Chapter Twenty-nine
Eric
Allison insisted on coming with them to the station. Then she demanded she be present when Bree gave her statement. Eric tried to argue with her, telling her Bree wasn’t being questioned, and wasn’t under suspicion of anything. Allison gave him the evil eye, and proceeded to ignore him. He ended up standing behind them with his back to the wall so he could survey the whole room, while Allison took his chair and held Bree’s hand.
It was good that Bree had such loyal friends even if she didn’t need them right now. He was watching out for her. Bree was his only concern at the moment. Getting her in bed and resting safely behind his walls was such a priority he wanted to scream at how long the interview was taking.
Between the table, the extra chairs, the tripod in the corner, and all the extra people, the little grey room was overflowing, but nobody was willing to leave. Eric couldn’t be involved, not with his personal connection to Bree. Adam was out for the same reason. That left Dutch to run point and Mackie as his right hand. Once Dutch had the camera rolling, Mackie gave the introductory spiel for the record and turned to Bree. “Can you tell us what happened?”
“Allison Grey and I decided to go to the Frozen Cow for ice cream. A big beige sedan pulled into the parking lot after we were parked, blocking us in. The driver got out of the car. Did you want me to describe him now?” Bree asked.
“Yes, please.”
“White. Short, dark blondish hair. A little shorter than Eric. Six feet, maybe. Muscular. Like, works for a living. Real muscles, not gym muscles. I don’t know, two hundred, two hundred and twenty pounds. Angry. Really angry. He was pissed when he got out of the car, and we’d been parked and talking before he even pulled in. It’s not like I’d cut him off or anything. I’d never seen him before,” Bree said.
“Eye colour? Accent?” Dutch asked.
“I didn’t see his eyes. I didn’t hear an accent, but he was mostly swearing.”
“Tattoos? Scars? Distinguishing marks?” Dutch pressed.
“I didn’t see anything!”
Bree’s voice climbed as she kept coming up with negative answers to the standard questions. Eric laid his hands on her shoulders and squeezed gently. She took a deep breath.
“Go on, Bree,” Mackie encouraged.
“He approached me. I thought he was headed to the counter, but he blocked me from going back to the car. He said he knew who I was,” she said.
She went quiet. So did the rest of the room. If the killer knew who she was, it meant that he’d stalked her. It didn’t make sense. All his previous victims were tied to Ice Road Warriors members in one way or another. Unless Forrester and his boys had been close to Bree without her noticing, she’d only had a few encounters with the club, and they had all been in the last two weeks. It wasn’t enough to indicate a relationship. Not to a normal person’s brain, anyway. It might be enough for the fucker who almost killed her.
It changed the whole profile.
“What did he say?” Adam asked, violating protocol.
She cocked her head to the side. Eric remembered that pose. She used it often while she was translating when she was trying to get a particularly complicated phrase exactly right.
“He said he knew who I was,” she repeated.
“But what exactly did he say?” Adam repeated.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. He said, open quote, I know who you are. I know who you’ve fucked. Fucking a cop is bad enough, but then Forrester came along and you couldn’t keep your legs together. Close quote,” Bree shouted.
“Are you sure? How could he know who you were sleeping with?” Adam asked.
“Can he go? Can you make him leave?” Bree asked Dutch. “I can’t talk about this when my own brother is questioning every word out of my mouth.”
Adam opened his mouth to protest, so Eric stepped in. “Adam, enough.”
“But—“
“You’re making her uncomfortable. You can watch from the other room,” the inspector ordered.
Bree relaxed under Eric’s hands, so he kept rubbing. “He pulled out a knife in the parking lot. I tried to fight him off but he hit me in the head. I woke up in the car with a blanket over my head. We pulled into the clearing where Eric and Marcus found me. He didn’t say anything else, except for calling me a cunt and swearing at me.”
“You’re doing great, Bree. I want to you take a minute and think of anything you might have seen or heard that you might not have mentioned,” Mackie said, his voice encouraging.
The entire room went silent. Unlike her brother, Mackie didn’t try to fill the silence with prompts in an attempt to jostle her memory.
