Page 41 of A Bear's Secret

Chapter Eleven

Sloane

Sloane puther head down on the metal interrogation table.

“James’s testimony puts you on the scene, with a gun in your hand,” the officer opposite her said.

Sloane raised her head slightly and just looked at him. She knew that she should probably be completely terrified right now. After all, she was getting charged with attempted murder, and apparently the victim had seen her shoot him.

True, she was starting to get nervous, but at that point, it was still hard for her to even take it seriously. She knew that she hadn’t done anything wrong, and besides, she was tired, hungry, and had been asking for a lawyer for the better part of three hours.

“I. Want. A lawyer,” she said, enunciating each word as clearly as she could.

I should probably not be so bitchy with police officers, she thought.

“Please,” she finished.

The cop just shook his head.

“The public defender’s office is closed for the night,” he said. “And you could be out of here on bail in a couple hours if you just told us what happened...”

Even as a bolt of fear shot through her heart, Sloane rolled her eyes.

The door to the interrogation room opened, and both Sloane and the officer opposite her sat upright as another officer let a very tall, very good-looking man wearing a dark gray suit through into the room.

“I’m Julius Bloom, and I’ll be representing Ms. Garcia today,” he said. “That is, if Ms. Garcia consents?”

“Yes,” she said quickly.

He must be Austin’s cousin, she thought. Are they all hot? Is there a rule? Is it genetics?

“Officer, could I have a moment with my client, please?” Julius asked.

The cop nodded, then stood and left, clearly unhappy with how things were going.

“Tell me everything,” Julius said, sitting down next to her.

She did, from the moment she’d seen the scrap of blue in the forest to getting home from the hospital and sharing cookies with Austin.

Julius seemed slightly amused about Austin, for some reason.

“You’ve never seen James Cookson before,” he said.

“No.”

“You don’t know that name, and you’ve never been here before?”

Sloane just shook her head.

He sighed.

“Well, they’re trying to pin this on you because you’re from out of town, and they want an open-and-shut case so they can get back to driving their oversized pickup trucks around town and perfecting their hog calling,” he said. “Don’t worry. You’ll be back at the ranch by midnight.”

Sloane exhaled. She hadn’t even realized she was holding her breath. Julius motioned the officers back in, and opened his briefcase.

“I’ll make this brief, officer,” he said. “I stopped by and picked up a copy of the young man’s statements before coming in here, and I agree that he claims a woman shot him,” he said. Julius pulled out a couple of papers and put them on the table. “However, there are approximately five thousand people matching that description in Ponderosa County at any given time. Furthermore, he also claims to have seen a snake with eagle wings, a monster with the body of a rhinoceros and the legs of a spider, and, if I’m reading this correctly, the Hindu god Vishnu. That’s the one with lots of arms, right?”

The officer’s mouth formed a straight line.

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