The Marshal's Hostage - By Delores Fossen Page 0,18

Warner.

“You can forget that in private request,” Dallas snarled before turning to Owen. “You drugged Joelle.”

Owen flinched. “What are you talking about?”

That earned him a groan from Dallas. “The Jack Daniel’s that you sent to her dressing room was drugged, and you damn well know it.”

“I didn’t,” he answered quickly. Owen cursed, shook his head and appeared as if he were trying to wrap his mind around something so impossible. “Wait.” His gaze flew to Marshal Warner. “If someone drugged her, it was probably Lindsey Downing. She works for me and is Joelle’s friend—”

“Yes, it was Lindsey,” Joelle volunteered.

“Don’t cover for him,” Dallas warned her.

Joelle had to cover. There was no other choice here. “Lindsey could be jealous.” And that was the truth. “I think she’s in love with Owen.”

Dallas gave her a flat look. “Then why the hell was she your bridesmaid?”

She wanted to postpone this explanation, but all four men had their full attention aimed at her. “The wedding was put together hastily. And Lindsey helped. It was too short notice for any of my friends to attend, so Lindsey asked if she could be in the wedding party.” Besides, Joelle hadn’t wanted her real friends to know what she was doing. Her plan had been to make the marriage as short as possible until she could get her hands on any and all evidence that would send Owen to jail without retaliation against her, Dallas or his family.

“What about the knife?” Marshal Warner asked.

Joelle could have sworn her stomach dropped to her knees. She looked at Owen, hoping and praying that the marshal meant some other knife, but Owen only gave her a smug glance.

The SOB. He’d ratted them out.

She silently cursed. “What about it?” she asked, not wanting to volunteer anything. She also hoped that Dallas wouldn’t, either.

“What knife?” Harlan asked.

“It might be the weapon that killed Jonah Webb,” Owen volunteered.

She gave Owen a look that she wished could have turned him to dust. Joelle could only stand there and brace herself for the worst.

“According to Mr. Palmer here,” Warner said, “the knife has some possible evidence that could link it to Jonah Webb’s death.”

Possible and could. So, Owen hadn’t spilled all. Maybe because he thought he could still use it to control her. He definitely wanted to neutralize the possibility of her testifying against him.

Marshal Warner made a sound that could have meant anything, and the silence began again. Joelle waited for Dallas’s boss to ask her about the test she’d had run. The test that had made her an accomplice in all of this. But he didn’t say a word about it. Neither did Owen.

“How’d you get this knife?” Clayton asked Owen, and it wasn’t a friendly request for information. Obviously, he disliked Owen as much as Dallas did.

“Someone sent it to me,” Owen readily answered. “It was in a plastic bag inside a box with no return address, but postmarked from San Antonio.”

Joelle glared at him. He’d told her that he’d found the knife in Webb’s office, which meant he was lying then.

Or now.

Dallas glared, too. Shifted his position. Put his hands on his hips. “Any reason you didn’t turn this knife over to the authorities the moment you got it?”

Owen lifted his shoulder. “I didn’t realize what it was at the time. There was no note. No explanation. I put it in a safe-deposit box and was trying to find out who had sent it and why. Now, mind you, it wasn’t a top priority since I was planning my wedding to Joelle.”

“Right,” Dallas said, his tone dripping with sarcasm. “Let me put that in my I’m not buying it file.”

Owen ignored that and turned back to Marshal Warner. “Then yesterday I got another package. No return address again and also postmarked from San Antonio. There was a typed note inside that said the traces of blood on the knife are Webb’s and the prints belong to...Joelle.”

Joelle couldn’t stop the gasp that came from her mouth, but she clamped her teeth over her bottom lip so that she wouldn’t blurt out that Owen had just told a whopper. She’d had the knife tested, and those were Dallas’s prints.

Not hers.

Everything inside her was yelling for her to come clean with the head marshal. Not to clear her name but because Owen was weaving some kind of spider web here, and if she withheld info about the tests she’d run, she could be helping Owen with whatever stupid plan he was now concocting.

However, if