The Truth About Comfort Cove (12 page)

P
rofessor
M
elissa
B
eck
wasn’t sure she remembered Jack Colton. His picture “rang a bell,” but she’d had so many students over the years they’d blended together. She most definitely had never had anything but professional relationships with any of her students—was happily married, thank you— and only knew of one teacher/student relationship at UC during her tenure, and that had involved a male teacher with a female student and the two were now married.

“That was a bust,” Lucy said as she and Ramsey got back into the Rendezvous. Her stomach was in knots. Wakerby was next.

“Maybe not,” Ramsey’s reply surprised her. “I’ve been thinking about this. Colton lived under the radar. He never gave anyone any reason to suspect him of anything. Never drew attention to himself, except as a good worker. What we just heard fits that character type.”

“He obviously was a good employee.”

“And what better cover for getting away with something illegal?”
Colton’s time at UC was probably before his involvement with baby stealing. “You’re saying his personality fits the profile.”
“Exactly. Or that he was purposely under the radar so no one would suspect him of anything.”
“Or remember him.”
Again Ramsey’s theory made sense. They were closing in on this guy. They just had to keep looking.
And what about Wakerby? Were they still closing in on him? Or was he on the road to getting away from them?
“You want to stop anyplace before we head out to the prison?” They’d had coffee while they’d waited for Professor Beck to arrive, but he was at her mercy so it was polite to offer.
And a stop could distract her for a moment or two.
“What time is our appointment?”
“Ten-thirty.” She wasn’t afraid of Sloan Wakerby. She was afraid of his effect on her.
The only way to rid herself of fear was to face it. Head-on.
Ramsey settled back in his seat. “I’m good, then.”
He smiled at her, an expression filled with concern. And she had fears to face. Not all of them Wakerby related.
“Where were you born?” She’d have liked not to blurt the question so boldly, or with such a lack of finesse, but she was taking care of business now. If she was going to give up her information, he had to give up his.
“Vienna, Kentucky.”
He put it right out there. No prevarication. Maybe she’d been going at this all wrong.
She asked where Vienna was and found out that it was a small town in the southern part of the state.
“Did you grow up there?”
“Yes.”
“Are your parents still alive?” She felt as if they were playing twenty questions. Except that the answers were far more interesting than any game she’d ever played.
“Yes.”
“Still in Vienna?”
“Yes.” He was staring out the front windshield, somewhat intimidating in his navy suit and polished shoes. Funny, his holster didn’t intimidate her a bit. The polished shoes did.
“What does your father do for a living? Was he a cop, too?”
“No, a tobacco farmer. He’s retired.”
She took the ramp for the state highway that would lead to Wakerby’s temporary residence until he was sent to prison for the rest of his life. No need for GPS assistance on this trip. She could get to the jail in her sleep.
And she didn’t have to think of Wakerby right now, either.
“You grew up on a farm?” Lucy chanced a look at Ramsey, appearing so official as he sat there in his suit with a black portfolio folder balancing on one thigh.
“I grew up working on the farm alongside my father.”
Yesterday the man had told her nothing. Today he was giving her his world. Or at least a part of it. What had changed?
“How far is it to the jail?”
“Another half hour or so.” Along a stretch of sparsely populated Indiana farmland.
Wakerby had spent time in a house out in this country. So close to Aurora. Lucy shivered.
Face your fears.
“Do you have siblings?” she asked the man who would be traveling back to her house with her, to sleep in her home for one more night.
The man who’d be accompanying her to a wedding in a few short weeks.
The man she’d been tempted to lose herself in the night before.
“I had a sister. She died more than fifteen years ago.”
Wow. She hadn’t expected that. “I’m so sorry,” Lucy said, wishing she could stop the car. Offer him something.
Staring out the window, he didn’t look as if he needed anything.
“It was a long time ago.”
“Were you close?”
“It was my job to look out for her.” Which didn’t really answer her question.
“She was younger than you?”
“Older by two years.”
He was going to tell her to shut up any minute now. She had a million questions vying for attention.
“Was she sick?” Was that why he had to watch out for her?
“No. She died of an overdose.”
His tone warned her that the interview was over. Lucy drove, passing the occasional farmhouse. Horses. Cows. She came to a four-way stop in the middle of nowhere. And drove on.
None of Ramsey’s business was her business.
And he was, in the moment, everything to her.
Personal waywardness aside, she was glad that he was going to be on the opposite side of the one-way glass when she was questioning Sloan Wakerby.
Not to keep her safe from anything Wakerby might try while she was with him. Lucy had no doubt she could protect herself against the scum for the second or two it would take for a corrections officer to break in on them if Wakerby tried anything.
She was glad Ramsey was going to be there because when it came to Sloan Wakerby, she was beginning to doubt herself.
That was a first.
“You asked me if I share my mom’s negative feelings toward men.”
Ramsey Miller’s gaze left the road. His silent scrutiny sent her insides trembling.
Face your fears.
“I respect most of the cops I work with, male and female. And the men and women who serve who I don’t know, as well,” she said.
There was no fear attached to either statement.
“I have faith in my accountant, who is male. And in most other men I meet on a professional basis, unless they prove that they aren’t trustworthy.”
Good common sense. Normal. No fear there.
The jail complex was fifteen miles ahead. Wakerby had already been notified of the meeting. He knew she was almost there. He knew that, shortly, he would be alone with her.
He didn’t know that she had backup. That Ramsey Miller would be on the other side of the glass.
“I assume you’re going somewhere with this?” Ramsey asked, still watching her, and she realized that she’d been silent for a while.
“Personally, I don’t have time for men,” she said, blurting again. “It’s not that I don’t like men, or have a thing against men, I just don’t have time.”
“Okay.”
Twelve miles until the jail complex.
Fear.
“No, that’s not completely right.” Frowning, Lucy swiped back her hair, welcoming the second’s worth of cool air to her heated forehead.
She couldn’t rely on Ramsey to help her with Sloan Wakerby. Not like this…
“I…don’t…trust men.” The words were damning. Ugly. Cold. “Not in my personal life.”
Her companion’s attention switched back to the world outside the car.
“It’s okay, Lucy.”
“What is?” Where? She needed something to be okay.
“You have no worries where I’m concerned.”
She glanced his way. He glanced hers.
And she knew that he was one hundred percent completely wrong.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

