Page 127 of Cold Case, Warm Hearts

But she couldn’t figure out how this could end without one or both of those happening.

“My presence here stirred everything up,” Aspen said. “Cote started looking at the case again. People started talking about the bombing again. It probably took a long time for everybody to forget your part in it.”

“Most never knew.” Dean looked past Aspen, then up into the darkening clouds. A long moment passed before he faced her again. “They knew your mom and I were friends, but they blamed her for the bombing. Everybody blamed her and her alone. Cote and his partner knew, of course. But they couldn’t prove it. I never understood why they didn’t go public with that information. At least about me.”

“Why would he go public about you and not Brent?”

“Brent was the rich kid. Aside from the Hamiltons, Brent’s family was the richest in town. Still are. Brent’s mother was the county prosecutor back then. His father was a successful lawyer. He’d been the mayor a few years before. He wielded a lot of power in Coventry. I could understand why the cops didn’t want to name him without proof.”

She’d known the Salcitos were wealthy. How else could they have afforded to keep an apartment in Boston? But she hadn’t realized they were that influential.

“My family’d been in town a long time,” Dean said, “but my folks didn’t have any connections. Both my parents worked at Hamilton. And anyway, if they’d known, they’d have turned me in.”

She heard the house phone ringing. Not very many people had that number—Garrett, Jaslynn, Cote. Whoever it was, hopefully they’d call back. “My understanding is that Cote’spartner was happy to cross you off the list of suspects. He thought you were a good kid.”

Dean’s smile was sad. “I had been, before.”

She felt sorry for him. She felt sorry for everybody who suffered because of her mother’s scheme.

“I’d never even told Deborah,” Dean said. “All these years, she never knew.”

What a secret to keep from the woman you loved. How had he managed it?

How had Dad managed to keep his secrets for so long?

“The three of us planned it—Jane, Brent, and me. I built the bomb. I was on campus that night. I knew when Jane and Brent were gonna set it off. But we had all decided that, if the building wasn’t empty, we’d come back another time.”

“So what happened?” Aspen asked. “The woman’s car was in the lot, so what?—?”

“I don’t know.” The words were filled with defeat.

“How do you not know? You were in on it. What did Brent tell you?”

“We never talked about it, not once after it happened. At first, it was because we didn’t want people to suspect us. We just stayed apart, hoping everybody would forget. I was afraid his part in the bombing would be discovered. I assume he was afraid mine would be. Weeks went by. Months. I never went back to college. He finished the semester and transferred.”

“But it’s been years. You live in the same town. Have you really never?—?”

“Brent was my closest friend. We’d been friends since preschool. But we haven’t had a single conversation, in public or in private, since that bomb exploded. So I don’t know what happened. I have no idea, and I never wanted to know. I just wanted to forget I’d ever met your mother.” He sucked in a breath, then blew it out and sucked in another.

“Are you all right?”

He pressed his hands against his chest, seemed to struggle to breathe.

He was having one of the episodes Garrett had told her about. She shoved the gun back in its holster and rushed down the walk to where he stood. “What can I do?”

But he couldn’t seem to catch his breath, or to talk.

“Come on.” She wrapped her arm around his back. Together, they made it up the steps and into her house.

Maybe this was all an act. Maybe he would turn on her as soon as they got inside. She was armed, but could she kill this man, Garrett’s uncle?

Was she enough like her parents to take a life?

She didn’t think so. But had they considered themselves capable of murder before they’d done it?

It was a risk she’d take—her life and Dean’s felt like they hung on some invisible scale. She was younger. She was innocent of murder. But her life wasn’t more valuable than his, and she wasn’t about to leave him outside in the freezing cold to have a heart attack and die alone.

She helped him to the sectional, and he collapsed into it, still struggling. She crouched in front of him. “Do you have medicine? What can I do?”

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