Faultlines (25 page)

“I met Libby Hennessey, Beck’s wife.” Sandy spoke from the doorway. “We talked out at Inman’s for an hour this morning.”

Jenna turned to look at her.

“Jordy told Libby he slept with Coleta. He thinks that’s why Huck is after him.”

“Jordy and Coleta?” Jenna’s voice registered some note between stupefaction and disgust.

“She seduced him, and you’d better watch what you say, because according to Libby, Jordy isn’t the only young guy in town she was entertaining.”

“Travis would never—” Jenna stopped, breaking Sandy’s glance. Even she knew better than to include the word
never
in some comment you were making about your kid. Turning back to Sandy, Jenna asked how it was she and Libby had come to meet and talk. Sandy had counted on it, Jenna’s curiosity, and as quickly as she could, she filled Jenna in, telling her that Jordy had taken the matter into his own hands and gone there, that he was now working for Libby. “Emmett said the only way he can ever know his birth dad now is through Libby.”

“But why confide in her? She’s a total stranger.”

“Maybe precisely for that reason. Or maybe he thought we wouldn’t believe him, that no one would.” Sandy wiped her face. “I think it’s reached a point where he had to tell someone. He’s pretty scared with Huck breathing down his neck—”

“I don’t see why Huck cares who Coleta slept with. All he can talk about is finding a way to get out of his marriage to her. He’s requested an annulment, and if that doesn’t work, he’s going to call her family in Honduras and ask if he can give the money back. Give Coleta back.”

“When he first went after Jordy, Huck threatened him. He said if he ever heard Jordy talking about having sex with Coleta, he’d find a way to put him in jail. I think, then, Huck meant to put the fear of God into him.”

“Why? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“It does if you figure the money Huck was getting paid by Coleta’s family depended on her getting citizenship, and for that to happen, she and Huck had to look convincingly married. If INS found out their marriage was a sham, Coleta would get deported, and who knows—Huck might lose his badge. He had a lot riding on that little venture, but it’s turned into something else now, since the accident. Now it’s about you.”

“He’s not in love with me, Sandy.” Jenna left the bathroom.

Sandy followed her into the kitchen. “Yeah, I agree. Obsession is not love. It’s a mental, an emotional, disease.”

“Oh, give me a break. Obsession? Really? I hardly think the guy’s obsessed. Like I’m what? Irresistible? Like he can’t get enough of me? Days go by and I don’t see the man. Besides, look at me. I’m a wreck. Is this something to get obsessed over? Even Troy doesn’t come around much anymore.”

“Think about it, Jenna. Who quit the force in San Antonio, uprooting what was a pretty successful career to come back here—basically the ass end of nowhere, for a cop, anyway—to look after you and Trav? He’s been like a husband, like a dad ever since John was killed. Who fixes the toilet when it runs? Who takes the car in for its checkup? Who did you call in the middle of the night when Trav ran a fever and you needed someone to make a drugstore run?”

“Well, yeah, okay. But not—I haven’t really called on him since Troy and I got serious.” Jenna sat at the table in the breakfast nook.

Sandy came up to the chair adjacent to Jenna’s and paused, balancing her hands on the back of it, thinking, working it through. “That’s it,” she said. “That’s what happened, what pushed him over the edge.”

“What are you talking about?”

Sandy came around the chair and sat down, leaning forward on her elbows, her eyes on Jenna’s intent, searching. “All this time, Huck was fine as long as he had you to himself, as long as he could care for you and Trav, you know? The way a husband would—”

“He wasn’t—there are no fringe benefits. We’re just friends.”

“In your mind. I think Huck was okay with it, too. A friendship was better than nothing. But then Troy came along, and he realized that in addition to fixing the toilet and running the car in, Troy was getting benefits.”

“That’s crazy,” Jenna said, but Sandy could tell she was considering it.

“He’s wanted you for years, since you were in high school. But you chose John, and he loved John, too.” Reaching across the table, Sandy took Jenna’s hand in her own, and it was cold in her warmer grasp. “You remember how horrible Huck felt when John was killed.”

“He blamed himself. I wanted to blame him, too.”

“But you always knew the risk, knew it could happen. You said you were prepared—”

“I lied.” Jenna smiled ruefully. She wiped her face, sniffed.

