Taken by Tuesday (Weekday Brides Series) (18 page)

Lucas nudged Meg and looked toward Rick. “Maybe she has a new favorite procrastination pastime.”

“I guess that’s true. She hasn’t had a lot of alone time since all this happened.”

Meg didn’t sound convinced. If anyone really knew Judy, it would be her best friend.

Something at the front door distracted his attention away from Meg.

Wearing suits, and not even trying to blend in, walked Detective Raskin and Detective Perozo.
Damn it.
He’d been waiting for the shoe to fall, and it looked as if it was about to.

“Is that . . . ?”

“Yeah.”

Raskin noticed them and started walking their way.

Rick wasn’t sure if the room grew quiet, or his own anxiety had him hearing his heart beating in his ear. “Hey, Utah?”

Judy lifted her gaze and followed his stare. The small smile she’d managed since they walked in the room disappeared. She tossed the cue on the table and moved to his side.

“You don’t think—”

“I do. Call Neil,” he told her.

“What’s going on?” Dan asked.

Rick looked at the other men. “Stay with the girls until Neil or someone on his team relieves you.”

“Where are you going?” Lucas asked.

Raskin stopped in front of them. Judy slid her arm around Rick’s shoulders.

“Hello, Judy.” Raskin addressed her first.

“Detective.”

“Mr. Evans.”

“Detective.”

No one said a word. The music on the jukebox filled the room; the attention of everyone in the bar was on them.

“We have a few more questions for you, Mr. Evans.”

A few questions . . . right!

“I can come in the morning and answer them.”

Raskin actually laughed. “We’d like you to answer them now.” He nodded toward the door.

Well, I had to try.

Judy sat on his lap and glared at the detective. “You’re looking in the wrong direction.” Her voice hitched higher.

“Mr. Evans, let’s do this quietly, shall we?”

“He didn’t do any—”

Rick cut Judy off. “Stay in control, babe.” He kissed her cheek. “Call Neil and stay with the team.”

“What the hell is going on?” Lucas asked.

Rick helped Judy to her feet and stood. He placed his hand on his front pocket and Raskin turned to the side and bared his gun.

Rick stopped, placed his hands in the air. “Keys to the car so Judy can get home.”

“I’ll help you with that.”

Before the detective approached, he lifted his hands higher. “I’m carrying two. Right side and left leg.”

He didn’t stop the detective from removing his firearms and the keys to Judy’s car.

Taking no chances, Raskin turned him around and slapped cuffs on him before he marched him outside.

“Holy shit!” Dan yelled. “What’s going on?”

Dan and Lucas followed behind along with Judy and Meg.

A crowed gathered as Raskin frisked him before putting him in the back of the unmarked sedan.

Meg had her arm around Judy’s shoulders. Instead of falling apart, Judy looked like she wanted to hurt someone.
Stay in control. Stay alert.
He hoped his thoughts made it to her head with nothing more than his eyes.

“Am I under arrest or what?” Rick asked as they pulled away from the curb.

Raskin turned in his seat. “You have the right to remain silent . . .”

Well, that answered that!

Something inside her fractured when she watched the police put Rick in the back of a car in handcuffs. Rick made her feel safe, gave her the confidence to walk tall and dare anyone to touch her. He was one of the good guys . . . the guy your mom tells you about . . . the one you wait for.

As the car drove away, she was vaguely aware of her friends talking. She opened her purse, found her phone, and called Neil. While the phone rang she pocketed the stun gun Rick had given her only hours before.

“MacBain,” Neil answered.

“It’s Judy. They took Rick in.”

There was no surprise in Neil’s voice. “Where are you?”

She gave him her location and looked up and down the block. The small crowd from the bar was already moving back inside. “Meg and I are here with friends. I don’t know where they are taking him, Neil. Do you have any idea?”

“I’ll find out. Don’t worry about Rick.”

She blew out a frustrated sigh. “That’s like asking you not to worry about Gwen. Listen, I’ll head home and wait for you there.”

Neil agreed only after she agreed to have the men in the car with them.

The drive home was quiet. Judy let Meg show Lucas and Dan around the house while she turned on the outside lights and looked around like she’d seen Rick do more than once. Confident that no one was lurking in the shadows, she placed a call to Mike, asking him to call her back as soon as he could . . . day or night. Asking for his financial help for Rick was easier than asking for herself. She had no experience with bail and jail . . . but she’d learn.

