by Anna Sugden
At least now that he knew the real suspect’s identity, he also knew who was no longer a suspect. Ben pushed the button on the steering wheel to make another call with his hands-free unit. When the man answered, Ben didn’t waste time with pleasantries.
“Trooper Cole, you haven’t been conducting any off-limits investigations that I should know about, have you?”
“Yes, sir, Lieutenant.”
“You realize you’ll probably be in trouble for doing this.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then, I’m going to need your help.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
DELIA CAUTIOUSLY APPROACHED the enormous truck parked near a group of tiny deserted cabins. The white treeless void beyond the buildings she could only assume was Caroga Lake. If not for Grant’s truck, which she recognized from work, she would have wondered if she was in the right place at all.
She probably should have waited for Ben, but it was already time for the meeting, and she couldn’t afford to miss whatever Grant planned to share with her. Especially since he’d taken the time to meet with her even though he was off duty. When she reached the truck cab, she stood on tiptoes to see inside. It was empty, but the truck itself was clear of snow, unlike the surrounding trees and buildings, suggesting it hadn’t been there for long. Footprint trails peppered the area, making it difficult to determine which to follow first.
She glanced around the area illuminated only by her patrol car’s headlights. She’d left them on along with the engine, which had to remain running to keep the electronic equipment online. She wondered again why he’d insisted on meeting in the middle of nowhere anyway.
She and Ben had met at all kinds of places without anyone catching—Okay, maybe Grant did have good reason for being so cautious. She was losing count of how many people had figured out that she’d been helping Ben, and maybe Grant didn’t want the same thing to happen to him. Seemed reasonable.
It was probably only a matter of time until she was called into Captain Polaski’s office for disobeying a direct order. Maybe even to be fired. But she couldn’t worry about that now, not when she might finally have the evidence to clear Ben’s name.
“Grant, where are you?” she called out, struck by how hollow her voice sounded in the empty space. She rubbed her arms, suddenly cold despite her heavy coat and the gloves she wore over her uniform and the layers beneath it.
Pulling her flashlight off her duty belt, she started toward the cottages that appeared to be closed for the season. “Grant, are you out here?”
Suddenly uneasy, she touched the grip of her weapon, to assure herself it was still there. Had something gone wrong? Had something happened to Grant? Did it have anything to do with Trevor? She shifted her hand to the pocket on her duty belt where she usually kept her cell phone, but she’d left it in the car. She wanted to believe it had been an accident, but could it have been at least a little bit on purpose? If she didn’t have her phone, she could avoid more of Ben’s texts warning her not to be a hero and to call for backup. She wanted to be a hero, though, just this once. For Ben.
The snap of a branch nearby brought her up short. At her gasp, a puff of condensation shot into the air before her. Grant stepped around the west side of the farthest cottage, dressed in jeans, a black parka and a stocking cap.
“Oh, there you are,” she said with a chuckle that she hoped didn’t sound too nervous. “You startled me.” She wasn’t about to share with one of her male fellow troopers that he’d just scared the bejeebies out of her.
He tromped into the lighted area near their vehicles.
“Just checking out the cottages. They’re not bad.” If he’d noticed how nervous she was, he didn’t mention it.
For several seconds, Delia waited for Grant to unload his information, but he only stared back at her. Why didn’t he just spit it out? Was he holding back just to drive her crazy?
“You said you knew something that could help Ben?” she prompted.
“I did,” he said with slow smile. “Looks like I’m not the only one who wants to help out old Ben.”
She drew her eyebrows together, frowning. “Guess not.” She waited.
“He’s a good guy,” he said finally. “Deserves to have people pulling for him. Such a team player. Damn humble, too, even after his big arrest at the bank.”
“More so than most of us would have been,” she agreed to keep the conversation going. Maybe if she did, he would finally tell her what he’d invited her here to say.
“He signed off on the evidence chains for so many cases over the years. For all of us. More than he ever realized.” He added the last as an afterthought and then shot a glance her way to see if she’d caught his slipup.
Did that mean that at least some of those signatures had been forged? So Grant was the suspect?
Delia pretended she hadn’t noticed what he’d given away, though he’d seemed almost proud of taking advantage of the man she loved. Her heart raced, her sweaty palms dampened the inside of her gloves as she madly tried to recall what she knew about Grant from their background research. Divorced father of two. Strapped from bad settlement and child support. The truck he blew his inheritance on. Had it really been from an inheritance? The shooting incident. Was there more to it than they’d realized?
She was such an idiot. Why hadn’t she and Ben looked closer at Grant when they were excluding him a suspect? No wonder Grant had wanted to meet her in the middle of nowhere. And no wonder Grant had figured out that she’d been helping Ben in the first place. He would have been watching everyone closely since he had something to hide. And she’d been asking too many questions.
Despite the ice forming inside her veins, she carefully schooled her features and met Grant’s gaze.
“You’re right that he signed off on a lot of cases,” she said. “Ben told me he’d signed off on so many that it was hard for him to remember the specifics.”
“Know how that goes. They all run together eventually.”
