by B. J Daniels
“Some people would kill to keep this kind of lifestyle,” she said, baiting him in the hopes of getting an honest reaction out of him.
“So Rachel’s guilty because she married well?” Ford said.
Hitch turned to look at him, pleased that she’d ruffled his feathers. “She’s guilty if she orchestrated what happened here in order to kill her husband for his money. I’m suspicious for the same reasons you are.”
“I didn’t say I was suspicious.” He raked a hand through his thick dark hair. He wore it longer than usual and wasn’t used to it, she thought, because this wasn’t the first time she’d seen his long fingers raking through it. It certainly wasn’t the military cut she’d seen in the photos she’d found of him during his distinguished career.
“You didn’t have to say you were suspicious,” Hitch said.
He sighed. “What about proof? Don’t you need that?”
She met his gaze. “Of course. Proof goes both ways. She could still surprise me. The call could be a coincidence and she could have killed her husband in self-defense.” She saw that he hadn’t expected that. What she didn’t say was that from experience, she knew that Rachel wouldn’t surprise her. All her instincts told her that the woman was guilty as hell.
But she could use Ford’s help, so she didn’t share that detail with him. Rachel trusted him because she believed she could control him. It was Hitch’s hope that the woman would lower her guard and make a mistake. Ford was an honorable man. He’d proved that. What would he do if he found out that Rachel had murdered her husband in cold blood? Walk away like he had fifteen years ago? Not until he’d seen justice done, he’d said.
Which was why Hitch was more worried about what Rachel would do if Ford suddenly became more than dispensable. If he became a liability... The thought made her shudder. If Ford found out the truth about Rachel, it could get him killed.
Rachel had no intention of going to prison for the rest of her life. And if Hitch was right, the woman had already killed once. To save herself...? Hitch had no doubt that Rachel would kill again.
“So let me help you with the list.” Hitch held out her hand and waited until he handed the note to her. Rachel’s handwriting was neat, the list organized right down to the smiley face on the bottom that was for Ford. Just like the small heart the woman had drawn on the smiley face’s cheek. And the kisses and hugs. She handed the note back. “Why don’t you read it to me and I’ll find the clothes?” He seemed relieved to let her. “Let’s see, first on the list. Was that a white suit with navy piping?” She moved to the suit area. “Nice that she has everything color coordinated. That will make it easier.”
“I’ll find the pumps she wants,” he said behind her as she thumbed through a variety of white suit sets.
It took them a while, but they found everything on the list. As they loaded the items into the largest piece of luggage from the closet, as per Rachel’s instructions on the list, Hitch said, “Tell me about Humphrey. You roomed with him for four years at college, were his best friend. Did you ever see any indication that he would do something like this?”
At first, she didn’t think he would answer. But as they carried the luggage out to the car—a large suitcase and Rachel’s makeup case—he said, “No, I never did. But that doesn’t mean—”
“Did he know how you felt about Rachel?” She sensed the heat of his gaze.
“No. Maybe.” He shook his head. “Apparently, I’m pretty transparent—at least according to you.”
She slid behind the wheel and waited for him to climb into the passenger side. “Why do you think Rachel reached out to you on social media after all this time?”
“She’d heard I was back in Montana. She wanted me to know she was in Montana, too.” He looked out his side window for a moment as she started the SUV’s engine. Was that when the idea had come to Rachel, the beginning of a plan to kill her husband? “Maybe there was trouble in her marriage and she needed someone she could trust to talk to.”
“She doesn’t have a friend she could confide in?” Hitch started up the road that would lead them off the ranch. In her rearview mirror, the Collinwood house was dark again—just like the night around them.
“Look, I don’t know why she contacted me. Maybe out of nostalgia. Anyway, she has a best friend here. Shyla. Shyla Birch. She’s probably the one you should be talking to. She’s a friend of Rachel’s from college. Shyla should know more about Rachel and Humphrey’s marriage than I do.”
“Another friend from college?” Hitch said, glancing over at him in surprise. “Did they also only recently reconnect?”
“You make me wish I hadn’t said anything.”
“You told me because you’re worried about Rachel. Like me, you want to know the truth. You’re also worried that I might be right.”
He shook his head again. “Don’t be telling me what I’m thinking, all right?”
“I’m not psychic, but I have good eyesight. Rachel knew about your accident and discharge from the service, didn’t she? She caught you when you were... vulnerable, knowing she could count on you.”
His expression said she’d hit the nail on the head.
He glanced away quickly and swore. “I understand you digging into Humphrey’s and Rachel’s lives, but I really wish you would stay out of mine.” His voice was rough with emotion.
“I wish I could, but once you got that phone call? Rachel pulled you right into her mess.”
“I don’t know how many times I have to say this. She didn’t mean to call me. She was probably trying to call 911.”
“Glad you brought that up. She botched calling 911, but didn’t have any trouble doing it after she killed her husband,” she said as she drove away from the Collinwood Ranch.
“He was attacking her during the first call,” Ford pointed out.
She glanced over at him. His eyes were dark with anger. Or was it worry? “You’re right. It could have been just one of those strange coincidences. Then again, some might even call it fate.”
