Page 34 of Breaking His Exile

He turned to the window, where the rain had slowed to a steady, drumming rhythm, and she watched his profile against the gray light. His jaw, his shoulders, all of him was tight, even at rest, like he was always braced for something.

She knew exactly how that felt. She’d lived most of her life braced for the bad, too.

“But I didn’t want to,” he said at last. “The water exposed something. When the ground washed away, it opened up a cut along the bank. Bones. Old ones.”

Rainey’s mouth went dry. “Human?”

“A murder victim.”

She stared at him. The rain hammered the roof. The coffee sat forgotten in her mug.

“Hank Goodwin,” Evander said, and his lip curled around the name. “He came out personally. Him and his deputies, looking at me like I’d dug a grave in my own backyard.”

“Who were the bones?”

“In his mind? Alice Dougherty.”

The name meant nothing to Rainey, but she could tell it meant something to him. “Did you know her?”

“No. She went missing when she was a teenager. Fifteen years ago. Taken off the highway, presumed dead for over a decade. Her twin sister, Greta, spent all that time looking for her. Everyone thought she was chasing ghosts.” He paused, and a muscle in his jaw jumped. “When the bones turned up on my property, Goodwin decided I was responsible for those ghosts.”

“Because you were the easiest person to blame.”

“Because I’m the ex-con who lives alone in the woods and doesn’t socialize. And I was once a resident of Valor Ridge. In his mind, that’s practically a confession.”

A surge of anger rose up fast, hot and protective in a way that surprised her. She’d known men like Hank Goodwin her whole life. Men who looked at someone different and saw only a threat. Men who would rather pin a crime on an innocent man than do the work to find the answer.

“Were you even here when she went missing?”

“I was still in high school two states away, but Goodwin didn’t care about that. He cared about closing a cold case, and I was the closest thing to a suspect he’d ever had. He held me for questioning. Tore apart what was left of the cabin. Brought in dogs. Brought in ground-penetrating radar.”

Rainey could picture him in a tiny interrogation room, facing down a smug sheriff who’d already decided he was guilty. His quiet fury at that moment must have been something to witness.

“What happened?” she asked.

“The bones turned out to be another victim of Alice’s adductor.” He turned from the window. His face was hard to read, but she thought she saw something soften around his eyes. “Despite Goodwin’s incompetence, the man was eventually arrested, and Greta finally found out her sister.”

“Alive?”

He nodded. “After the arrest, we suspected she was still alive. I went out searching with Jonah Reed—he’s at the ranch, a good man—and we found her wandering the mountains in a nightgown. She’d been held in a basement for the whole nearly sixteen years and escaped during the flood.”

Rainey released the breath she’d been holding in a rush. Almost sixteen years in captivity. She couldn’t imagine the horror of that. “Was she hurt?”

“Badly. She has selective mutism now. Trauma. But she survived.” He said it with quiet ferocity. “She got out. Her sister got her back.”

“Greta,” Rainey said, and tried to understand why the name felt like a splinter under her skin.

Maybe because his voice and expression had gone soft when he spoke of the woman.

Which was dumb.

If he had a relationship with Greta, it shouldn’t matter to her.

And yet she couldn’t help but ask, “Who is she?”

Evander came back to the table. Sat down across from her. The rain kept falling, relentless, and the cabin seemed to shrink around them.

“She runs a wilderness outfitting business in Solace. Tracks missing persons, trains search and rescue dogs.” He paused. “When the bones were found, and everyone else was calling me a murderer, she stood beside me. Never believed a word of it.”