Page 82 of Cornered

Donovan returned the iPad, but not before he studied the photo for a while. “Something about this is off.”

Gray gave Donovan a shrewd look. “Even if Cassie hadn’t seen him before, you should have. You interviewed everyone, didn’t you?”

Donovan grabbed his laptop. “I did. But I don’t recall seeing this man.” His voice trailed off, and Cassie and Gray shared a look but didn’t interrupt. Then Donovan turned his computer around and a new photo appeared. “This is who I saw.”

Cassie stared in shock. “Oh! Ihaveseen him. I didn’t recognize him. But that’s him with longer hair. He didn’t have the mustache in Atlanta. Or the glasses.”

She tried to find a memory of Wyatt in the events of the previous evening, but they were gone. But his voice wasn’t gone. And what she’d heard later wasn’t gone.

“I don’t know how he did it, but he’s the one who drugged me.”

Donovan sat on the sofa beside her. “I know he is. This is the guy who refilled your lemonade last night.”

IT HAD NEARLY KILLEDDonovan to let Cassie out of his sight, but he had a job to do. And she was safe with family.

His phone dinged.

Please be careful.

He texted back.

I will.

A photo came through, and Donovan couldn’t help but chuckle at the sight of Cassie’s grandfather and great-grandfather, sitting on the porch of her parents’ home, shotguns across their knees.

He showed the photo to Gray, who gave him a pointed look. “You sure you want to marry into that family?”

Donovan grinned. “If she’ll have me? You’d better believe it.”

Five minutes later, there was no smiling and no thought of proposals or gun-toting octogenarians. The house where he stood was small, the wood siding was rotten in places, and what landscaping there might have been at one time was overgrown. He stepped onto the porch with caution. It wouldn’t have surprised him if his feet had slid right through the boards.

When he knocked on the door to Wyatt Patterson’s home, he was prepared for anything.

But there was no answer.

He knocked again.

Still no answer.

Gray communicated with the officers behind the house. There was no movement. But there was a window with no curtain or blind over the kitchen sink. Donovan waited in tense silence as Brick approached the back of the home.

“We’ve got a body.”

They breached the house from every entrance and found Wyatt Patterson slumped over his kitchen table. Cocaine and other drug paraphernalia lay everywhere. Donovan reached toward the man.

“He’s still warm.” He searched for a pulse. Nothing. No. Wait. He shifted his hand. “Get the paramedics in here. I’ve got a pulse.”

236THERE WAS NO HONORamong thieves, and when Wyatt Patterson regained consciousness, he rolled over on Steven Pierce faster than the district attorney could say plea bargain.

After he’d been implicated in the hostage situation that Cassie had been involved in, Wyatt decided Atlanta was too hot for him. A music producer had shared all about the drug action he’d been surprised to discover while at a secret resort in the mountains of North Carolina.

Wyatt claimed that he’d planned to go straight and work at The Haven, but no one believed that part of the story. Especially since he’d managed to not only find the local drug dealers but also use his position at Hideaway to provide drugs to the guests at The Haven who were interested in purchasing everything from meth to crack.

He also sold cocaine to none other than Steven Pierce. And he had proof by way of some video he’d recorded. He explained that when he saw Cassie for the first time, he expected her to recognize him immediately and he knew he would lose his job. He ran into Steven and told him that he had to quit.

He claimed that it was Steven who suggested that Wyatt should get Cassie to quit, and that Steven volunteered to help. Wyatt didn’t think Steven needed him to be there just so he could get his drugs a little easier, so he questioned him about why he was doing this. Steven explained about the enmity between the Quinns and the Pierces and said that Wyatt would be doing the whole family a favor.

Wyatt started small. He began a process that he hoped would convince Cassie to leave. He admitted to taking her knife, but he claimed he’d wiped it clean and left it on a table at The Dry Gulch the day before the stabbing there. He insisted that his ideas were more about intimidation and fear, and that it had been Steven who had given him access to Cassie’s kitchen and suggested both the deer in the road and the kidnapping.

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