Sweet as Honey (Aster Valley 2)

For some reason this made him smile. “Stay, please.”

I cleaned up the mess from earlier while he put on a fresh pot of coffee and got the two of them settled at the kitchen table.

Dirk gestured to the woman he’d brought with him. “Gail Brown is a member of my team. As you know, fire is a serious threat here in Colorado, so we do our best to understand the circumstances of every fire instance in order to better prevent them in the future.”

“I appreciate it,” Truman said. “I was shocked last night. I’ve never experienced any kind of house fire or fire at my business before.”

Dirk nodded. “Well, I’m sorry to say, we did end up discovering signs of arson.” I noticed he watched Truman’s reaction to the news carefully.

Truman’s face fell. “I was afraid of that.”

Dirk glanced at me before looking back at Truman. “Do you have any idea who would want to set fire to your building, Mr. Sweet?”

Truman’s hand reached for mine under the table, and I held it firmly. “Um. Well, it’s kind of a long story, but…” He swallowed. “There is a man who’s made threats to me before. His name is Patrick Stanner. He and his brother, Craig, have harassed me for a couple of years now. Most recently I was a witness to Patrick’s deliberate destruction of property—Sam’s motorcycle—and he threatened me against pressing charges.”

I hadn’t had time to tell Truman that I’d already told the investigator some of this, but Dirk handled it professionally. “Your friend Sam here said there was a note? Do you have that, and may I see it?”

Truman stood up and found the note. He put it on the table in front of Dirk, who gestured to his coworker to gather it into an evidence bag.

“Can you tell me other instances of this harassment?”

What happened over the next few minutes shocked me. Truman told Dirk about instances of physical intimidation around town, times when Craig and Patrick barred Truman from his own shop, the grocery store, and the diner. He explained about a time his tires were slashed, a night they barged into his shop and threw his inventory around, and a winter when they’d somehow had his road removed from the snowplow service route.

As he spoke, my heart started beating wildly like a caged, feral thing. I stood up to pace. I couldn’t sit still and think about all the times this man was mistreated and left to fend for himself without any kind of support and no ability to rely on local law enforcement.

How the hell had he stayed?

Thankfully, Truman ignored my restless wander around the kitchen as he continued to tell them calmly about the time the brothers had cornered him behind his shop one night after closing.

He blinked over at me before continuing. “They, um, they told me their dad had been taken to the hospital for a heart attack and it was my fault because of the stress of everything from when he’d lost his job at the ski resort.” He swallowed. “They punched me and stuff. This wasn’t long before Mikey’s, um…” He glanced up at the investigators before looking back at me. “Accident.”

I could not bear this.

“They beat you up?” I asked, my voice almost breaking at the end. “Tru?” I returned to where he was sitting and squatted down in front of him. “They hurt you?”

I reached up to brush the tumble of curls back from his eyes so I could see them as he answered. He simply nodded. I wrapped my arms around his waist and pressed my face into his chest.

Fuck. Fuck, I was going to kill them.

This sweet man had taken this bullying long enough. And I wasn’t going to let him have one more moment of pain at the hands of those abusers.

14

Truman

I was embarrassed to admit all of this in front of Sam. The number of times I’d let the Stanner brothers take advantage of me was humiliating, but if I truly wanted them to pay for what they’d done to my shop, it was time to come clean. This investigator was from the state, not the county, so I had to assume he didn’t have the bias local law enforcement had.

This was my chance.

“I went to the emergency room with bruised ribs, a sprained wrist, cuts and bruises on my face, and suspected head trauma. There should be records at the hospital. I know I had a CAT scan because I was relieved when it came out okay.”

I gently nudged Sam back up into the chair next to mine. His display of emotion had taken me off guard, and I didn’t have the mental energy to pick it apart right now.

I swallowed and continued. This was going to be the hardest part. It was something I’d never told anyone. Ever. “Like I said, they blame me for their father losing his job at the ski lifts. They thought my dad should have fought harder to keep the resort open, and they blamed me for the accident that had caused all the trouble in the first place.” I glanced at Sam to gauge his reaction. “But it wasn’t my fault.”