The Truth About Comfort Cove

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Wakerby had spent time in a house out in this country. So close to Aurora. Lucy shivered.

  Face your fears.

  “Do you have siblings?” she asked the man who would be traveling back to her house with her, to sleep in her home for one more night.

  The man who’d be accompanying her to a wedding in a few short weeks.

  The man she’d been tempted to lose herself in the night before.

  “I had a sister. She died more than fifteen years ago.”

  Wow. She hadn’t expected that. “I’m so sorry,” Lucy said, wishing she could stop the car. Offer him something.

  Staring out the window, he didn’t look as if he needed anything.

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “Were you close?”

  “It was my job to look out for her.” Which didn’t really answer her question.

  “She was younger than you?”

  “Older by two years.”

  He was going to tell her to shut up any minute now. She had a million questions vying for attention.

  “Was she sick?” Was that why he had to watch out for her?

  “No. She died of an overdose.”

  His tone warned her that the interview was over. Lucy drove, passing the occasional farmhouse. Horses. Cows. She came to a four-way stop in the middle of nowhere. And drove on.

  None of Ramsey’s business was her business.

  And he was, in the moment, everything to her.

  Personal waywardness aside, she was glad that he was going to be on the opposite side of the one-way glass when she was questioning Sloan Wakerby.

  Not to keep her safe from anything Wakerby might try while she was with him. Lucy had no doubt she could protect herself against the scum for the second or two it would take for a corrections officer to break in on them if Wakerby tried anything.

  She was glad Ramsey was going to be there because when it came to Sloan Wakerby, she was beginning to doubt herself.

  That was a first.

  “You asked me if I share my mom’s negative feelings toward men.”

  Ramsey Miller’s gaze left the road. His silent scrutiny sent her insides trembling.

  Face your fears.

  “I respect most of the cops I work with, male and female. And the men and women who serve who I don’t know, as well,” she said.

  There was no fear attached to either statement.

  “I have faith in my accountant, who is male. And in most other men I meet on a professional basis, unless they prove that they aren’t trustworthy.”

  Good common sense. Normal. No fear there.

  The jail complex was fifteen miles ahead. Wakerby had already been notified of the meeting. He knew she was almost there. He knew that, shortly, he would be alone with her.

  He didn’t know that she had backup. That Ramsey Miller would be on the other side of the glass.

  “I assume you’re going somewhere with this?” Ramsey asked, still watching her, and she realized that she’d been silent for a while.

  “Personally, I don’t have time for men,” she said, blurting again. “It’s not that I don’t like men, or have a thing against men, I just don’t have time.”

  “Okay.”

  Twelve miles until the jail complex.

  Fear.

  “No, that’s not completely right.” Frowning, Lucy swiped back her hair, welcoming the second’s worth of cool air to her heated forehead.

  She couldn’t rely on Ramsey to help her with Sloan Wakerby. Not like this…

  “I…don’t…trust men.” The words were damning. Ugly. Cold. “Not in my personal life.”

  Her companion’s attention switched back to the world outside the car.

  “It’s okay, Lucy.”

  “What is?” Where? She needed something to be okay.

  “You have no worries where I’m concerned.”

  She glanced his way. He glanced hers.

  And she knew that he was one hundred percent completely wrong.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  R amsey was alone in the viewing room, with the exception of one officer at the door behind him who was also watching the proceedings between Lucy Hayes and Sloan Wakerby. Another guard stood outside the door that Lucy had just passed through.

  Foregoing the row of hard-backed seats, Ramsey stood at the window, holding in both hands the portfolio he’d brought in with him as Lucy got a verbal agreement from Sloan Wakerby that he’d agreed to speak with her without the presence of an attorney.

  At the prisoner’s acquiescence, she proceeded to nod at the guard who closed the door, leaving her alone with the man who’d raped her mother.

  “Nice to see you again, Mr. Wakerby.” Her tone told all witnesses to the conversation that she didn’t think there was anything nice about the man seated, hands cuffed behind his back, at the table she stood before. It also conveyed, quite clearly, that she was not the least bit intimidated by the man who’d brutalized her mother and abducted her older sister.

  Not that Wakerby had any idea who Lucy was, other than a cop involved in his case.

  Wakerby’s grin was there, but not as apparent as it had been the first time Ramsey had had the displeasure of meeting the sorry excuse for a human being.

  The fifty-five-year-old was also sporting a fairly recent bruise over his right eye.

  “You been in a fight, sir?” Lucy’s tone softened a fraction as she took a seat in front of the man. A move Ramsey would have chosen himself. Wakerby, who was seated facing Ramsey, wouldn’t listen to her if she tried to lord it over him.

  The prisoner’s chin lifted, but there was no other response.

  “I’m sorry to see that your reception here isn’t all that you’d hoped it would be,” she said to the man. “I hear that even in jail there are standards,” she continued, her voice almost sweet sounding. “Guys who rape are okay. I mean, everyone knows that the girl was asking for it, right?”

  Lucy’s pause could have been tactical or it could be that she was choking on her words. Ramsey suspected it was a bit of both.

