The Only Witness. Laura Scott
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you walk me through the events that happened before I arrived?”
She swallowed hard. “I was finishing up the dinner dishes while Abby was playing in her room. I heard a crash and hurried over to see she’d dropped her tablet. She must have been afraid that I’d yell at her, because she was hiding under the bed.”
“Go on,” he urged.
“When I bent down to check if she was under there, the window shattered. I heard a loud bang and realized that someone was shooting at the house. I was able to get Abby to come out and my plan was to hide in the bathroom until the police arrived.”
“Did you call them?”
“No.” She realized her phone was still on the kitchen counter. “I didn’t have my phone. I thought about going back to the kitchen, but then I wondered if it might be better to hide.” She didn’t want to say exactly what she’d thought, since she knew Abby was listening.
“I was outside the front of your house when I heard the gunshots,” he said.
Now that it was over, she was grateful for his impeccable timing. “I’m glad.”
“When was the last time you spoke to your ex-husband?” Miles asked.
She grimaced. “Last week. He was supposed to take Abby for the weekend, but he called to cancel again.”
“Again?”
“He’s supposed to take her every other weekend, but he’s canceled three times in a row. But I know he keeps in touch with Abby on ChatTime, right, Abby?”
Her daughter pressed her face more firmly against Paige’s neck but nodded her head.
“ChatTime?” Miles repeated. “They communicate face-to-face using the tablet?”
“Yes. It was Travis’s idea, even though I’ve tried to tell him that ChatTime isn’t the same as spending time together actually doing things.” Yet another bone of contention between them.
“Abby? Did you talk to your daddy tonight?” Miles asked.
Paige was surprised when every muscle in her daughter’s body went tense.
“Abby, honey, it’s okay,” she murmured, stroking the child’s hair, the exact same color as her own. “We’re safe now. I’m not mad at you for dropping the tablet. We can always get another one.”
Abby didn’t relax or lift her head, or indicate in any way that she’d heard either of them talking, even though Paige was certain she had.
“Abby, please say something.” Her motherly instincts were screaming at her that something was wrong with her daughter. But what?
“Are you sure she’s not hurt?” Miles asked in a concerned tone.
“I don’t know.” Paige ran her hands up and down Abby’s small body, feeling for anything abnormal.
When her daughter shook her head from side to side, she stopped. “Are you hurt?” she asked.
Another head shake.
“Are you upset about something?”
Definite head nod up and down.
“What’s wrong? Will you tell me why you’re upset?”
Another head shake no.
“Why won’t you talk to me?” Paige asked helplessly.
“She’s probably still scared from everything that’s happened,” Miles said, as if trying to reassure her. “Rather than taking you to the police station, we’ll stay at a motel for the rest of the night. Tomorrow you’ll need to give a statement. Maybe Abby will feel better by then, too.”
“Did you hear that, Abby? Detective Miles is taking us to a motel. Maybe they’ll have a swimming pool. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
No response.
Fear squeezed like a fist around her heart. Abby loved to swim. She was normally a bright, talkative little girl. In fact, her kindergarten teacher sent notes home on a weekly basis complaining about Abby being such a chatterbox.
Paige thought back to when she’d heard the tablet drop on the floor, the way her daughter had been hiding under the bed, clutching her stuffed elephant with teary eyes, moments before Paige heard the sound of gunfire.
And she knew something was terribly wrong. More than just the gunfire they’d experienced had caused such a drastic change in her daughter.
But what?
Miles kept an eye on the road behind him, making sure there wasn’t anyone following them as he drove through the night. The hour wasn’t that late, so there was more traffic than he would have liked, forcing him to make several turns, heading in a zigzag pattern to the Ravenswood Motel, a place he’d learned about a few months ago when his older brother, Marc, had hidden out there with a witness. A witness that he’d ended up marrying just a month ago.
As happy as he was for Marc, no way was he going down that same path. Serious relationships were not for him.
Pulling his thoughts back to the situation at hand, Miles tried to put the puzzle pieces of his case together. Jason’s body had been found in a Dumpster a few minutes before three o’clock in the morning, after succumbing to injuries from a gunshot wound to the chest. The only person Jason had seemed to have issues with was his boss, Travis Olson. Miles had gone to Sci-Tech first, but had been told that Travis wasn’t there. He’d gone to Olson’s condo, but he hadn’t been there, either. So he’d dug into Travis Olson’s background, finding out about his ex-wife, Paige, and their daughter, Abigail. So he’d headed over, only to find Travis’s ex caught in the middle of an ambush.
Coincidence? Not likely, although it would be nice to have ballistics prove a connection. Maybe the slugs they’d find in Paige’s house would match the type that had been used on Jason.
But why shoot at the woman and child in the first place? That was another link he couldn’t ignore.
He wasn’t going to allow anything to happen to an innocent woman and her child, so if that meant bypassing normal police procedures, then fine. Their safety had to come first.
“Miles?” Paige’s voice was soft, tentative.
“Yes?” He met her gaze in the rearview mirror.
“When do you think I’ll be able to take Abby home?”
He grimaced and shook his head. “Not anytime soon, unfortunately. Once the crime scene techs have finished gathering evidence, you can authorize the repairs to the windows, but that’s it. You can’t return until we know who’s after you and why.”
“Don’t you think it might be a mistake? That maybe some other house was the real target?” There was a thin thread of hope in her voice, one that he didn’t like having to destroy with the blunt truth.
“No, I don’t.” He wished there was something to say to make her feel better. “How much do you know about your husband’s work at Sci-Tech?”
“Ex-husband,” she corrected tersely. “Not a lot. I know he’s involved in artificial intelligence, but he didn’t confide in me about the specifics. In fact, he always made a point to remind me that his work is highly confidential.”
Highly confidential? That’s exactly what Jason Whitfield had told him when he’d asked about what he was working on. Was it possible Sci-Tech was doing classified work for the government?
“How long have you been divorced?”
“Three years.” He caught a glimpse of her pale hand as she smoothed her palm over her daughter’s back.
“A lot can change in three