Dallas groaned. “Doesn’t sound like it’s enough to put him away for a long time.” He glanced at her and frowned. “Maybe all of his talk of you marrying him so you can’t testify was a ruse on his part just to get you to the altar.”
She opened her mouth to deny it, but then rethought it.
“Owen’s always been hot for you,” Dallas continued. “Heck, he could have set this all up. Everything. Including the evidence against him. You’re sure what you have is solid enough to put him behind bars?”
Well, she had been until now. “It was one of Owen’s former business associates who tipped me off about the illegal deals. I dug around, found some papers to corroborate the tip.” She had to pause. “But someone broke into my office and stole the papers.”
“Owen,” Dallas quickly concluded.
Joelle had to nod. “Probably. I tried to get duplicates of everything that was stolen, but they, too, had been destroyed. And the tipster suddenly had to leave town.”
“Damn, when Owen does a cover-up, he doesn’t do it halfway,” Dallas mumbled.
“Yes, except for me. I’m the loose end because I saw the documents and can testify that I did.” She huffed. “Well, I can once Owen is no longer capable of putting us in jail.”
“Neutralizing Owen is a must.” Dallas pushed himself away from the wall and faced her. “I need to discredit him any way I can so it’ll also discredit that knife and handkerchief. It’d be even better if I could find something to prove he murdered Webb.”
Joelle wasn’t sure that was possible, but with so much at stake, she would definitely try. “One problem is that Owen has a better alibi than any of you for the time of Webb’s disappearance. He was with the caretaker, Rudy Simmons, from about seven to ten o’clock, and Rudy verifies it.”
Dallas lifted his shoulder. “Maybe both are lying.”
“I wish, and I wish I could prove it.” And she’d tried to find a witness, anyone, who could dispute that time frame. But the bottom line was that Rudy simply didn’t have a motive for murder.
Well, not one that she’d been able to find, anyway.
On the surface, Webb and he had actually been friends of sorts even though Webb was Rudy’s boss.
“Owen is for starters,” Dallas said, “but we need more. I don’t believe any of my foster brothers or Kirby had a thing to do with Webb’s death.”
But he didn’t sound convinced of that. Neither was Joelle.
“We have to name some other suspects,” he added. “Credible ones, so we can end this investigation and clear our names.”
Joelle couldn’t argue with that. “Then we’ll find them at Rocky Creek just as Kirby suggested. Jonah Webb’s wife, Sarah, still lives on the grounds. Rudy Simmons does, too.”
“What about Rudy’s daughter, Amy, the one Wyatt was fooling around with in the shed?”
She had to shake her head. “She died a few years ago from leukemia. But even if she were alive, I doubt she’d make a good suspect. She was a lot smaller than Declan, and from what I can tell, she didn’t have a motive.”
In other words, Webb hadn’t mentally and physically abused her the way he had some of the boys—like Dallas and Declan.
Dallas stayed quiet for a moment, then snapped his fingers. “Jonah and Sarah had a son, Billy. He was about fifteen when his father disappeared. What did he have to say about Webb’s murder?”
Another headshake. “I couldn’t find him.” And she’d tried hard. “But I do know he spent some time in a mental facility after an attempted suicide.”
“Probably because his father used to beat the hell of him.” Dallas nodded. “Yeah, definitely a motive for murder, and he was big enough to help kill a man. I’ll see if my brothers can track him down.”
Joelle wasn’t about to refuse their help, not with Owen’s ultimatum and the lab test hanging over their heads.
She was so involved in her thoughts that it took a moment for her to realize that Dallas was staring at her. And he was still too close. She started to move away, but he snagged her by the wrist.
“You’re keeping something from me,” he accused.
Joelle opened her mouth to deny that, but she didn’t manage to get out a word.
“Or maybe you’re just trying to hide the obvious,” Dallas interrupted.
Unfortunately, she knew exactly what obvious he meant.
He got in her face. “This attraction won’t affect what we have to do. In fact, it won’t affect anything. Because we’re going to pretend that it doesn’t exist.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, that helps a lot.” Her stare dared him to disagree with her sarcasm.
He couldn’t.
The air was practically sizzling between them, and it didn’t cool down when they moved away from each other.
“So we don’t pretend,” he insisted. “We don’t do anything about it.” Then he cursed a blue streak.
“Denial’s a pretty sucky deterrent, huh?”
“Yeah.” And he just kept staring at her. Definitely didn’t back away. But then, neither did she. So yes, denial wasn’t going to stop this.
Maybe nothing would.
“I’m trying hard to remember why this can’t happen,” he mumbled a split second before he hooked his arm around her waist and snapped her to him.
It happened so fast that Joelle tried to brace herself for a kiss. But no bracing was necessary. Dallas moved his mouth toward hers. But he didn’t kiss her. He didn’t touch her with those lips that had kissed her too many times to count.
She could feel those old make-out sessions blood deep, and they sent a coil of heat from her head to her toes. Mercy. What was it about Dallas that turned her to mush? It wasn’t fair that he would still have her hormonal number after all these years.
Cursing, he moved in even closer. Almost touching. So close that she took in his scent, and the coil of heat turned to a throbbing ache.
