Surrendering to the Sheriff (9 page)

He brushed a kiss on the top of her head. And the heat came again. Not that it’d ever completely gone away, but it gave her another slam of a reminder she didn’t need.

“I should change,” she said, but she didn’t move. Her feet were anchored to the floor.

Aiden made a sound of agreement, but he didn’t move, either.

Heck, she had to do something. “If you kiss me again, you know where it will lead.”

Straight to the bedroom.

Another sound of agreement from him, and he leaned his head back. Enough to make eye contact with her. Brief eye contact. Then wham.

Another kiss.

Oh, mercy.
This wasn’t going to stop.

Well, not stop with just a kiss anyway. Kendall definitely felt the difference between this one and the other. Both were scalding hot, but this one had some urgency to it, and even though Aiden was trying to be gentle, he seemed to be losing that battle, too.

It was a battle she just might have let him win.

If she hadn’t heard the sound.

Aiden heard it as well, and he whipped toward the door, shoving her behind him in the same motion.

It didn’t take long for Kendall to see the source of the sound. There, on the front porch peering through the sidelight window, she spotted their visitor.

Aiden’s mother.

And it was clear from Carla’s glare that she’d seen exactly what Kendall and Aiden had been doing.

“Open up,” Carla shouted. “We need to talk
now
.”

CHAPTER TEN

Aiden groaned. He definitely didn’t need his mother’s visit this morning. Neither did Kendall, but she stepped away from him, disengaged the security system and opened the door so his mother could come in.

From just the sound of her voice, Aiden had already known that Carla was in a snit, but without the glass between them, he could see every bit of that fury in her eyes.

“You were kissing her,” Carla snapped.

“Yes,” Aiden admitted. “Last I heard, that wasn’t a crime.”

Though he knew Carla would put it on the same level as a felony. Ditto for some members of Kendall’s family, too.

“We just got upsetting news,” Kendall explained, obviously trying to make this better.

But there was nothing she could say to do that, and that was why Aiden stepped between them. He closed the door, too, just in case whoever had killed the prison guard was waiting out there with a high-powered rifle.

“And kissing my son makes bad news better?” Carla fired back.

“Yes,” Kendall said after a long pause. “As a matter of fact, it did help.”

Aiden nearly laughed. Kendall had some backbone all right, but it wasn’t a trait that Carla was going to appreciate right now.

Every muscle in Carla’s jaw turned to iron, and she aimed the next glare at him. “So, now you’re staying here with her?”

He nodded. “Someone’s tried to kill Kendall twice. She’s pregnant with my baby, and I want to be able to make sure she’s safe.”

Of course, so far he was doing a lousy job of that, but Aiden swore to himself that he’d do better.

“One of your deputies could have stayed with her,” Carla argued. “Or one of Jewell’s sons.”

Aiden put his hand on Kendall’s stomach. “This is my baby,” he clarified, knowing he sounded smart-mouthed in the process. “I’ve got more at stake here than my deputies or the McKinnons.”

“Well, I don’t like it.” Carla’s glare got worse.

No surprise there. Aiden didn’t like a lot of things about this—her visit included.

“Why are you here, Mother?” he asked.

Even with the direct question, she still didn’t take those glaring eyes off Kendall and him. She finally reached into her enormous purse, pulled out a padded envelope and handed it to him.

“I have some evidence against Robert Joplin,” Carla said. “It should be enough for you to arrest him for these attacks.”

You could have knocked Aiden over with a feather, and judging from the slight gasp Kendall made, she was equally shocked.

“What kind of evidence?” Aiden wanted to know. As the envelope wasn’t sealed, he looked inside and saw a cell phone.

“There’s a recording of Joplin meeting with a hired gun.” For having just delivered a bombshell, Carla stayed pretty calm. “If you dig around, I think you can link it to the man who kidnapped Kendall.”

Okay. That would be nice if that truly happened, but Aiden had his doubts. “How’d you get this?”

Now she dodged his gaze. “I hired a PI to follow Joplin, and he managed to record it.”

Aiden gave her a flat look. “Did this PI you hired break any laws to get it?”

Carla lifted her shoulder, managed to look a little indignant. “What does it matter? It’s practically a confession.”

“It matters. If the PI obtained it illegally like with a wiretap, then I can’t use it to arrest Joplin.” However, it would be proof of the lawyer’s guilt, so maybe it would give Aiden a jumping-off point to launch an investigation.

He looked at Kendall to see how she was handling this, but she shook her head. “If Joplin’s guilty, I want him to fry.”

So did Aiden.