Sandy leaned back. “Huck wanted to be your savior. I think he figured, eventually, if he hung around long enough, you’d let him in—all the way in. He’d take John’s place, get the bennies—the bed and board, so to speak.”

Jenna was looking at Sandy and shaking her head. “I’ve never felt that way about him and never will.”

“I know.”

“I love him the way John loved him.” She got up, turning away from Sandy, groaning softly.

“He’s setting Jordy up, Jenna. For you, so you don’t have to look at what really happened—”

Jenna held up her hand, and the gesture was a warning, but it was also a plea. Sandy could see from Jenna’s expression that something hard and resistant was giving way inside her. It was all coming together, the truth she didn’t want to know, that she couldn’t deny.

“A detective we hired has found a witness, Ricky Burrows. The night of the accident, Ricky was driving on CR 440 when the Range Rover came out of nowhere around a curve right at him. Ricky told the detective he saw Travis. They were eyeball to eyeball. You know how they say your mind will crystallize an image when you’re in danger like that? Everything slows down; your brain registers every minute detail, and it remembers them; it prints them like photographs. That’s what happened to Ricky. The image of Travis in the driver’s seat is printed on his brain as clearly as a photograph.”

Jenna went to the sink, leaned against it.

Outside a car door slammed, and they both jumped at the sound.

Footsteps approached. “Jenna?” A man shouted. “You in there?”

She wheeled, glance colliding with Sandy’s. “It’s Huck.”

Sandy stood up, blood pounding. She was afraid, and she saw that Jenna was, too, and it went through her mind that if she was wrong about Huck, it would be awful, and if she was right, it might be even worse.

He came through the back door without knocking, as if he were more than a visitor, which Sandy supposed he was now, after all these years. His focus, his look, and his tender smile were all for Jenna. His one-armed hug, the kiss he dropped on her temple, were rote, part of his usual routine when he visited.

But Jenna’s slight recoil was not, and Sandy saw how he tensed.

Huck found her gaze now. “What’re you doing here?”

“Telling the truth, the way you should be,” Sandy answered.

“What truth would that be?” He leaned against the countertop, crossing his arms, affecting a casual air.

But Sandy’s attention was riveted to the butt of his gun, jutting from his holster, and there was nothing casual about it. She made herself raise her gaze to his face. “I was telling Jenna about Ricky Burrows, the witness to the accident who says you threatened him into changing his statement.” It was a shot in the dark, really. She had no proof Huck knew about Ricky’s existence as a witness, much less that Huck had pressured him, but he must have. How else to explain Huck’s cryptic remark to Libby that Ricky had finally gotten his story straight?

“That guy,” Huck began, and the characterization was a sneer, a curse. “I guess if you can believe a whack job like him, you can believe anything.”

“You know him, then.” Sandy had expected that he did. Still, it shook her. There seemed to be no end to the ways Huck was prepared to get Jordy.

“What do you mean, whack job?” Jenna’s voice was strident, accusing. “Sandy says he was on 440 that night, that he saw Travis driving the Range Rover. It ran him off the road.”

“That’s total bullshit.” Huck addressed Jenna. “You know Fran Keller. Her folks owned the Little B.”

“What does Fran have to do with it?”

Jenna asked before Sandy could.

“Burrows is Fran’s sister Jewel’s kid, and if you remember, when we were growing up, that whole Scroggins family out there at the B were just a bunch of nut jobs, with the exception of possibly Fran. Jewel got hauled off the place in a straitjacket more than once, though. Her kid Ricky is just as bad off.”

“He’s crazy, so he can’t possibly know what he saw the night of the accident.” Sandy stepped into Huck’s field of vision. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“I heard it’s not only your boy who’s been talking to Libby Hennessey, that you and her are getting pretty chummy, too.”

“So? Is that your business?” He knew she’d met Libby? How?

“Well, you might want to ask her about Burrows. Ask her about the dead hog she found swinging in a cedar tree out at her place not long ago, blood and entrails smeared everywhere. He got in her house, too, left her a dead hummingbird on her kitchen floor, put rats in her mailbox. You think that guy’s not psychotic?”

“Why?” Jenna asked. “Why did he do all that?”

“He thinks the Little B belongs to him, that Fran is selling it out from under him. His mama filled his head with all this bullshit about it when she was dying. She told him Fran forced the old folks, Fran and Jewel’s parents, to give her power of attorney.”

