Page 1 of Defend Me

CHAPTER ONE

NOAH

I sit on the plastic chair in the interrogation room with my head in my hands.

The past hour has felt like a waking nightmare.

I’ve been arrested for a crime I didn’t commit.

And not just any crime. The murder of my best friend’s mother.

One moment, everything was as it should be. I was at an event at Everton Estate, the top winery on the North Fork of Long Island, where my best friend, Caden Everton, was celebrating taking the reins of his father’s billion-dollar company and steering it in a new direction. His girlfriend, Isla, had found a crucial piece of evidence in the cold case of the shooting of Caden’s mother, Marion Everton: a bullet casing, hidden in the cracks in the floorboards of Marion’s pottery shed, the very spot where she had been murdered five years ago. A shed that my fellow deputies in the Magnolia Bay Sheriff’s Department had searched multiple times.

The lab technicians found a fingerprint on that casing. I was so excited to tell Caden. We had a lead. Finally, after all these years, we had actual hard evidence. The Evertons have been like family to me. I wanted this case solved as much as they did.

Then the sheriff ran the print.

And it matched to me.

I stand and start pacing around the small room, wondering when the sheriff is going to come in and tell me this has all been some huge mistake. They can’t keep me here—I haven’t done anything.

I’ve been in this room many times, but never as a suspect. I’m a cop. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to be, since a drunk driver ran a red light and crashed into my parents’ car when I was four years old. My mom died on impact. My dad died in surgery, hours later. The driver only got five years for vehicular manslaughter. He was out in eight months. His dad knew someone in the prosecutor’s office.

I’ve devoted my life to helping people, and to securing justice for victims.

I clench my hands into fists. The room feels like it’s shrinking, its beige walls pressing in on me. I glance at the closed-circuit camera high up in one corner. My fellow officers are watching my every move on the monitor outside.

I don’t belong here!I want to scream at it. I would never have hurt Marion. She was like my second mother. Even after Caden left the Magnolia Bay public school system and started going to private school in the city, she still came to my soccer games. She even got me a trumpet the year I decided to join the high school band. It was a short-lived effort, but when I offered to pay her back, she insisted I keep it.

The door opens and Sheriff Briggs appears. About damn time.

“Sheriff,” I say with relief. Then I take in his face. His normally jovial expression is marred with distrust. His eyes flicker with anger.

Holy shit. Does he actually think I did this?

I’ve known the sheriff since I was a kid. I went to the Magnolia Bay Sheriff’s Department’s summer camps—another gift from Marion— and then I volunteered for the MBSD until I was old enough to apply to become a deputy myself. He knows me.

“Noah,” he says curtly, placing a file on the table. Probably the fingerprint report.

“I didn’t do this,” I blurt out.

The sheriff raises an eyebrow. It occurs to me that’s what every criminal who gets interrogated in this room says. But I’m different. I’m innocent.

“Look, let’s just start at the beginning,” he says. “You’ve known the Evertons for how long?”

God, he really meant the beginning.

“I’ve been best friends with Caden since kindergarten.”

“So you’ve been to the house.”

“Many, many times.” Dinners, sleepovers, movie nights in their massive home theater…

“You were familiar with the garden?”

“I knew about that secret entrance in the hedge by the vineyard if that’s what you mean.”

Sheriff Briggs nods. We both know the killer got into the backyard undetected through the garden. I know the case files better than anyone. I’ve been hoping for a break in this case for five goddamn years.

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