The Lost Hart Triplet, page 3
She turned that sharp brown gaze on him. “If you’re looking for signs of a frantic female, you won’t find it.”
“I wasn’t looking. I just... Your sister is dead.”
Zara shrugged. “I’ve thought she was dead for years. It’s awful to have it confirmed, but it’s not exactly a shock. I didn’t need...that kind of proof.” She shuddered.
And didn’t tell him to go away so he slid onto the bench next to her. Giving her as much space as he could on the small slab of concrete. “What’s her story?”
“She ran away. When we were sixteen. Haven’t heard from her since. She was...” Zara trailed off, something like a wince crossing her features. “It feels wrong to speak ill of the dead.”
“Consider it giving me and my brothers the pertinent information to understand what’s going on when we’re inevitably all questioned.”
She frowned at him. “Why would they question all of you? You were the only one with me.”
“It’s our land.” And there’d be speculation. Investigation. When they could little afford this kind of attention.
“Ah,” she said, shaking her head and giving a little laugh. “That’s why you’re here. You’re worried you’re going to be a suspect.” She seemed to mull that over, looking at him skeptically. Then she let out a disgusted breath. “I want to think it’s you. That’d be easy. But you could have kept us away from that spot. Beyond that, I saw how damn surprised you were. You thought it was me. You didn’t know there was a third. Unless you’re a really good actor. But that’s not my place to decide. I’ll tell the detective you thought it was me. You’ll be in the clear because I know it wasn’t you.” She frowned at the cabin. “Why Hazeleigh first? I uncovered the body.”
Like Zara, he looked back at the cabin. It was a valid question, and a concerning one. “She warned you. She didn’t want you to dig there.”
She shook her head. “They wouldn’t know that. You were the only one who—” She jumped up, outraged. “You told them that.”
He held up his hands and stayed seated so as not to give the impression he was fighting with her. “Zara, I answered the questions they asked when I made the call.”
“You told them. You... This is all your fault. Go home, Jake. To my home that you stole from me, and stay the hell away from me and my family.” She marched for the cabin, and no doubt she’d be in trouble for bursting in.
And no doubt he’d just screwed up his chance to make this less dramatic. To keep the attention far away from him and his brothers.
Who were really, really not going to be happy about the new developments.
Chapter Three
Zara stopped herself in the entry to the cabin. If she barged into the kitchen where she could hear the low tones of talking, it would complicate...everything.
But they couldn’t honestly be in there with the thought Hazeleigh had something to do with it. She stood there, torn by indecision, breathing a little too heavily. She needed to get her temper, her anger under control before she went in there.
But that was hard for her on a good day.
After a long while, Thomas left the kitchen and saw her standing at the doorway. He smiled kindly. “Do you have time for some questions?”
She nodded.
“Hazeleigh went out back, into the garden. She said she was looking for the cat, but I think she needed some air. Some alone time.”
Zara managed a nod. “Look, I can handle this questioning thing on my own. Will you stay with her?”
Thomas nodded, but he reached out and gave her shoulder a little squeeze. “She’s not as fragile as you seem to think. She held up pretty well.”
But “pretty well” wasn’t good enough, was it? Zara stepped away from Thomas’s hand and stepped into her own kitchen, feeling like a stranger. The detective had a small array of things spread out before her on the table in a neat, nearly anal fashion. Notebook, phone, two pens. All at the same angle.
The Christmas tree had been moved to the kitchen counter, and Hazeleigh’s Christmas-themed mug sat in the sink as if she’d actually used it this morning.
The detective looked up at Zara and offered a kind smile. “Have a seat, Ms. Hart.”
“Call me Zara,” Zara muttered. It felt so formal to be called Ms.
“Do you want anything before we start?”
Zara shook her head. She just wanted this over with. She told herself not to be petty. They all wanted to get to the bottom of this. And the only way to do that was with clear, concise, honest answers.
But, oh, how she wished she could throw Jake Thompson under the bus.
The detective took a breath. “Before we start, I just want you to know, it’s my job to find out the truth—regardless of what that truth is. I assume we’re after the same thing, but I also know what it’s like to have a sister you want to protect.”
“Hazeleigh didn’t kill our sister,” Zara said firmly. It was the truth. The only truth.
“Why do you think you need to say that?” the detective asked, void of any inflection or any implication, but Zara felt them all the same.
“You interviewed her first when I was the one who uncovered the body. Well, Jake and I.” She’d throw him a little under the bus. If only with the truth.
“I’m just here to ask questions.”
Zara muttered an oath, then closed her eyes. “Sorry,” she offered to the detective.
“No need to apologize. I’ve heard worse. Look, Zara, this is a trauma that you’re going through, and it’s going to have emotional responses. Especially this time of year. Emotions don’t follow the rules. I’m not here to judge your emotions, or your sister’s. I’m here to get to the bottom of the crime and to make sure we’ve built an airtight case when we do find out who did this. It’s why Thomas can’t be a bigger part of the investigation. It risks our credibility down the line. I won’t risk anything on this case, I promise you that.”
