Then she could come back and they’d figure out the what-happens-next part. But he couldn’t get there until he walked through this.
“It’s the best way.” The words, ragged and raw, tore out of him.
If she chewed any harder on that lip, she’d draw blood. “Who is going to keep Ellie safe?”
“Rich volunteered.” Jonas found his first smile. “A little fast, I might add.”
Courtney looked around Jonas. He followed her gaze and saw Rich throw off the tube plugged into his arm and go to Ellie. When he sat next to her, she leaned in with her head on his shoulder.
Courtney’s mouth dropped open. “Those two? She never said anything.”
Jonas nodded. “Surprised me, too. I knew he found her attractive but didn’t know he’d made a move.”
Courtney put a hand on his jaw and brought his gaze back to her. “I don’t want to leave you.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Jonas held her hand against his skin, letting her soft touch soothe him. “This is temporary. We catch this guy, drag him out of town, and then I think you mentioned something about naked wrestling.”
She chuckled. “I most certainly didn’t.”
“Huh, really? Well, think about it while you’re gone.”
“I’m going to try not to.”
“I expect you to miss me.” The words slipped out before he could stop them. They hung there, open and ready to crush him.
But the light in her face never dimmed. “Only if that will be a very mutual missing.”
He didn’t have to think about his answer. “It will.”
“Then we have a deal.”
“Good.” Great, fantastic. The words tripped on his tongue, but he shoved them back when Walt stepped up.
He clapped a hand against Jonas’s back as he stared at Courtney. “Are you ready to head out?”
“I know you don’t like me, but—”
Walt held up a hand. “I don’t have a problem with you.”
Jonas didn’t believe it but he appreciated the attempt to calm her nerves. “Thanks.”
Walt nodded. “Whatever it takes to end this, we’re going to do it.”
* * *
COURTNEY STEPPED into Walt’s family room and frowned. She’d expected a rush of relief at being somewhere safe and away, but nothing came.
The place was nice enough, a low-slung ranch house outside of Aberdeen. Acres of open land surrounded the place. A forgotten swing hung from the tree just out front.
On the inside, heavy furniture, very dark and at least two decades old, filled the room. There were cabinets filled with tiny figurines and stuffed animals over the mantel. It was all very feminine. Collections gathered over time and stored with the utmost care.
Not exactly the decor she expected from a lifetime lawman.
She walked down the two steps into the sunken living room and went to the fireplace. The blue bear on the end wore a shirt stamped with the hospital logo. She traced her fingers over the letters then picked up the bear, letting her fingers squeeze into the fluffy softness.
“My wife was sick for a long time.”
Courtney jumped at Walt’s voice. He stood right behind her.
Jonas had filled her in on the general details, but seeing the loss in Walt’s sad eyes brought it all home. “I’m really sorry about your wife.”
“The disease ravaged her then lingered. She spent two years going in and out of the hospital, unable to walk and eventually unable to do anything for herself.”
Pain filled every word. Courtney recognized the slight tremor. Sometimes, lost in her own darkness, she forgot that others lived in a similar hell. Her heart twisted for him.
This man served as a father figure to Jonas. Walt meant something to the man she’d started to love, so he meant something to her, too.
“That must have been terrible.” Courtney rubbed a hand over Walt’s arm.
“A slow death is devastating in so many ways.”
She only knew about a calculated assault. The wounds left from that never healed. “I can imagine.”
“Emotionally and financially it ruins you.”
She didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t say anything.
Walt’s entire body slumped as he dropped into a big leather chair in front of her. “It wasn’t supposed to go like this.”
“What?”
“You.” Walt took out his gun and balanced it on his lap.
“Me?”
“He was supposed to do a wellness check and leave.” Pain turned to anger with each word Walt uttered. “I never thought he’d get messed up in your life.”
The blood left her head. “What are you saying?”
“Jonas wasn’t supposed to be involved. I didn’t want him hurt, but I needed him to go in that first time.”
She tightened her hold on the stuffed bear. “You’re involved in all of this?”
“I was paid to deliver you. That was all this was ever supposed to be. Me getting you to the guy who wanted you.” Walt motioned for her to sit down across from him. “And I am going to do that now.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Jonas forced his legs to move. Seeing Courtney walk away, glance over her shoulder and smile nearly dropped him to his knees. Emotions battled inside him and none of them were relief. That sensation didn’t come as he expected.
But he could only handle one issue right now, and this one would be tough to choke out. Admitting he was wrong was not one of Jonas’s skills.
He stepped up to Cade. “Now might be a good time to thank you.”
Cade stopped staring at the floor and looked up. The haze over his eyes hadn’t cleared, but this wasn’t confusion. Jonas knew the look. The other man was in deep-thinking mode. Jonas doubted Cade had even heard the apology.
“What is it? What’s in your head?” Jonas asked.
“Who came into the room after me?”
Jonas had no idea where Cade mentally wandered in the timeline. “What?”
“You said you saw me go in and out of Paul’s hospital room. Okay, that’s not a secret. I went in to talk with him. But who else walked in there?”
