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“Did you recognize me?” Cagle demanded, glaring at Finley until she met her gaze.
Finley blinked. “No but—”
“He was never close enough to see me very well,” she said. “Time changes everyone.” She allowed strands of gray hair to slip through her fingers. “I doubt even Maureen would recognize me now, and we were best friends. It’s been thirteen years. The longest of my life.”
“What I want to know,” Finley demanded, looking to her neighbor, “is how you managed to kidnap this man?” Finley’s attention then swung to her father. “And what the hell you had to do with it.”
“You don’t know the whole story,” Ian Johnson said.
Finley stared at the man beyond the bars. She vacillated between feeling sympathy for him and outrage at herself for feeling anything at all—particularly for the man most likely responsible for the murder of Lucy Cagle. “Then explain it to me.”
“No,” her father announced. “This whole mess is my fault.”
Finley’s heart ached with equal measures worry and frustration. Did he not understand that this was not fixable? She couldn’t protect him from what was coming because ofthis. Couldn’t make it right.
“Thenyouexplain it to me,” she said, her voice nearly failing her.
He nodded. “Very well.”
27
After the Murder
Thirteen Years Ago
Thursday, December 7
Cagle Residence
Murfreesboro Road, Franklin, 5:30 p.m.
Bart watched as the car turned into the driveway, paused so that the driver could enter the code and then, once the gates were open, drove on through. He didn’t recognize the vehicle, but he did know the driver even if he couldn’t see her in the darkness.
It was Maureen Downey, Louise’s friend and editor. No one else would have access.
Taking a deep breath, Bart quickly pulled away from the side of the road and followed the path the car had taken before the gates could close, locking him out. He didn’t turn on his headlights and only rolled through the open gates far enough for them to close. Then he powered down his window and waited.
He heard her car door slam. Waited until he heard the front door of the house open and then close as well. Once he was confident shehad gone inside, he rolled forward, past where she’d left her car and closer to the detached garage. There were no exterior lights on to reveal his presence.
Bart climbed out of his car and made his way to the nearest window. He peered inside. The lights inside had been off, but Maureen had started to turn them on one by one as she moved through the house.
What was she doing here?
Did she know where Louise was? Did she know what the two of them had done?
Dear God, if Johnson found out, their lives would be in danger. He needed to warn Maureen ... but what if she knew nothing ... what if she was here just checking on things? For all he knew, she could believe that Louise had gone on a much-needed getaway.
Something cold and hard pressed into the back of his skull. He tensed.
“Who are you, and what the hell are you doing here?”
Bart instinctively lifted his hands. “Maureen? Maureen Downey?”
“Who the hell are you?”
“Bart O’Sullivan. Judge Ruth O’Sullivan’s husband.”
A hand clutched at his arm and spun him around. The hard thing she’d been holding was not a gun—a flashlight, which now blinded him.
