by Gen Griffin
Chapter 27
“Is Katie with you?”
Addison sat up in the bed and glanced to his side. Katie had been with him when he'd fallen asleep, but he was alone now. He reached out and touched the sheets. They were cold. She'd clearly gotten up awhile ago. He frowned at the empty bed. “Umm...”
“Addy, it's important. I know Katie left the club with you last night. Where did you take her? Did you take her home?”
“Not exactly, no.” Addison's head was throbbing. He'd had entirely too much to drink last night.
“Where did you take her?” Sully repeated.
“Why do you care?” Addison had never woken up fast and he normally needed a healthy dose of caffeine before his brain kicked into gear. Still, even half awake he had a suspicion that Katie wouldn't want him to tell Sully that they had spent the night together.
“Just tell me,” Sully sounded irritated. “Is Katie with you or not?”
“Why does it matter?” Addison countered. “Because if this is about Ian or Uncle Frank-.”
“It's not,” Sully cut him off. “Now talk.”
“She was with me last night. I'm not precisely sure where she is right this second.” Addison climbed out of bed and surveyed the empty houseboat. “I think...I'm thinking she might have ditched me while I was asleep?” He frowned at his own rumpled reflection.
“Great,” Sully said. He sounded like he meant it.
“You're glad that Katie ditched me. Damn, that's cold.” Addison looked around for his shirt and didn't see it. Katie's dress, however, was still neatly folded on the counter top.
“No, I'm glad that...” Sully trailed off. “You said she ditched you. What's she driving?”
“Umm,” Addison peered out the tiny window. “My Dodge.”
“You're sure?” Sully sounded downright relieved now. “Katie's got your truck?”
“My truck's gone. My keys are gone. My shirt is gone.” Addison ran one hand through his shaggy blonde curls. “If I had to guess, Katie probably drove the truck up to my sister's house. There's no food here. She most likely went to go fix breakfast. I hope she went to go fix breakfast.” Addison's stomach was growling.
“Where the hell are you?”
“Cal's place on the houseboat,” Addison explained. “Katie and I came out here last night to talk. Just to talk.”
“Uh huh.” He could hear the disbelief in Sully's voice. “She's not answering her phone for me. You think she'd answer if you called her?”
“I hope so,” Addison said. “She has my truck.”
“Call her,” Sully said.
“Why are you so desperate to get a hold of Katie?”
“Because I'm standing in the driveway of what used to be her house.”
“Used to be?” Addison froze mid-step.
“Katie's house burned to the ground last night, Addy. Tate says it looks like arson. We were worried she might have been inside of it when it burned. There aren't any vehicles here but that doesn't necessarily mean no one was home. I know she's been sharing that truck with Ian and Ian had it last night.”
“Holy shit. Did you just say Katie's house burned?”
“To the ground,” Sully repeated. “No one even called the fire in until this morning.”
“Motherfucker,” said Addison.
“You're sure she's okay?”
“I'm sure,” Addison said flatly. “We didn't go to bed until damn near sunrise. Besides, wherever Katie is right now she's got my Dodge. If my truck ain't parked out front then she's not there.”
“Your truck ain't here,” Sully told him. “Do me a favor. Find Katie and get her to come down here. I need to talk to her and she's probably going to want to see this for herself.
“Give me ten minutes.” Addison was already yanking on his blue jeans. “It'll take me that long to walk up to the house.”
Chapter 28
“It's for you.” Gracie held out her cell phone to Katie. The two of them were standing in the middle of the baby section of Walmart with two nearly full carts that contained everything Katie thought Gracie and Cal might need to take care of Kimber. “It's my brother,” Gracie added.
Katie wrinkled her nose as an unexpected burst of butterflies shot through her stomach. She suddenly wondered if he was calling her to tell her that last night had been a drunken mistake and he hadn't meant any of it.
Katie took the phone. “What do you want, Studmuffin?”
“Thank God,” Addison sounded upset through the tiny speaker. “You had me worried. Why aren't you answering your phone?”
