Shadows of the Past (Logan Point Book #1): A Novel (6 page)

As Nick settled in beside her, Taylor edged closer to the window but couldn’t escape the clean, cottony scent of his after
shave. She couldn’t believe he’d gone along with the story her seatmate had fabricated and had actually changed seats. She turned toward him.

“You let her believe we had a . . . a
relationship
.”

At least he had the grace to blush.

“You heard me, I tried to tell her.”

“Not hard enough.”

“Well, you didn’t mention
you
were flying to Memphis today.”

Warmth spread through her chest as his gaze held hers. It’d be so easy to get lost in those eyes. She’d never noticed the green and blue flecks before. Against her will, her focus drew to his chiseled jaw and then to his full, sensuous lips. He seemed to be waiting for an answer, and she tried to recall the last thing he’d said. Something about flying. Oh. “I decided to fly home after you left.”

“To find Scott?”

“Uh, no.” She shot him the look she reserved for arrogant freshmen. Once more a blush crept up his neck.

“I did it again.” He dropped his gaze. “That’s why I wanted to change seats—so I could apologize for yesterday. I thought this way would be a little more private.”

She snorted. “Sure. Now everyone within five rows thinks we’re in love.”

“Okay, so now I have three things to apologize for—embarrassing you and being nosey today and my rudeness yesterday. I’m sorry.” He tilted his head. “Accepted?”

Somehow Taylor didn’t think he was sorry about today. To her surprise, she didn’t care. She hadn’t looked forward to the long flight to Memphis, and especially so after finding out the baby was teething. At least she wouldn’t feel bad telling Nick she didn’t want to talk, might even get satisfaction out of it. “Apology accepted, on one condition—no arguing about Scott.”

“Deal.” He hesitated. “Can we talk civilly about him?”

“Yes.” She sighed. “And for the record, Scott isn’t the reason for my trip home—not to say I won’t try and find him.” Nick didn’t
have to know that Livy was looking for his brother even as they flew. She turned her attention to the refreshment cart as it rattled past their seat.

“Coffee? Or a soda?” The attendant waited for their order.

“Coffee,” she replied

“Sprite for me and a bag of pretzels.”

Taylor accepted the cup and a napkin and sipped the black brew. Strong. She blotted her lips and shifted in her seat toward Nick. Questions hovered in his green-flecked eyes. Questions she didn’t want to answer, she was sure. Maybe she could get him to talk about himself. Men liked to do that. “So, you grew up in Memphis.”

“Yep.” He popped open the tiny package of pretzels and offered her one.

“Never thought about leaving for somewhere like New York City?” Taylor asked.

“Nope.” He wrapped his napkin around his soda. “My turn with a question. How did a Southern girl end up teaching college so far from her roots?”

So much for directing conversation away from herself. “Hmm.” She munched on the pretzel. “I couldn’t wait to get away from Logan Point. Left for New York University the summer I finished high school. After getting my bachelor’s degree, I enrolled at Florida State University in a dual master’s and doctorate program in forensic psychology. That led to working with law enforcement, and that’s how Conway learned about me. They offered me a position teaching criminal psychology.”

“But Conway is so small,” he said. “How did you transition into teaching something as specialized as victim profiling?”

“Conway was bought out by Seattle University the first year I taught. They expanded Conway’s programs and offered me the opportunity to create a pilot program on victimology, one based on the methods I used while working with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.”

“I remember Sheriff Atkins mentioning your fame as a victim profiler. In Georgia?”

She tilted her head toward him. “Are you sure you want to hear all of this?”

He nodded. Taylor Martin intrigued him, and he couldn’t quite figure her out. Maybe if he knew more of her background . . .

She took a deep breath. “Three years ago, there was a series of murders in Atlanta. Prostitutes. I was working for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, actually FDLE is where I did my research project for my doctorate, and afterwards they gave me a job. Anyway, because of a couple of cases I worked on, the GBI requested, and I was loaned out to them. To make a long story short, my victim profiles led to the serial killer.”

“I remember that case.” He sipped the Sprite. “Your family—what did they think about you working on a serial murder?”

“They don’t have a clue I worked on that case. It would worry my mother to death if she knew. She thinks I only teach psychology.”

