Man of Honor (Passion in Paradise Book 4)

by Sarah O'Rourke

“In this case, it’s one and the same. The case has been cold until recently, and it’s a case that I’ve recently learned we both know quite a bit about.”

  “I’d appreciate if you’d quit being so cryptic and just spit it out, Zeke. You might have nothing better to do, but I’m raising a family.”

  Schooling his face into an impersonal mask, Zeke simply stared at her for a moment while he wondered how someone as conceited and condescending as her could have appealed to him. Sure, she wasn’t unattractive. Even now she’d still maintained a pretty enough face and a trim figure, but when he looked into her whiskey colored eyes he saw pure ugly reflected there. Had she been that good an actress eight years ago that she’d managed to fool him into believing she was a decent and kind person? Or had he just been that fuckin’ desperate to get his dick wet?

  Thank God for Honor. She’d shown him what genuine beauty looked like.

  “Stop talking and believe me when I say this, Sherry,” Zeke declared roughly, sneering her Christian name. “I don’t give a single shit about you or your family. I do, however, care about a crime that was committed eight years ago… a crime that you conspired and colluded to commit. A crime you concealed from law enforcement for years. A crime that I have you on video committing.” Watching as her tanned face blanched, Zeke smiled cruelly. “I think we’re on the same page now, aren’t we, Sherry?”

  Balling her hands into fists against the table, Sherry lifted her chin almost defiantly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about?” she replied, her voice higher than before as she darted her eyes toward the door.

  “Oh, I think you do,” Zeke disputed as he picked up the remote control from the center of the table and directed it toward the television mounted on the wall. “But, I can refresh your memory if you like,” he stated harshly as he hit a button on the remote as Angela Hastings’ face filled the screen while Honor's screams and pleas were heard in the background. Hearing Honor’s low moan in his earpiece, he hated Sherry even more for not only what she’d done, but what she was doing right now to the woman he loved.

  “Sherry, make sure you get a real good shot of this and hold the camera steady. Make sure you get that little bitch’s face, too. It’ll be the perfect weapon to use against Tanner if he steps out of line. I’ll email him a picture from it when I get home tonight as a little reminder not to cross me.”

  “Angie, I’m not sure if this is a good idea,” Sherry replied doubtfully as the picture on the screen grew clearer.

  “Don’t go soft on me now, bestie. That little girl ruined your night with Paradise’s delicious Deputy Monroe. And since I know from personal experience how good Zeke can give it when he’s feeling generous, I also know how pissed you’ve got to be at that little hick for pulling his attention from you.”

  Pushing the power button on the remote, Zeke watched as the screen went dark before shifting his attention to a trembling Sherry. “Seen enough? The video goes on for a while, but then, you’d know that better than anybody, wouldn’t you, Sherry?”

  “Oh, God,” Sherry gasped, pressing a hand to her chest as she looked from the blackened television screen to Zeke’s angry face. “Zeke, that isn’t…it’s not what it looked like?”

  “Really? Because it looked like you were witnessing a crime in progress and doing NOTHING to help the sixteen year old victim,” he roared. “It LOOKS like you passively participated in the kidnapping, assault, gang rape and attempted murder of a MINOR! Let me know when I get something wrong, Ms. Anderson!”

  Zeke could hear Honor breathing harshly through his earpiece, but as of yet, he hadn’t heard her cry. He wasn’t sure what he’d do if he heard her whimper at all while he was sitting in front of one of the people responsible for her pain. He wanted to believe he could keep it together and do his job, but honestly, he wasn’t so sure anymore.

  Across the table, tears fell freely down Sherry’s face as she rocked back and forth in her chair and stared into space.

  “Give me one good reason that I shouldn’t throw every charge I can find at you, Sherry. Give me one logical reason that could explain why you would turn your back on a kid. Were you really so insecure and jealous of my attention that you would walk away from a crime this heinous without a backward glance.”

  “You don’t understand,” she whispered. “You don’t understand, Zeke,” she repeated.

