Chapter Eleven
Lexa studied the footage of the doorbell cam that Declan had sent Aiden and her. The images were far from clear, thanks to the lack of street lights in this section of town and the distance between the cam and the car as it’d driven by. But by freezing the frame as Declan had done, it was easier to zoom in and see the woman’s face.
“Gillian looks furious,” Aiden commented. He was seated at his desk in his home office with Lexa right next to him in the chair she’d pulled over.
“She does,” Lexa said. “But we don’t know if that anger prompted her to set the manor on fire.”
Dragging in a long breath, he made a sound of agreement. “The person who started that fire had gas cans. And maybe also set up the device for those cooked-off bullets.”
Something like that took planning and wasn’t a spur of the moment reaction fueled by rage. But it could have happened, especially if the rage had been going on since Chloe and Brady’s engagement.
“Gillian could have brought those items with her,” Aiden continued. “Maybe with the intentions of…what? Murdering Chloe?”
“That’d be my guess. Gillian could have learned that Chloe would be there, and she might have decided to end her life then and there. First, set the fire. If Chloe managed to get out as we did, then the bullets might finish her off.” Lexa stopped, shook her head. “But then why continue to come after us?”
And a theory came to mind.
“When we climbed out of that window at the manor, we both thought we saw someone,” she reminded Aiden. “If it was Gillian, she possibly believed that we recognized her and were building a case against her. She could have wanted to take us out before we managed to arrest her.”
Aiden nodded, but he didn’t seem completely convinced. Neither was Lexa. There were just too many missing pieces of this particular puzzle, and they needed Gillian to fill in the blanks. And hopefully that would happen soon.
Owen had tried to call her a couple of times, but Gillian hadn’t answered. In fact, the calls had gone straight to voicemail. There might be a good reason for that, but Aiden could think of a couple of bad ones.
The woman was on the run.
Or she could be dead.
After all, if someone was cleaning house by murdering Chloe and attempting to kill Lexa and him, then Gillian might be a target, too. That could be especially true if Chloe’s killer believed Gillian could expose him as the killer. If so, that led right back to Wylie and Brady since they had almost daily contact with Gillian. Either man could have heard or saw something that put Gillian on the defensive.
But that could mean Gillian was ready to kill Brady.
And Lexa couldn’t see the woman going there. Then again, she hadn’t seen the facade Chloe had put on for six months.
A green light on his computer monitor flashed and then alerted them that there was incoming footage from the police station. Aiden minimized the image of Gillian on the doorbell cam and pulled up the live feed from the interview that Owen had just started with Brady. One look at Brady and Lexa knew that he’d already been informed of his fiancée’s death. Brady wasn’t crying, but his face was a mask of pure grief.
Well, maybe.
Again, Lexa didn’t want to believe the worst, but she knew people faked stuff all the time. Especially killers. And the bottom line was that Brady had a motive to kill the woman if he believed that she’d tried to set him up for her murder.
“Brady, for the record can you tell me where you went after you left the police station this morning?” Owen asked.
“I, uh…” Brady stopped and scrubbed his hand over his face. “Did Chloe suffer when she died?”
It was an interesting question and could be taken two ways. One, as the concern for a woman that Brady had loved. Or hope that she had experienced some miserable pain after what she’d done.
“The ME is examining her body now,” Owen said. “We’ll know more details of her death after the postmortem.”
“But you saw her,” Brady insisted. “You would know.”
Owen shook his head. “She’d been shot. That’s all I can tell you.”
Brady groaned, leaned his head back and stared up at the ceiling for a moment. “I didn’t go anywhere after I left here,” he said, finally answering the question. “I just drove around, trying to sort out my thoughts. Trying to figure out what happened to Chloe.”
“And you had no inkling that she’d stockpiled her own blood?” Owen pressed.
Brady’s attention snapped back to the sheriff. “I’m still not sure she did that. Yes, I know what you told me. That the blood wasn’t fresh, that it had some kind of additives in it, but there has to be an explanation about that.”
Owen shrugged. “Like what?”
“I don’t know.” Brady groaned, but then it seemed as if he’d had a lightbulb moment. “A couple of months ago she went to the blood drive at the hospital here in town. She has one of those rare types. AB negative. So, someone could have stolen her donation.”
