Take the Key and Lock Her Up (40 page)

And it wasn’t Gage Thomas.

She looked up at the whiteboard and read through the clues again. It was all coming
together, all making sense now.

Victims beaten, bruised, no bones broken.

No sexual assault.

She held the dossier up and read the stats—six feet tall—the height Hawley had used
to describe her attacker, an attacker who stayed in the shadows, covered their face,
wore a hat.

And now she knew why.

It wasn’t that hard to find the rest of the information she needed. A simple Internet
search gave her the address where she was 99 percent convinced the killer would be
waiting. It just made sense. If Devlin didn’t come back soon, she’d be forced to call
Tuck and tell him everything so he wouldn’t turn her in or try to stop her. She hoped
his partner loyalty would extend to helping her find and save Devlin.

She sat back and stared at the board again. The one last thing bugging her was motive.
Why, after all these years, would Devlin suddenly be targeted in such an elaborate
plot that had, based on the coroner’s findings about the date of death of one of the
skeletons in the basement, taken over a year to set up?

Wait. Was it really that long? Or a much shorter time frame? She shoved out of the
chair and hurried over to the board. Using one of the markers, she drew a circle around
Shannon Fisher’s name in the victim column and around Carolyn Buchanan’s jewelry in
the clue column. Then she added two more entries onto the board—Montana and EXIT’s
newly enhanced security system. What did they all have in common?

Each event had happened four months ago
.

She tossed the marker down and crossed her arms. It all made sense. The killer wasn’t
suddenly abducting and torturing people just to frame Devlin. Or at least Emily didn’t
think so. The pattern of behavior had probably been going on for years, meaning there
were other victims out there no one had linked to the case yet. The killer was just
using the same old established pattern as a tool to frame Devlin. And now Emily knew
why.

Devlin thought his hacking into the EXIT databases had gone unnoticed, but Emily believed
just the opposite. Someone inside the company had discovered that Devlin had broken
into sensitive files, and they immediately closed the security loophole to prevent
him from getting in again. At the same time, they sent him on a domestic mission—instead
of out of the country—so he could still reasonably have had the opportunity to kill
Shannon. As for Carolyn Buchanan’s jewelry, that theft had also occurred four months
ago, probably to continue to paint the picture of an out-of-control enforcer. Or perhaps
just to taunt Devlin and let him know someone was after him, even if he didn’t know
who or why.

She wished Devlin hadn’t left so fast, or that she had a way to contact him and run
her newest theories by him. With nothing left to do, she straightened the house, removing
all signs that she and Devlin had been there, including cleaning out the coffeemaker.
After discarding the trash bag of evidence in a big, green garbage can in the garage,
she went back to wait in the office. She erased the search history on the computer
and powered it down.

A few minutes later, someone knocked on the front door. It couldn’t be Devlin. Not
this fast. Could it?

Moving as quietly as she could, she hurried to the door and looked out the peephole.
She blinked in surprise and pulled the door open. “Mr. Buchanan. Pierce. This is a
surprise.”

“Detective O’Malley. Imagine
my
surprise when Devil called me during a task force meeting—with your boss, I might
add—and said he needed me to pick you up. But that I couldn’t tell anyone. Because
the two of you had broken into someone’s house.”

He crossed his arms and stared down at her. “How in the world did my crazy brother
talk a detective into committing a B and E?”

“Trust me, it wasn’t as hard the second time,” she grumbled.

His eyes widened. “Excuse me?”

“Uh, maybe we should discuss this somewhere else. I assume that’s your GTO parked
out front? Give me a second. I have to grab something.”

She left him standing with his mouth open as she ran back into the office. After grabbing
the stack of dossiers, she gave the room one last look to make sure she hadn’t missed
anything, then ran back to the door.

Once they were on their way down the street, she asked, “So what exactly did Devlin
tell you when he called?”

“Not much, other than admitting he broke into that house. He wants me to take you
somewhere safe until he can call me again to explain.”

She shook her head. “Change of plans. You’re taking me to Devlin, or at least where
I think he is.”

