Darken (Siege #1) Page 12

  “Give your brother room to sit,” she told him.

  While Josh was more than willing to follow Sarah’s directions, swinging his legs over the front end of the couch so he was sitting properly, Gavin continued his mission of small defiance and joined Logan at the bar.

  Sarah sighed and gritted her teeth as she took a seat between Sky and Caleb.

  “Okay, let’s go over this from the beginning,” she said. “Caleb, you start.”

  “Wait,” Sky interrupted. “What about Cora?”

  “What about her?” Immediately, Gavin went on alert.

  “Isn’t she going to be here?” Her eyes darted from Gavin to Sarah and then back.

  “Why would she be here? This is a family meeting.” The muscle in his jaw twitched. “She’s not part of this family.”

  Sky’s eyes widened and her mouth gaped like a fish. “How can you say that? We’ve known her for almost ten years. She was Lela’s best friend. She’s been protecting you for two years.”

  Gavin’s fists clenched as his stomach churned with something akin to guilt. It was a sensation he didn’t like.

  “When your mother and I decided to take you boys in,” his father said, “We made you family.”

  “She has her own family.” The noose tightened a notch around Gavin’s neck as he took in the expressions on his family’s faces.

  “Gavin,” Mark sighed, his disappointment clear. “We’ve always been willing to accept others into our family. Especially those hurt by Sinclair.”

  Tense silence filled the room, and the weight of his family’s disappointment pressed down on him. They were right, but even though everything they said was true, it didn’t make Cora family. She wasn’t.

  “This isn’t a conversation we need to have now,” Sarah said. “Let’s get the details and then we can decide what we need to do with Cora. Caleb?”

  Caleb launched into the details of the investigation he and Merrick did after the first car accident. They’d found images of Sinclair outside the nightclub where Lela and Cora had been, then there’d been the damaged rental car, the altered statement Cora made to the police, and the official report determining the accident refused from driver error.

  The most damning evidence of Sinclair’s involvement, though, was video surveillance of him going into Cora’s room at the hospital the day after the accident.

  “What was he doing?” Gavin asked.

  “We don’t know.” Noah twisted off the cap to a beer. “At first, we wondered if maybe he was taunting you, knowing we’d find it if we started looking. Then we found footage of him going back again. We thought maybe he was doing something to her.”

  “You didn’t think that was important enough to tell me? I get why you didn’t tell me about him taunting me, but how the fuck do you not tell me about Sinclair using Cora as a test subject?”

  “Watch your mouth,” Mark snapped, and Gavin pressed his lips together.

  Logan twisted on this stool and rested his elbows behind him on the bar top. “By the time we found out, it’d been a few months. If he did anything, Cora would’ve shown side effects.”

  “Can we get on with this?” Josh ran a hand through his shaggy brown hair. “I’ve got a dated at eight.”

  “Josh, this is more important,” Sky said.

  “Why? Because it’s Sinclair? Or because it’s Cora and you’ve got some crazy idea she’s in love with Gavin and you want him to marry her?”

  At that moment, Gavin was pretty sure everyone was glad Cora wasn’t there.

  “Sky’s right, Josh,” Noah said. “Sinclair targeting Lela and Cora means he’s not done with us. Any of us or our friends could be next.”

  “We shouldn’t have let him get away with it before,” Gavin said.

  “There’s no point in dwelling on what’s done and over,” Sarah interjected. “Gavin, tell us about what happened on Sunday.”

  Going through the whole process of retelling the accident seemed redundant. Noah and Logan heard it straight from Cora, and from the way the others nodded and made little noises of agreement, it was obvious they’d already heard. But arguing would only delay the process.

  “Where’s Cora now?” Sky asked when he finished.

  He shrugged. “She only stayed the one night then she went home. She mentioned something about her mom coming down to visit.”

  His sister just stared at him, and the knowing he saw in her eyes had him shifting uncomfortably on a stool. Then his spine straightened. It was sex between two consenting adults. He wasn’t ashamed of what happened, and he sure as hell didn’t need to justify himself to his little sister.

