Cold Truth

by Susan Sleeman

  “I’ll question them, you hold the door,” Coop said to Jackson and stepped inside. Coop kept his rifle raised. No telling if Pointer might be in the room.

  Gasps traveled around the room. People ducked for cover.

  “Relax,” he called out and finished scanning the room. Not locating Pointer, Coop lowered his rifle, his body swaying with the ferry. “We’re friendly forces, and we’re looking for an abducted man and woman.”

  Jackson remained at the door and took overwatch. Coop fished a picture of Kiera and Kevin from his pocket and showed it to passengers. He’d talked to almost everyone without an affirmative response to the picture and was losing hope. He approached the last male who was eyeing him with distrust.

  “Have you seen this couple?” Coop asked.

  He nodded. “They parked next to me below.”

  Coop’s heart soared at the news. “Did you see the driver?”

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t either of them. They were in the back seat. It was odd when they didn’t get out, but some passengers choose to stay in their cars. Whatever. I headed up here and didn’t give it another thought until now.”

  Coop dug out his picture of Pointer and displayed it for the man. “Is this the driver?”

  He nodded.

  “See any handcuffs or gags on the couple in the back?”

  “No gags, but they had a blanket over them, and I couldn’t see their hands.” His eyes narrowed. “These the people you’re looking for?”

  Coop nodded and ran the information through his brain. If Kevin and Kiera were involved in the theft, he suspected one of them would be sitting up front with Pointer. But if Hay had cuffed them and whisked then away, they would likely be in the back. Told Coop they weren’t likely involved, but then again, they could have partnered with Pointer and for some reason he’d turned on them.

  Only one way to find out. Get below deck and apprehend Pointer.

  23

  Kiera tried to listen to Hay’s demands and sit silently, but she had unanswered questions, and if she was going to die soon, she wanted to have closure.

  “How can you be sure that Kevin turned you in at the college?” she asked.

  “How?” Hay swiveled to look at them. “First, he was dumb enough to come to me and tell me to turn myself in. Talk about waving a red flag in my face.”

  “I wasn’t the only one who knew about your underhanded behavior,” Kevin said, his tone angry and firm, which to Kiera was a good sign. “And doesn’t mean I did it.”

  “That’s why I started doing some digging. I broke into Dr. Zain’s office to look at my file. It said the caller wanted to be anonymous, but Zain recognized Kevin’s voice and made a note of that in the file. He also noted that the incoming call came from the admission’s office, and it didn’t take me long to figure out that you had a friend who worked in the place. So, yeah, I had proof.”

  “Dr. Zain could have been wrong.” Kevin lifted his chin in the same way Kiera knew she did when she needed to defend herself.

  “Nah. You have this irritating nasally voice, and you know it. Would be hard to mistake it.”

  Hay was right. Her brother’s tone was unusual, and she didn’t doubt that Hay had his facts straight, but she wasn’t about to admit it. “I still think you’re wrong, but let’s move on. Why wait years to do this?”

  “Why? Why?” His voice shot up. “Because I was locked up, that’s why.”

  Kevin’s forehead knotted. “You mean in jail?”

  “No, prison. For four horrifying years.”

  “What for?” Kevin asked, but Kiera already knew the reason.

  “Manufacturing and selling a controlled substance.”

  “You sold drugs?” Kevin’s voice rose. “Really?”

  Hay fired an angry look at Kevin. “Not like I wanted to, but you ended my hope of being a chemist. What was I supposed to do? No one would hire me. Even in entry-level grunt chemistry jobs. I couldn’t handle it. Started drinking to forget. Moved on to drugs for a very brief time before I realized with my background, I could make meth. It’s pretty easy for a chemist. I was rolling in the money, but the DEA got wind of my operation and poof.” He snapped his fingers. “Like that I was in prison and serving time.”

  “That’s so unethical,” Kiera said.

  “Don’t lecture me, Kiera. Not until you’ve hit rock bottom and your only choice after years of college is a minimum-wage job that won’t even pay the rent.”

