Broken Promises (2 page)

“Miss Smithson?”

“That’s me,” she said with a smile guaranteed
to warm the heart of many a good pooch. And even some not so
inclined.

Apparently, having his heart warmed wasn’t
Detective Dog’s idea of an interview. He gestured for her to have a
seat and proceeded to tell her the interview was being
videotaped.

What he did
not
do was read her her
rights. No Miranda had to be a good thing…for a start, anyway.

Maybe if she sat, rolled over, and jumped
through all their hoops, the department would get off their
collective asses and find her boss before something bad happened…if
it hadn’t already.

She leaned forward, her elbows on the table.
“First, before we go into Jackie’s kidnapping, we have to get this
out of the way. We need to do something about the animals in the
animal clinic. There are two post-ops who should be ready for
discharge this morning.”

The detective let out a long sigh. “This
isn’t our first time at the rodeo, Miss Smithson. The Humane
Society has already been called in. They’ve evaluated the, uh,
patients, transported them to their shelter, and notified the
owners of their whereabouts.” He paused, then leaned forward. “Now,
about this so-called kidnapping. If we can start at the
beginning…”

She took a deep breath and composed herself.
“Well—”

The detective’s cell phone rang. He held up a
hand. “Hold on. Gotta take this.” He proceeded to nod and “Uh-huh”
a few times, while his face grew redder with each passing
“Uh-huh.”

“Appears we have an outside agency requesting
to be brought in on the case. Excuse me.” He stood, stomped out,
and left her alone. She glanced up at the video camera placed high
in a corner and gave a halfhearted smile.

An outside agency meant the Feds, and with
any luck that meant Alex had arrived. Dealing with anyone else
wasn’t high on her list of favorite things to do. Mostly, Feds were
a dour bunch, but he was altogether different.

She ran her fingers through her hair. Heaven
only knew what she looked like. Not that it mattered in the grand
scheme of things. Only someone with a skewed world view would care
about her appearance at a time like this. But there it was. She
cared.

She started to chew on a fingernail, stopped
herself, and fisted her hands in her lap. Nasty habit—biting her
nails. As a child, she’d done it constantly, even though her mother
painted the tips of her fingers with some bitter-tasting stuff. In
spite of breaking herself of the habit in high school, she
occasionally, in times of stress, caught herself about to do
serious damage to her French manicure.

Outside the interview room, she could make
out the sounds of Detective Spitz arguing with someone. Alex,
maybe?

The door opened. The detective stomped in,
shoulders rigid. Behind him, tall, confident, and looking better
than any man had a right to was none other than Special Agent Alex
MacGregor. A mixture of relief and something else best left
unacknowledged flooded through her. Breathing came easier. Now that
Double-O was here, everything would be all right.

“This federal agent here says
you
called him in on the case. Why’s that?”

“Maybe because he’s her
brother
.”
Okay, her tone that time was a little on the snarky side. Not
counting summer tourists, Canandaigua was a smallish town. Curious
he didn’t already know Alex.

“What’s your connection to Agent
MacGregor?”

“We met…once.” Irritated, she shot Alex a
look
. Why wasn’t he explaining their connection himself? “He
helped me out of a bad situation and got me a job in Jackie’s
office.”

“If it’s all right with you, the agent wants
to sit in on this interview.”

“Of course.” She glanced up at Alex’s tall
figure. He wasn’t acting like they had any connection at all. In
fact, he was doing a superb job of avoiding her gaze. His stance
was rigid, as if he had a poker up his back passage. “No
objections. I want to help anyway I can. And I wouldn’t have called
him in the first place if it hadn’t been an emergency.”

There, chew on that.

Alex’s eyebrow twitched, but beyond that, he
didn’t react to her sarcastic tone.

Then his stance relaxed. He went so far as to
fold his arms across his chest and lean against the wall, but no
hint of his smile played about his mouth. His icy-blue gaze caught
hers. “Start from the beginning, Bette.” His voice was deep and
resonant. Her body shuddered a bit, but she clenched her jaw. Not
like an uptight and upright feeb and a runaway Mafia princess would
ever have any kind of relationship beyond a booty call. And the
chances for that were growing less likely by the second.

