by Barb Han
And then what?
How would she be able to go back to the way it was a few minutes ago? To the place where she managed to keep enough of a distance to hold her emotions in check? To the place where she would be able to walk away from him permanently once this was all said and done?
“I want to go to the scene,” she said, tensing up for the argument that was sure to come.
“I know.” There was a whole lot of resolve in his voice.
The fact he didn’t argue showed how well he knew her. There was nothing, short of being called away to find their daughter, that would keep her from that crime scene.
“I’ll let Colton know we’re on our way, then,” he said.
“Thank you.” She was half-surprised he hadn’t already told his brother they’d be there as fast as possible. She turned to find Ozzy standing next to the door like he wanted to go out. Did he know they were talking about his owner? Ally said he was the only responsibility she ever planned on having other than being a godmother.
Ally.
A few deep breaths and Cheyenne walked over to pick up Ozzy. She nuzzled him to her chest despite his low warning growl. “I won’t abandon you, little guy. I’ll take care of you.”
Ozzy continued to growl but he was all bark and no bite. She wondered how much dogs picked up on human emotions. Probably more than anyone would ever know.
And then Ozzy settled down, nuzzling his head against her. She walked over to her handbag, picked it up and placed him inside. Shouldering the bag, she grabbed her cell phone and then headed to the door without another word.
Riggs picked up his wallet, keys, and phone before following her out the door. After a quick coffee stop, he drove off the main road onto a side road near the hospital. The road dead-ended and then there was nothing but a field that seemed to go on forever. Had Ally been this close to the hospital the whole time?
There were half a dozen emergency vehicles around. There was an area at the back of the field, a heavily treed part that was cordoned off with yellow police tape. The scene made her head spin. And yes, Ally’s cherry red Mustang was parked in the field.
A law enforcement officer had all the doors open, including the trunk. He was making his way around the vehicle, snapping pictures from just about every angle. One minute he was on his feet, the next he was on his back, snapping pics from underneath.
She spotted Colton, who was making a beeline toward them as they exited the truck. His serious expression confirmed what she already knew even though she didn’t want to accept it as truth. This whole scene was going to take time to process. Answers would have to wait.
Riggs met her at the front of his truck, reached for her hand and then linked their fingers. She ignored the electricity shooting up her arm from contact as it was quickly replaced by warmth.
Colton immediately brought his brother into a bear hug. She’d always admired how close the O’Connor men were. They were tight knit before their father’s murder and had only become more so since his death.
Colton surprised her by bringing her into a hug next. “I’m sorry about your friend.”
She nodded, taken aback by the show of kindness. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected from Colton. Anger? Defensiveness? Definitely not this.
“Thank you,” was all she could say as she reached for the comfort of Riggs’s hand after hugging his brother. The second their fingers linked she could exhale again.
If Colton was shocked by the move, he hid it well.
“A teenager called it in. Raven was riding her bike across the field to go to the convenience store for breakfast tacos when she came upon the scene. She’d stayed up all night playing video games online with a friend who was supposed to meet up,” Colton said. His gaze moved from Cheyenne to Riggs and back like he was checking to make sure it was okay to keep going.
Riggs nodded as Cheyenne skimmed the small crowd of people for the teenager. She must have been so shocked to come up on a crime scene like this...being the one to find a...
Cheyenne couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence. It was too horrific.
Her gaze stopped on a woman who looked to be in her early forties and was wearing jogging pants and a sweater. She was leaning against a deputy’s sport utility, smoking. Inside the SUV, a young person sat hunched over with a blanket around her shoulders. Her shoulders shook like she was crying, and it took everything inside Cheyenne not to march right over there and bring that poor kid into a hug.
“She was out without her mother’s permission, wasn’t she?” Cheyenne asked. “Raven.”
“Her mother claims so, but the teen said she does this all the time,” Colton said.
“The mother is embarrassed?” she asked.
“That’s my guess,” Colton said. “She doesn’t seem to want to admit to allowing her daughter free access to come and go as she pleases.”
Shame.
“Did she see the...?” Again, Cheyenne couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence. Her stomach clenched so tightly she was nauseous.
“Yes,” Colton confirmed. “She dropped her bike and ran to the hospital. She came screaming into the ER and one of the orderlies immediately called 911.”
Cheyenne thought about the kind of mark that would leave on this teenager.
“They tried to give her something to calm her nerves, but she refused to take it. Said it would interfere with her Adderall,” he continued.
The medication sounded familiar. Then it came to her. She had a friend in middle school who used to take it for attention deficiency disorder. It also explained why the teen might have been up all night. What day was it anyway?
Cheyenne realized it was Saturday. Wow. She’d lost track of the day of the week. Hell, she’d lost track of the month, too. All time had stopped in the past two weeks.
“Is she going to be okay?” Cheyenne hated the fact this would scar this teenager for the rest of her life. At the very least, for many years to come. The mother didn’t seem like she was being a whole lot of help, either.
Normally, Cheyenne would mind her own business when it came to a parent-child issue. This was sticking in her craw for reasons she couldn’t explain.
