“What’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded, though the subtext of her accusation implied far too much. She’d been on this thing like white on rice—the dead bodies that had been scattered throughout the Fist in Dante’s dark wake. Did she suspect Shane was a werewolf? That his entire clan was? What did she know? And how would she twist it to pin a murder on Shane that he wasn’t guilty of? “How did she die?” he asked when Rachel only stared at him as if analyzing his every reaction.
“I won’t be able to state with certainly until the medical examiner has had a chance to draw up his report, but it looks like she bled to death. That’s probably more than I’m at liberty to say. Where were you?”
“It’s none of your business where I was,” he hotly retorted. “But I wasn’t here killing Delilah, that’s for damn sure.”
“When were you here last?” she questioned.
“I don’t know, this morning,” he told her and when she didn’t look satisfied, he pointed out, “I woke up with the sheriff’s daughter, we left together for the diner, we’ve been out ever since. I was at Yellowstone with her. Go on, ask her,” he dared.
“My officer is handling it,” she stated before she cut her eyes in Whitney’s direction. “You were out all day?” she questioned. “Don’t lie to me, Shane.”
“I’m not.”
“Because I have one very hotheaded Larry Hardcastle who puts you right here at your cabin in the late afternoon,” she warned.
“Right,” he said, having forgotten himself. “After Yellowstone, Whitney and I came back here. We barely got out of my truck when Hardcastle tore up the driveway.”
“I think you know where I’m going with this,” she said in a tone thick with implication.
Shane suddenly realized that he hadn’t even gone out in the backyard in weeks. He was never out there. He doubted someone could’ve killed Delilah out back while he was home. He would’ve smelled it, spilt blood. And if she’d been dumped here, he probably would’ve taken immediate notice as well. But recently he’d been out a lot. Damn, Delilah could’ve been out back the whole time.
“I’m not sure I do, Officer,” he carefully responded, and Rachel lifted those eyebrows of hers again as though she didn’t buy that for a second.
“Hardcastle gave you a dress. Delilah’s dress. One that was covered in blood according to him.”
“And he’s not a suspect?” he asked, outraged. “The guy admitted to you that he was in possession of her bloody dress and you’re questioning me?”
“I’m questioning everyone,” she reminded him. “Hardcastle included. But murderers don’t generally storm into police stations and implicate themselves.”
“So Hardcastle’s innocent because he came to you?” he challenged.
“No,” she corrected him. “No one is innocent until proven innocent.”
Shane was one hundred percent certain that wasn’t how the legal system was supposed to work, but Devil’s Fist seemed to function by its own set of rules.
“Yeah, he showed up here,” he admitted. “Threw that dress at me then took off.”
“And you didn’t report the incident?” she pointed out as though it was evidence of Shane’s guilt. “You didn’t bring the bloody dress in to us?”
“Was I supposed to?” he asked defensively. “Was I supposed to assume that some dress with blood on it was undoubtedly evidence that its owner had been killed?”
“You weren’t supposed to assume anything,” she allowed. “But you didn’t alert the authorities.”
“The authorities don’t exactly appreciate us Quinns, or haven’t you noticed?”
“Don’t get smart with me, Shane. I’ve never treated you like that and you know it. And you also know I wouldn’t be asking you the kinds of questions I am if I hadn’t found a dead body on your property.”
“What do you want me to say? I have no idea how Delilah could’ve been killed out back. I had no idea her body was out there.”
Rachel narrowed her eyes on him and confided, “I didn’t say she was killed back there.”
“What are you telling me?”
“It’s not my job to tell you anything and it isn’t your job to ask me questions. We’re talking about Delilah’s dress,” she firmly reminded him. “Where is it?”
Shane knew that the second he told her that the dress was inside his cabin, he’d open himself up to a search warrant. He couldn’t let that happen. If the police found the two Polaroids that had been slipped under his door—one of his violent argument with Delilah and the other of her unconscious body on his living room couch—he’d be arrested without question.
