by Brant, Kylie
“Uh-uh.” She held up a warning hand. “That only works once. Okay, twice. But now I really have to go.”
He flicked a glance at the clock face on the stove. Three A.M. Dev couldn’t think of a blessed reason she needed to leave at this time of night, regardless of how busy her day might be.
But he suspected a woman as guarded as she might want to regain a bit of distance after spending the last several hours wrapped around a man. Or, to be more exact, over him, under him, and several positions in between.
Ramsey wasn’t leaving on account of work. She was running .
“You should try sleepin’ sometime,” he suggested blandly. Reaching down, he scooped up one of her sandals near his bare foot and held it out by its strap, letting it dangle from one finger. “That’s what most folks do this time of night.” He couldn’t shake the suspicion that had he not wakened, she’d have snuck out like a thief.
“I sleep.” She grabbed for her shoe. Slipping it on, she looked around the room. He wondered if it was his imagination that her gaze skirted the table. “Do you remember where I left my purse?”
“In the car. Do you remember how you got here?”
Given her stricken expression, he figured she’d forgotten. “If you’re that intent on run—goin’ home,” he amended, “give me a second to get dressed. I’ll drive you.”
“Shit. Now I feel guilty.”
“I sincerely hope so.” He began searching for his own clothes on the kitchen floor. It was doubtful that guilt was the primary emotion she was experiencing. It was panic.
The sort of panic a person like Ramsey would feel from letting someone too close, too fast. Understanding that almost made it easier to allow the night to end like this.
Almost.
Chapter 16
Matthews strode alongside Ramsey toward the front of 24 Hour Fitness, a decidedly sullen expression on his face. “How come you get to play bad cop?”
“Because I’m not playing.”
“You’re also not a cop. Not anymore.”
She stopped, one foot on the first step, and looked at him. “If you’ve got a problem with the strategy, take it up with Powell. This is how he laid it out.” Digging her cell from her navy suit jacket pocket, she extended it to him.
He glanced at it, then away. “I’m the one who’s been busting my ass running all over the state getting these interviews.”
When he made no move toward the cell, she put it away. He had a legitimate complaint, so she nodded. “But in doing so, you’re familiar to all the interviewees. It’s better to bring in a stranger, one Sanders has no rapport with, when we hit him with what we’ve got.”
“Yeah. Still . . .”
“I haven’t exactly been vacationing in the Jamaican isles in your absence.” She restarted her ascent up the steps.
“Jamaica’s an isle. I don’t think it has other ones.”
“Whatever. Sanders has been lying through his teeth about this whole thing.” And why would anyone be surprised at that, since his lying started while he was still engaged to Cassie Frost? Ramsey looked at the TBI agent, her hand resting on the front door’s handle. “So let’s go nail his ass to the wall.”
Quinn Sanders had piercing blue eyes, thick light brown hair that would make Leanne beg to touch it, and a body that looked like an advertisement for his health club. He wore a tight sleeveless T-shirt and shorts, an incessant smile, and an edge of nerves that showed every time he glanced in Ramsey’s unsmiling direction.
She could smell fear on the man. She figured it was there for a reason.
After the introductions and pleasantries were out of the way, Sanders spread his hands. “I’ll admit I’m surprised to see you again, Agent Matthews. I told you everythin’ I knew the last time we talked. Unless . . .” His voice trailed off, inviting one of them to pick up the conversational gambit. When neither of them did, he continued, “Did somethin’ new come to light in Cassie’s case?” He looked from one of them to the other, his expression hopeful. “Did you catch her killer?”
“I’m afraid not, Mr. Sanders.” Matthews was playing it just right. Professional. Courteous. With just the right note of friendliness. “There were a few more questions that came up. Figured it’d be easier to take care of them now before I head back to Buffalo Springs.”
Ramsey got out of her chair while they were speaking. Roaming the office, she paused before a framed diploma certifying that Quinn Sanders had graduated from the University of Tennessee with a degree in exercise science. Since when was exercise considered a science? Shaking her head, she turned to look at Sanders over her shoulder. “So this place has been open . . . what? Two years?”
“Twenty-six months.” He gave a boyish grin she immediately distrusted. “I sank everythin’ I had into it, and haven’t even drawn a salary yet. But it’s startin’ to show a profit. Better every month, in fact.”
She didn’t return his smile. “Did Cassie Frost put any money into this place?”
“Cassie?” He looked nonplussed. “No, of course not. She didn’t have any money. I mean she made a good salary when she was working in a bank here in Memphis. But she bought a town house a while back and tied up her savings in that. No, this is all mine. Mine and the bank’s.”
She’d already seen a copy of the deed to this place that Matthews had uncovered at the courthouse. Sanders had financed rather than rented the building. Given his previous job and the fact he wasn’t independently wealthy, he had to be in hock up to his eyeballs.
“That must have been tough. Before you opened up, you were, what? An accountant? They must rake in serious dough for you to have enough stashed away to live on while you wait for this place to make it.”