“They really think Rick attacked you?” Dan asked when they were all waiting for Neil to show up.

“It wasn’t him,” she told them. “Not even close.”

“Judy didn’t actually see the guy. The only thing the police are going on is a lack of an alibi,” Meg told them.

“They have to have more than that . . . don’t they?”

Judy shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Neil arrived with Russell, and Dan and Lucas left with a promise to call in the morning.

Neil wasn’t a hugger, which suited Judy at the moment. Sympathy might have flashed on the man’s face, but he wasn’t going to dwell on it. “Blake has a call in to his lawyers. We should have suits on the ground in a few hours. The problem is the weekend. We think the detectives purposely made the arrest tonight to spread out any arraignment, keep him away from you longer so they can approach you without him close by.”

“Why do they need to approach me? I don’t have anything else to say to them. And if they’re going to try and use my words to prosecute the wrong guy, I’ll just keep quiet.”

“It’s not that simple, Judy. This isn’t a domestic violence issue, cut-and-dry . . . you can’t drop the charges. The district attorney is who will file charges against Rick since they think he’s responsible for the attack.”

“He didn’t do it!” She was yelling at the messenger and tossed her hands in the air to calm herself. “Sorry. I’m not mad at you.”

“Be prepared for the police showing up to talk to you.”

“Do I have to cooperate?”

“No. We have a separate lawyer on call for you, someone to advise and help direct questions. If the police show up, tell them you want counsel present. They have to respect that. It won’t keep them from talking
at
you, however.”

“I put a call in for Mike. I’m sure he’ll post the bail money.”

“I have that covered, Judy.”

Her relief only lasted a minute. “Now what?”

Neil blinked . . . twice. “We wait.”

“Great! We wait and the bastard that knocked me around is still out there and the man who has protected me is in jail. How is that fair?” She wanted to scream, wanted to hit something.

“Russell will stay here. I’m going to the station and meet up with the attorneys.”

“Can’t I come with you?”

“There’s no point. Chances are the only one who will see Rick is the lawyer until he’s released.”

“And when will that be?”

“Best guess . . . Monday, if the judge grants bail.”

“Why wouldn’t the judge grant bail?”

“I don’t have that answer.” Neil didn’t seem happy about his own information.

Neil left a few minutes later and Judy removed her laptop from her room and set it up on the table in the kitchen before brewing a pot of coffee.

“What are you doing?” Meg asked when she returned from her room wearing her pajamas.

“Crash course in law school. The evidence they have on Rick can’t be any more than circumstantial. The question is how much can they assume before a judge thinks it’s fact?”

It looked like Meg agreed with the idea of research when she returned with her own computer and poured a cup of coffee for herself. Hell, two newly retired college students knew their way around the Internet more than most.

Chapter Nineteen

Meg sat on the couch, her laptop on her thighs, one foot perched on the coffee table while she nibbled on popcorn. “According to this website, there’s a good chance they will put you on the stand if Rick goes to trial. Even if you’re a hostile witness.”

“You think they’d do that?”

“I’m not the one to ask. I didn’t think they’d actually arrest Rick.”

Russell had taken up residence in one of the bedrooms, where he was hooking up surveillance equipment to show all the cameras around the property inside the house.

“I’ll plead the Fifth.”

Meg laughed. “You can’t do that. Only Rick can. He’s the one on trial.”

“He’s my boyfriend, there has to be something I can plead.”

Meg clicked around the website she was on to see if there was something her friend could do to avoid giving testimony at any trial Rick might face. The word
spouse
had many links so she flipped through them. “Hmm . . .”

“What?”

“I didn’t find anything for a girlfriend. But if you were Rick’s wife, you wouldn’t be forced to testify. The laws are clear on this point everywhere.”

Judy moved from her perch at the table to sit beside Meg.

She scrolled the page to the beginning and pointed at the passage. “A spouse has testimonial privileges, the right to
not
testify. A spouse also has privileged communication where the conversations between spouses are confidential.”

Judy leaned back and stared beyond the computer, thinking. “So if Rick and I were married, and I’m the only witness . . . I won’t have to testify.”

Meg wasn’t sure she liked the deductive look in her friend’s eyes. “Judy! You can’t be serious.”

Judy snapped her gaze to Meg. “My boyfriend is sitting in jail simply because he’s in my life.”

“But marriage?”

Judy pushed off the couch, now on a new mission. “If the Kardashians can marry for the sake of cameras and cash, I can get married to keep Rick out of jail. Besides, don’t you arrange temporary marriages for a living now?”

