Her arms went around her waist, an instinctive need to camouflage herself. “I like helping you, Billy. And I’m happy to do it anytime. But I don’t trust my instincts enough to go official with this arrangement beyond a case-by-case basis.”

  “Your instincts are as sharp as ever, Ro. Don’t allow Addington to keep you doubting yourself forever. Five months is long enough to punish yourself for making a mistake.”

  That mistake had cost the lives of many people, including her father. But she understood Billy wasn’t minimizing the enormity of what had happened with Julian. He just wanted her to trust herself again and to move on. He didn’t understand she couldn’t move on until Julian had paid for what he’d done.

  Until she had the truth.

  “I’m working on it,” she said, mostly to make him feel better.

  After a half minute of silence, he asked, “Are you thinking that Addington used Wanda and Sue Ellen the way he did Logan Wilburn’s sister?”

  Wilburn’s sister, Juanita, had been a member of the funeral home’s cleaning team. Julian had used her to gain access to the funeral home, to Rowan’s living quarters. He’d tortured and murdered Juanita’s brother to remind her of what was at stake.

  “It’s possible, but frankly, I can’t see the point. I don’t know either of these women. They’re not involved with me or the funeral home, but it feels exactly like it was one or both of them.”

  “The other side of that is that they both have alibis,” he reminded her. “And, like you said, neither of them is associated with you the way Juanita was. No matter how I look at or shake the pieces, it all comes back to those two and that brick wall called an alibi.”

  “One thing we can be certain of—if this is Julian, he has an agenda. If not to access me in some way, then to distract one or both of us for some reason not discernible just now.”

  Billy finished off his beer. “Our tattooed man and your mother.” He looked at Rowan then. “He doesn’t want you to find the truth. It’s possible there’s more to learn about Addington through Sanchez or Santos, whatever the hell his name was.”

  “What could he possibly want to hide that’s worse than what we’ve already uncovered about him?” Rowan shook her head, frustration making her want to kick something.

  Billy chuckled but the sound held no humor. “Considering what we found at his place, I think I’d be afraid of the answer to that question.”

  She sighed. “Good point.”

  “I should get going.” Billy stood. “I’m supposed to meet Lincoln to go over a few things.”

  It was late but a homicide investigation wasn’t limited to anyone’s schedule. Rowan got to her feet, felt incredibly heavy with the weight of all she didn’t know and desperately needed to. “Thanks for the pizza and the company.”

  He grabbed the pizza box and his empty beer bottle. “I’ll take this down as I go.” He held up the box, which was way too large for the trash can in her kitchen.

  “Thanks. I’ll gather up the crime-scene photos for you.”

  While she shuffled the photos together and packed them into the appropriate file folders, he deposited his beer bottle into the trash in the kitchen and interacted with Freud. The dog loved him.

  Rowan loved him.

  She stopped, her fingers on the manila folders. The feeling was strong, like the love she’d felt for her father and her sister. But different. She hadn’t analyzed the realization too deeply in the past. Honestly, this was the first time the thought had fully formed in her brain. Ideas and conclusions so very close to that thought had bobbed to the surface of the ocean of others flooding her life lately. No matter, it was becoming more and more difficult to deny that her feelings for Billy were strong. He felt something similar. She saw it in the way he looked at her. A lingering glance or touch.

  She imagined he was afraid to cross that line, as well.

  They would need to talk soon or risk making a mistake during a frantic moment.

  She followed him to the door. He settled his hat into place and she tucked the folders under his arm. “Drive safely.”

  “Always.” He nodded. “’Night, Ro.”

  “Good night.”

  She watched him walk down the corridor and then disappear around the corner. The air seemed to change with him gone. Loneliness filled the space she called home, closing around her.

  A long hot bath and a good night’s sleep was what she needed.

  Maybe tomorrow she would help him figure out how two men who hardly knew each other and certainly had little in common got themselves murdered in such a similar manner.

  If Julian was involved, what did he hope to gain?

