Lead Me On (17 page)

“Oh…” Jane sighed. Her hands reached up to clutch his jacket. Snowflakes touched the back of his skull, like tiny bites of ice.

“I think I’m falling for you, Jane.” He dragged his mouth up to hers and kissed her before she could protest. She would, he knew that, but he didn’t plan on paying attention to her arguments.

She tried to shake her head, but he wouldn’t move his mouth. A tense moment passed, and then she was kissing him back, rubbing her tongue hard against his. The taste of her was a drug, wrapping around his nerves, dulling the feel of the snow on his neck.

He could kiss her forever. Just kiss her and nothing else. But Jane wouldn’t allow that. She’d want more, and he’d give in without any fight at all.

Ending the kiss with a faint taste of her bottom lip, Chase framed her face in his hands so she’d have to meet his gaze. “I’m falling for you,” he repeated.

“No.”

He let her go. “You have no say in it. Sorry.” Reaching past her, he opened the truck door. “Where to?”

“Chase, we can’t…There’s no future for us. None!”

“You want to go to your grandma’s house?”

She put her hand flat to his chest and pushed him. He took a step back so she’d feel some satisfaction. “Listen to me!”

“I’ll do whatever I want, Jane. I just thought you deserved fair warning.”

“Then you need to leave. Just go!”

“I’m your ride, darlin’. And right now your brother is more important than your fear of genuine emotion.”

Her jaw dropped. “My
what?
”

Chase rolled his eyes. “Get in the truck, Jane. We’ll talk about this after we find Jessie.”

She choked on her outrage a little, still staring at him as if he’d just grown a third eye. But finally she bit out, “Fine,” and climbed into the truck.

Fine
was never a good thing from a woman, and it would likely be an uncomfortable ride, but Chase was glad he’d said it. A pressure was gone from his chest, as if those words had weighed a ton. But he made a sincere effort to hide his smile as they pulled onto the road and headed toward Carbondale. Jane wouldn’t appreciate it at all.

Just that was a frightening complication, but the way her heart had responded to those words was even more disturbing. It had
strained
in her chest, as if it wanted her to jump up and down or throw her arms around him and squeal.

Her second response had been abject terror. But
not
because she was afraid of genuine emotion. It wasn’t that at all.

Jane glared at him in remembered anger. Then she registered the deep lines of worry in his forehead as he listened to whoever was on the line.

“Who is it?” she whispered.

He held up a hand. “And that’s all he would say?” When he pressed his fingers to his forehead, Jane began to worry. “Shit,” he muttered. “All right, Dad. Thanks. I’ll talk to you later.”

Chase snapped his phone shut and wrapped both hands around the steering wheel. “We’ve got a big problem.”

“What?”

“They found another girl.”

Panic blasted through her body like lightning. “A girl? A murdered girl?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, God. Oh, God. This is…”

“Her body was found in her house tonight. Cause of death was unnatural.”

“She was strangled?”

“My dad’s contact didn’t know any more. He did say the time of death hasn’t been determined, so my dad suspects it wasn’t within the last hour or two.”

“Who was it?”

Chase shook his head, the bones of his knuckles showing white through his skin. “I don’t know. It was in Aspen, though, not Carbondale or Garfield County.”

The panic twisted through her, squeezing her stomach too tight. “Mom should never have bailed him out.”

Chase shot her a hard glance. “You think he did it?”

“I think if he was still in jail, we’d have proof he hadn’t done it.”

By the time they drove into Carbondale and turned onto Grandma Olive’s street, Jane’s body burned with tension.

She spotted Jessie as soon as the headlights flashed over the front porch. “He’s here.”

The truck rocked to a halt and she jumped out and ran across the grass.

“He just showed up,” Olive snapped. “Won’t tell me where he’s been.”

“Okay,” Jane panted. “All right. I’ll talk to him, Grandma Olive. You go on and get out of the cold.”

Jessie muttered, “I wanna get out of the cold, too,” but his grandmother slammed the door in his face.

Jane grabbed his arm and dug her nails into the leather of his coat. “Where were you?”

“I had to get out, all right? Grandma was watching a
Fantasy Island
marathon, and I couldn’t take it anymore. She’s only got one fricking TV in that house.”

She shook him, hard. “Where
were
you?”

“God.” He tore his wrist from her grasp. “I was with a girl, all right? Calm down.”

A girl. He couldn’t mean…“What girl?”

