Roughshod Justice. Delores Fossen
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some memory loss. That was a nasty gash near her hairline, and the medic had said she might have a concussion. But pretending to have amnesia would be a quick way for Kelly not to have to answer any of his questions.
Jameson didn’t get a chance to say anything else to her. That’s because Gabriel finished his chat with the CSI and joined them.
“So who is she?” Gabriel immediately asked Jameson.
“Kelly Stockwell.”
She repeated that as if trying to figure out if it was right or if she recognized it. Either she didn’t or else was faking it, and tears sprang to her eyes.
A first.
Kelly wasn’t the crying sort.
“She’s not linked to the...other stuff going on, is she?” Gabriel asked.
Jameson didn’t need him to clarify “the other stuff.” They were just two days away from the tenth anniversary of their parents’ brutal murders. Murders that had been splattered over every newspaper in the state, and because of all that news coverage, it had brought out a couple of crazies. People who’d wanted to see the old crime scene. Others who’d talked of copycat killings.
At least his parents’ killer, Travis Canton, was behind bars and was no longer a threat. Of course, there were some, and Kelly was one of them, who thought the wrong man had been convicted.
Jameson didn’t see it that way. Travis and his father had had plenty of run-ins over the land boundaries they shared. Added to that, Travis was a drunk. A mean one. And Jameson believed it was in one of those mean rages that Travis had slipped into the Beckett home and knifed Jameson’s dad. When his mother saw what was going on, Travis killed her, too.
And that was the theory the prosecution had used to give Travis a life sentence.
“She’s connected in a way,” Jameson verified. “She’s a PI, and she and her sister, Mandy, owned an agency in San Antonio. A few years back, August hired them to find any evidence to clear Travis’s name.”
No need to clarify to Gabriel who August was. He was Travis’s half brother and a pain because he was always pushing hard to come up with someone else who could have murdered the Becketts. That way, he could spring his brother from jail.
That wasn’t going to happen.
At least not with anything August might have gotten from Kelly and Mandy. Even though there hadn’t been any new evidence to find, that hadn’t stopped Kelly from digging. And she’d done her digging by getting close to Jameson so she could steal that file.
“I didn’t know what Kelly was up to when I met her about two years ago,” Jameson went on. “I didn’t know she was working for August. But when I found out, she disappeared, and her sister eventually closed the business.”
Jameson didn’t mention anything about his sleeping with Kelly. Didn’t have to do that. Gabriel slid him a glance to let him know that he knew. It was that sixth sense that his big brother had.
“I take it there’s some bad history...and more...between you two,” Gabriel added, and he aimed a look at Kelly.
“You could say that. At best she’s a liar and a thief. She stole everything I had about our parents’ murder investigation, including files with info that hadn’t been released to the public.” Obviously, though, that was the least of her worries right now. “Who found her?” Jameson asked. “Who called this in?”
“A guy driving by saw the two men in the pasture, and Kelly was running away. Or rather trying to do that. She collapsed near the ditch. Since she was armed, the guy didn’t get out of his truck, but he called it in. I had him go to the station to wait for me, and I’ll question him later.”
Good. Jameson wanted to hear what the man had to say. But more than that, he wanted to finish this conversation with Kelly.
“I can ride in the ambulance with her to the hospital,” Jameson offered.
Gabriel didn’t exactly jump to agree to that. Probably because he knew Jameson wasn’t in the best of moods. Still, Gabriel also knew that Jameson wouldn’t do anything to disrespect the badge. It didn’t mean, however, that he wouldn’t grill Kelly. As much as he could grill an injured woman anyway.
“Watch your step with her,” Gabriel warned him as Jameson got into the ambulance. “When I frisked her, she had two guns and a knife, and she would have hit me with a karate chop if I hadn’t gotten out of the way in time.”
“I thought you were going to try to kill me,” Kelly said.
Jameson hadn’t even been sure she was listening, but she obviously was. He also hadn’t remembered Kelly having any martial arts skills. Of course, probably everything she’d told him about herself was a lie. As far as Jameson was concerned, he didn’t really know the woman in front of him.
“Are you going to try to kill me?” she came out and asked, glancing first at Gabriel and Cameron. Then at Jameson.
Jameson tapped his badge. “I’m not the bad guy here.”
Her gaze darted away from his, and she took another of those uneasy breaths. “Sometimes bad guys wear badges.”
That didn’t sound like a guess or a general observation. “Is your amnesia cured and you’re remembering something specific?” Jameson pressed.
But he instantly regretted the snark. More tears came, and even though Kelly quickly brushed them away—cursed them, too—Jameson still saw the pain on her face. Not just physical pain, either. Whether or not the amnesia was real, she’d still been through some kind of ordeal.
“The CSI swabbed her hands for gunshot residue,” Gabriel explained, “but she put up a real fight about being fingerprinted.”
Jameson pulled back his shoulders. People who did that usually didn’t want their identities known. Coupled with the dyed hair—Kelly had been a brunette when he’d met her—she was obviously trying to disguise her appearance. Even her eyes were different. She’d hidden her green eyes with brown contacts.
“Call me if she says anything we can use to figure this out,” Gabriel added, shutting the ambulance door.
Jameson nodded and got seated just as the ambulance driver took off. The EMT continued to hold a compress to Kelly’s head and probably would have to do that the entire time since it was still bleeding.
It wouldn’t be a long ride to the hospital, only about ten minutes, and Jameson wanted to make the most of that time. He started by reading Kelly her rights. Gabriel had likely already done that, but Jameson didn’t want there to be any unticked boxes if she did confess to everything.
Whatever “everything” was.
“Did you shoot those two men?” he asked. “And before you lie, just remember we’ll know if you’ve fired a gun because there’ll be gunshot residue on your hands. Your weapons will be tested, too.”
She touched her fingers to her mouth, which was trembling a little. “I honestly don’t know if I shot them or not. They’re dead?”
He nodded, though the confirmation might not have even been necessary. Because she might already know the answer. “Who were they?”
An immediate head shake that time. So fast that the medic told her to keep still. “I don’t know that, either,” Kelly answered. Her gaze came to Jameson’s again. “Did you send them after me?”
There it was again—her distrust of him. Well, the feeling was mutual. “Let’s get something straight. I didn’t send thugs after you. I’m not here to kill you. Everything I’ve told you has been the truth, but you can’t say the same, can you?”
She stared at him. “You’re talking about that file you mentioned to the sheriff. I don’t remember it. I need to remember,” she added as she choked back a hoarse sob. “Because I have to