Nothing To Lose
RaeAnne Thayne
Crime expert Wyatt McKinnon has built his career by turning high-profile cases into bestsellers. His most recent project–investigating the murders that landed a detective on death row–has reunited him with Taylor Bradshaw, the inmate's fiercely protective sister. Wyatt plans to help her exonerate her convicted sibling.Wyatt insists his attraction to the captivating redhead won't distract him, but he does concede that the recent attempts on Ms. Bradshaw's life have caused unexpected emotional complications.
“Your brother is a grown man. If he wants to talk to me, I don’t see how you can do anything about it.”
Taylor’s midnight eyes flashed fire. “He’s fighting for his life, Wyatt. The last thing he needs is for you to write one of your salacious books about the case and go stirring everybody up all over again. He should be pouring all his energies into his appeal, not wasting his time talking to you.”
“I’m sorry you’re not happy about it. But as long as he wants to see me, I’ll continue going.”
“And nothing I can say will change your mind?”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
She gazed at him for a long moment, that sweetly curved mouth tight and angry; then she turned and stalked away, leaving him with his head pounding and unwilling guilt gnawing at his insides.
Nothing to Lose
RaeAnne Thayne
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
RAEANNE THAYNE
lives in a graceful old Victorian nestled in the rugged mountains of northern Utah, along with her husband and two young children. Her books have won numerous honors, including several readers’ choice awards and a RITA
Award nomination by the Romance Writers of America. RaeAnne loves to hear from readers. She can be reached through her Web site at www.raeannethayne.com or at P.O. Box 6682, North Logan, UT 84341.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Epilogue
Chapter 1
“A family shattered, innocence destroyed. The tragic death of Cassie Nyland reminds us once more that the monsters we should fear most are those that lurk inside ourselves.”
Enthusiastic applause burst through the bookstore just off the University of Utah campus when Wyatt McKinnon closed the pages of his latest book. He offered the audience the smile the writer for Vanity Fair had called “dangerously enigmatic” at the same time he fought the urge to rub at the familiar tension headache pounding holes in his temples and his concentration.
He hated speaking in public. After ten book tours, he probably should be used to it. But no matter how many readings he gave like this one—how many speeches, how many television interviews—he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was all a mistake, that eventually everyone would figure out he was just a hick cowboy from Utah who didn’t deserve any of the wide acclaim that had found him after the publication of his first book, Shadow of Fear.
Only neurotic-writer blues, he told himself again and straightened his spine to face the crowd of university students suddenly clustering around him. They all looked so young, pathetically eager, and he had the lowering thought that they were all barely in elementary school when he finished college himself a decade earlier.
“That was so wonderful, Mr. McKinnon.” A perky brunette with a tight gymnast’s body and a brilliant smile that must have set her parents back a small fortune in orthodonture was the first in line. “Your books are all so scary. I can’t pick one up unless my roommate is home. They’re scary but so gripping, you know?”
“I’m pleased you think so,” he responded automatically.
“Oh, I do. Will you sign Blood Feud for me?” She thrust a copy of a book he was currently promoting. “To Brittanee, with two E’s.”
With a dutiful smile, he signed the book, then spent the next hour doing his best to keep that smile firmly in place while his headache cranked up a couple of dozen notches and the muscles in his hand cramped from all the books he signed.
Finally the crowd dispersed, until only a few people remained. One was Paul Cambridge, an old college friend whose family owned the bookstore. He was talking to one of the salesclerks and held up a finger to let Wyatt know he was almost ready to take him out for the seafood enchiladas at Cafe Pierpont as he had promised.
Wyatt nodded and rose to stretch, then caught sight of a woman he had noticed briefly earlier. She hadn’t moved from the back row of chairs. Now that he had a moment to focus on her more closely, he thought she looked vaguely familiar. He narrowed his gaze. It wasn’t until she rose and approached him that all the pieces clicked together.
“Taylor Bradshaw, right?” he said quickly as she came to stand before him.
A flare of some unreadable emotion registered briefly in eyes a deep and lovely blue, but she quickly veiled it. “Yes.”
The last time he had seen her was during the sentencing phase of her brother’s murder trial eighteen months earlier. When Hunter Bradshaw had been sentenced to death by lethal injection for the murder of his girlfriend, her mother and her unborn fetus, the former Salt Lake City police detective hadn’t so much as blinked in reaction.
Bradshaw’s sister had been a different story. When Judge Leonis had pronounced the grim sentence, every trace of color had leached from the elegant, fragile features of Taylor Bradshaw and she had collapsed to the floor of the courtroom.
That small scene had been just one more in a string of dramatic developments in the case that had captivated the public’s interest. Successful, popular television personality murdered by the father of her unborn baby. It was a fascinating case and Wyatt couldn’t wait to finish his research and start writing about it.
He didn’t wonder that he hadn’t immediately recognized Taylor Bradshaw. Except for some shadows lingering in those huge blue eyes, the woman standing in front of him barely resembled the pale, distressed young woman who had haunted the courtroom every day.
She also didn’t look much like the other college students who had attending his reading, in their jeans and T-shirts and slouchy backpacks. Taylor Bradshaw wore tailored slacks and a russet blazer over a crisp white shirt. She carried a leather briefcase and exuded an air of professional competence. Her auburn hair was cut shorter than he remembered it and her face was harder, somehow. Determined.
She looked…driven. He couldn’t come up with another word to describe her. He knew she had been in her last year of medical school during the trial and he wondered now if she had returned to finish up. He sincerely hoped for her sake that she had. Just because her brother was living on borrowed time didn’t mean she had to shove her own life into the deep freeze.
“I’m surprised to see you here,” he admitted.
Her gaze was as cool as the October night outside the bookstore. “I’m sure you are.”
Though both of them had attended the monthlong trial every day, they had spoken only once. It hadn’t been a friendly conversation, Wyatt remembered with an internal grimace. During a recess in the trial, he had slipped to the coffee shop across the street from the courthouse and discovered Taylor sitting alone in a quiet corner booth.
He remembered she had some kind of thick medical textbook propped up in front of her, but over the top of it he had just been able to see her eyes. The utter lack of hope in them still haunted him.
That despair had changed to bitter anger when he approached her booth, driven by some insane desire to try to comfort her.
“Looking for a scoop, Mr. McKinnon?” she had asked, her tone biting.
“No. Just a lunch companion. I hate eating alone.” But even his friendliest smile didn’t thaw the chill in her eyes by a single degree.
She snapped shut her textbook and slid out of the booth. “Too bad. I’m done here.”
The full plate of food in front of her gave the lie to her words and made him annoyed at his own foolishness. She didn’t want his comfort. What had he expected, that she would be thrilled to have his company?
“Come on, don’t run away. You have to eat. I won’t bother you, I promise.”
“I’ve suddenly lost my appetite. Something about yellow journalism does that to me.”
The denunciation had stung, he had to admit. He took pride in his work, in presenting the blunt truth, no matter how unpalatable it might be. Through his career he had received thanks not only from the families of the victims he wrote about but also the families of their killers for helping them understand what had gone so horribly wrong.
Before he could respond to Taylor Bradshaw’s derisive comments, she had stalked out of the diner, and she had studiously avoided him for the remaining days of the trial.
Apparently the intervening eighteen months hadn’t softened her attitude toward him at all. She still looked at him like she thought he was approximately as appealing as a cow with the slobbers.
“Hunter told me you’ve been going to the Point of the Mountain to see him.”
“A few times, yes.”
“He told me he’s cooperating with you from prison on the book you’re writing about his case.”
“We’ve had a few conversations, mostly about his relationship with Dru Ferrin. How they met, how long they dated, that sort of thing.”
“I don’t want you going out there again.”
Wyatt studied the muscle flexing along her jawline and the hot color climbing her cheekbones. He wasn’t the kind of man to go looking for fights but he wouldn’t back down when one found him, either. “Your brother is a grown man, Ms. Bradshaw,” he murmured. “If he wants to talk to me, I don’t see how you can do anything about it.”
Anger snapped to life in her eyes. “I can ask you to have a little human decency, if you even know what that is. My brother is living in hell. The last thing he needs is for you to write one of your salacious books about the case and go stirring everybody up all over again.”
In the court of public opinion, Hunter Bradshaw had been guilty of the Ferrin murders before he ever walked into that courtroom. In conservative Utah, where Dru Ferrin had been a pretty, popular television personality, and with the case involving the violent deaths of pregnant women or their terminally ill mothers, the man hadn’t stood a chance of being acquitted.
“I’m not trying to stir everybody up again,” he said, deciding to ignore that whole “salacious” bit. “All I want to do is explore a little more deeply why it happened.”
“To know why Dru and her mother were killed, don’t you think you have to know who really did it first? It certainly wasn’t my brother.”
“A jury of his peers said he did.”
“That jury was wrong! And if you write a book saying he killed anyone, all you will be doing is furthering their injustice.”
“Your faith in your brother is admirable, Ms. Bradshaw.”
“Admirable but misplaced. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”
That was exactly what he’d been thinking but he didn’t have the heart to voice his opinion. “He was convicted,” Wyatt pointed out gently. “Hunter is on death row. In the eyes of the courts and the world, he’s guilty of killing both women and Dru’s unborn child.”
