Cowboy Undercover. Alice Sharpe

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      “I don’t know how we avoided being seen,” Chance said as Lily led them to the nature trail.

      “I don’t, either. What did you do in Jeremy’s office besides find my purse?”

      He pressed her bag into her hands. “Wiped my prints away and kicked in the closet door from the inside. I didn’t want your husband knowing you had outside help. You didn’t tell him I was with you, did you?”

      “No,” she said as she extracted the car keys. Would Jeremy believe she was capable of kicking open a door? Maybe, maybe not, but at least he’d wonder.

      Lily took the passenger seat. A few seconds later, Chance directed the car onto the quiet road. “Where’s the nearest police station?” he asked. The moon illuminated the pavement and they drove without lights for several seconds before they’d turned away from Jeremy’s neighborhood and traffic began to appear. The headlights went on and they sped up.

      “We’re not going to the police,” she said.

      “But the man hit you, Lily. He locked you in a closet...”

      “I’m not important. It’s Charlie we have to worry about. Jeremy says if the police get involved, the kidnappers will kill Charlie.”

      “And you believe him?”

      “I don’t know what to believe,” she said. “But for now, no police. I have to find out who took Charlie. It’s someone named White, I think.”

      “We’ll find him,” Chance said.

      Too caught up in her thoughts, she didn’t respond. A son for a son... That implied revenge. It had to be tied to Jeremy.

       Chapter Four

      “Jeremy knows who took Charlie,” she said. “And for some reason, he’s keeping it to himself, which to me implies he has something to hide.” They were digging through the papers Lily had gathered before leaving her husband. The former neat stacks were now in a state of disarray as she grabbed one reprinted article after another. “Look for the death of a man,” she coaxed.

      Her voice was too highly pitched and the papers seemed to slip through her fingers. Chance wanted to tell her to calm down but he knew better than to even suggest such a thing.

      “There was no demand for ransom, right?” Chance asked.

      “No.”

      “Is it possible Jeremy staged the kidnapping to throw you off?”

      “Why bother? I’m just a pesky gnat to him.”

      “Don’t underestimate yourself,” Chance said. “You can be a hell of a lot more than pesky when you put your mind to it.”

      “Thanks,” she said with a sudden smile.

      “What’s to keep us from calling the cops?”

      “Jeremy said—”

      “The man lies as easily as a duck quacks.”

      “But this time he may be telling the truth. I can’t risk it until I know more.”

      Chance stopped arguing. All it took was one glance at her bruised and bloodied face to make the veins pop in his forehead. No one knew better than he how focused and relentless she could be, but the fact that Jeremy felt he had the right to strike her made his blood boil.

      Boiling blood aside, the bigger issue was Charlie. Little Charlie, stolen from his bed, held...well, why? As a hostage? As retribution? What did a five-year-old kid have to make retribution for? Who in the world would take out their hatred for a man on his very young child?

      No one sane. Ergo, a lunatic had Charlie. And a lunatic might harm the boy if threatened.

      “Here’s something,” she said, holding up a piece of newspaper. “A man Jeremy prosecuted died of cancer while serving a life sentence. It says, ‘Levi Bolt, 68, expired Wednesday—’”

      Chance cut her off. “His parents would have to be in their eighties. Keep looking.”

      They fell silent as they searched. “Look at this,” she said a few minutes later. He glanced at her face to find that the blood had congealed and her eye had swollen almost closed. He stood up.

      “Lily, let me help you clean those wounds.”

      “Not yet,” she said. “Read this to me. It’s not long.”

      He took the paper from her hand and read the article aloud.

      “‘Police today reported an inmate apparently committed suicide early Saturday morning by hanging himself in his cell. Darke Fallon, estimated age eighteen, was found at 3:25 a.m., January 14. He was being held pending proceedings that were to have started on Monday to determine competency. Prison medical staff attempted life-saving measures before transporting him to Charity Hill Medical Center where he was pronounced dead. Results of toxicology tests were unavailable for review.

      “Fallon is accused of the January 10 murder of Mr. Wallace Connor, 21, of Greenville, Idaho, who was found knifed to death in a Boise motel where he had reportedly traveled for a job interview. Twenty-four hours later, police spotted Connor’s truck. The driver, Darke Fallon, confessed to the murder but shortly after arrest, ceased cooperating with police. He claimed Connor picked him up while Fallon was hitchhiking from his home in Bend, Oregon, but that could not be confirmed. State appointed attorneys swore to fight demands for hypnosis to establish identity. It is unknown if Mr. Fallon leaves any survivors. The prosecutor’s office, headed by Jeremy Block, refused comment.’”

      “How could the police not find a trace of him?” Chance mused aloud. “Apparently no fingerprints, no family stepping forward, no Social Security number, no one has ever seen or heard about him before? That seems so unlikely in this day and age.”

      “I know, I know,” Lily said, “But his parents would be young enough to steal Charlie.”

      “If he had any. Did Jeremy talk about this suicide to you?”

      “I’m not sure. What’s the date again?”

      “January 15.”

      “That’s right around the time Jeremy finally knocked me out and I decided to leave. I told you there’d been a suicide at the jail in a cell before he came unglued. This must have been the one.”

      “Was there a follow-up investigation after his death?”

      “Probably.”

      “There must have been fallout over the suicide,” Chance said. “Did you ever hear why the kid killed himself before his trial?”

      “No.”

      Chance skirted through other clippings. “There’s nothing else here.”

      “I’ll search the internet,” she said, and picking up her phone, went to work. СКАЧАТЬ