A Threat to His Family

by Delores Fossen

  And he definitely didn’t strike Owen as stupid.

  Just the opposite. Terrance could have told them about Nettie and Hadley’s meeting as a way of covering himself. By casting doubt on Nettie, Terrance might believe it would take the spotlight off him when it came to Hadley’s murder. It didn’t. He had motive and means. As for opportunity... Yes, he had an alibi, but he could have hired someone to do the job.

  Laney’s top suspect in her sister’s murder was Emerson. Or at least it had been before Terrance had just thrown Nettie into the mix. But Owen was going to take a hard look at Terrance himself.

  “Are you all right?” Owen asked Laney when they stepped into the observation room. It was a small space, not much bigger than a closet, and it put them elbow to elbow.

  “I will be,” she answered after a long pause. That meant she wasn’t all right at the moment. Of course, he hadn’t expected her to absorb it all and look at this through a PI’s eyes. Not when there was this much emotion at stake.

  She kept her attention on the two-way glass window where Kellan, Terrance and his lawyer were filing into interview room. “I’ll be better if I can figure out a way to put him back in a cage.”

  Owen made a sound of agreement and because he could feel the tight muscles in her arms, he put his hand on her back and gave her a gentle pat. That took her gaze off Terrance. She looked at him. Then she groaned.

  “You’re feeling sorry for me.” She said it like an accusation. There was some anger in her eyes and her voice. “You’re thinking about the way Terrance beat me up and how that’s weighing on me—”

  Owen didn’t let her finish. He snapped Laney to him and kissed her. What she’d said was true, but for some reason, her anger riled him. It had obviously made him stupid, too, because his go-to response had been a hard kiss. That didn’t stay hard. The moment his mouth landed on hers, everything changed.

  Everything.

  The anger melted away from him, along with the rest of his common sense, and in its place came the heat. Of course, the heat had been stirring for a while now between them, but the temperature inside him soared to scalding temps when he tasted her.

  Oh, man.

  He was toast. That taste and the feel of her in his arms worked against him when she moved right into the kiss. Apparently she’d gotten rid of her anger, too, because she certainly wasn’t fighting him. In fact, he was reasonably sure Laney was also feeling plenty of the heat.

  The memories of that look in the barn slammed into him, mixing with this fresh fire and making this so much more than just a mere kiss. That, of course, only made him even more stupid. He shouldn’t be lusting after her. Not with the chaos that was in their lives. And he darn sure shouldn’t be wondering if he could take this kiss and let it lead them straight to bed.

  She slid her arms around him, first one and then the other. Not some tight grip that would anchor him in place, which made it all the more dangerous. Because he suddenly wanted the anchor. He ached for it. Owen wanted to feel every inch of her against him. He silently cursed himself. And he cursed her, too.

  When Owen heard Kellan’s voice, he automatically tore himself away from Laney. It took him a moment to realize his brother wasn’t in the observation room with them but that his voice was coming from the intercom. Kellan wasn’t speaking to Laney and him, either. He was reading Terrance his rights.

  Great. He’d gotten so tied up in that kiss and in the thoughts of bedding Laney, he’d forgotten there was something very important going on just one room over. They were there to hear what Terrance had to say, to try to look for any flaws or inconsistencies in his statement. Not for a make-out session. Even if that session had been damn good.

  “Don’t you dare apologize to me for that,” Laney warned him. She ran her tongue over her bottom lip, causing his body to clench and then beg him to go back for more.

  Owen stayed firmly planted where he was, though it was still plenty close to Laney. “I’m sorry that I lost focus,” he settled for saying. “Not as sorry as I should be about the kiss.”

  It was the truth, but it was also true that it would happen again. That was why Owen groaned and cursed. He didn’t need this kind of distraction, not with so much at stake, but his body didn’t seem to be giving him a choice.

  “We should have done something about this in the barn that day,” he grumbled. “Then we would have burned it out of our systems by now.”

  At best, that was wishful thinking, but Laney didn’t dismiss it. That told him she believed this was just lust, nothing more. But maybe that, too, was wishful thinking.

  She smiled, but then quickly tightened her mouth to stop it. “I still have dreams about that day in the barn,” she said.

  Great. Now that was in his head. Dreaming about him having sex with her. Or rather, him wanting to have sex with her. The urge to do just that had been plenty strong that day. Still was. And Owen figured he’d be having his own dreams about not only that but the scalding kiss they’d just shared.

  Thankfully, Kellan got their minds back on track when he sat across from Terrance at the table and opened with his first question.

  “Where were you last night?”

  The lawyer immediately took a piece of paper from his briefcase and handed it to Kellan. “We anticipated that you’d want to know that, so there’s my client’s alibi. As you can see, he was having dinner with several friends. I’ve included their names and contact information should you want to verify.”

  Slick move, Owen thought, and he had no doubts that the alibi would check out. That didn’t mean Terrance hadn’t been involved, though. Nope. He could have hired those men to break in. Heck, he could have hired them to plant the bug and set up Nettie.

  Kellan looked over the paper the lawyer had given him. “Did you have a PI tail on Joe Henshaw, too?” he asked Terrance.