“None of your business, Jane.”

“Jessie!” she screamed.
“What girl?”

The weight of Chase’s hand was a sudden comfort on her shoulder. She’d forgotten he was there.

“Jessie,” he said calmly, “this is serious. Your sister needs to know where you were.”

He finally seemed to get it. Her brother’s eyes went wide, and she was relieved to see no sign he’d gotten high. “I was with a girl named Eve. It was only for an hour or something. She just dropped me off.”

Jane swallowed hard, fearing that she might sob with relief. “She was here?”

“
Yes
. Dude, what’s going on?”

For a moment there, she’d thought…She’d
feared
…

Jane couldn’t speak, and she was impossibly grateful when Chase cleared his throat and stepped forward. “The police want to talk to you, Jess. There may have been another murder.”

“Oh, fuck,” Jessie said. Even in the moonlight she could see his face go pale.

Now that her doubt was gone, fury took its place. “Your lawyer told you to stay home! No drinking or smoking and
no girls
.”

“I’m not a fucking monk, Jane. And I didn’t do anything wrong!”

“Will this Eve give you an alibi?”

He shrugged. “I think so. She doesn’t have a boyfriend or anything.”

“We’re calling your lawyer. Right now.”

To her credit, the attorney answered on the first ring, despite the late hour. Jane babbled out the whole story, feeling more calm with every no-nonsense question the woman asked.

“Stay with him,” Ms. Holloway said. “Don’t let him go anywhere. I’ll call you back in fifteen minutes.”

For the full fifteen minutes Jane paced the tiny confines of Grandma Olive’s dining room. Everyone else was crowded into the living area. Jessie lounged with his feet on the arm of the couch, of course, able to relax despite the threat hanging over him like a sword. He even charmed Grandma Olive into cackling at a joke or two.

The old woman was relaxed enough to offer margaritas, but when no one took her up on the offer, she poured herself a glass, dropped into her recliner and popped out her dentures to enjoy it.

Chase seemed surprisingly unfazed.

Finally the phone rang, and Jane answered it so quickly that she cracked her cheekbone with the phone. “Hello?”

“All right, here’s what I’ve arranged. Jessie will voluntarily meet with an Aspen detective tomorrow at ten. I’ll be there. Don’t worry. I’ve made clear that he has an alibi for the whole day, but he’s happy to offer questions if they feel it will help move the investigation along.”

“Okay.” Good. That sounded great.

“I already spoke with Mr. Chase and he’s going to get as much information as he can on his end. Tonight Jessie needs to stay sober and get to bed.
Nothing
else.”

Jane nodded. “All right.”

“Let me speak to him for a moment.”

She happily handed the phone to her brother, and even more happily turned into Chase’s arms when he offered comfort.

“It’s okay,” he whispered. “You’re okay.”

In that moment Chase’s threat of falling in love felt more like peace than a complication.

She glanced over her shoulder to see Chase watching carefully from his truck where it was parked at the curb. He rolled down the window. “You okay?” he called.

“Yes,” she lied.

Her brother hadn’t been arrested, but the murder had made it to the paper, along with a note that a local man had been brought in for questioning. There’d also been one ominous line indicating that police were not yet ruling out the possibility that the murder could have been linked with the earlier death of Michelle Brown.

If her brother’s name was linked to a serial killing or, God forbid, if he was framed for those deaths…

She had to do this.

Jane walked the last few feet to the door and knocked.

At first there was no answer. If Greg wasn’t home, she was off the hook for a few hours, maybe for a whole day. But Jane knocked again and waited. Unfortunately, Greg answered the door a few seconds later. Her heart plummeted.

“Jane?” His eyes widened with what looked like pleasant surprise. “What are you doing here?”

“I need to talk to you.”

“I’m glad! Come on in.”

“No! I just…I can’t come in.”

Eyes narrowing, he leaned against the doorjamb and crossed his arms. He was wearing a cardigan. An honest-to-God cashmere cardigan. Jane resisted the urge to look toward Chase to see the way his muscles bulged in his worn T-shirt, but her control didn’t matter. Greg’s gaze rose to look over her shoulder.

“Who the hell is that?”

“Nobody,” she said automatically, but the word sent a shock of painful guilt through her heart. Crud. Drawing a deep breath, Jane squared her shoulders and made herself stop wringing her hands. “I need to, um…I need to talk to you about Jessie MacKenzie.”

“Who?” he snapped.

