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  Sins of the Father

  McIntire County, Book 3

  Winter Austin

  Avon, Massachusetts

  Copyright © 2016 by Winter Austin.

  All rights reserved.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.

  Published by

  Crimson Romance™

  an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  57 Littlefield Street

  Avon, MA 02322

  www.crimsonromance.com

  ISBN 10: 1-4405-9724-3

  ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-9724-4

  eISBN 10: 1-4405-9725-1

  eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-9725-1

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art © The Killion Group, Inc., © Marilyn Volan/123RF.

  Thank you for purchasing a Crimson Romance novel. Please sign up for our weekly newsletter for information on new releases, contests, discounts and more.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  More from This Author

  Also Available

  To the readers who became fans.

  Your support is what keeps me going.

  And to the fangirls, you didn’t get Heath, but you got Xavier. ;)

  Chapter One

  Death had a stench that was all too familiar to Xavier Hartmann. It was pungent and meaty and carried with it the memories of acrid smoke, the screams of dying men, and an out-of-body experience Xavier couldn’t forget.

  He fought hard to free himself from the dreams, becoming aware through a hail of pain stabbing at his head. He squinted at a hazy, almost ethereal vision of something slender and yet full hovering above him. The cacophony of battle noise faded, replaced by a soft swish and a rustling. Slowly, he inhaled, catching an earthy scent along with the cloying odor of death. Pushing past the poking needles, he opened his eyes, and his vision cleared. He was lying on the ground. A hot breeze buffeted his body, making the leaves flutter above him.

  With a groan, he rolled up onto his left elbow and good hip. The movement aggravated his head, and he feared he had another concussion. The first one had been horrible enough to be labeled as a traumatic brain injury. If he had another concussion, it begged the question, how the hell did he get it? Managing to push himself into a sitting position, he discovered the lower half of his right pant leg was lying flat. Xavier pawed at his jeans, rolling up the empty fabric and gaping at the blank space.

  His prosthetic was gone. Terror clawed at him; same as it had when he’d been wounded and glimpsed his mangled and bloodied right leg. Frantic, he scanned the area. The damn things were expensive as hell, and he couldn’t lose it. Then the fact of where he was slammed home: sitting in the middle of a park-like area. His position seemed familiar, like he’d been here many times before, but his hurting brain couldn’t wrap around the actual place.

  Scooting up into a crawling posture, Xavier carefully picked his way to the closest tree, examining the ground along the way, pushing aside dead leaves from last year. Where was the prosthetic? Reaching the tree, he used the trunk to aid him onto his good leg. The change in position turned his headache into a raging, white-spots-in-his-vision migraine. He slumped back to the earth, breathing through the nausea that overwhelmed him until it subsided.

  This was not good.

  The coppery, rancid stench was powerful here by the tree, and the odor was making it difficult not to vomit. With a hand cupping his mouth and nose, he inched around the trunk and finally came across the source of the smell.

  A man lay on the ground, his neck bent at a sharp angle; blackened blood coated his tattered T-shirt. Xavier gaped. The mangled corpses of uniformed men danced like skeletal marionettes through his mind, their bloodied and broken limbs flopping, heads twisted at odd angles with zombie sneers. He heaved, losing control, and retched. His body drenched in sweat and trembling, he collapsed behind the tree. Xavier stared at his legs until his brain registered the dark splotches on his jeans. Lifting his hands, he looked at the palms and sucked in a breath.

  Dried blood blotted his skin and pants. Had he blacked out? Had he reverted to his training? Had he killed that man? The questions and the lack of answers swirled around in his head, making the headache worse. He had to stop or the damage inflicted on his vulnerable brain would create more invisible scars from which he’d never recover.

  One baby step at a time. First, he had to locate his prosthetic. Gathering his flagging courage, Xavier flipped into a crawling position and carefully approached the corpse. Every cell in his body screamed to stay away, but his instinct overruled, convinced that the worst was true—that he’d lost his prosthetic next to the dead man. Lady Luck had been a cruel mistress to Xavier from birth.

  He closed in on the corpse and stalled. His arms shook, straining under the effort to keep him upright as his empty stomach seized. He wanted to run—oh God, how he wanted to get up on two good legs and sprint away from here. But there would be no relief. There, clutched in the man’s dying grip, was the leg. Brown streaked the sleek calf where bloodied fingers grasped it.

  Visions of bloodied hands reached for him, pleading eyes, gaping mouths. Damn these terrifying images of a zombie squad crawling after him. Xavier eased around the body, pried his prosthetic loose, then froze. Squinting at the dead man, he tried to sort through his memory. He knew this man, somehow.