“Not you, though,” he said, an edge to his voice. “You only believe what you can prove.”
She smiled. “Exactly.”
* * *
FORD WAS GLAD when the ride out to the Collinwood Ranch was over. After seeing the place, he couldn’t help but remember what Shyla had told him about how unhappy Rachel had been living there. It was isolated, but so grand. Rachel had once told him that she wanted one day to live in a palace and have so many clothes to wear that it would be hard to pick out something to wear. And yet she’d been miserable.
He couldn’t understand it. Now Rachel was in more trouble than he felt she realized. If Hitch and Bart had their way, Rachel would be going to prison for life or worse. Hitch had done her best to make him doubt what he’d heard. Like her, he had his questions. And maybe, if he was being truthful, his suspicions.
Hitch had dropped him off at the hospital. She’d offered to help him with the luggage but he’d declined. “I can handle it, Ms. Roberts.”
“Hitch. I’m sure you can,” she’d said before pulling away in her patrol SUV.
“Did you have any trouble finding everything?” Rachel asked anxiously when he brought in her large suitcase and cosmetic bag.
“No. Hitch helped.”
“Hitch? You’re on a first-name basis with that woman?”
He looked at her, unable to miss the razor-blade sharpness of her tone, and saw that she was visibly upset. “What is it you’re asking?”
“She wants to put me in prison. She’ll do whatever she can to do that—especially if she thinks she can use you against me,” Rachel snapped.
“Because I’m your defense?”
She started to say something, but apparently changed her mind, closing her mouth. Her blue eyes flashed with anger. He watched her try to gain control again. She hadn’t expected him to st
and up to her.
“I’m sorry,” Rachel said quietly. “I know none of this is your fault. It’s just that she keeps trying to dig up something against me.”
“There’s nothing she can dig up, right?” he asked.
“No. But she said she had to go back out to the house. What was that about?”
“I don’t know.”
“She didn’t search the place or act like she was looking for something?”
“No, not that I saw,” he said and felt himself frowning. “What would she be looking for?”
“I don’t know,” Rachel cried and busied herself smoothing the sheets over her. “All of this is so terrifying.”
He said nothing, studying her. Even with the years that had passed, he realized with a start that he still knew this woman. While he’d definitely put her up on his own pedestal all those years ago, he didn’t think she’d ever truly hidden her flaws from him. He’d just forgotten how she’d used her smile to always keep him on her side when she and Humphrey had an argument.
Ford thought of what Hitch had said, insinuating that he’d put all the blame on Humphrey—rather than Rachel—for forcing him to walk away from the two of them after the wedding.
“I didn’t mean to snap at you,” Rachel said into the heavy silence that had fallen between them.
“You’re under a lot of stress.”
“I am,” she said, sounding close to tears. “I never thought my life would turn out like this.”
“I’m sure Humphrey didn’t either.” He hadn’t meant it the way she’d taken it. Her shocked look, the color that shot to her cheeks, the horrified widening of her eyes, made him regret it.
“You blame me, too?” she said, her voice breaking.
“No, no. That isn’t what I meant. I don’t know what happened that day. But I do know that Humphrey would never have wanted it to go so wrong.”
She turned her head away, clearly dismissing him.
“I should go,” he said and started to move toward the door. “I’ll see you in court tomorrow.”
As he stepped out of the room, he felt that familiar melancholy take hold of him. He fought to pull himself out of it. He had to see this through. But that thought didn’t lift him back up—not the way it had at first.
He considered the woman he’d left in the hospital room as he left. Hitch thought he was a fool. She didn’t think he saw through Rachel’s helpless act. Rachel was scared, no doubt about that. But the woman had never been helpless. Was that why she’d had a loaded gun? When had she learned to fire it? Or had she just gotten lucky with that one shot?
Ford swore under his breath. Hitch and her suspicions had him doubting everything. Rachel had always used her feminine wiles to get what she wanted. But not all women did. The thought made him think of Hitch.
So what if Rachel loved the finer things in life. That didn’t make her a murderer. And Humphrey? Ford couldn’t help but remember when they’d been best friends. Like brothers. Had Humphrey turned into a violent man who’d done so much damage to his wife’s face and taken a bullet for it?
With a start, Ford realized that if he were a juror at Rachel’s trial, he might find her guilty of setting this whole thing up to kill her husband for his money. Never in his life would he have thought Rachel—the woman he’d once adored—could be a cold-blooded killer. Until now. And he hated himself for even considering it.
Chapter Thirteen
The courtroom had a chill to it this morning, Ford thought as he took a seat on the hard wooden bench a few rows back. Bart was already seated in the row behind the prosecutor. Ford watched the two talking quietly. They separated quickly when Rachel was brought in to take her seat alongside her attorney.
Attorney Denton Drake was an elderly man with a pleasant smile and a fatherly attitude toward Rachel, Ford noted. He wondered if the lawyer was good at his job. Rachel needed all the help she could get, if the medical examiner and Bart Collinwood had anything to do with it.
