Take Down

by Jess Anastasi

  “What did he look like?” Jake prompted when he didn’t reply.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see him clearly.” And he hadn’t taken much notice when he’d seen the guy standing across from the diner. “Nothing remarkable about him. In his late twenties or early thirties. Light brown hair, maybe? I don’t know…. He was just a guy. But I think he’s one of the ALP members. I’m pretty sure he was with that group we ran into coming out of the diner the first morning we had breakfast together.”

  Jake’s features seemed to darken, and he looked back along the street again as if that might provide some answers.

  “What is it?”

  “Come on.” Jake took his free arm and tugged him along. “I’ll explain when we get back to my place.”

  Whatever that meant. It made the unease settle more uncomfortably in his stomach. He glanced over his shoulder, getting the weird sense of being watched, but the man was gone, and now Jake’s expression was closed-off and cold. What the hell was going on?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  JAKE GLANCED over his shoulder again to check they weren’t being followed, but the street was empty. He could practically feel Danny staring at him with all kind of questions, but Jake avoided his gaze. He needed to get his thoughts in order if he wanted to be able to explain everything and not sound like a lunatic bent on revenge.

  When they crossed the street to walk down the block his house was on, he jerked to a stop at the sight of a pickup truck sitting on the curb, front end damaged and one headlight completely smashed in. His mind flashed back to the night of the accident, when he’d looked over and seen the figure silhouetted by the single headlight advancing on his smashed-up Jeep. It’d been too dark to figure out the make or model of the pickup before it had sped off, but his instincts were howling. It had to be the same pickup. Someone had left it there because they knew he and Danny would see it.

  It felt like there was ice in his veins instead of blood. Danny hadn’t given him much to go on, but he just knew in his bones it had to be Leroy Hobbs he’d been seeing everywhere. Hobbs, who’d apparently just now been waiting for them to come out of Danny’s house. Hobbs, who’d run them off the road and left the smashed pickup truck here— To what? Warn them? Taunt them?

  Danny thankfully hadn’t noticed the pickup; he was too busy staring at him in concern. He set a hand in the middle of Danny’s lower back, hurrying him past it and debating whether to call the vehicle in, or if it’d be put down to another random, unrelated happenstance.

  He didn’t know why he was so certain it’d been Hobbs—there were probably any number of ALP members who were white, male, in their late twenties or early thirties and had light brown hair who probably hated the hell out of gay people—yet this had to be the last piece of the puzzle he hadn’t been able to figure out. The why behind it all, however, still didn’t make sense.

  Hobbs must have killed both Williams and Gomez, and had probably been the one to shoot Danny with the crossbow. But why? Because Hobbs had seen Danny with him that first day they’d run into each other outside the diner? But why dump the second body for Danny to find? Had he been trying to frame Danny for the murder, or simply taunting them? Or did it have nothing to do with Jake personally and everything to do with the fact Danny just happened to be the one who crashed into the back of the stationary sedan with the first body?

  By the time they stepped through the front door to his house, he was no closer to working out the answers in his mind, but knew it was past time he told Danny his real reason for moving to Everness.

  “So,” Danny said conversationally as he set his bag down just inside the living room doorway. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

  Jake went over and put the bag he’d been carrying on top of the other one and then slowly turned to face Danny, trying to ignore the apprehension climbing within him. Surely Danny would understand. He didn’t have any reason for being this nervous.

  “It’s a long story,” he said by way of starting, probably hedging, but he still hadn’t quite figured out how to explain without sounding like a nutjob.

  Danny’s brow lowered a little. “Jake, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I could have been imaging things anyway. It was probably just a coincidence. It’s a small town. I see the same fifty people every day.”

  “I don’t think you were imagining things, Danny.” What if it was all his fault Hobbs was targeting Danny? What if it was his fault Danny had gotten hurt—shot with a crossbow then hurt in an MVA? In that moment, he almost hated himself, and the words to even start explaining the situation totally escaped him.