  “Make me then,” he demanded sharply. “Make me understand all this. Paint me a goddamned picture that explains how in the hell you could be a part of something like this,” he snarled, jabbing a finger at the screen. “And I advise that you do a real good job because, right now, you’re not giving me any reason not to lock your ass up for a REAL long time. And we both know I could. With that video,” he said, pointing toward the television screen, “a jury of your peers will fucking crucify you and we both know it - especially here in Paradise County where Honor McKinnon is considered a town treasure.”

  Sherry’s eyes closed as she struggled to pull a deep breath into her lungs. “I think I might need a lawyer,” she wheezed, biting her lip as she lifted a shaking hand to wipe her wet cheeks.

  “You bring in a lawyer, there’ll be no deal to make with me, Sherry,” Zeke warned ominously. “I will throw the fucking book at you and I will make it my life’s mission to make every single charge stick. You were a part of wrecking a young girl’s life. A woman that I grew to adore. A woman with whom I fell in love. A woman that I’d kill and die for, Sherry. So, I’ll ask you… you really wanna call a lawyer in here with the evidence you know I’ve already got?”

  Turning her head to look at him with tearful eyes, she whispered, “Zeke, I didn’t know you were in love with her then.”

  “That’s because I wasn’t in love with her then, Sherry. She was a child. You and I were adults. My feelings for Honor changed later and none of that is ANY of your business. Now, do you want to call your lawyer or not?”

  “You’re saying you’ll offer me a deal if I tell you everything I know?”

  “What I’m saying is that I won’t pull the idea of a deal off the table, but my cooperation is contingent on your willingness to assist me in identifying the two remaining men that raped, stabbed, and left Honor in a sinkhole to die,” he declared firmly.

  “Then I’m already doomed, Zeke. I don’t know who those men were. Well, other than Tanner,” Sherry replied, hanging her head in defeat.

  Zeke heard Deputy Hightower’s low curse in his ear and momentarily thought about calling a halt to the questioning so that he could check on Honor and how he felt must have shown on his face because in the next moment he heard Honor’s soft voice reassure him through his mic. “I’m fine, Zeke. Keep going,” she urged him evenly.

  The gentle strength in his words gave him the incentive he needed to keep his ass in his chair. “Maybe you don’t know their names, Sherry, but you might know something useful and not realize it. Angie might have said something to you that could give us a clue. Bottom line, you have nothing to lose now by going over that night with me and everything to gain if we can find something valuable in your recollections.”

  Biting her lip, Sherry looked up at him with desperation shining in her eyes. “Please, Zeke, for the sake of what we once were…”

  “Enough,” Zeke clipped cruelly, leaning forward in his chair. “The one thing I’ve learned in the past several years and especially the last 24 hours, Sherry, is that we were nothing. I didn’t even know you, and I wish like hell that I’d never touched you. It sickens me to know that I’ve been with a woman whose act of cruelty condemned a child to the kind of torture that’s detailed on that video. It makes my fuckin’ skin crawl.”

  “I have a son,” she whimpered. “A husband. A family. I know I did something horrible, Zeke, but I’ve changed. I’m a good wife and mother, and my boys need me.”

  “You’re also the bitch that left the woman I love and am going to marry in the woods to be raped, tortured, and nearly murdered. She needed you, too. I think
that sin trumps whatever so-called good that you’ve done for your family,” he returned, his voice soft and dangerous. “Did you know that she doesn’t sleep through the night for the nightmares, Sherry? Every single time she closes her eyes, she takes a trip back to those woods and is forced to relive what happened. She wakes up screaming, terrified. For that alone, I’ll go to my grave hating you. So, you need to get that I don’t care WHAT you have waiting for you at home. I only care about finding some justice for a woman that was wronged in so many ways by so many people.”

  “It wasn’t my idea!” Sherry cried.

  “Probably not, but you were there,” Zeke growled. “Now, are you going to finally do what you should have done then and tell me what happened, or am I going to arrest you?” he asked, unclipping his cuffs from his belt and dangling the shackles between them over the table. “It’s up to you, but I really don’t think you’d look all that great in orange.”

  “Talk. I’ll talk,” Sherry responded quickly.