He was inclined to tell her he dumped it in the trash, which had been picked up by the garbage collectors, but he looked over at Whitney instead. What was she telling the officer who was questioning her? She knew that Delilah’s dress was in the house. Would she tell the police officer that? Would Shane be subject to a search of his cabin no matter what?
“Shane,” said Rachel, pulling his attention back to her. “The dress?”
“I’ll bring it in,” he offered.
It didn’t satisfy her. “Where is it, Shane?”
“I said I’ll bring it into the station,” he repeated.
“Not good enough. Tell me where it is so I can retrieve it.”
Damn, she was a brick wall. He pressed his mouth into a hard line and if the pressure wasn’t crippling enough, Sheriff Rick Abernathy joined them, his meaty hands planted on his hips and his expression pinched with a steely edge of all of his suspicions about the Quinns having finally come to vindicating light.
“Why ain’t the boy in handcuffs, Clancy?” he barked.
Shane glared at him and seethed through clenched teeth, “Because I haven’t done anything wrong, Rick.”
“I’ll thank you to address me as Sheriff, son.”
“And I’ll thank you to go fu—”
“Daddy!” Whitney charged over and threw her arms around her father’s neck. “What in God’s name is going on here?”
“You shouldn’t be here, Whitney,” Rick told her, easing up on his deathly-serious tone. “I told you, I don’t like you hanging around the likes of this one.”
“Shane has done nothing wrong!” she insisted. “Y’all think he killed Delilah?”
“That’s no concern of yours, honey,” Rick told her. “Go on and wait for me in my SUV. I’ll bring you home.”
Whitney stood firmly beside Shane and declared, “I’m not going anywhere. Shane had nothing to do with what happened to Delilah. If anything, he’s the only person in this God-forsaken town who gave a damn when I asked him to help me find her!”
Rick furrowed his brow and cut his skeptical eyes at Shane, but Rachel wasn’t about to get derailed.
“The dress, Quinn!” she demanded.
Rick chuckled evilly at Shane and said, “Please oh please, Lord, tell me it’s in your house.”
Shane clenched his jaw.
Whitney, connecting the dots, immediately offered, “I have it.”
“What?” Rick and Rachel blurted out simultaneously.
“It’s at my cabin.”
“Just why in the hell would it be—”
Whitney interrupted her father, explaining, “I’ll bring it over to the house, okay, Daddy?”
Rick would be hard pressed to scold his daughter, who Shane knew would have to remain innocent in the sheriff’s eyes.
“For dinner,” Whitney added. “I miss you. Let’s have burgers tonight? I’ll bring the dress on over, okay?”
Rick angled a finger in Shane’s face and warned, “This ain’t over.”
“No,” he agreed. “I wouldn’t think so.”
Whitney shifted her performatively-innocent eyes from her father to Shane and back again, then cutely exclaimed, “Oh good! You can get to know one another better over dinner!”
“What?!”
This time it was Rick and Shane who had responded in astonished unison.
&
nbsp; As Shane quickly declined, Rick was voicing the same effort, “I ain’t havin’ no Quinn over in my house, Whitney, what in the hell has gotten into you?”
“Well, he can’t very well eat here!” she pointed out, gesticulating wildly to the cops that were crawling all over the place.
“Angel’s Food is just fine by me,” Shane insisted, but Whitney wasn’t having it.
“Shane is innocent,” she pleaded with her father. “And he’s important to me.”
“Dear Christ in heaven,” Rick huffed as he ran his big hand down his face in utter exasperation. “Say it ain’t so.”
“I want you two to get to know one another!”
Even Rachel looked alarmed at this point.
“Look on the bright side,” Rachel offered. “She’s definitely not a lesbian.”
“Not now, Clancy!” he barked, his face reddening with a rash of embarrassment.
Whitney screwed her face up and asked him, “You thought I was a lesbian?”
***
There were no silver linings where the Quinns were concerned, Rick frowned to himself as he slapped ground beef into the shape of burgers in front of a smoking grill behind his cabin.
