Lucy mumbled something as they neared the doorway, as Jack and Angel started down the stairs.
She’d come back into herself a bit more, but was still acting bewildered and out of sorts.
“What?” Kaleb asked.
“My pills. I need my pills.”
“What pills?”
“The ones Leeanne came up here to get for me,” she said in a hazy, far-away voice.
They stopped at the foot of the stairs.
And it hit Kaleb in an instant. This was Lucy’s apartment, not Leeanne’s. The two women didn’t look similar—Lucy’s long, blonde hair and twinkling blue eyes made her look like a woodland pixie, whereas Leeanne’s brown hair and heavy makeup caused her to look more like a trailer park queen—but they both wore the same Angel’s Food uniform and if an assailant had been acting fast as he’d attacked, he might not have had time to realize he had the wrong girl until it was too late.
There wasn’t a question in Kaleb’s mind that Lucy’s life was in danger, but right now all she wanted was her pills.
“Where are they?” he asked.
“In the medicine cabinet, in the bathroom.”
“Stay here,” he told her as he entered the living room. There were two cops making notes near the body and Kaleb knew they weren’t going to like him stomping through their crime scene even worse than he already had, but that was too damn bad.
Luckily for Kaleb, as he crossed through the living room, Officer Rachel Clancy darted up the stairs and entered in behind him.
Before addressing Kaleb, who was impossible to overlook in his red tee shirt and staggering height, PO Clancy first called over the two police officers and asked, “What do we got?”
As they briefed Rachel on the facts and mentioned that Lucy Cooper was about to be questioned down on the sidewalk—Rachel had figured as much and seemed short-tempered about it—Kaleb made fast work of stepping very carefully over Leeanne’s body to get to the medicine cabinet.
There was a prescription bottle with Lucy’s name on it resting right there, plain as day on the shelf. He gave it a quick read—Xanax—and shoved it into his pocket before stepping carefully back over the body.
As careful as he thought he’d been, the fact of the matter was that Kaleb, Jack, and of course Lucy had stepped in and out of the blood pool so many times that the white tiles as well as the wooden floor were covered in bloody shoe prints.
“Hey! Whoa!” yelled Rachel as Kaleb walked briskly towards the open apartment door. “Out of my crime scene!”
“I’m out!” he called out, good-naturedly, before racing down the stairs and joining the cluster of police officers surrounding Lucy.
Another cluster had surrounded Jack and a third was questioning Angel, the officers having separated all of the key after-the-fact witnesses.
Lucy was doing a shaky job of relaying to the officers what had happened, how Leeanne had offered to go up to her apartment to get her medication, how she’d never come back down into the diner, and how Lucy, probably a solid hour later, had gone up to find her dead on the bathroom floor.
Her eyes seemed clearer, though, but when the officer questioning her glanced over his shoulder to find Kaleb hovering, he barked, “We’ll get to you, Quinn. A little room please.”
“Here,” he said to Lucy, angling his broad shoulders in-between the officers to get to her. He handed her the pill bottle and asked, “I can get you a glass of water if you—”
But Lucy had already cracked the bottle open and popped two pills into her mouth. She swallowed them dry and slipped the bottle into the pocket of her blue button-down uniform, just as a medic sidled up to her and, apologizing to the officers, said, “I’m going to borrow her for a few minutes.”
As the medic led one very fragile-looking Lucy to the back of the ambulance, Kaleb’s first instinct was to join her, but as he started after them, the officer grabbed him by the upper arm and said, “Not so fast.”
“Not so fast is damn right!” the sheriff barked, furious, as he stomped his way across the parking lot, having jumped out of his SUV.
He looked frazzled and out of breath and whenever he cut his steely gaze away from Kaleb, it looked like he was hunting for PO Clancy, chomping at the bit to rip her a new one.
“I thought I warned you boys to stay out of my way,” Rick seethed.
“I had no idea I was in your way, Sheriff. You weren’t here,” he said easily before pressing the jab to its farthest conclusion. “You’re a bit late to the party, aren’t cha?”
