Huffing out his breath, running his fingers through the military cut of his hair, Dan eyed her green-eyed stare and childlike pout. And got mad. “Are you a moron or some kind of a nut, Miss O’Leary?”
Her mouth dropped open, an involuntary noise escaped her. “What?”
Dan shrugged. “It’s a legitimate question in light of what’s happened in Taos in the week since the murder. My little corner of the world is now the stomping grounds for the national press corps. And they’re laughing over our efforts to get a murder-one rap to stick to a suspect. Why? Because of six nutcase ‘confessions’ previous to yours. Every one of them was a loony looking for media attention or publicity for some cause.”
Her eyes sparked with rising temper. “Not to worry. I’m none of the above, Sheriff.” Then, suddenly blinking, she puffed her breath out and upward, trying to blow a wisp of bangs out of her eyes.
He watched her struggle and commented, “All right. Then you’re either guilty or innocent. Let’s say you’re innocent, but you saw something. And the bad guys forced you to say you killed Tony, or be killed. Am I getting warm?”
She shook her head no, even as tears came to her eyes. Not so much from emotion, he reckoned, as from that hair still poking at her eyes. Irritated to the extreme with her story and her distracting gestures, Dan reached across the table and swiped the offending wisps away. She tensed at his touch. His fingers froze against the warm, taut skin covering her forehead. He looked deep into her eyes, saw a world of hurt and fear there. He’d seen that look before. And knew he couldn’t walk away. Damn that Hale and Carter.
Against his better judgment, against his years of police training and experience, Dan heard himself losing not only his bet with the two detectives, but also his professional detachment and, quite possibly in the near future, his life. “Look, I don’t know why you’re doing this, why you’re so determined to throw your life away. But whatever your reasons—and I don’t care what they are—they’re not good enough. Not for me. So, like it or not, I’m going out on that legal limb with you.”
Joan O’Leary eyed him, crinkling the skin at the corners of her eyes. Then she inched back from his touch. Grateful for that, Dan sat back, too. Then she spoke. Her voice was flat, emotionless. “I can’t let you do that.”
“Can’t let me what…touch you? Fair enough. But help you? You can’t stop me.” With that, Dan reached for her file and opened it, began sorting papers, looking for the report on her initial interview. He also awaited her challenge. It didn’t come. A secret grin tugged at his mouth. Gotcha.
As he scanned the pages, he warned himself to remember that his job consisted solely of placing her in his custody and taking her back to Taos. And turning her over to the questionable mercy of the sharp-toothed, very fallible legal system she said she trusted
With that thought, tension suddenly banded Dan’s forehead and squeezed tight. He put his fingers to his temples and rubbed as he concentrated on finding the page he needed. Aha. There it was. Buried in the back. Should have known. He held it up, skimmed it. “Lovely. Carter’s chicken-scratch handwriting.” He glanced at his prisoner, saw her quizzical expression. “Yes, I talk to myself. I also answer.”
With that, he ignored her again, instead turning his attention to the report in his hand. He searched for one overlooked detail that screamed discrepancy, maybe even innocent. One beyond-a-reasonable-doubt detail that he could use. Because everyone from the voters to the governor, from the Taos Chamber of Commerce to the national press, howled for an arrest.
And Sheriff “Big Ben” Halverson, caught right in the middle of the outcry, was not going to sit patiently through half-baked theories of innocence on Nutty Confession Number Seven. One more headline about his department arresting a suspect, only to have to turn him—her—loose, and the longtime sheriff was dog meat.
And Ben didn’t deserve that. Yeah, he was gruff and rough, like an old grizzly bear. But he had a teddy bear’s heart. A virtual one-man institution in New Mexico and one hell of a respected sheriff. Until, that is, Tony LoBianco got himself killed in Big Ben’s jurisdiction. When a big-time mobster, who was about to become a big-time informant, gets murdered, someone’s got to take the flak.
