Relentless (Fallon Sisters Trilogy: Book #1) (5 page)

The shrill peal of a cell phone, her cell phone, made her stand up. The bottle of Crown Royal dropped and poured out onto the hardwood floor. "Shit!" She bent over and righted it and lurched for the nightstand. Tom's name glowed on the screen of her phone. The room spun and Bren dropped onto the bed. Gripping the phone tight, she fumbled to flip it open, but the ringing stopped. Tom's name disappeared.

"What the hell?" She scrolled through the contacts and verified the number. It was Tom's.

She hit the number two key and scrolled down her list of contacts until she came to Bendix.

"Bren?" Kevin yawned into the phone. "It's three in the morning. What's wrong?"

"Tom's phone. Where is it?"

He yawned again, and something, maybe his bed covers, rustled into the receiver before he grunted. "Bren, we've been over this a million times. You know we never found his phone."

An hour later, Kevin turned off the lights on his cruiser and stepped out into the chilled, predawn air. "You ever think to run this by me before you take out a full-page ad?" He reached into his cruiser.

Bren didn't need to guess for what.

A copy of Clear Spring's weekly newspaper crinkled in Kevin's fingers. He held up page three. "It looks like a damn wanted poster from the Wild West."

That had been her intention. A decorative scroll at the top and bottom, and the word "Wanted" in bold capital letters.

She lit it up with her flashlight.

Local kill buyer, frequents Jameson Livestock Sale Barn, mid-sixties, wanted for the murder of Thomas Patrick Ryan. Reward for any information leading to his arrest and conviction. Call Bren Ryan or the Washington County Sheriff's Office.

If it wasn't for the desperation behind the act, she'd almost laugh. "Only thing missing is his photo."

"Real funny." Kevin scratched his head, his tight blond crew cut bristling against his fingers. "You'll be damn lucky Wes doesn't smack you with a defamation suit."

"I didn't mention his name."

He smirked. "Nice try, Bren. You knew damn well he and everyone else in this town would get your meaning." Less formidable minus his uniform, he leaned against his cruiser and yawned. "I'm tired, Bren." Snow batted his face, and he grabbed a knit cap from his pocket. Pulling it on his head, he huddled inside his jacket. "And cold. If you have something new, let's have it. If not, I'm going the hell back to bed." He grabbed the door handle.

"Tom called me tonight."

His head whipped back. "That supposed to be funny?"

"It's true." She handed him her phone. "Check recent calls." Bren wrapped her arms around her waist, pressing her barn coat against her. She was freezing. Still in her flannel pajamas, she'd slipped her work boots on bare feet when she left out the back door to meet Kevin.

He flipped open her phone, the screen a blue glow reflecting off his wrinkled brow.

She sidled up next to him. "For Tom's name to appear on my phone, the call had to be made from his phone."

He gave her a sideways glance. "I know how it works," he snapped.

She stiffened and placed her hands on her hips. "Then do something. I shouldn't have to resort to ads in the paper. You're the sheriff. Obviously, I got his attention. Not that I was expecting a phone call."

Kevin scrubbed his face and pushed off his cruiser, handing back her phone. "Since when do you not get Wes's attention?" His brow rose and she got his meaning.

She'd done a lot of things in recent months to screw with Wes. All could have gotten her fined or thrown in jail. Good thing her best bud came in the form of the county sheriff.

"You never canceled Tom's cell?"

Kevin's voice brought her around. "It's stupid." She shrugged. "I needed to hear his voice." Her own voice cracked then. Tom's voicemail was the only recording she had of him. Being able to call his phone, hear his voice made it seem as though he was still with her.

Damn it!
The bastard must have enjoyed her desperate attempt to keep from going quietly insane. She winced. "He knows I've been calling Tom's phone."

Kevin's expression softened. "You tell anyone else about the call or the phone?"

"No. But why would he keep it?" She pulled on her bottom lip. "There must have been something on Tom's phone he didn't want us to know."

"We already checked his phone records. None of the numbers would raise an eyebrow. It was just the usual you would expect for a man who is a blacksmith and runs a rescue."

Okay, so it wasn't the caller that stood out. "But what about messages? Did you check those?"

"Bren, technology has come a long way. But there's nothing that would allow us to hear or read a message. We'd have to have the phone."

