If I Should Die

by Allison Brennan

  His brother had cleaned up Sean’s background, but it wasn’t lost on Sean that Duke was more than willing to tap into Sean’s expertise and old network when necessary. It was only when Sean wanted to do it that Duke balked, fearing his brother would slip back into his old bad habits. Bad habits? That was an understatement.

  Looking back toward the trucks, he extrapolated where the shooter had to have been situated, then walked behind the tree he suspected was ground zero. Scanning the ground, he circled outward. The bullet casings could have been ejected quite a distance, depending on the type of gun, the wind, and the angle of the shooter.

  He found a casing about ten feet from the base of the tree, on the right side.

  Pulling tweezers from one of Lucy’s evidence bags he’d grabbed when they’d returned to the truck, he used them to pick up the brass.

  A .270-caliber Winchester round. Very common among hunting rifles, particularly for deer and other large game. Here in the Adirondacks probably every household had a rifle, and half of them fired .270 bullets.

  But it wasn’t hunting season.

  He dropped the casing into the bag.

  Tim said, “I called Duke last night.”

  Sean barely controlled his flash of anger. “You called my brother, why?”

  “To fill him in on what is going on. I’ve known Duke nearly twenty years; I wanted his advice.”

  Of all people—dammit, his brother? For years Sean had been working to get out from under Duke’s thumb, to run the East Coast branch of the California-based RCK without unnecessary interference and unwanted advice.

  “And what did he say?” Sean asked, though what he wanted to ask was How did I screw up? Because no matter how much Duke said he trusted him, he had never truly stopped second-guessing his little brother’s decisions.

  “He said he’d have done everything exactly as you’ve done. Also, that he’d tap into other contacts for the background checks your partner is running. He told me to have you call him if you needed anything.”

  Sean swallowed uneasily. He hadn’t expected that.

  “But,” Tim continued, “I’m not so sure about any of this anymore. How did anyone even know you and Lucy were at the mine?”

  “That’s why we’re upping the ante,” Sean said, though he didn’t have a firm plan in place. He spotted another casing, three feet from the first. He put it in the bag.

  “What’s your plan?” Tim asked.

  “We’ll talk at the lodge. I have a few details to work out.”

  Meaning he didn’t know what the hell he was doing, but he wasn’t going to sit around and wait for the shooter to come after him.

  It was time to go back to the Lock & Barrel, look everyone in the eye, and declare war.

  FOURTEEN

  Lucy paced the short length of Tim Hendrickson’s living room in the small house next to the Spruce Lake lodge. She’d been livid that it’d taken two hours for Deputy Weddle to arrive after the shooting, but nearly exploded when he focused on their excursion into the mine rather than the attack.

  “Someone shot at us,” she repeated. How long was he going to ignore the more serious crime of attempted murder?

  “We’ll get to that,” he said, “but first I want to know why you went to the mine when it’s a possible crime scene.”

  “When you were here yesterday, you gave no indication that the missing body was a priority, and there was no police barrier blocking access to the mine.”

  “It’s in the middle of the woods,” Weddle said. “I didn’t think I needed to tell people to keep out. The sign near the mine shaft says the same thing.”

  She bit back the urge to explain the difference to him. “We didn’t disturb anything,” she said with forced calm. This cop brought out the worst in her.

  Tim leaned forward from his chair at the table across the room. “Deputy, my guests could have been killed. This has all gotten out of control.”

  “There’s nothing that tells me there’s a connection between the guy with the rifle and the vandalism you’ve been having,” Weddle said. “For all you know it could have been a hunter and he didn’t even know you were there.”

  “That doesn’t explain the note,” Tim said.

  Lucy glanced at Sean. He sat on the couch watching the deputy with a deceptively casual expression. He’d been so angry after finding the sniper’s note in their truck, and uncharacteristically silent after Weddle arrived. She forced herself to stop pacing, but she couldn’t sit.