  “Not recently, but yes, before my trial I did,” Terrance admitted. “I’ve already told you that I had Laney and anyone connected to her under watchful eyes in case something turned up that I could use in my defense.”

  “You do know that Joe was murdered last night?” Kellan threw it out there.

  Terrance nodded. “But I didn’t see him, if that’s what you’re about to ask next.” He tipped his head to the paper. “And that proves I was elsewhere when he died.”

  Kellan didn’t even pause. “You’d be willing to turn over your finances so I can verify that you didn’t hire someone to kill him and hire others to attack Laney and kill Joe?”

  Terrance smiled, definitely not from humor, though. It was more of amusement, and then he waved off whatever his lawyer had been about to say. “I’ll turn them over to you if and when you get a warrant. I’m guessing, though, you don’t have enough probable cause to do that, or you would have already gotten it.”

  “You’re right. I don’t have probable cause, not yet, but it’s still early,” Kellan answered. “A lot of hours left in the day, and I don’t think it’d take much to convince a judge that I need a look at your financials. Not with your criminal record. Judges are a lot more apt to help when a convicted felon’s name comes up in a murder investigation.”

  The anger flared in Terrance’s eyes. Heck, his nostrils did, too, and that caused Owen to smile. It was nice to see Terrance get a little comeuppance, but it wasn’t enough. They needed to get into his bank account, and despite what Kellan had just threatened, it might not happen. Terrance’s lawyer would almost certainly stonewall any attempts at a warrant.

  “How much did the woman he met online steal from Terrance?” Owen asked Laney.

  “According to Terrance and the lawsuit he filed against me, it was about three million.”

  Owen’s mouth fell open for a moment. “Damn.”

  Laney made a sound of agreement and glanced up at him. “A judge threw out his lawsuit, but from what I could gather, that three million
was about two-thirds of Terrance’s entire inheritance. His family wasn’t happy about that.”

  No one other than the swindler would be happy about that. And with Terrance blaming Laney, it gave him three million motives to get back at her. Maybe even enough to kill or hire killers.

  However, if Terrance had indeed paid someone to do his dirty work, his old-money background might have given him the skills to hide transactions like that. There could be offshore accounts. Heck, the funds could have come from a safe with lots of cash. Still, Owen would press to get that warrant. Right now, it was one of the few strings they had to tug on Terrance. If they tugged hard enough, things were bound to unravel and get them the proof they needed for an arrest.

  “I’ve heard you have one of the so-called gunmen in custody,” Terrance went on a moment later. “I gather he hasn’t said anything about me hiring him, or you would have used that to arrest me.”

  There was enough snark in Terrance’s tone to let them know it was a challenge of sorts. No, the gunman hadn’t pointed the finger at Terrance. Maybe he never would. But the longer they held the gunman, the higher the chance he might start to get desperate. The guy could ask for a plea deal in exchange for giving up his boss. Owen figured it would make plenty of people happy if it turned out to be Terrance.

  Kellan stared at Terrance for several snail-crawling moments. “A lot of hours left in the day,” he repeated. “Who knows what kind of dirt we’ll be able to turn up on you.”

  This time Terrance flashed one of those cocky smiles, and Owen thought he saw some honest-to-goodness frustration slide into the man’s eyes.

  Terrance leaned forward, resting his forearms on the metal table. “Let me make your job easy for you, Sheriff Slater, because I want you to get off my back. I didn’t hire any gunmen. I also didn’t kill anyone, but I might have some more information that can put you on the right track.”

  Owen didn’t miss the more and he found himself moving even closer to the glass. However, he also reminded himself that anything that came out of Terrance’s mouth could be a lie or something meant to throw them off his track.

  “I’m listening,” Kellan said to the man.

  Terrance opened a bottle of water first and had a long drink. “I’ve already told you that I hired PIs to follow people connected to my trial. That’s how one of the PIs saw Nettie with Hadley.” He paused. “But that wasn’t the only time they saw Hadley.”

  That grabbed Owen’s attention. Laney’s, too, because she moved in closer, as well.

  “I’ll give you the reports from the PIs, of course,” Terrance went on, “but I can tell you that about two days before Hadley was murdered, one of my men followed her to Austin.”

  Austin was a city only about an hour from Longview Ridge. Owen glanced at Laney to see if that rang any bells as to why her sister would go there, but she just shook her head.

  “Hadley had a package with her,” Terrance continued a moment later. “She went into the First National Bank on St. Mary’s Street, stayed inside about a half hour, and when she came out, she didn’t have the package with her. I know I’m not a cop, but I figure what she left there is worth you checking out.”

  “The photos of Emerson and Hadley,” Laney said, snapping her eyes toward him. “Owen, we have to go get them now.”

  Chapter Seven

  Now didn’t happen. Despite Laney’s insistence, she and Owen still did not have the photos even after Terrance had given them the name and street address of the bank where his PIs had seen Hadley.

  Laney tried not to be frustrated and impatient about that, but it was impossible not to feel those things. And more. The urgency clawed away at her. She was so close to the evidence she needed to nail down Hadley’s killer. She knew that in her gut. But she was going to have to tamp down that urgency because of one simple fact.

