Atonement

by Winter Austin

  “You’re a sniper?” His gaze never wavered.

  “Yes.”

  “And where did you get your training?”

  “The marines.”

  That got a reaction. His eyebrows lifted.

  “What does her training have to do with these suicides?” Hamilton asked.

  Hunt closed the file and set it on the desk. “Sheriff, you reported that the first death, Dusty Walker, knew that you had a sniper stationed to take him down, correct?”

  “That’s what the report says,” Hamilton said.

  “I’ll need to listen to the recordings to confirm it, but from my assessment, he purposely forced you to kill him.”

  The agent’s words struck Nic hard in the chest, stealing her breath. Dusty had committed suicide by cop. She gripped the edge of the desk and bent over, gulping air. It had been horrible trying to cope with the fact she’d killed him to protect the kids. But this … this she couldn’t accept. Hunt was wrong. He had to be. There was no way Dusty plotted for her to kill him like that. Not that way.

  “Rivers, are you okay?” the sheriff asked.

  She waved him off and pushed upright. The quick movements were a mistake. She became lightheaded, and the room faded into black. A strong grip on her arms brought her out of the tailspin. Nic shrugged free of the hands as her vision focused. Blinking, she looked at Hunt.

  That stone mask was firmly in place, so she had no way of knowing if he’d done this on purpose to gauge her reaction, or if he truly was just stating a theory. Either way, he was still a bastard.

  “Screw your assessment.” She stalked to the door. “While you boys ‘profile’ these suicides, I’m going to do some actual police work.” She flung the door open, exited, and slammed it shut.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Con glared at Agent Hunt. “That was a low blow.”

  “I simply gave my opinion. I didn’t say it was gospel.”

  “How many snipers have you worked with in the past, Agent Hunt?” he spat out.

  “Enough to know how one reacts when they discover a person they neutralized for the greater good was hoping a cop would kill them because they couldn’t do it themselves.”

  Anger roiled in Con’s veins. “You’re just having a grand time pissing off the Rivers sisters?” With that parting shot, he left the office to seek out Nic.

  Her desk was empty, as was Doug’s and Jennings’s. Con picked up on the sound of voices coming from the back and followed them to the interview room he and Nic had set up as the evidence room.

  “It’s not true. I know Sheila; she’d never do it,” Doug asserted.

  Con hesitated in the doorway, quickly assessing the situation. Nic had Doug backed against the wall, and Jennings was blocking a laptop that had an evidence tag attached to it.

  “Those are emails he sent to her,” Jennings said with authority Con didn’t expect. “I’ve found stuff of hers he’d deleted.”

  “You’re making it up.” Doug lunged from the wall straight into Nic’s grasp. She propelled him back, slamming him hard into the wall. “He’s lying. He planted that shit.”

  Con moved to assist Nic, who was struggling to keep a hold of the agitated Doug, who out-weighed her by a good thirty-five to forty pounds. She glanced at Con but didn’t relinquish her hold on her coworker’s collar.

  “What’s going on?” Con asked.

  “I managed to hack into Seth Moore’s computer and found emails he was sending and receiving from Sheila Walker.” Jennings brought the laptop around and showed Con the long list of correspondences between the two. “They were having an affair.”

  Doug spewed a litany of profanity and put up a fight against Nic. As she swung him away from the wall, she placed her foot between his legs to trip him. He went down on his knees, and she restrained his arms behind his back like she would have an unwilling arrestee.

  “He can’t plant evidence,” she said. “DCI would find it if he did.”

  “It’s wrong. She’d never do it.”

  Con sighed and motioned for Jennings to close the laptop and leave. Once the kid vacated with the evidence in hand, Con closed the door.

  “Let him up, Rivers.”

  She stared at him, her features unrelenting as she strained to keep Doug in his subdued position. After a few seconds, she finally released his arms and stepped away.

  The deputy collapsed on all fours, his shoulders jerking as he heaved deep breaths.

  “Get on your feet, Doug.”