Rick narrowed his eyes at him and warned, “If you hear someone scream, you can call the police, you surely can, but that’s not what you did, is it, boy?”
If the sheriff had even the slightest clue as to how old Kaleb really was, he would know how asinine he sounded using derogatory insults like boy and son on him.
“I dialed 911 as soon as I learned there’d been an emergency,” he reminded him.
Rick poked him in his chest, giving him a shove that was obviously meant to be intimidating, as he said, “Stay out of my way.”
Kaleb wasn’t easily intimidated. He stepped in, closing the gap between them and staring down his nose at the Sheriff. “Or what?”
“Sheriff!” Rachel called out, having just stepped outside.
“Not now, Clancy!”
“You’re gonna want to see this,” she insisted.
Rick took his sweet time staring Kaleb down before he turned for the building. As he started off, he told him, “I’ll not hesitate to arrest anyone who impedes an investigation.”
Kaleb let out a tense breath as soon as the sheriff disappeared inside. Then he joined Lucy at the back of the ambulance before the police officers could swoop in again to question her.
“How is she?” he asked the medic who was shining a light into Lucy’s left eye then the right.
“Physically? Fine,” he said cheerily, but when he turned to face Kaleb, he said in a discrete tone, “emotionally… she took about three too many Xanax. She’s on the moon right now.”
“I only saw her take a few.”
“And I saw her take a few,” he pointed out. “Like I said, three too many.”
“Okay,” said Kaleb as he ran his hand down his face.
Leeanne had been the one who’d thwacked Kaleb on the shoulder with those menus, scolding him for having reminded Lucy of her parents. Lucy had disappeared into the kitchen. Leanne had offered to fetch her pills from upstairs. A chain reaction. Kaleb had to ask himself if he’d been the one to set it all off. Had he not said what he did to Lucy, would Leeanne still be alive right now?
Or would it have resulted in Lucy’s murder instead?
The police officers got a jump on Lucy before Kaleb could approach her. He watched them swarm and question her, then saw his brothers’ pickup trucks pull into the parking area behind the diner, one after the next.
If the sheriff had been displeased to have found Kaleb here, he would likely completely flip his shit to find all five Quinns in the parking lot, which would be inevitable as long as Rick and Rachel exited the apartment side of the building.
“I had my amethyst in my pocket the whole time,” Kaleb explained to Troy from where they stood in a huddled circle with their brothers in front of their line of parked pickup trucks. “It never got hot or even warm. I was definitely in the diner when Leeanne went up into the apartment and was killed. Wouldn’t it have lit up, white-hot and searing, if Dante or one of his damned had been up there?”
“I would think so,” said Troy, who seemed determined not to speak in any concrete or certain terms.
Shane asked, “Never mind the amethyst, what did your gut tell you when you saw her?”
Kaleb told him, “Honestly, there was so much blood congealed over the gaping wound in her throat, I couldn’t peg it for something a wolf might’ve done. It could’ve been a knife. I’m telling you, there was just no telling with the amount of blood.”
Conor mentioned, “Rick’ll k
now as soon as the medical examiner finishes up with her, which means sooner or later, Jack will know.”
“And we’ll find out from him,” Dean added, agreeing that no matter how disturbing it was that Jack actually had what appeared to be a genuine friendship with the sheriff, he was one of their own, loyal, and would turn over as much information as he learned directly to them.
“Look, guys, I’m worried about Lucy,” said Kaleb. “The killer might have meant to attack her. It was her apartment.”
“Or they were opportunistic,” Shane countered. “Noticed Leeanne slip out. Followed.”
“Could be,” Kaleb allowed, “but I’d still like to keep my eye on Lucy.”
All four of his brothers exchanged knowing glances, their mouths quirking into sideways grins.
“Hey, now, it’s not like that,” Kaleb tried to argue, but his brothers weren’t buying it. “Seriously? You know what, I’m offended,” he tried to convince them, though he wasn’t offended. They weren’t afraid to call a spade a spade, how could he get mad? Regardless, he maintained, “I’m not trying to prey on a vulnerable woman. I’m legitimately worried about Lucy and she obviously isn’t going to have a place to stay tonight since her apartment has been turned into a crime scene.”
