“You couldn’t have known what he was doing.”
“Ishouldhave known.”
“No.” She cupped his cheek. “He set it up so that Jonah looked like the bad guy. He fooled everyone.” And now she owed Jonah one big fat apology. “Do we know what happened to Jonah?”
Suddenly, the door opened and Ward walked in, closely followed by a middle-aged male deputy.
The sheriff cleared his throat. “Evening, Polly. How are you feeling?”
“I’m just glad to be back with Joel.”
“Can you tell us what happened?”
“Give her some time to recover,” Joel growled.
She touched his arm. “It’s okay.”
She started with Jonah’s visit at Bloom. Then the cellar, and all the things that came after with Cox. She relayed everything the deputy had said to her about his faith and believing that he was doing God’s work. How he’d admitted to killing four women.
While Joel just seemed to get tenser and angrier, Ward barely reacted.
It wasn’t until she was finished that the sheriff shook his head. “He always seemed like a great deputy.”
“Maybe you need better screening for the people working for you,” Joel muttered.
Ward visibly stiffened. “You had interactions with him. You didn’t realize he was a serial killer with allyourtraining?”
The muscles in Joel’s arms flexed, and he looked like he was going to hit the guy.
Gently, she touched his arm before looking back at Ward. “Are there any more questions?”
Ward held Joel’s gaze for one more second before looking back at her. “That’s it.”
“Great. Cox will go away for a long time, right? There aren’t any loopholes that’ll allow him to get out?”
“He’s not getting out, Polly.” Ward turned to go.
“What about Jonah?” she called, before he could leave.
Ward looked at her again. “We found his car in an alleyway a street away from Bloom. Someone had tied him up and shoved him in the trunk.”
She gasped. “Cox was really going to let Jonah go down for his crimes.”
“He must have been watching you,” Joel said quietly. “He saw Jonah come out. Followed him. Left him in that alley and went back for you.”
It was sick. All of it. And the worst part was, he still probably thought he was the saint in all of this.
Ward had barely left when the door swung open again and her mother rushed in.
“Polly, honey! You’re okay?” Her mother pulled her into a hug.
“I’ll be in the hall,” Joel said quietly, before slipping out of the room.
Polly hugged her mother. One of those tight, all-encompassing kind of hugs. “I’m sorry about Jonah. I’m sorry I blamed him and that he was hurt.”
Olivia Mack pulled back and wiped tears from her eyes. “Honey, we don’t need to talk about that now. They told me it was Deputy Cox. I can’t believe the abuse of power.”
“I know.” She shifted her gaze between her mother’s eyes. “Have you seen Jonah?”