“And why would someone have done that?” Owen wasted no time in asking.
This time the frustration came when Brady smacked his fist on the table. “I don’t know,” he repeated.
Another of those theories popped into Lexa’s mind, and she took out her phone to get started on a search of the exact date of the hospital’s blood drive. After she had that info, she’d check to see if there had been a theft or break-in reported.
“You’re thinking someone could have stolen the blood,” Aiden said, “and then used it to stage Chloe’s death and implicate her in the arson that nearly killed us?”
“Yes,” she verified. “Of course, that wouldn’t explain the motive for doing that. I mean, if they wanted Chloe dead, why not just kill her? Still, maybe the plan wasn’t to kill her but to get her arrested and locked up.”
The words had barely left her mouth when there was a series of three sharp beeps. “Vehicle has turned onto the road,” Geralt informed them.
That didn’t put Aiden or her on full alert. Not yet anyway. It could be more CSIs or another deputy. Still, they went to the front window to check. Owen, Hudson, the ambulance, and the ME’s van had already left, but the CSI vehicles and one cruiser were still there.
The car, a black Audi, slowed past those vehicles, maybe checking to see if there was anyone inside. There wasn’t. The two deputies and the CSIs were in the area where Chloe’s body had been found.
After a few seconds, the Audi driver accelerated again, and when it got closer, Lexi finally got a look at the driver. Apparently, so did Aiden.
“That’s Gillian,” he grumbled. “What the hell is she doing here?” he muttered, taking the question right out of her mouth.
And the answer was Gillian was apparently coming to see him because the woman stopped her car in front of his house.
“Geralt, scan our visitor for weapons,” Aiden instructed as Gillian made her way to the front door. Not a slow pokey stroll either. She was practically running up the steps while her gaze flew all around her.
“Visitor is not armed,” the app announced just as Gillian rang the doorbell.
“The app is pretty good at detecting conventional weapons,” Aiden let her know. “But I’ve learned the hard way that just about anything can be used to hurt someone. And I have the scar to prove it.”
Lexa had no doubts about that, and she wouldn’t be taking any chances with Gillian either.
“Geralt, disengage security for only the front door,” Aiden instructed. “And unlock it.”
When the locks made that clicking sound, Lexa slid her hand over the weapon in her shoulder holster. Aiden did the same before he opened the door to their visitor.
“Is she really dead?” Gillian blurted. She didn’t try to barge her way in, and the woman actually took a step back when she saw they had their palms resting on their guns. “Is Chloe really dead?”
Since Chloe’s next of kin, her brother, had been notified of her death, there was no reason for Lexa to hold back on answering that. Besides, she wanted to see Gillian’s reaction.
“Chloe is dead,” Lexa spelled out.
Gillian reacted to that, not with shock but rather anger. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she spat out, pressing her hands to both sides of her head. “You’re going to arrest Brady for this, aren’t you?” But she didn’t wait for them to respond. “Well, you shouldn’t. Brady didn’t do this.”
“And how would you know that?” Lexa asked.
Gillian glared at her. “Because I know Brady. So do you.”
The words stabbed out, heavy with emotion and accusation that Aiden and she should believe Brady was innocent because of their friendship.
Groaning, Gillian began to pace across the porch. “If you arrest Brady, that means Chloe’s real killer goes free.”
Obviously, the woman just couldn’t accept that Brady might be guilty. Was that because Gillian had been the one to kill Chloe?
Lexa decided to test those waters.
“The sheriff’s been trying to get in touch with you,” Lexa said. “Since you’re here, I’ll go ahead and give you the Miranda Warning.”
Gillian stopped pacing, gasped, and pressed her hand to her heart. “So, now you believe I killed that gold-digging bitch?”
All right. Now, they were getting somewhere. All that ranting emotion meant the woman might say something she might not normally reveal.
Lexa recited the Miranda while Gillian’s glare and profanity got a whole lot worse. When Lexa was done, she hit the record button on her phone and went with her first question.
“Why were you near the manor last night when the fire was set?” Lexa demanded.
