Page 142 of Cold Case, Warm Hearts

He didn’t bother to explain what had happened. It didn’t matter now.

“Your wife murdered a woman. And you’re going to be implicated. You can tell them I was with her, but nobody will be able to prove that. It’ll be your word against mine. Maybe they’ll believe you. Maybe they won’t.

“My partner will mail the evidence to the police station tomorrow. The police will follow up on that. Jane will be dead, and you’ll be implicated in what happened here as well. Maybe none of the charges will stick. But maybe they will. Maybe you’ll get sent to prison. Maybe your little girl will grow up knowing her mother murdered an innocent woman, and her father murdered her mother.”

Michael cringed as if the idea caused him physical pain.

“Or,” Brent said, “we hide her body. Everybody’s going to believe she set that bomb off, and she did. The blame will fall exactly where it should. They’ll come after me and my partner, but we’ll both have alibis. Nobody will be able to prove anything. Jane will disappear. Just…be gone. The world will think she realized what she did and ran away to avoid facing charges.”

He wasn’t sure what he expected Michael to do. Yell at him, maybe come after him. Maybe collapse. But the man stood his ground and said nothing.

Brent added for good measure, “You’ll get to raise your little girl.”

“And you’ll get off scot-free.” His words were cold.

“I didn’t kill her. You know that. You know it was self-defense.”

“You set off the bomb. You?—”

“I didn’t set it off. I tried to stop her. I failed. I see now that I should never have… She was losing it. I thought I could keep her under control.”

“If you’d backed me up when I tried to have her committed…” Michael’s words trailed, and he blew out a short, humorless laugh. “I knew she was a danger to herself.Youknew she was a danger to others. But you kept that tidbit to yourself.”

He had. It was stupid, and he’d never forgive himself.

None of that mattered now. “If you take me out, then I’ll take you out. You and I will both lose. But you know who’ll lose even more?”

Michael didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. The truth was written across his face.

Aspen meant more to him than justice. His daughter meant more to him than anything.

He’d loved Jane out of obligation.

He loved Aspen from a place of pure adoration.

The details were spinning and setting themselves in place in Brent’s mind. “It’s very simple. You take Jane—and the knife. You bury them somewhere. The knife has my blood on it.” He lifted his hand to show where he’d been cut, registering only then the blood dripping down his arm. “You can take my jacket too.” He shifted so Michael could see where Jane’s blood drenched the arm of his canvas coat.

“And then?” Michael asked.

“You have evidence against me. I have evidence against you. We both leave here tonight and say nothing about what happened. We claim we don’t know what happened to her. We haven’t heard from her. We keep our mouths shut, and we go on with our lives.”

“Just like that?”

Brent lifted his shoulders, let them drop. “I’ll never forgive myself for what happened tonight.”

Michael stared at him a long moment. “Not exactly a fitting punishment.”

Brent couldn’t hold his eye contact. He slipped off his jacket and dropped it on the road. Then he walked away. When he was well past Michael, he broke into a jog until he reached his car a few hundred yards down the mountain.

He went home, bandaged his hand, changed his clothes, and left with his father for the city.

Hoping Michael would keep his mouth shut.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

“You just left her there?” Aspen’s words seemed too loud in the silent, snowy world.

Brent stared ahead at the beautiful vista. The gun rested on his lap, but he never let up his grip.

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