Fractured Minds Box Set, page 15
part #1 of Fractured Minds Series
“What did you see?” Noah asked.
I spun and turned my stare at Carson. “Nothing.” My breath came out in hard pants as the anger in my veins boiled. Why the heck wouldn’t Carson tell me?
“Nothing?” Noah asked.
My eyes narrowed, and yet Carson remained unmoving. “Nothing.” I took a deep breath and turned to look at Noah. “I need a break. There was a ton of anger, and I need to calm down before I view the next one.”
“I’ll get you some water,” Grant said leaving the room.
“I’ll go check in with locals to see if they’ve found the knife used on Mr. Tines,” Noah said, his gaze going between Carson and myself. “You sure there was nothing with Cody?”
I turned to meet his questioning stare. “As sure as your daily phone calls.”
Noah’s eye twitched, and yet I waited for him to leave the room.
I shoved against Carson’s chest before the door even closed. His big thick frame didn’t even budge. “Are you kidding me, Irish? You should have told me you were there.”
“What is she talking about Carson?” Bishop asked.
“Be careful with your words, lass. I know for a fact I didn’t kill him.”
“Then you know who did. Which one of you threw the damn knife?”
“Carson?” Michael asked.
“Tell them or I will,” I growled and rested my fists on my hips, trying hard to bite back the anger and keep it from growing. It was a side effect from the energy I’d picked up. I took it on like it was my own and often times had a hard time releasing it.
No answer.
“Fine. I’ll tell them.”
“Go ahead, lassie. I have nothing to hide,” Carson said as he started to pace the room.
Nothing to hide, yeah right. I turned toward the brothers. “Carson was there the day Cody died. He was arguing with Cody near the lake where the bodies were found. They were fighting. He gave Carson a bloody lip and antagonized him to attack again, and Carson did. Cody shoved him away, and when I moved outside of Cody’s body to view the scene, a knife flew through the air, stabbing Cody in the chest. I opened my eyes on purpose before I could see the killer.”
Carson paused his pacing and turned to stare at me. “Why the hell did you open your eyes? You could have told us who the killer was.”
“I’m not sure you want me knowing that information, Carson. It can do more damage than good.”
Anger stirred in my gut as heat traveled through my body up to my face.
“So, you didn’t really see if Carson threw the knife?” Bishop asked.
I spun on him. The anger thrumming in my veins had me clenching my fist. I screamed. “Be glad I didn’t.”
A needle pricked my neck as I glanced up over my shoulder at Carson. “You’re getting more worked up. It’s for your own good.”
My vision started to blur as my limbs started to give out. Carson grabbed me up into his arms and held me against his chest. “I’m no killer, Lucy.”
My world turned dark.
Chapter 8
“You did the right thing.” Grant’s voice sounded like it was in a tunnel as I fought the pain prickling my mind.
“Grant’s right. She needed it.”
My eyes slid open to find Carson, Grant, and Noah across the room in quiet discussion.
I lay there concentrating on my breathing and trying to figure out exactly what I was going to tell Noah. If I told the truth, I might be pointing at the wrong man. I didn’t see the knife thrower. But the thought of Carson doing the deed, I’d flat-out refuse.
“Welcome back,” Carson said.
“How about a little warning next time,” I answered.
“I thought you liked to live on the edge, Lucy,” Carson said.
“Some people might think that you knocked me out just to try and shut me up,” I said.
“Some people might be right, but it’s not because I’m trying to hide killer tendencies.” Carson grinned.
My gaze shot to Noah’s. He raised a single brow. “Were you going to tell me what you saw?”
What was up with all of these men conspiring against me? First Sam told them I could have escaped, and then Grant told them I was giving the Tines’s a head start in the event they were guilty, and now Carson. I shook my head as I slowly sat up on the sofa. “I didn’t see Carson kill the kid. There was nothing important to tell.”
