Since she was still thinking about Sloan and the trouble they were in, it took a moment for Carley to grasp what Zane had said. "You think I'm crazy?" she asked.
"No. But this shrink has been trained to uncover details in eyewitnesses' accounts and testimony. At least consider it, for the sake of the case."
Until he'd added that last part, Carley was about to answer with an unequivocal no to someone picking apart her account or her brain, but she couldn't say no to that. She had to do whatever it took to catch this killer.
"All right," Carley said. "I'll do it. But there's another person who might have witnessed Lou Ann's murder. Your father. He was there at the inn that night, I'm positive of that, and he might have seen something he hasn't remembered."
Because she was still facing Sloan, Carley had no trouble seeing his reaction. It wasn't as negative as she figured it would be. He actually seemed to be considering it. Which couldn't have been an easy thing, especially since his father might have killed Lou Ann—even if he didn't remember doing it.
"Okay," Zane concurred. "I'll call Dad and see if he'll try this approach. I'll let you know what he says."
Carley wouldn't hold her breath that Jim McKinney would agree. Potentially he was a man with a lot to hide.
"Sloan, you told Carley about the new sleeping arrangements?" Zane asked.
Sloan broke eye contact with her. "Not yet. I'll do it now. 'Bye, Zane."
"What sleeping arrangements?" she asked as he clicked the end-call button.
Sloan cleared his throat. "From now on, you'll be rooming with me."
Because his explanation didn't sound either serious or sane, Carley mentally repeated it word for word. She still didn't get it. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me, and it's not up for negotiation." He got to his feet and stared down at her. "You're moving in with me. If I could, I'd hide you away in a safe house, but since you're the sheriff and part of this investigation, that wouldn't be practical."
She shook her head and stated the obvious. "There's no way we can be roommates."
"Oh, yes, there is. I need someone to watch my back, and you need someone to watch yours. Think about it, Carley. This person wants overkill, and that means I'm now a target since I saw the shooter last night."
Oh, God.
He was right. Sloan was now in danger from the same SOB who wanted her dead.
Carley's stomach sank. Her breath vanished. Why hadn't she thought of this sooner? Sloan was just as much at risk as she was.
"We don't have a choice," Sloan added.
No. They apparently didn't. But that didn't make this any easier to accept. Because daylight didn't last forever. Nightfall would come a lot sooner than she wanted. And that meant Sloan and she would be alone.
In the same room.
Together.
Chapter Twelve
"Have I mentioned that this really isn't a good idea?" Carley called out from the bathroom.
"Yeah. You've mentioned it," Sloan answered. And though he wasn't counting, Sloan figured that she'd mentioned it at least a dozen times. She would no doubt mention it a dozen more before the night was over.
Why?
Because despite their inability to keep their hands and mouths off each other, they were going to sleep in the same room.
Well, he hoped sleep was all they'd do tonight. They both needed some rest and they definitely didn't need any other activity.
Especially sex.
The bathroom door opened and Carley stepped out. Fully clothed, thank goodness. In fact, she wore mint-green pajamas and a matching ankle-length robe. There was nothing remotely sexy about the outfit, but Sloan couldn't say the same about the woman wearing it.
Carley had taken off what little makeup she'd previously had on, and her hair lay loose and mussed on her shoulders. The lack of adornment allowed him to concentrate on just how beautiful she was.
Oh, man.
Sloan shook his head. Best not to think of her great looks tonight. Instead he turned back to Lou Ann's notes that he should be studying.
"I'll bet you sleep naked," Carley mumbled under her breath.
So much for studying. Sloan almost laughed. "Normally I do. But, trust me, I'll be fully clothed tonight." In fact, maybe he'd wear his holster and boots. Spurs, even. It'd be a surefire way to keep him from removing his pants.
"Me, too. If I owned panty hose, I'd put them on beneath these PJs. Something tells me we're going to need all the chastity-belt type of help we can get."
