More Than a Hero Read online

  Kylie blinked. She hadn’t made the connection earlier between the case and Therese Franklin, the shy young woman who lived down the street from her. Therese had been taken in by her grandparents after her parents’ deaths, and after they’d raised her into her teens, she’d begun caring for them in their declining years. Her grandfather had died just a few months ago, and Kylie had heard talk about her grandmother being placed in a nursing home.

  “Perhaps after Mr. Norris learns about the story he’ll see it’s not worth his time.”

  “But what if he doesn’t?” Lissa persisted. “The senator’s campaign for the governor’s office is just getting started. This could have a very negative impact.”

  Rising from her chair, Kylie circled the desk and slid her arm around Lissa’s shoulders. “My father didn’t prosecute the wrong man,” she assured her as she eased her through the door and down the hall. “He didn’t send an innocent man to prison. We’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  She wasn’t the only one who’d been ever conscious of reputation and consequences. Her father had known from the time he was ten years old that he wanted a career in politics. He’d never had more than one drink in public and never got behind the wheel of a car after that one drink. He’d never fudged a dime on his tax returns, never accepted money from special interest groups, never looked twice at another woman while his wife had still been alive. He’d lived above reproach as a father, a husband, a man and—despite Norris’s accusation to the contrary—a politician.

  There was nothing Jake Norris could do to threaten her father’s career.

  “Okay,” Lissa said when they reached the reception area. “I won’t worry…yet. See you tomorrow.”

  Kylie waited for her to step outside, then turned the key in the lock. With a wave, she returned to her office, settled behind her desk and picked up her notes again. The senator was giving a speech to a veterans’ group in Oklahoma City two weeks after his vacation ended, and she had a rough outline sketched out. He’d done a tour in the Army after high school—because he was patriotic, because he’d needed the college tuition assistance and because he’d known it would come in handy down the road when he was seeking votes. No doubt Norris would see that as calculating, but Kylie defined it as smart. Without voters, no one would ever get the chance to make a difference in office—and the senator had made a difference.

  But when forty-five minutes had passed while her thoughts roamed everywhere except the speech, Kylie put the pages in her bag, shut off the lights and left the office. For a moment she simply stood on the sidewalk out front, letting the evening’s warmth seep into her bones. It was the third week of October, and the weather was warm with just a hint of the chills to come. The leaves had started changing colors, and the occasional whiff of wood smoke in the air made her think of weenie roasts and campfires and burning piles of leaves.

  She loved Riverview. “‘No river, no view,’” she mimicked as she started down the street. The rolling hills, pastures and cultivated fields provided plenty of great views. It was a lovely little town in a lovely part of the state, and if Norris didn’t like it, he was more than welcome to leave.

  She doubted she would be that lucky. But handling nuisances was nothing new. That, too, was part of her job.

  When she reached her car halfway down the block, she took a deep breath. The Tuesday dinner special at the Riverfront Grill was baby back ribs, rich, smoky and sticky with secret sauce. If she went home, she would have a salad or a frozen dinner in front of the television—probably better for her hips but not for her mental state. Turning away from the car, she covered the few remaining yards to the restaurant, greeted everyone by name and was shown to a booth at the front window.

  No sooner had the waitress left after taking her order, a shadow fell across the table—no doubt one of her very popular father’s friends or acquaintances. She glanced up, first seeing a pair of jeans so faded that they were practically white, hugging a pair of narrow hips so snugly she couldn’t help but think for one instant about exactly what they cradled.

  Heat seeping into her cheeks, she forced her gaze upward, across a simple belt—leather, brown, no tooling—and a T-shirt that could be had for six bucks at the local Wal-Mart. Half the men in town wore similar shirts every day. None of them looked half as good.

  Jake Norris’s expression was a mix of chagrin and suspicion. “You should have told me you were his daughter.”

