Take the Key and Lock Her Up (3 page)

Tuck slowly shook his head. “You and this guy are the only people we’ve seen since
we got here.”

Her shoulders slumped.

Another uniformed policeman with a flashlight in his hand rushed to the doorway. “I
can see skeletons through the windows in two other rooms.”

Damn.
“What about Mrs. Hawley?” Emily called out.

“No sign of her so far.” He and two of the other officers headed back toward the other
cells, leaving one uniform with her, Tuck, and Jones.

Emily retrieved her Glock from where it had fallen during the scuffle and shoved it
into her holster.

“What about the white truck I followed here?” she asked no one in particular.

The remaining beat cop trained his flashlight inside the cell.

“There’s a white truck parked out front. A Ford F-150,” Tuck said.

“The suspect wasn’t driving a Ford. He was driving a Chevy,” Emily told him.

“The Ford is mine.” Devlin’s deep voice cut through the gloom with the sound of authority,
snapping everyone’s attention back to him. “The man I assume you’re looking for took
off in his truck when I pulled into the yard.”

Emily closed the distance between them and craned her neck back so she could look
him in the eyes. Good grief he was tall, probably six foot three. How could she ever
have thought he resembled the suspect when the man she’d chased into the basement
had been just a tad over six feet tall and without the solid muscle that filled out
Devlin’s impressive frame?

“I’m Detective Emily O’Malley,” she reminded him, wanting to establish formality between
them and gloss over the awkward intimacy from earlier. “Who are you? Full name this
time.”

He hesitated, as if deciding whether or not to answer. Finally, he said, “Buchanan.
Devlin Buchanan.”

Buchanan. Why does that sound so familiar?
“You said you saw our suspect. What did he look like?”

She was testing him to see if he was telling the truth. From the wary look in his
eyes, she thought he might be trying to hide something. She studied him closely. Reading
people’s body language, interpreting the subtle changes in their tone of voice and
how that related to what they were actually saying was her forte. It was one of the
reasons her boss and peers often asked her to interview suspects on cases that weren’t
even hers.

“He looked a bit like me,” he admitted. “Caucasian, short dark hair, tall, probably
mid-thirties. And the answer to your next question is no, I didn’t see anyone in the
passenger seat. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t anyone there. The driver took off
as soon as I pulled into the driveway. He tore across the field to the road out front
and I didn’t get more than a quick look at him.”

His description was spot-on. And his body language told her he was probably telling
the truth. “Which direction did he go?”

“West.”

“Jones,” Emily said, “I gave dispatch the license plate number and description of
the truck when I was following it here. Put out a—”

“BOLO. Will do. Every law-enforcement officer within a hundred miles will be on the
lookout for that truck. We’ll get him.” He pulled out his cell phone.

“You’ll have to go outside to make the call. No coverage in here,” she said.

Jones hurried out of the cell and down the hallway, leaving Tuck and the officer holding
the flashlight on Buchanan to back Emily up.

“Start talking,” Emily said. “Why are you here? If you were trying to help me, how
did you know I needed help in the first place? This is a fairly deserted rural area.
Seems oddly coincidental you were driving down that road the same time as me and just
happened to come into the basement after I was locked in this cell.”

He hesitated again, then let out a deep breath, as if resigned to answer her questions.
“I keep a police scanner in my truck. I heard you ask for backup and figured the odds
were against any other cops being in the area. I thought you could use the help.”

If he was telling the truth, he’d just risked his life for a complete stranger. But
far from wanting accolades or thanks, he seemed impatient and uninterested in any
attention—which made Emily all the more suspicious. There was something else going
on. What was he hiding?

Normally when she and Tuck interviewed witnesses, they would take turns firing off
questions, ferreting out the clues. But since she hadn’t briefed him yet on what had
happened, he stood silently beside her, trusting her to ask the right questions.

“How did you know I was in this cell?” she asked.

Buchanan gave her a bland look, as if she was wasting his time. “I didn’t. But when
I didn’t find you in the rest of the basement, I figured you were behind one of those
doors. I tried all of them and they were locked, so I decided to bust them open one
at a time to look for you.”

