Colton's Fugitive Family
Page 10
He must have kissed her to make her aware of the problem. Warn her. She could not, under any circumstances, fall for him.
“Demi?”
She focused on Brayden.
“I’m okay. Everything is okay. I need to find that missing gun.”
Brayden hesitated, unconvinced. “I’ll let it pass for now, Demi, but if he so much as—”
Lucas planted his hand on Brayden’s chest and pushed him out of the way a little, nothing too forceful, just a message. “Relax. I’m on your side.”
“Since when?” Brayden muttered.
“That’s enough. Please. I’m up against murder charges, you two. Could you please get along?”
Judging by the look on both faces, their answer was no.
* * *
Devlin lived in the upscale part of town in a luxury condominium complex a few blocks from Main Street. He owned a unit two-story unit with a sizable balcony and two walls of windows with views of the Coyote Mountains. The guard at the gate let them in after they’d announced who they would see. Not much of a guard.
Now, well after dark, Lucas walked with Demi and Queenie toward the stairwell of Devlin’s condo building, he with his hood up over his head, and she in her wig and sunglasses. Queenie would pass as a pet. He’d scoped out the security already. The guard did regular rounds and wouldn’t be near here for another hour. Cameras might capture them entering the stairwell, but in disguise they wouldn’t be identified and wouldn’t be noticed until the morning.
On his way home yesterday, he’d stopped by and followed a guard into the control center. He’d used his credentials as a deputized K-9 bounty hunter to ask them some questions relating to the ongoing Groom Killer investigation. Queenie had been with him, and the guards had been all too willing to help as much as they could. Lucas had begun by asking each of them about the times of each murder and if they had seen Devlin. They said they’d reviewed video at the request of other officers and hadn’t seen Devlin during the times the murders took place. Video surveillance had recorded him coming home late at night most nights, not only the nights when murders occurred. Lucas had asked if they had seen him themselves on those late nights and they explained that only two guards worked nights and the control center wasn’t manned during the night but the recordings were reviewed every morning.
Lucas picked his way into Devlin’s condo.
“Residue,” he said to Queenie, who immediately set out to search for gunpowder residue scents.
The lower level was an open floor plan. A spacious kitchen had a gas stove in a kitchen island that faced the living room with a large leather sectional and a big screen television hanging above a gas fireplace. There was also a bathroom, along with a double door leading to an office. It appeared the bedrooms were all upstairs.
Demi searched the bookshelf in the living room while Lucas went into the office. The desktop computer had already been searched. Devlin had not used the computer during the times of the murders and there had been nothing found linking him to any of the crimes, other than communications with Hayley.
Lucas noticed a laptop case he hadn’t seen before and had not seen reported in the reports relating to any searches. He saw Demi head upstairs for the bedrooms as he opened the case. He booted the computer and easily accessed the folders. He spent several minutes going through files, not finding much. Devlin didn’t seem to use this computer for anything other than work. Then he found a file full of photos of Hayley. Nash Maddox, another K-9 cop, reported catching Devlin looking at a photo of Hayley. Hunter had found the room upstairs filled with all things Hayley Patton and a storage device that further proved his obsession.
Demi joined him in the office. “I found these in his nightstand drawer. She held a pair of underwear. “And this.” She held a bra in her other hand. “Must be new since the condo was last searched.”
“I found the photos Nash reported.”
“No weapons anywhere.”
“Let’s wait for Queenie to finish.”
Lucas hadn’t expected to find actual weapons. Police had already searched his condo and Devlin wouldn’t be that stupid. Lucas was more after anything Devlin may have left after the searches were conducted or something he’d forgotten and hadn’t yet been found. Devlin may have returned to his condo while he was on the run. Police weren’t watching the place like they had when he’d first become a suspect.
Queenie barked.
Lucas and Demi hurried upstairs to the room where Devlin had created a shrine to Hayley. Everything had been taken for evidence. Queenie sat in the closet looking up at the attic hatch.
Lucas dragged a chair into the closet and stood to open the hatch. He used his small flashlight to peer inside. As he turned in a half circle, he found a shoebox. Bringing that down, he gave Queenie her reward and put the box on the bed.
“There’s gunpowder residue in here.”
“How was this missed before?”
“Maybe it wasn’t.” Lucas opened the lid and found some receipts inside and some other pieces of paper. Notes. Also inside were several spent ammunition shells.
“Let’s go through this at your cabin,” Demi said. “We can return it if it ends up being real evidence.”
They were already operating in secret, without the RRPD involved, so returning anything they might find seemed their best option.
Leaving the condo, Lucas checked the stairwell for any signs of people. No one moved up or down the stairs. He led Demi down to the ground level, Queenie at his side, and walked toward the rental. On the way, he noticed a car he hadn’t seen when they’d arrived. As they neared, he spotted a man sitting behind the wheel. It was a different car than the one Devlin owned, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t find another one.
He kept his hand close to his weapon and saw that Demi had noticed the suspicious driver, as well. She veered away from the vehicle, taking a long route to the rental. There, she got inside and Lucas drove from the parking lot onto the street, heading toward Main.
