“Listen, though, he could have shot her, finished things quick and certain. With the gas, there was always a chance she could escape. What if it was a warning? Maybe he figured that if she didn’t die, that would be enough to scare her off, especially when he followed it up with a text message and then coming over here.”
“So you don’t think it will get worse?”
Matt wasn’t happy with the lilt of hope in Gemma’s voice. He liked how it sounded, but it was false hope right now, and he couldn’t let her hang on to it. “I don’t think we can say that for sure.” He glared at Clay with a “thanks a lot” kind of expression.
Gemma’s shoulders fell. Matt noticed for the first time how much more exhausted she looked even than she had after the carbon monoxide incident earlier.
“All right, if that’s all I need to know, I’ll head out and check things out.”
“Be careful,” Gemma urged.
Clay smiled and nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I will be.”
Matt followed him to the door, then locked it behind him after he left. He turned back to Gemma.
* * *
Matt’s eyes on hers seemed to look deep into the tangle of fears weaving its way around her heart. His expression had become more serious since the text message. Even though he’d been so insistent earlier that he didn’t want to push her into sharing more about the past than she was comfortable with, Gemma knew the rules had changed at this point. The text message had been a game changer, and everything was going to be different now.
Her heartbeat quickened and she had to remind herself to breathe deeply as she waited for what he’d say. She couldn’t bring herself to just volunteer the information. She needed him to ask, needed to know that he wanted to be invited into the not-so-pretty sections of her past.
Another deep breath. And another. She wasn’t ready.
“Do you have any more coffee?” she stalled.
“Gemma.” He shook his head. “I’m pretty sure you don’t need more coffee with whatever drugs you’ve got in your system that they gave you after the carbon monoxide.”
Her shoulders slumped as he sat down on the other end of the couch and looked at her. “I know I told you we wouldn’t talk about it...”
He trailed off. Gemma looked away.
Since she was looking at the wall, studying the mounted fish trophies that somehow looked not awful in this cabin, she didn’t see Matt reach out.
But she sure felt his hand cover hers and squeeze.
She swung her head back around, eyes meeting his with no hesitation. She’d expected him to yank his hand away quickly, but he let it stay there.
“I want to keep you safe, but I don’t know how to do that when I don’t have the whole story. He’s going to be one step ahead of me, Gemma, trying to get you, if I don’t know at least what you do about who he could be.”
This time the skipping of her heart had more to do with the emotion in his words, the words themselves and how he cared, than with fear. Something deep inside her felt...something.
“And, Gemma, I’m willing for this to go both ways. You tell me what really happened that night, trust me with that, and I’ll keep you in the loop on my investigation.”
He didn’t break eye contact as he said it. Everything about his body language backed up his words—he was telling the truth.
An inside look at the case, through his eyes? That would keep her close to it. Ensure that she could do everything possible to guarantee all the loose ends were tied up this time, that she really got closure and her life back.
Her self back. She was tired of being known as the girl who’d been through this or that related to the trial.
She wanted to just be Gemma Phillips.
Ending this case would let her do that, at least she hoped so. Which was why she nodded. Took a deep breath.
“You already know I was on a walk on the Hamilton property when I saw those men. I guess maybe I was curious, I don’t know, but once I saw movement, I studied them for a minute while I was walking, just curious about what they were doing. They were burying things in the ground, which struck me as odd.”
Matt nodded. “I remember this part. I paid attention at the trial—I knew you’d tell the truth about what really happened and I wanted to know.”
“Really?” Gemma had known Matt was there, but had assumed that when she’d talked he’d probably tuned her out. It went right along with her assumption that he would probably always hate her for her part in putting his dad behind bars. Now he was telling her he’d listened? And...appreciated what she’d had to say?
When had she ever felt as if anyone had appreciated the sacrifices she’d made to testify?
“I always wanted to tell you,” he admitted, his eyes not wavering from her.
Somehow it gave her the strength she needed to keep going. Gemma squeezed her eyes shut, then forced them back open. Stood up and started to pace.
“I saw them burying boxes. You heard all of that testimony, so there’s no need to go over it again.” Anytime anyone brought it up she saw the whole thing in her head all over again. Saw them behind the hanging Spanish moss, thinking no one saw or heard them as they talked about what they’d done, how many estates they’d stolen things from. She’d recognized a couple of them. Matt’s dad, for one, and Rich Thompson, who’d worked at a gas station not far out of town. Several of them were unfamiliar to her, but she could tell by their accents that they were mostly local. Not necessarily from Treasure Point, but at least from this corner of Georgia.
“I ran back toward the Hamilton House, but I tripped. The doctor told me later it was the worst ankle sprain he’d seen in his career. In any case, I fell.” Hard. The pine straw on the forest floor must have muffled her fall. Either that or the men she’d seen next had been too distracted by their own disagreement to notice a little bit of noise in the woods...
Her own heartbeat had been the loudest thing in her ears then, even when the men’s fighting had grown louder. They couldn’t have been standing more than thirty feet from her, off the little game trail she’d been using. She’d only seen the other men a minute before—they were close enough that she assumed they were together, even before she heard what these men were saying.