Gillian’s glare finally went south, replaced by surprise. And maybe fear. “I didn’t set that fire,” she said.
“That’s not an answer,” Aiden pointed out. “Why were you there?”
The woman took her time answering, and she must have found another stash of mad because the anger returned to her eyes. “I heard Brady mention that Chloe would be at the manor so I went there to have it out with her, all right? I was going to demand that she leave Brady alone. I was going to write her a check, giving her every penny in my savings if she’d just leave.”
Interesting, since Wylie had tried to pay Chloe off, too.
Aiden made a circling motion with his hand for Gillian to continue. “I didn’t even see Chloe,” she insisted. “Her car wasn’t there, and no one answered at the manor when I knocked.”
Lexa made sure her gaze and her voice were all cop. “You were pissed so I can’t believe you didn’t at least try to find her. Did you look around the back of the manor?”
There was a small parking area there for staff, and for Gillian to get there, she could have passed right by the window of the dressing room.
“I didn’t,” Gillian said without a whole lot of conviction. She stopped, huffed. “I got a little spooked. I, uh, thought I saw someone lurking around the back so I got back in my car and went home. A few hours later, I heard about the fire at the manor.”
“Describe the person who saw lurking around,” Aiden told her, and he sounded like a cop, too.
Gillian shook her head. “I only got a glimpse. And it might have been nothing. Shadows,” she concluded.
“Any reason you didn’t volunteer this info to the cops?” Lexa asked.
She huffed again. “Because I didn’t want questions like this. I didn’t want the cops hounding me the way they are Brady. Neither one of us killed Chloe. From what I’m hearing, she tried to set up Brady.”
It didn’t surprise Lexa that gossip about that was already getting around. But it was also possible that Gillian hadn’t heard the talk but rather had firsthand knowledge of what had happened at the manor and here at Aiden’s.
“Where were you for the past three hours?” Lexa added a moment later.
“Home. I was working.” Gillian stopped. “Then, Wylie called to tell me that Brady had been brought back in for interrogation and that Chloe’s body might have been found.”
Again, not a surprise. Wylie was Gillian’s boss after all, and he probably wasn’t happy about his son being questioned. But was he happy about Chloe’s death?
Maybe.
But if so, Wylie still hadn’t personally been the one to kill her.
“Here’s what I want you to do,” Lexa spelled out. “You’re to drive straight to the police station and give a thorough statement to the sheriff. Don’t leave out anything. This is a murder investigation, Gillian, and you can be charged if you withhold evidence.”
Oh, the woman did not like that. “Fine,” Gillian snapped, and turning on her heels, she hurried back to her car.
“Geralt, engage locks and security,” Aiden said after he shut the door.
From the window, Lexa watched Gillian drive away, and she took out her phone to text Owen to let him know the woman was on her way to the station. That way, if she didn’t show, Owen could send someone after her.
“I want to look at the feed from the doorbell cam,” Lexa muttered, sending a second text to Declan. “I’d like to study it frame by frame to see if I can spot this mystery person that Gillian, you, and I might have seen outside the manor.”
“Good idea,” Aiden said, heading back to the kitchen. “I need to finish looking at the drone feed.”
He woke up his laptop, and she saw the images that he’d already pulled up. Since it might take Declan a while to get her the doorbell footage, she moved next to Aiden and watched as he accessed the next round of the feed.
Her body instantly reacted to the close contact, reminding her of that kiss they’d shared right here before Hudson had shown up. She cursed because she could almost feel the heat zinging back and forth between them.
Lexa forced herself to focus on the screen. That got a little easier for her when Aiden zoomed in on one of the images. It wasn’t a shot of Chloe’s lifeless body or even the fire that’d ignited when the bullets had started going off. No, this was something beyond that.
At first, it just looked like a pixelated blob. A swirl of gray and green shadows. But as Aiden zoomed in more and enhanced the image, she could make out that it was a man dressed in jeans and a gray shirt. He appeared to be in mid-stride, running.
Aiden went to the next image and this time, he was immediately able to enlarge the blob, and she could make out more of the man’s features.
“Shit,” Lexa said on a groan.
The man on the feed was Brady.