  She unrolled the napkin in front of her, left the silverware on the table and spread the white linen across her lap. “When I asked your name, you should have shown a little interest in mine. Besides, you learn such interesting things when people are being honest rather than tactful.”

  He took a drink from the frosted mug he held, the muscles in his arm flexing as he lifted, his throat working as he swallowed. Something about the action struck her as sensual, though she rejected the thought as soon as it popped into her head. He was drinking beer. Period. It was nothing to raise a woman’s temperature.

  “I apologize if I offended you.”

  “If?” she repeated mildly.

  “But, in fairness, you accused me of exploiting other people’s suffering.”

  “Isn’t that what you do? Dig into traumatic events, lay them out bare for everyone to see, then pocket their money?”

  Without waiting for an invitation, he slid onto the opposite bench. “How many of my books have you read, Ms. Riordan?”

  “None.”

  “Then doesn’t it seem wise to withhold judgment until you know what you’re talking about?”

  She smiled faintly at the waitress as she returned with a tall glass of iced tea. “Fine. I apologize for calling you a vulture.”

  The insult brought a grin to the mouth she had inadequately described as “nice.” It was a great mouth—a really sexy mouth, especially with that bold, brash, amused grin. “You didn’t call me a vulture,” he pointed out. “At least not to my face. Were you and Lissa talking about me after I left?”

  “No, of course not.” It wasn’t a total lie. Those few minutes of calming Lissa’s worries didn’t count.

  “So you were talking to yourself when you called me a vulture. Some people consider that worrisome. Not me, though. I talk to myself a lot when I’m working.” He set the beer on the table and laced long, strong fingers around the stein. “What did you think of the reviews?”

  “What reviews?”

  He grinned again, and she had to admit that, arrogance aside, there was a certain charm to it. “Aw, come on. Don’t tell me that you or the munchkin didn’t go online as soon as I was gone to find out what you could about me.”

  Rather than admit the truth, she frowned. “Don’t call Lissa that.”

  “So…what did you think?” Norris prompted.

  Kylie summoned a cool smile. “I think you’re smug and conceited, but I didn’t have to go to the Internet to learn that.”

  “I’m not conceited. I’m confident. There’s a difference.”

  “But you admit to being smug?”

  He shrugged. “No one’s perfect.”

  She liked his easy manner. Liked his grin. Was even starting to kind of like his smugness…until he went on.

  “Including your father.”

  Her spine stiffened. “You think the senator mishandled the Baker case.”

  Another easy shrug rippled the fabric of his shirt. “I think Charley is innocent.”

  “Why? Because he told you so?”

  The easiness disappeared in a flash—no doubt chased away by her snide tone. “I’m not naive, Ms. Riordan. I’ve spent a lot of time with more convicted murderers than you can even name. They write me letters, call me, send me e-mails. They tell me things they’ve never told anyone else. Yes, Charley told me he’s innocent. My gut tells me he’s innocent. More importantly, the evidence raises reasonable doubt.”

  Kylie leaned back, crossed her legs and folded her arms across her chest. A body-language expert would say h
er posture meant she was closed off, not open to hearing what Norris had to say, and he would be right. She knew her father—knew his morals, ethics and beliefs. He didn’t send the wrong man to prison. “Such as?”

  “The whole basis for Charley’s arrest and conviction was his affair with Jillian Franklin, and yet there was no evidence that it ever happened. No one ever saw them together. His wife swears his time was pretty much accounted for—if he wasn’t at work, he was with her or their son. Jillian never mentioned him to any of her friends. His fingerprints weren’t found anywhere in the house. Nothing connects them.”

  “Illicit affairs are generally conducted in secret.”

  “This affair appears to have been fabricated to serve as a motive for Charley to kill Jillian.”

  Anger swept through Kylie with a force that made her tremble. “My father never fabricated evidence.”

  “I didn’t say he did. It could have been the sheriff’s department.”

