A Most Shocking Revelation Page 16

  “Where is she now?” Jake asked.

  Gavin checked his watch. “She’s at the diner, but she should be at the house in a couple of hours. And when she gets back, I’ll be waiting for her.”

  Valerie walked into the great room to find Gavin seated in the chair, one leg crossed over the other at the ankles. By all appearances he looked relaxed, until she noticed his grave expression. Something had gone terribly wrong, and she intended to find out the details.

  After tossing her purse aside, she collapsed onto the sofa and stretched her sore legs out in front of her. “Tough day, I take it.”

  “You could say that.”

  She heard no warmth in his tone. In fact, he sounded as cold as the ice that had recently melted from the rooftops. “Come on, Gavin. It will help if you talk to me about it.”

  “I intend to.” He remained as still as stone as he said, “I know all about your mother.”

  Valerie’s whole being went on red alert. “I was going to tell you about her last night, but you stopped me, remember?”

  “You should have told me a long time ago,” he said. “I had a right to know.”

  The familiar shame tried to take over, but this time she refused to let it. “Actually it was my decision if and when to tell you. I wanted you to know after—” I fell in love with you “—we’d become close. I’ve learned it’s not something you readily share with people, especially people who might not understand.”

  He released a cynical laugh. “Guess you’re going to tell me I didn’t have a right to know about your criminal record either, even though I opened my house to you.”

  Now she was angry. “Mind telling me why you suddenly decided to investigate my background?”

  “First, another question. Do you own a gun?”

  That caused her to straighten in her seat. “No. I hate guns. Why?”

  He put his boots flat on the floor, then leaned forward, forearms draped on his knees, hands fisted together. “Then would you mind telling me why Rhodes found one taped underneath your car? Specifically the gun that murdered Malcolm Durmorr.”

  She simply stared at him a few moments until the shock settled some. “I have no idea why it’s there, but I assure you I didn’t put it there.”

  “But you did know Durmorr.” He didn’t bother to disguise the suspicion in his tone.

  “I barely knew him,” she said. “And if you think I killed him because he came on to me, you have totally lost your mind.”

  “Maybe so, but you should be able to understand why I might have my doubts.”

  “I see. We’re back to once a criminal, always a criminal. Would you like to know what I did in my youth, Sheriff?”

  He sat back and assumed an almost insolent posture. “Yeah. Enlighten me.”

  After coming to her feet, Valerie crossed the small space and stared down on him. “First of all, let me ask you a question. Have you ever had to listen to kids on the playground call your mother a jailbird?”

  “No.”

  “Of course not. You had perfect parents who loved you and cared for you. Which leads to another question. Have you ever done without any necessities? Food? Clothes? Heat?”

  His gaze faltered. “Not that I recall.”

  Tears burned hot behind her eyes, but she willed them away. “Then you don’t know what it’s like to be hungry or cold or not have enough money to buy the simple things. But I know that all too well.”

  “I’m really sorry about that, Val,” he said without even a hint of true understanding. “But being poor doesn’t give you a right to commit a crime.”

  “Spoken like a man who’s never wanted for anything,” she said through gritted teeth. “And for your information, I was fifteen years old when I was charged with shoplifting a coat. Not for me, for my grandmother. She was recovering from pneumonia and it was so cold, outside and inside our ratty apartment. She was cold. I went into a department store, grabbed a coat off the rack and tried to wear it out.”

  The memories came back then, pelting her like a hailstorm, as hard and unforgiving as Gavin’s expression. “I’d never shopped anywhere but in thrift stores, so I didn’t know about sensors. I got caught. They cuffed me and put me in a patrol car. I got charged with a crime and my grandmother still didn’t have a decent coat. Pretty ironic, huh?”

  Gavin rubbed his forehead but didn’t say a word.

  “So there you have it, Sheriff,” she continued. “I was a teenage thief, but I’ve done nothing—nothing—but walk the straight and narrow since then. A lot of good that’s done me.”

  Gavin sat in silence for a few moments, his gaze focused on the window, before he finally looked at her again. “Are you sure you haven’t committed any more crimes?”

  Damn his indifference. “I definitely did not kill Malcolm Durmorr, whether you choose to believe that or not.”

  He withdrew her youth-center baseball cap from his pocket and dangled it from one finger. “You were caught on a surveillance camera stealing a map from a museum display, wearing this. The map that’s supposed to lead to buried treasure. I figure you thought you’d done without long enough and you decided to pad your pockets with some gold. When Durmorr got in your way, you took care of that.”

  This time Valerie looked away. “If you recall, I left a note of apology for borrowing the map after I returned it. And as far as your assumptions about me being some kind of greedy fortune hunter, that’s not at all true.”

  He stuffed the cap back into his pocket and leveled a hard gaze on her. “What is the truth, Valerie? Or do you even know the difference between truth and lies?”

  Valerie. Now they were back to being virtual strangers. “The truth is, I’m Jessamine Golden’s great-great-granddaughter. I came here in search of answers, not the damn gold. Those answers are supposed to be buried with the treasure, and that’s all I care about. I didn’t plan to move into your house and I certainly didn’t plan to fall in love with you.”

