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Sighing, she started toward the door of the caretaker’s cottage office, not caring if Boone followed or not.
Her cell phone rang before she got halfway up the walk. She slipped her badge and ID inside one pocket of her beige, cropped jacket and grabbed the phone out of the other. Her sister’s number showed in the little window.
Angie’s heart thumped against her chest. This call was not to chat. Chloe didn’t “chat” with her. They were both still too bruised and cautious about their renewed relationship, which was another reason she wasn’t jumping into the middle of her sister’s romance with her gun drawn on Detry. She knew who Chloe would side with.
The phone kept chirping. She turned around to find Boone staring at her curiously. He was still by his Mercedes.
“I have to get this,” she more asked than said.
Boone shrugged his broad shoulders, and she tried to convince herself she didn’t want to hide her face against one now. She never hid from anything, but she did not want to take this call. What on earth was wrong with her?
She was afraid of what Chloe was going to say, that was what.
With a deep breath, she walked well away from Boone to the back of his car, hit a key on the phone and cupped her hand over her mouth to keep her voice from carrying. She hoped.
“Chloe?”
“Ange, yes, it’s me. I have the greatest news, and I just had to call you. I hope that’s okay. You said the other night you would get this week off, right?”
“Right.” She’d called Chloe the night she’d found Cliff dead, unnerved by shock, wanting to make sure her sister was still all right. Maybe she’d also called Chloe because she wanted to hear the voice of someone familiar. It hadn’t comforted her, not when she’d really wanted to be talking to…someone else. She glanced at Boone.
“Chief Gregg gave me over a week of compassionate leave time,” Angie added. To pull herself together, which she would have to do all over again when she attended the funeral tomorrow. Nine days to get over losing a friend. It wouldn’t be enough. She already knew that.
She needed to focus on her sister. Chloe was chatting and gushing. Chloe sounded extremely happy. And given the circumstances of her sister’s life at the moment, that could only mean one thing.
“Warren proposed!” Chloe chirped in her ear. “We’re getting married Saturday.”
Oh, please, Lord, no, was what she thought. “Wow,” was what she said. What else could she say?
“I’m so happy,” Chloe added. “I was going to let you get the invitation in the mail, but Warren said he’d imagine a call would surprise you more.”
Oh, yeah. Angie rested her hips against Boone’s car, her knees threatening mutiny. Detry was a snake coiling around her neck. Tightly.
She couldn’t tell Chloe her suspicions yet. She needed absolute proof to back her up, like that murder weapon, with only Detry’s fingerprints on it. She probably could use more than that—maybe an indicting tidbit from Detry’s past that Boone missed when he ran the man’s background check. And hard as it was for her to accept, she probably needed to ask Boone to let her read his copy of that report. Detry was already making his moves. There was no time to waste.
As her sister bubbled over with hopes and dreams for her future with a murderer, Angie cast a long look at Boone. How on earth would she get him to go along with her game plan of ruining his former client, which would require his admitting to having made a mistake?
Around them birds chirped; an elderly woman, with a waterfall of red roses next to her, drove through the gate; and a plane flew through some clouds overhead. So much for the dead quiet. The world was back to normal—except for her own life.
“Ange, I really want you to be there for the shower, the rehearsal and the wedding. There’s a party, too, one evening. Mom said you can stay at the house if you don’t want to drive back and forth.” Some of the gush left Chloe’s voice as she added, “If you can come soon, maybe it will give us some time together to get to know each other again before I’m all caught up with being a wife. I’d like that.”
“I’d like that, too,” Angie whispered. She refused to tear up now, with Boone’s intense gaze on her. “I do love you, Chloe.” She couldn’t remember the last time she’d said that—if she ever had. She must have, right?
At the other end of the invisible line, Chloe hesitated, a reflection of the hard times they’d had. “I love you, too. My invitation will have the dates and times. Please let us know when you’re coming. Bye!” She disconnected.
Angie slipped her phone back into her pocket and straightened up. Boone moved to her side, so close their arms were touching. She longed to lean into him and absorb some of his strength. He was always a rock, no matter what, and she’d been on her own so long that leaning on him held great appeal. She ought to be thinking of God as her rock, but sometimes, like now when trouble was slapping her into a small, dark place, God seemed so remote.
“You hear my heart, Boone?”
“Is this a test?” he asked lightly.
“I’m surprised you can’t hear my heart,” she said, not joking. Her sister’s situation was life or death. She pulled her bag up into her arms to hold that instead of him. “I can hear my heart. It’s pounding.”
“You’re upset.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Whether or not now was a good time to ask him for permission to read the background check he’d done on Detry, she wasn’t certain. She doubted if he would let her if she didn’t first tell him about her sister’s engagement and how she was going to stop the wedding. Was it a good idea? She needed to think, but Boone’s intense gaze and nearness made that extremely difficult.
“Bad news?” Boone asked.
“Yes, I would say so.” She backed away from him a little to break the mental hold he had on her. “That was my sister.”
