first two chapters of Everette: Driveton 1

Dedication:

This book is dedicated to all the humble heroes,

the ones who, without fanfare, show love and kindness daily to all those around them.

You make the world a better place.

Note to my readers:

Welcome back to Driverton. It’s a fictitious town in Maine, so small it’s often forgotten on maps. Loathing a Landon was the first book set in this town. I enjoyed visiting it so much that Driverton is the setting of the next three books in the Barrington Billionaire series.

Driverton is best described by Mrs. Williams: “I’m ashamed to say I used to think horrible things about small towns. I’ve learned, though, that they’re only as good or as bad as the people in them. Driverton has a tough reputation in the local area. We don’t put up with nonsense from outsiders. But there’s a difference between being nice and being kind. The people in this town won’t talk pretty to you. If your car breaks down going through here, they’ll tell you all the things you should have done that could have prevented that from happening, but then they’ll take you in, feed you a good meal, and get you back on your way if you have the manners to thank them for it. But you bring a bad attitude here—we’ll tow your broken-ass car to the town line and leave it there.”

Everette, Levi, and Ollie are the rowdy but sexy and good-hearted single men of Driverton. I hope you enjoy the wild ride of each of them finally meeting their match.

Chapter One

Shelby

“Do you want me to come to you?” Megan, my best friend, asked again, clearly unhappy with the vague answer I’d given the first time. “I have travel points; I could probably catch a short flight tonight.”

I shook my head, wishing I’d said the video option on my phone wasn’t working. The past twenty-four hours had been rough, and it was impossible to lie about that when Megan could see how ragged I looked. “I’m okay. At least, I will be. I just need a little time.”

“Have you spoken to him since—”

“No.” Emotion thickened my voice. “There was nothing left to say. He was right to ask me to leave. I didn’t really want to be with him. I just didn’t want to be alone. I never actually settled in. All I had to do was pack up my luggage and go. You told me it was too soon, that I shouldn’t have said yes, that it was a mistake . . .”

“Shelby, I hate that I was right. Where did you stay last night?”

“In my car. It wasn’t that bad, actually.”

“That’s not safe. Come home—”

“No. I don’t want to go back.” When the words came out more vehemently than I’d meant them to, I added, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I understand why you don’t want to be here anymore, and of course you didn’t want to be alone after what happened. Unfortunately, some men take advantage of women when they’re struggling. Jeff swept in, saying all the right things. Hell, in your situation, I would have gone with him too. I’m not judging you.”

“I know.” Megan was a better friend than I deserved. She’d been that way since we met in grade school during a ballet class neither of us enjoyed. We’d both considered being forced to wear pink tights and remain quiet hell on earth. After a few weeks, we’d quit and joined a soccer team together—and ruled the field side by side for years.

“Help me help you. What can I do?” Megan asked gently.

“Do you have a time machine?” It was a sad attempt at joking about something that would never be funny.

“I wish I did.” After a pause, she asked, “Where are you staying? Do you have a plan?”

“There’s no shortage of hotels in Rhode Island. I’ll find something.”

“Text me as soon as you choose one.”

“I will.”

“You’re going to be okay, Shelby.”

“That’s what I’m telling myself.”

“I’m only a phone call away. It doesn’t matter what time it is. I’ll pick up. You’re not alone.”

I wiped tears from the corners of my eyes. “Thank you. I love you, Megan.”

“My offer to come to you stands. Today. Tomorrow. Next week. If you need me, I’ll come.”

Nodding while trying not to burst into tears, I said, “Time on my own will be good for me. I need to figure out who I am now and what I want to do.”

“Every day will be a little easier. I promise.”

That didn’t seem possible, but I nodded because she needed to believe that. “I’m going to go now.” I turned my phone so she could see the view before me. “Look at that lake. Isn’t it beautiful? I might end up emptying my savings account to stay here, but it’s the kind of peacefulness I need. Hopefully I can find a place on the water.”

“I’m doing a search now. I’ll text what I find.”

God, I loved her. “What would I do without you?”

