Tall, Dark, and Determined (45 page)

How can this be?
All his certainties came crashing down.

“Dunstan?” The pale man on the bed asked. “I didn't know you'd come back.” His head fell back against his pillow, his eyes rimmed with dark circles. “Don't know why you'd want to.”

This last was said in a resentful mutter that sounded nothing like the Braden Lyman Chase once knew and respected. Still, Chase couldn't answer. The shock of seeing Braden sent his mind reeling. The man before him obviously wasn't faking any injuries to deflect suspicion that he'd been involved in the collapse.
He didn't know what would happen. Maybe he still doesn't know what happened
. This gave him pause.
I still don't know what happened. What am I supposed to say to the man?

“Well?” Lacey Lyman stood on the opposite side of the bed, arms crossed and glaring daggers at him. Suddenly Chase wasn't concerned so much with what he'd say to Braden.

What am I going to say to Lacey?
Guilt and shame flooded him for his incorrect conclusions about her brother.
But someone still sabotaged the mines. I can't discount her as a suspect
.

“No one should see me like this!” Suddenly irate, Braden sat back up. Obviously the man took Chase's silence as shock over Braden's appearance. “Why did you bring him here?”

It began to dawn on Chase why Lacey and Miss Thompson spoke of this different man as replacing the Braden they knew. What had Lacey said when he began accusing her?
Braden is much altered after his ordeal in the mines…. You misunderstand….

“We brought him here to prove that you're you,” Lacey informed her brother. “Your friend decided I'd gone to extreme lengths to conceal your death, and you were an impostor.”

“I was wrong.” The admission sounded hoarse even to Chase. Still, he couldn't bring himself to apologize around his thoughts.
Something is still wrong here. Too much doesn't fit
.

“I'll say.” Miss Thompson's glower seared through him.

“What?” Braden tried to push himself into a more upright position. “What's all this about an impostor, Dunstan?”

“We knew you wouldn't want visitors.” His fiancée referred to his anger mere moments before. “So we didn't bring Mr. Dunstan to meet you when Granger recommended we hire him.”

“But I know him!” Braden looked incredulous. “Why didn't you tell them we'd worked together and ask to see me?”

“Because he'd already decided we'd hidden a fake Braden,” Lacey hazarded a guess. “He wanted proof of our perfidy before he deigned to accuse us openly and come confront you.”

“Where did you get such a fool notion?” Braden demanded.

“The ad.” Chase could tell them that much before he finished putting all the pieces together. “The women were too desperate to find husbands. There had to be a reason.”

“The reason is they don't have the sense God gave a gnat.”

“Braden.” His fiancée's tone was both warning and censure.

“Not from what I've seen.” Chase couldn't let the insult pass when he'd provided the instigation. “These women keep tight control over the town and are more capable than most men.” The women looked startled by his sudden defense, but it was true.

“Are you comparing their sawmill to my mine?” Braden started on a low whisper, but got louder with every word. “Are you saying that, because the sawmill looks to be viable, these women are more capable than I was at running Hope Falls?”

“Stop seeing insults where there are none,” his sister snapped at him. “We're too busy with ones that actually exist!”

“Is that why you wanted us gone?” His fiancée moved closer to the bed. “Not because you were afraid we'd be in danger, but because our sawmill might succeed where your mine failed?”

“The mine didn't fail!” He slumped and whispered, “I did.”

“No you didn't.” All three of them spoke the words at once, trying to wipe away the defeat lining Braden's face. A second of surprise, and then everyone looked at Chase.

“What do you mean, Dunstan?” Braden looked so tired. “I lost three-quarters of my men in that collapse and didn't even manage to die with them. I failed on every possible level.”

The women gaped at him, apparently horrified by the revelation that Braden held himself responsible for the cave-in. Dunstan wasn't surprised to hear it at all. Every good leader took on responsibility for both his men and their mission.

“Isn't that why you've come here? For restitution?”

“What?” Lacey resumed glaring at him. “Why would he want restitution? We paid all the investors what they owed, Braden.”

“My brother-in-law died in the collapse,” Chase volunteered. “My sister, Laura, was left destitute. She didn't just lose the man she loved. She lost her home, too.”
Or she would have, if I hadn't stepped in and made things right
.

“So that's why you've come to Hope Falls, full of suspicion? You're looking for
revenge?”
Lacey looked at him as though he were a snake about to strike her down.

“No.” He met her gaze, willing her to be as innocent as she looked now. “I came to Hope Falls looking for justice.”

“Get out.” She flung her arm toward the door. “The train just pulled up, Mr. Dunstan. Get on it and don't come back.”

“Ever again,” Miss Thompson added for good measure.

“We'll see that your sister is handsomely compensated.” Braden sank back wearily. “I promise you that, Dunstan.”

