by P. Creeden
“Like I said,” Colby’s voice became a bit hard again, but he cleared his throat and softened it before continuing, “We just want to rule out the prints of those who’ve been in contact with the vehicle today.”
The man pushed up his glasses and rolled his eyes. “Fine then,” he said as he stepped over toward the CSI van to get his fingerprints taken with Jack.
Colby stepped closer to Emma—close enough that she could feel the heat of his shoulder against hers and the warmth of his breath on her neck as he leaned toward her and whispered. “He’s right. His fingerprints are going to be all over everything in the car already. What difference is it going to make?”
“It’s just a hunch,” Emma said and stepped away as the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. She didn’t need to let her hormones or the attraction she had for the deputy distract her right now. If she was right, she had just the piece of evidence that would prove what they all knew was true. Rick had murdered Patricia.
Chapter 7
“This is getting ridiculous. I’ve been standing around here for almost two hours, and you still can’t even just call this an accident and let me get on home to Thanksgiving dinner.” Rick’s hands were on his hips and anger contorted his face.
Colby’s lips pulled up into a half smile, but his words held a bit of sting as he said, “I’m happy to take you down to the sheriff’s office for questioning if you’d prefer to talk there? I think we’re almost done here at the scene. If you were willing to be patient for a little while more, I’ll be able to let everyone go on to their Thanksgiving dinners. Right now, we need to let the Crime Scene Unit do their jobs. Is that all right with you?”
His cheeks flushing a bit, Rick’s hands moved from his hips to crossing his arms over his chest. At the same time, one of the CSI workers came back toward both Emma and Colby. She leaned in toward the two of them. “I checked for fingerprints on the item you asked about, Emma. You were right, there were prints of both the victim and Mr. Bushy. But like the man said, his fingerprints are all over most of the items in the vehicle.”
Emma nodded and stood straight. “It’s all right. It doesn’t matter about anything else except for that one thing.”
Then she turned toward Rick Bushy with her grip tightening on the leashes of both dogs in her hands. “Mr. Bushy, when did you say that you last saw the victim?”
He huffed. “Friday... or maybe Saturday. It doesn’t really matter, does it? Sometime last weekend.”
“You’d seemed surer about it before,” Emma said, narrowing her eyes at him.
He shrugged. “I’m tired now, so my memory’s a bit foggy now about details. Sorry.” Sarcasm dripped from the last word.
“You’re sure you didn’t see her today?” she asked.
He suddenly stood up straighter, losing the tired bend to his back. He glared at her. “No, I didn’t see her today. I was in Ridgeway while she was coming from Richmond. How could I possibly have seen her today?”
“But you didn’t come from Ridgeway,” Emma said, shaking her head. “When my car spun around in traffic, I ended up facing the opposite direction. There were no cars on the road coming from Ridgeway at the time. I remember clearly seeing a vehicle make a U-turn and come back this way from a half mile or so up the road. Your car. You were coming from the opposite direction—not from town.”
He rose a brow. “Are you sure you didn’t hit your head or something in your accident? You’re mistaken.”
She shook her head. “I’m not mistaken. I’m sure of it. And there’s more. Did you get Miss Stone a gift?”
He blinked. “What are you talking about?”
“There’s a new CD in her car, one from a popular K-pop group. It’s one of the many things that she had in her car that your fingerprints were on.”
He shrugged and half rolled his eyes. “I may have helped her open a CD that she got for herself or something. But it was on the weekend. Saturday or something, like I said.”
Emma shook her head. “That would be impossible. You see, that CD was just released today as part of a Thanksgiving/Black Friday special. If your fingerprints are on it, which they are, they could only have gotten on the package today.”
His lips thinned, but he didn’t say a word as he glared at her.
“You see. You met up with Miss Stone today with a plan to kill her, maybe with the pretense of giving her that CD as a gift. Maybe not. Either way, you opened the package for her. Then you stuffed sod into her tailpipe, knowing that it would potentially look like an accident. You also knew that Miss Stone was on a medication that made it so that she wouldn’t smell the exhaust coming into her vehicle. You followed her all the way back from Richmond or wherever you met up until she began to drive off the road, starting with heading directly into oncoming traffic. An accident like that might have hid your crime. If she and I had been in a head-on collision, the airbags would have deployed, and potentially there would have been enough damage to her body that it would have hid the true cause of her death.”
Colby’s lips drew thin this time as his eyes went wide.
Emma continued, “But that didn’t happen. My evasive maneuver kept the head-on collision from occurring and she ran into the ditch at a very slow speed. You turned your car around up ahead, hoping you were far enough away that I wouldn’t see your U-turn. And I might not have if my car hadn’t ended up turned around on the shoulder. Then when you reached the scene, you realized that her car was going to be filled with the smell of exhaust, so you broke out a window and opened the door to shut off the engine and let out the smell before the police could arrive. It was all part of your plan. It makes me wonder, how much did you actually hate Patrica?”
He shook his head. “Hate her?”
“How did you hate her so much that you hoped that the damage you caused to the windshield might actually make glass cut her skin? It’s what you were hoping for, wasn’t it? When you beat in the windshield, weren’t you hoping to cut her face, even though she was already dead? What did she do to you to hurt you so badly that you even wanted to mar her dead body?”
Rick Bushy’s hands fisted as he rushed toward Emma and lifted one arm to strike her. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, wench.”
He didn’t take more than two steps before Gabby growled and jumped forward, pulling from Emma’s grasp. The German Shepherd grabbed a hold of the man’s arm and yanked him to the ground. Rick screamed. “Get it off me! Get this dog off me! He’s breaking my arm! Help!”