“You’ll never have to find out. I’m not going anywhere. And neither are you. You’ve been my strength so many times in the past. I hope I’m half as good at supporting you as you’ve always been for me.”

I fought back a sob. “I’m saying goodbye before you make me ugly bawl in public.”

“Call or text me tonight. Promise?”

“Promise.” With that, I ended the call and replaced the phone in my back pocket. I found a bench and sat for a long time, trying to empty my mind as I looked out over the water.

Unwelcome voices intruded. One was from a young female asking how long they would have to stay in that town before they headed down to New York City. The male voice that answered promised her it wouldn’t be very long and that the wait would be worth it. He said he was still setting up agents for her to meet when they got there. It was better, he said, to wait one more day and go down when all her appointments were scheduled.

I didn’t hear her response because they’d walked out of earshot, but I was tempted to run after them and warn her that men promised all kinds of things they had no intention of following through on. I didn’t, though, because my view of both men and the way the world worked was severely tainted by my current circumstances.

Five months, six days, and ten hours ago the life I’d known had ended with one phone call. I’d been working an overtime shift at my airport job, feeling lucky to have one with flex hours as well as the ability to nearly double my pay by picking up holiday hours. My parents had been proud when I’d graduated from college and even prouder when I’d become a logistics manager for a major airline. Their relief had been tangible when I’d told them even though I wanted to get my own apartment, the job would keep me local to them.

My life plan had been falling perfectly into place, until that one call. Every single detail of that day was forever burned into my memory. Just when I would think I’d successfully put it out of my thoughts, it would wash over me, tumbling me under like a rogue wave sweeping someone off an otherwise peaceful beach.

I would find myself right back there in the office, smelling the stale scent of the rug, feeling the weight of the beige walls closing in on me while I clutched my phone with shaking hands.

“Ms. Adams, there’s been an accident . . .”

But it hadn’t been an accident. Not really. As my parents slept, someone had broken into their home with the intention of robbing them. There’d been a struggle; my mother had been injured, my father shot, and a fire started. The police report included a death certificate for not just my parents but also their assailant. It was thought that the man who’d broken into my parents’ home hadn’t wanted to leave empty-handed and had, despite the fire, attempted to gather their valuables. They found his body in my father’s home office with his pockets full of credit cards and pieces of jewelry that weren’t worth much at all.

The next few weeks were a blur. There’d been meetings with the police, a lawyer, and a funeral director. Friends and family tried to be supportive, but all I wanted was to be alone.

One day, the family of the man who died trying to rob my parents showed up on my social media feed. They’d made a video claiming their son was the real victim because my parents had decided to fight instead of fleeing. They implied they had proof that my father had started the fire deliberately to kill their son. The story went viral on social media.

There was no proof and their accusation was baseless. According to the coroner, although my father had been shot, he and my mother were still alive when the fire started. Accelerant had been poured in the hallway where my parents were found. The investigating officer said the intruder had likely wanted to cover the crime with a fire, but hadn’t understood how fast the home would fill with smoke and how quickly it could turn deadly.

When the lawn in front of my parents’ home started filling with flowers from people mourning the young man rather than my parents—it was too much for me. Megan stepped in and helped me sort out my parents’ insurance policy and hire contractors to fix the house. I found a Realtor for when the house was ready to sell and walked away, no longer wanting anything to do with the place I’d once thought would always represent home to me.

Megan was a practical soul. She said people mourn for the story they know and that it wasn’t a battle I could win. Public opinion had been swayed and, in the end, didn’t change anything. She was right. I couldn’t hate the family of the man who’d robbed my parents. They’d lost a son, a brother, a cousin . . .

But I couldn’t stomach the physical shows of sympathy for that family while there was none for mine. Therapy helped a little with that, but I soon stopped being angry and just went numb.

Then came Jeff.

I’d met him a few years earlier when his flight had been delayed and I’d bumped into him at the airport. We’d had dinner together and sex the next time he’d come to town. No, it hadn’t been a hot and heavy affair. Looking back, I’d say we were friends who sometimes had sex. But when he’d heard what had happened and opened his home to me—it had felt like a lifeline thrown to someone drowning. He’d promised things would get better and that he'd always be there for me.

