Page 37 of The Couple’s Secret (Detective Josie Quinn #23)

Thirty-Three

Time crawled as the ERT worked along the boat ramp.

Josie spoke briefly to Hollis. She wasn’t releasing the brothers until they’d had time to cool off.

She wasn’t surprised by Jackson’s behavior.

It would take time for both brothers to process the fact that they’d lost Riley forty-eight hours after burying their father.

The reality kept poking Josie with small jabs of unease. What were the odds?

“Hey,” Gretchen said. “Which one do you want?”

The brothers had been moved to opposite sides of the road—Zane in the back of a second ambulance that had arrived, nursing his busted nose, and Jackson in the back seat of a cruiser, his hands zip-tied behind him. Both of them looked pale and exhausted, dazed even.

Josie pointed to the ambulance. “That one.”

Zane reclined on the gurney, an ice pack pressed to his nose. His voice was slightly muffled and nasal as he answered her questions. “The last time I saw her or talked to her was last night in Hollis’s living room. We stayed up late watching Netflix and, um, drinking.”

He said the last word quietly, shame coloring the skin of his neck and cheeks.

“Where were Hollis and Jackson?”

“Bed.”

Outside the perimeter of cruisers, several reporters began to set up for their live shots. Denton PD hadn’t released any information but given Jackson’s outburst, the bare bones of the situation were pretty obvious.

Another viral video.

Josie looked back at Zane. “How would you characterize Riley’s mood?”

“How do you think? She was sad.”

“Did she say anything to make you think she might try to harm herself?”

He lowered the ice pack, his red-rimmed eyes bulging. “Wait. Did she—is that how she?—”

“We don’t know what happened yet,” Josie said. “But I need to know if she talked about harming herself or if she appeared to be distraught enough to do so.”

“No.” Zane shook his head vigorously. “No. If I thought she was going to do something like that, I would have told someone. Woke Jacks up. Or Hol. I don’t know.

Something. We talked about the press, about Dalton, about what the hell to do with ourselves now that finding our parents wasn’t a thing anymore.

She cried a little, but she’s been crying on and off for days.

Then we put on this show we used to watch when we were in high school and she fell asleep on the couch. ”

His eyes took on a faraway look, as though he was transported back to those last hours with Riley.

A host of emotions flashed across his bruised face.

The sorrow that finally settled over his features was so devastating that Josie felt it in the pit of her stomach.

Like Riley, he had been a teenager when the only parent he had left was taken from him.

All he had was Jackson and Riley. The shared trauma bonded them like nothing else could and now they were fracturing in spectacular fashion.

Josie hated the way this case cut her to the bone.

Pushing the morass of feelings down deep, she focused on the information she needed to get from Zane. “Did she wake up after that? Go to bed?”

“She had a blanket. I left her there. Things were so awful.” He pressed the pack against his nose again.

“You know how when something bad happens and it’s like every minute that you’re awake is torture and you can’t stop it or get away from it?

Like just breathing is hard and distractions don’t work and you kind of want to die even though you would never hurt yourself just because the pain is, like, constant? ”

Josie did know. “Yes,” she said, keeping her voice and her expression carefully neutral.

“Right, and so the only relief is sleep. When you’re asleep, you can’t feel it but when you wake up, it’s all there again and sometimes you’re sorry you woke up because it all rushes back.

Well, that’s what it’s been like, especially for Ri, so I didn’t wake her up.

I left her on the couch, figuring if she woke up on her own, she could just go to bed. That was the last time I saw her.”

“How much had she had to drink?”

“I don’t really know. I wasn’t counting or anything.

Hol and I were over at the office for a while last night.

We had takeout there with Ellyn while Jacks and Riley were home.

They’d already eaten when we got back around nine or nine thirty so I don’t know what she drank before that.

You can ask Jacks. She had a few beers that I saw and after Jacks went to bed, she opened a bottle of wine. We split it.”

Josie glanced over her shoulder to see that Gretchen was still conducting her interview. “Jackson didn’t join the two of you?”

“No,” Zane said.

“Why not?”

He removed the ice pack and pointed to his blood-crusted nostrils. “Why do you think?”

“But he woke you up this morning when he couldn’t find Riley?”

The skin beneath Zane’s eyes was already starting to bruise. “Yeah, it was around ten, I guess. Hols was already at work.”

“How long have you and your brother been on the outs?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Since I was in high school.”

“Because of Riley?”

He pressed the pack against his nose again, tipping his head back so she could no longer see his eyes. “No.”

“He’s implied more than once that you contributed to her drinking.”

“Yeah, well, he’s wrong. I never made her drink or encouraged her to drink. Sure, we got busted a few times in high school, but she made her own choices. She always made her own choices.”

“The two of you disagree about a lot of things when it comes to Riley, don’t you?”

“What? No.”

“Zane,” Josie said, suppressing a sigh. “The jealousy isn’t subtle. I’ll ask again: is the tension between you and Jackson because of feelings you both have for Riley?”