Colby gave the release command, and Gabby let the man go, backed up a step and sat on her haunches. Rick picked up his glasses from the shoulder with his good arm and then he supported the one Gabby’d had a hold of. When he met eyes with Gabby again, she growled at him and bared her teeth. Though the man attempted to scramble away from the German Shepherd, Gabby got up and tracked him inch for inch.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Colby warned him. “Just sit still and tell us the truth. That’s your best bet.”
“Fine! The wench is right. It happened like she said and I’ll tell you everything,” Rick said, panting from the exertion of wrestling with the dog. “Just keep that thing away from me. He broke my arm.”
Colby patted Gabby on the head and picked up the leash. “Good, talk. But just so you know, the dog is a she.”
Chapter 8
Colby read the man his rights and recorded his confession, with both Emma and Jack standing there as witnesses. Once Colby got Rick in the back of his police car and put Gabby in the hatch area, he asked Jack to sit his tow truck in the street with lights flashing in case a car came. Then he got in Emma’s car, himself, in order to turn it around so that it wasn’t facing the wrong direction and parked it back on the shoulder while he approached Emma once more. “Are you sure you’re okay enough to drive? That was quite a stressful day and you’re lucky you didn’t get hurt or damage your vehicle.”
Emma nodded. “I know how lucky I am, even if it didn’t
feel very lucky at the time.”
Jack honked his horn lightly and waved at the two of them as he drove away with the victim’s car in tow.
Sadness came over Emma as she watched the car go. “Because of one person’s selfishness, another person’s family would be doing without their loved one this holiday season.”
Shaking his head, Colby put an arm around Emma’s shoulder. “Sometimes when a person is in a position of power over another, like Rick was with Miss Stone, he’ll try to control the other person and force them into a relationship. Even if she wasn’t ready for a relationship like that or even if she was already starting a relationship with someone else. A person in power often doesn’t care about the other person’s true feelings. So when he found out that she was still seeing her ex-boyfriend and planned to break her engagement with Rick, he made a decision that put him in the position of the most power. Some men don’t understand that a man and a woman have to be strong for each other, not just strong.”
Emma’s heart fluttered as he squeezed her shoulder a little tighter. “It’s just sad that someone had to lose their life for it.”
“I agree,” Colby said, and pulled her into a full hug. “But you and I need to learn from others’ mistakes and not make the same ones, right. Don’t ever let anyone try to power you into something you don’t want.”
The warmth of his embrace was both comforting and made Emma greedy. She loved that he held her and he was making her feel better, but in truth, she wanted more and wanted for him to never let her go. At that thought, her heart ached a bit in her chest because she couldn’t have what she really wanted. And just when she thought that he would end the hug, he held her tighter and longer than she ever thought he would. He held her as if he loved her. Against his body as if he was attracted to her. And then he ran his hand down her back in a possessive way. “I’m so glad you weren’t hurt,” he whispered into her hair.
Her heart thudded in her chest, and suddenly, she didn’t know what to do.
Colby released her and looked into her eyes, and she saw something in them that she’d never seen before. It wasn’t just the same brother-sister affection, but something more. Her heart beat harder, higher in her chest, making it feel as though it might choke her. She was afraid break eye contact with him. Afraid to lose this moment.
Then her phone rang so loudly that she nearly jumped.
And the spell was broken.
He smiled down at her and backed a step away. “That’s probably someone looking for you. I’m sure you had Thanksgiving plans, too, right? I’ll see you around, Emma.”
She watched him walk another step away before her phone rang intolerably loud again. She looked down at the caller ID and saw “Mom.” After taking a deep breath, she answered, “Hello.”
“Emma! Is everything all right? Are you still coming?”
“I am. I just witnessed an accident and had to wait until everything was resolved. I’ll be there in about two hours,” Emma said as she put Molly in the back of the SUV and closed the hatch. “Sorry if I’m holding everyone up.”
“Nope. Not at all. Two hours is perfect. The turkey will be just out of the oven then. Drive safely, okay?”
“Okay,” Emma promised as she slid into the driver’s seat of her car and hung up the phone. Then she looked in the rear-view mirror and found that Colby was still waiting for her to safely pull away. Her heart skipped a beat when he waved to her. She waved back, and a lump caught in her throat again. What was going on? Were all the feelings that she thought she saw in Colby real, or was she just fooling herself? Slowly, she pulled back out onto the road as soon as she felt it was clear. In the rear-view mirror, she saw Colby make a U-turn behind her. After several minutes, she reached down and turned on the radio, hoping it would distract her from her line of thoughts.
If he felt the way she thought, he’d act on them, wouldn’t he? What if she was wrong? She couldn’t let herself get set up for a heartbreak by believing that he liked her as more than a sister. A slow breath moved past her lips as she tried to concentrate on the drive. No, she couldn’t let her imagination get away with her. He’d never shown her a sign like this before, but she shouldn’t read into it. She spent most of the rest of the drive trying to get the idea that Colby liked her the same way she liked him out of her head.
But the thought just kept creeping back in...
the end.
About the Author
P. Creeden is the sweet romance and mystery pen name for USA Today Bestselling Author, Pauline Creeden. Her stories feature down-to-earth characters who often feel like they are undeserving of love for one reason or another and are surprised when love finds them.
Animals are the supporting characters of many of her stories, because they occupy her daily life on the farm, too. From dogs, cats, and goldfish to horses, chickens, and geckos -- she believes life around pets is so much better, even if they are fictional. P. Creeden married her college sweetheart, who she also met at a horse farm. Together they raise a menagerie of animals and their one son, an avid reader, himself.
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