Kate pressed herself against the car as Billy Hodgkins lurched at her.
Behind them in the park, former classmates and alumni were mingling and socializing, enjoying refreshments and music. Her heart gave a pang at the sight of the babies and children.
Right now, though, they seemed a million miles away.
“We need to talk.” The dark scowl on Billy’s face reminded her of the day he’d cornered her at the cemetery.
She tried to maneuver past him, but he trapped her against the car by planting both hands on the hood. The back of her thighs hit the front bumper.
The instructor in the self-defense class she’d taken in college emphasized not to show fear. Or to look vulnerable. To emit an air of self-confidence.
Lifting her chin in a show of bravado, she braced herself for a physical attack.
“Kate, listen to me,” he said in a deep voice.
“Move out of my way, Billy.” Kate used both hands to push him away and he stumbled backward. But before she made it two feet, he grabbed her arm.
She gave a pointed look to where his fingers held her a little too tightly and then spoke through clenched teeth. “Let go of me.”
“You keep running from me and won’t listen.” Billy’s voice took on a shrill edge. “You have to hear me out.”
“She doesn’t have to do anything,” Riggs’s deep voice boomed with authority as he walked up behind Billy. “And if you know what’s good for you, Billy, you’ll take your hands off of the lady like she asked.”
A strand of Billy’s shaggy hair fell across one eye, adding to his sinister look. “Back off, Riggs. This is none of your business. It’s between me and Kate.”
Riggs slapped a hand on Billy’s shoulder and dug his fingers into the man’s skin. “I’m making it my business. Now step away from Kate.”
“Kate, listen,” Billy cried. “I just need five minutes.”
“Back. Away.” A threat underlay Riggs’s commanding tone.
A shiver rippled through Kate at the menacing look in Billy’s eyes. But he released her arm, raised his hands in a surrender gesture and stepped back.
“What’s going on?” This time Stone appeared, hands on his hips as he traced his fingers over his gun.
“I just wanted to talk to Kate,” Billy barked. “But Benford jumped on me like a mad dog.”
Riggs crossed his arms and spread his feet, an intimidating stance. “If you have anything to say to Kate, you can say it in front of us.”
“Forget it.” Billy cursed and started to walk away.
Stone blocked his retreat, his height towering over Billy as he looked down at him.
“What the hell?” Billy said. “I thought this was supposed to be a damn reunion. A chance to get back together with old friends.”
“You were never friends with Kate,” Riggs snarled.
“Neither were you.” Billy hooked a thumb toward Kate. “Sheriff, Kate organized this shindig. You gonna stop everyone who wants to talk to her?”
“Anyone who’s viewed as a threat,” Stone said bluntly.
“Wait just a minute,” Billy snarled. “Just because my brother did a stupid thing doesn’t mean—”
“This is not about your brother, at least not directly,” Stone interjected. “It’s about the fact that someone has been threatening Kate and sabotaged her car.”
Billy’s eyes darted from Stone to Kate. “You think that was me?”
“We know you blame Kate for your brother’s death,” Riggs said in a cold tone. “The publicity for the new school and demolition of the old building must have triggered traumatic memories for you.”
“Yeah, hell, it did. People ran my folks out of town. They had to change their names because the press made our lives a nightmare.” He pounded his hand over his chest. “Did you know they received hate mail? Death threats? That people threw rocks in their living room and someone set fire to my father’s hardware store?”
Kate had been so grief stricken from losing her mother and traumatized from witnessing the bloody massacre of her friends that the world had blurred. She had no idea the pain and suffering Ned’s family had endured.
“I’m sorry, Billy,” Kate said, sympathy lacing her voice.
Pain wrenched Billy’s face.
“My father documented what happened,” Stone added. “It must have been hell for your family, Billy. And for you.” He paused. “All the more reason you might retaliate against the town now.”
Confusion marred Billy’s face. He seemed thrown off by their acknowledgment of his family’s suffering.
“Kate is working to help the town revive the love we once shared and to make a better place for our children,” Riggs said. “Blaming her is wrong.”
“I didn’t attack her,” Billy snapped.
“Where were you last night?” Stone asked.
Billy’s right eye twitched. “None of your business.”
Stone tapped his badge. “As a matter of fact, it is. You can either answer my questions here or down at the station.”
Billy shifted and yanked up his baggy jeans, which were sliding down over his hips and barrel belly. “I had dinner at a place outside of town.”
“What place?” Stone asked.
“Pie in the Sky. It’s across from the Lazy Dog Motel.”