Since the phone had already been compromised for prints while in his mother’s purse and heaven knew where else, Aiden took it out and clicked the button to hear the recording. The quality was far from ideal, but he had no trouble hearing the voices of two men.

“You’ll get half the money now and half when the job’s done,” Joplin said.

“You want it done at her place?” the second man asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” Joplin answered. “Just get it done.”

And that was it.

While it wasn’t exactly a confession of guilt, it certainly sounded suspicious. Still, there was a big problem. “Joplin could say he was talking to his gardener or any other employee that he was sending to somebody’s house to do work.”

His mother handed him a piece of paper she took from her purse. “That’s the name of the man on the recording. Barry McNease. If you check, you’ll find he has a long criminal record.”

Aiden would check all right, but he had some other things to settle first. “I’ll need the name of the PI who did the recording,” he said to Carla.

She hesitated and finally extracted a business card from her purse. “I don’t know why you just can’t see this recording as a gift to get a guilty man off the streets.”

“I’d rather be sure that this
gift
isn’t just some trumped-up nonsense designed to send the wrong man to jail. Arresting the wrong person won’t keep Kendall safe.”

Aiden paused and went on to the next matter he needed clarified. “I had a chat with Joplin yesterday, and he said you’re the one who told him Kendall was pregnant.”

Carla pulled back her shoulders as if she might launch into a denial. Then she shrugged. “I told him because I thought maybe Jewell and he could talk some sense into Kendall.”

“Excuse me?” Kendall didn’t stay behind him. She came out to face his mother head-on. “What’s your definition of talking some sense into me?”

Carla’s gaze darted around for a few uncomfortable seconds. “You shouldn’t be raising a child. Your sister’s a killer, and your blood is the same as hers.”

“Alleged killer,” Aiden corrected. He was glad Kendall wasn’t the hitting, hair-pulling type, because his mother had just crossed a very big line. “That’s why we have courts of law and such.”

“And you think you’d be a better person to raise my baby?” Kendall asked Carla, but she didn’t wait for an answer. “Because you’re not. You’re a bitter woman, and you have no say whatsoever in my life or this child’s.”

Aiden hoped like the devil that the
no say
didn’t apply to him, too. But it was clear this visit was not making things better. Well, maybe with the exception of the recording, but there were so many possible snags that went along with it that it would likely turn out to be nothing. Still, before he ushered his mother out, he had one more question for her.

“How did you even know Kendall was pregnant?” Aiden demanded. “And this time I want the truth.”

Carla looked him straight in the eye. “Your sister told me.”

“Laine,” Kendall said on a huff.

“No. Shelby,” Carla corrected. Her chin came up. “That horrible Lee Palmer hired PIs to follow all of us around so he could get some dirt to help out Jewell. Shelby found out about it and started following one of the PIs. She saw you two leave the Bluebonnet together three months ago.”

“Wait a minute. The PI that Palmer hired was following me?” Kendall asked.

“Or maybe Aiden. Shelby wasn’t sure, so she stuck close to him and then followed you to the hotel. We’d both hoped the one-night stand would be the end of it between you two. We were obviously wrong.”

Yep. They’d been wrong. But now Aiden knew how the word had gotten around about Kendall and him at the bar. Either his sister had blabbed it. Or maybe the PI. Maybe even Carla once she got the info from Shelby.

“That doesn’t explain how you knew I was pregnant,” Kendall said to his mother.

“I’m not sure how Shelby found out, but she’s the one who told me.” With that, Carla turned to leave, and like a child who’d just gotten scolded, she slammed the door behind her.

“I think it’s time I had a little chat with Shelby,” Aiden said.

He put the phone with the recording on the stairs and took out his own cell. He also motioned for Kendall to lock the door and reset the alarm.

“I can put the call on speaker,” he said to Kendall. “But it’s highly probable that my sister will say some things you won’t like.”

“I already know what people are saying. Please put the call on speaker.”

Aiden did, but he hoped he didn’t regret it. Especially as Kendall had already had enough ill will thrown at her this morning.

“What?” Shelby snapped when she answered the call. Obviously, he’d woken her, but Aiden didn’t care. His sister had some serious explaining to do.

“So you followed Kendall and me?” Aiden demanded.

Shelby made a sleepy, irritated sound. “Just Kendall. Well, actually I followed a PI who was following Kendall, but since you were with her, let’s just say you got caught up in the net.”

Thankfully, Kendall didn’t snap about that being a violation of her privacy, because if Shelby knew she was listening, she might not be so willing to answer his questions. But if she didn’t supply those answers now, she
would
give them to him. One way or another.

“So you followed Kendall, you found out that we’d spent the night together in the hotel and you spilled it to Laine and then Mom,” Aiden recapped.