  And why hadn’t he called her if there was some pending move coming?

  Being a fugitive had never stopped him from doing what he wanted before.

  Maybe he was dead...or maybe there was a copycat out there trying to gain notoriety using the media frenzy surrounding Julian.

  Her cell rang and she had to think a moment where she’d left it.

  “Kitchen.” She hurried there and picked it up before whoever it was hung up. There was no time to check the screen to identify the caller. “Rowan DuPont.”

  Silence greeted her.

  She stilled, listened for the sound of breathing.

  A single breath, so soft she barely heard it. Her jaw hardened. “What do you want?”

  More of that burgeoning silence.

  “I’m waiting,” she said, anger fueling her now. “I’m sick to death of your games and your hiding. Stop being a coward, Julian. Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

  A distinct click announced the call had ended.

  She shivered. She checked the screen. Unknown caller. Bastard. She went to the keypad by the door and checked the security system. Billy had set it downstairs as he left. She double-checked the dead bolts, and then went to the front window to ensure Billy’s truck was no longer in the parking lot. He was gone.

  Probably a good thing. If he’d still been down there, she might have called him back. If she had called him back, she wasn’t sure she could have trusted herself not to use these new feelings as a distraction.

  Angry and frustrated, she snagged a beer from the fridge and headed to her room.

  That bath was calling her name.

  Fourteen

  His chair leaning back and his feet propped on the conference table, Billy considered the case board Detective Clarence Lincoln had created. He’d done a damn fine job. Billy was fairly certain even someone like Rowan, with years of big-city homicide experience, would be impressed.

  “I’ve added the points you and Rowan discussed,” Lincoln said, gesturing to his latest additions to the board. “We’ll be reinterviewing friends and family again starting tomorrow. We’ve narrowed down a sizable lot of trace evidence—hairs, cloth fibers—but none that have pointed us in a particular direction. I talked to Yance again. He says there had to be more than two hundred thou in that safe.”

  Yancey Quinn was the assistant manager at Thackerson’s Mini Market. He was reopening the place tomorrow and would be running it until the estate cleared probate. “Did he actually see the money or is he guessing based on things Barney told him?”

  Lincoln sat down across the table from Billy. “He claims he helped him count it one night and there was three hundred and twelve thousand dollars. That was maybe a month ago. It’s his life savings. What his daughter didn’t go through, anyway.”

  Billy shook his head. “Why on earth would Barney keep that kind of money in his safe?”

  Lincoln shrugged. “He didn’t trust banks. He had a bank account—the checkbook was in his desk. I guess he had to for operating his business. Think about it, it wasn’t like anyone was going to carry off that safe. Hell, it’s six feet tall and four feet wide. No telling how much it weighs.”

  “Sounds like he was trying to avoid paying Uncle Sam his fair share.” In Billy’s experience, when a business owner avoided the bank, he was evading tax liability and/or trying to hide criminal activity.

  “That could be but Yance didn’t mention tax evasion.”

  “Could he have given some to his daughter in the past month?”

  Lincoln shook his head. “Yance said he swore he wasn’t giving her another dollar until she got her act together.”

  Billy ran his fingers through his hair, rubbed at his forehead and the ache that had started there. It was late. Too late for Lincoln to be working on this case or any other. Too late for him. This level of exhaustion prompted mistakes. They didn’t need any mistakes. “If Yance is right, someone removed a little over a hundred thou and left the rest. Why would a robber who’d gone to all the trouble of torturing and murdering Barney leave two hundred thousand in the safe?”

  “Maybe one who took only what he felt was owed to him.”

  Billy chuckled, couldn’t help himself. “An honorable, murdering thief, huh?”

  Lincoln rubbed his eyes and then reached for his coffee. “I should go home. Get some sleep and talk to Yance again tomorrow. See if his story changes after he’s had a night to sleep on it.”

  “We should look more closely at the daughter and at Stan’s wife.” Rowan was right about those two.