“I didn’t hear you opening any other doors. You expect me to believe you just happened
to open my cell first, without knowing I was inside this one?”

He shrugged, as if he couldn’t care less whether she believed him or not.

“If you were trying to help Detective O’Malley,” Tuck said, “why were you on top of
her when we got here?”

Great, of all the questions Tuck could have asked, he had to ask
that
one.

Devlin’s lips twitched, as if he were trying not to smile. His heated gaze met Emily’s,
leaving no question that he was remembering the feel of her body crushed against him,
and her unfortunate movements that had elicited a response she didn’t think either
of them had expected. He seemed content to let her answer Tuck’s poorly worded question.

Not wanting to humiliate herself further, she decided it was time to get rid of her
audience. She motioned to the officer holding the flashlight. “Get Mr. Buchanan out
of here. I’ll interview him at the station.”

Her casual dismissal of him had Devlin stiffening. But he didn’t protest and allowed
the policeman to escort him out of the cell, leaving Emily alone with Tuck. She breathed
a sigh of relief and ran a shaky hand through her shoulder-length hair as soon as
they were gone.

“What’s going on?” Tuck demanded. “Why
were
you on the floor when I got here?”

“I might have . . . tried to shoot Buchanan, and he was forced to knock me down in
self-defense.”

He blinked. Twice. “You
tried
to shoot him? You fired your weapon?”

She put her hands on her hips. “He busted into the cell. It was dark. I thought, for
a split second, that he might have a gun.”

“You
thought
he
might
have a gun?” Tuck glanced around the cell. “He didn’t?”

She let out a long breath. “No. He didn’t.”

He slowly shook his head. “Emily—”

“I know, I know. Lousy under pressure. You don’t have to remind me.”

“Lieutenant Drier is going to be pissed.”

Her fingernails bit into her palms. “He has every right to be. I screwed up. Big-time.”

A civilian would be easily forgiven for the mistake she’d made. But a trained police
officer knew better. She shouldn’t have fired at an unarmed man. She should have maintained
control of the situation. She should have kept her distance from the cell door, announced
she was a police officer, given him a chance to surrender. Instead, she’d guaranteed
he
had
to attack her to avoid being shot.

If she was lucky, her mistakes today would just become fodder for the gossips at the
station, something for the guys to laugh at and tease her about. If she
wasn’t
lucky, her first six months as a detective would be her last. She’d have to crawl
back home to Nashville, Tennessee, and admit to her over-achieving parents and siblings
that she’d failed—just as they’d expected she would.

“You should have waited for backup.” Tuck put his hand on her shoulder in a comforting
gesture. She fully expected those same words to come out of her boss’s mouth once
he heard about this, but they’d be said in a shout. And he certainly wouldn’t squeeze
her shoulder in solidarity when he said them.

“No arguments here,” she said.

“What exactly happened?”

She shoved her hands into her pants pockets to keep from twisting them together. “I
told you, I heard screams and gunshots outside the basement and ran inside. Someone
locked me in this cell.”

“Someone. Not Buchanan?”

“I couldn’t swear to it, since I didn’t see who shut the door. But I don’t think it
was him. I never saw the suspect or Hawley once I went into the basement. Did you
see any other exits when you got here?”

“No. We circled the entire house before we entered. There’s only one way in and out
of this basement. And all the windows and doors on the ground floor are boarded up.”

“Then the gunshots and the screams were probably a diversion to get me inside. The
suspect must have circled around the maze of walls and got away with the victim while
I was in here thinking I was rescuing her.” She shook her head in disgust. “Thanks
to my stupid decision to go in without backup, that poor woman is still being held
against her will. And we don’t have a clue where she is.”

Tuck didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. The commiserating look on his face told
her he’d already arrived at the same conclusion.

