Someone was willing to kill an FBI agent to keep secrets hidden, a move that guaranteed feds would be crawling all over this case any minute now. Once they figured out this wasn’t about an agent killed on vacation, the questions would start and so would the press coverage. Jonas was trying to keep the lid on it until then. To stall and get some traction before he lost the lead.
The same someone who killed Eckert risked everything to make a run at Jonas’s back door, and possibly hired the guy to kill Courtney in the forest and grab her at Stimpson’s place.
The fire chief thought a gas leak might explain the apartment explosion, but Jonas didn’t buy the coincidence. He didn’t have to sort through the burned pieces to know the inspector would come to a different conclusion.
The path of death and destruction kept growing. That meant they were dealing with a person with nothing to lose. And that scared the hell out of Jonas.
But outward panic wouldn’t solve anything. Neither would talking about his sex life. He wasn’t that guy, anyway. Neither was Rich, but if his wide eyes meant anything he sure seemed interested in the details this time around.
“No problems with intruders last night,” Jonas said. “Thanks for your concern about my well-being.”
“The officer stationed outside your door filled me in on what happened here last night.”
Jonas caught something in Rich’s voice but ignored it. This likely fell into the category of things Jonas didn’t want to know or dissect. “We were fine.”
“From the stupid look on your face, I’d say more than fine.”
“Don’t.”
“Hey.” Rich held up his hands. “I’m not Walt. I’m all for you having some fun.”
Another problem. “What’s with Walt?”
“He’s stepping into the role of your dad and worrying about things like whether you’re having safe sex and dating the right woman, and don’t change the subject.”
Jonas blew out a long breath. “In case you can’t tell, I’m not comfortable talking about Courtney like this.”
“That’s good to know.”
Both men spun around at the sound of her voice. She stood in the kitchen doorway with her contacts back in and a coffee cup in her hands. A smile tugged on the corner of her mouth.
The jeans and sweater covered her body, but Jonas remembered everything. Long legs. Athletic but still-curvy body. Soft skin. Curious hands. Hot mouth.
Much more of this and he’d have to kick Rich out and not worry about the consequences. “Morning.”
She nodded in the direction of Jonas’s hand. “Have any more doughnuts?”
“You don’t look like you’ve eaten one in…” Rich’s gaze did a quick trip down her body and back again. “Well, ever.”
“Do you want to die?” Jonas didn’t bother to mumble the question.
“Don’t let the waistline fool you. It’s metabolism. I have the diet of a fifteen-year-old boy.” She moved to the head of the table and rested her coffee on top of one of the closed boxes.
Jonas lifted the mug and put it on the table next to his. Last thing he needed was a complaint that he ruined evidence by spilling coffee all over it. “I bet other women love you.”
Courtney frowned. “That reminds me. Can we check on Ellie today?”
Jonas wanted to kick his own butt for not thinking about performing an informal wellness check. Ellie had been at Courtney’s house and discovered the break-in. The woman had shaken in her seat belt during the entire drive back to her place yesterday. She’d had a scare. She had to be worried and more than a little confused.
Rich sat up straighter. “Ellie Wise?”
“You know her?” Courtney’s eyes widened as she asked.
“Sure, she owns the bookstore.” Rich stared at both of them again. “What? I read.”
Courtney laughed as she lifted the top off a box. “What’s all this?”
“Wait.” Jonas came up and out of his chair in a flash. His hand slapped against the lid, knocking it out of her hand. “No.”
“Stop,” Rich said at the same time.
Her gaze shot between them. “What’s wrong with you two?”
“Nothing.” Jonas tried to pull her away from the table. “I just can’t have civilians touching case materials.”
Rich wedged his body between her and the table. “It’s a chain-of-custody issue.”
She delivered on of those looks that said she thought they were idiots. “You’re both lying.”
“The boxes are on loan to us,” Jonas said.
She put her hand on Rich’s arm and he stepped aside. “This is the file on my dad’s case.” She traced her finger over the case number on the side of the box. “How did you get it?”
“I had it shipped in. Called in some favors and got it here fast.” Rich returned to his seat and tried to drag the box across the tabletop with him.
She grabbed the edge and stopped him. “Why?”
Jonas stepped behind her. With as gentle a touch as possible, he pried her hands off the cardboard. “I don’t know how to look into the murders and figure out who committed them without going through all of this stuff, page by horrible page.”
She turned until she stood in the safe zone between his arms. Her finger slid across his jaw before her hand dropped. “Okay.”
He continued to hold his breath. “We’re good?”
“You believe me, so we’re better than good.”
The need to pull her close burned through him, but he held on to his control. They had a witness. More important, Jonas knew he had to exercise some distance on this.
“I know you believe someone else did the crime, and that’s good enough for me to double-check everything.” And he wasn’t playing. Separating the woman from the case grew harder each day.
Rich cleared his throat. “Me, too.”
His voice killed the moment and for once Jonas was grateful for the interference.
She moved his arm and stepped away. When Jonas looked up again, she sat in his chair eating the last few bites of his doughnut.
