Steel Rush (In the Shadows#5) (28 page)

“Because all identity thieves are honest, right, Joe?” his female partner in a sharp pantsuit and a pixie cut says as she walks the floor behind him.

“Stop pacing, it’s making me dizzy, Tori,” he grunts, then looks at me expectantly.

I sigh, wondering if I repeat what I’ve already said several times after I made my one phone call to Talia, if they’d actually hear me this time. “I’m not saying a word without my lawyer. We can do this all night.”

“If you’re innocent, what does it matter?” Tori props her fit butt on the corner of the table in the small interrogation room, while her partner unbuttons his straining jacket and flips open his notebook and reads off the notes.

“According to our officers, an anonymous tip was called in this evening stating that you were impersonating Celeste Carver and that the real Celeste is missing.” He pauses and gestures to me. “The Carver family says you claim that Celeste asked you to be her for one night and when she didn’t show the next day, they asked you to continue on through tonight’s event in the hopes they could locate her without a lot of media attention. Is that about right?”

I want to yell at them, “Yes, damn it!” but then after what I experienced once Beth and I walked into Gregory’s office an hour ago, my response stays firmly stuck in my throat. Could I have said or done anything differently that wouldn’t have landed me here in this room?

“Thank you for bringing her, Beth.” Phillip said. He gestured to the cop and continued, “This police officer is following up on an anonymous tip called in earlier tonight that suggested you’re impersonating Celeste.”

I looked at Phillip and Gregory, unsure what was going on in their heads, but one thing was for certain, I refused to lie to the police again. “Yes, it’s true,” I address the uniformed police officer and tried not to get too anxious about the second officer waiting just outside the office door. “I’m not Celeste Carver. My name is Cassandra Rockwell and Celeste asked me to impersonate her for one night during her father’s political event. When she didn’t arrive home, I—”

“Let me stop you right there...” The police officer interrupted me and glanced down at the notepad in his hand. “Was that you the other night when the police came by asking about the abandoned vehicle they found with blood and Celeste Carver’s ID in it?”

I nodded. “Yes, that was me. It was the night Celeste asked me to be her. I was out with her sister, Beth, and was supposed to meet up with her and switch places, but she didn’t contact me, so I went back to her house. When I arrived, the police were here. You have to understand, Celeste was adamant that no one know I was pretending to be her, so I stayed quiet that night in the hopes she would contact me. The next morning, when I still hadn’t heard from her, I told her family the truth. That’s when they asked me to continue on as Celeste so they could quietly look for her while hopefully avoiding a media frenzy during Mr. Carver’s events.”

“Asking Miss Rockwell to stay on gave us a chance to conduct our own search for Celeste in places she might’ve gone,” Phillip said smoothly as he walked over and opened a filing cabinet drawer. “But it also gave us time to conduct our own investigation into Miss Rockwell’s story.”

Investigate me?
I gaped at him. “You know it’s not a story,” I said, my heart thumping hard as I watched him pull out a folder and the cell phone that Celeste gave me.

“We still hope to locate Celeste,” he continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “But now that it has been forty-eight hours, it’s time to turn this over to the authorities.” He hands the folder and the cell phone that Celeste gave me to the police officer. “I believe you’ll find ample evidence in here to question Miss Rockwell in Celeste’s disappearance, starting with the fact she made up the entire story of Celeste asking her to pretend to be her in the first place.”

“What evidence?” I gestured to the phone. “There is proof on that phone that Celeste recruited me. Texts—”

“I found no such texts,” Phillip stared at me with a bold, accusing gaze.

“That’s a lie. If they aren’t there, then you deleted them.”

Gregory cleared his throat and glanced my way, frustration and betrayal in his gaze. “As Phillip mentioned, there are no texts between Celeste and Miss Rockwell on that phone. It is a clone of my daughter’s phone, but we have since learned it’s not hard to clone a phone if you have the right equipment. In the folder you’ll not only find interviews of past classmates who state that my daughter was never friends with Miss Rockwell in high school, but actually the opposite. These classmates claimed that Miss Rockwell hated my daughter for some perceived wrong Celeste did to her in high school.”

When I glanced at Beth and shook my head, she took a step away from me, her eyes wide. “Is that true, Cass?”

I gripped the back of the leather chair for support. “Your sister did play a prank on me in high school and I didn’t like her for it. That is true, but I wasn’t obsessed with Celeste. She came to me for help, Beth. That’s the truth.”

“Didn’t you say that you pretended to be Celeste at a party in the past?” Phillip asked. “Did she ask you to be her back then too?”

“No, she didn’t ask, but it’s not what you think—”

“So you did it for what…kicks?” Phillip doesn’t give me a chance to answer before addressing the police officer. “In the folder, there is also a copy of Miss Rockwell’s medical history from a hospital stay a few years ago where she was put on suicide watch.”

“That’s private! How dare you dig through my medical records.”

Phillip doesn’t spare me a glance. “I believe that’s enough to show her mental state isn’t a stable one and could absolutely contribute to her becoming obsessed with Celeste. Not only does her photography business give you another data point into her obsession with an ultra rich lifestyle like Celeste had, but my son, Jake, claims Miss Rockwell hated the fact he only had eyes for Celeste and wouldn’t give her the time of day back in high school.”