  “But guys who steal babies while they’re raping women… now that’s looked upon a little differently.” Her voice didn’t waver at all as she continued. If Ramsey didn’t know better, he’d never have guessed that the woman before him was in any way attached to the case she was working.

  And he was fairly good at picking up on the unspoken intricacies in people’s body language and voice variances.

  “Unless we know that you didn’t also turn your sick attentions on that baby, you’re going to get the reputation of a lower than lowlife, Mr. Wakerby… .”

  Lucy’s pause this time had to be deliberate. It was perfect.

  The woman in front of him might be little and blonde, and sexy-looking in her black slacks and black-and-white fitted tweed jacket, but she had more guts than any officer he’d ever worked with. Himself included.

  “What did you do with that baby, Mr. Wakerby?”

  The man didn’t answer.

  “You agreed to meet with me this time without your lawyer present, sir. You can talk to me now.”

  Still nothing.

  “If you did to that little girl what you did to her mother, then, fine, sir, you will pay for your actions. If you didn’t, then you should speak up soon, because if people on the inside think you did, the truth isn’t going to matter anymore.

  “Did you sexually abuse that little girl, Mr. Wakerby?”

  Ramsey could only see the back of Lucy’s head. She held it straight and tall.

  “You jealous?” Wakerby spoke, his gaze penetrating, no smile evident.

  “No. I want the truth. I want you to pay for what you did, not for what you didn’t do.”

  The truth in Lucy’s words rang clearly. Wakerby might think Lucy was trying to keep him from being unfairly brutalized in jail. Instead, she’d just promised him full retribution for brutalizing her mother, abducting her sister and any other adverse effects that Allison Hayes
had suffered because of his actions.

  “The truth is, I ain’t into babies,” Wakerby said. “And I’m done here.”

  Relief was a sweet release from the tension of the past moments. Lucy had done well.

  His next job was to let her know that without crossing the very clear line she’d drawn between them in the car on the way to jail.

  “D id you believe him?” Lucy’s question came as soon as they were alone in the hallway outside the barred portion of the jail building, having just reclaimed the weapons they’d surrendered before entering the visiting area.

  “That he wasn’t into babies?” Ramsey’s words kept her centered on the case, not on the panic surging through her, compliments of Sloan Wakerby.

  “Yes.” Ramsey was here because she trusted his opinion. And because she didn’t trust her own where her mother’s rapist was concerned.

  “I believed him.”

  “You don’t think he was just saving his ass? Buying my protection? Because I could have been threatening to let it slip to his fellow prisoners that he’d raped a child?”

  “Sloan Wakerby would never let a woman protect his ass.” Right. She knew that. Knew his type.

  “He was protecting his own reputation,” she said, seeing

  clearly for a moment. “He’s not afraid of being roughed up. He’s afraid of being seen as something he is not.” “The man feels no compunction for what he did to your mother. Or any other women he may have violated through the years—”

  “Because chances are good my mother’s not the only one. I know. Amber’s all over Wakerby’s past, looking for other victims.” Amber Locken. She had to call her associate and let her know how the meeting went.

  Problem was, she wasn’t quite sure how it went. And she couldn’t have Locken, or anyone, know that. The one thing Lucy had always been confident about, the one thing she’d never doubted, was her ability to get the job done.

  “Sloan Wakerby has Sloan Wakerby’s back,” she said. “His safety and security comes from his own belief in himself. His weakness is being accused of being someone he isn’t—or of a crime he didn’t commit. That’s one thing he can’t tolerate.”

  “He’s also not smiling anymore.” Ramsey’s words came from directly behind her.

  She’d noted the lack of a smile. And chancing that her reading of the situation was accurate, as opposed to wishful thinking, she said, “I’m getting to him.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” Ramsey walked step by step beside her on the way to the car.

  She clicked the remote entry on her key ring, unlocking their doors. “I’m not going to get a confession.”

  “You just got one.”

  Dropping her purse on the floor behind her seat, Lucy took her time getting in the car. And then, seat belt buckled, she looked at Ramsey. “I got a confession?”

  How could she have missed it? What hadn’t she seen?

  “Wakerby didn’t sexually violate your sister, but something about what happened to Allie bothers him. Otherwise, he’d be laughing his ass off at you.”

  Lucy froze. Too stunned to care that she’d missed something so obvious. “He knows where my sister is,” she said slowly. Had she been at this too long to believe that she might actually succeed? “He knows what happened to Allie.”

  “Yep.”

  “I…” She didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know how she felt. About anything. Lucy stared at Ramsey.

  “You’re too connected to the case for your cop instincts to kick in full swing, or to get a purely professional reading on him. Your personal emotions get in the way.”

  “You think I should pull out?”

  “You aren’t in. Not in any official capacity. Everything’s in order. Your captain saw to that. And he respects you enough to let you move forward where you must. I’m just saying that you need to go easier on yourself. No one expects you to be on the top of your detective game, here. And even with that, you just conducted a superior interview.”

  More confused than ever, Lucy started the car, thinking that it was a good thing that she still felt like she knew how to drive.

  Everything else in her world was in total upset.

  Most particularly the fact that she had a distinct feeling that she’d just been nurtured by Detective Ramsey Miller.

