AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Eads and his attorney were up to bat first. I wasn’t surprised Alyssa had joined Rigby in the interview room. Eads was cooperative and borderline friendly as he answered each question. His attorney only intruded once, and that was to clarify a question Alyssa had asked. It had sounded like splitting hairs to me, but Remington seemed mollified when Alyssa slightly tweaked her question. Afterward, it was one alibi witness after another.
Eads had been on a hunting and camping trip with a group of friends and family. Each of them told a variation of the same story, which accounted for Eads’s whereabouts all day. One of his cousins claimed to have been in the SUV while Eads had gone inside to buy some lottery scratchers.
“Is that possible?” I asked Lio.
“The windows on the SUV were all tinted, so I guess so.”
The cousin described Lio’s truck and what he’d been wearing. He’d heard Eads’s remarks, but he didn’t think they were threatening. When pressed for an opinion on what he’d meant about being lucky to run into Chief Mendoza, the guy shrugged. Alyssa had asked if he was lying to protect Eads, and he adamantly rejected the notion. Then he produced his phone and showed a picture he’d taken when Eads had gotten back in the SUV. Lio and I couldn’t see it, but according to the cousin, he’d captured a smiling Eads giving him a thumbs-up with one hand and holding five hundred dollars in the other.
“You can see the general store in the background,” the guy said. “I couldn’t doctor that.”
“Any amateur with basic Photoshop skills could produce this picture,” Alyssa had countered. She probed further but couldn’t get him or any other witnesses to testify.
“Well,” Lio said when Alyssa and Rigby released the last witness. “It doesn’t look like Eads is the shooter.”
I looked over at him. “Do you believe that?”
Lio met my gaze and shrugged. “I don’t know what to believe.” He sighed heavily, and I noticed the tension in his shoulders.
“Adrenaline crashing?” I asked.
Lio nodded.
I moved to stand behind him and went to work on his shoulder and neck muscles. “You’re going to be sore in the morning.”
Lio snickered. “I bet you say that to all the guys.”
I dropped my arms around his waist and rested my chin on his shoulder. “You’re the only guy. Let’s go home.”
He turned in my embrace. “Yours or mine?”
“Your house is closer and feels more like home, even if you still haven’t replaced that awful goose wallpaper in the kitchen.”
“My helper keeps bailing on me every time I suggest removing it,” Lio countered.
“Tomorrow,” I promised.
We had a quick conference with Rigby and Alyssa while waiting for Eads and his buddies to leave. Lio’s house was in various stages of remodeling, but I still loved it.
“Still smells like burned cake,” I teased when we stepped through the front door.
Lio glared at me, but I saw the corners of his mouth twitch. “Keep it up and you’ll go back to crashing on my couch.”
I held up my hands in mock surrender and followed him down the hall toward his bedroom. “Maybe we can do appliance shopping while we’re at it tomorrow. Find you one of those fancy ovens with a timer on it.”
Lio grabbed a throw pillow off the bed and hit me in the stomach. I wrestled it out of his hands before he could whap me with it again, and we ended up horizontal on the bed. That led to kissing and teasing. Lust chased away my lingering fear, and all my focus went into celebrating Lio’s victory over death. When I was buried deep inside him, I stared into his brown eyes.
“Don’t you dare leave me,” I pleaded.
Lio carded his fingers through my hair. “I’m not going anywhere but to sleep if you don’t fuck me.” With a challenge like that, I had no choice but to rock his world.
I fell into a deep sleep once we’d cleaned up and returned to bed, but my reprieve was short-lived. I came awake around two in the morning with a sickening thought about who else might have wanted to hurt Lio. My uncle and two cousins lived in a trailer park not too far from Terry’s. One of them could’ve been there and gone unnoticed by Lio. He might’ve called the others to let them know Lio was heading that way. It was a sick feeling to think my flesh and blood might’ve tried to kill the man I loved.
No love was lost between Lio and my family, but to kill him? Then I recalled Red forming a gun with his fingers and telling Lio he’d get what he had coming to him. A flash of heat washed over me, and I broke into a cold sweat. My stomach pitched and acid blazed a path up my throat, filling my mouth. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and hurried into the bathroom, making it just in time to throw up in the toilet instead of on Lio’s new floor. I vomited and heaved until there wasn’t anything left, then I lay on the floor and pressed my heated cheek against the cool tile.
Once my stomach stopped cramping, I pushed myself into a sitting position and wiped my brow with the back of my hand. I knew exactly what I needed to do. Standing took effort, but I was determined to get answers, so I splashed water on my face and brushed my teeth. I shut off the bathroom light and checked on Lio. Luckily, he was still snoring softly and didn’t wake as I dressed as quietly as possible and eased out of the room.
I climbed into Betty and held my breath when I started the engine, but Lio didn’t come charging after me. I backed into the street and aimed the old truck in the right direction. It would be nearly three in the morning by the time I made the forty-five-minute drive to Liberty County, but Vernon and his miscreants would be rolling home from the bar. I kept my rage in check while I drove past Terry’s and the spot where Lio had nearly lost his life, but I snapped when I saw Vernon, Merrill, Red, and Bobby hooting and hollering on their front porch. Maybe they didn’t care if their neighbors wanted to sleep, or maybe they were too busy celebrating to notice how late it was. The three men froze when my headlights swept over them, just like deer do when they run out in front of a vehicle.