The car left the parking lot behind them and now tailed.
Lucas drove in the opposite direction of his cabin. He turned onto Main Street and then drove around one block to let the other driver know they were aware of him following. That car kept going straight when Lucas drove back toward Main Street.
“I don’t think that was Devlin,” Demi said.
Lucas didn’t either, which meant whoever had parked outside Devlin’s house must have been a police detective on watch for Devlin.
Chapter 8
Lucas had to go into work the next day, so Demi would have the day alone with Wolf. She hadn’t been alone all day since she’d left her cabin and was reminded of how lonely she had been. She found more Christmas decorations and entertained Wolf by putting them up. Garland on the mantel. A table centerpiece that looked old enough to have come from his mother. She and he shared that, as well. They’d each lost a mother.
How much of his determination to never fall in love had to do with that? He claimed it was how his father had suffered that had fueled most of his decision, but what about how he’d felt growing up without his mother? He’d grown up learning how family life was with only a father. He didn’t really know much about what it was like to grow up with a mother.
Demi did. She couldn’t imagine not having had her mother through her childhood and teen years. That had to have had some kind of an effect on Lucas.
She passed the front door on her way to the kitchen and saw the gate communications monitor come to life. The camera was activated by movement. A car drove by very slowly.
Demi stopped and walked to the panel to watch. She could see the bumper of the car through the trees. She saw nothing else, but the car seemed to have parked along the side of the road up from the turn into Lucas’s driveway. The driver must have seen the camera.
What would they do now?
Getting her jacket, she left the house with her gun and walked down the lane to the gate. Keeping out of sight of the road, she walked into the trees, her booted feet sinking into the shaded snow. At the fence, she could see the car. A dark blue sedan, the windows were tinted and the engine wasn’t running.
She memorized the license plate number and went a short distance along the fence before she spotted a man walking off the highway and into the trees. He wore a beanie and sunglasses. He had the same build as Devlin, but his bulky jacket and hair hidden by the hat made it difficult to tell.
Demi took cover behind a tree and watched him look up at the fence. The twelve-foot-high iron barrier with coiled barbed wire would be a challenge to climb. He seemed to have decided the same and headed back toward his vehicle. When he made a U-turn on the highway and drove away, she jogged back up to the cabin. Lucas considered his property impenetrable but he had no motion detectors along the perimeter. Some wire cutters would take care of the barbed wire. Climbing twelve feet wouldn’t be easy but it could be done.
* * *
Lucas entered the training center. If the agility course had cleared enough, he’d start with that. He took Queenie through the administration area, greeting coworkers on the way to the back. The dog tugged on her lead more than usual. She knew where they were going. Queenie loved the agility course. He also spent a fair amount of time training her in air-scenting to search for the lost or missing persons. She was an excellent tracker in missing-person cases. Ground and air were her specialties. She’d found Alzheimer patients before and responded to his verbal commands, answering with a bark and standing still at the location of something significant.
Noticing a couple of officers look at him, he wondered if he was imagining their suspicion. Lying violated his moral compass. Even though it was for the good, keeping Demi a secret bothered him. His fellow duty men stood for honor and justice. He hated betraying them. But there were some who would see Demi jailed based on hard evidence. He satisfied his morality with the fact that, if he let that happen, an innocent woman would be arrested.
Outside, he entered the fenced area and saw no one else in the arena. The snow had melted enough to do the agility training session. He’d do variable terrain later, an important part of practicing her expertise. No surface deterred her. She could track on gravel, dirt, vegetation or in urban areas. She could also pick out a criminal in a lineup by scent alone.
He might be a proud papa, but she really was an amazing animal. He sometimes thought she understood English—beyond his verbal commands.
Removing her leash, he gestured for her to sit beside him. She did and waited for his go-ahead. Spaced sixteen feet apart, four sets of obstacles made up the hurdles. On his hand signal, she began. The first was a plastic barrier painted like a brick wall. Queenie cleared that while he moved along beside her. She sailed into the group of white picket fences, wagging her tail when she finished and then the motion stopped as she approached the open frame. She leaped through and ran into a turn, easily maneuvering over a chain link fence. Next was a board jump.
At his voice command, Queenie jumped six feet over the first and lowest of the boards, which progressively grew higher until she cleared the last. With a quick and graceful transition, she reached the shrub jump and finished.
At his command she came to sit beside him. He gave her a few tiny treats with a “Good girl.”
Next he took her to the catwalk. Queenie sat beside him again and waited. He signaled and she climbed an angled ladder to a platform and then waited halfway across for Lucas to give the go-ahead to finish down the other side.
Last was the crawl and then the A-frame. Lucas asked her to sit before beginning each one, and when she completed her exercise, he rewarded her with a rub and a few pats.
“Good girl.”
Queenie hadn’t lost her edge. She completed the training like a pro and with a tongue-hanging smile as she came to sit before him. Lucas spotted an officer in uniform watching him from the other side of the gate.
