Harlequin Intrigue July 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Carol Ericson

  Foster smiled at Millie. Mostly because he agreed. He might not have seen the woman go through the motions, but he’d definitely benefited from her actions.

  “I was just trying to help,” she said shyly.

  Deputy Park wasn’t hiding his admiration.

  “You didn’t just help, you probably saved someone’s life out there.”

  Foster recognized the profound relief that flitted across the deputy’s face as he put emphasis on “someone.” It was brief but poignant. He wasn’t spelling it out to Millie but, had she not helped, there was a good chance that Deputy Park would have had to take a kill shot had one of the men, or both, managed to take up their guns. Which meant there was a high chance that she’d saved him from his first causality in the line of duty.

  Now Park was grateful, and Foster wasn’t at all surprised by that.

  “And if you hadn’t shown up, things could have been a lot worse for us,” Foster pointed out.

  Park shrugged.

  “If the Good Samaritan hadn’t seen you two get taken and called it in, we wouldn’t have known you were missing for a while,” the deputy said.

  “But you took that extra time they gave you, found tire tracks, and decided to check the water. That’s good work. No matter which way you slice it.” Park took the compliment with a smile. Foster followed it up with a question he was itching to ask. “Is the sheriff in his office?”

  To say they all had questions was an understatement. Foster had been compiling and updating his own list of questions since he’d met Millie. The last twenty-four hours had just extended that list to an uncomfortable length for him. Calling from the hospital to ask the sheriff about William Reiner was just another drop in the question bucket. Maybe that was why Chamblin hadn’t fought Foster’s desire to leave the hospital earlier than he was supposed to.

  “We have questions and we have answers,” Chamblin had said, heavy on the vague. “If the good doc is okay with you leaving, then I’d like to use that brain of yours.”

  Foster and Millie’s doctor hadn’t been that thrilled at the idea, but Amanda had stuck around to help convince him.

  “They’re going to the sheriff’s department, not a rave,” she’d pointed out. “Worst case they pass out among trained professionals, best case they figure out who did this to them and why. But if it sweetens the pot, I will personally go check in on them after my shift.”

  The doctor had relented—and complimented Amanda’s outfit—and added in his off-the-record comment that he believed they’d be fine.

  “There’s no lingering effects of the drugs, and any physical injuries you obtained were only superficial,” he’d said, trying to keep his gaze from settling on his coroner crush. “That said, my unsolicited advice for the near future? If you’re looking for leads at a bar, maybe make your own drinks.”

  That had put fire in Foster’s veins. Mostly because he’d been benched while the sheriff’s department had gone over every inch of Rosewater and the boat. Including in-depth interviews of staff and patrons. Specifically the bartender.

  Foster and Millie had been drugged at almost the same time and, since there were no needle marks anywhere on their bodies, it all boiled down to their drinks.

  That was enough to make anyone’s skin crawl or, at the very least, uncomfortable, so Foster had felt the need to offer Millie an out.

  “I have it on good authority that Deputy Lawrence talks a lot but that he’s a good man to have on watch,” Foster had told Millie in the hallway after. “He can take you home and keep an eye out while I try to work this at the department.”

  Millie had been adamant in her short response.

  “No way, bud,” she’d been quick to say. “We’re partners in this now, whether you like it or not.”

  Foster had had partners before back in Seattle but found that Millie’s statement elicited a different kind of reaction from him. But he put that thought on the back burner. It was still sitting there, waiting for more time for him to think on it later, when Deputy Park nodded.

  “He’s in there with his fifth cup of joe,” Park said. “In my nonprofessional opinion? We’d all benefit if a shot or two of whiskey finds its way into his cup.”

  Foster bet he was right.

  Chamblin had come out of semiretirement to become the interim sheriff to help his community, to help his home. To rebuild the department so he could leave it again and be happy with the results. Now he was drenched in a sea of unknowns, and Foster was sure he was getting mighty tired of just treading water.

  “Let’s drop our stuff off in my office,” Foster said, turning toward his closed door.

  Chamblin had taken the time to pack a quick bag for Foster when they thought they’d be at the hospital overnight. Larissa, Millie’s best friend, had done the same for her. Both had had to use their hidden spare keys, considering Foster and Millie hadn’t just lost their memory from the bar, they’d also been stripped of their keys, wallets and cell phones. Millie had mourned the abduction of her purse maybe even more than her own abduction. Then again, Foster understood the grief the first time she’d realized she’d probably never see her things again.

  “Fallon’s sixth grade school picture was in my wallet,” she’d said, voice quiet. “It was my only copy.”

  Now she was quiet again. Though it was more introspective than upset.

  “I can’t believe I was sitting in here a week ago.” She set her bag down on the love seat that was crammed into the corner of the office. The piece of furniture was worn and cracked leather, a welcome hand-me-down gift from Chamblin since he knew Foster sometimes spent the night at work when on a case. “It feels like a lot longer.”

  He chuckled because she was absolutely right.

