Cowboy Commando. Joanna Wayne
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his dark eyes. Tonight his gaze seared into hers accusingly.
His five o’clock shadow was pronounced, his face a mix of taut planes and angles, his muscles strained and pushing against the white cotton dress shirt. The white dress shirt didn’t fit the image she’d carried of him for the last six years, not even with the top two buttons undone and the sleeves rolled up to just below his elbows.
The rest of him fit the image perfectly. The lean, hard body. The tanned skin. The thick locks of dark hair falling across his forehead giving him a devil-may-care look and a sexiness that wouldn’t quit.
Linney took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, then pushed her back against the slats of the chair. “Julie’s mother drowned last Friday. Amy Colley. You may have read about it in the newspaper. It happened in Green’s Harbor. That’s a small town on the bay about twenty miles south of Houston.”
“Yeah, I know where Green’s Harbor is. And I read about the accident. Her husband came home from work and found her floating in their backyard swimming pool.”
“That’s what he said. It’s not what happened.”
Cutter’s eyebrows arched. “Oh?”
“He killed her.”
“By he, I assume you are talking about the husband?”
“Yes, Dane Colley. Amy’s husband.”
“And also Julie’s father?”
She nodded.
“I suppose you have proof of your accusation.”
“I don’t have hard evidence, if that’s what you mean. But I know he did it.”
“So now you’re psychic?”
“This isn’t a joke, Cutter.”
“I’m not laughing.” His eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched. “Didn’t I read that Dane Colley is a homicide detective?”
“Yes, and that’s the worst part of all this. He knows how to play the system and he’s got friends in all the right places. They’ll take him at his word and there won’t be a real investigation into the murder. He’ll just kill my friend Amy and get away with it—unless someone stops him.”
“Did you talk to the Green’s Harbor Police Department about your suspicions?”
“I tried. I gave the clerk a statement and he said I’d hear from one of the detectives. That was two days ago. I’ve called several times since then as well. No one’s called me back. I also called the news department of several of the local TV channels. They told me they’d need more than groundless suspicions to run a story.”
Cutter walked to the refrigerator and retrieved a couple more beers. He opened them both and set one in front of Linney. “Only two left,” he said. “I’m not sure that will get us through this explanation.”
“You asked for the facts.”
“I’m still waiting for the main one. Why is the daughter of the recently deceased mother and the homicide-detective father sleeping in my bedroom?”
Linney pushed back from the table. “Don’t you get it? I can’t get through to the police via normal channels, but if they suspect I’ve kidnapped Julie, they’ll have to contact me. And if the media gets involved, all the better.”
Cutter took a huge gulp of the cold beer before finally straddling one of the kitchen chairs. He stretched his left leg in front of him and massaged the thigh.
She knew from what Merlee had told her that he’d taken two bullets in that leg. She wondered if the stress she was causing him was making the wounds ache. She hoped not, but it couldn’t be helped.
“You’re not making a lot of sense, Linney. If there’s a beginning to this story, I suggest you start there.”
The beginning? Linney had no clue how far back the roots of the murder actually extended, but her first suspicion about Dane Colley went back to the day she’d met Amy. It had been the faculty’s first day of school last September. The fading bruise on Amy’s right cheek had caught Linney’s attention during the principal’s introduction of new staff members.
It had brought back bitter memories of the one and only time Alfred had slugged her. She’d packed her bags that night, left his overpriced, gaudily grandiose mansion in River Oaks and never returned.
The punch had done what years of unhappiness and feeling like the pseudo-princess of a bogus furniture kingdom couldn’t. It had knocked some sense into her and freed her to file for divorce.
Linney hadn’t asked Amy about her bruise that day, but she had asked her about several subsequent ones over the next few months as she and Amy developed a friendship. Amy had always made flimsy excuses—until last week.
“Are you going to talk or not?”
The impatience in Cutter’s voice pushed Linney to find a place to begin. “Amy and I both work at the Green’s Harbor Kindergarten and Early Learning Center,” she said, deciding basic background was all he really needed to know. “I’m a teacher. Amy’s a paraprofessional.”
“When did you start teaching?”
“Two years ago, right after I left Al. This was Amy’s first year and she’s come to work with bruises on her face and arms too many times to count.”
“Did she say her husband had caused them?”
“No. I think she was too embarrassed to admit it. She always came up with some ridiculous story about falling over a rake in the garden or walking into an open door.”
“Yet you seem sure he’s to blame?”
All too sure. Linney took a sip of the beer. “Amy called me last Thursday and asked me to meet her at the café on Bay Drive for coffee. It was the first time I’d heard from her since school had let out three weeks earlier for summer vacation and I was really looking forward to seeing her.”
“What happened?”
“When I arrived, she was already sitting at one of the outside tables near the water. The first thing I saw when she looked up was a violently purple bruise and a ball of swollen flesh beneath her right eye. That time when I asked her about it, she admitted that Dane had punched her.”
“Did she say why?”
“Does it matter why?”
“Call me curious.”
“He’d tried to reach her on her cell phone and couldn’t.”
“Sounds brutal.”
“It sounds criminal,” Linney said, “because it is. Amy told me she was afraid of him. She’d made up her mind to leave him, even though he’d threatened to kill her if she ever tried it.”
If Linney had suspected for a second what was going to follow, she’d have begged Amy to run away that very day. But who could foresee murder?
“And this was last Thursday before Amy Colley drowned on Friday?”
“Right. Dane must have found out she was leaving and made good on his threat.”
“That’s a big assumption, Linney.”
“Men kill their wives. I hear about cases like that all the time on those TV crime documentaries. And those are just the ones who get caught.”
“Maybe so, but thousands of women leave abusive husbands every year. Very few of those husbands resort to murder.”
“Then I guess Dane’s the exception.”
“Have you seen him since Amy’s death?”
“I saw him at Amy’s funeral, but didn’t get a chance to speak to him.”
“When was