Breaker's Reef (18 page)

“… just bringing Chief of Police Matthew Cade in for questioning in the murder of Jamie Maddox, the girl found yesterday in Breaker’s Reef Grotto off the coast of Cape Refuge. Chief Cade admitted to having written
Will You Marry Me
on the wall of the cavern where the body was found.”

Blair caught her breath. Cade hadn’t written that. It was already there! She took a step forward, ready to run onto their makeshift set and set the woman straight.

“Sources tell us the girl was murdered with a .40 caliber revolver, the same gun used by police forces across Georgia. Until the sandal was found in his truck bed, police were wondering if Cade had simply been in the right place at the wrong time, but
now it’s clear he’s being questioned about the murders. Meanwhile, Amelia Roarke, the dead girl’s best friend, is still missing.”

When the broadcast was over, Blair rushed forward and grabbed the reporter. “You got that all wrong! How could you report those things? I was
there.
I was with Cade when he found the body. He didn’t write that on the wall. It was already there!”

“Oh, you must be Blair Owens.”

She hadn’t expected the reporter to know her. “Yes, I’m the publisher of the
Cape Refuge Journal.
”

“And his girlfriend. My sources tell me that Cade admitted going out to the grotto early that morning to write
Will You Marry Me
on the wall. He wrote it for you, Blair.”

She stood, mouth agape, as the reporter took off to join the other cluster of reporters waiting for a statement. Could Cade really have written that? Why wouldn’t he have told her? Her heart raced, and she couldn’t catch her breath. Her eyes strayed to the door, and she swallowed back the tightness in her throat.

She had to get in there and find out how much truth there was in the reporter’s claim. If Cade
had
written the words, it meant he wanted to marry her. Hope fluttered up in her heart.

But then she realized that the proposal itself would implicate Cade further. No wonder they suspected him.

She shivered as she understood the complexity of the killer’s scheme … and his fearless execution of it.

B
lair knew she had no chance of getting into the police station as a reporter, so she kept her press credentials in her purse and found a back entrance. She slipped inside and hurried to the front desk. The place was a war room full of perpetrators and complainants, the chaos barely controlled by irritable cops.

“May I help you?”

“Yes,” she said. “My fiancé was brought here. I need to know if he’s been arrested.” The word had tumbled so freely from her lips—a lie she hoped Cade wouldn’t hear about—but she knew nothing less would get her information.

“What’s his name?”

“Matthew Cade.”

“Oh, yes.” The female officer looked her over. “There hasn’t been an arrest. He’s just being questioned. Are you the one who was with him when he found the body?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Wait here just a minute.”

She waited as the sergeant left the desk and disappeared into another room. A drunk man who reeked of body odor and Jack Daniels stumbled into her, and the cop behind him grabbed the man’s collar and pulled him back. “Sorry, ma’am.”

“It’s okay.” She looked past the drunk and saw the sergeant coming back.

“Miss Owens, could you come with me? Agent Yeager would like to talk to you.”

She went willingly, hoping to be taken to the same room where Cade was, but instead, they took her to an empty room. Two GBI agents and a transcriber came in with her, and she realized she had plunged herself into an official interview.

She started to protest but then realized that anything she told them could help vindicate Cade. So she sat down, trying to be submissive, and went through the whole story again.

Agent Yeager took copious notes as she recounted what had happened in the cavern. When she finished, he looked up at her, his small eyes boring into her. “What did Cade say to you about the writing on the wall?”

She tried to think. “Nothing, really. There was chalk there, under the writing, and I suggested that it might have fingerprints on it.”

“Then you weren’t aware that he’d written it?”

There it was again. She caught her breath and stared across the table at them. “No. The first I heard of that was a few minutes ago when one of the reporters was broadcasting it.” She leaned forward on the table. “Is that true? Did Cade say he wrote that?”

“Yes, he did. And frankly, I’m a little confused, Miss Owens. Didn’t you tell the sergeant at the front desk that you were his fiancée?”

