Into the Fire - Anne Stuart [101]
It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, just one day following the next. Nate was buried quietly in the family plot, and the only people in attendance were Jamie and Detective Drummond, who’d made the forty-five-minute trip from Danvers just for the occasion. And to ask more questions that Jamie refused to answer. Jamie’s mother declared herself too frail to leave her bed to even attend the ceremony, but Jamie knew better. Isobel Kincaid just refused to accept the finality of Nate’s death.
Days turned into weeks, and the police stopped asking questions. Everything had been tied up quite neatly, thanks to the wonders of DNA testing, and the short, violent life of Nate Kincaid was only a file in some storage vault. And there was no word from Dillon.
Christmas was shaping up to be a bleak holiday. Her mother insisted on a tree, even though neither of them felt like celebrating, and it was up to Jamie to buy it, decorate it, find a wreath and pretend that everything was normal.
There was something inexplicably lonely about the holidays when your heart was breaking, she thought, wandering through the parking lot and the rows of freshly cut Christmas trees. It was cold, and she pulled the jeans jacket around her. Isobel despised it without even knowing who it had belonged to, but Jamie had stopped listening to her mother somewhere along the way. She even took the jacket to bed with her at night. If Dillon could hold on to her old striped dress then she had every right to cling to the jacket he’d tossed her the last time she saw him.
The smell of the Christmas trees was heavenly, but for some reason it reminded her of Wisconsin. Her mother would never have anything less than a real tree at Christmas, and she decreed tiny white lights and the collection of German glass ornaments and French crystal that had been handed down through generations of Kincaids.
Jamie pulled a tree upright, but she wasn’t looking at it. All she could see was Dillon, watching her.
She blinked, and it was nothing more than a dream. Part of her life that was past. So why was she crying?
She put the tree back against the fencing and walked back to her car. None of the well-proportioned trees would meet her mother’s exacting standards—she’d have to drive to the next town over to check.
She was driving the Cadillac—always a mistake when she was feeling vulnerable, but Isobel’s stately Mercedes wouldn’t hold the size of tree she demanded. The thing ate premium gas like a starving man at a feast, and she pulled into the self-serve on the edge of town and pulled out her credit card.
She was a quarter full when the police car pulled up beside her, and she watched Lieutenant Drummond get out and head over toward her. Her stomach constricted, but she kept a calm expression on her face as the gas tank kept guzzling.
“Nice car,” he said by way of greeting.
“It belongs to a friend of mine.” Wrong thing to say. He gave her a swift, questioning look, and she could have bit her tongue. Lieutenant Drummond had handled the investigation into Nate’s death and her mother’s shooting, and he’d always been gentle and circumspect with her. But she didn’t trust him.
“Lucky man,” he murmured, and Jamie didn’t dare ask him how he knew the car belonged to a man. “You staying around for the holidays?”
“Why? Am I supposed to?”
“No, ma’am. The case is closed, everything’s all nice and tight. I was just being sociable.”
“Sorry,” Jamie said. “After the last few weeks I guess I’m a little bit edgy. I’m not planning on going anywhere. Just keep my mother company for Christmas.”
Drummond shook his head. “Your mother’s quite the character, isn’t she? Scared the heck out of me, and I’ve faced some of the worst criminals you could imagine.”
“My mother can be very intimidating.”
Drummond grinned, running a hand through his thinning hair. “Well, I was over this way