“He should take it up with Fran, shouldn’t he?” Sandy asked.

“Well, I guess he would if he had a brain that worked, but, trust me, he’s crazy as a shithouse rat. He keyed his own truck, for chrissake. Although that does indicate some of the cells up there are working. It kept the suspicion off him when the other stuff started happening. Slaughtering that hog, the other animals—he thought it would scare folks off.”

“If he’s doing all of this and you know it, why isn’t he in jail?” Sandy looked intently at Huck. Something was off; she could see the swim of it, oily and deep, in his eyes. He didn’t want her here. He didn’t want her anywhere near Jenna. Sandy thought of leaving; she could drive to the police department . . . and say what? That Huck was obsessed with her sister, and to protect Jenna from the further trauma of facing that her son had foolishly caused his own senseless death, Huck was out to frame Jordy? Who would believe her?

Huck said something about Colorado, that folks in that state were hunting Ricky. “They have a BOLO out on him.”

“Why?” Jenna wanted to know.

Sandy talked over them both. “You made a deal with Ricky, didn’t you, the same as you did with the trucker from Detroit, Nat Blevins. What did you promise Ricky? Did you say if he changed his story about who he saw driving the Range Rover, you wouldn’t arrest him for vandalism and trespassing? Or maybe you told him to get out of town, get clear out of Texas.” She was baiting Huck, and she knew it might be dangerous, but what other option did she have to get the truth, or what she hoped and prayed for Jordy’s sake was the truth? But she was shaking now, and scared. Scared enough that she felt her blood pounding the walls of her brain, hammering the space behind her eyes. She thought of her phone, feet away in her purse on the breakfast-room table, where she’d left it.

Huck took a step in her direction. “What are you trying to say, Sandy?”

She stood her ground. “I’m not
trying
to say anything. It’s a fair question. You’re in love with Jenna. You don’t want her to have to face it, that Trav was the driver. You don’t want to believe it yourself. You want it to be Jordy. At first you went after him because he’s the punk kid who slept with your immigrant wife, and even if you don’t give a shit about her, macho guy that you are, you weren’t about to let Jordy get by with it. But now—now you want him put away for Jenna’s sake.”

“Sandy.” Jenna’s sharp protest was a warning.

“Hasn’t that accident taken enough from us, Jenna?” Sandy kept her eye on Huck.

“Is it true?” Jenna came around Huck, distracting him.

It wasn’t a thought process that prompted her when Sandy seized the opportunity and grabbed her phone and began pressing buttons, a ridiculous attempt to hit the right ones for Roger, or Emmett, or even 911.

“Do you think I’m that weak?” Jenna wanted to know. “That I can’t handle knowing my son wasn’t perfect? That he could be capable of being foolish, of making a horrible mistake?”

“No, hell no, Jenna. You’re the strongest, bravest woman I know. It’s just, you’ve been through so much shit, and so much of it is on me—I mean, John died because some asshole gets my gun? Jesus.” Huck’s head rocked back. Blinking, voice torn, he said, “I keep seeing it, the look on your face when I told you. It’s like, etched into my brain, you know? I’d do anything—”

“Stop, Huck, please.” Jenna touched his arm.

He looked down at her, and his face was a suffusion of love and despair. Even Jenna saw it, the way he was eaten up with his adoration of her, and she stepped back as if burned by its heat.

“Are you lying about Jordy?” she asked him. “Because I don’t need that. I didn’t ask you to do that.”

Huck turned away, wiping his face, his upper lip.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do if you’ve lied about this, Huck.” Jenna’s voice hitched. “If you’ve threatened Jordy, pressured witnesses. Did you? Tell me the truth.”

“For you, Jenna, to save you—”

“Oh my God, Huck.” Jenna sounded sick. She locked her gaze with his. “You realize I have to tell your captain. You must know that.”

He wheeled, and Sandy saw it as if in slow motion, his hand whipping his service revolver from its holster, in one slick, practiced movement. He swung the weapon first in Jenna’s direction, and then he pointed it at Sandy.

Her heart paused.

Jenna asked, “What are you doing?” and took a faltering sidestep, and that’s what caused Huck to look at her and take aim at her again.

The moment would be seared into Sandy’s brain—Huck’s expression, his look of dumb devotion, underscored by the darker, welling shadow of his rage and his grief when he pulled the trigger.