"Feehan, Christine - Lover Beware 03 - Brand, Fiona - After Midnight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Feehan Christine)
Tucker snapped his notebook closed. "It's not that."
"What then? Motive? I've been back three days. I haven't had time to buy groceries yet, let alone go out and murder anyone."
"Opportunity."
"Every male in Tayler's Creek and Winslow had opportunity."
Tucker's gaze shifted to the weaponry that was laid out on the tarpaulin. "Not many of them are armed like you are."
"You won't find a weapon there that isn't registered. Those guns were part of my kit."
Tucker's gaze sharpened. "You've left the SAS?"
"I resigned two weeks ago."
Tucker pulled out his notebook again, flipped the cover, and scribbled a note. "That's something we can check on."
"If you're looking for a dishonourable discharge, don't hold your breath. And when you test the guns and ammunition you'll find the ballistics won't fit. The perp used a twenty-two, and I don't own one. But a twenty-two is a pretty standard kind of gun around here. Most farmers use them for rabbit and opossum control."
Tucker's eyes sharpened. "How do you know a twenty-two was used?"
Michael wondered idly if Tucker was aware that in Special Forces one of their offensive training units concentrated specifically on how to use cuffs to disable and kill. "The same way everyone else in this town knows it. I read it in the local paper."
Michael watched as the guns were bagged and loaded, then climbed into the rear of one of the police cruisers and allowed Parker to belt him in. "Guess you'll be busy checking all the guns that belong to the locals. I'm betting there must be at least a hundred of them."
After Midnight 187
He heard Tucker swear beneath his breath, then the door thunked closed, cutting off the sound and enclosing him in the stifling interior. One of the cold-eyed Winslow cops climbed in beside him, and the other took the wheel.
As the police cruiser maneuvered down his long shady drive in Tucker's dusty wake, Michael clenched his jaw and settled in to wait out the process.
Minutes later, he was hauled out of the backseat and a flash exploded in his eyes. The local press. A couple of shopkeepers walked out of their businesses to see what all the commotion was, along with a small stream of customers. A woman pushing a supermarket trolley paused at the boot of her car, long, shiny dark hair swinging forward as she rummaged for keys. Michael's belly clenched, his heart slammed hard in his chest.
Jane.
Hunger ate at him, sharp and deep. He'd been back in Tay-ler's Creek just three days, and in that time he'd spent a lot of time sleeping, and the rest of the time trying to contact Jane O'Reilly. Every time he'd knocked on her door, mysteriously, she hadn't been at home, despite the fact that the whole place was wide open. Every time he'd rung, he'd gotten her answering machine, and she hadn't bothered to return his calls.
She was his next-door neighbour, but damned if he'd been able to catch her at it.
A hand landed in the centre of his back. Grimly, he resisted the shove. His gaze locked on Jane as he willed her to look at him, cold fury welling at the steel manacling his wrists.
If it hadn't been for Jane's dog hanging around his place, he'd have begun to wonder if she hadn't packed up and left town. Or worse, buried herself with her husband.
THE AFTERNOON SUN poured down, radiating off asphalt with all the heat of a blast furnace as Jane slid her key into the boot lock. Automatically, she moved back a half step as the lock disengaged. Her disinterested gaze lifted with the motion of the boot and snagged on a pair of cold, dark eyes. For a frozen second her heart stopped in her chest.
Michael.
She blinked, barely registering the fact that for once she'd used his first name rather than the more impersonal address of "Rider." He was dressed in a pair of tight, faded jeans, his torso bare, and for a dizzying moment she wondered if she'd imagined him. His hair hung loose to his shoulders, and his skin was deeply tanned, as if he'd recently spent a lot of time in a tropical climate. His face was altogether leaner, sterner, than she remembered, his exotic looks hammered into a tough maturity that made her stomach clench.
His gaze flashed over her and she almost flinched at the cursory appraisal, then the uniformed police constable pushed him toward the station doors, and he was forced to look away.
Numbly, she watched the broad shape of his back as he disappeared into the station, and registered that the shiny glint she'd noticed around his wrists was a pair of handcuffs.
After Midnight 189
For a moment she went blank, then the reality of what was happening sank in. Rider was under arrest. If he were just being brought in for questioning, the police wouldn't have cuffed him, which must mean they had enough evidence to carry out the arrest.
There was no question in her mind about why he was being taken in. After spending just fifteen minutes in town she'd soon discovered there was no other topic of conversation than the home invasion, but everything in her rejected the thought that Rider could have had anything to do with the Dillon murder. In all the time she'd known him, they had barely spoken, let alone touched on subjects like values and ethics, but at an instinctive level she knew Michael Rider to his bones. The sexual attraction aside, she would trust him before she trusted Sergeant Tucker.
The doors of the police station swung closed, and Jane lifted a bag of groceries out of her trolley and dumped it in the chilly bin in the rear of her station wagon, automatically placing ice packs in with the groceries so nothing would spoil in the heat. She noticed her hands were shaking, and remembered she hadn't stopped to eat lunch, she'd simply finished her lemonade, showered and changed, and left for town. But that wasn't the only reason she was shaking. She was furious-quietly, deeply furious. She wanted to march into the police station and demand to know what Tucker thought he was doing-
"Do you reckon he did it?"
Jane glanced at the red-haired woman who'd paused beside her, a toddler clasped on one hip. Yolanda Perkins was a plump, happily married mother of four. She and her husband, John, owned a small farm, and John also operated a lucrative earthmoving business. Yolanda had often been heard to say that, given John's indifferent skills with anything that had hooves or ate grass, the D-eight bulldozer was the only thing that kept them solvent.
Jane lifted her final bag of groceries into the rear of the station wagon and transferred her attention to the small crowd that had gathered on the sidewalk, which included a TV news crew, who had materialized out of a brightly painted van. "No," she said flatly. "He didn't do it."
Macie Hume, the barmaid at the local pub, stepped out of
190 FIONA BRAND
the shade of the supermarket overhang, a shocking pink handbag, which clashed wildly with her lime green microskirt, in one hand, and a polystyrene cup of coffee from Stevie's takeout bar in the other. She eyed the police station and grinned. "I don't care whether he did it or not, I can think of a better use for those cuffs."
Marg Tayler, who had managed the local drapery since time immemorial, and whose family Tayler's Creek had been named after, emerged from the narrow frontage of her shop, crossed her arms over her thin chest, and eyed Macie. "He's taken," she remarked gruffly.
Macie set her coffee down on the car parked next to Jane's, rummaged for sunglasses, and slid them onto the bridge of her nose. "Do tell. Who's the lucky girl, then?"
"That's nobody's business but his own."
Macie settled her hip against the car bonnet and sipped her. coffee. "I might decide to make Rider my business. I'd hate to see all that man go to waste."
"Like you haven't tried already," someone called from beneath the shady overhang. "What are you gonna do, Macie, write to him in prison?"
Macie sipped her coffee and flipped her middle finger in the general direction of the comment.
Marg frowned at the gathering crowd, her eyes glittering with the light of battle. "Why don't you people just go home and leave the boy alone. When he's been here at all, he's never done anything but help." She fixed an older man with a sharp glare. "You can attest to that, Mason. Didn't he help dig that cow of yours out of the river last spring?"
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