by Elle Kennedy
Finn was already removing his car keys from his pocket. The gold sheriff’s badge clipped to the belt on his jeans glimmered as he turned for the door. Jamie got to her feet too, but Finn quickly gestured to the chair. “No, you stay here,” he ordered. “You’re still woozy from the painkillers, and I can’t have you getting hurt.”
She wanted to argue, but the brief rush of dizziness she experienced from standing abruptly told her that Finn was right. She was in no shape for a walk in the woods right now. “Call me when you know something?” she said instead, sinking back on the chair.
Finn nodded. “The second I know what we’re dealing with.”
Without another word, Finn and his deputy dashed out of the office, their footsteps thudding in the bullpen. A moment later they were gone, and Jamie sat in silence, reaching up to rub her suddenly throbbing temples. A body. Gideon?
Or what if…
Icy fear filled her veins. Gideon’s property was right next to Cole’s. What if something had happened to Cole?
Tamping down her panic, she drew in a calming breath and forced herself to stay put. She couldn’t go running off on her own. She didn’t have a vehicle, anyway. And Finn had said he’d call when he knew something. Which meant she had no choice but to sit in his office and wait for news.
Ten minutes passed, Finn still hadn’t called and Jamie’s worrying intensified. Whose body had they found, damn it?
Please, don’t let it be Cole.
She shot to her feet, deciding the only way to ease her worry was to find out for sure. She would call Cole, just to make sure he was okay. He probably was. Hell, he was probably sulking at home, still angry with her.
She’d left her purse on one of the desks in the bullpen, and she made a beeline for it, finding her phone just as a familiar voice came from behind.
“Sitting around doing nothing,” Valerie Matthews remarked coldly. “Why am I not surprised, Agent Crawford?”
Stifling a groan, Jamie turned to face the other woman. “Hello to you too, Valerie.”
Teresa Donovan’s sister directed a scowl in Jamie’s direction. “You promised to keep me posted about the case.”
“I did. I mean, I am,” she corrected.
“Really, then why did I have to find out from Tom Hannigan that you have the gun that killed my sister?”
Ignoring the dull throb of her shoulder, Jamie crossed her arms over her chest. Tom Hannigan? The lab tech, she remembered. Then she frowned, annoyed that someone involved with the case would reveal crucial information to a civilian.
“We did find the gun,” she conceded. “But it was wiped of fingerprints and the serial number was filed off. We have no way of knowing who it belongs to.”
“Cole Donovan, obviously,” Valerie muttered.
At the sound of Cole’s name, Jamie glanced at the cell phone in her hands. Damn it, she had to know if he was all right. “Look, Valerie, I’m kind of busy at the moment. Maybe you can come in tomorrow and the sheriff and I will update you on—”
“Update me now,” Valerie interrupted, her eyes flashing with anger.
“I can’t. I was actually about to call Finn to tell him to pick me up,” she lied. “He’s supposed to drive me over to his house.”
“Fine. I’ll drive you.”
Jamie narrowed her eyes. “No, thank you. I’ll just wait for Finn.”
“You need a ride. I need answers about my sister’s murder,” Valerie snapped. “And I’m going to get my answers, damn it. This has gone on long enough.”
A tremor of suspicion climbed up Jamie’s spine. Why was Valerie insisting? And why had she shown up here out of the blue?
Right after Finn received a 911 call that had him rushing out of the station.
Something didn’t add up. She felt like she was looking at a missing piece of the puzzle, but couldn’t seem to fit it in place. She looked into Valerie’s dark gray eyes and the suspicion grew stronger. Did Valerie know something? About Teresa’s death? About the attacks on her?
“Okay,” Jamie finally agreed, an edge to her voice. “You can drive me to Finn’s.”
“Good, and you can answer my questions,” the other woman retorted.
With reluctance weighing down on her chest, Jamie followed Valerie out to the parking lot, where a shiny white Honda Civic was parked. Valerie unlocked the doors and, with a mocking gesture, motioned for Jamie to get in. Still uneasy, Jamie slid into the sleek leather interior, then waited for Valerie to get in.