  “So what’s the plan?” His eyes roamed around the room.

  “Find Sinclair, beat the crap out of him, and maybe help him dig his grave.” Josh rubbed his hands together and slapped them on the top of his thighs as he started to stand up. “Now—”

  “Sit down,” Sarah demanded with a glare.

  “I have a few leads I’m following up on,” Caleb said. “Merrick’s pulling some surveillance footage from around the mall in Billings. We’ll start going through them this week. Even though it wasn’t Sinclair in the car, we may be able to trace the guy back to him.”

  “Cora is off until Friday. When she’s back on shift, it’ll be easy to keep an eye on her at the bar,” Logan said.

  “And until then?” Sky asked.

  Although he didn’t look at his mother, he felt the weight of her expectant stare. He refused to be sucked in. Yes, Cora needed to be kept safe. But there was no way in hell he was going to be the one to do it. Not now. Getting close to her again would lead him down the same path he went Sunday night, and he didn’t think he could handle that again.

  “I’ll drop by and see her tomorrow,” Josh said with a cocky smile.

  Gavin came off his chair and was stepping toward Josh before he even realized he’d moved. When he did, he stopped short and sat back down, spinning his stool so his back was to everyone except Noah. He looked up at his oldest brother, his gaze glancing off the scar along Noah’s cheek.

  Facing the harsh reminder of what his defiance of Sinclair had done to Noah was even less appealing than the shaming gazes of his sister and mother, so he turned back around.

  “I’ll call her in for some management training,” Noah offered. “Stuff she can do without exerting herself.”

  “All right, we have a plan.” Sarah stood with a determined smile. “Caleb and Merrick will follow the surveillance leads while Logan and Noah keep an eye on Cora.”

  “I can help go through the video footage,” Sky offered.

  “Merrick doesn’t need you underfoot.” Noah scowled at her.

  “She’ll be fine.” Caleb nudged her with his elbow. “Another set of eyes will get it done sooner.”

  “I want the files from the original accident,” Gavin said. “There’s gotta be something we’re missing. Some link between the two accidents that we’re not seeing.”

  There had to be a reason why after two years Sinclair came back for Cora, and Gavin wasn’t going to let him slip away again.

  Chapter Twelve

  TWO FULL DAYS OF mother-daughter time with no one else to play buffer was way too much, Cora decided. She rinsed off the plate she’d been scrubbing and placed it on the drying rack before draining the lukewarm water from the sink and dabbing her hands with a tea cloth. Her mother, Jill, scrutinized every move she made, probably searching for a missed spot to point out

  Oh, she loved her mom, but their relationship was tense at the best of times. In the aftermath of the accident and her train wreck of a night with Gavin, Jill’s presence had been a nice distraction, but the thought of another two days with her mother had driven Cora to drink. She took a sip from her second glass of wine, already looking forward to the third.

  Of course, that would raise her mother’s eyebrows and lead to a long lecture on alcoholism and the hereditary influence from her grandparents.

  “Your apartment in
Denver was so much nicer than this place. Of course, you were making better money so you could afford a nicer place,” Jill said from her perch on the edge of the couch.

  “I make good tips at the pub,” Cora countered.

  Jill gave an exaggerated shudder. “The bar should have been shut down years ago. There was a man murdered there, you know.”

  “Mom, that was like back in the nineties.” Cora would have rolled her eyes if she hadn’t known her mom would launch up onto her soapbox about manners and respect. “Noah and Logan bought the bar from their uncle a few years ago and worked hard to clean it up.”

  “This isn’t just about it being a bar, Coraline. Your father and I worry about you. Darren is doing so well in Billings with his new position at the insurance firm. We just wish you would settle down in a stable job. We were so disappointed when you resigned from the museum. You’d been doing so well.”

