different circumstances, she might have liked him. Would have definitely been attracted to him. A no-brainer since Seth had rock-star looks to go along with that toned body and tempting mouth.
But this wasn’t different circumstances.
Something she always had to remind her body any time she was within breathing distance of the FBI cowboy.
The bothersome reminder of his hot looks probably had something to do with the fact that he’d saved her life multiple times during their escape. Shelby hated to owe him, but she did. If Seth hadn’t been with her in the warehouse and the woods, she likely wouldn’t be sitting here in the enemy’s camp. She’d be dead.
And speaking of the enemy, Cooper finished his latest call and strolled toward her.
“So tell me more about this anonymous call that you got earlier today,” Cooper said to her. Like some of Seth’s earlier questions, it sounded like an accusation.
Shelby ignored the tone, the hard look and tried to give the sheriff something, anything, that would help with this investigation. “The caller was a man, and he said there was evidence about Jewell’s trial in the warehouse.”
That earned her a skeptical look from both Colt and Cooper.
“If I had my phone, I could show you the number,” Shelby added. “But since the kidnappers took it, the only other thing I can tell you is that I didn’t recognize his voice. He had no distinguishable accent and didn’t give away any details about his identity or location.”
The skeptical looks turned flat, and Seth even joined in on it.
“An anonymous caller tells you to go to an abandoned warehouse in the middle of nowhere, and you don’t think that’s suspicious?” Cooper pressed.
“Not really. I’m an investigative reporter. I get calls like that all the time.”
Okay, that was a white lie. But she did occasionally get them, and she almost always followed through on them. She’d rethink that for future calls, though.
Shelby huffed. “Look, any time anyone contacts me and says they have information about my father’s murder, I check it out. Period.”
She owed him that, even though no one in this room was on board with this particular crusade. Not even her own siblings. And especially not the other residents of Sweetwater Springs. Her father hadn’t been well liked because of his womanizing and cutthroat business dealings. That didn’t matter to Shelby, though. He was her dad, and she’d make sure Jewell paid for killing him.
Cooper stared at her. A long time. So long that Seth stepped in front of her. “Someone set Shelby and me up. We need to find out who and why.”
Seth and the sheriff were almost the same height and weight. They had similar glares that they traded when their gazes connected.
“So who would have set you up?” Cooper asked.
Seth tapped his badge. “Anybody who wanted to get back at me because of this.” Then he paused. “But no one that I can think of who’s connected to both Shelby and me. And trust me, I’ve been trying to come up with someone who’d fit that bill.”
When Cooper’s attention came back to her, Shelby knew it was her turn to answer. “I have a restraining order against Marvin Hance, the guy who got away with murder.”
She saw the instant recognition in Cooper’s eyes. Hance had certainly gotten a lot of press before and after his arrest. Thanks to her.
“Hance hates me because of the articles I wrote about him,” Shelby continued. “And other than his friends still in the FBI, he hates people with badges because he thinks they should have done more to clear his name. Maybe Hance figured that he wanted to set me up for murder and snare a cop or an FBI agent in the process.”
Except something about that theory didn’t make sense, and the sound Seth made let her know he was thinking the same thing. If this was a setup, then why had those men kidnapped Seth and her and taken them to that barn? It would have been a better setup to leave them in the warehouse. A lot less work, too.
“I’ll get Hance in here for questioning,” Cooper insisted, and he took out his phone, no doubt to do that, but the sound of Colt’s voice stopped him.
“We got an ID on the dead body from the warehouse. Randy Boutwell,” Colt announced when he finished his call. Like Cooper, the deputy came closer to them.
Shelby repeated the name several times and shook her head. “Never heard of him.”
Seth had a similar response. “Who is he?”
“An unemployed bartender from San Antonio,” Colt answered, reading from his notes. “Fifty-six years old. He has an old record for shoplifting and petty theft.”
Not exactly a hardened criminal, but maybe their paths had crossed at some point. She had to deal with all sorts of unsavory people sometimes to do research for her articles.
“San Antonio PD is running a background on him now,” Colt added.
Good. Something might turn up as to why someone would want him dead. Someone who could explain all of this.
“What about the mask that was on Boutwell?” Shelby asked.
Mercy, her voice actually cracked. It was silly to hate a sign of weakness such as that, but she did. Especially in front of these cowboy cops.
The three lawmen exchanged glances, and it was Colt who finally shrugged. “Nothing on it. The CSIs will process it for prints and trace.”
Which meant if the killer had half a brain there likely wouldn’t be any evidence left behind.
“The mask is a blown-up shot of the photo that the newspapers ran after my father was murdered,” she told them.
“After Whitt’s blood was found in the cabin,” Seth corrected.
Technically, Seth was right. There’d been blood, plenty of it, in the hunting cabin where her father and Jewell had met for their romantic trysts.
But no body.
At first the cops had ruled her dad a missing person, and that was when the particular photo had been splattered in the newspapers. He’d stayed listed as a missing person for more than twenty years until Shelby had pressured the new DA to reprocess the evidence. When Jewell’s DNA had been discovered on the bloody sheets, the woman finally had been arrested. And when Whitt’s bone fragments had been found a few months earlier, it had looked like a slam dunk case for the prosecution.
Still did.
“Was that why Randy Boutwell was killed?” Though Shelby hadn’t intended to say it aloud. She also hadn’t expected the trio of lawmen to know what she meant, but the scowl Seth gave her said otherwise.
“No,” Seth snapped. “Nobody in my family killed Boutwell to make my mother look innocent.”
“But it’s an interesting theory,” Shelby said. “Jewell’s in jail. No way could she have killed Boutwell herself, but this might put reasonable doubt in the jurors’ minds that my father’s killer is still out there.”
Oh, that didn’t sit well with any of them.
Not that she had expected it would.
Cooper and Colt certainly wouldn’t have done something like this. Or at least she hadn’t thought they would since they were essentially estranged from Jewell, but Jewell had kids who loved her. Her twin daughters, Rosalie and Rayanne.
And her stepson, Seth, of course.
Seth looked her straight in the eyes. “Your father’s killer is still out there.”
Shelby didn’t dodge that stare. “Then, we’ll have to agree to disagree about that.”
They could add it to the other