Finding Justice (16 page)

“Go to hell.”

Another low burst of laughter. “How was your visit to the
forest yesterday? Swept the place clean, haven’t they? Nothing left of me for
the poor sergeant who came all the way from Reading to find.”

Cat tightened her grip on the phone. “I’ll see you behind bars
for this. I swear to God.”

Another laugh. “Will you? You are so far away from finding the
killer, it’s a joke. You’re blind, Detective. Maybe even blind drunk like your
lush of a mother. What do you think?”

Cat sucked in a breath.

“See you around, Sergeant.”

The line went dead. Cat’s hand shook as she quickly pressed the
call list. Nothing. Unknown number. She dropped her head back against Jay’s
chest.

“He’s watching us. He knows...” She swallowed the revelation.
He knew about her mum.

Jay turned her in his arms and stared. “He knows what?”

“He knows what we’re doing and when we’re doing it.”

A muscle leaped in his jaw. “Ring Bennett. Ring Bennett now
before I do something stupid.”

“I can do better than that.”

He frowned. “Like what?”

“Like see Bennett face-to-face. Chris scanned Sarah’s letter
and emailed it to me. I checked while you were asleep and it’s on my
BlackBerry.” She moved out of his embrace as her fear evolved into determined
anger. “Whoever that was has just made the biggest mistake calling me again.
He’s going to pay big time.”

“Send the letter to my email and I’ll print it off.”

She nodded. “Then I’ll take it to the station and speak to
Bennett. Tell him about the letter and find out what the hell he’s doing about
the bastard who’s daring to mess with me.”

He blew out a shaky breath. “Fine. But I’m not leaving your
side, so we’re both going to see him.”

“But you can’t—”

“No arguments.” He walked toward his dresser.

She had to keep him away from the station. If Bennett found out
Jay knew as much about the case as she did, he’d have her ass back on a train to
Reading before she could spit out another word...and she wanted to question
Bennett. Find out once and for all why Jay hadn’t been eliminated from the
police’s suspect list. What did he know about Jay or his alibi that she
didn’t?

“I want you to speak to Marian and George, remember? We can’t
waste any time.”

“Already done. We’re meeting them at the bakery later.”

“What?”

“You’re not the only one who can creep around when someone’s
asleep.” He winked as he pulled fresh underwear out of a drawer.

“Great.” Damn it. She continued toward the ensuite bathroom.
“When we find out who did this...”

“I’ll make sure no one disturbs you when you’re in a police
cell bashing his brains out.”

She widened her eyes in mock innocence. “I’d never do any such
thing.”

Jay laughed and came forward to press a kiss to the tip of her
nose. “Sure you wouldn’t. We’ll see Bennett and then when we’ve done as much as
we can today, you and I will talk about how you’re going to get a transfer from
Reading.”

Dread struck like a knife in her chest. “I told you. Work—”

He raised his hand. “I don’t believe you, but if you insist
it’s work keeping you there, there’s no problem.”

She swallowed. “How do you figure that?”

He smiled. “Because after you solve this case for Bennett,
he’ll offer you a job here, anyway.” He narrowed his eyes. “Unless, as I
suspect, it’s not work stopping you from moving to the Cove in the first
place.”

She gripped the duvet tighter at her breasts. “It’s work.”

“Fine. Then we’ll talk later.”

Her mouth opened but when no words came, so Cat shot him a
glare, turned around and marched into the bathroom. She slammed the door and
threw the lock into place.

With her heart racing and her hands trembling, she leaned
against the door and cursed. She’d made a big slip. Jay would now pick at the
tiny thread, pull and pull until the entire, disgusting truth of her home life
came unraveled, leaving nothing behind but shame.

She didn’t want to regret last night...or this morning, but the
fingers of doubt crept up her spine, threatening to make her turn away from him.
He’d asked her to stay, said this wasn’t it for them—made love to her as though
she was his world.

