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car, shaking her head. It hadn’t been a good idea to have that drink—alcohol made her paranoid. Sophie was fine, she’d gotten through Tessa’s horrific murder and she’d get through the death of a stranger. Tomorrow, in the dubious light of day, everything would seem much better. She wouldn’t have this crazy, irrational urge to throw Sophie into the car and get the hell out of here.
    She’d always been too impulsive. Impulsive when she’d run away with Jared, impulsive when she’d refused her rigid parents’ generous offer of a lifetime of servitude and her child put up for adoption. And she’d been impulsive when she’d decided to marry a man she barely knew, simply because he was safe and gentle. She wasn’t going to compound that by taking off at the drop of a hat.
    She locked the doors behind her, for once going through the ritual of double locks that David preferred, and leaned her head against the solid door.
    So it had been a lousy, shitty day. Things would look better in the morning. They always did. She and Sophie would talk, and if Sophie even hinted at doubts, they’d be out of there before the sun set.
    But for now, for this night, all she could do was sleep on it. And hope she’d have the answers when she woke up.
    Â 
    Caleb couldn’t sleep. By the time he drove back up the winding muddy road to his ruined house he was still feeling jangled, like he’d had a triple espresso with chocolate on the side.
    He’d bought the place on a whim years ago—the abandoned project of a failed architect who thought he was the reincarnation of Frank Lloyd Wright. He’d built his own house in town, then started this one halfway up the mountain, where he’d gone bankrupt and shot himself. Since no one was willing to buy a half-finished monstrosity halfway up a mountain with a history like that, Caleb got it cheap.
    He turned on the two lights he’d bought earlier that day. He’d gotten the electricity turned back on, but expecting anything like internet service was a lost cause. He wasn’t going to be there that long.
    Longer than he’d ever been before, though. He’d never spent more than two nights in this godforsaken little town, and he didn’t like the fact that right now he was trapped, thanks to the red-haired amazon who’d been idiot enough to marry his brother.
    Stephen Henry had sent him the wedding announcement, and he’d freaked, moving so fast that he’d missed the part about her daughter. How the hell could she have let herself and her daughter be drawn into such an infernal mess? And why the hell did he have to come and clean it up?
    Because nobody else would. Nobody else had the faintest idea what was going on, and if he tried to tell them they wouldn’t believe him. They never had, and years ago he’d given up trying. He was committed to seeing this through, and he’d do just that. He couldn’t live with another death on his conscience.
    The wife was interesting. All wrong for David—he couldn’t figure out why the hell they’d ended up with each other. David went for the same willowy blondes that Caleb had preferred, and Rachel was neither willowy nor blonde. She had curves—ripe, lush, sensual curves that even that dull black dress couldn’t disguise. Her hair was a blazing red, not a subdued auburn, and her mouth was stubborn, her eyes defiant. Not David’s type at all. David liked his women docile and compliant. Rachel Middleton was a volcano about to erupt.
    Why had he chosen her? That was just one of the questions he needed to have answered. What had made him choose a totally unlikely woman and bring her back to Silver Falls? Maggie Bannister had mentioned something about Rachel’s daughter being involved in an earlier murder, and his instinctive alarm system went into full mode. One murdered girl was unfortunate. Two was just too damned