Olivia did stay with him—right on his heels. Sloan burst into the office and she ran in behind him.
Jane Everett was on the sofa; she’d been there with her computer, a cup of coffee on the driftwood coffee table in front of her.
She had collapsed onto her side. Her computer lay haphazardly on the floor.
Sloan rushed to her.
“A dart! Look for a dart—a small dart somewhere!” Olivia told him. She fell onto her knees by Jane’s left side as Sloan took the right.
Olivia saw the tiny dart that had struck Jane; she reached for it. “Sloan! I’ve got the dart.”
But even as he turned to her, reaching for his gun, she heard a “zzzz” in the air.
The big cowboy fell onto his partner and beloved. Olivia ducked close to the couch, trying to see who was in the office shooting the darts.
She stared at the door, but the sunlight was streaming in. She couldn’t see the man’s face. And then...
“Drew!” she gasped.
*
“I just don’t know what you’re going to get out of the woman,” Frank Vine muttered to Dustin. “She has an answer for everything—and I don’t have a single thing to hold her on.”
They were in the observation room. Jimmy Callahan stood watching Sandra while Frank and Dustin talked.
“Hold her on suspicion of murder,” Dustin said.
“With what proof? We have nothing! No district attorney would be able to take this case to court!”
“I doubt if Sandra knows that. Just tell her she’s going to be booked for murder. Then I’ll go in.”
Dustin watched as Frank went to talk to Sandra. She immediately flew from her chair in a fury, telling him he was an idiot.
“Strange, huh, that they called her Mama Cheever? She’s a real virago. I guess she ran a tight ship, though. But it seems like she did love Aaron. You really think she might have killed him?” Callahan asked.
“She didn’t do the deed—but I think that, somehow or other, she was in on it.”
Frank returned to the observation area. “She’s all yours,” he said.
Dustin nodded and walked into the interrogation room. Sandra watched him suspiciously, radiating pure tension. “You,” she spat. “You are a despicable federal ass!”
“Sandra, you were the only one who had a key to Aaron’s house—besides Aaron.” Something in her manner changed slightly.
“That’s ridiculous!”
“You loved him and you were having an affair with him. Are you telling me you didn’t have his key?”
“Of course I had his key! But how the hell would I know just how many keys Aaron had out there?”
“He didn’t have any other keys out there, Sandra.”
“How do you know that?”
“Aaron told me.”
“Aaron? Aaron is dead.”
“Yes. Yes, he is.”
She stared at him, her lips twitching with derision. “You spoke to a dead man?”
“He spoke to me,” Dustin said. He could well imagine Frank Vine and Jimmy Callahan frowning at each other in the observation room. Their lips would be twitching, as well.
Dustin leaned forward. “You had the only extra key, Sandra.”
“I didn’t kill Aaron! I loved him.”
Dustin eased back in his chair. “You know,” he said slowly, “I don’t think you realized he was going to be killed.”
“He wasn’t killed. It was an accident.”
“I just told you—I’ve talked to Aaron. Or, as I said, he talked to me. It wasn’t an accident. He didn’t reach for anything electrical, including his iPod charger, while he was in the bath. Someone was in his house. Someone who probably knew he liked baths.” He shook his head. “I never took you for stupid, Sandra.”
“Stupid! You bastard, I’m hardly stupid!”
“No? Then you did know what was going on. So, which is it? Are you stupid—or guilty?”
“Neither!” she yelled.
“Who had the key? Who did you tell about your affair? What was the real plan—if you didn’t want Aaron dead? And, if you loved him so much, why did you leave his house when you knew your accomplice was in there, lying in wait for him?”
She didn’t answer.
He stood up. “Frank? Frank, come and book her for murder. She’s definitely involved. She didn’t do the killing, but she was in on the conspiracy. She facilitated the killer.” He turned back to Sandra. “But then the whole thing got away from you, didn’t it? Then you started fearing for your own life, right? So you figured you had to keep quiet. Because unless we caught the killer—”
He broke off. He was pretty sure he had it figured out, but he needed to trip Sandra up just once.
He slammed his palms down on the table. “The Horse Farm was supposed to go under, right? But not so it could be sold to a Nashville lawyer. Right?”