Riggs squeezed her hand for reassurance and more of that warmth shot through her. She took a slow, measured breath. The move meant to calm her did its job. Her pulse kicked down a couple of notches. Her heart went out to the teen. Same for her gratitude.
“She was in hysterics at the hospital but she’s doing better now. Her father is on his way. The minute she got him on the phone, she started calming down. Apparently, the parents divorced and it was hard on her. She lives with her father by choice and spends every other weekend with her mother. I get the impression the relationship is contentious on a good day,” Colton admitted.
Cheyenne couldn’t help but think about her relationship with her father. How they had drifted apart after her mother’s death. How she barely knew what to say to him anymore now that he’d remarried a woman named Virginia and gone off to tour the country in an RV. And how it had taken him almost a week to respond to her text letting him know his granddaughter was gone. A surprising tear sprang to her eye. She coughed to cover.
A girl never stopped needing her father, even if he wasn’t perfect.
* * *
RIGGS KEPT A careful eye on Cheyenne. She was stronger than just about anyone else he’d ever had the pleasure to meet. Too strong at times and it made her stubborn. She had the kind of strength that also made her try to fix all her own problems, like she didn’t want to trouble anyone else even if they volunteered. And yet everyone had a breaking point. Was losing their baby hers? Or would it be losing Ally?
Her eyes were sharper today, not like the distant stare she’d had when he first saw her at Ally’s house. This also meant she was tucking her feelings somewhere down deep. He could be accused of doi
ng the same thing far too often. Talking out his feelings wasn’t something that normally ranked high on his list.
Except with Cheyenne. He missed talking to her every day in the two weeks since she’d been gone. He missed waking up beside her, that long blond hair of hers spilling all over her pillow and his. He missed the warmth of her body against his first thing in the morning and when he went to sleep at night, and the sense of the world being right when she was in the room.
“How long before her father gets here?” Cheyenne asked. Her motherly instincts seemed to have kicked into high gear. She looked poised and ready to fight off a bear if it got in the way. She was going to make an amazing mother someday despite her many arguments to the contrary.
Colton checked his watch. “Soon. He should be here in the next fifteen minutes or so. He’s working the graveyard shift over at the meatpacking plant as security to keep up two houses so Raven’s mother doesn’t have to move out of the place they shared.”
The teen’s father sounded like a real stand-up guy. Someone who could use a hand but probably would never take one. Riggs made a mental note to circle back to get information about the man’s character. If he turned out to be the person Riggs believe him to be then Riggs planned to set up an anonymous donation to pay off the man’s mortgages. He would set up a college fund for the teen, as well. There was no use in having all the zeroes in his bank account that came with the last name O’Connor if he couldn’t use the money to help out decent people—people who would never ask for a dime and yet deserved to hold the world in their hand.
He squeezed Cheyenne’s fingers and she rewarded him with a small smile. It was in the eyes more than anything else. Those serious blue eyes that reminded him of the sky on a clear spring morning. Eyes that he’d loved staring into.
“You should know the scene looks as though it’s been staged.” Colton made eye contact with each of them.
“What does that mean exactly?” Cheyenne asked.
“There are empty beer cans loose in Ally’s vehicle. All over the floorboard in fact,” Colton supplied.
“Ally doesn’t drink beer,” Cheyenne said without missing a beat.
“Ever?” Colton asked.
“Nope. She likes those fruity wines and she’s recently been into Prosecco. She raves about it.” Cheyenne seemed to catch her almost smile at the memory before it could take seed.
“Interesting.” Colton pulled out his favorite notebook from the pocket of his shirt and took down the note. “This whole scene has been made to look like she had a rendezvous with someone, a male.”
“She texted to meet up with us,” Cheyenne said. Riggs confirmed with a nod. “There’s no way she would change plans.”
“Is it possible she was trying to get the two of you in the same room together?” Colton asked.
“We already considered it,” Cheyenne said, “but dismissed the idea. There’s no way she would do that to us. And there’s no way she would text us and then secretly meet up with some random guy.”
“Did she ever do any online dating?” Colton asked.
“Not that I know of.” Cheyenne shrugged. “But to be one hundred percent honest, I can’t say that for sure. She could have. It doesn’t sound like her, though.”
“She never mentioned it?” Colton asked.
“Not to me. I’ve been wrapped up in my own situation for the past year, though. Still, I feel like Ally would have told me at some point,” she said. “She wouldn’t have felt there was anything wrong with online dating, but she was afraid of her own shadow. She wouldn’t meet up with a stranger who wasn’t carefully vetted first. We had friends in college who used to try to set her up on blind dates with acquaintances and she wouldn’t consider it. Not unless the person had a long history.”
“What about dating at work?” he asked.
“I don’t think she was against the idea.” Cheyenne snapped her fingers like she was trying to recall something that was just out of reach. “I think I remember her complaining about a visiting doctor and I can’t remember if he was hitting on her or just being a jerk.”