Zara frowned at the detective. She had to give the woman credit—she knew what to say to help... Zara couldn’t say she felt better, but it eased some of those high-strung nerves. “Have you worked a lot of murders?”
“A lot? No. It is Bent County after all.” She smiled kindly. “But this isn’t my first murder case, no. So believe me when I say I need your cooperation and your honesty so we can make sure we get the person who did this and see them punished.”
Zara nodded and swallowed. “Okay. How can I help?”
The detective tapped her phone. The home picture was of a smiling family. A Carson-Delaney family. Because she was one of the ones Bent had made such a stink about a few years back, because the Carsons and Delaneys were supposed to hate each other. A modern-day Hatfield and McCoy situation.
Apparently, now the enemies had two cute kids.
The detective swiped the picture away and brought up a recorder of some kind. “I’m going to take notes and record the conversation.” She noted the date and time and Zara’s full name, to Zara’s distaste, and then looked up at Zara. Her gaze was frank but not unkind. “Let’s start with how you found the body.”
Zara went through the whole thing. She was honest, even when it came to Hazeleigh. The detective really made her feel like...well, like if she told the truth everything would be okay. The whole truth.
“She has these feelings,” Zara said, unable to stop herself from wincing at the word. “She always has.” Zara looked up at the detective imploringly. “She once saved me from a car accident. I know that sounds crazy, but she does get these feelings sometimes. Hazeleigh wouldn’t hurt a fly. She wouldn’t know how.”
The detective smiled, and it was kind but...guarded. “It’s good to have that kind of impression of your sister. And, I hope you understand that I’m not trying to be dismissive when I say feelings aren’t evidence.”
Zara sighed. No, she couldn’t blame the detective for that.
“That’s all I need from you and Hazeleigh today. Likely we’ll have follow-up questions, either in person or by phone. We’ll continue to interview those involved. Jake Thompson. The first officer on the scene. We’ll wait for the coroner’s report to give us an idea of when she died and other details that will help us come up with a timeline and some suspects.” The detective began to pack up her items in a small bag. When she was finished, she held out a hand to Zara.
Zara shook it, a heavy weight in her stomach, but the detective held on. Gave her hand a squeeze.
“I will do everything in my power to find your sister’s killer.”
Zara managed a smile. “Thank you.”
The detective dropped her hand, looked at the door in the kitchen, presumably the one Hazeleigh went out of. “Thomas was right when he told you she held up well.” Her eyes returned to Zara’s, frank and assessing. “But she’s hiding something. I’d encourage her to tell me. Sooner rather than later.”
Zara could only frown at the detective’s retreating back.
Hazeleigh wasn’t hiding anything. They didn’t have secrets.
But that heavy weight didn’t move, and for the first time in a very long time, Zara didn’t know where to turn.
* * *
“YOU UNDERSTAND THAT this is a disaster, right?”
Jake lounged on the couch in the living room of the creaky old ranch house that was almost starting to feel like home. Not that Jake was well versed in what homes felt like, but if he thought back to his childhood dreaming of what one might be like, it would be a lot like this.
Spacious. Old. Newer little additions added on over the years in weird angles and uneven transitions between rooms.
It wasn’t perfect or shiny or boring. So, yeah, he’d grown fond of the place.
But that didn’t mean he’d found anything easy about the transition. Especially when Cal stood before him, legs spread, hands clasped behind his back, disapproving frown on his face.
Like they were back in training.
A dichotomy to that homey feel.
“Jake,” Cal barked.
Jake sighed. Six weeks into their supposed new lives and Cal still acted like the commanding officer he wasn’t supposed to be anymore.
“I didn’t kill her and bury her on our property, so I don’t see why you’re lecturing me about it,” Jake replied. He forced himself to remain relaxed, because they weren’t in the military together anymore and he did not have to stand at attention to Cal or anyone else.
Truth be told, Jake was warming up to civilian life pretty quick. Cal...not so much.
“I guess you don’t recall our mission when we were assigned here.”
Jake shook his head, careful to keep his voice even instead of frustrated, because Cal thrived on frustration and dissent—in that, he thrived on stamping it out. It made him a hell of a commander.
Not such a great characteristic for a “brother.”
“We’re not on a mission, Cal. We’re not on assignment. We’ve been hidden away. Stripped of all our ranks, responsibilities and connections. This is just supposed to be...life.”
Cal’s mouth firmed. He didn’t like that reminder. That he wasn’t in charge. That he didn’t have a goal to accomplish other than fly under the radar.
Cal wasn’t ready for all this nonmilitary life.
Jake might have felt sorry for him if he wasn’t so worried. “Did you tell the boss?” he asked, infusing his voice and body with a casualness that was very much an act.
The boss. Major General Wilks, though they usually just referred to him as the boss, was their one and only connection to the old life. The life they’d had to leave because they were all marked men. Doomed to die if they didn’t disappear.
So they’d come to the most out-of-the-way, boring place the boss could secure.
And somehow they’d stumbled upon a dead body. Not exactly the quiet life they were looking for.
Would the military make them move again? Erase these identities too? Start all over. Again. The idea made Jake...uncomfortable. At best.
