LITMIR.BIZ

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with the search commander and select the area that needed his and Ashton’s support the most. Everything else on today’s agenda could wait.

      “Sheriff!”

      Mitch held the door for Dixon who was double-timing down the corridor to join them. “One more thing,” he said, a bit out of breath as he sidled into the waiting car. The doors closed behind him and the elevator slid into motion. “Roy’s a little miffed that Willis wouldn’t let him check the Preston woman’s room over at the hotel. Willis didn’t want to go in there without your authorization since it’s still taped off.”

      Mitch grimaced at the thought of his overzealous cousin. Roy wanted to be the boss around the other men, but he knew Mitch wouldn’t back him up if he overstepped his bounds, so he whined. Which only served to lessen his already poor popularity.

      “Giving that room another look-see wouldn’t hurt,” Mitch allowed. “I think it was gone through pretty thoroughly the last time, but we might as well cover every base.”

      Dixon smiled. “I’ll tell Roy he can do it personally.”

      Mitch resisted the urge to ask Dixon to do it himself. Roy would gloat over this triumph for weeks. That concern was quickly replaced as the memory of going through Alex’s room that first time reeled through Mitch’s mind. Touching her things. Feeling angry when one of his men commented on silky panties and hating himself for it. The stab of betrayal had pierced deep into his chest when faced with the reality of just how badly he’d been fooled by Alex Preston.

      The elevator glided to a stop on the requested level and Mitch forced the haunting memories away. He glanced at Ashton, who had been particularly quiet for a lawyer. A wise man knows when to listen, Mitch decided as the three crossed the lobby. Ashton was likely building a case right now, and closely observing who he would consider his enemy. But Mitch wasn’t his enemy, he only wanted to know who’d killed two of his deputies. And why. Murders just didn’t happen in his county.

      Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to Ashton’s relationship with Alex than simply sharing the same employer. But that wasn’t supposed to matter to Mitch since it had no apparent bearing on the case. Still, it did.

      As Dixon drove away in a brown-and-tan cruiser, Mitch slid behind the wheel of his Jeep Wrangler. Ashton settled into the passenger side. Renewed dread pooled in Mitch’s gut as he considered what he had to do first. He definitely was not looking forward to making that call. Saylor had been young. He and his wife had only been married for a couple of years. This whole thing was crazy. Mitch had himself two dead deputies in the space of just over twenty-four hours. To his knowledge, Raleigh County had never before lost a deputy in the line of duty.

      “It’s my thinking,” Ashton said, breaking his lengthy silence, “that this incident should clear Alex of the murder charge.” He said it as offhandedly as if he’d just commented on the nice weather they were having, but Mitch heard the tension hiding beneath that polished surface.

      Oh yeah, the lawyer had been doing some serious thinking. Mitch backed out of the parking space, his gaze drifting up to the second-story window of the hospital room where Saylor had taken his last breath. “Maybe, maybe not,” Mitch returned noncommittally.

      “Come on, Sheriff,” Ashton argued impatiently. “Do you think Alex shot at herself? She’s running for her life. Someone tried to kill her. Maybe the same person who killed Miller. The shooter probably thinks she knows something or can identify him.”

      Mitch glanced first right then left before pulling out onto Commerce Street. That was one possibility. “Or maybe it was a setup by her accomplice to make her look innocent,” he suggested, bracing for the other man’s fury.

      “What accomplice?” Ashton was more than a little annoyed now. “She came down here alone.”

      “So you say.”

      “Look, Hayden,” Ashton snapped, dropping the title and any respect he’d so politely displayed before. “I’ve told you everything I know about the case Alex was working on, but I get the feeling that you’re not being completely up-front with me. There’s something you’re leaving out.”

      Mitch braked at a red light and turned his attention fully to Ashton, who iced him down with one of those legal-eagle stares. Mitch supposed he should tell Ashton the rest. He’d know soon enough anyway…well, assuming they found Alex alive. Mitch refused to even consider the alternative.

      “Her prints are on the murder weapon,” he said finally.

      Ashton shrugged. “And I’ll bet Miller’s are on his pistol. We have the proverbial standoff. Who shot first?”

      Mitch mulled that one over for a while before responding. There was just too much he didn’t understand, and a strong possibility existed that he might never know any more than he did right now, especially considering the circumstances. “That’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question,” he said in answer to Ashton’s rhetorical jab. “There’s no way to know which weapon fired first.”

      “What does Alex say happened?” he demanded. “You’ve certainly avoided that question cleanly enough this morning.”

      “She doesn’t know what happened,” Mitch admitted, grinding out the words as he parked in his designated slot in front of the Raleigh County Sheriff’s Department.

      “What do you mean she doesn’t know what happened?” Ashton asked warily.

      Mitch withdrew his keys from the ignition and faced him. “She has retrograde amnesia. She doesn’t remember anything since arriving in town.”

      Fury and something else less definitive etched itself across Ashton’s features. “You said she was fine.”

      “She is fine. The gunshot didn’t leave much more than a nasty flesh wound. The neurologist thinks the problem occurred when the back of her head slammed pretty hard into something, giving her a concussion. The scrapes and bruises she sustained indicate there was a struggle.” Mitch shook his head, frowning with the same frustration that had plagued him for more than twenty-four hours. “We just don’t know when or why. There was no indication that Miller had been involved in a struggle.”

      “So what are you saying,” Ashton pressed, “that she can’t remember anything?”

      Mitch shook his head again. He wasn’t sure he completely understood this himself. “She remembers everything prior to this case. She knows who she is, where she works—” he shrugged “—everything, except what I need her to.”

      “Victoria will want to call in a specialist.”

      “I already have.” Mitch climbed out of his Jeep and rounded the hood. After waiting for Ashton to catch up, Mitch led the way to the building he called home the better part of every day. “He said she could remember some of it, all of it, or none of it.” He paused at the door, leveling a gaze on the other man that he hoped conveyed the utter desperation of the situation. “Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe never. And whatever she remembers will likely come in bits and pieces.”

      Ashton met that gaze with steel in his own. “So you’ve got no witnesses and no known motivation.” He inclined his head in a gesture of triumph. “You’ve got no case, Sheriff. You can’t even legally hold Alex any longer than you already have.”

      Ire knotted in Mitch’s gut. “I’ll tell you what I’ve got, Ashton,” he said calmly, but a threatening quality belied his attempt at an even tone. “I’ve got her prints on the murder weapon and powder residue on her right hand. It may not be much, but it’s all I’ll need to build a case and you know it.”

      A slow grin slid across Ashton’s face. “We’ll just see about that, Hayden. There’s no way Alex killed your deputy unless it was in self-defense. You’ll never make me believe it, and you damn sure won’t prove it in a court of law.”

      Mitch jerked the door open and went inside, Ashton came in behind him. That was the thing Mitch hated most about lawyers.

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