“I don’t care what the world says. I know he didn’t do it! My brother is facing death for something he didn’t do. What could be worse?”
Despite his own knowledge of the case and the overwhelming avalanche of evidence against Bradshaw, Wyatt couldn’t help being stirred by the force of her convictions.
Taylor went on. “You’ve met him. Can you honestly tell me you think he’s capable of this crime?”
That was one of the things that bothered him most about this case, Wyatt had to admit. Bradshaw was a tough man to peg. He had a reputation for being a smart, dedicated cop. Stubborn enough to earn his share of enemies on the force, but passionate about the job and not at all the sort who would fly into a rage and kill two women.
During their three prison interviews, he had seen none of that passion the prosecution had alleged. Bradshaw had been courteous but cool, showing no emotion whatsoever.
Wyatt wasn’t being arrogant to acknowledge that one of the reasons his books had been so well-received was his ability to climb inside the minds of the killers he wrote about. As uncomfortable as he found such places, the perspective always gave a rich depth to his writing, a gritty verity he worked hard to attain. But Hunter Bradshaw wasn’t letting him anywhere near his mind. The man he met was as remote and cool as the Yukon.
“Who knows what any of us is capable of with the right provocation?” he responded.
Taylor Bradshaw’s midnight-blue eyes flashed fire. “I don’t know you. I don’t know what you’re capable of. But I do know my brother and I know he would never lift a finger to hurt any woman, especially not the woman he thought was carrying his child.”
Wyatt thought again of Dru Ferrin, the girl he’d known in grade school, pretty and sassy and smart-mouthed. He’d been lost and terribly lonely when he returned to Utah with his mother after the divorce. Missing his dad and Gage like crazy, mourning Charlotte, traumatized by the purgatory they had all been through.
The other children hadn’t known how to talk to him—what did a nine-year-old say to a kid who was the only witness to his little sister’s kidnapping?—but Dru had always been kind to him.
For that alone, he wanted to write her story, so he could remember that girl willing to sit by him on the school bus when everybody else treated him like he had head lice.
“Leave Hunter alone.” A pleading note crept into Taylor’s voice and her hand tightened on her attaché. “He’s fighting for his life. He should be pouring all his energies into his appeal, not wasting his time talking to you.”
“I’m sorry you’re not happy about it. But your brother seems to want to tell his side of the story. As long as he wants to talk to me, I’ll continue going down to the Point of the Mountain.”
“And nothing I say will change your mind?”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said again.
She gazed at him for a long moment, that sweetly curved mouth tight and angry, then she turned and stalked away, leaving him with his head pounding and unwilling guilt gnawing at his insides.
Taylor was greeted by two things a half hour later when she let herself into her little house in the Avenues—the rich smell of something Italian and spicy wafting from the kitchen, and a huge furry shape that rushed her the moment she walked inside.
Belle’s eager welcome went a long way to helping Taylor shake the anger and frustration that lingered from her encounter with Wyatt McKinnon.
She dropped her case and gave the dog the obligatory attention, ignoring the hair Belle eagerly deposited. “Yeah, I’m happy to see you too, you crazy dog, even if my jacket will never be the same. How was your day, sweetheart? Anything exciting happen?”
“Not much. I worked a double shift at the hospital, then got hit on by the kid who bagged my groceries.”
Taylor turned her attention from the Irish setter she had inherited from Hunter after his arrest to her roommate and best friend standing in the doorway. “Big surprise.” She grinned. “You get hit on by everyone.”
“Not true. Only sixteen-year-old bag boys and sixty-year-old anatomy professors. Nobody date-able.” Kate’s rueful grimace did nothing to hide her model-beautiful features.
At the wry reference, Taylor had to laugh as she remembered Andrew McLean, the anatomy professor in question who had been notorious for propositioning all of his female medical students. Even Taylor had been on the receiving end of one of Randy Andy’s absymal pickup lines.
It seemed like another lifetime ago when she met Kate Spencer on the first day of McLean’s anatomy class, when they’d been paired up as lab partners. Both of them had been first-year medical students, overwhelmed and a little lost by the new world they’d been thrust into.
Recognizing kindred spirits, they had become immediate friends and study partners. Both of them had the same fierce dedication toward medical school, with little interest in anything but succeeding and becoming physicians.
During their second year of med school, Taylor’s father died of a massive heart attack after walking out of the courtroom where he presided with the same iron fist and cold resolve he had shown to his children.
After his death, she purchased this house near the university with part of her inheritance. Though she could have gotten by financially without a roommate, she discovered after a few months that she didn’t like living alone. Kate had been the logical choice.
They had shared so much together, Taylor thought now as she studied her roommate. Hopes and dreams and late-night cram sessions and a memorable cross-country trip one spring break to visit Kate’s foster parents in Florida.
They would have graduated together the previous year if Hunter’s arrest hadn’t plowed like a freight train through Taylor’s educational plans. While Kate had finished up and was now a second-year resident at University Hospital, Taylor’s life had taken a drastic turn.
She had withdrawn from her last semester of classes to attend the trial. After Hunter’s conviction, she had dropped out of medical school altogether. Now, instead of anatomy and physiology, she was immersed in torts and civil procedure.
She shook off the depression that suddenly settled on her shoulders like a weighted cloak at the reminder of the mounds of homework awaiting her before she could sleep.
“So how was the lecture?” Kate asked. “Did you get a chance to talk to the evil Wyatt McKinnon?”
“I spoke with him,” she said grimly.
“And?”
“He’s not budging.”
“Did you really expect him to drop the whole project just because you asked him to? He was there every day of the trial too.”
She sighed, slipping off her shoes and hanging her blazer in the closet off the entry. “Not really. Still, it was worth a shot. I guess I just wanted to make sure he knows how strongly I object to the idea of him making money off the hell Hunter is going through.”
“I’m not sure the money is all that important to him. He’s had ten books at the top of the bestseller lists. I think if Wyatt McKinnon never wrote another word, he would still be worth millions.”
Rich and successful and gorgeous. The man had everything. Her mouth tightened again. Why did he affect her so strongly? She should despise him for what he was doing to Hunter. She did, she assured herself.
So why had she sat through his reading as captivated by his words as every other brainless coed in that bookstore? Something about Wyatt McKinnon’s lean, rangy build and his tanned features and the intensity in his sage-green eyes seemed to reach right inside her and tug out feelings she had never imagined lurked inside her.
She could never tell Kate that. If her roommate ever figured out she was attracted to the blasted man, Taylor would never hear the end of it.
By unspoken agreement, the two women headed for the kitchen, Belle padding along behind them. Kate returned to the stove and stirred a tomato sauce bubbling there while Taylor set out plates and silverware.
“I read that article about him in Vanity Fair a few months ago,” Kate went on. “It might have been hype, but I got the impression he’s not in it for the money.”
“I’m sure he doesn’t turn it away when his publisher sends him all those big fat royalty checks.”
“Maybe not, but I think there’s more to it than that. Hang on a minute.”
Kate set the spoon down with a clatter and suddenly dashed out of the kitchen toward her bedroom, Belle following on her heels. A moment later she rushed back and thrust a magazine at Taylor.
Gazing back at her out of those vivid green eyes that gleamed behind wire-rimmed glasses was none other than Wyatt McKinnon, wearing cowboy boots and a denim jacket and looking as if he had just climbed off the back of a horse.
“I thought I still had this—”
Though Taylor wasn’t sure how Kate could look at anything but that compelling picture, her roommate scanned the article.
“Here is that quote I was looking for, about why he writes what he does.”
She pulled the magazine away from Taylor and read out loud. “‘I write for the victims and the victims’ loved ones. When a family loses someone through a violent crime or an unsolved disappearance, their lives are changed forever. The world is never again as shiny and bright with possibilities. Though it doesn’t take away any of their pain, victims’ families deserve to know the truth about what happened and, more importantly, to know their lives won’t be forgotten.’”
“He sounds as if he knows. I wonder if he’s lost someone.” Taylor studied the picture, looking for shadows behind that enigmatic smile. She couldn’t tell anything from the glossy photograph.
“The article doesn’t say anything like that about him, but it’s possible.” Kate returned to the stove to drain the pasta. For a few moments the kitchen was silent except for Belle’s snuffly breathing and the sauce burbling on the stove.
“You know,” Kate said suddenly, “maybe you’ve been going about this the wrong way with McKinnon.”
“How?”
“You want to keep him from interviewing Hunter. But maybe you should be thanking your lucky stars he’s interested in the case.”
Taylor stared at her. “You’re crazy. Hunter doesn’t need more negative publicity. He’s had enough to last a lifetime.”
“What if it’s not negative? McKinnon’s books are extensively researched. He has a reputation for writing genuine, accurate stories, even in cases where the cops messed up. If you show him the evidence you’ve gathered since Hunter’s conviction, he can’t help but see that your brother is innocent.”
“You’re the one who read that quote. He writes for the victims and their families. Not for the accused killers.”
“We both know Hunter is no killer. You just have to convince Wyatt McKinnon. Imagine what it would do for Hunter’s appeal if McKinnon wrote a book questioning whether an innocent man is on death row!”
“He sat through the trial and heard the state’s case. As far as he’s concerned, Hunter killed Dru and her mother and her unborn baby. Just like the rest of the world, I’m sure he thinks Hunter deserves what’s coming to him.”