"That's it. We need to find the phone."

"That's the logical step. But let's keep this between you and me."

"But—"

"I mean it. If he had anything to do with Tom's death—and that's a big if—you'll tip him off, and we'll never find the phone."

"Okay."

He hesitated. "Can you think of anything else Tom might have been involved in before he died?"

Huh? Maybe she'd missed something. She just assumed it was Wes's way of paying
her
back. But perhaps Tom had known something she didn't. "Remember that horse of Rex Boland's? The show horse, Cloud Dancer? They found him dead in his stall over at Wes's place."

Kevin gave her a blank look.

"Yes, you do. A few days before Tom died, the county got back the lab results. They said it was colic. Tom thought the cause of death was too convenient. Plus, Wes's stable is for looks. He never kept any horses in it until Cloud Dancer." She zeroed in on Kevin. "Think about it. Rex Boland and Wes are friends. Wasn't that horse heavily insured?"

Kevin slumped against his cruiser, his hands in his pockets. He frowned. "I think the county knows more about toxicology reports than a blacksmith and his wife, even if they do run a horse rescue."

"Come on. It's not the first horse death. There's been a string of them. Maybe not here in Maryland, but now I think it's the only thing that makes sense. With his job, he got around. If anyone might have overheard something, it would have been Tom."

Kevin took a breath. "I think that's a huge leap. Let's stick to facts, Bren. The phone exists, I'll give you that. So let's revisit the night in question, and you tell me everything you remember."

She paced, the snow swirling around her. "I told you. Tom went out around eleven thirty to get his truck ready for the next day. When I woke up close to two thirty, he wasn't in bed. He wasn't in the house." Her voice rose.

Kevin pushed off his cruiser toward her. "Calm down."

"Don't tell me to calm down." She stopped and narrowed in on him. "Tom's dead, damn it! And for almost a year you've wanted to believe it was an accident." Her fingers tensed on the flashlight. She took a deep breath and continued. "I checked the barn—the hayloft. I came around to here." She stepped toward the barn and centered herself under the pulley outside the hayloft door. "And that's when I heard it. A faint creak, like a floorboard squeaking. Then I felt it. A shadow above me." Her eyes glistened, and she blinked back tears. "All I could think about was Tom. Saving him. I should have done better." Bren sagged. "If I could have gotten him down faster... heard his cries for help... he'd be..."

Kevin put his arm around her shoulder. "Bren, no one's blaming you. You couldn't have saved Tom."

She pulled away and shined the flashlight up toward the pulley system. Only quiet snowflakes danced in the night sky. "You didn't find his phone?" she said, thinking out loud.

"We combed every inch of the barn, the hayloft, and here, where you found him."

"What about the hospital? Did you check his belongings?"

"Yes." Kevin cocked his head. "You sure he had his phone?"

"Positive." Bren flashed the light onto the ground. "When he left the house that night, I saw him snap it into his belt holder." She turned off the flashlight. "I heard it click. It wouldn't have fallen out, even if he was hanging upside down." She tapped her finger against her lips. "Unless it was taken off."

"And you think Wes is your guy, obviously." He shook his head. "I think you're reaching."

"You were there."

Wes had been pissed that day. Waking up to find six good-sized, profitable horses missing instead of headed for the slaughterhouse in Mexico made for a contentious neighbor. Wes assumed she and Tom had something to do with it. They—Grace Equine Sanctuary—had bid against him at auction the night before and lost. He'd raised holy hell with the sheriff's office the next morning after the horses went missing. Kevin barely had his feet firmly on Grace's gravel drive before Wes flew up and intercepted him. Not liking the odds—Kevin, Tom, and Bren had been friends since childhood—Wes threatened his own kind of justice. He never elaborated on his method.

The next night, Bren found Tom tangled in their pulley system, the ropes a jumble around his body and his neck. He'd been strangled, and it sure as hell didn't look like suicide or an accident. She knew Tom. He wasn't careless. And she didn't believe in coincidences, either.

"Yeah, well, it doesn't mean he's guilty," Kevin said. "Wes is a blowhard. Always has been. Besides, he had an alibi. He and Lyle—"

"Lyle and he are buddies. They'd both lie to save the other's ass."

