“No, you wouldn’t,” Allison said decisively. “You are far more forgiving than that uptight stick in the mud.”
Heather couldn’t control a snort of laughter. “That’s what I love about you,” she told her sister. “You can always make me laugh, no matter how dire the circumstances.”
Allison gave her one last hug and then pushed to her feet. “I’ll be back, I promise. But right now, I need to see what I can do to get you out of here.”
Standing as well, Heather trailed her to the door. “Thank you for coming,” she said, fighting the urge to grab her sister’s arm and beg her not to go. She couldn’t stand the thought of being alone in here for one more minute. “It means the world to me.”
Allison rapped on the door and then kissed her on the cheek. “Chin up. We’ll have you out of here in no time.”
Chapter Eighteen
“You have a lot of explainingto do!”
Drake looked up from his desk to find a seething little ball of blonde pregnant fury standing in his doorway. Allison O’Brien looked as though she’d like to murder him with her bare hands, and Quinn, who stood glowering over her shoulder, looked just as angry.
He sighed and scrubbed his hand over his face. Now that he’d had a little while to calm down, and he’d spoken to Ness about what Heather had told him, he realized that perhaps he’d acted a bit precipitously in arresting her.
“Come in,” he said in resignation. “Shut the door behind you.”
“Drake!” Allison cried as she took the seat in front of his desk. “What are you thinking? Heather is as much a victim in all of this as you were. I thought you wanted to protect her!”
“What charges are you holding her on?” Quinn demanded, remaining standing protectively behind his wife.
“She’s safe in jail,” Drake said, though that wasn’t the only reason he’d done this. “Lindon is still out there. He can’t get to her here.”
“You never should have taken her to your house to begin with,” Allison snapped. “Heather was perfectly fine with us.”
He sank a little lower in his chair, knowing she was right. He hadn’t been thinking clearly where Heather was concerned since the moment he’d found himself in that cellar with her.
“You either have to charge her with something or let her go,” Quinn said, as though Drake didn’t know that. “Do we need to get her a solicitor?”
“I could charge her with a lot of things,” Drake snapped back. “Conspiracy, kidnapping, even as an accessory to murder.”
“She didn’t know they were going to blow up that building,” Allison cried. “All she did was stand watch. Surely you know her well enough to believe that!”
“I don’t know what I believe,” Drake fired back. “She made me believe she was a prisoner too. I probably could have escaped sooner if I wouldn’t have been trying to protect her.”