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“You don’t strike me as a dumb ass,” he continued at last, “and you’d have to be to do all that in your home. Plus, it didn’t look like there was a huge struggle. The damage downstairs looks like two tough guys making out and not paying attention to their surroundings. But whoever killed the guy was strong and he was pissed. Split the victim’s cheek in two with that baseball bat in the first blow.”
Snow glanced at Lucas, knowing only he would understand the tightening of Lucas’s features in that moment. Hollis would write it off as disgust over hearing the details. Snow knew Lucas was remembering another time when Snow had tracked down Gratton after he’d taken Ian.
Green-gray eyes locked with his and nausea filled Snow. Did, no, could Lucas think him capable of something like that again? He hadn’t actually killed the man that time and he’d been provoked. Hell, they’d all been provoked. If Snow hadn’t found Ian and Gratton first, Lucas or Rowe would have done something similar. They’d all been out for blood—both Gratton’s and Jagger’s.
“There’s more,” Hollis said, pulling their attention back. “And it’s not about what happened last night or this morning—we still haven’t heard from the ME.” Hollis paused, dropping his eyes down to where his large, rough hands rested on the table. The detective looked uneasy for the first time, as if he were debating whether he should continue. “This is about Ian’s accident. We found a witness who saw the truck that hit Ian and Melissa. He said it was no random accident—but we’d already suspected that. But the witness said the person driving the truck deliberately drove into them at a high speed and only stuck around long enough to watch the outcome. With that particular off-ramp, it had to have been perfectly timed, too. Someone had to have been following them.”
“Wait.” Lucas straightened off the wall. “You’re saying that Melissa was murdered.”
The cop nodded. “And Ian nearly was.” His lips thinned. “Trust me, I want to know exactly what happened myself.” He looked up at Lucas. “Spoke to your ex-bodyguard and he said that Rowe usually drove that particular company car, but Melissa had taken it because her car was in the shop.” Hollis paused. “So, who the fuck did the three of you piss off?”
“Three?” Sarah asked. “You’re including Lucas when I’m hearing that Rowe and Snow are the intended victims here?”
“Did we not become acquainted because someone pinned a target on Vallois’s ass not too long ago?” His eyebrows lifted. “You’re telling me this is separate? That the other situation was resolved?”
Sarah cleared her throat. “Stop fishing, you pain-in-the-ass cop.”
“I’m paid a not-so-pretty penny to be a pain in the ass. It’s my job. What’s your excuse?”
“I pay her a very pretty penny to be,” Lucas said. He pulled off his coat and draped it over his arm. “Can you have someone bring us another chair, Banner? I want to hear every detail about both last night and the night Ian and Melissa were hit.”
Snow finally let one corner of his mouth raise in amusement. Exhausted or not, he appreciated his friend’s high-handed attitude and settled in for more stale coffee and hopefully, enough details to bring Rowe back into their fold. Now that they knew Melissa had been murdered, none of them were going to need Hollis involved any further. If Snow was hampered as the city’s number one suspect, Lucas and Rowe would move in and take care of Gratton. He was the only man who knew exactly how things had gone down the day Snow had found him with an unconscious Ian. The only one who could have staged that scene at Snow’s house.
That psychopath needed to be put down once and for all.Chapter 12Jude heard through the UC grapevine that Snow was staying with Lucas Vallois. He heard a lot more than that because the hospital vine grew wild and free, invading every nook and cranny of the building. It chapped Jude’s ass that so many thought the surgeon was guilty. Not his own surgical team—they were standing behind the doctor— but to the rest, this was juicy, delicious gossip. It looked bad, yeah. He’d seen the spilled details on the news himself—details that spread the horror of that murder into a fickle public that was always ready with torches and pitchforks.
It was all he could do not to blurt out that he’d spent the night with the man, but Snow didn’t need more crap to deal with. And the only gossip more popular than murder was sex. People chewed on sex gossip like a habitual nail biter gnawed nails to the quick.
It would come out in the end anyway. He had every intention of doing anything he could to help the doctor. It scared him to death that someone had gone to so much trouble to set the man up—and the only way he could have known about the guy from The Dock was if he’d been there. Watching them.
