So she told him everything, including the fact that she had a defender.
“Come home,” her father said instantly, the way she’d known he would.
“I won’t let them drive me out of my house. It might be different if I really thought I was in danger, but hurting me would really backfire for Deputy Hayes. He’s surely smart enough to realize that.”
“Get a gun,” her father suggested.
“Dad!” Tess stared at him in shock. He was a big proponent of gun control laws.
Unbending, he said, “If you won’t protect yourself, come home and I’ll do it.”
Tess jumped up, came around the table and threw her arms around her father, hugging him hard. “Daddy,” she whispered.
His arms came around her, too.
His strong embrace felt almost as good as being held by Zach.
* * *
“NOLTE ACTUALLY TALKED to you?” Bran slowly lowered his beer glass to the Formica-topped table.
“He was a little testy at first, but once I got him started, he didn’t seem to mind talking.” Zach set his laminated menu aside.
“He never returned my phone calls.”
“I sneaked under his radar, what with my last name not being Murphy.”
His brother didn’t look pleased.
“He promised to try to get a copy of the police report, too.”
Bran shook his head. “It’ll be interesting to see if he comes through.”
“It will.” Zach paused, turning to be sure no one had quietly slipped into the booth right behind him. Having his back to the room disturbed him, but Bran had arrived first and obviously had the same instincts. At least he’d grabbed the booth at the very back of the diner and, so far, no one else had been seated within earshot. “He gave me the names of a couple of Mom’s lovers, too,” Zach added, keeping his voice low whether they were alone or not.
Bran met his eyes. “I knew who one of them was. I wasn’t sure you’d really want to know.”
“I want.”
They were interrupted by the middle-aged waitress who appeared vaguely familiar. The mother of someone Zach had gone to school with? But she didn’t seem to recognize him, so he let it go. Both men ordered and then waited until she was chatting with a family several booths away before resuming their conversation.
“Who?” he asked.
“You remember Jack Percy? Friend of Dad’s?”
Zach had trouble hiding his shock. “You’re kidding. Jack?”
“Oh, yeah.” Bran leaned back in the booth, anger in the rigid set of his jaw. “Dad deserved better than a best friend and a wife who both betrayed him.”
Zach shook his head. “Man. I really liked Jack. He never seemed to mind Dad bringing us on fishing trips.”
“After I saw him with Mom, I quit going on those trips.”
“I remember,” Zach said slowly. “It hurt Dad’s feelings.”
“Not like I could tell him why I didn’t want to go.”
“So you just looked sullen and said, ‘Because I don’t feel like it.’”
His brother’s face relaxed into a grin. “I was practicing at being a teenager.”
Zach laughed but was left oddly unsettled. This was the kind of information that made him feel as if the binoculars he was looking through had just been readjusted, sharpening or possibly distorting a view he’d thought he was already seeing clearly.
“You didn’t know,” Bran said suddenly. “Nolte didn’t give you Jack’s name.”
“No.” Zach hesitated. “The two he admitted to knowing about were Duane Womack, who was apparently Mom and Dad’s insurance agent, and a younger guy named Sam Doyle. Him, I remember. He was a plumber. He came out to the house when the pipe broke in the bathroom wall.”
“God, I remember that.” Bran looked stunned. “He was practically a kid.”
Zach nodded. “I’ve already traced him. He’d have been twenty-one.”
“That’s sick.”
“Mom was a beautiful woman.” He thought about that. “Still is, for her age.”
His brother appeared to be stuck on the idea of their thirty-five-year-old mother sleeping with a kid only a few years out of high school. His expression suggested he was doing his best to swallow something indigestible. Zach knew how he felt.