“Zac . . .”

  They both froze at the sound of a car approaching. Then, as it slowed and turned into the driveway, they hurried to crouch behind the woodpile. Rachel’s heart pounded, adrenaline racing through her blood. She preferred using her brains to puzzle out a mystery. Nothing was more satisfying than uncovering clues and following them to a logical conclusion. But she couldn’t deny there was an absolute thrill in the chase.

  The car pulled to a halt in front of the cabin, the engine switching off. A second later they could hear the sound of a door slamming shut.

  Zac leaned toward her, whispering into her ear. “I’ll check it out.”

  She nodded, watching him ease past the woodpile and disappear around the side of the house before she turned to press herself against the cabin next to the back door. They didn’t know who or how many people were in the cabin. She wasn’t going to let anyone slip away because they were sloppy.

  Reaching beneath her jacket, she touched the butt of her gun. More to reassure herself that it was there if she needed it than to prepare to shoot anyone.

  “Hello, Curly,” she heard Zac drawl. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  Rachel released a silent whistle. Well, well. It was one of the Curly boys. And where there was one, she was willing to bet there was going to be a second.

  “Christ. Dad, it’s the cops!” Curly shouted on cue, the words echoing through the nearby trees.

  There was the sound of pounding footsteps from inside the cabin, then, with a tedious predictability, the back door was shoved open and a man stumbled down the steps. Why did they always run?

  “I don’t think so.” Rachel moved with a practiced ease, catching the fleeing man with her hip to knock him off his feet. Curly was already off-balance, and with a cry of frustration he fell heavily to the ground, hitting his head even as Rachel shoved a knee into his back. “Don’t move.”

  Chapter 13

  An hour later Zac headed down to the basement of the courthouse and entered the holding cell. It was a small, dark square that smelled of old mold and cigarette smoke that had seeped into the cement walls. It didn’t matter how many times the place was cleaned, the stench lingered.

  Inside the cell was a narrow table, and on each side was a plastic chair. Overhead was a bare lightbulb surrounded by a steel cage. It was a bleak, barren room. But it wasn’t that way just to make it uncomfortable for the suspects. It had been stripped of comforts to make sure there was nothing in the space that could be used as a weapon.

  Curly Senior was currently slumped in one of the chairs, his arms folded over his narrow chest and a sullen expression on his thin face. He was a tall, gaunt man with a bald head and a nose that consumed more than its fair share of space. His eyes were dark and sunk deep into his skull, as if they were attempting to disappear entirely. All in all, he looked like the Grim Reaper. Zac wondered if that was why he’d worked at a funeral parlor.

  “It’s about time.” Curly intruded into his thoughts.

  “You in a hurry to go somewhere?” Zac asked as he took a seat in the chair on the opposite side of the table.

  “To see a doctor.” The man lifted a hand to touch the swelling bump on his forehead. “I think that cow broke my skull.”

  Zac leaned back, folding his arms over his chest.

  He’d deliberately left the man sitting alone in the cell since he’d hauled them into town. Curly Junior was in another cell just down the hall. It not only gave them time to worry about what they were facing, but he needed to get the paperwork started on a search warrant. They’d done a quick walk-through to make sure there was no sign of Tory Devlin. Or anyone else hiding inside the cabin after he’d arrested the two Curlys. But to do a more thorough investigation of the property, along with both Curly Senior’s and Junior’s places, he was going to need a judge to give him legal permission.

  The sooner he could get it, the better.

  “You’re lucky she didn’t put a bullet through your heart,” he told Curly, not adding his pride in Rachel’s ability to take down the man without ever pulling her weapon. “It’s against the law to run from the police.”

  “Run from the police?” He made a sound of shock. “No way. I thought you were—”

  “Cut the crap, Curly,” Zac interrupted. “I’m too tired to play games. You disappeared from your trailer when your son called to tell you that I wanted to chat. And you tried to run when you realized we were at the cabin. Why?”

  The beady brown eyes narrowed as Curly considered whether he could continue to lie. Then he gave an indifferent shrug. “I don’t like cops. They give me a rash.”