  Zeke nodded. “Good decision; I knew you weren’t stupid, Sherry. Take me through it. How did you even end up in those woods with Angela Hastings that night eight years ago? As I recollect, when we parted company for the evening, you told me you were going to bed.”

  Studying her carefully, Zeke watched as the guilty woman stared at the wall, her choppy breathing the only sound in the otherwise silent room. “Sherry, I’m going to need you to start talking or I’m going to have to assume this interview is over and arrest you.”

  “Give me just a sec to get my head straight, Zeke. Could I have some coffee or water, please?” Sherry whispered, reaching for a tissue from the box in the center of the conference table.

  Zeke fought the urge to howl? Did this look like a restaurant? Was she stupid enough to think that they could sip coffee and chat like old friends? On the other hand, maybe the caffeine would help her focus. Frowning, Zeke turned to nod toward the one way mirror behind him, giving the signal to Jeb to comply with her request.

  Seeing his movement, Sherry paled even more. “Are we being watched?” she squeaked, her hands gripping the edge of the table so tightly that it turned her knuckles white.

  “You’re in a police interrogation room, Sherry,” Zeke answered. “You’re being watched and recorded.”

  “Oh, God,” she whimpered as someone tapped on the door from outside.

  Shooting her a hard look, Zeke rose and crossed to the door, opening it to find Carline waiting with two steaming cups of black coffee in disposable cups. “Thanks, Care Bear,” he told the younger no-nonsense woman softly. The raven haired lady had worked for him for two years and she was nothing if not reliable.

  “You don’t know how badly I wanted to spit in that witch’s brew,” she grumbled as she passed the cups over to him carefully.

  “Oh, I bet I do.” Zeke’s lips twitched. One of Carline’s many job duties was transcription of any evidence that required it, and the poor woman had been forced to listen to an audio of what had happened to Honor. So his secretary knew exactly how large a role Sherry had played in the events of eight years ago. That said, Carline now carried a noticeable grudge against the woman inside the room with him.

  Taking a step back so his assistant could close the door for him, he quickly carried the coffees back to the table. “Alright, Sherry. You’ve got your damn coffee,” he said, pushing her paper cup toward her across the surface of the table. “Enough stalling,” he ordered, watching her take a sip of the scalding coffee.

  “That night… I was angry when you left. If you remember, we argued about it. I wanted you to stay with me, but you said it was your job to make sure that girl got home safe,” she began, her voice tinged slightly by bitterness as she stared into her coffee like it held the secret to the universe.

  Grinding his teeth, Zeke’s muscles tightened. He remembered, alright. She’d been pissed as hell, but he hadn’t been able to get his mind off Honor. He’d had a bad feeling ever since leaving her to wait for her family on the side of the road, and he’d wanted to make sure she got home. He could still kick himself for letting her convince him that she’d be fine waiting on her own. At the very least, he should have stayed there until somebody had arrived to fetch her.

  But, he hadn’t. And he couldn’t change that now.

  Instead, he had to concentrate on finding and punishing the men that had tortured her. Fuck, the men that were still torturing her.

  “I remember, Sherry,” he acknowledged softly.

  “Yes, well, after you left, Angie called. We were close friends back then, and since she’d dated you once upon a time, I asked her if you’d ever made her feel like an afterthought because of your job.”

  Zeke’s jaw flexed. Leave it to Sherry to make things all about her, he thought angrily.

  “Angie went on to ask what had happened, and I told her about seeing Honor on the side of the road and how you rushed our evening together to race off and make sure she’d gotten home safe. Angie laughed and told me she had an errand to run and asked me to go with her. I asked her where she needed to go, but she wouldn’t tell me. All she would say was that I’d enjoy what she had to show me,” Sherry whispered.

  So far, this stupid bitch wasn’t telling him anything he hadn’t already pieced together for himself from the transcripts of the video Honor had been sent. Impatient, Zeke barked, “Then what?”

  “She picked me up and we started driving way out in the country. Before I realized it, we were on some dirt road that didn’t look like it had been driven on in years. I asked her again what we were doing and about that time, we pulled off behind two cars that had been parked on the side of the lane.

