Cold Midnight

by Joyce Lamb

  “Are there other suspects?”

  “Not at the moment. I’m waiting on some test results on the shirt that could add to the case.”

  “For now, though, you do realize that this case is circumstantial,” she said.

  “My gut tells me he’s one of the guys.”

  “Your gut carries a lot of weight with this office, but I’d need more to make a strong case.”

  “My plan is to get a confession.”

  “So just bring him in for questioning.”

  “My partner questioned him already and didn’t get anything. I need him in cuffs and intimidated if I’m going to get anywhere with him.”

  “Okay. I’ll get a warrant issued, and we’ll see what happens. We can present the case to the grand jury, and if they don’t bite, kick it.”

  “Done. Thanks, Rebecca.”

  “Good luck.”

  Disconnecting the call, Chase pushed the speed dial button for Sam.

  “Hawkins,” Sam answered.

  “How soon can you meet me?”

  “Half an hour, forty minutes. What’s up?”

  “I just talked to the prosecutors’ office. It’s time to make an arrest.”

  “Who are we arresting?”

  “Quinn McKay.”

  20

  KYLIE USED A PAPER TOWEL TO WIPE UP WATER drops around the sink. Her lips still throbbed from Chase’s kiss. Hell, her whole body throbbed. Especially her heart. She should have been feeling victorious: He’d tried to show her how weak she was, and she’d flipped the game on him. She couldn’t have asked for a more satisfying win. Except it didn’t feel like a win. It felt like a loss. Empty.

  The phone rang, and she snagged the receiver off its cradle.

  “Hello?”

  “So he did let you in,” Jane said. “I won’t bother to ask you why, since it’s hardly important.” Which was her way of saying it was totally important—to her. “How is he?”

  Kylie snugged the phone between her ear and shoulder as she tore another section of paper towel off the roll. “Fine. He’s in the shower.”

  “Fine? He can’t possibly be fine.” Jane released a sigh, the one that said “I’m surrounded by incompetents.” “When he gets out, will you let him know that I’m on my way over?”

  “You really don’t have to do that. I’ve already talked to him.”

  “I’m sure your idea of talking included an extended discussion about the weather.”

  Kylie bristled. So what if she and Quinn didn’t have a deep, dark conversation about how there were evil bastards in the world and sometimes they hurt innocent people? Maybe all he needed at the moment was a fresh pot of coffee. “You’ll be happy to know that our discussion got a little heated when I said it was partly cloudy and he insisted that one big cloud that covers the entire sky means it’s mostly cloudy.”

  “What is it with you two? You have to make everything a joke. Well, this situation is not a joke. Our brother could go to prison.”

  Kylie turned as Quinn walked in wearing a clean T-shirt and shorts, his hair wet and combed back. He looked like total, haggard crap as he raised a questioning brow.

  “He’s not going to prison, Jane,” Kylie said. “He didn’t do anything.”

  Rolling his eyes, he strolled barefoot over to the coffeemaker.

  “Innocent people go to prison all the time,” Jane said. “And don’t think that just because your high school sweet-heart is on the case that he’ll give Quinn a break. He has a job to do, and he’s going to do it no matter what it does to you.”

  Kylie turned her back to her brother and walked toward the deck doors. “For the record, I trust that Chase will do the right thing, and the right thing is not putting Quinn in prison for something he didn’t do.”

  Jane made a sound that would have been a snort if she hadn’t managed to make it so delicate. “I don’t know why I bother to argue with you. I never win.”

  “Funny, that’s how I feel.”

  “You’re too defensive. When did you get so defensive?”

  Her voice had shifted smoothly into professional gear. Kylie’s cue to bolt. “Quinn just got out of the shower. I’ll tell him you’re on your way.”

  “This is a difficult time for you, Kylie. You shouldn’t keep it all bottled up inside.”

  “I’ll work on it. But I think Quinn needs your attention more than I do right now.”

  “Wench,” Quinn growled behind her.