R
amsey was alone
in the viewing room, with the exception of one officer at the door behind him who was also watching the proceedings between Lucy Hayes and Sloan Wakerby. Another guard stood outside the door that Lucy had just passed through.

Foregoing the row of hard-backed seats, Ramsey stood at the window, holding in both hands the portfolio he’d brought in with him as Lucy got a verbal agreement from Sloan Wakerby that he’d agreed to speak with her without the presence of an attorney.

At the prisoner’s acquiescence, she proceeded to nod at the guard who closed the door, leaving her alone with the man who’d raped her mother.

“Nice to see you again, Mr. Wakerby.” Her tone told all witnesses to the conversation that she didn’t think there was anything nice about the man seated, hands cuffed behind his back, at the table she stood before. It also conveyed, quite clearly, that she was not the least bit intimidated by the man who’d brutalized her mother and abducted her older sister.

Not that Wakerby had any idea who Lucy was, other than a cop involved in his case.
Wakerby’s grin was there, but not as apparent as it had been the first time Ramsey had had the displeasure of meeting the sorry excuse for a human being.
The fifty-five-year-old was also sporting a fairly recent bruise over his right eye.
“You been in a fight, sir?” Lucy’s tone softened a fraction as she took a seat in front of the man. A move Ramsey would have chosen himself. Wakerby, who was seated facing Ramsey, wouldn’t listen to her if she tried to lord it over him.
The prisoner’s chin lifted, but there was no other response.
“I’m sorry to see that your reception here isn’t all that you’d hoped it would be,” she said to the man. “I hear that even in jail there are standards,” she continued, her voice almost sweet sounding. “Guys who rape are okay. I mean, everyone knows that the girl was asking for it, right?”
Lucy’s pause could have been tactical or it could be that she was choking on her words. Ramsey suspected it was a bit of both.
“But guys who steal babies while they’re raping women… now that’s looked upon a little differently.” Her voice didn’t waver at all as she continued. If Ramsey didn’t know better, he’d never have guessed that the woman before him was in any way attached to the case she was working.
And he was fairly good at picking up on the unspoken intricacies in people’s body language and voice variances.
“Unless we know that you didn’t also turn your sick attentions on that baby, you’re going to get the reputation of a lower than lowlife, Mr. Wakerby… .”
Lucy’s pause this time had to be deliberate. It was perfect.
The woman in front of him might be little and blonde, and sexy-looking in her black slacks and black-and-white fitted tweed jacket, but she had more guts than any officer he’d ever worked with. Himself included.
“What did you do with that baby, Mr. Wakerby?”
The man didn’t answer.
“You agreed to meet with me this time without your lawyer present, sir. You can talk to me now.”
Still nothing.
“If you did to that little girl what you did to her mother, then, fine, sir, you will pay for your actions. If you didn’t, then you should speak up soon, because if people on the inside think you did, the truth isn’t going to matter anymore.
“Did you sexually abuse that little girl, Mr. Wakerby?”
Ramsey could only see the back of Lucy’s head. She held it straight and tall.
“You jealous?” Wakerby spoke, his gaze penetrating, no smile evident.
“No. I want the truth. I want you to pay for what you did, not for what you didn’t do.”
The truth in Lucy’s words rang clearly. Wakerby might think Lucy was trying to keep him from being unfairly brutalized in jail. Instead, she’d just promised him full retribution for brutalizing her mother, abducting her sister and any other adverse effects that Allison Hayes had suffered because of his actions.
“The truth is, I ain’t into babies,” Wakerby said. “And I’m done here.”
Relief was a sweet release from the tension of the past moments. Lucy had done well.
His next job was to let her know that without crossing the very clear line she’d drawn between them in the car on the way to jail.