  Kiera started to tell him she still wouldn’t have broken the law, but she noticed movement out of the corner of her eye. She slowly shifted her focus to the parking area ahead to keep from alerting Hay. A rifle poked out from behind a pillar. Someone peered around the column. A quick dart out to take look then back behind the column. Didn’t matter. She recognized the man.

  Coop. It was Coop.

  Her heart soared, but crashed when Hay started to turn around. She couldn’t let him see Coop.

  “That still didn’t give you an excuse to make meth,” she quickly said to capture his attention again. “You could have found a roommate or a cheaper place to live. There were plenty of options open to you.” She was risking his wrath, but it was the only thing she could come up with.

  He bared his teeth at her and growled.

  Kevin grabbed her knee under the blanket. “Kiera, don’t.”

  She patted Kevin’s hand and shared a quick look with him, telling him she knew what she was doing. “I don’t mean to offend you, Hay. I can’t imagine what I would do if I somehow lost my ability to work as a chemist.”

  She saw Coop dart toward another pillar and drop to the ground. She glanced at Kevin to see if he’d noticed, but his focus was on Hay.

  “Oh, I know what you’d do.” Hay scoffed. “You’d run home to mommy and daddy. I didn’t have parents to bail me out. Or siblings. I was on my own. Already barely scraping by to complete my education on a scholarship.”

  “You did have a tougher life than Kevin and me,” Kiera admitted. “I suppose you used that to justify your plagiarism, too.”

  Hay’s eyes creased in anger. “Shut up, Kiera. Just shut up. You don’t know anything. And soon you won’t know anything at all. Not after I put my gun to your head and pull the trigger.” He raised his handgun and pointed the barrel at her face. “I only wish I could do it here. Right now. But I’m not going away for this. Not when you deserve it. I’m never going to prison again.”

  With his anger, she should let this go, but she didn’t want him to turn and look out the window. “Why try to run me over with the ATV and poison me with the cocaine?”

  “I had no idea the coke was laced with something or that you wouldn’t be able to resist it. I only wanted to make it look like Kevin was into drugs.”

  “I didn’t do the cocaine. Just touched my mouth with my finger that had some on it.” She glared at him now. “And the ATV?”

  “Never planned to hit you.”

  “Then why come racing at me?”

  “When I called you, you didn’t sound all that worried. Figured maybe that would get your attention.” He chuckled. “Sounds like it did.”

  His door was suddenly wrenched open. The barrel of a rifle was placed against his head. “Don’t move, Pointer. Your reign of terror is over.”

  Kevin jerked back.

  Kiera looked at her brother. “It’s okay. This is Coop. He’s part of the Blackwell Tactical team that I’ve been working with to find you.”

  “Put the gun on the passenger seat,” Coop directed Hay. “And before you try anything, you should know that I have a very itchy finger, and I’m not afraid to use it.”

  Kiera wished Coop would glance at her to convey what he was thinking about her taking off, but he couldn’t take his focus from Hay.

  “Gun on seat,” he reminded Hay.

  A look of disdain settling on his face, Hay laid the gun on the seat and slowly pulled back his empty hand. Not a second later, Coop jerked Hay out of the car by his jacket and pla
stered him against the side of the car. Coop twisted Hay’s arms behind his back, and when Coop spun Hay around, his wrists were bound with zip ties.

  The passenger door opened, and Jackson grabbed Hay’s gun then poked his head inside. He gave her a not-so-friendly look, likely because she’d taken off on them. “Sit tight.”

  “This is Jackson,” she said to Kevin.

  “Another team member?” he asked.

  “Yes.” She refrained from adding one who was obviously upset with her. After his response, she could only imagine how angry Coop was with her.

  “Time to start talking, Pointer.” Coop slammed him against the car again. “I want to know every detail of the biotoxin theft.”

  “It was them.” His whiny voice came through the open door. “Kiera and Kevin. They stole the toxin. I’m bringing them to the police.”

