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“State and federal agents are on scene rounding everyone up,” he told Jordan. “They’re covering the judge’s involvement in it. He was hustled out of there by the first two agents on scene. The marshal’s dead. They found Gaylen Patrick in a gully, gutted like a fish, and son of a bitch if they didn’t catch Mayor Silbert in the group. Most of the militia is dead. What’s left alive won’t live long. Otherwise there were no other bodies to collect.”
Noah was alive.
“And you?” Jordan asked him. “How much of this will you keep to yourself?”
Rick’s lips tightened. “Sienna and Sabella were kidnapped. Sienna was killed in a rescue attempt. That’s the orders from the feds.” His lips tightened. “What the fuck-ever. Kent doesn’t need to know his mother was a fuckin’ murdering junkie. And I’ll be damned if I can find it in me to give a shit right now.”
Jordan nodded.
Rick turned back to look at her, his shoulders straight, his gaze direct. “I’m damned sorry, Belle. If I’d suspected . . .”
She shook her head. “None of us did, Rick. It’s over. Let’s let it stay over.”
But it wasn’t over. She turned to the mantel and saw the pictures and felt something wither inside her.
“Grandpop. Rory. I want to speak to Jordan alone.”
“Belle.” Grandpop started toward her.
He was stooped and aging, and it broke her heart how he accepted the man his son was, and the deceit of his grandson. Noah, Nathan, he hadn’t told grandpop either. They were losing him all over again.
“Alone, Grandpop,” she whispered. “Just for a minute.”
Rory shook his head as Grandpop sighed. They moved out the front door with Rick. She watched from the wide window as they walked the sheriff to his car.
Sabella turned back to Jordan and walked toward him slowly.
“Where. Is. My. Husband.” She made it simple for him. Said it clearly. Even a simpleton couldn’t mistake the question.
Jordan inhaled roughly. His lips tightened but he stared her in the eyes and he lied to her. “Nathan’s dead, Belle.”
She wasn’t aware of her own clenched fists until she delivered a right hook her father would have been damned proud of.
“Fuck!” Jordan stepped back, shock, disbelief filling his eyes. “Damn, Belle. You hit me.”
“Do I need to ask you again?”
He stared back at her, keeping plenty of distance between them now. He watched her carefully, that edge of Malone calculation in his gaze.
“It won’t change my answer, Belle.”
Her smile was tight. Hard. “Go home. You’re not needed here.”
“Belle.” His protest was low, rough.
He was a damned handsome man, she thought. He resembled Nathan. Just as Rory did. The Malone men were quite simply male perfection. In looks anyway. And he had been her friend. Once.
“My husband has been dead for six years,” she told him. “And he was never the man I thought he was anyway. I don’t need your compassion or your sympathy over another man that never cared enough to stick around either. So leave.”
He started to say something more.
“Get out!” she screamed. “Just go.”
He left.
It took longer to convince Rory and Grandpop to leave. It hurt more to make them go. But finally, the house was silent. She turned the phones off, she locked the doors, and she walked to the mantel. The pictures.
She stared at them, seeing the stranger who had held her and the stranger she had married. They had loved, but they had never known each other, not fully. She had sensed all that darkness roiling in her husband, but he had never shown it to her. And she—she touched his brow in the closest picture. She had been what she thought he needed her to be. She wouldn’t ever be that woman again. Not for him. Not for the man he was now.
