“Of course.” She gave him a squeeze. “Come on. I’ve started dinner and I’ll pour you some Scotch and we can sit and watch the river.”
It was his favorite place to be if he wasn’t in bed with her wrapped around him. He loved to sit and watch the sunset with her. “That would be nice.”
He followed his wife and prayed he could use these days to find a way to tell her he was a lie.
* * * *
“I heard it was a drug cartel.” Holly frowned as she poured a cup of chamomile tea and set it in front of Nell. “But I heard that from Marie, and she seems to think Seth has invested heavily in drug rehab centers and that’s why they came after him. I don’t think that was it.”
Laura patted her infant daughter as she rocked back and forth in the rocking chair that used to be Nell’s mother’s. “Yeah, I don’t think so either. Somehow I don’t see a cartel targeting investors in rehabs. Cam hasn’t come home yet, so I haven’t been able to grill him. I’m so tempted to go to the big house and see if I can pick up any clues. You’re sure Henry didn’t tell you anything at all?”
Nell took the tea and settled back into her place on the sofa. Laura had shown up with Holly shortly after Nate had knocked and asked Henry to come down to the station house. Nate had explained that they needed to take a more thorough report on what he’d seen now that Seth was in surgery and expected to make a full recovery. Nell had tried to go with her husband, but Henry had insisted that she rest. And Nate had insisted they go to the station rather than taking his statement here. It had been an odd exchange, with some weird tension running between the sheriff and Henry. She’d been glad when her friends had shown up on her doorstep offering to sit with her for a while.
“He told me what he knew,” Nell replied. “He was there. He went over to help Logan with a plumbing problem.” Except he hadn’t taken his tool kit. Had he? He hadn’t come back with it. She supposed he could have gone out to his shop, picked it up, and then left it behind in the chaos. He’d seemed so dazed when he’d come home. She looked to Laura. “Why would Nate need Henry to come down to the station? According to Henry, he didn’t see much. He was in the bathroom, and he hid there until the shooting was over.”
Which also didn’t sound like her husband. Henry wasn’t a violent man, but she’d never had a question in her mind that he would protect the people around him. She believed in nonviolence, but she wasn’t so naïve that she didn’t understand sometimes there was no other way. She already knew she would defend her husband and child and friends if she was forced to.
Henry wouldn’t hide. He might throw his body in front of something deadly, but he wouldn’t hide.
And that meant something was wrong with his story.
Laura patted her daughter, Sierra, on the back as the baby started to mewl. She’d only recently adopted the infant, but she was already settling into her new role as a mom. “I suppose he wants Gemma to take a long statement. You know Nate doesn’t love to type.”
“Why would he need a long statement from a man who was in the bathroom the whole time? Henry didn’t leave the bathroom until it was all over.” He’d said he’d had to help stop Seth’s bleeding, and that was how he’d gotten the blood on his clothes.
He’d seemed haunted by the whole thing. But Henry had been around blood before. He was always solid in a crisis. Something was different this time. The only other time she’d seen him so shaken was a few months before when Gemma had been in trouble.
Holly sank down beside her. “I think Nate is trying to make sure he gets everything right on this one since he’s going to have to talk to the feds. Some of the people who attacked Seth and Georgia were from other countries.”
She didn’t buy it. Something was wrong, and it made her wonder about the incident that happened before. “Do you remember when Jesse got shot?”
Laura let out a huff. “Who could forget that? Gemma’s ex-fiancé comes into town and tries to kill her because he thinks she’s working with you on a case that eventually got a presidential candidate taken out of the primaries. No. I don’t forget that easily.”
It had hit close to home because Nell had been working with the township that formed the basis of the case Gemma’s old firm had been working on. They’d been able to prove the EPA investigator was taking money under the table from the corporation that was polluting the town’s water table and causing a cluster of cancer cases. One of the primary investors had been a presidential candidate. Gemma and Nell had been able to prove that the candidate had known what was going on. The scandal caused the candidate to drop out.
But not before Jesse had been shot and Gemma and Cade had nearly died.
Holly sat down beside her. “Caleb complains regularly about how he’s taken more bullets out of Bliss citizens than all his years in war-torn countries.”
Holly and Laura shared a look, one that normally Nell would let slide as her two best friends trying to figure out how best to handle her so she didn’t go off on a protest. But this time she rather thought it was about something else.
“How did that man die? Gemma’s ex?” She’d heard the rumors and laughed them off. Because the rumor was someone had killed the man who’d shot Jesse and tried to kill Gemma. Because there