“Tell me why this is a bad idea,” he growled. He slid his hand around the back of her neck, angling her head. Angling her body, too, with the grip he still had on her waist. They were pressed against each other like lovers now.
“Because you can’t forgive me?” she said. “Because you hate me?”
He was right in her face, and she saw what she was saying register in his eyes. Both were valid reasons. Well, the first one, anyway. That didn’t look like hate in all those swirls of blue. No hate in his body, either. His breath was uneven. Heart racing.
“Because we don’t have time for this,” Joelle tried again. “And because you’d regret it.”
Dallas kept staring for what seemed an eternity, and even though he didn’t move, her body seemed to think it was about to get lucky. Everything inside her was melting, urging her to do what Dallas had so far resisted.
Like kiss him.
“I would regret it,” he finally said.
The breath swooshed out of her, and Joelle knew she should feel relief, but that damn ache in her body was overriding common sense. Yes, Dallas would regret it all right. And once the pleasure had worn off—and there would be pleasure—she would regret it, too.
Dallas cursed again. He squeezed his eyes shut a moment, then added a few more words of profanity.
“Get some rest,” he snarled, and moved her aside so he could open the door. “First thing in the morning, we’re going back to that hellhole at Rocky Creek, and one way or another we will find answers.”
He headed out but then stopped when his phone beeped. With his back still to her, Dallas glanced at the screen and then groaned.
“What’s wrong now?” Joelle immediately asked, praying that nothing else had happened.
No such luck.
“My boss just got orders from his supervisor to have the tests expedited on the knife and handkerchief.” Dallas shook his head, then mumbled something she didn’t catch. “They might have the preliminary results back as early as tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Oh, God.
“Yeah.” He
said the rest of what he had to say from over his shoulder. “We’ve got less than twenty-fours to clear Kirby’s and our names, or Saul will have to arrest us.”
Chapter Nine
The moment Dallas took the final turn onto the rural road, he spotted the place. Rocky Creek Children’s Facility. He felt a punch of dread from the old memories, but he reminded himself that this visit was necessary.
So was Joelle.
Well, necessary for him to be able to speed through this investigation, anyway. But the sooner he put some distance between them, the better.
Joelle ducked down a little, probably so she could dodge the bright morning sunlight and take in the grounds and buildings. Even though he knew she’d recently visited the place, she seemed to shudder.
“It never did look like a prison,” she mumbled.
No. But that’s pretty much what it’d been since the kids sent there literally had had no other place to go and couldn’t leave. In his case, it’d been because his druggie mother had abandoned him at a sheriff’s office when he was seven, and since she wasn’t even sure who his father was, that hadn’t been an option. When Dallas hadn’t been a good fit and a troublemaker to boot in the half-dozen foster homes where he’d been sent, he’d ended up in reform school. After that, Rocky Creek became a place of last resort.
And his home.
That H word obviously didn’t have the same warm, fuzzy memories that it did for other kids, but reform school, Rocky Creek and his abandoning mother hadn’t broken him. His past had actually given him the drive to make something better of himself.
Apparently, it’d done the same for Joelle, though she’d been placed there for a different kind of abandonment. When her parents had been killed in a car accident, they’d left provisions in their will for her to be taken to Rocky Creek because a relative worked there. Of course, by the time Joelle had arrived, the relative had been long gone, and she’d been on her own.
Until they’d found each other, that is.
“You okay?” Joelle asked him.
He hadn’t realized she was staring at him, obviously noting his less than happy expression. “Yeah.” And that wasn’t a lie. “You?”
No yeah from her. “I just want to finish this.”
He was on the same page with her when it came to that.
Dallas pulled to a stop in the driveway in front of the entrance of the sprawling redbrick building. The grounds were in good shape. The trees were all trimmed. The flower beds were weed-free. He’d expected to see the place in total disrepair, but it looked pretty much the same as it had sixteen years ago.
“Rudy and Sarah still take care of the place?” he asked.
“Yes. Rudy does the grounds. And Sarah cleans the place—often, from the looks of it. Well, she did before her husband’s body was found and the inquiry started. After that, the state had the doors locked.”
It made sense. Basic precautions had to be taken in case there was any evidence left inside, and it was a plenty big enough place for there to be some hidden evidence.
He hoped so, anyway.
Dallas stepped from his truck. Looked around. Not just at the facility but at the wooded area and grounds. He was certain no one had followed them, but their attackers were still at large so he had to take precautions.
Joelle got out as well and had her own look around. She wobbled a little on the pebbled drive and had to catch on to the truck to steady herself while she raked a small rock from her high heel.
“Not exactly the best shoes for a trek like this,” he mumbled.
Or for keeping his attention off her. He could say the same for the entire outfit. A pale blue skirt and top that seemed to skim every curve of her body, and she had some curves, all right. The heels didn’t help, either. They weren’t exactly high, but they showed off her legs.
Yet something else that he’d always admired.
“The shoes and two similar outfits were all I’d brought with me,” she explained. “I hadn’t packed for an investigation.”
