Weston joined him at the door. He squinted. “You okay? I can take this on my own.”
“No.” Luke sucked in a deep breath and tucked his emotions away in a steel cage. They wouldn’t help him. Right now, he had to think like a lawman. “I’m ready. The cameras rolling?”
They couldn’t be on while Wade was speaking with his lawyer, but Luke wanted the questioning recorded.
“Yep,” Weston said. “We’re ready.”
He opened the door. Wade glanced up from the table where he was seated, and their eyes locked. He’d been twenty-one when he went to prison. Three years and a conviction for murder had shorn away the soft edges of youth, leaving a hardened man with the guarded look of a hunted animal. A cut split his cheek, and a bruise bloomed next to his left eye.
Luke’s resolve to remain emotionless cracked. He’d dated Megan for several years before their engagement and had grown fond of her brother during that time. Seeing Wade in prison garb, dark circles under his eyes, and his nails bitten down to the quick yanked on Luke’s heart.
He forced his feet forward and took the seat across from Wade. Weston ran through the motions of the Miranda warning and the procedures necessary to start questioning.
“I’ve informed my client about the recent attacks on his family.” Grace, Megan’s law partner and Wade’s lawyer, folded her manicured hands over the pad of paper in front of her. “It won’t come as any surprise that much of what Megan has told you is true. These attacks are connected to Franny Dickerson’s murder.”
Wade’s gaze never left Luke. Buried in the dark depths was stark terror. “You need to protect them.”
“To do that, I need the truth. Did you kill Franny?”
The air thickened, the moment drawn out and countable in heartbeats. Luke had never dreaded nor wanted an answer more.
Wade shook his head. “No, it wasn’t me.”
Luke scanned the other man’s face, but there was no trace of deception. The knot in his stomach twisted like a knife.
“Who did?” Weston asked.
“I don’t know.” Wade blew out a breath. “I wish I did.”
Luke pulled out a notepad and a pen from his sport coat pocket. “Let’s start at the beginning. What time did you arrive at Franny’s house for the party?”
“Around nine. It was her birthday and everyone had a great time. Things broke up around midnight, and I was one of the last to leave along with Kyle.”
Kyle Buchanan was the sheriff’s nephew and Wade’s best friend. This was all information Luke already knew, but he scribbled it down anyway. “You were giving Kyle a ride home, right?”
“Yeah. On the way to his house, Franny called Kyle to say she’d found my cell phone in the couch cushions. It must’ve fallen out of my pocket during the party. I hadn’t even realized it was missing. When I went back to Franny’s to get it…” He swallowed hard. “I found her lying on the living room floor. She’d been shot.”
“What did you do?”
“I freaked out. My cell was sitting on the entryway table. I grabbed it, got in my car, and started driving. At some point, my brain kicked into gear, and I realized how much trouble I was in. I also knew no one would believe me. Not even you.”
Luke stilled. “Why not?”
Wade licked his lips. “Because of my actions in the past. The bar fights. Word had gotten around about my explosive temper, and it was worse when I drank.”
“Were you drinking at the party?” Weston asked.
Grace leaned forward. “The statute of limitations for a DWI have expired.”
“Understood.”
“Yeah, I’d been drinking. I was probably over the legal limit and shouldn’t have been driving.” Wade laughed, although it held no real mirth. “Ironically, Franny had been trying to get me to stop. She’d been seeing Pastor John for counseling, and she encouraged me to go.”
“Why was Franny seeing Pastor John?”
“I don’t know. Franny didn’t often share her problems with others. Coming from a high-profile family made her cautious.”
Luke made a note to contact the pastor. He hadn’t known Franny was receiving counseling.
“If you didn’t kill Franny, why did you confess?” Luke asked.
“Because the next morning, the phone calls started. Threatening ones. I couldn’t tell who it was because they used a voice distorter, but the instructions were clear. I needed to confess to Franny’s murder or Megan and June would be hurt.”
Wade fingered the bruise along his eye and winced. “I didn’t know how seriously to take them at first, but it was enough to give me pause about how much to say. Every day, I racked my brains, trying to figure out how to get out of the situation. June and Megan were calling every day. They both knew something was wrong. I almost told Megan the truth the last time we spoke, but chickened out halfway through. The next morning, I found my dog shot on the front porch. That terrified me. I started to wonder if my stalker was listening in on my calls.”
It was possible. Spyware could’ve been installed on the cell phone or surveillance equipment hidden in Wade’s house.
“Did you tell anyone about the dog?” Luke asked.
“I buried him on the property and told June he died suddenly. During the same conversation, she mentioned stuff had been moved in her house. She passed it off as forgetfulness, but I knew better.”
Did the killer have a key to June’s house? Is that how he’d gotten inside without Megan knowing? Finding out things had been moved around inside the home previously made it a greater possibility.
“You figured the stalker had been inside,” Weston said, echoing Luke’s thoughts.
“Yeah. When the sheriff showed up at the house later that day to question me, I confessed to a murder I didn’t commit. It seemed the only way possible to protect my family from
