by Kaylea Cross
He opened his mouth to say something but then looked toward the road, and his eyes narrowed.
She followed his gaze. A black SUV slowed at her driveway and pulled in. The car rolled all the way up to her front door, and three men wearing dark suits spilled out. Her stomach sank as she recognized them: FBI.
“I better see what that’s about.” She stomped up front.
Were they ever going to leave her alone?
The tallest of the men—early thirties, crew-cut blond hair, cold eyes—reached into his pocket and pulled out his ID as she reached them. “Agent Hunter, FBI. We met a few weeks ago.”
“What is this about?”
“We need you to come with us, ma’am.”
Her heart rate picked up. Why now? They’d been out here and had looked over her land, had found nothing and left. Had something new come up? Suddenly, with a sinking heart, she realized what that might be.
Jack Sullivan had handed over her paintings.
She had no idea how she was going to talk her way out of this. Her throat tightened. “I need to lock up.”
“Of course.”
The agents followed her in when she went inside to get her keys.
“Do you think I could have five minutes? I ran outside this morning without getting ready for the day.”
“No problem.”
But Agent Hunter went upstairs with her, checked out her bathroom before she went in. At least he let her close the door behind her. She took care of her morning needs, too nervous to do more than the bare minimum.
What would they make of her paintings? She brushed her teeth with jerky, frenetic movements. Did she need a lawyer?
She’d had one after the accident on the reservoir. She could call him again. She hesitated. Not yet. Lawyering up right now would just make her look guilty. Not to mention she didn’t have the money. But she would definitely call if things got any worse.
On the way out to the car, she looked to the backyard, wanting to tell Eddie that she was leaving, but Eddie had gone back into the woods already. He wasn’t the type to sit around; when he worked, he gave one hundred percent. One of the many reasons why the town kept him even with the budget cuts last fall.
Whatever maintenance personnel they had left now answered to him. The town trusted him with all kinds of things, even sent him to tradeshows out of state to check out new road-maintenance equipment they needed. He’d been proud of that.
“Are you getting some work done on the property?” Agent Hunter asked as he opened the back door of the SUV for her, looking at Eddie’s pickup.
“Just giving away some firewood.”
The agent watched her through narrowed eyes, a cold expression on his face, not looking like he believed her. Which didn’t bode well for the upcoming questioning. She was innocent, had nothing to do with Brady Blackwell or Jack Sullivan’s troubles. How did she end up getting pulled deeper and deeper into all this mess?
At the end of her driveway, the car turned onto the road toward Broslin. Cold sweat gathered on her forehead as she clasped her hands on her knees. And her phobias were the least of her problems.
She hated, absolutely hated Jack Sullivan for forcing her secret out, then doing this to her.
* * *
The fans on the ceiling whirled in a futile effort to evenly distribute the heat through the Broslin Police Station. The phones rang off the hook; the department’s ancient copy machine grated on, giving everyone within ten feet an instant headache,
Nobody sat behind the front desk. Leila didn’t work weekends. She kept office hours Monday through Friday. The rest of the time, the nearest person answered the phone. Whoever was unlucky to be on duty had to fend for himself.
“No, ma’am. We can’t arrest your neighbor’s dog for getting yours with puppies. I’m sorry, ma’am.” Jack listened. “You’d have to go to court for, ah, puppy support; we don’t do that either.” He let the old woman rage at him for another minute before politely saying good-bye and hanging up.
And, miraculously, there wasn’t another call immediately.
He sat at his desk and watched the closed door of the interrogation room. The news that the FBI had brought in Ashley Price was the first thing he’d heard when he’d come in for his exercise this morning. Okay, when he’d come in to talk Bing into letting him back on at least partial duty.
Then he caught sight of her through the half-closed blinds, and he chose to sit at his desk instead, from where he could keep an eye on her while surreptitiously signing into the database on his computer. Not that the data could hold his attention. Twice he’d come to his feet to barge in. Twice he’d sat himself back down. Bing was in his office, talking on the phone but keeping an eye on him.
Joe and Chase were off duty. Mike was out on some call. Harper, Broslin’s black sheep turned cop, was the only other person in the office.
“Want some coffee?” he asked Jack as he put down his phone and headed for the coffee machine.
“Had too much already. Hey,” Jack called after him. “Any missing persons since I’ve been out?”
Harper poured his coffee, then strode back to him, tall and lean, a ladies’ man, if the gossip was to be believed. To his credit, he didn’t parade his women around the office like Joe. Harper liked to keep his private life private.
“No one’s gone missing. A single murder all week, early this morning, not ours, over in West Grove. Looks like nephew kept his old-man uncle locked up in a closet, starved him to death while he spent the vic’s social security checks.”
“People are idiots.” Jack reached for the mouse and brought up the crime-scene photos of the West Grove murder in the central database, dozens of shots of the old guy’s closet, with and without the body.
The short hairs stood straight up at the back of his neck as he took in the spookily familiar images on his screen—an old man folded on the floor, stacks of boxes at his feet, clothes hanging above him. Exactly as in Ashley’s painting.
