Holding the Truth
HOLDING THE TRUTH
Table of Contents
Title Page
Holding the Truth (Small-Town Sheriffs, #1)
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
Chapter 117
Chapter 118
Chapter 119
Chapter 120
Chapter 121
Chapter 122
Chapter 123
Chapter 124
Chapter 125
Chapter 126
Chapter 127
Chapter 128
Chapter 129
Chapter 130
Chapter 131
Chapter 132
Chapter 133
Chapter 134
Chapter 135
Chapter 136
Chapter 137
Chapter 138
Chapter 139
Chapter 140
Chapter 141
Chapter 142
Chapter 143
Chapter 144
Chapter 145
Chapter 146
Chapter 147
Chapter 148
Chapter 149
Chapter 150
chapter 151
Chapter 152
Chapter 153
Chapter 154
Chapter 155
Chapter 156
Chapter 157
Chapter 158
Chapter 159
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Further Reading: Hiding
CALLE J.
BROOKES
LOST RIVER LIT PUBLISHING, LLC
SPRINGS VALLEY INDIANA
EST. 2011
Other books by
Calle J.
Brookes
ROMANTIC SUSPENSE
PAVAD: FBI ROMANTIC SUSPENSE
Beginning (Prequel 1)
Waiting (Prequel 2)
Watching
Wanting
Second Chances
Hunting
Running
Redeeming
Revealing
Stalking
Ghosting
Burning
Gathering
Falling
Hiding
Seeking
FINLEY CREEK SERIES
TRILOGY ONE (TEXAS STATE POLICE)
Her Best Friend’s Keeper
Shelter from the Storm
The Price of Silence
TRILOGY TWO (FINLEY CREEK GENERAL)
If the Dark Wins
Wounds That Won’t Heal
Hope for Finley Creek (bonus novella)
As the Night Ends
MASTERSON COUNTY NOVELLA SERIES
Seeking the Sheriff
Discovering the Doctor
Ruining the Rancher
Denying the Devil
SUSPENSE/THRILLER
PAVAD: FBI CASE FILES
PAVAD: FBI Case Files #0001
“Knocked Out”
PAVAD: FBI Case Files #0002
“Knocked Down”
PAVAD: FBI Case Files #0003
“Knocked Around”
PAVAD: FBI Case Files #0004
“White Out”
Calle has several free reads available at
www.CalleJBrookesReads.com
For my grandfather, the best man I have ever known.
You will be missed.
Oct. 2015
For my grandmother, who gave me the courage to try. Without you and your love of romance, I never would have made it this far.
Feb. 2016
For my papaw, whose children loved him deeply, and will always
miss him.
Oct. 2017
Calle J. Brookes is first and foremost a fiction writer. She enjoys crafting paranormal romance and romantic suspense. She reads almost every genre except horror. She spends most of her time juggling family life and writing while reminding herself that she can’t spend all of her time in the worlds found within books. CJ loves to be contacted by her readers via email and at www.CalleJBrookes.com. When not at home writing stories of adventure and wrangling with two border collies and a beagle puppy, CJ is off in her RV somewhere exploring the beautiful world we live in, along with her husband of she can’t remember how many years and their child.
STS12019
HOLDING THE TRUTH
Copyright © 2019 by Calle J. Brookes
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations em- bodied in critical articles or reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, orga
nizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
For information contact:
www.callejbrookes.com
Book and Cover design by B. G. Lashbrooks
First Edition: FEB2019
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
HOLDING
THE
TRUTH
SMALL-TOWN SHERIFFS
BOOK ONE
CALLE J.
BROOKES
Yes, truly, for look you,
the sins of the father
are to be laid upon the children.
Therefore, I promise ye I fear you.
—William Shakespeare
Prologue
Sheriff Clay Addy sat by the hospital bed for hours, watching her sleep. Counting her breaths. Listening to the beeps and hums of the machines that told him the woman still lived.
She’d died twice on the surgeon’s table. They’d brought her back. Thank God they’d managed to bring Bailey back.
