16

The woman was amazing. Well, both of them, really. After all, it wasn’t every day a man encountered a deaf person who could speak and understand what was spoken to her. Yet it wasn’t the girl from the river who astounded Logan. It was Eva.

We’re all broken, she had declared. Without shame. Wanting only to bond with a frightened girl who feared her secret would cause her to be cast out.

Who did that?

Society trained its members to hide their defects from an early age. Self-preservation demanded it. It was why he angled his hat to cover the scar slashing across his left eye. Why he concealed his last name. Why he bluffed in poker when he held weak cards. To be successful, one required an edge on the competition, even one built solely on perception.

Eva, on the other hand, forfeited her edge without hesitation. Despite her ingrained insecurity about her eyes and a history of outsiders devaluing her because of them, she openly professed her brokenness and offered it as a gift to a stranger.

Not only that, but she offered home and family, too.

Logan rubbed a hand against an odd tightness suddenly pressing against the inside of his chest, one that felt uncomfortably like envy. Would Eva be as accepting of his flaws and secrets when he finally revealed them, or was her generosity reserved only for those in immediate need?

Why did he care so much? It wasn’t like he wanted to be fostered into the Hamilton family. They were the enemy. Or at least one of them was the enemy. He couldn’t paint Eva with that brush, not even to protect himself from the doubts and inconvenient longings that cropped up with alarming regularity while in her company.

She couldn’t have been more than twelve when her brother stole Logan’s home. Too young to be culpable, too innocent to recognize the sin that had been committed. She’d probably never questioned how her brother had provided their little ragtag family with a home and security. Logan couldn’t hold her accountable for her brother’s actions.

Yet neither would he absolve her brother of guilt for her sake. Logan had family, too. A mother who depended on him. One who hadn’t been the same since the day she found her husband dead, which would never have occurred had Zacharias Hamilton not cheated Rufus Fowler out of his land.

“You got something you want to say, Logan?” The low, rumbling voice of his nemesis snatched him from his thoughts.

Logan jerked his gaze right, accusatory words clawing at his throat for release. However, the man beside him looked merely curious, not antagonistic. Logan bit his tongue.

Hamilton raised a brow. “Your face went dark all of a sudden. Do you have concerns about the girl staying with us? See any threats she might pose to Evie?”

The girl from the river. Right. Logan gave himself a mental shake. Focus, man. With his gambling background, Hamilton could probably read posture and expression as well as Logan. He needed to tread carefully.

Scrambling to come up with a sufficiently dark alternative thought to explain his lapse, Logan glanced at the females, who were clasping hands in silent solidarity. Fortunately—or unfortunately, as the case might be—coming up with a substitute worry was all too easy.

Pitching his voice to match Hamilton’s quiet timbre, Logan murmured, “It all depends on how determined that fella is to see this girl dead. If he just wanted to rid himself of her, he might not care where she ends up. But if he needed her dead for some other reason, he might come after her. Though I doubt he has any better idea of who we are than we have of him. She should be safe here for the time being.”

“The thought occurred to me as well.” Hamilton pushed to his feet and gestured for the ladies to resume their seats at the table. “Why don’t we start with something easy,” he said as the two females settled themselves. He lowered himself back into his chair, then leaned his forearms on the table as he peered at the girl from the river. “What’s your name?”

The girl darted a glance at Eva, who gave her an encouraging nod, then turned back to Hamilton. She hesitated, though, looking down at her hands folded on the table in front of her. She nibbled her bottom lip as if weighing her options. After a moment of mental calisthenics, she straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin.

“Christie Gilliam.”

Hamilton dipped his head. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Gilliam.” He pressed a hand to his chest. “I’m Zach Hamilton.” He stretched his arm out to grab Seth’s shoulder. “My brother, Seth.” He nodded toward Eva. “Our sister, Evangeline, and our, uh, neighbor, Logan.”

Logan ignored the less than enthusiastic introduction and smiled at Christie.

