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Suzy glanced at James. He still looked as confused as she felt.
“Whose blood is it?” she had to ask.
The man’s gaze stuck to his hand.
James crouched down so he was at eye level with the other man. “Queso, whose blood is it?” Suzy didn’t have a chance to question the name. She was holding her breath for an answer. “Queso?”
James reached out and grabbed his shoulder. It did the trick in focusing him.
“It’s Sully’s,” Queso finally answered, voice low. “I don’t even know if he’s still alive. He made me run when the shooting started. He told me that getting you that address was too important.” He let out an exhalation. It deflated him. “Padre, he said you’re already running out of time.”
“Okay, I’ve heard enough.”
Suzy placed her hands up in defeat. She wasn’t about to let this show go on any more. The story was lost on her, everyone’s motivations just as hazy. She’d made a promise to herself not to willingly walk into situations exactly like the one she’d just walked into. Having a powwow with a man who had just confessed the blood he was covered in was not his own? A man who had limped from the dark of night to James Callahan’s estate instead of to the police?
It was too much.
“I’m calling this in.”
“You can’t,” Queso said hurriedly. His haze had been replaced with sheer panic in seconds. It hit every syllable in his words. “If anyone knows I talked to the cops, I’m done for.” He shook his head and turned to James. “And you’ll be out of even more time. Please, Padre, don’t let her call them in.”
Suzy grabbed her discarded high heel and tried to cool her mounting anger before it came to a head.
“I am the law,” she reminded him. “And no amount of money is going to erase that fact. Now, can you walk to the house or do we need to carry you?”
Queso flapped his mouth open and closed. James answered for him.
But not with what she wanted to hear.
“Maybe we should go inside and take a moment to think this through, Suzanne.”
If there was one thing Suzy disliked more than a man trying to tell her how to do her job—or when not to do it—it was a man calling her Suzanne.
“Either call me Suzy or Chief Deputy Simmons,” she snapped. “And there’s nothing to talk through. Something is going on, you’re in the middle of it and I’m going to get answers this time around. Honest ones.”
She grabbed Queso’s wrist and pulled up. James helped but kept talking.
“I need to go see what’s at this address. Now, not later,” he tried. “You heard him. I’m running out of time.”
Suzy whirled around as the side door banged open. The man James had been talking to before he’d gone upstairs had a towel in his hand.
“Listen, Suzy, this is my head of security, Douglas. Let him watch Queso until we know what’s here.” He shook the paper with the address on it. “Then we can do whatever you feel we need to do. Please.”
All three men looked up at her.
“You’re out of your mind,” she exclaimed. “A bloody guy limps to your party and gives you an address, and then you want to go off without anything else to go on? Even if I wasn’t law enforcement, I would think that’s crazy.”
Then James did something that surprised her. He almost closed the space between them, his blue, blue eyes never leaving hers.
“I know you don’t trust me,” he said, voice low. “You don’t believe that I just happened to be out there that day...and you’re right.”
Suzy felt her eyes widen.
“Then why were you?” she had to ask.
Would it be this simple to get her answer?
James angled his body slightly, as if he didn’t want Douglas to hear what he had to say next. Suzy couldn’t help herself. She leaned in a fraction.
“Because Gardner Todd, my brother, asked me to meet him there.” Before Suzy could react, he continued. “He said he needed to tell me something important. I never learned what that was, never even had a clue, either. Until this.” Suzy glanced at the paper in his hand. “Listen, I’m not like my brother, but I am like you. I want answers, too. So let’s go get some before it really is too late.”
There was so much to process that Suzy couldn’t land on any one point or question. In part, that was because of the pure urgency behind his plea. It bled through his words and into her. So sincere. So real.
James wasn’t the only one surprised when she nodded.
“Okay, I’ll go with you,” she agreed. “But I’m going to need answers on the way. And, Mr. Callahan, if you lie to me again, no one will be able to help you. Not your money, not your lawyer, not even the entire town of Bates Hill. Got it?”
He nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
Chapter Four (#u74f89d21-a7a7-576e-bf3d-447dc5830b05)
Suzy shook her head. She might have followed the millionaire to and into his truck, but she was still having a hard time believing what he’d said.
