Делорес Фоссен – Safety Breach (страница 8)

“It was easier for me to toss some of the blame at you, too.” She made another of those sighs. “But there was no stopping Eric that night. The stopping should have happened prior to that. I should have seen the signs.” Gemma silenced him by lifting her hand when he started to speak. “And please don’t tell me that it’s all right, that I’m not at fault. I don’t think I could take that right now.”

Unfortunately, Kellan understood just what she meant. They were both still hurting, and a mutual sympathy fest was only going to make it harder. They couldn’t go back. Couldn’t undo. And that left them with only one direction. Looking ahead and putting this son of a bitch in a hole where he belonged.

She nodded as if she’d reached the same conclusion he had, and Gemma swiveled the screen so he could see it. It was a collage of photos of the crime scene at the Serenity Inn. He’d wanted to give her some time to level her adrenaline and come down from the attack, but it was obvious she was ready to be interviewed.

“I’ve been studying this,” she said, “and Eric could have been telling the truth about some things.” She paused. “I hope he’s telling the truth about Caroline, that he left her alive.”

Yeah. But if she was alive, did that mean she’d been with a serial killer this whole time? That twisted the knot in his stomach. There were things worse than death.

“I know you didn’t get a good look at everything in the inn where Eric had you that night. Eric said he picked up the gun from inside the inn. Did he?” Kellan asked.

“It’s possible. He’d drugged me by then so everything was blurry around the edges. But, yes, he could have done it. When he stepped into the house, he had his arms crooked around mine and Caroline’s necks. Caroline hadn’t been drugged so she managed to elbow him as he was backing up with us. She fought like a wildcat.”

Kellan nearly smiled. That sounded like Caroline. “If he was telling the truth, the gun would have been on the floor. Eric would have had to reach down to get it.”

She stayed quiet a moment, and he could almost see the images replaying in her head. “He staggered when Caroline was clawing at him.” Another pause, her forehead bunched up. “They both fell, I think. But only for a few seconds.”

He hadn’t thought that knot in his stomach could get any tighter. It did. Because a few seconds was plenty enough for Eric to have grabbed a gun and used it to shoot Gemma just as Kellan had been walking through the door. If that had happened though, and if by some miracle Eric had been telling the truth, then that left Kellan with a big question.

Why was the gun there?

Kellan looked at the photos again, letting it play out in his mind, too. “There are some inconsistencies.” He hated that blasted word, so sterile and detached from the emotion. Still, it was better than saying that there were things that had caused him a year of living hell and to not have a single full night of sleep.

“Dusty was shot with a different gun than my father and you,” Kellan said, spelling it out, again, with the hopes the inconsistencies might go away. “We always assumed Eric had two weapons and had possibly even run out of ammo in the one he’d used on Dad and you and that’s why he shot Dusty with another one.”

She cleared her throat just a little as if trying to clear her head, too. “Neither gun was found at the scene, which means Eric could have taken them with him. I don’t suppose either have turned up in a pawn shop or someplace like that?”

“No.” He’d been keeping tabs on that because a gun could possibly still have trace or fiber evidence even after a year. “I did put in a request, though, to have the CSIs go through the Serenity Inn again. They’ll head there first thing in the morning.”

For the first time today, he saw some kind of amusement in her eyes. He doubted it was from actual humor but rather because Gemma would know how that played out. “I’ll bet they weren’t happy about that. How many times have you had them go through it?” she asked.

“Three.” He’d lost count of how many visits he’d made himself. “That hotel was once a house, built in 1880, and people had hidey-holes all over. It has twenty-eight rooms and nearly fifteen thousand square feet. And as if that weren’t enough, it sat empty for a decade before Eric got near it. The squirrels and mice could have added even more holes. Easy to miss something in all that space.”

Gemma made a sound of agreement, pushed her fingers through her hair again. She opened her mouth, but then closed it as if she’d changed her mind. “Sorry. I was about to attempt a profile. We both know how reliable I am with those.”