That was possibly the first true statement he’d made since she’d met him. His lies must have blended together by now like a set of watercolor paints dumped in a tub of water. The line between right and wrong probably had become just as blurry. How far would he be willing to go to make sure his secrets didn’t get out?
As discreetly as possible, she scanned his form, looking for his weapon, but his coat was so thick that either a duty belt or a shoulder holster could easily have been hidden beneath it. If the need arose, she could draw her weapon on him, but she had to prepare herself to face fire, as well.
She took a steadying breath. She had to keep it together. Ben was on his way. She just had to avoid upsetting Grant until Ben reached them. Why hadn’t she listened to Ben? He’d told her to call for backup. Now, in her rush to get answers that might help him, she’d put them both in danger. She didn’t even have her phone on her. Without it, she couldn’t warn him. She was sending him into this mess blind and without a weapon.
“So what information do you have that can help Ben?” she managed, hoping her voice sounded steadier than she felt.
This time Grant laughed. “A little anxious, aren’t you?”
“I guess so. We haven’t found many leads so far.”
“Many?”
She sighed. “None.”
It wasn’t in her best interest to tell him she had a pretty good lead right now. Of course, she would need evidence to go along with his offhand admission, and she had to find a way to get him to tell her more without setting him off. She tucked her hands in her coat pockets to keep him from seeing them trembling.
Grant tilted his head, studying her. “It wasn’t like you to poke around for answers after Polaski said hands off.”
“What do you mean?” This wasn’t how she wanted the conversation to go, but at least they were still talking.
“Little Miss By-the-Book? I figured it would kill you just to make a personal phone call on work time, let alone this.”
He held his hands wide to indicate the cottages at this unfamiliar location, illustrating the breadth of her departure from the security of rules. What he didn’t know was that his example didn’t begin to cover it.
“That’s fair, I guess,” she said.
“What made you want to go out on a limb for him?”
“It was the right thing to do.” She couldn’t help but smile as she recalled the first time she’d said that to Ben. It had been the right thing, for more reasons than she could have spelled out then, and she still didn’t regret it, even knowing she would end up here.
“Sure you don’t have a thing for him?”
“Why would you ask that?” she said to give herself a chance to come up with an answer. She was already at a disadvantage here. It didn’t seem like a good idea to give him further ammunition to hurt her or Ben with, so she lied. “Of course not. I just knew he wasn’t involved in the crimes, and he deserved to have someone help him prove it.”
He stepped past her toward the lake and glanced back at her over his shoulder. “You never know what the people around you are involved in.”
“I guess that’s true.” But because that subject wasn’t one she was ready to explore just yet, she directed the conversation back to an earlier one. “So what can you tell me about the case that I don’t already know?”
It was dangerous to ask, but if she didn’t bring it up, that would make it more obvious that she was trying to avoid it. When he didn’t respond immediately, she continued, “Do you think it was just one suspect from inside the Brighton Post, plus some outsiders, or was it an inside operation?”
Grant crossed his arms and seemed to consider before answering, but when he did, it was with a question. “Who do you think would benefit the most from a few low-level drug dealers having charges against them dismissed?”
She hadn’t expected him to tell her anything of value, so she weighed his words for several seconds. “Those higher in the operation, I guess. The suppliers. They wouldn’t have to recruit another round of grunts.”
He nodded. “Well, someone had to ensure that the grunts didn’t serve time.”
The next question was obvious. She needed to ask him the identity of this someone, but she already knew the answer. And once he realized she knew, he might want to make sure she couldn’t tell anyone else. Another look at the hazy, deserted scene her headlights painted and she could no longer keep from shivering.
Was that the point of their meeting at this deserted location in the first place? So he could threaten her? Or kill her? No, it didn’t make sense. She was on duty. Dispatch had GPS on her patrol car. She would be found eventually. But would it be soon enough?
In the distance, Delia thought she heard the sound of a car engine. Her gaze darted past her car to the road beyond, but there were no headlights to indicate an approaching vehicle. Had she just imagined it? Grant must have missed the sound. He looked out toward the frozen water again and then glanced back at her.
“Aren’t you going to ask me?” He didn’t look at her as he spoke this time.
“Ask what?”
When he shot a glance back at her, she made a point of not making eye contact.
“Who.”
“Well, sure. I’d like to know who set up Ben. You invited me here to share information. Is that what you wanted to tell me?” She forced herself to remain calm as another sound filtered through a bank of trees. It sounded like the click of a car door, and this time she was sure she hadn’t imagined it. “Or was it something else?”
“You know.”
His voice was so low that Delia wasn’t certain she’d heard him right at first, but when she met his gaze, a grim smile lifted his lips. “I do?”
“You know I didn’t invite you here for a nature walk. You might be an overzealous rookie, but you’re no dummy.” Taking a step closer to her, he patted his coat pocket to indicate that he was armed.
“So it was you?” She forced herself to look him in the eye as she spoke. “What kind of coward does this to his own friend?”
Grant spread his arms and fisted his hands, puffing up like a much larger man and taking several menacing steps forward. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know what they—”
Delia planted her feet where she stood, refusing to back down though her instincts told her to run.