I quit the job I loved and went to live with him in Rhode Island. I brought almost nothing with me because there was very little about my old life I wanted to keep. Everything that mattered was gone.

Yesterday, four months after I moved in with him, Jeff had sat me down and we’d had the conversation no one wants. It wasn’t working. He apologized profusely, making it impossible to hate him. He said he’d thought he could help me, but I wasn’t doing anything to move forward. I hadn’t gotten a job, made any friends, or even been intimate with him. He couldn’t do it anymore, and I didn’t blame him because I didn’t want to be with me anymore either.

I’d tried.

I’d gone through the motions of finding a job. I’d posted my résumé, gone to interviews, but every time a potential employer showed interest, I found a reason I couldn’t take the job. It was the same when it came to connecting with his friends. Pretending to be happy was exhausting; it was easier to be on my own. And him? I wanted to want him. We’d slept in the same bed, talked about wanting to be together, but in the end he was too good of a man to push himself on me and I wasn’t interested in sex anymore.

I should have corrected Megan when she’d lumped him with men who took advantage of women when they were struggling. If anyone was guilty of taking advantage of anyone, it was me. I’d moved into his house like an entitled stray cat, expecting three meals a day simply for existing and not messing on the carpet.

As I sat there looking out across the water, I knew Jeff had done me a favor. I did need to pick myself up and start living again.

And I would.

As soon as I figured out how.

Chapter Two 

Everette

Up early and on my first solo assignment, I started the day with a five-mile run, a feat that wouldn’t have been possible for me months earlier. A lot of things had changed since my friend Cooper Davis had become Cooper Davis Landon. It was not every day someone in my hometown went from being broke like the rest of us, to announcing his family was filthy rich. We’d always known Cooper had secrets. He’d been young and on the run from something horrific when he’d shown up in Driverton. We’d taken him in and made him one of our own.

Being wealthy had sounded more tempting before I’d heard the story of how Cooper’s uncle had torn the Landon family to shreds out of greed. Money certainly hadn’t brought much good to the Landons. Since being reunited, they were still patching their relationships back together.

My family might have always struggled to pay the bills, but we were tight. The same could be said about all those who lived in Driverton. It was a town in Maine so small it was often left off maps. Long, cold winters forced us to rely on each other for survival and that fostered the kind of trust outsiders couldn’t understand.

Bradford Wilson had come to Driverton to find Cooper Landon, but had stayed because he and his wife, Joanna, fell in love with our community. In the words of Mrs. Williams, everyone in town’s second mother, “There is always room at our table, but we don’t suffer fools gladly so leave your ego at the door.” I can attest to how much she meant those words. She didn’t sugarcoat her opinions and she had standards of behavior she’d hold even God to if he came for a visit.

No one had been surprised when she’d told Bradford to use his military training to sober up the young men in town—me included. Bradford’s big job with the CIA? Well, she said, that should mean he’s smart enough to figure out how to get her adult son, Ollie, to balance working at his restaurant with helping around the house more. Fences needed mending. The electrical needed updating. No, she didn’t want money to have it fixed. Why did anyone in town need money when they had able-bodied young ones who simply needed to put down their beers and step up?

She was right. Levi, Ollie, and I had all given up on being more than we were, and drinking ourselves into a stupor had become where we found our joy. Small towns, for all their strengths, can do that to a person. I loved my family, loved my friends, had never resented working to support my parents and siblings, but my life had felt as small as Driverton was. And, I’ll admit, there were times I’d felt trapped by all the same things I loved about it. My dreams? I hadn’t allowed myself any. I was where I needed to be, doing what needed to be done. Drinking had been my way of freeing myself from the weight of that.

Bradford was the first person I’d ever confessed that to—sober, at least. He’d offered to train me and my friends, just like Mrs. Williams had instructed him to. I was the only one so far to agree to it. To understand why none of us immediately jumped at the opportunity, you’d have to know Bradford. I’ve always been referred to as a gentle giant. Bradford was close to my height and breadth, but his face and body were scarred and his eyes went cold sometimes. You could sense that he was someone who could take another’s life, bury him in a back field, and never fucking say a word about it.

