Deserves to Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

“When?” he asked as she noticed Big Zed squinting at her car as he walked toward the back of the house.

“This week.”

“And if you don’t?”

“You won’t have to worry about me. I’ll be gone and . . . and he’ll follow.”

“To kill again,” he said, lifting an eyebrow. “That’s what you’re trying to get me to believe.”

She let out a nearly inaudible sigh and opened the door. “Believe whatever you want, Cade.” She heard another door open and didn’t wait any longer. She didn’t want to explain herself to Zed or anyone else, yet.

She followed her earlier tracks across the front yard to her car and wondered if Cade were watching her or if Zed was asking questions. Well, so be it.

She should never have shown her hand, never have driven there and tried to drag Cade into it.

Her hopes for help from anyone named Grayson had died with the sheriff.

It was time to come up with Plan B.

“Who was that?” Zed asked as he walked into the house and found Cade staring out the living room window.

“No one.”

“Like hell.”

“Okay. Someone I knew a long time ago.” He watched Anne-Marie drive off and thought, Good riddance. It surprised him that she’d tracked him down, but it didn’t surprise him that she’d shown up with some wild-ass story. She’d always been slightly off, one wheel not quite on the track. Yes, she’d been his lover and he still remembered how passionate she was in the bedroom, but he also recalled what a crazy and bona fide liar she was. The kind of woman best left alone. He didn’t know why she was in Grizzly Falls, but if it was to start something up again, he’d shut her down. Fast. It was over, and for the first time in his life, he wasn’t interested. He was with Hattie and had her daughters to consider. He’d be a fool to risk losing his family, and he wasn’t about to do it with Anne-Marie Calderone.

“A woman.” There was a sneer in Zed’s voice.

Cade turned and faced his older brother. “Yep.”

“Women are always getting you into trouble.”

That much was true. Sex had always been Cade’s downfall. He liked women. All women. Lots of women. And he’d never been one to shy away from danger, especially if it involved a slightly over the top woman, the operative word being slightly. At least that’s how he’d reacted until recently, but Anne-Marie had been trouble from the get-go. He’d wondered then, as he wondered now, if she was missing a few vital screws. She’d always been attractive and sexy, but mentally a little unbalanced. And there was the lying thing; he hadn’t been kidding when he’d called her compulsive. It was as if she just couldn’t stop.

“She’s just a friend.”

“No such thing. Not with you.”

“Believe me,” Cade said.

“So how do you know that waitress from the diner?” Zed asked. To Cade’s look, he said, “That’s who it was. I saw her there.”

For a reason Cade couldn’t name, he felt suddenly protective of a woman he’d sworn to abhor. “Long story. Long time ago. Long over.”

Zed’s eyes thinned and he took a look out the window, but Anne-Marie?

?s car had disappeared. “Okay,” he said as if he didn’t quite believe Cade, but was willing to move on. “I was just at the funeral home. Everything’s a go for the service.”

Cade grunted. He didn’t want to think about Anne-Marie, true enough, but he also didn’t want to dwell on the fact that the brother he’d looked up to was gone. “Can you handle the night’s feeding?” he asked Zed.

“S’pose. Where you goin’?”

“Into town to have dinner with Hattie and the girls.” The darkness in his soul dissolved a little when he thought of Mallory and McKenzie, the twins he’d recently found out were not sired by his brother Bart, but by Cade himself. Had it changed how he felt about them? Not much. Since Bart’s death he’d thought of the girls as his, anyway. The new biological information had been a shock, but not an unpleasant one. Truth be known, it was a possibility he’d considered a couple times but had tossed aside while his brother had been alive.

“Hattie.” Zed snorted again. “She’s no good, y’know. I don’t know what your deal is, or was, with the waitress from the diner, but it sure as hell has to be a lot less complicated than the thing you’ve got going with Bart’s wife.”

“Ex-wife.”