Playing Dead_ A Novel of Suspense - Allison Brennan [61]
“Five days? Why’d it take so long for us to get the call?”
“The Shasta County Sheriff’s Department took that long to pull the tapes and look at them. They didn’t give a lot of credence to the sighting. It was a truck driver at a diner off the interstate. But they reviewed the tapes and think it might be O’Brien. A deputy is driving down with the tapes, should be here early afternoon.”
“If it was O’Brien, that means he’s in town by now.”
“You’re thinking something,” Steve said.
“There was a sticky note on Claire’s computer with her name printed on it. It wasn’t her handwriting. I couldn’t find anything that looked like it that came from O’Brien, but she did searches on Maddox and Collier.” He glanced at his watch. “She left at seven this morning. Collier’s first class was at eight. What if she went to talk to him?”
“About Maddox? Why?”
“To see if he knew what Maddox knew about her father. Maddox thought O’Brien was innocent. I know for a fact that Claire gave Maddox no credence—believe me, she believes her father is guilty.” Believed. “At least until recently. And I don’t know about now, but it looks like she’s trying to learn exactly what Maddox knew.”
“To clear her father?”
“To decide whether he’s telling the truth.”
“Fuck,” Steve muttered. “I put the fear of God in that woman, why is she screwing around with her future like this? She knows she could be charged as an accessory.”
“She blames herself for the murders, but if her father is innocent, she’d blame herself for not standing by him,” Mitch said.
“She told you that?”
“Not in so many words, but she did talk about the murders last night.”
Steve glanced at him. “And she left at seven in the morning? You slept with her, didn’t you?”
“I don’t see—”
“Dammit, Mitch, what are you thinking?”
“Steve—”
“Don’t bother making excuses.”
“I wasn’t going to.” He should have, but he didn’t regret his relationship with Claire. He only regretted deceiving her.
“I knew you’d fallen for her, but you’re going to get yourself in deep shit if you persist in this. What if she is working with her father? What if she knows where he is and is helping him evade the authorities? Can you honestly tell me that your judgment isn’t clouded? That you can—oh, this is really fucked. Anything you learn we can’t even use to prosecute. You’ve contaminated the entire case!”
“Whoa, hold off a minute, Donovan,” Mitch said. “O’Brien is a fugitive, and we can pursue him using any means possible. There is no contamination, other than the fact that Claire will hate my guts when she finds out I lied to her.”
“We sure as hell can’t use anything you’ve learned to—”
“To what? Prosecute Claire for talking to her father? Is that what you really want to do? We don’t even know that she has seen him. What we’ve guessed is that somehow he got a message to her, told her something that prompted her to track down Maddox.”
“She’s supposed to report any communication, not just physical contact.”
“I get that. But we agreed that the most important thing was putting O’Brien in federal custody to protect him. Wrongly convicted or not, he is in danger on the streets. If Claire is in contact with him, being close to her will help us find him. If we push her, I won’t be on the inside.”
His deception suddenly took a darker focus. He was not only watching Claire, but actively using her. It made him ill, but it was the single best way they had right now of finding Tom O’Brien.
“Think she’s on to you?”
“No.” Claire wasn’t the type to keep her opinion to herself.
“You’re going to have to push.”
“She’ll know.”
“What do you think this is, Bianchi? A game?”
“I’m not playing any fucking games. I think O’Brien made contact with Claire, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what he could have said that would have her working with him. I searched her computer and desk this morning when I sensed a change in her demeanor, found nothing from him, but lots of research on Oliver Maddox and the Western Innocence Project. And this guy”—Mitch