Busted. She let out a long sigh. “I exaggerated, okay? I didn’t think being his girlfriend would get me in. I needed to be here for him. I had to make sure everything was all right.”

“So the two of you haven’t discussed the writing on the wall since the body was found?”

“Cade’s been busy ever since. We haven’t had much chance to talk.” She sat there, staring down at the wood grain on the table, trying to think. If Cade wrote those words on the wall, then he had planned to ask her to marry him. A sense of loss poured over her, mingled with that fragile joy.

He was going to ask her to marry him …

“Has there been any discussion of marriage before?” Yeager’s question shook her out of her thoughts.

She swallowed. “Not in so many words …” Tears came to her eyes, as she thought back over that day. He’d been so insistent about their taking that day off and going out to the grotto. It had seemed important to him. And when he picked her up that day, he’d had a glisten and a grin in his eyes. He’d been nervous, and very gentle, and enchantingly attentive.

She thought of the struggle they’d both had to keep their relationship Christ-centered, the way he always pulled away when their feelings pulled them together, the way he would kiss her good-bye at night with that look that told her he wanted to stay.
You’re so hard to leave at night
, he’d whispered a few nights ago.

How could such good intentions have gone so terribly wrong?

She struggled to steady her voice. “I don’t know for certain what his intentions were that day, but I know Cade better than anyone else. He was as shocked as I was to find that body.” She held Yeager’s gaze and leaned in toward him. “Agent Yeager, you’re questioning him. I can understand that, given the circumstances. But you need to be asking the
right
questions. Who wanted to set Cade up? Who knew he was going to be out there that day? Who are his enemies?”

Yeager didn’t respond. Maybe they were already doing that. If they weren’t, surely Cade was getting those things out in the interview. He wouldn’t be taking this passively.

“Is he going to be arrested?”

Yeager looked noncommittal. “I can’t say. It depends on what we find.”

When they were finished with her, they let her wait in the waiting area. She jittered and paced and tried to fight off the
headache clamping on her temples. Two hours went by, and finally, Cade came out. His face was tense, exhausted, pale. She knew the work of deciphering every thought he’d had and every move he’d made in the last few days had worn him out.

When he saw her, his face changed. She saw a visible softening and a smile in his eyes. He was glad to see her.

She went to him, and he slid his arms around her. “How long have you been here?” he whispered against her ear.

“Since they brought you.”

“I’m sorry it took so long.” He stroked her hair and tipped her face up to his. “Take me home.”

“They’re letting you go?”

“I told them everything I knew. Passed the polygraph.”

Relief flooded through her. “I thought they were going to arrest you.”

“So did I. I guess my record and my service count for something. They’re letting me leave, but it’s not over yet.”

They got into her car, and as she drove, he stroked her hair and rubbed her neck, as if she was the one who’d been in the hot seat all afternoon. She wanted to ask him about the writing on the wall, but the words got caught in her throat.

“Cade, who do you think did this?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve been racking my brain. I gave them a list of everyone I could think of who we might have arrested in the last couple of years, people who might have it in for me.”

“Do you think you’re in danger?”

“It’s hard to say.”

She knew that meant
yes.

He got quiet as she drove home, and she wished she could take the pain from him. “Are they giving you back your truck?”

“Not yet. Guess I’ll drive a squad car until I get it back.” He saw that she was heading to the station. “You can take me home. I need to eat something, and I’d love to get a shower before I go back to work. It was hot in there. You’d think they could afford better air-conditioning.”

They got to his house, and she sat in the car for a moment, not wanting to say good-bye with so many questions hanging over her. But how would she ask them?

“Come in with me. You’re the only bright spot in this day.”

He did it to her every time. Made her feel as if she was the most important person on earth to him.

She went in and busied herself making sandwiches as he took a shower. When he came out, he was wearing jeans and a white Henley shirt. His feet were bare, and his hair was wet.

He came to the counter where she’d laid out the food, and he slid onto a stool. Instead of grabbing his sandwich, he took her hand, and pulled her to him. His kiss made her weak, and she felt as if she would melt right into him, merging body and mind.

