He didn’t get out.
“You go straight to the department right now or so help me God I’ll send a manhunt after you two,” he yelled. “Got it?”
“Got it.”
Julian didn’t get a chance to ask what was wrong. The detective floored it after Caleb. Madi’s mother pulled up behind them, brow knit. She threw up her hand in confusion. Madi shrugged.
“Something happened,” Julian said. He steered them back onto the road and turned on the radio. “I don’t like this.”
“It seems to be a theme lately.”
Madi turned on the radio and searched until she was on the local station. The hair started to stand up on the back of her neck.
The Morning Rundown radio show with hosts Micah and Calhoun should have been rolling through the usual spiel with prank calls, talk of viral videos, relationship blunders and fart jokes. Instead, Micah’s high-pitched, nasal voice was strained.
“...avoid County Road 11. Take Jackson Road to the highway to get to Kilwin or reroute through Rockport Landing. Again, if you plan on using County Road 11, detour instead. The road has been shut down due to what appears to be a large motor vehicle fire. Authorities are currently blocking the road and trying to get a handle on the situation. Do not take County Road 11.”
Calhoun, his cohost, spoke in a more reserved fashion than her normal radio persona. A car fire didn’t seem to warrant the change.
“For those of you who have called in about it, thank you. We’ll be back after this commercial break.”
Madi tilted her head to the side a fraction, confused.
“Surely that’s not where Caleb and Miller are going,” she said. “County Road 11 is on the opposite side of town from us. The department is closer than we are. Plus, Kilwin’s volunteer fire station would be, too.”
“Maybe they went out on another call,” Julian pointed out. “Or maybe the deputies at the fire needed more help?”
Madi didn’t hear any conviction in his voice.
“Maybe.” She didn’t hear any conviction in hers, either.
When they got to the sheriff’s department, that niggling feeling of dread was confirmed. It was not as simple as not enough hands on deck or another call that needed their response.
Desmond met them at the front stairs. He was in one of his best suits, his black Stetson on and his cell phone in his hand. He was also rattled. It was a look that set Madi’s already-fraying nerves to ribbons. When he set eyes on Madi, the concern was palpable.
“Where were you just now?” he asked without segue.
Madi was taken aback by his demanding tone.
“I—I was at the ranch. Talking to Christian Miller. Why?”
Des sagged in relief. Which was telling in itself. He disliked Miller just as she did. The detective’s reappearance in their lives should have had more of an impact.
“Thank goodness,” he said. “I didn’t think you did it but was afraid you wouldn’t have an alibi this time.”
“Come again?” she asked just as Julian repeated, “This time?”
Des motioned them to follow him.
“I want to make sure as many people see you as possible, just in case. Declan said for us to meet in the conference room for the interviews but let’s go ahead and get in there now. Then I’ll explain.”
Their mother pulled up and with her they followed him inside the faded and chipped brick building with a collective and mounting worry. Declan was the sheriff; Caleb was a long-standing detective. Desmond might not have been law enforcement but his work and charm had made connections with almost everyone in town. Madi knew the faces that turned toward them as they passed. She’d been to their weddings, given their kids birthday presents, talked to them in the aisles at the grocery store, knew their embarrassing stories from adolescence and could give at least one fun fact about each. She knew the department and the people who worked inside its walls.
Yet as several pairs of eyes set on her, Madi had no idea what her friends were thinking.
What had happened?
The conference room was right off the bull pen, visible through the glass windows that lined the shared wall. Des didn’t close the blinds over them but he did turn his face away.
“What’s going on, Des?” their mother asked, hands wrapped around her cell phone like it was a lifeline. Madi fought the urge to wrap her own hand around Julian’s.
“Does it have to do with the car fire out on County Road 11?” Madi followed up.
Des nodded.
“Yes and no. It wasn’t just a car fire.” He placed his hat on the table in the center of the room. Madi sank into one of the chairs. Everyone else remained standing. “Carl Smith, the county coroner, was transporting Loraine’s body to Kilwin this morning. Lee Holloway, the junior detective working at the police department, was accompanying him. He made a distress call yelling that someone was trying to run them off the road.” Des paused and looked back at Madi. “He said it was a blonde woman.”
Madi felt her eyes widen.
“But there are more blonde women in this world than Madi,” Julian said. “They can’t think it was her anyway. I’m assuming this all happened while Detective Miller had an eye on us.”
“Which is the only good news about this whole situation,” Des continued. “Miller may hate us, but that hate can’t put Madi in two places at once.”
“What happened to Carl and the detective?” their mother asked. “Are they okay?”
Des’s face became even more grim.
“The van was engulfed last I heard...and there was a body inside. Not just Loraine’s. That’s all I overheard in here before someone said you all had pulled up.”
Madi shook her head.
“I don’t understand what’s going on. We went from normal to crazy in less than a day!”
Julian agreed with the sentiment.