She had to find out what Valerie knew. If the woman even knew anything. Maybe the painkillers she’d taken were making her mind jumbled, steering her instincts on the wrong course. Either way, she intended to find out.
Valerie put the car in Drive and pulled away from the curb. “Why the hell haven’t you arrested him yet?” the woman demanded. “You’ve got the murder weapon now.”
“Have you ever stopped to think that maybe Cole didn’t kill your sister?” Jamie asked in a quiet voice.
“Of course the son of a bitch killed her!” Valerie tossed her black hair over her shoulder in outrage. “And he’s going to kill you too, if you keep hanging around him.”
Jamie sighed. “Seems to me like the only person making threats about me dying is you, Valerie.”
“Oh, trust me, honey, those were just warnings.” Valerie gave a hard laugh. “I haven’t even started with the threats yet.”
Cole was stunned as he hung up the phone, unable to comprehend what his P.I. had just revealed. Hank had kept him on the line while he looked into Cole’s request, and the entire time, Cole had clung to the hope that this was a mistake.
Now, it was glaringly apparent that that wasn’t the case, even as his brain continued to fight the obvious. It was too appalling to even consider. She couldn’t have done that. She couldn’t have.
She did, an irritated voice buzzed in his head. So deal with it and do something.
Christ, he had to find Jamie. He was probably overreacting here, but if what Hank said was true, then there was a chance she was in trouble. Big trouble.
Darting out of the kitchen, he paused only to swoop up his keys from the credenza in the front hall and put some shoes on. Fighting the panic rushing inside him, he stumbled down the porch steps towards his truck, determined to find Jamie and make sure his suspicions were unwarranted. Of course she was okay. There had to be a logical explanation for what Hank had discovered.
He reached the truck, then halted in his tracks.
Eyes widening, he stared at the tires in disbelief, wondering if he was imagining it. As his pulse pounded between his ears, he knelt down, then let out an obscenity.
All four tires had been slashed. And not just once. Someone had taken a knife to them and sliced so many holes in the thick rubber that driving would be impossible.
It must have happened when he was being questioned at the station, and he hadn’t noticed the damage when Martin had dropped him home. He’d been too distracted at that point. Too devastated.
With a growl of frustration he tore back into the house and skidded into the kitchen, where he grabbed his phone from the counter and dialed Jamie’s number. As the ringtone chimed endlessly in his ear, dread climbed up his spine.
“Damn it, Jamie, pick up.”
“Hi, you’ve reached Jamie Crawford. I’m unavailable to take your—”
“Damn!”
Cole quickly controlled his rage before he gave in to the impulse to whip the phone across the room. With stiff fingers, he dialed a different number, and the sheriff’s gravelly voice filled his ear. “I’m in the middle of something, Donovan. This had better be important.”
“In the middle of what?” Cole demanded. “Is Jamie with you?”
“No, she’s at the station. I left to answer an emergency call. False alarm, though.”
Cole’s spine stiffened. “What are you talking about?”
“Someone reported finding a body on Joe Gideon’s property,” Finn said, sounding impatient. �
�But there’s nothing here. We just searched the area where the body was supposedly found, didn’t see a damn thing. And Gideon is now getting in my face, threatening to sue me for harassment because we interrupted him in the middle of a damn bender. Now what the hell do you want, Donovan?”
Finn was at Gideon’s, which meant he could get here in no time, Cole realized. “Look, I need you to come and pick me up. Someone slashed my tires, probably when I was at the station with you, and I have no way to—”
“Someone slashed your tires?”
“Yes. So get over here, Finnegan.” He swallowed a lump of panic. “I think Jamie’s in danger.”
“What are you talking about? What’s going on, Donovan?”
“I’ll explain everything when you get here.” Cole spoke quickly, urgently. “Just hurry.”
A click sounded in his ear. He could only hope that Finn had hung up without a word to save time and was running to his car at this very second. Gideon’s cabin was only a five-minute drive, the sheriff could make it here in less than that if he ignored the speed limit.
