Page 53 of Love in Overdrive

Jordan set her papers aside and looked him square in the eye.

Crap! The interrogation was about to begin.

She pulled back, both mentally and physically, from the table. Cade watched as she leaned back in her chair, crossing her feet at the ankles. The lieutenant was changing tactics. No worries. He’d been in worse situations. But he really didn’t want to spend time behind bars again.

“Tell me about Ms. Hunt. She came running out of the bank in a hoodie and shades, carrying this black bag, and jumped into your car?” She gestured to the bag on the table with the stolen money in it.

“No. Laney came out of the bank. Yes, she was wearing a hoodie and sunglasses, but she wasn’t carrying this bag.” A crack formed in his cool façade.

Was she insane, trying to get him to implicate Laney in the robbery? “You don’t know Laney. She’s not a criminal.”

“Like you?”

He didn’t reply.

“How well do you know Ms. Hunt?” She tipped her head as she examined him. Cade knew exactly what she was doing, and he didn’t like it. Not one bit.

Go ahead and look. She wouldn’t see anything. His face was a mask. Now, his insides were another story. At the mention of Laney, his blood pressure crept closer to its boiling point.

After the lieutenant circled around the same point for the third time, Cade leaned in. “Throw all you want at me, but leave Laney alone.”

Jordan locked gazes with him. Her cheek twitched. Her eyes squinted. He knew she was picking through every minuscule move he made. Cade wasn’t giving her much to go on. He locked down his emotions and body as if he were on a mission.

The clock on the wall ticked. Cade focused on the sound as he waited for Jordan to crack.

Finally, she stood, did a neck roll, and circled the room. “Tell me again how you ended up with the money.”

Cade’s patience was wearing thin, but he bit back the cutting remark on the tip of his tongue and focused on the events of the carjacking.

“The dirtbag told us to get out of the car. Laney got out, and I saw my opportunity. In the fight, I dove over the seat. Somehow in the scuffle, the door opened, I fell out, and the guy took off. When I got up, Laney spotted the bag on the ground. He left us on the side of the road—in the middle of nowhere. No phones. We thought we were going to die!” His volume grew louder with each word. So much for being calm. Cade’s face heated to habanero-peppers level as he continued, “When we realized we had the wrong bag, we were scared he was going to come back. We could have been in the middle of South Dakota for all we knew, and we walked for hours to find a phone.”

Her phone buzzed, and she glanced at the screen. “Excuse me one minute, Mr. McBride.” She quickly got up, took her things, and left.

“Fuck!” Cade dropped his head to his hands. He’d blown it now. Cade always had control of his emotions. His job required it. But when she shifted her questions to make Laney out to be a criminal, he lost it. Laney was a sweet, quiet school teacher. She would never do anything like rob a bank. Cade hoped he hadn’t screwed this up worse.

The door opened. Cade looked up, expecting to find the lieutenant, but the man in the doorway rattled him even more. He stood. “Well shit, Fenley. If you’re here, I must be screwed.”

“Nice to see you too, McBride.” Agent Trey Fenley set his briefcase down on the table, then pulled Cade into a backslapping hug. “You sure do get into trouble.”

“What’s a Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s agent doing out here?”

“I came to save your sorry ass. It’s been ten years since we served together, but when I saw your face on the news, I knew they had the wrong guy.”

“Thanks, man.”

Lieutenant Jordan reentered the room with a stack of papers. She placed a typed sheet of paper and pen in front of Cade. “I want to thank you for coming in, Mr. McBride. If you could sign this statement, here, you will be free to leave.”

Cade looked at her in disbelief. What? No handcuffs? No arrest? He turned to Fenley. “You?”

“Nope. I just got here.” Trey turned to Jordan. “Mind explaining?”

The lieutenant sat in the chair across from them and clasped her hands together on the table. “We found Mr. McBride’s car this morning out by Morristown. Ms. Hunt’s bag was in the front seat, and the contents were strung all over the floor of the vehicle. We also lifted fingerprints from both the front and back seats that belong to a Raymond Jackson. Mr. Jackson has a long list of priors.”

She sat back then, giving him a “had you going” look. “That, along with the statements from your friends, family, bank employees, and the bank video security, which clearly shows Ms. Hunt entering and leaving the bank before Mr. Jackson entered to rob it, you are free to go.”

“If you knew Laney and I were innocent, what was with the interrogation?” Cade replayed the interview in his mind, every accusing question. By the end, his puzzlement had turned to anger.

Lieutenant Jordan sat up straight in her chair, looking Cade dead in the eye. “Mr. McBride, we were not sure of your innocence until we questioned you. You could have been accomplices. We were doing our job.”