with the quilt and turned to the nurse. “Make sure he stays put.”
The woman gave a shaky nod, and though she probably didn’t know what was going on, she had to realize it was serious.
And it was.
Dallas marched back into the hall, grabbed Joelle and headed not back toward the kitchen but outside to the front porch where they could hopefully finish this conversation without Kirby hearing.
“I’m not blaming him for this,” Dallas insisted. But part of him was doing just that.
She swiped at the tears but more came. “Kirby has his reasons for not telling you, and I had mine. I didn’t think of the age difference between us back then, but Kirby was right about someone maybe using it to arrest you. The main reason I didn’t tell you was because I was worried you wouldn’t go through with college.”
“I wouldn’t have,” Dallas snapped. “But that was a decision for me and me alone to make.” He couldn’t help it, Dallas cursed again. “Hell, no wonder you wouldn’t see me or answer my calls. You didn’t want me to know I was about to be a father.”
That was one thing explained. He’d never been able to figure out how Joelle could go from red-hot to ice-cold in such a short period of time, but yeah, a pregnancy would do it. Part of him hurt to the core that she’d had to go through that alone. At seventeen, no less. But another part of him just hurt.
“You need time,” Joelle murmured.
“I’m not sure that’ll help.” But it was the pain talking. He did need time. He had to sort all of this out and come to terms with what he’d lost.
And what he had lost was his baby.
The lump in his throat was so thick he wasn’t sure he could breathe. It felt as if someone had a fist clamped around his heart.
God, he hadn’t expected anything to hurt this much.
His phone buzzed again, and he nearly bashed it on the porch, but then he saw it wasn’t Owen and his troublemaking attempts this time. Nor was it a message.
It was a call from Clayton.
The last thing Dallas wanted to do was talk to anyone, but he knew in his gut that his brother wouldn’t have called if it weren’t important. And with all the irons they had in the fire, it was a call he had to take.
“Yeah?” Dallas answered, unable to hold back the anger and other emotion in his voice.
“Uh,” Clayton said. “You okay?”
Dallas ignored that question and went with one of his own. “Why’d you call?”
“I thought you’d want to know that I’m out at Rocky Creek.”
That was the last place one of them should be right now. “What are you doing there? What went wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. I’m actually calling with some good news. From the sound of things, you could use it right about now.”
“Yeah,” Dallas said. He glanced at Joelle. She was pacing now. And still crying. Hell’s bells. What a tangled mess this was.
“I’ve been here for about a half hour,” Clayton continued. “Quietly observing the CSI team. Not with Saul’s permission or knowledge, but I called in a few favors. Don’t worry. I’m not in the actual building. Figured I wouldn’t want to call into question anything they might find.” He paused. “They found some things, Dallas.”
Even though he doubted Joelle could have heard what Clayton said, she must have sensed something because she stopped pacing and moved closer. Dallas wasn’t feeling very generous, but he put the call on speaker so she could hear.
“The initial tests indicate that it’s Webb’s blood on the window frame. Better yet, it’s a cast-off pattern consistent with someone who plunged the knife into Webb and then drew it back to stab him again.”
“Any way to use the pattern to determine the killer?” Joelle asked.
“They’re working on it,” Clayton answered. “Not just the blood on the frame, but there are spatters on the wall invisible to the naked eye that the luminol lit up. They might be able to get some details about where the attack started. And who started it.”
Good. Luminol was a chemical spray that could detect even small amounts of blood. Too bad Dallas’s mind was still in a horrible place right now because this conversation was important.
“From what I heard from my contact inside,” Clayton went on, “there was some indication of blood on the floor, too.”
Joelle shook her head. “Why wasn’t this detected sixteen years ago?”
“Because it wasn’t tested, that’s