Emily wanted nothing more than to crawl into a hole and hide from the reality of what
she’d done. But that wouldn’t help the victim. She owed it to Virginia Hawley to use
the skills she did have—her talent for solving puzzles—to help find out exactly what
had happened and who was behind it. Once she had that information, she might be able
to figure out where the suspect would have taken his victim. To do that, she first
needed to decide once and for all if Buchanan was in any way involved. She couldn’t
rely exclusively on her instincts about him—she needed facts.

She looked around the cell again, searching for some kind of clue, anything that would
help her piece things together. The doorway captured her attention. The door that
had once secured the opening was now propped against the wall in the hallway. One
of the officers must have picked it up off the ground to move it out of the way. The
lock mechanism appeared to be fully intact. So was the door frame. The brass hinges
were dull and mottled but unbroken.

“Where are the hinge pins?” She hurried into the hallway.

Tuck followed. “What are you talking about?”

“The pins that held the door on its hinges. They’re gone.” It didn’t take long to
find them. They were lying right where they must have fallen, along with a discarded
tire iron next to the propped-up door.

“So that’s how he did it,” she said.

“What are you talking about?” Tuck asked. “Share.”

She waved her hands toward the door and the pins. “It all makes sense now, the noises
I heard inside the cell. Buchanan rapped on the window. He must’ve gone to his truck,
got the tire iron, and used it to pull out the pins and pop the door off the hinges.”

Tuck’s mouth pursed, as if considering what she’d said. “He wouldn’t have gone to
all that trouble if he had a key.”

“Exactly. He didn’t have a key. I think he was telling the truth. He isn’t a part
of all this. He
was
trying to help me.”

“But he had his hands wrapped around your wrists and was holding you down when we
got here.”

“Only because of me almost shooting him. He was about to help me up. He acted in self-defense.
Buchanan . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“What is it?” Tuck asked. “You’ve pieced something together?”

The hope in his voice wasn’t surprising. They’d worked together since the academy.
He was used to how she’d sift through the details of a crime scene and find clues
where others failed. It wasn’t uncommon for her to have a sudden epiphany, a theory
seemingly based on nothing that later proved to be true. She wasn’t exactly getting
an epiphany right now. Instead, she had a niggling belief that she’d missed something
important.

“Devlin Buchanan, Devlin Buchanan,” she murmured. “Why does that name sound so familiar?”

“
Alex
Buchanan was a pretty famous defense attorney back in town for years,” Tuck said.
“I think he still takes on a few cases here and there as a favor to friends. Maybe
that’s what you’re thinking of?”

“Maybe.” She closed her eyes, trying to bring the illusive thought or memory into
focus. “No. It’s something else.” A memory, a very recent memory, slammed into her.
She sucked in a sharp breath and her eyes flew open. She ran back into the cell and
dropped to her knees beside the cot.

“What are you doing?” Tuck squatted down next to her. “Don’t touch the body until
the coroner gets here.”

“Don’t you mean skeleton? It hardly qualifies as a body anymore.” She pulled her cell
phone out. “Here, look at this.” She shined her phone’s LED light onto the bracelet
that lay on top of the woman’s wrist bone. “See the engraved charm, the largest one
on the chain?”

His eyes widened as he read the words.

“And these.” She shined the light on the five smaller charms attached to the bracelet’s
chain. She used the edge of her fingernail to flip the third charm over so Tuck could
see the name on the back.

“Holy shit,” he whispered.

“Ditto.” She lowered her phone. “Who gets to tell Devlin Buchanan that this skeleton
is what’s left of his mother?”

Chapter Three

E
MERGENCY VEHICLES CONTINUED
to arrive at the little house of horrors every few minutes, parking in the overgrown
field that served as the front lawn. Devlin leaned back against his truck at the top
of the long gravel driveway, arms crossed as he observed the chaos erupting around
him. Police officers stood in clusters or shuffled back and forth between the basement
and the yard. But with all the activity, nothing of value seemed to be getting done.

The inefficiency swirling around him was enough to make him want to start barking
orders. But this wasn’t one of his operations, and offering advice would only raise
questions he wasn’t prepared to answer. He’d raised enough questions already by playing
the damn hero when he’d heard Detective O’Malley’s call for help on his police scanner.