“If you’re not guilty, just turn yourself in. All this will get sorted out.”
“Speaking of guilt.” Bree peeked out from around Tanner before he could stop her. “Why are you here at three o’clock in the morning?”
“Especially in this part of the building?” Tanner added. “There’s no reason for you to be back here at all if you’re not up to something.”
The other man’s eyes bolted around nervously again. “No offense, but I’m not the one who has a warrant out for my arrest. I don’t have to give a reason for being here.”
Tanner was about to argue the point none too gently with the doctor when a ping came from Bree’s laptop behind him. A second later she grabbed his arm.
“Whitaker just logged in to a computer on site. We need to go.”
What the hell was Whitaker doing here at three o’clock in the morning? He didn’t work night shifts, either.
“Tanner,” Michalski said, his voice returning to the soothing tone he was more familiar with. “Just turn yourself in right now. There’s been a ton of people who’ve come in or called to speak up on your behalf. If you didn’t do this, trust your colleagues to find the real killer.”
“Yeah, Doc? Well, you’re a colleague and you certainly didn’t speak up on my behalf. So I think it might be to my benefit to prove my own innocence.”
Tanner dragged the older man down the hallway and threw him into a closet, bolting the door from the outside. Michalski would be able to get someone’s attention tomorrow when the administrative offices filled up.
He looked over at Bree. “You okay?”
She nodded. “Yeah, but let’s get out of here. The turning-yourself-in plan doesn’t seem like such a good one anymore.”
A door clicked open at the other end of the hallway. Tanner grabbed Bree’s hand, and they ran in the opposite direction, barely making it around the corner without being seen.
Tanner didn’t slow down. If Michalski made enough noise, whoever was around would undoubtedly hearhim. And if it was Whitaker—although why would Whitaker have a reason to be in that part of the office at that time of night, either?—the chase might be starting immediately.
They needed to get out of the building right now. But the only way to do that was going back the way they’d come.
“We’re trapped, aren’t we?” she whispered.
He let out a low curse. “Whoever that is, it won’t take them long to get to the closet I stuffed Michalski in.”
She nodded and dropped to the floor, opening her computer and resting it on her crossed legs. Within just a few seconds, an alarm was going off at the front of the building.
“What is that?” he asked her.
She shrugged, getting up. “I triggered a window alarm near the northeast side corner of the building. It won’t buy us much time—”
He pulled her in for a quick, hard kiss. “But it will be enough.”
They were getting out of here and figuring out exactly what the hell was going on.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The man looked at report after report after report that had been shown to him. Reports of how Tanner Dempsey could not be guilty.
He was their hero.
He was incapable of wrong.
How could the people here be so blind? Dempsey had managed to completely pull the wool over everyone’s eyes. Convinced them he was infallible.
He was so, so fallible.
The people in this town, this county, obviously couldn’t see what was right in front of them. Their letters proved how much Dempsey had fooled them. They argued for his innocence out of hand, never suspecting that Dempsey was the epitome of everything wrong with law enforcement.
Tanner Dempsey wasn’t a hero; he was a villain. He should be shunned, not cheered. If it were anyone else who was accused of three murders, there’d be a statewide manhunt, rather than everyone sitting around twiddling their thumbs, waiting for Dempsey to come back from hisromantic getawayand explain himself.
