And after the engine noise faded, she heard the distant voices of Ramon’s men and hoisted herself high enough to see out. But her sudden moves started the aching pain again. Her shoulders were on fire, caused by the weight of her body. And her wrists were raw from the ropes.
When her question about the noise went unanswered, she looked over to the dark part of the cell, where only a thin stream of moonlight doused the stone walls. Estella saw the silhouette of the American. He had not moved in over two hours. And she barely heard his breathing.
“Please . . . don’t be dead,” she whispered.
Saying the words aloud didn’t make her feel so alone, even if the wounded man couldn’t hear her.
“No such luck,” he mumbled.
“Oh, I’m . . . sorry. I did not mean . . .”
“Helicopter.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard a h-helicopter. That was . . . the n-noise.”
It took all her concentration to hear him. Yet even though the man sounded weak, there was something in his voice that calmed her. And since he had answered her first question, she ventured another.
“What are they doing? Ramon’s men. I hear them outside.”
Her whisper hissed across the cell and echoed off stone, sounding garbled. When he didn’t answer right away, she almost repeated her question, thinking he had not understood her.
“This is almost over. I’m sorry for how it turned out.” Even though he choked out words plainly enough, she didn’t understand what he meant.
“This isn’t your fault,
“I wish you were right about that.” When he spoke, she saw the glint in his eyes, a reflection of the moonlight . . . and something else.
Estella didn’t understand the strange man, but for the first time, she was afraid of what she saw in his eyes.
After Jessie lost her footrace with the guy who had taken an interest in her, she had given up on her appetite. She’d stopped in at the motel office and scored enough snacks to satisfy her if she changed her mind. Byron McGivens wasn’t behind the desk when she stopped in, even though his nameplate was still hanging on the wall as if he were on duty.
“Does Byron have the night off?” she asked. The minute she’d instigated the conversation, Jessie knew it had been a mistake. It only gave the guy behind the counter a reason to chat her up.
“Yeah, he had something to do. I fill in sometimes.” The older man grinned back at her. “So . . . you new in town?”
Jessie fought the urge to roll her eyes. The clerk rang up the sale, between his attempts at making one-way small talk, and forced Jessie to smile as she headed out the door. When she got to her room, she set the brown bag with her snacks on the sidewalk near her door—and as a precaution—she reached for her Colt Python. After she unlocked her door, she flipped on the lights and aimed her gun from corner to corner.
Her room was empty. And her things were as she’d left them, except where the maid had touched. Jessie smelled the scent of pine cleaner, saw that the bed had been made, and noticed the maid had left her fresh towels. After she saw the room was clear, she went back for her bag of goodies and locked the door behind her, tossing her new stash of Fritos, Twinkies, and Red Bull onto the extra double bed.
She pulled out the newspaper articles from the waistband of her jeans and tried to straighten them, without much luck. Since the pages had gotten squashed and manhandled in her chase with the local yokel, she slipped them under her mattress to flatten them out while she got cleaned up.
Jessie took a quick shower and changed into the gym shorts and tank top she normally slept in if she wasn’t spending the night with Seth. After she got in bed, she propped herself up on her pillows and spread out the articles she wanted to read as she ate a Twinkie.
Most of the articles about the killing were textbook journalism, but some were more dramatic, like an intriguing mystery. And some reporter even speculated on rumors. Anything was news in a small town.
Folks had wondered why Angela DeSalvo had kept to herself, not socializing much with the rest of the town. Someone had her pegged as a woman on the run from an abusive husband. And another local woman swore she saw her with kids and speculated that she was running an illegal adoption scam.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” she whispered.
Reading that, Jessie felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise. If Angela DeSalvo had been on the wrong side of the law, that could explain how she had ended up in the hands of a serial pedophile. The thought of Angela contributing to what had happened to her made Jessie sick.
“What were you up to? And did it get you killed?”
Jessie made up her mind to spend the next day talking to some of the locals mentioned in the articles, to see who was still living in La Pointe. And something about Sophia Tanner still bothered her. The woman had appeared edgy, and she had wrung the washrag so tight in her hands, it had made Jessie nervous just watching her. And when she’d mentioned kids, the woman freaked. She had immediately looked to Chief Cook for protection, and the local LEO obliged her, right on cue.
Jessie had no doubt that Cook would arrest her if he found out she had talked to Sophia Tanner one-on-one after he had specifically told her to leave the woman alone. When Jessie thought of how adamant he’d been, she smiled to herself.
Guess what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.
Jessie turned out the lights and lay in the dark, her mind still working over all that she’d seen today, but when her cell phone rang, she had to get up to answer it. She had it recharging in the motel bathroom.
“Hey, Sam. What’s up?” She’d recognized the incoming cell number and knew who it was. Her friend didn’t call at this hour unless it was important.
“Hey, Jess. Sorry to wake you.”
“Funny thing. I haven’t been able to sleep lately. Imagine that.”
“Well, don’t kill the messenger.” Detective Samantha Cooper forced a laugh, but since Jessie knew her well, she was familiar with Sam’s strained attempt at humor. “Are you sitting down?”
Jessie looked behind her. The only place to sit in the tight bathroom was the toilet seat, and she had no intention of receiving bad news sitting on the commode. When she got to the bed, she took a corner and sat.
“Yeah, I’m sitting. Shoot.”
“Remember that DNA report that I requested, the one Chief Cook claimed he got a hit with your DNA that tied you to his cold case?”
Jessie didn’t like the sounds of this already.
“Yeah. What about it?”
“Chief Cook told me he got one hit on your DNA. Is that what he told you?”
“Yeah, he did. What’s this about, Sammie? ’Cause you’re shaking me up here.”
Jessie’s throat went suddenly dry. Her breathing had escalated, along with her heart rate. She had no idea where Sam was headed with her questions, but Jessie didn’t like it.
“Sorry, Jess. I don’t know why the chief wouldn’t tell you everything. Guess you can ask him when you see him.”
“Sam, spit it out. Please.”
“I had my lab boys analyze that report, so I’d be sure of the findings. That’s why I couldn’t call you sooner, but Jessie, that report had two DNA samples on it. Your DNA wasn’t the only one found at that crime scene.”
“What?”
“The Wisconsin state crime lab found a second unidentified sample of DNA. And that sample showed a 95 percent probability match to yours.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that second sample doesn’t have a match in the databases, so they can’t ID who was there, but the DNA came from someone in your immediate family, Jessie. Your