  There was a knock at the door, sending his heart thumping, making him think for a second Hobbs had followed them for some reason. But he grabbed on to the logic that told him it wasn’t very likely and forced a calming breath on himself as he crossed to the entryway, shooting Danny an apologetic look. He’d deal with whoever this was and then force out the words he owed Danny, one way or another.

  When he opened the door, however, surprise and then suspicion accelerated his pulse as Detective Stevens stood there with Lieutenant Mullens.

  “Detective, can I help you with something?” he asked, automatically going into polite-professional mode.

  “We’re here to take Daniel Jones in for questioning in relation to the deaths of Jeremiah Williams and Emilio Gomez.” The detective’s gaze skipped past him, looking somewhere over his shoulder into the house.

  He felt Danny step up behind him and tightened his hold on the door. “Really, Stevens? You can’t honestly think Danny killed them. And then what? Staged the accident and car dumped in front of the garage?”

  Stevens gave a casual shrug. “I’ve seen stranger things.”

  “Cooperate and come along, now, Daniel,” Mullens put in, hand landing where the handcuffs were secured on his utility belt. “No need to make this harder than it’s got to be.”

  “Do I have a choice?” Danny asked, a hint of unease in his tone.

  Jake glanced over his shoulder, wishing he could stop this from happening, an irrational fear that Danny was somehow going to be found guilty and spend the next fifty years in jail making his chest tight. But that was boyfriend Jake. Cop Jake knew this had to be done. Yes, they could hold Danny for up to twenty-four hours without pressing charges. But they wouldn’t find anything tying him to either crime and would have to let him go eventually. The sooner they got it out of the way and cleared Danny from the investigation, the better.

  He finally let go of the door, fingers stiff and aching from how tight he’d been holding it.

  “You’ll be fine.” He sure sounded certain of that, and it definitely worked to calm Danny, who nodded with relief in his gaze, clearly relying on every word to be the truth. “I’ll come with you, okay?”

  “No can do, Perez,” Mullens drawled with a smirk. “Kind of a conflict of interest, being personally involved with the suspect. Can’t have you interfering with things.”

  Dammit, why out of every cop at the station did Stevens have to bring Mullens?

  “I’m not asking to sit in on the interview, Lieutenant. Just a ride to the station since my Jeep got totaled. I can promise I won’t interfere on the three-minute drive.” It took every ounce of training he had to get the words out anywhere near polite. And they were still clipped. He was on edge—from the revelation that Hobbs had possibly been following Danny around, seeing the smashed pickup near his house, to the ill-timed arrival of Stevens and his decision to question Danny as an official suspect.

  “Let’s get a move on, then.” Stevens stepped back and indicated for them to come out of the house.

  Jake swallowed a sigh and shifted to allow Danny to step past him, before pulling the door shut and pocketing his keys. Stevens was directing Danny into the back of the cruiser. Jake went around the other side and sent Danny a reassuring smile as he slid in next to him. Danny looked nervous, though he was clearly trying to hide it.

 
“First time in the back of a police cruiser?” he asked casually, reaching across to take Danny’s hand.

  “Yep. Can’t say I’ve ever been in trouble with the cops before.”

  “You’re not in trouble now.” He glanced up and caught Mullens glaring at him in the rearview mirror. Whatever. He didn’t care what the guy thought. “It’s just a formality to clear you. They’ll ask a few questions, establish a timeline of your movements around when the murders took place, and you’ll be out before you know it.”

  Danny nodded, grip tightening around his hand.

  The rest of the short trip went by in tense silence. When they got to the station, Stevens immediately opened the door on Danny’s side to let him out. As they walked away, Danny glanced back over his shoulder with worry creasing his brow. Mullens took his sweet time opening the other door for Jake. By the time he got out, Stevens and Danny had disappeared inside with a bang of the back door opening onto the parking lot.

