Dirty Little Lies: A Men of Summer Novel

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  For my gracious, wonderful, most patient editor Monique who hasn’t threatened to kill me once.

  That I know of …

  This one’s for you.

  prologue

  Loudon, Tennessee

  Why was she still here?

  The beauty of the place she had always thought of as home, the peace of the tree-shrouded mountains that surrounded it, and the murky depths of the river bordering it weren’t so peaceful now as they had once been. Pristine green grounds surrounded her uncle’s two-story white-and-red farmhouse. Horses grazed in their fenced-in pastures, and a hint of fall lent a bite to the late-evening air.

  This was home.

  She’d been raised here, feeling secure and loved despite her mother’s often abrasive, less-than-affectionate personality. In all the years she’d understood that her mother bore her no love, Grace had nonetheless felt as though she belonged.

  Until now.

  Now she just felt spooked, as though she were being watched. Like a deer sensing itself in a hunter’s sights.

  Dammit, she didn’t need this.

  Staring out at the Tennessee River as it drifted lazily past the Maddox farm, Grace admitted to herself that she wasn’t exactly certain why she was still here. She’d been packed and ready to leave on the day of her mother’s funeral. After all, what right did she have to be in her uncle’s home when it was her mother who had destroyed that uncle’s life? Lucia had had her own sister, Uncle Vince’s wife, Sienna, murdered. She’d tried to murder his daughter. She’d lied, murdered others, and for so long had worked to destroy not just the family, but everyone they protected.

  Grace hadn’t been certain where she was going at the time and leaving wasn’t what she wanted. She’d wanted to make things better for her family, for the friends who had suffered. A family that pleaded with her to change her mind. To stay. To remain despite her mother’s crimes.

  Her uncle Vince and his three forceful sons, Cord, Deacon, and Sawyer, weren’t exactly easy to fight against. Like the mountains themselves, they were immovable, shadowed, and often treacherous when encountering the enemy.

  She wasn’t the enemy, though.

  Was she?

  Rubbing at her arms against the chill wind blowing off the water, Grace tried to tell herself that her mother’s crimes weren’t her own. No one knew what Lucia Maddox had done except the family. Lucia’s crimes had been dealt with quietly to preserve the secrecy of the government-backed militia her uncle headed. The one Lucia had tried to destroy.

  Her mother.

  She was the daughter of a traitor.

  Yeah, that one was going to look really good on her résumé, wasn’t it?

  It sure as hell hadn’t helped matters when it came to the man she’d been certain would finally decide to become more than just a friend. But Zack Richards had pretty much been MIA whenever she was around after Lucia’s crimes were revealed.

  Big surprise.

  Quiet, intense. An accountant. As different from her military family as one could be.

  “Miss Grace?”

  Grace whirled around from her view of the river to stare up at one of the farmhands her uncle Vince employed. A stable hand standing six feet with a rangy build and brown puppy-dog eyes. Longish brown hair fell over one eye, giving him a boyish look.

  “Hey, Richard.” She smiled up at him before heading back to the farmhouse.

  Rich was nice, unassuming, but something had her spooked regardless. So spooked that suddenly she just wanted to be in the house, surrounded by her uncle and cousins.

  “I’m sorry about your momma,” he said softly as they moved into the backyard.

  From the corner of her eye, she watched the large Rottweiler Zack had given her the year before lurking in the leafy bushes to Rich’s right. For once, the dog wasn’t jumping around, chasing moths, or trying to get the stable hand to play.

  The unusual behavior from her normally rambunctious pet made Grace’s nerves tingle. She hated feeling so frightened. The last eight weeks had been hell, and she wasn’t in the mood for the nerves that jumbled inside her at the oddest times.

  “Thank you, Rich.” She nodded, reminding herself that she knew this man, she’d been raised around him. Hell, he’d helped her cousins teach her to drive when she was just sixteen.

  “Miss Grace.” His hand settled on her arm heavily, drawing her to a stop as her heart began to beat fearfully.

  “I’m sorry, Rich.” She shook her head apologetically. “Cord’s waiting on me—”

  “No, Miss Grace.” His hand tightened around her arm, restraining her, his face filling with regret. “Mr. Cord’s in the stables with his brothers. No one’s waiting for you.”

  A glint of metal, the blade of a knife, gleamed from his other hand as Grace felt panic set in. “Rich?”

  At the whisper of his name, the look on Richard’s face shifted from regret to grief. “I’m so sorry, Miss Grace,” he said softly. “I’m so sorry. Just tell me where the files are, and I’ll let you go. I promise.”

  Files?

  This was a nightmare. He wanted files? Even if she knew what the hell he was talking about, he wouldn’t let her go. He’d gone too far for that.

  “What files?” Play along. She could play along with this just for a minute, just until she could find a way to escape him.

  “Miss Grace, helping your momma was a really bad idea.” He sighed again, muscles bunching in his arm above the knife hand. “The files have been gone this long … nothing’s hurt if they stay hid, I guess.”

  He was going to kill her.

  Sweet Jesus, he was actually going to use that knife on her.