She could hardly breathe when she pulled back.

He stroked her hair back from her face. “I love you, Blair.”

She could never hear those words enough. “I love you too.” Tears came to her eyes then, and she started to cry. She wasn’t sure why, but it had something to do with a thwarted proposal, a chance that had been lost, a question never posed.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

She shook her head, and touched his lips with her fingertips. “Nothing.”

“Something,” he whispered. “Tell me.”

She drew in a deep, shaky breath. “There are rumors.”

He didn’t seem surprised. “Which ones?”

She swallowed and wished she could stop the tears. “About … the writing in the cavern. They said that … they said you wrote it.”

He gazed into her eyes, and gently he wiped away the tears from her face. “That’s because I did.”

She breathed a laugh through her tears, and he took her hand and kissed it, brought it to his face and held it there.

“It was a good plan. I was going to make it the most romantic proposal in the world, because you deserved that. I never expected it to end the way it did.”

She drew in a sob. “Cade, it’s the question that matters. Not the method.”

He nodded. “I know. I just wanted it to be so memorable. I wanted it to be something we could tell our children, our grandchildren … I wanted it to be a love story, not a murder mystery.”

“It
is
a love story. It’s romantic, and beautiful. Right here and now.”

His eyes misted over. “You’re right.” He stood and led her to his couch, sat down and pulled her onto his lap. “Blair, you mean so much to me. I’ve loved you for years. I don’t even know how long.”

The words were crushing in their honesty, blinding in their beauty.

“I can hardly stand to leave you at night anymore. I want more of you. I want you beside me every day for the rest of my life. I want to wake up and see your face every morning.”

She hadn’t expected to fall apart, but the sobs racked her throat and her body. He held her, strong and secure, in his arms.

“I don’t know what the coming days are going to hold. This whole thing could spiral downhill. I suppose I could even be arrested. It could be a very stressful time.”

Blair stroked his face. “We’ve been through stressful times before. We’ve fought battles together. God has always been with us.”

“Yes, He has. And I know He’s with us now, telling us that He created us to be together.”

“And He looks at us, His creation, and it’s good.”

He nodded. “It’s very good.” He nuzzled against her hand, kissed her fingertips. “Blair, if you would marry me, I would consider myself the most blessed man on the face of the earth, and I would spend my life trying to make you feel as special as you are to me.”

She could hardly speak. She nodded her head, trying to say
yes.

He reached into the drawer of the end table next to them, pulled out an oyster shell. She watched him turn it over in his fingers. “That day, when we were at the cavern, I was going to let you find this.”

She took it in her trembling hands. “An oyster?”

“Open it.” His eyes were on her as she pried the shells apart.

And then she saw it. A diamond solitaire, radiant and white, catching the light in every facet, and sparkling like his eyes. “Oh, Cade.”

He got the ring out and took her hand. “Say you’ll marry me, Blair.”

She sucked in a sob. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

He slid it on her finger, and a symphony crescendoed in her heart. Dreams long unspoken had come true. The man she had longed for would be her husband.

He kissed her again, a long, lingering kiss that told her miracles do happen. God does hear. And when the kiss broke, Cade moaned against her lips. “One condition.”

“What?”

“We’ll have a short engagement. I’m talking real short. I want you to have the wedding that little girls dream of … but I’m asking you to plan it as fast as you can.”

That was one request Blair was delighted to honor.

D
on’t let me die.

Amelia Roarke’s silent prayer rose up into the black night, but she feared it hit the ceiling sixteen feet above her, no more able to escape than she was. She longed for morning, when the first rays of light would ease the darkness and make her prison less of a terror.

She was weak … so weak she couldn’t fight him off any longer when he came for her. She hadn’t eaten in … how long? Two days? Three? She’d lost track. She’d had nothing to drink in all that time, either. Thank God for the brief rain yesterday, when the rain drizzled through the trap door overhead. She lay on her back, mouth open, desperate for hydration.