“Whatever is happening, it’s nothing good.”
* * *
“OH GOD, I can’t believe you shot me!”
The man wrapped the strip of his shirt he’d torn off around the bullet hole in his hand. He’d already gotten sick just looking at it, never mind the pain. The man who had taken the shot was glaring at him above his duct tape gag. His look promised more than pain if he ever got loose from the cuffs around his wrists. Or the binding around him.
He wouldn’t.
And if he did? Well, where would he go?
“Make sure you wrap it up tight.”
The sweet voice often caught him off guard. It preceded a woman he believed was made from fire and steel. Looks were definitely deceiving with her.
But again, that was the point.
“Do you think they bought it?” he asked, trying to knot the cloth tighter.
The woman laughed. It was dark and calculated. How he loved the sound.
“They better have. I don’t want to stick my neck out anymore. This was the last big splash.” The smile crept across her lips, resembling a lioness preparing to go on a hunt. Despite the pain he was in, it rallied him. “But if they still don’t think Little Miss Perfect is capable of such horrors, then we’ll just have to convince them. Until then—”
She picked the gun up and walked over to their captive. He lashed against the ropes around him. There wasn’t anything he could really do beyond that.
“Have you heard the phrase ‘an eye for an eye’?” she asked. She walked her index and middle fingers down his chest. The duct tape muffled his anger. “It’s a really big thing for me, an eye for an eye. It’s a principle I learned at an early age. One I truly believe in. One that applies to everyone.” She stood back to full height, moved around his back and pressed the gun against the palm of his hand. He thrashed around again. It did nothing but make her smile grow. “No matter if they’re a young man wearing a badge or a pregnant innkeeper.”
Not even the duct tape could muffle the man’s scream.
Chapter Seven
Julian hung by the conference room door. His legs were stiff from standing in one spot but he wasn’t going to sit. The closest available chairs were in the lobby. That was too far away.
He wasn’t going to leave Madi. Even now with the door shut between them, Julian couldn’t help but feel uneasy. He wasn’t going to lengthen that distance.
“She’s a tough one, you know.” Dorothy Nash walked up with a small smile. She motioned to the door. “Madeline may look fragile on occasion but I tell you what, sometimes she gives all of my boys a run for their money.”
Julian hadn’t had time for a one on one with any of the Nashes, Madi included, since they’d made their way into the department. He knew it was only a matter of time before the pregnancy was brought up. Along with why he hadn’t been around through it. Still, he wasn’t going to be the one who dived into that topic first. Not with everything going on.
“That I don’t doubt,” he said.
Dorothy took the spot next to him, lining up her shoes inside the large square tile. After her statement and interview with another Kilwin PD detective named Devereux, she had moved to the sheriff’s personal office for privacy. Declan was at the scene with most of the department, but those left behind hadn’t made one peep of protest as she’d gone in and shut the door behind her. It was clear that, despite everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, it took more to lessen the respect for the Nash matriarch.
She crossed her arms over her chest and let out a long breath. They had been at the Wildman County Sheriff’s Department for several hours. Two of those had been spent waiting, wondering what was going on. Then Detective Devereux had shown up. Julian had read the tension in the man well before he spoke. Worry had folded a line into his forehead; his eyes had jumped around as he took them all in, unable to settle.
“Detective Holloway appears to have been taken by force by whoever attacked the coroner’s van,” he had said, barely able to hide the anger and concern there. “Our only suspect is a blonde woman.” He had focused on Madi, and Julian felt relief when there didn’t seem to be any malice toward her. “Detective Miller puts all of you within eyesight before and during the incident.” He’d pulled out a small spiral notebook. “Does anyone have any information they’d like to share before individual interviews?”
The room had quieted as Julian, Madi, Dorothy and Desmond had shaken their heads. No one knew what was going on, local or not.
Past that, their interviews had started with Dorothy before ending with Madi, who was still inside now. Julian was glad Detective Miller wasn’t around. His questions might have delved further into their lie. As far as Julian could read through Detective Devereux’s body language, the investigator believed what he had to say.
Julian hoped the same went for Madi.
“Madi said you were here before?” Dorothy’s words were low but pointed. “I mean here in Overlook?”
“Yes ma’am, but then I had to leave.” His answer was curt, but he didn’t know the extent of what Dorothy was privy to when it came to Madi and the pregnancy. A thought that made his skin crawl. Everyone here had known about her pregnancy while he had been clueless. What if he had decided to keep driving instead of taking his detour?
Would Madi have been sent to prison?
Would he have ever had a chance to meet his daughter?
These questions had been springing up too often in the last few hours. He was going to talk to Madi at length about everything when things died down. That was for sure. Until then he wanted to keep all of his cards close to his chest.
“You had to go back home?”
Julian shook his head. So Dorothy didn’t know about him being in the military. Which meant Madi hadn’t told her mother about him.
Or the fact that she’d been the one to end things between them. No matter how short their time together had been.
