Chapter 58
Emily didn’t want to think. She kept her eyes closed and tried to stop all the things Justine and Misty had said from playing over and over in her head.
Now she knew what Heather had intended to tell her.
About Justine. Heather was going to tell Emily and then they could have gone to the police together.
Tears scalded Emily’s eyes, leaked past her clenched lids.
Damn Justine Mallory and Misty Briggs.
Emily would see that Misty got what she deserved too.
The car suddenly slowed and started to bump over the shoulder of the road.
Emily’s eyes shot open. She sat up, looked around. Didn’t immediately recognize their location.
She leaned forward. “Mike?”
He shifted the car into park, released his seat belt, and turned sideways to look at her. “You all right, Emily?”
There was no reason to be afraid. She knew Mike Caruthers, not all that well, but he’d married one of her closest friends.
But she’d known Misty and Justine too.
Emily blinked, stared at his profile. Recognition slammed into her.
The blondish hair. He was one of the guys in the photo she’d taken from Justine’s house.
Emily had only seen his profile in the picture.
His profile and the blond hair that wasn’t quite blond.
It was him. She remembered now. He’d hated his carrot top so bad, he’d tried to go blond one summer.
As a freshman, she vaguely remembered making fun of him behind his back.
Mike Caruthers had been one of Justine’s boys.
The fear pressing against Emily’s throat suddenly made speech impossible. She forced her head into an up-and-down motion in response to his question. “I’m fine.”
“Good.” He sighed, removed his cap. “I wanted to do this myself. The others warned me against it, but I know what you’ve been through these past ten years. I’ve kept up with your folks, and Ray always said you’d paid a high price for what happened to Heather.”
Emily licked her lips, wished her throat weren’t so dry. “I . . . I don’t understand.”
“You don’t have to worry. Everything will be fine now. We know Misty is lying. And we’re going to take care of everything. You have my word.”
Somehow she managed to squeeze two words around the constriction in her throat. “Thank you.”
“You have to understand that our information was limited during the Baker investigation. Protecting certain people was priority.”
Keith. He meant Keith and his father. He didn’t have to say so.
Ray had likely confronted Justine about the necklace and she’d claimed Keith was the guilty party.
There was no telling what else she and Misty had done to make Keith look guilty.
Granville had no doubt paid top dollar to see that Keith was left in the clear.
Clint Austin had taken the fall. He was nobody.
A guy who was on thin ice with the law anyway.
No big deal. Who was going to argue? Who would care enough to?
No one.
That injustice twisted in Emily’s chest. Clint never had a chance.
“We’ll make sure justice is carried out swiftly and fairly this time. Misty Briggs will be dead before she reaches City Hall. We won’t waste the taxpayers’ time or money on a trial.”
Shock generated a tremor along Emily’s limbs. She tried to hold still, certain she hadn’t heard right. Absolutely positive she didn’t want to ask him to repeat it.
“You may have forgotten, Emily, since you’ve lived away so long, but here in Pine Bluff we take care of our own.
Misty and Justine just got out of control before we realized how much damage they’d done.
Even Ray was fooled for a while. But we’ve got the situation under control now.
We’ll take care of everything. Justine’s home will become a secondary crime scene, as will Misty’s; whatever they’re hiding, we’ll find it. ”
Then Emily understood. “You’re doing this for Ray.” She tried to take comfort in that. Misty and Justine had killed Ray. His men likely wanted vengeance.
But these were officers of the law. The bizarre combination of fear and dread and even understanding churned, confusing Emily further. She tried to rationalize how this could be right in some capacity.
Mike nodded thoughtfully. “In part, you’re right.
We are doing this for Ray. But Granville and I spoke shortly before midnight last night.
We reached an agreement about how this would be handled.
He alerted me a little later to the possibility that Justine might go after you and Clint.
” With a heavy sigh, he added, “That’s behind us now, but there are other things.
Things we don’t need to go into, that simply shouldn’t be aired in public.
We don’t want any more harm done to the community and certainly not to the reputation of our fine school. It’s better if we do it this way.”
Her entire body quaked during the expanse of silence that followed his dissertation.
“Mike?”
“Yes, Emily?”
She held her hands tightly together in an attempt to keep them still. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Well, now, there’s a perfectly good reason for that.”
Tiny blasts of fear detonated in her veins.
“We don’t want that nasty business about Ray having tampered with evidence to ever end up in the media.
We know you and Clint stole that report.
It really isn’t that significant, since the necklace could have belonged to you or Heather or really anyone, for that matter.
Unless, of course, you were to make it significant.
We all feel that the best thing to do is just let all this ugliness fade into history where it belongs. We want this to end. Now.”
He had just admitted to her that the Pine Bluff Police Department intended to kill a suspect and suppress evidence.
Why not just do it and let her believe, along with the rest of the world, that it was whatever they decided to report to the media?