  “Shocking,” Zac drawled, studying the man’s stubborn expression. He was prepared for Zac’s interrogation and intended to make this as difficult as possible. Maybe it was time to shake him up a bit. “Does your dislike have anything to do with the fact they don’t approve of you throwing children out of windows?”

  Curly looked genuinely confused. “What?”

  “You were arrested for domestic abuse against your son.”

  “Oh.” The man reddened, as if embarrassed to be reminded of his violence toward a child. “That wasn’t my fault.”

  Zac arched a brow. “What part? The window? Did you intend to throw him against the wall? Probably a better choice. No cops involved if you can keep the beatings private.”

  “There was no beating,” Curly snapped. “The boy attacked me. I was just protecting myself.”

  “Right. It’s never the abuser’s fault. He provoked you. He deserved it. He—”

  “I’m telling you, he came after me,” Curly interrupted, his voice harsh. “Not that I blame the boy. If I hadn’t been drinking, none of it would have happened.”

  “Why would he come after you?”

  Curly hunched his shoulders in a defensive motion. “He’d overheard his mom and me fighting and he was upset.”

  “Fighting about what?” Zac demanded, genuinely curious now. He wanted to know if this man had graduated from beating children to murdering helpless women.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does if you want to prove you’re not a violent man capable of brutalizing a small child,” Zac reminded him, his voice hard.

  Curly’s lips parted, as if he intended to tell Zac to shove his intrusive questions up his ass. Then, as if seeing something in Zac’s expression that warned it would be a mistake to piss off the sheriff who held his future in his hands, he muttered a curse.

  “I didn’t know I had a son until his mother appeared on my doorstep with a two-year-old kid she said belonged to me.” The older man shrugged. “I agreed to support the two of them, but I’ll admit that there were times I wondered if I was being conned. I didn’t have actual proof the kid was mine. And when I would get drunk I would sometimes say stuff that wasn’t so nice. One night Curly overheard me saying that he didn’t belong to me and he went into a fit.”

  Zac narrowed his eyes. “What kind of fit?”

  “He started screaming and yelling like a wild creature, and the next thing I knew, he’d launched himself at me and was taking a bite out of my arm.” Curly moved his hand to cover his forearm, as if recalling the unexpected attack. “It hurt like a bitch, and I swung my arm, just trying to dislodge him. I never intended to send him flying and I most certainly didn’t intend for him to go through the window. It scared the shit out of me.” He grimaced. “Not that anyone cared that it was an accident. I was arrested and my wife took off with the kid. End of story.”

  Zac didn’t have the time to consider what the episode revealed about the Boltons, if anything. It was time to get to the reason the older man was currently seated in a holding cell.

  “Why were you hiding in the cabin, Curly?” he abruptly asked. “And why did you run from me?”

  “Like I said, I don’t like cops.”

  Zac snorted. “Yeah, a lot of people don’t like cops. It’s a hazard of the job. But most folks don’t pack up their belongings and disappear into the middle of the woods.” He held the man’s wary gaze. “Only someone who has done something illegal goes to that extreme.”

  His jaw tightened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “All right. Let’s see if I can explain it in words you understand.” Zac spoke in a slow, concise voice. “Premeditated. Murder.”

  “Murder?” Fear flared through the man’s eyes before he was trying to laugh off the accusation. “You’re out of your ever-loving mind.”

  “You were hiding in the cabin of a man who was found with a bullet through his head.”

  “It was empty. I didn’t know who owned the place.”

  Zac rolled his eyes. Curly Senior wasn’t the most skilled liar. If he was the killer they were searching for, it shouldn’t be tough to prove his guilt. “You worked for the Henleys for years.”

  “I worked for a lot of people around town. And I’m sure a lot of them have cabins.”

  With a deep sigh, Zac rose to his feet. “You should get a lawyer, Curly. A good one. You’re going to need all the help you can get.”

  Zac headed toward the door, not surprised when Curly called out. “Wait. Wait.”

  Slowly turning, he sent the older man a warning glare. “Don’t waste my time.”

