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She nodded. “And, Clarke?”
He glanced at her, just briefly, but long enough for her to feel the warmth of his gaze.
“Thank you.”
He leaned as though he was going to move toward her, but before he’d taken a step, there was a knock at the front door and he was gone.
* * *
Clarke was reluctant to leave Everleigh, even just to make a quick trip to the police station. As though no one but him could keep Everleigh safe.
In truth, his brother was more equipped, better trained even than Clarke in terms of guarding actual bodies, but Everleigh felt safe with Clarke. He didn’t want to jeopardize that.
The stricken look on her face, when he’d first told her he was leaving...
It took him a second to realize that he’d been speaking to a woman whose husband of eighteen years had just walked out on her a few months before—leaving her understandably sensitive to broken expectations where sticking around was concerned.
Because he’d put off actually leaving his condominium until the last minute—having stood there talking with Stanton, even after the introductions had been made and Everleigh had excused herself to go upstairs to her room—he was the last one to arrive at the emergency meeting.
Melissa was already seated at the head of the table in the small conference room at police headquarters. Two of his cousins, detective Troy and FBI agent Bryce, were already seated on either side of the chief, with two other officers next to them, leaving the other end seat for Clarke. While he could really use a cup of coffee, he refrained from holding them up any longer.
Refrained from doing anything that would require him to be gone from home any longer than absolutely necessary.
“Thanks for coming on such short notice,” Melissa said, flipping a strand of red hair over her shoulder. Clarke read the very real concern on his sister’s face, but he noticed the new light in those blue eyes, too, and was happy for her. At thirty-six, Melissa had always been single-mindedly devoted to career through and through. And now here she was, in a blink, falling in love with the owner of the hotel where Hannah kidnapped the toddler, and Melissa was already engaged to be married.
And he was absolutely not drawing any ideas for himself from his sister’s example, he told himself.
“It looks like we might have another killer on our hands, guys.”
Whoa. What? Clarke’s attention 100 percent on his sister’s words now, he pulled his notebo
ok and pen out of his coat pocket, opened it and started writing.
“Three months ago, Vincent Gully, a man in his fifties, was killed while walking his dog at night in Grave Gulch Park. He was shot point-blank in the chest, cash had been taken from his wallet, and he’d been posed with his hands laid neatly over his abdomen.”
Clarke remembered the case. “A suspect was arrested from DNA evidence found at the scene that matched him through the help of a genealogy website,” he said.
“That’s right.” Melissa nodded toward him. “You might also remember that we had to let him go when the evidence went missing...”
He knew where this was going. And it wasn’t going to be good.
Not for anyone.
“The suspect was told not to leave town but disappeared within an hour of having been released.”
He remembered that, too, now that she mentioned it. And missing evidence was what was tying this meeting to Randall Bowe.
Clarke had known Bowe for years and was disliking him more and more. He’d always had a snooty attitude, but recently the man had been accusing the Coltons of nepotism.
Teeth clenched, he listened as his sister continued, “This morning I met with Randall Bowe’s lab assistant, who’d been blamed for the missing evidence and subsequently fired. She swears that she processed the evidence with all protocols observed. She double-checked it herself before she left that night. But when she came to work the next morning, it was gone...
“This morning another man in his fifties was found in the park, shot point-blank in the chest and posed with his hands folded over his abdomen.”
And there it was. Feeling sick and angry at the same time, Clarke tapped his pen against his pad. Not lightly. Until Melissa glanced pointedly at the table where his notebook lay, and he stopped. Gritting his teeth instead.
“DNA evidence left at the scene of the second murder is a match for the Gully killing, even if we only have reports of the Gully evidence and not the evidence itself,” she said. “We now have solid, not-missing, irrefutable evidence against the suspect in the Gully case—Len Davison—and no idea where to find him. He’s obviously still close by, though. And ballsy, committing the exact same crime a second time on a second Grave Gulch citizen, right under our noses.”
Everyone in the room sat back, glancing at each other. The others looked as stunned and disgusted as he felt.