Sloan nodded. "It'll also help if we keep some space between us. You take the bed. I'll take the floor."
She glanced at the hardwood floor. "I could have the desk clerk bring up a cot."
"I don't want anyone, including the clerk, to know which room we're staying in."
That was the reason he'd used Carley's master key to turn on the lights in some of the unoccupied rooms. It would make it difficult for the cloaked shooter to make a return visit if it wasn't common knowledge where Carley and he were specifically staying.
"I could go get a roll-away bed from the supply closet," she suggested.
He shook his head, vetoing that, as well. "And you'd risk someone seeing and following you. I don't want to take any chances."
"Yet here we are together, mere feet apart from each other. Don't say it," she quickly added. "It's an unavoidable risk. I know. But…"
There was no need for her to finish that statement. Sloan knew what she was thinking. Sleeping so close to each other could turn out to be the ultimate risk.
She grabbed extra blankets and bed linen from the top of the closet and deposited them onto the floor. They landed with a kerplunk, and Sloan could already feel the backache he'd have tomorrow. Still, a backache was a small price to pay for keeping Carley safe.
"Find anything new in Lou Ann's notes?" Carley asked.
"Not yet."
Carley threw back the covers on the bed and practically jumped in. She pulled the comforter all the way up to her chin. For long, quiet moments she said nothing, but Sloan could almost hear her thinking. It was either one of two things on her mind: the murder investigation or this insanity happening between them.
"I keep thinking about our confessions," Carley said softly. "About how we were attracted to each other all those years ago."
He groaned softly. Of the two possible subjects, this was the one he didn't want to discuss. Best to dismiss it. It was also best to delay that sex talk he'd promised her earlier. A conversation like that shouldn't happen when they were alone. In the same room.
With the air steaming between them.
"We were teenagers," he stated. "Attraction at that age isn't just common, it's a given."
"I guess. Are we going to have the sex talk now?" Carley asked.
Sloan nearly choked on his own breath. "I thought you'd forgotten about that."
"You're joking, right? After that kiss at the police station, you thought I'd forget that you wanted to discuss sex? Well, I didn't. So, talk. After all, it was your idea."
Yes. And in hindsight, it was a very bad one. An idea that'd formed in his head when he'd done the bump-and-grind session with Carley against the door. It'd been a way to defuse a situation.
It had worked. Temporarily. Sort of.
Now he'd need something to defuse the defusion tactic.
"Okay, I'll start," Carley volunteered. "We've acknowledged the attraction. We've acted on it a little. But we can't act on it further without jeopardizing our careers."
Man, he wished that were true and he knew this for a fact because he'd given it too much thought. "At worst, acting on it would just cause us to lose focus. And at best, it would be very, very good."
She laughed. It was throaty, filled with nerves and excitement. Because this conversation was definitely taboo. "I like you, Sloan. I mean, I really like you, and that's more frightening to me than the sexual attraction."
Sloan agreed, but it was best not to voice it. They'd already crossed
too many lines tonight.
"We should probably get some rest," he reminded her. Sloan got up from the table and, without bothering to remove any items of clothing, he crawled onto his makeshift bed on the floor.
His preparations for sleep didn't put a cap on the conversation.
"This has been going on for a long time," she continued. "On my part, anyway. That night when I realized you were a fairly hot guy, I considered the possibilities. I mean, we both knew we wanted to be cops, even then. And my teenage brain began to weave a fantasy. Both of us serving as deputies, side by side. Then maybe one day cosheriffs."
"Cosheriffs? Not in Justice. The city has enough trouble paying one."
"It was a fantasy," she grumbled, sounding as if he'd just burst her bubble. "And I'm rambling. Sorry, I do that when I'm nervous."
"Yeah. I understand."
He wasn't nervous but anxious. Anxious about their sleeping arrangements. Anxious about the case. Anxious about the silence. Because with the silence gave his body too much time to come up with other ideas.
