The O'Connells Box Set

Chapter 24

Reine was now sitting in a chair with her hands cuffed behind her back because Pete had demanded Marcus arrest her. She had watched in horror as he pulled his cuffs from his pouch, turned her around, and made her put her hands on her head, fingers linked, as he patted her down and searched her pockets, pulling out her key, the granola bar Suzanne had handed her, and the twelve dollars and twenty-six cents she had left after buying the day-old sandwich. It was all on Pete’s desk now, and her pockets were still inside out. Her legs were shaking.

She wondered if they seriously thought she’d be walking around with the old woman’s jewelry in her pockets. How the hell had she managed to land in this hot water when she never should have been left alone in the Hirst house anyway? She was Ivy’s assistant, doing all the grunt work and dirty jobs the nurses didn’t do. Anger was the only emotion going through her now.

This was a nightmare. How? Why? She’d been out of jail for only a week.

She could hear Pete still yelling, feeling the force of his rage in the accusations he yelled down at her. Where is it? You stupid little f*****g b***h. You steal from one of my clients? It’s the end of you. She knew Pete was a friend of Manny’s, and she’d expected Manny there instead of Marcus, though, as she pulled in a breath and sat uncomfortably, staring at her things on the desk, she knew it was only a matter of time before he showed up, too.

Where is it? You stupid little f*****g b***h. You steal from one of my clients? It’s the end of you.It was so damn official now, the way Marcus was talking to Pete just outside the office, but Reine had stopped listening to the back and forth. Valerie had called to say the old woman’s jewelry had been picked through, but she didn’t know where to begin in wondering why. There had to be an explanation.

The old woman carried around that case of jewelry because she had dementia. Reine was still furious with Valerie, her daughter, because she hadn’t come back when she said she would, and she’d ended up having to chase an old woman down the street.

Reine wanted to cry from the agony that filled every part of her, but all she could feel now was numbness. Maybe there was a point where her body couldn’t take one more thing. She sat there, knowing she was going back to bars and concrete, a tiny cell. And her daughter, Eva… She’d never see her again. It was that thought which had tears slipping down her face and her nose running, and she couldn’t even wipe it. She sniffed loudly.

“Come on, Reine. You’ve got to tell me something. Did you really do this?” Marcus said. She hadn’t heard him walk back in. She refused to look up at him and shook her head.

“Does it matter? Seems my word means nothing. Seems it’s easy to say I did it because I have a record…”

“You were the last person at her house, and now the jewelry is missing. Are you saying you didn’t do it?”

She flinched at the way he snapped, but when she lifted her gaze up to him, she saw empathy despite the disbelief in his voice. She couldn’t hide her misery, and she couldn’t see him clearly through tear-filled eyes, and that only brought out her anger again, because as he stood there, staring down at her, she could see he’d already convicted her. She made a rude sound, pulling at the cuffs, feeling the ache in her shoulders.

“If I say I didn’t do it, would you believe me?”

He just stood there and lifted his gaze, letting out a rough sigh.

She shook her head. “Didn’t think so, so what does it matter?”

“What did you do with the jewelry, Reine? What was your plan, to sell it, pawn it? You’d have to know we’d track you down, that you’d get caught. Or was it that you thought no one would notice? Stealing from an old woman?” He reached for her arm and pulled her up. “You know the drill. Get up. You hide it somewhere at your place? What were you planning on doing with the money? You said you wanted Eva back. Was this to pay for the lawyer or something else? We’ll take that shithole you live in apart and find it, you know. Come clean. It’s the only way this gets easier for you.”

The way he talked, she found herself hating everything about him, about who he was. Worse, he had her daughter. But he couldn’t make her talk. She was furious at Ivy, too, for leaving her the day before and walking out that door. If only she’d said no, if only she’d walked out. But then what? Getting fired wasn’t an option, either, because that would have been another strike against her. Seemed she was damned either way.

“This was so stupid on your part, Reine,” he said. “You were out and had a chance to get your life together.” He was leading her out of the office, and she could feel eyes on her, burning into her, watching her. She could hear them talking, but she’d stopped listening.

Marcus held her arm and pulled open the door to walk her outside, and there was Suzanne—and Ivy, too. She wanted to spit in her face, something she’d never done to anyone. But the woman had left her and put her in an impossible situation. She made herself look away.

“Marcus, you arrested her?”

It ached deep, hearing the way Suzanne spoke about her.

Marcus pulled open the back door of the cruiser, put his hand on her head, and shoved her in the cramped space before closing the door. She could hear only the muffled sounds of the back and forth between brother and sister, the police radio in the background, as she stared through the black mesh and bars in front of her.

He was the law, the sheriff. She’d felt for so long that she didn’t have a voice. How could someone so easily accuse her and be believed when she hadn’t done it?

The driver’s door opened, and Marcus climbed in and started the car. She knew he was watching her in the rear-view mirror as he backed the police car up and pulled out of the parking lot.

“This isn’t helping you, Reine. Did you not think of Eva and how this would hurt her? What happened, you going to jail the first time, shouldn’t have happened. You weren’t a criminal then, but did being inside turn you into one?”

She pulled in a breath, wanting to tell Marcus right where to go. “If I shouldn’t have been in jail the first time, why didn’t you do something to get me out? Instead, you let me believe you were good and decent, and, like a fool, I let you adopt my daughter. You’re so quick to think the worst of me. But ask yourself if that’s because now I can’t cause you a problem. This way, I’m no longer a threat to you. I have to wonder, Sheriff, how easy it was. And this jewelry going missing, I think the timing is rather convenient for you.”

He lifted a sharp gaze to the rear-view again as he drove, then shook his head. The way his face hardened, she knew she wasn’t getting on his good side anytime soon.

“You cuffed me to a chair,” he said. “I wasn’t the sheriff of this county when you were convicted, but I think you need to give yourself a refresher, Reine. I called my sister to get you out, and she worked your case without cost to you. She swung you a deal that was a miracle at the time, considering the DA wanted to make an example of you. I’m sympathetic, but you broke the law.”

She knew she’d pushed the wrong buttons with this man. She could hear the edge of his temper in the way he spoke so sharply.

“Are you trying to say someone is setting you up?” he said. “Don’t go laying that at my feet. I can see you want to paint me as a monster, and maybe it would be easier for you to justify hating me. But we love Eva, and she’s part of our family. And this, what you’re doing, is going to hurt that little girl—my little girl, very much. That’s entirely on you, Reine. You did this to yourself.”

my“That’s right, Sheriff O’Connell, hero. Wash your hands of it and pass the blame to me. I know what I did then. I was trying to survive with my daughter.”

Then there was Tommy, whom she’d thought of too many times since. What if she’d never gone with him?

“Eva will always be my daughter,” she continued. “I love her and would never do anything to hurt her. Everything I’ve done has been for her.”

He cursed under his breath, and she knew deep down that it didn’t matter what she did, what she said. He’d already made up his mind. What hurt more than anything was how easy it seemed for everyone to assume she was automatically guilty, proof be damned. She lowered her head and shut her eyes, because all she could feel was the dark hole she’d fallen into, and her only way out had been snatched away. Worse, the image she continued to see within the darkness was Marcus O’Connell staring down at her.