  “I won’t.” The older man leaned forward, his expression stubborn. “But first I want your promise you’ll let my son go. He wasn’t involved in any of this.”

  Zac felt a stab of surprise at Curly’s loyalty toward his son. He’d assumed he’d throw the younger man under the bus if it would divert suspicion from himself.

  “If you’re telling the truth, he won’t be prosecuted.”

  Curly frowned, clearly unhappy at the vague commitment. Then perhaps realizing that he wasn’t going to get any better offer, he grudgingly nodded. “Okay. It’s true, I did work for the Henleys.”

  Zac returned to slide into his chair, leaning his elbows on the table. The session was being recorded so there was no need to take notes. “What dates?”

  The older man considered for a second. “I started in the mid-eighties, a couple years after Mr. and Mrs. Henley died in a car crash. I stayed until Jacob closed the place a few years ago. I don’t have the exact dates.”

  “You knew Jude back then.” It was a statement, not a question.

  Curly shrugged. “He made occasional appearances at the funeral parlor. Usually when he was hoping for a handout from his brother.”

  “Were you friends?”

  “Barely knew him.”

  Zac curled his hands into frustrated fists. When he’d heard the car pulling up to the cabin he’d been convinced that this nightmare was about to end. They would find Tory and clear up both Jude’s and Paige’s murders.

  Now he was battling a horrifying fear that he was no closer to finding Tory, or even discovering who’d brutally killed Paige. And it was pissing him off.

  “Do you want Curly Junior released or not?” he snapped.

  Curly scowled, but he swallowed his smart-ass comment. Did he sense that Zac’s nerves were at the breaking point? Or was he actually worried about his son?

  “A few times he hooked me up with some weed. That was it.”

  “Did you party together?”

  The man snorted. “No way.”

  “Why not?”

  “I was the hired help.”

  Zac frowned. He knew the sordid truth about Jude Henley. The man had been a heartless beast. But even without the videotapes, he’d gotten the impression that he was a loser. “Jude was a high school dropout and a petty criminal,” he pointed out in dry tones.

  “Didn’t matter,” Curly insisted. “The Henleys had once been a big deal in this town. My mom said that Jude’s mom insisted on buying a brand-new car every year for her birthday and traveling to the beach during the winter. Even when they were barely making ends meet toward the end they thought they were better than everyone else.”

  “Okay.” Zac tapped his fingers on the table, pretending to consider his next words. “You might not have been friends, but you knew that Jude was alive.”

  As he hoped, he caught Curly by surprise. His brown eyes widened, his head shaking in denial. “No. I swear.”

  Zac planted his hands flat on the table, as if he was preparing to shove himself to his feet. “I knew this would be a waste of time.”

  “I didn’t know,” Curly insisted, his tone sharp with an urgent attempt to convince Zac of his sincerity. “Not until . . .” His words died on his lips, and he glanced toward the door, as if wishing he could get up and walk out of the room.

  “Until when?” Zac prompted, knowing he had to keep the man talking.

  Curly hesitated, then with a last, longing glance at the door he returned his attention back to Zac. “Until I was coming out of the Bait and Tackle one night and Jude suddenly appeared in front of me.” The older man grimaced at the memory. “It scared the bejesus out of me, I can tell you that. I thought I was seeing a ghost.”

  “When?”

  “A couple of weeks ago.”

  “Be more exact.”

  “I can’t.” Curly hunched his thin shoulders. “I don’t pay any attention to the passing days now that I’m retired. All I can say is that it was sometime in early October. I’d gone to the bar to watch the baseball game. It was the playoffs.”

  Zac ground his teeth. He’d check with the new owner of the Bait and Tackle later. “Where was Jude waiting for you?”

  “I was walking to my truck I’d parked around the block and he stepped out of an alley next to the bar. At first I thought I was going to be mugged. I don’t know why. Everyone in town knows I’m always broke. Then the man said my name and I realized who it was.” A violent shudder shook through Curly’s body at the memory. “Like I said, I thought I was seeing a ghost.”

  “What did he want?”

