Guilty as Sin (33 page)

His body flushed red hot, then went ice cold in a matter of seconds. His hand started to shake around the phone. “What does she want?”

But he knew before she spoke what Kate was doing there.
“She’s here with a man—his name is escaping me right now—he’s a private investigator helping her with the missing girl case. I’m sure you’ve heard about it—she was on vacation with her family over in Sandpoint?”

“We’re monitoring the case, of course,” he replied, hoping his voice didn’t sound as choked as it felt.

“Well, they seem to think there might be a connection to my brother’s case and this one.”

He felt a spike of panic and tamped it down. There was nothing to worry about, he reminded himself. He’d been so careful, covered all of his tracks.

And then after Dorsey’s death he’d finally found his true mate and hadn’t needed to take such extreme measures until recently.

“You don’t think it could be true, could it? Is it really possible that my brother wasn’t guilty after all?”

He took a deep breath, forced the panic back. Kate and Ibarra could ask all the questions they wanted. Nothing would ever point them in his direction—nothing that could possibly connect him to those other girls. “I know it’s hard to hear,” he said, infusing his voice with false sympathy, “but all of our evidence points to your brother’s guilt. Despite your mother’s position, if there was evidence that contradicted that, I believe we would have found it by now.”

Judy gave a heavy sigh. “I know. I accepted the truth a long time ago. I just wish Mother would.”

He thanked her for her call and rang off.

His hand was shaking as he put down the receiver. When he scrubbed it over his face, it came back damp with his own cold sweat. It would all be all right, he assured himself. Ten years and no one had ever had even an inkling. He heard a soft footstep outside his office door.

Well, he corrected himself, there might be those who had inklings, but they knew better than to rat him out.

His breathing slowed to an even pace, and as he scanned the desk, his gaze snagged on the fabric bag sitting to the left of his computer.

Gifts for his beloved, along with some other necessities he’d planned to give her this afternoon.

But now…

No, he scolded himself. There was no reason to let that icy bitch and that gorilla who thought himself some security hotshot ruin his plans. He’d learned to cover his tracks before Ibarra even knew what a computer was, and Kate was nothing but a talking head.

He would go as planned, but not before he made a pit stop. It was time for him to do a little investigating of his own and find out exactly how much Kate and Tommy actually knew.

Kate thanked Mrs. Dorsey for her help and gently extricated her hand from the woman’s grip.

As they walked out to the car, Tommy couldn’t miss the dejected set to her shoulders. “Well,” she said as she slid into the passenger seat and clipped herself in, “while she managed to raise some doubt about Dorsey’s guilt, we have absolutely nothing that helps us with Tricia.” She blew out a frustrated breath.

“First thing is to get in touch with the medical examiner,” Tommy said as he pulled out of the Dorseys’ driveway and headed for the highway.

Kate nodded. “That’s very strange to me, that there could be such a potential discrepancy in the time of death and it wouldn’t have been noted in the case file.”

Tommy flexed his fingers on the steering wheel. “In any investigation you run across people with an agenda. The agent in charge clearly had it in his head Dorsey was their man. He would include whatever information supported that.”

“But the defense would be all over that if it ever made it to trial,” Kate argued.

Tommy shrugged. “Probably, but it was never an issue.”

“Because Dorsey conveniently committed suicide,” Kate said wryly. Her finger twisted and untwisted around a lock of her hair as she stared out the window. Tommy didn’t interrupt her silence, knowing she was doing the same thing he was, taking what they’d just learned from Dorsey’s mother, flipping it around in her head, trying to figure out if any of it could be of immediate use to them.

To his frustration, all Tommy was able to come up with was a hell of a lot more questions and pitifully few answers. None of which got them any closer to Tricia’s whereabouts or confirmation she was even still alive.

His stomach clenched at the thought. Of course the possibility that they wouldn’t find Tricia alive had been front and center in his mind from the second she’d gone missing.

But until today, until Kate had given him a firsthand view of what life was like after Michael’s death—along with a couple more bombshells he didn’t want to dwell on right now—Tommy hadn’t thought too far into the future. About what might happen to Jackson and Brooke if they didn’t find Tricia in time.

It was suddenly clear that he was on the hook for not just one life but three.

Tommy picked up his phone and dialed CJ to give him an update on what Mrs. Dorsey had told them.

“The price of the body cream and a highly disputable
discrepancy in the M.E.’s report isn’t much proof of Dorsey’s innocence,” CJ replied skeptically.

Tommy agreed and hung up as they came up on the bridge that would take them into downtown Sandpoint. This stretch of highway curved along the side of a steep drop that offered stunning views of the mountains and the lake below.

“It’s so weird,” Kate said, her gaze still fixed out the window.

“What?”

“The gold dust cream.” She gave her head a little shake and turned to face him. “I haven’t thought of it in years. Now that I think of it, the last time I can remember using it was…” Her gaze drifted down to the floor.

