Where Angels Rest (22 page)

“I’ll be right back,” he said, and went to the kitchen. He heard it again when he got there: a scraping sound at the French doors onto the patio. A bump.

Jesus. Someone was working the lock.

He stepped back, drew his pistol. He glanced to the great room—
stay there,
he thought—and inched toward the French door, his back against the wall. Six feet away, four. The door opened and the intruder was right there.

“
Freeze
,” Nick said. “Don’t move.”

He hit the light switch with one hand. Blinked when the patio lit up.

“Son of a bitch,” Nick said, breathing hard. His heart pounded like the devil. “Son of a bitch,” he said again, and angled his 9mm toward the sky. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Breaking into your house.” Luke held up a key between two fingers. “Mom didn’t tell me the lock stuck.”

Nick vented another oath. Luke was his brother, younger by two years, distant by thousands of miles and a history that hung between them like a toxic cloud.

He looked like hell. Scraggly hair and beard, cold features. The kind of hard look that comes from a life in the underworld of a drug cartel.

“What are you doing here?” Nick snarled.

“You didn’t return my calls.”

Nick made a crude sound, walking around the island. An eight-foot slab of granite between them seemed a good thing. “There’s a message in that somewhere.”

“You’ve got a woman named Erin Sims running around pissing off a U.S. Senator.”

Nick peered at him. “What’s it to you? The Rojàs cartel is into U.S. politics now?”

Luke’s expression gave away nothing. “This chick, Sims. She might be telling the truth about Jack Calloway.”

“Believing doesn’t make it so. Besides, odds are that Jack Calloway is dead now, so it doesn’t much matter anymore.”

Luke looked genuinely startled. “It matters to Justin Sims. And maybe to the families of Sara Daniels, Shelly Quinn. You’re pretty fucking nonchalant about having a serial killer in your town.”

Every muscle in Nick’s body turned to stone.

“Ah, so that’s it,” Luke drawled. “A criminal, right here in little old Hopewell—”

“Shut up.”

“Under the nose of the mighty superhero, Nikolaus Mann—”

Nick sprang. He smashed Luke against the cabinets, Luke steeling himself but not fighting back, grating his words through clenched teeth. “Go ahead, beat the shit out of me like you did Allison’s killer. That’ll make it all better.”

Nick braced a forearm high across Luke’s chest, not quite crushing his windpipe. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“I thought you might wanna know what the FBI has to say about Erin Sims.”

“I already know what they say, damn it. They say she’s a mental case.”

“And you didn’t wonder why?” Luke’s voice was gravel, his fingers digging into Nick’s sleeves, but for a man on the verge of being choked to death he was illogically calm. Of course, they both knew Nick wouldn’t
strangle him. They were equally matched in size and strength; they had a lifetime of fights between them as practice and two careers spent honing the skills. If Nick did decide to hurt him, there would be one helluva brawl before either one of them went down. “Don’t you want to know
why
the FBI says she’s mental, or why they care?” Luke asked.

“
I
do,” came a thin voice.

Nick turned, his weight still braced against Luke. Erin stood under the archway to the kitchen, a hand on the doorjamb and her face sheet white.

“
I
want to know,” she said.

And Nick thought,
Shit.

E
RIN,
go back to the great room. Luke and I need to talk.”

The man named Luke choked on a chuckle. “This is Nick and I, having a talk.”

Nick gave him a shove and backed off. “Leave us alone, Erin.”

“This is about me,” she said. Her courage grew now that it looked like no one was going to die. “When it’s about me, the rules say I get to hear it.”

She turned to Luke. A big man, like the sheriff, but his hair was shaggy and his eyes like ice.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Nick’s brother.”

“No shit,” she said. “That’s clear from a mile away. What do you want with me?”

He reached beneath his coat and pulled out an envelope. “I have some information for you, courtesy of the FBI.”

Erin went for the envelope but Nick grabbed it first and squared off to his brother—two big dogs establishing rank. Luke tipped his head to Erin. “Nick didn’t tell you he had a brother on the dark side.”

Nick
hadn’t told her much of anything, Erin realized all of a sudden. “No,” she said. “He didn’t.”

“That’s no surprise. He likes to pretend I don’t exist.”

