So did she, but she wasn’t sure she’d find those answers here.
While Shelby wasn’t on friendly terms with Cooper or Colt, the two brothers weren’t exactly friendly with Jewell, either. In fact, judging from the frosty looks they were occasionally aiming at Seth, they also didn’t care much for their stepbrother. Probably because Jewell had raised Seth after abandoning them.
Yes, that definitely had created some tension.
Tension that had turned every muscle in Seth’s body to iron. Not that Shelby had personal hands-on knowledge of that, because he’d kept his distance from her after they’d arrived at the sheriff’s office. But she could tell from the grip Seth had on his borrowed phone and his terse responses to the caller that he was running on spent adrenaline and a steady dose of frustration.
Shelby knew exactly how he felt.
“Well?” she prompted the moment Seth finished his latest call. “Anything on the missing men who tried to kill us?”
He shook his head. “The FBI has a team looking for them. They’ll turn up.” Then Seth shot a narrowed glance at Cooper, who’d also just finished another round of calls. “Anything on that dead body?”
“I’m working on it,” Cooper said, his voice practically a snarl. “The CSIs are processing both the barn and the warehouse now. Another is going through the kidnappers’ truck that you drove here.”
Shelby wondered if the local CSIs and FBI were actually cooperating with each other. Maybe. Jurisdiction fell under the sheriff’s office, but that clearly hadn’t stopped Seth from calling in his FBI buddies. That might not sit well with Cooper. Of course, nothing probably sat well with him at the moment.
She didn’t care who found answers. Shelby just wanted someone to get to the bottom of this.
Whatever this was.
“What about my truck and Shelby’s car?” Seth asked. “Any sign of them?”
Cooper shook his head. “They weren’t at the warehouse or the barn. No vehicles were found at either location.”
Probably because the kidnappers hadn’t wanted Seth and her to use them to attempt an escape. Still, if the vehicles turned up, they might contain clues as to who had moved them.
Seth didn’t ask Cooper anything else. Or say anything to her. Instead, he launched into another call. Shelby wanted to make some calls of her own, but she didn’t have a phone, and all the lines in the sheriff’s office were tied up while they were still trying to track down those men.
Besides, the main reason she hadn’t asked for a phone was because she really didn’t have anyone to call.
Her brother Aiden was away on a trip with his fiancée and wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. Her sister had her hands full taking care of her adopted twins. That left her mother, who was dealing with her own demons and had checked herself into a psychiatric facility. It would only make those demons worse to hear how close to dying her youngest daughter had come just a few hours earlier. Her mom would want to know the details. Details that Shelby didn’t want to say aloud. The kidnapping. Being tied up.
Those gunshots.
She’d been through a lot of tense situations, but no one had ever fired shots at her and tried to murder her.
The sounds and images came flying at her like bullets. They hit her hard, causing her knees to buckle, and Shelby staggered a little before she could stop herself.
Seth was right there, even before the stagger ended, and he took hold of her arm and sat her down in the chair next to one of the deputy’s desks. He didn’t stop there. Though he didn’t look particularly pleased about the chore, he went to the water cooler, filled a paper cup and brought it back to her.
“Drink this,” he insisted. “And stay in that chair.” No bedside manner. Zero. But the water was a nice touch since she actually might need it. Her throat felt ready to snap shut.
“I’m all right,” she managed to say. “I’m just a little dizzy.” Along with the nerves zinging in her body.
Seth checked her eyes, no doubt trying to figure out if she was telling the truth or anything close to it. “When you got examined at the hospital, did the doctor say you’d get dizzy?” he asked.
Shelby nodded, sipped the water, stayed seated. “He said it was a possibility.” Along with nausea and other unpleasant side effects. “They won’t know what kind of drug was used on us until they get back lab results.”
When Seth continued to stare at her, Shelby stopped in midsip and looked up. “Why? What did the doctor tell you?” Because it occurred to her then that Dr. Howland might have given her the diluted version of what she could expect. “Did those men do something to us that I should know about?”
Seth shook his head. “No. I’m not keeping anything from you.”
Good. They were on the same information page. Well, hopefully.
At least there hadn’t been a sexual assault. Shelby had been checked for that. For any signs of trauma, too, but other than scrapes, bruises and a single needle puncture mark on her arm, she was okay.
Physically anyway.
It might take forty years or so to stop hearing the sound of those gunshots. Or for her to forget what it felt like to be so close to dying.
“You’re not dizzy,” she pointed out.
Maybe because Seth didn’t experience such lowly human reactions. He only shrugged and stared down at her with those icy blue eyes. They coordinated well with his icy expression.
Except that changed a little, too.
“Once we’re done here, I’ll drive you to your place so you can get some rest.” Then Seth huffed, cursed under his breath and generally looked disgusted with himself for giving a flying fig about her well-being.
Shelby couldn’t help herself. She smiled. A weak, temporary one, but a smile nonetheless.
Under different circumstances, she might have liked him. Would have definitely been attracted to him. A no-brainer since Seth had rock-star looks to go along with that toned body and tempting mouth.
