Pitching his voice to match Hamilton’s quiet timbre, Logan murmured, “It all depends on how determined that fella is to see this girl dead. If he just wanted to rid himself of her, he might not care where she ends up. But if he needed her dead for some other reason, he might come after her. Though I doubt he has any better idea of who we are than we have of him. She should be safe here for the time being.”
“The thought occurred to me as well.” Hamilton pushed to his feet and gestured for the ladies to resume their seats at the table. “Why don’t we start with something easy,” he said as the two females settled themselves. He lowered himself back into his chair, then leaned his forearms on the table as he peered at the girl from the river. “What’s your name?”
The girl darted a glance at Eva, who gave her an encouraging nod, then turned back to Hamilton. She hesitated, though, looking down at her hands folded on the table in front of her. She nibbled her bottom lip as if weighing her options. After a moment of mental calisthenics, she straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin.
“Christie Gilliam.”
Hamilton dipped his head. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Gilliam.” He pressed a hand to his chest. “I’m Zach Hamilton.” He stretched his arm out to grab Seth’s shoulder. “My brother, Seth.” He nodded toward Eva. “Our sister, Evangeline, and our, uh, neighbor, Logan.”
Logan ignored the less than enthusiastic introduction and smiled at Christie.
Her pale green eyes met his. “Thank you for saving my life.”
Uncomfortable with her gratitude, he shrugged. “I just pulled you out of the water. Eva’s the one who realized you were in danger. She’s the one who deserves your thanks.”
Christie reached for Eva’s hand. “Thank you.”
“I’m glad we reached you in time.” Eva held her gaze. “Who was it, Christie? Who tried to drown you?”
The girl’s chin tilted downward again, and her teeth emerged to bite the corner of her lip. “I don’t know. Not for sure.”
But she suspected someone. Logan frowned. Who? And why didn’t she want to name him?
“I was hit from behind,” she explained. “It’s the last thing I remember before waking up on the riverbank. I never saw my attacker.”
“Were you at home when it happened?” Seth asked.
Christie didn’t respond. Eva squeezed her hand to get her attention, then nodded toward her brother. Seth repeated his question.
“No.” Christie shook her head. “I was walking home from town after making a delivery for my stepfather.”
Seth leaned forward to place himself directly in her line of sight. “Which town? Ben Franklin?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Were you carrying money?” Zach probed after wagging a finger at her to get her attention.
“Some.”
Logan shook his head. “Robbery doesn’t make sense. A thief might bash her on the head and take her coin, but if she never saw him, there’d be no reason to kill her.”
“I agree,” Eva said, sending waves of satisfaction rolling through Logan. Waves that should have been nothing more substantial than pond ripples, since they were simply talking through possible scenarios. No true sides were being drawn. Yet having her agree with him in front of her brother on anything seemed to trigger ocean-level crests.
He wanted her on his side. Always.
“And it doesn’t explain the bruises,” she added.
Logan’s attention jerked to Christie’s face. He didn’t see any discolored marks. “What bruises?”
Christie’s face reddened, and she ducked away from his regard.
Ah. So the bruises were in places not usually seen when clothed. Eva must have noticed them during the young woman’s bath.
Eva touched Christie’s arm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you. But someone has hurt you. That same person could be the one who threw you into the river.”
“My stepfather is not the patient sort, but I don’t think he would go so far,” Christie said. “He’s lazy. And cowardly. Without me to run his deliveries, he’d have to do it himself.”
“Are your deliveries that toilsome?” Seth scanned her slender frame, no doubt drawing the same conclusion Logan had—that any task managed by a woman of such slight build couldn’t be that difficult for a man to take over.
A derisive smile twisted her mouth. “It isn’t so much the work as the risk he wants to avoid.”
Seth raised a brow. “What, exactly, do you deliver?”
“Moonshine.” Christie drooped a bit at the admission, as if waiting for her new friends to change their minds about her welcome. “My stepfather’s a bootlegger.”