Stone tilted his head to the side. “Can anyone verify you were there?”
“Waitress,” Billy said with a toothy grin.
Stone didn’t find humor in it and neither did Riggs.
“Do you ever go to Smokehouse Barbecue?” Stone asked.
Billy shrugged. “A time or two. Most everyone in town does. Why do you want to know about that place?”
“Because someone set fire to the woods behind Kate’s house,” Stone said. “And we found a pack of matches at the scene.”
Billy’s face paled. “I see what you’re doing.” He motioned at the crowd in the park. “Half the people out there are against tearing down the old school, but because it was my brother who shot it up, you’re going to railroad me to jail for something I didn’t do.”
“I’m not railroading anyone,” Stone said coldly. “But my job is to protect the citizens in Briar Ridge.”
Billy raised his head in a defiant gesture. “You don’t have anything on me because there’s nothing to get. Now, I’m out of here.” He gave them a go-to-hell look then stormed away.
“Let me grab my fingerprint kit,” Stone said. “Billy’s prints should be on the hood of your car, Kate. We’ll see if his match the ones on that matchbook.”
“I CAN’T BELIEVE the nerve of that guy,” Riggs muttered as Billy roared from the parking lot.
Kate shrugged. “His family suffered. Maybe I should have listened to what he had to say.”
Riggs gently turned Kate to look at him. “You don’t owe that bastard anything. You did not cause his brother to kill our classmates or your mother, and you certainly don’t have to put up with his bullying tactics.”
Stone returned with his fingerprint kit, and Riggs gestured at the crowd. People had brought lounge chairs and picnic baskets, and old friends were getting reacquainted, playing Frisbee and football.
“We should mingle,” he told Kate.
“Yeah, I guess we should.”
Although she didn’t sound thrilled at the idea.
How could she be excited or relaxed when the person who’d tried to kill her might be in the crowd?
For the next half hour, they talked to former classmates. Riggs kept his ears and eyes peeled for anyone acting suspiciously. Two girls he’d once dated flirted with him, but they no longer made his pulse jump like they had when he was sixteen.
Not like Kate did now.
He grabbed a bottle of water while Kate chatted with friends from the yearbook staff. Jay approached him with an eyebrow raise.
“Something going on with you and Kate?” Jay asked.
Riggs hesitated, maybe a fraction of a second too long. “I just don’t want to see her get hurt.”
“Uh-huh.”
Riggs shifted and spotted Macy at the far end of the park, deep in conversation with another classmate, Trey Cushing. He’d heard the two of them had married.
“Keep telling yourself that,” Jay said. “From what I’ve seen, you’ve got it bad for her.”
Riggs heaved a weary breath and angled himself toward Jay so no one could overhear the conversation. “Fat lot of good it’ll do. She still sees me as the player I used to be. That and the thing with Cassidy...”
“You could correct her, you know.”
Riggs shrugged. “Maybe I will. If the subject comes up.”
A frown tugged at Jay’s mouth. “What’s holding you back? I’ve never known you to be shy around a woman.”
Riggs chuckled. “She’s different.” He rolled his shoulders. “Besides, why are you giving advice? Do you have a significant other I don’t know about? Fiancée? Wife?”
Jay’s smile faded. “I move around too much with the job.”
“Excuses, excuses,” Riggs said wryly.
This time Jay was the one who looked sheepish. “Guess we’re both chicken when it comes to matters of the heart.”
Turning around, they spotted Gretta stalking through a crowd of their classmates. “Speaking of dangerous women, run.”
They both laughed, but their laughter died when Brynn Gaines wheeled her way down the hill to join the crowd. Gretta darted up beside her, her camera poised as she photographed Brynn’s struggle over the rough patchy ground.
“That stupid witch,” Jay said. “I’m going to rescue Brynn.”
Jay strode off as if on a mission. He was going to have to hurry. Brynn had paused to reposition her chair, and Gretta caught up with her. She blocked Brynn’s way and seemed relentless in firing questions at her.
Questions that, from Riggs’s position, seemed to upset Brynn.
Speaking of trouble, Cassidy Fulton sashayed toward him.
Riggs steeled himself against a reaction. With her dyed-blond hair, low-cut top and shorts up her rear, Cassidy had been a hell-raiser in high school. She’d also used him and then tossed him aside like trash. Her cruel comments about his injury had shattered the remnants of his self-esteem at the time.
“Riggs.” Cassidy fluttered her eyelashes at him as if the past didn’t exist and he wouldn’t remember what she’d done. “I heard you came to the rescue when Kate’s car exploded.”