There had to be more. Her palms began to sweat with the urge to try the door, but she couldn’t escape, not from the back seat of an official squad car.
Clint. The idea that he could be killed just like Misty ripped through Emily. “What about Clint?”
“Oh, we’ll see that he’s fully exonerated,” Mike assured her.
“The state owes him a small fortune for his wrongful conviction. He’ll be fine.
Just fine. We don’t need anyone getting restless down the line and asking questions.
It’s best that we all move on with our lives and put this terrible, terrible tragedy behind us once and for all. Don’t you agree?”
Funny, everyone had been telling her that for ages. She met his eyes, tried her best not to allow accusation to enter hers. “Sure.” Terror pounded in her ears. “You’re absolutely right.”
He stared at her for what felt like a whole minute. Maybe assessing her reliability. Emily tried all in her power to look utterly unfazed and entirely agreeable.
“One last thing.”
She held her breath. Please don’t let this be worse news. “Yes?”
“I’m certain you understand that if you fail to stand by our arrangement Clint will have to pay the price.”
She wasn’t sure what she was expected to say to that. “I . . .” She cleared her throat but couldn’t dislodge the wad of dread there. “I thought you said he would be exonerated.”
“You can count on that,” Mike insisted with an affirming nod, “just as long as we can count on you to keep up your end of this arrangement. I’m sure you know that these things take time.
There’ll be an official inquiry, perhaps questions from the ABI or even the FBI.
We’ll need to be sure we all stay on the same page for that.
We certainly wouldn’t want any fuss to come up over your father’s perjury ten years ago. ”
Ice slid through her veins. “No. No we wouldn’t.”
Mike smiled, the act unholy somehow. “That’s good. And just so you know, we have that video of the two of you breaking into the courthouse. That would look really, really bad in court—particularly for Clint given his history.”
“There’s a video?”
Another of those evil smiles. “We were pretty sure the two of you would try something foolish like that. It was Ray’s idea. He knew if he dragged his feet on those files, you’d get desperate. So we took the liberty of keeping an eye on you. For insurance if we ever needed it.”
If we ever needed it. Emily had to remind herself that this was real . . . not just a nightmare. She’d known these people her whole life. How could this be possible?
The rest of the picture cleared for Emily; her stomach filled with dread. If Clint ever ended up back in that awful place again, he would never come out. They would make sure. And her father . . . dear God, she couldn’t put him through this.
They had her. Had her and Clint both right where they wanted them.
Evidently her silence told Mike she’d reached the proper conclusion. “I’m glad you can see our dilemma. We just want Clint to move on with his life. Maybe even move to another town the way you did. Too many reminders of the past here.”
Emily bit her lips together to hold back the emotions mounting inside her.
“You do your part,” he assured her, “we’ll do ours.”
She nodded jerkily. “I understand.”
“And the evidence report? Just for the sake of tidying loose ends.”
“It’s taped under the dash of Clint’s truck.”
“Very good, Emily.” He settled his cap back into place. “I knew we could count on you.”
Sudden inspiration awakened in Emily’s fatigued mind as the events of the last twenty-four hours whipped around madly. “There’s just one other thing, Mike.”
He turned back to her with a questioning look.
“I’ll keep your bargain because I grew up in Pine Bluff and I don’t want anyone else hurt unnecessarily. And Clint will move on with his life, fully exonerated.”
“I’m certain you have a point, Emily,” he suggested, his impatience showing.
“I do.” She looked him square in the eye.
“As far as the video of us breaking into the courthouse goes, I’ll happily trade a photo of a buddy giving you a blow job for it.
Sound doable? Or shall we each keep our little insurance policies?
” She smiled at his stunned look. A tiny jolt of shock unsettled her just then as she realized who his buddy in the photo most likely was.
Ray Hale. He and Mike Caruthers had been best friends forever.
“Anything happens to me or Clint and, gee, the world will know your little secret.” She thought of what Marv had told her.
“That might be a little difficult to explain to your wife.”
Fury tightened his lips.
“I almost didn’t recognize you with the blond hair,” she added just to ensure there was no misunderstanding.
“And don’t get any ideas about doing to me what you’re planning to do to Misty.
That photo is my insurance, and my attorney knows just what to do with the envelope if anything happens to me.
” She held her breath, hoped like hell he would go for her slightly embellished story. She didn’t even have an attorney.
“I think we understand each other.”
She smiled, satisfied and more relieved than she would dare let him see. “Excellent.”
Mike checked his side mirror before executing a U-turn and heading in the direction of town. Their gazes met in the rearview mirror. She refused to show the first inkling of fear.
“I will be mighty glad,” he said cordially, “to see things get back to normal in Pine Bluff.”
Emily held his gaze until he looked away, but she didn’t comment. When he’d settled his attention back on the road, she stared out at the passing landscape. She shivered. Normal.
Pine Bluff and normal were two things that would never, ever again go together in her mind.
But she and Clint had their lives back and that was all that mattered . . . for now.