Page 130 of Timid (Lark Cove 2)

There wasn’t a two-way mirror, but there was a camera in the upper corner of the room. Its blinking red light made me even more nervous than I already was.

I took the chair on one side of the table, sitting on my shaking hands. Sheriff Magee sat across from me, slapping down the yellow legal pad and pen he’d been carrying. Then he pulled a small black recorder from the breast pocket of his brown shirt. He clicked it on and set it down, its red light intimidating me too.

“Sheriff Xavier Magee questioning Willa Doon on December eighth.” He wrote down my name and the date on the paper, then looked up.

I held my breath, waiting for his first question as I sweated underneath my coat.

“Willa, could you state your relationship to Jackson Page?”

I swallowed hard, clearing the lump in my throat. “I’m his girlfriend.”

“And how long have you been dating?”

“A little over three months.”

He scratched something on the paper. I didn’t try to read it upside down, focusing instead on trying to calm my racing heart. What if I said something wrong? What if I made this worse for Jackson?

Maybe I should have waited for the lawyer. I wasn’t equipped to deal with this kind of pressure. I was a good girl. Good girls didn’t know how to act when being questioned about a murder.

“Do you recall where you were on the night of November sixteenth of this year?”

“I’m not sure,” I answered honestly. “I’d have to look at a calendar. But I was probably either at home or at Jackson’s.” That was three weeks ago. I would need a calendar to see the exact day of the week, but I had a feeling I already knew which night that was.

“Do you stay the night there often?”

I nodded.

Sheriff Magee smiled and looked at the recorder. “If you could say yes or no, Willa. Thanks.”

“Sorry,” I muttered, taking another breath. “Yes, I stay there often. Especially since he has Ryder now.”

“And did you ever meet their mother?” he asked.

“Twice.”

“When was that?”

“Um, the first day she came to Lark Cove. I was in the bar when she came in.”

“And what happened that day?”

“Uh . . .” I searched my memory, trying to remember all that had happened that afternoon. “She came in and said she was looking for Jackson. Thea was there too. We didn’t know who she was and when Jackson came out from the kitchen, she didn’t recognize him. He told her to leave.”

“He told her to leave? Or did he physically remove her from the bar?”

“He, um, escorted her out.”

Sheriff Magee didn’t need to write anything down. He already knew things had gotten heated that afternoon. But the only person who could have told him was Jackson since Thea had been with me in the lobby all day. Where was he going with this?

“And what happened next?” he asked.

“Nothing. I spent the evening at the bar with Jackson and then went home.” There was no way in hell I was going to tell him anything about the fight we’d gotten into that night.

“You went home alone?”

“Yes.”

“But you normally spend the nights together.”