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Damn it all to hell! Wouldn’t you know. Brittlynn stiffened her spine as she turned to face them and, she supposed, the music. Son of a bitch! “About?” she asked more calmly than she felt.
“The McIntyre Massacre and your husband,” the man said. He was tall and somber, his eyes hawkish and cold. The woman had darker skin and eyes that looked black as coal. Her expression, too, was serious, dead serious. “We’d like to speak with Chad.”
“He’s not here,” Brittlynn blurted out, hoping they would just go away. “He took off this morning.” She forced out the words through clenched teeth. “He left.”
“Do you know where he went?” The woman with a velvet-soft voice and hard-as-nails expression.
“Nope, he didn’t say. Drove off before dawn.”
“Why?”
“Don’t know.”
“Did you have a fight?”
“I’m sorry, is this any of your business?” Brittlynn said, bristling. “I don’t think so.”
The man took a step forward. “It is our business. We’re investigating a homicide.”
“What? Homicide?” All the air in Brittlynn’s lungs froze.Homicide? Oh, shit.“And you think Chad is involved?”
“That’s why we’d like to talk to him.”
“Well, you’re too late. He’s gone.” The tall cop—what was his name? Cole or something? He looked at the fire and his frown grew darker. Oh, crap, he probably thought she was destroying evidence or something. She could be in trouble. Big trouble. They were investigating a murder, for God’s sake. Brittlynn’s stomach twisted and despite the freezing temperatures, she began to sweat.
“Are those Chad’s things?” he asked.
Oh, God, she’d fucked up. “Some of them.”
The woman cop opened up her phone, and scrolled through several screens, probably checking to see if Brittlynn should be arrested. Brittlynn swallowed against a desert-dry throat.
“He has a cell phone?”
Brittlynn nodded and felt as if a noose had been strung around her neck. “He . . . he did. But he left it.” She let her eyes slide to the fire, where Chad’s possessions were charred and burning, cell phone included. “It’s there—” She hitched her chin to the burning mass.
The detectives shared a look and the woman turned away, punched in a number on her cellphone, and spoke softly to whoever was on the other end of the connection. That didn’t look good. Not at all.
Suddenly desperate and thinking fast, Brittlynn said, “If there are any of those laws that Chad told me about that, like, I can’t testify against my husband or whatever, then it’s not a problem cuz I’m getting a divorce.”
“That’s not an issue,” the tall man assured her.
“Okay,” she said, sizing up the situation. The cops didn’t look stupid, and the man—Cole or Thomas or whoever—was studying the fire, his eyes focused on the contents going up in flames. Oh, God, they probably thought she was involved in some way no matter what she told them. Crap! She had to remind herself these people weren’t her friends. She couldn’t trust them. As the woman slid her phone into her pocket, Brittlynn began to panic. She could be arrested. Right? Swallowing hard, she forced herself to stay cool, despite the sudden jackhammering of her heart. She’d seen enough episodes ofLaw & Orderto know her rights. “Okay, I’ll answer your questions, but I want an attorney.”
She was not going to jail for anything Chad had done. Nowhere in those hastily written wedding vows had she ever stated,I promise to love you, to respect you and oh, by the way, I promise to lie for you, to take the fall for you, to go to damned prison for you.Nu-uh, that wasnothappening.
“No problem,” the man said, though the woman’s lips pursed almost imperceptibly.
“And,” Brittlynn added, pressing her advantage, “I want a deal. Okay? And make sure it’s a good deal. For what I’m going to tell you? It better be damned good.”