Deathscape (15 page)

Bing watched him.

The phone rang again. Harper answered it.

Bing shook his head after a couple of seconds. “Hell, maybe work would keep you busy, keep you out of trouble. Desk duty only.” He scowled as he thought for another second. “On three conditions. You pass the physical, you talk to the shrink, and you stay away from the Blackwell case.”

He leaned forward, into the I-mean-business pose they all used in the interrogation room. “I catch you as much as looking at that bastard’s file from across the room, and you’re going back on leave. Is that clear?”

Jack scratched the back of his head and let the captain interpret it whatever way he wanted.

Bing leaned back in the chair, his shoulders relaxing a little. “I don’t suppose you remembered anything new?”

Jack shook his head. He’d been in and out for those three days he’d been missing, the details sketchy. The fact that he’d been blindfolded complicated things. And so far he hadn’t remembered anything that could have given them a clue on where Blackwell had taken him after tasing him at that abandoned farmhouse. “I was in some kind of a workshop, that’s all I remember. He had plenty of tools handy. Somewhere in a basement, I think, cement floor, a woodstove and fan, a metal chair he chained me to.”

Bing winced. “It’ll come back. You need to give yourself a chance to recover.”

“
Feds said anything about why they brought Ashley Price in?” he asked after a few seconds, reaching for his coffee cup, gesturing toward the interrogation room with it. “She has nothing to do with anything.”

A bushy eyebrow rose. “Now you’re defending her?”

“
Swore to protect the innocent and all that.”

“
I’m sure they’re not going to waterboard her in there.”

Yeah, but they would push her, push her hard, and she had enough stress on her already. She needed somebody on her side. She needed a damn lawyer. Why the hell didn’t she hire one?

For the hundredth time, he considered just marching in there. Trouble was, he wasn’t sure if that would really help her.

Bing’s eyes narrowed. “Ashley Price and the Feds are not your concern.”

“
What else is going on, then?” Better take the captain in another direction before he kicked him out of the station.

“
Still the damn string of break-ins, a handful of shoplifters, two domestic violence cases, and a parole violation, none of which you’ll touch. You’re on desk duty. Try not to forget it.”

The interrogation room door opened, and Agent Hunter stepped out, apparently to take a call. Jack caught a glimpse of Ashley through the gap in the door. He didn’t like her distressed expression.

“
Be back in a sec.” He jumped up and strode forward. By the time he reached the agent, the man was putting his phone away.

Jack shoved his hands into his pockets. “Anything new?”

The man flashed him a cold look. “I’m not at liberty to say. However, I do need to see you, Detective Sullivan, as soon as we’re finished here.”

“
Regarding?”

“
I understand you’ve paid Miss Price several visits lately.”

“
She saved my life. I owed her a proper thank-you.”

The agent quirked an eyebrow. “Then you wouldn’t be, by any chance, investigating?”

“
Interfering with an FBI investigation could cost me my badge,” he deadpanned.

“
Let’s not forget that, Detective.”

* * *

The interrogation room was small, drab gray, and oppressive. It made her anxious. Then again, what didn’t? She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been as far from her house as the police station.

Ashley steeled her spine. She refused to live the rest of her life in fear.

“
When was the first time you met Detective Sullivan?” Agent Hunter asked.

“
The night I found him.”

“
But you didn’t know who he was at the time?”

“
No. He was unconscious for the most part.” Except when he’d forced her to drive back to her house.

“
When was the first time you heard the name Brady Blackwell?”

“
A few days later, when the police asked me about him.”

The agent threw more questions at her, his voice becoming more clipped with each, his shoulders growing stiffer. In a way, she understood him. He wanted a solution, a bankable lead. He wanted a victory and probably the promotion that would come with it, and he didn’t like that he wasn’t getting what he needed from her.

She pulled her neck in and waited for the bomb to drop.

But as the questions kept coming, he didn’t ask about her paintings. In fact, he sounded like they hadn’t discovered any leads lately, which was why they were going back, covering old ground.

So maybe Jack Sullivan hadn’t betrayed her after all but kept her secret. She wasn’t sure what to make of that.

“
People say you keep to yourself. Why?” Agent Hunter kept pushing. He was like a robot. He was checking off checkboxes in his head, marching forward, going for the win.

Jack was just as determined but not as detached. The case was personal for him. Blackwell had put him in the grave.

“
I work a lot,” she answered the question.

“
And you have no idea who might have buried Detective Sullivan on your land? You had nothing to do with it?”

“
No.” She’d said that over and over again. “Am I an official suspect?”

“
Yes.”

She closed her eyes for a second.
A suspect
. Not even just a “person of interest.”

Agent Hunter was hungry for a win. Jack had a personal vendetta. Captain Bing hated her guts to start with… Her future looked bleaker with every passing minute.

The agent pinned her with a cold look. “You had opportunity. The grave is on your land.” He shot the words at her.

“
But I didn’t put Jack Sullivan into that grave. He can tell you I didn’t.”

“
You could have helped Blackwell after Detective Sullivan had lost consciousness.”

She gritted her teeth. Painting her latest vignette of horror and Jack’s interrogation the night before had left her drained. She didn’t have enough for another fight. “What possible motive could I have?”