“Well, yeah . . . eventually.” She hadn’t made a match yet, but she would. “What are you looking up now?”

“Marriage laws.”

Meg narrowed her eyes. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

Judy barely glanced over her shoulder. “What?”

“Rick. What if he’s not into this idea?”

Her BFF laughed. “He’s grown attached to his freedom. My guess is he’ll go for it.”

“But he’ll be married.”

“To the woman he’s been trying to date for an entire summer and who he’s been messing the sheets with for the last week. Besides, we’re not talking forever. We’re talking until we find the ass who is behind all this. Once Rick’s name is clear, we can get an annulment. You should know all about the dissolution of marriages in your line of work.”

She did . . . but applying that to Judy didn’t seem right. “I’ll call Samantha in the morning and ask what she thinks.”

“Perfect.”

“Excuse me?” Russell poked his head into the room from the hall.

“Yeah?”

“Looks like we’re having company.”

The words left his lips and the buzzer for the gate told them of their late-night guests. On the monitor, red and blue lights glistened off the top of the black-and-white car in the drive.

Judy hit the button. “Yes?”

“Miss Gardner? It’s Detective Perozo and Officer Greenwood. We’d like to talk to you.”

They both looked at Russell. “Might as well let them in.”

“Record them,” Judy told him. “I don’t want to miss anything they have to say.”

Where Meg would be biting her nails, Judy answered the door with a strange smile.

Nice touch, Judy thought, watching Officer Greenwood walk into the room. It’s like the police knew bringing in the guy who cuffed Rick would be a bad idea.

“What can I do for you, officers?”

“We just want to talk to you.”

“I don’t have anything more to say.” Judy folded her arms over her chest.

“Mind if we sit, Judy?” Officer Greenwood’s soft voice reminded her of her moments in the ER. She was a nice lady, even if she was currently working the wrong angle.

She moved to the table and lowered her laptop so they couldn’t see what she was working on.

Detective Perozo looked over at Russell and Meg. “Mind if we talk to you alone?”

“Yes, actually I do. Russell is my temporary bodyguard since you deemed it necessary to remove my permanent one. Anything you have to say you can say in front of Meg.”

The officers exchanged glances.

“Oh, and Russell, can you please call the attorney. Let them know I have guests.”

“Absolutely.” Russell glared as he removed his cell phone and punched in numbers.

“You don’t need an attorney, Miss Gardner. You’re not on trial.”

Instead of saying anything, she smiled and nodded.

“We know you’re confused as to why we brought Rick in.”

She’d have the smile and nod thing down in no time at this rate.

“He had opportunity, knowledge of your every move, no alibi, and motive.”

She kept her smile. “Motive, really? What might that be?” Asking questions wasn’t the same as answering them.

“Did you know that Rick was allowed to retire early from the Marines?”

No, she didn’t, but she kept her smile on her face and didn’t answer the question.

“There was some question as to the mental health of the team he worked with. Reports from a paper in Colorado said he was responsible for a civilian’s death less than two years ago.”

She didn’t know that. Not that it mattered. “He
is
in private security.”

“Shot a man in the back in the forest.”

Her eyes glanced to Russell.

He gave a curt nod.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“He’s capable of hurting you.”

“He didn’t.”

Officer Greenwood leaned forward. “Domestic abuse takes up four out of every ten cases of abuse. Did you know that?”

Judy bit her tongue to keep from responding.

“We know that Rick has been keeping tabs on you for months. Long before you moved to LA. Did you know that?”

Her tongue was going to bleed.

“My attacker sounded nothing like Rick.”

“Voices can be disguised. There’s no telling what the military trained Rick to do.”

Judy went back to chewing her own tongue.

A buzzer from Russell’s phone made noise.

Everyone glanced up, and he was now looking into his cell. “We have company,” he said.

Detective Perozo jumped up.

Russell clicked on the main TV and flipped the feed coming from the gate cameras.

Outside the gate were several cars pulling along the narrow drive with men carrying cameras.

“What the?”

“Paparazzi. Police cars have a way of attracting attention,” Meg said for all of them.

“Just when life was starting to get back to normal,” Judy said. “Thanks ever so much.”

“We’re trying to keep you safe, Miss Gardner,” Officer Greenwood said.

Holding her tongue wasn’t going to happen. “No. You’re trying to solve a case using the path of least resistance. Why don’t you try a little harder and put the
right
guy in jail?”