Bad ideas.
"That cosheriff fantasy was a good one," he commented. He gave it some thought. "And it all came crashing down the night of Lou Ann's murder."
She sat up, stuffed some pillows behind her back and peered down at him. Since they'd intentionally left the overhead light on, he had no trouble seeing her. "It stung when you didn't believe that I'd seen your father coming out of Lou Ann's room that night."
"I'm sorry," Sloan said because it was a long overdue apology.
Carley didn't exactly accept that apology, but she did continue. "In addition to lusting after you, I idolized you. You had it all. Great grades, athletic ability, popularity."
"I also had a totally dysfunctional family," he reminded her. "It was that year that I learned my father had an illegitimate son and had seemingly slept with every adult female in town. Coupled with Lou Ann's murder, it nearly destroyed my parents' marriage. Which wouldn't have necessarily been such a bad thing," he added.
Carley kept her attention solely on him. "Why exactly did your mother stay with your dad after she learned of his affairs and his other son?"
"The truth? Sometimes I think it's so she can punish him. This way, she can remind him on a daily basis of how much he hurt her."
"He hurt all of you," Carley pointed out.
"True. That includes you. He hurt you by default by placing himself in a situation where he should have never been."
She shrugged. "Life's like that sometimes. We were all just breezing along before that night. Lou Ann's murder stopped the breezing and made us take a cold, hard look at ourselves."
"And it tore this town apart," Sloan concluded. "That's why we need to find her killer. We need to end this so the entire town can heal."
The silence settled uncomfortably between them and it made Sloan wonder if she disagreed with his comment. Maybe the town wouldn't heal. Maybe he wouldn't heal if he learned that his father was involved.
No, not involved.
Guilty.
Just thinking about it caused his stomach to churn. But he wasn't a naive sixteen-year-old kid anymore. He had to accept the possibility that his father had done the unthinkable.
Or, if not his father, someone else close to him.
"I've been keeping something from you," he heard himself say.
Carley frowned. "This isn't more of that sex talk, is it?"
"No. I almost wish that it were. It'd be easier than what I have to tell you. It's about something that happened the night Lou Ann was murdered sixteen years ago."
Her frown deepened.
"Over the years I've tried to convince myself that it wasn't important," he continued. "But the truth is I just don't know anymore."
"This is about your father?"
"Not exactly." Sloan tucked his hands behind his head. "I went looking for my father that night. I even walked around the inn to see if I could find him with Lou Ann. I didn't. All the curtains were closed in the rooms on the bottom floor. I didn't want to come inside to look because you were there—and you would have asked questions."
"So you left. That must have been when I spotted you and followed you?"
"Probably. Though I really didn't notice you following me. I just kept thinking that I needed to find Dad. I needed to convince him to stop seeing Lou Ann."
"But you didn't find him," Carley concluded.
"No. I went back to my house. No one was there."
He waited and watched his words register on Carley's face. "Zane was at college," she said as if thinking out loud. "So where was your mother?"
"I don't know. I called out her name and she didn't answer. The following morning I asked her about it, and she said she was asleep, that she'd taken her migraine meds and they'd knocked her out."
"Did you believe her?"
"At the time. Because I wanted to believe her. But the light was on in her bedroom. If she'd had a migraine, she would have turned off the lights."
"Wow," Carley mumbled. A moment later she repeated it. "Why didn't you tell this to the sheriff sixteen years ago?"
"You probably won't believe this, but I forgot all about it until Sarah's death. I didn't repress it, but I was totally sidetracked by my father's arrest. The sheriff didn't really even investigate the murder. He certainly didn't ask if my mother had an alibi. Right from the start, he was convinced that my father was guilty."
"So was I."
Sloan looked up at her. He'd expected to see some condemnation or at least a little anger that he hadn't told her this before, but there was only sympathy.
