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Rogue slid the high heels from her feet and folded her legs beneath her. No sense in worrying about whether or not her legs looked nice in front of Zeke right now. He was keeping his gaze firmly on her face. Besides, feeling sexy and being reminded of why he was here didn’t go hand in hand.
“Joe wouldn’t have killed Jaime,” she told him with a firm shake of her head. “Joe and Jaime were too close, Zeke. They might have fought over a woman every now and then, or anything else, but they would have never hurt each other. Not for anything. ”
“What about drugs?” He leaned forward and stared back at her in demand. A demand for the truth, as though she would lie to him.
“They didn’t have the money for drugs,” she told him. “A little pot every now and then, sure. But not the hard stuff. They didn’t touch hard drugs. ”
“But they did smoke pot?” he asked.
“Probably. ” She lifted her shoulders. “I never saw them do it, but I assumed they did from a few jokes they’ve made over the years. I never saw any evidence of it though.
The most I’ve seen was a few too many beers and a little brawl here and there over a girl. They usually made a few swings at each other, started laughing, and then headed home with the girl together. They were like that. Nothing was serious for too long. ”
“What about enemies?” Zeke asked. “Did they have any you’d believe would want to hurt them?”
She stared back at him heavily. “I can’t think of a single enemy those two boys had. For all their womanizing, they were well liked. I never knew of anyone wanting to hurt them. And why ask that question if it’s a cut-and-dried murder-suicide as your deputy believes?”
She watched Zeke suspiciously now. Why the questions if he believed Joe had murdered Jaime, then killed himself?
“There was a murder, no matter what happened or why,” Zeke told her. “I need to figure out the what and the why to close this case, Rogue. I don’t like questions left dangling. ”
“Then you have a hell of a question going on there,” she told him. “Because I’m telling you, Joe wouldn’t hurt Jaime. He was the oldest twin. He was more protective toward Jaime. No one hurt Jaime that Joe didn’t come running. ”
He still watched her closely, that somber gaze moving over her face, almost to her neck.
For a second, she had a feeling that he would have looked lower, but he didn’t. He kept his gaze on her face, and that pissed her off.
He was sitting here questioning her over her cousins’ deaths, deaths he had to suspect couldn’t have played out as it was made to look. He could have come to question her at any time, but he came late, after he was off duty, in plainclothes, and aroused.
Unlike him, she’d had no problem looking below his neck. Or his waist. She sure as hell had no problem looking below his belt.
“Look, Zeke, I can’t tell you anything you obviously don’t know already,” she told him.
“I know Joe or Jaime—neither one would have hurt the other. Whatever happened up there is bogus. It was a setup and I can’t figure out why, because Joe and Jaime were a threat to no one. ”
“We thought you were a threat to no one last year when you were attacked as well,” he reminded her. “It wasn’t what you knew on Mackay and Grace that landed you in the hospital, Rogue, it was what they were afraid you knew. What could Joe have been afraid of that would have made him kill his brother and himself?”
Last year she had managed to get herself twisted into a Homeland Security investigation into Nadine Grace and Dayle Mackay. As he’d said, it wasn’t what she had known but what Grace and Mackay thought she might have known that had been the problem. When the investigator, Dayle’s son’s lover, Chaya Dane, had questioned her, it had drawn Rogue within their sights once more.
She’d spent a week in the hospital, bruised, with a cracked rib and a bruised skull, but she’d come out of it alive.
“Someone else killed Joe and Jaime,” she told him. “Get that in your head, Zeke.
Someone set that scene up. Because I know to the soles of my feet neither of those boys would have hurt the other. It wasn’t in them. ”
His jaw flexed, and his gaze jerked to her feet where they rested at the side of her body, then back to her face. How interesting.
God, he made her mad. Never more mad though than he was making her tonight. He was almost foaming at the mouth to touch her, as desperate for it as she was, and still, he denied both of them.
He nodded. “I’ll keep checking things out,” he told her. “But unless forensics or the coroner comes up with something, then murder-suicide is what we’re looking at. And it damn sure looks as though Joe killed Jaime and then himself. ”
Her lips twisted mockingly. “Yeah, and there are pictures on the Internet that make me look like a world-class slut,” she reminded him. “Trust me, looks are incredibly deceiving. ”
His gaze darkened, though it never moved from her. Sometimes, she wondered exactly what was going on behind that fierce gaze. Hawklike light brown eyes that seemed to reflect shadows of emotions that she could never really decipher.
“I’ve never seen the pictures,” he finally said, surprising her.
Rogue’s brow lifted. “Really? You must be the only man in the county that hasn’t managed to find them. ”