  “You’re an ass, Mullens, you know that?” he muttered as he brushed by the other officer.

  Mullens caught his arm before he could take more than two steps. “Watch it, son. The sheriff might be fond of you, but life in this town can be difficult if you don’t fit in.”

  He glared at the lieutenant, trying to figure out if there was an actual threat behind the words, or the older man was giving him a not-so-friendly warning. Either way, he didn’t appreciate it.

  “Noted,” he replied through a tight jaw, roughly tugging his arm free. “But for the record, I don’t care much for fitting in with small-minded people.”

  The lieutenant’s features tightened, but Jake hurried away before the man could say anything else. He didn’t need to be written up for punching a higher-ranked cop.

  He shouldn’t have called a superior officer an ass, but he wasn’t on duty and he felt like the walls were closing in from all directions. With Mullens being a dick for the sake of it, it was only pushing his temper closer to the edge.

  The door banged loudly behind him when he rushed through and by the time he got into the main offices, Stevens had already secured Danny in an interview room. Jake went in next door to observe through the mirror, finding the sheriff already there.

  He hesitated for a moment. Damn, what if Hayes told him to wait outside in the foyer like a civilian? Not knowing what was going on would drive him mental. Of course, the sheriff couldn’t exactly claim impartiality, since he was practically Danny’s uncle.

  “You just going to stand in the door all day, or you coming to join me?” Hayes’s voice held a hint of grim amusement.

  Jake cleared his throat, a small swell of chagrin rising through him at being caught dithering. That wasn’t usually him. Usually he made a decision and stuck to it, no hesitation and no second thoughts. Hell, he’d uprooted his entire life and changed his plans for the future to make sure his brother eventually got justice, and never questioned if it’d been the right thing to do.

  He stepped forward, stopping next to Hayes and taking in the sight of Danny sitting nervously across from the detective, fingers tapping a rapid beat on the table. His chest got warm and tight. Then the feeling unwound and flowed through him, leaving a resonance of deep affection bathing him from the inside out. No matter if he ever saw Leroy Hobbs in jail or not, he would never, ever regret coming to Everness and finding Danny.

  He wanted to tell the sheriff about seeing the truck, but he had no evidence, not even any certainty it was the same vehicle. Wasn’t the first damaged car he’d seen since moving to town—hitting deer around the town’s outskirts was a particular hazard many people didn’t escape. He only had his gut feeling telling him it’d been the same pickup that’d run them off the road, and that certainly wasn’t enough to build a case on.

  “How’s he been?” Hayes asked, pulling him out of the thoughts.

  “Good, actually,” he replied, crossing his arms and trying not to wish he was sitting in the room on the other side of the one-way glass. “He got a few hours’ sleep, and then we went to his house to get some of his things. His mom was there and they talked. I should let him tell it, but things are resolved for the better where his mom is concerned, at least.”

  “Joyce always was a remarkable woman,” Hayes murmured, almost to himself it seemed. “I never wanted to say it, but Grant didn’t deserve her.”

  He eyed the sheriff, getting the sense there was more to the history there than anyone might guess, but his attention was diverted when Stevens began the interview. Though he didn’t have much experience with the investigation side of being an officer and hadn’t witnessed many interviews, the conversation seemed pretty straightforward and stock-standard to him.

  As things progressed, however, he tried not to worry about the fact Danny didn’t have much of an alibi for the estimated times the murders had occurred. The first, he’d been working late on the books in the office of the garage by himself, and the second, he’d been alone at his house because his parents had been out at some church thing. There was also the fact that the car outside the garage with the body in the trunk had been completely wiped clean of prints—they’d only found Danny’s on the door, steering wheel, and trunk.

  “Stevens can’t really think Danny did it,” he muttered as the detective yet again got Danny to go over what had happened at the accident on the first day they’d met.

  “I’d like to hope not, but Danny’s lack of alibi and only finding his prints in the vehicle isn’t doing him any favors.”