  Slowly, he lifted his head and glared at Con, muttering some F-bombs. Con resisted the urge to reach down and haul the ass onto his feet by the collar. As defiantly as he could, Doug stood.

  “You were removed from these cases because of a family connection. From now on, if I so much as smell you near this room or deputies Rivers and Jennings, I will request the sheriff to put you on administrative leave.” He moved to open a path to the door. “Now get the hell out of my sight.”

  “This isn’t over, O’Hanlon,” Doug spat out as he passed.

  “Don’t push me.”

  Before exiting, the donkey’s ass paused in the doorway and looked at Nic. She returned her coworker’s glare with an icier one. Con noticed the muscle twitch in Doug’s shoulders before he spun on his heel and marched out, slamming the door shut.

  Con stumbled back from the shove Nic gave him.

  “You ever intervene like that again, I’ll punch you.”

  “Sorry if I was trying to prevent you from making a huge mistake and getting fired. For the second time.”

  “I didn’t ask for your help the other night or just now. I have to work with that asshole, and every time you step in, it sets me back even further in dealing with him and the people in this county. You know as well as I do that he can’t keep his trap shut.”

  “Nic, that has never been my intention.”

  Rolling her eyes, she shook her head and moved away.

  Damn it, she was more stubborn than a fence-row of multi-flora roses. He wasn’t getting through to her, and neither was her sister. And with the intrusion of Agent Hunt this morning, Con and Cassy had not come up with a new approach to dealing with Nic.

  “What do you want from me?” he asked.

  Her hands stilled in shuffling through a stack of printouts. Her shoulders slumped and she set the papers on the table. Seconds ticked past as she avoided looking at him.

  The strained lines along her mouth and at the corners of her eyes indicated a lack of sleep again last night. Her hair didn’t gleam of health as it had days before she shot Dusty Walker. Con couldn’t tell when the last time Nic ate. Cassy had made no mention on that front, either. Bringing her right hand to her mouth, Nic pinched her bottom lip between her fingers.

  “I’m not happy about Agent Hunt being involved with this, but you can’t let what he said get to you. There was nothing on those recordings to indicate that Dusty wanted you to shoot him.”

  She jerked her hand to her side. “Just because he didn’t come right out and say it doesn’t mean that he didn’t think it.”

  “He killed his wife and was about to kill his kids. That isn’t the mindset of a man unable to do the deed himself.”

  “When did you become such an expert on how a suicidal person thinks?”

  The lashing question sent prickles of suspicion through Con. Like she’d had experience with something along those lines prior to these incidents. He bit his tongue before the question slipped out and he widened the rift further.

  “Do you want to back out of working these cases?”

  Her hazel eyes flashed. “No.”

  “I’m giving you a chance to leave gracefully before things get uglier.”

  “Gracefully?” She sniffed. “Sounds more like you’re forcing me out before I really screw up everything and ruin your precious reputation.”

  Where the hell did that come from?

  “I’m not leaving. Two can play this game.”

  “This isn’t a game,
Nic.”

  He didn’t think it was possible, but her features hardened more.

  “On the job, it’s Rivers or Deputy. And yes, it is a game. Whatever you and Cassy are concocting for me won’t work.” She skirted around the table on the opposite side and went straight to the door. “And believe me, I’ve had more experience at it with The General than the two of you combined.” She left the door swinging in her wake.

  By the holy saints! Who was The General?

  • • •

  The message light blinked on Nic’s phone. Her fellow deputies weren’t around, and Hamilton was still holed up in his office, probably with Agent Hunt. Nic picked up the phone, punched the button, and listened to the voicemail. Doc Drummond, asking to see the sheriff and O’Hanlon.

  Obviously Hamilton wouldn’t be leaving any time soon. And she wasn’t about to tolerate O’Hanlon’s presence after what he just pulled. They could figure it out on their own. Nic left the message and grabbed up her gear. As she was heading for the door, Jennings came in.