But Rachel was a worthy opponent. In her expensive, beautifully cut white suit, she looked beautiful. Her blond hair was up, gold gleamed at her earlobes and her bandage had been removed. He noted that she hadn’t used the makeup he’d brought to the hospital. Her attorney’s idea to let the judge see the damage Humphrey had allegedly done? Or had it been Rachel’s idea?
Ford saw Hitch drop off some papers for the prosecutor before she spotted him and, to his irritation, slid in beside him.
“Good morning,” she said quietly.
“Is it?” He caught her scent, clean and understated, just like the woman herself. He scrutinized her more closely. All the other times he’d seen her, she’d been dressed in either canvas overalls and jacket with Medical Examiner stenciled on the back or jeans and a T-shirt with a jean jacket. Her auburn hair was usually pulled up in a knot at the back of her neck. But this morning she wore a nice-fitting gray suit with a white blouse that was opened at the neck. Her hair fell below her shoulders in a cascade of burnished curls. The woman was striking. He wondered how he hadn’t noticed it before.
She turned those tropical green eyes on him and seemed to be taking him in with the same kind of scrutiny. He’d had to go shopping for clothes since he’d left in what he’d been wearing, so his jeans and Western shirt were new. His boots were old ones he’d left at his father’s place years ago.
“Didn’t get much sleep, huh,” she said, studying him with that observant look of hers.
Before he could comment, she shifted her gaze to Rachel, who was talking animatedly to her lawyer. “Looks like she got more sleep than either of us.”
“The sleep of the innocent,” he said.
Hitch chuckled, but then turned serious. “Does that mean you aren’t innocent? Or maybe you have more of a conscience?”
Ford shook his head. He wasn’t up for another word battle with this woman. He was relieved when the bailiff called out “All rise!” and the judge came into the room. Her Honor signaled for everyone to sit. “Let’s make this quick. I have a lot on the docket today.”
Ford listened as the charges against Rachel were read. Deliberate homicide? The judge asked how she pleaded and Rachel said, “Not guilty, Your Honor.”
Her attorney asked that she be given bail since this was a justifiable use of force. “She has already surrendered her passport and isn’t a flight risk, Your Honor. She has agreed not to leave the state, but simply return to her home north of town.”
The prosecutor rose from his chair. “Mrs. Collinwood has sufficient assets to get herself another passport in another name and disappear. I don’t think the lack of her passport would stop her.”
Rachel’s attorney argued that she had no priors, had been a model citizen and that most of the assets were in her husband’s name and not accessible to her due to a prenuptial agreement she’d signed. “Mrs. Collinwood is the victim here, Your Honor.”
The judge banged her gavel. “Bail is set at five million.”
Rachel gasped loudly. In the stunned silence that followed, she turned to look back at Ford, tears in her eyes. He felt that old familiar pull at his heart in spite of everything. But it was accompanied by nausea. He honestly didn’t know the truth about her and feared he might never know.
* * *
“WHAT WILL HAPPEN to her now?” Ford asked Hitch as Rachel was being led to a jail cell until she could post her bail bond. The courtroom began to fill again. They walked out into the deserted hallway.
“If she can raise enough liquid assets, she’ll be released until her trial,” Hitch said. “Otherwise, she can post a property bail equivalent to five million dollars.”
“If she can’t?”
“Then she’ll stay in jail until her trial.”
“You’re that sure this will go to trial?” he asked.
“She killed a man.”
“Yes, but—�
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“The law doesn’t recognize...yes, but.”
“What will happen to her if...she’s found guilty?”
“During the trial it will be decided if she used justifiable force to stop her husband. If so, she could be charged with mitigated homicide and serve anywhere from two to forty years.”
“Forty years!”
“But if the jury finds that she used extreme force that wasn’t justifiable, then she could be convicted of deliberate homicide and could be sentenced to life, which is a minimum of thirty years.”
He looked sick.
“Or, depending on the judge, she could get ten to a hundred years. We do still have the death penalty in Montana. Lethal injection, though there hasn’t been an execution in years.”
He clearly couldn’t stand the thought. “How is that possible if she was fighting for her life?” Ford said angrily.
“It will be up to a jury and what evidence there is to the contrary.”
“Evidence you’re gathering against her.”
“Only if the evidence is there.”
He raked a hand through his hair, looking miserable. “No one is stupid enough to gamble their life for money.” She raised an eyebrow, making him furious. “Rachel might be materialistic, but she isn’t stupid.” He got a smirk at that. “You’re wrong. She would have had to know that she might not get away with it.”
“Not if she covered all her bets, including making sure you heard enough of the argument that you are now a very large part of her defense. I have to admit, the phone call was pretty brilliant. A medaled war hero just back home? You make a good witness because any jury would see that you’re also an honest, honorable man.”
He swore under his breath. “You’re making Rachel out to be a mastermind criminal and me a saint.”
“Most criminals think they’re smarter than law enforcement.” Her eyes twinkled mischievously. “And I don’t think you’re a saint. I just think you’re a nice guy who fell in love with the wrong woman and has never let himself get over it or the guilt.”