  “Nice try, Pointer,” Coop said. “The county sheriff’s office is in the other direction.”

  “I planned to go straight there from the ferry.”

  “Then why take the ferry in the first place?”

  “I got turned around on these country roads.”

  “So you had nothing to do with the theft and didn’t abduct Kevin?”

  “No to both.”

  “Yeah, I should’ve figured as much,” Coop said, shocking Kiera. He really didn’t believe her. He thought she and Kevin were guilty.

  “Why’s that?” Hay asked.

  “You couldn’t manage to turn in a plagiarized paper without getting caught.” Disdain lingered in Coop’s voice. “So something like this? It’s way above your intelligence level.”

  “That’s not true.” Hay’s voice had dropped and reminded her of when he’d caught her at the lighthouse and warned her in a deadly calm to drop the gun.

  “Now Kiera and Kevin on the other hand,” Coop continued. “They’re smart enough to pull this off. Not you. No. I don’t know how I could accuse you.”

  Did Coop really believe what he was saying, or was he trying to get Hay to confess? Either way, he was very believable, proving he had strong acting skills. Had he really been acting this whole time with her?

  “I’m smarter than you think.” Hay’s voice hardened.

  “Really?” Coop asked. “Sure can’t see anything that would prove it. Not the puzzles and the cryptic phone calls that Kiera must have arranged after she faked Kevin’s abduction. Those were brilliant. Just brilliant.”

  “She’s not that smart. She must have had help.”

  Kiera couldn’t help but notice that if Hay hadn’t made the calls and created the puzzles that he would have asked for clarification. Coop had to see that, too.

  “You’re probably right,” Coop said. “Kevin must have helped her.”

  “That’s not what I mean. Kevin is no brighter than she is. It takes a man of great intelligence to set all of this up.”

  Coop continued. “But those clues were impossible to figure out! Kiera led us to believe she was solving them. I mean, how could she? Maybe the hands in the ice…but what about the others?”

  Silence settled around them, and Kiera wondered if Hay had realized that if he was innocent, he wouldn’t know anything about the clues and had clammed up.

  “The code numbers on the back of the picture,” he finally said. “Surprised me that she figured that one out.”

  “She wouldn’t have. Not without the help of my team.”

  “Ah, yes. Something I could have never predicted.”

  “True. Even an intelligent guy like you couldn’t know that my team would join in the search for Kevin.”

  Hay’s shoulders lifted. “Glad to see you now recognize my superiority.”

  “One, thing we’re still baffled about,” Coop said. “None of us have been able to figure out how you got into the lab. That had to be a challenge even for you.”

  Kiera could almost see Hay’s cocky smirk, but he didn’t respond.

  “I could’ve never done it,” Coop added. “I still have no clue.”

  “Probably because you aren’t familiar with 3D printing.”

  “No. I’m not,” Coop replied, but Kiera suspected he had knowledge of 3D printing. These days most people had at least heard of it.

  “It’s going to be the way of the future. I was able to use a picture of Kevin’s finger to create a 3D mold that fit over my finger. The fingerprint was perfect. And viola, I was in the lab.”

  “Hey, thanks for sharing that, Pointer. Now we know exactly where to look for your prints and DNA.”

  “What? I didn’t tell you anything.”

  “My recording begs to differ.” Jackson held up his phone and chuckled. “I’ll take a look in the back for that mold.”

  “No!” Hay shouted. “Wait. You’ll find it, but that’s because I took it from Kevin.”

  “Why would Kevin need a mold of his own finger?” Coop asked.

  “I mean Kiera. I took it from Kiera.”

  “Now here’s where that logic falls down, Pointer. Kiera’s a woman, and she moves like one. And she’s not as tall as Kevin and could never have made it past the lab security guard without questions. Now you, on the other hand…”

  “No. No. I haven’t done anything wrong. You have to believe me.”

  “You can tell that to the sheriff. His office will be our first stop when the ferry docks.”