But this wasn’t different circumstances.
Something she always had to remind her body any time she was within breathing distance of the FBI cowboy.
The bothersome reminder of his hot looks probably had something to do with the fact that he’d saved her life multiple times during their escape. Shelby hated to owe him, but she did. If Seth hadn’t been with her in the warehouse and the woods, she likely wouldn’t be sitting here in the enemy’s camp. She’d be dead.
And speaking of the enemy, Cooper finished his latest call and strolled toward her.
“So tell me more about this anonymous call that you got earlier today,” Cooper said to her. Like some of Seth’s earlier questions, it sounded like an accusation.
Shelby ignored the tone, the hard look and tried to give the sheriff something, anything, that would help with this investigation. “The caller was a man, and he said there was evidence about Jewell’s trial in the warehouse.”
That earned her a skeptical look from both Colt and Cooper.
“If I had my phone, I could show you the number,” Shelby added. “But since the kidnappers took it, the only other thing I can tell you is that I didn’t recognize his voice. He had no distinguishable accent and didn’t give away any details about his identity or location.”
The skeptical looks turned flat, and Seth even joined in on it.
“An anonymous caller tells you to go to an abandoned warehouse in the middle of nowhere, and you don’t think that’s suspicious?” Cooper pressed.
“Not really. I’m an investigative reporter. I get calls like that all the time.”
Okay, that was a white lie. But she did occasionally get them, and she almost always followed through on them. She’d rethink that for future calls, though.
Shelby huffed. “Look, any time anyone contacts me and says they have information
about my father’s murder, I check it out. Period.”
She owed him that, even though no one in this room was on board with this particular crusade. Not even her own siblings. And especially not the other residents of Sweetwater Springs. Her father hadn’t been well liked because of his womanizing and cutthroat business dealings. That didn’t matter to Shelby, though. He was her dad, and she’d make sure Jewell paid for killing him.
Cooper stared at her. A long time. So long that Seth stepped in front of her. “Someone set Shelby and me up. We need to find out who and why.”
Seth and the sheriff were almost the same height and weight. They had similar glares that they traded when their gazes connected.
“So who would have set you up?” Cooper asked.
Seth tapped his badge. “Anybody who wanted to get back at me because of this.” Then he paused. “But no one that I can think of who’s connected to both Shelby and me. And trust me, I’ve been trying to come up with someone who’d fit that bill.”
When Cooper’s attention came back to her, Shelby knew it was her turn to answer. “I have a restraining order against Marvin Hance, the guy who got away with murder.”
She saw the instant recognition in Cooper’s eyes. Hance had certainly gotten a lot of press before and after his arrest. Thanks to her.
“Hance hates me because of the articles I wrote about him,” Shelby continued. “And other than his friends still in the FBI, he hates people with badges because he thinks they should have done more to clear his name. Maybe Hance figured that he wanted to set me up for murder and snare a cop or an FBI agent in the process.”
Except something about that theory didn’t make sense, and the sound Seth made let her know he was thinking the same thing. If this was a setup, then why had those men kidnapped Seth and her and taken them to that barn? It would have been a better setup to leave them in the warehouse. A lot less work, too.
“I’ll get Hance in here for questioning,” Cooper insisted, and he took out his phone, no doubt to do that, but the sound of Colt’s voice stopped him.
“We got an ID on the dead body from the warehouse. Randy Boutwell,” Colt announced when he finished his call. Like Cooper, the deputy came closer to them.
Shelby repeated the name several times and shook her head. “Never heard of him.”
Seth had a similar response. “Who is he?”
“An unemployed bartender from San Antonio,” Colt answered, reading from his notes. “Fifty-six years old. He has an old record for shoplifting and petty theft.”
Not exactly a hardened criminal, but maybe their paths had crossed at some point. She had to deal with all sorts of unsavory people sometimes to do research for her articles.
“San Antonio PD is running a background on him now,” Colt added.
Good. Something might turn up as to why someone would want him dead. Someone who could explain all of this.
“What about the mask that was on Boutwell?” Shelby asked.
Mercy, her voice actually cracked. It was silly to hate a sign of weakness such as that, but she did. Especially in front of these cowboy cops.
The three lawmen exchanged glances, and it was Colt who finally shrugged. “Nothing on it. The CSIs will process it for prints and trace.”
Which meant if the killer had half a brain there likely wouldn’t be any evidence left behind.
“The mask is a blown-up shot of the photo that the newspapers ran after my father was murdered,” she told them.
“After Whitt’s blood was found in the cabin,” Seth corrected.
Technically, Seth was right. There’d been blood, plenty of it, in the hunting cabin where her father and Jewell had met for their romantic trysts.
But no body.
At first the cops had ruled her dad a missing person, and that was when the particular photo had been splattered in the newspapers. He’d stayed listed as a missing person for more than twenty years until Shelby had pressured the new DA to reprocess the evidence. When Jewell’s DNA had been discovered on the bloody sheets, the woman finally had been arrested. And when Whitt’s bone fragments had been found a few months earlier, it had looked like a slam dunk case for the prosecution.