The blazing, orange, Wyoming sun was lowering over the Tetons in the far west, casting the vast sky in the most exquisite shades of red, purple, and pink, but it was lost on Rick. As were the picturesque pines and evergreens waving in the mild breeze. It was a perfect evening, a soothing sunset that his Sally-Mae would’ve loved. But Rick couldn’t appreciate any of it.
He felt disturbed.
Why couldn’t Whitney take interest in that blond boy who worked the bar at Libations? What was his name? Sam or Benny or something stupid… Something-stupid-Sammy would’ve been alright. Rick could’ve tolerated a personality like that, he could’ve shrugged his shoulders at the fact some bartender wouldn’t be able to provide for his little girl. He could’ve chalked it up to a phase and waited patiently for Whitney to realize she was too smart and too good for a kid like that. Hell, she could’ve picked just about any man in town and he wouldn’t feel all knotted up inside, like his daughter had just thrown herself to the wolves. That’s what Shane was, as far as Rick was concerned. That’s what all the Quinns were—wolves in sheep’s clothing. He’d raised her right. Why couldn’t she see it?
And she’d maintained her stubborn alliance with Shane despite the yellow police tape that barricaded across his property. She’d defended him fiercely while the body of a dead girl had lain, gutted and naked, right there in his backyard. No questions asked. No doubt. Just pure allegiance.
It made him sick.
And here Rick was, molding ground meat into the shape of burgers and stacking them on a plastic tray beside the grill, while his Whitney giggled without a care in the world right there in his kitchen. He looked back at the cabin, lifting on his tiptoes, and spied her through the sliding glass doors of the deck, his little girl on the other side flirting with and flitting around Shane Quinn as they collected stemless wine glasses and a bottle of Merlot. There wasn’t enough wine in all of the Fist to calm his jagged nerves and put him in the frame of mind to get along with the likes of Shane Quinn. As far as Rick could determine, Larry Hardcastle had been right. Delilah Dane’s murder had to have been all tangled up in that man who had the audacity to—oh, hell, no! Were they kissing? They were kissing in his kitchen!
He tore his prying gaze away and stooped to adjust the temperature of the smoking grill. As he did, lowering the heat of the coals, his floppy chef’s hat slipped into his eyes. He cursed and pushed it back into place then ran his large hands down his grilling apron. Whitney had given it to him as one of many Christmas gifts a few years back, a bright red number that read, Grill Sergeant! I don’t take orders, I give them!
As Rick tossed burger after burger onto the hot grill, lining the sizzling meat into a grid, Whitney spilled out of the kitchen, having pulled the sliding glass door aside, and stepped out onto the deck with three stemless wine glasses in hand. Shane followed with the wine bottle and a corkscrew, and closed the glass door.
After setting the glasses on the table up on the deck, Whitney leaned over the wooden railing and called out, “You want a glass now, Daddy?”
“Go on an’ pour me one, but you can let it breathe up there for a minute or two!” he told her, feigning a smile that hurt his soul.
He touched eyes with Shane just before the beefed-up, former military man tended to uncorking the bottle. If Rick wasn’t mistaken, the guy looked just as disturbed to be there as Rick felt. He couldn’t even hold Rick’s gaze for very long and the way Whitney was fawning over him, hooking her arm playfully with his and caressing his shoulders seemed to put him on equally unsteady ground.
Humph.
Maybe whatever fling they had going wouldn’t last.
Maybe.
A man could certainly hope.
Rick returned his attention to the sizzling burgers. Medium-rare was the only way to eat quality meat, so he flipped all six lickety-split, and lowered the hood back down, as Whitney padded down the wooden deck stairs with two glasses of red wine in her hands, Shane following after her—reluctantly by the looks of it—with his own Merlot.
“Smells good, Daddy,” she complimented as she neared him, having crossed the grassy expanse of the backyard to reach him.
“You were in the house for a damn long time, girl,” he commented, displeased.
“I wanted to show Shane my bedroom.”
He furrowed his thick brows at her.