“No, I haven’t told him. Ideally, this all gets figured out in a few days and he’s none the wiser, or doesn’t know until the case is put to bed and we’re squarely out of the spotlight.” Cal didn’t rake his hands through his hair or pace his frustration away. He stood there, military straight, completely immobile.
But Jake had been with Cal long enough to know that he wanted to do all those things. Would he ever let go and actually...let himself be normal again? With a little pang, Jake kind of doubted it.
“Look, maybe the cops ask a few questions, but whoever buried that body...” Jake suppressed a shudder at Zara’s face in the dirt, unseeing and lifeless.
Amberleigh Hart. Not Zara. Hard to remember, even when there were two replicas of that same face walking around, that it wasn’t Zara’s body they’d found in the ground.
“Whoever did all this did it before we owned the land. They’re not going to be looking at us too hard. It just doesn’t make sen—”
His words were cut off by a firm, no-nonsense knock on the door. A cop knock. Cal gave Jake an eyebrows-raised look. One that clearly said “told you so.”
Cal walked to the front door and opened it to the blonde detective. She studied Cal, sized him up quickly. Her smile was polite if distant. “Hello, I need to speak with Jake Thompson.”
“And you are?”
“Detective Delaney-Carson. I just have a few questions for Mr. Thompson. To be asked of him. Alone,” she said pointedly.
“Is he a suspect?” Cal demanded, point-blank.
The woman didn’t flinch or bat an eye. She met Cal’s glare with a bland one. “Everyone’s a suspect right now. And you are?”
Cal’s face went carefully blank, and no matter how smart this detective was, Jake was pretty sure he was the only one in the room who knew how much energy Cal was putting into that blankness.
“Cal Thompson.”
The detective nodded. “One of the brothers.” She turned her attention to Jake, behind Cal. “Is there somewhere we can speak alone?”
Jake nodded in assent, and with obvious reluctance, Cal stepped aside and let her enter. Jake jerked his chin toward the kitchen. “Follow me.”
He led her into the small old kitchen and gestured for her to take a seat at the table Jake thought might be from the 1800s, it was so old and scarred. “Can I get you anything to drink?”
“No, this should be quick enough.” She set her bag down on the kitchen table, pulled out a phone and a notebook. “No Christmas decorations?” she asked casually as she took a seat in a kitchen.
“Still in storage,” Jake returned with the easy lie.
She didn’t react. “I just need you to run through what you saw and did yesterday.”
“To see if my story matches everyone else’s?” he asked, standing.
She looked up at him with sharp brown eyes. She might be a little thing, but she wasn’t a pushover. “To do my job, Mr. Thompson.”
Jake sighed. “Call me Jake,” he muttered. “I already ran through this when I called in what we found.”
She nodded. “You did. Let’s run through it again.” She clicked a button on her phone, noted the date and time, and then asked him questions. She didn’t ask him to sit. She didn’t fill in any blanks. She just asked question after question.
And she didn’t lie. It was quick. After he went through the ten minutes or so he’d been involved, the detective turned off the recording, closed her notebook and then studied him. Carefully. “Zara said that Hazeleigh gets these...feelings. Like premonitions,” she said at very long length.
When the detective didn’t ask a question after that statement, Jake shrugged. “Okay.”
“You haven’t had any experience with these...feelings?”
“Hazeleigh lives in that cabin with her sister, and that’s the extent of what I know about her. I work with Zara on the day-to-day, but that doesn’t exactly make us close. We’ve only been here six weeks. And you likely know Zara enough to know she didn’t relish her father selling the ranch to us.”
She nodded, then smiled and got to her feet. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Thompson.”
“I’ll walk you out,” he said, feeling oddly...unsettled. Like that hadn’t gone the way it should have. The feeling only intensified when they walked into the living room and Cal was still standing there, arms crossed.
The detective followed Jake to the door, pausing her exit as Jake held it open.
“It’d help a lot if you stay put for the time being. No trips or leaving the county without letting us know.” She shrugged. “As a precaution.” She turned to survey Cal. “That goes for all six of you, actually.” Then she left.
The silence she left behind was...heavy.
A dull pounding started at the base of Jake’s skull. He wasn’t a suspect. Not seriously. They weren’t, but they weren’t exactly out of the woods and...they couldn’t afford that kind of scrutiny.
“We’re screwed,” Cal said flatly. “I’m calling the boss.”
“No. We’re not.” Jake looked at Cal. It was hard on a good day to talk Cal out of something, but this... He didn’t want to be uprooted again. They’d worked this ranch for a month and Jake had let himself get...settled.
He wouldn’t leave. Not on the damn boss’s whim. For once he was going to have a say on where he went, where he stayed. He was too damn old to keep having someone else yank the strings of his life. “You like it here, don’t you?”
Cal shook his head grimly. “It’s not our call.”
Which was as close to a yes as Cal was ever going to get. “But it could be our call.” Jake wanted to reach out and shake Cal, but he kept his hands at his sides. “All we have to do is figure out who did this so it’s all over before the boss gets wind.”
“You’re not a cop,” Cal said, but there was just enough give in his voice Jake figured he was getting somewhere.