Tears fell onto her cheeks and Cat pushed away from the door.
She started the shower. With each passing day, the memories of the Cove and the
potential to make more, poured into her blood, filling her up as they had every
summer she came there.

What if her feelings for Jay grew stronger every day it took to
find Sarah’s killer? What if, when she had her killer behind bars, she couldn’t
go home without irreparably breaking her heart...and Jay’s?

“Cat?” Jay’s knock at the door made her jump. “Can I come
in?”

“I’m in the shower.” She quickly dropped the duvet she’d
forgotten she still clutched like a child’s comfort blanket. “I can’t hear
you.”

“Then how come you just answered me?”

She grimaced and stuck her head under the shower. Now she
couldn’t hear a thing.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

H
ALF
AN
HOUR
LATER
, Jay poured a second cup of coffee and took it
out onto the veranda. The sun’s rays burned warm on his bare skin. Having put
the phone call from the sicko from hell on the back burner for now, he puffed
out his chest in satisfaction. Despite having to face Bennett again shortly, the
previous night lingered in his memory. The night ended in the perfect way,
making love to the girl whose green eyes, dark red hair and perfectly toned and
smooth-skinned body had haunted his dreams for seven long years.

Cat was as flawless now as then. Their night of lovemaking had
left him exhausted and pleasantly aching, but the need to touch her again had
woken him at first light. He willed his penis to grow up. The last thing he
wanted was to frighten her away with this overpowering need to make up for lost
time.

Taking a hefty mouthful of black coffee, the memory of the fear
in her eyes when she looked at the wine bottles disintegrated his smile. His
initial instinct was to attack, but her shock was so profound it had sucked all
the temper from his gut and replaced it with an overwhelming sense of
protection.

Her eyes had grown wide as her body trembled. Then she blinked
and her cop training slammed into place like a closing door. Her discomfort
about him drinking set off warning bells all around him. Passion and blatant,
undisguised fury burned in her eyes. He was sure it was aimed entirely at him.
She loved him. No one cared that much if they didn’t. Cat Forrester was the
woman for him. Come hell or high water, he would have her.

Turning, he stared at the house. She was taking forever in the
shower. He shouldn’t have pushed her about staying with him in the Cove, but
what Cat failed to realize was that, try as she might to hide them, her feelings
for him were clearly written in her eyes. She was scared. So was he. She didn’t
want their friendship ruined. Neither did he. Most of all, Jay wanted peace in
his life...and feared Cat was his only hope of ever achieving that seemingly
impossible future.

He gazed out toward the sliver of ocean to the left of him,
avoiding looking right toward a daylight panoramic view of the forest. Sarah’s
smiling face filled his mind’s eye. He was an addict. He would always be addict.
Sarah’s cry for help toward both him and Cat meant she lived in some sort of
self-inflicted hellhole, too. Only, by the time she’d called them, the ground
was already receding from the edge of the abyss, sending Sarah hurtling to the
bottom in the most violent way possible.

Jay clenched his jaw. Love would be the only thing Sarah would
risk her life for—love for the kids she taught, or her killer. Jay’s mind
whirled but produced nothing but a messy carnage of unanswered questions.

“Goddamn it.”

Tossing the dregs of his coffee over the balustrade, he turned
and marched back inside the house. A slow burning headache pulsed at his temples
as he looked toward the pinewood staircase at the edge of the room. Cat made
love to him with raw ferocity. The bedroom had been filled with the scent of
fresh air and the sea coming from the open windows. The sound of the waves
crashing against the rocks down on the shore had been overtaken by their
animalistic grunts, moans and pleas. It had been a bigger reality than Jay’s
wildest fantasy.

Then the phone call changed everything. He curled his hands
into fists and stared blindly ahead. The caller was playing with them. With Cat.
The knowledge stuck like a boulder in his gut. This person...this vermin had
killed one of his best friends, but there was no way in hell he’d come within
six feet of another. He loved Cat with his every fiber. He would kill for
her.

