The Darkest Hour

  THE DARKEST HOUR

  ANINA COLLINS

  The Darkest Hour

  Poppy and Alex come up against their toughest case yet, and they may never be the same again.

  When someone close to both Poppy and Alex is found brutally murdered, all the clues point to Alex as the killer. But Poppy knows in her heart that her partner could never commit such a heinous crime. As the evidence begins to mount against him, Poppy must race against the clock to prove that the man she trusts with her very life isn’t the murderer, even as everyone around her is convinced of his guilt.

  But if Alex isn’t the killer, who is? As the mystery unravels, the past and present finally meet in Sunset Ridge.

  The Darkest Hour is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to events, locations, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  2016 Eight Feathers Press, LLC

  Copyright © 2016 Eight Feathers Press, LLC

  Kobo Edition

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  Published in the United States

  ISBN: 978-0-9972153-7-3

  Book Cover Design by Susan Coils

  aninacollins.com/subscribe

  Click on the covers below to learn more about the series:

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  About the Book

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  About The Author

  Chapter One

  The sound of my Jingle Bells ringtone woke me from a sound sleep, startling me from a recurring dream of me running and stopping only to be buried alive in sand. I’d begun having the dream right after my mother died, and whenever my subconscious felt helpless, the dream crept back into my nighttime mind. This was the first time I’d had the dream in months, though.

  As I opened my eyes and looked across the room to see the frost framing my bedroom windows, I had no idea why the dark recesses of my mind thought I should feel helpless or lost. The holidays had been a flurry of good times with my father, and things between Alex and me had never been better. We hadn’t gotten as serious as I’d hoped to yet and still hadn’t slept together, but I chalked that up to his inability to let the past go. I’d known he was haunted by the ghost of his wife when I kissed him that night in October, so I worked to quietly temper my desire for more.

  All of this ran through my mind at lightning speed as my phone continued to jingle on the nightstand next to me. Forcing my eyes to remain open, I rolled over and grabbed it without looking at the caller ID. There really was no reason to look anyway. Only two people in the world called me in the middle of the night, so it was either my father or Alex whose voice would hit my ear momentarily.

  “Hello?” I groggily mumbled, silently asking why they’d interrupted my sleep.

  “Poppy, it’s Derek. I’m sorry to wake you, but something’s happened.”

  Hearing his deep voice instead of my father’s or Alex’s surprised me. Pulling the phone from my ear, I looked at the time. 4:17. Why was Derek calling me at four o’clock in the morning?

  “What do you mean something’s happened?” I asked as my brain tried to recover from sleep mode.

  “I need you to get down to the apartment building across the street from The Eagle. Hurry, okay?”

  “What? What are you talking about?” I asked, slowly coming out of my fog, but it was no use. He was gone already.

  I hopped out of bed and quickly dressed as my mind kicked into full panic mode and questions exploded one after another. Why was the police chief of Sunset Ridge calling me about something happening in the early hours of the morning? He had officers who handled the overnight shifts and hadn’t worked one since becoming chief nearly a year ago. What awful event had roused him from bed before his usual nine AM arrival at the station?

  Then a horrible thought tore through my brain and made tears fill my eyes. Derek would only call me if something had happened to my father. Nothing else would make him involve me in one of his cases.

  As I raced down the stairs to head out to my car, I called my father but it went directly to voicemail. That wasn’t normal. My father’s phone was always left on. He was one of those people who never let his phone run out of a charge. Over and over, I called and every time my heart sank a little lower when his comforting voice intoned that same voicemail message he’d had for as long as I could remember.

  I backed out of my driveway like a bat out of hell and tore down the road toward the apartment building on Main Street where Derek waited to break the news that I’d lost my father. I wiped the tears rolling down my cheeks, warming the ice cold steering wheel with them. What had happened to him? Why would he have been at that building instead of at his place over the bar? My father hadn’t told me about anyone new in his life recently. Had he met someone at McGuire’s and gone back to her house?

  A million ideas flashed through my mind. He’d been told by his doctor right before the holidays that he needed to lower his blood pressure, but his love of salt had continued unabated through Thanksgiving and Christmas. Had he had a heart attack and been found dead?

  The last words I said to him echoed in my head as I parked my car a block away because of the police barrier. He’d called right before nine to remind me to turn on my humidifier since the heat had been running in my house and it tended to make it almost unbearably dry. I’d brushed him off because I was thinking of something Alex had mentioned about going to Baltimore for dinner one night this week and told him I’d be sure to get the humidifier running, the idea leaving me as soon as the words left my mouth. I’d then said goodbye and that I loved him, but it had been more rote than anything real and full of feeling.

