by Lucy Quinn
“Sorry about what?” Daisy started to ask, but she barely got the question out before Hunter stepped up, looming over the poor girl.
“Miss Harris, I’m going to have to ask you to come with us,” he told her, his voice and manner all business. “We need to speak with you down at the station regarding the death of Chip Winslow.”
“Uh…” Daisy looked completely confused, but fortunately she didn’t resist, and called for her father to take over her duties before Hunter led her away. Cookie followed, shooting an apologetic look at Larry while he watched with helpless concern. When they were back outside, they walked toward the deputy station.
Cookie did her best to keep up with Hunter’s quick pace, but with every step her spirits sank a little further. She had a bad feeling this was only going to get worse.
“I’m telling you, I didn’t do anything to Chip Winslow!” Daisy insisted for the third time, slapping her hand on the desk. “Or with him, or around him, or anything. I barely knew the guy. Sure, I’ve seen him around, and I know he kept pressuring Dad to sell him the Salty Dog, but everybody knew that was never going to happen.”
“He never hit on you?” Hunter asked coolly. “I find that hard to believe.” Clearly he’d noticed her charms as well, Cookie thought with just a little heat.
Daisy flushed at that. “Yeah, okay, whenever I saw him he did the whole slimy come-on thing, but so what?” She shrugged. “I blew him off, he went away, rinse and repeat. That was as far as it went, and as much as I ever thought about it. Or him.”
“When was the last time you saw him?” Hunter inquired next.
Their chief suspect frowned. “I don’t know,” she admitted after a few seconds. “Last week some time, I think. Wednesday? Thursday? Could have been Friday, even. He’d come round the restaurant yet again, urging Dad to sell. He made some sleazy comment to me, and I told him to get lost.” Another shrug. “He did. That was it.”
Cookie set her phone in front of Daisy, open to the photo of their chief evidence. “Does this look like a piece of one of the bricks used to build the Salty Dog?” she asked.
“Aren’t you just an inn owner?” Daisy asked. “Why should I answer any of your questions?”
Hunter cleared his throat. “Ms. James has a law enforcement background. She’s working for me temporarily. Consider any questions she asks as official questions of the FBI.”
The fact that he had to explain away Cookie’s presence, made her bristle. The FBI had been her identity for so long, it was hard to just be an “inn owner.”
But the explanation seemed to pacify Daisy because she shrugged and studied the image. “Could be.”
“And where were you late last Saturday night and early Sunday morning?” Hunter pushed.
“At home,” Daisy told him. “With Dad and Stone. Then asleep—alone. Then at the Salty Dog, getting set up.”
Cookie and Hunter exchanged a glance. It was a weak alibi at best, no one but immediate family around, and they couldn’t be trusted not to cover for her. They couldn’t see any obvious bruises, but that didn’t mean Daisy hadn’t healed enough to conceal them. She still had means, motive, and possible opportunity. She’d certainly given them nothing to exonerate her.
Just then Cookie’s phone started to play Love Shack. Her mother’s smiling face flashed on the screen, and Cookie groaned, wondering when her mother found time to change her ringtone. After last night’s activities, no doubt. The song was a little too much even for Rain. Though she should have ignored it, Cookie ground her teeth and answered with a bark, “You’re out of control.”
“No, I’m brilliant. I solved the mystery of the key. You’re never going to guess whose it is,” Rain said.
“Mother!” Cookie admonished and turned away from Hunter and Daisy, lowering her voice. “You stole the key? What were you thinking? That’s evidence. And where’s Scarlet?”
“Don’t worry about her. She’s enjoying some much needed hammock time. Just listen. I was out taking my walk and killing two birds with one stone. And I figured out who it belongs to.”
Cookie sucked in a sharp breath, torn between wanting to scream at her mother or kiss her. “And?”
“It’s for Daisy’s apartment.” Rain’s tone was full of pride and superiority. “I told you, you’d never guess.”
Unfortunately, Rain’s discovery fit Cookie’s theories all too well. “Mother, you should not have done that. But now that you have, thank you for the information. Please wait for me at home, and whatever you do, don’t go into Daisy’s apartment.”
