Page 11 of Bone Echo

Kurt shoved his phone back into his pocket without saying a word. “Take care of things here, Johnson.” Not waiting for the other man’s response, Kurt strode back to his Jeep and climbed in. He cut the wheel sharply and executed a U-turn.

Before he was back on High Street his cell buzzed yet again. He muttered every swear word in his vast repertoire as he excavated it from his damned pocket.Dawson. “Is she there?” he asked instead of hello. His entire body stung with worry.

“I found that key exactly where you said it would be,” Dawson said, likely buying time before passing along the bad news. “I checked the whole house, even the barn. She’s not here, chief. Doesn’t look like her bed was slept in last night.”

“Thanks for checking.” Kurt ended the call. He hissed a few more of those expletives.

That news made no sense. She’d stormed up the stairs just after one this morning. Had she later left again? Why the hell hadn’t he checked to see if her car was in the garage before he left that morning? Because he was an idiot.

Obviously Ella had left the house after he went to bed to go somewhere…to meet someone.

Brian Satterfield maybe. Probably. Did that make Ella a witness or an accomplice?

Something thick and red surged into his brain, clouding his vision and stiffening his muscles. His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. He drove straight to the station and parked. He took the back way into the small city jail so he didn’t have to answer Doreen’s questions or see the worry in her eyes.

He nodded to the officer at the security desk without stopping. Brian Satterfield would be kept here until a determination was made as to whether he would be formally charged or released to someone who would supervise him until whatever happened next. Ms. Grimes had agreed that under the circumstances he was safer here than anywhere else. Suicide watch was standard operating procedure in situations like this one. Not to mention, if it wasn’t him, then a killer was out there running free. One the kid might be able to identity when his head cleared.

Kurt braced himself as he approached the room. The officer on watch duty quickly and without question unlocked the room.

“Take a break,” Kurt told him before stepping into the holding cell. He didn’t care that he should have called Grimes enroute. He didn’t care about one damned thing except the truth. Here and now.

Brian sat up straight, his expression sad and fearful.

No sympathy, by God.

Kurt walked to where he sat and towered over him, searching his face for the guilt beyond the fear. “You and my daughter are friends. Good friends.”

The words were spoken as calmly as Kurt could manage but even he recognized the quality of danger lurking in the undertones.

Brian nodded. “Best friends.”

Kurt eased into a crouch, putting himself at the kid’s eye level. “When was the last time you saw her, Brian?”

Hanging onto patience in this moment was one of the hardest things Kurt had ever done. Memories of having to identify his wife’s body after she’d been pulled out of her car and beaten to death by a suspected robber who was never found and then the funeral flashed one after the other in his brain. Losing Elizabeth had been the hardest thing he’d ever had to deal with. He could not—would not—lose Ella too. This son of a bitch had better start remembering and talking.

“I don’t want to get her into trouble.”

If the words—if his expression—hadn’t appeared so genuine Kurt might have laughed despite himself. “Trust me, Brian, nothing you say is going to get Ella into trouble with me.”

Brian hugged his arms around his middle, his shoulders hunched as if he were trying to draw into himself. “The truth is I wasn’t with a friend from the debate team. Ella and I were watching this guy she’s having trouble with.”

Kurt’s heart practically stopped. “What guy? What kind of trouble?”

Brian gave one of those shrugs that could mean anything from I-have-no-idea to whatever. “She told me the guy had been watching her. Asking her weird questions. He made her uncomfortable so she tried to stay away from him but it’s hard, you know. At school you’re kind of stuck with people.”

“Who is this guy?” Kurt demanded again, his patience evaporating like spit on a hot griddle.

Brian’s gaze connected with Kurt’s. “You’re sure there won’t be any trouble?”

The kid was in this damned holding cell because his aunt and uncle had been brutally murdered in their beds. There was blood on his pajamas, in his car as well as Ella’s and he had sworn he couldn’t remember what he did last night? What the ever-loving-fuck worse trouble did he think there could be?

“Brian, your aunt and uncle were murdered. You stated that you can’t remember what you did after you got home last night. The only trouble I see are the conflicting details in your statement.” Kurt clamped down on the need to grab him and shake the shit out of him but Ella’s life could depend on this boy’s cooperation. Kurt had to tread carefully.

“I remember the early part of the night,” he explained. “It’s just the stuff after like midnight when Ella took me home that I can’t remember.”

Fear swelled so rapidly inside Kurt that he barely held himself together. “So the two of you were together watching some guy until Ella dropped you at your house and then came home about one this morning?”

Brian nodded. “I got sick.” Another shrug. “I mean I felt weird. I had to throw up. She dropped me off at my house and that’s the last thing I remember.”

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