He was plainly taken aback by the derision in her tone. Appearing to choose his words carefully, he said, “I’ve continued workin’ with my tax clients to supplement my income, of course.”
Matthews gave him an approving nod. As an aside to Ramsey, he said, “There will be tax records of that.”
Sanders’s gaze bounced between Matthews and Ramsey. “What’s goin’ on here, anyway?”
“Routine follow-up,” she replied, making no effort to insert sincerity into her voice. “Matthews is convinced you’re the real deal. A good guy. Me?” She strolled over to place her palms on his desktop. Leaned forward. “I’m still waiting to be convinced.”
“Well . . . hell. Do I need a lawyer?”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
Sander’s gaze widened. “I haven’t done anythin’ wrong!”
“So why would you need a lawyer?”
“C’mon, Clark, back off.” Ramsey thought—she was almost certain—the agent’s words were part of the routine. “He’s been nothing but cooperative through this thing.”
“Cooperative?” She drilled a look into Sanders.
“Yeah, totally.” He gestured to the agent. “I’ve answered every question Agent Matthews asked me.”
“Yeah, but see, the thing is, Quinn, when you answered those questions of his, you lied like a dog.” Ramsey slammed her palms on the desk in emphasis. “That doesn’t look like cooperation to me. That looks like someone with something to hide.”
“That’s bullshit!”
Yeah, the fear was unleashed now, Ramsey noted with a degree of satisfaction. There was a muscle twitching under one eye, and his Ken doll perfect manner had slipped several notches.
“Oh, so you didn’t tell Agent Matthews you hadn’t spoken to Cassie since the breakup?”
“I . . .” Looking hunted, Sanders shot a glance at the TBI agent, then back to Ramsey. “I didn’t mean not at all.”
“Oh, so the agent misunderstood you? He specifically asked, and I quote, ‘Can you tell me when the last time was that you had any sort of communication with Cassie Frost?’ And you said—still quoting here—‘That would have been the night we broke our engagement, Wednesday, March eighth, last year, when we . . .’ ”
Her recitation of his statemen
t was interrupted by the younger man. “Okay, I’ll admit I wasn’t totally truthful about that.”
Matthews managed to look shocked. Ramsey thought he might have a frustrated actor gene buried somewhere inside him. “Quinn, are you saying now that you did have further communication with the murder victim after the breakup?”
“It’s complicated.” The man ran his hand through his hair. “Okay, I talked to her a few times. What’s the big deal? I never saw her once she left here. There were a few things to iron out, like some items I’d left at her town house. A tie I was missin’. Stuff like that.”
Ramsey reached into her jacket’s inner pocket to retrieve a copy of Frost’s cell phone LUDs. “Well let’s count those calls. Between March eighth and the week before her death, I come up with . . .” She pretended to tally, as if she didn’t have the exact number branded on her mind. “Thirty-seven. Over three dozen times you had to talk to Cassie about ‘stuff.’ ” She paused a beat. “That’s a lot of ties.”
Sanders sent a wild look in Matthews’s direction, but the agent was surveying him expressionlessly. “I couldn’t admit that I’d talked to her,” he pled. “If Sarah found out Cassie and I were still in touch, she would have hit the roof.”
“What happened, Quinn?” Ramsey asked rancorously. “Couldn’t decide which sister you wanted after all? Or did all the excitement of the chase sort of disappear once Cassie removed herself from the mix?”
“Yeah—no!” The man sank into his desk chair. “I mean, I thought I wanted Sarah. But later . . . I couldn’t stop thinkin’ about Cassie, y’know? And everythin’ we’d meant to each other.”
“And you started to think maybe you’d made a mistake breaking things off with her. Sarah’s rushing you to the altar, and you stop and think, hey, is this really what I want?” The sympathy was back in Matthews’s voice. “That’s understandable.”
“And maybe Cassie wanted to use you to get back at her sister.”
“No.” Sanders looked at Ramsey with dislike. “Maybe we talked about gettin’ back together at first, but when I didn’t break things off with Sarah right away, Cassie wouldn’t discuss it anymore. It was just . . . I missed her, y’know?” He hunched his shoulders, managing to look miserable. “And I think she missed me, too. Or at least, she missed havin’ someone she knew to talk to. So we’d talk, that’s all. Totally innocent.”
“So innocent that you called her from this number instead of your cell phone, so your current fiancée wouldn’t find out.”
Sanders swallowed hard. “She wouldn’t have understood.”
Ramsey gave a feral smile. “See, now I think you’ve underestimated Sarah. I’ll bet she would have understood perfectly .”
“You can see how this looks, Quinn.” It was Matthews’s turn to work the man, his voice persuasive. “If there’s more you haven’t told us, now’s the time to come clean. The more you try to hide, the worse it is for you in the long run.”