“You just have to prove that he and the rest of the world are wrong.”
Taylor gave a short laugh. “Sure. And while I’m at it, I’ll solve world hunger and in my spare time maybe I’ll find a cure for cancer.”
“Who else will speak up for Hunter? You and I are just about the only people on the planet who believe he’s innocent. But imagine if he had someone as influential and well-known as Wyatt McKinnon in his corner. He would be bound to win an appeal.”
Kate was right. If she could somehow convince Wyatt to help her prove her brother didn’t murder anyone, it would undoubtedly help Hunter’s appeal. But how could she face him again? Just the idea of another encounter made her stomach hurt worse than the first time she had to answer a question aloud in her miserable contracts-law class.
She could do it, though. She would. Hunter’s life depended on it.
Chapter 2
Taylor dreaded Tuesday afternoons like she used to hate the dance lessons her father insisted on during her pre-adolescence.
Monday evening at around nine o’clock her stomach would start to ache like a rotten tooth and her shoulders would stiffen with tension. She could pretend everything was fine, could just go on as normal and try her best to concentrate through her Tuesday morning torts class. But by the time she set off on the thirty-minute drive from the University of Utah campus to the Point of the Mountain state prison, at the south end of the vast Salt Lake Valley, she was usually a mass of tangled nerves.
Hunter really didn’t want her there. Each visit he told her not to come again, to contact him by phone if she needed to talk to him. But each Monday evening she girded herself for the ordeal of another visit.
She hated it, but she would keep coming every Tuesday until hell froze over, or until Hunter was free.
As horrible as it was to see her brother under the harsh, dehumanizing conditions at the prison—to watch him harden a little more each week—she knew she would continue to make this trip across the valley, past housing developments and shopping malls and warehouses.
If nothing else, each visit to her brother’s hell renewed her determination to see him out of there.
She drew in a deep breath and fought the urge to press a hand to her knotted stomach as she watched the mile markers slip past.
When she was younger, her father had taken her and Hunter this way a few times on business trips out of the valley to southern Utah or Las Vegas. She had never given it much thought, other than to wonder at this scary huddle of buildings that seemed out in the middle of nowhere.
She found it disconcerting to realize how in eighteen months the Point of the Mountain complex had become so much a part of her life.
The valley’s population had grown dramatically in the past decade and houses had sprung up within a stone’s throw of the prison complex. Draper and Bluffdale were two of the fastest-growing communities in the state. How odd, she thought, that South Mountain, to the east of the prison across the freeway, was actually one of the more desirable slices of real estate in the valley, with sprawling, million-dollar homes and groomed golf courses.
She wondered if Hunter could look across the interstate at all those bright, shiny houses—if the contrast between the world of those who lived in them and his own life seemed as stark and depressing to him as it always did to her.
She took the prison exit and a few moments later passed the first of many security checkpoints. The guard recognized her but checked her driver’s license against his visitor list anyway, before allowing her to enter. Cars weren’t searched entering the prison—only on the way out.
In the visitor parking lot, she sat for a moment behind the wheel, trying to dig deep inside herself for at least the semblance of a positive attitude. For Hunter’s sake, she tried hard to hide how much she hated coming here, how each visit seemed to bleed away more of her hope that her brother would walk free.
Just for practice, she forced a smile for the rearview mirror. Okay, it wasn’t exactly perky but it was better than nothing.
With her non-perky smile firmly in place, she locked her car, pocketed her keys—since purses weren’t allowed inside—and headed into the Uinta maximum security prison for the next round of checkpoints.
The guard waiting inside was the first bright spot in what had been a grim day. He offered her a wide, sunny smile. “Doc Bradshaw. This is a pleasure.”
Her smile felt almost genuine as she greeted Richard Gonzolez. She didn’t bother to correct him that she was several credits shy of ever being a doctor. He had called her Doc Bradshaw as long as she had been coming to see her brother.
Richard was one of her favorite guards in the unit—some of the corrections officers made her feel even more like a piece of meat than did the leering inmates, but Officer Gonzolez always treated her with courtesy and respect and even kindness.
“Great to see you again!” she said. “I’ve missed you these last few months. I thought Tuesdays were your day off.”
“I’m back on for a while. I needed to change my shift so I could have Fridays off instead.”
“How’s Trina?” Taylor asked about his wife.
His ready smile looked a little strained around the edges. “Could be worse, I guess. She was tired of her hair falling out in clumps so she shaved it all last week. I told her it looks sexy—told her I was gonna get her a belly ring and a tattoo and take her down to the Harley-Davidson shop for some leathers so she’d look like a biker chick.”
“I guess she didn’t go for that.”
“Not my Trina.” He met her gaze and the worry in his brown eyes made her heart ache. “She tries to stay upbeat for me and the kids but it’s been tough on her. That’s why the shift change. She’s onto her second round of chemo and they changed the day to Fridays. I didn’t want her to do that on her own.”
A dozen questions crowded through her mind—Trina’s white blood cell counts, her med regimen, how she was doing emotionally after her radical mastectomy—but she managed to clamp down on them. Despite Richard’s affectionate nickname for her, she wasn’t a doctor. An almost-doctor, maybe, but she hadn’t been part of that world for a long time.
“Trina is in good hands with Dr. Kim. He’s the best around.”
“That’s one of the things that keeps her going. We both know we never would have gotten in to see him if it hadn’t been for you.”
Taylor just shook her head. “I didn’t do anything, only pulled a few strings.”
“Well, we sure appreciate it.”
Under other circumstances, she would have given his hand a reassuring squeeze, but she knew this wasn’t the time or place. “Please let me know how things are going.”
“I sure will,” he said, with a smile that filled her with shame at her own self-pity.
This kind man’s wife was waging a fierce, losing battle against breast cancer and he could still manage to smile. All she had to do was spend an hour in a place she loathed. Surely she could be at least as cheerful as Richard Gonzolez.
“Sorry to tell you this,” the guard said, “but you’ll have to wait a few minutes. Your brother already has a visitor in the last group. Time’s almost up, though.”
That was odd. Hunter rarely had visitors besides her. They had no other family and her brother had never been much of a pack animal. Most of his so-called friends had abandoned him after his arrest. She wondered who it might be.
“I don’t mind waiting,” she assured the guard, then took her seat with the other visitors waiting their turn.
She had never been very good at coping with unexpected blocks of free time. Usually she tried to carry around at least one law book at all times so she could use her time constructively and keep up with her reading lists—probably a hold-over from the judge’s frequent edicts against wasting time.
In this case, she had no choice, as she’d left all her books in her car. She picked up a news magazine and tried to leaf through it but found little of interest.
She was trying a woman’s magazine—with much the same malaise—when the volume in the room increased as the previous group of visitors was led out.
She recognized a few familiar faces and was once more struck by how insular this prison community could be. She had watched people make friendships, business connections, even romances while they waited to visit someone on the inside.
A few minutes later, she had risen to wait her turn to go into the visiting area when a familiar face appeared in the crowd—this one unexpected.
Wyatt McKinnon walked out, looking tall and lanky and gorgeous.
The same reaction she’d had to him the other times they’d met started stirring around inside her. The same butterflies in her stomach, the same silly breathlessness, the same surge of awareness.
What was the matter with her? This wasn’t at all like her. She just wasn’t the kind of woman to lose brain cells over a man. Especially not this man—and especially not in these circumstances.
She drew in a deep, steadying breath. He hadn’t seen her yet, she realized as she watched him stop to exchange words with one of the guards—not Richard but another she had met only a few times.
Wyatt greeted the man with a ready smile, though from here it looked as if it dimmed a little when the corrections officer produced a book from beneath the desk. From here she could see it was Wyatt’s latest bestseller. The guard wanted it signed, she realized, just like all those silly little coeds who had flocked to the lecture the other night.
She couldn’t be too derisive of them, she thought with brutal self-honesty. Not with her pulse skipping and this weak trembling in her stomach.
Wyatt signed the book with a flourish, handed it back to the guard with a polite smile, then turned to leave.
She knew exactly the moment he noticed her. Surprise flickered in those grey-green eyes and he froze for an instant, then walked toward her.
“Taylor. Ms. Bradshaw. I didn’t realize your brother had another visitor waiting. I’m sorry—I’m afraid I went a little long. I hope I didn’t take all your time.”
A few days earlier she might have given him some sharp reply about how her time was just as valuable as his, but she decided that wouldn’t be diplomatic, not if she still wanted his help.
In theory, Kate’s idea had seemed a good one. Wyatt McKinnon could be a powerful ally. His words had influence, and she had just seen more evidence that he had readers everywhere. If she wanted his help, she knew she would have to ask for it. But being confronted by the man made her tongue feel as slippery as a hooked trout.
“He’s still allowed another half hour of visitation.” She sucked in a breath for courage. “Listen, I…”
Richard cut her off. “Doc Bradshaw, you’re up. You ready to go back?”
She rose, aware as always of the time and how limited it was.
She had learned since Hunter’s arrest that life behind bars was ruled by the clock. Inmates talked of marking time, doing time, hard time. Their world revolved around the tick of each passing second.