  Gavin seemed more surprised by that revelation than any of the others. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me all of this sooner?”

  If only she had, then maybe it wouldn’t have come to this. “I tried, several times as a matter of fact, beginning with that first night in front of the fire. First you gave me your opinions about criminals. Then you told me you didn’t want to know about my past. That my slate was wiped clean. Or have you forgotten about that?”

  “You should have forced the issue.”

  “Probably so, but the last time I confided in a man I cared about, I regretted it. I suited him just fine as a lover, but when he went home on the weekends, he wouldn’t take me. He said his mother would ask too many questions, and he couldn’t tell her about my past. Which basically meant I wasn’t good enough for him, except in bed, and that made me his whore.”

  Her tears began to flow then, tears of frustration and fear and anger. Of a deep-seated hurt the likes of which he’d never known. “So you see, I had to know if what they say about Jess is true, hoping and praying it’s wrong, because then maybe I can believe that my mother’s crimes are a fluke and that I won’t be passing on some kind of tainted genes to my own children. I had to find out for myself before I can move forward with my life.”

  He met her gaze and she saw a flicker of compassion before it faded once more. “I would have understood.”

  She braced her palms on the chair’s arms and leaned forward, her gaze locked into his. “Would you really have understood, Gavin? The man with zero tolerance to crime? Think about it. You probably would have locked me up as soon as you realized I was the one who took the map. Arrest first, ask questions later.” She straightened and backed way from him, holding her arms tightly to her middle against the sudden chill. “Isn’t that your policy, Sheriff?”

  When he came to his feet slowly, grabbed his hat from the coffee table and brushed past her, she asked, “Where are you going?”

  He stopped and turned, sporting the same emotionless expression. “I’m goin
g to check out some more evidence, a few strands of hair we found on Durmorr’s body. Blond hair.”

  Dear God, could this get any worse? But then again, they shouldn’t match hers because she had been nowhere near Durmorr the night of his death. Unfortunately she had no one to vouch for her since she’d been in the motel alone.

  “What then, Gavin?”

  “If the strands match yours, then I’ll be back to arrest you.”

  He might as well have knifed her right through the heart.

  “You do what you have to do, Gavin, and so will I.”

  He turned away from her. “In the meantime, I’ll be gone at least an hour. Maybe longer.”

  Digging through her bag, she withdrew the keys to his car and dangled them from one finger. “Don’t you want these?” she called out, prompting him to face her again. “You certainly wouldn’t want to leave your car with a murderer and a thief, would you?”

  “You keep them for now.” He settled his hat on his head, completing his return to Old West avenger of justice, viewing her as the villain. “If you’re innocent, you’ll be here when I get back. If not, then take care of yourself.”

  As Gavin walked out the door, Valerie realized he was giving her a head start if she decided to run away. But she refused to run. She never had before.

  She did intend to go on with her quest, beginning with locating the diary. If she found that and only that, she’d have another part of her great-great-grandmother’s story. And the way things were shaping up, she might have to resort to reading it in prison unless she could somehow prove she had nothing to do with Malcolm Durmorr’s murder.

  Of course, she still had to retrieve the diary from the old Golden homestead, the one that had recently belonged to Jonathan Devlin.

  Valerie shivered just thinking about going inside the house to search for the journal. And what if she couldn’t locate the loose floorboard that supposedly served as its hiding place? What if someone had already found it? After all, the map had surfaced months ago. But if someone had found the diary, then where was it? All she could do was see if maybe it was still there, somehow overlooked.

  If she did manage to get into the house, that would constitute breaking and entering. But what did she have to lose? Gavin believed she’d committed murder. He believed she was a career criminal, just like her mother. At one time he’d even believed that he loved her, but that no longer remained true, exactly as she’d predicted.

  If the diary remained lost forever, she would try her best to locate the missing gold and turn it over to Gavin. And then she would fight for her life, battle for her freedom and prove to the world that she wasn’t like her mother or Jessamine Golden. Even if she could never convince the man she would always love.

  Her time was limited and it would soon be dark, so she had to hurry. She returned to her bedroom, laid out the letters for Gavin to see and wrote a last entry in her journal so he would know where to find her—and arrest her.

  Valerie changed into jeans and a sweatshirt, grabbed a flashlight from the kitchen and borrowed Gavin’s extra down coat. She immediately noticed it smelled like him, clean and fresh, providing her with some comfort as well as some sorrow.

  Hurrying to the car, she fumbled twice with the keys before she finally got it started and headed away. Luckily she had a good sense of direction and had little trouble finding the location. When she arrived at the house, she pulled up the drive and parked out back, then rushed out of the car. The daylight had already faded, but she could make out enough to find the broken window and prayed that it hadn’t been fixed yet. To her surprise, it lifted with ease and she climbed inside. Afraid of risking detection, she opted not to try the lights and instead flipped on the flashlight to discover she was in a bedroom where the furniture had been draped, giving the area a ghostly quality. She didn’t believe in restless spirits, but then, she hadn’t believed in true love until she’d met Gavin.