“The night Michael died,” Tommy said softly. “I remember.”

“You noticed?” Kate’s full lips quirked in a little half smile.

“I noticed everything,” he said without thinking. And the way Kate’s grin widened made him want to pull over and kiss it off her.

Nice, he thought. The sick fuck rubbed that gold shit all over the girls he killed, and your dick is getting hard remembering a heavy petting session a decade a half and ago. “It seemed strange when we first read the files,” he said. “But when you think about where the guy lived and where he came from, it doesn’t seem likely it would have come up on his radar. Regular old glitter lotion, sure—you see that on even your low-rent strippers—”

“You know from your vast experience?” Kate said archly.

“I wouldn’t call it vast,” Tommy said defensively.

Kate let out a soft laugh. “Maybe Dorsey became fascinated by a wealthy girl and got frustrated he couldn’t have her.”

“Someone like you?” Tommy said, and just the thought made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
It was nothing but a coincidence.
Still, all of his senses flared to high alert as they crossed the bridge that spanned the lake into Sandpoint.

And when Kate dropped him off back at the sheriff’s office to pick up his truck, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he shouldn’t leave her alone.

Not just because his protective impulses were firing off right and left. Though he was trying not to dwell too much on the heavy truths he’d discovered today, something in his chest pinched at the idea of her spending the night alone in that townhouse.

Kate had been left alone to deal with her pain too many times in her past.

Yet when she’d left him, there had been nothing close to invitation in her eyes.
Face it, dude, despite what happened last night, your chance to be the shoulder she cries on has long since passed.

To Kate, climbing the three steps to her townhouse felt like she was climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. Right after she had dropped Tommy at his truck and turned her car toward the lake, a wave of exhaustion had hit her so hard she marveled she’d made the three-mile trip without passing out in the car.

Along with the exhaustion had been a need that bordered on desperation to keep Tommy by her side. To not let the tentative bond she’d sensed from this afternoon’s revelations dissolve before it had a chance to form.

But she’d reminded herself harshly that just because
Tommy finally knew the truth about what she’d gone through didn’t mean he automatically forgave her for her part in what was done to him. What had happened last night, along with a few hot looks he hadn’t been able to conceal, proved that he was still sexually attracted to her, but just because he sympathized with her own sob story didn’t mean he liked her any better.

That harshly sobering thought had kept her from embarrassing herself by begging him to come back to her place. To spend the rest of the night distracting her with his hot mouth, his strong hands, his big, powerful body until she forgot about all of the pain and sadness the day had dredged up.

If Tommy had come home with you, the first thing he would have done was read you the riot act for not setting the alarm
, she thought with a rueful chuckle as she pushed open the door and saw the green light blinking on the panel.

The interior was dark, the thick drapes that kept late-afternoon sun and heat from overtaking the living room allowing only a line of light at their seam. Kate followed the narrow path of light to the sliding glass doors. She reached for the cord to pull the drapes and felt a chill creep up her back. There was a subtle movement, nothing more than a puff of air to warn her.

A hand closed over her mouth as the other went around her neck. Kate’s heart leapt to her throat as the adrenaline spiked, sending her arms and legs flailing in every direction as she struggled to break free.

She tried to scream, but nothing came out but a harsh, gurgling sound as the hand around her throat tightened. She struggled harder, but the arm anchoring her to a large male chest was like a steel band, the long sleeves of his shirt making him impervious to the frantic clawing of her nails.

The already-dark room went darker, and Kate knew if
she didn’t get away she was going to lose consciousness, or worse. Even more terrifying was the hard pressure she could feel growing against the small of her back.
He was getting aroused.

The thought made her gag against the hand covering her mouth.

Forcing the panic aside, she racked her brains for the self-defense tips she’d received in one of countless training sessions St. Anthony’s offered to the public. It had been ages since she’d attended as a student instead of an observer. She vowed to whoever was listening that if she made it out of this, she’d pay better attention next time.

She felt his foot kick against the outside of hers and had a flash of memory. After bringing her foot up, she stomped her heel against his instep with every ounce of power she could muster.

It wasn’t much, but it was enough to elicit a grunt and make him loosen his grip just enough to give her the leverage to swing her elbow back into his ribs. She flung herself out of his hold. He was between her and the front door, which left the sliding glass doors off the downstairs guest room her closest escape.

She flung herself toward the stairs, crying out in pain as her knee met the corner of the coffee table. She was on the second stair when he tackled her from behind, sending them both tumbling down. All the breath rushed from her body as her ribs made contact with the wooden edge of the bottom step.

She managed to wriggle out of his hold and was pushing herself to her knees when she heard the air whistling behind her. There was a hollow
thunk
ing sound the split second before pain exploded in her skull and the bright flash of stars blinded her to everything around her.