A low whistle escaped Logan’s lips. Her stepfather’s choice of occupation opened up a world of unsavory possibilities. With Delta County being dry, a man of low character could make a tidy sum stilling corn into whiskey. Most bootlegging operations were too small for local law to bother chasing down, so the risk was minimal. In fact, it wasn’t unheard of for a lawman to accept a jug or two under the table in payment for turning a blind eye. And while most customers were harmless citizens with a thirst for the occasional strong drink, prominent clientele would have more to lose should it be discovered that they were willfully breaking the law.
“Your stepfather’s taint is not on you.” Eva was getting that stubborn look again, that feisty I’ll-defend-you-to-the-bitter-end-even-if-you-won’t-defend-yourself look that Logan couldn’t help but admire. She might be a bleeding heart, but she was a warrior, too. A warrior unafraid to surround herself with soldiers who were broken, weak, and scarred as she charged into battle against whatever foe stood in their way.
Christie shook her head. “But I participated. I made his deliveries. Collected his money. Ate food he provided. Wore clothes he supplied by preying on the weakness of others.”
“Did you have a choice?” Eva pressed. “Did you ever try to say no?”
Logan recognized immediately where Eva was headed. The bruises. The girl had been battered into submission. Forced to do what was necessary to survive. She didn’t need the added burden of guilt by association if she’d not been a willing partner.
Christie shrugged. “I tried to refuse a few times in the beginning, but it only made him angry. My mother had made the deliveries before me, but she died two years ago when I was sixteen. With her gone, Earl demanded I take over the family responsibility. I tried to act like I didn’t understand. Mama had never told him I was deaf. She thought it would be safer for me if Earl thought I was just slow. That way he’d want nothing to do with me. It worked for a while. You see, I didn’t lose my hearing until I had scarlet fever when I was ten, the same fever that took my Pa. I was top of my class in school before the fever.” Pride flashed in her eyes before they dimmed once again.
“Unfortunately, Pa had run up a bunch of debts before he passed. Earl offered to pay those debts if Mama wed him. She didn’t particularly care for Earl, but she feared being taken to a poor farm, where paupers were housed with petty criminals and the mentally ill. So she chose the lesser of two evils. I hid my books away, swallowed my pride, and pretended to be less than I was, at least around Earl. But I was determined not to become the idiot he thought me to be.
“So I closed myself up in my room with Mama’s hand mirror and practiced mouthing words in front of the glass for hours, learning the shapes of certain letters and sounds. When he was away, I dug out my favorite books and mouthed sentences from Black Beauty and Heidi until I memorized all the basic shapes. Then I practiced wherever we went, staring at shopkeepers as they assisted Mama with her purchases, the old men who stood around jawing outside the livery, other children when they invited me to play. It became a game.
“Until Mama died and left me alone with Earl.” Christie glanced down at her hands and started picking at the cuff of her right sleeve. “If I couldn’t figure out what he wanted fast enough, he’d hit me. Call me foul names. Throw things. He wore a beard
, so it was hard to read what he said. Without Mama there to help, I made a lot of mistakes.”
Logan ran a hand over his face, the bristles of his recently trimmed beard rubbing against his palm. He could feel the smoothness of his lips at the edge of his mustache, so she’d probably been able to read him well enough, but if a man let his beard grow long and scraggly, his lips would be almost completely obscured. What an untenable position for a young woman to find herself in. Cards stacked against her with only a bluff and her wits to see her through.
“Over the last year or so, things got easier,” she said, her chin lifting once again. “I got better at guessing what he wanted before he asked, and he’s dumbed things down so much now that instructions are rarely needed. Earl ties different colored ribbons around the jug handles, and I match them to the colors in the hidden compartments where I leave the moonshine. Inside a hollowed-out stump with a streak of blue paint across the top, behind a bush at the back of a red barn, another beneath a green wagon seat, and so on. I make deliveries on Sundays while all the God-fearing folk are at church, out of the way. Of course, some of those God-fearing folk leave money in the hidey-holes, too.”
