Taken to the Edge (11 page)

Ford watched her, blatantly enjoying the view of her tossing her head back, inhaling the rarified Montana summer night breeze. She was such a gorgeous creature, and she had no idea what she did to him.

By the time they arrived at their hotel—the nicest one he could find in Bozeman, because Daniel insisted his employees treat themselves well when they traveled on the job—Robyn finally seemed at ease.

He’d requested that Celeste book them a two-bedroom suite rather than two separate rooms so they would have a place to spread out and work on their strategy for facing Roy White. As they rode up in the elevator, though, he wondered if he’d made a mistake. Robyn looked way too enticing in her skinny black jeans and a clingy red shirt, her long hair mussed from running nervous fingers through it one too many times. Her sky-blue eyes seemed too big for her face.

God, he could drown in those eyes, just dive into them and never surface. Knowing she would be sleeping in the next room, only a few steps away…

She folded her arms and drummed her fingers on her arm. “Slow elevator.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Nice hotel, though. You guys at Project Justice have it pretty good.”

“Staying in nice hotels and getting a decent salary beats the hell out of working for the police department,” Ford agreed. “Plus, Daniel doesn’t ask his people to settle for less than he would. But I never worked as hard when I was a cop. Project Justice is pretty much a 24/7 job.”

“Is that why you haven’t remarried?” When he raised an eyebrow at her, she shrugged in feigned innocence. “Hey, you interrogated me about my love life. Don’t you think it’s fair I know more about who
I’m
working with?”

“I haven’t had time to date, much less get married again. It wouldn’t be fair.”

“Not fair, how?”

“The job demands too much of me. There’s not enough left to keep a wife or girlfriend happy.”

“Once you’re done with this case, you’ll have all the time in the world. You are still planning to quit Project Justice, right?” The question sounded like a challenge.

“As soon as this case closes, one way or another.”

“Probably for the best,” she said as the elevator doors opened and she sauntered out ahead of him.

He followed, frowning. “What do you mean by that?”

“Just that, to work this job you have to have your heart and soul invested to do your best job.”

“You don’t think I’m invested enough in this case?” Try as he might not to care, her assessment bugged the hell out of him.

“Well, I did have to push pretty hard to get you to help me. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t feel some resentment at being forced to do something you really didn’t want to.”

“You’re right, I don’t like being manipulated. It’s just that once I got my teeth into the case, I forgot to be mad. I can’t deny that I enjoy the work.”

She stopped and turned suddenly, and he almost ran into her. “Then why quit?”

“Enjoying the work itself doesn’t mean I can live with the results.”

“You mean Katherine Hannigan.”

Every muscle went tense at the mention of that name. He sidestepped Robyn and continued down the hall. “If you know what’s good—for both of us—you’ll drop the subject. Why would you even bring it up? It’s distracting.”

She hurried to catch up. “I’m sorry. See, you’re not the only one who can be insensi— Oh, my God.”

Oh, my God indeed. Ford had just opened the door to their suite. But it wasn’t the standard two-bedroom suite he’d requested. This was clearly the bridal suite.

The room before them was an enormous bedroom, complete with a gauze-draped canopy bed and enough cabbage roses to give Laura Ashley nightmares. There was also a bottle of champagne chilling in an ice bucket and an enormous fresh flower arrangement.

“There had better be a second bedroom,” he said as he stalked into the room and opened the first door he saw. It led into a palatial bathroom with a made-for-two Jacuzzi whirlpool bath, a shower big enough that the entire Dallas Cowboys team could get clean at the same time. Everything was pink-and-white—the tile, the sink, the piles of fluffy towels.

He rushed out and tried another door. Closet. Then he was out of doors.

“I know I had a couple of glasses of wine,” Robyn said, “but I think I would remember if we got married.”

He was glad she could maintain a sense of humor. He didn’t think it was all that funny. He grabbed the phone and called the front desk. “There’s been a mistake. I did not request the bridal suite…did I?”