Cole bounded to the security room to unlock the gate, then went out to the porch, where he fixed his gaze on the end of the driveway, as if he could will Finn’s Jeep to appear. It must have worked, because the Jeep burst onto the dirt path a minute later. Cole was in the passenger seat before the vehicle came to a complete stop and then Finn did a sharp turn and barreled down the driveway again.
“Where are we going?” he demanded.
“My house.” Cole’s lips tightened. “Where Teresa died.”
“Are you going to tell me what the hell is going on?”
The trees on the side of the road whizzed past like streaks of lightning as Finn sped toward the main intersection.
“I think Jamie is in danger,” Cole burst out. “I got a phone call from— Oh crap.”
His abrupt exclamation came at the same time Finn slammed on the brakes. Cole hadn’t bothered with his seat-belt, and he nearly smashed his head against the dash as the Jeep came to a screeching stop. A few yards from the intersection sat a white Honda Civic, its passenger door carelessly flung open.
Cole’s heart thumped as he squinted for a better look. A dark head was slumped over the steering wheel. Valerie. He recognized the car, knew it had to be Teresa’s sister in the driver’s seat. The open passenger door indicated that someone else had been in the car with her.
Jamie.
After Finn drove the Jeep onto the shoulder of the road, Cole jumped out and ran to the white car, reaching it seconds before the sheriff lumbered up from behind. As Finn rounded the vehicle to examine any potential damage, Cole stuck a hand through the open window and touched Valerie Matthew’s raven hair, nudging her gingerly. “Valerie. Valerie!”
She gave a strangled moan and then her head moved ever so slightly.
“Valerie, wake up. Where’s Jamie?” Cole pleaded.
Another moan, followed by a whimper, and then she slowly looked up at him, her gray eyes glazed with confusion. “C-Cole?”
“Someone hit them from behind,” Finn muttered, returning to the driver’s side. “The bumper is all but gone.”
Cole cursed at the news, then glanced back at the injured woman. “Valerie, are you okay?” He touched her hair again, lifted his hand and saw it was stained with blood.
“He…he knocked me out,” Valerie murmured, awe and bewilderment ringing in her voice.
Cole choked down the lump of horror in his throat. “Who knocked you out, Val? Tell me what happened.” When she just whimpered again, he grew frantic. “Valerie, where’s Jamie?”
“He took her.” A wobbly breath left her mouth. Shaking her head as if to clear it of cobwebs, she blinked several times, then focused her silvery gaze on Cole. “That guy who works for you…your assistant…he took Agent Crawford. He took her.”
Chapter 16
“Get out of the car, Agent Crawford.”
Jamie stared at the barrel of the gun, then up at the face of the man wielding it. For the hundredth time, she had trouble accepting that this was Ian Macintosh. Ian, the young man who’d been so pleasant to her the morning after the storm.
He looked like a completely different person. Brown eyes wild, boyish features twisted in a mask of evil loathing. She resisted the urge to rub her aching right temple, fearing any sudden movements would set him off. Or the gun. Her gun, she realized as she stared at the familiar Glock with the scratch on the butt. He must have grabbed it from her purse, after he’d run Valerie’s car off the road.
She’d hit her head during the accident, and her memory was still fuzzy, but she recalled the crunching of metal, being propelled into the dashboard, then hearing muted footsteps and seeing Valerie droop forward. She remembered fumbling for her purse, and then…then Ian’s face appeared in the passenger window, the door was thrown open and everything went black.
“I said, get out of the car!”
She blinked, trying to stay alert despite the throbbing of her head. She was in a beige sedan, most likely Ian’s rental, and it was dark outside but not pitch black, which told her only a short amount of time had passed since he’d knocked her unconscious. The sun had just set when she’d gotten into Valerie’s car, so it couldn’t be later than seven o’clock, maybe eight.
“All right then, if that’s how you want to be,” Ian snapped.
The gun disappeared and he was out of the car, his footsteps thudding against the ground as he walked around to her side, opened the door and pulled her out of the sedan by her hair.
