Harlequin Romantic Suspense July 2021 Box Set Page 20

  “Stay here, ma’am,” a man she didn’t recognize ordered her as he and his dog raced down the alley.

  “Please stay here, Evangeline,” Troy said, no less urgently, even as he slowed. “Don’t follow us.”

  “The killer might still be down there.”

  “All the more reason for you to stay put.”

  Troy was already off, following the other cop, so that all she could do was holler at his back. “Be careful!”

  A quiet voice brought Evangeline back to the moment, even as her gaze still lingered on Troy’s retreating back. “Sweetie, are you all right?”

  She turned to find an older, kindly-looking woman. The stick holding her protest sign was dangling from her hand, and her eyes were full of concern. “I couldn’t help but overhear you mention a killer. What’s going on?”

  Although Evangeline saw nothing but support and help in the woman’s rheumy blue gaze, she eyed the sign warily. As an officer of the law, she believed deeply in the right to protest in peaceable assembly. As one of the objects of those protests, however, she found her inherently broadminded nature wavering.

  “Um, I needed some help.”

  “You said ‘killer.’”

  “It’s—” She broke off, struggling for the right words. “I thought I saw something. The police are investigating.”

  “Willie!” The older woman hollered to someone across the street, waving the man over with her free hand. “Get over here!”

  Whatever kindness Evangeline believed she’d seen in the woman was nowhere in evidence. Instead, she saw the obvious thrill of being in the thick of things coupled with an already heightened sense of purpose that had brought her into the streets in the first place.

  “Get Evan and Sally, too!” she added before the man had a chance to cross the street.

  The dispatcher’s words echoed around in her mind, warning her to keep her distance, while this person dragged more innocent, vulnerable people closer to the threat.

  “What are you doing?”

  “If a killer’s on the loose, you can be damn sure I want a front seat to his arrest.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Ember let out a series of hard, sharp barks as Troy crossed the last few feet into the alleyway. He stopped short at the T-shaped entrance; the sidewalk alley that fed into the broader area running behind the various shops and buildings was empty. With the precision honed over years of training, he lifted his service weapon, sweeping the area, only to find his initial assessment was correct.

  “No one’s here.” Troy gave the alley one additional sweep before dropping his gun.

  “Nope,” Brett said as he ordered Ember to his side, the two of them trotting back from the end of the alleyway that gave access into downtown.

  “But dispatch said a woman had been shot. There’s no one here. No body.” Troy reviewed the ground, quickly taking in the area that would have been visible from Evangeline’s position on the main street. “No blood.”

  His gaze roamed the alley again, even though he knew what he’d see. He’d lived in Grave Gulch his entire life and while he hadn’t spent that much time walking the town’s alleyways, he knew how they were structured. The long, thin corridors served the functional aspects of the town’s businesses, just wide enough for delivery trucks and garbage pickup to pass through.

  A killer could have escaped through one end of the alley or the other, but dragging a body through the area would still have left a mark. Not to mention that it would have captured the attention of people back out in the main walking areas of town. Only there was nothing. No shell casings, no blood. Not even a sign of a struggle in overturned trash cans or knocked-in recycling receptacles.

  “I don’t understand.” Brett moved close, Ember at his side. “The call was legitimate. And I realized we passed by her quick, but Evangeline looked scared out of her mind as she pointed us down the alley.”

  Troy had seen it, too: the black eyes, even from a quick glance, that were obviously wide and terror-filled. The strong, straight pose that had seemed crumpled up on itself somehow. Defeated, almost.

  He’d known Evangeline Whittaker for quite a while now. She was strong, smart and tough as nails. Her reputation as a fair but tenacious member of the DA’s staff had taken a serious hit over the past few months. A situation he could appreciate since the GGPD’s had taken a hit, as well. But fair or not, their citizens had a right to be upset.

  And Evangeline’s actions in the courtroom sat squarely in the midst of their unhappiness.

  Was it possible this was some sort of stunt? A way to drum up sympathy and to take the heat off the bad press directed her way?

  As a trained detective, Troy knew he had to consider all the angles. Yet even as he did consider the very real possibility Evangeline had made the entire thing up—a situation only corroborated by the lack of evidence and indication that anything had even happened—something in him fought the suggestion. Hadn’t he learned that lesson the hard way? Randall Bowe had tampered with evidence, ensuring things weren’t what they appeared on the surface.

  Recent events aside, he’d also spent years observing that she was incredibly good at her job. A role that, if done right, required honesty, thoroughness and overall decency. He’d always been impressed by her, on the occasions where he was part of a case she was prosecuting.

  And she’s gorgeous.

  That lone thought whispered in, hardly subtle and completely inappropriate for the moment. Yet even as he couldn’t deny the images of her that always sprang to mind when he heard mention of her, Troy pushed them aside. Especially when he considered the scared woman, shuttered behind a large floppy hat and big sunglasses, that he’d spoken to on the sidewalk.

  The long waterfall of dark hair he normally pictured, along with the eyes that were the color of her hair and the firm cut of her cheekbones had no place in this situation.

