Bodyguard with a Badge by Elizabeth Heiter

Author:Elizabeth Heiter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin Intrigue
Published: 2017-08-04T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

“What?” Juliette gaped at him. “Jim is dead? How?”

“A homeless man stumbled across his body in an old warehouse. The place was condemned, so no one was supposed to be in there,” Cole said.

Juliette nodded. She knew exactly which warehouse he was talking about. Everyone in town knew it. The warehouse had been condemned for as long as she could remember, but somehow it never got bulldozed, and every few years, police had to rouse squatters from it. “It’s a good place to hide a body. Usually, no one goes in there until it really starts getting cold outside, generally December.”

“Well, estimated time of death is yesterday afternoon,” Andre contributed, his expression hard to read.

“Right before Dylan left town,” Juliette said. It made sense, in a way. If Jim was trying to go after Harkin for more money, he was probably putting pressure on Dylan to help, too. She should have realized earlier that Dylan wouldn’t have been in this alone—he and Jim always worked as a team. If Jim pushed hard enough and Dylan wanted to put it all behind him, maybe he’d snapped.

But somehow, even though the idea of Dylan trying to kill her didn’t seem far-fetched, she couldn’t imagine him turning on Jim.

She shook her head. “You talked about the law enforcement brotherhood? Dylan and Jim were like brothers.” It was a connection that had always seemed to go deeper than his loyalty to her. The loyalty she knew she’d completely broken when she’d confronted him.

“He chased you pretty determinedly,” Andre said.

“Yeah, but you’ve been putting doubt in my mind that his intent was to kill me. Either way,” she rushed on when Andre seemed ready to keep arguing, “he knew Jim a lot longer than me. They weren’t just partners. They grew up together.”

“Getting back to Valance,” Scott said quickly, not giving Andre time to respond, “What happened to him?”

“He was shot in the head with a small-caliber weapon. They should know more in a day or two, after the autopsy. The locals are handling the scene, and so far if they have anything useful forensically, they’re not sharing. They do know the gun was unregistered.”

She wondered if that was supposed to mean something to her. Of course a cop would know not to use his own weapon, but she assumed most people wouldn’t do that if the murder was premeditated.

“Was he moved, or did someone lure him to that warehouse?” Marcos asked.

“He was killed there,” Andre said. “So either it was a meeting place no one would see or someone took Valance there under duress and then killed him.”

“Doesn’t that mean it was probably Harkin?” Juliette asked. “There’s no reason for Jim and Dylan not to be seen together. They’re partners.”

“Well, I was digging up information on Harkin while you were in the shower earlier today,” Andre began. Somehow, the words sounded intimate, as though they really shared a home instead of this temporary situation. “And he filed a flight plan for his private plane to fly down to an island off the coast of Florida this week.

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