  “What kind of cars were they?” Zeke questioned, his ears perking up. He knew that Tanner had driven a black Mustang back then, but he’d always assumed that the men had all been in the same car since when they’d kidnapped Honor, they’d put her in the trunk rather than the backseat.

  “I… I’m not sure. I can’t remember,” Sherry babbled.

  “Which is it, Sherry. You’re not sure or you can’t remember? Or are you still trying to cover up your crimes for an accomplice?”

  “I didn’t have an accomplice!” Sherry objected.

  “Really? Because by my count, you had at least six of them.”

  “I wasn’t a part of orchestrating that crime, Zeke. That was all Sherry and Tanner’s doing!”

  “The cars, Sherry. What kind were they? Make? Model? Year?” Zeke bit the questions out.

  “I don’t know anything about cars, Zeke. I think one was a Mustang. That’s the one with the emblem of a horse on it, right? It was black.”

  “And the other vehicle?”

  Running a nervous hand through her hair, Sherry squeezed her eyes shut. “It was red and I think it was an Impala. My aunt had a car similar to it and hers was an Impala, I think. And it had a Tennessee Titans bumper sticker on it.”

  Zeke made a note in the file. “Any other vehicles there?”

  “Not where we parked, but pulled further off in the woods, there was a motorcycle. I’m pretty sure it was a Harley.”

  That tracked, Zeke thought. The Hell Hound prospect would have had a bike. “Okay, then what happened?”

  “I followed Angie through the brush. It was dark, but I had my Nokia phone and had pulled a flashlight from the car so we could see. I was asking her question after question about why we were there, but she just hissed at me to be quiet and keep my eyes open. We could hear men laughing and we just followed the sound. When we got to the clearing…” Sherry’s breath caught in her throat as her eyes darkened and filled with tears. “God, when we got to the clearing, the first thing I heard was her scream. She was begging them to let her go,” Sherry whispered, shuddering. “I still dream about it, too, Zeke.”

  “Hard to feel sorry for a woman that’s partially responsible for the victim’s pain,” Zeke informed her starkly, his eyes unforgiving as they glared across the table at her.

  “I know,�
�� Sherry breathed. “But, I wasn’t a willing participant. When Angie pointed at my phone and told me to start recording what was happening to Honor, I assumed we were going to help her! I presumed we’d hightail it out of there and take it to the police. It wasn’t until I saw that satisfied smirk on her face that I knew she was up to something… that somehow she was part of what was happening. I’d known she was having an affair on Abel Turner with Harmony’s husband,” she explained guiltily, “But when one of those men peeled back his mask and I caught sight of Tanner Suarez, you could have knocked me over with a feather. I took one look over at Angela and just KNEW my suspicion about her bein’ involved was now a FACT. So, then I asked her why, you know? As you said, Honor was just a kid and while I was aggravated that you’d run off to see if she’d made it home that night, I didn’t hold it against her. Not really. I was just pissed that you’d put your stupid duty above our relationship again.”

  “Stay on topic, Sherry. We’re not talking about us. Tell me about that night,” Zeke growled. “Why did Angela Hastings say she wanted Honor’s violation recorded?”

  “Blackmail. Honor knew about her affair with Tanner. She said that Honor had barged in on them the previous week. Evidently, Angie had tried to talk to Honor about it, but the girl was avoiding her. Angie was scared that Honor was going to ruin the meal ticket she had in Abel so she told Tanner to take care of her.”

  “And by ‘take care of’, you mean…”

  “Dead girls tell no tales,” Sherry whispered. “That’s what she told me that night. According to her, Tanner enlisted some help and they decided to…”

  “To what?” Zeke prodded, his jaw clenching as he spoke.

  “These were her words, Zeke. Not mine,” Sherry clarified before continuing. “She said that Tanner and his boys decided to have some fun before they got down to business. She wanted the video to use as blackmail if Tanner ever ran his mouth to Abel. After…after we left, she had me email a few pics from the video as a reminder that she still had leverage if his lips ever got overly loose.”