Relentless (Fallon Sisters Trilogy: Book #1) (6 page)

"Not so fast." Jo grabbed the paper out from under his arm. Without breaking stride, Jeremy disappeared through the kitchen.

Jo shook her head. "He's like a big kid." She maneuvered with her cane and stepped inside, folding Bren into her arms. "Holidays make it hard, sweetie."

Bren hugged her back. "I just miss him so much." She wiped a tear from her cheek and sniffed before pulling away. "I've made a mess of things with the boys, especially Aiden. He said he hates me."

"He didn't mean it. He loves you." Jo took Bren's hand, giving it a good shake. "You need to let it go. Trust me. I was in law enforcement once. Wes's alibi is solid."

It was on the edge of her tongue to tell Jo about the phone call from Tom's cell phone. Her expertise as a retired DEA agent had come in handy as Bren had tried to make sense of Tom's death. But she'd promised Kevin.

"Come on." She tucked Jo's hand inside her arm and led her toward the dining room. "Dad's waiting on us. He's cooked the biggest bird you've ever seen."

Since Bren's mother had passed away a few years earlier, her father had learned to cook for himself, offering his culinary skills every Wednesday at her house and insisting he do the major holidays as well. Damn good thing. Today her heart struggled to beat, her limbs moved mechanically but by no means were capable of preparing a sumptuous feast. She'd more than likely burn dinner, her mind preoccupied with who was missing.

Bren was quiet at the table. She filled her plate, passing the food on, but toyed with her fork, unable to take a bite. She watched as the gold flecks running through the ivory tablecloth caught the light of the country chandelier above. The merriment of her family's and friends' voices and Sugarland's newest Christmas CD in the background grated on her nerves. She wanted to clamp her hands over her ears.

Tom was everywhere—in her children's eyes, her father-in-law Paddy's expressions. Bren wanted so desperately to scream, pull her hair out. Have a tantrum. She missed him, his laughter, even his anger when she'd pushed him past the point of reason.

The only thing she'd managed to do was wake the dead. The late night calls from Tom's phone hadn't stopped. The article had gotten Wes's attention. One point for her. But she needed more, and the phone—Tom's phone—was her objective. If Kevin didn't come up with his probable cause, she'd find a way to track down Tom's phone, and she wasn't above breaking and entering to get it.

Daniel Fallon, Bren's father, directed his gaze across the table toward Jeremy. "What do you think about Sweet Prince?" His voice, every bit Irish—he'd never lost his accent since coming to America—was edged with dismay.

Founder of Grace, he lived a brisk walk down the gravel road he shared with Bren and her family in a farmhouse where she and her sister Kate grew up. He'd never quite retired. Since Tom's death, it had been necessary for him to take a more active role. Sweet Prince had become a barb in his side that wouldn't shake lose. Not that he or the rescue had any claim to the horse. Sweet Prince's death, just like the other horse deaths over the last year or so, seemed too convenient.

Kevin popped into Bren's mind. Mr. Know-It-All. Now here she had just pointed out there was something up with the number of colic cases and, boom, another drops to his death.

Of course now Kevin was considering she might be on to something.

Jeremy handed the potatoes to Jo. "Damn shame. I nursed him back from colic once."

"Colic?" Bren's father's usual glittering blue eyes hardened through his bifocals. "You don't find that odd, then? Nine deaths now, all from one cause?"

In his early seventies with a portly frame, and thin, downy-white hair, he could pass for a sweet old man, and he usually was, except she knew her father well. The color in his cheeks wasn't from the warm kitchen where he'd prepared their bountiful Christmas dinner. "I guess law enforcement knows better, perhaps?"

Jeremy set down his fork. "I've wondered, myself. The only other horse death I attended was White Lace, a white Arabian. That was over two years ago in Frederick County. Same thing. Nothing showed up on the toxicology report."

"Was the horse insured?" Paddy asked. He sat at the end of the table. Tom's only surviving parent. Pam had died giving birth to their firstborn—Tom.

Having Paddy around worked to both soothe and upset Bren. It was like looking at her husband thirty years fast-forward. Other than the crew cut and the silver hair, Paddy's compressed lips and furrowed brow reminded her of Tom. Tom when he was mad. Or when he'd questioned her about her involvement in Wes's missing horses the same night she found him dead.