And look at you, Dan chastised himself, hunting for a way to make the sheriff look sillier. The very man who called you with a job after Marilyn’s death, who gave you a chance to leave Houston with dignity, to go home and take care of Grandpa. Ben—who stepped in when your father was never around, when you were a cocky teenager and always in trouble. The man who believed in you when no one else did. He maybe saved your life, the way you were headed back then. And now look at what you’re doing.
Feeling lower than dirt, Dan slumped, let the report flutter out of his hand. What was he doing? He owed Ben Halverson. Not Joan O’Leary. He gazed across the table at her. Looking very young, very soft and very innocent, she watched him intently. Another unbidden surge of protectiveness surprised him. Those story-starved reporters in Taos would take her apart. And then they’d dismantle the entire sheriffs department—from Ben on down.
How would she hold up against a mob of reporters, all shouting questions at her? Maybe he ought to test her mettle. Maybe he’d get lucky and she’d blurt out who really killed Tony LoBianco. Because she didn’t do it. He closed her file and crossed his arms over his chest. Time to discredit her story. “All right, let’s say I believe you, that you are guilty. Why’d you kill him?”
Joan O’Leary blinked. “Why’d I kill him?”
“I asked you first.”
She looked everywhere but at him. “Um, I killed him…because he was…cheating on me.”
“Cheating on you?” Dan said. “You told Carter and Hale you were his new bookkeeper, that you’d worked for him for a week. Now you two were lovers? For how long?”
She looked him right in the eye and said, “For that same week.”
“You work fast, I’ll give you that. Okay, so you juggled more than his books. You two had a thing going. For a week. And he was already cheating on you.” His unspoken insinuation was on purpose. She couldn’t be all that “good” if her lover strayed so soon.
She took the bait. Snapping forward in her chair, she retorted, “I didn’t juggle books or anything else. Maybe he was cheating on her with me. Maybe I didn’t know about her until I caught them together. Did you think about that?”
“No, but that’s good. So that’s why you offed him? One week into a relationship and you loved him that much, enough to kill him?”
Her defiant attitude bled a little. She frowned, as if wondering where to go from there. Then she nodded. “Yes. That’s it—a crime of passion.”
“Was it?” Well, he was hating that whole idea worse and worse. Scumbags like LoBianco shouldn’t get women like Joan O’Leary. Reminding himself that he believed she was lying, that none of this had actually happened—beyond her working for the man—Dan asked, “Who was he with?”
“Who?”
Dan uncrossed his arms and snapped, “Tony LoBianco—your lover. When you caught him cheating, who was he with? We’re burning daylight here, Miss O’Leary.”
And she snapped right back. “I don’t know her name. We were never formally introduced…under the circumstances.”
“Okay, I can buy that. So, who do we look for, since we’ll need to question her? What’d she look like? And I’m assuming here you didn’t kill her, too, and dump her body somewhere?”
“No, I didn’t kill her or dump her body. But what’d she look like…let’s see. Pretty. Tall. Pretty tall. I don’t remember.”
Dan almost jumped out of his chair. “You caught your lover with a woman you remember only as pretty tall? Not buying it. Say you were my lover, and I caught you cheating on me. I promise you—given the way I’d feel about a woman who looks like you—that I’d know exactly what that guy looked like. Down to the smallest detail. Right before I took him out”
Silence…of a funereal quality…thickene
d the air between them. Too late, Dan’s brain kicked in, replaying for him everything he’d just said—and revealed. Oh, hell. Worse, he found he couldn’t look away from Joan O’Leary’s assessing green eyes. Even when his face heated up. Good thing she couldn’t hear the guilty thumping of his heart.
Finally, his suspect raised a dark brown eyebrow. “All that anger,” she began, speaking slowly, deliberately. “All that…passion you just expressed? That’s exactly how I felt. And what you said you’d do? I did.”
Except for an eyebrow raised in skepticism, Dan ignored her statement “I’m going the long way around for my next question, so bear with me. I told you I’m a deputy in the Taos County Sheriff’s Department. In that capacity, I patrol the city of Taos. Which means I’ve driven across every mile and down every street. It’s not that big. Okay, here’s the question. How come I never saw you—with or without Tony? Him, I saw. I kept an eye on him. But I never saw you.”