Zach’s chair creaked as he shifted his weight. “And you were making deliveries this morning when the attacker struck?”
Christie’s forehead crinkled. “Sorry. I didn’t catch that.”
Zach repeated his question, slowing it down. “Were you making deliveries when you were attacked?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
Logan stroked a hand over his beard, making sure it lay as flat as possible before he voiced the thought that had been niggling at him for the past thirty minutes. He motioned with his hand to gain her attention. “What was different about today? Did something go wrong? Did you see something you weren’t supposed to see?”
The young woman cocked her head to the side, and her hands stilled. “I don’t think so. I delivered the jugs and collected the payments as I always do. One customer left a slender book instead of cash, but this isn’t uncommon. If people are short on ready funds, they often leave something else in barter. If Earl is unsatisfied, he takes it up with the customer later. My job is just to bring home whatever is left for me. So I took the volume, stuck it in my burlap sack, and went about my business.” She scratched the edge of her nose. “The attack didn’t come until twenty minutes later, when I was halfway home.”
Logan’s poker instincts flared. She was bluffing. The superfluous details. The guarded posture. The hand to the face. She wasn’t telling them the whole truth. The question was . . . why?
17
It didn’t take long for Christie to find her niche at the Hamilton homestead. She was so determined to earn her keep that she’d cut Evangeline’s household chores in half. A circumstance that afforded Evangeline more time for afternoon exercise—which just happened to involve long walks through the countryside. Countryside shared with a particular neighbor who made her heart flutter in the most delicious way whenever he smiled at her. Or looked at her, for that matter. And if he happened to touch her—well, actual palpitations had been known to occur.
Who knew having a sister would bring so many benefits beyond simple female companionship? Not only did Christie free Evangeline to pursue more intriguing interests than dusting shelves and weeding gardens, but she kept Seth distracted. Evangeline grinned as she and Hezekiah navigated a shallow ravine at the border of Logan’s property. Seth hounded her a lot less these days about where she was going and what she planned to do while she was out. She’d like to think he was finally treating her like an adult and trusting her judgment, but Evangeline suspected that he placed fewer barriers to her leaving because it meant fewer barriers to him spending time alone with Christie.
The two had grown close over the last three weeks.
It was really quite sweet. Christie seemed to share a bond with Seth that went beyond even what she and Evangeline shared as women. She probably saw Seth as a kindred spirit—someone who had been dealt a handicap yet sought to control it instead of letting it control him, just as she did.
Christie went out of her way to dust every nook and cranny in the house on Seth’s behalf, exceeding even Evangeline’s tight standards. Who knew dust collected atop doorframes? Evangeline couldn’t see that high, let alone think to dust there. Christie always made sure the coffeepot was filled and warm as well, and joined Seth for fish every day. He had taken to bringing home two or three fish instead of his usual one. How the girl stomached eating catfish and crappie every day was a marvel Evangeline had yet to fathom. However, she could understand the desire to share a meal with a man she found attractive. The small basket containing corn bread muffins and a jar of honey currently dangling from the crook of her arm attested to that truth.
She whistled to Hezzy, who had stopped to root at the base of an oak tree, then continued down the thin path her many visits had worn into the ground on the way to Logan’s cabin. A cheerful tune absently danced through her mind, and she hummed the melody, matching her strides to the bouncing rhythm. The basket of goodies swung in time to her song as the framed-out cabin came into view.
It was such a nice cabin. Cozy. Homey. One she couldn’t stop imagining belonged to her. Easy to do when the craftsman regularly asked for her opinions and had basically been building it to her specifications.