  “All you have is Charley Baker’s side of the story, and he’s in prison. He obviously can’t be trusted. You know nothing of the facts.”

  He remained as calm as she wasn’t. “That’s what I’m here for. The facts—or an approximation thereof.”

  “So you can include them in your book—or an approximation thereof,” she said sarcastically.

  He merely smiled. “My books are as accurate as they can be under the circumstances. I rely on trial transcripts, newspaper accounts, public record, interviews, letters—whatever sources I can find. The most recent crime I’ve written about took place eleven years ago. Time affects people’s memories. They want to make themselves look better—or, on occasion, worse—than they really were. I present what I find and I let the readers draw their own conclusions.”

  “And hope for a new trial to boost the sales of your book.”

  His grin was unexpected and all the more powerful for it. “So you did look me up.”

  She stared stonily at him. “You won’t get a new trial out of this one. If my father believed Charley Baker was guilty, he was guilty.”

  They were sitting there staring at each other when the waitress approached with a platter of ribs, baked beans and coleslaw. “You planning to eat here or go back to your table?”

  Norris held Kylie’s gaze a moment longer before turning to the waitress. “I’m going back to my table.” As she walked away, he slid to the edge of the bench, stood up, then grimly said, “No one’s father is infallible. Not mine, and sure as hell not yours. Enjoy your meal, Ms. Riordan. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around.”

  She knew it was petty, but as he walked away she muttered, “Not if I see you first.”

  Jake’s motel was about a mile from downtown, a small place that had started life as a motor court back in the heyday of getting your kicks on Route 66. Tiny stone buildings, each consisting of a bedroom and a bath, formed a semicircle around the office, disguised as a giant concrete tepee. It was tacky, but his room had a high-speed Internet connection and plenty of space to spread out. That—and running water—was all he needed.

  He parked in the narrow space that separated his room from the next and climbed out of his truck as a white car slowed to a stop behind it. The seal of the Riverview Police Department decorated the door.

  He took his duffel bag, an attaché and the backpack that held his computer from the passenger side, slung the straps over his shoulders, then stood a moment in the fading light, trading looks with the young officer behind the wheel. Jake didn’t speak, and neither did the cop, though he did make a show of calling in Jake’s tag number to the dispatcher.

  Resisting a grin, Jake climbed the steps and let himself in, flipping on lights as he went. The chief criminal investigator for the Davis County Sheriff’s Department twenty-two years ago was Coy Roberts, currently Riverview police chief. If he thought Jake could be intimidated by a cop barely old enough to shave, he was mistaken.

  He’d expected a lack of cooperation from the primary subjects in the case. He suspected they’d arrested, prosecuted and condemned the wrong man. If it was merely a mistake, they, like most people in authority, wouldn’t want to admit it. If it was deliberate, naturally they would want to hide it. After all, they had reputations, careers and freedom to protect.

  Reputations and careers made off Charley’s case. Coy Roberts had been elected sheriff six weeks after Charley’s conviction. Jim Riordan had been elected to the district attorney’s office soon after. The case had been a boost to Judge Markham’s bid for a seat on the state supreme court, and Charley’s court-appointed lawyer, Tim Jenkins, had parlayed the media attention into a big-bucks criminal defense career.

  Everyone had come out of Charley’s case better off than before. Except Charley.

  Jake booted up the computer on the square table that served as a desk, then signed online. He checked his e-mail, then Googled Kylie Riordan.

  He got a lot of hits, most of them having to do with her father. She worked for him and had since graduating from Oklahoma University and according to an article on old oil families, she still lived in the family mansion. That aside, he found only one entry of any real interest.

  Senator’s Daughter to Wed, the headline read. There’d been no mention of a Riordan son-in-law in the search he’d done. She still used her maiden name and she’d worn no ring on her left hand. So what had happened to the wedding?.

  The article was from the Riverview paper, three years old, and focused as much on the senator as on Kylie. The prospective groom was, at the time, a lawyer as well as a newly elected representative to the statehouse, one of the up-and-coming power players.