“I had to get things squared away for a job after my next deployment ended, which it just did.”
Dorothy’s eyes widened in surprise at the information. She didn’t voice it. Instead she let out another sigh.
“Well, I suppose we’re all lucky for your sense of timing,” she said. “Madi and the baby don’t need this stress. No one does.”
Her expression darkened and the conversation stalled out. Julian was good at silences, so he lounged in theirs until, finally, the door behind them opened. Detective Devereux with his flame-red hair came into view, looking more world-weary than he had when he’d first walked into the department.
He wasn’t a local in Overlook but he knew to address Dorothy with respect. Another deviation from what might have been had Miller grilling them.
“For now you all are free to go, but I’d appreciate it if no one left town and you all kept your phones on you just in case we need to get ahold of you.” He moved out of the doorway so Madi could make her way out, too. She smiled but it was tight—channeling her customer service skills, Julian had no doubt. Devereux didn’t care one way or the other. His gaze swept the room behind them. He found no relief in what he saw. “You can return back to your home,” he said to Madi. “We have everything we needed from the crime scene.” Then he was charging across the room, phone up to his ear.
Julian felt for the man. He was worried about the missing detective—his colleague, most likely his friend. He also knew the overwhelming worry of leaving a man behind. How it could drive someone to great lengths to get him back.
Which was why Julian directed Madi and her mother out of the department and to their vehicles as fast as he could. It was easy to see the department and Kilwin PD were looking for someone to blame. He didn’t want that urgency to make them point fingers at someone they shouldn’t.
Still, both women hesitated in the parking lot. Madi cut her glance between Julian and her mother.
“How you doing, Ma?”
Dorothy surprised him by cracking a smile.
“Oh, you know me. Focusing on one thing I can do and not all the things I can’t.”
Madi rubbed her hand across the older woman’s back. Julian had noticed the tension between them earlier and hadn’t been surprised it was there. Dorothy had been a sore topic when he was at Hidden Hills all those months ago. Yet for that one moment, he saw nothing but love between the two.
“Dad might have talked a lot, but that was my favorite piece of advice.” She turned her smile to Julian. “There’s never enough time to do everything, so focus on the one thing you can.”
He nodded. “Definitely good advice.”
Madi dropped her hand, along with her smile. She glanced at the department behind them.
“I need to go back to the inn and see how everything looks,” she said, voice hard. Resolute. “If it’s all good then I’ll call Ray and, if he’s willing, tell him to come back to his cabin.”
A look Julian couldn’t place flashed across Dorothy’s face but she nodded.
“Let me know what he says. I can help.”
They hugged and Dorothy said goodbye. She hung back where only Julian could hear her. Her words held more of a wallop than he cared to admit.
“You make sure nothing happens to my baby, Mr. Mercer. Yours, too.”
* * *
MADI FELT DISMAL. Take away the stress and confusion of what had happened to Loraine and the missing detective, and take away the mountain of handsome that was the man driving her home, and there was still a fact that blared like an unending alarm. She was almost seven months pregnant.
Her ankles were swollen. She was hot and hungry. Halfway through the questioning she’d caught a whiff of Julian’s cologne and spent the next half hour trying to not be as turned on as she was. But, as she’d been learning the last few months, being pregnant was a wild,
unpredictable ride. It was marked with things such as hormones running rampant, love that knew no bounds and stretch marks. My goodness, the stretch marks.
Now as they stood in the doorway of her bedroom at Hidden Hills, Madi waited for her hormones to knock her down. To pull out tears that would rival the creek flowing through her property. Yet nothing came.
“She was in your bedroom?” Julian asked, moving past her to the coffee table in the living space. It was cleaned off.
“Yeah, on the bed.”
Madi cringed as the image of the body thrown across the foot of the bed flashed through her mind. She moved back to the hallway like she could escape it and what had happened. Julian went in the opposite direction. He stepped into the bedroom and cracked the door behind him. Madi didn’t try to see around it.
After a minute or two he came out, done with his inspection.
“Uh, how attached are you to your mattress?”
Madi cringed.
“I didn’t even think about it with everything going on. Is it that bad?”
“Let’s just say that I’d feel more comfortable getting that thing out of there while you’re somewhere else.” He shook his head. “It’s not pretty.”
Madi sighed.
“I don’t think I could sleep on it again, anyways.” Anger surged from the tips of her toes out to the roots of her hair. It was so sudden and violent that she took a step farther back into the hallway, as if her body were trying to keep Julian from seeing that side of her before her brain had the chance to stop the words that poured from her mouth. “Whoever killed Loraine did it somewhere else and then brought her here! To my home, into my bed, and for what? To make it look like I killed her? Why? Why do this?” That anger burned holes in her calm. Tears leaked through. She balled her hands. “I didn’t like Loraine but I didn’t want that. Why would someone do this?”
Credible Alibi Page 6