He shot her a sharp glance. “Why?”

“Because he’s in danger.” She shuffled through the dossiers and pulled out two of
them. “He thinks he knows who killed Shannon Fisher, among others.”

Pierce shot her a stunned look. “He knows the killer’s identity? And didn’t tell me?
I’m on the task force.”

“I know.” She held up one of the pages. “He’s going after this man, Gage Thomas.”
She put the page down and held up the second one she’d picked out.

He frowned. “How did you get that picture? That matches the sketch of one of the missing
women, one of the victims.”

She shook her head. “No. Kelly Parker isn’t a victim. She’s the killer.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

E
MILY CHECKED THE
loading of the backup pistol Pierce had grudgingly given her after she gave him a
brief explanation of what was going on. He steered the GTO around a slow-moving car
on the highway and then punched the gas.

“So why would this Kelly person use the Jo Harper alias? She had to know someone could
pull the badge picture and would know it was a woman who’d visited those convicts.”

“The badges are cheap throwaways you turn in when you leave and are destroyed. She
might not have realized the prison keeps digital records of the pictures. I’m betting
she thought only about the log and wanted to ensure she used an alias that wouldn’t
point back to her. And since she was framing Devlin, why not use an alias that one
of his friends regularly used, just to trip him up?”

“Maybe. What was her connection to the prisoners? Do you know why she visited those
specific men?”

“Some kind of profiling maybe? She knew she needed some muscle to do her dirty work
so she could remain in the background. She could have done a little research to determine
who was getting out of prison soon and met her qualifications—a proven track record
of being violent but someone she could easily manipulate. Since the prisoners she
visited were all friends, I figure she targeted one in particular and maybe he recommended
the others to her. There’s something else too, about convicts or ex-cons. Devlin’s
fiancée was killed by a felon on parole. The man Devlin went after today was in a
picture at the prison, picking up that ex-con before Arianna was killed. Since Kelly
is comfortable using ex-cons as her henchmen, it wouldn’t surprise me if she helped
arrange Arianna’s murder.”

“This is a nightmare. Do you really expect me to believe my brother is an assassin?”

She shrugged. “All that matters is that we get there in time and make sure Devlin
knows Kelly isn’t a victim so he doesn’t walk into a trap.”

His knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. “It does explain a lot, like why he was
wearing a gun the night of the fire, and why he never went to the hospital afterward
to check on Austin and the others. I imagine he won’t be happy that you told me all
of this.”

“I’m sure he’ll be furious. Serves him right for leaving me behind.”

He grinned. “I’m beginning to understand why my brother likes you so much. You certainly
aren’t boring.”

She shoved the gun into the waistband of her jeans. “What makes you think he likes
me?”

“It wasn’t obvious the first time you were at Alex’s house, the night you told us
about Carolyn. But the night of the fire, I saw how he looked at you. He wouldn’t
have been that concerned if he didn’t truly care about you. Why? Do you doubt it?”

“How’s your father doing? And your brothers?”

“Changing the subject, huh? Point taken. Braedon’s fine. He’s already been released.
Alex is doing great. The doctors are baffled about why he had a heart attack. There’s
no sign of any heart problems to explain it. They’ll be monitoring him for a couple
more days before he can go to my house or Matt’s, wherever home will be until the
house can be rebuilt.”

Emily had a feeling Ace had done something to cause Alex’s supposed heart attack,
but she and Devlin had never had time to discuss that. They’d been too busy running
for their lives, and trying to rescue a woman who didn’t need rescuing.

“What about Austin? Devlin hasn’t mentioned him since that night. I think he’s trying
not to think about him so it won’t distract him from finding the killer, but I know
he loves his brother very much.”

His smile faded. “Austin is fighting for his life. He’s at the burn center, still
touch and go.”

“I’m so sorry.”

He gave her a crisp nod. “How sure are you that Kelly Parker will be at this Jackson’s
Island place? Or that where we’re going is the place you think it is?”