  How could I have been so thoughtless? My last words to him and they’d been nothing more than a daughter’s dismissiveness to the only real family she had left.

  I wiped the tears from my cheeks and steeled myself for what Derek had to tell me. Craig stood in the middle of the street redirecting curious onlookers away from the apartment building about a block away and smiled at me when I approached him, but it wasn’t his usual happy smile. His face told me this wasn’t just some crime scene like usual.

  And then he spoke and I knew it was bad.

  “Poppy, I’m sorry. I know you two were close.”

  Tears welled in my eyes again. Close wasn’t the word for what my father and I were. I had no grandparents left alive, and after my mother died, he was all I had in this world.

  I thanked Craig with a gentle pat on his shoulder and made my way to where Derek stood on the sidewalk in front of the apartment building. As I walked t
oward him, my legs moving as if on their own since my brain was occupied with thoughts of how I’d go on without the man who’d been there every day of my life, I tried to decipher Derek’s expression to figure out what had happened. His frown made him look much older than his thirty odd years, and in his eyes I saw real sadness like when he lost his brother.

  Reaching out, he put his arm around my shoulders and quietly said, “A neighbor found her sitting in her car. I want to warn you, though. It’s bad.”

  I leaned against him, thankful for the support, and then stopped dead in my tracks as his words finally made it through all the other thoughts in my brain. “Her? This isn’t about my father, Derek?”

  He shook his head. “No. Why would you say that?”

  Relief washed over me as tears of joy now filled my eyes and began to roll down my cheeks. I wiped them away and smiled. “You didn’t tell me what had happened, so I naturally thought my father had been hurt or worse.”

  “No, it’s not your father. As far as I know, he’s home safe and sound in bed, like I wish I was.”

  My eyes dry now, I stood there confused by Derek’s still sad look. “Then why am I here at some crime scene and speaking of that, where’s Alex? You know I do my amateur sleuth thing with him.”

  Derek didn’t cheer up at all from my attempt at being cute. “Not on this one, Poppy. Come with me.”

  I followed him to a car surrounded by nearly all of Sunset Ridge’s police officers and Donny, the county coroner, and his assistants. All four doors were open, and as I stepped closer, I saw a woman sitting in the driver’s seat.

  “Who is that, Derek? What happened to her?”

  “That’s Bethany, Poppy. Someone slit her throat sometime tonight.”

  I looked at the woman behind the wheel again and saw he was telling the truth. It was Bethany. Covered in blood, her beautiful face was frozen in a look of shock. The sense of relief I’d felt when I learned my father hadn’t been hurt disappeared, replaced by a feeling similar to the one I’d had on my way there. Bethany was the closest thing I had to a best friend, and there I stood looking at her as she sat in her car murdered sometime that night. I’d cried so much already since waking up just a short time earlier, but now as I thought of Bethany attacked like she must have been, I couldn’t stop the tears from coming again.

  Turning away from the sight of her, I asked Derek through my sobs, “Why would someone do this to her? Everyone loved Bethany.”

  He avoided my gaze and looked past me to where a woman stood with another of his officers. “Yeah, I hope it’s not worse than that. Come with me.”

  Worse than that? Had her killer sexually assaulted Bethany before slitting her throat? My stomach roiled at the mere thought of that happening in addition to the son of a bitch killing her.

  I followed Derek as the bile rose in my throat. Why would anyone do this to her? I hadn’t exaggerated when I said everyone loved Bethany. They did. Men and women alike took to her naturally. She had a way of lighting up a room by just walking into it, and her smile never failed to make everyone around her feel better.

  It’s one of the many things that made her a great member of The Eagle’s advertising group. Nobody sold more for the paper than she did, and even as she beat her team members every time in their quarterly sales competitions, none of the other people in the sales department resented her for it. I always had the feeling they understood she’d been blessed with good looks, an infectious personality others couldn’t help but love, and a way about her that made sales the perfect career for her.

  That she wouldn’t be there to pop into my office and chat each day made my chest tighten. That same bright soul who sold better than anyone else at the newspaper had been the one person I called my friend there. Even when she and Alex began dating and I secretly hated it, I never truly felt anything but friendship from her.

  We’d drifted apart slightly in the past weeks after he’d told her he couldn’t see her anymore. I sensed she knew he and I had gotten closer, but she never once mentioned it or gave me any sense she resented me.

  Alex had been a blip on her very busy social radar, for sure, so I always assumed she easily walked away from whatever they’d been and continued on with her life. She never wanted for dates in all the time I’d known her, so what was one guy in a world of men who clamored for her attention?

  As Derek and I drew nearer to the officer, I heard the woman next to him say something about a boyfriend of Bethany’s. That couldn’t be right. We may have drifted apart a little recently, but she would have told me about a new man in her life, especially someone she was calling a boyfriend. Bethany Lewis wasn’t exactly the type to award that title to just any man.