Cooper said Bradford was the person the government sent in to save someone when the situation was too sensitive or volatile for them to use a Special Forces unit. That sounded far-fetched until you got to know Bradford.

Yep. I could imagine him doing whatever was necessary to save someone. He was the kind of hero people don’t like to admit the world needs. Before I agreed to work with him, I gave him a few tastes of the lifestyle Levi, Ollie, and I were reluctant to give up.

Tipsy by noon on weekdays? If your chores are done, absolutely.

Pass out drunk on the weekends? Race you to it.

Inebriated Bradford was fucking hilarious, but he could also tell a story that would have a grown man ready to bawl into his beer over the heinous side of humanity and then be just as ready to go to war to protect the innocent. When I’d learned that Cooper had been working with Sheriff Tom to locate and retrieve runaways, I’d expressed a desire to help them. It was only after getting to know Bradford that I understood how much I’d need to learn.

Cooper and Bradford had bonded quickly because they had a lot in common. Both had perfected extraction without detection. They practiced the art of remaining invisible while tracking their target. They used burner phones, clothing designed to confuse AI from recognizing them, paid everything in cash, created aliases, drove cars that couldn’t be traced, and were careful to leave no fingerprints.

The only difference? Cooper and Sheriff Tom held to a code of letting the justice system deal with everything beyond saving the runaway. Bradford had seen more, and his moral code wasn’t as clear. Over too many shots of moonshine, Bradford admitted that meeting Joanna was all that had saved him from becoming no different than the monsters he’d unalived.

Could I train with a man like that?

Should I?

It was a question I’d asked myself many times before I decided his desire to move to Driverton was revealing. He needed a community as much as the world needed him. And, just like Cooper, we made him one of us.

He offered to pay me while I trained with him, but I’d been raised too proud for that. I supported my family by selling chainsaw-carved wooden structures. It was manual labor I’d always done with ease. I told myself I could do that around my training schedule. I was wrong. Training with Bradford was like boot camp. He had me up at dawn running until I threw up. I lifted weights until I couldn’t, honed my ability to shoot, and learned to stealthily scale almost anything. There was no time to consider meeting Levi or Ollie for a drink and I fell into bed exhausted each day.

At the end of my first week, Bradford showed up at my house unexpectedly and caught me trying and failing to cut a bear sculpture. My arms were shaking so much I kept fucking up the lines. He took the chainsaw from me and asked me to guide him through how to do it. That was when I knew Bradford really was one of us. In Driverton, people stepped up when someone was in need. We didn’t do it for the glory or with any expectation of compensation. We did it because that’s what a community does for its own.

Now, that sculpture wasn’t worth shit, but I’d never tell Bradford or anyone else that. I hid it in our back barn and didn’t speak of it again. My workouts with Bradford became slightly less intense after that, enough so I could finish the projects I’d lined up while becoming more fit than my ass had ever imagined I could.

When I was ready, Cooper let me shadow him as he tracked a twelve-year-old girl who’d gotten in a physical altercation with her mother’s boyfriend and had run away. We found her several states away, miraculously safe, hitchhiking her way to her father. She wasn’t happy to be rescued, but Cooper talked her into trusting us. We took her to her father, helped him secure legal representation, and when we left her, I’d felt on top of the world. Cooper had set up counseling for the family and the boyfriend was being handled by the courts. Justice prevailed.

When Bradford offered to let me join him as he searched for an infant that had been snatched from a playground, I expected to return from that job with the same optimism. What I experienced was a life-changing, horrifying nightmare where crimes like that were perpetrated not by one sick person, but by networks of them—for profit. There was no happy ending. There was tracking, location, retrieval, carnage, then cover-up.

I didn’t kill anyone, but I did shoot when shot at and covered Bradford’s back while he cut through anyone who stood between him and the child. Part of me was repulsed by his methods, but when he came out of the house and handed me the child—I decided there had to be room in heaven for him. There had to be. If not, I’d endure the fire to ensure no one like him ever suffered alone.

