“I multitask,” she told him. With a wink she added, “I can do at least two things at once.”
She was telling him that her mind was whirling even as they were making love last night. “I don’t know if I should be impressed or insulted,” he told her.
“Flattered,” she corrected. “You should be flattered because you’re an inspiration and you were the one who got all my juices flowing.”
Well, put that way, he couldn’t be insulted that her mind was elsewhere. “And exactly what is it that you were thinking about?”
Maggie smiled like a woman who knew she was about to drop a bombshell. And then she did. “I think we should go and pay Elliott Corgan a visit.”
Jonah’s fork froze just as he brought it up to his mouth. He looked at her as if she had slipped a gear. “You want to go and visit the serial killer?”
Maggie nodded. Swallowing what she had put in her mouth, she said, “One and the same.”
“But the man’s in prison,” Jonah protested. Had she forgotten that?
“I know. But I think we need to talk to him,” she insisted. Now that she knew all about the “family secret,” she had questions she wanted to ask James’s uncle. “He might be the only one who could tell us what happened to the chief’s sister.”
“Thompson said he talked to Elliott and the man denied killing her,” Jonah reminded her, finishing his eggs.
“And serial killers are always so truthful,” she responded sarcastically.
Jonah frowned. She had a point. “You’re serious about wanting to talk to Elliott?” he questioned.
Finished with her own meal, she wiped her mouth, then dropped her napkin onto the plate. “Absolutely.”
He could see that she was serious, but that still didn’t make this doable. “And we’re just going to waltz up to that prison in Austin and ask to see Elliott Corgan,” he asked incredulously.
“No,” she said simply, “we can drive. Waltzing will take too much time.”
“Very funny,” he responded, then rephrased his question. “And we just walk into Randolph State Prison and ask to see him, out of the blue. What makes you think we can pull that off? Or that we can even get him to talk to us?”
Though she had only come up with this while making breakfast, she had given it a lot of thought.
“Well, technically, I am family, so to speak. I’m his nephew’s former wife. More importantly,” she stressed, “the man’s a serial killer. Once they’re caught, they revel in attention, in showing everyone how much more clever they are than everyone else.”
He could almost see her mind figuring out the details. He was in awe of the way it worked.
“We can tell Elliott that we’re true crime documentarians and that we’re interested in bringing his story to the small screen. Once he knows that, we probably won’t be able to get him to stop talking,” she said confidently.
He still wasn’t sold on the idea. “Thompson told us to stay clear of this. Again,” Jonah reminded her.
She sighed. “I know, but you can’t tell me that he doesn’t want to know who’s responsible for his sister’s death.”
“I’m sure he does,” Jonah conceded, “but Thompson’s perfectly capable of going to question Elliot himself if he wanted to do that.”
“He already did,” she reminded Jonah. “That’s how the chief knows that Elliot denied having anything to do with Emmeline’s death,” she said, paraphrasing what Jonah had just said earlier.
Jonah saw the look on Maggie’s face. She was determined to do this, he thought. “But you don’t believe him,” he guessed.
“Let’s just say I need to be convinced of Elliott’s innocence in this case. After all, he is the likely killer,” she pointed out.
Jonah felt as if they were going around in circles. “Again, if there is something to pursue, Thompson’s the one who should do it.”
She agreed, but there was a glaring problem with that. “He’s a police chief. His hands are tied by rules and regulations.”
Jonah eyed her, rather bemused. “And ours aren’t?”
Maggie smiled at him. “Let’s just say that for us, the rules and regulations are bendable.” Picking up the empty plates, she piled the utensils on top and took everything to the sink. “You don’t have to say anything,” she told him. “I can do all the talking. You can just be there as my backup. Or my cameraman,” she said, really beginning to get enthusiastic about the idea.
“Don’t get carried away,” he warned. He knew someone who had tried to make a film on the premises and had gotten stymied. “There are all sorts of forms to fill out if you want to bring a camera onto prison grounds. That’ll take time to get clearance and I can see by the look on your face that you’re dying to just jump in and do this thing.”
“Okay, no camera,” she told him, perfectly willing to adjust her plan to fit the situation. “You can just be there to take notes.”
He made a calculated guess. “So you’ll be the producer.”
“Hey, it’s my idea, right?” Maggie reminded him with a grin.
“And if I said that it’s not a good idea?” Jonah challenged.
She wasn’t about to force him to go with her. “All right, you don’t have to come. I’ll go by myself,” she told Jonah.
If she thought he was about to go along with that, she didn’t know him at all. He had absolutely no intention of letting Maggie go into the prison by herself. “The hell you will.”
Inwardly, she breathed a sigh of relief, then smiled at him. “The offer’s still open to be my sidekick,” she told Jonah.
“You are incorrigible, you know that, don’t you?” he said, shaking his head.
“Oh, I might have heard that before,” Maggie conceded.
He laughed dryly. “With good reason, I’m sure.” He saw that Maggie had opened her mouth, a clear sign that she was about to share a story with him, most likely about the last time she had been called incorrigible.