I shoved my feet to the floor and grabbed hold of the couch. Grant stepped forward with a bottled water. He uncapped it and handed to me. “You’re dehydrated.”
“Not for long. Once I get through the rest of these people, I plan to hit that bar where Carson’s ex works.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Lucy,” Carson said. “If Janet knows you’re helping investigate her twin brother’s case, she’s going to want answers.”
I let out a hefty sigh and shoved my hands into my pockets. “Then we need to hit the store so I can buy some wine. I have a lot to celebrate.”
“Where’s Sloan and that winery he promised you?” Grant chuckled. “Drink your water, and we’ll go deal with the next one.”
I followed the others back into the morgue. The people in the hall and surrounding offices stared at me as I passed. I continued to drink the entire bottle and got another one as I walked around the morgue. I gently lifted the sheet up to see the face beneath.
Apprehension filled the room, but it wasn’t mine; it belonged to Carson and his brothers. I hadn’t even laid a finger on the body. I held Carson’s gaze and lowered the sheet. “Guys, I’m a little worn out, and I can still feel the lingering anger. Can we try this again first thing in the morning?”
I swallowed around my lie and tried my best not to look at Carson.
“Sure,” Noah said. “It can wait. We have a lot of stuff to review anyway.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Now who's taking me to get wine?”
“I am,” Carson said. “Come on, Lucy. I’ll drop you off when we’re done.”
I was the only witness left that might be able to tell the truth of what had happened, and I was leaving with a potential killer. I grabbed a pen from the table before leaving and slipped it into my pocket before I followed him out the door.
“You won’t need that.” Carson chuckled.
Carson opened the passenger side truck door for me and waited until I climbed in to shut it. He exchanged a few words with his brothers before he hopped into the driver’s side.
“I guess they’re not coming with us?”
“They know their way back home. I thought you and I could use a few minutes alone to talk.”
“You don’t want any witnesses.” I didn’t think Carson would kill me, although he was extremely capable. As the last one seen with me, he would make the perfect suspect.
“You’re right, lassie. I don’t want any witnesses for what you and I have to discuss.”
Carson drove through the center of town, passing the bar and three stores where I could’ve bought wine. He kept driving until he passed a sign saying we’d left the city limits. “This must be some really big talking we need to do if you’re worried about somebody in town hearing it.”
“Don’t worry, Lucy. We’re almost there,” Carson said, pulling into a liquor store on the outskirts of town. We both got out, and he gestured wide. “Get whatever you prefer. You’re going to need it.”
Carson headed down the liquor aisle straight to the whiskey and met me at the counter, where I put my bottle of red wine. He paid, and we got back into the truck.
“I guess it had to be kind of an emotional day for you seeing your dad like that.”
“Not as hard on me as it was for my brothers.”
Cryptic and kind of telling. Another five minutes and he turned down a dirt road surrounded by trees. “You have daddy issues.”
Carson sighed. “I don’t have issues, Lucy. I have facts. When our mother died, our dad kind of checked out of life. He started drinking. He didn’t raise us. We raised ourselves, and still, before he went missing, the bastard gave me a glimpse of him changing. Just enough to make me think it possible, and then he disappeared. I think he was trying to make things right by us, but it was too little too late.”
“Yep, daddy issues. Suck it up, Carson. People suck, including those that share our DNA. He was hurt.”
“We were all hurt, and we were kids, and we needed him.”
“And you had each other to lean on. Who did he have? Being drunk is the easy way out. You don’t have to process feelings.”
“You’re defending him?” Carson pulled up outside a small cabin tucked into the trees. He parked in front of the door.
I held up Carson’s bag full of liquor. “You might not be a drunk, Carson, but you process the same way.”
“The whiskey helps me think.”
“Whatever you say, Irish.”
We climbed out of the truck, and I followed up onto the porch while he fumbled with the door key. After unlocking it, he stepped inside, punching numbers into an beeping alarm right next to the door.
“You afraid someone’s going to come in and steal your dust bunnies and dead plants?”
