River Road(18)
Author: Jayne Ann Krentz

“I see what you mean,” Lucy said. She shuddered. “No wonder she stopped doing major repairs and renovations.”

“Bringing in a contractor or a handyman or a painter would have been too risky,” Mason said. “Any halfway decent craftsman would have taken one look at that fireplace and started asking questions. He would have offered to give her the name of a good tile man. Sara would have declined. The contractor or the painter would have wondered why she didn’t want it repaired.”

Lucy contemplated that for a moment. “Were you ever a suspect in Brinker’s disappearance?”

“The leading theory at the time was that Brinker was the victim of a drug deal gone bad, but Brinker’s father didn’t want to hear that. If you’ll remember, Hobbs was the chief of police back then, and Brinker senior was pushing him hard. A lot of people saw you leave the party with me that night, and at least one other person, Quinn Colfax, knew there was some bad blood between Brinker and me. So, yes, Hobbs came around asking questions.”

“What happened?”

“Thanks to your aunt, I was able to tell Hobbs the flat-out truth—I had no idea what had happened to Brinker. Hobbs had no proof to the contrary. I told him what Brinker had planned to do to you that night. But I couldn’t prove it, and Hobbs knew that Brinker’s father wouldn’t want to hear that news, either, so I doubt if Hobbs ever told him.”

“Did Hobbs talk to Jillian?”

“Sure. He talked to her, Quinn Colfax, Nolan Kelly and several other people who were known to hang around Brinker. But everyone denied knowing anything about the plan to drug you and rape you.”

“Including Jillian?”

Mason finished the water and set the bottle aside. “Including Jillian.”

Lucy’s mouth twisted into a grim smile. “She lied.”

“Yes.”

Lucy studied him intently. “You said that there was bad blood between you and Brinker. What happened?”

“After I drove you back here that night, I went out to the ranch and waited for the party to break up. It didn’t take long, because someone phoned in a complaint. I had a talk with Brinker—told him not to go anywhere near you again. He made a run at me and slammed into the fender of his car instead.”

Lucy’s brows rose. “I see.”

“Quinn Colfax was a witness to the conversation.”

“I should have known.” Lucy shook her head. “My guardian angel couldn’t let it go. In addition to allowing Brinker to bruise himself on his own vehicle, did you by any chance make threats?”

“More like promises. I let Brinker know that if anything happened to you, he would have to deal with me.”

“He would have believed you,” Lucy said. She was silent for a beat while she absorbed that information. Understanding darkened her eyes. “You thought that if you threatened him he would go after you first. He would have been obsessed with rage because you dared to get in his way.”

“I wanted to distract him.”

“You deliberately made yourself a target. What on earth did you think was going to happen?”

Mason said nothing. He watched as another shock of comprehension struck her. Tension coiled inside him. He had no clue how she would react.

“Dear heaven,” she whispered. “You intended to kill him if he came after you.”

Mason let the statement seethe in the atmosphere between them. There was nothing more he could say.

Lucy took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I need a moment here.”

Mason sat quietly, waiting for the verdict. Thirteen years ago he had been willing to cross the line. Lucy had to know that he probably hadn’t changed all that much over time. He would do a lot for Lucy, but some things he could not do. He could not pretend that he was all that different from the nineteen-year-old he had been that summer. Given the same set of circumstances, he would be willing to cross the line again.

“I don’t know what to say except thank you,” Lucy said. “And I’m very, very glad you didn’t have to do it.”

It was not the reaction he had been expecting, Mason realized. Then again, he hadn’t known what to expect.

“I don’t want your thanks,” he began.

“You were only nineteen. It would have been a heavy burden for you to carry. Aunt Sara understood that. She also knew that Brinker was a monster and a threat both to me and to you. She considered herself to be the adult in that situation. She knew she couldn’t go to the police because Hobbs wouldn’t have paid any attention to her. She took care of Brinker so that you wouldn’t have to do it.”

Mason looked through the kitchen doorway at the crime scene tape strung across the entrance to the living room. “You sound very sure you know what was going through Sara’s mind at the time.”

“I am sure, now that I know her secret and the facts. People tell me that I’m a lot like her, you know.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh, not the eccentric, flower-child, student-of-enlightenment thing. But deep down I understood her better than anyone else in the family did. And she understood me. So yes, in hindsight I can imagine her thought processes and her logic.”

Mason nodded. “I get it.”

Silence stretched between them.

“Did you search for him?” Lucy asked suddenly.

“Brinker? Oh, yeah, from time to time over the years. After Aaron got the program up and running I plugged in everything I knew about Brinker. Alice came up with a high probability that he had been murdered the summer he disappeared.”

“Well, it looks like that conclusion may be right.”

“Alice also estimated that there was an eighty-nine percent probability that Brinker had been killed by someone who knew him and that the motive was personal. He wasn’t the victim of a drug deal gone bad.”

“A reasonable conclusion. Brinker was too smart to get caught in that kind of scenario.”

“Yes.”

Lucy regarded him with an expression that could only be classified as one of professional interest.

“Did Alice offer up a list of possible suspects?” she asked.

“I fed in all the names of the people I could remember who had been associated with Brinker that summer. The program spit out only one serious suspect.”

Lucy winced. “You?”

“Me.”

“Whew. Good thing Fletcher Consulting was not called in by the local police to consult on the Brinker case at some point during the past thirteen years.”