look at Quinn. “Is that your way of telling me to pack up my things and get out?”
Quinn picked up his glass of whiskey from where he’d set it on the windowsill. He took a long sip before he spoke. “If I had fired you, there would be no question of my intentions.”
“You still want me on this case?” Cain tried to keep the desperation out of his voice, not wanting to reveal to Quinn just how badly he still wanted answers about Renee Lindsey’s death. But he could tell from Quinn’s expression that he hadn’t succeeded. His boss at The Gates was a former CIA man with a long and colorful past in some of the world’s most dangerous hot spots. Very little got past him.
“You have the capacity to be a good investigator,” Quinn said in a tone that oozed reason and calm. “But you have to scrape that boulder-size chip off your shoulder. You tell me you’re innocent, and I want to believe you, but you give off an air of guilt.”
“I may not be a murderer, but I’m no Boy Scout.”
“Your record in the Army was impressive. Your commanders spoke highly of your courage and skill.”
“I’m not in the Army anymore.”
“So you’re only trustworthy in uniform? But once you step foot in Purgatory, you’re nothing but trouble again?”
Cain frowned. “You know what I mean.”
“And you know what I mean.” Quinn finished off the whiskey and set the glass on his desk with a muted thud. “Did you know Seth Hammond spent over a decade as a con artist? Or that Sutton Calhoun used to steal food from the greengrocer over in Bitterwood when he was growing up? Hell, Sinclair Solano joined a terrorist group and spent five years on the FBI’s most wanted list.”
Quinn was speaking of men he’d hired at The Gates, Cain knew, men who were now vital members of his investigative team. Cain released a long, defeated sigh.
“What have you done to rival any of those things?” Quinn asked pointedly.
“I killed my mama and my twin brother just by bein’ born,” he answered bitterly. “Nobody in Purgatory’s going to give me the time of day. They think they see too much of my daddy in me. And, hell, maybe there’s something to that.”
“You had no agency in what happened to your mother or your brother at the time of your birth,” Quinn said bluntly, “no matter what your bastard of a father might have told you. And you have control over whether or not you behave as your father did. You’re not a child. Stop thinking like one.”
He never should have come back to Purgatory, Cain thought. He’d had a life in Atlanta, working construction. Making decent money doing honest work. Nobody there knew about his past, about his father or his own failings.
He didn’t let anyone get too close, of course, but his track record with friendships hadn’t exactly been great, anyway. He didn’t mind being alone.
He was used to it.
“Think about what I said,” Quinn said after a long, tense silence. “If you still want out of the job, I’ll see that you get back to Atlanta.”
“But don’t expect a reference?”
Quinn shrugged. “There are some things even I won’t lie about.” He turned back to the window, his posture a clear sign of dismissal.
Cain left the office and wandered down the short corridor into the large communal office shared by Quinn’s agents. Even after the official closing time, there were still a few agents at work. He spotted Sinclair Solano sitting on the edge of Ava Trent’s desk, his dark head bent low as they conversed in quiet tones. Sinclair looked up and nodded a greeting before he turned his attention back to the other agent.
There was something going on with those two, Cain thought, although they made an effort to keep it under wraps at work.
The new hire was still here, too. Nick Darcy. Guy had a British accent, despite being one-hundred-percent genuine American. At first, Cain had figured he was putting on airs or something, until he learned Darcy had grown up in London because his dad had been the U.S. ambassador to Great Britain. Darcy himself had worked for the State Department, in Diplomatic Security. Cain had no idea, however, why he’d left that job behind to work for The Gates.
Alexander Quinn had put together quite the motley crew. Cain just didn’t know where he was supposed to fit.
* * *
“CAIN DENNISON’S BACK in town.” Sara watched for her father’s reaction to her casual remark. Carl Dunkirk had been a good cop, with a good cop’s poker face, but she’d figured out his tells a long time ago.
He leaned back in the kitchen chair across the table from hers. The corner of his left eye twitched, even as he adopted a tone of nonchalant surprise. “Really?”
“But you already knew that.”
Her father’s lips quirked. “You’ve gotten too big for your britches, young lady.”
She grinned at him, the sensation strangely alien, as if her muscles weren’t accustomed to stretching that way. “So, what’s his deal?” she asked, giving her own poker face a workout. “Why’s he back in town?”
“How’d you know he was back?” Carl asked, ignoring her question. She wasn’t the only good investigator in the family.
“Ran into him,” she said vaguely.
“Where?”
She supposed it was too late to back out of this conversation now that she’d started it. She glanced toward the stove, where her mother stood stirring her famous homemade chicken chili in a stew pot. “I went to Crybaby Falls,” she said in a hushed tone. “He showed up.”
Her father’s eyebrows joined over the bridge of his nose. “You went there by yourself?”
“I’m a cop, Dad. I was armed, and as far as I could tell, he wasn’t.”
“You know your father’s just going to tell me what you two are whispering about later,” her mother said from the stove.
Sara arched an eyebrow at her father. He shrugged.
“Tomorrow’s the eighteenth anniversary of her death. I guess Dennison went there for the same reason I did.”
“You went to Crybaby Falls?” Ann Dunkirk turned from the stove and gave her a curious look.
“She ran into Dennison there,” her father said, shooting Sara a look that was part apology, part resignation.
“Really? I didn’t know he was back in town.”
“Y’all don’t exactly run in the same circles,” Sara said.
“I don’t think Dennison ever had a circle,” Carl said in a flat tone Sara recognized from her teenage years. Apparently his assessment of Cain Dennison hadn’t mellowed a bit in the intervening years. “He was too much like his daddy that way. Anybody with sense steered clear of the boy.”
“Renee didn’t.”
Her father just looked at her. She supposed his opinion of Renee’s judgment wasn’t something he planned to speak aloud. She’d heard it years ago, anyway, listening to her parents’ conversation shortly after the murder.
“I told Gary Lindsey the girl was heading for grief,” her father had murmured, not realizing Sara was sitting on the stairs around the corner, feeling queasy and unsettled by the news about Donnie’s sister. “The Dennison boy has never been anything but trouble, and he’s been sniffing around her for months. Gary should’ve done something.”
“Done what?” Ann had asked, her voice gentle the way it always was when she was trying to talk her husband through what she called “the valley of the shadow”—the gut-burning stress that came from dealing with death and depravity on a constant basis.
“Locked