  She shot him a wicked grin over her shoulder. “When shall I tell him you’ll be here?”

  “An hour. I have to clear my schedule.”

  “Drive safely.”

  She clicked off the call and faced her brother, taking in his pallor and the puffiness around his eyes. More than drunk, he looked unhealthy, stressed.

  He set down his cup with a grimace. “This coffee is terrible.”

  “I made it the way I do every day.”

  “Why do you think Jane always wants tea?”

  Kylie wished things could stay like this. Easy and bantering. “You’re just bitter because I ruined your morning as a happy drunk.”

  Groaning, he plopped onto a stool at the end of the island. “Christ, I can’t believe you sicced her on me.”

  “She’d whipped out the legal pad that has my name at the top. No way was I in the mood to be analyzed.” Especially after that kiss with Chase. Her lips still vibrated. To occupy her restless hands, she retrieved a cup from the cupboard above the coffeemaker and filled it.

  “Ever wonder what that legal pad says about you?” Quinn asked.

  It took her a moment to remember what they’d been talking about. “I imagine lots of doodles of tennis players with rackets broken over their heads. What does yours say?”

  “I don’t even want to think about it,” he said.

  She tore open a pink packet of sweetener and dumped the contents into her coffee. After retrieving the milk from the fridge, she dribbled enough into her cup to turn her coffee the color of light caramel then gingerly took a sip. “There’s nothing wrong with this coffee. It’s fine.”

  “That’s because you put all that crap in it. Once you’re done messing with it, it’s milk and saccharine with a tablespoon of coffee for color.”

  She gave him a benign smile. “Now you’re just being mean.”

  Pushing off the stool, he crossed to the fridge and jerked it open. “I’m ruined, you know. People are never going to forget this.”

  “The people who know you know better than that, Quinn.”

  “Maybe it’d be okay if we lived in a big town, like Miami or even Tampa. But Kendall Falls—”

  “Is filled with people who care about you.”

  He slammed the door shut with a rattle of glass bottles and faced her, his eyes dark with misery. “I don’t know how you can even look at me.”

  “Trust me, you’re much easier to look at now that you’ve had a shower.”

  “I’m serious, Kylie. My shirt was found with the bat.”

  “Did you hit me with that bat?” she asked, her tone deliberately sharp.

  He flinched back, and something that looked like pain contorted his features before his Adam’s apple bobbed. “No. I didn’t.”

  “All right then.”

  “It’s really that easy for you?”

  She took a breath. Nothing was ever easy, or black and white. She believed him when he said he didn’t do it, but his behavior—I’ve been a terrible brother—confused the hell out of her. Still, he needed her to sound sure, so she gave him a firm, convincing nod. “Yes. It’s really that easy for me.”

  He turned away—she thought she caught a glimpse of tears—and reopened the fridge to peer inside as if searching for something to eat.

  She walked over and stood beside him. “Are you going to be okay?” she asked softly.

  He nodded without looking at her. “Yeah.” But his voice sounded constricted.

  “I’ve got a student in fifteen, but I can postpone
.”

  “I’m fine, Kylie. I promise.”

  “Do me a favor?”

  “What?” He glanced at her reluctantly.

  She grinned. “Say hi to Dr. Jane for me.”

  Laughing, he swatted at her ponytail as she walked away.

  AS SHE CLOSED QUINN’S FRONT DOOR BEHIND her, Kylie paused on the front stoop. Chase was leaning against the front fender of his SUV, looking formidable and unfairly sexy in those soft, faded jeans. When she noticed his stony expression, trepidation congealed inside her.

  “What are you still doing here?” she asked.

  “I’m waiting for Sam.”

  “Why?”

  He straightened away from the truck. “I don’t have a choice, Kylie. I’m a cop.”

  Her heart started to pound in her ears. No way. He wouldn’t. But she could see by the look on his face, the resigned hardness in his eyes, that he would.

  “If he’s indicted,” he went on, “he’ll have a trial. If he’s innocent—”

  “If he’s innocent? Of course he is. He didn’t do it.”

