Page 61 of You Know Why

“I don’t even know what this is, to be honest.” She holds up her hand, and Drake sucks in a breath. “I just know we really need to find Andrew Locke, as quickly as possible.”

“Or what?”

She stares at him until he sets his fork down and pushes his plate away.

“Talk,” he commands, and against her better judgment, she does.

“This stays between us.”

He swipes a finger in an X across his chest. “If it can, absolutely.”

“I had a visitor the night the Lockes were murdered. A stranger. He was looking for Andrew.”

Drake’s lips tighten. “Did he do that to you?”

She sighs. “He was being persuasive.”

“I’ll kill him,” he growls, and her stomach does a little flip. She is perfectly capable of taking care of herself, but it’s nice to know he cares. “Who was it?”

“No idea. It was dark, it was fast, and I was in pain. He had an eastern European accent and wore a ball cap pulled low over his eyes. That’s the best I’ve got. He disabled my security system and was sitting at my kitchen table waiting for me while you and I were going over the video from the airport. I went for a cup of tea and he ambushed me.”

Drake lets out a string of curse words tied together so creatively she has to stop herself from laughing. This is not the time for jokes. Now she’s committed. She has to plow ahead.

“And of course, with it being the night of the murders, I can’t be one hundred percent sure that this stranger wasn’t at the Locke residence before he came to visit me.”

Drake’s espresso eyes sharpen. “You’re just now telling me that there’s another suspect?”

“There’s always been another suspect. We’re looking for the man who followed Andrew from the airport just as much as looking for Andrew himself, right? I figured if you could identify him, I’d have a jump on finding him.”

Drake is furious. His whole body is vibrating.

“I knew I shouldn’t have told you.”

“You damn well should have, immediately after it happened. I have half a mind to write you up for this. If you worked for me, I’d fire you. Damn it, you’ve withheld evidence from a double murder investigation.”

The staring match is epic. She feels the shame bubbling up and forces it away. Yes, she should have told him. But she’s trying to keep herself alive, too. The Lockes’ murders were a message. Andrew’s passport being left there was a message. A convenient scapegoat had been offered, so she’d done what anyone would have and presented the facts on their face: Andrew Locke had been at his parents’ house the day they were murdered. He was the most logical suspect.

He just wasn’t the only one.

“Maybe I should have trusted you sooner,” she concedes.

“You think?”

Wow, the anger in his voice . . . She’s never heard him so mad. He needs a distraction.

“Let’s change gears for a minute. Do you know what Andrew Locke did in the Air Force?”

The Plot Thickens

After a minute, Drake huffs a breath out of his nose and answers. “C-130 pilot, right? Flew transport flights.”

“Correct. However, according to his new wife, Trey Locke is terrified of flying. Why is that?”

“Bad experience? Didn’t he muster out early?”

“He did. By all accounts, he served his time, but with no great distinction. So yeah, that’s possible. He came home on scheduled leave, got his wife pregnant, then, without knowing she was knocked up, eight weeks later, suddenly separated and returned home for good, only to walk in on Christmas Eve and find Chloe murdered. That’s the story we’ve been told.”

“All right. Why the sudden shift? Why’d he want to get home so badly?”