  “I’ll take it to the sheriff and see what he thinks,” Weddle said, “but at this point, we have more important issues to discuss, such as interfering with my investigation.”

  “What investigation?” she snapped, unable to keep the sarcasm from her tone.

  They’d decided not to mention she’d picked up three of the maggots they’d found. She felt uncomfortable keeping the information from a cop, but he hadn’t taken her seriously, and she didn’t trust him. His attitude today told her they’d made the right choice. She’d already packaged up the bugs to ship to a lab once she figured out exactly where to send them for the fastest, most accurate analysis.

  “There were strands of hair on the rock,” Lucy continued, “and the maggots I’d seen in the woman’s mouth were in the tunnel opening, right where the cart had been. It’s pretty clear someone used the cart to move the body.”

  Weddle looked ill as she spoke, and Lucy was silently pleased. Childish, perhaps, but this cop wasn’t making anything easy. She’d been around law enforcement officers her entire life and expected them to do the job; most did. Weddle was one of the few who seemed both clueless and incompetent.

  “I ran you both. You live in Washington, D.C., not Boston,” Weddle said.

  Lucy frowned. “Boston? We never said we lived in Boston.”

  “You said you were friends of Tim Hendrickson from Boston.”

  “You know what they say about ‘assume,’ ” Sean spoke up for the first time.

  Weddle didn’t get the insult. He continued. “And you, Rogan, should have told me you’re a licensed private investigator. You’re just on vacation?”

  “Yes,” Sean said curtly. “When we found out about the vandalism, we told Tim we’d help him get to the bottom of the situation.”

  “And found a dead body.” His voice dripped with sarcasm.

  Lucy exclaimed, “The body was there! I told you there is evidence, but it needs to be collected immediately to avoid any more degradation. The larvae need to be collected as soon as possible and sent to a lab. They’ll be able to dissect them and detect human DNA, to prove that they grew inside a dead body, and possibly yield enough DNA evidence to identify the victim.”

  “Ms. Kincaid, I appreciate your diligence, but you need to leave this investigation to us. You tampered with evidence by returning to the mine. We may be a small county, but we’re not hicks and we know what we’re doing. You should have told me you worked at a morgue.”

  She had left her position three months before, but evidently her official records hadn’t caught up with her status. She didn’t correct him, but said instead, “Then you should believe me. And the fact that someone shot at us—they may have been trying to scare us away so they could destroy that evidence!”

  “Which you’ve given them ample time to do since you breached the crime scene.”

  “Now you’re calling it a crime scene?” She began to pace again. She hated confrontation, but couldn’t seem to stop her anger from spilling out. “You’re missing the point! Someone shot at us! I don’t know if it’s related to the dead body or the vandalism, but I don’t like being shot at.”

  “That wouldn’t have happened if you didn’t go back to the mine,” Weddle snapped.

  Lucy clenched her fists, and Sean rose from the couch and put his hand on her arm, halting her movement. Usually she was the one who tried to calm Sean down.

  “Deputy,” Sean said, “you’re out of line.”

  “No. You and Ms. Kincaid
need to stand down. Both the arson and the dead body are police business.” He, too, rose and stared at them, his face flushed with anger. Unjustified, as far as Lucy was concerned. “If I see either of you interfering again, I will arrest you.”

  “With all due respect,” Sean said, though there was no respect in his tone, “Tim hired me to stop the vandalism and protect his property. I’m not backing off.”

  “You haven’t done a very good job.”

  Now it was Sean who looked ready to deck the cop. Lucy took a deep breath and said, “Are you going to collect the evidence, or do you think I should call the FBI?”

  Weddle’s face reddened. “It’s our jurisdiction. We’ll decide if we bring in the Feds.” He eyed Sean. “I have no problem with you playing mall cop on the Hendrickson property, but you’d better watch yourself if you leave these grounds, because my department doesn’t want your help or interference.”

  Weddle swaggered out, brushing against Sean, as if daring him to fight. Tim looked stunned at the exchange but followed the cop out, and Sean slammed the front door behind them, causing the windows in the small house to rattle.