“Gardner Todd had no family,” she said. “At least, nothing in his files ever said that at any point he had a brother. Let alone that you’re him.”
The truck hit a series of bumps that rocketed Suzy off the seat. James threw his hand out to steady her. His palm pressed against her rib cage. Through the thin material of the dress, she could feel the heat of his skin. It momentarily distracted her.
“Like you guessed, some people will do anything for the right price,” he said, unaware that his contact had put a hiccup in her thoughts. “And my father was all about knowing what somebody’s right price was. It was easy to keep Gardner out of the spotlight. Easier, too, when Gardner ran away at sixteen.”
“But why?” Suzy interjected. James pulled his hand back, setting it on the steering wheel. The dark night kept flying by the windows. “Why would he erase Gardner like that?”
A small smile pulled at the corner of James’s lips. In the dark of the cab, Suzy couldn’t tell if it was a happy one. Given the subject matter, she doubted it.
“Gardner wasn’t a crazy kid, if that’s what you’re after. But he drove our dad crazy. And it went both ways. My dad wasn’t the easiest man to get along with, and for whatever reason, Gardner got the short end of the stick with him. They never had one big fight, just a hundred little ones. It was like everything he did rubbed Dad the wrong way.” He shrugged. “And there’s only so much anger and disappointment and resentment you can shell out on a kid before they eventually either become the person you made them out to be or a completely different person, despite what you tried to make them.”
“You’re talking about Gardner Todd here,” Suzy said, still in disbelief that he was related to the man next to her. “The Alabama Boogeyman. The fixer who gets hired by the highest bidder. Notorious across the state for his role as being basically the best criminal handyman.”
James shrugged again. “I never said he was perfect.”
The truck slowed enough to hook a right. Beneath the tires was nothing but dirt and rock. They were in backcountry and only getting farther into it.
“If he really was your brother, father issues aside, why run away and give up a fortune? Especially if he could have inherited it.”
The smile—and whatever it meant—disappeared from James’s lips.
“I never got to ask. I was thirteen when he left. He sent birthday cards, but the last time I talked to him in person was a few days after Dad passed.”
“But you were going to meet him at the warehouse.”
James stiffened, then nodded.
“In the last few years he’d call me occasionally to talk. Nothing devious or anything. Just about how I was doing and checking up on our sister, Chelsea, mostly. Honestly, I think he regretted not having a relationship with her, but as you’ve pointed out, he was in with the worst kind of crowd. And he knew it. He never tried to come around while I raised her, and I never invited him to.”
“Until four months ago,” Suzy offered.
“He called and I knew something was off. He said there was something he had to talk to me about. In person. Something important.” James tightened his grip on the steering wheel. His knuckles turned white. A muscle in his jaw twitched. “By the time I got there...well, you know.”
Suzy fidgeted in her seat. “So you have no idea what he wanted to tell you?”
He shook his head. “I have no idea what he wanted or why he chose to meet there. Or who wanted him dead. I might not be in law enforcement, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t heard about his reputation. If someone wanted him dead, it was a bold move. One not many would make. Especially not Lester McGibbon. At least, not on his own.”
Suzy and Matt had already agreed on that point. Nothing in Lester’s history suggested he would go from white-collar crime to taking on Gardner. Someone either bold or stupid had ordered the hit and gotten the man to do it.
“You think what Gardner wanted to talk to you about was related to his death,” she guessed.
James reduced the truck’s speed and leaned forward to get a better look ahead.
“When the Alabama Boogeyman has a secret for you and then gets shot three times before he can tell?”
“It’s hard not to connect the two,” she admitted.
“Damn hard.”
He motioned out the windshield, but Suzy was already pulling out her gun. The country road was funneling them toward a house in the distance. Not a farmhouse—it was too small, and there was nothing else around the property that suggested the owners dealt with animals or crops—but something more quaint. One lone exterior light hung over the front door. There were no cars around.
“You’ve never been to this house?” she asked, already knowing the answer. In profile, she could see the way his brows pinched together. Along with her, he was seeing the house for the first time.
“I’ve never been here,” he confirmed. “I didn’t even know there were houses this far out here.”
