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Before she packed, Clarke asked her to take a look around to determine if she noticed anything missing, paying particular attention to any place where there might have been valuables. From what she could tell, nothing had been taken. Not even the wedding and engagement rings she’d had in her jewelry box. None of the jewelry, most of it costume variety, had been disturbed.
After calling the neighbor who’d watched Forester while she’d been in prison, she got the cat out from under the bed with only a minimal scratch and saw him safely housed next door, had a bag packed and was sitting in the front seat of Clarke’s navy blue SUV twenty minutes after she’d accepted his offer of help.
Troy Colton had arrived while she’d been packing, and Clarke had handled that aspect for her. She’d never even had to speak with the detective. Clarke had earned some of his fee right there. And a tad bit of gratitude, as well.
Still, sitting there in his car with her suitcase in the back, bundled up in her thick black coat, she was almost overwhelmed with trepidation. What was she doing moving in with a man she’d known only a couple of hours?
Not moving in with him, of course. She was going into protective custody in a guest room of a licensed, armed and trained professional investigator and under the watchful eyes of the chief of police.
And she needed to get on top of the morning’s events. Not let them control her.
“I guess this is kind of odd, asking you to take me to visit the woman who kidnapped your cousin.” Gram had kidnapped the toddler from a wedding where the entire Grave Gulch police department was in attendance, but not with the intention to hurt the child. There’d never been a threat to that baby’s life.
“She took drastic measures to get us to see what was right under our own eyes,” Clarke said, not taking his gaze from the road and the world outside the vehicle. He seemed to scan everything at once. Constantly. Moving his head little, but his gaze a lot. Intently.
She’d hate to be a bug under his microscope.
And appreciated his honesty where her grandmother was concerned. Still, Gram’s drastic measure...wow...so drastic. She’d broken the law in a way that couldn’t be ignored. You couldn’t just kidnap someone anytime injustice was done. The action had helped eventually exonerate Everleigh—but it was still inexcusable.
“She would never have hurt Danny.”
“I know.”
Okay, then. That conversation was done. They had fifteen minutes to go until they got to the prison.
Time for her to figure out who wanted her dead? Who’d vandalized her home with so much rage?
All she got was blankness. No one
, other than maybe Fritz, had ever thrown that kind of anger in her direction... How did she find a demon with no suspects?
“Hannah apparently loves you an awful lot.” His words pulled her thoughts back from the dark abyss, and it took her a second to realize he was still talking about Gram.
“I know. And I love her the same. I can’t let her just spend the rest of her life in prison. There has to be something I can do...” She’d trade places with her if she could, if the law would allow such a thing. She glanced at Clarke. “Or maybe, instead of you working for me, there’s something you could do?” She couldn’t think of it at the moment.
“I could talk to her, if you’d like. Try to convince her to take a plea deal so that the case doesn’t go to trial. Once a jury and judge get it, there are laws that dictate their choices and her sentencing...”
Heavy weight settled over her as she listened to him. She knew full well how the legal system worked. Knew that she’d been days from a life sentence herself, in a trial that hadn’t been going at all in her favor, when Gram’s bold move had turned the tide for her.
So, what bold move could she make to save Gram? The townspeople were still holding protests. She’d seen a group of them on the courthouse steps depicted on the news that morning.
But the law was the law. Those in charge had to uphold it or risk going to jail themselves.
“Can I take a rain check on that?” she asked Clarke. “I’d like to talk to her first, to see what I can do...”
“I’m fairly certain that if she’d take a plea agreement, the DA’s office would be willing to offer some kind of sentence that doesn’t have her dying in jail.”
“If she lives long enough, you mean.” Ten years in prison would make Gram ninety when she got out. Ten years in prison would kill her.
He shrugged. And Everleigh wasn’t happy to have won the point. Nor was she happy with any other options where her grandmother was concerned. An insanity plea might hold some weight—except that Gram was as sharp as they came and wouldn’t be willing to sacrifice her cognitive freedom to get out of paying for what she’d done.
And there was the crux of it...
“Gram’s a stickler for accountability,” she said, tears pushing at her. She pushed back, and won, but the profound sadness that had ignited them lingered. “No way she’d be right with walking away from a crime she committed,” she continued. Because it was important all of a sudden that he know that, in spite of her impoverished background and having a family who’d all—except for Gram—accepted her guilt when presented with DNA evidence, she came from some good stock. “She knew when she made the choice to take that baby that there’d be a price to pay.”
It was she who was struggling with her grandmother paying it. Not Gram. They were on the outskirts of prison real estate and her stomach tightened to the point of pain. Two days ago, she’d woken up within those walls.
Being caged up, losing all of her freedoms... Those months were going to haunt her for the rest of her life.