"To the hilt," Jeremy said around a mouth of turkey. His voice, a hard jerk, brought Bren back to the conversation.

Jeremy would have prepared documentation for the insurance claim. He must have gotten a glance at the payout. Bren and Tom had theorized over the deaths that stretched as far down as North Carolina and up to New York. Now that she looked back, to before Tom's death, he'd been a little preoccupied about the whole subject.

"Honey, you all right?" Her dad cocked his head, his gray brows furrowing into one.

"Fine." Bren gave a quick smile before her lips thinned. She took a sip of her water.

"Paddy." Finn pulled on his grandfather's arm. "Show me how to do the coin trick."

"You liked that?" Tall and still carrying a lean, muscular frame for sixty-nine, Paddy wrapped his arm around Finn and grinned.

Nowhere could she register Paddy's loss for his son. Even with the holidays and the one-year anniversary approaching, he seemed content and accepting sitting there, his expressive brown eyes smiling through his reading glasses at Finn.

"He'll never get it," Aiden complained across the table.

"Will so," Finn challenged.

"Give him a chance, Aiden," Jeremy said.

"Are you watching, Mom?" Finn piped over the table.

Bren nodded, her temples throbbing.

Sleight-of-hand not being one of Finn's strong points, the coin slid from his sleeve and out onto the table where it spun like a globe before coming to rest flat on the tablecloth.

"Fail!" Aiden yelled as he reached across the table for the coin.

"The wine, me boy!" yelled her father.

Out of the corner of Bren's eye, the glass of wine at her elbow fell over with such force the glass broke, and red wine, dark as blood, splashed her white turtleneck, the excess flooding the tablecloth before it spilled over the edge and sloshed onto Bren's lap. She sucked in air and slid her chair back, her hands pushing the broken glass away from the edge. A sharp sliver caught the meaty part of her palm. She whimpered.

"Bren, you all right?" asked Jo, struggling to her feet.

"You're bleeding." Jeremy stood, too.

Blood from her palm dripped onto the hardwood floor.

"Mom?"

"Stop whining, Finn," Bren said, his voice tonight just a little too high pitched.

Finn's eyes widened and he clamped his mouth shut. "Bren, he only—"

"Enough, Dad." All eyes remained on her. "Everyone stop staring at me! Stop telling me what to do. How to feel. I've had it up to here!" She raised her trembling hand, still dripping blood, to her neck and cut a slice through the air. Bren grabbed a napkin to stanch the blood and pushed back against the chair hard, toppling it over. Everything seemed to circle—the chair, broken glass, blood-red wine—Tom's blood!

Oh God.

Bren turned toward the hallway, tripping in a pair of high-heeled clogs. Unable to steady herself, she kicked them off and ran to the steps, the tears blinding her as she climbed the stairs and headed in the direction of her bedroom.

He isn't coming back.

Bren hit the light switch inside the doorway and ran to Tom's highboy chest. She still hadn't cleaned out his things. She grabbed for the top drawer and began scooping his undershirts, socks, and boxers, the blood from her hand smearing the clothes. Bren dumped them on the floor. Going for the next drawer, she did the same, a pile growing.

She ran to the walk-in closet, her socks slipping on the hardwood floor. His clothes hung on the left. She took a tentative step—a mix of jeans, flannel shirts, a few dress shirts, and slacks rested silently on hangars. She moaned. Wiping her wet face with the back of her arm, she slumped forward. The smell of Tom filled that side of the closet, a combination of the barn, their land, and Irish Spring.

As long as she could smell him, he was with her. But while time passed, the scent of him haunted her. He'd be alive if it weren't for her—Bren, always needing to prove a point, always pushing to get what
she
wanted.

Except this time it had backfired—big time.

Bren leaned into Tom's clothes. She gathered them into her arms and took a long breath. Her tears flowed anew as she clung to his flannel shirts. Then her anger took over, and she yanked them off the pole and threw them to the floor. She reached up and pulled down his hunting gear from the shelf, letting it fall with a thud to the ground. On the floor, she pulled out his shoes and pitched them behind her, grunting and stopping to wipe her face several times.

"Bren." Jeremy stopped her mid-throw.

Bren stood still, holding Tom's Nike tennis shoe in her hand.

"You okay?"