“Just doing my job.”
“Is someone really trying to kill her?” Cassidy asked.
He narrowed his eyes. “Where did you hear that?”
“Small town, word gets around.”
Didn’t he know it? “How’s your son?”
A tiny seed of irritation flickered in her eyes. “Fine.”
“Did his father ever step up?”
Any sign of friendliness fizzled out as quickly as a flame being doused by water.
“My son and his father are none of your business—or anyone else’s.” With a huff, Cassidy stormed away.
Riggs shrugged off her dismissal. He felt for the boy. Maybe he should reach out.
Kate’s face caught his attention across the lawn, and he noticed her watching him, her face set in a deep frown.
He wanted to win her trust, for her to see him as a stand-up guy.
Dammit. But talking to the woman he’d supposedly impregnated and abandoned had just accomplished the opposite.
KATE SILENTLY CHIDED herself for watching Riggs and Cassidy. If Riggs wanted to talk to Cassidy or to sleep with her, he was free to do so.
So why was her heart hammering out of her chest with jealousy?
Riggs had a past with Cassidy. A child.
No one could change that.
When whoever was threatening her was caught and the activities surrounding the reunion and dedication for the new school were over, things would return to normal.
Riggs would resume his life—without her.
Her heart gave a pang.
Voices on the hill echoed loudly. Brynn... She was talking to Gretta. Only, Brynn looked upset.
Kate started up the hill to see if Gretta was harassing Brynn, but Jay approached them and lit into her.
Loud voices to the right made her halt in her tracks.
She pivoted and strained to see what the commotion was about, then spotted Macy standing with Trey Cushing. They were having a heated argument, though she couldn’t hear what it was about.
Kate had never liked Trey. He’d been pushy with the girls.
On graduation night, she’d seen Macy and Trey leave together. Another blow—Kate thought she and Brynn and Macy would be celebrating together.
Instead, her friends had gone their separate ways.
The argument intensified and Trey leaned into Macy, his face contorted in rage. Macy shook her head and backed away as if to leave.
But Trey clutched Macy’s wrist and yanked her to him.
Kate tensed. Macy was an FBI agent and could take care of herself. Although, as tough as Macy appeared, Kate knew a vulnerable side lay beneath the surface. The side that had led them to become friends when Macy was five and needed help.
A side Macy didn’t show to anyone.
Freeing herself from his grasp, Macy planted both hands on Trey’s chest and pushed him back. He spit out a string of obscenities.
Wanting to reassure Macy that she still had her back, Kate veered toward them.
“Leave her alone,” Kate said sharply.
Trey swung toward her, resentment and rage darkening his already vile expression. “Stay the hell out of our business, Kate.”
Riggs’s comments about Billy being a bully echoed in her head. Trey was a bully, too. “Trey, why don’t you take a walk and calm down?”
Macy cut her eyes toward Kate. “Leave us alone, Kate. I’ve got this.”
Her sharp tone made Kate’s stomach clench and drove home the truth of the distance between them.
Suddenly, Kate felt overwhelmed. She was tired of fighting everyone on the school. Tired of being afraid. Tired of...being alone.
Still, she believed wholeheartedly that what she was doing for Briar Ridge was right, and she would see the school project through. Tomorrow.
Today she needed a break.
Battling tears, she rushed to her rental SUV, jumped in and drove straight to her house.
Her phone was ringing as she let herself in and switched off the alarm. Riggs’s name appeared on the Caller ID.
She let the phone roll to voice mail, poured herself a glass of wine and was just about to carry it to the back porch when the doorbell rang. Shoulders knotted with nerves, she checked the security camera. Riggs.
He looked worried. Maybe angry. And so sexy that she wanted to fall into his arms.
“Kate, open up.” The doorbell rang again, followed by a loud knock. “Kate, please. I have to know you’re okay.”
She steeled herself against his sex appeal as she opened the door. “I’m fine, Riggs, you didn’t have to come.”
“Yes, I did. When you left the picnic so abruptly, I was worried something had happened.”
He did sound worried, and a little bit angry. “I’m sorry,” Kate said. “You were busy, and I was ready to leave.” And I couldn’t stand seeing you with Cassidy.
“Then you should have come and gotten me.” Riggs strode past her into the room, his breathing heavy. “I was worried to death.”
Kate’s heart squeezed. “I’m okay—” Her voice died as something crashed through the sliding-glass doors.
Glass shattered. Then there was a popping sound and smoke began to pour into the room.