Sanders slumped in his chair, scrubbing his eyes with one hand. “I know this looks bad, but you have to believe me. One of the reasons we kept talkin’ is because she was spooked. She thought someone might be followin’ her.”
Her derisive snort couldn’t be contained. The younger man’s head came up, and he glared at her. “See I knew you’d blow it off, but it’s true. And she was really creeped out by it.”
“Couple problems with that, Quinn.” Ramsey hooked a straight-backed chair with her foot and dragged it close enough to sit in. “One is you never mentioned this mysterious stalker until your neck’s in a vise. And two, no one who knew her in Kordoba can back you up. She never mentioned being afraid to anyone there.”
“But she did in Lisbon.” He was eager now to make them believe him. “I couldn’t mention it earlier because I’d have to admit we had kept in touch. She moved to Lisbon from here after we broke up. And about a month after she got there, she said some guy tried to pick her up at a restaurant. She gave him the brush-off but said she’d see him around at random times, watchin’ her. And after she’d been in town a couple months, she woke up and saw someone trying to break in through her bedroom window.”
A tight frisson of rage fired through Ramsey’s veins. “Convenient that your memory cleared up once we’ve caught you in a pile of lies.”
“I didn’t tell you before because there wasn’t really anythin’ she told me that would help, you know? And if Sarah found out we were speakin’ . . .”
“Yeah, you said. She wouldn’t understand.” Ramsey regarded him with disgust.
“I can prove there was someone she was afraid of. She reported that window peepin’ incident to the police.” He looked from one of them to the other. “There’d be a record of that, wouldn’t there?”
Ramsey easily kept up with Matthews’s stride as they made their way to their respective cars. “Powell was right. He’s a lying-ass dog.”
“Just because he lied about not talking to her doesn’t mean he’s lying about everything.” The agent sent her a pointed look. “Easy enough to check out. If she filed a complaint, there’d be a record of it.”
“Wouldn’t prove a damn thing.” But she was already thinking about it. Worrying at the ramifications like a dog with a bone. They’d gone through Frost’s life in Kordoba thoroughly. And once they’d traced her to Memphis, Matthews had been similarly methodical there.
But had they missed something important by not being as painstaking with the places she’d lived in between the two towns?
“I’ll let Powell know I’m sticking around here with you,” she said. “Maybe if we go at Sanders again tomorrow, we might be able to convince him to voluntarily let us look at his financials as a show of good faith.”
“More likely he’ll lawyer up if we hit him too hard,” Matthews warned.
“Possibly. Which makes it all the more critical to get info from him before then. Maybe if he thinks we’re going to let Sarah know about his continued interest in Cassie, he might be more forthcoming.” They’d have to tread gently there. Matthews was right. They’d pushed Sanders to his limit today.
“I’m heading back to the motel.” The agent stopped by his car, a black four-door Crown Vic. “If the report exists, we can always get a copy by fax.”
“Let me see what Powell has to say. Once we finish up here, I wouldn’t mind swinging through Lisbon on my way back to Buffalo Springs.”
“Really?” Matthews looked considerably more cheerful. Ramsey figured he thought he was going to get stuck with that duty, too.
“Yeah, I’d like to poke around.” From the victim’s financials, she could glean her old employer, her landlord, even her former hair stylist and nail salon.
“Fine by me. I’ll catch you later.”
Ramsey got in the Ford, sending the TBI agent an absentminded wave. She was ninety-eight percent certain that Sanders was sending them on a wild-goose chase. He wasn’t exactly racking up points for honesty.
Inserting the key, she started the ignition. She wasn’t going to overlook anything that might bring them closer to the killer, no matter how remote the chance might be. Grimly, she checked her mirrors and headed off the lot.
Cassie Frost had been let down by those who were supposed to love her most. Ramsey figured she owed the woman at least this much.
The sun was almost straight overhead by the time Dev made it back to Rose Thornton’s place. He gathered the equipment he’d need from the trunk of his car, and with a sense of déjà vu, headed off toward the woods fringing the old lady’s property.
All the while, he kept a wary eye on the door of her cabin. Although there were some experiences he wouldn’t mind repeating, having buckshot removed from his ass wasn’t one of them.
The late start was courtesy of his lack of sleep the night before. Dev was normally not a late riser, but once he’d returned Ramsey back to her place, he’d laid sleepless for a long time, wondering if he could have played it any differently.
The answer to that had been evas
ive, so he’d fallen into a restless sleep about the time the birds had started waking. And had woken surly and out of sorts as a result.
There was nothing that cured surliness like buckling down to work.
So he spent a couple hours setting up and getting those control measures to compare to last night’s readings. And then sat contemplating the results, his mind racing.
Because the readings today were well within the normal range.
The outdoor temperature would be expected to be warmer, of course. He’d need to take another reading tonight at the same time he and Ramsey had been here. But the EMF meter should read the same today as it did last night if the previous elevated reading were due to power lines. Trouble was, they were in the normal range, too.