“Do you know where Rick was yesterday after he dropped you off at work?”

The question stopped her smile. She didn’t answer.

The buzzer from the gate sounded.

Russell answered.

“Looks like your counsel is here, Judy.”

The police looked at each other and stood. “No need. We’ll be in touch.”

The Lexus passed the police car when the gate opened. Several flashes of light caught the entire exchange.

A woman stepped from the car, her jet-black hair slicked back in a long ponytail in the back, her dark clothing suitably fitting and stylish. “Was it something I said?”

Judy liked her instantly. “If I knew lawyers were cop repellant, I would have asked that you join us earlier.”

The woman approached and extended a hand. “Kimberly March. I’m with the firm hired by Blake Harrison.”

It took a minute to recognize the name. “Thank you for coming.”

Kimberly watched the retreating car.

“C’mon inside. I suppose you’re not needed now that they’re gone.”

“I’d like to know what they said.”

Meg brewed another pot of coffee, this time decaf. “I’m starting to think this night is never going to end.”

Judy hid a yawn and tried to smile. Russell left them to update Neil.

“I won’t keep you up much longer.”

“Can I call you Kimberly?”

“Please do. I’ve been brought up on the situation. The police feel they have the right guy, and everyone else knows they have the wrong guy.”

“Yeah.” The night was catching up with her, and Judy wanted to find something shiny to place on the cloud before she went to her lonely bed. For the first time in a week, her bed wouldn’t house one amazingly warm body who made her feel protected and comfortable.

Meg sat beside them while Judy played the recording Russell had managed to capture of the conversation with the police.

“Sounds like you handled yourself well.” In true lawyer form, Kimberly wrote a few things down on a large yellow pad while she talked. “Did anything they ask or say make you question Rick?”

Judy glanced at Meg, then the lawyer. “I don’t know everything about his past, his years in the military. They wanted me to think he’s not sane.”

“Did you wonder?”

“No. Rick is one of the most levelheaded men I know. My famous brother is crazier than Rick.”

Meg laughed beside her and spread her arms. “That’s because he leaves this all the time to live out of a trailer on a set. Now that’s crazy!”

Kimberly smiled. “Anything else?”

“Yeah.” She paused. “Why do you think they asked me if I knew where Rick went after he dropped me off at work this morning?”

Meg pulled Judy’s laptop closer and started clicking.

“Do you know where he was?” Kimberly asked.

“I had no idea where he was. I was at work.”

Kimberly scribbled a note. “They were looking for his alibi.”

“Why?”

Russell took that moment to walk in the room.

“There’s more coffee. Decaf,” Judy offered.

“I’m OK . . .” He ran a hand through his hair and seemed to wonder what he was supposed to do with it after that.

“What’s up?”

“Neil . . . he a, told me . . .”

“What?” Judy’s heart really couldn’t take much more for one night.

“There’s been another attack. Happened just after nine this morning. They found the woman just after five.”

Judy swallowed . . . hard. “Found her?”

Russell had a difficult time keeping eye contact. “Back of a garage a few blocks away from your building. Dark hair, medium build . . . pillowcase over her head.”

In an instant, the strong exterior dissolved and Judy remembered the terror inside the pillowcase, the horror of being at someone else’s mercy.

So fucking easy.
Her arm burned . . .
Next time.

“Judy?”

She tossed up her hand. “Damn it.”

“Is she alive?”

The answer was in Russell’s eyes. No words needed.

Judy slowly shook her head.

“Are you OK?” Meg asked, placed a hand on her arm.

Judy didn’t meant to shrug her friend off, but she did. “I’m fine.”

Meg bounced away as if stung.

“Sorry.” Judy instantly felt bad for pushing away. “I’m pissed. This guy is after me. I know it here.” She placed a finger on her chest. “I know it. I don’t know why, but he is. Now everyone’s attention is on Rick and not finding this guy.”

“A stranger’s death isn’t your fault.”

“I know . . . I get that.” Didn’t stop her from blaming herself on a strange level. Not everyone had access to bodyguards and personal trainers. And she needed hers back. She needed Rick at her side.

“Kimberly . . . what I talk to you about is confidential, right?”

Kimberly smiled, her dark eyes lit with question. “Of course.”

Judy looked at Russell. “Can you excuse us?”

Russell narrowed his gaze but left the room without incident.

Judy patted Meg’s hand, her gaze still on Kimberly. “I need you to do something for me.”