Читать книгу Falsely Accused - Shirlee McCoy - Страница 14

Nine years was a long time to not speak to the best of friends, the staunchest supporter, the most enthusiastic encourager.

Nine years should have changed everything, but the rhythm of her friendship with Titus? It was the same. The verbal sparring. The quick exchanges of ideas and plans. The compromising and the challenging. It all felt as natural as breathing.

That was the only excuse Wren could find for allowing him to walk toward the perpetrators while she sat in the Jeep and waited.

His plan had made sense.

He’d presented his argument, and she’d agreed because he’d been right. She wasn’t in the position to win a skirmish let alone the battle she thought might be coming.

But sitting idle?

It wasn’t something she did well.

She scooted closer to the door, legs out of the Jeep, feet on the muddy ground. Her tennis shoes were already soaked through, the cuffs of her jeans damp. If she’d had use of her hands, she’d have rolled them up, removed her shoes and climbed the steep hill that led to the road. She’d done it dozens of times as a teen, returning home with dirty feet and mud-caked clothes and listening to Abigail’s good-humored grumbling about her tomboyish ways.

Sirens screamed, the sound echoing through the forest and pulsing behind her eyes. She’d been exhausted before this, pulled in too many directions by too many people. Work. Friends. Abigail. She’d hoped that the two weeks she’d taken off to help her foster mother move her belongings into the retirement home she planned to move into when she was released from rehab would clear her mind and renew her flagging spirit. She hadn’t expected this kind of trouble. Not in a place like Hidden Cove.

But she should have been prepared for it.

A year ago, she would have been.

Life had been wearing her down. Fatigue had caused her to make a rookie mistake. Instead of carrying her service revolver, she’d left it in the gun safe at Abigail’s. Ryan might have paid for her mistake with his life.

Might have?

No matter how much she kept trying to deny it, she knew the truth.

She blinked back hot tears. Crying did no good. What she needed was razor-sharp focus because she planned to catch his killers, and she planned to throw them in jail and toss away the key.

An engine revved. A door slammed.

She expected a volley of shots to be fired.

Expected to have to duck for cover and worry that Titus was in the line of fire. He’d quit the Boston Police Department several years after she’d joined the FBI. She’d heard it through the law enforcement grapevine. She’d wanted to call and ask him why. He’d been a great cop and a fantastic homicide detective. He’d been on his way to a great and fulfilling career.

But by the time she’d heard he’d quit, the silence between them had seemed too deep, the distance too great to overcome.

She wondered what he’d been doing since he’d left the force. He still acted like a cop. Still moved like one. She could see him crouched behind brush halfway up the hill, gun in hand and at the ready.

She wanted to call out and tell him to be careful, but that would bring bullets flying in her direction.

Or maybe not.

The car sped away. Lights still off.

She stepped out of the Jeep.

“Stay where you are!” Titus shouted, and she realized she’d made another mistake. She’d assumed both perps had left the area. One might have stayed behind.

She froze, waiting for gunshots.

All she heard was the pulsing siren of the approaching emergency vehicle and the rapid beat of her heart.

“It’s clear, I think,” she finally responded, stepping out of the muddy creek bed.

“I’d rather we both know,” he muttered, jogging toward her.

Strobe lights flashed on the street above them.

Help had finally arrived.

She wanted to feel relieved and victorious, but all she felt was grief. Ryan was gone. They hadn’t ever been close, but they’d always had each other’s backs. She’d bailed him out of jail when he was a young punk kid with more attitude than brains. She’d helped him with college expenses, encouraged him to keep his nose clean and lectured him when he’d needed it.

He’d always called her on her birthday and on holidays. Always sent funny cards reminding her not to take life too seriously. Always called her “sis.”

“You okay?” Titus asked as he reached her side.

“Do I look it?” she responded.

His gaze dropped from her face to her blood-splattered T-shirt.

“No.” He shrugged out of his flannel shirt and dropped it around her shoulders. “It’s going to be okay. We’re going to find the person who did this.”

“People,” she corrected. “Two men.”

“We’ll find the people who did this. But, first, I need to get you out of these cuffs.” He touched her uninjured wrist. “This one is fine, but the other one is so swollen, the cuff is digging in. Can you feel it?”

“It hurts,” she responded, her gaze on the road and the flashing lights. “I need to speak with the police.”

She headed uphill, her feet slipping, her arms useless for balance.

“How about I help?” Titus muttered, sliding his arm around her waist, careful not to jar her injured wrist.

If it had been any other day, if he’d been any other man, she’d have told him she could manage on her own, because she could manage. She hadn’t gotten where she was in her career by relying on other people to get her through the tough times. It might take more time and more effort, but if she’d had to, she’d have crawled to the road.

However, Titus was an old friend. They’d parted ways under unhappy circumstances, but she still cared about him. She’d like to believe he still cared about her. For right now, she would believe it, because as much as she hated to admit it, she felt too weak to climb the hill on her own.

They were nearly to the top when a uniformed officer stepped into sight, the beam of his light illuminating them. “Sheriff’s department! Freeze! Both of you! Hands where I can see them!”