  “You know, growing up I thought Kelby Creek was the most mind-numbingly boring place on the planet. Now here I am with more excitement than a year in Seattle.” He checked the top drawer to make sure Fallon’s file was still inside. It was. “I guess it goes to show you that even small towns aren’t as sleepy as the movies would have you believe. I’d love some boring right now.”

  A smile passed over Millie’s lips but it didn’t last. Instead, she followed him down the hall to the sheriff’s office, tension lining every move as she went.

  They had answers to get. Foster just hoped they weren’t all bad.

  “Well, if it’s not good to see you two up and about.” Chamblin greeted them with his, apparently, fifth cup of coffee in hand. He used it to motion to the door. “Let’s get rolling and go ahead into the interview room where we can start mapping this all out.”

  The interview room? Where they interrogated suspects?

  Foster raised his eyebrow at that but followed orders. He got to the door first and let Millie in. Chamblin caught him before he followed.

  “Hey, Love, I need you to do me something before we start.” His voice dropped so low that Millie couldn’t hear.

  It tipped Foster off to the fact that he wasn’t going to like whatever it was the sheriff was about to ask of him. Millie gave them privacy and took one of the two chairs on either side of the metal table.

  Foster didn’t like the look of her sitting in the same place criminals were usually handcuffed. He shrugged off the feeling and looked his boss in the eye.

  “And what’s that?”

  “Did Miss Dean ever tell you why she believed the note her brother left was a fake?”

  It was such an out of the blue question that Foster took a beat. The sheriff misread his hesitation.

  “Listen, Love, I get that you two have been through more thick and thin together than most partners on the force, but I can’t just let a civilian into an investigation. Especially not knowing some pretty key facts, like the main reason why she’s been looking for a runaway for six months only to have mud slung into the fan the first day we get a new detective in
here. For all we know she can be in on this with her brother.”

  There was no hesitation this time.

  “No dice there, Sheriff. I may not know what’s going on yet, but I do know I trust her.”

  Chamblin ran his hand along his chin, thinking. The older man wasn’t convinced.

  “Give me some truth I can work with then. Get her to tell us exactly why she is the only one who thinks Fallon Dean has been in trouble for the last six months, and then I’ll tell you why you might not be so quick to trust her.”

  * * *

  IT HAD BEEN humid outside, hot too. The Alabama sun was nice to lay out in, but for Millie, that’s where her love for it started and stopped.

  Inside the interrogation room of the sheriff’s department was surprisingly cold. Goose bumps rose up along her arms and pricked up across her legs beneath her jeans. She thought to let her hair down to give the back of her neck some warmth, but Millie wasn’t sure the cold in her was all the air conditioner’s fault.

  Not after the stone-faced Foster took a seat in the metal chair across from her.

  And the sheriff didn’t come in at all.

  Something had changed.

  Foster had changed.

  He’d gone impassive, unreadable. Just like the first day they’d met with her sitting across from him, frustrated and angry that no one would believe her.

  Those feelings tried to come back now.

  Millie tamped them down.

  After everything she and Foster had been through, she couldn’t imagine he didn’t believe her.

  Unless...

  Had something happened while they were in the hospital?

  “Miss Dean, I need to ask you something to help clarify a few things for us.”

  If Millie hadn’t seen his lips move, she wouldn’t have thought the monotone voice had come from the detective at all.

  She glanced behind him at the mirror.

  The sheriff must have been behind it. Watching.

  Millie felt a wash of embarrassment at not catching on sooner.

  They weren’t just in the interrogation room to talk. They were in there to question her.

  Millie tried to keep the hurt out of her voice as she relented.

  “What do you need to know that I haven’t already told the department?”

  It might have been her imagination, but she could have sworn the detective’s jaw hardened. Though the question that followed was a simple one.

  “Why do you think the note your brother left you six months ago was fake?”

  Millie couldn’t help it.

  She sighed. Not because she didn’t know the answer but because she’d already had this conversation with Detective Gordon. Which meant that the department must not have believed her answer.

  Would Foster?

  A part of Millie didn’t want to know.

  If he didn’t, then he was just like everyone else.

  That was something she couldn’t overlook, even after the brushes with danger they’d had together.

  “Millie?” he prodded. His golden hair and bright green eyes were harsher beneath the room’s hard light. “Can you tell me?”

  “Yes. I can and I will, again.” Her words were harsh too, but Foster was a stone wall. Unmoving and unfazed.

  Millie made an effort to soften in comparison, though not by a lot. The story she was about to tell was a long, emotional one.

  But it was also the only way to get to her reason.

  The reason she knew her brother was in trouble.

  “My dad once said that when he met my mom, for the first time, the entire world came into focus,” she began. “That up until then the world hadn’t been wrong, per se, it had just felt off. My mom was cheesier when she talked about them. She said that meeting my dad was like finding the part of her that had been missing, the part that made her whole. Basically they believed they were soul mates. And from what I can remember, I think I could believe that.”