She turned toward him and bit down on her lip, shaking her head.

Jeremy moved forward. He frowned and took the shoe from her hand, then wrapped his arms around her. "I know you're hurting."

She nodded against Jeremy's shoulder. The tears ran down her cheeks, soaking his ridiculous red-and-green reindeer sweater.

"I can't—" Racked by sobs, Bren couldn't finish. She only buried her face deeper into his shoulder. She'd cried on his shoulder so many times over the last year, it wouldn't have surprised her if he was waterlogged by now. She'd woken him from a dead sleep the night she found Tom. He had lowered Tom down while she guided his body to the ground. Jeremy and Jo had both rallied around her when Kevin couldn't put Wes anywhere near their farm the night Tom died and wasn't changing his "findings" to suit a friend who, in his words, needed to get a grip.

Well, he needed to get a grip, too—a grip on Tom's phone. Because it existed.

She pulled away and wiped her face. The cut on her hand still thumped, but the blood had stopped. "I'm a mess." She glanced at her wine-stained sweater and jeans.

Jeremy gently pulled her from the closet and sat her down on the edge of the bed. He glanced beside the bed at the pile of clothes. "The clinic is closed tomorrow. How about Jo and I help you pack up Tom's things?"

"I can—"

He put up his hand. "I know you can, Bren. But let us help. Six hands are faster than two." He sat down beside her and squeezed her knee.

Bren gave him a half smile. "Thanks."

"I know this is none of my business, but how are you doing financially?"

Bren shrugged. "It's tight. With the economy, donations are down for the rescue so I've had to dig into what little savings Tom and I had. But we're managing."

"Didn't you have life insurance for Tom?"

Her shoulders slumped. "We're living off it. What's left anyway. And Dad's social security."

Jeremy rolled his lips and made one of those "I'm thinking" faces. "I'm looking for an assistant. In fact, Monday I was going to put an ad in the
Hagerstown Herald
. The position starts at twenty-seven K."

Bren gave him a questioning look. "What are you saying?"

He pulled back and grinned. "The hours are flexible. Part-time for someone who needs to be home before the bus lets off her kids."

"You can't be serious! I don't—"

"Have experience? You run a horse rescue, have lived on a farm your whole life. Don't sell yourself short."

"When would—"

"The first of the year. Tomorrow I'll drop off a key."

"But I didn't—"

"Say yes, Bren."

Bren pulled away and licked her lips, the taste salty. The money, although generous, wouldn't go a long way considering the expense to run a household, but it would ease some of the burden.

She gave Jeremy one of her most serious faces. "How about vacation and holidays?"

His eyes widened.

She smiled and nudged his shoulder. "I'll take it."

J
ameson Livestock Sale Barn, on the first and third Friday of each month, took every ounce of energy from Bren whenever they came to auction. This place, redolent of fear, horseflesh, and piss, sickened her, the laughter and jovial chatter maddening.

Folks milled about the barn like it was a Saturday night social. Some sat in the bleachers lining the chute where the livestock came through as if in anticipation of a sporting event.

"You want the night off?" Jeremy dipped his head to see her face, frowning when he saw her expression.

Even though she wasn't here to bid on Grace's behalf, an equine vet was required to be on standby. As Jeremy's assistant, she couldn't shirk her duties, sour stomach or not. "I'm good." She held onto Finn's hand. "You seen Aiden?" she asked her son.

Finn shook his head.

She'd told Aiden to meet them at the rails, adding with finality eight o'clock sharp, hoping she had drilled that last point into his obstinate teenage brain.

"Mom," Finn whined.

"What?" She glanced down. He was grimacing. "My hand. You're squeezing it too tight."

"Sorry." She lightened up on his little hand and searched for the time. A big round clock hung above the auctioneer's box. "It's—"

Running feet, slipping on straw, caught Bren's attention. Aiden fell in next to Jeremy and swung the unnerving swath of brown hair away from his eyes. "Here," he announced and nodded toward the clock. "With two seconds to go."

He was cruising toward restriction big time. But he had her—he was on time. Giving him a razor-sharp stare, she pinched together her thumb and forefinger, leaving scant space between them. "You're that close."

Aiden's lips thinned and his cheeks flushed in embarrassment. Bren could sympathize with him a little. No one liked being the center of bad attention, and they had belabored the issue.