“Her hands are cuffed,” Titus responded.

“Facedown! On your bellies. Now!”

Titus tried to help her, but the deputy shouted again. “I said get down! Now.”

Titus dropped to his stomach.

She did the same, her eyes tearing as the sudden movement jarred her injured wrist.

Seconds later, they were surrounded. She counted shoes as she was patted down. Five sets. That was a lot of manpower for a small-town sheriff’s department to send out.

“Wren Santino?” one of the men said, grabbing her arm and yanking her to her feet.

“That’s correct,” she said as she met Sheriff Camden Wilson’s eyes. They’d attended high school together. He knew exactly who she was.

“You’re under arrest for the murder of Ryan Parker. You have the right to remain silent...”

His voice droned on, but she didn’t hear what he was saying.

All she could hear was the word murder and Ryan’s name.

Ryan was gone. Somehow, she’d been responsible for that.

She was dizzy with the truth of it, and she stumbled, dropping to her knees despite the sheriff’s grip on her arm.

“She needs medical attention,” Titus said, his voice gruff with concern. She wanted to tell him that she’d be fine, but the words seemed trapped in her head.

“She needs to be in jail for the rest of her life,” the sheriff said, but he put in a call for an ambulance. She heard that. Heard the soft murmur of voices as other law enforcement officers chatted.

The sheriff led her to his vehicle. When they reached it, he uncuffed her wrists with more gentleness than she’d expected.

“Thanks,” she managed to say.

“You’re a human being. You deserve to be treated like one. I wished you’d felt the same about my deputy. Sit.” He opened the door and motioned for her to sit in the back.

She didn’t argue, and she didn’t try to explain.

Her Miranda rights had been read.

She knew them.

“I’d like to make a phone call,” she said.

“Later,” he replied, and then he closed the door, locking her inside. She’d wait patiently. She’d do what she was told. Fighting the system could only lead to more trouble in the long run, but what she really wanted to do was shout for him to let her out, demand that she be treated like the law enforcement officer she was, give him all the details he had yet to ask for.

She had done nothing wrong.

She knew that.

The best thing she could do was the most difficult—be quiet and wait.

Six hours after he’d been cuffed and taken to the sheriff’s department, Titus finally returned home. His Jeep had been towed from the creek and was sitting in front of his house. The windows were shattered and the body damaged. He thought the front axle might be broken. It wasn’t drivable, but it wasn’t his only vehicle. Despite asking about Wren numerous times, he’d been given no information. Now that he was free, he planned to take matters into his own hands. He’d drive back into town and ask around. Someone knew something about where Wren had been taken and how she was doing.

More than likely, everyone knew everything.

That’s how it worked in Hidden Cove.

He’d moved there as a child, making the long trip from Fort Worth, Texas, because his mother had inherited property from her maternal grandfather. By all rights, the home should have been exactly what they’d been needing, but Sophia Parker had been more interested in her addictions than she had been in keeping up the pretty little house and beautiful acreage. He’d spent his tween and teen years ignoring the whispers about his home life, about his mother’s ways of making a few bucks, about his threadbare clothes and wild Afro. He hadn’t cared that he was the only dark-skinned kid in town. He’d cared that he’d had to carry his clothes to the Laundromat if he wanted them clean. He cared that he had to buy food if he wanted to eat. He cared that the entire town knew his business.

Now, though, the nosy neighbors and small-town gossips might come in handy.

He ran to the garage and climbed in the Chevy pickup he used to haul wood. It was ancient but functional, the engine roaring to life as soon as he turned the ignition. His gun had been taken and then returned. He had it tucked into the holster, and he grabbed a jacket from his emergency pack in the back of the truck and shrugged into it. No sense wandering around town with his gun visible. People in Hidden Cove hadn’t trusted him when he was a kid. He had been an outsider with an attitude, a teenager who had no understanding of small-town life. His mother’s drug addiction had been well known, and he had been her son—a young man who had a chip on his shoulder and no reason to want to fit in.

It had taken a while, but eventually he had proven that he was more than a product of his mother’s mistakes. His job as a police officer in Boston had helped solidify the town’s impression of him as hardworking and honest. When he had returned for his high school carpentry teacher’s retirement party and had been given an opportunity to take over his restoration business, he had jumped at the opportunity. He had worked with his teacher for two years before stepping in as owner and operator. The town had seemed happy enough with the transition, but Wren had left town to go to college, and she had only returned for brief visits. Unlike Titus, she was still considered an outsider. The fact that she was an FBI agent might make people more willing to trust her, but whether or not she’d have any allies in a town that was close-knit and tight-lipped when it wanted to be remained to be seen. She did have Abigail, though, and Abigail had a lot of influence in Hidden Cove. She’d been born and raised there. She’d taught elementary and middle school. She’d fostered kids who’d had nowhere else to go. Never married, she’d devoted her life to helping others and supporting the town she loved.

The town loved her for it.