“I can take care of Laura,” he told them. “I didn't come here for money or for revenge. I came to find the truth.”

“Well, now you know it. Braden really did survive, we put out the ads to help hold the large size of the claim and get the sawmill underway, and there are no plots or impostors.
Now go.”
Lacey looked furious, but her voice cracked on the last words.

“I can't.” Chase drew a deep breath and laid his cards on the table. “Not until I find out who sabotaged the mines.”

The man has a bad habit of leveling me with shocking comments
, Lacey decided. After this one, she could only gape at him.
Is it possible he's unbalanced?
No, that would be an easy explanation.

“What?” Unbelievably, Braden perked up. “What did you say?”

“I know how seriously you took safety,” Dunstan clarified. “Surveyors, architects, extensive support systems … It made me wonder how Miracle Mining, of all the outfits, caved in.”

“Didn't make sense to me either.” Her brother leaned forward eagerly at the idea the collapse hadn't been his fault. “Do you have any proof, Dunstan? Anything concrete to go on?”

“Just Draxley's recollections,” he admitted. “To hear him tell it, it sounds like an explosion started everything.”

“That's what you're going on?” Lacey heard herself screech, winced, and modulated her tone. “The impression of a cowardly little twitch when he wanted to look good in front of Arla?”

“He didn't say it sounded like an explosion,” the hunter admitted. “And I don't doubt Draxley exaggerated for his audience. But he didn't describe rumbling or shaking. The first and most important recollection he had was of a great boom.”

“So the telegraph operator says ‘boom,' and you suspect sabotage?” Cora sounded as incredulous as Lacey. “The same way you saw our ad and decided we'd manufactured a fake Braden?”

Put that way, Dunstan's speculation looked as ludicrous as Lacey believed it to be. “We can only be thankful you haven't sought to use your investigative skills in law enforcement.”

“He's right.” Braden sounded full of wonder. “I hadn't thought about it…. It didn't seem important which aspect of my operation caused the collapse, since any of it was my fault. I signed off on the route, the tunnels, the supports—all of it.”

“Anyone can make a mistake,” Cora was quick to assure him. It looked as though Braden's newfound liveliness gave her hope.

“Oh, I made a mistake all right.” Braden's expression turned grim. “By avoiding the memories. If I hadn't fought so hard not to relive it, I would've remembered the blast.”

Lacey gasped. “You don't mean to say he's
right?”
For a moment she didn't know which to hope for. That Dunstan was proven a raving lunatic, seeing conspiracies everywhere—or that Dunstan's instincts were right, even if his theories were wrong. Because if he was right, then the cave-in wasn't Braden's fault, and her brother would really have a reason to start recovering.

“I know the sound of a blast when I hear it,” he confirmed. “But I didn't realize it at the time. The world collapsed around me, everything buckling, the air impossibly thick with dust, and rocks crushing everything in their path. Then, when everything settled, men screaming in the dark … I couldn't think about it then, and I didn't want to think about any of it afterward.”

Men screaming in the dark?
For the first time, Lacey began to get a sense of the horror Braden endured.
All this time I've been impatient for him to move past it. How do you move past something like that? Even worse if you think it's your fault?

“Will you keep searching, Dunstan?” Her brother looked to her accuser. “Can you find the proof we need to catch a killer?”

“He's been here for weeks on end.” Cora seemed hesitant to voice her doubts, but pressed forward nevertheless. “If he's not found anything by now, I fear you'll have to look to your own memory for comfort, Braden. But now you know.
It wasn't your fault
. And I hope you know that we never thought it was.”

“I've managed to search the town fairly well,” Dunstan intervened. “But with everything else, I've yet to inspect the area around the mines, nor what's left of the tunnels.”

“ ‘Everything else' meaning the job we hired you to do”—Lacey tried to vent some of her smoldering rage—”completely unaware that you were trying to prove your foul suspicions.”

He didn't have the grace to look shamefaced as he nodded.

“So will you do it?” Braden's eyes lit with hope.

“I planned to try this afternoon,” Dunstan admitted. “It's why Decoy's in the barn with a beef bone. I misinterpreted some things and have lost some time, but there's still daylight enough to get the job started as soon as I grab my supplies.”

“You're going into the mines?” Cora looked aghast.

“No.” Lacey didn't give him a chance to answer.
“We
are.”

“Oh no you're not!” Her brother lapsed back into the scowling, yelling oaf they'd been stuck with for months. “I forbid you to step foot inside or even anywhere near my mines.”

Lacey gave him a sweet smile. “I won't. We can just consider anywhere I happen to step foot a part of my half. I own equal shares of those mines, and it's my decision to make.”

“You're not equipped to go down there,” Dunstan refused. “Of course I am.” Lacey's smile grew even wider as she hitched her skirts to her ankle. “You see, I have new shoes.”

    THIRTY-EIGHT