Dangerous Secrets (Payback Mountain #1)

Chapter One

Walker took the turn off the highway,

passing the sign welcoming him to the town of Sisters, California.

The irony wasn’t lost on him. There’d be no welcome mat laid out by

the town leaders. In fact, if they’d known he was coming back,

they’d’ve likely blocked the highway. But they didn’t so they

hadn’t, and here he was ready to stir things up. He’d done his

damnedest to stay away from the people who lived in this valley,

but unfinished business and the need for home had drawn him back.

Now they’d have to deal with him.

For the past six years he’d

crisscrossed the country, checking in with his grandfather and

brother every month or so, working one odd job after another, and

never staying put more than seven or eight months before an itch

had him moving on. Circumstances had changed and now he was done

with all that. Coming home meant ripping the scabs off old wounds.

Maybe it was what was needed for them to heal properly.

A whine came from the passenger seat.

Without taking his eyes off the road, he reached out to pet the

little dog buckled into his harness. “You gotta pee, I know. Almost

there. You’ll be out of the truck in ten minutes.”

He hadn’t meant to keep the stray

who’d shown up at his door two years ago, but he couldn’t let the

scraggly mutt starve so he’d fed him. He’d been in Alberta then,

and since it got miserably cold in the mountains, and the dog had

looked so damned pathetic, he’d let him in at night. Then when it

was time to move on, he could hardly leave the dog behind. So here

he was, coming home with a not quite brown, not quite gray,

bug-eyed, butt-ugly dog.

The town sign read

Welcome to Sisters in

loopy script. It stood next to a trio of tall pines and a

house-size boulder that forced a curve in the road. Passing the

familiar landmarks smoothed out some of the rough edges he’d been

feeling.

He’d gotten used to living among

strangers, never staying in any one place long enough to really

connect. This town, in the shadow of Payback Mountain, held

memories that meant something. He pressed his foot harder on the

gas pedal, the sense of urgency that’d been dogging him for days

suddenly sharper.

He’d left the lousy roadside motel

south of Seattle at four that morning, sped through Oregon, and hit

the California border around noon. Now at a little past sundown his

eyes felt gritty, and a burning in his gut told him the burger he’d

grabbed at a truck stop a few hours back had been a bad

idea.

He’d been planning on returning home

when he’d gotten the call from his brother that’d hit him like a

sucker punch to the face. Their grandfather was dying. Walker had

tied up loose ends as quickly as he could, stuffed the few things

he cared about into his truck, figured out a dog restraint so if he

crashed, Bud wouldn’t get pitched through the windscreen, and

started driving.

He sighed heavily as he thought of his

grandfather. The man had been a giant in his life. James McGrath

had stepped in to raise Walker and Sawyer when their parents had

been killed in a stupid freak accident. A tree had fallen during a

heavy rainstorm, its trunk landing squarely across the front

windshield, killing his parents but sparing the two boys in the

back. It couldn’t’ve been easy taking on two half-grown,

grief-stricken kids, but that’s what James had done.

Now the time Walker had missed with

Pop was another weight to add to the load of guilt he

carried.

Laney sure as hell wouldn’t be

welcoming him back home. His mind pulled up the memory of her

standing outside the prison gate when he’d finally walked out a

free man. After being given the balance of his commissary account,

and waiting through the excruciatingly slow process to be released,

he’d walked out of prison with no plan except to get as far away as

he could from the seven by ten cell he’d been caged in.

The prison van was supposed to take

him and the other releasees to the Greyhound station, with a stop

in a parking lot for those lucky enough to have people who cared

enough to pick them up.

Then his name had been called. He’d

told his brother and grandfather he didn’t want them to come. No

one should be there for him, but he’d stepped out of the prison’s

van and there she’d been. Delaney Bryant with her sky-blue eyes

that’d always sucked him in. Seeing her had nearly brought him to

his knees. And true to form, he’d done what worked when forced to

deal with the shitload of emotions it seemed his fate to carry

around. He pushed his feelings for her down and walled them off

until they no longer threatened to destroy him.

She’d been standing next to Pop’s old

pickup, her fingers fiddling with the keys, her blue eyes shifting

from side to side. She’d worn white shorts and a flowered top. Her

long arms and legs bared in the summer heat of the Central Valley.

He’d thought she looked as fresh as a spring meadow and he’d been

fucking furious.