She slid her gaze away from his face and shrugged. “I haven’t lived there long. But there’s no reason why I should come to your notice. You’re the law, and I’m pretty law-abiding. Well, except for this.” She indicated her handcuffed condition. And then quietly added, “Maybe Taos is bigger than you think.”
He chuckled, but not so much from humor. “Maybe it is. Did you move there from here? Is Houston home?”
A funny-sad look claimed her features. Dan didn’t know what to make of that. But finally, she nodded yes.
“Why’d you leave?”
“Why’d I leave?” she repeated and then chuckled, shaking her head. “Because I’m a hopeless romantic. My boyfriend Jack said—” She stopped and stared at him, blanking the emotion from her face. “I needed a…a change of scenery.”
Dan sent her a sidelong look. “So besides Tony, you have this boyfriend Jack? Where’s he? How does he figure in all this?”
A bleat of laughter escaped her. “Not at all. He’s history.” Her grin instantly flipped to a frown as she rushed on. “Not ‘history’ as in dead. ‘History’ as in he’s in Colorado. I didn’t kill him.”
“Glad to hear it. So, Jack’s history, and you needed a change of scenery.” Dan pointedly looked around the room. “I’d say you got it.”
Her answering laugh was surprising. And low and husky. “No lie. Check me out.” She raised her manacled hands.
Dan let that pass, seeing as how that throaty laugh of hers was skipping over his nerve endings. “Tell me what you saw on the night of the murder.”
She arched an eyebrow. “You mean what I did?”
He grinned at her quickness. “Okay. What you did.”
She studied him a moment and then launched into her tale. “I had some questions about the books. It was my first time to do them, and things didn’t add up. So when the club closed that night, I took them to—um, I mean I went to see Mr. Lo—Tony…like I always did. We had a date. But that night, I was…later than usual. And I heard some noises in the back room. When I went there, I saw—” She clamped her lips shut against her next words.
Dan sat very still. “Like I said, what’d you see?”
Her face puckered. From a bloody memory? She struggled for a moment but managed to blurt out, “Just read my statement. It’s all in there.”
Dan tapped a finger on her case file. “I did, but I don’t believe it. In fact, I’m ready to recommend we cut you loose right now.”
“No!” Joan O’Leary shouted, surging forward, leaning over the metal table. Dan drew back, instinctively reaching for his gun. But stayed that action when he looked into her pleading green eyes. “Please don’t turn me loose. You’ve got to believe me. Please.”
Working her panicked state, Dan calmly shook his head, affecting a detachment he didn’t feel. “I’m trying, but you don’t give me much to work with. Your story falls apart with only a few questions. But even if it was ironclad, I’d still have one huge, glaring problem. And that is, there’s no way you repeatedly stabbed to death a big, tough guy like Tony LoBianco. No way.”
She stared mutely at him for long seconds and then said, “That’s exactly my point—one for the legal system to figure out.”
“Figure out what? You place a lot of blind faith in that system, Miss O’Leary. And maybe you shouldn’t Yeah, it works and works well. But it’s populated by people, and people make mistakes. They’re prone to oversights, to misjudgments that can get you killed. I’ve had firsthand experience with that.”
She seemed to harden some with her shrug. “So have I. I was entrusted at a very early age to our legal system, Sheriff. I know how it works, what it can and cannot do. It’s not perfect, but it’s all I’ve got. I’ll take my chances.”
Dan ran a hand over his mouth, exhaled loudly. “Look, I don’t mean to bust your chops with all this. I’m just trying to sort it out. If Tony had been stabbed from behind, you and I would already be on the road. But he wasn’t. The wounds are all frontal. In his chest The medical examiner says the first wounds weren’t fatal, that Tony fought back. That’s verified at the crime scene. And yet, here you sit, a week later, with not the first bruise or cut or injury of any sort.”
She raised an eyebrow. “How do you know? All you can see are my face and arms.”
“I was going by the report made of your physical condition when you were processed in.”
She stiffened and immediately began turning red. “You saw that? You read it? There’s an actual report in my file of that woman examining me? I cannot believe this.” Her green eyes begged him to tell her it wasn’t true.
