Page 131 of Take Your Breath Away

I led Jayne outside the headquarters building, a broad, one-story, drab red-brick structure with a foreboding, massive black entryway. There were no park benches around, so I led her over to my Explorer and got her into the passenger seat. I went around and slipped in behind the wheel, turning the key only so that I could put down the two front windows to let in some air.

“Talk to me,” I said.

She told me about Tyler’s arrest for the murder of a woman named Candace DiCarlo, as well as the pantomime orchestrated by Albert and the dead woman. That left me speechless. Albert’s stupid stunt got a hit man to second-guess himself, and nearly got me killed in the process. I wanted to find him and smash his head up against a tree.

And now Tyler had been ensnared by the entire mess.

“I’m scared to death for him,” Jayne said.

“They’ve got a witness, they know he was there, and there’s blood,” I said. Jayne nodded. “Do you think he did it?”

She shook her head. “No,” she said confidently. “He would never do that to anyone. Except …”

“Except what?”

“There’s something I never told you. About why Tyler’s aunt wouldn’t look after him anymore.” She told me the story. About Tyler’s angry outburst with Clara, that Detective Hardy had found out about it. “I’m sorry I never told you. I should have. You had a right to know.”

I didn’t see where I had anything to complain about, given how much I had kept from Jayne. “It’s okay. But, shit, it makes him look bad where this Candace woman is concerned. And he ran away from the scene?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t call the police?”

“No.”

“Christ, Jayne, forgive me, but it kind of looks like he did it.”

Jayne nodded. “It looks that way, but …” She paused, sniffed. “I tried to confess.”

“What?”

“I told Detective Hardy it was me. I told her I did it. She wouldn’t believe me.” Her voice briefly adopted an almost dreamlike quality. “Maybe I can still convince her.”

“For God’s sake, Jayne,” I said, “there’s got to be a better way to help him than doing something crazy like that.”

“I love him,” she said. “He’s my brother. I was never there for him. It’s time that I was.”

“Listen, Jayne, I have to tell you what happened to me today. Why I’m such a mess.”

She focused on me and said, “Tell me.”

“I know what happened to Brie.”

Her focus became sharper. “Oh my God.”

I related the events of the afternoon. How Brie was murdered by a hit man named Matt, then buried in the woods north of town. How Norman showed up at the right time and that Matt was dead. I didn’t get into the shoelace story, or that I got some significant information out of Matt before he died.

“Dear God, he made you dig up her grave,” Jayne said, looking as though all that had happened, to both of us, in the last few hours was going to cause her to faint. “Andrew, how are you even putting one foot in front of the other? What are you doing sitting in the car talking to me for? You need to go in there and tell all this to Hardy.”

“In time.”

“Now that you know who killed Brie, maybe she can figure out who it was who hired him.”

When I didn’t say anything right away, Jayne whispered, “You know.”

“I know.”

“Tell her. Tell me.”