  Nor did they have any bearing on her possible guilt or innocence.

  Which meant it was time to talk to her and find out what was going on.

  Brett had already started for the alley exit with Ember, and Troy turned to follow.

  Which made Brett’s heavy shout, along with Ember’s corresponding bark, deep and angry, that much more jarring.

  Especially when his fellow detective and his K-9 partner took off at a run, straight for Evangeline.

  * * *

  The crowd pressed in around her. The anger Evangeline had only heard from a distance earlier as she’d observed the protesting residents had an entirely different quality as it hemmed her in from all sides. Snippets of fuming remarks and heated utterances grew louder and louder, the frustrated citizens’ anger reigniting at the chance to focus on a new object.

  No longer a person, she thought frantically. She was increasingly not a person to them, but rather, a target for all that ire and fear.

  That’s the one from the DA’s office that put a killer on the streets.

  I thought she was fired.

  What right does she have to stand out here talking about killers when she’s the reason Len Davison’s on the loose?

  Over and over, the remarks flew, picking up steam along with the head nods and the angry faces and the stifling press of bodies.

  She hadn’t told the older woman what she was waiting for or why she’d mentioned a killer to the police, but the crowd had made up a story of their own. That and the continuing fear, coursing through all of Grave Gulch, that a serial killer was on the loose.

  “Excuse me! Break it up!” An authoritative voice rose up over the comments of the citizenry.

  That voice was joined by a second, ordering everyone to move on and disperse.

  The whirling blur of humanity slowly stood down, the individuals’ movements too sluggish for Evangeline’s taste. But even in the lingering panic, she couldn’t deny that they were moving alon
g. As her panic receded, she could make out faces again. Some she recognized, some she didn’t, but the whirling rush of fear had stopped spinning quite so quickly.

  “Evangeline. I mean, Ms. Whittaker...” Troy Colton started in. “We’d like to talk to you.”

  “Did you find her? Is she okay? Did you find the man who shot her?”

  “Shot who?”

  The other man she didn’t recognize posed the question and it only managed to re-spike her waning reserves of adrenaline yet again. “The woman! The one I called nine-one-one for!”

  “There’s no woman, Ms. Whittaker.”

  She whirled to look at Troy, the face she’d so recently thought sexy and competent now set in hard lines. “What do you mean, there’s no woman? I saw it. A man and woman were fighting. Right there at the end of that alley.” Her hand flung out toward the entranceway between the two buildings. “He shot her. I saw the spread of blood all over her white shirt myself.”

  A hard shaking settled in her bones, rattling her body as the adrenaline faded, leaving nothing behind, not even the reserves of strength she’d been subsisting on for the past few weeks. “I saw it.”

  Troy’s gaze hadn’t left her face and she saw the pity that shifted his mouth from grim to something far worse. Doubt.

  “There’s no one there?”

  He glanced at the crowd that still surrounded them. The protesters had moved back to give them room, but they hadn’t left the area. And they were all within earshot of everything taking place.

  “Why don’t you come with us? We’ll take your statement and try to figure out what’s going on.”

  What was going on?

  And why did she suddenly feel as if the world had fallen away beneath her feet?

  * * *

  Mary had radioed for additional backup and the two officers on duty who’d taken her call helped disperse the rest of the crowd. Another team was sent to scout the entire downtown area, checking for anyone on the run or bearing any resemblance to a beefy man in a hat.

  Troy commandeered use of the police vehicle while the pair working the crowd stayed to make sure everyone went on their way, promising to send someone back for them. The other cops on duty only nodded, even as they assured him that they could walk, based on their proximity to the precinct.

  Brett and Ember took the cruiser they’d driven over from the precinct to cover off the area around the alley and corresponding routes that fanned out from there. So it was only a matter of settling Evangeline in the back and heading to the GGPD.

  He’d been deliberate and careful in his movements and she was obviously uncuffed, but it still struck him that having to sit in the back of a police cruiser might make her feel like a prisoner. She remained quiet on the quick ride, and every time he glanced at her through the rearview mirror her face remained wan and pale, her wide eyes determinedly focused on the still above-average-size crowd out and about downtown Grave Gulch on a Sunday night.

  Troy considered what he knew about her, beyond his knowledge of her prowess in the courtroom.

  She had been a part of the Grave Gulch County DA’s office for a number of years, her case record impeccable up until the issue with the town serial killer, Len Davison.

  Davison’s actions had caught them all off guard, his escalation a situation the GGPD was trying desperately to manage. The entire department had gathered as much information as possible and were all working around the clock to catch the man, but his methods so far had been unpredictable.

  So had his connections.

  What their chief, Melissa Colton, had originally assumed was mere sloppiness coming out of the CSI department had taken a dark turn earlier in the year. Their chief forensic scientist, Randall Bowe—responsible for working some of the most challenging cases the GGPD managed—had been falsifying evidence. Or flat-out not collecting it.