Laney had no business being anywhere

near that hellhole.

She’d put her nerves aside and had

rushed to him, her smile wide and her eyes shining. She’d wrapped

him in her arms, pulling him into a hug he’d felt down to his

bones. He’d have to have been dead not to hold her close, to bury

his face in her hair, to breathe in the essence that was

her.

But he wore prison like a stain and if

she was with him, that stain would spread to her. It didn’t matter

that all charges against him had been dismissed and his record had

been wiped clean. He hadn’t wanted her to see the prison, to be in

any way associated with it.

Even doing something decent like

picking him up would make people think differently about her. He’d

forced himself to push her back, to set her away from him, and told

himself she’d get over the hurt clouding those baby

blues.

Anxious to get away before he ruined

her, he’d turned around to find the van had already driven away,

and once again, choice was taken from him. He’d let her drive him

home to Sisters, not responding to her repeated attempts to draw

him into conversation. He’d spent that night talking with his

grandfather and brother, then, like an asshole, had left at first

light without a word to her.

Pop had signed over the pink slip of

his pickup, the same one Walker still drove, and he’d taken off to

parts unknown.

He’d hit the highway and couldn’t put

the miles behind him fast enough. In prison he’d been a caged

animal. He’d never felt safe and had to watch his back every damn

minute. When he’d walked out, all he’d been able to think was that

he needed to be free, someplace with no walls and an endless sky

where he could breathe.

He told himself that him being gone

was better for Laney. Safer. He’d taken off, first south through

the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico, then east over plains and

mountains. He’d avoided the interstates, traveling the blue

highways, the ones winding across the map pages through

out-of-the-way towns and limitless back country.

Often as not he’d slept under the

stars. It hadn’t been until he hit the Atlantic that he’d stopped.

If he could have driven over the ocean, he’d have done that

too.

Instead, he’d spent five months as a

waterman on a crabbing skiff on the Chesapeake Bay. That had been

the beginning of what, when he was being introspective, he termed

his years of solitude.

In those years he’d found he liked the

north best. He’d worked at an airport in Maine where he’d learned

to fly small planes, at a logging camp in Oregon where he’d been

taught to fell tall trees without killing himself, and eventually

landed in Alaska operating a fishing boat in the gulf.

Wildness appealed to him. He figured

if he hadn’t decided his wandering was over and gotten the call

from Sawyer, he might’ve pulled up stakes again and ended up

crossing the Bering Strait and the Russians would have picked him

up.

But now he was back, and there was

going to be a reckoning. Those responsible for his wrongful

conviction would pay for their crimes.

Tall pines whizzed past in

the purple twilight. He eased up a bit on the speed when he spotted

a couple deer grazing on the side of the road. He also spotted the

white SUV with El Dorado County Sheriff emblazoned on the side

passing him going the other way. He tightened his grip on the

steering wheel when the rearview mirror showed the SUV pulling a

U-turn. Shit. It

passed a slow-moving van and edged in behind Walker’s pickup. He

let loose with a string of profanity. There was no surprise when a

red light joined the headlights shining in his rearview

mirror.

Blinker on, he pulled carefully to the

side of the road, turned off the engine, cranked down the window,

and then rested his hands on the steering wheel so they were

clearly visible. No use getting himself shot dead before he even

got to town. Cars sped by, stirring the cool air. He watched in the

side mirror as the officer exited the patrol vehicle and

approached, silhouetted against the cruiser’s

headlights.

Walker narrowed his eyes.

“License and registration,

asshole.”

“Fuck you.”

“Wrong answer. Exit the

vehicle slowly, keep your hands where I can see them.”

The dog growled low in his

throat.

“Easy there,

Bud.”

Walker pushed open the door and stood

in front of the officer, shoving his hands deep in his pockets. In

the glow cast from the interior of his truck he saw a grin split

the officer’s face. A moment later Walker was pulled into a tight

embrace. He pulled his hands from his pockets to return it. When he

was released, his brother kept a grip on his shoulder.

“Christ, it’s good to see

you. I’d know that pickup anywhere. What took you so

long?”

“Had some shit to tie up,

and it’s a long drive from Alaska. I’m here now.” He fingered

Sawyer’s sleeve. “Got some stripes there, Deputy.”

“That’s lieutenant to you,

son.” Sawyer must have read Walker’s expression correctly because