  His fear turned away, and Xavier gently grasped the dead man’s chin and tilted his head out of the awkward angle. Why was this man familiar? Releasing the chin, he trailed his hand down the body to the Levi’s, patting the pockets but finding nothing.

  “Who are you?” he whispered.

  The man had been stabbed, and as a finale, his neck broken—assassination style. Xavier swallowed hard. Som
ething he’d been taught as a marine.

  Oh, bugger.

  Placing the prosthetic leg in his lap, he tensed; ready to scoot back, when a sharp intake of breath made him stiffen. Slowly, he turned his head to the left, raising his arms. God, don’t shoot.

  Newly minted Deputy Jolie Murdoch gaped at him, her already pale features whiter than a ghost now. “Xavier Hartmann, what have you done?”

  Chapter Two

  What had happened? Why was Xavier covered in blood and looming over a dead man? Why was Clint Kruger dead? Where was Clint’s daughter, Sarah? And was that a prosthetic in Xavier’s lap?

  The unholy smell of decay hanging in the hot June air, making Jolie want to hurl her lunch, wasn’t helping her predicament.

  Wait! He was missing a limb? Her stomach twisted in knots, sending a sour taste into her mouth. Oh, this was so wrong, on so many levels.

  “Deputy, this … ” His raised, tattooed arms flopped down. “This looks exactly like you think it does.”

  “What in God’s name happened?” she demanded.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know? Clint Kruger is dead.”

  “That’s who this is?” Xavier groaned, shaking his head back and forth, muttering, “No, no, no, no.”

  Eyelids fluttering in rapid succession, and like a fish, her mouth open and closed. Had he seriously …? How could he not know who Clint Kruger was? Wasn’t Xavier one of many who knew that Sarah was missing and possibly with her estranged father? The news had been all over town for the last twenty-four hours, pictures of the two strung everywhere Sarah’s mother could post them.

  “Xavier ... ” Jolie approached him cautiously, that nagging voice in the back of her head telling her to draw her weapon, but she ushered the thought away. “If it was self-defense, I’ll understand, but how do you not know what happened?”

  Tortured green-gray eyes stared back at her. “I can’t explain it.” The accent he’d done so well hiding leached into his voice in that statement.

  She broke out in a sweat. Whoa, baby, she was in it deep. What was she going to do? This was like Ian all over again. She couldn’t screw this up, not like last time. She was a full-fledged deputy now; all eyes were on her, expecting her to botch another case, smearing the good name of Murdoch through the proverbial crap even more than Ian had.

  Her radio squawked. “Murdoch, status?” It was Jennings, the currently acting dispatcher.

  Xavier’s gaze bore into her as they stared at each other. Could she claim he was a killer, when, in fact, she hadn’t seen him actually kill Clint Kruger? But the evidence before her was damning, and the blood that splattered Xavier’s clothing certainly made him look suspicious.

  Don’t do something stupid, Jolie.

  “Murdoch, report.”

  What should she do?

  Sighing, Xavier positioned the prosthetic under his stump and put it on. “You do what you have to do, Deputy,” he said. Then, with an ease that surprised her, he hauled himself upright.

  “You could leave. I could pretend I never saw you.” And that right there was how you screwed it all up.

  For a moment he gaped at her and then shook his head. “After all that happened with your brother, you’d pull that card? Murdoch, I’m not going anywhere. Respond.”

  Stupid, stupid, stupid. Oh my God, what was I thinking? The sheriff would fire me if he knew I said that.

  Her hand trembled as she reached up to grasp the radio. Running the tip of her tongue over her teeth, she swallowed and answered, “This is Murdoch. I’ve found Clint Kruger.”

  “Status?” Jennings asked.

  “Deceased.” An ungodly sized lump lodged in her throat. “Homicide.”

  Silence met her report.

  “I have a potential suspect.” With those simple words, she’d just signed Xavier Hartmann’s death warrant.

  • • •

  In Jolie’s opinion, a few too many cops arrived after her call. Since the death had occurred inside city limits, Eider Police Department’s sole detective, Con O’Hanlon, came to lead the investigation. Along with him came McIntire County Sheriff Shane Hamilton, Deputy Cassy Rivers-Hunt, and three Eider police officers.

  Having no prior encounters with a homicide, other than pictures, Jolie gnawed on her thumbnail, doing her best not to look at Clint Kruger’s corpse. Despite the heat and humidity, she wrapped her arms around her body and shivered. Because she had been the dispatcher during her brother’s murderous trek across the county, Jolie hadn’t seen those bodies up close and personal like this. Her stomach quivered, threatening to send up her rushed lunch of tortilla chips, a granola bar, and Gatorade.

  To ease her trembling stomach, she focused on Xavier, who seemed undisturbed by it all as he faced the body and talked with Detective O’Hanlon. It was like Xavier had seen a few dead humans in his lifetime.