“Remind me not to get old.” Harper scanned the images. “Neighbor called it in. They hadn’t seen the old guy in a while. Hell of a thing is, if they’d called a day earlier, the poor geezer could have been saved.”
Jack looked at TOD. Time of death was approximately eight p.m. last night. Just when Ashley had begun painting.
An unpleasant shiver ran down his spine as Harper saluted him with his coffee mug, then sauntered away.
If Ashley did have visions, if she wasn’t pretending…
Whatever was happening to her was taking a damn heavy toll, he had seen that. Hell, he was a tough-ass cop, and he wasn’t sure he could live with something like that.
Bing got off his phone at last and headed for him. “You’re only supposed to come in to use the gym for your physical therapy.”
“Reporting back to duty, sir.” Jack winced when his side brushed against an open drawer.
“Like hell.”
“I’m all healed.”
“Bullshit.”
“Healed enough.”
Bing’s gaze turned to steel. “I’m the captain. Keeping my men safe is my top priority. Go home.”
“I could be useful on this case,” he said reasonably.
“Like a screen door on a submarine. You were one of Brady’s victims. Your sister was one of Brady’s victims. Can you say conflict of interest?”
Frustration tightened his jaw. “You can’t keep me on sick leave forever.”
“I can try. I sure as hell am not gonna lose you again.”
A few moments of charged silence passed between them.
Jack broke it first. “What happened to me wasn’t your fault.”
“One of my men went missing, and I couldn’t find him.” Bing dropped into Joe’s empty chair at the next desk, the fight going out of him. “You still look like death chewed on you before spitting you out.”
Which was exactly what had happened, come to think of it. And yet… “I can’t sit at home. How about desk duty? Partial
duty?”
The man gave an irritated huff. “You looked right into my goddamn eyes and lied. You hadn’t come to Broslin for a job. You came to hunt Blackwell. And you didn’t say a damn word about it. I thought we were friends.”
The words made him feel like dirt. Technically, he hadn’t lied. He just hadn’t told Bing everything. But he was in the wrong, and he knew it, so he wasn’t about to defend himself. “I want Blackwell,” he said simply.
“You stay away from that bastard if you want your badge.”
Tense silence stretched between them.
“She was my sister,” Jack said after a while. “I can’t let this go. Could you? If you had Stacy’s killer within reach?”
Bing’s wife had been killed two years before, during a home invasion, the killer never apprehended, zero leads.
His mouth narrowed into a thin line. “Don’t you dare throw that into my face. I had let it go. You know why? Because I swore an oath to the citizens of this town to protect them. Not to pursue my own vengeance, dammit.”
“You’re a better man than I am,” Jack said, and meant it. He had carried the darkness around inside him for too long. It had changed him, he knew that. He didn’t care. He was so close now, he just wanted to see this to the end, wanted to see Blackwell finished.
“I can’t sit around at home and do nothing. All I do is think about Shannon and that bastard. It drives me crazy,” he admitted. “Let me come back.”
Bing watched him.
The phone rang again. Harper answered it.
Bing shook his head after a couple of seconds. “Hell, maybe work would keep you busy, keep you out of trouble. Desk duty only.” He scowled as he thought for another second. “On three conditions. You pass the physical, you talk to the shrink, and you stay away from the Blackwell case.”
He leaned forward, into the I-mean-business pose they all used in the interrogation room. “I catch you as much as looking at that bastard’s file from across the room, and you’re going back on leave. Is that clear?”
Jack scratched the back of his head and let the captain interpret it whatever way he wanted.
Bing leaned back in the chair, his shoulders relaxing a little. “I don’t suppose you remembered anything new?”
Jack shook his head. He’d been in and out for those three days he’d been missing, the details sketchy. The fact that he’d been blindfolded complicated things. And so far he hadn’t remembered anything that could have given them a clue on where Blackwell had taken him after tasing him at that abandoned farmhouse. “I was in some kind of a workshop, that’s all I remember. He had plenty of tools handy. Somewhere in a basement, I think, cement floor, a woodstove and fan, a metal chair he chained me to.”
Bing winced. “It’ll come back. You need to give yourself a chance to recover.”
“Feds said anything about why they brought Ashley Price in?” he asked after a few seconds, reaching for his coffee cup, gesturing toward the interrogation room with it. “She has nothing to do with anything.”
A bushy eyebrow rose. “Now you’re defending her?”
“Swore to protect the innocent and all that.”
“I’m sure they’re not going to waterboard her in there.”
Yeah, but they would push her, push her hard, and she had enough stress on her already. She needed somebody on her side. She needed a damn lawyer. Why the hell didn’t she hire one?
For the hundredth time, he considered just marching in there. Trouble was, he wasn’t sure if that would really help her.
Bing’s eyes narrowed. “Ashley Price and the Feds are not your concern.”
“What else is going on, then?” Better take the captain in another direction before he kicked him out of the station.
“Still the damn string of break-ins, a handful of shoplifters, two domestic violence cases, and a parole violation, none of which you’ll touch. You’re on desk duty. Try not to forget it.”