“Wait,” he spoke up before she could get started, “I don’t want to know.”
There was humor in her eyes. “Your loss,” Maggie said glibly.
“That is a matter of opinion,” Jonah countered with feeling. He thought for a moment, doing some mental juggling. “I’m going to have to go by the latest rescue site to find out if I can be spared today,” he told her.
This was turning out to involve a lot of logistics, she thought. “I said I can go alone,” Maggie reminded him.
Jonah had made up his mind. There was no way he wanted her to see that killer without protection. “The hell you can.”
She looked at him for a long moment. For once, Jonah couldn’t begin to guess what Maggie was thinking.
“You realize that you can’t order me around, don’t you?” she asked.
“I saved your life,” Jonah reminded her. “In some cultures, that means your life belongs to me. If it belongs to me, I get to have a say about where it goes or doesn’t go.”
Her eyes narrowed as she tried to discern whether he was joking not. “Are you serious?”
“No,” he admitted. “But it was worth a shot. However, if you insist on doing something stupid and try to take off without me, I’m within my rights to handcuff you to my bed until you start thinking clearly.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” she told him, unconsciously sticking out her chin.
“I wouldn’t go betting anything on that if I were you, Maggie,” he told her, his tone so serious that she wasn’t sure if he was putting her on or not. “I’m just asking for a couple of hours. You can come with me,” he added.
She sighed. “I guess I can do that,” she responded.
Admittedly, she wasn’t all that happy about this delay, necessary though it was from his viewpoint. Now that she had come up with a plan, she wanted to be out there, implementing it. If pressed
, she couldn’t exactly explain why, but she had this sense of urgency vibrating within her, as if she felt that she only had a limited amount of time to get to the truth before it would be lost to her forever.
Maggie supposed that the hurricane was partially responsible for creating that feeling. Having watched the giant funnel rip through buildings that had seemed so solid looking one minute, only to become a pile of rubble and wood the next made her feel that everything could come apart with a second’s notice, burying vital answers forever.
“All right, you have a deal. Just let me finish washing the dishes and I’ll go with you. But you have to promise me that barring another hurricane—or flash flood—we are going to go to Austin to see Elliott Corgan—”
“Your former uncle-in-law,” he acknowledged.
“Well, I didn’t know that at the time,” Maggie confessed. “I never met the man and no one in the family ever told me about him.”
“Small wonder. If you’d known, you might have opted out of the wedding,” Jonah guessed.
She would have liked to have agreed with him, but she couldn’t, not without lying about it.
“Actually,” Maggie admitted, “I couldn’t. I had obligations and the only way I knew how to meet them was to marry James.”
“You married him for his money?” he asked her. That didn’t sound like her, but then, how much did he really know about Maggie?
“No, I married him because I loved him, but I’d be lying if I said that the money was of absolutely no consequence to me. I needed the money to help my parents the only way I knew how,” she admitted. “They were drowning in medical bills and needed help. By marrying James, I could provide that help. Unfortunately,” she said sadly, “I wasn’t able to do it before they died.”
“That must have been really disappointing for you,” he said.
“It was.” She roused herself. There was no point in dwelling on the past. “So I used the money to buy Bellamy our old family home. I didn’t want to have anything to do with the money,” she said passionately. “Having it made me feel cheap.”
“Cheap is the last word I would associate with you,” Jonah told her as he locked the door to his cabin.
She really was something else, he couldn’t help thinking. The more he knew about her, the more he found to like.
Chapter 14
Jonah felt torn.
Because of the amount of damage created by the hurricane and the subsequent flooding, he felt it was his duty to remain in Whisperwood so he could help with the cleanup efforts. At this point, it was no longer a search and rescue operation. Whoever might still be buried beneath all the debris was most likely dead.
But just because there were no more rescues to head up, that didn’t mean that there wasn’t work to be done. The nature of this work involved digging up whatever bodies might still be buried under all that havoc caused by the storm, plus clearing everything else away so that the rebuilding could begin.
But although his sense of duty urged him to stay and work alongside his team, a far greater sense of loyalty had him wanting to accompany Maggie to the Austin state prison. He knew she couldn’t be talked out of trying to get to the bottom of the riddle that her late former father-in-law had sent to her via his lawyer. She was stubborn that way.
There were others on the team who could take his place and do the work that was needed, but as far as he was concerned, there was no one available to go with Maggie, so his choice was clear.
The way he saw it, he didn’t have a choice. He had to go with Maggie. Not just to be beside her when she walked through the prison gates, but also because of the anonymous text threat she’d received.
Jonah supposed that the latter could just be a stupid prank, but his gut told him it wasn’t. It was something he had to take seriously. Otherwise, if he just ignored it, he had a feeling that he would regret it.
And worse than that, Maggie might just wind up regretting it. That sealed the argument for him.
So, less than an hour after they had left his cabin, he and Maggie were on the road, driving toward Randolph State Prison in Austin.
But he had to admit that he still felt uneasy about the venture.
