Chapter One
I’d never once set foot in a police station until I found myself in Meadow Ridge, Georgia, and now I was sitting across from the sheriff.
The place wasn’t like the police stations I’d seen in movies. When Jasper told me we’d be coming here, I’d pictured…well, I wasn’t sure what I’d pictured, exactly. But it wasn’t a building that looked more like a trailer than a police station. Coming in the door, we had to edge our way around a large desk belonging to a girl who looked barely older than a teen, wearing denim cutoffs, with her thick, nut-brown hair in two braids. She glanced up at us briefly when we walked in, but she was surrounded by messy piles of paperwork and largely ignored us, choosing instead to tap away on her cell phone. As we walked down the corridor to the sheriff’s office, the sound of popping bubble gum followed us.
I’d met Mack Sands before, but seeing him here, in his own habitat, made him seem like something straight out of the old west. He beckoned us in with a gruff “Yeah!” and as we entered, his feet were propped up on the desk, dirty with ancient mud, probably from chasing cattle-wranglers and kids making out at the old kissing spot. His face was thick with a black beard, and the edges of his eyes were stony and carved with wrinkles. His gaze, piercing and skeptical, cut through me like a knife. Two fans ran in the office, causing his hair to flutter in the breeze. Beside one boot, a polished gold plaque reading Sands was the only clean thing in the room.
“Hello again,” the sheriff said. He didn’t make a move to stand up and greet us. “Have a seat.”
Jasper pulled out the chair for me. I glanced at the spot next to me, but Jasper ignored it, choosing instead to retreat to the door. He leaned against the frame, crossing his arms and cocking one foot against the wall. My gaze wandered down to his crotch. I could see his gun and wondered if Sheriff Sands could, too. Jasper didn’t seem to be worried. If anything, I felt like I’d walked into a dick-measuring competition between the two men.
If Sands noticed the gun, he said nothing.
“We’re here,” I said.
“Right,” Sands said, nodding. He plucked a file folder from the pile of unarranged paperwork on his desk. While the scene looked like perfect chaos to me, it seemed Sands knew exactly where to find everything. Maybe that was how police work in Meadow Ridge was—imposing order on an otherwise chaotic system. “Had a little problem last night.”
I grimaced. I’d had a couple of problems last night.
My mind wandered. I jiggled my feet and tapped my fingers on my thighs. I looked over my shoulder at Jasper. The door behind him beckoned, like a warm house in a snowstorm. Jasper cleared his throat, and I glanced up at him, listening to his commands like one of Pavlov’s dogs. He said nothing but, instead, nodded slowly at Sands. I swallowed hard and looked back at the sheriff. Thinking about Jasper standing behind me stilled my feet and fingers, at least for the time being.
“Let’s start simple,” Sands said, dragging his feet off the desk. “I want to know where you were last night. Want a drink?”
“What?” I asked, shaking out of my stupor. “No, no thanks.”
The sheriff bent down and pulled a bottle of whiskey and two glasses out of the drawer. He glanced up at Jasper, offering him a drink. I didn’t look, but Sands shrugged and stuck one of the glasses back into the drawer. “Your boy seems soft,” Sands said to me. “Can’t handle a little liquor?”
I waited for Jasper to answer. He remained mute. The awkward silence grew into a monster in the room, and I buckled. “He’s not,” I said quickly. “Soft, I mean.”
Boy, didn’t I know it—nothing about Jasper could be called “soft” most of the time.
“He seems to take himself pretty seriously,” Sands said, capping off the whiskey and sticking it back in the drawer. “A man’s gotta relax from time to time.”
Sands scrutinized me for a moment, sipping at the amber drink. The fans in the room were set to go back and forth and every time the air rushed across my face, it felt like a small orgasm. Since when had it gotten so hot in here?
“Right!” I said. “Where was I last night?”
“That’s what I’m asking you, miss,” Sands said. “You seem to be having some problem answering the question. Thinking of an alibi?”
“N—no,” I said. “I mean, no, I’m not having trouble, or thinking of an alibi—”
“She was in Atlanta,” Jasper said. “Trust me. I had my eye on her all night.”
He didn’t wink at me, but he might as well have.
My face went red hot. Yeah, he’d had his eye on me all night. I guess you could say I had my eye on him, too. Well, parts of him. If the sheriff noticed the six shades of purple my face turned, he didn’t mention anything.
“You can prove you were together in the city?” Sands eyed me up and down. I swallowed thickly, my throat dry, but it was Jasper who answered.
“There are security cameras in the lobby and each hallway of the hotel we stayed at.” Pulling out his wallet, he extracted a thin sheath of receipts, tossing them onto the desk. “This is where we stayed. Pull those recordings, and you’ll be able to verify we were there.”
“Everything was strictly professional,” I said. Immediately I regretted adding that comment, because it hung in the air. I half expected Sands to say if it was strictly professional, why do you need to say it was strictly professional? Instead, he calmly sipped his whiskey.