  And she’d liked it.

  T he first thing Ramsey did when he landed in Boston on Wednesday was get on the phone to start the ball rolling for a warrant to seize Jack Colton’s bank accounts. He had to provide enough circumstantial evidence to convince a judge that the warrant for Colton’s current affairs was in order, although he had nothing but hunches and theories and conjectures based on testimonies from witnesses with twenty-five-year memory lapses to give doubt to their accuracy.

  Getting the warrants for the UC records had been easier. Those records pertained to the time period during which the crime had taken place. There was reasonable expectation that they might have turned up evidence that Jack Colton could be a kidnapper and baby dealer.

  Still, Ramsey had used his time on the plane wisely. Rather than spending it thinking about his hostess from the past two days, he’d done what he always did when life tried to get messy on him—he’d sunk himself in his work.

  He knew his limits. Personal relationships were outside the scope. He failed at them. Every time. Being a good cop, a good detective, was the limit of what he had to offer the world.

  By Wednesday afternoon he had the warrant that he needed. And by Wednesday evening, he was in possession of a long night’s worth of work.

  He showered Thursday morning with the intimate knowledge of Jack Colton’s financial affairs. L ucy was at the desk she shared with Todd Davis early Thursday morning. She was investigating a series of gas-station robberies that had been taking place in Aurora. She’d also put in a call to Lori Givens, the friend who worked in the private DNA lab in Cincinnati. Lori had donated her time to do all of the scientific work involved in setting up the DNA database for all of the babies involved in the Gladys Buckley case.

  Lucy wanted some more information on the Claire Sanderson DNA match with evidence stored from the Buckley mansion. What color was the ribbon on which they’d found Claire’s DNA? How long was it? Most importantly, what was it made out of? If she had to trace hair-ribbon makers from twenty-five years ago she would. She was determined to give Claire back to Emma—as if by doing so she could somehow ease the ache of not finding Allie.

  But Emma and Claire weren’t her case.

  The person who was siphoning gas from service stations

  was her problem. The obvious answer to the gas investigation was that it was an inside job. Lucy didn’t like obvious. Obvious was usually a waste of time. But in this case, she’d started there. By Wednesday afternoon, she’d not only cleared all the delivery drivers and station workers, but she’d put in requests for surveillance tapes. And Thursday morning she spent a couple of hours watching eye-glazing videos on a screen at her desk.

  By ten o’clock, she had a warrant for the arrest of a suspect: a farmer who had a wife and young kids and not enough money to support any of them, but who also had his own approved, in-ground gas tank on his property. The man had been selling off what others believed to be his own unused gas at lower prices before it evaporated.

  No one knew quite how much gas the farmer had been selling. No one knew that it was gas he was stealing, twenty-five gallons at a time in the dark of the night, in order to make enough money to keep his family afloat.

  Lucy was having the guy arrested and now he wouldn’t be able to help his family at all.

  “You got a minute?” At thirty-eight, Amber Locken looked better than Lucy felt at twenty-seven.

  Lucy swung around, facing the redhead as she stood beside Lucy’s desk. “Of course. What’s up?”

  “First, good work on Tuesday. Wakerby put in a request to see his lawyer.”

  The meeting with the captain and Amber first thing Wednesday morning, to report on her m
eeting with the prisoner, had been short and to the point. Lucy had given the facts and excused herself, not waiting around for the reactions to her report. Or for questions.

  “He’s going to confess?” Her voice squeaked. She couldn’t help it. She was stunned.

  “I’m not sure what he’s doing. But it’s clear you’ve shaken something loose.”

  She had to calm down. To remember the job. Not because she gave a whit at the moment about how she looked to her peer—or to her boss, either, for that matter—but because if she didn’t stay calm and focused she could miss something critical.

  “When’s the meeting?”

  “Monday morning.”

  Four days away. So maybe she should pay the man one more visit over the weekend. Just to make certain that he didn’t have time to start feeling safe again.

  “Thanks for letting me know.” The woman was only acting on Lionel’s orders, keeping Lucy informed, but she was still grateful.

  Amber didn’t immediately move on her way. “I had a call yesterday afternoon,” she said after a pause. “A woman who claims that Wakerby lived with her for a couple of years. She says she just heard that he’s in jail on a rape charge.”

  Another victim. Lucy braced herself.

  “She said that she has a box of his things. She’d been keeping them in the hopes that he might show up again, but now she wants nothing to do with them. She called to ask what she should do with them.”

  Heart pounding, Lucy held her tongue, waiting. This was Amber’s show. “I had them picked up last night and they were couriered this morning. We should have them sometime tomorrow. If you’d like to go through the box with me, I’ll call you when it arrives.”

  “I would really appreciate that, yes,” Lucy said. And this time when she thanked her colleague, she smiled, too.

  And then she zipped off a text to Ramsey. Just to keep him informed.

  Ramsey was not in a good mood when he made it to the station on Thursday. He’d spent the morning looking at a dead body in a hotel room down at the docks—until he found a suicide note. The deceased was a financier from Boston who’d driven to the ocean to end his life after being indicted for misappropriation of funds to the tune of a few million dollars.