Jonas didn’t have an answer, but he wanted to see where the question went. “What are you thinking?”
“What’s going on?” Rich joined them.
Jonas took in the limp and the way his friend held his head and recognized the signs of a guy refusing to stay down. “Should you be up?”
Rich shrugged. “I am.”
Cade faced them both with his hands out, as if trying to convince them of something. “The guard was there and alive when I left Paul’s room. That leaves a small window for someone else to sneak in there.”
Jonas understood the obsession. Cade had lost a friend and wanted answers. He’d jumped into the investigation and had the determined look of a man who had no intention of getting out again until the mystery had been solved.
A kick of admiration hit Jonas. If Cade was in, so was the Aberdeen police force.
“It would have to be someone with access.” Cade nodded, clearly picking up speed on his theory. “Someone who could get by without any questions and who knew exactly when to get to the door because Stimpson would be gone, or knew Stimpson well enough to get in with permission.”
“That sounds like an inside job,” Rich said.
Cade snapped his fingers. “Who has the tape?”
“There are two. The official one and mine, and the county sheriff has them both.”
Cade’s eyes narrowed. “The guy who called me about Paul?”
“We only saw the tape up to the point where you came out of the room,” Rich explained.
The fact tickled in the back of Jonas’s brain. He’d been so quick to jump on Cade as a suspect, he never thought to ask more questions or insist on seeing every moment of that room for hours on each end. He saw Cade come out and then the empty doorway.
If the guard was there when Cade came out, why didn’t the tape sho
w it? “The guard was still there,” he repeated.
Cade coughed. “I already said that. Several times, in fact.”
The pieces clicked together in Jonas’s mind. The timing fell into place. “If Stimpson had been outside of the room when Paul was killed he would have heard something.”
Rich leaned against the wall, likely to keep from falling down again. “Maybe Stimpson did it.”
Jonas shook his head. “Then why is he dead? No, it’s more likely Stimpson was a pawn. The guy was paid or was asked to look the other way.”
Jonas knew that had to be it. Stimpson’s role was minor at best. He could finger someone, tie a person to that room, and he died for it, but he didn’t do the killing.
“We need to see that tape,” Cade said.
Rich reached for his radio but he grabbed air because it wasn’t on his shoulder. “I’ll call Walt.”
Jonas grabbed his friend’s arm when he signaled to another officer. “Skip Walt. Use the landline and call hospital security. Tell the head of security to upload the duplicate copy and send it to your cell.”
“I have your video on my phone already.”
“Good. That one might give us a different angle. We’ll check out both.” Jonas looked at Rich and Cade. “I want this immediate and quiet.”
Rich frowned. “What’s with all the secrecy?”
“I don’t want anyone else touching the videos but us. The hospital one goes straight from security to us.”
“You’re including me?” Cade sounded stunned by the thought of being included.
Even ten minutes ago Jonas would have shut him out, but the guy proved to be an asset, and Jonas wasn’t one to throw up territorial barriers. He’d take all the help he could get, so long as he knew the motives behind it.
“You’re FBI, right?”
Rich continued to shake his head. Understanding washed over his face. “You think someone tampered with the hospital tape.”
Jonas didn’t want to think it because the arrow could point anywhere. Any person under his command could be dirty. Missing that, not being able to ferret out that disloyalty before it blew up played on every insecurity he possessed. The failure would once again be his alone.
“All I know is the tape went to the shot of the empty doorway, no Stimpson, after we saw Cade go in and out. I’m thinking that was planted there because it doesn’t match the unofficial version.” Jonas hitched his chin toward Ellie. “How’s she coming with her description?”
The question sidetracked Rich. “I’ll check.”
Cade waited until they were alone to talk again. “This could get ugly.”
Jonas nodded. “It already is.”
* * *
COURTNEY SAT ACROSS FROM WALT and watched him shift the gun from one hand to the other. “Tell me why.”
“I didn’t have a choice. The bills destroyed me.”
Her throat burned with the need to scream. All that potential wasted over dollars. “This was about money? Stimpson and Eckert are dead because of your need to pay a bill. You do realize that, right?”
Walt shook his head. “I didn’t have anything to do with those deaths.”
The man compartmentalized and ignored. She hated people who refused to take responsibility for their actions. Right now, she despised Walt for both what he was doing and how he had betrayed Jonas.
“You put me in danger. Worse, you risked Jonas’s life by bringing him into this. And all because of money?”
Walt pointed the gun at her. “I told you Jonas wasn’t supposed to be involved. He was supposed to knock on the door and plant the woman’s name. That’s it.”
She watched Walt put the facts into neat little boxes. It didn’t matter if they fit or not, if they were true or not; he grabbed onto his rationale to get through.
She wanted to rip the safety shield away. “You dropped Jonas right in the middle of it. You did that.”
But Walt was lost. He talked more to himself than to her. “He’d always been so practical. He follows my advice, except when it comes to you.”
Bile filled her mouth. “He’s a better police officer than you.”