“Stop it, Luke,” Nick said.

“Both of you stop it,” Erin said. The two big dogs had degenerated to surly ten-year-olds. “I want to know what’s in that envelope.”

Luke leaned back against the counter. “It tells why you hit a brick wall every time you went to the police about John Huggins. It’s because Senator McAllister wanted it that way.”

A cold rage gathered inside. “What?”

“The FBI has a file on you, claiming you’re nuts.” Luke winced. “That’s probably not the clinical term for it. But you get the picture.”

“That son of a bitch,” she said. From the corner of her eye, she noticed Nick skimming a page, his brow furrowing. Luke went on.

“Your medical history arrives at a police department as soon as you start screaming about Huggins. Paranoid schizophrenia. Delusions. Manic episodes. Medications.”

Erin’s jaw unhinged. “I never took meds for… I was never—”

Luke put his hands up. “The cops don’t know that. They hear you ranting about your brother’s innocence, they combine that with the report from the FBI, and think you’re a little cooked. Anyone who decides to check up on you comes across it.”

She looked at Nick. The idea that he had seen that sort of file on her made her want to explode. “You told me you were looking into Justin’s case, not doing a background check on
me.
”

“I did both,” he said, with infuriating calm.

“You had no right.”

“I had every reason.”

“You were just looking for a way to discredit me, like all the rest—”

“Damn it, I was looking for a reason to
believe
you—”

“Whoa, whoa,” Luke said, making a T with his hands. “Nick, shut up. And you,” he said, pointing at Erin, “calm down. Nick only did what any cynical bastard would do: He looked you up.”

“But none of that is true.”

“Could be, but McAllister’s career will end if it turns out he’s wrong about your brother. When it became clear that you weren’t going to let the verdict rest, he decided not to take any chances.”

Erin stared. “His career. For Justin’s
life
?”

“He’s not going to let a simple case of ‘Oops, I killed the wrong man’ ruin him.”

“But Justin hasn’t been killed. McAllister could still come forward.”

“And risk someone finding out that he paid off a cop before the trial?”

“Christ.” Nick tipped back his head, rubbing a hand over his face.

Erin was flabbergasted. “No.”

“Yes. McAllister and the police helped the case along a little.”

“So, the Senator knows Justin didn’t kill his daughter?”

Luke shook his head. “The truth is, he probably believed Justin was guilty. He may still. But it does look like he went above and beyond to make sure Justin got convicted. If you uncover that, he’s finished.”

Erin stood, started pacing. Trying to contain the emotion prickling every fiber of her body. All these years,
she’d blamed herself. For confirming to police that the picture they were showing her was the girl Justin had been seeing. And yet it was McAllister who’d provided the final nail for his coffin.

Your medical history arrives at a police department as soon as you start screaming about Huggins.

A ribbon of nausea slipped into her gut. She remembered sitting in Nick’s den with Vaega, watching him talk to someone on the phone and refusing to let her see the printout arriving on his computer. She turned to Nick: “You had this information, too?”

He shrugged. “Bunch of bullshit.”

Her breath went shallow. One heartbeat at a time, she realized she didn’t have to convince him of anything. “Why did you believe me?”

Those pale eyes met hers. “I didn’t wanna have the hots for a loon.”

A thrill shivered through her belly. Erin didn’t know what to do with it. She didn’t know how to handle faith. Not to mention the blatantly sexual suggestion that accompanied it. She felt like a teenager, being handed a note in gym class:
Nikolaus Mann likes you
. A heady sensation.

She pushed it aside and stood, batting down the physical sensations in her body and trying to focus on what this meant for Justin. “What do we do now?” she asked.

Nick looked at her with an expression that brooked no argument. “I go find Jack. You go through that FBI report. Use a fine-toothed comb. Find me a reason to confront a U.S. Senator.”

N
ICK WATCHED
E
RIN
carry the file into the great room to read: If she could finger McAllister, Florida authorities would have no choice but to re-examine Justin’s case, and they’d do it in a hurry. Meanwhile, Nick had work to do.

He re-holstered his gun, picked up his jacket. Luke was oddly silent.

“How did you get that report?” Nick asked.

“When you contacted the FBI for info about Shelly Quinn, you tripped a wire. A friend called me.”