“Look, I’ve got to go or I’ll miss my chance. Would you mind…that is, um—” she faltered. Oh, this was hard! She would rather be foxtrotting with the sweaty-palmed Troy Oppenheimer who had been the bane of her dance-class days than be forced to grovel to Wyatt McKinnon.
But she had no choice.
“Would you mind waiting for me?” she asked in a rush. “I…I need to talk to you.”
His eyebrows rose in surprise but he nodded. “Of course. I’ll be here when you come out.”
The guard led her to one of the visitor chambers. In the maximum security unit, visits were always non-contact and were carried out in individual rooms separated by a Plexiglas divider.
Hunter was already on the other side of the glass, dressed in the obligatory orange jumpsuit. His dark, wavy hair could use a trim and he had a bruise along his jawline that hadn’t been there the week before.
He looked big and mean and dangerous, and she grieved all over again for the dedicated, passionate cop he had been.
He didn’t smile when he saw her, but she thought perhaps his eyes softened a little. She wanted to believe they did, anyway, though she thought that was probably just more self-delusion.
Every time she visited him, Hunter seemed a little colder, a little more remote. Hard and brittle, like a clay sculpture left to dry too long in the broiling sun.
She was so afraid that one Tuesday she would discover nothing left of him but a crumbled pile of dust.
“What happened to your jaw?” she asked after she sat down and picked up the phone.
That jaw tightened. “Nothing. I slipped in the yard while I was shooting hoops one day.”
He was lying. She had grown up with him, had seen him butting heads with the judge during his rebellious years often enough to recognize the signs. But she also knew he would choke on his own tongue rather than tell her what really happened.
Former cops—especially homicide detectives—didn’t exactly make the most popular prison inmates. She knew there were plenty of other inmates he had helped put behind bars who probably weren’t too thrilled to have Hunter Bradshaw join them in the pen. And though he would never say anything about it, she also knew most of the guards treated him with a contempt and derision reserved for one of their rank who had gone bad.
Oh, how she hated this. She hid her sisterly concern and brought out that smile she had practiced in her car earlier, though it felt cheesier than usual.
“I ran into Wyatt McKinnon out in the visitor waiting room. How often is he coming to talk with you?”
His sigh came over the phone loud and clear. “Don’t start in on this again, Tay.”
“What? I didn’t say anything.”
“No, but you have that what the hell are you thinking? look on your face.”
“You’re imagining things. Must be the lighting in here.”
“Lighting my ass. I know what you think about McKinnon.”
Don’t be so sure, she wanted to say but held her tongue.
Hunter went on. “He told me you went to see him last week. He said you asked him not to write the story.”
Okay, it had been a lousy idea. She had known it even before she went to the bookstore, but she had never been very good at inaction. When something was wrong in her world, she tried to take steps to fix it.
“It didn’t do much good, did it? He’s still here today.”
“You think I’m crazy to talk to him, don’t you.”
She thought of all her many objections to Wyatt writing a book about the case. Her biggest fear was that it would make life even harder for Hunter here behind bars.
“I don’t think you’re crazy,” she answered. “I just hope you know what you’re doing.”
“Somebody’s going to write the story. We both know it’s only a matter of time. I’m surprised nobody has done it yet. If not McKinnon, it will be someone else, and frankly, I prefer him to some of the bottom-feeders who’ve tried to get interviews with me. McKinnon talked to me a few times about other cases when I was on the job and actually quoted me correctly. From what I’ve seen of his work, I figure he’ll at least try to be fair. He cared enough to attend the trial, not just rely on court transcripts.”
“That’s true. He was there every day. I wonder why he’s just now writing the story.”
“A few reasons, I suppose. I only decided to talk to him a few months ago and I do know he had to finish another project before he could write this one.” He paused. “Today he told me he would like to talk to you. I’m sure he wants to know what it was like growing up with a vicious killer.”
“I wouldn’t know,” she shot back quickly.
Hunter’s short laugh echoed in the phone. That was why she continued these torturous visits. If she could make him laugh even once, everything was worth it.
“Will you talk to him?”
She sighed. “I already planned to. He’s waiting for me to finish up my visit.”
“Really?”
“Kate seems to think convincing Wyatt McKinnon you’re innocent might help your appeal. I would like to show him all the evidence that was thrown out at trial that proves you could never have killed anyone.”
He shook his head in resignation, but there was a warmth in his eyes that she hadn’t seen in a long while.
“You never did know when to give up the fight, did you. Remember when you brought home that stray mutt and the Judge said under no conditions would that mangy thing ever be allowed in our house? You hid him at Suzie Walker’s house down the street and spent weeks wearing the Judge down.”
She smiled at the memory. “I think what finally did the trick was the ten-page research paper I did—complete with footnotes and annotations—outlining how child development experts believe pets can be beneficial to young minds.”
“That’s funny. I thought it was the amateur ad campaign you shot of you taking care of Rascal down at Suzy Walker’s—feeding him, walking him, teaching him tricks.”
“I miss that dog. You know, he would have died before admitting it but I think the Judge warmed up to Rascal eventually. After you moved out, I even caught him petting him a few times.”
Hunter unbent enough to smile—or as close as he came to a smile these days anyway. Too quickly, though, he sobered. “You’re not going to win this one, Tay. You need to face facts here. God knows, I have. Life is a hell of a lot easier to deal with after you stop holding on to foolish hope.”
“Without hope, what else do you have?”
He didn’t answer, but she saw the truth in the bleakness of his eyes. Nothing. He had nothing. She wouldn’t have thought it possible but her heart cracked apart a little more.
Before she could respond, the guard walked up behind Hunter. “Time’s up,” he said, his features stony.
Oh, she hated time, especially each reminder that it was quickly running out.
“I haven’t given up hope,” she said urgently into the phone, wishing more than anything that she could throw her arms around her brother. “I will never give up hope, Hunter. You did nothing wrong and I will do whatever it takes to prove that to the world.”
Whatever brief moment of levity they had shared over the memory of a stray mutt, Hunter had once more donned that impassive mask. “Don’t waste your life on me, Tay. I’m not worth it. Go back and finish your residency. Be a doctor. Help people.”
She wanted that—oh, how she wanted that—but right now she had other work.
“I’ll see you next Tuesday,” she said.
He looked as if he wanted to argue, but the guard roughly snapped on the transfer handcuffs and led him out of the room.
She watched him go, his back tall and straight, and wondered how much more of him would crumble away before next Tuesday.
Wyatt never minded waiting.
He considered it research, a rare and wonderful chance to study people in a variety of situations, the whole rich texture of the human experience.
He spent the twenty minutes he waited for Taylor cataloguing the others in the waiting room, wondering about their stories, imagining the journeys their lives had taken to lead them to this point.
As he did wherever he went, his mind recorded impressions as he looked around the room.
He saw an older woman with stunning blue eyes and a face etched with character holding tight to the arms of her chair, her spine straight and her feet in their sensible brown shoes precisely lined up on the floor. Was she here to see a son or a grandson? he wondered.
Across the room sat a man of about fifty with a tattoo of an American flag just below his shirtsleeve and an Elvis-like pompadour and sideburns. He was a mechanic, Wyatt figured, at least judging by the grime under his fingernails and the faint shadow of permanent oil stains on the knees of his jeans. The man fidgeted and glanced at the clock every few moments while pretending to leaf through a hot-rod magazine.
Nearest the door to the visiting area sat a pregnant girl who couldn’t have been a day older than eighteen, her belly stretched beneath a blue T-shirt that exposed a few inches of skin above her low-rider jeans. She chewed gum loudly and looked bored to tears, but every once in a while she paused to lay a loving hand across her stomach and her heavily made-up features would soften with a warm maternal glow.
No, he didn’t mind waiting. This was life, gritty and real.
He was making a few notes from his conversation with Hunter in the steno notebook he had carried in with him when the man’s sister walked through the checkpoint.
She wasn’t a frail woman by any means, but for just a moment as she paused there at the entrance to the waiting room, she looked fragile, brittle almost. When she caught sight of him, he watched her take a deep breath and then paste on a polite smile as she walked toward him with a grace that seemed out of place here.
“Mr. McKinnon. Thank you for waiting.”
She was extraordinarily beautiful, he thought, with that luminous skin and those dark blue eyes. He wondered if she had any idea how fresh and lovely she looked here in these grim surroundings, even with exhaustion stamped on her features.
“No problem. I didn’t mind, especially since I cut into your time with your brother.”
She looked as if she wanted to say something, then changed her mind.
“I wanted to apologize for the other night at your book signing, for coming on so strong,” she said after a moment. “I suppose I’m a little too protective of Hunter. He tells me I am, anyway.”
“It’s natural in this situation. Perfectly understandable. You want to make everything right again for him, the way things were before all of this happened.”
“I can’t do that.” The bleakness in her voice gave him the oddest urge to pull her into his arms.
“Probably not.” He debated the wisdom of his next words, then threw caution to the wind. “Your brother knows his own mind. Despite the fact that most of his life is out of his control now and other people now tell him when he can shower and what he can eat, he’s not helpless. He has his reasons for wanting to tell his story and he trusts me not to write a ‘salacious’ book. Maybe you should too.”
She winced at his deliberate use of her word from the other night. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I’ve read a few of your books and none of them were salacious. I’m sure this one wouldn’t be either.”