That bite to her voice was drenched in regret and pain, things he knew plenty about. And while he didn’t want to go the profile route, either, he did want to run something past her.

“Rory Clawson,” he threw out there. “I know you’ve been doing hypnosis and therapy to help you remember more of what happened after Eric drugged you, and just wondered if you recalled him being there that night.”

“No. No recollection of that,” she said without hesitation but then paused. “How did you know about the hypnosis and therapy?”

“I’ve been getting updates on any and every aspect of this investigation—in case any new evidence came to light.” Kellan didn’t intend to apologize for it, either. “I want my father’s killer caught.”

Gemma continued to stare at him as if trying to figure out if that was all there was to it, but she didn’t press it. “I’ve been searching computer records, too, for updates. In case there’s any new evidence,” she added, emphasizing his own words.

Of course, she had. Because his father’s killer was also the same person who’d put three bullets in her. Well, probably. Unless Eric was telling the truth and Gemma had been the only person he’d shot that night.

“I can’t hack into Rory’s records,” she went on. “And, yes, I just tried.”

Again, no surprise, but he gave her a warning glare because she’d just confessed to committing a crime. He was ornery enough to consider arresting her but secretly wished he’d had the “moral flexibility” to do the hacking himself. Yes, he wanted the truth, but the badge meant something to him, and it had meant something to his father, too. Buck wouldn’t have wanted Kellan or his other sons bending the law even when it was for the sake of finding his killer.

Gemma must have had no trouble interpreting his glare or the way his forehead was now bunched up. While looking him straight in the eye, she lifted her hands, palms up, wrists exposed, as if waiting for him to cuff her.

Kellan’s glare deepened, and using his free hand, he braceleted those exposed wrists to push them back down. Unfortunately, that involved the touching that he’d been trying to avoid. Touching, that seemed to bother Gemma, too, because her breath hitched a little, and her gaze finally darted away.

“I’m sorry,” she said when his grip melted off her. “That put you in a tough position, but I’m not sorry for trying to get to the truth. Eric is out there, killing.” Now she shuddered, gave her bottom lip another bite until her mouth stopped trembling. “And he found out where I was, how to get to me. It bothers me that Rory’s a marshal and therefore could have gotten access to my WITSEC location.”

“That’s not the only thing that bothers me about him, but yeah, that’s part of it. What bothers me just as much is that I haven’t been able to solve the murder of Lacey Terrell, the prostitute Dusty was investigating. He was convinced that Rory was behind that somehow.”

Kellan didn’t add more because his phone rang again. This time it was Jack, and Kellan went back across the room so he could have at least a little privacy when he talked to his brother.

“Owen just told me what Eric said,” Jack blurted out the moment he was on the line. “Did he really say he didn’t kill Caroline?”

None of this was a surprise. Not the question and certainly not the desperate emotion that went with it. Jack loved Caroline, and even though all the signs had pointed to her being dead, Jack would never give up, never heal, until they found her body.

“For just a second, think with your badge and no other part of you,” Kellan insisted. “Eric is a liar.”

Kellan glanced at Gemma to see if she was listening. Maybe she was, but she was also back to working on the computer. Hopefully, not hacking into anything.

“Yeah,” Jack snapped. “But there’s no reason for him to lie about that.”

Sure there was, and it was going to slice Jack, and himself, to spell out what his brother already knew. “If we’re focused on finding Caroline, then we’d be looking in the wrong direction—for Eric. No way would he leave her alive if she could be found and lead us back to him.”

“Maybe she escaped,” Jack insisted.

“Maybe.” This was going to slice, too. “But then, she would have found a way to get in touch with you.”

His brother’s groan was the worst slice of all. Jack was his kid brother, and it hurt to feel him hurting like this.

“I want to talk to Gemma,” Jack snarled several moments later. “I want to work this latest murder investigation with you.”