All Through the Night (Liar's Web) (22 page)

He knew one thing with absolute certainty. As long as he lived, he never wanted to see that look of heartbreak and betrayal on Darcel's face.

Chapter Twelve

All morning she'd been on cloud nine. She had a date with Jake tonight, an absolute, honest to goodness date. He was taking her out to dinner and dancing, hopefully to be followed by a passionate night in each other's arms. Even though he hadn't expressed his feelings for her, she knew he cared. It was greedy of her to want to rush things, but in the deepest regions of her heart, she hoped he felt the same love for her as she did for him. But, she reasoned, it could take a while for him to express it. Having witnessed the dysfunction within his own family, she sensed he wasn't a big believer in love everlasting. Who could blame him?

You'll just have to make a believer out of him.

The doorbell rang, and she made her way toward it, stopping in her tracks as she saw the person standing at her door through the bay window. She raised a hand to her throat and stifled a rising scream in her throat. Her pulse was racing madly, and she felt as if she were having an out-of-body experience. Ronnie's face stared back at her through the front door window. Was she going crazy? Hallucinating? She'd had so many dreams about Ronnie since the night of his death. Was this a sign that she was losing it?

“
Darcel, it's me…Andre.”

 
She let out a shaky breath and chided herself for being such an idiot. It was Ronnie's twin Andre at her door. How ridiculous for her to think even for a moment Ronnie had come back from the grave. She really needed to take a week off from work and fly to the Caribbean for some R & R before she lost her mind. A smile crossed her lips at the thought of Jake wearing a straw hat, lounging on a beach towel, and sipping on a Pina Colada.

She opened the door, her eyes immediately taking in the stress and strain on Andre's face. His eyes were hooded and shadowed, hinting at a grief and pain she imagined must be unbearable. Her heart immediately went out to him.

“
Hi, Andre. I'm surprised to see you.”

“
Hey, Darcel. Excuse me for just dropping by out of the blue.”

“
Come on in.” She waved her hand to welcome Andre into her home. “I'm so sorry about Ronnie.”

“
Thank you. I don't want to take up too much of your time. I just came by to thank you for the fruit basket and the letter you sent by the house. Mama wanted to thank you herself, but she doesn't get out much these days.”

She nodded her head, compassion flowing through her as she considered Mrs. Devlin's loss. “Mourning is a long process. Parents aren't supposed to outlive their children. It goes against the natural order of things.”

“
So true,” he murmured as he gazed thoughtfully at her. “That's exactly how Mama feels.”

She was trying not to be freaked out by his uncanny resemblance to his fraternal twin. It wasn't fair to be creeped out by his presence in her home. For the rest of his life Andre was going to have to deal with the fact his twin was gone from this world, taken in a brutal act of violence. It wasn't right for her to add to his burden and treat him as if were tainted in any way by his brother's murder.

“
Can I get you something to drink? Lemonade? Sweet tea?” She was determined to treat Andre as a welcome guest in her home. After all, they'd been childhood classmates and grown up in the same small town.

“
A glass of lemonade would hit the spot,” he said as he wiped beads of sweat off his forehead.

She made her way to the walk-in kitchen, opened the fridge, and reached for the pitcher of fresh lemonade before pouring it into a glass tumbler. “It's getting to be a scorcher out there today,” she said in a conversational tone. “They say it might reach ninety degrees.”

“
Yes, it's promising to be a hot one,” he agreed.

As she handed Andre the glass of lemonade, their fingers touched, and she felt a chill sweep through her. He stared at her, his hazel eyes brimming with untold secrets. Images flashed into her brain, chaotic scenes from the night Ronnie was killed. She saw Ronnie. Suddenly there were two Ronnies. One Ronnie had blood pouring down his chest. And another Ronnie was standing behind him. No, not Ronnie. It was Andre!

