eyes at the ranger, and Jessica looked down at the floor to hide her smile.
He stood and Leslie smiled up at him. “Please turn off the recorders, too.”
“Who hired you?” Jessica asked after he’d left.
“Hawk,” Leslie said. “I’m a family friend.”
“Thank God,” Jessica said. “Can they really keep me for ninety-six hours?”
“Yes, on a murder charge,” Leslie said. “But they won’t. You should know, though, they searched your house, Hawk’s house, and the bakery.”
“My bakery?” Jessica’s heart almost stopped. “I have to clean it up so I can open tomorrow.”
“They found nothing,” Leslie said. “If they had they would be charging you now instead of badgering you. How many times did they make you repeat things?”
“We were on twelve,” Jessica said. She was close to tears. They searched her bakery? She worked her ass off to get that place up and running, and if they broke anything there would be hell to pay.
“I didn’t kill the old biddy,” Jessica said. “I swear it.”
“I believe you,” Leslie said. “I’ve seen the autopsy. They put the time of death between nine p.m. Monday and three a.m. Tuesday. Do you know where you were then?”
“I was bent over the back of Hawk’s truck getting banged,” she said. “Then we went home to bed.”
“Together?” Leslie asked.
“Together.”
“To your house, not to the ranch?”
“We always go to my house,” Jessica said. “That way we can do what we want, in any room we want.”
“I can’t believe they searched the ranch, too,” she said.
Leslie opened her briefcase and brought out a piece of paper. “They’re looking for a specific gun.”
“That means the slug was left behind?” When Leslie lifted her eyebrows in question, Jessica said, “I like crime TV shows. Hawk always corrects me though, and says you can’t get it done in forty-five minutes. That’s why I watch true crime shows, too.”
Jessica looked at the door. “When can I go home?”
“They have no evidence against you, just the blustering of your ex who said his mother told him you’d threatened her.”
“That’s a lie,” Jessica said. She was too tired to be angry about it and scream. She just wanted to go home so she could sleep in Hawk’s arms. But then she thought about the bakery. “What time is it?” It had been around eight when the cops had shown up, or at least that’s what she thought. She needed to check out the bakery and see if she needed to right things that had been wronged in the search.
“What about all my supplies? My bins of flour, and sugar? Did they search through them, too?”
“Probably,” Leslie said.
She wanted to scream. What she needed was a phone so she could call Hawk and talk to him. “When you leave, will you call Hawk for me?”
“I’m not leaving without you,” Leslie said. “Unless they find something and charge you, you’re going home with me tonight. Now, is there anything you want to tell me?”
Jessica laughed softly. “I swear to you I didn’t steal the ring, and I didn’t kill anyone.” She was also pretty sure she’d told the attorney that already, but those words she didn’t mind repeating.
“Then stay here while I go talk to Ranger Jackson. You’ll sleep in your own bed tonight, I promise.”
Jessica stared at the door after it was opened, and shut. The click said it all. She was locked in. This was not how she expected this day to go. It was the worst Monday of all.
Hawk paced in the front room of the bakery, his anger rising with each step. It had been hours since the rangers had taken Jessica away. He’d asked Reed to call Leslie, since they had the hots for each other, and she’d driven down from Amarillo as fast as she could. But Jessica should be back by now. He wanted his baby in his arms, and he wanted her there now.
“What is taking so long?” he asked. His brothers were working to clean the mess left behind by the search team. Natalie and Lizbeth were there, too. Much to his surprise the retirees had shown up about half an hour after they’d started to clean and asked what was happening. They offered to help, and Hawk had agreed. The bakery was starting to shine now. They’d wiped down every surface with cleaner, washed every plate, and the girls had packaged up all the food that had been touched and were planning on baking all night long to replace things. Any ingredients that had been opened already,