“Of course not, dear. That would be an invasion of privacy.” Rain clicked off and Cookie signaled to Hunter.
After filling him in on Rain’s call, Hunter rose from his seat. “Miss Harris, I’m afraid we’re going to have to hold you for further questioning,” he informed her. “I’ll have Deputy Swan formally charge you with suspicion, and the Hancock judge may set bail, but I’m guessing you won’t be going anywhere for a while.” Then he stepped out of the room, holding the door open for Cookie to join him.
“Can we really hold her?” she asked as soon as the door had shut behind them. “It’s still circumstantial.”
“Enough to charge her, at least for now,” Hunter replied, though he sounded unsure as well. “Hopefully that’ll give us the time to find real proof.”
Cookie nodded but wasn’t thrilled about it. Daisy didn’t seem like a murderer. What if they had the wrong person?
“Where is she?” a deep, rough voice demanded, and Cookie immediately tensed. Spinning around, she saw Dylan striding toward them across the deputy’s station.
“If you mean Miss Harris, she’s in custody,” Hunter replied, moving to intercept before Dylan could reach Cookie or the door behind her that led back to the cell where they’d just placed Daisy after the judge had faxed over the warrant for her arrest. “And unless you’re her legal counsel, you can’t see her.”
“The hell I can’t,” Dylan snapped, shifting to go around Hunter. Cookie winced, knowing what a mistake that was.
“Back off,” Hunter warned, his own voice dropping to a much lower register as his body tensed for action. When Dylan kept coming, Hunter’s arm shot out, hand open and at a right angle, clearly intending to shove Dylan back by the shoulder.
Only, Dylan slipped past the blow, grabbing hold of Hunter’s wrist with one hand, his other rising to slap Hunter’s opposite shoulder. The next thing Cookie knew, Hunter was leaping back up from where he’d hit the ground, his eyes gone flat black and his face murderous.
Whoa. Cookie had seen her ex-partner take down all sorts of bad guys, including ones with a whole lot of combat training. She’d never seen him take a fall before.
Who was Dylan, exactly? He’d said something about enlisting—had he been special forces or something?
Right now, though, she had a more immediate concern. Namely, how to keep the two men she was interested in from killing each other right there in the sheriff’s office.
“Okay, stop!” she shouted, stepping forward and raising her hands as she attempted to slide between them. Two equally rock-hard chests were under her palms as she pushed them apart. “Enough!” That at least made them both pause. “Look, let’s just talk this out,” she insisted, eyeballing each of them in turn. “Okay? Before somebody gets hurt.”
“I’ll tell you who’s going to get hurt,” Hunter growled. “It’s Mr. Fix-it over here.”
“Not likely,” Dylan shot back, matching Hunter glare for glare. But when Cookie pushed harder against his chest, he let her shove him back another step. She did the same to Hunter, and at least now there was a little space between them.
“You’re holding Daisy,” Dylan ground out after a few seconds of staring. “Let her go. Now.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Hunter answered. “Not unless you’ve got a hundred K lying around for bail.”
Cookie wasn’t entirely sure how he’d gotten the judge to set bail at such a ridiculous
ly high amount. But she was even more shocked when Dylan unslung the gym bag she’d only just realized he was carrying and dropped it onto the nearest desk. “One hundred thousand,” he announced. “Now let her go.”
Stunned, Cookie stepped over to the bag, unzipped it, and looked inside. Sure enough, it was filled with cash—bundles of hundreds, counted and tagged by a bank. Five thousand per bundle, the bills rustled as she confirmed that there were twenty bundles. “He’s not kidding,” she told Hunter. “He’s just posted bail for her.”
Hunter’s scowl could have frozen a forest fire, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. “Fine,” he said finally. “Go get her.”
This time it was Cookie who wouldn’t back down. “No, you go get her,” she replied. “I’ll get Swan to fill out the forms.” No way am I leaving the two of you alone in here without adult supervision, she added in her head, and she was fairly sure the thought was strong enough that her ex-partner picked up on it. That earned her another glare, but finally Hunter turned away and headed for the cells.
