35. Colt
35
COLT
I couldn’t stop staring at her. Or touching her. Or just breathing her in. That burnt-orange scent was everywhere now. The air in the dining-room-turned-office. The sheets as I went to sleep every night—alone. Singed into my goddamned skin.
“What are you scowling at?” Ridley asked, cutting into my spiraling thoughts.
I leaned back in my chair, trying to force nonchalance. “Nothing. We’ve just been over these case files a dozen times. I don’t think it’s going to bring anything new.”
Ridley unwound her legs from a pretzel-like position. Today she wore jean shorts and a flowy sleeveless blouse with tiny flowers all over it. Her hair hung in loose waves around her, the color a little blonder than normal. Maybe because she’d worked most of the day outside yesterday. Torturing me in another of those damned tank tops as she lay on a towel reading the latest police report I’d gotten.
Her gaze roamed over me, a silent check-in. “You need to take a run?”
My scowl only deepened.
Ridley held up both hands in surrender. “Sorry. Geez.”
I was the one who should’ve been sorry. But it annoyed me that she knew me so well. Knew that after hours at this table, I needed to move, to get the pain and death out of my system.
I twisted my head, making my neck crack. “It’s not you.” Only it was—it was everything about her.
“Will you come look at this tape for me?” Ridley asked.
Hell.
I didn’t need to be closer. Didn’t need to smell that tempting scent. Feel the heat that always came off her in waves. Be close enough to touch that skin.
But I went. Because not going would be admitting just how weak I was when it came to Ridley Sawyer Bennett.
I stood and moved behind her chair, locking my fingers around the back of it so I wouldn’t be tempted to tangle them in those blond strands; then I turned my eyes to the laptop screen. A brand-new one, since I hadn’t been able to recover her old one, hadn’t been able to find the asshole who had hurt her.
That fact only stirred my annoyance further. It felt like everything surrounding me was a series of failures these days. I focused on the screen, the image there, trying to shove out every other thought. It was a video I’d seen before. Coach Kerr standing at a gas pump, filling up his SUV.
The footage was a little grainy, but you could see him clear as day. Those polo shirts he always wore. The ball cap pulled down low with Wimbledon stitched across the back. His license plate on display, confirming the vehicle’s identity. The time stamp read 8:13. It was about as good as you could get in terms of an alibi.
Because during that time, Emerson was unconscious in the back of a truck. On her way to be hurt in some of the worst ways imaginable. My fingers tightened on the chair, and I closed my eyes for a moment.
Emerson was safe. She hadn’t been hurt, not physically. But it didn’t change the fact that her life had been forever altered.
“Something is off with this footage,” Ridley said, voice low.
My eyes opened, narrowing on the screen. “What do you mean?”
I watched as Kerr turned, glancing at something over his shoulder. It was him. During the window of the crime. In addition to the tapes, the clerk on duty that night confirmed seeing him. We’d just been lucky they saved the old cassettes for a week before recording over them again.
Ridley didn’t look up at me. She just kept her gaze locked on the screen. “Emerson was abducted May twenty-third, right?”
I nodded but then realized she couldn’t see me. “Yeah. Right before Memorial Day weekend and school getting out for the summer.”
“I’ve looked at everything about that day. Was it a full moon? What was the temperature like? The weather? What time did the sun set?”
“It was cold,” I said automatically. “I remember I had a jacket on when I went to pick up Em.”
Ridley nodded, turning to me. “There was a cold snap that lasted for three days. Looks like that’s normal in the mountains. The wild swing of temperatures.”
I frowned. “Sure. We can be in the eighties one day and the forties the next.”
“It wasn’t quite that drastic. But on the twenty-second, the high was seventy-two. On the twenty-third, the high was forty-eight, and that was in the height of sunshine. So why”—she turned to tap on the screen—“is Coach Kerr in shorts and a polo?”
My gut tightened, that prickle of awareness skating over my skin. “Could be that he was working out with the team. Maybe he forgot a coat.”
Ridley tapped on her laptop screen. “There’s a fleece right here on the back seat. Or if it was chilly, he could get back in the SUV while his gas tank fills. But he doesn’t. He also doesn’t shiver at all. Doesn’t look the slightest bit cold. I looked up the temperature at eight o’clock on the night of the twenty-third. It was thirty-six degrees.” She looked up at me. “Even if I’d just run a mile, I’d still want at least a sweatshirt if it was that cold.”
Fucking hell.
I stared at the screen for a long moment. “That’s video footage.”
“With a timestamp only,” Ridley argued.
I shook my head. “We have the original cassettes in evidence. They have the dates written on them. They were labeled each week when the gas station started over.”
Ridley met my gaze dead-on. “And how difficult would it be to just write a new label with a different date?”
Everything in me tightened. I hadn’t been a deputy at the time, but I’d talked to every officer who worked my sister’s case. I’d talked to them multiple times. Lucian, the gas station clerk, in his early twenties, had been working nights that week. He told officers he’d seen Kerr at the pumps that night. And the owner of the gas station, Bill, had been the one to hand over the tapes. I couldn’t see all of them being in on some sort of conspiracy. But still…
I released my hold on Ridley’s chair. “I need to bring Kerr in for questioning.”
She was on her feet in a flash. “I’m coming with you.”
“The hell you are.”
Ridley’s expression went thunderous. “I thought we were past this. That we were teammates.”
“This is an active investigation. You can’t just come on a ride-along.”
“I gave you the information that led to this.”
“Yes, but?—”
“Don’t cut me out.” Ridley’s voice dropped low. It wasn’t pleading exactly but something worse. The undercurrent said she believed I'd do the right thing.
I cursed. “Go to the station and meet me there. I’ll tell Ryan to let you watch from observation.”
Ridley’s entire face lit up, like sunshine was pouring out of her goddamned skin. It nearly knocked me over, it was so bright. She stretched up onto her tiptoes, pressing her lips to my cheek before whispering in my ear, “Thanks, Law Man.”