“Gemma?”
She had to blink to see Matt and his living room, rather than the dark, thick Southern woods she’d been lost in, in her mind. When she finally focused she noticed she’d stopped pacing. She was standing in the middle of the room, suddenly afraid to go on, afraid to move.
Somehow afraid that someone was watching...
Listening?
“Gemma.” Matt was up from his place on the couch now, moving toward her. All she could do was shake her head.
“What is it? You can trust me. You know that. I know you do.”
He was right. She did trust him, for reasons she couldn’t explain even if she tried. But she couldn’t shake her sudden uneasiness.
What she was about to say she’d only said out loud a handful of times. Once the police had decided that this part of her testimony was questionable, that it had too many gaps to be useful, she’d stopped telling this half of her story.
“They were fighting.” She lowered her voice. Looked around the room again. No one was eavesdropping. Gemma tried to use logic to calm her fears. Matt was inside and hadn’t noticed anything else unusual since the text message, and Clay Hitchcock was out there somewhere in the night.
No one else was here. She took a deep breath. Time to be brave whether the emotions were there or not. “They were fighting and I interrupted them. Harris Walker is the only one I could identify for sure. The other man had his back to me. His voice sounded familiar, but I never could place it.”
“That’s not uncommon in situations like these. Sometimes the trauma makes it too much for the brain to process.”
Gemma nodded. That was what she had assumed. “Anyway, when I fell, my ankle hurt too much for me to move right away, and I could hear them talki
ng. Their voices were tense and it wasn’t long before their fight got out of hand. Harris wanted more money—I assume from his part in stealing the antiques I’d seen the other men hiding—and the other man wouldn’t give it to him. The argument grew more heated. The last thing I heard was Harris threatening the other man. Even though my ankle felt as if it was on fire, I got up and ran anyway. I was afraid that if they saw me, they’d kill me. All I could hear from then on was my heartbeat and the pounding of my feet as I ran. I don’t know if he was shot or killed some other way, I just know that no one ever saw him again. And I think I was yards away when he was murdered, the second-to-last person to see him alive.”
Matt sat silently for a minute, nodding as he studied her face, looking like he was absorbing her story, taking it in. “And no one believed you?”
“No.” Gemma tried to keep the bitterness out of the word, but it was a struggle. Ten years later and she was still paying the price for everyone’s distrust of what she’d been so sure she’d seen. Although she would admit that by the time the case had gone to trial, so many people had tried to convince her that she’d been mistaken that she’d started to doubt a little herself.
But they were her memories. She never had doubted them fully. Just pushed them away, tried not to think about them.
A lot of good that had done.
“So you believe the body they found today is Harris Walker’s. He didn’t live here, did he? I know I only saw him in town some, though I think he was one of the guys my dad drank with at the bar.”
“I don’t know where he lived, but I always thought of him as a drifter.”
“So no family. That’s why no one looked too hard when he disappeared.”
True, sadly.
“So we have a place to start. Your memories, my current investigation.” Matt took a breath, let it out. “I think we can do this, Gemma.”
“I need you to know that we can.”
He nodded. “All right. I know we can. Let me take you back to Claire’s. Try to get some sleep. I’ll come back here and do the same, and we’ll get together as early as we can tomorrow to figure out where to go from here. The department won’t put security on you since they don’t fully believe your story. One text message won’t be enough to convince them, but I believe the threat is real, and I won’t let anything happen to you. I’ll stick close—you have my word.”
It was the best thing Gemma had heard all night. She smiled at him, nodded and followed him to the car.
When she got home Claire was awake, even though she’d have to get to her coffee shop around four or five in the morning to do the baking for the day. “I’m sorry, Claire. I forgot you would wait up.”
Claire pulled her fuzzy pink bathrobe tighter around her, stifled a yawn. “It’s okay. I just wanted to see that you were home and really safe. Tell me again what happened—I heard something about someone finding a body out at the Hamilton place? Were you there interviewing for the job when that happened?”
“Yeah.” Gemma didn’t have the strength to rehash everything again tonight, but she understood why her sister wanted to know. She cared, and that was nice. The two of them had always been close, from the day Gemma had been adopted as a four-year-old and become part of six-year-old Claire’s family. So Claire deserved at least some answers now, no matter how late it was. “The short version is...remember when I said I saw Harris Walker at the Hamilton property years ago, on the night of that robbery?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure it’s his body that was found today. And I’m pretty sure that I’m the only one who might be able to identify the man who killed him.”
Claire looked fully awake now. “What?”
“I know. It’s bad. But Matt is going to solve it.” She really believed that. The determination she’d seen on his face tonight... She wanted to believe it was all about keeping her safe, but Gemma knew full well he had a stake in seeing this case finished for good, as well. Either way, he had more than enough motivation and she thought he seemed like someone who was a good investigator.
“Matt O’Dell?”
