Chapter 5

There was blood everywhere. Like his worst nightmare come to life. The stench of death was like a blow to his chest, taking his breath, stealing the very air from his lungs. Sam could do nothing but stare in horror. Mark Tate was laid out in the small dingy living room of his mobile home, his body beaten nearly to a bloody pulp. It was Mark, he knew it was, but the features were nearly indistinguishable, his limbs were contorted, bits of flesh and blood splattered walls and furniture alike. Sam shook his head, fighting for breath. He had seen such brutality before, and felt the violence of it searing his system. He shook, fevered and yet chilled as memory and reality collided, and for a moment, the scene was overlapped by that of another. I killed him, Sam, Cade screamed furiously through his mind, his expression savage, commanding. Do you hear me? He’s dead. I killed him. Blood had stained them both, the room in his memories reeking of filth and agony, and the bone-chilling scent of death. Just as it did here. I killed him, Sam. Cade’s voice echoed around him again. But Sam had wanted to kill him. Wanted to kill so bad, even now, twelve years later, he dreamed of it. He felt bones cracking beneath his pummeling fists, blood spraying, a gasp of death in his ears.

He shook his head, blinking. But he couldn’t make himself move. All he could do was stand there, the door opened behind him, staring at the bloody body and the mark of a painful death. This horror of this death didn’t lay on his conscience, yet the previous one did.

“Sam, back away from the door.” The authoritative, cold voice of the sheriff shocked him back to reality.

Sam froze, fear flashing through his mind for a moment. His fists clenched, his mind switching into a primal survival response before he was able to overcome it.

“Sam, I have you covered.”

Sam glanced back slowly, feeling his face pale. He hadn’t even heard the vehicles drive up, hadn’t seen the flashing lights that blinded him now, nor heard any sirens if they had been blaring. But they were there now. Three sheriff’s units, five men with weapons aimed at his back.

He turned around slowly, careful to keep his hands in clear view. Son of a bitch, he could feel the panic starting to overwhelm him. There was a dead man in the trailer behind him. A man he had sworn to kill just earlier that day. A man everyone knew he detested. His hands trembled. Damn.

“Josh, I just got here.” He swallowed past the tight lump in his throat and fought the insidious voice that warned him no one would believe him. He looked at his hands. They were clean. Scratched but not bloody, and the scratches were already healing.

“There’s no blood on my hands, Josh. I just got here.”

Joshua Martinez stood coldly firm, the police issue pistol aimed at his heart. Sam felt the cold bite of reality and the knowledge that, for now, he could do nothing but sweat it out.

“Step down, Sam,” Josh advised him, his voice echoing with menace. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”

Sam took a deep, hard breath. God help him, he didn’t know if he could let Josh cuff him, he only prayed he wouldn’t. He stepped down slowly, fighting a horror he had sworn he would never visit again.

He followed Josh’s orders explicitly, leaning against the sheriff’s car while they searched him for weapons, answering Josh’s short questions in a deceptively calm voice. He was anything but calm.

“I’m not going to cuff you, Sam,” Josh said quietly as he backed away. “I have to take you in though. Are you going to come easy?”

Sam swallowed tightly, nodding with a brief movement of his head.

“I’ll call Cade…”

“No,” Sam bit out. “I didn’t do it, Josh. Don’t upset the family. You go in that trailer and all you’ll find are my prints at the door and on the light. I just got here. I swear it, man. No sense in upsetting family.”

No sense in making the nightmares worse.

Josh opened the door. Sam steeled himself as he glimpsed the steel cage he was being forced to willingly step into. He did so, his mind screaming out at him to run, to hide, to escape the cage. His fists clenched and his breath became strangled. Stepping into the back of the sheriff’s cruiser wasn’t the hardest decision he had ever made in his life, but it ranked in the top ten.

The door slammed shut behind him. He breathed out roughly, closing his eyes in an attempt to shut out the reality he was being locked into. He shut out the sounds around him, the flashing lights and the knowledge of what could be coming. Instead, he thought of her. Heather.

She would be sleeping peacefully at the ranch house, her long red hair haloed around her head, her soft face flushed and too damned innocent. Was she wearing another of those sexy little nighties he had caught her in the other night, he wondered. Sure she was, he convinced himself. Silk, of course…maybe that green one. The silk and lace teddy that made her look so damned pretty. Her eyes, sparkling like emeralds and tempting him, her smile honeyed, promising the sweetest secrets.

Dear God, he should have never left tonight. Should have ignored Tate when he called earlier instead of leaving the house like a fool and charging over here. This wasn’t one of the smartest moves he had ever made in his life. He hadn’t been gone long, he assured himself. He had talked to Cade and Rick before leaving the house, though they had been unaware where he was going. He had come straight over here, hadn’t stopped anywhere. He wiped his hands over his face, disgusted with the fine, cold sweat he wiped from his forehead. God, this couldn’t be happening.

Heather. Her name was a mantra, whispering through his mind. Silken skin, and hot kisses; something else denied him. He grimaced. Something he denied himself.

“Sam?” Josh opened the driver’s seat door and slid into the cruiser. “I’ve got to take you in, buddy.” He turned, staring through the cage, his brown eyes somber. “It’s going to take a while to dust for prints and the like. It’s an unholy mess in there.”

“Josh.” Sam flinched at the graveled sound of his own voice. “I didn’t do it. Just let me go home. I’ll be there if you need me. I promise.”

Josh sighed, shaking his head as he pulled his door close. “One of the boys will bring your truck in. We’ll have to search it, and let the investigator finish his job. I have to hold you till then, Sam. I don’t have a choice.”

Hold him. In a cell. He could feel the sweat building on his face, his body. Dammit straight to hell.

“You can call Cade from the office…”

“Goddammit, I don’t need Cade,” Sam bit out, then tightened his body, fighting for control. Control. He wouldn’t survive without it. “Sorry, Josh.” He pushed his fingers wearily through his hair as Josh watched him, his expression clinical, emotionless. “Not everyday you see something like that.”

But it hadn’t been the first time he had seen so much blood, either. Not the first broken and mangled body, bones broken, blood flowing. Nausea welled up inside him as scattered images flitted through his mind.

“Hell no, it ain’t,” Josh grunted, turning around. “Hopefully, they’ll have things settled by morning though.”

Sam prayed they settled sooner than that.