When the heavy door slammed shut behind Hunter, Cookie said, “Look. I’m sorry. We had to—”
He raised a hand to stop her. “I really don’t want to talk about it right now,” he told her gruffly. “Just show me what to sign and where so I can take Daisy home.”
That made Cookie bridle a bit. Home? As in, his home? Her home? Their home? But she ground her teeth together, bit her tongue, and went to find Swan. By the time Hunter was back with Daisy, everything had been filled out, signed, and squared away.
“Dylan?” Daisy asked as soon as she caught sight of him. “What’re you doing here?” She sounded genuinely surprised.
“Bailing you out,” he answered, his tone thawing a bit. “Your dad called me, told me they’d brought you in. Something about Winslow having a key to your apartment.”
Her eyes narrowed in disgust. “I never gave that to him. The creep must’ve stole it last week when he was at the Salty Dog, the same day I lost my keys.” She gave an involuntary shudder. “It never occurred to me someone would’ve taken them.”
Dylan leveled a death-stare at Hunter. “Take those off her,” he insisted, clearly meaning the handcuffs.
The chain rattled as Hunter removed the cuffs from Daisy’s wrists then stepped back and watched without a word as Dylan led her out. At the door, Dylan stopped long enough to look Cookie’s way, but she couldn’t read his expression.
His eyes were gray as steel, though. And just as cold.
19
The next morning, Cookie surprised herself by rising at dawn, pulling on a pair of bike shorts and a T-shirt, and creeping downstairs and outside. Though not normally big on morning exercise, she needed to get out, stretch, and do something active.
Especially if it would help her erase yesterday’s events from her head. Like the way Dylan had looked at her as he’d escorted Daisy out.
“We did what we had to do,” Hunter had insisted after the pair—were they a pair? Cookie had found she really wanted an answer to that question—had left. “She’s our chief suspect. We had no choice.”
“To bring her in, yeah, sure,” she’d agreed. “But to charge her? Maybe. And then to set bail at a hundred thousand? She’s not exactly a flight risk. Her entire life is here on this island, and it doesn’t provide a lot of hiding places.”
“It was enough that I figured her dad couldn’t leverage the restaurant to cover it,” Hunter had explained, finally calming down. He’d been ready to go after Dylan for a rematch, and Cookie had known that wouldn’t have ended well. “That was all. I just wanted to keep her here, sweat her a bit, and see if she let anything slip.” He’d slammed one hand down on a desk. “I didn’t expect the handyman to show up with a gym bag full of cash.” The look he’d leveled at her then had been sharp, serious, and devoid of the usual macho rivalry. “Charlie, how much do you really know about this guy?”
Not a lot, Cookie admitted to herself as she walked away from the inn, slowly increasing her pace until she finally broke into a steady jog. Her muscles flexed tightly with the movement, but she knew that would pass once she’d warmed up. Dylan Creed. Born and raised here. Left for college, he’d said, though he hadn’t said where, or what his major had been, or even if he’d graduated. He’d said he’d enlisted when he was eighteen. She suspected in the Navy, though she didn’t know for certain, nor did she know how long he’d been in or how and why he’d left the service before starting college then coming back here and starting his own business. He had his own place—apartment or house, she wasn’t sure.
And evidently, he had a hundred thousand dollars just sitting around. Oh yeah, and could toss Hunter around as though he were a wadded-up napkin. Also, Dylan was insanely hot, smart, engaging, fiercely loyal, more than a little bit of a flirt, and good with his hands. She tried not to dwell on all the implications of that last statement.
Her mental musings had brought Cookie into town, and she slowed as she glanced around, making sure she wasn’t about to drift into traffic. It was still early enough, though, that most regular folk were still in bed. The lobstermen were already out on their boats, of course, checking their catches even as the sun came up.
But as she turned down the main street, Cookie did spot one other figure awake and outdoors at this ungodly hour. Curious, she jogged a little closer. It was a guy, she saw, decent height but rail thin, dark hair that might have been black or brown or even a deep red. He was wearing jeans and a plaid shirt over a T-shirt and was carrying a cardboard box. As she approached, she saw him shove the box into the back of an old Subaru parked there at the curb.