  Cora forced a smile. A year and a half before, Jill had freaked when Cora mentioned moving to Denver. There’d been the massive guilt trip about not being able to visit on the weekends, and whether she’d remember to call each week. The conversation only encouraged her to move. As much as Cora had hated the idea of leaving Gavin behind, she’d relished the freedom from her parents constant nagging.

  It was just like Jill to now be complaining about her coming back to Thompson Creek. Thank God her dad wasn’t there with them in the apartment, because it would have been twice as bad.

  The phone rang, cutting off any further comments from her mom, and Cora leaped for it. The number for Porter’s Pub flashed across the screen.

  “It’s work, I need to take it,” she told Jill and walked to her room as she answered the call. “Hello?”

  “Hey, how’re you holding up?” Noah asked.

  “I’m good, all back to normal.” She closed the door between her room and the prying ears of her mother. “Except for the stitches; they’re starting to itch like crazy. Even the cream the doctor recommended isn’t helping much.”

  “I thought we could step up the manager training. You up to coming in tomorrow?”

  “God, yes, please.”

  Noah laughed at her overly-enthusiastic response. “I take it you’re a little bored.”

  “Try going crazy. My mom’s here.” She flopped backward on the bed. “If I tell her I’m going back to work, I might get lucky and she’ll go home. Otherwise, well, at least, I’ll have an eight-hour break, right?”

  “That’s one way to look at it. Come at ten thirty. That’ll give us time to go through opening procedures.”

  She stared up at the ceiling, eyes narrowing as a thought occurred to her.

  “You know, I see through this, right?” she said.

  “Through what?”

  “This attempt to maneuver me somewhere so one of you can babysit me.”

  “It’s not babysitting,” he denied. “And if you’d stayed at Gavin’s place instead of going home—”

  “Not gonna to happen.”

  “I’m not sure you understand how big a threat Sinclair is. Now that we know he’s targeting you, we need to get ahead of him,” Noah explained. “By keeping an eye on you, not only are we ensuring your safety, but it might also put him in our path.”

  She didn’t want anyone looking after her, but as much as she disliked the thought of anyone keeping an eye on her, she grudgingly understood she was in danger. If sticking close to the Walkers helped them find the guy sooner, she’d suffer through it.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow.” She hung up before he could try changing her mind about staying with Gavin, or worse, ask why she refused to stay with him.

  It was a question she didn’t want to face because she knew it would lead to a series of other whys she’d been avoiding since she left Gavin’s bed.

  Why had she given in to her desire?

  Why had she believed it would make a difference?

  Why was she so willing to accept crumbs from Gavin?

  Why?

  “Coraline?” Jill called through the door and followed it with a soft knock.

  Cora squeezed her eyes shut and let out a deep sigh, but hopes that her mother would vanish were pointless. She sat up and ran her hands down her face. Maybe she should skip that third glass of wine.

  Knowing Jill wouldn’t give up, Cora opened the door, a tight smile on her face. She had a pretty good idea how her mom was going to react to the news she was going into work in the morning. It was a conversation she wanted over with quickly.

  “What were they calling you about?” Jill asked.

  “Noah needs me to go to work tomorrow.”

  “Phff,” Jill snorted. “I hope you told him no.”

  “I said yes. He’s training me for the assistant manager position,” she explained, hoping the mention of a managerial role would soften her mother up. It was a vain attempt.

  “Why bother? This is a temporary job. A few months from now, you’ll realize you—”

  “Mom, please stop,” Cora begged. Frustrations built from years of hearing the same things and of disappointment and guilt being heaped upon her boiled over. “I don’t need this right now.”

  “I’m sorry if you don’t want to hear this, but it needs to be said. You’re wasting your life, throwing away your education and good opportunities.”

  “Having you constantly tell me how much of a failure I’ve become is not helping me,” Cora snapped. A flash of satisfaction passed through her as Jill’s face paled.

  “I have not called you a failure.”

  “Maybe you haven’t said the word, but the implication is in everything you say.”