Her eyes opened, so blue they looked unreal, but they were clouded and unfocused. A small cry escaped her. Clay leaned over her so she would know that she wasn’t alone. “Bailey, honey, it’s ok. You’re safe now.”
“Sheriff...you got them?” Her words were strained, but he still heard. He’d never thought he’d get to hear her again. “Is...Kyra safe?”
“Yes, she’s safe now. With Agent Lake.”
“She loves him. Could tell. Did you get the men? My father?” Her eyes closed as her small hand twitched on the blanket. Her small, cut, bruised, and broken hand. Clay brushed her fingers lightly, just above the plaster cast.
He just needed to touch her for a moment.
“Don’t worry about that now.” Clay would get the men who'd done this to her. Even if it took the rest of his life, he’d get the men who’d hurt Bailey. Including her own father. “You just rest.”
“Don’t have to stay. Know you don’t want to.” Her eyes remained closed, her breathing deepened. Clay let out the breath he’d been holding. “Know you don’t like me very much.”
“Of course I like you.” But she was already out. He stood, staring down at her for a long moment.
Bailey was two weeks shy of her twenty-fifth birthday, but she barely looked old enough to vote. He’d known her since she had been nine and he had been twice that. Her hair was pale gold, with slight curl. Someone had washed her hair and braided it into two braids. Probably the redheaded nurse who was hovering nearby.
When she’d been brought in, she’d been soaking wet and covered with mud and sludge of some sort.
And blood.
Clay would never forget Bailey’s blood. Or the words she'd written in her own blood and the dry Texas soil.
Bailey made such a small lump under the thin blanket. Small and vulnerable and having barely survived hell.
Not like her? Hell, that couldn’t be further from the truth. He felt so much more for her than that.
Bailey Moore was the center of his world. And had been for months now.
Bailey kept him centered, grounded. Reminded him of sunshine and hope. Without her, he’d simply sink into oblivion in his personal life and drown in his duty as the sheriff.
He wasn’t stupid; he knew how he felt about her bordered on obsession. It scared him just how intensely he did.
Clay had never felt for a woman the way he did this one. He probably never would another, either.
He’d wanted nothing more than for some rancher to come and carry her off—carry her somewhere where she couldn’t haunt him with just a simple smile. Take her somewhere and make her happy. Give her everything she deserved.
Someone had carried her off, and it had been her own bravery that led to her rescue.
He had almost lost her.
Chapter 1
Bailey Moore was back.
Clayton Addy, sheriff of Value, Texas—population eight hundred and nine—knew it from the first moment he walked into his office that ridiculously sunny Monday morning. Bailey was back.
He could almost smell the shampoo she used.
He dreamed of that shampoo sometimes. Dreamed of her shampoo, dreamed of her blue eyes, dreamed of her slightly crooked smile. The smattering of freckles over her smooth cheeks. The tiny dimple that flashed every once in a while when she was truly happy about something.
That dimple had teased him from the very beginning.
Clay also dreamed of finding her almost dead every damned night.
Those were the dreams he could never get past. He had failed her. Through his stupidity, he had failed her.
He never should have left it at one guard all those months ago. He should have known they were dealing with far too many unknowns. She had paid the price for his stupidity.
First with a bullet, and then with hours of captivity at the hands of the one man who never should have let someone hurt her. Bailey's father and his friends were still out there somewhere. Clay hadn’t been able to find them yet.
But Bailey...Bailey was back.
And he had no idea how he was supposed to deal with her.
Clay fell back on his go-to position. He looked out of his office toward the four desks that stood silently in the middle of the small bullpen. They had a total population of just over eight hundred, but that was mostly in the five-mile region surrounding the town. He still covered the entire Barratt County population, of nearly four thousand. He had three deputies on duty now at all times.
He'd forgotten Jeremy had taken over the scheduling for him two months ago. Forgotten that Verity, the dispatcher, had made a point to remind him that Bailey was coming back today. She’d even provided cake and fruit punch. A welcome-back banner hung over the bullpen.
