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“Bring her in, or I will,” Hurston threatened.
McCrae left without responding. The man sure had a hard-on for getting inside the West Knoll police department and asserting his will. Whatever his reasons, McCrae was done placating him.
Chapter 25
Gale Crassley followed Ellie into his house as she was trying to make a call.
“Gimme that,” he told her, yanking the phone from her hand.
“I was just texting my boss to let him know where I am,” Ellie said. A lie. But he didn’t have to know it.
For an answer, he moved the rifle up and pointed it at her. Her whole body was quivering, even while she desperately wanted to not show fear.
“I think you’d better take your clothes off and sit on that couch.”
“What?” She almost laughed until she looked into his cold, staring eyes. He was only a year older than she was, maybe two, but there were light years of different experiences between them.
“You have green eyes,” he said, smiling. In fact, he never stopped smiling. It was thoroughly creeping her out. A part of his reptilian self, she decided.
He very gently pushed the rifle at her, making her stumble onto the couch. A spring popped up to meet her, a hard slap to her derrière.
“I don’t think—”
“Shut up. Take off your clothes,” he said mildly. “Ain’t nobody here but you and me. Ain’t nobody gonna be here. You can tell me what you want after you take off your clothes.”
She held up her hands in front of her, mind whirling, seeking to be free of him. “If I could just say something.”
“Don’t talk till I tell you to. You got that?”
She was staring at him, her gaze above the muzzle of the gun, hoping to make eye contact, anything.
He tucked the gun under one arm again and rubbed his jaw, looking down at her.
“Take off your goddamn clothes before I rip them off.”
“And then . . . we can talk?”
“Not if you keep yappin’ away.”
Ellie considered her position. C’mon, McCrae, she whispered in her head.
Very carefully, she began to unbutton her blouse.
* * *
McCrae got the text from Ellie that was sent without being finished. At Crassleys. Come and get—
He was on his way to the Kiefers, determined to put Coach Sutton’s theories about Bailey’s mother to bed. He hadn’t talked to Masterer, not because he believed anything besides flirting had transpired between the man and Delta, just because he should knock it off the list. Now it could appear that McCrae was protecting Delta, and Hurston, with Corinne’s help, was out for blood.
Why? How did he benefit from Delta being charged with Tanner’s murder? Hurston always had his own agenda, but he couldn’t see how charging Delta would help him. She was a sympathetic figure with a little boy to take care of.
But Tanner called her Dee, the name or letter he’d called out from the hospital bed . . . and she’d lied about the knife, though Hurston didn’t have that bit of information yet. God knew what he’d do when he did . . . and she wrote a book with the same plot. He’d managed to read two chapters, and the similarities were eerie . . . and the marriage was in trouble because Tanner regularly slept with other women . . .
All circumstantial evidence, but damning, nonetheless.
But Ellie’s text. Come and get . . . what?
But anything to do with the Crassleys was bad news.