Bates Hill might have been a small town, but its country land ran for a good chunk of miles. As far as Suzy could recall, she hadn’t been out here, either. Which meant she needed to be on her A game.
As easy as it had been to not trust James during the last four months, she couldn’t help but believe that he believed the tip he’d gotten was genuine.
Suzy took the safety off her weapon.
James didn’t stop in front of the house. Instead, he drove a circle around it and parked facing the road they’d come from. No one stirred inside.
“Ready, Chief Deputy Simmons?” There was a hint of excitement in his voice. It matched the small dose of adrenaline building in her. The danger of the unknown. The promise of getting justice. All in a day’s work.
“Yes, but at the first sign of trouble I’m calling in the cavalry. Got it?”
James snickered. “I wouldn’t have thought otherwise.”
They got out of the truck and fell into a surprisingly comfortable rhythm. James led the way to the door and knocked, and when no one answered, he stepped to the side. He tried the doorknob. It turned, but he didn’t open the door. Instead, he gave Suzy a look that made pride for her job swell in her chest. She pushed her shoulders back, brought her gun up, and looked ahead and nodded. James opened the door wide and waited as Suzy pushed in first, gun ready.
“Riker County Sheriff’s Department!” she yelled, quick on her feet.
No one yelled or jumped out, but Suzy didn’t slow. She went through the living area as soon as James turned on the light. No sign of anyone. She moved to the one bedroom and the attached bathroom, flipping on the rest of the lights as she went.
“It’s clear,” she called after checking the closets. She holstered her gun and went back to the living room. “Anything you recognize?”
The room was small and open to the kitchen. A modest furniture set centered the room while a bookshelf took up half the wall near the front door. James stood in front of it, scanning the books and odds and ends it housed.
“I don’t know,” he answered after moving to the next shelf. “Nothing so far. No pictures or anything that I think would constitute a secret worth killing to protect.” He reached over and pulled out a book. “Unless someone really didn’t like Romeo and Juliet.”
Suzy walked to a chest against the wall and opened it. It contained a few handwoven blankets and a shoe box. Carefully she lifted the small box out.
“Do you think this is where he lived?” she had to ask, taking the lid off. “Gardner, I mean. Did he ever tell you where he stayed?” The box was filled with blank envelopes and a pen.
“That’s just another question I never asked. Though I assumed he had a place north of Birmingham. Definitely not here.”
“Maybe this place is the secret.”
Suzy placed the box to the side and pulled the blankets out. She tossed them onto the couch.
“A secret about what?” James asked, his focus still on the bookcase. “That whoever stayed here liked isolation and Shakespeare?” Suzy could hear the frustration in his voice.
“Your source could have been pulling your leg,” she pointed out.
He turned and their eyes met. Blue glass. Sharp and clear. “You saw Queso. Do you think he was lying?”
“I think he was scared and confused,” she admitted. “He might have misinterpreted what he saw or was simply given the wrong information on purpose.”
James didn’t agree. He didn’t even have to shake his head to get that point across. He squared his shoulders defensively. “My source wouldn’t do that.”
He didn’t elaborate past that, and Suzy didn’t push. He stalked past her into the bedroom.
James might have told her one of his secrets, but he certainly had more up his tailored sleeves. Maybe jumping into his truck without a second thought hadn’t been her best move. Answers be damned.
They spent the next several minutes in silence, both working their rooms. Suzy checked the side tables, went back over the bookcase and started pulling out kitchen cabinets and drawers. Whoever lived in the house had either left in a hurry or hadn’t been there in a while. Almost everything was cleaned out of the kitchen.
Almost being the operative word.
“James!”
“Suzy!”
Suzy jumped and turned as they spoke at the same time. James walked into the living room, holding a cloth in his hand.
“I would say ‘jinx,’ but I don’t think it works like that,” he said. The joke didn’t hold any humor. James’s expression was blank. “I found this in the dresser. It was hung up between the drawers.”
He held the cloth up. Only it wasn’t just a cloth.
It was a small onesie. One with a rubber ducky sewn in the middle.
Suzy’s heart began to race. She stepped to the side to show what she’d found.
“It was at the back of the cabinet. I almost didn’t see it.”