As I ran, I brought my focus back to the reason I was in Rhode Island. A call had come in to Sheriff Tom regarding a fifteen-year-old girl from Connecticut who’d been categorized as a runaway. Alexia Paine’s parents insisted she’d always been impulsive, but wasn’t abused and hadn’t given any indication that she might not be happy. I’d been offered this as my first solo assignment.

Evan Lamb was my alias. I was a small-time real estate investor looking for vacation rental properties to buy. My imaginary fiancée and I were also looking for a nice town to relocate to, so my cover for asking questions was that I wanted to get a feel for different towns before bringing them up to my fiancée for her final approval.

Time spent in Alexia’s hometown had given me the opportunity to speak to some of her friends. They confessed that Alexia had been seeing someone she hadn’t told her parents about. He was someone from out of town with a nice car. They hadn’t told the police about him because they didn’t want her to get in trouble with her parents, then as time went on they’d been afraid to get themselves in trouble because they’d held back that information.

All they had was a first name, Curtis, and he drove a silver sedan with stickers from different states on the back window. One of Alexia’s friends had been present when Alexia had been on the phone with him and thought she remembered him talking about a lake house his family owned in Rhode Island. The number of the person Alexia had spoken to came back as a burner phone. This was no amateur. Bradford warned against going to the police. Whoever had taken Alexia thought they’d gotten away with it. If they saw her face on the television they might eliminate her and move on to an easier target. Or, just as bad, they could cover their tracks so well we might never find them. Bradford offered to join the search, and I didn’t refuse. Whoever Alexia was with, he was likely dangerous and, if we didn’t stop him, Alexia wouldn’t be his last snatch.

The final tower Alexia’s phone had connected to was in northern Rhode Island a few days ago. Bradford was following a lead to a lake south of the one I was canvassing. During my run, I stopped to speak to everyone I came across. If they didn’t fit the profile of someone who might be involved, I showed them a photo of Alexia and asked them if they’d seen her. There was a risk involved in that, but we didn’t have the luxury of time. Sometimes, according to Bradford, a man had to put aside his training and trust his instincts.

I slowed my speed as I saw a lone figure sitting on a bench, looking out over the water. Long brown hair similar to the teen I was searching for, but as I approached, the person looked up and my hope that it might be her disappeared.

The woman on the bench was beautiful, but most likely in her mid-twenties . . . and crying. Shit.

Wiping the sweat from my forehead on the short sleeve of my T-shirt, I debated whether I should leave her to whatever she was dealing with or intervene. She’d obviously sought this secluded location out of a desire to be alone. Still, if I’d learned anything over the past few months, it was that clues could come in many forms and from the least expected sources. What made Cooper and Bradford successful in searches where others failed was their tenacious natures. They didn’t give up. Neither of them would walk by this woman without determining if she’d seen Alexia.

When I came to a stop close to the bench, the woman stood and wiped at her cheeks. The expression on her face was one a smart man recognized. She didn’t know me and there was no one around. Her hand went in her bag and my guess was it would resurface with a can of Mace if I took another step toward her.

I shot her my most charming smile. “I’ve been running for so long I think I’ve gotten myself turned around. Is the boat ramp beyond the trees?”

“I have no idea,” she answered. “Sorry.” She turned to leave, but kept her hand in her bag and glanced at me more than once to make sure I wasn’t following her.

I stayed where I was, but said, “Hey. Can I ask you a question?”

From a distance of ten feet or so, she turned to face me. “I don’t know this area.”

“I promise I won’t quiz you about landmarks. I just want to show you something.” When my hand went to my back pocket to pull out the photo, her eyes widened, she shook her head then turned and bolted to her car.

Real smooth. I have to learn to do this better.

I couldn’t judge her for fleeing. Had I wanted to, I could easily have overpowered her, Mace or no Mace. She was smart to not want to be in a secluded area with a stranger. Still, it made me sad that she knew that. Had someone hurt her? Was that why she was crying? She hadn’t appeared bruised or injured, but there’d been a sadness in her eyes that had gutted me.

I knew nothing about her.

She wasn’t why I was there.

Still, I couldn’t leave before I knew she’d made it safely to her car and that it started without a problem.