He couldn’t do that. And she could see it on his face. Uncomfortable in the extreme, Dan quickly moved on. “Back to Tony fighting his assailant. Guessing at your weight, I figure he had way over a hundred pounds on you. So how do you explain that?”
Looking pretty green around the gills, she blurted, “Genetics, I guess. Or maybe he ate more than I did.”
“What?” Then thinking back to his question, Dan chuckled. “I wasn’t asking why he was bigger than you. I meant how do you expect me to believe that you killed him.”
Her gaze was now steady and focused. “I didn’t know I had to convince you. You said it earlier—your job is to take me back to Taos. When are you going to do that?”
Insulted by her dismissive words, as much as by her flippant attitude toward her own life, Dan’s expression hardened. Here he was, trying to save her life, and she wanted to get on with the road trip? “So don’t help yourself. It’s no skin off my nose.”
Surprisingly, she backed off. “Look, I’m sorry. It’s just that I don’t know what else to tell you. If you think I’m lying, that I didn’t do it, then fine, keep investigating. Keep looking for other suspects. But until you find one, I’m your man—woman. I’ve confessed, and I won’t retract my confession. Because outside these walls, I’m as good as—”
“Dead?” Dan finished for her, suddenly sure he was onto something here. Just as Hale and Carter suspected, too. “Are Tony’s buddies after you? Come on, Miss O’Leary, tell me the truth. You need to trust somebody.”
“Now that’s funny.” She chuckled as though at a private joke. She looked away, shook her head at the blank wall to her right.
Dan searched her profile, hoping for a clue as to what made her tick. But what he saw, what he felt was…fear for her, that resurgence of protectiveness. And yeah, a whole lot of physical attraction. She was the only good-looking convict he’d ever seen…with all that auburn hair, that fringe of bangs across her forehead. The sweep of those high cheekbones. The perfect nose and full lips.
As if she felt the weight of his stare, she pivoted her head on that swan neck of hers and locked gazes with him. Dan caught his breath. Her green eyes shamed Ireland for richness of color. And shot to hell what might have remained of his professional detachment. Looking her right in the eye, leaning toward her, he crooned, “You don’t look like a murderer.”
She stiffened and pulled back…defensively, shutting him out. “Murder
ers have a look?”
“Yeah. They do. A look and a profile. And you don’t fit either.” With that, Dan scooted his chair back and crossed his legs, an ankle atop his opposite knee. Then, trying to catch her off guard, he said abruptly, “You never had a thing with Tony. There was no other woman. You just worked for him. So maybe you’re mob, too. Maybe you played with Tony’s numbers, played him for a fool and got him killed. Maybe you have ambitions and found a way to move up some in the organization.”
She nearly came out of her chair. “Me—in the mob? I don’t think so. And I did not get him killed. In fact, until that night I had no idea that Mr. LoBianco—Tony—was a—” She pressed her lips together and glared at him.
Again, Dan finished for her. “A mob boss from Vegas? You had no idea your lover was a what, Miss O’Leary?” Her frowning expression emphasized her high cheekbones and generous mouth. Dan shifted his weight, forced himself to focus on her eyes. “What are you really afraid of?”
She again attempted to cross her arms. Grimacing when her chains prevented it, she let her hands fall limp. “I’m not afraid of anything.”
“Everyone’s afraid of something,” he said quietly. “We just need to work on whatever it is that’s scaring you.” In the face of her defiant silence, Dan stood up, shrugged into his windbreaker. Then he turned away and stalked to the locked door. He pressed a button on the intercom set into the wall and spoke into it. “Griffin, I need your keys, man.”
He stepped back when a key turned in the lock. The door opened to reveal a potbellied, balding guard who dangled a ring of keys from his hand. Griffin sorted through them, found the one he wanted and held the ring out by that key. Dan took it, saying, “Thanks. We’ll be out of here in a minute.”
The guard nodded, cut his gaze to the prisoner then exited the room, closing the door behind him. Dan approached his prisoner, crooking a finger at her and saying, “Stand up, please.”
The Great Escape Page 3