“So, you two went off to Atlanta,” Sands said. “And your room at the motel here was broken into while you were there. And this Daly fellow was at the scene.” His stare was off to the side, as though he were looking at some invisible whiteboard on the wall, connecting pictures of Daly and Jasper and I to see how the web all came together. “I looked at your motel room here this morning, after I spoke with that producer of yours. And I can only think of three things, but if you were in Atlanta it pokes some big holes in them.”
Sands paused to take another sip of his whiskey, and I leaned toward him. The whirring of the fans seemed deafening. Over my shoulder, Jasper was completely silent. My mouth went dry, and as Sands swished the whiskey around in his mouth and swallowed, I forced a lump down my throat.
“First off, we found Daly in your room,” he said. “One theory is that you trashed your own room to make Daly look bad. Of course, you didn’t expect him to show up, but it worked in your favor. What better evidence that Daly trashed your room than to physically plant him there? Though if you were in the city, maybe you paid someone else to do it for you.”
I cleared my throat indignantly, crushing my hands into fists. “Are you saying that I would destroy my own stuff just to get back at Daly?” Keeping my teeth from clenching took more willpower than I knew I had.
“I’m saying it’s a theory,” Sands said as his eyes wandered across my face. He’d probably noticed how tense I’d gotten. “Theories can be right, they can be wrong, and they can be disproven. Right now, I have a couple of them.”
“If they all end with me paying someone to trash my own room, then I have trouble seeing—”
“Cari.” Jasper’s voice cut me off like a razor, and his tone was like a bucket of cold water on my irritation. I stopped talking, opened my mouth to continue, and then closed it for good.
“The second theory,” Sands said, “was that it was Daly who trashed your room, and you came across him. For whatever reason—maybe you have history with this fellow, maybe you were just hot-to-trot to give him an ass-kicking for breaking into your room—you attacked him in a fit of rage. This doesn’t work if you weren’t there, though it’s still possible you might have had someone else on your payroll.”
Again, I opened my mouth, but this time I held my tongue. Sands paused for a moment, waiting for me to say something, maybe letting the silence linger so I’d feel compelled to out myself. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
Sands finished off his whiskey and set it on the desk, the glass connecting with the wood with a resounding thud. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Which brings us to our third and final theory: that it was Daly who trashed your room, and you came across him. Being a little lady like yourself, there’s no way you could have given him the ass-kicking he got. Which suggests that you were with someone—maybe some kind of protector. But if your attack dog was with you, that doesn’t work, either.”
Settling back in his chair, he eyed me with suspicion. I could tell he didn’t like the fact that Jasper and I had both been out of town, but I wasn’t sure if he still thought I had something to do with it—if I had someone on my payroll.
“Jasper had nothing to do with this,” I said. “And neither did I. I’d like to remind you that we have alibis. We’ve already told you where we were last night, and we have witnesses. And those recordings.” I had no doubt that Jasper had verified the presence of cameras before we’d ever set foot in the hotel.
“No need to get hot under the collar, miss,” Sands said. “I’m a man of the law. I take no sides, hold no biases. It’s my job to look at a situation like this from every angle.” He leaned forward and stared into my eyes. “Ask me on a personal level? I don’t think you or your boy had anything to do with these happenings.” He leaned back again. “The lawman in me don’t give two squirts about what the man in me thinks, though. The lawman don’t care about opinions. The lawman knows that things aren’t always how they first appear.”
“Fine. I get it.” I nodded slowly. Casting a quick sidelong glance at Jasper, I felt myself flush with embarrassment. “But we have a witness, on top of the recordings. Jackson. Ask Jackson, and he’ll back us up.”
“Jackson,” the sheriff said. He pulled the bottle out and filled the whiskey glass again. “Who is that?”
“He’s…” My words faded, and I cast a helpless glance at Jasper.
“He’s a colleague.” Jasper’s voice was calm. “He was in the hotel room in Atlanta with us last night.”
“The three of you in the room together,” Sands said. “What were you all doing?”
Jasper simply raised an eyebrow as his lips curved into the barest hint of a smirk. I grimaced. Sands coughed on his whiskey.
Sands produced a bandana from his back pocket and wiped his mouth. “Well, then. Look, Miss Dunn, rest assured the investigation is ongoing. Why don’t you and your friend just go back to the motel, clean up a bit, and try to relax? If I come up with anything, I’ll give you a call. If you have any more problems, you let me know.” Sands pulled a business card from the top drawer of his desk and handed it to me. “Day or night.”
I accepted the card and tucked it into my pocket. “Thanks,” I said. “Hopefully there won’t be any more problems.”
“Hopefully,” he said. “Have a nice day.”
I stood up. Without a word, Jasper led me to the front door and closed it behind us.