  Shaking off all thoughts of the sheriff, determination kicked in, sending her into the hallway and eventually into the parlor. She shined the beam on the walls, searching for the closet door. Just when she thought she’d found it, “Are you looking for this?” came from behind her.

  Valerie spun around and almost dropped the flashlight when she contacted the cool, gray eyes that now held a devilish gleam. She stepped back a few inches, widening the ray until she had the complete picture in view.

  There Gretchen Halifax stood, immaculately dressed in a black fur coat, matching fur hat and black silk pants, a weathered journal in one hand, and a gun in the other—pointed straight at Valerie’s head.

  “Face it, O’Neal, you’re still in love with her.”

  Gavin took his eyes from the road long enough to give Thorne a hard look. He appreciated Connor volunteering to come with him to arrest Valerie even if he didn’t appreciate his assumptions. Correct assumptions. “It doesn’t matter how I feel about her now. The hairs found on Devlin matched hers, and that means she’s probably guilty of murder.”

  “But you’re still not completely convinced,” Connor said.

  Gavin tightened his grasp on the steering wheel. “No.”

  “You’re letting your emotions screw with your common sense, Gavin.”

  No use in arguing with Connor about that. Or arguing at all. His friends believed she was guilty and they could be right. But still…

  “She never lied to me, exactly,” Gavin said. “I never asked her if she had a record and I never pressed her for information about her past. And now that I think of it, she tried to tell me several times. I wouldn’t let her.”

  “She withheld the truth by omission,” Connor said. “But I can understand why you’re trying to make excuses for her. If it were me and we were talking about Nita, I’d probably do the same thing.”

  Gavin shot a hard look at his friend before turning his attention to the road. Connor was a former army ranger, a hard-ass in most instances, but that was before he’d met his wife. Love did crazy things to men. Gavin had found that out the hard way.

  Now only a mile from his ranch, he would know soon enough if Valerie was still there. As he turned up the drive, an overwhelming sense of dread filled him. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted her to be there or if he hoped she’d taken off. Of course, she would eventually be found, but at least someone else could arrest her then.

  Even though the sun had set, Gavin could still see that his dad’s car was missing. Obviously she had left, and probably for good. But she wouldn’t get far before the authorities would catch her—as soon as he made the call.

  He wasn’t quite ready to do that just yet, not until he confirmed her departure. Shifting the truck into Park, he kept it running and told Connor, “I’ll be back in a minute.” Without waiting for a response, Gavin sprinted to the front door, turned the key in the lock and rushed inside. He flipped on the lights as he went, as if he expected to find Val hiding in a corner, waiting for the big, bad sheriff to take her away.

  When he found no sign of her in the kitchen, the great room or the loft, he immediately headed into the bedroom, expecting to find all of her things gone. Instead her bag rested on the end of the bed, only partially packed, and her uniforms still hung in the closet. She’d probably decided she wouldn’t be needing those where she was going.

  The wooden chest sitting on the top of the dresser immediately caught his attention. He couldn’t imagine her leaving without that, but then, she had been in a hurry. Curious to see what it contained, he strode to the bureau to find two documents laid out on the oak surface beside it.

  Gavin read the letter from Val’s grandmother first, set that aside and picked up the yellowed parchment signed by Jessica Baker—also known as Jessamine Golden. He scanned the letter to learn the details about the gold, including the mention of a pendant. He remembered seeing Val wearing that pendant a few months back, but not since she’d been in his house. That seemed to be the key to the gold’s exact location, along with the map, which would explain why
she had made the copy. He searched the chest and found no sign of the necklace, which led him to believe she had decided to search for the gold before she left town. But if that were true, then why was the damn map still sitting on the corner of the bureau?

  Gavin turned it around and immediately noticed that a black X marked one of the hearts—the same hearts they’d puzzled over for months. The gold’s location. And next to the map he found a small black journal opened up to a page containing neat script.

  Gavin, if you’re reading this now, I’ve gone to find the answers to my past. I promise you I had nothing to do with Malcolm Durmorr’s murder. I know you don’t believe me, but if you believe nothing else, please know that I love you with all of my heart. That will remain true forever.

  He collapsed onto the edge of the bed, holding the journal in his hands, clinging to the final connection with Val. Right now he didn’t have time for this. He had to do his job, even if he suffered from a heartache bigger than all of Royalton County. Bigger than Texas.

  He had to suck it up and find her and he now knew where to look. First, he’d go to the Devlin house, and if she wasn’t there, he’d move on to the Windcroft property. Even if she had decided to flee after she found the gold, she would have to dig through frozen ground, and that could take a lot of time.

  Before he could heave himself off the bed, Connor appeared in the doorway. “I take it she’s not here.”

  Gavin shook his head. “No. But I know where she is and what she’s after.” He nodded toward the bureau. “It’s all spelled out in that letter from Jess Golden, Val’s great-great-grandmother.”

  Connor’s gaze snapped from the documents to Gavin. “Then she’s after the gold?”

  “And a diary Jess left behind. It’s been hidden in the Devlin house all these years.”

  Connor frowned. “That’s got to be the diary Lucas Devlin mentioned to Tom. He found a reference to it in those notes when he was looking at Jonathan’s books.”