“That’s not how it started.” His free hand drifted over his bloodstained T-shirt.

The streaks ran from collar to hem and had even dripped onto his jeans.

“You know what? It doesn’t matter. Let’s just say that when we were younger—before Dad met Cora—Jackson wasn’t all that morally upstanding when it came to women, okay? He didn’t make good choices.”

“What does that mean?” Josie asked.

“What do you think it means? He was an asshole.”

“I’m going to need a specific example, Zane.”

With a heavy sigh, he pulled the ice pack from his face.

“He was twenty, I was thirteen. Dad was working all the time, like he always did. Jackson was usually the one who picked me up from school. That’s how he met my eighth grade English teacher.

She was almost thirty. Really pretty. Nice, too.

Patient, especially with all of us wild, hormonal boys in her class. Anyway, he started dating her.”

“That made you uncomfortable?”

Zane dug a nail into one of the blood droplets on his thigh. It had dried some time ago. “She was pretty upset when he dumped her, so yeah. Made it real awkward for me for the rest of that year.”

“Did you have a crush on this teacher?” Josie asked.

“Maybe,” he mumbled. “Maybe I didn’t like seeing them together or having a front-row seat to how hurt she was when it ended.

But that’s how he always was with women.

Start seeing someone, get them all infatuated and starry-eyed over him and then dump them.

Every single time. Our neighbor’s daughter when she came home from college.

The receptionist at urgent care he went to high school with.

A couple of customers. Dad was pissed. When I was fourteen, he dated one of my friend’s moms after her divorce.

Lasted a few months. She was devastated.

He was fine. My friendship was destroyed.

Fast-forward to five years after Dad and Cora disappeared.

After all the shit the three of us dealt with, he went after Riley. ”

“He pursued her?”

Zane nodded. “I didn’t even know he was interested in her. It took him a while but eventually she went all starry-eyed like the rest of them. It bothered me, okay? She deserves better. I didn’t want her to be hurt any more than she already was by missing her mom.”

“It looks like they were happy together,” Josie said. “Did he cheat on Riley?”

“I don’t know. Ask him.”

“Were you interested in Riley?”

“I love her like a sister, okay?”

“Were you interested in her?” Josie repeated.

Zane abandoned the ice pack on his lap and examined his cuticles, also stained with dried blood.

“Zane,” Josie coaxed.

He let his head loll back against the gurney, squeezed his eyes closed and exhaled through his mouth. “When I was a teenager, yeah. Okay? Happy? Yeah, I had a crush on the girl who was supposed to be my stepsister. I never once acted on it or even thought about acting on it.”

She could tell the admission cost him something and wondered if this was the first time he’d ever said it out loud. Forging ahead, she said, “Even when the two of you were out drinking together?”

Zane blinked, keeping his eyes trained on the harsh overhead lights.

“I didn’t bring her with me because I was trying to hook up with her.

Even though we weren’t blood-related, it would have been gross, okay?

We lived in the same house. Our parents were getting married.

It would have been too weird. I invited her to go drinking with me and my friends because she was bored.

She caught me sneaking out one night and asked to come.

That was it. I never even told her how I felt, much less acted on it. ”

But Jackson had. Well after Zane’s crush started, but still. How had it felt for Zane all these years? Him being so careful never to cross any lines with Riley only to have his womanizing brother swoop in and marry her?

Before today, the rift between the brothers had been nothing more than a curiosity but now the woman both of them were in love with was dead.

Josie knew what Dougherty had told her about the scene.

Knew without yet viewing it that the signs pointed to a medical event.

Knew that Riley had a drinking problem and had been under tremendous stress in the past week.

Those things might have contributed to said medical event.

Still, deep in Josie’s gut, unease swirled.

How could a family be this unlucky?

Josie asked if she could search his phone.

Zane handed it over readily. It was standard procedure.

She needed to know if there were inconsistencies in his statement, the timeline he had given or red flags in communications he might have had in the last twenty-four hours.

She scrolled through the text messages and the call log.

There was a flurry of messages on a group chain with him, Riley, and Jackson regarding the funerals.

A barrage of texts from people whose names Josie didn’t recognize offering condolences.

A thread between him and Hollis regarding company matters.

More messages from that morning between him and Jackson about whether Jackson had located her yet.

There were calls to Riley between ten seventeen in the morning and when he had contacted Hollis earlier that day—the same time that Josie and Gretchen had been speaking with him at the company lot.

If there was anything remotely suspicious about Riley’s death, they’d get a warrant for the contents of the phone and serve it directly on his cell carrier. It would give them access to anything he might have deleted in the past several hours. They’d do the same for Hollis and Jackson.

Josie handed the phone back to Zane. He leaned to his left a little, peering over her shoulder in Jackson’s direction.

“You going to arrest him?” he asked tiredly. “’Cause I’m not pressing charges.”

“Then no, we’re not arresting him,” she said. “But you two have to leave the scene. Stay in Denton but try not to beat the hell out of each other.”

“I’m not leaving this city until I know what happened to Riley.”