Her pale green eyes met his. “Thank you for saving my life.”

Uncomfortable with her gratitude, he shrugged. “I just pulled you out of the water. Eva’s the one who realized you were in danger. She’s the one who deserves your thanks.”

Christie reached for Eva’s hand. “Thank you.”

“I’m glad we reached you in time.” Eva held her gaze. “Who was it, Christie? Who tried to drown you?”

The girl’s chin tilted downward again, and her teeth emerged to bite the corner of her lip. “I don’t know. Not for sure.”

But she suspected someone. Logan frowned. Who? And why didn’t she want to name him?

“I was hit from behind,” she explained. “It’s the last thing I remember before waking up on the riverbank. I never saw my attacker.”

“Were you at home when it happened?” Seth asked.

Christie didn’t respond. Eva squeezed her hand to get her attention, then nodded toward her brother. Seth repeated his question.

“No.” Christie shook her head. “I was walking home from town after making a delivery for my stepfather.”

Seth leaned forward to place himself directly in her line of sight. “Which town? Ben Franklin?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Were you carrying money?” Zach probed after wagging a finger at her to get her attention.

“Some.”

Logan shook his head. “Robbery doesn’t make sense. A thief might bash her on the head and take her coin, but if she never saw him, there’d be no reason to kill her.”

“I agree,” Eva said, sending waves of satisfaction rolling through Logan. Waves that should have been nothing more substantial than pond ripples, since they were simply talking through possible scenarios. No true sides were being drawn. Yet having her agree with him in front of her brother on anything seemed to trigger ocean-level crests.

He wanted her on his side. Always.

“And it doesn’t explain the bruises,” she added.

Logan’s attention jerked to Christie’s face. He didn’t see any discolored marks. “What bruises?”

Christie’s face reddened, and she ducked away from his regard.

Ah. So the bruises were in places not usually seen when clothed. Eva must have noticed them during the young woman’s bath.

Eva touched Christie’s arm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you. But someone has hurt you. That same person could be the one who threw you into the river.”

“My stepfather is not the patient sort, but I don’t think he would go so far,” Christie said. “He’s lazy. And cowardly. Without me to run his deliveries, he’d have to do it himself.”

“Are your deliveries that toilsome?” Seth scanned her slender frame, no doubt drawing the same conclusion Logan had—that any task managed by a woman of such slight build couldn’t be that difficult for a man to take over.

A derisive smile twisted her mouth. “It isn’t so much the work as the risk he wants to avoid.”

Seth raised a brow. “What, exactly, do you deliver?”

“Moonshine.” Christie drooped a bit at the admission, as if waiting for her new friends to change their minds about her welcome. “My stepfather’s a bootlegger.”

A low whistle escaped Logan’s lips. Her stepfather’s choice of occupation opened up a world of unsavory possibilities. With Delta County being dry, a man of low character could make a tidy sum stilling corn into whiskey. Most bootlegging operations were too small for local law to bother chasing down, so the risk was minimal. In fact, it wasn’t unheard of for a lawman to accept a jug or two under the table in payment for turning a blind eye. And while most customers were harmless citizens with a thirst for the occasional strong drink, prominent clientele would have more to lose should it be discovered that they were willfully breaking the law.

“Your stepfather’s taint is not on you.” Eva was getting that stubborn look again, that feisty I’ll-defend-you-to-the-bitter-end-even-if-you-won’t-defend-yourself look that Logan couldn’t help but admire. She might be a bleeding heart, but she was a warrior, too. A warrior unafraid to surround herself with soldiers who were broken, weak, and scarred as she charged into battle against whatever foe stood in their way.

Christie shook her head. “But I participated. I made his deliveries. Collected his money. Ate food he provided. Wore clothes he supplied by preying on the weakness of others.”

“Did you have a choice?” Eva pressed. “Did you ever try to say no?”

Logan recognized immediately where Eva was headed. The bruises. The girl had been battered into submission. Forced to do what was necessary to survive. She didn’t need the added burden of guilt by association if she’d not been a willing partner.