Although he hadn’t been to see her at the farm since his return, they’d spoken at church and at town meetings. She’d supported his efforts to save some of the oldest homes in town, and he’d appreciated that. She’d broken her hip a month ago, and, according to people who supposedly knew, she planned to move into a retirement home once she finished rehab.

The fact that she was giving up the property that had been in her family for three generation made his stomach churn, but it wasn’t his business, and when he’d heard that the for-sale sign had finally gone up, he’d kept his mouth shut and his opinions to himself.

Abigail would be devastated when she heard the news about Ryan. She’d loved him like a son. Her two last foster children had been her two best. That’s what she’d often said when he was visiting Wren at the farm during their high school years.

He glanced in his rearview mirror as he pulled onto Mountain Road. It had been too long since he’d been out to Abigail’s property. He should have visited before she’d broken her hip, but he’d been avoiding the memories he knew it would stir up.

He’d made a lot of mistakes in his life.

Accusing Wren of lying about his ex-wife? That had been one of the biggest. He’d known her almost as well as he knew himself. He’d known how honest she was, how much she cared about him, how deeply it had hurt her to have to tell him she had seen Meghan with another man.

Yet, he’d been more willing to believe she was lying than he had been to accept the truth.

He’d tried to apologize, but by that point it had been too late. The damage had been done.

“Water under the bridge,” he muttered, accelerating as he headed toward town. The sun had just risen, golden rays of light tipping the tree canopy with gold. The sky was pristine blue. No clouds, but he caught a whiff of something in the air.

Smoke?

He rolled down the window, inhaled fresh cool air and the unmistakable scent of a fire. He glanced in his rearview mirror, saw black smoke billowing up from the valley.

Surprised, he turned the truck around and sped toward the plume of smoke. It was too big to be coming from a trash pile. Was someone’s house burning? He called 911 but, without an address, could only be vague about the location. The road wound its way down into the valley, the forests opening into farmland. He drove several miles, his attention on the road and the smoke wafting across the sky. It took him too long to realize where it was coming from, and by the time he did, he was almost at the gates that opened onto Abigail’s two-hundred-acre property. The old farmhouse stood on a hill in the center of a lush green lawn. Gray siding. White shutters. Wraparound porch.

The smoke was coming from behind the house.

Or from the back of it.

He drove through the open gates, speeding up the gravel driveway and giving the address to the 911 operator as he parked. If he didn’t do something, the two-hundred-year-old farmhouse would be consumed by flames before help arrived.

He raced to the backyard, hoping an outbuilding or trash pile was on fire. Flames shot from the roof of the kitchen addition that had been added in the fifties. Abigail loved to tell the story of how her father had surprised her mother with the extraordinary gift of a modern kitchen. In the years since, nothing had been changed. The subway-tile backsplash, the Formica counters and glossy pink cupboards were all exactly as they had been. The oven, the refrigerator, the old icebox. They stood exactly where Abigail’s father had placed them.

He bounded up the porch stairs. The back door was open, the room beyond filled with smoke. He could see flames lapping at the floor and moving toward the dining room, which was part of the older building.

All the aged and dry wood would be kindling for the inferno. He grabbed the garden hose that Abigail used to water the flower beds and turned on the water.

It wasn’t much, but if he could wet down the wood, he might be able to slow the fire. He aimed for the interior of the kitchen, listening as the fire hissed and steamed, moving into the room as the flames diminished.

There was a trail of liquid on the floor, and the flames followed it, shooting along through the pool of what had to be accelerant.

He aimed at that, spraying water across the floor and into the dining room, skirting past smoldering floorboards and making his way deeper into the house.

He could smell it now—gasoline.

And he could see it, splattered on walls and on the floor, just waiting for the spark to get it going.

Someone had been trying to burn down the farmhouse.

Who?

Why?

And what did it have to do with Ryan’s death?

Titus didn’t believe in coincidences, and he didn’t believe the two things weren’t connected.

He sprayed the floorboards, stretching the hose as far as it could go. Once he’d reached its limits, he headed back into the kitchen. The flames were out there, smothered by the deluge of water, but the damage was massive. He doubted the addition could be saved, but the fire marshal would make that determination.

He caught movement in his periphery vision and turned as a figure lunged from the doorway that led to the back stairs. Something glanced off his head, the pain less immediate than his need to stop his attacker from escaping.

He dropped the hose and tackled what looked like a scrawny teenager. They fell into a puddle of gasoline-tainted water. Titus had the kid pinned, his forearm to the boy’s throat.

“Let me go!” the kid whined.

“Not until the police arrive.”

“Police? I was trying to put the fire out!”

“You can tell them all about it,” Titus said.

The kid’s gaze shifted. Just a little. Just enough that Titus had a millisecond of warning. He dove to the side as something whipped through the air. It hit his shoulder, the impact stealing the breath from his lungs.

Not a bullet. He rolled sideways, pulling his gun, aiming at a man who was swinging a baseball bat in the direction of his head. The shot hit its mark, but momentum kept the bat spinning through the air. It hit Titus in the temple.

He saw stars.

Then he saw nothing at all.