“So you came running home to help your big brother. And here I haven’t even thanked you for the last time.”

“You’ll never forgive me for stopping you, will you?”

“The fucker’s in a hospital. Fresh sheets and soft pillows, three meals a day. My wife’s underground.”

“Putting Yost there too wouldn’t have changed what happened to Allison. It would only have changed what happened to you.”

Nick scoffed. “I could handle it.”

“Hannah couldn’t. Mom couldn’t. Ask that lady out there what it’s like to have a brother in prison. I don’t think I would have liked it much, either.”

“And what about you being here? I’ve got enough to worry about without thinking Manuel Rojàs might decide to send you a message through a family member.”

“Jesus, Nick. You don’t think I know how to cover my tracks?”

Nick studied him. Yes, a man who’d spent years undercover wrestling his own demons knew how to cover his tracks. Besides, Nick couldn’t think about Luke now. He had to think about Jack Calloway and Justin Sims, Erin, his town…

Nick started out then turned. “Did you see Hannah?”

“She was sleeping. She’s gotten big. Pretty. She looks like—” He stopped, a faint smile on his lips, then stepped to Nick and lowered his voice. “This thing with Sims is bigger than you know. It’s a good time to swallow your pride and accept some help.”

“Yours?”

“And Alayna’s. I were you, I’d give her a call.”

“I already did. She’s on her way to Florida.”

“A regular family affair,” Luke quipped.

“Listen, Erin has attracted some threats,” he said, and let Luke fill in the rest.

“I’ll watch her. She’s not hard to look at.”

Nick shot him a glare that could freeze an ocean. “Touch her and I’ll kill you.”

Luke chuckled. “There’s something new.”

Coffee brewed at the office, filling the air with the promise of false energy. Hogue, Jensen, and Quentin perched on the edges of desks and a chair. Roger Schaberg stood against a wall reading a file. He was a dick to his wife—chased anything in a skirt—but he was a smart investigator. Nick had specifically called him back from vacation.

Nick caught them up. First, he told them about the bogus FBI reports about Erin. Second, about Carl Whitmore’s concerns about Jack. Third, about Lauren McAllister’s abortion. And fourth, about the disappearance of Shelly Quinn.

The fourth scared the shit out of each and every one of them.

“Suicide note,” Nick said, reading from a list.

“It didn’t come from Jack’s computer,” Schaberg said. “Maybe he didn’t want Maggie to stumble on it, wrote it someplace else, or maybe someone else wrote it.”

Jensen asked, “So who wanted Jack dead?”

Wart Hogue scoffed. “How much time have you got?”

“Who’s on your list?” Nick said, and Wart took a deep breath. He pulled out a rumpled piece of paper and a two-inch pencil whittled to a dull point by a jackknife. “Erin Sims—not much question about that one. Calvin Lee—he’s just a kid, but he’d just been in jail, and Rosa said Jack came down on him hard about the paint. Mighta snapped. Margaret Calloway—gotta look at the spouse, especially when her husband was diddlin’ everyone but her.”

Quentin said, “Margaret told us she never loved Jack. I don’t think she cared enough about his affairs to kill him.”

Wart shrugged. “Maybe.” He touched another name with his pencil. “Leni Engel.”

“Leni?” Nick asked. “Why?”

“A few years back, Jack’s business at Hilltop nearly put her place under. Ain’t no secret she’s never liked the Calloways.”

Nick closed his eyes. Christ.

“And last,” Wart said, folding up the paper, “Dorian Reinhardt. He defended Jack, helped him with the name change and all that. Was mad as hell when he found
out Jack had lied to him about having an affair with Lauren.”

“Since when has a defense attorney ever cared about his client lying?” Schaberg asked.

Nick shook his head. If Jack was dead and it wasn’t suicide, it seemed the pool of suspects could include half the county.

Jensen said, “The truck went over the cliff between four and nine a.m. It’s almost an hour away. Who does that keep on the list?”

Everyone stared at Nick, who’d gotten up to pour a cup of coffee. Wart was the only one with the guts to ask: “Where was your girl this morning, Sheriff?”

“She’s off the list.”

Everyone looked at Quentin. He could say things to Nick no one else could. “We’ll take you at your word. But what do we tell the media?”