At the thud of a branch hitting the snow, as if it had been thrown, both turned to the line of trees. Ben stood there, a heavy-looking log at his feet.
“Let her go, Grant.”
Before Grant had the chance to look back at her, Delia drew her weapon, pointing it at him.
“Get on the ground. Right now,” she shouted. “Put your hands behind your head.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Ben advancing. “Stay back, Ben. He’s armed.”
“Look who’s suddenly gotten brave now that her boyfriend’s here.”
Delia startled, her gun shifting slightly. Apparently, Grant hadn’t believed her when she’d said she and Ben weren’t involved. Grant had his hands behind his head, but as he dropped to his knees near her, he lunged forward and grabbed her ankles. She toppled backward with nothing to catch her fall unless she released her support hand’s hold on her weapon. He barely had to grapple with her to pluck the gun from her dominant hand.
As he scrambled to his feet, he yanked her police radio off her duty belt, dropped it to the ground and crushed it beneath his heavy boot. Delia dove for the weapon again, but Grant only hauled her to him and pressed her own gun to her temple. Ben, who’d been racing toward them with his 9 mm drawn, stopped and held up his hands, one still holding the gun.
“Want your little girlfriend to get hurt, Peterson?”
* * *
BEN HAD NEVER thought himself capable of murder until that moment, but now he easily imagined himself snapping Grant’s neck. If he hurt her, Ben couldn’t promise he wouldn’t make good on that threat.
She looked tinier than normal, crushed in Grant’s grasp, but she still held herself straight, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry. Grant couldn’t see her wide eyes, though. Her fear ate right through Ben, tempting him to throw himself between her and the gun.
“She’s not my girlfriend.” He kept his face blank, but the words tasted acidic on his tongue for so many reasons.
“She said the same thing, and she was about as believable as you. Women are poison, man. That’s my free advice.” Grant tapped the side of Delia’s head with the muzzle. “You might want to toss your gun over there in the snow.”
Ben didn’t argue with his former friend, but he didn’t meet Delia’s gaze, either, as he tossed his gun. They had to keep their wits about them.
He rubbed his hands together, empty without his weapon. “You don’t really want to do this, do you, Grant? Have you thought this through?”
Grant chuckled at that. “Look at us, Peterson. Does it really look like I could have thought any of this through?”
“Then how did we get here?” Ben held his hands wide, his mind racing. He had to find a way to get Delia out of this without setting off a man who had nothing to lose.
“Has anyone told you your skills are wasted behind a desk, Ben? You’ve got the whole thing down, dealing with the distraught suspect.” Grant tightened his grip on Delia. “Next thing you’ll be telling me that you can make everything go away if we just sit down and talk it out. ‘Kumbaya’ and all.”
“Sorry, buddy, but we’re not going to be able to make all of this go away—” Ben paused, shaking his head “—no matter how many campfire songs we sing.”
“I take back what I said then.” Grant leaned in close to Delia’s ear. “You might want to tell your guy here that I have the gun.”
“Ben...”
He tried not to hear the strain in her voice. He had to keep Grant calm for a little longer.
“So, what really happened, Grant? Because I know you don’t just wake up one day and star
t tampering with evidence.”
This time Grant loosened his hold slightly on Delia and pulled the gun away from her temple. “Always right, aren’t you, Ben? It started small. I developed a taste for some of the product I was confiscating from drug dealers. Coke, mostly, just to get my day going, then a little Molly or Ecstasy, to make the weekends a little more entertaining. Pretty soon, the need exceeded the easy access, and I became more a customer and less a disruption of the trade.”
Ben nodded as the answers lined up with his many questions, his father’s story continuing to play on the fringes of his thoughts. He’d heard this story before. “It’s a slippery slope, isn’t it?”
“I found myself having to remove evidence that implicated their associates in order to make sure I got my next fix.”
“What about the thing that happened last summer? Was it related?”
Grant stared off into the darkness before looking back at him again. “I wanted to stop. The bullet that whisked by my head was to remind me that I needed to continue removing evidence.”
“So a lot of these things were connected?”
“You don’t know the half of it.” He waved vaguely at Delia with the gun. “Even the thing at Kensington with the burned-out car. Just another reminder to a middleman who, like me, wanted to walk away from the business. But there was no walking away. Ever.”
Grant was so caught up in his story that he didn’t seem to notice when Ben started shifting closer to him. From the slight shake of Delia’s head, Ben knew that she’d noticed. He would say she would just have to trust him, but he already knew she couldn’t do that.
“I do have one question, though,” Ben said.
“You mean why you?” At Ben’s nod, Grant shrugged. “Sorry, man, but you were just an easy target. Why’d you have to go and be a hero? You put the post under the microscope when we’d been doing just fine.”
“You know it all would have come out eventually, right?”
“Maybe.” Grant pressed the gun to Delia’s head again, and she closed her eyes. He looked down at her head. “Too bad I couldn’t just have implicated you instead. It would have been so easy. You’ve never been one of us.”