  The photo that accompanied the article was…It seemed wrong for a writer to find himself at a loss for words, but Jake was. There was Kylie, in all her goddess beauty, wearing a smile that could make a man weak, looking beautiful. Sexy. Unattainable.

  It was arresting. It would have caught his attention even if he hadn’t had two run-ins with her in the space of a few hours, even if he’d never had the good luck to see her in the delectable flesh.

  What she didn’t look like, he thought, was a woman in love. Had she hidden it well? Or had her father arranged the match as some kind of political alliance? Who had called it off—the bride, the groom or the senator? Had she been relieved at her narrow escape or heartbroken by her loss?

  He preferred to think relieved.

  Without considering his reason, he saved the picture to a folder, then shut down the computer. It wasn’t even eight o’clock—far too early for bed—but he was too restless to work. Taking the computer and the attaché with him, he went back out to the truck, backed out of the parking space and pulled onto Main Street. In the rearview mirror he caught a glimpse of a white car pulling onto the street a hundred yards back. Chief Roberts’s flunky?

  There was a lot about Riverview that Jake didn’t remember. He’d lived more places by the time he was ten than most people saw in a lifetime. His father had wanderlust, his mother had liked to say. For a time it had charmed her, but then she’d gotten tired of the moves, the new jobs, trying to make a place a home for a few weeks or a few months but never more than a year. Since the divorce, she’d lived in the same small town. She’d put down roots and nurtured them carefully.

  Jake drove the length of Main Street, then Markham Avenue, the other primary thoroughfare. The school he’d attended for six or eight months was located two blocks off both streets, its red brick more familiar than any other place he’d seen. Sacred Heart Church was on the same corner as before, but the old building was gone, a newer, blander version in its place.

  He located the courthouse and jail where Charley Baker had spent his last weeks in Riverview. Chief Roberts’s house, in the neighborhood where all of the town’s old money had settled. Tim Jenkins’s showplace where the new money lived. Judge Markham’s place, stately and impressive, and Senator Riordan’s home, even statelier and more impressive.

  Riordan had lived in the house for more than thirt
y years, but everyone still called it the Colby mansion. He’d had dreams and determination but not much else when he’d married Phyllis Colby and her family fortune. Given her money and his ambition, the only surprise was that he hadn’t already moved into the governor’s office and used it as a springboard to get into politics on the national level.

  Built of sandstone blocks, the house reached three stories and was surrounded by grounds that spread over an entire block. A wrought-iron fence kept the lush plantings in and the common folk out. Somewhere inside there Kylie Riordan was…doing what? Watching television? Working? Maybe thinking about Jake?

  It would only be fair.

  He drove past one other house, where Therese Franklin had lived with her grandparents since her parents’ deaths. It was in the old-money neighborhood, too, though nowhere near as fancy as the Riordan place. But then, nothing in Riverview was.

  When he turned back onto Main Street, the same white car followed. It must be a slow night in town if Roberts could assign an officer to watch him.

  Or was it a sign of how much Roberts and the others were worried about what Jake might find? If they didn’t have anything to hide, there would be nothing for him to find.

  But Jake suspected—hoped?—that was a mighty big if.

  Chapter 2

  Kylie’s college roommate had described her energy level before sunrise as obscene, and nothing had changed since then. By the time she parked outside the office downtown on Wednesday morning, she’d already run three miles, finished the senator’s veterans’ group speech, made a half dozen phone calls back east and sorted through all his e-mails as well as her own. She’d accomplished enough that she could have taken time for a leisurely breakfast at the tearoom two doors from the office, but instead she was going to have her usual—a protein drink and an orange at her desk.

  She’d hardly settled in when the private line rang. Balancing the phone between her ear and shoulder while she peeled thick skin from the orange, she answered with, “Hello, sir.”