Terri Reed - Strictly Confidential

“Did you see Neil O’Brien after you left last night?”

Becca’s softly asked question sent a ripple of concern down Colleen’s spine. “No. He stormed out and that was that.” She shook her head. “He was really drunk. I hope he didn’t get in a car and drive like that.”

“No. He didn’t get into a car.” Sam moved restlessly around the room.

Colleen tracked his progress. “Sam. Talk to me.”

He stopped his pacing and turned to look directly in her eyes. “Do you own a gun?”

“What?” She dropped her chin. “Do I need one?”

He moved to stand right in front of her. “Colleen. Neil O’Brien was murdered last night.”

Colleen staggered back a step. He was about to be a father. “Oh, poor Mary. How…What happened?”

“Someone shot him in the back,” came Becca’s reply.

“In the back?” Colleen’s journalistic nose twitched. “I’ve got to get my notebook.”

“Actually, Colleen, we need you to come down to the station with us.”

Colleen stopped and stared at Sam as realization came at her like one of Jake’s baseballs, effectively knocking the wind from her lungs. “The question about the gun…you think I…how could you…?”

Contrition showed bright in Sam’s warm brown eyes. “It’s just routine. You had an altercation with the man prior to his murder.”

“So that makes me guilty of killing him?” she asked, her voice rising. “Sam, you’ve known me my whole life.”

Becca stepped forward. “There’s more, Colleen. We really need your cooperation.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she stated.

Her mind whirled with story angles and possible suspects in Chief O’Brien’s murder. She had to get out on the street and find out who had killed Neil.

“Then we’ll need to read you your rights and then take you to the station,” Becca said softly.

“Read me my rights?” Panic slithered up her spine. She felt as if she’d somehow walked into a B movie and wasn’t able to follow the plot line. “What are you saying?”

“Colleen Montgomery, you’re under arrest for the murder of Neil O’Brien….”

“What are you doing here?”

Alessandro halted at his cousin Sam’s harshly asked question. He’d come to the police station as soon as he heard they’d arrested Colleen.

Not for the first time, Alessandro wished he could confide in his cousin that they were on the same side.

But he couldn’t.

The fewer people privy to such information, the better. For their sakes as well as for his own.

“Colleen Montgomery had nothing to do with Neil O’Brien’s death.”

Sam raised a brow. “Do you have proof of this?”

Knowing his words would mean little to nothing to the detective, Alessandro stated, “Your evidence is circumstantial at best.”

“That’s for her lawyer to prove,” Sam retorted.

Frustration tightened in Alessandro’s gut. “You can’t believe she did this.”

Sam ran a hand through his hair. “It doesn’t matter what I believe. I have to follow the law.”

Not above using their familial connection, Alessandro lowered his voice and said, “Cousin, I know you have no reason to trust me. But trust yourself. You know Colleen wouldn’t hurt anyone. She is being framed. Think for a moment. The articles she has been writing lately on the escalating drug trade…the fires…someone wants her stopped. And I know who it is.”

Sam grabbed him by the arm and pulled him into an interrogation room and shut the door. “You better tell me what you know, Cousin .”

“Baltasar Escalante is not dead.”

Sam gave him a droll look. “Really. And you know this…how?”

Alessandro ground his teeth together. He couldn’t reveal his source of information without blowing his own cover. “You’ll have to trust me.”

Sam snorted. “As you said, I have no reason to trust you.”

Regret for the image he’d been forced to cultivate in order to work his way closer to Escalante’s people stabbed him in the chest. “I can’t explain how I know. He is back.”

Sam shook his head. “We’d have spotted him.”

This time Alessandro shook his head. “He has had plastic surgery.”

Sam scoffed. “You can’t expect me to go to my superiors with this without any proof or any corroborating evidence. I’d be laughed off the force.”

Sam opened the door and walked back into the hall.

Anger burned in Alessandro’s chest. He had to find Escalante and bring him down before he destroyed any more lives.

Including Colleen’s.

“Thank you, Jake, Adam. I love you guys.” Colleen hugged each brother and sent a silent prayer of thanks heavenward for the devotion of her family.

As soon as she’d reached the police station she’d called Jake. She was confident that as an FBI agent, he would know what to do. Her brothers had arrived within the hour with a lawyer in tow.

They’d agreed to tell their parents after they had Colleen released. A terrific idea as far as she was concerned. Frank Montgomery would chew some hide inside and out as it was when he found out that Colleen had been arrested. At least this way they could protect Sam and Becca until Frank cooled down.

“That’s what big brothers are for.” Jake shrugged and grinned while adjusting his conservative red tie. He dressed the role of FBI agent nicely in a navy suit and black wingtip shoes. “Getting our little sister out of scrapes is what we do.”

“I don’t think this qualifies as a scrape,” Adam said, concern clouding his eyes. As a doctor, Adam dressed more casually in tan pants and an oxford dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

“You’re right,” Jake agreed, his expression turning somber. “This was a frame. Someone’s out to get you.”

Colleen frowned. “Who? Why? That doesn’t make any sense.” Though deep inside, a nagging feeling that they were right clamored for her attention.

Obviously someone disliked her enough to want to implicate her in Neil’s death. Her reporter’s brain raced toward possible reasons why someone would be out to get her.

Could her suppositions that the hospital fire, the Montgomery Construction fire and the Double V Ranch fire were all somehow connected be on track? The timing of the fires had been way too coincidental and too specific to the Vance and Montgomery families. Had her report on the recent increase in drug activity since the mayor’s shooting stirred some hornet’s nest? But whose? The mysterious El Jefe , who reportedly had been contacting Escalante’s old contacts? No one seemed to be able to identify the new would-be drug lord in town.

“I should have remembered to pick up my scarf when I left last night,” she mused.

“Hey, don’t beat yourself up for something you had no control over,” Jake said.

The door to the small windowless, mirrored room opened and Craig Smith, her lawyer, walked in. His pinstripe suit and shiny black shoes made him look professional, but his youthful face made Colleen jittery. She only hoped her brother was right when he’d assured her that, though Craig was young, he was good.

Pushing up the wire-rimmed glasses that seemed to constantly be sliding down his straight nose, Craig said, “I’ve had a talk with the D.A. and he agrees that the evidence they have isn’t enough to charge you with Neil O’Brien’s murder.”

“So I can go?” Colleen asked.

She couldn’t wait to get home and start working on the O’Brien case. And continue her research on Alessandro, the latter for purely professional reasons. It had nothing to do with the fact that the Italian man intrigued her. She had to stay objective and report just the facts, no matter what her own personal feelings were.

Which, where Alessandro was concerned, were confusing.