Christie shrugged. “I tried to refuse a few times in the beginning, but it only made him angry. My mother had made the deliveries before me, but she died two years ago when I was sixteen. With her gone, Earl demanded I take over the family responsibility. I tried to act like I didn’t understand. Mama had never told him I was deaf. She thought it would be safer for me if Earl thought I was just slow. That way he’d want nothing to do with me. It worked for a while. You see, I didn’t lose my hearing until I had scarlet fever when I was ten, the same fever that took my Pa. I was top of my class in school before the fever.” Pride flashed in her eyes before they dimmed once again.

“Unfortunately, Pa had run up a bunch of debts before he passed. Earl offered to pay those debts if Mama wed him. She didn’t particularly care for Earl, but she feared being taken to a poor farm, where paupers were housed with petty criminals and the mentally ill. So she chose the lesser of two evils. I hid my books away, swallowed my pride, and pretended to be less than I was, at least around Earl. But I was determined not to become the idiot he thought me to be.

“So I closed myself up in my room with Mama’s hand mirror and practiced mouthing words in front of the glass for hours, learning the shapes of certain letters and sounds. When he was away, I dug out my favorite books and mouthed sentences from Black Beauty and Heidi until I memorized all the basic shapes. Then I practiced wherever we went, staring at shopkeepers as they assisted Mama with her purchases, the old men who stood around jawing outside the livery, other children when they invited me to play. It became a game.

“Until Mama died and left me alone with Earl.” Christie glanced down at her hands and started picking at the cuff of her right sleeve. “If I couldn’t figure out what he wanted fast enough, he’d hit me. Call me foul names. Throw things. He wore a beard, so it was hard to read what he said. Without Mama there to help, I made a lot of mistakes.”

Logan ran a hand over his face, the bristles of his recently trimmed beard rubbing against his palm. He could feel the smoothness of his lips at the edge of his mustache, so she’d probably been able to read him well enough, but if a man let his beard grow long and scraggly, his lips would be almost completely obscured. What an untenable position for a young woman to find herself in. Cards stacked against her with only a bluff and her wits to see her through.

“Over the last year or so, things got easier,” she said, her chin lifting once again. “I got better at guessing what he wanted before he asked, and he’s dumbed things down so much now that instructions are rarely needed. Earl ties different colored ribbons around the jug handles, and I match them to the colors in the hidden compartments where I leave the moonshine. Inside a hollowed-out stump with a streak of blue paint across the top, behind a bush at the back of a red barn, another beneath a green wagon seat, and so on. I make deliveries on Sundays while all the God-fearing folk are at church, out of the way. Of course, some of those God-fearing folk leave money in the hidey-holes, too.”

Zach’s chair creaked as he shifted his weight. “And you were making deliveries this morning when the attacker struck?”

Christie’s forehead crinkled. “Sorry. I didn’t catch that.”

Zach repeated his question, slowing it down. “Were you making deliveries when you were attacked?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

Logan stroked a hand over his beard, making sure it lay as flat as possible before he voiced the thought that had been niggling at him for the past thirty minutes. He motioned with his hand to gain her attention. “What was different about today? Did something go wrong? Did you see something you weren’t supposed to see?”

The young woman cocked her head to the side, and her hands stilled. “I don’t think so. I delivered the jugs and collected the payments as I always do. One customer left a slender book instead of cash, but this isn’t uncommon. If people are short on ready funds, they often leave something else in barter. If Earl is unsatisfied, he takes it up with the customer later. My job is just to bring home whatever is left for me. So I took the volume, stuck it in my burlap sack, and went about my business.” She scratched the edge of her nose. “The attack didn’t come until twenty minutes later, when I was halfway home.”

Logan’s poker instincts flared. She was bluffing. The superfluous details. The guarded posture. The hand to the face. She wasn’t telling them the whole truth. The question was . . . why?