  “That’s not for you to decide.”

  “But I’m the one who was attacked. Don’t I get a say?”

  “You’re not objective.”

  “And you are?”

  “Hell, no. If I were, Quinn would have been sitting in a cell a long time ago. My job is to look at the evidence and make an informed decision. It’s up to the grand jury to look at the same evidence and decide whether charges should be filed.”

  “Evidence that you’re going to continue to collect.”

  “Ky, please. I’m not doing this to hurt you. But I have a job to do, and I’m going to do it. End of discussion.”

  21

  CHASE STRODE INTO THE INTERVIEW ROOM, YANKED a chair out from the table and sat across from Kylie’s brother. He felt Quinn’s wary gaze on him but didn’t acknowledge him just yet, instead taking in his body language without being blatant about it. Quinn sat with his elbows on the table, his hands clasped before him. The pads of his thumbs were pressed together and moving back and forth in a nervous dance. His swept-back hair revealed a glimmering sheen of sweat on his forehead. The guy was clearly on edge.

  “Let’s start with where you were the day Kylie was attacked.”

  “How is she? Is she freaking?” Quinn’s dark eyes were bleary with booze and distress.

  “That’s not an answer to my question.”

  “As I told Sam the other day, I was getting drunk in the garage.” Quinn kept up the steady, back-and-forth rhythm of his thumbs.

  “Alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why alone? Why not with friends?”

  “Wasn’t in the mood.”

  An alarm sounded in Chase’s head. Quinn’s speech pattern had just changed. He’d been answering questions with “I” as the subject, and suddenly he’d dropped the pronoun. Could be a classic liar’s mistake or just a coincidence. “How did you find out about what happened to your sister?”

  Quinn paused the thumb boogie but didn’t respond.

  “You have to think about it?” Chase asked.

  “I was drunk off my ass at the time.”

  “I would expect you’d remember clearly where you were when you found out something so big.”

  “I’m sure most people would,” Quinn said slowly, enunciating each word, “but I was loaded.”

  Chase switched gears. “Let’s talk about the bat.”

  Quinn dropped his hands apart and sat back. “What about it? I’ve never seen it.”

  “You saw it yesterday next to her Jeep.”

  “That was a fake, wasn’t it?”

  “How would you know that?”

  “I assumed, like everyone else. Didn’t you? Does that make you a suspect?”

  Chase didn’t react. “What about your shirt at the scene? How do you explain that?”

  “I already told Sam. It rained, and I got wet. I took off the shirt, and I forgot it when I left. Don’t you two communicate?”

  Chase sat forward, looked Quinn dead in the eye. “You’re not helping yourself here.”

  Quinn stared at him for a long moment, his expression maddeningly blank. Kylie blank. “You only want answers that incriminate me.”

  “You incriminated yourself. Otherwise, your shirt wouldn’t have been buried with the bat used to tear up your sister’s knee and you’d have an alibi other than ‘I was in the garage getting drunk all by myself.’ ”

  Quinn’s red-rimmed eyes went flinty.

  “No matter what I say, you’re going to see me as the guy who attacked my sister. And you know what? I don’t think you’re all that objective.”

  “I’m probably the only cop in this town who wants you to be innocent. It scares the shit out of me what it’ll do to your sister if it turns out that you’re the guy who hit her with that bat.”

  Quinn’s lips thinned, and his chin actually trembled. “I didn’t do it. I couldn’t have done it.”

  “Prove it.”

  “Don’t you think I would if I could?” Quinn shoved back his chair. He began to pace with all the pent-up frustration of a wild animal in a too-small cage.

  “Tell me what you meant this morning,” Chase said.

  Quinn whirled back toward him. “What I meant about what?”

  “When you told Kylie that you’d been a terrible brother.”

  He looked confused for another moment, and then the blood drained from his face. “Christ, you heard that? And, what, you immediately jumped to the conclusion that I meant because I destroyed her knee?” Turning away, he scrubbed his hands over his face and groaned aloud. “I am so fucking fucked.”