  Troy had seen that truth himself when he worked with Melissa to comb through Bowe’s files. Or what little they could get their hands on, seeing as Bowe had fled with his hard drive and hard copies of his work back in January. The GGPD’s tech guru, Ellie Bloomberg, had managed to recover quite a bit and it all supported what they’d already come to suspect: Bowe had been mishandling and destroying evidence.

  They’d spent the ensuing months combing through all of Bowe’s cases, searching for inconsistencies and falsehoods. All while going after a serial killer, as well as dealing with the normal amount of crime in Grave Gulch. His cousin Jillian, a junior member of the CSI team and Bowe’s scapegoat prior to his skipping town, had been putting in serious overtime, trying to find whatever she could in the files. She’d done an amazing job working through the evidence, but the department still had a lot of holes.

  Holes, Troy thought as he walked Evangeline into an empty conference room, holes that had caused problems for the DA’s office, too. Belief in Bowe’s evidence had caught all the prosecutors short and had resulted in several mishandled cases, including Len Davison’s.

  And it was that mishandling that put a serial killer on the streets. A fact she would be well aware of and, likely, feel some responsibility for.

  “Can I get you anything, Ms. Whittaker?”

  “It’s Evangeline, Troy. We know each other. And no, thank you. I’m okay.”

  Troy recognized the shock and fear that still mixed beneath her gaze. He walked over to the small fridge in the corner of the conference room and snagged two bottles of water despite her polite decline. “Why don’t you have some water anyway.”

  She accepted the bottle with a quiet thank-you before her gaze tripped around the room. It was covered with notes, maps of Len Davison sightings and crime scene photos. Concern for her rode low in his gut. “I’m sorry you have to see these things.”

  “No, it’s fine. And they’re all images I’ve seen already.”

  “I guess you would have.”

  Although the DA’s office had to request crime scene photographs through normal legal channels, it wasn’t a surprise that she had seen the images of Davison’s victims.

  “I still can’t believe this is happening in Grave Gulch.” She murmured the words before firmly turning her back on the photos and taking a seat at the long conference room table.

  “I’m sure people say that everywhere. Any crime is a shock, but something of this nature is what people expect to see in movies or experience in books that keep them reading late into the night. They don’t expect it in their backyard.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  Although Troy, Melissa and his fellow officers had all been dealing with a lot—along with the town’s considerable ire at how the evidence for Davison’s case had been handled—he knew they weren’t alone. He’d heard plenty of rumblings that the Grave Gulch County DA’s office was having a hard time, too.

  Troy’s cousin, Stanton, and Stanton’s new love, Dominique, had seen it firsthand. Dominique’s connections as an investigative journalist, along with her contributions to the local prison with creative writing skills courses, had led her to realize one of the convicts she worked with hadn’t gotten a fair trial. Charlie Hamm’s case was more testament to Bowe’s shoddy work, but it had been one more mark against the DA’s office, too.

  Well aware that blowback was pressing hard against Evangeline, Troy asked, “How have things been at work?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I’ve been on enforced leave for a few weeks now.”

  News traveled quickly, especially in the county’s police and legal circles, but this one had been kept close to the vest. He’d heard the barest whisper Evangeline was on leave, but when he hadn’t heard it over and over as a continued item of gossip, he’d assumed that she was cleared. “For how long?”

  “They haven’t put an end date on it yet, but my boss is quite sure I will be back in a few more weeks.” Evangeline opened the bottle of water and took a long, draining sip.
“I’m not so sure she’s right.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because the good citizens of Grave Gulch County don’t appreciate ADAs who put serial killers back on the streets.”

  “They don’t appreciate police departments who keep corrupt forensic specialists on the payroll, either.”

  Troy wasn’t quite sure why he said that, because it smacked of disloyalty and the airing of dirty laundry. As a Colton, he avoided doing both. Yet there was something about her. Something in those big eyes and slim, fragile shoulders that spoke to him and made him want to offer her some comfort.

  It was interesting, because in all the time he’d known her—and, admittedly, they didn’t know one another well—Troy had always seen Evangeline Whittaker as strong and capable. She was slim, but there was a core strength to her that infused her very essence.

  The woman sitting opposite him looked defeated.

  Which made what he had to do that much more difficult.

  “Are you ready to talk about what you saw in the alley?”

  “I already told you what I saw. You don’t believe me.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  For the first time since he came upon her on the street, he saw a spark of fire light the depths of her eyes. “No, you don’t.”

  “We didn’t find a body, Evangeline. No sign of a struggle. No shell casings. No blood.”

  “I know what I saw.”

  “Then why don’t you take me through it. Step by step, tell me what happened.”

  He pulled a blank notepad from the table and took notes as she began to speak. Her legal training had obviously kicked in, because she shared the information in clear, concise terms and with minimal embellishment.

  Troy wrote it all down. Her decision to go out and get dinner, just to get out of her condo for a bit. The waning light as the summer afternoon turned into evening. Even the tone and tenor of the crowd protesting down near the GGPD. She captured it all.