“Don’t knock my alarm,” he said.
The grimy windows, dusty porch, and the dead plants added to the cozy-killer-home vibe. “You brought me to the creepy cabin to kill me, didn’t you?”
Chapter 9
Carson took the bag of liquor from my hands and walked into the house, leaving the door open for me to follow. I stepped inside, hoping this place might be like the mill where they’d taken me the first time. The outside had looked run down, but the inside had been transformed into a modern-day meeting area and workspace for our zany group of misfits.
This wasn’t that. The furniture looked lumpy and outdated, like it was from the fifties. The TV with the rabbit ears looked like it came from the same era. I knew no woman had been let into this space. No way in hell they wouldn’t have convinced him to make some changes. “So, is this your man cave?”
“Something like that,” he said, grabbing glasses from the cabinet.
“It’s very…fifties Neanderthal-ish. No wonder you’re still single. You’d have to find just the right girl to carry over this threshold so she doesn’t run away.”
“The price was right, and it came fully furnished.”
“Whatever you paid was too much,” I said, running my finger over one of the puke-green laminate tabletops on the way to the kitchen. Carson was searching through drawers. “What are you looking for?”
“I don’t drink wine and don’t have a corkscrew.”
“You got a lighter?” I asked.
Carson pulled out one of those long lighters that are used to start grills and fireplaces and handed it to me. I was in a forgiving mood, or I would have torched his house, starting with the furnishings that were making me blind.
I unwrapped the top of the bottle, flicked the flame, and held it to the neck of the bottle, slowly turning it in place. Within a minute, the heated air in the bottle expanded and slid the cork up the neck until it popped out.
“Were you a science nerd?” he asked.
“No, I just don’t like being kept from my wine.” I grinned. “So why did you bring me here, really?” I glanced to the doors down the hall and shivered thinking of what furniture might be inside.
He poured me a glass of wine and handed it to me before grabbing a bottle of whiskey.
The alcohol in the bottle glugged as he splashed a double shot into a Mason jar. He downed it, poured another, and rounded the kitchen bar, holding out his hand. “Let me show you.”
I slipped my fingers into his rough hands. He had the hands of a man that did a hard day’s work, unlike Ford’s hands. His had been soft to the touch. Sloan’s hands were somewhere in the middle. I kind of felt like Goldilocks and the three bears. But I already knew whose bed I’d be sleeping in.
Carson led me to the end of the hall and pushed open a bedroom door.
I’d been right. The room was painted in that pee yellow, and the bed comforter was an orange and brown plaid. “No way, are you getting me in that bed.”
Carson glanced back at me and then at the bed. “That’s not why I brought you here, but if I’d wanted to seduce you, I wouldn’t have needed to get out of the truck.”
“Good to know,” I said as Carson walked to a double-door closet and pulled it open.
The entire space was filled with headlines and pictures of various people. He stepped back to let me enter.
I was struck speechless.
“I have two closets like this. This one is dedicated to the mysterious disappearances around town. I was hoping the ghosts would come out of hiding so I could get some accurate matches. The other closet is dedicated to my mother’s killer. If you tell anyone, I’ll have to kill you.”
I patted his chest. “You’d only kill me with kindness. Don’t kid yourself, Irish. I’m growing on you.”
I let my gaze rove over every face. I rested my fingers on Drake Tines’ face and then moved them over to Cody Anderson. I bypassed the others and rested them on the only other face I recognized. The guy beneath the last sheet I’d lifted that caused all the Tines brothers a bit of apprehension. “You knew the other guy beneath the sheet I looked at?”
Carson downed his shot and wiped his lips on the back of his hand. “Yeah, I knew him. My brothers knew him too.”
I felt the sadness rolling off Carson, and it tugged at my heart. I turned my gaze back to the photo. “Who was he?”
“Tony Miller,” Carson said. “His parents moved him into town when he was in the eighth grade.”