Speaking of which, where was he? Usually she heard hammering or sawing before she made it this close to the site. She heard nothing now beyond a mockingbird chirping somewhere overhead and Hezzy snorting a few yards behind. Evangeline craned her neck, her humming temporarily fading as she scanned the vicinity for a familiar male form. No black hat bobbing between wooden slats. No handsome bearded jaw or intriguing gray eyes in evidence anywhere.
“Hello!” she called. “Logan?”
No answer. Unless one counted the mockingbird’s mimic.
Well, shoot. She’d missed him somehow. Evangeline’s pace grew sluggish, but she pushed on the rest of the way. She might as well see what progress he’d made since yesterday. Maybe she’d even take tea in the kitchen. She had no tea—or table for that matter—but she had cakes and honey. What more did a girl really need? All right, she had hoped to have more handsome company than a muddy-nosed swine, but surely she could make do and manage a perfectly lovely outing all on her own. Just think—with the spaces between the studs, the view would be unmatched. Perhaps a mite breezy, but she’d not complain. There was no one around to impress with fetching hair anyway. Not that there was much fetching left in her hair after traipsing through the countryside for half an hour.
Evangeline approached what would eventually be the front door and sauntered into the house. She started in the front parlor, took a shortcut into the first bedroom by ducking through the wall, then meandered into the hall, across to the second bedroom, and up into the kitchen.
Nothing had changed since yesterday. No new boards had been added to the back wall where he’d been working. The horizontal siding still only reached her waist. Logan’s toolbox hadn’t moved, either.
She lowered her basket to the floor next to it then knelt and ran her finger over the smooth wooden handle of the hammer that lay atop the other tools. He’d held these in his hands, toiled with them, built this very structure with them. The hammer and level. The wood plane and saw. So masculine. Strong. Purposeful. Like the man who owned them.
A man she’d wanted to spend the afternoon with. Too bad that didn’t seem to be an option at the moment. Evangeline let out a sigh. It bothered her more than it should that Logan had left without informing her of his plans, but that was his prerogative. She had no true claim on him. At least not yet.
That thought drew a grin. With new energy zinging through her, she spun in a quick little circle, watching as her skirt twirled out at her ankles like an upside-down trumpet flower. The afternoon was filled with possibilities, just like her future. She simply had to be bold enough to explore them. Maybe she’d go down to the creek that Logan ha
d shown her, take her shoes and stockings off, and wade in the cool water. A perfect activity for a hot summer day. She could even give Hezzy a bath. She glanced down at her butter-yellow skirt. Perhaps not. She’d just laundered this skirt.
Evangeline stood and crossed the room, heading for what would be the back door. At the halfway point, the clicking of her heels dulled to a hollow echo. She glanced down at a thin rectangle outlined in the floorboards. The root cellar. Logan had never really shown it to her, the hole being too dark to see into without a lantern. Maybe this was what he’d been working on. He might have just run into town for some additional supplies.
Evangeline jabbed two fingers into the hole at the end of the trapdoor and lifted. It opened easily. She laid it all the way back against the floor and spied a rope tied near the hinges. Usually ropes were attached opposite the hinges so the person climbing down could pull the door shut once inside should there be a storm or some kind of attack. Yet this rope was fastened so close to the hinges that there would be no leverage to close the door. Logan was too meticulous to make that kind of mistake, so it must serve a different purpose.
She crouched down and peered into the dark hole. It smelled of damp earth. The sun angled down from the west and highlighted a small area inside. There wasn’t much to see, mostly just different shades of dark.
Wait. There, pushed back from the opening. Was that Logan’s duster? She’d seen him in the long black coat a time or two, especially when he was coming back from town, but in the heat of summer, it wasn’t the most practical garment. He must have decided to store it in the cellar. Sensible. It would be safe from anyone who happened upon his homestead while he was away.
What else did he keep hidden down there? Evangeline bit her lip, then shot a glance around her in all directions. Her pulse thrummed in her veins. She really shouldn’t. Snooping through another person’s belongings was a violation of their trust. Their privacy.