She closed her eyes for a moment and he was struck by the pale tracery of veins in her eyelids. She had the delicate skin of a redhead but she still looked as if she had spent too much time indoors lately.
When she opened her eyes again there was a determined light in them. “You’re right, Hunter wants you to do this book and he’s asked me to cooperate with you. I can do little enough to help him, but at least I can do this.”
“Against your better instincts.”
“Maybe. But haven’t you ever gone ahead with something when your instincts were telling you to run, Mr. McKinnon?”
He thought of how his own instincts were warning him right now to run away from this woman with her expressive eyes and her passionate defense of her brother. If he let her, he had a strong feeling she could be hazardous not only to this project but, worse, to his heart.
“Listen, I know a great diner in Draper,” he said, deciding to ignore his better judgment. “What do you say I buy you a cup of coffee and we can talk about the book? I’ll see if I can allay some of your concerns—and maybe convince you to call me Wyatt.”
Indecision flickered on her features. She started to nibble her lip, then checked the motion. “All right,” she said, with a quick glance at her watch. “I have a study group at seven but I’m free until then.”
Wyatt refused to worry about the excitement flowing through him at the idea of spending a few more minutes with Taylor Bradshaw.
Chapter 3
He beat her to the diner.
Despite the hour—too early for dinner, too late for lunch—several of the booths at Dewey’s were full when Wyatt walked inside alone. The squat, unassuming restaurant served to-die-for mashed potatoes and several kinds of divine pie. It was a popular spot with visitors to the prison and with guards after their shifts.
He had always found it odd how much economic development seemed to spring up around prisons, the thriving little microeconomies correctional facilities fostered.
Taylor arrived just as the hostess was finding a booth for them. “Sorry,” she said, somewhat breathlessly. “I wasn’t paying attention and drove right past the place.”
“No problem. You’re here now.”
They slid into opposite sides of the brown vinyl booth with the awkwardness of near-strangers suddenly finding themselves in close quarters. After a few moments of perusing the menu, Taylor ordered a chicken taco salad and a diet cola while he settled for coffee and a slice of Dewey’s famous boysenberry pie.
“I didn’t have time for lunch today,” Taylor explained after the waitress walked away to give their order to the kitchen, “and my study group will probably go long past dinnertime. This might be my only chance to eat until midnight.”
“What class is your study group for?”
She made a face. “Constitutional law. My least favorite class. I need all the help I can get in there.”
“Why would a medical student need to study constitutional law?” he asked, genuinely baffled.
“A medical student wouldn’t. It’s a requirement for second-year law students, though.”
He stared at her. “When did that happen? During the trial I could swear I heard you were attending the U. medical school, that you were close to graduation. I thought somebody told me you intended to specialize in pediatrics.”
If he hadn’t been watching her so closely, he might have missed the quick spasm of misery that crossed her features before they became impassive again.
“Things change.”
“Wow. I’ll say. Law school now? That’s a major career shift.”
She absently fiddled with a sugar packet from the wire rack on the table. “Sometimes you think you have your life all nicely mapped out. Then fate picks you up, shakes you around until your teeth rattle, and plops you down on a completely different path.”
Try as he might, he couldn’t picture her as an attorney, starchy suit and case files and law books. The whole white coat–stethoscope thing seemed a much better fit.
He wasn’t sure why, he only knew that Dr. Taylor Bradshaw sounded much more natural to his ear than Taylor Bradshaw, Esquire.
“Why law?” he asked.
She paused for several seconds, her brow creased as if struggling to formulate an answer. She opened her mouth to respond, but before she could speak, the waitress arrived their order.
“Here you go, doll,” the cheerful waitress said as she set Taylor’s taco salad in front of her with a flourish.
In all the times he had been here, Wyatt had never seen the woman with anything but a smile on her face.
“Let me tell you, that chicken is delish today. It’s always good but today the cook outdid himself. I had it for my own lunch and just about licked the plate clean.”
She handed Wyatt his pie with a wink. “And I don’t have to tell you how good the boysenberry pie is, since you order it just about every time you come in. Enjoy.”
She had just left when a group of three men walked past. One of them paused and did a double take at their booth as Wyatt was enjoying his first sweet taste of berries.
“Taylor? What are you doing here?”
Wyatt chewed and swallowed while he tried to suppress his irritation at recognizing the balding man in the high-dollar suit. At first glance, Martin James looked mild-mannered and unprepossessing. He was about the same height as Taylor, slightly pudgy, with smooth, pleasant features and warm brown eyes.
First impressions could be deceiving, though. In this case, the man was a shark in the courtroom, one of the most sought-after defense attorneys in the state. But even James’s reputation for dogged determination and creative representation hadn’t been enough to acquit at least one of his infamous clients—Hunter Bradshaw.
Taylor apparently didn’t hold a grudge at the man who had been unable to see her brother acquitted. She rose with delight on her features and kissed Martin James on his round cheek. “It’s Tuesday. I always visit on Tuesday, remember? What about you? Have you been to see Hunter?”
“No. I had an appointment with one of my other clients,” the attorney said. “If I had remembered Tuesdays were your day to visit, my dear, we could have driven out together.”
She smiled at the man with a familiarity that surprised Wyatt, until he remembered hearing during the trial that Martin James and Taylor’s late father, William Bradshaw, had been friends outside the courtroom.
“Thanks,” she answered, “but I didn’t feel much like being in a NASCAR time trial today.”
“Are you insinuating I drive too fast?” Martin asked her with mock offense.
“Not at all. I think the fingernail gouges in my thighs have almost healed from the last time I rode somewhere with you.”
Martin laughed and squeezed her hand.
As Wyatt watched, Taylor suddenly seemed to remember his presence.
“I’m sorry. Martin, this is Wyatt McKinnon.”
“We’ve met,” James said, all warmth gone from his voice and his features like a January cold snap. “McKinnon.”
He nodded with the same coolness. Hunter Bradshaw wasn’t the first client of Martin James whose story he had written. Wyatt’s second book, Eye of the Storm, had chronicled the kidnap and murder of Rebecca Jordan. Martin James had represented Rebecca’s husband, convicted of paying two teenagers to kill his wife. The attorney hadn’t been at all thrilled to show up in Eye of the Storm, especially as Wyatt had chronicled some of the backdoor wrangling that had gone on between attorneys involved in the case.
James had threatened to sue him for defamation of character, but the threats never went anywhere, since Wyatt had documentation that every word in his book had been true.
Taylor looked from one to the other as if trying to figure out what had sparked the sudden tension. “Wyatt is writing a book about Hunter’s case,” she told the attorney. who looked not at all surprised—or pleased—by the information.
“I know. Your brother told me he was talking to him.”
“Martin was a good friend of our father’s and represented Hunter at trial,” she explained to Wyatt, then winced. “I guess you would know that about the trial anyway. I forgot you were there. You would have seen him in the courtroom.”
“Right. How are you, Martin?” Wyatt asked.
“Fine. Busy. I’m up to my ears in cases.”
The affection on Taylor’s features hardened a little and she sent the attorney a pointed look. “That must be why you haven’t returned any of my calls or e-mails for the past two weeks.”
A trapped light entered Martin’s eyes and he suddenly looked as if he wanted to be somewhere else, somewhere far away. “I was out of town last week at a conference in Santa Barbara.”
“What about this week?”
Though the cornered look was still there in his eyes, Martin’s sigh was heavy and heartfelt. “I wish I had all the time in the world to devote to Hunter’s appeal, but I don’t. Your brother is not my only client, Taylor. You know that.”
She didn’t look appeased by his excuse. “How many of those other clients are fighting for their lives? Are any of the others on death row?” Her mouth tightened. “Are any of the others the son of one of your closest friends?”
Martin glared at her. “That’s not fair.”
Taylor drew in a breath, and Wyatt watched her visible attempts at calm.
“You’re right, it’s not,” she murmured. “I’m sorry, Martin. I know you did your very best for Hunter during the trial. I’m just not ready to give up yet.”
“Who said anything about giving up? I’m working up several briefs for his appeal and should be filing them anytime now.”
“Did you get those citations I sent you? People v. Loden and California v. Junger?”
“Yes. I haven’t had a chance to properly determine relevance but I’ll put one of my associates on it right away, I promise.”
“That’s what you said with the last cites I sent you, and so far I haven’t heard anything from you. Martin, I need your help. I can’t do this by myself.”
Martin brushed a hand over her hair in a gesture of both comfort and affection. “I know, shortcake. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to give this my whole attention the past few months. I haven’t forgotten Hunter’s appeal—how could I? Let’s meet next week for a strategy session and we can go over everything you’ve found. Does Monday night work for you?”
“I have a class that night. What about Tuesday?”
“Sounds good. Listen, I’ve got to run. Judy’s got tickets to Ballet West tonight and I’ve got a dozen things to do before I can break away. She’ll skin me alive if I’m late.”
“Give her my love,” Taylor said.
“You need to come for dinner sometime soon. I remember what being a second-year was like—you need to keep your strength up.”
“I know. Thanks.”
Martin kissed her cheek, gave Wyatt a curt nod, then hurried out of the diner, leaving the scent of some kind of smooth, undoubtedly expensive cologne behind him.