“He went to school with you?”
“Among other things,” he said. “I’ll need to start at the beginning.” Carson plopped down onto the bed. “Bishop’s entire senior science class was in the woods camping around the lake the day that Cody went missing.”
“You weren’t invited?” I asked.
“I wasn’t in the class. He was a year ahead of me,” Carson answered.
I turned to face him. “Then why were you in the woods?”
Carson rose from his spot and stepped into the closet. He pointed his finger at one of the pictures. “We lived at the lake house nearby, and Tony asked me to meet him.”
Sadness shined in Carson’s eyes.
“And?” I gasped.
“He wanted to talk to me about my brother Bishop. He thought it would be easier hearing it come from him.”
“Hearing what?”
“They were secretly dating. Bishop and Tony loved each other. He was Bishop’s first relationship, but Bish wouldn’t come out of the closet. He thought we’d be disappointed in him,” Carson said, visibly swallowing.
“You had no idea your brother was batting for the other team?”
“No.” Carson held my gaze. “It wouldn’t have mattered to me. Hell, it doesn’t matter to me. I kind of suspected it, and then Tony told me that he and Bishop were about to come out of the closet to the whole town.”
I could feel the nervousness coming off of Carson. He still worried over his brothers. “And you were worried that the townspeople wouldn’t accept him?”
“Twenty-five years ago, people weren’t as open as they are today,” he answered.
“So, you thought you’d kill Tony to keep him from telling anyone else?” Pushing his buttons was too easy. I held in my grin.
“Hell no. I’d never hurt the person my brother cared about,” Carson answered.
“Bishop had found out about our meeting, and the two got into an argument. I was the one who heard someone coming. I ran Bishop and Tony off so they wouldn’t be caught.”
“Tony and Bishop snuck back into camp, and I was about to head home when Cody stepped out of the bushes, blocking my path.”
“Did he overhear anything? Is that why you killed him?”
Carson spun around to meet my gaze. “I didn’t kill him. I wanted to though.”
“I know. I can feel in your emotions that you didn’t commit the deed. I was teasing. So, what else happened?” I asked.
Carson shut the door and led me back into the kitchen, where he poured himself another drink. “I don’t know that he overhead anything. If he did, he didn’t act like it. He was taunting me but not about Bishop. He was taunting me about Amber.”
“Who the heck is Amber?”
“Six months prior to being in the woods, I’d gone to the Marine recruiters office, and meet with Master Sergeant Farley. I only had a year and a half until I graduated but I was debating a career in military. Anything to get me out of this town. Master Sergeant Farley took a shining to me and turned out to be a surrogate father, giving me advice. After graduation, I was going to join. It was there that I met his daughter, Amber.”
“So…you were attracted to her?”
“God no,” Carson said. “Amber and I became friends since I was spending time with her dad. So, at school, when Cody had cornered her and was picking on her, I stepped in to defend her and Cody was ready to beat me to a pulp.”
“I saw you were kind of scrawny back then.”
“That’s being polite. I was a stick figure with a sense of duty,” Carson said. “The bell rang, and kids and teachers filled the hall, and Amber and I swept away in the crowds, but that doesn’t mean Cody forgot.”
“That’s what the fight was about down by the lake?”
“Yeah,” Carson said, grasping the counter. “When he shoved me, I hit my head on a rock and lost consciousness. When I woke up, Cody was gone. I didn’t even know he was missing until they started a search party. Every one of those people pictured have disappeared in town since that date.”
“There were five pictures,” I said, recounting them in my head.
“And five bodies,” he added. “You have my word we didn’t kill them.”
“I don’t need your word. I need to prove it wasn’t you before they start pointing fingers.”
“If you touch the bodies and tell them what you see, they’re going to lock me up.”
“I guess I won’t be touching the bodies then.” I sipped my wine and savored every last drop. “If you’re not the knife-wielding killer, then who? You’ve obviously been researching it.”
