Page 14 of Her Baby, Her Badge

“I, uh…” She stopped, and Dutton heard the woman’s sob. “I’ve been seeing Brian Waterman.”

Dutton had no trouble recalling who that was. Elaine’s fiancé.

“Seeing?” Grace queried.

Another sob. “I’ve been having an affair with him. And, yes, I know he’s engaged. He was up-front about that but said he couldn’t break up with her, that it’d crush her parents if he didn’t go through with it, that they would probably even fire him since he works for them.”

Dutton figured that Grace had only scratched the surface of her research on Brian, and an affair might not have come out in the usual background checks.

“I’m the other woman,” Felicity muttered. “I know it was wrong, but I’m in love with him. Was in love with him,” she amended.

Grace jumped right on that. “Was? What happened to change your feelings about him?”

Felicity couldn’t answer for a couple of seconds because she was sobbing more now. “Brian called me about an hour ago and said he needed for me to tell the cops that he was with me tonight. He said I was to say we’re old friends and we were just catching up and that he was telling me all about his wonderful fiancée.”

Grace’s expression went hard. “Was Brian with you tonight?”

“No,” Felicity said on another sob. “I haven’t seen him in two weeks.” She paused. “And then I heard on the news about the woman who was murdered. It was her, wasn’t it? Brian’s fiancée?”

Grace didn’t answer those questions. “Where was Brian when he called you?”

“He wouldn’t say, but I assumed he was at his house in San Antonio. I’m in Austin, and it’s not storming here, but I could hear thundering in the background when I was talking to him.”

Or the man could have been in Renegade Canyon, since San Antonio was less than an hour away.

“Has Brian been to El Paso any time over the past week?” Grace asked, obviously following up on what the man had told the police.

“No. Not that I know of.” She stopped, and Dutton could hear her trying to slow down her breathing. She failed. “And he wouldn’t explain why he needed me to lie to the cops.” Felicitybroke down again. “Sheriff Granger, I just have to know. Did Brian murder his fiancée?”

CHAPTER FIVE

Did Brian murder his fiancée?

That was the question that kept repeating through Grace’s head. Too bad she didn’t have an answer, but she hoped to remedy that soon.

First, though, she had to locate Brian, and so far she wasn’t having any luck. He hadn’t responded to a knock on the door when officers from San Antonio PD had gone to his house. So Grace had left messages for him not only on his personal phone, but also with his employer. If she didn’t hear from the man soon, she would need to issue an APB. With Brian’s alibi in question and asking his lover to lie for him, Grace had grounds to force him to come in for questioning.

The second thing going through her mind was Dutton. Even when the man was out of sight, it was hard to keep her thoughts off him. It was impossible now that he was following her in his truck.

She had no doubts—none—that he’d stick to his “threat” of sleeping outside her house. Sadly, part of her actually welcomed that for the sake of their baby’s safety, but she also didn’t want Dutton sitting in his vehicle if the killer just decided to gun him down. She doubted he’d agree to sleep in the bullet-resistant cruiser, either.

And that left Grace with a huge dilemma.

She could back down on her insistence that he not stay with her. Or she could just accept it for what was left of this night. Then, after a few hours of sleep, she might be able to work out a better arrangement.

She turned onto the road that led to her place, and while she was always aware of her surroundings, she was more so right now. The rain had stopped, but there were still plenty of clouds to block out the moon, making it pitch-black. The headlights of her cruiser created some spooky-looking shadows as she drove past the trees and shrubs that lined the road. She hoped one of those shadows wasn’t the killer, but she had to be prepared just in case.

The house came into view, and she used the voice command on her phone app to turn on not only the porch lights, but also the ones on both floors of her house. Gone was the absolute darkness, but not the shadows, and she slowed, looking for any signs of an attack.

Nothing.

Since the house was well over a hundred years old, there was no garage, but she pulled beneath the covered part of her driveway that was only steps away from the door that led into the kitchen. Of course, Dutton pulled in right behind her, and he was darn fast at getting out of his truck.

“I want to check the house,” he insisted. “To make sure no one got in.”

She didn’t remind him that she had a security system that would have alerted her to an intruder. That’s because Grace knew systems could be hacked.

So far, the killer hadn’t used something like that to get to the victims. There’d been no break-ins at either woman’s residence. Instead, they’d likely been snatched shortly after leaving work and incapacitated in some way. In the case of the first murder,that had been with a stun gun, and Grace was betting the same had happened to Deputy Elaine Sneed.

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