"The gender bias was at work back then," Carley explained. She climbed out of bed and eased down onto the floor, sitting beside him. "Sheriff Wainwright was in charge then and he was as old-school as they come. He probably took one look at your mom—feminine, pale, vulnerable, president of the Garden Club—and he probably didn't believe that Stella McKinney was capable of swatting a fly, much less strangling a woman."
Yeah. That'd no doubt been the old sheriff's thinking. "Still, I should have told someone."
She reached out and skimmed her finger along his cheek. Not in a sexual way. She was obviously trying to comfort him. "It wouldn't have done any good. No one, including me, would have listened." Carley paused. "But I'm listening now and I still can't see your mother—all ninety-five pounds of her—going after a wildcat like Lou Ann."
Sloan played around that image, and while it seemed unlikely, it wasn't impossible. Adrenaline and anger were huge factors in a physical confrontation, and despite his mother's delicate size, he'd seen her angry enough to do just about anything.
Carley plucked his cell phone from his holster. "But you should tell Zane. Just for the record. Just so it doesn't come back later to bite you in the butt."
Sloan nodded, wishing he'd done it ages ago. Or at least at the onset of the most recent murder investigation.
Dreading the conversation, Sloan pressed in his brother's number. "Zane—" he said when his brother answered.
"Sloan, I was about to call you. I just had a very interesting conversation with our father."
That put a halt to the confession Sloan was about to make. "What did he want?"
"He said he's willing to see the Rangers' psychiatrist, and he wants us to set it up."
That was the last thing he'd expected from his father, and Sloan's own reaction was mixed. "What made him agree to it?"
"He said he needs to get to the truth."
"After sixteen years?" Sloan thought Why now? but didn't voice it to his brother. "So when is this session going to happen?"
"Day after tomorrow. Cross your fingers, Sloan. We might finally learn what happened the night that Lou Ann was murdered."
"Yes," Sloan mumbled.
"Why did you call?" Zane asked. "Something to do with the case?"
"Maybe." Now how to put this? It wasn't easy to say, especially with the news about his father spinning through his head. "Mom might not
have been home the night Lou Ann was killed."
Zane paused. "What do you mean?"
Sloan suddenly felt foolish, but then Carley began to rub his arm, and it had a surprisingly soothing effect. "I mean I can't say with certainty that she was there."
"Are you trying to tell me she's a suspect?"
Sloan scrubbed his hand over his face. "I don't know what I'm saying. I just wanted you to know."
"And now I know," Zane said. Not in a matter-of-fact tone. There was emotion. Lots of it. Old wounds that just wouldn't heal. "Reinterview her in a day or two. Better yet, have Carley do it. Have Carley press her hard. If Mom is hiding something, I want to know what."
That was the big question—was his mother hiding something? If so, what? Had she gone to the inn and seen Lou Ann? Or better yet, had Stella seen her own husband with another woman?
"My dad agreed to see the shrink," Sloan relayed to Carley once he'd hung up the phone.
"That's gutsy of him."
Gutsy or maybe even stupid. He wasn't sure which.
Sloan only hoped he could live with the truth that his father—and mother—might give them.
Chapter Thirteen
As if it were a rattler coiled and ready to strike, Carley picked up the letter that the deputy had deposited on her temporary desk the next morning. She hadn't thought she had any adrenaline left in her body, but she'd obviously been wrong.
She felt the adrenaline roar through her. She also felt the trepidation and the queasy feeling that went right along with it.
Sloan must have noticed the change in her body language, because he got up from his own temporary desk and went to her. "Something wrong?"
"No." And before he could get a glimpse of the return address on the envelope, Carley shoved the letter into the center drawer. It was apparently like waving a red flag in front of a charging bull.
"You might as well tell me what that was," he warned, "or I'll just keep bugging you."
"No, you won't. You'll get back to work reading Sarah's notes and setting up that interview with your mother. We need a break in this case so things can get back to normal. This place is making me claustrophobic."
Trace Evidence in Tarrant... Page 11