The interrogation room door opened, and Agent Hunter stepped out, apparently to take a call. Jack caught a glimpse of Ashley through the gap in the door. He didn’t like her distressed expression.
“Be back in a sec.” He jumped up and strode forward. By the time he reached the agent, the man was putting his phone away.
Jack shoved his hands into his pockets. “Anything new?”
The man flashed him a cold look. “I’m not at liberty to say. However, I do need to see you, Detective Sullivan, as soon as we’re finished here.”
“Regarding?”
“I understand you’ve paid Miss Price several visits lately.”
“She saved my life. I owed her a proper thank-you.”
The agent quirked an eyebrow. “Then you wouldn’t be, by any chance, investigating?”
“Interfering with an FBI investigation could cost me my badge,” he deadpanned.
“Let’s not forget that, Detective.”
* * *
The interrogation room was small, drab gray, and oppressive. It made her anxious. Then again, what didn’t? She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been as far from her house as the police station.
Ashley steeled her spine. She refused to live the rest of her life in fear.
“When was the first time you met Detective Sullivan?” Agent Hunter asked.
“The night I found him.”
“But you didn’t know who he was at the time?”
“No. He was unconscious for the most part.” Except when he’d forced her to drive back to her house.
“When was the first time you heard the name Brady Blackwell?”
“A few days later, when the police asked me about him.”
The agent threw more questions at her, his voice becoming more clipped with each, his shoulders growing stiffer. In a way, she understood him. He wanted a solution, a bankable lead. He wanted a victory and probably the promotion that would come with it, and he didn’t like that he wasn’t getting what he needed from her.
She pulled her neck in and waited for the bomb to drop.
But as the questions kept coming, he didn’t ask about her paintings. In fact, he sounded like they hadn’t discovered any leads lately, which was why they were going back, covering old ground.
So maybe Jack Sullivan hadn’t betrayed her after all but kept her secret. She wasn’t sure what to make of that.
“People say you keep to yourself. Why?” Agent Hunter kept pushing. He was like a robot. He was checking off checkboxes in his head, marching forward, going for the win.
Jack was just as determined but not as detached. The case was personal for him. Blackwell had put him in the grave.
“I work a lot,” she answered the question.
“And you have no idea who might have buried Detective Sullivan on your land? You had nothing to do with it?”
“No.” She’d said that over and over again. “Am I an official suspect?”
“Yes.”
She closed her eyes for a second. A suspect. Not even just a “person of interest.”
Agent Hunter was hungry for a win. Jack had a personal vendetta. Captain Bing hated her guts to start with… Her future looked bleaker with every passing minute.
The agent pinned her with a cold look. “You had opportunity. The grave is on your land.” He shot the words at her.
“But I didn’t put Jack Sullivan into that grave. He can tell you I didn’t.”
“You could have helped Blackwell after Detective Sullivan had lost consciousness.”
She gritted her teeth. Painting her latest vignette of horror and Jack’s interrogation the night before had left her drained. She didn’t have enough for another fight. “What possible motive could I have?”
He waited, held out the silence. “Am I correct that your mother died in a mental institution?”
And craziness could be hereditary. Crazy people didn’t need a motive. A chill ran through her. Was that what they were going to run with?
“That has nothing to do with me,” she protested
.
“Doesn’t it?”
She stared at the man. Were they this desperate? Did they care more about the win than the facts? Maybe they did. It wasn’t like the innocent had never been made to pay for crimes they didn’t commit. She’d seen plenty of shows on TV about people who’d been wrongly convicted and were only recently released, saved by DNA. Some had been in prison for decades.
And if Agent Hunter won…
He wouldn’t. She was going to beat the FBI, beat Jack Sullivan, return her life to normal, and get her daughter back. She wasn’t going to lose Maddie over this. Whatever she had to do—
“I would like to call my attorney,” she said, although she was no longer sure that would be enough.
But the possible solution that suddenly burst into her head scared her as much as the false accusations, maybe more. Her entire body went cold. She considered the idea anyway.
What if she didn’t resist her visions?
What if she embraced them? Would she see more? Would she see how Sullivan had come to be in the grave? Would she see Blackwell? Could she lead the authorities to him to end this nightmare?
Did she dare willingly walk into the abyss? And what if she did and couldn’t find her way back? Would she end up like her mother and lose everything?
She needed to think this over, needed to get out of here. “I want to call my lawyer,” she repeated.
The agent closed his notebook and rose. “You’re entitled to an attorney, but we’re done for today.”
She swallowed hard. “I was going to stay with my father in Philadelphia for a few days, if that’s okay.” If the Feds released her, Jack Sullivan couldn’t do anything. She held her breath for the answer.
But the man shook his head. “I’d rather that you stuck around for the time being.”
Disappointment washed over her. She’d talk to her lawyer about this too. She had to see Maddie.
She walked out to the main area of the police station, thinking about the lawyer and how she could force a vision somehow, if she could make that work. Her gaze caught on Jack Sullivan. He hadn’t been in earlier. Now he was watching her from behind a desk, across the room.