It was the Subaru that clued her in as to who she was looking at. “Good morning!” she called out, picking up her pace in order to close the remaining distance quickly. Stone Harris, brother of Daisy and son of Larry, started at the greeting and glanced up, suspicion naked on his narrow face. He looked a little like Daisy and a little like Larry, Cookie thought as she came to a stop just a few feet from him, but without the drive and determination that showed so clearly through both of them. “How’s it going?”
“Uh, good,” Stone replied, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He scuffed the ground with his worn sneakers, stole a quick peek at her face, which then tracked down across her body, then glanced back down at the ground again. “You?”
“Oh, can’t complain,” Cookie replied as she leaned on her thighs to catch her breath, her chest heaving from her run. “You’re Stone, right? Stone Harris?” She cut him off before he could ask. “I know your dad a little bit. Love the Salty Dog.”
“Yeah, it’s great,” Stone agreed, still not looking at her directly. “Uh, they should be opening up soon. If you hurry, you can get the first biscuits of the day. Dad makes ’em fresh.”
“I know. They’re so good.” She realized she was laying it on a little thick, but something in her warned to keep him talking. She glanced at the battered Subaru beside them, and the boxes filling most of the back. “Wow, early bird gets the worm, huh? What’s with all the stuff?”
“Camping trip,” he replied, though she didn’t see a sleeping bag or a tent at all. There was a scuffed blue cooler on the front passenger seat, but most of the other stuff looked more like personal items than camping gear. Who brought a box of old photos when they went camping? And not just photos, but framed ones, as though he’d just pulled them off the wall?
“Really?” she asked. “I didn’t realize there were any good places for camping around here. Where do you go?”
When he squinted at her, she knew she’d pushed it a little too far. “Who are you, anyway?” Stone demanded, finally looking her in the eye. “I don’t know you.”
“Cookie James,” she replied, holding out her hand. “My mother and I took over the Secret Seal Inn.”
“Ah, yeah, right.” He shook hands with her, though he seemed to do it reluctantly, and he pulled his clammy hand free as soon as he could. Nervous? “Well, nice to mee
t you.” His eyes—the same green as Daisy’s, she noted—darted over to check out her rack again. Yuck.
Cookie decided it was time to drop the act. “Look, Stone,” she said, her hands going to her hips, “don’t do this.” She waved at his heavily laden car. “Whatever it is. Daisy needs you right now.”
“What?” He was staring at her again, only now it was confusion and anger rather than lust. “What do you know about any of that?”
“I know that she was formally charged with manslaughter,” Cookie responded. “I know that she posted bail. And I know they’re still looking for that last little bit of evidence, the one that’ll put your sister away for good.” She shrugged. “If it was my sister facing all that, I’d want to stick around. To be there for her.”
“Yeah?” He barked out a short, bitter little laugh. “Lady, trust me, the last thing Daisy needs is me around. She’ll be a lot better off if I’m out of the picture. And speaking of being out—” He slid past her and closed the car trunk with a solid thunk. “I’ve got a few more things to take care of. Nice to meet you.” Turning his back on her, he retreated to a small apartment building just past where she’d first seen him.
Cookie watched him go, regretting there wasn’t anything she could do to make him stay. She was just a civilian. But Hunter was a whole other matter. She pulled out her phone and hit Call. “Where are you?” she demanded as soon as he picked up his phone.
“Back at the inn. Why?” he said. “Where are you? Is something wrong?”
“I’m in town,” Cookie answered, glancing back the way Stone had gone, but she didn’t see him returning yet. “I just ran into Stone Harris. He’s got what looks like half his life shoved into his car, and he’s grabbing the last few boxes now.” She paused. “I think he’s doing a runner, Hunter. We can’t let him disappear. I have a feeling he’s the one we need to crack this case.”
“Could be,” Hunter agreed. “If nothing else, he may know something about Daisy, something damning.”