The Missing Mccullen. Rita Herron

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СКАЧАТЬ him. “For the record, I’ve never met the man, and he didn’t pay me to do anything.” She let that sentence sink in for a brief second. “In fact, I can’t be bought by anyone, so even if he had offered, I would have turned him down.”

      “Really?” Koker’s mouth curled in a sardonic grin. “You mean I’m looking at a real-life honest lawyer?”

      She gave him a flat look. “Believe it or not, yes.”

      She removed photos of the crime scene and spread them across the table. Cash zeroed in on a shot of Sondra Elmore drenched in blood, and his face paled.

      “Did you kill Sondra?” BJ asked.

      A tortured look darkened his eyes. “No.”

      BJ waited, hoping he’d elaborate, but he didn’t.

      She tapped a picture of a bloody hunting knife the sheriff had found at the scene. “This isn’t your knife?”

      Cash cursed. “Yes, it is, but I didn’t kill Sondra with it.”

      “Then why was it lying on the floor beside her?”

      “I have no idea.” He leaned his head on his hands and inhaled several deep breaths. “Think about it. If I had killed her, you think I’d be dumb enough to leave a weapon behind with my fingerprints on it?”

      No. But she had to ask.

      Still, this man was a stranger to her. She wasn’t certain she could trust her instincts, either, not after the mess she’d made with Davis.

      * * *

      THE PICTURE OF Sondra covered in blood made Cash’s stomach roil.

      The lawyer cleared her throat. “You knew Sondra well, didn’t you, Cash? You were friendly?”

      He gave her a scathing look. “We were friends. Period.”

      “According to the sheriff’s notes and his interview with Mr. Elmore, you were more than that.”

      Cash shook his head. “Not true.”

      “You weren’t lovers?” she asked bluntly.

      Cash shifted. “I answered that already. We were just friends.”

      “They why did her father think you two were involved?”

      He made a low sound in his throat. “Sondra may have implied that we were.”

      The lawyer tapped her manicured nails on the table. A reminder that his were ragged and had been bloodstained, that the cops had forensics that would work against him.

      Even though he’d washed them, in his mind’s eye, he could still see Sondra’s blood.

      “I see,” she said wryly. “And you allowed her father to believe a lie?”

      “I didn’t like it. I told her that.” Cash shrugged. “But I didn’t dispute it.”

      “You two argued about the issue?”

      “Not really. She begged me not to say anything and I agreed.”

      Cash rolled his fingers into fists. If he admitted that he and Sondra had argued the afternoon she died, he’d give this lawyer a motive.

      “Why did Sondra allow her father to believe you were the boy’s father? And why would you let her do that?”

      “Elmore’s a paranoid jerk who warned all of his employees, including me, to keep their hands off of his daughter. He wanted to keep her in some kind of bubble, but she was rebellious.”

      The woman raised a brow. “Rebellious as in she dated the hands to make him angry?”

      “Sometimes.”

      “If she was so rebellious, why didn’t she just move out?”

      Cash shrugged. “First of all, Elmore controlled her trust fund. But I think she was secretly hoping her father would come around and accept Tyler.”

      “She dated you to get back at her father?”

      “I told you, we never dated,” he said firmly. “She was too young for me.”

      “But she got pregnant and told Elmore you were the father.”

      Cash heaved a weary breath. God, she was a professional interrogator. “Yes. But the boy wasn’t mine. Do the DNA test and you’ll see.”

      “We’ll get to that.” She glanced at her file, then back up at him. “So who was the child’s father?”

      He wished to hell he knew. “She never told me.”

      “Why not? You said you were close.”

      “I don’t know why. She just didn’t want to talk about him.” Cash tensed. He was painting himself into a corner.

      “Tell me more about your relationship then.”

      “She was like a kid sister to me,” he said. “She used to come out to the barn and yammer on like a teenager. Mostly venting about her father and how overprotective he was. He pressured her to give up the baby after it was born so she wouldn’t shame the family.”

      “But she kept the child?”

      “Yeah, she was tenderhearted. Loved animals and kids.” She’d cried on his shoulder about that decision. Cash had promised to provide emotional support if she kept the child and raised it on her own.

      Yet he’d let her down and she was dead.

      “Elmore allowed you to stay on after Tyler was born?”

      Cash gritted his teeth. “No, he fired me, then bad-mouthed me to other ranchers. Finally, I found a job on a small spread not too far away.”

      “You still saw Sondra and Tyler?”

      “Mostly Tyler. Sometimes she dropped him off so we could spend time together. Said he needed a male role model.” Cash had been surprised she’d chosen him for the job. But hey, the kid didn’t have a daddy and Cash related to that.

      Images of the little boy tagging along behind him taunted Cash. Tyler loved horses and riding. He constantly talked about joining the rodeo.

      “Cash?”

      BJ’s soft voice dragged him from the memories. God, what if something had happened to Tyler? “Tyler’s three now. He’s a pistol.”

      “Do you think Sondra intentionally got pregnant? Maybe she thought this man would marry her if they had a child.”

      “Sondra wouldn’t have done that.”

      Disbelief tinged the lawyer’s eyes. “Did she tell the father about the baby?”

      Cash СКАЧАТЬ