Night Whispers (Second Opportunities 3)

The exterior of the police station looked modern and manicured; the interior was well-lit, but the officers standing around and working on reports looked as if they were having a quiet night. "Who's in charge?" Paul snapped at a cop who'd been getting a drink from a water fountain.

"Sergeant Babcock; he's over there talking to the dispatcher."

"Are you Babcock?" Paul said, interrupting a chat the two were having about the seizure of Maitland's yachts.

Babcock straightened. "Yeah, who are—" Before he could ask the question, an open case with FBI credentials was in front of his face.

"What can we do for you, Mr. Richardson?"

"You're holding one of my people. I want her released to me. Now."

The lockup was empty except for one drunken teenager, who was waiting to be picked up by his father, and Sloan Reynolds, whose arrest had made Captain Hocklin famous and euphoric that day. "Who are you talking about?"

"Sloan Reynolds."

The sergeant paled, the dispatcher gaped, and officers stopped writing reports and turned around, openly eavesdropping. "Are you telling me Sloan Reynolds is working for the FBI?"

"That's what I said. Are you holding her here or not?"

"Well, yeah, but I can't—I don't have the authority—"

"Who does?"

"That would have to come from Captain Hocklin himself. But he goes to bed early, and he was up late last—"

Paul picked up the telephone on the dispatcher's desk and thrust it at him. "Wake him up," he snapped.

Babcock hesitated, studied the look on the FBI agent's face, and did as he was told.

Sloan signed for her belongings, which constituted her purse and watch, and walked in stiff silence to Paul's car in the parking lot. "We'll check in to a motel for the night," he said. "I'm sorry, Sloan. I had no idea they'd busted you until I heard it on the ten o'clock news."

In an odd, soft voice, she said, "I'm sure you were very busy or you'd have come sooner."

Paul glanced uncertainly at her and decided to wait until she'd settled into a room before he told her exactly what had kept him.

He stopped at a decent-looking motel, got two rooms next door to each other, and left her outside hers. "I need to make a phone call; then we'll talk."

She said nothing, but put the key in the lock of her room and walked inside, leaving the door a few inches ajar.

Inside the room, Sloan walked over to the television set and turned on CNN. They were having a field day showing films of federal agents swarming over Noah's boats. They were making him sound like a criminal who made his money transporting and selling illegal weapons. She saw Paul at the edge of one quick shot.

When Paul walked into her room, Sloan was standing at the foot of the bed, still watching the news footage of his raid on Maitland's boats. "I know how you must feel," he began soothingly.

Her arms dropped to her sides, and she turned fully toward him, her face a study of emotions that he didn't quite recognize. "Did you find anything?" she asked in an odd voice.

"No, not yet," Paul admitted. With a resigned sigh, he said, "Look, I know you must want to tear into me for all this. If it will make you feel better, do it."

"That won't make me feel better, but this will—" Her right fist slammed into his jaw, snapped his head back, and sent him reeling backward.

Grabbing for the wall to steady himself with one hand, Paul lifted his other hand to his jaw. For someone as small and slender as she was, she packed a hell of a wallop. She took another step forward. Caught somewhere between pain, admiration, and annoyance, he held up his hand and said ominously, "Enough! That's enough. I'll let that one pass, but there isn't going to be another."

Deprived of an outlet for her anger, she seemed to wither before his eyes. She slumped down on the foot of the bed, wrapped her arms around her stomach, and rocked slowly, as if she were trying to physically hold herself together. Her hair fell forward, hiding the sides of her face, and her shoulders began to shake.

Her silent, anguished weeping was even harder on Paul than her right hook. "I'll try to make things right somehow."

She stopped rocking and lifted her tear-streaked face to him. "With whom?" she said, her voice choked with tears. "With Noah? Before he knew what you were doing today, he was moving heaven and earth to try to protect me from being arrested. An hour later, he hated me so much, he hung up on me and left me in jail."

"I can't help that."

Fiercely, she cried, "What can you help? Can you help Paris forget that I've smeared her family's name all over the world news? Can you help her forget that I was hauled out of her home in handcuffs? She was screaming when they took me away. Do you hear me?" Sloan finished hysterically. "She was screaming!"

Paris was an Academy Award caliber actress, in Paul's opinion, but he knew there was no point in saying that, or in trying to make Sloan believe that the only thing Paris could possibly have felt was relief because her sister was being arrested for her own crime. He didn't know whether Paris would now play the role of sweet, naïve, supportive sister while Sloan was under suspicion of murder, or if she'd decide she didn't have to bother. He hoped, for Sloan's sake, Paris might decide to do the former. It would make things a little easier on Sloan if she was allowed to come back there. He nodded to the telephone beside the bed. "Call her," he said. "If she was that upset over what was happening to you, she may want you to come straight home."

The hope that flared in Sloan's eyes, the hesitant way she reached for the phone and then picked it up, made Paul feel as sick as he'd felt when he realized Paris had to be the murderer.

The phone call was extremely short, and when Sloan hung up, there was no more hope in her eyes. She looked up at Paul, her voice dead. "Gary Dishler said that Paris told him to tell me she and Carter never wanted to see or talk to me again. He's putting our luggage on the porch right now. If we don't pick it up within a half hour, it will be sent off with the trash in the morning."

"I'll go get it," Paul said, feeling a sudden urge to put his hands around Paris's slender, "fragile" throat and choke the life out of her.

Sloan nodded and tiredly reached for the phone. "I'll call my mother and Sara. They must be out of their minds with worry if they've heard about this."

The police department was apparently providing security while the crime scene team still had work to do, because two police cruisers were parked in the driveway, but the team had obviously knocked off for the night. So had the media, Paul noticed with relief as Gary Dishler answered his call at the gates.