Before he opened his mouth and made an even bigger fool of himself, the telephone rang. He crossed the room and snatched up the receiver before the second ring. “Hayden.”
“Sheriff, you’re not going to believe what me and Willis found in that P.I.’s hotel room.”
It was Roy. Mitch glanced at the clock. “Roy, I thought everyone had called it a night?”
“I know,” he crooned. “But I just couldn’t wait till morning to do this. I talked Willis into coming over here with me after the search ended for the night.”
Mitch studied Alex, who was staring into her coffee cup again as if it held all the answers she needed. “So what’d you find?”
Roy’s excitement was palpable. “We found a high-powered rifle hidden under the mattress. How much you want to bet it’s the same one that killed Saylor?”
Chapter Two
Mitch sat in the darkness of his bedroom staring at the telephone on the table next to the bed. A faint beam from the moon filtered through the curtains silhouetting the table and the items that sat upon it. The digital alarm clock read 12:45 a.m.
He leaned back in his chair and told himself again that he couldn’t delay making that call any longer. For almost an hour now he’d been sitting here like this, mulling over all that had happened and putting off the inevitable. Roy had called his buddy in ballistics and gotten the promise of a priority test to confirm if the high-powered rifle found in Alex’s hotel room was, in fact, the one used to kill Saylor. They would have their answer some time tomorrow.
Mitch hadn’t told Roy that he had Alex in custody. What was the point? The search wouldn’t resume until daybreak. That was soon enough to announce the news in Mitch’s opinion, though for the life of him he couldn’t understand why he was delaying that call as well. He told himself that it was the right thing to do. First he needed to interrogate Alex further, and he wanted to do that on his own terms.
She wasn’t up to questioning tonight, that was certain. He hadn’t bothered to tell her about the rifle they’d found either. She might make a run for it in the middle of the night if she thought that new evidence, which made her look even guiltier, had been found. Continuing to behave in a completely unprofessional manner, Mitch had allowed her to finish her coffee and then he’d shown her to his spare room. Fifteen minutes later she’d been sleeping like a baby.
Opting to keep her whereabouts to himself until morning might not really bother anyone connected with the official search, but not telling Ashton was a whole other can of worms. There would be hell to pay if he didn’t tell Ashton. Whatever the man’s personal claim on Alex, as her attorney he wouldn’t appreciate being made to wait a moment longer than necessary.
Pushing to his feet, Mitch blew out a weary breath. He padded across the carpeted floor and sat down on the edge of his unmade bed. Until just over one week ago his professional life had been pretty much a breeze, other than the long hours. The worse thing that ever happened was the occasional drunken brawl at one of the college hangouts, or, even more infrequently, at the campus itself. With its five thousand students, Fulmer College was a pretty busy place. Despite the number of rowdy college students the school seemed to draw, trouble rarely found its way into Raleigh County.
But it sure as hell had waltzed into town with Alex Preston. She’d managed to not only turn his professional world upside down, but his personal life as well.
After calling information and requesting the number for the hotel, Mitch selected the option so the number would be automatically dialed. His voice rusty with sleep, the desk clerk offered his practiced welcome greeting, then transferred the call to Ashton’s room.
He answered on the first ring.
So, Mitch wasn’t the only one who couldn’t sleep. The thought only irritated him all the more. “This is Hayden. I’ve found Alex.”
“Is she all right?”
As had been the case from the start, the anticipation in the other man’s voice was a good deal more than professional concern. His relationship with Alex clearly went much deeper. That shouldn’t bother Mitch, but somehow it did.
“She’s fine.”
“And what does that mean?” Ashton snapped. “The last time you told me she was fine, she’d lost part of her memory. Where is she?”
Mitch struggled to control the unwarranted fury that rocketed inside him. “I said she’s fine. She’s sleeping.”
“Where the hell is she?”
“Here,” Mitch ground out. “At my house.”
The brief silence on the other end of the line spoke volumes. “Why is she at your house?” Ashton’s tone was guarded this time, almost accusing.
“She said she figured it was the last place anyone would look.” Mitch massaged his stubbled jaw in an attempt to stop the muscle jerking there.
“Give me directions,” Ashton ordered, “I’ll be right there.”
“No. I told you she’s sleeping.”
More silence.
“You can see her in the morning,” Mitch offered.
“I don’t know what you think you’re up to Hayden, but you’d better think long and hard before you step too far over that line. I won’t tolerate you coming between me and my client.”
Mitch shrugged off his shoulder holster and tossed it onto the bed behind him. “I’m getting tired of your threats, Ashton.” He gritted his teeth to hold back the rest of what he wanted to say. This was Mitch’s county. He didn’t need any big-city know-it-all telling him how to take care of his business.
“You can’t stop me from seeing her, you know that.”
“I have no intention of trying to stop you,” Mitch pointed out. “Be at my office at nine in the morning. You can see her then.”
That tense silence again. “I’ll be there at eight,” Ashton countered hotly, “and if you ask her just one question outside my presence I swear you’ll regret it.”
“I wouldn’t dream of questioning her without you,” Mitch assured him. “See you at nine.” He hung up the receiver before Ashton could protest.
One thing was crystal clear, Mitch decided as he climbed into bed with his usual sleeping companion, his weapon, he had to get his head together before morning. Whatever it was that had allowed Alex to get so deeply under his skin in such a short time, he had to find a way to ignore it. Because if Mitch was half as easy to read where Alex was concerned as Ashton was, the hotshot lawyer already knew too much.
ALEX SLOWLY OPENED her eyes and stared at the ceiling of her room. Something was different, but she couldn’t be sure what. A dull ache throbbed deep in her skull, making focused concentration impossible. She stretched and sore muscles screamed in protest. The memory of a fist slamming into her stomach, of steel fingers gripping her throat and shoving her hard ricocheted through her mind. The ache in her skull exploded into fierce pain. She groaned and sat up, resting her head in her hands.
It took her a few seconds to realize the fierce agony wasn’t real, only remembered from an event that hovered behind an impenetrable wall that wouldn’t allow her to recall the last six days of her life. When she’d finally convinced herself it wasn’t real, the dull ache was all that remained.
How had she lost that whole block of time? Why couldn’t she remember? The concept seemed completely foreign to her. She should simply be able to retrieve those lost hours like so much data on a floppy disk. But she couldn’t. The flash of memory she’d just experienced was only the second little frame of recall she’d had since waking up in the hospital