  “Have you lost your ever-lovin’ mind, Richard James?” she burst out, sheer incredulity snapping through her. “I never helped Luce so much as change a lightbulb. Get your head out of your ass and let me go.” She jerked her arm and for a second, just a second, she thought he’d actually let her go.

  His hold relaxed, pain contorting his features just before resolve filled his eyes.

  Yep, he was going to kill her.

  Grace twisted in his grip, obviously surprising the farmhand as her foot swept out and connected with his knee while an ear-piercing scream left her lips. At the same time, her Rottweiler, Magnus, gave a vicious snarl a streak of fiery pain lacerated her thigh.

  She was damned if she’d make it easy for him!

  chapter one

  Annapolis, Maryland

  Brigham Estate

  Damn, he didn’t want to be here.

  Pulling into the circular drive of the Brigham Estate, home of the Brigham Security Agency, Zack Richards fought back the coil of rage and betrayal that tensed in his gut every time he was ordered to show up.

  The Brighams liked to call themselves his family; he liked to call them a pain in the ass. He would gladly hav
e kept well away from them if only that were possible. Unfortunately, his uncle, the head of the Brigham family, had found a way to get Zack back to D.C. periodically.

  Alexander Brigham hadn’t found a way to make him like it, though, and Zack made certain his uncle knew how very much he despised each visit. A bit childish, perhaps, but it kept Zack from hitting a man whose health was said to be suffering.

  Zack hopped out of the mud-spattered pickup he’d driven in from Tennessee and strode across the drive to the imposing two-story brick colonial and up to the wide, wooden front doors, wishing he’d get a chance to pound on the wood and expend a little of his irritation. Instead, as usual, just as he set foot on the porch, the panels were opened smoothly by one of the young agents Brigham employed.

  “Mr. Zack, Mr. Brigham’s assistant will show you to the office.” The younger man nodded to the aging assistant, Peters, who waited at the end of the huge foyer.

  Nodding, Zack strode past the agent and over to his uncle’s assistant, scowling at the other man. “He ordered this little visit … and now he’s not available?” Zack sneered as the assistant turned and led the way down a wide hall. “Why am I not surprised?”

  Not that the assistant deigned to comment. Or to speak at all until they reached the office. “Mr. Alex will be right in, Mr. Zackary,” Peters stated, his precise lack of inflection raking Zack’s nerves more than normal.

  John Peters still stood tall and stiff, his shoulders militarily straight, his expression—well, he was rather devoid of any particular emotional look. For as long as Zack had known the man, he’d never seen a single emotion, opinion, flash of sympathy, compassion, like, or dislike on his long, now aging face. His gray hair was still marine short, though now it was silver gray rather than the nondescript brown of his youth.

  Zack went straight to the bar, lifted the decanter of Alexander Brigham’s finest aged Irish whiskey, and poured a short glass half full before tossing half of it back with a grimace of pleasure. Refilling the glass, he tried to convince himself that this meeting wasn’t going to piss him the hell off within five minutes of Mr. Alex’s entering the room.

  He knew better, though. Getting ticked off was just a given.

  He turned back to Peters with a slow, mocking tilt of his brow. “Sure, Peters,” he drawled. “Tell him to take his time. I’m in no hurry.”

  The assistant inclined his head with a measured move before turning on his heel to retreat from the office, closing the door silently behind him.

  Zack gave his head a little shake. The man never failed to amaze him—and maybe even intimidate him just the slightest bit.

  While moving around the office, Zack stared up at the mahogany shelves filled with books from floor to ceiling. He noted the cherry hardwood floors, a heavy mahogany desk the size of a bed, the comfortable leather chair behind it. A Victorian settee and matching chairs were placed in front of the fireplace on a centuries-old tapestry rug, while the walls on the opposite side of the room held portraits of four generations of Brigham patriarchs.

  Bastards.

  Taking another sip of Ireland’s finest, Zack continued to pace around the room. He shifted priceless figurines from their various places, turning them, sliding them forward or back.

  Childish, he admitted again with a sneer, but it did so irritate Old Man Brigham. His uncle’s irritation would increase with each object he had to reset and place just so.

  Zack walked behind the enormous desk. Once he took a seat in the heavy, far-too-comfortable leather chair, he shifted picture frames and, not for the first time, removed the silver frame of a laughing red-haired young woman, her gray eyes filled with life and love. He slid open a bottom drawer of the desk and placed the picture there, facedown.

  It wouldn’t take Brigham long to find the portrait, but his uncle would get the message loud and clear. Closing the drawer, Zack turned his attention to the files stacked on the desk, intent on pulling pages from inside the folders and distributing them haphazardly throughout the pile.

  One file label caught his attention, causing his jaw to clench and suspicion to tear through him. He opened the folder and scanned the pages carefully, white hot fury rearing inside him.

  A weekend meeting in D.C.? It was no more than a ruse. He just hadn’t imagined the depths of the deception involved.

  Zack quickly closed the folder and shoved it under his jacket, holding it in place beneath his bicep. As he stalked to the door, it pushed open and Old Man Brigham himself stepped inside the office.