“D
id you believe him
?” Lucy’s question came as soon as they were alone in the hallway outside the barred portion of the jail building, having just reclaimed the weapons they’d surrendered before entering the visiting area.

“That he wasn’t into babies?” Ramsey’s words kept her centered on the case, not on the panic surging through her, compliments of Sloan Wakerby.

“Yes.” Ramsey was here because she trusted his opinion. And because she didn’t trust her own where her mother’s rapist was concerned.

“I believed him.”
“You don’t think he was just saving his ass? Buying my protection? Because I could have been threatening to let it slip to his fellow prisoners that he’d raped a child?”

“Sloan Wakerby would never let a woman protect his ass.” Right. She knew that. Knew his type.
“He was protecting his own reputation,” she said, seeing

clearly for a moment. “He’s not afraid of being roughed up. He’s afraid of being seen as something he is not.”

“The man feels no compunction for what he did to your mother. Or any other women he may have violated through the years—”

“Because chances are good my mother’s not the only one. I know. Amber’s all over Wakerby’s past, looking for other victims.” Amber Locken. She had to call her associate and let her know how the meeting went.

Problem was, she wasn’t quite sure how it went. And she couldn’t have Locken, or anyone, know that. The one thing Lucy had always been confident about, the one thing she’d never doubted, was her ability to get the job done.

“Sloan Wakerby has Sloan Wakerby’s back,” she said. “His safety and security comes from his own belief in himself. His weakness is being accused of being someone he isn’t—or of a crime he didn’t commit. That’s one thing he can’t tolerate.”

“He’s also not smiling anymore.” Ramsey’s words came from directly behind her.
She’d noted the lack of a smile. And chancing that her reading of the situation was accurate, as opposed to wishful thinking, she said, “I’m getting to him.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Ramsey walked step by step beside her on the way to the car.
She clicked the remote entry on her key ring, unlocking their doors. “I’m not going to get a confession.”
“You just got one.”
Dropping her purse on the floor behind her seat, Lucy took her time getting in the car. And then, seat belt buckled, she looked at Ramsey. “I got a confession?”
How could she have missed it? What hadn’t she seen?
“Wakerby didn’t sexually violate your sister, but something about what happened to Allie bothers him. Otherwise, he’d be laughing his ass off at you.”
Lucy froze. Too stunned to care that she’d missed something so obvious. “He knows where my sister is,” she said slowly. Had she been at this too long to believe that she might actually succeed? “He knows what happened to Allie.”
“Yep.”
“I…” She didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know how she felt. About anything. Lucy stared at Ramsey.
“You’re too connected to the case for your cop instincts to kick in full swing, or to get a purely professional reading on him. Your personal emotions get in the way.”
“You think I should pull out?”
“You aren’t in. Not in any official capacity. Everything’s in order. Your captain saw to that. And he respects you enough to let you move forward where you must. I’m just saying that you need to go easier on yourself. No one expects you to be on the top of your detective game, here. And even with that, you just conducted a superior interview.”
More confused than ever, Lucy started the car, thinking that it was a good thing that she still felt like she knew how to drive.
Everything else in her world was in total upset.
Most particularly the fact that she had a distinct feeling that she’d just been nurtured by Detective Ramsey Miller.
And she’d liked it.