A nasty suspicion occurred to him. He hadn’t personally made these reservations. Celeste had done it for him. Celeste was not in the slightest way incompetent, nor was she senile, so he could only assume she had done this on purpose. Why, he had no idea. Sometimes her actions furthered her own agenda, but her motivations were often murky to everyone but herself.

“That’s what I have written down,” the front desk clerk said. “Bridal suite.”

“Well, do you have something else? I’m on a business trip with a colleague, for God’s sake.”

The clerk hemmed and hawed a bit, but finally came up with a second room on the third floor.

“I’ll take it,” he said curtly. “Have someone bring up the key.” He hung up to find Robyn grinning.

“Oh, come on. You’ve got to admit, it’s a little bit funny. This room is over the top even if we were newly weds. It’s a nightmare only a ten-year-old girl could like.”

Ford forced his tense shoulders to relax. He should be grateful she’d gotten past her pique with him and his labels. “A little bit funny. Let’s get to work.” He cleared the lace tablecloth and flower arrangement from the table for two, opened his briefcase and pulled out a folder of notes and a clean legal pad. For the next two hours, they worked on how they would approach Roy White.

Or rather, Ford tried to focus. But his gaze kept straying to Robyn’s slender, expressive artist’s hands. Whether she was gesturing animatedly or resting her hands on the table, Ford kept imagining them on his skin.

Then there was her mouth. Lipstick never seemed to last long on her lips, but it was the sexiest mouth he’d ever seen. When she was thinking hard, she had a tendency to worry her full lower lip with her front teeth.

Her perfume wasn’t obvious, like Trina’s, but every time they leaned close to look at something one of them had written, he smelled
something
. Shampoo, soap. The scent was sweet and clean and light.

That frilly bed was so, so close, and Robyn was slowly driving him crazy, though he was sure every provocative gesture she made was unconscious. She had said she was done with men, and he took her at her word.

Not that he would sleep with her under these circumstances. Under
any
circumstances.

When they were finally finished, it was close to eleven o’clock. Ford was torn between lingering, drawing out his time with her, and fleeing like his ass was on fire.

He opted for the ass-on-fire choice.

“I’ll meet you in the restaurant around seven-thirty for breakfast,” he said as he packed up his notes. “Then we’ll head for the asphalt company where Roy works. Try to get some sleep.”

“I will.”

He didn’t take a full, comfortable breath until he was on the elevator, heading for his own room.

She loved working with Ford, and it went beyond simple relief that someone competent was on her side, fighting to free Eldon. She loved the way Ford’s mind worked. When he brainstormed, ideas flowed out of him like a river. He made quick, logical connections, and sometimes she struggled to keep up with his train of thought barreling down the tracks.

She loved working with her students, of course, but it was a welcome distinction to stretch her intellect with an equal. More than an equal—he was brilliant. He’d been smart in high school, but she hadn’t realized quite how deep his thoughts ran. In her own way, she’d labeled him: Smart, sexy-but-hollow jock.

He was anything but hollow.

It was easy to see why the work attracted him and why he so often succeeded, even though he didn’t want to acknowledge his own skills right now.

Robyn changed quickly into pajamas, brushed her teeth, then climbed into the ridiculously huge bed, nearly twice as big as her bed at home. And twice as empty-feeling.

She hadn’t realized how much she missed having an intimate connection with a man, someone to hold her in bed, someone to share ideas with, share a meal with.

Although she did not want Eldon ever again—Ford need not worry on that account—she suddenly missed some of the things she’d had with him, especially at first. She missed the domestic tranquility, the small things shared only between two intimates.

And yeah, the sex. She and Eldon had never made fireworks together, but even their tranquil couplings, the physical bond they’d forged had brought them closer, at least at first.

She suspected sex with Ford would be anything but tranquil. Not that she would ever find out. He seemed oblivious to her growing attraction to him.

Which was good. She was simply reacting to the stress, longing for reassurance. In a very short time, Eldon would either be free, or he would be dead, and she was sure her attraction to Ford would be dead, too.

Instead, the supervisor, who seemed impressed with Ford’s credentials and his current mission, provided them with a private office in the concrete-block building that housed Hermann’s Asphalt.