  “Deputy Rivers, where are you going?”

  “I need to chase down a lead. Where were you?”

  His face flushed red and he turned to look back at the parking lot. “I followed Deputy Walker. He got into his vehicle after he sort of … well … slashed the tires on Detective O’Hanlon’s truck then tore out of here.”

  Nic gaped at the tilted truck. The sheriff was going to hit the roof. What the hell was Walker thinking? Wait, scratch that, Walker didn’t think.

  She gripped Jennings’s shoulder. “Kid, if I were you, I’d get the heck out of Dodge. Things are going to hit the fan, fast.”

  “Where am I going to go? I need to finish cataloging all of those emails and such from Seth Moore’s computer.”

  “Find a quiet room to do it in.” She put on her sunglasses. “You don’t want to see the sheriff when he finds that.”

  As she pulled out of the lot in her Jeep, she chanced a glance at Jennings; he was watching her leave. He was a surprise. Nic had to applaud him on hacking into the computer as quickly as he did and locating those deleted correspondences between Moore and Sheila Walker. Too bad Walker had to find out about it. Nic was glad she’d been in the room when her colleague came unhinged and went after the kid. Jennings might have been able to fend off the enraged deputy, but for how long?

  Following the street that led to the hospital and Doc Drummond’s adjoining practice, she pushed aside her anger at O’Hanlon and Agent Hunt and focused on her driving. Too many things were happening at once, and it was upsetting her carefully structured life.

  The PTSD was roaring back at an uncontrollable speed. If let loose, would she succumb to the same temptations that Aiden had? Would she isolate herself and end her life? Leave Cassy to find her?

  No. Nic shoved those dark thoughts into a box and locked it. There would be no dwelling on them. Not now. Not ever.

  At the hospital she went straight to the administration desk, where the clerk directed her to the basement, stating that Doc Drummond was on his way down. At the elevator bank, Nic hesitated.

  Because of her connection to Dusty Walker’s death, she hadn’t been allowed in the morgue. And she avoided it for Seth Moore. Why was she willingly going to the one place where death reigned? She stared at the button panel, swallowing the trepidation. There had been no morgue for the men slaughtered in that village. Where their bodies fell after the terrorists finished with them had been it. The morgue was where Aiden’s body had gone, and it left her cold and shaking.

  Nic turned her back to the elevators and bumped into someone.

  “Oof.”

  She stumbled back until hands landed on her shoulders to steady her.

  “Deputy Rivers, what are you doing here?”

  Dr. Jasper Drummond was a handsome man in his late thirties, with streaks of light gray through his dark brown hair. Apparently he was on rotation in the hospital, as he was wearing blue scrubs and black Adidas with his stethoscope draped around his neck.

  “You wanted to see someone about the Tomberlin autopsy.”

  His eyes narrowed in suspicion. “I asked the sheriff or Detective O’Hanlon to come down.”

  “They’re tied up at the moment and sent me.”

  The suspicious look deepened briefly, then with a tight smile, Doc Drummond nodded at the way she had just come. “We’ll go to my office instead.”

  Nic stayed on his heels, ignoring the stares and pointing fingers of the nursing staff, patients, and others. She didn’t have to hear to know what they were whispering: “There goes Dusty’s murderer.” How long would they hold it against her? And why the hell did she even care?

  Entering Doc Drummond’s office right behind him, she sank into one of his chairs as he closed the door and skirted around the other side of his desk. “I found some interesting things in the deceased’s stomach.” He held out a file. “And I sent another tox screen to the state lab per the sheriff’s request.”

  “Isn’t that standard?” She opened the file and rotated the reports.

  Doc’s silence made her look up. The contemplative expression on his face gave her pause.

  With a shake of his head, he moved on. “From the lack of digested matter in her stomach, I can tell Giselle hadn’t eaten before she died. There was a substantial amount of water in her stomach and none in her lungs. I did find small food particles floating in the liquid. Those will be analyzed at the state lab.”