Veri’s doing, no doubt.
It was one hell of a thirty-sixth birthday present for himself, and he knew it.
Bailey Moore had no business ever setting foot in a Texas State Police building. Especially his. Maybe doing forensics, or something off the radar like that—if she felt like she needed to do this job for some reason.
Maybe he could nudge her toward a transfer to nearby Finley Creek County. It was far bigger and had a much better forensics unit than he did. His entire unit consisted of one deputy who'd had forensics training. Bailey.
Movement caught his eye.
Blond hair in a high ponytail.
He stood where he was and just watched her for far too long, feeling like a damned asshole. He should go out there and talk to her. Welcome her back, as her boss, at least. But he didn't. Eat cake, drink punch. Any of it. He hid.
Because he didn't want her there, and they both knew it.
She had known how he felt about her from the very beginning. He'd made no secret about it. And that had driven a wedge between them. A chasm he regretted, after what had happened to her.
If she had trusted him more, she could have come to him that morning. He would have done his best to help her deal with what had been bothering her. And something had, but he’d never learned exactly what.
If they had found Bailey an hour later than they had, she would have been gone. Possibly minutes.
The doctors had lost her at least once that he knew of on the operating table.
It had been four months and two weeks since that hell had happened.
And now...Bailey was back.
And Clay didn't know what to do about her once again.
He just stood there and watched her.
Chapter 2
Bailey ran her fingers over the battered wood of the desk stationed far away from almost everything else. It was the desk she'd been assigned on her first day with the Value TSP. Sheriff Addy hadn't wanted her there then. She'd at first thought it was because he was a sexist pig. But he just hadn't wanted her around specifically.
He was perfectly fine with other female TSP deputies who filtered through the area ever
y so often. Bailey hadn’t ever understood why.
Unless it was a sins-of-the-father kind of thing. There were a few in the TSP who remembered her father and what he had been a part of. Some held him against her, even though she’d been only four when he’d been arrested.
She had spent most of the last four months attempting to figure Clayton Addy out.
Bailey was no closer to having the answers to him now than she had been when she'd first opened her eyes to see him sitting by her hospital bed—scowling at her.
She wouldn't lie to herself; it had been one of the hardest things she had ever done, coming back here. Since the attack and abduction had happened, she'd done her best to avoid Value as much as she possibly could. Finley Creek was so much better...so less difficult for her.
Her physicians had been at Finley Creek General Hospital. The therapy sessions she'd attended at Women for Hope After Violence had been right across the street. She'd considered leaving Value and everything about it behind her forever and finding a small place in the much larger city forty miles away.
Bailey had a job with the larger TSP post in Finley Creek anytime she wanted it. The chief himself had guaranteed it.
Value was all she had ever known. And leaving would make it feel so...unfinished. As if she’d given up.
She was tired of feeling unfinished. Of everything just stopping abruptly and being abandoned.
She'd felt that way since she was four years old and her father had been arrested for police corruption.
That hadn't changed much in the twenty-one years since.
Her desk wobbled dangerously when she dropped her bag on top of it. She looked down. She'd been using a thin, fifty-year-old romance novel to prop it up. Before.
Someone had removed it and shifted her desk four feet to the left.
Farther away from the other three.
Separated again.
She somehow doubted it was Jeremy, her closest friend on the small eight-person force, who had done it. It was probably the sheriff. He wanted no traces of her left anywhere in the post. She'd learned that early on when she'd made the mistake of bringing a small plant into the bullpen.
He'd made it disappear within a week.
She shot a glare toward his office. Bailey had no doubt he was in there. Probably watching her through the blinds on his door. She had no illusions where Clayton Barratt Addy was concerned.
The man despised her.
He thought she was weak and helpless and useless and not worth his precious time. Half the time she thought he resented the very air she breathed. He definitely wasn’t going to greet her with open arms.
What in the heck was she doing here again?