* * *
“You sure you want to do this?” Jonah asked her when they were about twenty minutes into their trip to the prison. “It’s not too late just to turn around and go back.”
“It’s not exactly a destination I’d pick out for a fun road trip, but yes,” Maggie answered, “I’m sure—because there is no other way around this. No stone unturned, right?”
He didn’t quite see it that way. “You know, there’s no shame in just abandoning this whole thing. It’s not up to you to find the answers,” he pointed out.
A smile slowly curved her mouth. “You don’t know me very well, otherwise you wouldn’t say that. I don’t abandon things,” she told him with pride. “I see them through.”
He blew out an impatient breath. “I’ll make sure they put that on your tombstone.”
If he was being sarcastic, she wasn’t buying into it. “There are worse things to have on a tombstone,” she told him glibly.
Jonah gave up trying to convince her to let him turn the truck back. He knew if he did, she would only set out for the prison on her own the first chance she got. While he liked the fact that Maggie was brave and determined, there was such a thing as being too brave and too determined. In his opinion, that was only asking for trouble and they already had enough of that, thanks to the hurricane.
He went on to a more immediate problem. “Okay, we’re almost there. You still want to go through with this supposed documentary filmmakers ruse?”
“Sure,” she answered. She saw the doubtful look on Jonah’s face. “It beats pretending that we’re some kind of ghoulish groupies or fans. I hear that a lot of mass murderers have them.” Even as she said it, Maggie couldn’t help shivering at the improbable thought. “I will never be able to understand people like that.”
“That’s because you’re normal,” Jonah told her simply. He took in a long breath. They were approaching the massive prison gates. Even in broad daylight, the prison looked foreboding. “Okay, time to take out our IDs,” he prompted. “Remember, these prison guards are always on the lookout for any kind of suspicious behavior. Randolph State Prison hasn’t had a successful prison break in the last forty years.”
“I hope that doesn’t mean they’re overdue for one,” Maggie murmured, feeling progressively less secure the closer they came to the gates.
“Positive thoughts, remember?” Jonah found it ironic that he was reminding Maggie of the basic philosophy that she espoused.
“Right,” Maggie mumbled under her breath, taking out her wallet. She passed it over to Jonah just as he pulled his truck up next to the guard.
“Well, that wasn’t the least bit intimidating,” Maggie commented as they were waved on through the gates several long minutes later.
“Actually,” Jonah told her as they drove through the parking lot, searching for a space, “as far as these sorts of things go, this was rather laid-back and routine,” he told her.
“Laid-back, huh?” she questioned. “Remind me to live an exemplary life once we get out of here,” Maggie cracked.
“Remember, you were the one who wanted to come here,” he told her.
“I know, I know,” Maggie answered. “You’re right. And I don’t regret this,” she wanted him to know. “I’m just going to need a long hot shower once we get back home,” she said.
Home. She had just referred to his cabin as home, Jonah thought. He wondered if she even realized that, or if she’d thought of it as a mistake the second the words were out of her mouth?
He eyed her, but there was no change in Maggie’s expression and he wasn’t going to be the one who brought it to her attention.
For all he knew, she’d meant
it. Maybe she had actually started to think of his cabin as “home.” Jonah turned the idea over in his head. He didn’t know if he felt uncomfortable about that—or if he was actually rather pleased.
And then, suddenly, there was no longer any time left to contemplate anything. They had left the truck behind them and were now about to walk through the prison doors.
Showtime.
“I think that by the time we leave here, our IDs are going to be worn-out,” Maggie commented as they followed a prison guard to a general gathering area where prisoners were allowed to meet with family members and friends. By her count, they had produced their IDs four times since approaching the prison gates—and then had to surrender them as well as their cell phones at the last station.
“That’s probably the general idea,” Jonah replied. He saw her looking at him in confusion, so he explained. “Fake IDs don’t stand up to all that handling, at least the poor ones don’t,” he amended.
Maggie shrugged, at a loss. “I know you know what you’re talking about, but I’m not really sure I understand that,” she confessed.
Just then, before Jonah could explain it to her more clearly, Maggie grabbed his hand, holding on to him very tightly.
Her eyes were riveted on the scrawny, mangy-looking man with the unruly gray hair. He was wearing an orange jumpsuit and being escorted in by not just one guard, but two, one positioned on either side of him.
Elliott Corgan was just a shade smaller than his two uniformed bookends, not to mention a good deal older. But neither time, nor size could subdue the very menacing shadow that the man cast just by his mere presence in a room, no matter how large that room was.
The sharp, almost-black eyes moved around the area, taking in everything at once.
Even now, as old as he was, Maggie had the feeling that Elliott Corgan was not a man she could safely turn her back on.
When one of the guards pointed toward Jonah and her, Maggie could feel her throat closing up a little. And when Elliott stared in her direction, his small, marble-like eyes honing in on her even at that distance, for just a moment, Maggie thought she was going to be sick.
Colton 911: Cowboy's Rescue Page 13