  “That’s it?” This is why the good doc insisted on Hamilton and O’Hanlon being present? On a bunch of tests that had to be done through the state lab?

  “Actually, no. The reason I wanted the sheriff here is in the photos.”

  Nic quickly flipped to the pictures and then placed them in a neat row on the edge of the desk. She scanned each one, stopping on the one Drummond pointed at—a close-up image of Giselle’s shins.

  “I didn’t spot it at first and neither did the DCI guy until we adjusted the light. There’s light bruising on the left leg to the outside of the bone and the same on the right.”

  Nic’s breathing accelerated. Her gaze snapped to Drummond’s face. “Meaning … ?”

  “Meaning, someone applied enough pressure to damage her tissue. What no one besides me, her doctor, knows, not even her family, is that Giselle had von Willebrand disease.”

  “What is that?”

  “A bleeding disorder. We just discovered it a few months ago after she had dental work done and the bleeding wouldn’t stop. She was treating it.”

  Nic straightened, frowning at Doc Drummond. “Wait, if she knew that, then why drown herself if she’d just bleed out?”

  “Someone was there when she died and possibly held her under the water.”

  “I was right,” she whispered. “Doc, are you sure?”

  “Deputy Rivers, I seriously believe when those tox screens come back we’ll find that each of those victims had something in their systems to make them want to kill themselves.”

  “You just said someone held Giselle under water.”

  “Possibly. The angle of the lacerations on her wrists prove she cut herself. I can’t attest to her state of mind at the time. Maybe she asked someone to be there to make sure she finished the job, and they kept her under the water.”

  It still meant it was an assisted suicide, and anyone who was with her at the time and failed to report it could face charges.

  Nic slapped the file folder on the desk. “You were her doctor. Did she show any signs of depression while you were treating her? Was she on antidepressants?”

  Drummond shut his mouth so fast his teeth clicked together. His lips pulled into a thin, perturbed line. Now, suddenly, he was drawing a line in the dirt.

  “Can the patient-doctor confidentiality. She’s dead. Did you treat her for depression?”

  “No.”

  “Did someone else treat her?” she persisted.

  “I have no idea,” Drummond snapped. “If she was taking something
and lied about it, there could have been severe drug interactions, which would show up in the toxicology reports.”

  Damn it, everything kept coming back to the tox screens. If Hamilton wasn’t able to get a push for a fast track with those, they could be waiting for weeks or a month. Wait. The Feds. Agent Hunt might be able to pull the strings to get the screening done faster.

  Nic needed another unbiased set of eyes on these cases. And she knew the perfect person to assist. First, she had to brown-nose the doc after pissing him off.

  “Doc, could I please get copies of the autopsy reports on the Walkers, Seth Moore, and Giselle?”

  “You give me a strip down and then expect me to just hand over copies of the reports with a please?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to treat you like a suspect. Nothing personal.”

  He muttered something she thought sounded like “my ass,” but she didn’t react to it. After what felt like a ten-minute stare down, Drummond sighed and picked up the file.

  “Why do you want these when you can get copies from the sheriff?” he asked as he added the Tomberlin report to a few folders that were stacked on a metal filing cabinet.

  Honestly, it was to keep the sheriff and O’Hanlon off her back about digging around on her own. If they didn’t catch her with the files, or making copies, she’d be free to follow through on her plan without a million and one questions.

  “I’m here, the files are here, it’s just easier this way.”

  The “I don’t believe you” look Drummond gave her was almost comical. Nic returned his look with her typical blank face she’d perfected in many a fight with The General. Nothing about this was comical. Four people were dead, and the way they were dying smelled rotten to Nic.

  She vowed to find out why.

  Chapter Fourteen

  An hour later, Nic parked in her driveway. She realized on the drive that Doc Drummond would probably tell Hamilton and O’Hanlon about her jaunt to the hospital, but she was past the point of caring. It was evident both men were looking for a way to black her out, and with Con poking around about her PTSD, it was only a matter of time.