Boone’s face registered surprise. “I thought you two weren’t speaking.”
“We weren’t, until Warren Detry stepped into the picture. Chloe was part of a Bible study ministry for inmates. That’s how they met. When he was freed, he looked her up at her church, and they started dating.”
“You were going to tell me this when?” His eyes narrowed.
“Now?” She lifted her eyebrow. The edges of his lips lifted, but only briefly. His attention was diverted by the elderly lady’s car leaving. He watched the vehicle carefully, then resettled himself to look at her.
“Go on,” he said.
“Chloe never believed Detry capable of murder. At some point, Warren discovered we were sisters. Not too long ago, he made it a point to ‘encourage’ Chloe to reconcile with me.” Not out of any love of his fellow man, Angie was certain. The monster just wanted to assure she was out there, scared. Sweating. Petrified.
“The call just now was to tell me she and Warren are getting married Saturday.” She met Boone’s eyes again. “Warren encouraged her to call and invite me especially. He’s taunting me.”
“Angie—”
“He is,” she insisted, “because I know as soon as Chloe moves in with him, she’s readily available to be his next victim, and he wants me to worry. He must know we’re here, looking for the evidence. That I’m not giving up, despite his death threat on my car this morning. He’ll either kill her to get revenge on me for insisting the murder weapon existed, or he’ll hold her over my head to keep me from taking the murder weapon to the authorities.”
Boone’s skeptical eyes made Angie want to kick him in the shins, but she held back. At the rate today was going, she would probably just break a toe. Besides, she was trying to change inside, to mature as a Christian.
A hard battle, especially when it came to Boone, in more ways than one.
“I’ll admit,” Boone said, “that his choosing your sister to fall in love with and marry is very coincidental, but it’s not like he went looking to meet her in the first place just to get revenge on you. The trial hadn’t even happened yet when they met.”
Was she wrong? The memory of Detry’s evil eyes lacerating her appeared in her mind like fireworks, clear and sharp at first, then fading into nothingness, and she shivered, despite the warmth of the June morning. No, she wasn’t wrong. She’d met up with perps like him before, men who had it out for females, but never any with the intensity of hatred in their eyes that Detry had displayed toward her. Her guess was that Detry was a psychopath who hated women. When she’d claimed a weapon existed that he’d stated wasn’t there, she’d become tops on his hit list.
Maybe it had been a coincidence Detry met Chloe, and maybe even that he’d found out they were sisters. But it hadn’t been by chance he’d sought out Chloe later, after the trial was over, and begun dating her. No, that had been his plan.
But she’d never convince Boone of that.
“You’re also assuming Detry was guilty,” he added, “and that someone else didn’t commit Laurie Detry’s murder and write that note to you. Someone who doesn’t want the weapon found now.”
She sidestepped impatiently. “Do I really need to remind you there were no signs of any break-in or struggle at the mansion? That the forensics team found no stranger’s prints anywhere? I’d stake my life on there not being an intruder.”
“I wouldn’t stake your life on that,” Boone said fiercely.
That almost sounded like he cared. She supposed he did, in a way, but he cared more about his clients. He would never side with her over one of them. Ever. This was proving it. Worse, he was gazing down at her as though she were being an illogical child. Just like at the trial, he was still doubting her opinions and abilities. That hurt.
No matter what he thought, Detry was dangerous, and she believed that to the depths of her soul. Because he’d put Chloe up to this latest call, Angie was almost positive he wasn’t planning to murder her anytime soon. He would have too much fun getting his revenge by watching Angie squirm…while the clock ticked away the seconds till his next murder.
Her sister’s.
So physically, Angie was safe—for now. Mentally, though, she knew Boone would fight her the whole way on breaking up Detry and her sister, and he was a formidable enemy to have. She needed to stay on his friendly side until she got the information about Detry she wanted.
“Tell you what. Since there’s no danger, and we seem to waste a lot of time disagreeing with each other on this, I’m demoting you from bodyguard back to lawyer.”
To say Boone looked shocked would be an understatement. “You sure you want to do that, Angel?”
Hearing his nickname for her brought back memories that made her warm inside. He’d called her Angel all the time when they were together. She wished she could tell him to stop now, but if she did, he might think she was still bitter toward him. She was, and maybe he even knew she was, but if he didn’t, she didn’t want him to figure it out. She wanted him to think “help Angie.”
She kept her voice even. “I know you’ve been enjoying your elevation in status, but you can go back to your office, and I’ll take a cab there with the evidence when I’m done.”
“What makes you think I would just leave you here?”
“Because there’s no reason for you to stay.” Distracted by the movement of curtains in the cottage window, she paused. They needed to hurry up before someone got worried and called the police. That would be messy. Chief Gregg would not be pleased if she became the center of attention—again.
“The way I figure it, before he died, Cliff must have let Detry know that he told me that he’d buried the evidence, but not where exactly. I don’t know why Cliff would have done that, but that’s what I think happened.” She gave Boone a few seconds to process that. “So Detry, angry, decided to threaten me with the note. Not because he has plans to kill me. That’s no real fun when it comes to revenge. No, he’ll get his jollies from me panicking.”