No. She’d packed for a honeymoon. Dallas’s stomach clenched at the thought of her wearing that outfit for Owen. Or wearing anything for him for that matter. Heck, his stomach clenched more at the thought of Owen looking at her while she was wearing nothing.
Oh, man.
He was a lost cause, and he forced his brain to dwell on something other than the shape of Joelle’s butt.
Dallas cleared his throat, hoping it would also clear his head, and he walked up the steps. “I’m surprised the state hasn’t torn the place down by now.”
“They can’t. The man who donated it back in the fifties put a stipulation in his will that it couldn’t be removed, only renovated. So far, no one seems eager to do that, and the state doesn’t have the desire or the money.”
Because places like this were dinosaurs, thank God.
“Sarah’s and Rudy’s salaries are paid from the donor’s estate,” she added. “I guess that’s one of the reasons they stay on.”
It’d take a heck of a lot more than a paycheck for Dallas to continue to live here.
Joelle fished through the laptop bag she’d brought with her and came out with the keys to open the padlock on the metal bar latch that stretched across the double front doors.
“Where’d you get the keys?” Dallas asked.
“The governor’s office.”
They stepped inside, and Dallas looked around. Bare floors and walls. Not a stick of furniture in sight. But it was indeed clean. Sarah and Rudy had obviously taken their maintenance duties seriously.
“The furnishings were sold years ago,” Joelle explained, “and the bulk of the records were moved to Austin when the place shut down, but there are still storage sheds. And Webb’s office.”
“Anything in there?” he asked.
“Plenty. It had been sealed off since the closure, and even Rudy and Sarah weren’t given keys to the lock. It still has some of Webb’s personal files, and it’s where I spent most of my time when I first started the inquiry.”
Dallas had no doubt she’d done a thorough job, too. “Anything left there to find?”
She lifted her shoulder and headed for the stairs. “Maybe you’ll see something I missed. Then we can walk over to Sarah Webb’s cottage and talk to her. Rudy lives in a trailer near the creek.”
They went up the steps that Dallas had walked hundreds of time, and while his mind should have been solely on this visit, it wasn’t. Damn his body. Certain parts of it, anyway. Those parts wouldn’t let him forget this blasted attraction for Joelle.
“I need to apologize for what happened last night,” he said.
She stopped in front of Webb’s office and proceeded to open a padlock on yet another bar lock across the door. “Nothing happened.”
He lifted his eyebrow.
“Nothing we can’t ignore,” she amended.
He wasn’t so sure of that. There was something else he couldn’t ignore, either. “I never have thanked you for trying to help Kirby and me.”
“No need for thanks. I was helping myself, too. Or so I thought.” She paused. “If I can’t stop Owen, we’re going to jail.”
“It’s not over until it’s over.” He hadn’t meant that to sound, well, sexual, but it did. Or maybe that was just his blasted imagination.
Nope.
The slight quiver of Joelle’s mouth let him know she was having similar thoughts, and that made both of them stupid.
She threw open the door, and though Dallas had thought he was prepared to see his old nemesis’s office, he wasn’t. A jolt of a different kind.
Webb had beaten him in this office.
Not just hours before Webb’s disappearance but plenty of other times, too. And not just him but Declan and Harlan. Hell, the man had even slapped Joelle, and it didn’t matter how many years had passed, that still put some acid in his gut.
Joelle shuddered again, maybe reliving the same memory. He saw the steel return to her eyes, and she plopped h
er bag on Webb’s desk.
“I have a portable scanner,” she explained, “and I copied things that I thought might be important.” She pulled a handful of files from the desk drawer she’d unlocked, put them on the desk and unlocked the other drawers. “Like Webb’s personal notes about the kids.”
That grabbed his attention, and Dallas dropped down in the chair to have a better look. “He kept files on all of us?” He looked at the sheer number of folders that she was pulling from the drawers.
“Most of us.” She plucked one from the stash and handed it to him. It was his file. “I went through all of them, looking for a motive for Webb’s murder.”
Dallas thumbed through his file and saw exactly what he’d expected to see. Webb labeled him a troublemaker and there were plenty of notes about the fights. But zero notes about Webb’s beatings.
“We all had motive,” Dallas mumbled. He tore his gaze from the folder and looked at her. “But did anyone other than us stand out?”
“Maybe.” She opened her laptop and turned it on. “I used these notes and the timeline I created. As I said, you have a short window of opportunity. But some others didn’t.”
“Like Declan. He didn’t do this.” Dallas hoped not, anyway. “Besides, it might not have been one of the boys. Some of the girls had reason to hate Webb, too.”
Joelle nodded. “Caitlyn Barnes. Remember, she and your brother Harlan were together.”
Yeah, he remembered. Even though they were supervised, the teenage hormones had prevailed, and some of them had found ways to be together.
“You think Caitlyn could have killed Webb?” Dallas asked.
“Not really.” Joelle huffed and sat down on the edge of the desk. “And that’s the problem. Webb wrote some negative things about her, even labeled her antisocial because she had all those piercings, crazy colored hair and wore black lipstick. But she wasn’t a large girl. I can’t see her overpowering a man like Webb. That’s true for most of the residents, and the ones who were close to being physically his match either lack motive or opportunity.”
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