The Missing Mccullen

“Just sit down,” he growled.

BJ shook her head. “I don’t take orders from you, Mr. Koker. If I accept your case, I expect respect. But first, you have to convince me that you’re innocent.”

Tension rippled between them. He shifted and stared at his fingers again, obviously torn. Or was he trying to concoct a convincing lie?

“All right, Miss Alexander,” he said. “Please sit back down.”

A tiny smile of victory twitched at her mouth, but she masked it, maintaining her neutral expression. He had said please, though, so she slipped into the chair facing him.

“Now tell me—has Tyler been found? Is he okay?”

“I’m afraid there hasn’t been any word on the boy,” she said quietly.

Cash pressed his knuckles over his eyes. “You have to find him.”

“Do you know where he is?” she asked in a tight voice.

“No.” His gaze met hers, suspicion flaring. “Are you working for Elmore?”

BJ frowned. “Why would you ask that?”

“Because Lester Elmore never thought I was good enough for his daughter.” A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Did he pay you to get dirt on me so he could railroad me to prison for killing his daughter?”

BJ locked stubborn gazes with him. “For the record, I’ve never met the man, and he didn’t pay me to do anything.” She let that sentence sink in for a brief second. “In fact, I can’t be bought by anyone, so even if he had offered, I would have turned him down.”

“Really?” Koker’s mouth curled in a sardonic grin. “You mean I’m looking at a real-life honest lawyer?”

She gave him a flat look. “Believe it or not, yes.”

She removed photos of the crime scene and spread them across the table. Cash zeroed in on a shot of Sondra Elmore drenched in blood, and his face paled.

“Did you kill Sondra?” BJ asked.

A tortured look darkened his eyes. “No.”

BJ waited, hoping he’d elaborate, but he didn’t.

She tapped a picture of a bloody hunting knife the sheriff had found at the scene. “This isn’t your knife?”

Cash cursed. “Yes, it is, but I didn’t kill Sondra with it.”

“Then why was it lying on the floor beside her?”

“I have no idea.” He leaned his head on his hands and inhaled several deep breaths. “Think about it. If I had killed her, you think I’d be dumb enough to leave a weapon behind with my fingerprints on it?”

No. But she had to ask.

Still, this man was a stranger to her. She wasn’t certain she could trust her instincts, either, not after the mess she’d made with Davis.

* * *

THE PICTURE OF Sondra covered in blood made Cash’s stomach roil.

The lawyer cleared her throat. “You knew Sondra well, didn’t you, Cash? You were friendly?”

He gave her a scathing look. “We were friends. Period.”

“According to the sheriff’s notes and his interview with Mr. Elmore, you were more than that.”

Cash shook his head. “Not true.”

“You weren’t lovers?” she asked bluntly.

Cash shifted. “I answered that already. We were just friends.”

“They why did her father think you two were involved?”

He made a low sound in his throat. “Sondra may have implied that we were.”

The lawyer tapped her manicured nails on the table. A reminder that his were ragged and had been bloodstained, that the cops had forensics that would work against him.

Even though he’d washed them, in his mind’s eye, he could still see Sondra’s blood.

“I see,” she said wryly. “And you allowed her father to believe a lie?”

“I didn’t like it. I told her that.” Cash shrugged. “But I didn’t dispute it.”

“You two argued about the issue?”

“Not really. She begged me not to say anything and I agreed.”

Cash rolled his fingers into fists. If he admitted that he and Sondra had argued the afternoon she died, he’d give this lawyer a motive.

“Why did Sondra allow her father to believe you were the boy’s father? And why would you let her do that?”

“Elmore’s a paranoid jerk who warned all of his employees, including me, to keep their hands off of his daughter. He wanted to keep her in some kind of bubble, but she was rebellious.”

The woman raised a brow. “Rebellious as in she dated the hands to make him angry?”

“Sometimes.”

“If she was so rebellious, why didn’t she just move out?”

Cash shrugged. “First of all, Elmore controlled her trust fund. But I think she was secretly hoping her father would come around and accept Tyler.”

“She dated you to get back at her father?”

“I told you, we never dated,” he said firmly. “She was too young for me.”