Wyatt stared after him, his mind processing the interaction between the lawyer and Taylor Bradshaw. Suddenly all the pieces clicked into place.
“That’s why you switched to law school.”
She paused in the middle of taking a sip of cola to blink at him. “Excuse me?”
“Hunter. You quit medical school so you can devote yourself to helping your brother appeal his conviction.”
She set her glass down quickly as if it contained rat poison. For several long seconds she said nothing, then she faced him, her chin lifted—with determination or defiance, he wasn’t sure.
“All the medical degrees in the world won’t help me save my brother’s life.”
He wasn’t sure why her sacrifice bothered him so much. Whatever she did wasn’t any of his business—he barely knew the woman. She could decide to pitch a tent in the parking lot of the prison and his opinion wouldn’t matter a whit. Still, for some reason it stung like a fresh blister that she had decided to give up her dream on such a hopeless quest.
“What do you think you’re going to accomplish as a second-year law student that Martin James—one of the most successful litigators in the western United States—couldn’t manage to do?”
“I don’t know. But I have to try. I can’t sit by and do nothing.”
“What does Hunter think about this whole thing?”
She shrugged. “He’s not happy about it, but he understands it’s something I have to do. You have no idea what its like to feel completely powerless to help someone you love.”
“Don’t I?” he murmured, clearly seeing the image never far from the surface—of a sweet little curly-blond-haired girl disappearing in a puff of exhaust while her skinny, gawky older brother frantically dug through sunbaked grass for the broken shards of his glasses.
He thought of how both he and Gage had never given up hope of finding their little sister. They had worked relentlessly over the years, following cold leads, looking for patterns, trying to see inside the mind of the sort of person who might commit such a heinous act against an innocent child and her family.
In the twenty-three years since he had last seen Charlotte running through the sprinklers of their Las Vegas front yard, he had never stopped loving her, missing her, searching for her. He had never given up—nor would he—and he knew Gage felt the same.
He couldn’t fault Taylor for her passionate effort to do anything necessary to appeal her brother’s conviction. How could he, when he had spent more than two decades chasing the ghost of his little sister?
“I couldn’t live with myself if I sat by and did nothing.” Taylor continued. “Hunter is innocent. No matter how strong the state’s case was against him, I will never believe otherwise.”
He studied her in the bright fluorescent lights of the diner. “You believe it strongly enough to change the entire course of your life?”
“How could I possibly go out into the world and try to save the lives of strangers, knowing that I did absolutely nothing to save the life of my own brother?”
“Do you miss med school?”
To his chagrin, her smile looked a little wobbly. “Like crazy,” she answered quietly, picking at her salad. “I’ve never wanted to be anything but a doctor, from the time I was a little girl. But I can always go back to med school once he’s free again. Hunter is worth any sacrifice.”
Wyatt couldn’t help comparing her devoted relationship with her brother to his own relationship with Gage. His brother, three years older, was an FBI agent assigned to the Salt Lake field office. Until a few months earlier when their paths had intersected again, they had had a polite relationship but little more than that. In most respects, they were strangers.
Once Gage had been his hero. Wyatt had idolized his older brother and wanted nothing more than to be just like him. Gage had been well-liked, athletic, the epitome of cool to his awkward nerd of a kid brother.
Charlotte’s kidnapping when he was nine and Gage twelve had changed everything. Each of them had retreated into a lonely world of remorse, regret. Guilt.
The strain and grief had been too much for their parents’ marriage and Sam and Lynn McKinnon eventually split up a year after the kidnapping that had ripped apart their world.
In what Wyatt was sure they considered a fair and logical arrangement at the time, Gage had stayed with their father in Las Vegas while Wyatt had been forced to pack up his books and his chemistry set and return with Lynn to her family’s ranch in Utah.
He had always felt that he had effectively lost not only a sister but a brother the day Charlotte was kidnapped.
He saw Gage only a handful of times during the rest of his childhood. His brother seemed to prefer things that way; their few encounters over the years had been marked by awkwardness and unease.
A few months after Gage moved back to Utah earlier in the summer, he was seriously injured during an attempt to arrest a suspect, and had met his fiancée Allie and her girls during his rehabilitation. In the process, Wyatt and his brother had begun to rebuild a relationship eroded over the years by time and distance.
He was rediscovering his brother, the strong, decent man he had admired so much during his early years, and he had to admit he was thoroughly enjoying the process.
He couldn’t imagine how difficult it must be for Taylor to have her brother’s pending execution hanging over her head.
“You called me quixotic,” she said at his pensive silence. “You think I’m tilting at windmills here, don’t you?”
He wanted to give her hope but he knew there was very little of that where Hunter Bradshaw was concerned. “You said it yourself. The case against your brother was a strong one, or twelve members of that jury wouldn’t have voted unanimously, first for conviction, then for the death penalty. You face staggering odds against overturning his conviction.”
Her eyes darkened with emotion at his words. “I know all that. But I have to try, Wyatt. I’m all he has.”
Taylor heard the raw desperation in her voice and wanted to cringe. So much for coming off confident and assured. She sounded like a crazed zealot. Her goal was to convince Wyatt McKinnon she had evidence proving Hunter’s innocence, not treat him to these maudlin displays of drama.
She had a fierce need for a little distance, and excused herself to hurry to the ladies’ room.
Martin was partly to blame, she thought. His behavior today was nothing new. Since the trial he had been evasive and hedgy. Whenever she tried to work with him on the appeal, she was inevitably shuffled to some associate or other. It was like trying to nail down the breeze.
She knew the attorney had taken Hunter’s conviction hard, had seen it as a personal failure. She didn’t—she knew Martin had worked tirelessly to see Hunter acquitted. She just wished she could get the same effort out of him for the appeal.
In the small ladies’ room, she gazed at herself in the round mirror and was horrified to see her coloring was blotchy and her eyes looked on the verge of tears. That was the problem with having auburn hair and pale skin—she could never hide her emotions. She blushed as easily as she could go deathly pale.
Out there in the diner she might have been only on the verge of tears, with not a single drop shed, but she still looked as if she’d been on a three-day crying jag.
Taylor spent several moments repairing her makeup and forcing herself to take slow, steady breaths until she felt once more in control, then returned to their booth.
She slid across from Wyatt. To her chagrin, she felt watery all over again at the look of concern on his lean features.
“I’m sorry. I’m not usually such an emotional wreck,” she felt compelled to explain. “Visits to the prison are…difficult for me.”
“I understand. I admire you for coming back week after week.”
“I would say it gets easier but that would be a lie. I hated it as much today as I did the very first time I visited.”
Taylor tried to swallow some of her salad, aware she didn’t have much time before she would have to leave for her study group. “So when you interview family members of convicted murderers, what do you usually talk about?”
“Any insights they want to offer into why the crime happened. Some people blame it on difficult childhoods, others bring up failed relationships. It varies. I usually let the interviewee lead the conversation. If you talk to me, you can bring up anything you’d like that might help me understand your brother.”
She could offer a hundred stories about how her brother had always protected her, how he had invariably stood between her and any threat, whatever the risk to himself. Telling any of them to Wyatt would be difficult, though, would expose dark family secrets she didn’t like to even remember, let alone reveal to anyone else.
If she had to, she would tell him, though. Just not here. Not now.
“There is evidence that never came out in the trial, for various reasons,” she said instead. “Evidence I believe proves his innocence beyond any reasonable doubt.”
He looked intrigued. “What kind of evidence?”
“I have a whole room full of folders and a computer full of files. If I agree to talk to you for your book, give you whatever information you might be seeking about our family life or whatever, withholding nothing, will you at least look at what I have—really look at it—and judge his guilt or innocence for yourself?”
“Of course. Even if you don’t want to be interviewed for the book I would still want to look at anything you have. Arriving at the truth is my ultimate goal as a writer. I wouldn’t be any kind of researcher if I ignored important details that might help me get there.”
Could it really be that easy? She hadn’t even had to bargain with him—the curiosity in his eyes told her he meant what he said, that he would look at her collection of evidence without her having to bare any painful details of their childhood.
Relief swamped her like a warm, comforting tide. This could work. Kate’s idea had been nothing less than inspired. This man, with his clever mind and his insightful prose, could be a powerful ally.
Now all she had to do was hope that Wyatt could look at the evidence with an objective eye, untainted by the damning testimony offered during the trial.
She could always hope. She’d become an expert at that over the last thirty months.
Chapter 4
“You can’t desert me, Kate,” Taylor exclaimed. “This whole crazy thing was your idea!”
“Oh, no. Don’t pin this one on me.” Kate laughed. “I only suggested you talk to the man, try to get him on your side. The whole home-cooked dinner, wine and candlelight routine was completely your idea.”
“I didn’t cook anything! It’s only takeout lasagna from La Trattoria. You think it’s too much, don’t you. It’s too much. I knew it was. Okay, he won’t be here for another half hour. I can just clear everything away, throw it all back in the fridge.”
She reached for the place settings she had just spent ten minutes neurotically and meticulously arranging, but Kate grabbed her hands, laughter brimming in her blue eyes.
She squeezed her fingers. “Relax, Tay. I was only teasing you. Dinner is a great idea to soften him up. No man in his right mind can resist La Trat’s lasagna.”
