GRAY WOLF SECURITY, Texas: The Complete 6-Books Series

by Glenna Sinclair

  I couldn’t do that.

  I dressed and slipped out of the house, determined to put this thing to rest now.

  Chapter 20

  At the Compound

  Another insomniac.

  Kipling watched Knox make her way to the house, walking quickly in the cool breeze of the early August night. She was alone, suggesting that her man was asleep. That told him that she was coming to look at video footage of his house, trying to solve the case while everyone slept.

  She was definitely his kind of girl.

  He went downstairs, meeting her in David’s office.

  “He has it on the hard drive.”

  She nodded. “There’s one thing about David: he’s kind of predictable.”

  Kipling chuckled. “He is.”

  He walked up behind her and watched as her fingers furiously flew over the keyboard of the computer set up. David had a complicated array of computer monitors and desktop configurations that confused Kipling. He’d never really cared much for computers except where they made his work overseas more efficient. He was beginning to see how it made things more efficient here, too.

  Knox settled in David’s chair as she sorted through the files on his computer that contained important security footage. She found what she was looking for, a group of images that Ricki and her team had taken from the live feeds that had come from Dunlap’s home before the explosion.

  She frowned as she studied an image of a woman bent low over the gas lines outside the house, a black sweater covering her head.

  “I heard Ricki say that they’d tried to enhance the image, but they didn’t have any success.”

  She barely nodded as she leaned close to study it.

  “Do you see that?” she asked, pointing to the woman’s hoodie. “Do you see that lump there?”

  “I think it’s just the design of the hood.”

  “Maybe.”

  She switched to another image, one of the woman inside the house. The long, dark pants she was wearing were clear in the image, as were the heels underneath. Who wears heels to sabotage a house? But she had on the same heels and her face was carefully turned away from the cameras.

  “Who would know where the cameras are?”

  Knox sat back a little. “Anyone with access to the security company’s information. Dunlap. Maybe Julep. And his assistant, Janis. She seems to know everything about the house.”

  “Janis?”

  Kipling grabbed and iPad off a shelf behind David’s desk and pulled up the information on the Spencer case that was kept in a central database there at the house that anyone with the right security information could access using the iPads.

  “We had the girls do a background check on all the people working for Dunlap.” He paused a second. “Here it is. Janis Macky. Thirty-eight years old. Graduated suma cum laude at Northwestern University.”

  “Northwestern? That’s where Dunlap met Colby.”

  “She graduated the same year, too, apparently. She came to college a little later in life, I suppose.”

  “How’d she end up in Texas?”

  Kipling perused the file, then shrugged. “Doesn’t say. In fact, there’s very little info here. She grew up on a farm in Illinois, went to Northwestern later in life, but it doesn’t say why. Illness, maybe? Then she moved here, worked a few other jobs—mostly secretarial—then she went to work for Dunlap a little more than six years ago.”

  “About the time Stevie was born.”

  “No criminal arrests, no traffic tickets, no record of any kind. Her credit history is clean. She had a bank account, two credit cards that she pays off every month. No real debt. No unexplained deposits.”

  “But she has access to everything in Dunlap’s office. His architectural plans, his contracts, all his business stuff. And how much you want to bet she knows about the house, the way it was designed, the way it was built, the security company’s designs? Dunlap built that house with one of his own crews, through his business. That means all that stuff would be at the office and would be something she could access.” She leaned toward the computer screen again. “Janis would know how to avoid showing her face to the cameras. She would know how to tamper with the gas lines to keep from blowing up the entire house. I bet he even has her deal with the garage that services his car. They would know how to fiddle with his brake lines.”

  “But there’s something wrong there. The explosion, that was clearly designed to scare them, not to hurt anyone. The car? He could have died.”

  “Maybe the brakes weren’t supposed to go completely out. Or maybe…” she hesitated, still staring at that still picture on the computer screen. “They both grew up on farms. She would have known that he knew how to work farm equipment, how to use an emergency brake. Maybe she assumed he played chicken on the farm a few times, as I’m told he and his sisters loved to do. Maybe she assumed he would know how to control the crash.”

  “But that’s a huge risk to take.”

  “So is blowing up someone’s kitchen with the assumption everyone would have been in bed. What if he’d gotten up in the middle of the night for a snack? Or one of the kids had wanted a glass of water?”

  Kipling nodded, agreeing with her, even though the evidence seemed weak even to his inexperienced eyes.

  “These shoes,” she said, running her finger along the line of the heels the woman was wearing. “Unusual thing to wear while setting up someone’s murder. But not so unusual in an office setting.” She continued to study them, her finger moving over the shoes and then up to the bump at the back of the woman’s hood. “I’ve seen these shoes before. And this…doesn’t it look like a ponytail pressing against the material of the hood?”

  “Could just be a knot in the material.”

  “Could be. But I don’t think so.”

