Chapter Twenty-Three

Rage roared inside Chloe's chest, clawing for release. "What do you mean, 'not enough'?! Two key witnesses lied under oath about their whereabouts on the night of Rose's murder! That fact alone will stop the execution! Martin would be guaranteed a new trial—"

"So he can just be convicted and sentenced to death all over again?" Bethany shot back. "No. I need evidence exonerating him. If anything, Chet's video only makes things worse for Martin. It puts him at the apartment just a few hours before Rose's time of death!"

Chloe opened her mouth to argue back, then abruptly clamped it shut.

"The time of death…" she murmured, some important detail niggling in the back of her mind but not quite reaching the surface. Chloe pressed 'play' on the video and skipped ahead to Chet's account of the night in question.

"—was full-on passed out," Chet was saying. "I was worried, but Keith said he would be fine. We just needed to get him home and Rosie would take care of him. So I helped Keith carry him to the car and shove him in the passenger seat. It took every bit of muscle we had. Martin was dead weight. Keith already had the car running and the heat blasting to help Martin wake up, but it didn't seem to be doing much good. Anyway, uh—"

Chloe paused the video and closed her eyes, a memory washing over her:

Head pounding, lights way too bright even through her eyelids, mouth cotton-dry, a civil war taking place inside her stomach. And then, a blast of icy air hitting her right in the face, transporting her to a whole new dimension of misery. She groaned in agony and slit her eyes open just wide enough to register Lucifer hovering over her, grinning like a gigantic dick. The sunlight gave him a blinding halo as he stood there, a steaming mug in one hand, some kind of electric fan in the other.

"What the hell are you doing to me?" Chloe moaned.

"Curing you of your hangover, of course," he replied cheerfully, moving the torturous fan even closer to her face. "Hot coffee, cold air, hair of the dog that bit you. There's no better remedy on this earth. Believe me, I've looked."

Chloe's eyes popped back open in the present. Chet's face was frozen on the screen in mid-word. She rewound, replayed.

"—the heat blasting to help Martin wake up—"

Hot coffee, cold air, hair of the dog that bit you.

"That's it," Chloe whispered.

"What?" Bethany asked.

"That's it!" Chloe repeated, scrambling to disentangle herself from Lucifer without knocking him over. "You wouldn't use warm air to wake up a drunk person. That would just make them more cozy, more likely to stay asleep. Keith didn't have the heat on for Martin—he had it on for Rose. She was already dead. He already had her in the trunk. He killed her earlier that night and then kept her body as hot as he could in order to alter the time of death, so it would look like she was killed later!"

Chloe was panting, both from the excitement of the discovery and from the effort of spewing the words out at such a high speed while simultaneously packing every sports bottle and supply she could get ahold of around Lucifer's prone form, trying to make it so he couldn't roll off the cot in her absence. She paused in her efforts to stare at the ceiling, her heart in overdrive as she awaited the verdict. If Bethany said it still wasn't enough…

"Well done, Detective Decker," Bethany said finally, her voice shaky with relief and probably a million other emotions. "You're free to go."

"Thank you," Chloe blurted, more tears welling up in her eyes as she gave Lucifer one last check. He was going to make it. He was going to live. "Thank you so much. I—"

"After you make the call to stop the execution."

Chloe froze, her giddy heart going still again. "What?"

"You'll have to make the call yourself. They won't believe it, coming from me."

Chloe swallowed. "But how—"

"I'll connect you right now. Just tell Martin's lawyer what you've learned. He'll know how to proceed in terms of stopping the execution. A word of caution, though: if he even suspects you're being held against your will, that you're under duress of any kind—"

"He won't," Chloe promised. Down on the cot, Lucifer's breathing faltered. His lips were turning blue again. Chloe's hand tightened into a fist. "Just get him on the phone. Now."