Taylor pulled her hands free and let them fall to her side, mostly to keep from wringing them. “I’m not good at this stuff. You know I’m not.”
“What stuff? I thought you were just meeting with the man to talk about Hunter’s case.”
Kate raised a knowing eyebrow and Taylor felt heat scorch her cheeks at her own transparency.
“We are. It’s just…he’s just…” She blew out a breath.
Kate grinned. “What? Too gorgeous for his own good?”
Her cheeks heated up a notch. “That too.”
Kate’s lighthearted teasing gave way to a worried expression. “You’ll be careful, won’t you?”
“Careful of what?”
“I haven’t seen you like this about anyone since Rob. I just don’t want you to be hurt again.”
Taylor rearranged the place settings again, refusing to meet Kate’s all-too-knowing gaze. “The situations aren’t at all the same. Rob was a complete jerk.”
“A jerk you were seriously thinking about marrying.”
“In one of my more idiotic moments. Good thing I found out how shallow and ambitious he was in time, right? At the first sign of trouble he decided the woman he claimed to be passionately in love with wasn’t nearly as important as his future political aspirations.”
Hours after Hunter was arrested, when Taylor was been reeling from shock and disbelief, Rob Llewelyn had dumped her. He had his whole life mapped out, he had informed her with a self-righteousness that still made her burn at her own foolishness. First the state legislature, then a congressional seat, and after that, the sky was the limit.
Someone in his position had to be above reproach. He couldn’t afford this kind of negative guilt by association, he told her. This was already shaping up to be a huge scandal and he couldn’t have even a whiff of it tainting his future.
“Rob didn’t hurt me,” she said automatically, as she always did. “I had a lucky escape.”
Though she believed the second part of her statement, the first part wasn’t strictly true, she had to admit. Kate knew it too. Taylor might not have been sure she loved the man—in retrospect, she couldn’t believe she had ever even entertained it as a possibility—but being dumped at such a traumatic time when she could have used all the support she could find had been one more shock to get over.
“Anyway, even if I am…attracted…to Wyatt McKinnon, I could never do anything about it. I don’t have the time or energy for that kind of complication right now. I just don’t. With school and Hunter and the appeal, I don’t have anything left to give.”
“Sometimes you just have to find the time and energy, especially when it comes to a man like McKinnon.”
“Says the woman whose personal relationship rule is not to date the same man more than three times.”
Kate gave her a pointed look. “Don’t change the subject. We were talking about you, not me.”
“I’d rather talk about you,” Taylor muttered.
“I’m sure you would,” Kate said. Her smile slid away after a moment. “I’m just saying be careful, that’s all.”
Obviously Taylor hadn’t been as successful as she’d hoped at hiding from her friend the strange effect Wyatt had on her, if Kate thought this little lecture was necessary.
She had spent the past three days trying to figure out what it was about him that struck such a responsive chord in her. He was gorgeous, Kate was certainly right about that. Lean and masculine, with those intense eyes and his surprisingly sweet smile.
She suspected her strong reaction to him—and the disquiet it sparked in her—was from more than just a hormonal reaction to a gorgeous man. The other day at the diner, she had seen the kindness in his eyes. Something about his quiet calm had comforted her, steadied her, more than all the warm tea in the world.
“I’ll be fine,” she finally answered Kate, wishing she believed her own words. “I’d be better if I knew I could count on you for moral support. A nice, friendly buffer. I never would have brought home La Trattoria if I thought for one moment you would be abandoning me.”
“Ha. Nice try. Your guilt trip is not going to work on me this time.”
“Not even a little?” Taylor asked hopefully.
“I have rounds! I don’t have any choice—I can’t help it if my schedule was changed. With this flu outbreak, Sterling has all the residents on double shifts. I’m going to be late as it is if I don’t hurry!”
Taylor gave her a quick hug. “Don’t worry about me. I’m sorry I badgered you.”
Kate hurried for the front door to pick up the battered denim jacket she adored. She grabbed her keys off the hall table. “You know I’m going to expect total deets in the morning, right? I’ll pick up Krispy Kreme on my way home, so be ready to spill.”
“I will.” Taylor gave her another hug. “You can have leftover lasagna and doughnuts for breakfast.”
“Mmm. My favorite.”
With a laugh, Kate rushed out the door. Taylor watched her go, aware of the jealousy settling like a hard, greasy lump in her stomach.
She wanted to be the one running out the door to the hospital. Just went to show how crazy she was, she thought, that she could actually envy Kate the upcoming twelve hours on her feet dealing with surly patients and reams of paperwork.
She fiercely wanted to go back and finish medical school, to serve the residency she’d been promised in pediatrics. She had told Wyatt the truth about that the other day at the diner. Though she knew it wasn’t fair, that it was petty and small, sometimes it chewed her up inside that Kate had the freedom to follow her dreams while Taylor was trapped in a world she hated, a world that threatened to suck the life out of her.
Taylor sighed, ashamed of her moment of weakness. How could she feel sorry for herself and decry her own lack of freedom? If the mood struck her, she could walk outside right now and enjoy the cool bite of an October evening or the sweet scent of the late-blooming flowers in her garden.
She could run to her favorite Italian restaurant for all the lasagna her heart desired, could top it off with a big bowl of triple chocolate Häagen-Dazs from the freezer if she wanted.
Hunter could do none of those things. He truly had no freedom, no choices. Until he did, she could put her own dreams on hold.
Wyatt wasn’t sure what to expect from Taylor’s house. From his research and from testimony during the trial, he knew she came from money—her great-grandfather Bradshaw had been a wealthy silver baron in Park City during its mining heyday. Through prudent investments, the Bradshaws had managed to hang on to their money at a time when many other mining magnates went broke.
That had been one of the more intriguing aspects of her brother’s case that the media had played up relentlessly—Hunter had come from wealth and privilege. He hadn’t needed to work a day in his life if he didn’t want to, yet he had dirtied his hands by playing at being a cop. Rich boy turned cop turned killer.
For all he knew, Taylor could live in some starchy Avenues mansion. But when he followed the directions she’d given him three days earlier, he found a neighborhood of small cottages. Though the houses were small and the yards minuscule, this was a desirable area, neatly sandwiched between the University of Utah campus and Salt Lake City’s downtown. The houses were old but charming, with residents who kept them freshly painted and tidy.
With its cheerful blue shutters and fall flower garden, Taylor’s house reminded him a little of the cottage his brother Gage had rented in Park City earlier in the summer, where he had met his fiancée Allie and her two darling little girls.
A group of children played basketball on a standard tacked to the garage of the house next door, and on the other side, a rail-thin gray-haired man paused his leaf-raking long enough to study Wyatt with curiosity, making him wonder if Taylor didn’t have many male callers.
Before he turned off his engine in front of her house, he saw a small silver Honda back out and drive away, but from his angle he couldn’t get a glimpse of the driver.
Maybe Taylor chickened out and decided not to meet with him. Wyatt rejected the thought as soon as it entered his mind. She struck him as the kind of woman who would never back down from a fight. Besides, he had seen her car the other afternoon at the prison and knew she drove a Subaru wagon.
Anticipation flickered through him at knowing he would see her again. He was grimly aware that he had done entirely too much thinking about Taylor the past few days.
Objectivity.
He repeated the word in a low mantra as he hit the locks on his Tahoe and climbed out into the October evening. He might be fiercely attracted to Taylor, but he couldn’t allow that to distract him from his goal. He was going to write her brother’s story.
No, he corrected himself. He was going to write Dru and Mickie Ferrin’s stories. Big difference, one he needed to remember. They were the reason he was here.
Taylor Bradshaw was a source for his book, that’s all. As a loving, devoted sister, she could give him rare insight into her brother’s mind and heart, perceptions he might not even be able to get from Bradshaw himself. She could tell him what it had been like growing up as the two children of a man who by all accounts had been as strict with his children as he’d been on the bench.
Maybe she could even shed some light into what might have made Hunter snap that night.
He rang the doorbell and smiled at the curious neighbor, amused that the elderly man was still watching with his rake in his hands as if he was prepared to use it if Wyatt threatened Taylor in any way.
The door opened a moment later and, before he could even say hello, he was accosted by a sleek Irish setter. The dog didn’t bark at him or jump up, but she blocked his way inside, sniffing and wagging her tail in greeting, until he reached down to pet her.
She immediately took that as permission to get up close and personal. She rubbed her head against his thigh eagerly, that long auburn tail going like crazy.
Taylor stepped forward, her color high—at the dog’s friendliness or at something else, he couldn’t begin to guess. “Belle, leave the poor man alone. Down,” she ordered. The dog whined a little but obeyed, slinking down to the tile floor.
“Sorry about that. I’m afraid Belle is a cheap hussy for any man who gives her a little attention,” she said. “Most women she can take or leave, but whenever a man comes to the house, she is practically giddy. She misses Hunter, I think.”
“She was his?”
Taylor nodded. “He raised her from a puppy. Actually, he rescued her from a crime scene. Belle’s mother was shot trying to protect her owner from the woman’s abusive boyfriend. Neither the dog nor the woman survived. There were three others in the litter, and Hunter and John Randall, his partner, made it their mission in life to find homes for all of them. He fell hard for Belle and couldn’t give her up.”
