Chapter Twelve #2
about James being in her heart. The basic truth of the sentiment
helped to ease Delaney’s grief. It made her feel like James was
close by, but just out of sight.
Antonia always gave Delaney’s spirits
a boost. Clara had given her love and support in the way she could,
but it was Antonia who had added the warmth Delaney had missed
growing up.
“You’re looking for
trouble. You won’t like it when you find it. Or maybe it’ll find
you.”
Delaney nearly jumped out of her skin.
Her mind had been on her conversation with Antonia and she hadn’t
noticed the gaunt man with weathered features standing around the
corner in the shadowed walkway. He leaned against the building, his
arms crossed over his chest. He had gray hair cut military-close to
his head, and glared at her from under bushy brows. She thought his
sharp gray eyes looked familiar, but she couldn’t place
him.
Delaney took a step back. “What are
you talking about? I don’t know you.”
“You should know me. I
heard you talking to that hippie woman. You need to mind your own
business and butt out of what’s of no concern to you.”
“Move along,
Grafton.”
Delaney gave her second startled jolt
in less than a minute. Walker seemed to have materialized out of
nowhere to stand behind her. He gripped her elbow and pulled her
closer to his side. The old man was Neil Grafton? She should’ve
remembered the coldness in the former sheriff’s eyes.
“Protecting your fucking
whore, McGrath?”
Delaney sucked in an enraged breath as
Grafton straightened so he was no longer leaning against the
building. She’d seen his photo in the paper when a scandal had
caused him to lose his position several years ago, and time had
only hardened his features. But though he’d aged, he still appeared
to possess the same wiry strength he’d always had.
His gaze traveled over her and snagged
on her breasts, his lips splitting into a leering smile. “Guess I
wouldn’t mind getting a piece of that myself.”
When she would have surged forward,
Walker’s grip tightened and he tugged her back until she bumped
against him. His chest was a solid wall of muscle.
The ugliness Grafton spewed twisted
her stomach into knots and set her temper boiling. She thought it
might be doing something similar to Walker. His body grew rigid and
the air around them grew so tense she wouldn’t’ve been surprised if
a bolt of lightning were to spear out of the sky to land at their
feet.
“Watch your mouth,
Grafton, or I’ll be helping you with that,” Walker
growled.
Grafton sneered. “Guess I was right.
She is your whore. Just like her grandmother was a fucking whore
for James McGrath. Figure you all keep it in the family. It’s a
little incestuous, if you ask me.”
Delaney saw red, the deep scarlet red
of anger, and lunged forward.
She wasn’t sure what she’d do—hit him,
kick him, knee him in the balls like she’d done to Vance—but Walker
wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her firmly against him,
well out of range of the disgraced sheriff.
When Grafton smirked, she twisted
against Walker’s hold. “Dammit, let me go. He’s got no right to say
that about James and my grandmother. I’ll punch him in the throat.”
That seemed like a solid plan.
“Pull it back, Laney. If
anyone needs to punch the sorry bastard, it’ll be me.”
Grafton apparently had more bravado
than sense because he continued in a goading tone, “Is that what
you’re going to do, asshole? Punch an old man? It’s what you want
to do. Go for it. Take a swing.”
His taunting words had her fury
clearing enough for reason to set in. Punching Grafton would be bad
for Walker. He’d just come back to town and didn’t need to revive
his reputation as a hothead.
No longer trying to break his hold,
she grabbed onto the arm still wrapped around her waist, his corded
muscles tense under her fingers. “Don’t, Walker. Don’t hit him.
That’s what he wants so you’ll get in trouble. He’s not worth
it.”
“Don’t hit him, Walker,”
Neil Grafton mimicked her in a singsong voice. “Fucking ex-con. Go
ahead and try it. Beat the shit out of me if you think you can.
Maybe it’ll get you a ticket back to prison, and you’ll be back in
a cage built for animals like you.” He glanced past them and
muttered, “Well, isn’t this rich. The Boy Scout of the family has
shown up.”
Delaney twisted to peer around
Walker’s wide shoulder and spotted a sheriff’s department SUV
parked in a space on the street in front of Retro Days. Relief
flooded through her when she saw Sawyer striding toward
them.