She saw it all so clearly, as if it were a movie being played in her head. Whereas before she'd seen nothing but shadows, everything now was crystal clear. She'd seen Andre standing in the doorway of the building with a gun in his hand as his twin brother slumped to the ground. It was Andre who'd raised the gun and shot at her, then chased after her in his car. It was Andre who'd come into her hospital room and tried to smother her to death. And it was Andre who'd murdered his own brother, his flesh and blood, his twin.

The glass of lemonade slipped from her fingers, shattering on her hard wood floor with a loud crashing sound and spraying liquid and fragments of glass all over the floor.

* * * *

Jake pointedly looked at his watch and began drumming his fingers on his desk. He gazed dispassionately at the person who'd entered his office unannounced and without a scheduled appointment. Try as he might, he still couldn't conceal the fact that he couldn't stand him. The very sight of him standing there in his office irritated the hell out of him. It still grated on his last nerve that he'd had the audacity to send Darcel out to Hangman's Wharf in the wee hours of the morning to clean up his mess. She'd come awfully close to being killed herself that night.

It rankled his sense of right and wrong that a man could justify such an action. What kind of man hid behind a woman's skirts? He let out a deep, frustrated sigh. He didn't know how he was going to do it, but somehow he had to make peace with this man since he was planning on having a future with his sister.

He forced himself to be professional. “What brings you here, Lenny?”

“
Sheriff, I need to talk to you about something,” Lenny said in an urgent voice.

“
And what would that be?” he asked coolly, unimpressed by Lenny's dire sounding voice. At this point, he knew enough to connect the dots. Lenny was by nature a person who liked to be in the spotlight. Who knew what drama he'd concocted in order to get some attention from the police department?

“
Something’s been bothering me.” Deep worry lines marred Lenny’s otherwise perfect features, while a slight frown betrayed his inner turmoil. If he hadn't known any better, Jake would've bought Lenny's act hook, line, and sinker. As it was, he was exercising extreme control by not kicking him out of his office on his ass.

Jake leaned back in his chair and placed his hands behind his head while he swung his legs across his desk, his snakeskin cowboy boots resting against the edge. “Yeah, what would that be?”

Beads of sweat began to break out on Lenny’s forehead. “I wasn't completely honest in my official statement to the police.”

Jake sat up in his chair and scowled at Lenny, drawing his eyebrows together in a menacing gesture. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“
I left something out,” he confessed in a low voice. “A piece of information that might be important.”

Jake didn't have time for Lenny's games. He was waiting for a forensics report from the lab. Something wasn't sitting well with him about Cree Robinson being the shooter. Although his fingerprints had been all over the Glock .9 mm, there'd been another set of prints—a partial the lab was working overtime trying to match up with prints in the database.

“
Spit it out. I don't have all day to screw around.”

“
Andre Devlin was there, Sheriff. I saw him.”

“
What're you talking about?”

“
At the Sugar Shack,” he stated impatiently, “When Ronnie threatened to kill me if he didn't get his money. Andre was there that morning.”

“
In your statement you said it was Ronnie and Cree. Just Ronnie and Cree,” Jake said forcefully.

“
I lied,” Lenny said in a small voice. “I didn't want to make trouble for Andre after everything his family has been through. It felt wrong to rat him out like that. But now I'm starting to feel funny knowing he was part of Ronnie's organization. It might mean my sister is still in danger.”

“
If you're playing games with me, you're going to be in a world of hurt.”

“
No games, Trueblood. I swear. It's the truth. I saw him sitting at a table in one of the back rooms counting money with Cree. The door was open just a crack and I saw him…he didn't see me though.”

Jake's mouth felt dry, and for a moment he lost the ability to speak. A sudden burst of fear coursed through him as the weight of Lenny's words hit him with full force. If Andre was part of Ronnie's criminal enterprise, then all bets were off.