  There was a hint of worry in the sheriff’s voice, and the earlier irrational fear—that Danny was going to take the fall for this whether he was innocent or not—returned to clench tight in his gut.

  “But what about the fact he was shot with a crossbow and someone ran us off the road? Danny couldn’t exactly do those things to himself.”

  “Perez, did you ever stop to consider it was your car run off the road? And how do you know that crossbow bolt wasn’t meant for you, but missed?”

  Jake’s heart stuttered to a stop as the words hit him. Was Hayes right? Had he been looking at this all wrong? Not the bit about Danny being innocent—that was obvious. But what if he’d been the target all along and Danny had simply been collateral? Guilt burned acidic in his stomach and he swallowed heavily.

  The whole thing had snowballed and gotten way out of control. He’d come to Everness intent to see Hobbs brought to justice and to make sure the bastard didn’t hurt anyone else. But in the few weeks since Jake had arrived in town, two people had been murdered while he’d gotten caught up in things with Danny—not only his own feelings, but the fact Danny had seemingly been dragged into the middle of it all. He’d assumed after the accident the first day Danny was the one being targeted. But Hayes had just flipped everything on its head. None of this might have happened to Danny if only he’d simply dropped Danny home from the accident that first day and they’d gone their separate ways.

  It was clear now what he had to do. Time to get his head on straight and see through the vow he’d made at his brother’s graveside… no matter the personal cost.

  “At the moment,” the sheriff continued, “they’re lacking any other clear suspect, and the fact that Danny found both bodies can’t be ignored.”

  “What if I had another suspect?” The words came out slow with reluctance. Never mind coming clean with Danny. He had to tell Sheriff Hayes the truth right this minute, before anyone else got hurt. The problem was, once the truth came out, it would change everything. He might not even have a job any longer.

  Dammit. He locked his gaze on Danny, suddenly feeling like he was standing at a crossroads and had no idea which way to turn. But as he took in Danny’s earnest expression, the way he bit his lower lip between his teeth as he thought about an answer for something Stevens had asked him, the way his blue eyes and dark blond hair caught the light above—the path Jake wanted, needed to take became clear. Luis would have wanted him to be happy, to take every opportunity, to find someone sp
ecial and make a life. Not bury himself in some lonely vigilance, waiting on a man who wasn’t worth the time of day to make the mistake that’d finally see him in jail where he belonged.

  Hayes was a decent man. He just had to hope the sheriff understood and didn’t immediately strip his badge from him.

  “Son, you got something you need to tell me?”

  He turned to find the sheriff studying him intently and got the feeling the man had already been watching him for several moments while he struggled with his resolve.

  “I’m pretty sure I know who’s responsible for all this, and maybe if I’d been truthful from the start, none of this would have happened. People might not be dead.” The guilt he’d felt earlier returned in a lump swelling his throat.

  Hayes reached up and clapped a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Why don’t we go sit in my office and you can explain everything to me?”

  He nodded, not trusting his voice in that moment. As Hayes led him from the room, he snatched one last glance over his shoulder at Danny, praying he wasn’t about to lose everything.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  DANNY LET his forehead thump gently to the table, bored frustration raking hot claws through him. It’d been hours. Apart from a very quick toilet break—which one of the male officers had accompanied him on; what they thought he was going to do, he couldn’t imagine—he’d been stuck in this small, bare room. No contact with anyone except Detective Stevens. Not even the sheriff, whom he’d secretly been hoping would either intervene or simply make his presence known. And definitely not Jake since they’d been separated in the parking lot.

  By the time Stevens had finished questioning him, his head had been simultaneously throbbing and spinning. Possibly left over from the concussion he’d gotten the day before, but also likely to do with how Stevens had asked him the same thing over and over, just in slightly different ways, as if trying to trip him up on the details. After a while, he couldn’t have said if he was keeping the story straight anymore, even though it wasn’t a story. It was the truth.