“You knew Jake? Why did you pretend you didn’t know him?” Beth looked at me as if every lie Phillip just told had spread through her mind like a disease.

Phillip pointed to the folder. “You’ll find a sample of Celeste’s hair in that plastic sleeve stapled to the top. Please have it tested against the blood that was found in that abandoned car. We’re hoping it won’t match, but at this point…we’ve almost exhausted all the places we can think to look and need your help.”

“Why don’t you tell them you’ve already had someone in the lab test a sample of Celeste’s hair against the blood they found?”

The police officer turned his gaze on Phillip, a frown on his face. “Is that true? You can’t tamper with evidence. We want this person’s name.”

When Phillip didn’t speak right away, the officer demanded, “Right now, sir.”

Once Phillip grudgingly provided the man’s name, the officer snapped the folder shut and turned to me. “Based on this, we have to take you in for questioning, Miss Rockwell.”

I wanted to tell him that they had it all wrong, that Phillip is the one they should be looking into, that they needed to know that Celeste was pregnant, but I didn’t know for sure if Talia ever got Phillip’s glass, and without his DNA, we might not have enough to build a case against him. Instead, I said, “This is insanity. I’m being framed!”

Sympathy reflected in the officer’s eyes. “I’m following procedure, Miss Rockwell. A young woman is missing and you’re the last person to speak with her. This is just a formality.”

I tensed when he reached for my arm. “I insist on my phone call the moment we reach the station.”

As the officer walked me out of the room, I glanced Beth’s way, surprised that she didn’t bring up the pregnancy. She looked confused and hurt and was probably wondering if I somehow manufactured the whole pregnancy scenario too. Pausing in front of her, I said, “Celeste asked for my help for a
reason
. You have to believe that.”

“Miss Rockwell, do you know what the penalty is for impeding an investigation?” the detective’s gruff voice pulls my attention back to them.

“A lot less than a murder rap, that’s for sure,” Tori says, snorting.

I jerk my gaze to hers. “Murder?”

She flips open a blue folder and reads the contents. “According to the lab report, based on the amount of blood found in that abandoned car, there’s no way the person survived that much blood loss. So you’d better pray that the blood isn’t Celeste Carver’s, or you’re potentially looking at a murder charge, Miss Rockwell. If you start talking now and tell us where you dumped the body, we might be able to talk the district attorney into reducing your sentence.”

I’m so shocked by the proof that Celeste has been murdered, I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. I try once more but a tiny woman with striking silver hair opens the door. “Not a word, Cass. Understand?” When I nod, she turns to the two detectives, her bobbed hair swinging with her movements. “I’m Felicity Danvers and you two have no right to talk to my client without her lawyer present. Get out of this room right now before I have you both written up.”

Joe rolls his eyes and pushes himself to a standing position, muttering his disgust over uppity lawyers. Tori raps the edge of the folder sharply on the table and says in an ominous tone, “We’ll be back, Cass. Don’t think you’re going anywhere.”

As soon as they close the door behind them, Felicity sits down beside me and puts a petite hand over mine. “It’s nice to meet you, Cass. Sebastian and Talia sent me to lift your spirits while kicking ass. Do you want me to represent you?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

She smiles and sets her briefcase down. “You’re apparently very popular tonight. There’s another lawyer outside, claiming he was sent to represent you.”

I frown. “By whom?”

Felicity shrugs. “I have no idea. I’ve already talked to Sebastian and he’s brought me up to speed on your investigation. He hopes to have all the evidence necessary to build a strong case against Phillip. This evidence might all be circumstantial, but it’ll certainly be more compelling and easier to draw an inference of guilt than what they have on you. Right now I need to go talk to the Chief, but I wanted your permission to ask for this deal.”

“What deal?” I ask, eyeing her warily.

She squeezes my hand. For a woman under five feet she has a surprisingly strong grip. “They aren’t going to charge you, dear. I won’t let that happen, but we need time to get the paternity tests run against the DNA samples. Would you be willing to stay here overnight? We should have the results in the morning.”

My heart starts racing with worry. “You just said that they won’t charge me.”

“That’s why this conversation is only going to happen between me and the Chief. He’ll know what we’re doing, but because we don’t know who else in this department Phillip Hemming might have on his payroll, it’s going to have to look like you’re being held, pending charges. That way Phillip won’t be tipped off.”

Pulling out a pad and pen, she hands it to me. “For now, I need you to write down everything that happened from the moment Celeste approached you.”

“There’s one thing none of us knew while collecting this evidence.”

Her eyebrows shoot up. “What’s that?”

My hands tremble so hard I have to set the notepad and pen down. “One of the detectives just told me that the lab report on that abandoned car states that the person couldn’t have survived that much blood loss.” I look down at the blank pad, my voice shaking. “We know for certain that the blood is Celeste’s. I can’t believe she’s gone.”

She presses her lips together, then takes a deep breath. “Murder certainly ups the stakes, but it doesn’t change the plan. We just need to provide them with compelling evidence, which is coming.”

“But all of this hinges on us proving that Phillip is the baby’s father.” I put my hand on my chest and take several breaths, trying not to hyperventilate. “If I’m wrong and the tests prove he’s not…I’m screwed.”

She takes the pen and puts it in my hand. “We will know for sure tomorrow. This is just for me for now, but I think it will also help calm you down. Start writing.”