The sheriff's office had concluded that Cree's death was a suicide based on the information they'd assembled. But there was still the question of the additional set of prints on the gun. There was still a huge puzzle piece missing from the puzzle. Why hadn't Andre stepped forward to aid the investigation? Why hadn't he wanted to help find his brother's killer? Why had he flat out lied?

“
He was in on it. I know it,” Lenny said convincingly. “Andre was part of Ronnie and Cree's organization.”

A white-hot rage swelled within him as the ramifications of Lenny's words settled in. Andre had never been a suspect in the shooting since there hadn't been anything tying him to the scene of the crime. According to Andre and his mother, he'd been at home all evening keeping her company. Had that alibi been a lie? Jake wracked his brain, thinking about Andre and any criminal activity he'd been involved in over the years. For the most part, his record was as clean as a whistle.

Other than being arrested a few years ago for destruction of property, Andre was a choir boy compared to his twin. But if he'd been part of his brother's criminal dealings this whole time, he'd managed to pull the wool over everyone's eyes in law enforcement. Everyone had been under the impression Andre was the brother who walked the straight and narrow while Ronnie couldn't stay away from trouble to save his life.

He'd gone to great lengths to make law enforcement believe he was a law-abiding citizen. Could his grief at the morgue have been an elaborate act to evade suspicion?

His thoughts immediately raced to Darcel. Dammit! He was no longer acting as her bodyguard since Cree had been fingered as the shooter. If Andre was out there somewhere hoping to hide his involvement in the shooting, then Darcel's life was in imminent danger. He'd miscalculated big time. Darcel wasn't safe!

The door to his office burst open, and Bo was standing there with a flushed face and breathing as if he'd just completed an Iron Man competition. His blond hair was wind tousled, and he held up a white piece of paper in his hand. Without pausing for pleasantries, he said, “Boss, we have a positive I.D. on those prints you gave us.”

Jake knew what he was going to say before the words even exploded from Bo's lips. He knew it deep down in his gut. “The prints belong to Andre Devlin.”

Chapter Thirteen

Jake reached for his phone, quickly punching in Darcel's home number. He let out a grunt of frustration as an annoying busy signal sounded on the line. He swiftly hit the redial button, fighting a rising sense of panic that was threatening to undo him.

The line was still busy. He reached for his cell, dialing Darcel's mobile number instead of her home phone. “C'mon, Darcel. Answer the phone, dammit!” As the phone rang off the hook then switched to her voice chirpily asking him to leave a message, he aggressively terminated the call.

Something wasn't right. His lawman's intuition told him Andre was out there hunting Darcel. And if he found her, if he'd made his way to her house, there was no telling what lengths he would go to in order to silence her forever. So far he'd shown he was a ruthless, cold-blooded killer. He'd already tried to kill her on two separate occasions, as well as attacking Bo and taking out his own flesh and blood, Ronnie. And Cree? Had he been responsible for that death also?

A paralyzing fear gripped him, and he felt all the color leaching from his face as doubts began to set in. What if Andre had already hurt Darcel? What if he'd killed her? Dammit! He wasn't about to let that happen, not so long as he drew breath. He slammed his fist down on his desk and stood, unwilling to let his imagination take him to such dark, desolate places.

He was going to do whatever humanly possible to keep Darcel safe. It had been his task from the beginning, and he'd managed to screw it up by losing focus and buying into the theory that Cree was the shooter.

Sweet, beautiful Darcel. She'd been so strong throughout this ordeal, the strongest woman he'd ever known. He couldn't bear to lose her now. Not now that he'd found the love of a lifetime. Why hadn't he told her? He agonized. Why hadn't he let her know how deeply he loved her?
It's not too late
!
 
There was still time to tell her he loved her, to make love to her in a hundred different ways and tell her over and over again “I love you.”

“
Bo, I want you to put an APB out on Andre. I want you and Stacy to go to the Devlin residence and look for him there. Talk to his mother, father, girlfriend, fifth-grade teacher—do whatever it takes to find out his whereabouts.”