  “He’s the epitome of every reason I hate cops!”

  Lucy winced. Sean didn’t mean it literally, but she knew he had issues with law enforcement, many of them justified from his personal experience. And Lucy was no Pollyanna when it came to law enforcement—there were good and bad cops, without a doubt. Her older brother Connor had been forced to quit the police force when he turned against a corrupt cop. Her sister-in-law Kate had been unjustly accused by the FBI of getting her partner killed. But most police officers did the job right and they did it well.

  Sean ran both hands through his hair. “I don’t trust that cop. We have no idea who the players are. For all we know, he could be involved with trying to shut the lodge down. He could have killed that woman or shot at us.”

  “Quite a conspiracy theory you’ve got going there,” Lucy said.

  “You can’t trust him.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Not all cops wear white hats, Lucy,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken.

  “You think I don’t know that?” Why was Sean so confrontational with her? Because of his deep-seated animosity toward law enforcement? “I know exactly how you feel,” she continued. “You’ve made it perfectly clear. The world isn’t black and white; no one is a saint. The bad cops on the street make me sick, but most cops aren’t like that. They might not bend the rules enough to suit you and you might not like the restrictions they have to work under, but take away the rules and what do you have? Vigilante justice. And we know where that leads.”

  “Lucy, I’m—”

  She cut him off. “And how are you going to feel about me when I’m wearing a badge?”

  She was so angry—at Weddle, at the sniper, but mostly at Sean, because deep down he’d scratched at a doubt she still couldn’t articulate: would she be able to follow the strict rules required of the FBI? When could they be bent? If Spruce Lake’s Sheriff’s Department didn’t do anything about the missing dead woman, could Lucy let it go? Or would she break the law to see true justice done?

  “How I feel about you won’t ever change, whether you have a badge or not.” Sean rubbed her arms. “I shouldn’t have to tell you that.”

  She swallowed uneasily. “Maybe you don’t realize how hostile you are toward authority.” But her anger, and deep-seated worry about Sean’s attitude, began to fade.

  “This is a ridiculous conversation. We agree that Weddle is an asshole cop and is either incompetent or guilty of something. So why are we arguing?”

  She hesitated, torn between forcing Sean to address his issues and letting it slide to keep the peace. Sean took that moment to extend the olive branch.

  He stepped closer and held her face in his hands. “I wish I’d never agreed to help Tim. We need time together, alone.” He studied her eyes, wanting her support and affirmation.

  It felt as if Sean had been in her life for years, but it had been only three months since they’d grown intimate, and they rarely had any time alone together. He knew everything about her past—but what did she really know about Sean’s history? He’d had issues with authority ever since he’d been expelled from Stanford after hacking into his professor’s computer to expose him as a pedophile, but that wasn’t the whole story. There was much about Sean’s past she didn’t know.

  Nevertheless, Lucy absolutely trusted Sean’s deep-seated drive to help those in trouble. “You couldn’t turn your back on somebody who needed you,” Lucy said, “and we must do what we can for Tim and Adam.”

  “We’re good, right? You and me? That’s my main concern.”

  He looked worried. Sean had told her that he needed her more than she needed him, and she didn’t believe it. But for the first time, she saw fear of loss in his eyes.

  “Lucy, I’m sorry I overstepped.”

  She shook her head. “I overreacted. We agree that Weddle is a problem. Do you really think he could be involved in what’s going on with Tim?”

  “I need to call in some help.” He smiled, though the humor didn’t reach his eyes. “You probably thought you’d never hear me say that.”

  “You’re right.” She smiled back, grimly.

  “I suspect the sniper will try again, when he realizes we’re not leaving, I need Patrick up here to watch our backs.”

  “What about the bullet casings?”

  “I’ll send those to RCK West. Duke has an interest in this case; he’ll be happy to run them.”

  “What about the missing persons reports?”

  “Patrick is already working on it; we’re not going to let that go. I promise.”

