Читать книгу Justice is Coming - Delores Fossen, Delores Fossen - Страница 10

Chapter Five

Declan slipped on the latex gloves that he’d taken from his equipment bag at his house, stooped down and pulled the note from the dead man’s pocket. Yeah, it was addressed to Kirby all right.

“Is it really a death threat?” Eden asked. She was right behind him, peering over his shoulder. And she was shaking. Not just her voice, her whole body was trembling.

He figured Wyatt hadn’t gotten the contents of the message wrong, but Declan had to see it for himself. There wasn’t much to read.

This is just the beginning, Kirby Granger. You can’t save him. O’Malley’s a dead man.

It’d been handwritten almost in a childish scrawl with green crayon. Maybe as an attempt to disguise any handwriting characteristics. But Declan would have it analyzed anyway. He slipped it into a plastic evidence bag.

“Why does someone want you dead?” Eden asked.

She’d only been around him for the past couple of hours, and she’d already asked him that several times. Too bad it was a question he didn’t have an answer for.

He stood and started back toward his house, where the chaos was in full swing. A different kind of chaos from the attack. The crime-scene folks had arrived. Two of his brothers, Dallas and Slade. Sheriff Rico Geary and his deputies, too. It wasn’t exactly a local case what with the attempted murder of two federal marshals, but Geary had people in place to preserve the crime scene. Plus, the sheriff wouldn’t do anything to keep Declan and his brothers out of any part of this investigation.

Not that he could have anyway.

Declan wasn’t sure what’d happened here, but he would find out, one way or another. Apparently, Eden had the same idea, because she’d been on and off her phone since the attack. All of this was just for starters. Declan wanted to question Eden a lot more so he could try to pinpoint the person who’d set all of this in motion.

Maybe she knew.

Maybe she didn’t.

He was leaning toward didn’t since she’d nearly been killed. Most people didn’t protect a person who wanted them dead. And besides, she was genuinely worried about her two sisters, since most of her calls had centered on arranging extra protection for them. Declan would add his own layer of protection soon by calling the marshals in that area.

“This is connected to your foster father,” Eden said, falling into step beside him. “The note proves that.”

“No. The note proves nothing. Someone could have written it to muddy the waters.”

She made a slight sound of surprise, then frustration. Maybe because she hadn’t thought of that angle first. Still, Declan couldn’t take his muddy-water theory as gospel, and that meant talking to Kirby. Maybe there was something that connected all three of them—Eden, Kirby and him. Something linked to the photo of him and his family back in Germany. And Declan had a sickening feeling that it was a connection he wasn’t going to like.

“Thank you,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “For saving my life.”

Declan just gave a noncommittal grunt. He couldn’t issue a standard “you’re welcome” without choking on it, because he’d told her to stay put and she hadn’t.

Yeah, she was hardheaded all right. And up to her pretty neck in danger. A real bad combination. She had just enough guts and skills to get herself killed. Him, too, since his stupid body had decided to protect her. But then, protecting her was the only way to get those answers.

When they reached the front of his house, he saw the medical examiner’s crew loading the dead gunman into their van. The guy had the two gunshot wounds to the legs that Wyatt and he had given him. But it was the gaping hole in the back of his head that’d done him in.

“Not an amateur’s shot,” Declan mumbled.

Wyatt nodded in agreement and pointed to the woods directly ahead. They were thick and dark despite the lack of leaves. “Dallas and Slade are down there having a look around.”

Because it was probably where a rifleman had positioned himself to kill the gunman.

A hit man for the hit man.

Sometimes, karma worked. But in this case, it hadn’t worked in Declan’s favor.

“Any sign of the shooter?” Eden asked.

“None.” Wyatt clearly wasn’t happy about that, either. Neither was Declan. But they’d gotten someone out to the area as fast as possible and had simply missed the guy. Of course, if he was a pro, and Declan was pretty sure he was, then he would have had his escape route well planned out.

“There are some tire tracks,” Wyatt went on. “We’ll do castings of those.”

It was all standard procedure, but standard didn’t seem like nearly enough.

“Maybe we’re dealing with two factions here,” Eden said. “Someone’s trying to kill Declan and someone else is trying to protect him.”

“Or someone didn’t want the gunman to talk,” Wyatt supplied.

Declan was leaning toward that theory. And it meant the person behind this really didn’t want his or her identity revealed and wasn’t willing to risk a hired gun running his mouth.

“I’ll do mop-up,” Wyatt assured him, and the sheriff added his nod to that. Wyatt motioned for Declan to hand him the evidence bag with the note inside.

Declan hated to leave his brothers with the chore of processing a crime scene this big, and this personal, but there were other things that needed to be done. Plus, Eden’s trembling was getting worse with every passing second, and soon the adrenaline crash would hit her hard. Him, too. But at least he had some experience dealing with it. He was betting she didn’t.

“Come on,” Declan insisted.

