Free Fathers and Sons (Harlequin Super Romance) by Carolyn McSparren Page A

something back, but she didn’t think that something was an attack with a tire iron. She could see him making Waneath get out of the car, but more likely she got out of her own free will, expecting him to sweet-talk her back in so that they could make up.
    What she’d wanted meant responsibility and growing up and the end of his career and life plans. He wouldn’t have thought beyond putting the pedal to the metal. He was an irresponsible nineteen-year-old nitwit. But not a killer.
    She said conversationally, “So you plan to expiate your guilt by going to jail for twenty-five years?”
    “Yeah. No! I don’t know.” He dropped his head into his hands. “I knew I shouldn’t have left her there, but, man, she made me so mad.”
    “You did go back,” Kate said gently.
    “Oh, sure, I went back. But by then she was gone.” The face he turned toward Kate was tear-stained. “I tried to find her. I drove around and I yelled...”
    “And then what?”
    He shrugged. “I was pretty wasted. I mean, we’d been drinking beer and getting it on and fighting and stuff. I figured somebody’d picked her up. I came home and went to bed. I was still asleep when Sheriff Tait showed up around noon.”
    “Okay. What are you leaving out?”
    “Nothing!” It was a wail. “Look, I saw what Waneath’s mother did to you. I knew she’d be mad at me for leaving Waneath that way, but she really thinks I did it, you know? No matter what happens I can’t ever come back to Athena.” He fell back onto the bed. “Not that I want to.”
    “What do you want to do?”
    He sat up and waved a hand at the posters on the wall. “Make movies. I’m going to make it too.” He glanced at the door and curled his lip. “Not like my dad.”
    Kate felt her heart leap in her chest. Was that it? Jason thought his dad was a quitter because he gave up an acting career to marry Melba and be a farmer. “Your dad did what he thought was right.”
    “Sure. Like he ever gave a damn.”
    “He gives a damn about you.”
    “Right.”
    Kate stood up. “Okay, here’s the deal. You’re going to have to work out your guilt over leaving Waneath on that road, and I have no idea how you’re going to do it. What you are not going to do, however, is plead guilty to salve your conscience. I guarantee you that two days after you got to Parchman you’d realize what a bad bargain you made. Maybe you can make documentaries that save humanity from famine or something. That’s up to you. But if you’re telling me the truth about not hitting Waneath, then you didn’t kill her. Now, come get some breakfast and act like a rational human being for a change.”
    “I’m not hungry.”
    “Of course you are. You’re nineteen.” Kate stopped with her hand on the door. “Oh, and later on this morning you’re going to give me the name of every friend the two of you had in high school, everybody who was at that party, everything you can remember from the minute you got off that airplane in Memphis. You’re going to make a list of every old beau of Waneath’s and anyone and everyone else in this town that she might have run into on that road.”
    “But...”
    “And another thing. Whether it’s me or somebody else, your attorney has one job—to get you acquitted. If you get in the way, I’ll run over you.”
    She left the room before he could say anything. At the head of the stairs she leaned on the balcony railing and looked down at the empty foyer, trying to catch her breath. Maybe she was being too trusting, but she believed he didn’t kill Waneath.
    Was her sixth sense about Jason because he was David’s son? She sure didn’t owe David a damn thing. He’d tricked her into coming, he’d tricked her into spending the night thinking about him. Maybe Jason was tricking her as well, but she didn’t think so.
    She felt the old swell of enthusiasm whenever she got her teeth into a case she believed in. She started down the stairs. By the time she reached the