  “What did you want to tell her, Quinn? You’re obviously desperate to get it off your chest.”

  “Fuck that. I want a lawyer.”

  Chase winced inwardly. Damn it, he’d pushed too hard. “Kylie believes you’re innocent. If it turns out that you’re not, I’m personally going to make you a very miserable man.”

  22

  KYLIE HAD PACED THE LOBBY OF THE KENDALL Falls Public Safety Building for so long that the woman at the front desk, a redhead with radiant blue eyes, had started smiling at her like they were old friends. After the first two hours of watching Kylie trying to wear a path in the black-and-white tile floor, the woman had even offered to get her some coffee or water.

  Her cell phone rang, and Kylie flinched. Her hands shook while she fished it out of her bag. “Hello?”

  “Do you know where Quinn is?”

  “Jane. I tried to call you earlier, but you’d already left and your cell was off.”

  “I’m at his house,” Jane plowed ahead. “Didn’t you say he’d be here?”

  “Yes. It’s just . . .” She had no clue how to say it.

  “I’ve got a lot on my plate today,” Jane snapped. “I canceled several appointments so I could be here.”

  Kylie bit down on the urge to bark back at her impatient sister. Instead, she was blunt. “He was arrested. We’re at the police department.”

  Silence.

  “Jane?”

  “Arrested for what?”

  Kylie had to take a breath before she could say it. “My attack.”

  “Oh my God. Oh my God. Not Quinn.”

  “He didn’t do it,” Kylie said quickly.

  “Of course he didn’t. I was just thinking of how awful it must be for him.”

  “That’s why I’m here. I’ll post his bail and take him home, make sure he’s okay.” Kylie sank onto a chair. “Chase won’t listen to me. I was there, Jane. I was on that path. I would have known if my own brother had . . . hurt me like that.”

  “I don’t know much about the law, but the evidence is circumstantial, and really, Kylie, what are we talking about here? No one was killed. You recovered fine. The chances of Quinn going to jail even if he were convicted are slim.”

  “You must not have read the entire story in the paper. It said a conviction for assault w
ith a deadly weapon could carry a five-year prison term.”

  Jane didn’t do anything more than breathe for several seconds. “Have you called a lawyer?” she finally asked, her voice thin now from stress.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Good. I’m on my way.”

  “Maybe we should wait until Quinn’s been released before we tell Mom?”

  “Definitely,” Jane said. “She wouldn’t take it well.”

  Finally, she and Jane agreed on something. “See you in a bit.”

  Kylie cut off the call and looked up to see Chase standing several feet away watching her. Her breath caught as her gaze met his. He looked both sad and angry, as if he knew something she didn’t and he dreaded the moment she found out. Jane would say she was projecting, that the look on his face was basically indecipherable and she assigned her own meaning to it, a meaning that she feared.

  Taking a fortifying breath, she asked, “Are you done with him?”

  “He lawyered up.”

  “Just now? You’ve had him in there for more than an hour.”

  “Well, I had to get in a few good punches before I started questioning him.”

  Sarcasm. Just what they needed. She bit back her own snarky response and let the ball stay in his court. One of them had to be the adult.

  He took a step toward her, lowered his voice. “Your brother just lied to me about where he was and what he was doing when you were getting the living shit knocked out of you ten years ago.”

  His words stunned her, and for a moment she could only stare at him in silence. Quinn wouldn’t lie. He had no reason to lie. The answer was simple: “You’re wrong,” she said.

  Sighing, Chase took her arm. “Let’s continue this conversation somewhere more private.”

  She forced herself not to stiffen at the feel of his fingers on her skin and let him lead her to the squad’s break room. While he poured coffee, she sat automatically at the wooden table, barely taking note of the ancient avocado refrigerator and shiny new coffeemaker.

  Chase had to be wrong. Why would Quinn lie?

  Chase set a cup of caramel-colored coffee in front of her. “Be careful, it’s hot.”