“
I’ll
handle the interview.” The
detective bristled and assumed his previous position across the
table. “You’re just here to observe, Agent MacGregor.” He smiled,
smoothed his mustache somewhat self-consciously, then said, “Start
from the beginning, Miss Smithson.”

She gave an eye roll but started the story
for what seemed like the fifth or sixth time. “It was a little
after closing. Jackie was due to head over to the twenty-four-hour
emergency vet clinic. The other employees had already left. I’d
just finished the accounts for the week. We locked up and walked
out into the parking lot together when a big SUV pulled in and
parked. I’d already opened my car door, but I heard him say his cat
was sick. I asked Jackie if she wanted me to stay and give her a
hand, but she said she could handle it, and I should go on home and
have a great weekend. I left, and that’s the last I saw of
her.”

“What about the man? Can you describe
him?”

She shook her head. “Not his face. He was
wearing a black hoodie. But he was tall—about Alex’s—Agent
MacGregor’s height but heavier. Not so trim, I mean.” She shot a
quick glance in his direction. He frowned, head cocked to the side.
Yes, indeed he was lean-muscled and trim, like one of those soap
opera stars with six-pack abs.

Strong. Capable. And, dammit, even more
handsome than she remembered.

“What about his voice? Any accent?”

“Definitely an Upstater. Nothing else
distinctive about it.”

“Weren’t you concerned about leaving your
boss alone with a stranger?”

“In Canandaigua? No. In fact, when they went
inside, she turned on the lights and I heard her laugh. So, I
figured it was someone she knew.”

“Where did you go after that?”

“Home. I live in Jackie and Brad’s basement
apartment.”

“And when did you discover she was
missing?”

“I kept hearing the upstairs house phone
ring. Finally, my cell phone rang. It was the assistant at the
emergency clinic wanting to know where Jackie was. That’s when I
really got worried. I tried calling her husband—he was in New York
City for a seminar—but all I got was his voice mail.”

She met Alex’s gaze. Tried to read his
expression. Failed. “I called the—uh, 911. After that, I called
Alex—uh, Agent MacGregor, early this morning. Around five, our
time.” She spread her hands on the table. “That’s it. That’s all I
know.”

“Could Dr. Stinnett be having an affair and
just took off with the gentleman and his alleged sick cat?”

“No.” She shook her head vigorously. The very
idea. “She’s devoted to her family. She’d
never
do anything
like that.”

“And Mr. Stinnett? Off in New York.” The
detective wagged his head. “Couldn’t be reached.”

“Still?” That didn’t sound too good. She shot
a surreptitious glance at Alex. No reaction.

“Oh, we got hold of him this morning.” The
detective nodded with a smirk. “He’s on his way home.”

“Good.” She started to rise. “Is that all,
Detective?”

“Not so fast. I have another question or
two.”

Wasn’t it Columbo who always had another
question or two? She sat, an uneasy sensation crawling along the
pit of her stomach. “Okay?”

“What about
you
and Mr. Stinnett?
Maybe you’d like to move upstairs and play house with your boss’s
husband?”

“What? No!” Appalled, she rose halfway,
hovered, then sat back down. “And that’s a totally asinine
suggestion.” She cut her gaze to Alex. Surely he wouldn’t believe
she’d be so conniving.

“Wouldn’t be the first time a hot little
number like yourself thought she could better her situation by
getting rid of her rival.”

She shot the detective a fake smile, then
batted her lashes. “Thank you so much for saying I’m a ‘hot little
number,’ but you’re an ass-hat.” This time, she stood and set her
hands on her hips. “If you’re arresting me, do it. Otherwise, I’ve
told you all I know, and I’m out of here. If you need me again,
I’ll be at The Villager eating breakfast.”

“Have your breakfast, but don’t—”

“Leave town? Yeah, I know the drill. Let me
tell you something. Leaving town while the kindest woman I’ve ever
known, not counting my mother, is missing. Well, that’s the last
thing I’d ever do.”

She turned to Alex. “I don’t know about you,
but I’m blowing this joint. Detective Shepherd or Spitz, or
whatever the hell his name is, has managed in the space of five
minutes to smear your sister, her husband, and
me
. I’ve had
enough. If I’m not under arrest, I’m out of here.”

