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“No.”
“So she just walked out of the hospital? How? Isn’t her car wrecked?”
“I don’t know.”
Sheila’s eyes narrowed, thick lashes thinning. Over her shoulder, she said, “Carl, can we set up here?” And then to Johnson, who was just slipping her phone into the pocket of her jacket, “So she took Uber or Lyft or had a friend pick her up?”
“Don’t know.”
Thomas’s phone rang and he answered. “Detective Cole Thomas.” He paused, frowned, then glanced at Johnson. “Come on. We gotta go.”
“What?” Sheila’s eyes laser-focused on him. Her reporter instincts went into overdrive. “What’s going on? Who called you?”
“Official business,” he said, and they walked back to the car.
“Meaning what? Does this have something to do with Jonas McIntyre? Or Kara?” Sheila called after them, the cameraman trailing behind. “Well, of course it does or you wouldn’t be here.”
He kept walking, using his remote to unlock his vehicle. The Chevy responded with a flicker of its lights and a sharp beep.
“Co-le,” Sheila said, making two syllables of his first name. She sounded frustrated. “Remember—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. I owe you. So you’ve said. Got it.”
“You don’t want me to . . .”
She let the threat linger and he turned. “What I don’t want is for you to threaten me. It won’t work.” He held her gaze for a brief moment, then added, “You should know that.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it again and whispered something to the cameraman.
Thomas and Johnson climbed into his Tahoe.
As he started the SUV, Johnson pulled the passenger door closed and strapped in.
“Thanks.” He drove up the slight rise in the street, the beams of his headlights catching the swirling flakes as snow continued to fall.
She lifted a shoulder in a half shrug. “She wasn’t going to give up.”
“So you called. To give me an out.”
“Seemed like the easiest way to get out of a sticky situation.” She shot him a glance as he slowed for a stop sign and a big truck spewing gravel onto the recently plowed cross street rumbled through the intersection. Johnson added, “Look. I don’t know what went on between you two, and trust me, I don’t want to. None of my business. But I gotta say, that woman, Sheila Keegan? She’s a piece of work.”
That and so much more, Thomas thought, as he nosed the SUV toward the station, that and so much more.
* * *
Tate wondered if he was making the biggest mistake of his life. He stared across the shadowy room to his bed, where Kara McIntyre was sleeping, her brown curls splayed upon his pillow, her dog curled next to her. Together they’d knocked off a bottle of wine and probably would have opened another if he’d had it. She’d even offered to go down to the market and buy another, but cooler heads had prevailed—his head—and they stopped at one. He hated to admit it, even to himself as he watched her breathing slowly, her eyelashes brushing her cheek, but he’d considered cracking open a bottle of Crown Royal that he’d gotten from his sister for his birthday, but, seeing that Kara was exhausted and still healing, he’d resisted.
Who knew what would have happened? Would she have opened up even more, told him secrets she’d locked away for twenty years, let him in? And he, would he have given in to temptation and kissed her? He’d thought about it. And there had been a couple of times when he’d caught her looking at him in a way he’d found incredibly sexy, but he’d been sober enough not to make that mistake.
At least not yet.
So he’d convinced her to sleep in his bed while he settled down in his favorite chair, but sleep, for him, had been elusive, and he’d given up all pretense of slumber around four thirty, long before dawn. In the ensuing hours, he’d downloaded the jump drives he’d taken from Merritt Margrove’s office.
He’d hoped to find something new and game-changing in the information, but so far, hadn’t. He’d made notes, though, and wanted to interview everyone associated with the McIntyre Massacre.
Whoever had killed Margrove had killed him for a reason.
Because he’d finally gotten Jonas McIntyre released from prison?