Blinking, Jay slowly exhaled. He needed to play it cool. Reign
in his temper and prove his counselor wrong. He didn’t want Cat just because of
their past. He needed to silence the unease battering around in his chest like a
damn Ping-Pong ball and find the man who was a threat to their rekindled love
affair. And it was a love affair. Whether Cat wanted to accept that or not.

Jay placed his mug on the table and glanced at his watch.
Eleven o’clock. They were wasting precious time. He headed for the stairs.

When he pushed open the guest-bedroom door, he stopped. Cat
wore a sleek black pencil skirt and white cotton blouse. Simple, professional.
Except for the four-inch stilettos on her feet, which were as sexy as hell.

“Wow.”

She jumped and turned. “Ah, there you are.”

He smiled. “There I am? I’ve been downstairs waiting for you.
Your coffee is stone cold.”

Jay moved forward, cupped his hands to her jaw and kissed her.
When they parted, she softly eased his hands from her face and brushed past him.
His jaw tightened. She couldn’t look at him. She walked to the bed and picked up
her BlackBerry, lipstick and keys and tossed them in a black handbag. She
hitched it onto her shoulder.

“Right. Bennett first, then we can check in with Marian and
George.”

“Yes, sir.” He saluted and gestured toward the door.

As she sashayed past him, Jay bit back a growl as his
irritation wavered. Her perfect ass and her shapely legs were a bad man’s
dream.

He followed her out of the room and down the stairs.

Ten minutes later, they pulled out of his driveway and he
glanced at her as she stared out of the side window. She was still as stubborn
as a mule when she didn’t want to do something, but he’d wager his cabin that
whatever held her in Reading—and from him—had something to do with a loved one
and zero to do with her work. Cat’s loyalty reigned supreme and her father’s
passing would have kicked her obligation to her mother into overdrive.

His gut told him this had something to do with Julia...or maybe
Chris.

The stream of cars in front of him slowed at a red light and he
touched her leg. She whirled around, her eyes a storm of wariness and surprise.
Their jade-green newness darkened to almost emerald and a flush of color stained
her neck. Jay’s gut clenched with guilt. Why did he suddenly feel like a damn
stalker?

“Are you okay?”

“Sorry, I was thinking about Sarah.” She looked down at her
hands clenched tightly in her lap. “I want to solve this case quickly. Her
parents need to bury her and the man who did this, who’s calling me? I want to
see him pay for what he’s done.”

He tentatively covered her hands with one of his and squeezed,
relieved when she didn’t pull away. “We’re on it, okay?”

She looked at him. “If you mean that, can you do me a
favor?”

“Anything.”

“Promise me you’ll drop the subject of me coming back to the
Cove...permanently. It’s a pipedream and one I don’t want to contemplate because
it’s never going to happen.”

The traffic started to move and Jay pulled his hand from hers
and onto the steering wheel. He eased the car forward. “I know you feel as
though I’m putting pressure on you—”

“I don’t feel it. You are.”

He stared ahead, frustration edging in. “Fine, maybe I
shouldn’t have said anything, but you sleeping in my arms last night felt so
right. Cat, it felt amazing. I don’t want us to miss a second chance when the
first went without us trying.” He drew in a breath through flared nostrils.
“Doesn’t this feel right to you? Us, together again? I need you and Sarah needs
you. I know you have a fabulous career and a family who are hugely proud of you,
but the two friends who lived here, the ones you loved spending time with each
summer, have properly messed up their lives. Unfortunately, we both need you to
make it better again.”

“No pressure, huh?”

“You’ve got a good life in Reading, I get that. But that
doesn’t mean—”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He glanced at her and her eyes filled with tears. “God, Cat.
Don’t cry. That’s the last thing I want. I’ll back off. You don’t want
this.”