Roy was a short, stocky man, but powerfully built with huge arm muscles and a thick neck. He had black curly hair, long and bushy, kept off his face with a green knit cap.

He smiled affably, seemed eager to help, until he saw the tape recorder come out.

“I don’t really like that recorder,” he said. “Can we turn it off?”

“We need an official record of this meeting,” Ford explained for the third time. “I could take notes, but it wouldn’t be nearly as compelling as your recorded voice.”

“I don’t know that much,” he said, contradicting what he’d told Ford over the phone. “It’s probably nothing.”

“If it turns out that’s true, then we won’t use the tape,” Ford argued sensibly.

Roy shrugged, grabbed a plastic office chair that was against the wall, swiveled it around and straddled it backward. “Okay. Let’s get on with it.”

Robyn settled in her chair, not liking Roy on sight, though she wasn’t sure why. He was just a guy who was reluctant to get involved. Maybe it was the slightly salacious way he looked at her. Maybe it was because he didn’t seem to care much whether some guy in Texas got fried or not.

Ford asked him a series of easy questions, starting with his name and age, where he’d lived at the time of Justin’s disappearance, his job at the pizza restaurant, his hours. Once Roy got talking, he seemed to like the sound of his own voice, and he relaxed.

The questions got more specific, and so did the answers. Roy seemed to have an excellent memory of that long-ago day’s events, including the exact time he’d gone on his break.

“How are you so sure about the time?” Ford asked, though in a friendly way. He was testing the waters, seeing how Roy would react to being pushed. If he provided a statement that supported Eldon’s claims, the cops would grill him six ways to Sunday.

“I worked at that job for three years, same hours, and I always took my break at 12:15 a.m. A working man watches the clock. Although maybe y’all never had jobs where you worried about that kinda thing.” He said it almost as a challenge.

Ford glanced at Robyn. Though she had remained almost completely silent during this interview, he expected her to say something now.

“I’m a teacher,” Robyn said, not wanting to disappoint Ford. “I watch the clock plenty.” But not because she looked forward to the end of her workday. A school ran on one-hour blocks of time, and she had to be cognizant of them.

Still, she hoped maybe the fact she worked for a living would build rapport with Roy, make him more sympathetic to her cause.

Roy turned his attention to her. “So you’re married to this guy in prison?”

“I was at one time.”

“And you’re trying to get him off? Man, if I was on death row, my ex-old lady would laugh her ass off.”

Robyn bristled, and Ford shot her another look. Though she wanted to argue, she knew she couldn’t.

“Well, he is the father of my child,” she said.

“Let’s get back to that night,” Ford said briskly. “You went on your break at 12:15 a.m. And what did you do?”

“I took a leak, then went out the back door to the parking lot to have a smoke. A joint, actually.” He smiled slyly. “Since you’re not a cop, I can say that, right?”

Although Ford didn’t visibly react to the statement, Robyn could almost feel the disappointment gnawing its way through him. Roy had been stoned when he saw whatever he saw. That was probably the reason the cops had discounted his statement. It wasn’t just the “one beer” Robyn had originally thought.

Damn. This whole trip might have been for nothing.

Ford’s next statement was deceptively casual. “Were you always stoned at work?”

“A lot. But it was just a couple of hits. Not like I was stumbling around or anything. You can’t work around those hot pizza ovens if you’re out of it.”

“So what happened next?”

“I saw the dude drive up. I noticed the car. A Jag. I always notice cars.”

“You’re referring to Eldon Jasperson?”

“Yeah. I watched him get out. He seemed like he was in a hurry when he went inside.”

“Could you see anyone else in the car?” Robyn asked, unable to stop herself.

But Roy shook his head. “Tinted windows.”

“So is that it?”

“No. This is the important part. Just when I headed back inside, another car pulled into the parking lot.”

Robyn sat up straighter. No one else had reported seeing a second car. No other customers had arrived to pick up pizza.

“You told the police this that night?”

“Yeah, and they seemed interested.”

“What kind of car was it?” Ford asked, not sounding excited, but Robyn noticed his body language. Leaning forward. Engaged. Alert. This could be something.