“Because it's on the charger in your sister's bedroom,” Katie said. “My battery is shot and it won't hold a charge. I was down to less than 5 percent battery life when I woke up this morning.”
“Remind me to buy you a new phone,” he said.
“Sure. I'll put it on my to-do list,” Katie joked. “Not that I would really expect you to buy me a new phone.”
“I'm going to have to buy you new everything,” Addison informed her. “You and Gracie need to get your butts back to Possum Creek.”
“What are you talking about?” Katie asked. “We aren't done shopping yet.”
“Hurry up and finish buying whatever it was y'all went to go get.” Addison still didn't sound too happy. “I need you to meet me at your place ASAP.”
“At my place?” Katie was baffled.
“Yeah.”
“What for?”
“Sully's been trying to get a hold of you. Apparently, someone burned your house down last night.”
Katie's heart dropped down into the pit of her stomach. For a moment she was absolutely certain that she hadn't heard him right. “What?”
“You heard me,” he said. “I'm on my way over there right now. I don't know exactly how bad it is, but Sully says the house burned to the ground and that Tate thinks it's arson. They both want to talk to you.”
“My house burned down.” Her voice was flat and she felt numb.
“I'm sorry, babe.”
“Your house burned down?” Gracie was standing beside Katie with a stunned expression on her face.
Katie nodded at her.
“Oh shit,” Gracie whispered.
“We have to go,” Katie told Gracie.
“Y'all on your way?” Addison asked through the phone.
“Not like we have a choice.” Katie closed her eyes and tried to pull her thoughts together. “Give us a few minutes to check out and then we'll head that way.”
“I'll meet y'all at the house,” he promised.
Katie hung up the phone and numbly passed it back to Gracie. “You heard most of that, didn't you?”
Gracie nodded her blonde head. “We need to go. We can just leave the carts here and come back later to get the stuff.”
“No. Let's go ahead and check out with everything. If the house has already burned then it's not like the ten minutes it takes us to pay will make any difference. Kimber will still need all of this.” Katie gestured to the piles of blankets, diapers, toys and other miscellaneous baby paraphernalia. “No point in making this shopping trip twice when we've already found everything and loaded it into a buggy.”
“Are you sure?” Gracie asked.
“Positive,” Katie told her. “Let's get this done so we can go see exactly how bad my latest disaster is.”
The two of them headed for the register with their buggies.
Chapter 29
“I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't. I just can't. Y'all can't make me do this.” Ian hugged himself as Joe wrapped April Lynne's body in a comforter that they had found in the linen closet.
“You ain't got a choice,” Joe snapped at him. “Unless you want to spend the rest of your life in prison?”
Ian let out a choked, miserable sob. “I'm sorry. I can't.”
“Were you this big of a baby when you killed the other girl?” Lowery demanded. “Cause I swear to God, you look like you're fixing to pass out.”
“Killing Casey was an accident!” Ian wailed.
“Hiding her body wasn't no accident.”
“I didn't hide her body!”
Joe turned and frowned at Ian. “What do you mean, you didn't hide her body?”
“It was Cal,” Ian moaned. “Cal and Ricky Breedlove hid Casey's body. Mostly Ricky.”
Joe and Lowery stopped trying to roll April Lynne's body into the blanket.
“Who the hell is Ricky?” Joe asked.
“Ricky was my uncle. David's dad.” Ian swallowed miserably. “He died a few years ago in a bar fight.”
“Well, well, well, I'll be damned. The truth has finally come out. You didn't really kill that little girl, did you?”
Ian gulped down a sobbing breath. “I ran her over. It was an accident.”
“If it was just an accident then why did you hide her body?” Lowery's thick eyebrows were furrowed with confusion.
“We were drunk teenagers,” Ian said as if that explained everything.
“Y'all didn't want to get into trouble,” Lowery guessed.
Ian bobbed his head miserably. “I killed Casey. I told the truth about that.”
“But you didn't hide her body.”
