“Fuck,” he hissed, pinching it with both hands.
“That was for Lyla, you motherfucker.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
VANCE
“Dad!” Vera gasped when we walked into their shelter. Home. Hut. Whatever the fuck I was supposed to call this place. “Oh my God.”
“I’m fine.” Cormac held up a hand streaked with blood. The bleeding had stopped and he’d done his best to wipe his nose and face clean outside before resetting the bone I’d broken, but he still looked like shit. “I, um . . . tripped.”
“You tripped?” Vera looked between us.
Cormac didn’t trip.
“Yeah,” he muttered, going to a small bowl positioned against the wall. It was full of fresh water. They must have a supply somewhere close. He picked up a dingy cloth that had seen better days, then washed his face clean. But even with the blood gone, his skin was pink and swollen.
I’d hit him with everything I had, and tomorrow, his eyes would be as black as Lyla’s had been the day we’d met. It served the asshole right. My knuckles were beginning to ache, but damn, that had felt good.
Lyla moved to my side, positioning herself as far away from Cormac as the cramped space would allow.
I put my arm around her shoulders, pinning her close, as I surveyed the single room.
Against the back wall were two bedrolls. They each rested on a wooden platform that lifted the blankets about a foot off the ground. The cots, similar to the shelter’s walls, were made from neatly cut and trimmed branches about three to four inches thick. They were held together with parachute cord. No doubt something Vera had bought during her trips into various towns.
The knots keeping the branches together were familiar and clean.
In our years together on the force, Cormac had taught me a lot, but the one area where I’d always had more knowledge was with tying knots. Square. Bowline. Prusik. Double fisherman’s. I had the Scouts to thank for that skill. As a kid, I’d practiced tying knots for hours and hours. Then I’d taught Cormac.
Then he’d used those knots to make this home for his daughter. He’d built a place to keep her from the world. From me.
“Time to explain,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest.
Cormac folded the bloody rag and set it aside. He looked to Vera, arching his eyebrows.
A silent conversation passed between them. They’d had that before too, like they could read each other’s thoughts.
Whatever passed between them made her shake her head. “I’ll get fresh water for dinner.”
She grabbed a flashlight from a small, handmade shelf beside her bedroll, then went outside.
Cormac watched Vera leave, then exhaled. When he looked up, it wasn’t at me, but Lyla. “I’m sorry for what I did to you. Vera doesn’t know.”
Lyla stiffened. “And I’m guessing you’d like to keep it that way?”
“I don’t have many secrets from my daughter. She knows who I am. You’re welcome to tell her.”
“Why didn’t you?” Lyla asked.
He swallowed hard. “I’m not exactly proud—”
“That you tried to kill me.”
“I had no intention of killing you. I panicked. I came down lower than usual to hunt. We’ve been stocking up for winter, and it’s been stressful. When you walked up on me like that . . . not many people can sneak up on me. And besides Vera, I haven’t seen another person in a long time. Needed to make sure you’d stay quiet long enough for me to get the hell out of there.” Cormac juddered and a strange, faraway look flashed over his face. It was almost like he couldn’t believe what he’d done. “I got spooked.”
“So you choked me until I nearly passed out and left me beside a gut pile, where any other predator could have come along and finished the job you’d started.”
She wasn’t going to make this easy on him. Good for you, Blue.
“I watched you get up,” he said. “I made sure you were okay. Then I followed you back to your car.”
Lyla’s eyes narrowed. “How do I know that’s true?”
“You drive a navy-blue Honda.”
“Oh,” she muttered.
So Cormac had hurt her, then followed her to make sure she was okay. That was something, I guess. I sure as fuck wasn’t going to thank him, but maybe I shouldn’t have hit him quite so hard.
Nah. He deserved to be punched again for what he’d done.
To all of us.
Lyla blew out a long breath and went quiet. Apparently she was done talking about the river. Time to move on to a different discussion.
“Should we wait for Vera?” I jerked my chin at the door.
Cormac walked to his bedroll and sat down on its end, leaning his elbows on his knees. “She won’t talk about it. Four years and I still don’t know everything that happened that night.”
“What?” Four years and she hadn’t spoken about it. “Why?”
“I used to ask. I’d beg her to tell me. She’d just stop talking entirely. After a while, I decided it didn’t really matter. Hadley and Elsie are gone.” His voice cracked. “I wasn’t going to risk losing Vera too.”
So he didn’t know what had happened? What the fuck was happening? What about Norah? The evidence was indisputable. He’d killed her, right? Why was Vera the only one who knew what had happened?
“You might want to sit down.” Cormac gestured to the packed dirt floor. “Vera won’t come back inside until we’re done talking. I’ll be quick because I don’t want her outside in the dark alone too long. But there’s a lot that happened. A lot I never told you.”
No shit. I kept that comment to myself and took a seat on the floor. This would probably be the spot where we’d sleep tonight. I’d take the ground and let Lyla sleep on my chest. There was no way I’d risk taking her down the mountain, not on such a steep climb after nightfall.
Lyla claimed the space beside me, her body tucked close. Then we waited, both watching as Cormac stared at the door, like he wanted to be anywhere but this hut.
“Best way to do this is to start at the beginning. The very beginning,” he said. “Did I ever tell you that Norah and I met in a bar?”
“Yes.” Once. “You were there with friends. She was alone. You took one look at her and ditched your crowd. Then you proposed the next day.”
He huffed. “Not exactly how it happened. That was the story she invented for the girls. The real truth was that I was there with friends. She was alone. I went to the men’s bathroom and found her passed out in a stall with a heroin needle stuck in her arm.”
I flinched so violently Lyla gasped. “What the fuck?”
“I didn’t propose the next day,” Cormac said, dragging a palm over his stubbled cheek. He had more gray hair now than years ago. The white strands blended with the red. “I went to visit her in the hospital I took her to from the bar. Day after that, went back again. I told her that once she got out of rehab to call me. I’d buy her a cookies-and-cream milkshake from my favorite diner.”
His voice was flat. Dead. Nothing akin to the way he used to talk about his wife.
The love of his life.
This man had loved Norah with every fiber of his being. How could he talk about her without a hint of emotion?
“She got clean. And when she left rehab, she found me. I bought her that milkshake.” His jaw clenched like he was holding back a curse.
“We took it slow,” he said. “Or, we’d planned to take it slow. Until we got pregnant with Vera. That changed everything. Norah and I got married. She stayed home with the baby while I worked. And for a while, everything was perfect. Too fucking perfect, I guess. When Vera was about nine months old, I came home to find Norah passed out drunk in the bathtub. Vera was in her crib, dirty diaper, screaming. Starving. Because her mother had decided instead of eating a normal breakfast, she’d down a liter of vodka instead.”
This was a joke. This had to be a joke, right? A lie? Except I knew Cormac. Even after four years of hating him, I knew this was the truth. “You never told me any of this.”
“No one really knew. It all happened when we were living in Alaska. Norah promised it would never happen again. She said it was postpartum depression. That and the long, dark winters. So we got her on some medication. I started searching for jobs in the lower forty-eight. Landed in Idaho.”
Cormac was ten years older than me, and I’d always looked up to him like a brother. Clearly, a brother I knew fuck all about. It was like he’d had this whole other life that he’d never shared.
“Norah was better after we moved. Normal seasons, sunshine, helped. Being away from her family helped. They were as toxic as those drugs she’d been hooked on when I’d found her. But there’s a reason I waited so long to have more kids. I needed to make sure Norah was solid. Stable.”