  “They were fighting bad,” the woman said, shaking her head and sighing. “It’s such a shame.”

  Derek tapped Stephen on the shoulder to get his attention. The newest officer to join the force, he came on a month after Alex. I had only met him once or twice as he always seemed to get stuck with the overnight shifts, but he was unforgettable with his pale blond hair and dark brown eyes, a combination that seemed misplaced like one or the other trait should be changed. Combined, they gave him a startling look I didn’t much like.

  “Chief, this is Mallory Michaels, one of the victim’s neighbors. I think you should hear what she has to say,” he said as he flashed me a snide look.

  I’d heard Bethany mention her neighbor Mallory once or twice at work when she was having problems with her landlord not fixing things. A tall, thin woman in yoga pants and a t-shirt, she had fried looking hair as a result of too many bad bleach jobs and reminded me of a stripper past her prime. Her makeup looked old and faded, like she hadn’t washed her face before she went to bed that night.

  Derek gave her a forced smile. “Just tell us what you know, Miss Michaels.”

  She twisted her expression from frustration and huffed, “I already told this officer my story. I don’t want to stand out here in the cold with her over there in that car any longer than I have to.”

  “I understand,” he said in a tone that made it clear to anyone who was paying attention that he was struggling to keep his cool. “If you could just repeat it for us, I’d appreciate it.”

  Mallory’s mouth contorted into a shape similar to what a snake might look like as it slithered away after killing something. “Fine, but then I’m going inside. This has been awful, and I think you people have a duty to one of Sunset Ridge’s citizens to do better by her than leaving her in that car for hours in a pool of her own blood.”

  Derek tensed up next to me, and for a moment I thought he might yank her right out of her sneakers and drag her to the police station for being so difficult. He looked like he wanted to, but he knew even better than I did that he couldn’t arrest someone for being a horrible person. Even if Mallory was more than deserving for being so damn difficult.

  “Thank you, Miss Michaels. If you could just tell us what you know.”

  “I called 911 when I heard a strange noise outside in the parking lot and was afraid someone was getting attacked. I didn’t see anyone, but I heard someone scream, so I hurried to my phone and called you guys. When I looked out my window after, I didn’t see anything but a car leaving the parking lot.”

  “Did you see anyone at all?”

  “No. Just the car. It looked like a sports car or something and it was dark.”

  Stephen interrupted and directed her back to the idea of a boyfriend I’d heard her mention as we walked up. “I think you should tell them what you told me about what happened earlier last night.”

  Again, the officer shot me a look, and this time I had to believe it was intentional. What was his problem? I didn’t even know him.

  Mallory folded her arms and turned to face Derek. “I heard her and a guy fighting outside last night around nine o’clock. It was pretty heated too. She was angry with that guy she’s been seeing lately.”

  I couldn’t stop from saying what I knew was the truth.
“Bethany wasn’t seeing anyone. I’d know if she was. She didn’t have a boyfriend. Whatever you saw, it wasn’t her fighting with anyone she was serious with.”

  Derek looked down at me still frowning. “Are you sure, Poppy? I know you two were close, but she might have decided to keep some guy a secret from even you. She might have had good reason to.”

  I stared up at him and couldn’t believe what he’d just said. “Do you remember who we’re talking about here, Derek? Bethany didn’t keep any men in her life a secret. I’d bet my last dollar on it that even you knew practically every guy she dated in the last year. She wasn’t exactly a shrinking violet about those kinds of things. Bethany liked to have a good time, and she didn’t care who knew who she was having those good times with. At the very least, I would have known.”

  Mallory didn’t seem swayed by my argument any more than Derek did, though, and insisted it was a boyfriend Bethany was fighting with. He pressed her for a description of the man, and when she began to speak, I felt my stomach drop.

  “It was the guy I’ve seen her with before. She’s been seeing him for months. Dark hair, dark eyes, about six foot, in good shape. I don’t remember his name, but she knew him. He wasn’t a stranger to her.”

  She’d described Alex to a T. He wouldn’t have been a stranger to Bethany and it was likely Mallory would have seen him in the time the two were dating. But he’d told me he broke it off with Bethany and hadn’t seen her except for in passing at The Grounds or the Madison Diner since fall.

  Had he lied to me?

  “Are you sure?” I asked, not wanting to believe what I was hearing.

  Mallory nodded, sure that she had seen the man there a number of times before. “He didn’t come around for a long time. I know that, but he started coming back around in the past few weeks since the holidays. I’ve seen him at least two or three times since Christmas. I just figured they got back together.”