What had she expected? This guy was meticulous. He’d spent years in that institution. Plenty of time to formulate a perfect plan.
But why now? More than ten years after his release? Had the news that his wife was growing a princess in her womb been enough to push him over the edge, at which his existence apparently hovered?
Sheriff Henley had jumped in with both feet as soon as Wyatt had explained the situation in Jackson County. Henley, too, was certain Jamison was their man. Both his wife and son had been assigned a security detail. That hadn’t stopped him from getting to his wife in the hospital. The wife had since been moved to ICU where security measures were stronger.
Between his grandparents and two assigned deputies, the boy was in good hands.
Adeline had a nephew.
Too much to absorb. She shook it off. Now was not the time to deal with those emotions. Or the fact that her mother had withheld important information related to an ongoing case. All of that would have to wait.
Whether Prescott and Arnold were still alive or not, they had to be found. Daniel Jamison had to be stopped.
Adeline wanted those women to be alive. She didn’t want to fail them.
Just something else she would have to deal with eventually. She had two sisters.Two.No way was she going to count Jamison as a brother. Clearly he was a psycho just like his damned daddy.
Herdaddy.
No. Adeline shook her head. Carl Cooper was her father. And Irene was her mother. No one else counted.
She settled her attention back on the house. “I’m going inside.”
“Henley said the property had been released,” Wyatt commented, moving up beside her, “but I’m not sure going in is a good idea. On a personal level.”
Adeline shot him a look. “Get real, Wyatt. You know how I am. I need to feel the vibe of the place.” Those she was getting out here in the yard were seriously creepy. Lots of pent-up rage. Intense secrecy.
Jamison wasn’t the only one who’d been keeping secrets.
“We should have asked Henley for access. Gotten a key,” Wyatt suggested.
“Come on.” She headed for the porch. “Chances are there’s at least one window unlocked. We probably won’t even need a key.”
“Breaking and entering, Detective Cooper,” he reminded. “Just because we represent the law doesn’t mean we’re above the law.”
“Yeah, yeah. So arrest me.”
The windows in front were locked. In back, too. Damn it. Front and back doors were secure. The credit card thing didn’t work. She had strong-armed Wyatt into trying when she’d failed to get the job done.
Wait. Adeline turned to Wyatt. “She was found in the basement. That’s what Henley said, right?” A house this old likely had an exterior entrance that wasn’t a typical walk-through door. Hope resurrected.
She hustled around to the back once more. The ground-level double doors were almost completely concealed by a thicket of shrubbery. She parted the dense greenery. Dawn’s gray gloom provided sufficient light to see that there was a big-ass lock secured to the doors.
“Well, shit.”
Wyatt crouched down to get a closer look. When he’d completed his assessment, he glanced up at her. “I think I can handle that.”
“You carry bolt cutters in your SUV?” she called after him as he jogged toward the corner of the house.
“You’ll see,” he called back.
That was the problem. She’d already seen too much. Her biological father was literally an axe murderer. Her brother, too. How screwed up was that?
She should call her old partner. Braddock would laugh his ass off and give her kudos for coming up with such a great joke. But it wasn’t a joke.
And Adeline wasn’t laughing.
Wyatt hustled back to where she waited. She got to her feet. He’d brought a flashlight. Good. She frowned when she recognized the tool in his hand. “So you don’t carry bolt cutters but you carry a hammer?”