  Lucy nodded. “I’m going to the cabin to take a shower. I still feel dirty from the mine.”

  “I’m going to Canton to overnight the casings to Duke.”

  “Why Canton? Isn’t that nearly an hour away?”

  “I’ll stop by the Sheriff’s Department and follow up on the vandalism report Tim made, check on the arson investigation. Maybe file a report against Weddle. Do you think there’s a crime for being an asshole?”

  She tried to conceal her grin. “Sean—” she said in warning.

  “I won’t get into trouble, but the only way to find out if Weddle actually reported the vandalism is if I check it out in person. I’ll follow up on the evidence in the mine as well, make sure the sheriff knows it’s down there, find out if Weddle was blowing smoke up my ass about a detective coming in to investigate. You may find this hard to believe, but I can be diplomatic when necessary.”

  “True. But there’s a reason Patrick usually handles law enforcement when you’re working a case.”

  “I’ll be fine.” He hugged her, but his mind was elsewhere.

  Tim walked in and said, “I don’t know why Deputy Weddle acted that way. I tried to talk to him, but he’s adamant that we’re to stay away from the mine.”

  “It’s on your property,” Sean said, taking Lucy’s hand.

  “My property surrounds it, but the mine itself is still on a ninety-nine-year lease to the Kelley Mining Company. Though the mine used to be in my grandmother’s family, the estate sold it long ago.”

  “We should find out who owns the mine, what they have planned, what it’s worth. It could be they have plans for the area that your resort would hinder.”

  Tim looked skeptical. “Certainly nothing’s been going on with the mine since I came back from Boston.”

  Lucy shook her head. “Except murder.”

  FIFTEEN

  I kept quiet after my pet cop told me what had happened at the Kelley Mine. I didn’t know what made me angrier: that Tim Hendrickson’s friend was a private investigator or that someone had tried to kill the two interlopers.

  I’d taken over my brother’s office, such as it was. Made a few aesthetic adjustments to suit my taste, rearranged the furniture so no one could sneak up behind me through the door or window. Ian had arri
ved that morning and watched from the corner. He didn’t like Tyler Weddle any more than I did.

  “Who fired the shots?” I asked my cop.

  Tyler’s Adam’s apple bobbed unsteadily. “I-I don’t know. You made it clear—”

  “Yes, I made it perfectly clear that you all were to stand down. I’m giving the Hendricksons time to do the right thing, and I’m confident they will. The fire was a dumb move, but what do I expect from idiots?”

  I didn’t bother waiting for an answer. “It’s Friday. We have two days”—I looked at the clock—“just under fifty-eight hours to make sure the resort project is dead. Now a private investigator is snooping around. You think shooting at him is going to scare him off?”

  “I didn’t—”

  “And what is this so-called evidence left in the mine?”

  “The girlfriend works at a morgue, apparently. She noticed things no one else would have noticed.”

  “What things did she fucking notice?”

  Tyler shifted his feet. He knew better than to sit without an invitation, and I hadn’t issued him one. “Some hair and, um, some bugs she said were on the body.”

  “And were they from the bitch’s body?”

  He actually turned green. “Yeah.”

  “You didn’t clean up your mess very well, did you?”

  “It was Jimmy—”

  I put up my hand. I wasn’t going to discuss Jimmy with anyone. He was the thorn in my side. I couldn’t kill him and I couldn’t let him live. Not when everything I’d been working toward for six long years was finally happening in two days. I swear, that bitch was haunting me from her grave. I should have cut her up and fed her to the pigs like they did in the good old days. I might just do that to Jimmy. And Tyler. Hell, I should fucking buy stock in a hog farm!

  “You were supposed to make sure the job was done, and you let him go down there alone. That makes it your fault and your responsibility.” I stared him down. He was sweating. That made me as happy as I could be considering the mess in front of me. “What, are you scared of the mine? Of the dark? Ian, look at the big, bad cop who’s scared of the dark.”