“One of them. That and the eyewitness who said she saw a late-model luxury sedan leaving the scene right after she heard gunshots. Hunter drives a Jeep Cherokee that just happened to be parked at the Doughnut Falls trailhead, thirty miles away, at the time of the shooting, according to other eyewitnesses.”
Wyatt sat forward, his puzzled frown deepening. “Is the eyewitness who saw a vehicle leaving the scene something else the defense didn’t know?”
Taylor curled a hand against her thigh. “No. Martin knew about Mrs. Hancey. But she’s seventy-five years old and she had been drinking that night. He didn’t think she would make a strong witness.”
“But you believe her?”
“Yes! She has no doubt whatsoever about what she saw. Someone else was there that night, Wyatt. I know that with all my heart, just as I know that when I find out who it was, I will find whoever killed Dru and Mickie.”
Chapter 5
After her impassioned declaration, Wyatt studied Taylor Bradshaw.
The recessed can lighting overhead and rich colors in the small office picked up golden highlights in her auburn hair and turned her eyes a vivid blue. He couldn’t look away, not from the allure of her features and not from the fervent conviction in her voice.
Objectivity.
The concept suddenly seemed harder than he had ever imagined. How was he supposed to keep things polite and impersonal between them with this attraction seething inside his skin? He wanted fiercely to kiss her, to direct that passion to something other than her fight to save her brother.
What the hell was wrong with him? This instant heat churning through his blood whenever he was around Taylor Bradshaw was an entirely new experience. He enjoyed women and dated a wide variety, but he was far from a womanizer.
Something about Taylor was different. He remembered the first time he had seen her, looking pale and frightened in the courtroom during Hunter’s first court appearance. Even then—when he had no idea who she was, only that she obviously had some connection to the defendant—he had been overwhelmed by a powerful desire to protect her, to help her, to ease that fear in her eyes.
He didn’t understand it then and he sure didn’t understand it now. He only knew he had never reacted this way to a woman. He wasn’t at all the sort of man tempted to steal kisses from a woman he barely knew—especially one with such a tangle of complications.
While they were not exactly adversaries, they were certainly coming at this case from different directions. She fiercely believed in her brother’s innocence while Wyatt had sat through the trial convinced just as staunchly that Hunter deserved the sentence he received.
Intellectually he knew Hunter was guilty. As he had said to her, the state’s case had been a strong one, if circumstantial. But listening to the conviction in her voice, to her passionate defense of her brother, it was hard not be swayed.
The urge to step forward, slide her down from that big desk and into his arms, was almost more than he could fight down, but he gave it his best effort.
He had no business touching her, not when he was writing a book about her brother’s case. If he thought their relationship was a tangled one now, how much more snarled would it become if he kissed her?
This book was too important to him to risk screwing it up because of some strange reaction to a woman he barely knew.
Wyatt blew out a breath, compelled to do something to put distance between them—in his own mind, if nothing else.
“I went to school with Dru Ferrin.”
At his blunt pronouncement, she stared at him, her eyes an impossible blue. “You did?”
“Yes. She was a friend. A good one at a time when I didn’t have very many others. She was the first girl I ever kissed, clear back in the second grade, before my family moved away. When I came back, she was always kind to me.”
“I see.” She looked down at the notes in front of her, neatly typed and organized. When she met his gaze again, her expression was cool, almost resigned. “That’s why you’ve chosen this case to write about.”
He nodded. “I knew as soon as I heard about the murders that I had to write this one, long before I knew any details of the case or anything about your brother. I have to. I owe it to an old friend.”
She said nothing for several moments, the only sound in the office the buzz of the computer behind her. Finally she met his gaze, and Wyatt regretted to see the fire in those eyes had faded to bleak resignation.
“So you already have your mind made up that Hunter is guilty. Nothing I say, no evidence I show you, will change that, will it.”
“I didn’t say that. I want to write about what really happened to Dru and her mother.” Wyatt chose his words carefully. “If Hunter didn’t kill them, I certainly want to find whoever did as much as you do. But I wanted you to know where I’m coming from. I’m on Dru’s side here. I don’t have any other choice.”
“I read the article about you in Vanity Fair. You write for ‘the victims and the victims’ families.’ That’s what you said.”
He winced. That article had been a huge mistake from start to finish. He usually shied away from that kind of publicity, but his agent and publisher had pushed him to agree to this one to promote his new book.
At the time Wyatt thought the tradeoff they were agreeing to would be worth it—in exchange for him agreeing to the Vanity Fair thing, they would cut the six-week book tour they were pushing to two, with a few scattered media appearance here and there.
He didn’t like the limelight, but he had accepted after the overwhelming public response to his first book—and to each subsequent one—that it was the steep price he had to pay for success.
The quote Taylor recited about his reasons for writing hadn’t been the full truth. He hadn’t told the Vanity Fair reporter about Charlotte and the reporter hadn’t managed to dig up that information, despite it being public record.
His little sister was the real reason for everything he wrote. Somehow, by writing about other victims, other crimes, he hoped to gain a kind of understanding into why she was taken.