But Eden held her ground when he tried to help her into the truck. “My car’s on the back trail, and I need to leave to check on my sisters.”

He looked her straight in the eye. “And what happens if the gunman comes after you when you’re with them, huh?”

She flinched, then quickly recovered. “The gunman will more likely come after you.”

“After us,” he corrected. “For whatever reason, someone involved you in this, and you’re not leaving my sight until I find out why. There’s also the part about you coming here to pretend to kill me.”

She budged, but after he practically pushed her into the cab of his truck. “You think I’m lying about being blackmailed into doing this?”

Declan shrugged, got in and drove away. “Not lying exactly, but maybe not telling me the whole truth.”

“I don’t know the whole truth,” she practically shouted. She groaned, a sound of pure frustration, and she yanked on her seat belt. “I just know I don’t want to be involved with this. Or with you.”

She stumbled over the last word, causing Declan to glance at her. There was just another of those disturbing split-second glances where he saw the unguarded expression in those baby blues. There was fear in her eyes. But something else.

Great.

It was the kind of look a woman gave a man. Not one she was hired to kill, either. It was a look that smacked of attraction, and it made Declan curse.

Because he was feeling it, too.

As soon as he figured out how, he was going to make it go away. He didn’t need the kind of trouble that Eden Gray brought with her. Especially since he’d been the one to arrest her father. Even though she didn’t appear to be holding any grudges about that, maybe those blue eyes were concealing things well hidden.

She looked away from him. “Where are you taking me?”

“Since the EMTs are going to be tied up with the gunmen for a while, first stop is the hospital. You should be checked out by the doctor, and Kirby’s there. He was a little weak after his last cancer treatment, and they decided to keep him a day or two.”

“I’m sorry. How sick is he?”

“Sick,” Declan settled for saying, and it was all he intended to say on the matter. Kirby could be dying, and there was nothing he could do about it.

“Maybe questioning him is a bad idea then,” she added.

Yeah, it was. Kirby didn’t need this while he was trying to recover, but there was no way to keep the news of the gunfight from him. Even while he was in the hospital. Someone would let it slip, and Kirby would be furious that he hadn’t heard it from Declan. Besides, Kirby might be able to shed some light on the note.

“I don’t need to see a doctor,” she said. She reached out and touched his chin. “But you should.”

Declan hadn’t been expecting that touch, and he actually flinched. First, from the contact. Then the little zing of pain as her fingers grazed his skin. When Eden drew back her fingers, he saw the blood.

“You might need stitches,” she suggested.

He jerked down the visor with the vanity mirror and had a look. Yeah, his chin was cut all right, but there was no way he’d take the time to get stitches. He reached over to the glove compartment, the back of his hand brushing against Eden’s jeans-clad leg, and this time she was the one who flinched.

“Good grief,” she mumbled. “What’s wrong with us?”

Oh, she knew what.

So did he.

“My advice?” He took some tissues from the glove compartment and pressed them against his chin. “Pretend it’s not there.” Since she didn’t question what it was, he figured they were on the same page.

Talk about lousy timing.

And bad judgment.

Of course, that idiot part of him behind his jeans’ zipper was a bad-judgment magnet. He had a way of hooking up with women who could give him the most amount of trouble in the least amount of time.

The most fun, too.

Still, this went beyond his fondness for bad girls whose middles names were Trouble. Because this bad girl had been sent to kill him.

“Any chance your father’s behind this?” Declan came right out and asked. He expected her to have a quick denial and figured she wouldn’t admit that Zander Gray would try to kill his own daughter.

“There’s no way he would put me at risk like this.” She paused. “But he hates you. A lot. And he blames you for his arrest.”

“He should blame himself. He’s the one who tried to murder a witness.”

“He said he was innocent and I believe him.”

Not exactly a surprise. “Well, I’m just as adamant that he’s as guilty as sin.” Declan took the final turn toward town. “Would he include you in any plan to get revenge against me?”

He looked for any signs that she’d been lying, that she’d been in on this plan from the beginning—all to help her father get back at him.

“No.” There was just a slight hesitation before she repeated it.

Maybe she wasn’t as certain as she wanted to seem. Declan sure wasn’t, and her father gave them a starting point. But before trying to track down the man who’d been a fugitive for months, he needed to deal with the note.

Well, maybe.

It was possible that Kirby would be too weak to talk. Still, he could at least have Eden checked out to make sure she was okay. He didn’t see any cuts or bruises, but she’d hit the ground pretty hard when he had dragged her off the porch and away from those bullets.

He pulled into the parking lot of the hospital and looked around to make sure they hadn’t been followed. Something he’d done on the entire drive. The missing gunman probably wouldn’t choose Main Street for an attack, but Declan didn’t want to take any chances.

“This way.” He led Eden through a side door for one of the clinics located in the hospital. It was an entrance he and his brothers had been using a lot lately so they wouldn’t have to go through the newly installed metal detectors and disarm. With Kirby’s frequent stays in the hospital, it saved all of them some time.