“I’ll kill him,” said Freddie. “That bastard Craig. She wouldn’t have stood for it, Becca wouldn’t. He killed her, didn’t he, to shut her up. And you—” He turned on Kincaid, his hands balled into fists. “You knew all along, didn’t you? You’ve been protecting him. You’re just as bad as—”
“Freddie, shut up and listen to me.” Kincaid had to restrain himself from shaking him. “I haven’t been protecting Craig. I’ve been trying to find proof that he killed Becca and attacked Kieran Connolly, but I don’t think he did.
“And now he’s dead. He killed himself, and his wife, last night.”
“What?” Freddie stood, his hands still raised, looking like a boxer reeling from a knockout blow. “But why— what—”
“We found out something else about Craig,” Kincaid said. “Something that had nothing to do with Becca. Something he knew he couldn’t cover up.”
“Then—if it wasn’t Craig—who killed Becca?” Freddie’s handsome face contorted as he bit back a sob. “Why would someone else kill her?”
Kincaid thought of the man Kieran had seen on the riverbank and of big, friendly Finn, suddenly frightened into a frenzy by the sight of a man in the street.
And he went back to Freddie’s friend Ross Abbott, the rower, the Oxford Blue—a rower whose wife had known Becca and Angus Craig. But why, if Craig had raped Chris Abbott, would her husband kill Becca, not Craig? And why was Ross Abbott so frantic now to learn what Freddie knew about Craig?
Kincaid shook his head. He didn’t have all the pieces, but he felt the violence building, the hair on the back of his neck rising in atavistic anticipation. This wasn’t over.
And if Ross Abbott was their killer, he’d targeted Kieran once. After that afternoon’s encounter with Kieran and Finn, he would be even more certain that Kieran posed a threat.
“Freddie,” he said. “Your friend Ross Abbott—where is he now?”
Chapter Twenty-four
—Brad Alan Lewis
“She’s lying,” said Gemma as she and Melody got back into the Escort. They’d run to escape a pattering of rain, but now that they were protected the shower seemed to have stopped.
“Yes, but about which part?” Melody responded. “How she left things with Becca? Or how she found out about Craig’s suicide?”
“It’s certainly possible that she heard about Craig from someone at work.” That had been Abbott’s curt response to Gemma’s last question. Then she’d come close to shoving them out the door, and they’d had no recourse but to leave as gracefully as they could. “It’s been more than twelve hours since the first reports began to come in about Craig,” Gemma went on, making no move to start the car, “and you know rumors are flying like wildfire. So . . . that I might believe. But Abbott was prepared to be asked about Becca, and to me she seems close to panic. I think she’s involved in Becca Meredith’s death.”
Had Chris Abbott been so convinced that the truth would ruin her career and her reputation that she’d been willing to kill to protect her past? Gemma wondered.
“I suppose Becca could have told her about her training routine, but she’d still have needed time off work to watch Becca, to find a good ambush spot, and she’d have had to juggle the time away from her kids as well,” mused Melody. “But she was a rower, so she’d have known how to tip the boat and hold Becca under—”
“Her kids,” said Gemma as realization hit her. “Christ. Melody, did you get the ages of her kids from her personnel file?”
Frowning, Melody pulled the pages from her bag. It seemed they had not been strictly window dressing. She flipped through them, then stopped, her finger holding her place. “The older boy, Landon, is nine. The younger one, Logan, is four.”
“Four?” Gemma’s stomach plummeted. “Shit.” She looked at her partner. “Four, Melody. He’s four. And we’re blinking idiots.”
“Oh, God.” Melody’s eyes went wide. “The little one. He’s Craig’s baby, isn’t he? You don’t usually just happen to have protection when you’re being raped. But why didn’t she just abort—”
“Maybe she doesn’t believe in it. Maybe she really wanted another child and she wasn’t sure whose he was —”
“Or maybe she didn’t want to tell her husband what had happened—or at least not the whole truth,” put in Melody. “Maybe she stuck to the story in the police report, rather than admitting she’d gone up to Craig’s room. Even if her intentions were innocent, it was questionable behavior, especially if her husband’s jealous.”
Gemma thought about the photos again, of the possessive drape of Ross Abbott’s arm across his wife’s shoulders. She didn’t think this was a man who would want to admit that his little son was another man’s child, no matter the circumstances of the boy’s conception. Or particularly in the circumstances of the child’s conception.
“Whatever Ross Abbott might have known before,” she said, “after Becca’s visit on Saturday, he had the whole truth. And whatever Chris Abbott knew about Becca’s training routine, she will have told—”
A movement in the rearview mirror caught Gemma’s eye.
Chris Abbott had come out of her house and was running towards the street, fumbling in her handbag. When she reached a white Mercedes SUV, she yanked keys from the bag and flung the car door open. When Abbott’s headlamps flashed on, Gemma realized how dark it had become.
“Boss?” said Melody.
“What’s she up to?” said Gemma. “Something’s happened.” She started the Escort, throwing it into gear as she watched Abbott in the mirror.
“Boss—” said Melody again, but as Abbott pulled out and barreled down the street towards them, Gemma backed up, then jerked the Escort’s wheels hard and stepped on the pedal. The car shot into the street, barely missing the Lexus parked in front, and screeched to a stop directly in Abbott’s path.
Abbott slammed the Mercedes to a halt, an inch from the Escort’s side panel. She was out of the Merc while it was still rocking from the sudden brake.
“What the fuck do you thing you’re doing?” she shouted. “Move your damned car, you bloody—” Then she saw Gemma get out of the driver’s side and stopped dead. “You,” she said, but it came out a croak.
“Where are you going, Chris?” asked Gemma. She reached Melody, who’d climbed out of the Escort’s passenger side, but she didn’t take her eyes off Abbott.
“None of your business. I told you. Get out of my way.” Abbott’s mouth was pinched in a tight, white line.
“I’m not going anywhere. And neither are you, unless you reverse out of here, and I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon.” Another car was coming down the lane behind Abbott, and Gemma suspected they’d have an irate motorist added to the mix any moment. “Get us backup,” she mouthed to Melody.
Abbott looked over her shoulder, saw the oncoming car, then turned back to Gemma. “You move your car, or your job won’t be worth the paper your warrant card’s printed on.”
“That’s not going to work with me,” said Gemma, keeping her voice level. “You’re a cop, Chris. Whatever you’ve done, you know the only thing that will help you now is to talk to us.”
“Done?” Abbott shrieked at her. “I haven’t done anything. You don’t know what you’re talking about. And if you don’t let me out of here, God help us, you’re going to be the one regretting it. I won’t be responsible.”
“Responsible for what, Chris?”