  Lincoln nodded. “Those two certainly had the most to gain. They got airtight alibis, though.”

  “They do,” Billy concurred. “Can’t argue with an alibi. But we both know it’s always possible they hired someone to do the deed.”

  “There’s a thought,” Lincoln said. “What about Rowan’s suggestion that we might be looking at more of Addington’s handiwork?”

  “If that’s the case all we have to do is figure out who did his dirty work for him. Ro says the kills were far too sloppy to be Addington’s personal efforts.”

  “Sanchez, or Santos, could have friends around here.” Lincoln shuddered. “Who knew we had a serial killer living right under our noses? There could be more.”

  “Makes you think twice about the neighbors you think you know.”

  “No kidding,” Lincoln agreed. “What about that neighbor of his? Utter? You think Sanchez/Santos would have let this guy see where he kept his souvenirs if they hadn’t done some serious bonding?”

  “That is a very good question, Lincoln. I think you should talk to the man again and see if he’s got any skeletons of his own buried around here somewhere.”

  “Will do. Mrs. Addington came by again today.”

  Billy finished off his coffee. He winced. “She bring her private detective with her?”

  Cash Barton was a retired homicide detective from Los Angeles. He had been following the case of Addington’s missing daughter for twenty-seven years. Now he and Addington’s former wife were staying in Winchester in hopes of learning who killed the girl. And maybe to be here if Addington showed up again. Billy suspected they would both love to see him take his last breath.

  Billy wouldn’t mind seeing that himself. In fact, he hoped he had the opportunity to make it happen.

  “Nope. She says he’s out of town following up on that assets liquidation Dressler told you about.”

  “He’s in Switzerland, I guess.” Evidently Mrs. Addington had the resources to send him halfway around the world at the drop of a hat.

  “Guess so.” Lincoln picked up his coffee cup, made a face and set it aside once more. “She wanted to know if her husband was involved in these two recent murders, considering that we rarely have homicides happen in our quaint little town. She thought he might be playing games with us again.”

  “Interesting that she would even wonder.” Billy sat up, dropped his feet to the floor. “Did she mention anything about the MO seeming familiar?” The news and the local paper had been running stories about the bizarre murders. Far too many details had leaked for Billy’s liking.

  “No,” Lincoln replied. “She was just dropping by for her weekly update. Maybe she threw that question in for good measure.”

  The woman came by once a week come hell or high water. Billy recognized his feelings about the former wife of Julian Addington might not be objective, but she was a strange one. He’d hoped that when she took her daughter’s remains back to LA for burial that she wouldn’t return to Winchester. Less than a week later she was back, staying at the same B & B and checking in with his detectives once a week.

  “I know you have a lot on your plate—” Billy almost hated to put this on Lincoln, too, but he was his most trusted and experienced detective “—but keep an eye on her as best you can. I’m not entirely convinced of her motives for staying. For all we know, she could be reporting to Addington. She could be watching Rowan for him. I don’t quite know what to make of the woman.”

  “I got it, Chief.” Lincoln cocked his head and looked Billy straight in the eye. “This is going to sound crazy, but is there any chance she could be a killer? With the help of that creepy driver of hers or that former detective?”

  “We both grew up here, Linc. Went to university right here in Tennessee, so I realize I’m not like Agent Dressler in that I haven’t seen the kinds of things he has, but after listening to Rowan talk about the cases she has been involved with, I’m here to tell you anything is possible. I say we watch her, for no other reason than the possibility that she might be leaking info to Addington.”

  Lincoln gathered his notes and stood. “I need some sleep.”

  Billy pushed to his feet. “See you tomorrow. Really good work, by the way.”

  Lincoln grinned. “Thanks, Chief.”

  Billy walked back to his office and locked up. He gave a little salute to the cleaning team as he exited the building. He settled his hat into place and descended the steps that fronted city hall. Every time he’d passed this building as a kid he’d told his mom he wanted to be a cop. His father had tried to dissuade him. What parent wouldn’t fear for their child’s safety? After a few pretty serious injuries on the football field at UT, his parents had decided if he could survive four years of college ball and all those rodeos back home during the summer, he could probably handle being a cop.