“Jessie MacKenzie. The police suspect that he’s been involved somehow in those murders. I figured you might know something.”

“What the hell?” His groomed eyebrows drew together. “What does any of this have to do with you?”

Jane would’ve swallowed in nervousness, but her throat was too dry to manage it. If there was anything worse than the prospect of asking a bitter ex-boyfriend for help, it had to be this. Asking him for help while explaining that your life was a lie, and a messy one at that.

“I know that Jessie couldn’t have done it. The police act as if they don’t believe me, so I’m coming to you for help. You said that you genuinely cared about me….”

His mouth twisted with impatience. “I said I
had
feelings for you. Past tense. Regardless, what possible interest could you have in Jessie MacKenzie?”

For a moment she considered blaming Chase.
The guy in the car is Chase. I work with him. Jessie is a friend of his and he needs help
. It would be an easier connection to admit, but the lie wouldn’t last through one inquiring phone call to police. And it wouldn’t be the truth. The last thing Jessie needed was lies piled on top of his situation.

Jane wanted to look down, but she met Greg’s gaze straight on and spoke over the mad pounding of her heart. “Jessie’s my brother.”

That knocked the impatience off his face. “Excuse me?”

“He’s my brother.”

“Jessie
MacKenzie?
”

“Yes. So I wanted to know if—”

“Jessie MacKenzie is your
brother?
” Now his lips were drawn so tightly down that white showed at the edges. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“No,” she bit out.

“You weren’t friends with Michelle Brown. You were calling for your brother.”

“Yes,” she admitted, her pulse pounding faster.

His gaze swept up and down her body. “This has got to be a fucking joke, right? Your dad’s an ex-con? A murderer?”

“My stepfather,” she muttered. “And that murder conviction was overturned. He was never charged again. He didn’t do it.”

“
That’s
what you want to talk about?” he growled. “You lied to me. You’ve been lying to me for months.”

“I’m sorry, Greg. I never…I don’t really like to talk about my family—”

“No wonder!”

“I didn’t lie about them. I just—”

“You let me think you were from a decent family! And you’re nothing but garbage.”

Jane’s chest burned with anger, but she couldn’t let it out. She needed his help.

“And you proved it by trying to coerce information out of me for a murderer.”

“He didn’t do it.”

“I really…I can’t believe I almost took a piece of trash home to meet my parents.”

Shock sang through her body at his words. She should have expected them, but she hadn’t. No one had called her trash in a decade. No one except her, anyway.

The shock broke quickly into old pain. Jane stuffed it down where it belonged. “I wanted to speak with you about Jessie’s case. I know what the police suspect him of. And I just want you to take a closer look at the evidence. For me.”

“For
you?
” Greg had never struck her as anything other than a decent person. Aggressive and short-tempered yes, but decent. But now…now he looked ugly and cruel, cheeks flushed and eyes bright with rage. “You broke it off with
me
, Jane. Now you’re standing in my doorway with your nose still in the air and asking me for help?” The bitter sneer in his voice was not a good sign. If he wanted her to grovel, she would grovel.

“I’m sorry I broke up with you, Greg. It wasn’t working.” Her brain offered up an excuse. “We’re from two different worlds.”

He cocked his head. “Now, that’s something you might be right about.
My
brother’s not a killer.”

“Neither is mine! I swear to you, Greg, he didn’t do it. I
know
that. That latest girl, she was killed the day before she was found, wasn’t she?”

“Where did you hear that?”

“It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that Jesse was with me that day. He couldn’t have killed her.”

Greg sniffed. “You want me to go to my boss and tell him I’ve cleared a murder suspect on the word of his sister? Maybe I’ll also mention that I used to sleep with you.”

“Regardless, I—”

“‘Hey, boss,’” he mimicked, “‘my ex-girlfriend is a skank from a family of criminals.’ That’d be a great note in my file when promotion time comes around.”

“All right,” she snapped. “I’m sorry I hurt your feelings, Greg, but this is more serious than your damaged pride. We’re talking about somebody’s life.”

“We’re talking about a few lives, Jane. Two women are dead, maybe three, and from what I hear there’s plenty of evidence that your brother did it. So get the hell out of here. Now.”

“He didn’t do it, and I’m providing you with evidence that he didn’t! On Monday evening he was with
me
. We met with his attorney and then stopped at the grocery store before having dinner with his grandmother. You can check with his attorney. You can check the security cameras at the store. He was with
me
.”

