Branded by the Sheriff. Delores Fossen
last time he’d seen those eyes, she’d been silently hurtling insults at him. She was still doing that now.
“Faith Matthews,” Beck grumbled. “What the devil are you doing here?”
She draped the towel in front of her and stepped from the tub. “I own the place.”
Yeah. She did. Thanks to her mother’s and sister’s murders. Since her mother had legally disowned Faith’s brother, the house had passed to Faith by default.
“The DA said you wanted to keep moving back quiet,” Beck commented. “But he also said you wouldn’t arrive in town until early next month.”
Beck figured he’d need every minute of that month, too, so he could prepare his family for Faith’s return. It was going to hit his sister-in-law particularly hard. That, in turn, meant it’d hit him hard.
What someone did to his family, they did to him.
And Faith Matthews had done a real number on the Tanners.
“I obviously came early.” As if in a fierce battle with the terry cloth, she wound the towel around her.
“I didn’t see your car,” he pointed out.
She huffed. “Because I took a taxi from the Austin airport, all right? My car arrives tomorrow. Now that I’ve explained why I’m in my own home and how I got here, please tell me why you’re trespassing.”
She sounded like a lawyer. And was. Or rather a lawyer who was about to become the county’s new assistant district attorney.
Beck had tried to convince the DA to turn down her job application, but the DA said she was the best qualified applicant and had hired her. That was the reason she was moving back. She wasn’t moving back alone, either. She had a kid. A toddler named Aubrey, he’d heard. Not that motherhood would change his opinion of her. That opinion would always be low. And because LaMesa Springs was the county seat, that meant Faith would be living right under his nose, again. Worse, he’d have to work with her to get cases prosecuted.
Yeah, he needed that month to come to terms with that.
“I’m trespassing because I thought your brother was here,” he explained. “The clerk at the convenience store on Sadler Street said he saw someone matching Darin’s description night before last. The Rangers are still analyzing the surveillance video, and when they’re done, I figure it’ll be a match. So I came here because I wanted to arrest a killer.”
“An alleged killer,” she corrected. “Darin is innocent.” The towel slipped, and he caught a glimpse of her right breast again. Her rose-colored nipple, too. She quickly righted the towel and mumbled something under her breath. “Before I got in the shower, I checked the doors and windows and made sure they were all locked. How’d you get in?”
“The back lock’s broken. I noticed it when I came out here with the Texas Rangers. They assisted me with the investigation after your mother was killed.”
Her intense stare conveyed her displeasure with his presence. “And you just happened to be in the neighborhood again tonight?”
Beck made sure his scowl conveyed some displeasure, too. “As I already said, I want to arrest a killer. I figure Darin will eventually come here. You did. So I’ve been driving by each night on my way home from work to see if he’ll turn up.”
She huffed and walked past him. Not a good idea. The doorway was small, and they brushed against each other, her butt against his thigh.
He ignored the pull he felt deep within his belly.
Yes, Faith was attractive, always had been, but she’d come within a hair of destroying his family. No amount of attraction would override that.
Besides, Faith had been his brother’s one-night stand. She’d slept with a married man, and that encounter had nearly ruined his brother’s marriage.
That alone made her his enemy.
Faith snatched up her clothes from the bed. “Well, now that you know Darin’s not here, you can leave the same way you came in.”
“I will. First though, I need to ask some questions.” In the back of his mind, he wondered if that was a good idea. She was only a few feet away…and naked under the towel. But Beck decided it was best to put his discomfort aside and worry less about her body and more about getting a killer off the streets.
“When’s the last time you saw your brother?” he asked, without waiting to see if she’d agree to the impromptu interrogation.
With a death grip on the towel, she stared at him. Frowned. The frown deepened with each passing second. “Go stand over there,” she said, pointing to the pair of front windows that were divided by a bare scarred oak dresser. “And turn your back. I want to get dressed, and I’d rather not do that with you gawking at me.”
It was true. He had indeed gawked, and he wasn’t proud of it. But then he wasn’t proud of the way she’d stirred him up.
“Strange, I hadn’t figured you for being modest,” he mumbled, strolling toward the windows. He could see his SUV parked out front. It was something to keep his focus on, especially since he didn’t want to angle his eyes in any direction in case he caught a glimpse of her naked reflection in the glass.
“Strange?” she repeated as if this insult had actually gotten to her. “I’d say it’s equally strange that Beckett Tanner would still be making assumptions.”
“What does that mean?” he fired back.
Her response was a figure-it-out-yourself grunt. “To answer your original question, I haven’t seen Darin in nearly a year.” Her words were clipped and angry. “That’s in the statement I gave the Texas Rangers two months ago. I’m sure you read it.”
Heck, he’d memorized it.
The part about her brother. Her sister’s ex. Her estranged relationship with all members of her family. When the Rangers had asked her if Aubrey’s father, Faith’s own ex, could have some part in this, she’d adamantly denied it, claiming the man had never even seen Aubrey.
All of that had been in her statement, but over the years he’d learned that a written response wasn’t nearly as good as the real thing.
“You haven’t seen your brother in a long time, yet you don’t think he’s guilty?”
Silence.
Beck wished he’d waited to ask that particular question because he would have liked to have seen her reaction, but there wasn’t any way he was going to turn around while she was dressing.
“Darin wouldn’t hurt me,” she finally said.
He rolled his eyes. “I’ll bet your mother and sister thought the same thing.”
“I don’t think he killed them.” Her opinion wasn’t news to him. She had said the same in her interview with the Texas Rangers. “My sister’s ex-boyfriend killed them.”
Nolan Wheeler. Beck knew him because the man used to live in LaMesa Springs. He was as low-life as they came, and Beck along with the Texas Rangers had been looking for Nolan, who’d seemingly disappeared after giving his statement to the police in Austin.
Well, at least Faith hadn’t changed her story over the past two months. But then Beck hadn’t changed his theory. “Nolan Wheeler has alibis for the murders.”
“Thin alibis,” Faith supplied. “Friends of questionable integrity who’ll vouch for him.”
“That’s more than your brother has. According to what I read about Darin, he’s mentally unstable, has been in and out of psychiatric hospitals for years, and he resented your mom and sister. On occasion, he threatened to kill them. He carried through on those threats, though I’ll admit he might have had Nolan Wheeler’s help.”
“Now