Her arm flew out in a desperate punch, but she’d instinctively used her right one, the injured one. Pain shot up to her shoulder and she sagged onto the gravel. She realized she’d landed on a driveway. Where the hell had he taken— She gasped when she caught sight of the commanding stone mansion.
She immediately figured out where they were. The house Cole had shared with Teresa.
“Why are you doing this?” she blurted out. “I thought you were loyal to Cole.”
“Loyal to that murdering bastard?” Ian smirked. “You thought wrong, luv. Now get up.”
She did as he asked, wishing she had a backup weapon right about now. She needed to neutralize this situation before Macintosh decided to pull the trigger.
He gestured her to move ahead of him. “Walk to the door.”
Jamie used the walk along the limestone path to assess the situation. Ian definitely wasn’t of sound mind, but his motive for doing this made no sense to her. Was he after Cole’s company? Was he simply crazy?
His reasoning became clear as he made her open the double doors at the mansion’s entrance, planted a hand on her back and shoved her into the house. Darkness shrouded them and then she heard a click and light flooded the impressive marble-lined parlor.
“You just couldn’t do your damn job, could you, Agent?” Ian said with contempt in his voice. “Go through the doorway to the left.”
He flicked another switch and Jamie found herself in an enormous living room with high ceilings and a gorgeous slate fireplace. Horror clogged her throat. This was the room in which Teresa Donovan had died. She glanced at the floor by the coffee table, growing sick when she saw the dark brown stain on the hardwood. Evidently the cleaning staff hadn’t been able to scrub away the bloodstain.
Ian waved the gun. “Sit down.”
When she moved to the couch, he barked at her again. “Not there. On the floor.”
Nausea knotted around her insides as she realized where he wanted her to sit. Knowing she had to cooperate until she found a way out of this mess, she slowly moved across the room and sank down on the marred hardwood. Forced herself not to think about the pool of sticky blood that had once congealed there.
“You know,” Ian said, his voice colder than a glacier, “I was quite pleased when you showed up in town. I thought, Hey, now here’s a smart woman, surely she’ll see that he’s a killer and send him to death row.” He sneered at her. “But no, you had to go and scr
ew the guy, didn’t you, Agent?”
“Cole isn’t a killer,” she said quietly.
He went on as if she hadn’t even spoken. “I tried to be nice to you! I left you that note, trying to help you get your priorities straight, but you ignored it! And then I tried warning you by messing with your car and you—”
“Warning?” she interrupted. “I could have died.”
“And if you did, then the sheriff would have called in another agent, one capable of carrying out a simple task.” Ian shrugged. “If you survived, I figured you’d skip town and let someone else take over, but you stuck around. I guess you do have a death wish.”
“You shot me this morning.” It was a statement, not a question.
“I missed,” he confessed. “I wasn’t planning on doing it—I was just keeping an eye on the house to make sure the bastard didn’t try and skip town. Then you came outside and I decided, what the hell, might as well go for it. But you moved at the last second, and I’m afraid I’m not very good with guns.” He wagged the weapon around as if to hammer the point home.
Jamie ran a hand through her hair, wincing when she unconsciously put her right arm to use again. She ignored the resulting pain and shot Ian a curious look. “So you’re doing this because you hate Cole?”
His eyes flashed. “What I did before, I did because that son of a bitch needs to be in prison.” His lips twisted in a malevolent smile. “But now…well, since you’re obviously not going to punish him for his crime, I’m going to punish him.”
She sighed. She didn’t normally provoke psychopaths, but this was bordering on nonsensical. “I have no idea what you’re saying, Ian. It’s starting to sound a lot like crazy talk.”
“Oh, I’m not making enough sense for you, Agent Crawford?” He made a tsking sound. “Not surprising, seeing as you’re completely incompetent at your job. How about I spell it out for you then?”
“Please do,” she couldn’t help but bite out.
“Cole belongs in jail,” Ian announced in a pleasant voice. “You’re too stupid to put him there. Ergo, I’ve decided to dish out my own form of punishment.” He leaned against the arm of the sofa, his gun hand swinging back and forth like a pendulum. “I’m going to make the bastard feel what it’s like to lose the woman you love. Clear enough for you?”