  Millie paused, just enough to see if Foster planned on interjecting. Wondering why she was talking about her parents being in love, no doubt. Detective Gordon had fussed about it immediately when she’d first told him the story. Foster, however, nodded for her to continue. So, she did.

  “That love really carried over to Fallon and me when it came to my dad. He wanted to be, and was, involved in almost every part of our lives. Even when work got in the way, he made sure to always let us know he was there for us. See, he was an adjunct professor of biology at the local community college. He was a big believer in expanding the mind. ‘You should never stop trying to learn’ was a big motto of his.”

  Pain, old and profound, started to wake up within her chest. A monster stretching after its hibernation. Millie rolled her shoulders back, trying to physically distance herself from it.

  She knew from experience it wouldn’t work.

  Nothing really would.

  “When Fallon was eight he came home so upset,” she continued. “It was his first day of elementary school, and he’d found out that they weren’t teaching cursive anymore as part of their curriculum. You know, me as a thirteen-year-old didn’t get what the big deal was but my dad? He commiserated with Fallon and made him a Dean family promise. He’d teach Fallon cursive himself because you should never stop learning, you know?”

  This time Millie couldn’t help but shift her entire body. The cold from the room seeped deeper. It burrowed into her bones.

  “Dad decided to start teaching Fallon before his Wednesday night class. Since it was a small campus and everyone knew and loved my dad, no one ever really cared that sometimes he would pick us up after school and let us sit in on his class until it was finished. He just really loved spending time with us, even if it was just being in the same room as we did our homework.” Millie smiled. It didn’t last. “I was out of town on a field trip the afternoon that Jim Mallory decided to take an assault rifle to campus.”

  Tears pricked at her eyes already. Her throat started to burn. Millie continued anyway while Foster remained impassive.

  “He was angry and fast and made it to half of the science department classrooms before he was killed by an off-duty cop. In that time Dad took three bullets shielding Fallon, and he died before the ambulance was even en route.”

  Millie’s vision started to swim. Her chest was tight. Some memories destroyed you, even if they weren’t all yours.

  “What about Fallon? Was he injured?”

  Foster’s voice had lost some of the even edge it had when he’d started. It helped bring Millie back to the present.

  She cleared her throat and shook her head.

  “No, but the damage was more than done,” she continued. “It took twenty minutes for authorities to lock down and clear the campus. Fallon spent those twenty minutes holding my dad while he bled out. He wouldn’t even leave him when the EMTs came in. One of my dad’s colleagues had to physically carry him away so they could do their job.” Millie felt relief that that part of the story was done. She knew she could make it through the rest with no problem now. “My mom... Well, she never recovered. I mean we were all devastated, but Mom, she just shattered. I didn’t realize it until later, but she was just going through the motions of being a parent after that. She became more like a ghost who haunted the house. An echo of someone who loved us that faded even more every day. If it wasn’t for Fallon, I wouldn’t have started resenting her for it, but he was just a kid. A scared, traumatized kid who was trying to act like he was okay and his mom didn’t even care. I was only thirteen and barely knew how to be a teenager, let alone a parent, and so I did the only thing I could think of to distract him. I decided to teach him cursive.”

  Foster was at least more engaged than Detective Gordon had been at this point.

  “Did he like the idea?” he asked.

  Millie actual
ly laughed, her heart becoming lighter at the memory.

  “He thought it was the best thing ever,” she said. “Every night before bed we’d sit and write in his room until he got it. He likes art, so I think to him it was more like drawing than writing. After he mastered it, he was unstoppable. Every day until I went to college, he’d write me a note in nothing but cursive. That’s a lot of letters from me being thirteen to leaving at eighteen, and even after I first got to school he continued to write me these script-filled letters. I told him I didn’t expect him to keep it up, but he told me that if I took the time to teach him something, he’d take the time to use it. So, I got a letter every week while I was away. Until I didn’t.”

  She turned her gaze toward the two-way mirror, assuming the sheriff was there.

  “You can check the police reports about what happened next. Just like I told Detective Gordon.”

  Foster’s eyebrow rose in question.

  “What do you mean? What happened next?”

  Millie decided right then and there that this was the last time she ever told this story in its entirety. If they didn’t believe her? Well, that was their problem, not hers.

  “My mom tried to fill the hole in her heart by marrying a man named Steve Conway when I was eighteen. Two years later and Fallon stops writing me. One day I get suspicious of how he sounds on the phone, then the next day my mom calls and says he’s run away. Since he’d never done that before, I rush home and find him in one of his favorite spots in town. He had bruises all over him. You don’t have to be a detective to guess what good ole Steve had been up to.”

  “He was abusing Fallon.”

  Millie nodded. “Turns out, not only was it not the first time he’d run away, but he’d also gone to the hospital three times with mysterious injuries.” Millie was angry again. “I filed a report, but by then no one wanted to listen to Fallon. They assumed he was just some teen acting out and hating his stepdad because he wasn’t his real dad.”