  She went back to the file and sifted through the stills Ricki’s team had pulled from the footage. She pulled out another, then another, studying each one for long moments each. Then she smiled, taping her finger on the screen.

  “Do you see that?” she asked. “That little line of yellow? It’s a ponytail.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because I’ve seen it. This is Janis. I know it is.”

  “Knox—?”

  “The shoes. I know those shoes. She was wearing them the day I went in for my interview. I remember distinctly staring at those shoes while she filled out my paperwork, thinking that they were pretty fancy for an office setting. I remember because I have this dress that would have looked stunning with those shoes.”

  “Women,” Kipling muttered.

  “Yeah, well, men should be more grateful for women who notice that stuff.” She tapped the screen again. “It’s her.”

  “Okay. I’ll call Alexander and we’ll go to the office, see if we can find anything in her desk that implicates her.”

  “We will.”

  She was confident. And that made Kipling confident.

  Chapter 21

  Knox

  Alexander was more skeptical than Kipling had been. He kept shaking his head as I searched through Janis’ desk, looking for some proof that she was the one on those tapes. It looked like we were going to come up dry. As unorganized as Dunlap’s office was, Janis’ desk was neat. She kept everything in the right place, carefully put away and filed. Everything. She even filed sticky notes he’d put on contracts for her to read.

  And then I found it. It was a file marked Dunlap’s house. I pulled it out of the file cabinet and opened it, watching the paperwork from the security company fall out onto the desk in front of me.

  “Bingo!”

  “That doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”

  “Pull up the footage on Gray Wolf cameras, and I bet you’ll see her face. She knew where the security cameras were, but she couldn’t have known where ours were.”

  Alexander was still shaking his head, but he pulled out his iPad and began access the footage. The cameras Gray Wolf put in only rec
orded when there was motion in an area near a camera, and the footage was only brought to a monitor’s attention when there was motion in a place where it shouldn’t be, or if it didn’t fit the parameters of the people allowed in that area. Janis’ presence at Dunlap’s house during the day wouldn’t have sent the footage to the monitor, but it would have been recorded.

  I leafed through the file while Alexander searched the database. Everything we needed to prove she was behind the explosion at Dunlap’s was in there. Plans for the house. The specs on the gas lines. There was even a page printed from the internet that explained how to loosen the connections so that the gas would leak at a predictable rate.

  We had her.

  And then Alexander came over and silently handed me the iPad. On the screen was a clear shot of Janis’ face surrounded by the dark hoodie.

  We had her.

  I laughed. “It’s over. We have her.”

  ***

  David called the police detective he worked with in Tierney Michaels’ case, Detective Snider. He came to the office and looked at our evidence silently, not really talking. But then he pulled out his cell phone and called for a warrant. Janis was arrested an hour later without incidence at her house.

  I went back to the cottage and found Dunlap still sleeping in my bed. He was so exhausted that he hadn’t noticed I was gone all that time. I stripped down to my panties and crawled into bed with him, pressing my body up against his back.

  “Morning, gorgeous,” he mumbled, turning toward me.

  “I have news.”

  He looked at me, then sat up, taking a longer look at me.

  “Did you sleep?”

  I brushed that question off, touching his face lightly, my fingers dancing in his facial hair. “We got her.”

  “Julep?”

  “No, Dunlap. It wasn’t Julep. The real killer set her up, made it look like it was her when it really wasn’t.”

  He frowned, his penetrating gray eyes hard on my face. “What do you mean?”

  “It was Janis. All the evidence was there in her desk, right there outside your office. She altered the gas lines. She caused the kitchen at your house to explode.”

  He shook his head, climbing out of the bed as he did. He paced the length of the room between the door and the end of the bed, staring at the floor.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. The cops are interviewing her now.”

  “It doesn’t make sense. Why would Janis want to hurt me?”

  “Did you know you went to college with her?”

  He stopped pacing and stared at me. “What are you talking about?”

  “She graduated from Northwestern the same time you did. And then she followed you here to Austin.”

  “I’ve only known Janis for a little more than six years. Since I opened my construction company.”

  “I know. But we did a background check, we have the records.”

  “That’s not possible. She showed me a resume that listed UT Austin as her alma mater. She didn’t go to Northwestern.”

  “She did. And she never held another job as an assistant, not like the one she has with you. She was a secretary at some insurance company and for a real estate company. She got fired from both.”

  He shook his head again. “She had references from all these construction companies. She’d even worked for Peterman.”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  “Fuck!”

  He ran his fingers through his hair, pacing again. I could see the dark clouds in his eyes, the tension in his shoulders. He kept pacing like he was running a race.

  “I should have done a background check. I brought this danger on my family.”

  “Dunlap…”

  I got off the bed, a little surprised at the direction the conversation was going. I tried to catch his arm, to catch his attention, but he was clearly upset. He didn’t want to focus on me.

  “Dunlap, we got her. She’s in jail.”

