Chapter Thirty-six – The Cards I’ve Been Dealt #2
“I’ll call Dad and give him enough of the story for him to understand what to look out for.”
Her throat bobbed, and she nodded.
“And then I’m going to call Dawson. I’ll tell him about your dad, but I also want to know what, if anything, he found out about Eddie and Marla.”
“Okay,” she said softly.
She slid in behind the wheel, and I grabbed her hand, placing another kiss on the palm. “It’s going to be okay, baby. We’re going to get through this.”
She’d held back tears the entire time I’d been with her, but now one escaped, sliding down her cheek slowly. I rubbed my finger over it, wishing I could fix all her problems as easily as I could wipe away the tear.
“I love you,” I said.
She nodded but didn’t reply.
“Go slow. The roads are icy,” I said and then shut the door.
It felt like I was breaking myself in half to do it. To let her go. To watch her back up and drive away. But I promised myself the next time I saw her, when I went to get her from my parents’ house, I’d have at least one damn answer for her. One piece of information we hadn’t had before.
When her vehicle was out of sight, I jogged through the falling snow to my rig. I started to slide in and noticed a baggie stuck to my windshield with a piece of paper inside it.
Just as I grabbed it, my radio crackled to life. I stuffed the bag into my pocket and climbed into the cab as Suzanne came over the line asking, on Deering’s behalf, what he should do next.
“I had to stop by the Harrington Ranch first. I’m on my way back to him now.”
I started the engine, pushing my speed as fast as I dared to go while dialing my father on the way.
I gave him some of the highlights, not only about Andie’s real story, but about the lab we’d found and the accident with Andie’s dad.
I didn’t have time to tell him everything, just enough for him to know Andie was in danger and that any authority that showed up at his door might not be trustworthy.
He wasn’t happy with the CliffsNotes version, demanded I tell him more as soon as I could, but he also understood that my list of to-dos was screaming at me to get back to them.
I’d reached the accident scene long before I’d hung up with him, and Deering waited patiently outside my window.
He looked frozen, shifting his feet in the cold, with snow layering his jacket and hat.
I’d have to wait to call Dawson until after we collected any evidence before it vanished completely, if it wasn’t already gone.
I climbed out of the cab, and Deering led me over to the guardrail where he’d attempted to tie yellow crime scene tape.
It flapped angrily in the wind. Over the cliff and down several yards was a black SUV.
The engine compartment was black and charred, the sides and roof slashed and dented as if the vehicle had flipped several times before landing in the boulders with a tree poking through the right side.
I turned back to examine the road. It was hard to see the skid marks in the red rock and ice, especially with the tracks of other cars that had driven by since then.
I looked back at the SUV. “You been down there?”
Deering nodded. “He didn’t lose control, Boss.”
My eyes shot back to his. “What are you thinking?”
Deering pulled out an evidence bag. Inside were two ice picks. “Found these in the front and rear tire on the passenger side. Driver wouldn’t have seen them when he got into the car.”
Fuck. I could see the headline: “Attempted Murder of a California Senator in Swift Rivers.” And right beside it would be an image of me kissing Andie against my sheriff’s rig.
The media would have a field day: “…incompetent sheriff spent more time kissing the locals than protecting the town or the senator.”
“You get pictures before you pulled them?” I asked.
Deering nodded. “I’ve taken hundreds, plus video, just to keep moving. I got some of the skid marks almost right away, plus the scrapes on the boulders on the mountain’s side of the road and down the guardrail. I also took samples of the paint from the rock and rail. Got those in the car.”
“Sounds like you did the bulk of the job already,” I reassured him.
I pulled my phone from my pocket, and the baggie I’d taken from my windshield fell out. I reached down and grabbed it. When I stood back up, the typing on the front was facing me. The first sentence popped out, and the more I read, the more my chest and shoulders tightened.
Whatever she’s told you, it’s a lie. You’ve been taken in by a con artist. A thief.
A murderer. She killed Eddie, and her daddy protected her until he showed up here today and threatened to finally expose her.
She took care of that too. She has the money she took from the casino.
Far more than she ever told the FBI about.
She’s been careful not to raise suspicion by spending it wildly, but she used it for the down payment on her house.
Look at her finances, and you’ll see she didn’t have that kind of cash.
If you let her off the hook, Eddie’s death will be on your shoulders and anyone else's who gets hurt while I try to stop her from getting away. Because if I know anything at all about Ariana Langley, it’s that she won’t stay. She’s a coward. And she’ll run.
Maybe if I hadn’t already fallen head over heels for Andie, maybe if I didn’t feel like I knew her almost as well as I knew myself in all the ways that truly mattered, the seeds of doubt the note’s author had tried to plant would have taken root and grown.
Instead, it pissed me off.
I shoved the bag into my pocket again, dialing Andie’s number.
“Where are you?” I demanded when she answered.
She hesitated, and I needed to believe it was because I’d startled her and not because she was on her way out of town. I wouldn’t let this asshole make me doubt her.
“Driving to your parents’ house. Why? Is everything okay?”
I looked down at the wrecked car and the ice picks in Deering’s hands. In my head, I heard Misty’s voice. ‘She waited by his car for a long time’ and ‘Remember what I said before we came in here.’
“Did Lance do a background check on Misty?” I demanded.
“Misty? Yes. Why?”
The snow was coming down in hard flurries now, coating everything at the scene.
We weren’t getting anything else from here today.
“Andie, hold on a sec.” I covered the phone with my hand and looked at Deering.
“Nothing more we can do here until the storm clears. Go grab coffees for everyone and take them out to the Cleaver cabin. I need you to help Sandy and Freeborn until I can get there.”
He nodded, his relief clear as he jogged over to his SUV.
I strode across the road to mine, sliding behind the wheel. I started the engine, and even with the heat pouring through, I couldn’t shake the ice that ran down my spine.
“Andie, you there?”
“I’m here. Cooper, what’s wrong?”
“I’m heading back to the ranch. I need to talk to Misty.”
“I don’t understand. What has Misty got to do with any of this?”
“I think she’s your stalker.”
Andie laughed, and then when I didn’t join her, she turned serious. “Misty? How? Why? She certainly isn’t the woman who called me. And when all that went down with Eddie, she couldn’t have been more than sixteen.”
“People lie about their age on job applications all the time. And we’ve already talked about the use of voice modulators. Think. None of this started until after you hired her.”
Andie’s breathing turned choppy. “You’re right. But…I don’t know…she seems harmless. Wired to run at full tilt almost more than Fallon, but still harmless.”
Except, she’d purposefully put Andie in the spotlight when I’d shown up at the ranch.
And I’d bet a million dollars that when I pulled up the security footage, it would show Misty putting the note on my windshield.
I needed that footage. I also needed the video of Andie’s dad showing up with the cash box in his hand.
It was, unfortunately, motive for Andie to have ice picked her father’s tires, especially if the note in my pocket came out, but the note was also motive for whoever was after Andie. They were angry that she’d gotten away with all of this for so long.
“Was Eddie sleeping around? Did he have someone on the side?”
“I…I don’t know. I don’t think so. But honestly, I was so focused on surviving those last few weeks that I probably wouldn’t have noticed if he did.
” She was quiet for a second and then said, “I kept meaning to tell you, but you know that woman at the party? The one who was staring at us? She was in town yesterday when Luca and I were walking to the station, and I got that same weird vibe from her. I don’t know her at all.
But then again, I’d never met Eddie’s partner. ”