“Devlin said Jackson’s Island was north of town. I searched the property appraiser’s
database online and this is the only place Gage owns in that location. As for why
I think Kelly will be there, it just makes sense.”

“Because of the Jo Harper alias?”

“No. Because Kelly has already framed Devlin for killing Shannon and Nancy. It makes
sense she’d finish up by framing him for his best friend’s murder. She knows about
Jackson’s Island. And the remoteness makes it a perfect place for her purposes. All
she has to do is call Gage and tell him some sob story about being held there and
needing him to come to her rescue. He’ll walk into a trap.”

“Wait. Gage wouldn’t believe that since he lives there. He’d know that no one was
holding Kelly hostage at his own house.”

“If he were living there, I’d agree with you. But according to his official address
in the phone book, the Jackson’s Island location isn’t where he chooses to call home.
Trust me—I’ve looked at this from every angle. This is what makes the most sense,”
she said.

“And you think Devlin will go there too, looking for his friend Gage, the one he thinks
is the killer.”

“Yes. Maybe not at first. Gage has several properties. But Devlin will eventually
wind up there.”

“Well, let’s hope you’re right. And that we get there before my brother, so we can
stop him. I still don’t feel right going in without backup. But you seem convinced
Devlin wouldn’t want that. I can’t believe he’s still trying to protect the company
he works for after they issued a contract on his life.”

Emily wasn’t so sure that Devlin was all that worried about protecting EXIT anymore.
She honestly didn’t know where he stood on that. But she knew her main goal was to
protect Devlin in every way—which meant keeping him alive
and
out of prison. If they brought cops in on this and caught Devlin trying to kill Gage,
Devlin’s fate would be sealed.

She couldn’t help the wry smile that curved her lips. When had she crossed over the
line so completely that she was actually trying to protect a man on the wrong side
of the law?

Pierce turned down another side road. They were pretty far outside of town now and
surrounded mostly by trees.

“How did Devlin get sucked into this?” he said, obviously still struggling to come
to terms with what she’d told him. “The brother I grew up with never would have agreed
to become a hired assassin.”

She wanted to brag to him about Devlin’s accomplishments, about how many people he’d
saved over the years. But it didn’t feel right to tell Pierce all of that. It needed
to come from Devlin, in his own words.

“Your brother is an honorable, good man. Don’t judge him until you know the facts.”

“Good advice, Detective. I’ll wait to hear the explanations from my brother.”

“Since we’re about to put our lives on the line together, maybe you could call me
Emily?”

He smiled. “Ditto.”

“You want me to call you Emily too?” she teased.

“Uh, no. Pierce will do just fine. You know, you sound pretty certain about his character
for someone who’s known him for . . . what, only a few days?”

She shook her head in wonder. “It doesn’t feel like just a few days.”

He slowed for a sharp curve. Trees crowded in close on both sides of what was quickly
becoming little more than a one-car path through the woods. “Any idea why this Kelly
Parker went to so much trouble to set him up? Why is she trying to destroy him?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it? I have no idea.”

As for her theory that Devlin would wind up here, the proof was the SUV sitting on
the side of the long gravel driveway Pierce had just turned down. The driver’s door
was open and the back window had been shot out.

“He beat us here. And he’s already been in a gunfight. We might be too late,” Pierce
said.

“Not necessarily. That window was shot out when I was with him earlier today.”

He winced and stopped the GTO beside the SUV, beneath the thick canopy of trees. Behind
them, the woods stretched on seemingly forever. In front of them, nearly a full football
field away, an enormous, two-story white farmhouse squatted amid acres and acres of
knee-high green grass blowing in the warm breeze.

Emily studied the trees on either side of the GTO as she pulled out her pistol. “There’s
no way to get to the house without being seen. This is going to be tricky.”

“A frontal assault could be suicide. It looks like the woods are closer to the house
on the back side. That will provide more cover and less ground to cross if we have
to run for it. If we split up, we can both perform reconnaissance and compare notes
once we meet around back. Sound good?”