Heading for the door and holding her breath,
she hesitated long enough to make sure the long arm of the law
wasn’t bent on stopping her…at least for the moment.

To hell with Double-O and his stuck-up
attitude. What had she expected anyway? Roses and
champagne—not.

Chapter Three

Alex leaned back and watched Bette flounce
from the interview room. She’d changed a little since he saw her in
January. He gave himself a mental shake. Damn, his priorities were
all fucked up. He was here to find his sister, his only sibling—not
get involved with the admittedly sexy Bette. He raised an eyebrow
at the detective. “Well?”

“Well, nothing. Seems like you two already
know each other. Not sure I ought to be telling you what I think.”
The detective rubbed one side of his thick mustache and sniffed.
“What I think is that she knows more than she’s letting on.” He
nodded knowingly. “Yeah, she does.”

Bette was right. Local LEO
was
a
freaking ass-hat. “You’re right. I know her, sort of. But you’re
wrong about her involvement.” Dammit. The last thing he wanted to
do was elaborate on how he and Bette met on New Year’s Eve in a
low-rent motel in Nashville during that city’s worst snow storm in
recent history. No amount of explanation or qualification would
keep the detective from going, “Uh-huh. Sure. Know what that was
about.”

Alex clenched his jaw and eyeballed the
detective. “Like Ms. Smithson said, I helped her out of a jam—of
the stalker variety. So I called my sister and asked for a favor.
She had an opening in her office and offered Bette a job and a
place to live.”

The detective scratched his shiny pate. “Hm.
Maybe this stalker caught up with her and took the wrong woman.
Need to look into that. You got any details on him?”

Alex reined in the anger flashing through
him. Talk about the locals getting sidetracked. “Some PI in
Nashville. Can’t remember his name offhand. I figure if he was
stalking Bette, he wouldn’t confuse the two women.” He pulled the
phone from his pocket and accessed the background intel he’d dug
up. “Name’s Rodney Jenkins, formerly with Metro. Nashville PD.
Followed her. Sat in front of her apartment building. Got her fired
from her job. Even broke into her apartment. You know the drill.
Basic Stalker 101, and to my way of thinking, ready to
escalate.”

Enough about Bette. Her old stalker wasn’t
the answer to his sister’s disappearance. He leaned forward. “What
kind of forensic evidence do you have on my sister’s
disappearance?”

“We’re processing fingerprints, but I got to
tell you, there are dozens of samples from the waiting room alone.
We’re calling in all the employees for samples to eliminate
them.”

Alex glanced toward the door. “Bette’s? Did
you take hers?” Damn, they could eliminate hers right away.

“We’ll get around to it before the day’s
over.”

“She’s probably still in the building. Why
drag her down here again?”

Spitz shrugged his burly shoulders. “No rush.
Figure we’ll see a lot of her before this is over.”

“What about tire tracks in the parking lot?
Surveillance video from businesses across the street? Was there any
blood in the office? Any signs of a struggle?” Damn. Might as well
be talking to a post for all the intel Spitz was offering.

“All in good time, Agent MacGregor. All in
good time. We’ve a small department. We’re thorough, but it takes
time.”

“If you call in the FBI, officially all the
resources of the Bureau will be at your disposal.” God. What a
cretin to be in charge of his sister’s disappearance. His stomach
cramped and burned with the irony.

“I think we can take care of this on our own.
Like I said, we’re thorough.”

“Have you even set up a tip line?” He
clenched his fists to keep from grabbing the local law enforcement
officer’s shirt.

“Now, Agent. We’re not so sure your sister
didn’t take off of her own accord.”

Alex glared and shook his head.
Un-freaking-believable. “She wouldn’t just up and leave, not
without her little boy. Just ask anyone. It took three years of
fertility treatments for her to get pregnant. No way she’d go
anywhere without him.” He glanced at his watch. “Time’s running
out. She’s been gone at least fourteen hours. You know the chances
of…” The words dried in his mouth.

“Don’t you worry. We’ll find your sister.”
This said with a dismissive shrug.

Alex took a step forward, moving into Spitz’s
personal space, challenging him. “Like this department found my
twin brother sixteen years ago? He was found, all right. Nothing
left but a pile of bones on Bristol Mountain.”