A five-foot-nine dark-haired man with blue eyes, Brian Miller wasn’t part of the K-9 unit. Something must have brought him here from the sheriff’s office. Brian had a wife and two sons, and rumor had it that he lived beyond his means and preferred to go out with his friends rather than spend time with his family. He didn’t strike Lucas as one of the best examples of a good cop.
Lucas took Queenie out of the training area. The sun had sunk lower in the sky, but at least it was clear.
“Weather cleared up nice,” Brian said. “A little cool.”
Lucas wondered if he went for the small talk to alleviate the pressure of what he’d really come here to say. “Yeah, it sure did. What brings you by?”
“I heard you got a lead on where Demi may have gone. Something about a cabin deeded to a woman around the same time she vanished?”
“I checked out all new rentals and purchases in a fifty mile radius from Red Ridge and checked them all. Just got back.”
“What about the one with the deeded cabin? Dead end?”
“Yes.” He hoped this man that he barely knew wouldn’t keep asking questions.
“I checked that out, too. The woman’s name was stolen. Did you know that?”
Great. Lucas wondered if anyone would uncover that. He already had. That’s why he’d driven there to find out if the woman was Demi. “Yes, but she wasn’t Demi.” There would be no way for him to learn it had been Demi at the cabin unless they did fingerprint or DNA analysis. Lucas didn’t think there were enough believers in Demi’s guilt left to go to those lengths.
The cop stared at him, doubting. “Why didn’t you turn her in?”
“She wasn’t Demi.”
“But she stole someone’s identity.”
“She wasn’t Demi,” he repeated more sternly. This guy wasn’t a threat to him. He was a rookie, probably trying to make an impression on his boss by reaching. What did he think he could do?
Ordinarily Lucas would not have let a person guilty of a crime go free. Identify theft made a lot of people suffer unnecessarily. But Demi had not harmed anyone with her theft. He told himself not to feel bad about deceiving everybody.
“The woman’s identity she stole was a deceased woman,” Lucas said.
“So you just let her go?”
“I never apprehended her. It wasn’t her I was looking for.”
The cop eyed him in that distrustful way again. “You think Demi is innocent. Everybody thinks she is. She isn’t.”
Lucas didn’t argue, hoping Miller would calm down and let him get on his way. At his side, Queenie sat and looked up at him with soft, blinking eyes as though she understood.
To his dismay, and maybe Queenie’s, Brian’s face reddened and his mouth twitched. His brow lowered a fraction and his gaze hardened.
“Her name was written in blood at your brother’s crime scene,” Brian almost sneered.
How could Lucas get rid of this kid? Miller had to be five years younger than him. “Devlin could have done that to throw off investigators.”
“What about her necklace and that witness?”
“Devlin could have planted it and the witness had a rap sheet a mile long.” Not to mention witnesses had a tendency to end up murdered after they made those claims. The policeman also had to know that another witness had confessed to being paid to lie by a man who sounded like Devlin. But that was all circumstantial. Lucas and Demi needed hard evidence proving Devlin’s guilt.
“Did you really come here to give me a hard time because you aren’t convinced Demi is innocent?” Lucas asked.
“The evidence...”
“Was planted. Go back to work. Come
, Queenie.” Lucas walked to the door.
“You’re making a mistake.” The rookie cop followed. “A murder weapon was found at a property belonging to Devlin but who’s to say Demi Colton didn’t plant that while on the run?”
“Give it up, Brian.” Lucas walked with tile-eating strides through the building.
* * *
When Demi heard Fenwick Colton had arranged a public meeting at the Red Ridge Police Department K-9 Center, she insisted on going. Everyone would be there and she knew it would be a risk, but she had to know what Fenwick had to say. His daughter, Demi’s cousin Layla, had gone through a lot because of him. Devlin’s father, Hamlin Harrington, who’d been engaged to Layla as part of a plot to save failing Colton Energy, would be there, as well. Why had Fenwick asked him to attend? It might have something to do with the Groom Killer case, given Hamlin was Devlin’s father.
Lucas had argued against her going, but she came up with an ingenious disguise—to go with Lucas as his newest flashy girlfriend. They would say they were having dinner right afterward. She’d used makeup to change the appearance of her eyebrows and lips, and already had brown contacts and a silky, long black wig. With fake diamond jewelry and extra padding to appear bustier and fuller in the butt, she didn’t look anything like herself. She wore a sexy black dress and high heels. Look out, Mrs. Doubtfire!
The next problem was finding someone to watch Wolf. Brayden would attend the meeting along with all the other officers. The natural choice had been Lucas’s brother Vincent and his secret fiancée, Valeria. They had been happy to oblige.
Demi wondered if he’d given in to her insistence on going with him because he wasn’t completely convinced she’d be arrested even if everyone found out she was back in town and living with Lucas.
Lucas kept looking at her. As they walked to the front doors of the center, she caught him eyeing her breasts and legs. He’d probably taken a good look at her rear, as well. Her ire flared because he preferred women who looked like this false version. Demi was no model. She was attractive but she did not dress like an advertisement for beauty.