So far it had eluded him, but he knew that with each book he came closer to the one he would someday have to write about his own family’s ordeal.
“It’s not an easy thing for a family who has lost someone they care about to open up to someone who’s going to write about their case,” he answered finally. “I hope I’ve treated the stories of every crime victim I’ve written about with dignity and respect. I just thought you ought to know I had a personal connection to Dru.”
“Thank you for telling me,” Taylor said quietly. “While we’re being honest with each other, I should tell you that I never liked Dru. My brother was crazy about her and wanted us to be friends. I tried, I really did, but all I could see was the way she manipulated him. I thought she was destructive and ambitious. I was never sure if she was really interested in him or just using him as an inside source at the police station. When he found out she was pregnant, he insisted they marry and do right by the child, but Dru refused over and over again.”
“The baby wasn’t his, though.”
Her expression twisted with bitterness and she rose from the desk and stalked to the window. “Right. But Dru never murmured a word that the baby’s paternity might be in question to Hunter. I don’t know, maybe she didn’t know herself who the father was. Maybe she didn’t want to marry Hunter until she knew for sure, but as far as my brother knew, he had fathered a child whose mother refused to marry him. It ate him up inside.”
“The state claimed he found out the baby wasn’t his and that’s why he killed her, in a jealous rage.”
“That was a lie! Absolutely ridiculous. I don’t believe he had any clue she was seeing anyone else—I was with him when he received the DNA report after the autopsy, proving the baby wasn’t his. I saw how shell-shocked the news made him.”
When he didn’t respond, she continued, her voice becoming more impassioned as she went. “Do you understand what I’m telling you?
As you said, the prosecution used that as his motive for killing her—Hunter supposedly flew into a jealous rage after he found out she was pregnant with another man’s child. Their theory is that he confronted her about it that night, took his gun along with him for good measure, and ended up shooting her and Mickie.”
“Right.”
“It didn’t happen, Wyatt! He didn’t even know until two days after she died about the results of the DNA tests. I was with him! I know without any doubt whatsoever in my mind that before that moment he received that report, he had no idea—none—that the baby wasn’t his. Think about it. How would you feel after you had just spent two days grieving for your child and the woman you loved, to be confronted with undeniable evidence that child wasn’t yours after all?”
Taylor didn’t give him a chance to answer. “I saw his face, the total sense of betrayal on it. He was stunned. So explain to me how jealousy could be his motive for killing them if he didn’t even know she had been sleeping with someone else until two days after the murders?”
There was a damn good question, one he was surprised hadn’t been presented by the defense. On the other hand, Taylor was the defendant’s sister. She had already proved by her actions since Hunter’s conviction that she was fiercely loyal and protective of her brother, that she would do anything to see him cleared of the charge against him.
Her credibility was bound to be put into question by the prosecution, and maybe that was a risk Martin James hadn’t been willing to take.
Still, it certainly raised questions. What if Taylor was right? What if the state’s case against Hunter was nothing more than a flimsy house of cards? Take away the man’s motive and the whole thing would blow away in a stiff breeze.
Dru deserved justice. That had been his goal in writing the book from the beginning—but he recognized that justice wouldn’t be served by punishing an innocent man for her murder.
“The best way—really the only way—to prove your brother didn’t kill Dru and her mother, Mickie, is to prove beyond any doubt that someone else did.”
She nodded. “That’s the direction I’ve been trying to go. I’ve made a list of possible suspects in the case—not specific people or anything, since I haven’t been able to nail down any names, just profiles.”
She dug through a pile of folders until she found the one she wanted. She handed it to him and Wyatt read it quickly. The list of people with motive to kill Dru Ferrin was a long one.
“Even though, as you said, no one else can substantiate them, I believe Hunter when he said Dru received death threats before she died. That’s why he gave her his weapon, for protection. If I can find out who made those threats, that’s a logical starting place. And the baby’s real father is another possibility, if I could ever discover who else she might have been seeing. Also, Dru covered crime for the television station where she worked. Maybe she was working on a story someone didn’t want her to report. Those are all possibilities.”
Wyatt drew in a sharp breath, terribly afraid he would live to regret the ramifications of his next statement—and hoping like hell he knew what he was doing. “It looks like we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us, then,” he said.
If he wanted to knock the pins clean out from under her, he had picked exactly the right words. She stared at him, her eyes wide and incredulous, as if she couldn’t quite believe he meant his words—that he was even willing to entertain the possibility that Hunter might be innocent, or that he would consider helping her prove it.
“We?” she asked warily.
Wyatt shrugged. “I want justice for Dru and Mickie. If your brother didn’t kill them—and I’ll tell you up front I’m still not convinced of that—I want to know who did.”
Gradually, the suspicion in her eyes gave way to a dawning excitement. Her expression relaxed, brightened. As the shadows lifted, she gave him what he suddenly realized was the first genuine smile he had ever seen on her face.