He waited, held out the silence. “Am I correct that your mother died in a mental institution?”

And craziness could be hereditary. Crazy people didn’t need a motive. A chill ran through her. Was that what they were going to run with?

“
That has nothing to do with me,” she protested.

“
Doesn’t it?”

She stared at the man. Were they this desperate? Did they care more about the win than the facts? Maybe they did. It wasn’t like the innocent had never been made to pay for crimes they didn’t commit. She’d seen plenty of shows on TV about people who’d been wrongly convicted and were only recently released, saved by DNA. Some had been in prison for decades.

And if Agent Hunter won…

He wouldn’t. She was going to beat the FBI, beat Jack Sullivan, return her life to normal, and get her daughter back. She wasn’t going to lose Maddie over this. Whatever she had to do—

“
I would like to call my attorney,” she said, although she was no longer sure that would be enough.

But the possible solution that suddenly burst into her head scared her as much as the false accusations, maybe more. Her entire body went cold. She considered the idea anyway.

What if she didn’t resist her visions?

What if she embraced them? Would she see more? Would she see how Sullivan had come to be in the grave? Would she see Blackwell? Could she lead the authorities to him to end this nightmare?

Did she dare willingly walk into the abyss? And what if she did and couldn’t find her way back? Would she end up like her mother and lose everything?

She needed to think this over, needed to get out of here. “I want to call my lawyer,” she repeated.

The agent closed his notebook and rose. “You’re entitled to an attorney, but we’re done for today.”

She swallowed hard. “I was going to stay with my father in Philadelphia for a few days, if that’s okay.” If the Feds released her, Jack Sullivan couldn’t do anything. She held her breath for the answer.

But the man shook his head. “I’d rather that you stuck around for the time being.”

Disappointment washed over her. She’d talk to her lawyer about this too. She had to see Maddie.

She walked out to the main area of the police station, thinking about the lawyer and how she could force a vision somehow, if she could make that work. Her gaze caught on Jack Sullivan. He hadn’t been in earlier. Now he was watching her from behind a desk, across the room.

He pushed to his feet. Then Captain Bing appeared at the door of his office, stared at Jack, and Jack sat back down with dark thunder on his face.

Ashley took advantage of the reprieve and hurried out, but came to a screeching halt in the parking lot. Agent Hunter had brought her in. She didn’t have her car.

He appeared in the doorway behind her before she could turn back in. “I’ll have one of the uniformed officers drive you home, Miss Price. Just give me a minute.”

But before she could thank the man, Sullivan came hurrying around the building. He must have come out somewhere in the back.

“
I’ll take care of it.”

“
I need to talk to you,” the agent told him with a scowl of disapproval.

He didn’t look too concerned. “I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”

“
See that you are.” Agent Hunter went back inside as Sullivan strode up to her.

“
I’m not up for another interrogation, Detective. I’d just as soon call a cab.” Ashley steeled herself for more accusations, but none came.

Instead, he said, “Call me Jack. No more interrogation today. Just a ride, I promise.”

She flashed him a doubtful look.

“
I could recommend a couple of decent lawyers,” he said. He looked tired around the eyes. Maybe he had as much trouble with sleep as she did. “You shouldn’t be alone when they question you.”

She found the sudden concern suspicious. “You came to my house and badgered me when you had questions. I don’t remember you recommending a lawyer then.”

He didn’t have a comeback for that.

“
I have an attorney. I had to get one after the accident,” she informed him as he walked to his black Crown Victoria and opened the passenger door.

She thought for a couple of seconds before she got in. Only because spending some time with Sullivan, Jack, now, might make bringing back the vision later easier.

“
What did the FBI want?” he asked once he’d gone around and folded his lean frame behind the wheel.

“
Same thing as you do, to prove me guilty.” She closed her eyes for a second. “It’d be easiest for everyone.”

“
Yes.”

“
Except for me.”

“
Except for you,” he agreed and drove out of the parking lot, pulling into traffic.

Since the town was old, the streets at the center of it were pretty narrow, made narrower yet by the cars parked on either side. Just as they crossed the first intersection, a truck stopped in front of them to make a delivery. Horns beeped as Jack maneuvered around it.

She grabbed the sides of her seat and held on tight. On the way to the police station, she’d sat in the back and closed her eyes for most of the trip. In the front seat, it was more difficult to ignore that she was out and about in town, away from her safe place. Sweat slicked her palms.

Jack glanced at her.

“
So, weird thing the other day,” he said conversationally as he turned his attention back to the traffic, none of his usual intensity in evidence for the time being. “Call comes in about an accident. Thirty-two-year-old guy fell out of the window of his pickup on Route 30 with his pants down.”

That caught her attention. “How do you fall out of the window of your car while driving?”

He shook his head, one corner of his mouth tilting up into an almost smile. “Turns out one of his buddies was driving. Our genius was mooning the passing cars out the passenger-side window, squatting on the seat. His buddy swerved, and the idiot fell right out. Broke his shoulder and a leg, on top of some pretty nasty lacerations.”

She stared at him, trying to picture the scene. “Nobody can be that dumb, can they?”

“
Not the stupidest thing I’ve seen on the job, by far,” he said and started into another outlandish tale.

He fell silent when they stopped at a red light, looking at the mushroom factory on the corner.