  Besides, this was Winchester, not Nashville.

  He’d had a few close calls, mostly with the drug dealers and manufacturers who cropped up now and then. A hit of the right kind of drug made a man dumb as hell, but damn fearless.

  Billy hit the fob and unlocked his truck, climbed in. As he rolled around the square, he was thankful for the peace and quiet despite the rows of cars parked in front of the few cafés that were still open on a Sunday evening. Before heading home, he drove past the funeral home.

  The second-floor lights were still on. Rowan was probably pouring over notes about the two murders or sifting through her mother’s ramblings in hopes of finding something more that would help her find the truth.

  His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. The idea that she would never be safe until Addington was stopped gnawed at him. Who the hell knew what this Sanchez/Santos bastard had been about? Whatever connection he’d had to Rowan’s mother, he certainly hadn’t bothered Rowan before he died and she’d moved back to Winchester nearly six months ago. He’d had the opportunity. This whole thing was just completely wrong.

  Keeping Rowan safe was his top priority and she didn’t like to cooperate. Yeah, she was armed and he’d made sure she could use her weapon. She had the best security system available and she had that big-ass dog.

  But Addington was smart. Too damn smart. What Billy really wanted was eyes on her at all times.

  She would not have it, though. To some degree she was right. His resources at the department were already stretched thin with these two murders.

  But he had another resource, one he preferred not to use unless it was absolutely necessary.

  No question. This was necessary.

  Going out on that particular limb wasn’t without its hazards, but he was willing to take the risk.

  Fifteen minutes were required to reach his destination. The man he needed to see lived in an old hunting shack halfway to Huntland. The woods on either side of the road were dark and thick. If he hadn’t known the area he would have been utterly lost. He took the left that was impossible to see until you were right on top of it.

  The gravel road was narrow and all of a mile long. A dim glow filtered past the edges of the curtains on the front windows of the shack. Someone was home. Whether it was Eddie Culver or one of his friends, Billy wouldn’t know until he knocked on the door.

  He parked, shut off the engine and climbed out. He reached under the seat and palmed his .38. Eddie was a mean bastard these days. Getting booted off the force had changed him. Couldn’t trust him completely. But the two of them had an understanding. Eddie owed him and Billy was about to call in one last favor on that marker.

  The snap of a shotgun barrel locking into place made Billy freeze. His grip tightened on his .38.

  “What the hell do you want?”

  Eddie. Billy relaxed. “I have a job for you, Eddie.”

  Eddie Culver stepped directly in front of Billy, blocking the distant glimmer of light from the shack. “And why would I give one shit about a job from you? I don’t work for you anymore, Chief.”

  “Maybe we should go inside and talk, Eddie. We have some catching up to do.”

  The silence expanded and the air went way too still.

  Finally, Eddie stepped aside, clearing the path to the shack. “After you.”

  The hair on the back of Billy’s neck stood on end as he walked toward the shack with an armed man walking behind him. Never a good scenario.

  An ex-cop. A dirty ex-cop.

  It had been Billy’s first year as chief of police. He’d suspected that Eddie and his partner were abusing their power as officers of the law before he was selected as chief. He’d mentioned it to Luther Holcomb, the former chief, once. But Luther had blown off Billy. Five months into his stint as chief, Billy discovered what Eddie and his partner were up to. The partner, Bruce Stratton, ten years Eddie’s senior in age and time on the force, was strong-arming certain business owners and demanding money for protection. Eddie went along and took his share. Billy was never able to get one of the business owners to talk, so taking steps to correct the situation was impossible. The shop owners were too afraid of Stratton. Stratton had killed a man not once but twice. Both were righteous kills, but dead was dead and the idea that he might kill one of them terrified the shop owners. Finally, Billy decided his only choice was to watch the two and catch them in the act.