“And how late did dinner run? I’ve got a feeling Grandma doesn’t eat at nine o’clock.”

Jane clenched her teeth together. She didn’t know the exact time of death. Mr. Chase’s contact had revealed only that she’d died about twenty-four hours before she was found.

When her fingers went numb, she realized that she’d twisted them tightly together. “Can you at least look into it? Please? Look at the evidence with a new eye. Just assume, for a minute, that it wasn’t him.”

“We treat every case with the same objectivity. Nobody is out to get your brother. If he didn’t do it, he won’t be charged.”

“Oh, please. Don’t give me that.”

“Jane,” he snapped, then paused to take a deep breath. “I’m sure his lawyer will be contacted with anything important. I couldn’t show you favoritism even if I cared to. And I don’t.”

Hoping to see some glimmer of reason in his eyes, Jane stared at him for a long moment.
Please help me
, she pleaded silently. But Greg’s scowl was back.

“Who’s that guy, Jane?” He jerked his chin in the direction of the truck. “Are you working your way back to your roots?”

Jane set her shoulders and calmly turned to leave.

She should have waited to break it off with him. Why had she been in such a hurry? If she’d held on for one more week…

But the thought made her shudder, and her instincts had just been confirmed. He’d liked her well enough when she was sleeping with him, but now she was trash. Just trash.

She slipped into the truck.

“Jane? You okay?”

“Yes.”

Chase pulled away from the curb, but she could feel his attention on her. “That didn’t seem to go well.”

“He was posturing. Maybe when he gets into the office he’ll take another look at the files.”

“Mmm.”

She’d claimed to be okay, but was she? Jane closed her eyes and took an internal inventory. She’d just revealed part of her past to Greg. And she felt…okay. It was the part of her past she would have been forced to reveal if their relationship had continued.

Yes, he might spread it around, let other people know where she came from, but her family was hardly the worst of it.

She was okay.

“So,” Chase said, “is that the kind of guy you usually date?”

“Yes.”

“Doctors, lawyers, that sort of thing?”

“Yes.”

“Mmm,” he said again. Jane wondered what that noncommittal hum could mean.

She hadn’t wanted to bring Chase along, but he’d decided that every solitary woman in Aspen was in danger. He also seemed to have decided that Jane was
his
solitary woman and he wasn’t going to let anything happen to her. In all honesty, she probably could have convinced him to leave her alone. He had no control over her. She could’ve kicked him out.

But the truth was that she had the perfect excuse to have a few more unwise days with him, so she’d asked him to drive her to Greg’s house.

“So what about guys like me?” he asked, startling her out of her thoughts.

“What do you mean?”

“You said you’d never done this before. I assume you meant you don’t usually keep a guy like me on the side?”

“No!”

Chase nodded, his hand hanging casually over the steering wheel, as if he hadn’t just said something outrageous. “Well, that guy doesn’t look like he’d be able to handle someone like you.”

“What?”
Jane heard her voice echo through the cab of his truck and realized she was shouting. “What do you mean, ‘someone like me’?”

When Chase turned to her, his face was flushed with anger. “I’m not calling you trash like your
classy
boyfriend did, if that’s what you mean.”

All the blood seemed to drain from her head. She felt clammy and cool and confused. “You heard that?”

“Yes. And I came damn close to getting out and putting my fist in his face, but I figured that wouldn’t help your brother.”

“No,” she murmured, shame drifting over her like wisps of fog. She’d let Greg call her garbage and trash. She’d stood there and let him say those words, and Chase had heard them. For some reason that was worse than knowing what Greg thought of her.

Chase cursed under his breath and wrapped both hands tightly around the steering wheel. “When I said he didn’t seem like he could handle a woman like you, I meant that he seemed like a jackass. And a wimp. And a pussy.”

Her throat got even drier.

“I meant that he wasn’t good enough for you.”

Oh, God. Why did Chase have to be the one to say the right things? Why did he have to be the man who made her feel tight with need? “I called it off with Greg because I wasn’t in love with him. And in the end, I guess I didn’t really like him.”

“I’m glad to hear that. I would have doubted your judgment otherwise, Jane.”

“I suppose. But he wasn’t that bad before. Maybe he’ll come through. Maybe he’ll give Jessie a fair shake.”

Chase shrugged. “We’ll see,” he said, but his voice still held the censure of disappointment.

Jane stared out the window and willed herself not to cry.