  Duh! Look at his missing leg. He lost it somehow, and it’s a pretty good bet it was in war.

  War, where men were blown up and killed in front of their comrades. War, a horrific event that only one in her small, tight-knit group had experienced.

  “Jolie?”

  She jerked out of her wandering thoughts as a hand touched her right shoulder, and then she looked at the woman next to her. Heavy with her first child, Cassy Hunt squeezed Jolie's shoulder and then swept her blond braid over her own.

  “How are you holding up?”

  “I don’t know.” And she didn’t. She couldn’t sort through her emotions. Everything from grief to horror to fury to embarrassment wove a destructive path through her mind, ending up as a tangled, wadded mess. “How can he be so calm?”

  Cassy’s features scrunched in confusion. “He?”

  “Xavier. Look at him. He acts like he wasn’t just caught with the body of a murdered man.” Jolie swallowed hard. “With the way this setup is looking, at the very least he could be under suspicion for killing Clint.”

  “We don’t know what happened, so let’s not jump to conclusions.”

  “Cass, he can’t remember anything. He didn’t even know Clint’s name.”

  At this, Cassy's face scrunched, her blue eyes darkened. “He told you that?”

  “Yes. It was beyond weird. Did you know he’s missing his right leg below the knee?”

  “Actually, Boyce figured it out.” Boyce was Cassy’s ex-FBI agent husband. “We never said anything about it, because it’s Xavier’s choice whether to reveal it to people.”

  Jolie removed her McIntire County Sheriff’s Department ball cap and raked her fingernails over her damp scalp. “It’s all too strange.”

  With another squeeze of her shoulder, Cassy gave her a pinched smile. “Welcome to being a deputy in Nowheresville, Iowa.”

  Detective O’Hanlon pointed at Jolie and beckoned for her to join him. Grimacing, she replaced her cap and left Cassy. As Jolie drew closer to the two men, O’Hanlon moved away from Xavier to create a more private space for them. She avoided making eye contact with Xavier, but her face still flamed at her recollection of trying to convince him to run while she lied about what she’d found. How stupid could she have been? She hoped against hope that he hadn’t breathed a word to O’Hanlon about what she’d tried to do. It would be the ultimate blow to Daddy if she lost her job before she really got started. All of his aspirations of her becoming the future sheriff would fly right out the window. He was already suffering enough, thanks to Ian.

  Shoving her hands in the pockets of her uniform pants, she attempted to strike a nonchalant, this-is-an-everyday-occurrence pose. But the tension pulling on her shoulders and the erratic beating of her heart made it near impossible. Run! Run fast and far! This was not how she wanted to start her career as a deputy.

  “A’right, Deputy Murdoch, let’s hear your statement on the events leading to this discovery,” said the displaced Irishman.

  Slowly, as she’d been taught by her instructors in the academy and by both Rivers sisters, she recounted
her actions step for step, from the moment she received the call about Clint Kruger possibly being sighted at the county 4-H fair parade, to her arrival as the parade had ended, to learning that Clint had actually been spotted in the city park on the west side of Eider. Both Eider city police and McIntire County Sheriff’s Department had been looking for Clint for the past twenty-four hours to question him about the sudden disappearance of his fourteen-year-old daughter. This break was what they’d needed.

  “I made my way out to the park. When I arrived, I didn’t see Mr. Kruger’s green Ford Taurus in any of the lots. I alerted dispatch that I was going into the park to search.”

  “How long after this did you come upon Mr. Hartmann and Kruger?” Con asked.

  Biting her lip, she maintained eye contact with O’Hanlon as she calculated the minutes it took to hike through the park from the north lot, where she made the call to Jennings, and happened upon the scene. “About twenty minutes, Detective.”

  The tall Irishman crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his chin up a bit as he contemplated her answer. She’d been in awe of this man since the day she decided to become a cop. Con O’Hanlon had started out as a police officer in the middle years of Daddy’s term as sheriff. Though the two were as different as north and south, Jolie admired Detective O’Hanlon’s goodwill and tenacity. He’d been involved in some disturbing cases in McIntire County, the most recent being The Priest incident and Ian’s murderous activities, but the case that stood out to Jolie was one of her earliest encounters with Con O’Hanlon—the mysterious disappearance of a young girl.

  The missing girl, Grace Maddox, had never been found, and it looked like history was about to repeat itself.

  “When you came across the scene, what did you see?” he asked.

  “I saw Xavier Hartmann leaning over Clint Kruger. Hartmann was holding his prosthetic in his lap, and he had blood spatters on his clothing and arms.” Jolie’s stomach ached, as if it were attempting to tie itself into a big knot. “I asked him what had happened … and he couldn’t answer me.”