“Kaleb,” said Troy, good-naturedly, “you don’t need our permission. Besides, I have a feeling that Leeanne Whitaker has met the same fate as Holly van Dyke, and all of this is going to lead straight back to Dante.”
The inevitable came to pass the moment the sheriff and PO Clancy exited the building.
“Hey, jackass!” Rick swore as he stomped furiously over to Kaleb. “You dragged your size 10s back and forth through my crime scene!”
Kaleb glanced down at his boots, the soles of which were caked in dried blood.
Shit.
Rachel was ready on the quick with a large evidence bag.
“You need my boots?”
“I should arrest you as my prime suspect,” he threatened, “got the evidence right there, your boot prints fleeing the scene.”
“Except that I was downstairs in the diner with about ten other people when we all heard Lucy shriek to high heaven.”
“Wiseass,” Rick sneered as Kaleb kicked his boots off and dropped them into the large evidence bag Rachel was holding open for him.
Kaleb looked down at his socked feet. This was embarrassing.
“I have a pair of sneakers in my truck,” Conor told him before starting off.
“I should have you arrested,” Rick threatened, getting in Kaleb’s face, but with three other Quinns now surrounding him, it was quickly dawning on the sheriff that he’d have an all-out brawl if he pushed it any further. Of course, that might work out in Rick’s favor. Assaulting a police officer would earn them some jail time, and assaulting the sheriff might warrant a trip to the county correctional facility, but Rick had other matters on his mind, Kaleb figured, when the man eased away in favor of nearing Lucy who was getting to her shaky feet from having been seated in the ambulance.
As Rachel got Jack’s attention and collected his boots into evidence, as well, Conor returned with a pair of old sneakers. Kaleb wrestled his feet into them, one after the next, keeping his attention on Lucy just as Rick was starting in with a series of questions that the traumatized girl had already answered when one of the lower ranking officers had questioned her.
“What were you and Leeanne doing on up in your apartment if you girls were supposed to be working your shift down in the diner?”
Kaleb didn’t like the edge of subtle accusation in the Sheriff’s questioning tone. Lucy hadn’t been up there with Leeanne. If she had, she would be the prime murder suspect. Kaleb didn’t like where this was going, and Lucy was too fogged-up on Xanax to catch the implication and immediately correct it.
“I gave her the key,” she said in a far-away voice as she stared out across the parking lot at nothing in particular.
“An’ why’s that? You hand her your key so she can start on in ahead of you and you have the advantage of attacking her from behind?”
“I didn’t attack her from behind,” she said feebly. Her voice hadn’t risen up, offended.
“You look all drugged out, girl,” he pointed out, eyeing her severely. “Is that why you snuck off from your shift with Leeanne? To put some dust up your nose or in your veins, or was it that Melissa-drug?”
The sheriff meant Molly, formerly referred to as E for ecstasy. He was way off, and way, way out of line, and Kaleb couldn’t hold himself back from intervening any longer.
“It’s a prescription for anxiety.”
“Did I ask you?” he snapped.
“She’s had enough,” Kaleb told him firmly.
“She’s obligated to answer my questions and you’re obligated to stand over there,” asserted the sheriff as he pointed his thick finger at the other Quinns.
“She’s already answered all the questions she’s going to right now—”
“Is that right?” he challenged. “Are you her lawyer?”
“She doesn’t need a lawyer because she hasn’t done anything wrong,” said Kaleb as he stepped in front of Lucy to protect her from further interrogation. “And she’s had enough. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind swinging by the station once she’s had some rest.”
A glint of sympathy flared behind Rick’s otherwise steely glare, but his eyes didn’t loosen from the narrow squint he was holding on Kaleb.
“I’ll bring her myself,” Kaleb assured him, hoping the courtesy would tip the scales.
Rick grumbled and angled his eyes around Kaleb, stepping sideways so that he could get one good, long, last look at Lucy Cooper.
“Yeah,” he said uneasily, “you do that.”
“First thing tomorrow morning.”