Mirrored sunglasses shielded his eyes
and he wore an El Dorado Sheriff’s Department ball cap pulled low
over his forehead. Delaney didn’t know how Sawyer had spotted them,
but she thanked her lucky stars he had.
He made a beeline for the trio
crowding the mouth of the walkway. “Delaney, Walker, good to see
you.” He nodded at the older man. “Grafton.”
Grafton’s gaze traveled over Sawyer.
“Guess anyone can make lieutenant these days.”
Sawyer ignored the comment. “Any
trouble here?”
Grafton spat on the sidewalk and
sneered. “Nothing you need to stick your nose in. You two were a
couple of punk kids back in the day, and now the Boy Scout thinks
he’s in charge. I have a message for all of you: mind your own
business if you don’t want to get hurt. None of you has a clue
what’s going on in this town.”
“You making a threat,
Neil?”
“Show some respect,”
Grafton snarled the words. “I was sheriff and your commanding
officer. You call me sir.”
Walker barked out a humorless laugh.
“You’re delusional, man.”
“You’ve lost whatever
respect you think you had a long time ago.” Sawyer’s voice was
controlled, but Delaney felt an undercurrent of anger vibrating
with the words. “You were in charge when my brother was arrested
for a sexual assault he didn’t commit. You railroaded him and you
know it. It’s never been confirmed how the supposed
mix-up happened to put Walker’s name on
the positive DNA match. You want to explain that?”
“Fuck off.” Grafton spat
again on the sidewalk again, barely missing Sawyer’s shoes. “I
never would’ve allowed you in my department if I’d known you were a
spineless shit.”
Walker’s steel-corded muscles coiled
even tighter under Delaney’s fingers. Before Walker had been
holding her back, now she made sure she had a firm grip on his
arm.
Ranging himself beside them, Sawyer’s
jaw was set, his hand resting on his service weapon. His expression
clearly read “don’t fuck with me.”
Grafton must’ve felt the threat from
both men because even as he blustered, he was backing
away.
Delaney thought his actions showed at
least some sense of self-preservation. Nobody in their right mind
would tangle with the McGrath brothers.
Grafton scuttled like a crab and
reached the end of the walkway. He raised both hands to give them
the double bird before disappearing around the corner.
“I wouldn’t put it past
that bastard to have put my name on the DNA match.”
Walker’s anger was justifiable. If he
was right, then Grafton was responsible for him spending more than
two years of his life behind bars.
Delaney released her grip on his arm
when she realized Walker was still holding her firmly against him,
his chest warm against her back. She tried to ease away but his arm
wouldn’t budge. “Walker, you can let me go now.”
“Right.”
Slowly, he dropped his arm and she
stepped away, but not before catching the glint of amusement in
Sawyer’s steady gray eyes. “I don’t know. You two looked adorable
cuddled up like that.”
“Fuck you,” Walker said
mildly.
Delaney was doing her best to focus on
anything other than the sensations still zinging through her body.
Her brain was still scrambled from how warm and protected she’d
felt when Walker had pulled her back against him.
And sinful.
His hard body at her back, his sinewy
arm holding her against him, then his voice behind her all deep and
rumbly. The warmth of his breath against her ear had made her
shiver. It’d taken every ounce of resolve to move away from all
that hotness, and at the moment she was having a hard time shutting
down the need curling through her body.
“Is that any way to talk
to your brother who kept you from beating up an old man?” Sawyer
held up a hand to forestall what would no doubt be another pithy
response from Walker. “But about Grafton, I’m with you. If it
wasn’t him who put your name on that DNA sample, at minimum, he
knows who did. He was sheriff, and it happened on his watch. He
also pressured the DA to go for maximum charges against
you.”
“I plan to prove Grafton’s
involvement.”
Sawyer assessed his brother with quiet
eyes. The resolute determination on Walker’s face sent a different
kind of shiver down Delaney’s spine. She wouldn’t like being on the
receiving end of all that bottled rage when he figured out who had
set him up.
