“Take the cuffs off!” she screamed, so ferociously that Mark considered reaching for his weapon.
“Caroline!” Dominic yelled again. He managed to lift himself from the hood of the car and positioned himself in front of his wife.
“They can’t do this,” she said, her eyes closed and her fists clenched. “I won’t let them.”
Mark raised his eyebrows. He wondered how she thought she was going to pull that off, but let it go since it seemed Dominic was talking her down from the ledge.
“It’s all right. You’ll follow me to the station.”
She reached for his face, ridiculously trying to wipe away the rain from his cheeks. The look on her face. Damn, Mark thought. When he got married, in like thirty or forty years, he wanted his wife to gaze at him just like that.
“I got the tape,” she whispered to him.
“Good,” he said. “We’ll give it to the police. It will be okay.”
“He doesn’t have to be handcuffed,” she snapped at him.
Mark blinked. “Yeah, but I’m thinking you do. Look, I have to take him in for questioning. He’s wanted. He shouldn’t have run and he knows it. Now back off and let me do my job. The sooner all this is settled, the better it will be. For both of you.”
By that time Nora had managed to puff her way across the street, her shoes now smartly in her hands instead of on her feet.
“Wow, you’re really out of shape. You need to work out more,” Mark told her while she bent over to suck in air.
“Are you kidding me?” She huffed. “You took the elevator!”
Chapter 17
“You can’t put him in a cell.”
Nora pushed a disposable cup into her sort-of sister-in-law’s hand. “Mark isn’t the enemy. He wants to find the person who did it, not just make an arrest. He’s good police.”
Caroline took the drink but didn’t respond. The two wet women sat on a bench in the precinct’s lobby. Cops and criminals, lawyers and victims, came and went. It was late at night, but it could have been the middle of the afternoon so busy was the station.
“Can I ask a question?” Nora wasn’t big on long silences.
Caroline nodded once.
“What made you stick with him? I mean, I was there when you found out about his past. And then you took off for Virginia and I figured I couldn’t blame you, but something must have brought you back.”
“I didn’t come back alone,” Caroline corrected her. “Dominic was waiting for me at my house. That’s where he was hiding. He called me, told me to go home. I thought he was sending me away, but he wasn’t.”
“So you came back with him. You didn’t have to.”
“No. I insisted. I came with him because I wanted to prove his innocence.” Caroline shifted in her seat. “I came because I love him.”
Nora smiled. She wasn’t sure why because she and Dominic really weren’t that close, but it made her glad to know that this woman would stick by him. “I thought so. You looked like a woman in love.”
Caroline snorted. “I’m not the sort of person who falls in love at first sight. Too cowardly to ever take a risk like that. But there was something about him. I don’t know. When I saw his picture for the first time, I thought he looked lonely. Don’t tell him I said that. I think he would hate it. I stared at the photo for hours. I had this idea that I could be good for him.”
“You will be. When all this is straightened out. Dominic needs someone. He’s always needed someone. He certainly wouldn’t let it be me…” Nora stopped. “Oh, I didn’t mean… We weren’t an item or anything we just worked together.”
“I know you’re his sister,” Caroline said.
“Wow. He told you.” Nora felt a rush of something swamp her. She always understood why he’d wanted to keep their secret. He needed to guard the links to his past. He gave her a job, a life really, so she couldn’t begrudge him it. But keeping the secret had made her feel marginal to him. Nora doubted he had a choice in telling Caroline, but still she felt connected to him now. More than she ever had before.
“So I guess this means we’re like sisters.”
Slowly they turned toward each other. “I never had a sister,” Caroline whispered, her eyes watering.
“Me, neither,” Nora concurred feeling choked up herself. “Maybe we can go shopping together. For shoes or something.”
“I would like that.”
“Okay, then. It’s a date.” Nora smiled. “You know, right after we prove Dominic’s innocence.”
Suddenly the good feelings were gone as the enormity of the situation reasserted itself.
“He can’t go to jail,” Caroline muttered. Nora reached out and took her hand. “He can’t.”
Dominic sat in a hard metal chair in the interrogation room. The room was spartan. Two chairs, one table and the standard two-way mirror. There were no windows.
He knew he was being made to wait to increase his feelings of isolation and fear, and already the claustrophobia was creeping up on him. He fought it off. He couldn’t be afraid for himself. Not any longer.
Only Caroline occupied his thoughts. If he couldn’t fix this, if he couldn’t prove Steven had killed Denny, then his only choices were to run or go to jail. Either way, Caroline would suffer.
Because she loved him. Whether she wanted to or not.
That fact sure as hell bothered him more than any small room.
The door opened and the detective who had introduced himself as Mark Hernandez entered.
“How are you holding up?” Hernandez asked.
Good cop, Dominic identified immediately. “How do you think I’m holding up?”
“You need anything to drink?”
“No.”
“You kill Denny Haskell?”
Dominic stared at the detective. “No.”
“Who did?”
“You’re the detective, you tell me.”
“I think you did it.”
Dominic met the man’s eyes again. “No, you don’t.”
Mark pulled the empty chair away from the table, the sound of the metal skidding along the floor echoed. He straddled it and folded his arms against the back. “Yeah, you’re right. I don’t.”
“I sent an e-mail…”
“I know all about the e-mail to Nora. That means jack in my book. She’s a computer whiz and she’s doing everything to convince me that you’re innocent. Do you know about your secretary?”
Dominic’s brow furrowed. “Serena? What about her?”
“She’s dead.”
The news was too sudden, told too quickly, without enough preparation. Dominic sucked air into his lungs and tried to wrap his mind around the idea of what that actually meant. Serena dead. Serena. Dead.
“Who? How?”
“Well, conventional wisdom around this place says it happened like this. You were stealing money from your own company. Haskell found out about it and confronted you, so you sneaked out of your office. You followed him in your Mercedes, pushed him off the cliff, dumped the car somewhere, then snuck back into your own office so the cameras could tag you leaving in the morning. But then you got nervous, decided to take some ready cash out of the bank and went into hiding. After a time, you realized that your secretary might also be aware of or have proof of your embezzlement scheme so you offed her, too. It was another car accident and there were more paint chips from the same Mercedes.”