  “If you’re reading that in my advice, perhaps it’s something you’re already looking for.” Jill straightened to her full five-foot-four height. “I have only ever encouraged you to do what’s best for you.”

  She didn’t get it. From the affronted expression on her face, Jill obviously believed she was helping by continually deriding Cora’s decisions. Arguing was a waste of time.

  “I’m going to bed.” Cora shut the door in her mother’s face.

  She stomped around her room, tugging her shirt over her head and yanking a tank top from the drawer to sleep in. The hurt look on her mom’s face nagged at her, reminding her she should feel bad about upsetting Jill and for not wanting her there.

  Halfway through pulling off her jeans, she froze. She shouldn’t feel guilty for being hurt when Mom called her a failure. Why should Jill be the only one feeling hurt?

  Darren was so right. Cora’s whole martyr complex was all thanks to Mommy dearest. In complete honesty, her father also played a big part in it too.

  She was so tired of it. How had it taken her twenty-four years to see how her mom manipulated her?

  The question haunted her dreams, leaving her tossing and turning throughout the night until morning brought a welcome respite from thoughts of her parents as a vision pulled her from sleep.

  Sinclair watched the door to Porter Pub open, his grasp on the steering wheel tightening as Gavin stepped outside and held open the door for the woman behind him. Trapped inside Sinclair, Cora saw her future self walk alongside Gavin through the parking lot.

  Sinclair reached for a stack of papers and she tried to make sense of the scrawling mess of notes, but Sinclair’s gaze glanced off the paper and back to Gavin.

  The darkness of night gave way to bright sunlight and she saw the two of them in Gavin’s Jeep pulling up to a large building in the middle of the country. Something caught Sinclair’s attention and he turned away, the vision fading as his focus moved away from Gavin.

  Cora kept her eyes closed as the vision faded and left her in the dark again. The visions were making less sense. They’d started out innocent enough then turned menacing as Sinclair repeatedly caught Gavin in his line of fire. Now, he merely observed. What was his game? And considering Gavin had no clue what Sinclair was doing, who was he playing it with?

  It wasn’t until her alarm went off and she
rolled out of bed that she was conscious enough to consider regrets from the previous night’s confrontation with her mother. And she had them. Especially when she walked into the living room to see Jill’s packed bag resting by the door.

  She rarely fought with her mother. Anytime Jill’s poking and prodding caused a sting too painful to ignore, Cora gritted her teeth, smiled, and walked away. But as much as she regretted hurting her mother’s feelings, she didn’t regret her words.

  “Morning,” Cora said.

  “Good morning.” A chilly smile accompanied the greeting.

  “Are you heading home today?” Cora asked and gestured to the bag.

  “You’re well enough to go back to work, so there’s no need for me to stay.”

  “Mom—”

  “It’s fine, Coraline.” Her tone suggested anything but fine. “You have your life; you don’t want me to interfere.”

  Cora heard the slight tremor in Jill’s voice and there was the nagging guilt again. She hated how easily her mother could do that to her.

  “I love you, Mom. And I am grateful you came down here to help me out, but I need to make decisions that are right for me,” Cora said. “For now, that means being in Thompson Creek and working at Porter’s.”

  Jill pursed her lips together and nodded.

  Breakfast was a tense affair. Neither woman spoke, perhaps in fear that anything said would only make things worse.

  Cora got ready for work then walked Jill down to her car where they exchanged a brief farewell hug. She pushed down the urge to apologize and somehow pacify her mother. She was done taking the blame.

  She waited until her mother drove away before walking down the street to the bar. When she got there, she went through the side entrance and waved to Noah on her way to the change room.

  Keeley stood at the mirror, a curler in hand as she finished creating the waves in her strawberry blond hair. She always bemoaned working before noon because she never had enough time to get ready. In reality, Keeley did her hair at work every day because she was always running late for some reason or another.

  “What are you doing here?” Keeley asked, staring at Cora’s reflection in the glass. “I thought you were off until tomorrow.”