“You been in a fight, sir?” Lucy’s tone softened a fraction as she took a seat in front of the man. A move Ramsey would have chosen himself. Wakerby, who was seated facing Ramsey, wouldn’t listen to her if she tried to lord it over him.
The prisoner’s chin lifted, but there was no other response.
“I’m sorry to see that your reception here isn’t all that you’d hoped it would be,” she said to the man. “I hear that even in jail there are standards,” she continued, her voice almost sweet sounding. “Guys who rape are okay. I mean, everyone knows that the girl was asking for it, right?”
Lucy’s pause could have been tactical or it could be that she was choking on her words. Ramsey suspected it was a bit of both.
“But guys who steal babies while they’re raping women… now that’s looked upon a little differently.” Her voice didn’t waver at all as she continued. If Ramsey didn’t know better, he’d never have guessed that the woman before him was in any way attached to the case she was working.
And he was fairly good at picking up on the unspoken intricacies in people’s body language and voice variances.
“Unless we know that you didn’t also turn your sick attentions on that baby, you’re going to get the reputation of a lower than lowlife, Mr. Wakerby…?.”
Lucy’s pause this time had to be deliberate. It was perfect.
The woman in front of him might be little and blonde, and sexy-looking in her black slacks and black-and-white fitted tweed jacket, but she had more guts than any officer he’d ever worked with. Himself included.
“What did you do with that baby, Mr. Wakerby?”
The man didn’t answer.
“You agreed to meet with me this time without your lawyer present, sir. You can talk to me now.”
Still nothing.
“If you did to that little girl what you did to her mother, then, fine, sir, you will pay for your actions. If you didn’t, then you should speak up soon, because if people on the inside think you did, the truth isn’t going to matter anymore.
“Did you sexually abuse that little girl, Mr. Wakerby?”
Ramsey could only see the back of Lucy’s head. She held it straight and tall.
“You jealous?” Wakerby spoke, his gaze penetrating, no smile evident.
“No. I want the truth. I want you to pay for what you did, not for what you didn’t do.”
The truth in Lucy’s words rang clearly. Wakerby might think Lucy was trying to keep him from being unfairly brutalized in jail. Instead, she’d just promised him full retribution for brutalizing her mother, abducting her sister and any other adverse effects that Allison Hayes
had suffered because of his actions.
“The truth is, I ain’t into babies,” Wakerby said. “And I’m done here.”
Relief was a sweet release from the tension of the past moments. Lucy had done well.
His next job was to let her know that without crossing the very clear line she’d drawn between them in the car on the way to jail.
“D id you believe him?” Lucy’s question came as soon as they were alone in the hallway outside the barred portion of the jail building, having just reclaimed the weapons they’d surrendered before entering the visiting area.
“That he wasn’t into babies?” Ramsey’s words kept her centered on the case, not on the panic surging through her, compliments of Sloan Wakerby.
“Yes.” Ramsey was here because she trusted his opinion. And because she didn’t trust her own where her mother’s rapist was concerned.
“I believed him.”
“You don’t think he was just saving his ass? Buying my protection? Because I could have been threatening to let it slip to his fellow prisoners that he’d raped a child?”
“Sloan Wakerby would never let a woman protect his ass.” Right. She knew that. Knew his type.
“He was protecting his own reputation,” she said, seeing