  Coop faced Kiera outside Gage’s house, the chilly wind biting through his jacket, but the cold was the least of his worries. Kiera had packed her bag and loaded it in her car where Kevin waited for her to join him, but on the way out of the compound, she’d stopped to thank Gage and Hannah for their hospitality. She didn’t have a word for Coop, not a single one and it stung.

  He met her gaze and held it, willing her to speak. She didn’t utter a word.

  “I wish you wouldn’t go,” he said sincerely.

  “Why? Because you believe me now?”

  “I believed you before,” he said, though it was a half-truth. He’d doubted her for quite some time.

  “Hah! That’s not what you said to Gage when I overheard you talking in the training facility.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said and meant it. “I should have trusted in you right off the bat instead of needing time to process everything. But put yourself in my shoes. I’d just found the container marked Oceanic Labs in your apartment. And it was filled with a white powder.”

  She eyed him. “Hay admitted to planting it there to make me look guilty.”

  “I didn’t know that at the time.”

  She sighed. “It doesn’t matter. I thought we’d made a connection. That we could trust one another, but you were ready to toss that out at the first hiccup.”

  “Hiccup,” he said, getting angry now. “Biotoxin in your apartment wasn’t a hiccup. It was more like an earthquake. And besides. You didn’t trust me, but took off on your own where you could easily have been killed.”

  She crossed her arms. “I wasn’t killed.”

  “Because we intervened in time.”

  She stared at him, the hurt in her eyes melting his anger.

  “You didn’t trust me, honey,” he said, hoping to thaw some of her anger.

  She crossed her arms. “I didn’t. You’re right. I chose to save my brother before you found him and had him thrown in jail.”

  “He might have been arrested, but our team would have kept working to help Blake put the right person behind bars.”

  “Really? Your whole team would have kept at it for no fee?”

  He hated her suspicious tone and ran a hand through his hair. “Maybe. Maybe not, but I would have.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I love you,” he said, shocked that he admitted it aloud.

  Her mouth fell open, and she stared at him. He was desperate to hear what she thought, but he wouldn’t prompt a reply, and he waited her out.

  “Then you don’t know the meaning of love.” She spun and climbed behind the wheel of her car. She leaned out before closin
g the door. “Please have the gate open by the time I reach it.”

  She closed her door and started down the drive. Shocked at how their conversation had ended, he headed inside to open the gate via Gage’s computer. At the desk, he watched the camera feed. She pulled toward the gate. He had half a mind not to open it, but what good would that do?

  He’d blown it. Failed to trust her when he should have.

  He pressed the button and the gate swung open. She drove through and out of his life.

  They’d had the best possible outcome to her brother’s abduction. Blake’s staff located Pointer’s print in the 3D mold and everyone could rest assured that she and Kevin didn’t steal the toxin. And yet, she’d left him, to go where, he didn’t know.

  He suspected she was spending the night at Kevin’s house. Or maybe they would head straight back to Portland. He could see that. See her and Kevin settling in with their family surrounding them for support. Something Coop now realized he wanted in his life. Sure, he had the team, but it wasn’t the same as family. Not the same as having the woman he loved by his side.

  He’d never had either of those things. Totally his fault.

  He headed outside and stared up at the stars. He was lost and didn’t know what to do. How to act. What to think. Except he wanted Kiera by his side, but he had no idea how to make that happen.

  Kiera had only driven a few miles before she couldn’t stop her tears and only hoped Kevin wouldn’t notice. He was often oblivious to things around him, but when it came to her, he didn’t usually miss much.

  She swallowed hard and tried not to sob or sniffle, but simply let the tears fall, blinking hard at times to clear her vision for driving. She probably should have let Kevin drive, but it was her car, plus he still seemed shell-shocked from his ordeal.

  Kevin swiveled. “What’s wrong?”

  “Guess I’m just letting the stress out,” she replied, which was true, but not the full truth.

  “You’ve had hours to do that. Why now?”

  “I didn’t want to cry in front of the team or Hannah.” Another half-truth.