AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He held up two fingers. “Scout’s honour.”
“You were never a scout,” Ash said.
Jamie laughed softly and crept in, pushing the door to my room closed behind him. “How are you, Lottie?”
“Tired. Miserable. Everything and its mother hurts. So pretty good, considering,” I replied. “I suppose you need to talk to me, don’t you?”
He held up his hands. “I’m just here to see how you are. Your doctor said it’s up to you, but that you’ve got some gaps in your memory, and she shouted at my boss once already. I just thought that maybe I can help you fill those gaps a bit.”
“Okay. Um. I guess I have some questions.”
He pulled over the other visitor chair and sat down. “I can answer anything you need me to.”
“Did you get Shane?” I tightened my grip on Ash’s hand.
“We did.”
I relaxed my fingers. “Okay. This isn’t about what happened, but I have to know. Why the bed and breakfast? How did that happen?”
“Coincidence, it seems,” he answered. “Shane has a bit of a drinking problem he’s kept well hidden from Steph, for the most part. He happened to be at the pub the night of the wake, and saw the whole thing go down between you and Declan. We think he planned to confront Declan about letting Steph get whatever she wanted in the divorce and followed him to wherever he ended up, which was the bed and breakfast for some reason. I doubt we’ll ever know why Declan headed there, much less how he got inside, but Shane followed him, confronted him, and the rest is history.”
“So, you really were wrong place, wrong time then, huh?” Ash asked, pouring some water into the little cup, then handing it to me.
I sipped through the straw, then passed it back to her. “Thank you. How did you know where I was?” I asked Jamie.
He pressed his lips together. “Somewhat by chance, honestly. Stephanie got home from shopping to an empty house and said there was a strange car outside. She was too nervous to go inside, so she checked with her next-door neighbour, but they didn’t recognise it. One of Declan’s family members is a higher up in the force, so she called him, and he agreed to run the plate in case it was related to his murder.”
I bobbed my head, then winced. “Ouch.”
“Careful,” Ash said quietly, resting her hand on mine.
“Maybe don’t do that.” Jamie smiled. “Noah and I were dispatched to check it out while they ran the plate, but he recognised your car the second we got there. The office confirmed it, and he chatted to Stephanie while I went to speak to the neighbours. One across the street told me she’d seen a blonde woman get out and go up the house, then be let in by Shane a couple of minutes later after a small chat. Then another was unloading her shopping when she heard some shouting, then about ten or fifteen minutes later when she let her dog out, she saw his car pulling out of the garage and leaving, but yours stayed there, and there was no sign of you.”
I frowned.
“She explained that she thought you were a friend of Stephanie’s and were coming to see her. Shane works irregular hours, and he’d been coming and going from the house since the funeral, so she didn’t think anything of it. Even when you didn’t come out. She assumed you’d just stayed inside to wait for Steph to get back.” He pressed his lips together. “I know you’d gone to see Noah the night before and were insistent she was the one who’d killed Declan, and he put two and two together, assuming you’d come over here to confront her. We immediately put out an ABP for his vehicle and went looking, and almost immediately, I heard through dispatch there’d been a two-car crash up on the mountain with a vehicle matching the description of what we were looking for.”
“He was hammered,” I said. “I tried to leave when I realised, but he… he…”
“Don’t,” Ash said, then looked at Jamie. “You don’t need her to tell you now, do you?”
“Not right now, but it would be best to be sooner rather than later,” he replied, shooting me a sympathetic look. “But you’ve had a traumatic head injury and have concussion, Lottie. If you’re not up to it right now, we can do it tonight or in the morning. I’m only here to see how you are and help you fill in the blanks. Noah was told to go away.”
I liked my doctor.
She was good at following instructions.
“Okay. Then what happened?” I asked.
“We went to the location of the crash and were the first there, since we were about halfway there anyway. He really didn’t get far with you. That’s when we heard you screaming and banging in the boot, and Noah got you out and kept you safe. The other units arrived a few minutes after us, with the ambulance not far behind.”
“What happened? I remember waking up, realising I was in a car, but I didn’t know what was going on. Then there was just this small bang, followed by a bigger one.”
“He clipped someone else’s rear end, so that’s probably the first one you heard. Thankfully nobody else was hurt, but the contact sent him veering off, and the other driver said he couldn’t regain control and turned straight into the tree. We assume he was too drunk to think straight.”
“You did get him then?” Ash asked.
“Yep, like I said.” Jamie nodded. “The impact set off his air bag and knocked him unconscious. He’s at the hospital, but he’s under police custody. We searched his house and have evidence of him threatening Declan Tierney, so we just need to build the murder case now. But with everything he’s done to you, there’s no chance of him getting bail.”