  “Yeah, well, she probably killed Colby, right? That’s what you’re thinking?”

  “I’m thinking it’s a pretty good possibility.”

  “And that’s on me. I brought her into our lives, I introduced her to my wife, complained to her about the problems we were having. We talked about everything. She knew everything! And she killed Colby because of it.”

  I nodded, unable to disagree with him. I could see the grief on his face, the pain that realization brought to him. And that addressed the last bit of doubt that lived in my soul. I was convinced that he still loved Colby, but the more time we spent together, the more I told myself it didn’t matter. But now it was pretty obvious it did.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He shook his head. “I need some time.”

  He walked out of the bedroom, out of my cottage. He never once looked back.

  He was gone. And where did that leave me?

  Chapter 22

  Dunlap

  I walked into the visitor’s room, listening to the conversations going on around me. We weren’t allowed a face-to-face visit with the inmates. Instead, it was a room filled with computers. A visitor sat at the computer, picked up a phone, and waited. Then the inmate would appear on the computer and the visitor had twenty minutes to say what they’d come to say.

  I had a lot to say.

  When Janis’ face appeared on the screen, I was filled with an overwhelming hatred like nothing I’d ever felt before.

  “Why?”

  The smile of delight that had been on her face abruptly disappeared.

  “What?”

  “Why did you do it? Why put my children in danger?”

  “I knew you wouldn’t be in the kitchen.”

  “But what about the girls? The kitchen is below their nursery.”

  “The specs. I knew the house was designed so that a fire in the kitchen wouldn’t spread to the rest of the house. I knew they would be fine.”

  I shook my head. “You couldn’t have known that. Not even I knew that.”

  “You are brilliant. You designed a sturdy house.”

  Admiration dripped from her words. I stared at her, finding it difficult to reconcile this woman with the woman I had leaned on so much during the first years of my business, when we were flagging and worried that we wouldn’t survive. She was my rock. And now? She’d taken our relationship and twisted it into something dark and dirty.

  “And the car? You did that, too?”

  “I knew you would figure it out and you’d be able to control the crash.”

  “Why would you want to hurt me?”

  “So I could take care of you. But then you ran to that woman and brought in those security people. I couldn’t get close to you without raising eyebrows. So I set the house to burn so that you would be forced to move out for a while. My house is more than big enough to keep you and the girls comfortable.”

  She smiled, like the invitation was still a possibility. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  “Why?”

  She touched the computer screen on her side, running her fingers over what must have been the image of my face. All I saw was the blurred image of her skin.

  “I’ve loved you since freshman year. We were in the same English Lit class. You don’t remember me, but I always remembered you.”

  “No, I don’t remember you.”

  “My hair was dark then. And I had this scar…” She touched the side of her face. “I was in a fire at my parents’ place. I thought it would never heal, but it did, and I went to school and saw you…and it all felt meant to be. But then you met Colby and you stopped seeing me. So I changed myself, had surgery, died my hair, so that you would see me.”

  I shook my head. “No, Janis…”

  “Colby made you happy at first. I was okay with that. But then she got pregnant and you were so miserable. So I had to do something.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I interviewed for that job. I knew you wouldn’t recognize me because
of how much work I’d had done. So I fudged my resume, made sure I was the best candidate for the job. And then I took care of you.”

  I didn’t understand. My head was spinning. This woman…she was my friend! She was my confidant! And now. I suddenly realized I knew absolutely nothing about her.

  “I wanted to make you happy. Colby wasn’t doing it, so I did all I could to make you happy. And then she was getting better, and you were smiling again. I thought…maybe it would work out. Maybe the two of you…but then I heard her arguing with her mother. I went to the house when you were out of town that week. I didn’t go with you because I’d needed to be here to oversee that new project you were just beginning to break ground on. Do you remember? You asked me if I minded. You said you had enough on your hands with Mattie being so little, you didn’t need to worry about that, too? I was so happy you trusted me that much!”

  She smiled again, that delight in her eyes again. And a little crazy. I’d never seen that level of crazy in anyone’s eyes before. Seeing it in hers…it frightened me, to be completely honest.

  “I heard her tell her mother that her stepfather molested her when she was nine. That he made her pregnant when she was twelve. I heard her tell her mother that she was unable to love her daughters because of that experience. She said that she couldn’t even look at Mattie. And that…that was horrible. And so unfair to you! Putting all that pressure of raising another man’s child on you and then not able to even look at her! How ridiculous was that? I knew exactly what I had to do then.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I waited until her mother left. Then I let her know I was there. She was about to get into the hot tub, so I told her I’d fix her a glass of Scotch. Her mother had left her purse and there were all these pills in it, so I dumped a bunch of Oxy in her scotch. And then I gave it to her, pulled up a chair, and just watched it happen. I waited to make sure she was dead, then I wiped down the bottle and left. I wasn’t surprised when they called it an accident.”