“No. I didn't. I couldn't.” He purposely looked down at the rolled comforter. April Lynne's horribly dyed black hair was still visibly poking out of the top. “I can't.”
“You ain't got no choice,” Joe said. “It's time to man up, Ian.”
“I can't,” Ian whimpered. Tears were filling his eyes. “I'm sorry. I can't.”
“You have to.”
“I can't!” Ian shook his head violently. “I can't! I can't touch her like this. You can't make me touch her!”
Joe walked nonchalantly over to the dining room table. Cal's gun was sitting on the hardwood surface. It still had drops of April Lynne's blood covering the barrel. Joe picked the gun up and pointed it at Ian.
“You're either with us or you're a liability. Pick one, Ian. This gun has a really iffy trigger.”
Ian gulped. “You wouldn't.”
“Try me.”
“You're my friend!” Ian wailed. “I trusted you.”
“You can still trust me.” Joe kept the .357 pointed at Ian. “But if you aren't going to help us dispose of the body then we can't trust you.”
“Joe, I don't want to touch her.” Tears ran down Ian's cheeks.
“You got to make a choice,” Lowery looked pale as he watched Joe point the gun at Ian. “You got to get your hands dirty just the same as us or we can't trust you. Come on, Ian. You know how this works. Its the same as when we break into somewhere. You got to be just as guilty as we are or there ain't nothing to stop you from turning us in.”
“I won't turn anyone in. I don't snitch.” Ian held up both of his hands in surrender. “I swear.”
“Your word ain't worth nothing. Don't nobody trust a thief.” Joe gestured to April Lynne's corpse. “Help us get her body loaded up in the truck.”
Ian gagged as he reached for the end of the rolled bedspread that contained his girlfriend's dead body. He struggled to lift her up as Lowery grabbed hold of the other side of the bedspread. Together they lugged April Lynne out the door. Joe didn't lower the gun and tuck it into the back of his waistband until they had the body loaded into the bed of Ian's truck.
Chapter 30
The old wooden house had probably burned fast. Fire Chief Tate Briggs was talking but Katie was only hearing some of his words. Her attention was almost entirely focused on the rubble and pile of ash that had been her life.
Not everything had burned completely. She could still see the charred metal box that had once been her stove. The refrigerator was thoroughly roasted as well. The couch had been reduced to a pile of metal springs. She couldn't recognize anything else in the rubble. It was all just blackened lumps and chunks of debris. Smoke continued to rise from the rubble.
Tate was saying something about arson and the use of an accelerant. Everything Katie owned was gone. All of her photo albums had burned up. Hannah Mae's newborn pictures had burned. Katie's wedding pictures had burned. The quilt that Grandma Cluster had stitched by hand for Katie before she had died was gone.
“Katie.”
Her jewelry was gone. Her clothes were all gone. Hannah Mae's clothes were gone. Hannah Mae's crib was gone. The nursery that Katie had poured her heart and soul into decorating was gone.
“Katie?”
She felt completely and totally overwhelmed by the scope of everything she'd lost. She had, quite literally, nothing left. No car. No house. No clothing. No food. No insurance to replace everything because she hadn't been able to afford renter's insurance after Ian had lost his job at the Sheriff's Department.
She knew she was shaking and that it had nothing to do with the weather. She felt sick to her stomach. Tate said this was an arson and she believed him. She started to walk towards the remains of the house. She needed to get a better look at the house. Maybe there was something left that she could still salvage. Maybe some of their things could be saved.
She was nearly in the ashes when someone grabbed her and pulled her backward.
“You'll burn yourself.” Addison's arms were around her. His skin felt burning hot against her cold flesh.
“I have to see-.”
“You can see from here.”
Katie was trembling all over. Addison pulled her backward into his chest so that her spine was pressed into his stomach. He wrapped his muscular arms around her and held her tightly. “Katie-.”
She twisted in his arms so that she was looking up at him. “Don't you dare tell me that it's okay,” she said. “Don't you dare.”
Addison frowned at her. “No one is dead. Everything else is replaceable.”