“I don’t know,” Roy said.

Robyn wanted to leap across the table and throttle the answer out of him. She literally sat on her hands to keep from reacting.

“You just said you notice cars.”

“Yeah, but I was heading back inside. I was on to the next thing. I mean, if I’d known a murder was gonna happen, hell, I’d have taken pictures.”

“Was it a big car? A small one? Do you know for sure it was a car, and not, say, a pickup truck?”

“I think it was a car,” Roy said. “Not real big, not real small. Just, you know, average.”

Robyn sighed inwardly. It was something, at least. Something to buoy Eldon’s story that Justin had been snatched from his car. Whoever did it had to have arrived at the parking lot right about that time.

But a make, model and license plate might’ve been nice.

“What about the color?” Ford asked patiently. “Could you tell if it was light or dark?”

Roy thought about it. He really did seem to want to help, though he’d been promised nothing, and Robyn had to respect him for that.

“I really don’t remember.”

Ford asked a few more questions, trying to elicit a memory, but nothing seemed to work. Finally, he admitted defeat and ended the interview. He turned off the tape recorder.

“So, did I help?” Roy asked. “You think the rich dude might want to reward me?”

Any positive feelings Robyn had been nurturing for Roy evaporated.

“This might help,” Ford said. “I’ll let Mr. Jasper son know you cooperated. He’s a generous man.”

“Guess that’s good enough,” Roy said glumly.

As soon as they were alone in the car, Robyn nearly exploded. “That’s good, isn’t it? That he saw a car? Even if he can’t identify it, the fact that he saw any kind of car has to mean something, doesn’t it? I mean, I know he was smoking pot—do you think that’s why the police threw out his statement?”

“That would not be standard procedure. Even if you interview a falling-down-drunk witness who saw pink elephants robbing a bank, you write it down and include it in the report, along with your observation of the witness’s impaired faculties. You don’t throw it out.”

“So, why do you think they threw it out?”

“Truthfully? I think within minutes of the cops showing up on the scene, in their minds they already had Eldon arrested, tried and convicted of the crime.”

“I was a suspect for a while,” Robyn said.

“Only briefly. Once they convinced themselves you weren’t involved, Eldon was their man, and Roy White’s statement didn’t support their theory. So they made it go away.”

“That’s terrible.”

“It happens more often than you’d guess. Cops coach witnesses, they plant evidence. Mostly because they are absolutely positive a certain person is guilty, and they’re trying to ensure that person doesn’t walk.”

“Justice at any cost?”

Ford nodded. “I’m as guilty as anyone.”

“You? I don’t believe it. You would never plant evidence.”

“No, but when I was a rookie, my overeager testimony put an innocent man behind bars.” His voice was deceptively casual. But Robyn could see that the incident still affected him. His grip on the steering wheel tightened. “Years later, Project Justice got the sentence overturned.”

“And you changed careers.”

“Yeah. But it turns out I can do as much harm on the other side of the fence.”

Katherine Hannigan again. She suspected that case was never far from his thoughts.

In a gesture that felt perfectly natural, Robyn placed her hand on Ford’s arm. “Everybody does the best they can. You can’t go through life believing you’ll never make a mistake.”

She expected him to close up. He had the last time this subject had come up. Instead, he sighed, as if giving in to her. “Yeah, but you can put yourself in a place where your mistakes don’t spell life and death for other people.”

“If everyone thought that way, we wouldn’t have any doctors or lawyers or cops. Humans aren’t perfect, and they never can be.”

“There comes a time, Robyn, when the mistakes pile up and you have to take yourself out of the game. I only hope I don’t add the Eldon Jasperson case to my list of failings.”

“Ford. Even I know this is a long shot. If we can’t save Eldon—” Her voice caught. She shouldn’t be this emotional about her ex-husband. But she’d only recently come to terms with the fact that he might actually be executed.

She swallowed a couple of times. “If we can’t save Eldon, as least we know we tried. It’s all anyone can ask.”

Ford placed his hand on hers. “Thank you.”