“I’ll follow up with her coworkers to see if she mentioned it to any of them.” Colton stood there for a moment like he was debating his next question, which caused Cheyenne’s pulse to pound in her throat.
“I apologize in advance for the question as we shift gears.” Colton locked gazes. He must’ve decided to go for it. “Did you actually see your daughter when she was born?”
Cheyenne searched her memory. She shook her head and gasped.
“I was shown something wrapped in a blanket. It’s all fuzzy.” The possibility she’d been lied to, tricked, pressed heavy on her chest. She hated not having clear recall with someone so important. She remembered the blanket. It had been pink. And the nurse who dipped down to give Cheyenne a glimpse of the bundle but...
“No. I didn’t see her clearly. All I remember being shown was the pink blanket,” she finally realized.
Riggs squeezed her hand. She looked up at him and saw all the questions forming behind those mocha eyes.
Chapter Eleven
Riggs wished he’d been the one to ask Cheyenne the question about whether or not she’d actually seen what was inside the pink blanket. The chance, however remote it might be, that their daughter was still alive slammed into him with the force of a runaway train.
Questions raced through his mind. Thoughts he had to shelve for now while Colton finished the interview with Cheyenne. Riggs would have to circle back later when he was alone with Cheyenne and could really talk.
Colton jotted down a couple more notes before locking eyes with Riggs and nodding. “My deputy spoke with the nurses. It’s clear to me there’s foul play here. I don’t for a minute believe Cheyenne’s friend was murdered while on a random date. The evidence says otherwise.” He paused. “In fact, it almost shouts it from the rooftop.”
“Too obvious?” Riggs asked, but it was more statement than question.
“Yes. The beer cans, for one. Someone Ally’s size and weight wouldn’t have been able to knock down all these. There are flowers, too. Roses. The kind anyone can pick up at the supermarket without much trouble. She was found inside the vehicle in a way that was very unnatural. She was stabbed by a kitchen knife, which indicates pre-meditation. Forensics will piece together more of what happened yesterday morning when Ally left from work, her time of death...” Colton apologized for his bluntness when Cheyenne sucked in a breath. “Based on the texts she sent the two of you, the possibility exists that she was killed because she discovered information someone didn’t want leaked out of the hospital.”
She exhaled slowly, and then urged him to continue.
“What about the flowers?” Riggs picked up on something in his brother’s voice when he mentioned the roses.
Colton’s gaze flashed to Cheyenne, who had brought Ozzy up against her chest. She was speaking quietly in his ear, no doubt whispering reassurances to the dog. The little dog was growing on Riggs. Or maybe it was just his situation. He no longer had a caregiver. The one person who’d promised to care for him was gone through no fault of her own. It wasn’t the animal’s fault or Ally’s. Bad luck.
Ozzy wasn’t the best fit for ranch life, but Riggs figured he could find a home for the guy if Cheyenne couldn’t take him. Damn, it was strange to think of Cheyenne and his separation as permanent. He would respect her wishes, though, no matter how much it gutted him. There wasn’t much of an alternative. He shouldn’t have to convince his wife to stay with him.
Watching her while she took in the news their child might be alive, no matter how small the possibility, he could see how guarded she was being. No one wanted to be crushed twice, not with this kind of pain.
“They were ‘arranged’ in a heart shape around her face and torso to look like someone was obsessed with her.” Colton’s gaze dropped to the gr
ound. He shook his head.
“I didn’t find anything on her laptop to indicate she was seeing someone,” Cheyenne chimed in. “Did you find her phone?”
“Not yet. The whole scene feels off,” Colton admitted. “We’ll follow the evidence and see where it leads. Word of warning, though. Investigations take time. It’s not like on TV where answers pop up almost instantly. Of course, I do get the occasional gift of speed. I just don’t want either of you to count on it.”
Riggs knew this firsthand, having several of his brothers work in law enforcement. The statement was aimed at Cheyenne. Of course, Colton wouldn’t want to get her hopes up. Not once he took a look at how hard she was taking the losses. Losses that were stacking up.
“She knew something,” Riggs said. “She requested my presence at her home ASAP. By the time I arrived, someone had made certain she would never make the meetup.”
“Interviews with security haven’t revealed that she left work with anyone,” Colton admitted.
“The cameras,” Cheyenne stated. “The ones aimed at the parking lot. E-cig Nurse seemed afraid to be seen on them. She stood in a blind spot when she waved us over.”
“That’s right,” Riggs confirmed.
“The images are blurry, and even if they weren’t, security doesn’t keep the videos overnight. The system resets at midnight. Otherwise, there’d be way too much recording to keep track of plus space on the system. The hospital doesn’t have the most storage, so the head of security said it gets deleted every night,” Colton said.
“Why have cameras at all, then?” Riggs couldn’t for the life of him figure out how any of it made sense.
“According to security, it’s meant for backup if there’s an immediate situation. The team can pull the data and hold onto it. They just don’t do it routinely,” Colton admitted.
“What about the nurses? What did they have to say?” Riggs needed to hear from his brother what he already feared. The interviews came up with nothing.