The impact of that smile plowed into him like a fist to the gut. It made her look young, so extraordinarily lovely and vibrant that his eyes almost hurt looking at her. He wanted to sit right here and bask in that smile, to do everything he could think of to make sure it stayed right there.
“Oh, Wyatt,” she exclaimed. “Thank you!”
She reached for his hand to give it a grateful squeeze. At the contrast of her warm, soft skin against his, his blood thrummed in his ears and the fierce attraction he had spent the past hour battling surged up again.
“Don’t thank me until we have something concrete,” he answered gruffly. He tried to extricate his hand from hers but somehow he only succeeding in tugging her closer.
Objectivity.
He closed his eyes so he didn’t have to watch the whole damn concept fly out the window. How could any man resist those dewy blue eyes, that smile that sent off enough wattage to light the whole valley?
When he opened his eyes, she was still staring at him as if he’d just lit the stars. He groaned and pulled her to him, his mind only consumed with tasting that smile.
He wanted to think he might have been able to keep the kiss light, just one small, seductive sample of her mouth that tasted of tiramisu.
But at the first touch of his lips, she sighed a what-took-you-so-long kind of sigh and melted in his arms, as if she’d been waiting for just this moment.
In his arms, Taylor felt as if she’d just walked out into bright sunshine after months in a dark, dank cave of uncertainty. She wanted to lift her face to that sunshine, to bask in it, to soak it into her skin.
For two and a half years she had lived with gnawing, relentless fear and a terrible burden of helplessness. But now Wyatt had agreed to look for answers with her and she almost couldn’t believe how giddy she was at being able to share some of the weight of that load at last.
Her arms slipped around his neck and she leaned against him, drawn by his heat and strength. With a low sound of arousal, he deepened the kiss, pressing against her until her hips rested on the edge of the desk.
She wanted to absorb the leashed power she sensed in his muscles. Since the first time she saw him, she had found his lean, rangy build wildly sexy but she had never dreamed it would feel so right to be in his arms like this.
Taylor wasn’t sure how long they kissed, she only knew it was slow and seductive and that for the first time in forever she forgot about the stress always waiting for her outside this room.
If she had her way, she would have stayed right here in this unexpected haven for at least another hour or two, but Belle’s concerned whine from the doorway pierced the soft haze of desire surrounding her.
She blinked back to awareness, stunned at how quickly and easily she had become tangled around him.
Belle whined again. The setter had never seen her in this kind of situation, Taylor realized. She probably wasn’t sure whether she ought to be protecting Taylor in some way.
If only the dog had come in a few minutes earlier, Taylor thought with a grimace, Belle might have prevented her from discovering just how attracted she was to Wyatt McKinnon.
She stepped away from him, embarrassed that she suddenly couldn’t seem to catch her breath. She tried to remind her lungs to breathe, her heart to pulse again.
After giving Belle a shaky smile that seemed to reassure her, Taylor turned back to Wyatt.
“That was…unexpected.”
“Right.” He cleared his throat, his expression adorably baffled, as if he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened between them. “Um, I don’t want you to think I make a habit of that kind of thing.”
“I don’t. Think that, I mean. Or make a habit of that kind of thing myself, really.”
“Okay, then.”
They stood in awkward silence as Taylor frantically searched her mind for something to say. How was she supposed to make her brain work when all she wanted to do was melt into a gooey pile all over the carpet?
“Do you mean it, about helping me find who really ki
lled Dru and Mickie?” she finally asked.
She found it strangely comforting that he seemed as disconcerted by the sudden heat between them as she was, and it took him several moments to answer. “I can’t make any promises that what we find will change my opinion about who committed the murders, Taylor. But I’ll do what I can to help you. I couldn’t in good conscience write the book without thoroughly researching those angles you talked about.”
Her heart sagged with relief and gratitude, and she would have kissed him again if she wasn’t afraid where they might end up.
“I have an appointment Monday to talk to a reporter at the television station who was friends with Dru. You are welcome to come along if you’d like.”
“What do you hope to find out from her?”
“I thought Dru might have told her what she was working on or about the threats she received or even given her some clue as to who might have fathered her baby.”
“You don’t think the police went over this with her?”
Usually she couldn’t stop thinking about it, but for the first time in two and a half years she found it hard to concentrate on Hunter’s case. She gave it her best shot, though. “I think the police found an obvious suspect in Hunter and decided to run with it, instead of exploring all of the possibilities.”
“Even though Hunter was one of their own? I find that doubtful. Cops look out for each other.”
That was one of the facts of the case that had convicted Hunter, she thought, in the court of public opinion anyway. Most people made the same assumption, that the police department would never have turned on one of their own unless the evidence against him was overwhelming and they had no choice.
“Hunter wasn’t the most popular detective in the department,” she said. “He didn’t like some of the political games his superiors played and wasn’t shy about making his views known. He was also involved, though peripherally, in a case that involved police misconduct, and he went to internal affairs about it. Some factions in the department considered him a traitor because of that and were only too willing to ignore any evidence that pointed to his innocence.”
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