Jay turned to the windshield. He didn’t want to make her cry.
The sadness in her voice grated his heart but the need for her to come clean
about what was going on at home was stronger. Guilt for demanding more from her
than she was willing to give scorched and seared his conscience, making him want
to obliterate whoever or whatever caused her so much pain. He willed her to
crack—knowing she never would.

Tension hummed around them. She was hiding something from him,
something important. He frowned. How could anything be as bad as the things he
told her about his life? She knew he’d taken drugs, humiliated Sarah at her
workplace and let her down in the final moments of her life. What could be so
bad Cat couldn’t share it with him?

“We can get through whatever it is.”

He hadn’t meant to say his thoughts out loud and from the
corner of his eye, he saw her inch away from him as though he might grab
her.

“There is no ‘we.’ As soon as Sarah’s killer is found, I’m
heading home on the next train out of here. Last night doesn’t change that.
Today is a new day.”

Goddamn it.

There was a long moment of silence and then she huffed out a
breath. “Clearly, having sex meant more to you than the great opportunity for a
bit of release it meant for me.”

He flinched.
Ouch.
It was a good
effort, but the first swipe of her knife didn’t even break the skin. He turned
and fixed her with his stare. She tilted her chin, but from the telltale shift
of her neck, she clearly struggled to maintain eye contact.

He smiled. “The red-hot moaning told me you were as hungry for
me as I was for you. So you can cut the crap.” He turned back to the road.

“That is a disgusting way to describe what happened between
us.”

He shrugged. “Sex is sex, right? Isn’t that what you’re trying
to get me to believe?”

Silence.

“We’ve still got it, and I, for one, fully intend to embrace
it.”

“What do you mean ‘it’? We were together once. That hardly
makes us past lovers. We might have had a tumble in the bedclothes last night,
but we’re friends. Nothing more.”

His confidence wavered closer to the edge of irritation. “Are
you serious?” The word
friends
crashed into his
heart, knocking the wind from his lungs. “Friends?”

“Yes, friends.”

Jay shook his head and curled his fingers tighter around the
steering wheel. “We were never ‘just friends.’ I’ve got no intention of being
‘just friends’ now.”

What the hell was going on in her mind? Her heart? He hadn’t
for one moment considered she wouldn’t think of their lovemaking as anything
less than the start of something great. As he did. His ego absorbed the blow of
her rejection as he glanced at her perfect legs beneath the hem of her skirt.
His gaze shot to her face. It looked set in stone. To hell with this.

“I’m not letting you go a second time. No way, no how.”

She met his eyes and her expression changed to shocked anger
mixed with mute disbelief. He hadn’t seen either look on her face before and
male pride surged through him, knowing he’d managed to shake her cool
nonchalance. Her eyes blazed like emeralds under a scorching hot sun.

He concentrated once more on the road and waited for the
explosion.

“Is that so? Well, I have news for you. I’m not anyone’s woman
to boss around. If I say we’re just friends, we’re just friends.”

He bit back the urge to smile, thinking it might get him a
right hook in the face. “Fine. We’ll talk about this later.”

“No, Jay. We won’t. I am sick to death of people drowning
themselves in whatever substance they think suits the occasion and then
wallowing in self-centered pity.” Her voice cracked. “I don’t need your crap,
okay? Just let me do my job and then I can go home.”

Substance? Self-centered pity? Nausea rose bitter in his
throat. No one had spoken to him like that in three years. Not since his father
grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and hauled his ass into rehab. She was
ashamed of him. Ashamed of his past. All her words saying how proud she was of
what he had done since had been bullshit.

Anger and blistering shame ripped through his body and his
knuckles ached from his unrelenting grip on the steering wheel. He’d never be
free from what he’d done. Never. He was an idiot. An idiot who’d thought he
could redeem himself after the hurt he’d caused by facing one person at a time.
Cat hadn’t seen him then, he hadn’t hurt her while high, yet still the narcotics
permeated his future and killed it dead with its poison.

He looked at her. Shit. He’d brought tears to her eyes.
Again.