Rick didn’t appear to like the sound of that, but he didn’t negotiate to get her into the precinct sooner.
As he turned away, however, he just couldn’t help himself from pushing it with one more question. “What’s she on?”
“Xanax,” he said quietly.
“It was prescribed by a doctor?” he questioned skeptically.
“Her name’s on the bottle, Sheriff. She isn’t a drug addict.”
“As far as you think,” he told him, but he left it at that, starting off to meet PO Clancy where she was handing off two evidence bags of bloody boots to another officer near the rear entrance of the apartment building.
“You okay?” Kaleb asked Lucy as the medic at the back of the ambulance closed its doors, preparing to head on back to the hospital in Jackson Hole, Kaleb presumed. When she didn’t respond—she barely lifted her shell-shocked eyes to meet his gaze—he offered, “You can stay at my cabin if you want. My brothers live nearby and I can stay with one of them so you have your space and privacy.”
Of course, Kaleb wasn’t actually planning on staying with one of his brothers. He wanted to be close to Lucy, under the same roof, in case whoever had attacked Leeanne decided to pay her a visit. Whether it was likely or not, his gut was telling him that Leeanne had been collateral damage in an attempt to take Lucy’s life. But should he tell her that, right here and now, pointblank? He wasn’t sure that scaring her—traumatizing her further—would be the best way to go about it. Especially considering what he’d learned about her parents…
“Lucy?” he asked when she still hadn’t given him an answer. “Would you let me help you?”
“I’m not—”
Her hazy response was interrupted as Whitney charged over. “Lucy!”
Whitney Abernathy, the sheriff’s rebellious daughter who had a knack for acting much younger than her twenty-six years, threw her arms around Lucy with such forceful intensity that her wild mane of red hair spilled over the fragile blonde’s shoulders and down her slender back.
“My God! I heard! Thank God you’re okay!” she exclaimed, clinging to her friend for a long moment as Lucy stood there, her arms at her sides, too slow on the uptake to reciprocate. Whitney
urged her back, taking her by the shoulders to search her eyes, and said, “Come on, let’s get you home. You can stay with me.”
Whitney lived on her father’s land on the south side of town right next to the old Halsey acreage. Hers was a little cabin situated behind Rick’s swollen one. The man had added so many extensions and additions over the years that his cabin-mansion was nearly as wide as the acre plot that held it.
As Whitney ushered Lucy off towards her Jeep, Kaleb watched the two girls and felt his chest tighten with concern. Lucy wasn’t safe. She needed the protective services of Quinn Security.
She needed Kaleb.
And she didn’t even know it.
Chapter Four
LUCY
Whitney Abernathy was, without a doubt, Lucy’s closest friend. She loved her for that. She appreciated Whitney’s concern and the hawk-eyed care she’d provided all afternoon. But this was getting ridiculous.
Whitney had changed the sheets on her own bed for Lucy to take a nap, but Lucy hadn’t been tired. The concerned and doting redhead had made sandwiches, but Lucy hadn’t had an appetite. She’d shepherded her out into the cool acreage behind her small cabin, insisting that some fresh air and sunlight would do Lucy good, but Lucy had been too lethargic and disinterested. If she needed anything, it was space. Time and space to process what had happened to Leeanne, and why.
Maybe she should’ve taken Kaleb up on his offer. Space and privacy sounded really good right about now, she thought as she glanced at Whitney who was seated on the couch beside her, and clicking the remote as channels flipped, one to the next, on the flat-screen TV.
“There’s gotta be a rom-com around here somewhere,” Whitney complained as she hunted faster and faster, at times shaking the remote control as though it were a Magic-8 ball that would eventually give her the answer she was hoping for.
At least the Xanax cloud that had fogged her mind up something fierce had dissipated. She knew she’d overdone it. Popping five pills wasn’t like her, but then again, she wasn’t sure how she would’ve mentally survived the sight of Leeanne on her bathroom floor. The image—so much blood—had stained the forefront of Lucy’s mind, and for as many anti-anxiety pills as she’d taken, it barely blurred the memory of poor Leeanne from her thoughts.
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