“I don’t want to hear it tonight.” Another part of being sisters. They could just as quickly irritate each other as support each other. Matt had been her security tonight, believed her when no one else in the police department had. She trusted him in return.
“Don’t let him hurt you, Gemma. If he makes you cry...”
Her sister may have been the epitome of sweetness, spice and everything nice, but Gemma knew she’d always fight for those she loved. “It’s not like that, Claire. And anyway, it’s time for bed.”
“All right, I’ll drop it for now. Only because you’re right, we need to sleep.”
The sisters hugged good-night and went to their respective rooms. Gemma double-checked her window to make sure it was locked, then lay down in bed, sure that sleep would never come. But sometime in the darkness, she thought about Matt, of the way he’d treated her tonight, the amount of kindness he’d shown her.
And somehow the bad dreams were chased away before they could even show up, and Gemma fell asleep in no time at all.
FIVE
Night had barely faded into daylight in the sky when Matt pulled his patrol car in at the Hamilton Estate. He and Shiloh were supposed to meet with a forensic specialist from Savannah at eight that morning, which was another couple hours away, but it didn’t surprise him that Shiloh’s car was in the lot already, too.
He put the car in Park, grabbed the thermos of coffee he’d brought and climbed out. He could see Shiloh kneeling in the dirt next to where the body had been discovered. He headed her way, taking a sip of coffee as he did so. The way the week was going he was going to need all the caffeine he could get and more just to keep a clear head. This body... It was likely the first murder victim in years for Treasure Point. This case was going to be a mess even without the added complication of the danger it brought to Gemma.
If he could separate the two of them, forget about Gemma and his past attraction to her, he would. Unfortunately for both of them, it was looking as though she was tied to this case tighter than either of them would have wished.
“What do you think?” Matt asked Shiloh as he approached.
She looked up at him, a frown on her face. She shook her head. “I don’t like it. This section of forensic anthropology isn’t my specialty, but I don’t think this guy got here naturally.”
“Since people don’t generally get buried three feet underground naturally...” Matt drawled the words slower than usual.
Shiloh’s frown switched to a glare. “You know what I mean.”
“You think the guy was murdered, and the killer buried him here. I agree.”
She studied him for a minute. Matt looked away, not sure how much of Gemma’s story he should share. On one hand, it sounded as though some of the officers involved hadn’t handled her testimony well years ago, so he understood why she was hesitant to tell the entire department. But this was Shiloh. Matt trusted her, knew that Gemma could, too. But maybe that should be Gemma’s decision to make?
Shiloh looked away before he’d decided whether or not he should share what he knew.
“So is she coming back today, or did yesterday scare her right out of town?”
“Who?” When Shiloh started asking questions, she got downright inquisitive in a ridiculous big-sister kind of way. He had to stop this as soon as he could or he’d be confessing his ancient crush on Gemma and all kinds of silly things.
“The woman who was here yesterday? The one you couldn’t stop staring at?”
“Maybe I was keeping my eyes on a woman who could have a tie to this case?”
Shiloh shook her head before she stood and walked back to her car to retrieve something. “Not how you looked at her,” she called back, her voice raised.
The crunch of another car’s tires coming down the drive caught their attention and Matt swiveled his gaze in that direction.
Gemma. It shouldn’t surprise him that she was here early this morning, either, he supposed.
Shiloh had looked back down to continue rummaging through her car, but looked back up when Gemma opened her door. “Hey. I’m Shiloh Evans Cole, Treasure Point Police Department.”
“Gemma Phillips.” If she was nervous as she stuck her hand out to shake Shiloh’s, Matt saw none of it. In fact, he saw very little of the Gemma he’d seen last night—this one was all city clothes and confidence, from her glossy, straightened hair to the toes of her dark high heels. A far cry from her ponytail and sweatpants.
It only took him about half a second to decide he liked both versions.
“You’re new here, right?”
Gemma shook her head. “Well, new and old. I’m from here originally, but had been in Atlanta until recently. Now I’m back...”
Her voice trailed off and a hint of insecurity returned as her gaze moved to where the body had been found—where it still lay mostly buried in the hard, plaster-like Georgia clay.
“Not a very nice welcome. No one would like this being their first experience when they’re back in town.”
Shiloh was digging now. He wasn’t going to let her try to get information out of Gemma, not like this. He stepped forward, closer to where they were talking, and interrupted before Gemma could respond. “Not a good welcome at all. But we’re going to do what we can do make this—” Matt motioned to the crime scene tape “—all go away so you can focus on whatever you’re doing for the historical society. You got a job with them, right?” He thought she’d mentioned something about that yesterday, though he’d been more focused on what she had to say that was related to the case.
“Yes, it’s a marketing job.”
“Have you met Mary Hamilton yet, the woman who owns all this and gave the town this little section of land to use for the museum? Or did you know her when you were in town before?” Shiloh grinned. “She’s one of my favorite people here.”
Matt laughed. “Yeah, well, she wasn’t anyone’s favorite a few years ago when she was driving all of us at the station crazy with those calls about nothing.”
Cold Case Witness Page 5