“They told you that?”

“Mom did. I just had a
friendly
chat with her about it. You might have given me a heads-up, Shelby.”

“I hadn’t meant to tell her. It just sort of slipped out. But while we’re doing the finger-pointing, you should have told me that you were messing around with the likes of Kendall O’Neal.”

Kendall gave a heavy sigh, stepped away and would have headed to the sidelight window, no doubt to look out to make sure his mother was gone. But Aiden didn’t want her in any potential gunman’s line of sight, so he held her back.

“Aiden, I can’t believe you slept with her,” Shelby added.

He reminded himself that he loved his sister. Not right at the moment. But in a big picture kind of way, he loved her. “It happened. Now Kendall’s pregnant and in danger. What do you know about that?”

Silence. For a very long time. “When you talked to Mom, did she seem, well, okay?”

That definitely wasn’t a question that Aiden had expected. “No. But then she never seems okay. She’s been in a bad mood for twenty-three years.” And seeing a shrink. “Why? Does she seem okay to you?”

More silence. “I’m not sure. Something was off.”

“I can say the same thing about you,” Aiden countered. “Why exactly did you follow the PI?”

“Because I want to make sure Jewell’s convicted, that’s why,” Shelby answered.

Aiden’s huff matched Kendall’s. “There’s a boatload of evidence against Jewell,” he reminded his sister. “Lots of Dad’s blood in the cabin. Jewell’s DNA on the sheets. Those bone fragments found just a stone’s throw away from the cabin. Sounds like a slam dunk to me.”

Well, with the exception of a confession.

And the niggling feeling Aiden was getting that this particular slam dunk seemed to be tied up into a too-neat package.

But maybe that was the fault of the pregnancy. And the kissing session. Or just being around Kendall.

“I don’t want any questions in the jury’s mind of Jewell’s guilt,” Shelby continued. “Jewell weighs a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet, and Daddy was a big man. I figure she must have had help moving the body from the cabin to the creek.”

That had come up plenty of times, and most folks thought Jewell’s husband, Roy, had helped. But an eyewitness had recently cleared Roy.

“So you’re looking at possible accessories to a murder?” Aiden concluded.

“Yes. Joplin and Palmer are tops on my list. From everything I’ve learned, Joplin was in love with Jewell even back then. And we both know how much Palmer hated Daddy.”

Aiden made a sound of agreement. “Am I on your list? I was big enough to have helped move a body, and Dad and I weren’t exactly on friendly terms, either.”

Shelby made a garbled sound of outrage and shock. “What the heck does that mean?”

“It means that not everything about this case is black-and-white.” And he waited, figuring that would prompt an argument or maybe Shelby would bring up that he was going soft because of the baby.

But his sister stayed quiet. Quiet enough for Aiden so that the niggling feeling became even worse.

“Mom gave me the recording with Joplin and an alleged scumbag who might have been hired to kidnap Kendall,” Aiden explained, hoping to squish that feeling. “She said she got it from a PI she hired, but I’m assuming you gave it to her.”

“Well, you’re assuming wrong.” Shelby paused again. “What’s on this recording?”

“Maybe nothing. I need to talk to Joplin about it.” And Aiden figured the lawyer would try to explain it away just as Palmer had tried to do with the traffic camera footage.

“Joplin has plenty of motive to want those bone fragments destroyed,” Shelby insisted.

So did others. But that brought Aiden to something he wanted to make crystal clear. “Shelby, you need to back off from this investigation.”

“What—”

Aiden talked right over her howling protest. “Here’s the deal. What you’re doing could be construed as interfering with a murder investigation and possibly even the judicial process. Do you really want to give Joplin a reason to file a motion to have the case against Jewell thrown out?”

“He’d have no grounds for that,” she fired back.

“And don’t give him any. Back off, Shelby, and that’s not brotherly advice, that’s a warning from the county sheriff.”

Aiden braced himself for an argument, something that Shelby was darn good at, but more of that unsettling silence followed.

“Are you and Kendall okay?” Shelby finally asked. “I heard about the attack at the jail. It sounds as if you two could have been hurt.”

Her concern for Kendall was a little surprising. And welcome. “We could have been killed. I don’t guess in all your digging around that anything came up about a scumbag prison guard on the take?”

Oh, man.

It was suddenly quiet enough to hear a pin drop.

“All right, what the heck is wrong?” Aiden demanded.

“Maybe nothing,” Shelby said almost in a whisper.

That got Aiden groaning because it not only confirmed that something was indeed wrong but that it was something Shelby didn’t like.

“It’s about Mom,” Shelby finally said.