Page 40 of Daddy’s Protecting

Incredible aromas surroundedDirk as he stepped out of his car. He sniffed appreciatively and recognized immediately that Cynthia was stress cooking. He’d gotten her message just as the jury walked into the courtroom. Dirk hadn’t been able to send her another message until the judge dismissed them for the day. His client deserved his entire attention and Dirk knew that a brief message wouldn’t explain everything he needed to share.

Ducking back into the car, he grabbed the small bag that his evidence team had put together for him. She would need to see this for herself, as would the court when they got to the trial.

The door to the garage burst open and Cynthia stood framed in the doorway wearing an apron splashed with a variety of dishes. “I thought I heard your car. Okay, I’ve been checking every ten minutes to see if you had gotten home,” she confessed in an avalanche of words.

“Breathe, sweetheart. I’m sorry you had to wait. Let me come in and I’ll show you what I saw in that photo,” he suggested.

Instantly, she took his arm and tugged him inside. After closing the garage door, Cynthia whirled and threw her arms around him to kiss Dirk hard.

He lifted his head and felt the corners of his mouth lifting in a smile. She was absolutely perfect. “Hi, Little girl. I missed you today.”

“I missed you, too. I may have cleaned out your freezer and pantry,” Cynthia admitted, looking back at the counter now laden with colorful containers Dirk didn’t even know he owned.

“I’m okay with that, sweetheart. I think a celebratory dinner is in order for us.”

Wrapping his arm around her waist, he guided Cynthia to her normal chair at the table. When she was seated and pushed into place, he joined her, setting the sack on the table. “Tell me every detail you can remember about what happened that day at the restaurant when Eddie pulled those pictures off the security feed.”

“I went outside to empty the kitchen trash barrel in the dumpster. It was super heavy, so I dragged it across the concrete. My foot slipped and I almost fell, but caught my arm in the trashcan. It was a sloppy mess of burnt spinach casserole. I knew that green would be hard to get out of my uniform, and it pissed me off. I went inside to get a wrench to tighten the leak in the water pipe. There were three different wrenches in the toolbox in the kitchen. I grabbed the biggest one because the leaking pipe was thick. It only took a few turns to fix the connection.”

“What did you do with the wrench?”

“I returned it to the toolbox when I walked back in. There were other tools there, but I didn’t touch them. I swear,” Cynthia promised, holding her hand up as if she were swearing on a stack of bibles.

“I requested a copy of the report filed after the building explosion. The inspector discovered sections of the exterior gas line. He was lucky enough to find the part where the explosion occurred. There were scratches around the welded section of the pipe. Someone had used substantial force with a wrench equipped with flat threads.”

Dirk opened his phone and googled that type of tool. Turning the phone toward Cynthia, he showed her a picture of an adjustable device with grooves cut in the wrench’s part that would bite into a pipe to open it.

“Look at the wrench in the latest picture,” he ordered.

Cynthia pulled her phone out of her back pocket and opened the message to look at the picture. “That’s not what mine looks like at all. The one in my hand wouldn’t even grip that smaller pipe.”

Slowly, she looked up to meet his gaze. The worry lines across her forehead disappeared as he watched her mouth open to form a small O of disbelief. “His own picture that he used to threaten me with helps clear me from his plan to give it to the police to incriminate me?”

“It does. The only way you could have damaged that gas line with that wrench was to bash it or puncture it. Neither of those marks were noted in the inspector’s notes,” Dirk informed her, feeling himself smile as she wiggled happily in her chair.

Halting her celebration, Cynthia asked, “Are you sure?”

“I am. This is the size of the water pipe and the wrench you used.” Dirk pulled out a foot-long section of piping two and a half inches in diameter and a twin of the massive wrench that had been used. “Feel the inside of the hooked part. Do you feel any teeth or grooves that would grip the pipe?”

“No. This just fit perfect around the connector piece that had like six sides. It tightened as I turned it.”

He reached back into the sack and pulled out a thinner black steel pipe. “This is a twin of the gas line. Try to twist anything on it.”

Cynthia placed the head of the wrench around the pipe and twisted it. There was no way she could move anything with the oversized tool in her hand. Slumping back against her chair, Cynthia set the implement on the table with a clatter and stared at him.

Several long seconds later, she asked, “What do we do?”

“I call a police contact and ask him to come speak to us.”

“But… What difference does it make to the charges against me? I uploaded the virus that attacked the computer system,” she pointed out.

“We now have proof of why you acted as you did. He blackmailed you.”

“Will that keep me from going to jail?” she whispered.

Dirk lifted his hands from the surface of the table and crossed his fingers on each hand. “I’m going to do all I can, sweetheart, to keep you here with me forever.”

Opening his arms, Dirk gestured for her to come sit on his lap. Snuggling his face in the curve of her neck, he inhaled her sweet, natural scent.Damn! This has to work! I can’t lose her now.

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