Page 42 of Outlaw Ridge: Hayes

Owen sighed and shook his head. “Duane’s in the interview room, but he won’t say anything until his lawyer gets here.”

Hayes moved, heading toward the interview room, but Owen stepped in front of him. “You’re not interrogating him. Not withthat kick-his-ass expression. You’ll end up trying to beat the answers out of him.”

“I want to know if he put that kid up to shooting Jemma,” Hayes snarled through clenched teeth.

“Yeah, I got that. All of us want to know that, but I’ll be the one questioning Duane. Trust me, I’ll pass along anything he says, and if I think he’s withholding a single word of information, I’ll arrest him for obstruction of justice.”

There was some kick-ass fire in Owen’s eyes, too. Heck, that applied to everyone else in reception. Clearly, Zander had pissed off a lot of people with what he’d tried to do.

“Does anyone have any idea whatsoever as to why Zander did this?” Jemma muttered, and her tone definitely wasn’t kick ass. Not with this godawful pain in too many parts of her body.

The response came from Reed. “Zander was friends with Caleb Preston, the student who died in police custody. They’d been best pals since first grade.”

And there it was. A powerful motive for shooting a cop that he might blame for his friend’s death.

“Did Zander kill…well, all the others?” she pressed.

“Not sure,” Reed replied. “Obviously, we have CSIs going through his things now, and Angel and Presley are at the school questioning the other students.”

“Is there a connection between Zander and the other dead gunman who worked for Brooks?” her father wanted to know.

Reed shook his head. “None that I’ve found yet, but I’ll keep looking.”

“We have a visitor,” someone called out from the parking lot. Jemma didn’t recognize the voice, but she’d noticed that Owen now had several more Strike Force operatives on a protection detail to stop another sniper from getting close to the inn. “She’s not armed,” the person added a moment later.

Jemma glanced at the door, assuming this would be Duane’s lawyer. It wasn’t. Cordelia walked in, giving Jemma a jolt of both relief and shock.

Judging from her stepmother’s expression, she was experiencing some shock, too, over the crowd of people, including her husband, who was now staring at her.

“Where the hell have you been?” her father was quick to ask.

A hoarse sob tore from Cordelia’s mouth, and she practically fell into Stefano’s arms. Her father didn’t look especially pleased with the forced embrace, but he also didn’t push Cordelia away. In fact, Jemma heard his sigh of relief.

“It is true?” Cordelia asked, her voice as choppy and broken as her breath. “Is Brooks really dead?”

“He’s dead,” Stefano told her.

Cordelia burst into tears, probably not her first of the day since her eyes were already red and lacking her usual applications of makeup.

“Who killed him?” Cordelia asked through her sobs. “Who would do this to my son?”

“We don’t know yet,” Owen responded. “But we do need to ask you some questions so you can help us with the investigation to find his killer.”

Until he added that last part, Cordelia seemed ready to protest, but she gave a shaky nod and buried her face against Stefano’s neck.

“I’ll need a full statement from you,” Owen went on, “but for now, can you tell us why you disappeared. And where have you been?”

Both crucial questions to establishing a possible motive and alibi for her son’s murder. After all, it seemed likely that Brooks had known his killer, and he would have lowered his car window if he’d seen his mother approaching. Still, Jemma couldn’t see a motive for Cordelia to do that.

However, Cordelia provided one.

The woman looked up at Stefano. “I left because I was upset, because I couldn’t face you. Or you,” Cordelia added, looking at Jemma. “Brooks confessed to me that he’d given your mother that lethal overdose of the pain meds.”

“Oh, God,” Jemma muttered. Her legs started to buckle, but Hayes slipped his arm around her and kept her on her feet.

“I didn’t know Brooks was going to do it,” Cordelia went on. “I swear, I didn’t know. She was dying. There was no need to hurry it along.”

“No, there wasn’t,” Stefano said.

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