“Oh, please.” Walt’s stern voice sounded more like a lecturing parent now. “He destroyed his career in Los Angeles. I’m the one who put him back together again.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He killed that drug-addicted kid. The press blamed Jonas, then he blew it all in a later case by hesitating when his partner needed him to shoot.”
Her heart ripped in two. Actually pulled apart and yanked until the rough edges jabbed at her. Jonas lived with so much and never said a word. “I thought you cared about him. That you viewed him as a son.”
Walt swallowed hard enough to make his throat move. “Our relationship isn’t your business.”
He wasn’t just in denial. He was delusional. “You think he’s going to like hearing about all you’ve done?”
“He won’t know. You’ll be gone and everything will get back to normal.” The explanation sounded so rational. Walt acted as if he were reading a train schedule instead of planning the end of her life.
Panic gave way to numbness. She tried to blink the flatness away, but it wouldn’t go. She didn’t tremble. She felt nothing. “Can you live with all that you’ve done?”
“I have to.”
“What would your wife say?”
His face flushed a deep red. “Don’t you dare talk about her.”
Going for his love for Jonas hadn’t worked, so she tried to appeal to his ego instead. “He says you’re one of the best cops he’s ever known. He trusts you.”
“That’s enough.” The deep voice rumbled through the room as a hand landed on her shoulder.
She jumped out of the chair. When she glanced to her left the image didn’t make sense. Him, here?
“Kurt? What are—”
He walked toward her, pushing her back until the bottom of the brick fireplace hit against her ankles. The gun hovered just out of reach.
“You were supposed to stop digging,” Kurt said. “Everything was fine until you got those boxes of business documents.”
All the arguments she used with Jonas rushed back into her head. Kurt’s name had always been on the list, but everyone discounted him.
He wept at her father’s casket and cried with her as she threw the flowers and they lowered the bodies into the ground.
Nothing added up. “I don’t understand. You didn’t benefit from their deaths.”
“I was supposed to. The insurance policy should have named me. I was supposed to be the alternate beneficiary on the estate. That was our deal. Your father promised, even produced fake papers to confirm it, but he lied.”
Her father chose his family instead. If she survived this, she’d hold on to that fact for comfort. “And I was supposed to die.”
“I should have known you’d sneak out that night.” Kurt shook his head on a laugh. “You were always the troubled one.”
She’d been difficult and artsy. She’d bucked her father’s discipline and pushed boundaries. But she didn’t deserve to die and neither did they.
“You killed my family for money.” Saying the words made her chest ache.
“Your father threatened to call the prosecutor. I was going to lose everything.”
She’d studied everything and never found even a line about a prosecutor. “What are you talking about?”
“None of that matters now.” Walt stood up. “Cade will be here soon and we can end this.”
The horrible news just kept coming. Everyone she believed in turned out to want to hurt her. Everyone except Jonas.
“What does Cade have to do with this?” she asked.
Kurt took out a phone and dialed. “He’s going to finish the job his father started.”
She spun around and faced Walt. Using all her energy she tried to will him to listen to her. “This is the man you’re working with?”
“Shut up,” Kurt sa
id without lifting his head. “Cade’s been waiting to see you.”
He doesn’t know. The realization shot through her that Kurt missed the part where she had already talked with Cade. Where he had already saved her by getting Jonas to the bookstore in time.
She glanced at Walt, who moved his head in an almost imperceptible shake. She turned back to Kurt and had to ignore his smirk to keep from tackling him and risking a bullet. “You think Cade will come here to kill me?”
“He hates you. When I gave him your address here in Oregon, he was so grateful. He came right away and has been following you ever since.”
Not anymore. He was working with Jonas now.
A call to Cade would tip off Jonas and bring the police crashing in. Walt had to know that, but he wasn’t talking. She didn’t know what that meant, but she wasn’t about to trust him yet.
Kurt shot her a feral smile. “If Cade doesn’t kill you, I’ll do it for him.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Rich slapped a piece of paper on the counter. “According to Ellie, this is the guy.”
Cade studied it. His facial expression never changed. “Kurt Handler.”
Jonas had seen one photo of the guy in the case file. He’d been younger, thinner. “The business partner?”
Cade rubbed his neck. “The same guy who told me where I could find Courtney in Oregon.”
“What?” The word exploded from Rich’s mouth.
Jonas did a slow burn. “You didn’t think to tell us that?”
“It seemed to come from a good place. He talked about his love for Courtney and talked about how I needed closure and so did she.” Cade looked up at the ceiling and blew out a long breath. “I didn’t care about closing anything. I took the information and pretended I’d make up with her…but I guess Kurt was pretending, too.”
Jonas could see the regret on the other man’s face. Hear it in his voice. “You wanted to get to her and make her stop.”
“I thought Kurt was being naive, but I didn’t care because his good intentions matched with my schemes. Now I know he was planning something worse than I could imagine.”
Rich threw his hands up. “Why?”
Jonas knew enough to answer that one. “He was the business partner, so I’m guessing it will all go back to money.” His back teeth slammed together as he said the words.
When She Wasn't Looking Page 17