  There was no safe-deposit box in Hadley’s name at the First National Bank in Austin.

  That meant either Terrance had lied about it or Hadley had used an alias. Laney was betting it was the latter. Hadley had wanted to make sure Emerson couldn’t get to those pictures because she’d seen them as some kind of insurance policy. Proof of an affair with a married man.

  Hadley had likely believed that as a DA, Emerson could have used his contacts to do searches of banks. And maybe he had indeed managed to do just that. But Laney wasn’t giving up hope yet.

  She would never give up hope, even if her patience was wearing thin.

  Laney was pacing across the living room floor of Owen’s grandparents’ house—something she’d been doing a lot since they’re returned an hour earlier from the sheriff’s office. She stopped when Owen came in. One look at his face and she knew he didn’t have good news for her.

  “We’re having trouble getting the search warrant for the bank.” He sounded as frustrated as she felt. “The judge wants more verification that Hadley actually had a box there, and we just don’t have it.”

  She touched her hand to the chain around her neck. It now only had the dragonfly pendant. “The bank manager has the key.”

  “A key that may or may not belong to one of the boxes,” Owen reminded her. It wasn’t his first reminder, either.

  She wanted to argue with him. But she couldn’t. She’d found the key in Hadley’s apartment shortly after she’d been murdered. Laney had no proof that it was the one for the safe-deposit box Hadley had told her about. But Laney believed that it was. She believed it with all her heart. Too bad the judge wouldn’t take her gut feeling as more verification for the search warrant.

  “Even if it is the right key,” Owen went on, “the manager says the bank employees can’t just test that key on the boxes to find the right one.”

  “So, we need either the name Hadley used to get the box or the box number,” she said, talking more to herself than to Owen. Laney forced herself to think, to try to figure out where Hadley might have left information like that.

  Owen nodded, but it wasn’t a nod of total agreement. “If the bank gets the right box and opens it, the manager says he can’t release the contents without proper authorization.”

  Laney knew that, of course. Kellan had already told her that when she’d given him the key. The key that he’d then passed along to the bank manager. It still didn’t make it easier to swallow. Plus, there was the hope that if and when the box was opened, there might be enough inside to spur the manager to help them get that warrant. After all, the photos could confirm motive for Hadley’s murder.

  Could.

  Again, it would take some convincing with a judge, but at least they’d have tangible evidence. Emerson might fall apart and confess everything when confronted with pictures of him and his lover. At a minimum, it might cause Owen to start doubting him so that he and Kellan would take a much harder look.

  “What about the PI report from Terrance?” Laney asked, but then she immediately waved that off.

  That wasn’t proof. Far from it. Terrance was a convicted felon and probably still held a grudge against her. He could have given them this info to send them on some wild-goose chase. One that would take the spotlight off him. One that would put her in an extra frazzled frame of mind. If so, it was working because that was where she was right now.

  “Kellan’s bringing in the PI who claims he saw Hadley go into the bank,” Owen told her. “If the PI will sign a sworn statement as to what he saw, we can go back to the judge.”

  It was a long shot, but Laney refused to believe it wouldn’t work. They had to find that box and get into it.

  Owen walked closer to her, but still kept some distance between them. Something he’d been doing since that kiss in the observation room. Despite Laney telling him not to apologize for it, she could tell he was sorry. And that he regretted it.

  “The bank manager did agree to go through all the names to see if there were any red flags,” Owen said several mo
ments later. “Is there any alias you can think of that Hadley might have used?”

  It was something Kellan had already asked her, and Laney had come up with zilch. However, she had given Kellan the full names of Hadley and her parents, their pets and even childhood friends in case her sister had used any one of those.

  “What about the PI report of the meeting between Nettie and Hadley?” she asked. “Has Terrance sent that to Kellan yet?”

  “He emailed it, and Kellan sent me a copy.”

  Laney huffed. She wasn’t frustrated that Terrance had sent it but because she’d wanted to see it as soon as it arrived.

  “You read the report,” Owen said, obviously picking up on her frustration. “It’s on my computer.”

  Upstairs and in his bedroom. Or, at least, that was where his laptop had been the last time she’d seen it. Upstairs was also where his brother Eli and Gemma were. Addie and Francine, too. And while Laney liked all of them, she’d wanted to give Owen some space to be with his daughter and the rest of his family.

  Owen motioned for her to follow him as he headed for the stairs. She did. “The reason I wasn’t jumping through hoops to tell you about the report Terrance sent is that there’s nothing in it other than what he told us at the sheriff’s office.”

  That wasn’t a surprise, but it was an annoying disappointment that only added to her frustration. Still, there was no way Terrance would give them anything they could use against him, and the PI likely wouldn’t have realized the importance of a meeting between the two women. Still, Laney wanted to read it, study it, because it could possibly have something they could use.

  “There are probably other reports,” she said as they walked up the stairs. “Ones that maybe Terrance is holding on to. He can maybe use them as bargaining chips if it comes down to that.”