Still did.
“Was that why Randy Boutwell was killed?” Though Shelby hadn’t intended to say it aloud. She also hadn’t expected the trio of lawmen to know what she meant, but the scowl Seth gave her said otherwise.
“No,” Seth snapped. “Nobody in my family killed Boutwell to make my mother look innocent.”
“But it’s an interesting theory,” Shelby said. “Jewell’s in jail. No way could she have killed Boutwell herself, but this might put reasonable doubt in the jurors’ minds that my father’s killer is still out there.”
Oh, that didn’t sit well with any of them.
Not that she had expected it would.
Cooper and Colt certainly wouldn’t have done something like this. Or at least she hadn’t thought they would since they were essentially estranged from Jewell, but Jewell had kids who loved her. Her twin daughters, Rosalie and Rayanne.
And her stepson, Seth, of course.
Seth looked her straight in the eyes. “Your father’s killer is still out there.”
Shelby didn’t dodge that stare. “Then, we’ll have to agree to disagree about that.”
They could add it to the other mountain of things they disagreed about. Except Shelby immediately rethought that. The only thing they actually disagreed about was Jewell. Obviously, though, that was enough of a six-hundred-pound gorilla.
Cooper volleyed glances between Seth and her and finally gave a low groan. “You’re both free to go, but don’t leave town. I might have other questions for you.”
That order didn’t sit well with Seth. It got his jaw tight again. Of course, anything Cooper could have said might have caused that reaction.
“I’ll be at my house,” Shelby mumbled. “Seth will probably be at the McKinnon ranch, where you and your brothers can personally keep an eye on him.”
Literally.
Since Seth had been living in the guesthouse for months, waiting on his mother’s trial, and the guesthouse was a stone’s throw from both Colt’s and Cooper’s houses.
Shelby started toward the door, but when Seth didn’t budge, she stopped and looked back at him. “Still planning to give me a ride to my house?”
Seth exchanged a few glances with the McKinnons and then added some profanity. “I’ll wait at her place with her,” he growled to Cooper. “Just find these kidnappers fast. And I’ll need a gun and a phone until the FBI can bring me replacements.”
Maybe it was her frazzled nerves, but it took Shelby a few seconds for that to sink in. It didn’t sink in well.
“You think you’re staying with me?” she asked. “Because we both know that’s not a good idea.”
Seth gave her a flat look and took the gun and cell phone that Colt handed him. “Those two men might come after you again. You really want to be alone when that happens, huh?”
She opened her mouth to say yes, that she wanted to be alone so she could get her head on straight, but the yes lodged in her throat. Shelby didn’t want to have to fend off those men again. She probably couldn’t win.
But then, it might be just as dangerous to be under the same roof with Seth.
Seth put the gun in his shoulder holster, slipped the phone into his pocket. “If the sheriff hasn’t found those men by morning,” he added, “I’ll get you a safe house.”
Shelby didn’t want that, either. Didn’t want to be tucked away so that she couldn’t get to the bottom of what was happening. She had to come up with an alternative plan, one that didn’t involve Seth or the McKinnons.
But what?
She didn’t even get a chance to give that some thought be
cause Cooper’s phone rang, and he stepped away to take the call. Maybe, just maybe, this was news that the kidnappers had been caught. While she was hoping, maybe the person who’d killed Boutwell had been caught, as well. If so, then she could go home and not have to be afraid of her own shadow.
However, one glance at Cooper’s face and Shelby knew she hadn’t gotten that lucky.
“Send me the picture,” Cooper said to whoever was on the other end of the line. Several moments later his phone made a dinging sound.
“What’s wrong?” she asked the moment Cooper finished the call. His attention stayed on the phone screen for what seemed an eternity.
The sheriff didn’t jump to answer. Nor did he aim another hard look at her. This time when Cooper looked at her, she saw something else in his eyes. Concern maybe?
No.
It was sympathy.
Oh, no. This was going to be bad.
“The CSIs out at the warehouse found another body,” Cooper finally said.
Yes, bad, all right.
Mercy. Her knees nearly buckled again, and Shelby slapped her hand on the wall to stop herself from falling. The shock of hearing there was another body was enough to send her stomach into a tailspin, but Cooper had no doubt encountered other dead bodies.
Ones that hadn’t put that look of sympathy on his face.
“Oh, God,” Shelby managed to say. “Is it someone I know?”
“Maybe.” Cooper held up the phone so she could see the image on the screen. Seth came closer so he could have a look.
At first Shelby couldn’t figure out what she was seeing exactly.
“The dead woman was wearing a picture mask,” Cooper explained. “Like the one on the man in the warehouse.”
Shelby swallowed hard. Except the man had a mask of her father. This time, it was Shelby’s face on the screen. A photo that was often printed along with her articles.
A Lawman's Justice (Sweetwater Ranch Book 8) Page 4