“Replaceable?” Katie stared up into his bright turquoise eyes. “With what money?” The last few words came out in a choked gasp. “I can't replace anything. I'm broke, homeless and alone.” Katie burst into sobs and her knees buckled.
Addison tightened his hold on her as she buried her face in his shirt and cried. Huge, racking sobs shook her entire body as he held her close against him and rubbed her back. “It's okay,” he whispered over and over. “Shh. It's going to be okay. You aren't alone. We'll figure this out. I promise.”
Katie didn't know how long she stayed in his arms and cried. Eventually, her sobs slowed and the world began to take on a gray, numb quality around them. She laid her cheek against his chest. His shirt was soaked with her tears and she'd wrinkled the fabric badly where she'd twisted her hands in it.
Addison stroked his fingers through her hair. “You're going to be okay,” he promised her again.
Katie reluctantly nodded, not because she believed him but because she didn't have a choice except to be okay. It wasn't like she could just curl up on the side of the road and die. Hannah Mae was counting on her Mommy.
“You okay?” Tate walked over to the two of them.
Katie bobbed her head. She was still leaning against Addison because she wasn't entirely sure her knees would hold her up.
“You hear anything I said before?” He asked.
Katie swallowed unhappily. “You said it was arson.”
“It was.” Tate was holding a clipboard in his hands and chewing on the end of an ink pen. “Do you know where your husband is?”
Katie frowned at him. “No.”
“Sully seems pretty certain that Ian wasn't in the house when it burned,” Tate said.
“The truck isn't here,” Katie said. “I doubt he came home last night.”
“Ian doesn't come home at night?” Tate didn't seem to be all that surprised.
Katie looked down at her feet. She kept her cheek against Addison's chest as she swallowed the lump in her throat. “Ian and I... we're not. Things haven't been good. Last night he stood me up for dinner and I decided I was done. I told him, well actually I told his girlfriend, that he needed to come get his stuff because I was filing for a divorce.”
“Ian did this,” Addison gestured at the fire. “I'll bet you my last dollar.”
“No bets,” Sully had appeared out of nowhere. Katie hadn't seen him when she and Gracie had pulled up. “I just talked to the only neighbor for half a mile. She said the only vehicle she saw drive up here last night was Ian's truck.”
“That doesn't necessarily mean he's the one who set the fire,” Tate said mildly. Sully opened his mouth to argue but Tate cut his younger brother off. “Ian is, however, pretty much the only person I can think of with a motive. Especially if you'd told him to get his belongings and get out last night.”
Katie choked on her own spit. “He wouldn't have done this. He couldn't have.”
“Ian might not have done this on his own but April Lynne wouldn't think twice about it if she didn't think she'd get caught. I'll bet those sleazebags he hangs out with would have done it, too.” Gracie stepped up beside Sully. Her arms were crossed over her thin hoodie and she was glaring at the burned remnants of the house.
“I agree,” Addison said.
Katie shook her head no.
“Katie, babe, you're in denial.” Addy rubbed her back with the palm of his hand. It was ridiculously comforting. “Ian's a petty bastard. He did this.”
“No one else had any motive. I'm assuming you didn't have a whole lot of valuables in the house. Nothing really worth stealing?” Tate asked.
“No,” Gracie answered for Katie. “Nothing that would be worth burning the house down for.”
“Do you have any enemies?” Tate asked Katie.
“Only April Lynne.”
“Who is April Lynne?”
“Ian's girlfriend,” Gracie supplied.
Tate narrowed his eyes at his paperwork as he wrote down the name. “Ian's girlfriend have a last name?”
“Hale.”
“Ian and April Lynne did this,” Gracie said to no one in particular.
“I'm guessing that they did,” Tate said. “Arson is usually committed for a reason. I'm assuming this place probably wasn't insured for hundreds of thousands of dollars, which means the landlord wouldn't have much motive to burn it down. Ian is our most likely suspect. Especially since we don't have any other suspects or anyone else with a motive.