Sawyer nodded. “I’m with you on that,
brother.” Sawyer nodded at Delaney, the corner of his mouth turning
up in a half grin. “Did you recognize Grafton?”
She shook her head. “I thought he
looked familiar but couldn’t place him. Not that I’d ever met him
in person. He looks like he’s been in the sun too long.”
“He’s living in a cabin up
by Bridger Lake. Comes to town every couple weeks, but until today,
he’s been keeping a low profile.”
“I read in the paper when
he was forced to resign, but I never heard anything about him after
that. That had to be four or five years ago.”
“Why was he forced to
resign?” Walker asked.
“He mismanaged the
sheriff’s department, and when it eventually came to light, he lost
his job and holed up in that cabin. No one saw him for months. I
don’t know if that was because he was ashamed or pissed. More
likely the latter. It’s been four years since it
happened.”
“Does he have family? A
wife and kids?” she asked.
“As far as I know, he
never married.”
Walker frowned. “Wait a minute, wasn’t
he related to Jerod Fetterly?”
“Yeah, Fetterly was his
sister’s son. The sister was a single mom and died of an overdose
when Jerod was a teenager. Grafton took him in.”
“Fetterly was a fucking
bully,” Walker muttered.
“He always had it out for
us,” Sawyer agreed. “Seemed like we couldn’t drive anywhere without
him pulling over one or the other of us just to be a
dick.”
“Wasn’t he the officer who
arrested you after that fight with Vance Norris?” Delaney asked
Walker, tilting her head as she tried to recall the details. “When
Vance and those two other guys jumped you?”
Walker nodded. “Yeah, they thought
they’d beat the crap out of me. That’s when I knocked Vance’s teeth
out. I think Fetterly set that up.”
“Set up the fight? What
makes you think that?” Sawyer interjected.
“When Fetterly showed up,
Norris said something about him taking long enough. I don’t think
anyone had called the fight into dispatch, but Fetterly knew it was
happening. He was looking for a reason to arrest me. You said
before he was dead. What happened to him?”
“After your trial, it came
out he’d been coercing women to have sex with him in his patrol
car.” Sawyer’s jaw tightened before he went on. “The fucker was
threatening them. Told the women if they didn’t do what he wanted,
he’d take them in on prostitution charges. Seems he was pretty good
at finding women who were vulnerable and going through a tough
time.”
Delaney considered what he’d said.
“I’d heard about that, but I don’t remember the case going to
trial.”
“He didn’t,” Sawyer said.
“Every one of those women recanted.”
“Someone got to them,”
Walker stated.
“I’m not arguing with you.
Upshot? Fetterly kept his job and probably kept doing the same
shit.”
“How’d he end up dead?”
Walker asked.
Sawyer filled in the gaps. “At the
time, Grafton’s leadership was imploding and citizen complaints of
excessive use of force and abuse of authority against Fetterly were
uncovered. Grafton had made sure those claims never saw the light
of day. Once the corruption started catching up to him, Grafton
gave Fetterly the choice of retiring and keeping his benefits or
going through the disciplinary process, which might not’ve gone
well for him. He chose the former.”
“That’s fucking corrupt,
but it doesn’t explain him being dead.”
Delaney looked up as the first drops
of rain began falling.
“Getting to it,” Sawyer
told his brother. “Fetterly was facing a civil lawsuit and negative
reports were popping up in the newspaper. About that time, he went
dispersed camping in the back country of Yosemite where a heavy
thunderstorm brought a flash flood through a canyon. The remnants
of his camp were discovered washed down the river, his tent was
downstream tangled in tree roots. His truck was parked at the
trailhead and there was no sign of him. It’s assumed he
drowned.”
“Was his body
recovered?”
“No.”
“You buying that?” Walker
asked. “Seems too convenient.”
“I’ll admit I was
skeptical. But it’s been several years and he hasn’t been seen in
all that time. The farther we get from when it happened, the less
likely he’s alive.”
The fresh scent of rain permeated the
air as fat drops spattered the walkway.
The radio hanging over Sawyer’s
shoulder buzzed. He listened for a moment, then nodded to her and
Walker. “Gotta go. You kids stay out of trouble.”