Page 21 of Engaging the Deputy

She felt her eyes widen in surprise.

“Please don’t jump to conclusions. We left there before she disappeared. I don’t know who moved into the house. Maybe no one.”

“What about Elden Rusk?” she demanded. “Is he still alive? Could he have been in Starling that night?”

The deputy groaned. “If he’s still alive, I really have my doubts he was in Starling on Halloween.”

“Because you want it to be one of my old friends. Or better yet, me.”

He shook his head. “Believe it or not, I’m just doing my job. I’ll try to find Elden. I’ll find out if he’s been in the area.” With that, he turned and headed down the hall to the nurses’ station.

Olivia felt sick to her stomach as she watched him leave. What had she thought would happen when she came home? Certainly not this. Jaden was angry with her, which scared her. What if Cody remembered that they’d argued and thought she’d been the one to attack him down in the root cellar?

Glancing back down the hall, she saw the young woman she’d seen earlier exiting Cody’s hospital room. She started to call down to the nurses’ station to Jaden, but he was already gone and the head nurse was on the phone.

Turning toward Cody’s room, she saw the blonde disappear around the corner. She went after her. As she passed a nurse, she alerted her that a patient in Room 9 needed help. Then she kept going after the blonde, determined to find out who she was.

By the time she reached the corner, the woman was halfway down the hallway. She called, “Excuse me! Could you please wait up?”

There was no way the woman hadn’t heard. Quite the contrary. The blonde increased her speed.

Determined to find out who she was, Olivia ran after her. “I asked you to stop,” she said when she drew closer.

The blonde said something rude and kept going.

Olivia grabbed her arm, spinning her around until they were face-to-face. “Who are you?” she demanded.

“Let go of me.”

“Not until you tell me who you are and why you were in Cody’s room.”

The young woman’s expression turned ugly. She jerked her arm free and, spitting out the words, said, “I have every right to see Cody. More right than you do. He’smyboyfriend.”

Olivia blinked. “Your boyfriend?” But before she could get more information, the blonde took off down the hall to the exit and was gone.

Staring after her, she realized that she should have known Cody would have been dating someone. He could have even been married after all this time. Cody Ryan had never gone long without a girlfriend—even back in grade school.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Jaden couldn’t help being frustrated by this case, by everything. As he climbed into his patrol SUV, he admitted that seeing Olivia again had him so far off-kilter, he didn’t know which way was up.

Worse, if she and Cody had argued the night of the tornado, which he suspected they had, she could have picked up a rock and flung it at him without thinking. While she’d never been impulsive, her decision to return home seemed that way. She didn’t seem to have an answer for why she’d come home or how long she planned to stay. That wasn’t like her.

After interviewing her, he’d checked. She’d quit her job, one that she’d worked so hard, apparently, to get since it was what she said she’d dreamed of since she was a girl. Why would she do that? He’d assumed she was happy with the decision she’d made after wanting to postpone their wedding indefinitely so she could fulfill that dream.

His cell phone rang. Pushing aside his suspicions and concerns about Olivia for the time being, he saw it was the crime lab.

“Thought you’d want to know about those bones uncovered up there,” the technician said. “I’m not sure if you were informed, but there were two sets in that pile. The one set is from a teenage girl. The second set is male, somewhere from twenty-five to thirty.”

“Will you be able to get DNA from them?” Jaden asked.

“Doubtful, but with the girl, quite a bit of her clothing had also been buried with her.” Even before he described it, Jaden knew the bones were going to be Evangeline Rusk’s.

“Were there any other remains, like a baby’s?” No. That meant she hadn’t been pregnant, the baby had been too small and its bones had deteriorated, or Evangeline had already given birth. Jaden thanked him and disconnected, thinking that he needed to find Elden Rusk, if he was still alive, and give him the news.

Meanwhile, he needed to talk to Emery Jordan. Starting his SUV, he headed for Emery’s bike shop.

He found him working on what looked like a vintage Harley, all the parts spread out on the floor around him. Seeing the man at work, he was reminded of the expression “happier than a pig in mud.”

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