“Relax,” she said, giving him a little pat.
Shane was hanging back and admiring the view of the setting sun, the way it lit the sky up in all kinds of colors, but Rick knew what that was really about. He didn’t want to be here any more than Rick wanted to be cooking the guy’s meat.
“No hanky-panky under my roof,” he warned before he amended, “any of my roofs.”
Whitney shot him a teen-aged look that told him he’d never had an ounce of control over her and likely never would.
“Oh, Daddy,” she sang, “you know I’m saving myself for marriage.”
At least she had enough respect for him to lie about a thing like that.
“What’s got you all giggly?” he asked.
“I’m just happy to have the two most important men in my life gettin’ to know one another.”
He liked no part of the reason she’d just provided. Absolutely no part, especially the part where she’d lumped the likes of a Quinn in with him on the list of important men.
He spoke low and with severity as he reminded her, “You realize we just found a dead girl on his property.”
“A girl who might not be dead if you’d taken my concern for Delilah’s disappearance seriously,” she returned bitterly. “He didn’t do it.”
“You don’t know what he did or didn’t do,” he hotly returned, hissing the accusation through clenched teeth so that Shane wouldn’t overhear and start defending himself. “Did you bring the dress over as promised?”
Her eyes turned dark and it wasn’t because the orange ball in the sky was hovering behind the mountain peaks in the far west.
“I will,” she told him.
“When?”
“Excuse me, do you want me to leave you alone to conversate with my boyfriend?”
Boyfriend?!
“I didn’t think so,” she concluded after studying his appalled expression.
“Besides, Daddy, I have my concerns about that—”
“What concerns?”
“Shane handled the dress, so did I. It’s probably got his hair all over it—”
“Shane doesn’t have any hair,” he pointed out, eyeing the tight crew cut of the man he’d like to throttle. Maybe Whitney should leave them alone for a few minutes. He might get his chance with Quinn, provoke him or something, get him to come after him so that Rick could draw and shoot, take the guy out in a permanent way. “Or any respect for that matter,” he added.
Finally, Shane neared the grill and if Rick wasn’t mistaken the guy was taking nervous gulps of his wine.
“Smells good, Sheriff,” he said, recycling Whitney’s compliment. “Is that Kobe beef?”
“How’d you guess?” asked Rick.
“Keen sense of smell.”
“But you couldn’t smell a body rotting in your backyard?” he challenged.
“Daddy,” Whitney hissed with a tone.
“Why don’t y’all get started building your buns and fixin’s,” Rick suggested, using his spatula to indicate the condiment table off to the wayside where a few lawn chairs had been set up for them to eat and watch the sunset.
“I’m a meat man,” Shane informed him.
Rick didn’t like the grin on his face. “You gettin’ fresh with me, boy?”
“No, Sheriff.”
“That a euphemism about my daughter?” he barked.
“Christ, Sheriff, no. I just mean I don’t bother with buns and ketchup and all that. I like the taste of meat, as is.”
Rick shot Whitney a look meant to convey that only a psychopath would decline the fixin’s, but she didn’t seem to agree. She returned him a stern, warning glance then bounded over to the table to prepare her own open-faced bun, leaving Shane and Rick to stand in painfully awkward silence.
Opening the hood of the grill so he’d have something to do, Rick hoped that Shane would wander over to the condiment table and give him a little breathing room, but he didn’t.
“If you think I don’t know my own daughter,” Rick began without looking at him, “you’re wrong. This whole bubbly, giddy performance… I’ve seen it before.”
“Oh?”
“Yes,” he asserted. “You pissed her off.”
Shane grew very still, which only confirmed Rick’s suspicion and gave him the higher ground to stare the guy down.
As Shane looked into his glass of wine, Rick told him, “She’s overcompensating. I’ve seen it before. Actin’ all la-di-da even though she’s being eaten up inside. The only reason you’re here right now is because she’s stubborn and opportunistic. She’s not going to let a chance to force you and I together to get out from under her. But trust me, she’s not happy with you.”
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