"It's not just Dwayne, it's all of us. All the fine, upstanding Longstreets."

"Miss Caroline?" Cy's voice echoed up the stairs and had both women jolting. "Miss Caroline, you in here?"

Caroline saw the panic shoot into Josie's eyes. "You tell him to go on. Tell him, Caro. See that he goes outside again. I don't want to hurt that boy."

"I'm up here, Cy," Caroline called out, her gaze fastened to the short, shiny gun barrel. "You go on out. I'll be along in a minute."

"Mr. Tucker said I should stay with you."

She could almost see him, hesitating at the foot of the steps, torn between manners and loyalties. "I said I'd be along," she repeated, the first true licks of fear sharpening her voice. "Now go on out."

"Yes, ma'am. The fireworks are going to start any minute."

"That's fine. You go watch."

She waited, hardly breathing until she heard the door shut.

"I wouldn't want to hurt that boy," Josie said again. "I've got a real fondness for him." Her lips twisted in a mockery of a smile. "A real family feeling."

"Josie…" Caroline struggled to keep her voice calm. "You know this isn't the way to solve things. And you know I don't want to hurt Dwayne."

"No, but you'll do what you have to do. Just like me." She slipped a hand into her purse again, and pulled out the knife. "This was my daddy's. He dearly loved to hunt. Dressed the kill himself. Daddy wasn't afraid to get a little blood and guts on his hands. No, sir. I used to go with him when he'd let me. I got quite a taste for hunting myself."

"Josie, please put the knife away."

"Now, Tucker," Josie went on, lips pursed as she turned the blade in the light. "He never cared much for killing things, so he mostly missed-on purpose." As if baffled by the waste, she shook her head. "Lordy, did Daddy wail into him for it. Dwayne, he didn't have any problem bringing down a deer or a rabbit, but when it came time to dress 'em, he'd go green. Squeamish. That's what Daddy used to say. 'Josie, you come on over here and show this boy how it's done.' " She laughed a little. "So I would. Blood never turned my stomach. It's got a smell to it. Kind of wild, kind of sweet."

With her skin going clammy, Caroline inched back. "Josie." The word came out in a cracked whisper as their eyes met again.

"When Daddy died, the knife came to me." She held it up so it glinted in the lamplight again. "The knife came to me."

Caroline stared at the glint of silver. Behind her the first fiery lights exploded in a black sky.

Chapter Thirty

The pretty little gun seemed like a joke now. Beside the long-bladed knife, it was more of an annoyance, something to be swatted away like a fly. But Caroline made no move toward it. All of her attention, and all of her fear, was focused on the slick gleam of silver.

"Josie, you can't protect Dwayne this way."

"You don't believe me." Josie nearly laughed. There was a part of her, the part she had no longer been able to control, that capered with glee. "Who would? No one even considered a woman-least of all our fine special agent. Look for someone who hates women, I told him. But he didn't understand. You and I know that no one can hate the way a woman can hate."

A jolt shook Caroline as the fireworks rocketed and boomed. "Why would you?"

"I have reasons. I have plenty of reasons." She moved closer until she was framed in the terrace doorway. Her eyes were as brilliant as the lights that studded the sky behind her. "I had to protect the family. I had to protect myself. Just as I will now. But it's different with you, Caroline. I won't enjoy it with you because I like you, I respect you. And I know how much it's going to hurt Tucker. Don't," she said as Caroline edged away. "I don't want to have to shoot you, but I will. No one will hear."

No, no one would hear. She could scream-just as Edda Lou had screamed-and no one would notice. The derringer was pointed at her throat. A tiny bullet, she thought. A small death.

"I don't want you to suffer," Josie told her. "Not like the others. You're not like the others."

Think, Caroline ordered herself. She had to think. The key to this was family, if she could only find a way to use it. "Tucker and Dwayne will suffer, Josie."

"I know. I'll make it up to them." Her eyes shifted for a moment as gold lights flashed, bloomed, and faded in the sky. "Isn't that a pretty sight? The Longstreets have had fireworks here at Sweetwater for more than a hundred years. That means something. I remember Daddy carrying me on his shoulders so I could get closer to the sky. I was his firecracker, he'd say. And Mama would just watch, and say nothing. She didn't want me, you know."

"Talk to me, Josie." How much longer could the fireworks go on? How much longer before Tucker or someone came to look for them? "Tell me, Josie, so I can understand why you had to do it."

"I can talk to you. There's time. It'll be easier if you see. Maybe easier for both of us." She took a long, deep breath. "Austin Hatinger was my father." Her lips twisted at the shock on Caroline's face. "That's right, that Bible-thumping, snake-mean bastard was my blood father. He raped my mother, and while he was raping her, he planted me inside her. She didn't want me, but when she found she was pregnant she had to go through with it."

"How can you be sure?"

"She was sure. I heard her talking to Delia in the kitchen. Delia knew. Only Delia." Satisfied with the knife, Josie slipped the derringer into her pocket. "She hadn't told Daddy. I guess she was afraid to. And she would have wanted to protect him, and the family, and Sweetwater. So she had me, and she tolerated me, and she watched me to see how much like him I'd be."

"Josie."

"I was a grown woman when I found out. She lied to me all my life. My beautiful mother, that great lady, the woman I wanted to be like more than anything, was just a liar."

"She was only trying to keep you from being hurt."

"She hated me." The words ripped out of her as she slashed the air with the knife. "Every time she looked at me she'd see the way I was conceived. In the dirt, planted in the dirt while she cried for help. And wouldn't she have to ask herself how much was her own doing? Why did she go there? Did she really care so much about Austin and his pitiful wife?"

"You can't blame your mother, Josie."

"I can blame her for giving me a lie to live with. For looking at me out of the corner of her eye and thinking I was less than her, or any other woman. She said to Delia, that day, that maybe I wasn't meant to be happy, to have a home of my own and a family because of my blood. My tainted blood."

She spat out the words while outside the sky rocked with color.

"I'd come back here after my second divorce, and she had that look in her eye. That look that blamed me for it. And she said to Delia that maybe I wasn't meant to have a home and children. Maybe it was the Lord's way of punishing her for keeping the secret, for holding the lie inside her. She was feeling poorly, had been feeling poorly for some time. When she went out to her roses, I went, too. I wanted her to tell me face-to-face. We had a terrible argument, and I left her there, standing in the roses and crying. A little later Tucker went out and found her dead. So I guess I killed her."

"No. No, of course you didn't. It wasn't your fault or hers, Josie."

"That doesn't change anything. I had something growing inside me. It wasn't a child-the doctors had already told me I'd never have a child. But what was growing was real, and it was hot. It started with Arnette. She wanted to get her hooks into Dwayne, just like Sissy had. She thought she could use me, and I played along. I thought about it and thought about it. I'd spend whole nights lying in bed and thinking, wondering. Mama had kept a secret by giving life. I was going to keep one by taking it."