  “Zackary?” A frown flitted across his heavily lined face, disapproval glinting in his gray eyes. “You needn’t come looking for me—”

  Zack grunted at the admonishment. “I was just on my way out.”

  “The hell you say!” The protest was rife with arrogance.

  “The hell I did say.” Zack stepped around him, barely glancing at his uncle as he entered the hallway.

  When he neared the wood-encased steel entry doors, the agent stationed there opened the panels with a smooth flourish, his expression as bland as Peters’s when Zack strode past him.

  Come to think of it, the entire household, family and help alike, showed little if any emotion. Ice water ran in their veins; he was certain of it. Pure, coldhearted logic and a touch of the psychotic.

  Stepping into his pickup, Zack tossed the file to the seat beside him before starting the motor and putting his foot heavily to the gas. He probably left a few skid marks on the old bastard’s brick driveway.

  At least, he hoped he had.

  Any other time, he’d have felt a measure of pride over that. If he wasn’t already so damned pissed. If he didn’t want to leave the skid marks on that son of a bitch’s head instead.

  Driving through the iron gates with inches to spare as the electronic release eased them open, Zack headed back to Loudon, praying he was in time. Whatever had made him believe that the Brigham family would keep their damned noses out of the mess that had arisen in the mountains of Tennessee at the beginning of summer?

  He should have known better. They’d sent a traitor home in a casket with no judge, no jury to order the execution. Why imagine they’d give the Maddox family so much as a warning before executing a possible threat, and without a shred of evidence other than the traitor’s word for it?

  Forget “innocent before guilty.” The Brighams believed it was innocence that had to be proved, rather than guilt.

  Glancing at the file that lay on the seat beside him, Zack could feel that core of rage, normally carefully hidden, rising inside him once again. And not for the first time, he thanked God he was never part of the family his mother had fought so hard to be free of.

  And he never would be part of it, no matter their seeming desperation or their threats or their games. He wouldn’t have a moment’s hesitation over foiling their plans—and this time, he might even be looking forward to it.

  The strident pulse of his cell phone in the pocket of his jacket drew his attention. Hitting the Bluetooth control on the steering wheel, he answered with a terse “Hello?”

  “You alone?” asked Jazz, his foster brother.

  “As can be,” he answered, clenching his hands on the steering wheel, filled with a heavy foreboding at the other man’s far-too-serious tone. “We have a problem?”

  Jazz’s fiancée, Kenni, was the long-lost Maddox princess. For eight years, she’d been the target of a traitor determined to kill her. The Maddox family suspected that the traitor wasn’t working alone.

  “Kenni, Slade, and Jesse are fine,” Jazz assured him. “But we have a big problem. Grace Maddox was attacked yesterday evening, at the Maddox farm. Her assailant escaped. Her uncle Vinny’s not letting anyone in or out—even Kenni. That Rottweiler you gave her last year managed to catch him off guard, but one of the farmhands sent a message to me that the dog was hurt pretty bad. I haven’t been able to find out more.”

  Vince wouldn’t dare refuse to allow Zack to see Grace. It would be the one time Zac
k would use the power the Brigham name gave him. And Alex Brigham would back him up, no matter the problems he and Zack had. No matter the plans the bastard might have to take Grace in for interrogation. He’d still back Zack.

  All Jazz could tell him about Grace now though was that she was alive. Son of a bitch.

  Tiny, delicate, as sweet-natured as anyone he knew, that was Grace. Fighting off an assassin would be impossible for her.

  “Put our men on alert,” Zack told him, the rasp of rage in his tone clear now. “I’m just leaving the estate—”

  “Slade has a plane waiting at a private airfield about twenty minutes out of D.C. You remember Chaz McDougal?” his brother asked. “His plane is hangered there.”

  Tall, red-haired, Scottish to the core, and detested by the Brigham family, that was Chaz McDougal.

  “I’ll be there in five,” Zack assured him. “I’ll have the pilot notify you once we’re airborne.”

  “No need, Chaz is flying you in himself and knows to contact us at lift-off,” Jazz informed him. “Get here fast, Zack. They’re not letting any of us in, Kenni’s sick with worry, and we have a report that Mad Max and Beau-Remi are heading in from NOLA. Things could be getting ready to get bad.”

  Kenni Maddox and her cousin Grace had worked together for two years to try to uncover the traitor threatening Kenni’s life. Neither woman had suspected how close that threat had been, though.

  Maxwell Maddox and Beauregard Remington, Grace’s half brothers, were a whole other set of problems.

  Big problems. The kind neither Zack nor the Maddox family needed right now.

  “As quick as Chaz can get me there,” he promised. “I’ll call as soon as we land.”

  Disconnecting, Zack hoped—for Alex Brigham’s sake—that the Brigham family hadn’t ordered that attempt. If they had, the war brewing in the Tennessee mountains would end up boiling over, and that was something none of them wanted.

  Except, perhaps, whoever had been working with the traitor who nearly murdered Kenni Maddox more than once. They still hadn’t identified the accomplice, but he knew it couldn’t possibly be Grace Maddox.