  “He said he needed my help.”

  “What kind of help?”

  “He told me that he was staying at his old cabin and that he needed someone to bring him supplies.”

  There was a compelling sincerity in the man’s voice, and if Jude had been staying there, that would explain the three mugs on the table. Not Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and Baby Bear. But Jude Henley, who would have left his mug without realizing he would never return to the cabin. And then Curly Senior and Curly Junior, who were too lazy to clean up.

  Still, Zac remained skeptical. Curly needed a convenient excuse to be at the cabin. What better justification than to say the dead man asked him to be there?

  “Why couldn’t he get his own supplies?” Zac asked.

  “He didn’t want anyone knowing he was in town. I guess because he was supposed to be dead.”

  “Hmm.” Zac didn’t disguise his disbelief. “You claimed you’d never been friends.”

  “We weren’t.”

  “So why would he seek you out? Why not Jacob?”

  “Haven’t you heard? His brother’s soft in the head.” Curly grimaced. “He was caught one night walking around the streets without his pants on. By the time he was found and taken to the hospital he had frostbite on his pecker. That’s when they decided to put him in the nursing home.”

  Zac winced, but refused to be distracted. “Why you?” “Honestly? I think it was because I was at that spot at that time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I had the feeling he’d been in the alley watching someone else,” Curly told him. “I just happened to come along and he recognized me. I assumed he thought he could trust me to keep my mouth shut.”

  Zac tucked away the potential clue. He could go to the alley to see who or what Jude might have been watching once he was confident that Curly was telling him the truth. Right now, that was still debatable. “He hadn’t seen you for twenty-eight years. Why would he trust you?”

  “Because I’ve always been the kind of guy who will do about anything for money.”

  Zac believed him. He’d known lots of men like Curly. They skimmed through life, taking whatever they could and never making a contribution to the community. His own uncle had been exactly the same, constantly showing up at the farm to ask for a couple bucks to keep him going until he got a job. He’d died a few years ago, broke and alone. A shame.

  “What did you do for him?” Zac asked.

  “I brought groceries and kerosene so he could use the hurricane lamps at night,” Curly admitted. “I delivered them each Monday morning. Three . . .” He wrinkled his nose. “Maybe four times. I can’t remember. He’d leave an envelope with money on the porch to pay for the groceries and some extra cash to compensate me for my time.”

  Zac continued to tap his fingers on the desk. He didn’t understand why Jude would ask a less than dependable Curly to bring his supplies. Even if he was afraid of showing his face in Pike, he could have gone to another town to buy what he needed. The chances of being recognized would have been close to zero.

  Unless . . .

  “Did he have a vehicle?” Zac abruptly demanded.

  Curly considered the question, as if it’d never occurred to him to look for a car. “Not that I ever saw,” he finally admitted. “But he might have had one in the old shed behind the cabin. I didn’t go back there.”

  Zac slowly nodded. If Jude didn’t have transportation, it would explain his need to approach Curly for help. Even if he did have his old truck in the shed, the license plates had expired years ago. The last thing he’d want was to attract the attention of the law.

  That still left a dozen questions whirling through Zac’s tired brain. “If the only thing you did was deliver a few groceries, why did you run when you heard I wanted to talk to you?”

  “Are you shitting me?” Curly glared at him as if he’d lost his mind. “The dude shows up in Pike after twenty-eight years of pretending to be dead and suddenly he is dead. Who do you think is going to be blamed?” He slapped his bony hand against the center of his chest. “Me, that’s who.”

  Zac knew that Curly had a point. Not that he was going to admit it. Instead, he leaned forward. “What did Junior do for Jude?”

  Curly blinked at the question. As if it had caught him off guard. “Nothing. He didn’t even know I was working for Jude Henley.” He held up his hand as Zac’s lips parted in disbelief. “Not until we heard that he’d turned up dead in the graveyard,” he continued. “That’s when I told the boy what I’d been doing. He was the one who decided I should keep my trap closed. He said that the cops were sure to try and blame it on me just to close the case. But he wasn’t involved in anything else.”