“You don’t know any of this for certain.”
“He had Chloe call me to announce the wedding, Boone,” she repeated. “He was turning his knife in my gut. He’s totally aware my sister and mother are all I’ve got now that he tore you and me apart.”
Much to her dismay, Boone’s relaxed aura was gone, and he straightened, looking critically at her. “That’s the whole problem you have with him, isn’t it? We might still be together if I hadn’t taken him on as a client.”
“No, Detry is the whole problem I have with you. That you chose him to defend—and not me.” The burning behind her eyes started, and Angie knew she needed to get mad instead of cry. She’d done enough crying over her past already, before and after Boone. “Besides, we wouldn’t have lasted even without Detry. There are too many differences between us. But that doesn’t matter now. I need to make my sister understand he is dangerous—that’s what does matter to me. Not putting him in prison—and not you.”
Her words were like a gut punch. Boone turned away from her and scanned the trees and road, determined to focus on watching out for threats. But one thought lingered on his mind like fire licking at a log—he no longer mattered to her.
“So I don’t need you to watch my back any longer.”
“I think you do.” She had tunnel vision where Detry was concerned and would never accept that he was innocent, and she could still be in danger from sources unknown. Not good. She needed him and couldn’t even see it. Or refused to, because he’d hurt her.
Whatever she said, he wasn’t leaving her there alone. He was finally there for her, one hundred percent there, but he feared it was too late.
“Don’t risk your life just because you’re angry with me,” he said. “I think someone else wrote the note for some other reason, and you’re still in immediate danger—maybe more than you think.”
“You’re wrong,” she said, her eyes flashing furiously.
“I am?”
“You’ve been wrong before.”
In court, about her, she meant. Boone knew she was right. He considered apologizing, not for choosing to defend his client over her, but for thinking there were no other possibilities for the evidence having disappeared beyond her being negligent.
That the gun could have been purposely hidden had never occurred to him. Cliff Haggis, the first responder the night of the murder from the small, understaffed, Copper City PD, was a decorated, well-respected police detective. He’d testified he had not seen the weapon Angie had described. Likewise, there was no reason to believe the crime-scene investigation team, called in from nearby Cincinnati, would have any reason to thwart the murder investigation. The only possibility he’d come up with was that Angie had somehow missed the real perp inside the mansion, who had taken the weapon at some point and fled unnoticed before the rest had shown up.
He’d played the case the way he needed to in order to free an innocent man, and he couldn’t apologize for that.
“Okay, so I was wrong—once,” he admitted. “That doesn’t mean I’m wrong now. Making faulty assumptions about someone’s guilt could get you killed.”
“There’s steam coming out of my ears, Boone.”
As determined as she was not to listen to him, he was just as determined to protect her. “How about if I keep my opinions to myself and tag along with you anyway?” he asked.
“Why would you want to?”
Boone considered his answer carefully. Because he owed her. Because he thought she was wrong about the threat to her life and didn’t want her to be dead wrong. Because…
“Because I missed you.”
Her cheeks flushed pink. “Quit saying that!”
He shrugged. “Can’t help it.”
“And don’t be charming.”
“Me? I don’t know the meaning of the word.” He grinned, because he was getting through to her. He could tell. “I’m just trying to make you happy.”
Angie, exasperated, waved her hand in the air. “Never mind. Tag along if you want to, while I dig up the gun, but don’t talk to me.”
“Even if I see danger?”
“You’re causing me to have premature aging lines,” she told him.
“See? Even when I’m the exact way you want me to be, you’re not happy.”
He might be right about that, and what did that say about her?
“I’m not talking to you anymore.” Leaving Boone behind, Angie walked up the concrete sidewalk to the cottage, where she rapped once on the door to announce her arrival and entered.
A woman in her late sixties with frosted, dark blond hair and weathered skin sat behind the desk inside reading a bestseller Angie recognized based on a real serial killer. In a cemetery. Gutsy.
The woman met her eyes with some emotion in hers that came and went quickly, spooking Angie. Then her face took on a world-weariness that held a hint of amusement.
“Took you long enough to get in here,” the woman said, laying her novel carefully on the side of her desk and joining Angie at the counter. “I watched you two for a while, but then I got bored. Too much conflict, not enough resolution.”
Uncanny how that about nailed down her entire life, Angie thought.
“You and that fella married?”
“No,” Angie said firmly, ignoring the giant moth trying to take off in the pit of her stomach. “Never.”
“Good thing. You’d be a divorce waiting to happen.”
Wow, if outsiders could tell, she’d done the right thing disengaging herself from Boone. Or trying to, anyway. The door shut behind her and she sensed Boone right back at her side. Close. Very close.
She elbowed him. It was like hitting concrete. He backed off, and she turned her attention to the cemetery’s caretaker. The nameplate on the front counter said she was Ida Zlotsky.