"Maybe, but it wasn't just the two of them. They were playing their weekly game of Texas Hold 'Em."

She could tell by the way his voice faded he wanted to take back those last three words.

Some lawman he is.

She took a step closer, ready to rip into him.

"Don't start. If I had to break up every card game that had cash riding on it—" He waved a dismissive hand. "The point is, he had five eyewitnesses. So he didn't do it." He scratched his head again. "We need to face facts. Like I said before, looks like Tom got tangled in the rope and lost his footing and somehow fell out the barn door."

"If that were true—" She bore into him with quiet irritation, because as much as she wanted to scream it at him, she didn't want to wake the boys. "—he was very conscientious to close the barn door before he flew out the loft." Oh, yeah. She'd had plenty of time to speculate, and Wes, the dumbass, had been just a little too neat with his crime scene.

Kevin took a labored breath. "I'll look into the phone."

"I'm coming." She moved toward his cruiser.

"Now hold up." He grabbed her arm. "I know you're hurting. Trust me, if there's something going on here, I'll find it. But there are procedures that need to be followed. I need probable cause to get a search warrant." He shook his head. "I don't have it."

"That's bullshit." She pulled her arm free. "He's a kill buyer."

"That doesn't make him a murderer."

"Might as well be," she muttered before facing him. "Buying horses out from under Grace that were healthy and could go to a good home is criminal."

"Buying horses for slaughter isn't against the law. Besides, not all of them were healthy."

"We're a rescue. There are more humane ways than sending them off to slaughter."

Kevin regarded her with something that looked very much like amusement. "Since you're so adept at investigation, use your feminine wiles on his son. Maybe Robert Connelly knows something." Kevin's gaze landed on her work boots—untied, with her thin, pasty-white ankles shoved inside.

"Go to hell."

"Just a thought. I heard he paid you a visit. Also heard he's back for good as Wes's accountant."

Bren shrugged. "He's not his father. He's been very supportive since Tom's death, which is more than I can say for you lately."

"Whatever." He placed his hands on his hips. "The point is, I can't have you going off half-cocked. I'm warning you. Let me handle it. Stay away from Wes."

That was impossible. The town of Clear Spring was no bigger than Mayberry. He was asking a lot because if she found herself within breathing space of Wes, she'd kill him.

She spun around and headed back toward the house.

"Hey, where you going?"

"To bed. You find Tom's phone, you'll find his killer."

And if he didn't, she would.

W
ho picked out your sweater?" Bren asked, holding open the door for longtime friends Jeremy Breakstone and his wife Jo, also members on the board of directors of Grace.

Jeremy looked down his nose, crossing his eyes. "I did." His chin rose and he grinned. "You don't like it?"

He must have been an easy mark as a kid. Short-cropped, strawberry-blond hair, a hint of youthful freckles—he could pass for a teenager when he grinned, except he was highly educated, tall, and strong enough to compete with the size and power of the horses as the local equine vet.

Bren reached out with her finger and rang the tiny brass bell sewn onto an embroidered applique of a reindeer. "It's festive."

"I thought so." He handed her a cookie tin with last week's copy of Clear Spring's newspaper strategically opened to page three. His eyes practically danced with amusement. "Only thing missing is his photo."

"Shh." Bren tried not to laugh hearing her words coming out of Jeremy's mouth as she tossed her head back. No one was in the hallway. She took the tin and handed him back the paper. "We're not talking about it around the boys."

A pink flush rose in Jo's bronzed cheeks. "We shouldn't be talking about it at all." She shot her husband a censorious look. Leaning on her cane, she frowned at Bren. "How you holding up?" Jo's deep blue eyes held hers.

Bren had struggled all morning to keep from crying. Call it Jo's best-friend-sixth-sense. No amount of smiling or humor directed toward Jeremy's sweater could hide Bren's pain from Jo.

"I miss him." Bren's eyes watered.

Jo motioned Jeremy through the door.

His arm went around Jo's waist. "I'm already gone." Pulling her tight, he kissed the top of her dark head, her hair slipping from its tight bun, loose wisps now framing her face. "I don't do tears."Jeremy crossed over the threshold and squeezed Bren's shoulder. "Hang in there." He started down the hall.