If Demi did this, she’ll pay. I don’t know what happened, but I promise she’ll pay. I’ll see to it.”
It was getting colder. Carson pulled his sheepskin jacket tighter around him and turned up the collar. But he remained where he was, a guard at his post. He wasn’t about to go anywhere until the unit came to pick up Bo’s body.
* * *
“I know my rights. I’m a bounty hunter, damn it, and I know my rights better than you do,” twenty-seven-year-old Demetria Colton shouted angrily at the two police officers who brought her into the small, windowless room within the Red Ridge police station. “Why am I here?” she wanted to know.
But neither of the two police officers, one young, one old, answered her, other than one of them telling her, “The chief’ll be here shortly.”
“The ‘chief’?” Demi repeated in a mocking tone. “You mean Cousin Finn? Is he still pretending to be in charge?”
The two officers left the small eight-by-ten room without answering her. An angry, guttural noise escaped the redhead’s lips. Frustrated, she would have thrown something if she’d had something to throw.
“Why am I here?” she demanded again, more loudly this time. Furious, she began to pound on the locked door. “I know you’re out there! I demand to be released. You can’t hold me here like this, you hear me?” she cried. “I haven’t done anything, damn it! You let me out of here! Now!”
When the door suddenly opened just as she was about to start pounding on it again, Demi was caught off guard and stumbled backward. Had the table not been right there behind her to block her fall, she would have unceremoniously landed on the floor.
“You’re here,” her cousin calmly told her as he and Carson walked into the room, acting as if they were about to have a run-of-the-mill, normal conversation, “to answer some questions.”
Demi tossed her head, her red hair flying over her shoulder.
“What kind of questions?” she asked defiantly, her dark brown gaze pinning him down.
“Like where were you tonight?” Finn wanted to know, gesturing toward the lone chair on the opposite side of the table and indicating that she should sit.
“Home,” Demi bit off, grudgingly sitting down. “I was in my home—since 5:00 p.m.” she added for good measure.
Finn gave no indication whether or not the answer satisfied him. He waited until Carson sat down next to him, then asked, “Alone?”
“Yes,” she bit off, then followed that up with a question of her own. “Why?” she demanded. Squaring her shoulders, she drew herself up and raised her chin, always ready to do battle with the world—and her cousin. “Is that a crime now?”
Hearing Carson’s chair scrape along the floor as he started to rise, Finn shot him a warning look before answering Demi’s question. “No, but murder is.”
“Murder,” the redhead repeated, growing more furious by the second. She made the only logical conclusion. “You think I murdered someone?” she cried, stunned. “And just who is it I was supposed to have murdered?” When Finn didn’t answer her immediately, she pounced on him. “C’mon, you can’t just throw something like that out and then leave me hanging in suspense, Finn. Just who was it that you think I murdered?”
Unable to remain silent any longer, his hands fisted at his sides, Carson pinned her with a damning look as he answered her question. “Bo. You murdered Bo and then you stuffed a cummerbund into his mouth.”
“Bo,” she repeated in noncomprehension. And then, for a moment, Demi turned very pale. Her eyes flicked from Bo’s brother to her cousin. “Bo’s dead?” she asked hoarsely.
It was half a question, half a statement uttered in total disbelief.
Then, not waiting for an answer, what had become known in the county as Demi’s famous temper flared, and she jumped up to her feet, her fists banging down on the tabletop.
“You think I killed Bo?” she demanded incredulously, fury flashing in her eyes. “Sure,” she said mockingly. “Makes perfect sense to me. The man’s dead so let’s blame it on the woman he dumped—EXCEPT I DIDN’T DO IT!” she yelled, her angry gaze sweeping over her cousin and her former fiancé’s brother.
“Sit down, Demi,” Finn ordered sternly. “And calm down.”
Instead of listening to her cousin and taking her seat again, Demi Colton remained standing, a firecracker very close to going off in a flash of fireworks.
“No, I will not calm down,” she cried. “And unless you have some kind of concrete evidence against me—” she said, staring straight at her cousin.
“How about Bo writing your name on the asphalt in his own blood?” Finn said. “Demi C.”
Demi paled for a moment. “The killer is framing me?”
Finn raised an eyebrow.
Demi gave him a smug look. “Just as I thought. You don’t have any sort of actual evidence against me. Okay, I’m out of here,” Demi declared.
“You’ll leave when I tell you to leave,” Finn told her sternly. Rising from his chair on the opposite side of the table, he loomed over her.
“Do you have any evidence against me, other than my name written in Bo’s blood and the fact that I had the bad judgment to have been engaged to the jerk for a month?” she asked, looking from her cousin to the other man in the room.
Though it obviously killed him, Finn was forced to say, “No, but—”
Triumph filled her eyes. “There is no ‘but’ here,” Demi retorted. “You have nothing to hold me on, that means I’m free to go. So I’m going.” Her eyes swept over her cousin and Carson. “Gentlemen, it has definitely not been a pleasure.”
And with that, she swept past them to the interrogation room door like a queen taking leave of a pair of disloyal subjects.
Finn shook his head as his cousin stormed out. “Hell of a lot of nerve,” he muttered under his breath.
“As I recall, Demi was never the sweet, retiring type. If she was, she would have never become a bounty hunter,” Carson told him.
Finn blew out a breath. “You have a point.” He walked out of the interrogation room with Carson directly behind him. “Well, check out her alibi, talk to anyone who might have seen her,” the chief said, addressing the victim’s brother. “I’m open to any further suggestions.”
Carson looked at his boss in mild surprise. “I thought you made it clear that I wasn’t allowed to work on my brother’s case.” Although, he thought, since Finn could work on the case in which his cousin was a suspect, he should be allowed to investigate his brother’s murder.
“Technically, you’re not,” Finn said as they walked out into the main squad room. “But I’m not an idiot, Gage. You’re going to work this whether I give you my blessing or not.” He stopped just before his office. “So you have any ideas where to start?”
He’d