He tried—and failed—to imagine the tough man he met in prison rescuing a litter of orphaned puppies. With that hard, steely gaze of his, Wyatt had a difficult time imagining Hunter had a soft spot for much. Except maybe his sister.
“I guess you inherited her after his arrest.”
“I’m just watching her until Hunter gets out,” she said, her chin lifted defiantly as if daring him to contradict her.
Wyatt wasn’t sure what to say to that, and they stood awkwardly in her small foyer for a few moments until she seemed to collect herself.
“I’m sorry, let me take your jacket.”
He shrugged out of it and handed it to her. “Have you eaten?” she asked after she hung it in the closet off the entryway.
“No. I was going to ask if you wanted to grab something after we were done,” he said. He didn’t want to admit, even to himself, how much he had wanted her to agree.
“Do you like Italian?” she asked. “I picked up some takeout on the way home.”
“Italian’s great. If my mother were here, she’d tell you I never met a pasta dish I didn’t like.”
She looked vaguely surprised at his mention of his mother, as if she’d never given the matter of his parentage much thought. “Does your family live in Salt Lake?” she asked as she led the way through the small house toward the kitchen.
“We’re all over. My parents split up when I was a kid. Mom lives in Liberty near my ranch—she’s an elementary school principal—and my dad has a carpentry shop in Las Vegas. I have an older brother who has lived all over the West but currently hangs his hat in Park City. He’s with the FBI.”
“FBI? Really? So I guess you both work closely with criminals.”
He sent her an amused look. “Something like that.”
The kitchen reminded him of a Tuscan farmhouse, with warm yellow stuccoed walls and pots hanging from a center island. It looked comfortable and well-used. He leaned a hip against the counter as he watched her transfer a pan from the oven to a dining table set in a small alcove overlooking her backyard.
“So your parents had just two boys?” she asked, her hands too busy with setting out food to notice the reaction he knew he wouldn’t be able to hide at her innocent question.
He thought of Charlotte—little Charley—with her blond curls and her sweet smile. Guilt socked him in the gut, as it always did. “We had a little sister but we lost her when she was three.”
It was his easy, glib answer, the one he used when he didn’t want to get into the whole story. He knew she would assume Charlotte died. Most people did. It was often easier to let them think that than going into all the grim details of the kidnapping, which would inevitably dominate the conversation for some time.
“Oh. I’m so sorry.” Compassion turned her eyes a dewy midnight blue and filled him with guilt at his lie of omission.
He chose to deal with it by changing the subject quickly. “Everything looks delicious. This is great. You didn’t have to go to so much trouble.”
“I didn’t do anything but pick up the lasagna from a restaurant. I wish I could say I made it, but Kate—my roommate—is the expert in the kitchen. I’m learning from her but I still am an amateur. I thought she would be here to join us but her shift was changed at the hospital. You just missed her.”
Did she tell him that to subtly remind him this wasn’t a date? he wondered. That even though they were two adults enjoying a delicious meal alone together, he shouldn’t make any kind of leap in logic about it?
Too bad the roommate wasn’t here. There was an intimacy to being alone together here that he would have preferred to avoid, given his attraction to her.
Objectivity, he reminded himself as he poured wine for both of them. This was just another interview, just like dozens of others he’d done for this book.
This wasn’t so bad, Taylor thought a few moments later as she took another bit of rich, spicy lasagna.
All her nervousness had been for nothing. Wyatt seemed to find nothing odd about sharing a meal before they got down to the gritty business of going over the facts in Hunter’s case. As they enjoyed the delectable pasta and crusty Italian bread, they talked of mundane matters—her classes, his ranch, how long she’d lived in the house.
“I bought it after my father died four years ago.”
“Your mother died when you were just a little girl. Six, isn’t that right?”
The question was a blunt reminder of the unpalatable fact that he knew far more about her than she did about him. She couldn’t help feeling a little exposed that so many private details of her life had become public knowledge after Hunter’s arrest. Her sense of invasion made her reply sharper than she had intended.
“And I guess that’s the explanation you’re going to use for everything that supposedly went wrong with Hunter.”
He looked surprised by the sudden attack, then thoughtful. “No. I was just thinking how tough that must have been on you, losing a mother at such an early age.”
The age hadn’t been as difficult as the circumstances of her mother’s death. “My mother was…ill for a long time before she died. I don’t remember her any other way.”
She didn’t add that Angela Bradshaw had suffered from a grab bag of mental health issues or that few of the snippets of memory she had of her mother were pleasant.
“What was Hunter like as a big brother?”
She gave him a cool look over the lip of her wineglass. “Is this on the record?”
“Up to you.”
She debated exactly what to tell him as the spectres of those dark family secrets loomed. For so much of her life, she had tried to pretend those first six years didn’t exist, that they were just some murky nightmare.
She didn’t like remembering how bad things had been as Angela’s condition deteriorated. She didn’t talk about it with anyone—choosing to break her silence to someone writing a book didn’t seem the greatest idea.
On the other hand, her ultimate goal was to convince Wyatt that Hunter wasn’t capable of murdering anyone. To do that, she would have to tell him at least something of their childhood.
“He was older than me by five years. I guess you know that.”
“So that makes you twenty-six.”
“Right. Five years doesn’t seem like much when you’re thirty-one and twenty-six, but take away a few decades and it’s a huge chasm at eleven and six. I think most boys that age would rather be caught in their Underoos on the school playground than be seen hanging around with their little sisters, but Hunter never seemed to mind me tagging after him. He was a great brother and never treated me with anything but love and kindness. I don’t remember him ever yelling at me or teasing me. He looked out for me. Protected me.”
He frowned at this. “Against what?”
She should tell him now. This was the perfect opportunity. The words hovered inside her, but in the end she chickened out. Once he knew the truth about Angela, he would jump to more wrong conclusions about Hunter—and about her.
“He protected me against anything that threatened me,” she said instead. “I love him and I know him, probably better than anyone else in the world. He can be a tough man when it’s necessary. A hard one. He has a strong sense of justice and maybe sees things as too black or white, but no matter what the provocation, he would never murder anyone. The man I know—the man I grew up in the same house with, simply isn’t capable of it.”
“Nice opening statement, Counselor.”
Her smile was small and rueful. “Sorry. I guess I tend to come off a little strong. I probably sound like a zealot.”
“You sound like a loving sister trying to help her brother.”
Trying, maybe, but for all her efforts, she didn’t seem to have been accomplishing much. Spinning her wheels, that’s all she seemed to be doing since his conviction.
They had finished eating, she saw, and though under other circumstances she would have enjoyed lingering around the table and learning more about him, she knew she couldn’t afford to waste his time. “I have tiramisu. If you’d like, we can have coffee with it in my office while I show you the evidence I’ve collected since the trial.”
“Sounds great.”
She loved her small office, filled with comfortable, favorite pieces of furniture she had moved here from her father’s library after his death when she and Hunter sold the house on Walker Lane. No surprise, Hunter hadn’t wanted any of it. As far back as she could remember, he and the Judge had a stormy relationship and she was fairly certain Hunter had few pleasant memories of the oak-paneled room where their father had presided with such a firm hand.
She found it peaceful, though. This was where she worked, where she preferred to study. She and Kate had crammed for many med school exams behind this desk. It had always been a refuge from the stress of life.
But when she walked inside with Wyatt behind her, the room seemed to shrink. He had such a commanding presence, a masculine confidence she found entirely too attractive.
Wyatt took the burgundy leather armchair opposite her desk, stretched out his long legs, and watched her expectantly.
Taylor didn’t quite know where to start. She had volumes of information carefully organized—court transcripts, the police report, newspaper clippings, eyewitness reports. She had more files on her computer, information she regularly dumped to her laptop.
What would he find most compelling? she wondered.
“You were in the courtroom so you know the basics of the case,” she began.
“I wasn’t there every day,” he answered, “but I have studied the court transcript extensively.”
Sitting behind the desk with him on the other side seemed entirely too formal, so she chose to perch on the edge, trying not to fidget. “Then you know the state’s case against Hunter was completely circumstantial. They had nothing to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Hunter killed Dru or Mickie.”
“It was circumstantial but it was strong. His fingerprints were all over the scene.”
“He dated Dru for eighteen months. It would have been more unusual if his fingerprints weren’t there! Don’t you find it significant that they weren’t on the murder weapon?”
“You mean the murder weapon that just happened to be registered to your brother?”
“Anyone could have fired that gun! He gave it to Dru the week before the murders, for protection after she received death threats.”
Wyatt frowned. “So he says. No one could substantiate either the death threats or your brother’s claim that he gave her his weapon. If she was threatened, she didn’t tell anyone else but your brother.”
As it always did when she heard the evidence against her brother, Taylor’s blood pressure seemed to rise. She wanted to snap back an angry retort, but that wouldn’t accomplish her goal. She was supposed to be showing him new facts, convincing him of Hunter’s evidence, not rehashing all the damning evidence from the trial.
“My brother was an experienced detective,” she said after a moment of deep breathing for calm. “Don’t you think if he was going to kill someone with his own weapon he would certainly be smart enough not to leave it behind for the whole world to find?”
She didn’t give him time to respond. “And let’s focus on the weapon. It was wiped clean, right? But the state crime lab did retrieve one partial from the safety. Did you know that?”
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