She read through the notes he made on the yellow legal pad. “What are you expecting to find in all of this?”
“Motives for someone other than your dad. Mistakes in the investigations. Notes on other suspects.” Jonas ticked off the list.
Courtney shot Rich a side glance. “Do you—”
“He filled me in.” The lightness had left Rich’s voice. The usual joking manner gave way to a tone both serious and caring. “I’m really sorry.”
“Thanks.”
Jonas didn’t know when or how it happened, but she’d woven her spell around Rich, as well. He’d once eyed her with suspicion. Now, only a few days later, he accepted her in Jonas’s house.
The realization filled him with pride and discomfort. Making room for her came too easy.
To get his mind off his runaway truck of a private life, he focused on the disaster in front of him. “We have a cold-case protocol that involves looking at the case with fresh eyes, no preconceived notions. We’re going to use the system here.”
Rich tapped his fingers on the top of the box. “That means everything.”
“I don’t see the problem,” Courtney said, her confusion obvious in the lines around her eyes.
Jonas did. “I’ll keep the crime-scene photos on a bulletin board in the extra bedroom upstairs. Stay out of there and—”
“There’s no need to hide them.” She put all her concentration into ripping the remaining doughnut into tiny pieces. “I’ve seen everything.”
Rich glanced at Jonas then back to her. “How?”
She shrugged. “I once paid an investigator to gather information. I also pressured the police and raised a fuss until the police let me see some of the file. I borrowed the rest and made copies.”
“Borrowed?”
“Do you really want to know?” Courtney shot Rich the duh look Jonas knew so well.
Rich put his hands over his ears. “I�
�m actually sorry I asked.”
Jonas didn’t find any part of the conversation funny. The idea of her studying the evidence punched a hole in his stomach. “There’s a reason to keep the photos and some of the tougher stuff away from the victims’ families.”
She piled the doughnut crumbs on a napkin. “Which is?”
“To spare you.”
An anger Jonas hadn’t seen since that first day on the porch darkened her face. “My family was murdered and my father was blamed. There’s nothing left to protect me from.”
Jonas’s festering frustration melted away. It was that simple.
She was right. She’d lived with it and let it run over every other part of her life. She knew what she could handle.
But that didn’t mean he’d stop trying to protect her. “Just stay out of the bedroom.”
A crushing quiet followed his grumbled response. The energy sucked right out of the room. Tension thumped off every wall and thickened the air.
Finally Rich broke the stalemate. “Why aren’t we doing this at the station?”
Jonas welcomed the return to safer ground. In his usual business life, people listened to him. Only Courtney pretended deafness to his orders. “Because someone pulled Stimpson off that door and knew to get to him before I could.”
“You think there’s a mole in the police force.” Rich nodded as he said it.
Courtney frowned. “You do?”
Jonas wasn’t ready to dissect that issue as part of an open conversation yet. “I think we handle this quietly for now.”
“Who else knows about my past?” she asked.
“Walt, as soon as he gets here.”
She made a face. “The guy who hates me.”
“He doesn’t…” Jonas looked to Rich for help, but his friend quickly lowered his head. Jonas scrambled to find the right words. When that failed, he went with the shortest sentence he could come up with: “Walt is worried.”
“He thinks you rob Jonas’s good judgment.”
Now Rich speaks up. Jonas would thank him for the delayed response later. “Rich, that’s enough.”
“She’s a smart woman, Jonas. She knows what’s going on.”
She winked at Rich. “You, I like.”
“And me?” Jonas asked.
Her head dipped to the side and she flashed him a heated smile. “You’re growing on me.”
Chapter Eighteen
The ding of the doorbell kept Jonas from doing something stupid. Something like clearing the room and the table and her clothing.
“Expecting someone?” she asked.
“Your admirer, Walt. He has the video from the night Eckert was killed.”
“The murderer was dumb enough to get caught on film?” Courtney asked Rich, as Jonas answered the door.
“Apparently.”
Jonas traded welcomes with Walt and showed him into the dining room. He saw the older man’s shoulders stiffen when he rounded the corner and Courtney came into view. The reaction struck Jonas as overblown. She was a victim and he treated her like the enemy.
Since he’d known Walt, and that encompassed most of his life, Jonas watched Walt protect and serve. He’d stuck by a sick wife debilitated by multiple sclerosis, refusing to throw away the first twenty-five years of their marriage to run from the end of it. When she died, Walt hibernated and mourned. He’d only ventured back into life when Jonas moved to town.
“Ms. Allen.” Walt nodded in her general direction but didn’t give her eye contact.
“Please, call me Courtney.”
Jonas wasn’t in the mood for stilted conversation, so he pushed the topic where he wanted it to go. “What did you find?”
“We have our killer’s face.” Walt turned around the handheld video camera and they all crowded around him. “Here he is.”
The monitor was small and the video a bit grainy, thanks to the hospital equipment. Jonas watched the man flash a badge at Stimpson then push his way into Eckert’s room. Short blond hair and a dark suit, and an age close to Jonas’s own.
