it.”
“You testified against your brother,” Jaxon said. “You remembered enough to tell the police that you saw him stabbing Wade Mulligan.”
A shudder coursed up her spine as she sank into the chair beside the Texas Ranger. “I know,” she said, mentally reliving the horror. The blood had been everywhere. Hank had been holding the knife, his T-shirt soaked in Wade’s blood.
“But Hank just told me what really happened.” She gulped back a sob. “He said he found our foster father on the floor, already dead. He thought I killed him, so he covered for me.”
Jaxon and the warden exchanged skeptical looks. “Hank is desperate, Miss Tierney,” Jaxon said. “At this point, self-preservation instincts are kicking in. He’ll say anything to convince the system to reevaluate his case. Anything to stay alive.”
“But you don’t understand—” Avery said.
“He confessed,” Warden Unger said, cutting her off. “Besides, the psych reports indicated that your brother was troubled. Other foster parents testified that he was violent. Mulligan’s own wife stated that Hank was full of rage.”
“Yes, he hated Wade and so did I.” Avery’s anger mounted. “We both had good reason. Wade used to beat Hank, and he...” She closed her eyes, forcing the truth out. Words she’d never said before. “He abused me. Hank was only trying to protect me that night. He took beatings for me all the time.”
Jaxon leaned forward. “Protecting you and hating his abuser give him motive for murder,” he pointed out. “Although I’m surprised Hank’s attorney didn’t use that argument in his defense.”
“So you read his file?” Avery asked.
Jaxon shrugged. “Briefly.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Warden Unger said. “Hank Tierney confessed.”
“Because he thought I killed Wade,” Avery admitted in a broken voice. “That’s the reason he confessed. He thought I stabbed Wade, and he didn’t want me to go to jail.”
* * *
JAXON’S PULSE JUMPED at the vehemence in her voice. “Why would he think that you killed Mulligan?”
Avery stared down at her fingers, then traced that scar on her wrist again, a fine sheen of perspiration breaking out on her forehead.
“Because Wade...was coming into my room that night.” Avery’s voice trembled. “Joleen, our foster mother, left earlier that day, and Hank and I both knew what that meant.”
Jaxon had a bad feeling he knew as well, but he needed her to say it. “What did it mean?”
She visibly shuddered. “It meant we’d have a bad night,” she said in a faraway voice. “That Wade would be drinking.”
The pain in her eyes sent a shiver of rage through Jaxon.
“He’d hurt you before?”
She nodded again. Which meant Hank could have planned the attack, that it was premeditated. According to the transcript of the case, Hank had never expressed any remorse for what he’d done.
Hell, Jaxon couldn’t blame Hank. Knowing his foster father was hurting his sister could make a fourteen-year-old boy stab a man to death and not regret it.
Avery sucked in a shaky breath. “I tried locking the door, but that only made Wade madder and he tore through it with a hatchet. And that night...I heard him yelling at Hank. Hank tried to fight him, but he tied Hank in his room.”
Jaxon’s jaw ached from clenching it.
“Then I...heard the door open and...”
The images bombarding Jaxon made him knot his hands into fists. But he didn’t want to frighten Avery, so he stripped the rage from his voice. “What happened then?” he asked softly.
She lifted her gaze, her eyes tormented. “I don’t remember. I... Sometimes when Wade came in, I blacked out, just closed my eyes and shut out everything.”
The warden was watching her with a skeptical look. But Jaxon had grown up in the system himself. He knew firsthand the horrors foster kids faced. The feelings of abandonment, of not being wanted. The abuse.
“What do you remember?” he asked.
She ran a hand through the long strands of her wavy hair. Hair the color of burnished copper. Hair that he suddenly wanted to stroke so he could soothe her pain.
“The next thing I remember was seeing Hank holding that knife.” She straightened and brushed at the tears she didn’t seem to realize she was crying. “But it could have happened the way he said. Someone else could have killed Wade. Then Hank came in and thought I did, so he stabbed him and took the blame to protect me.”
“But you were the only two people in the house,” Jaxon said. “You and Hank both said that.”
Avery looked up at him with a helplessness that gnawed at his very soul. “But there had to be someone else,” she said. “Hank only confessed because he thought I stabbed Wade. I can’t let him go to the death chamber for protecting me.”
Jaxon wanted to believe her, but there hadn’t been signs of anyone else at the house.
And without evidence or proof of her story, there was no way to save her brother.
* * *
AVERY SENSED THE warden was not on her side. He’d obviously heard hundreds of inmates declare their innocence.
Death row inmates in the last stages of their lives probably always made a last-minute plea of innocence.
But she believed her brother and had to help him.
Because the person who’d really killed Wade Mulligan had escaped.
Her heart hammered.
What if I did kill him?
The thought struck Avery like a physical blow. Hank must have had a reason to think she did....
He’d mentioned that she had a knife.... She didn’t remember that.
Did she have blood on her hands?
For a second panic seized her.
What if she discovered she had stabbed Wade, and that she’d let her brother take the fall?
Bile rose to her throat.
“Avery, are you all right?”
Sergeant Ward’s gruff voice made her jerk her head up. His deep brown eyes were studying her with an intensity that sent tingles along her nerve endings. It was almost as if he were trying to see inside her head, trying to read her soul.
She felt naked. Vulnerable. Raw and exposed in a way she hadn’t felt in years.
Because she’d
