Marie Ferrarella - Colton Baby Rescue

Finally, the chief broke the silence and asked, “You think Bo wrote that?”

“It’s in his own blood, Chief,” Carson answered. Then, in case there was any further question as to whether or not Bo was the one who wrote the name, he added, “There’s blood underneath Bo’s fingernail. Looks like he wrote it.”

Finn sighed as if the weight of the world had suddenly been dropped on his shoulders.

“Good enough for me,” he replied. “I’ll have Demi brought in for questioning. Meanwhile, I’ll send some of the team to bring in your brother’s body.” His voice softened, as if he was feeling sympathetic about what Carson was going through. “You can give your statement in the morning if you need some time, Gage.”

Finn was cutting him some slack, Carson thought. He didn’t want any slack, he wanted to get his brother’s killer.

Now.

“I don’t need any time, Chief.” Somewhere in the distance, a coyote howled. Carson would have been hard-pressed to name a lonelier sound. “I’ll stay here with Bo until the detail gets here,” he told his boss. “And then I’m coming down to the station. I want to be there when you interrogate Demi.”

“Gage, you can’t—”

Carson felt the walls going up. He cut Finn off before the chief could officially exclude him. “I need to be there when you question her, Finn. You owe this to me, Chief.”

There was silence again. An annoyed silence if he was any judge, Carson thought. He fully expected the chief to argue with him, but he wasn’t about to back down.

However, Finn surprised him by saying, “All right, you can be there, but I’ll be the one handling the interrogation. I don’t want to hear a word out of you, understood?”

Even though Finn couldn’t see him, Carson nodded his head grimly. “Understood.”

Terminating the call, Carson put his phone into his pocket. Silence enshrouded him although the distant sound of music and raised voices coming from the bar sliced through the air, disrupting the night.

“Sounds like your bachelor party’s getting underway without you,” Carson said to the prone figure near his feet. “Not exactly the way you expected the night to go, is it?” he asked ironically. He squared his shoulders. No, he and Bo hadn’t been close, but Bo was still his brother and he didn’t deserve this. “Don’t worry, Bo. If Demi did this, she’ll pay. I don’t know what happened, but I promise she’ll pay. I’ll see to it.”

It was getting colder. Carson pulled his sheepskin jacket tighter around him and turned up the collar. But he remained where he was, a guard at his post. He wasn’t about to go anywhere until the unit came to pick up Bo’s body.

* * *

“I know my rights. I’m a bounty hunter, damn it, and I know my rights better than you do,” twenty-seven-year-old Demetria Colton shouted angrily at the two police officers who brought her into the small, windowless room within the Red Ridge police station. “Why am I here?” she wanted to know.

But neither of the two police officers, one young, one old, answered her, other than one of them telling her, “The chief’ll be here shortly.”

“The ‘chief’?” Demi repeated in a mocking tone. “You mean Cousin Finn? Is he still pretending to be in charge?”

The two officers left the small eight-by-ten room without answering her. An angry, guttural noise escaped the redhead’s lips. Frustrated, she would have thrown something if she’d had something to throw.

“Why am I here?” she demanded again, more loudly this time. Furious, she began to pound on the locked door. “I know you’re out there! I demand to be released. You can’t hold me here like this, you hear me?” she cried. “I haven’t done anything, damn it! You let me out of here! Now!”

When the door suddenly opened just as she was about to start pounding on it again, Demi was caught off guard and stumbled backward. Had the table not been right there behind her to block her fall, she would have unceremoniously landed on the floor.

“You’re here,” her cousin calmly told her as he and Carson walked into the room, acting as if they were about to have a run-of-the-mill, normal conversation, “to answer some questions.”

Demi tossed her head, her red hair flying over her shoulder.

“What kind of questions?” she asked defiantly, her dark brown gaze pinning him down.

“Like where were you tonight?” Finn wanted to know, gesturing toward the lone chair on the opposite side of the table and indicating that she should sit.

“Home,” Demi bit off, grudgingly sitting down. “I was in my home—since 5:00 p.m.” she added for good measure.

Finn gave no indication whether or not the answer satisfied him. He waited until Carson sat down next to him, then asked, “Alone?”

“Yes,” she bit off, then followed that up with a question of her own. “Why?” she demanded. Squaring her shoulders, she drew herself up and raised her chin, always ready to do battle with the world—and her cousin. “Is that a crime now?”

Hearing Carson’s chair scrape along the floor as he started to rise, Finn shot him a warning look before answering Demi’s question. “No, but murder is.”

“Murder,” the redhead repeated, growing more furious by the second. She made the only logical conclusion. “You think I murdered someone?” she cried, stunned. “And just who is it I was supposed to have murdered?” When Finn didn’t answer her immediately, she pounced on him. “C’mon, you can’t just throw something like that out and then leave me hanging in suspense, Finn. Just who was it that you think I murdered?”

Unable to remain silent any longer, his hands fisted at his sides, Carson pinned her with a damning look as he answered her question. “Bo. You murdered Bo and then you stuffed a cummerbund into his mouth.”

“Bo,” she repeated in noncomprehension. And then, for a moment, Demi turned very pale. Her eyes flicked from Bo’s brother to her cousin. “Bo’s dead?” she asked hoarsely.

It was half a question, half a statement uttered in total disbelief.

Then, not waiting for an answer, what had become known in the county as Demi’s famous temper flared, and she jumped up to her feet, her fists banging down on the tabletop.

“You think I killed Bo?” she demanded incredulously, fury flashing in her eyes. “Sure,” she said mockingly. “Makes perfect sense to me. The man’s dead so let’s blame it on the woman he dumped—EXCEPT I DIDN’T DO IT!” she yelled, her angry gaze sweeping over her cousin and her former fiancé’s brother.

“Sit down, Demi,” Finn ordered sternly. “And calm down.”

Instead of listening to her cousin and taking her seat again, Demi Colton remained standing, a firecracker very close to going off in a flash of fireworks.

“No, I will not calm down,” she cried. “And unless you have some kind of concrete evidence against me—” she said, staring straight at her cousin.

“How about Bo writing your name on the asphalt in his own blood?” Finn said. “Demi C.”

Demi paled for a moment. “The killer is framing me?”

Finn raised an eyebrow.

Demi gave him a smug look. “Just as I thought. You don’t have any sort of actual evidence against me. Okay, I’m out of here,” Demi declared.

“You’ll leave when I tell you to leave,” Finn told her sternly. Rising from his chair on the opposite side of the table, he loomed over her.

“Do you have any evidence against me, other than my name written in Bo’s blood and the fact that I had the bad judgment to have been engaged to the jerk for a month?” she asked, looking from her cousin to the other man in the room.

Though it obviously killed him, Finn was forced to say, “No, but—”