He never looked at the camera, but he didn’t hide from it, either. Chances were he missed the equipment, which would have been easy since it was outside the regular security system. Jonas had his men plant this one at the nurses’ station. Only a few people knew about its existence. Even Walt hadn’t known until Jonas had asked him to retrieve it that morning.
Walt glanced around the circle. “Any idea who it is before I start running the image through our databases and call in the FBI for help?”
Courtney stepped back and leaned against the table. “Cade Willis.”
“Who?” Rich asked.
Walt’s face turned white. “Did you say Willis?”
She swallowed several times before answering. “His father killed mine.”
Walt blinked. “Excuse me?”
They’d all stopped, frozen in their places. No one said anything as Rich rewound the video and watched it a second time.
Jonas knew he had to bring Walt up to speed. He was both a friend and sheriff. He needed all of the facts. Not only would it make them all safer, knowing about Courtney’s past might ease whatever concerns the older man had brewing in his head about her.
But Jonas had to focus on the new information right now. “Are you sure that’s him?”
“We’ve been circling each other for years. I have a file on him two inches thick upstairs.” She hitched her thumb toward the second floor. “I don’t have to see his face to know it’s Cade Willis. I even have the walk memorized.”
Walt still hadn’t moved. “I don’t understand what’s going on.”
“That’s the other reason I asked you to come over.” Jonas laid his hand on top of the closest box. “This is the case file relating to the murders of Courtney’s family.”
“Family?”
“Parents and two sisters.” She delivered the information without any emotion.
Her detachment sent a warning signal across Jonas’s nerves. He looked at the file and his stomach hollowed out. The more she talked about it, the more it sounded as if she was reading a grocery list.
“When?” Walt asked.
“Ten years ago.”
“I still don’t understand what that has to do with what’s happening now.”
Rich asked the unspoken question that played in Jonas’s brain day and night. If Jonas could find that piece, he could unravel the entire mess.
“I was digging around in the evidence, asking questions and trying to get someone to listen to me about Cade’s father. To review everything again and point a new investigation in his direction,” Courtney said. “I’m guessing something I found scared someone.”
Walt sat down hard on one of the chairs. “What is happening here?”
“I got the fake call to check on her, went over there and set off a chase. We’ve been running ever since we met up with that guy in the forest.” Jonas hated his part in this. He didn’t regret meeting her. Even now he looked at her and saw something special, but he helped set it all in motion.
The confusion left Walt’s eyes. “The easiest answer is for you to leave.”
Rich sighed. “Walt, that’s out of line.”
Courtney’s face flushed a deep red. If she held on to the back of the chair any tighter, she’d snap the wood in half. “I happen to live here, in this town, and I’m not letting anyone push me out. I refuse to be a victim, but I’m not the bad guy here, either.”
Jonas clapped his hands to get their attention. The crack had them all looking in his direction. “Fighting and turning on each other aren’t going to get this job done. We have to track down Cade and ask him some questions. One wrong answer and I’ll arrest him.”
“One thing is certain. Contacting the FBI isn’t the right way to go since Cade is FBI. He went to law school and right into the agency for training.” Her mouth flattened the longer she talked. “He’s been working his way up ever since. One of these days he’ll probably run the place and u
se his position to publicly condemn my father and insist the case is completely closed.”
“Isn’t it already?” Rich looked to Jonas. “I mean technically?”
“The police determined my father did it and stopped looking elsewhere,” she said. “That’s not closed in my mind.”
Walt stared at his hands. Flipped them over and studied the nails then the palms. “I talked with him.”
“Who?” Jonas asked.
“That’s the name of the guy I called at the FBI when I hit Redial on Eckert’s phone.”
Rich was the first to say anything. “Interesting.”
“Willis is the person who picked up. There were other calls. I made a list of names.” Walt slipped a piece of paper out of his chest pocket and handed it to Jonas. “Here.”
“I can check the others,” Rich said.
Walt stood up and pointed at Jonas. “Can I talk with you for a second?”
Jonas dreaded another man-to-man discussion, but he passed the paper to Rich and followed Walt. “Sure.”
They only made it as far as the front porch before Walt unloaded. “I know you’re not going to listen to my warnings about Courtney.”
“No, I’m not.” Jonas hoped that would end the conversation but he was rarely that lucky these days.
“You’re too close to this and you know it.”
Jonas stared across the lawn. The sun beamed down on the grass, but the chill hadn’t left the air. Being this close to the water meant freak rainstorms and rare hot spells. The weather suited the mood hovering over Jonas since he moved there.
Today, racing white clouds or not, he welcomed the bright blue sky. “She’s under my protection, like everyone else in Aberdeen.”
“You sleeping with them, too?”
Something inside Jonas deflated. A man didn’t have any privacy in a small town. “How did you—”
“The way you put your body in front of hers. The way you look at her.” Walt rubbed a hand over his head. “Damn, Jonas. What are you thinking?”
“We’re not talking about this.”
“Let me take her. I can get her out of Aberdeen and hide her in another town until we catch this Willis guy.”
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