“You weren’t in the news on that case?”

She held up her hands. “No. I stayed in the background. But my work caught Seattle University’s eye, and that’s how I came to teach victimology at Conway.”

“Very interesting. One more question.”

She waited expectantly.

“How did you lose your Southern accent?”

“I worked
really
hard to get rid of it, so I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“You know, there’s no shame in being from the South.”

Heat blazed across her cheeks as her ex-fiancé’s words rang in her ears.
With that accent, people will think
you’re stupid.
“Never said I was ashamed, but I’ve found in educational circles a certain bias against a Southern accent.”

“Then you missed a good chance to prove them wrong.” He popped the last pretzel in his mouth. “Why couldn’t you wait to get away from home?”

Fire started in Scott’s stomach and washed upward to his throat, pushing him out of a drugged sleep. He rolled over and threw up on the wet grass. Where was he? And who was pounding that jackhammer against his head?

Scott swallowed back another wave of nausea as sweat ran down his face. He needed water . . . or something stronger. He cracked open an eye and immediately closed it against the light.

“When you dance, you have
to pay the piper.”

Shut up, Nick.

Don’t let me be in a public place. Scott struggled to a sitting position against a huge tree and used his hands to shade his eyes. A silver pole shimmered straight up to a ball. A flag pole. Slowly his vision adjusted to the light, and he looked around. A huge pencil on the ground. An orange lion. He rubbed his eyes. Was he still drunk? He cracked his eyelids and saw a white iron sign. Peabody School. A groan escaped Scott’s cracked lips. He’d sunk to a new low, passing out on a school playground. He rubbed his eyes and tried to remember how he got here.

Thinking hurt, but slowly memories surfaced. He’d followed Ross. Shadows . . . fighting . . . The jackhammer pounded against his temple. With the morning heat wrapping around him, Scott crawled to the flagpole, used it to pull himself up, then stumbled to a covered walkway. His mouth tasted like he’d been eating with hogs. Pretty sure he smelled like it too. Had to be a water fountain around here somewhere. He staggered around a corner and froze. “Ohh.”

A body lay sprawled across the walkway, face up.

Scott crept closer.

The blank expression. Unseeing eyes fixed on the sky.

Ross.

Dead.

T
aylor’s eyes darkened to almost violet and flashed a back-off warning. Were they destined to cross swords on every topic? Although Nick would have to admit this time was his fault. He’d crossed a line—her life was none of his business. Except for a brief second, he’d seen a pain so deep it pierced him like an arrow and made him want to help her. Another thought worked its way through his mind, numbing his brain. Taylor reminded him of Angie. Not her looks, although she was ever-so-easy on the eyes in that red sweater. No, her raven-black hair and porcelain skin were totally unlike Angie’s coppery curls and freckles.

It was more in the way she listened to him. Like Angie, she focused in on what he was saying. And Taylor stuck to her guns just like Angie when she believed she was in the right. Made for some unwinnable arguments . . . but Angie always challenged him to reach deeper. How he missed that.

Right now he owed Taylor an apology. Again. He unwrapped the white napkin from his drink and waved it. “I surrender. I should not be prying. How about a do-over?”

“You want a do-over? I haven’t heard that expression since I was a kid.”

Nick laughed. “But it always worked, and that last question bordered on being nosey. Again.”

“You’ve got that right.”

“How can I make it up to you?”

“Let me see . . .” A gleam lit her eyes. “Tell me about Nick Sinclair. What makes you tick?”

She drove a hard bargain. He thought a minute. “My writing, a camp for troubled boys, the blues. There’s something about the beat that just gets in your blood.”

Taylor’s lips tightened. “My dad liked the blues, played the saxophone.” She picked at a spot on her jeans. “You mentioned the boys’ camp on
A.M. News
. Tell me about it.”

Evidently her dad fell into the off-limit category as well. He shifted his thoughts to the camp. “Originally it was my wife’s dream way before we had the money to accomplish it. I caught it after Scott’s trouble with drugs and alcohol started. He’d moved out, and it almost killed my wife. He’d lived with us since my dad and Scott’s mom were killed in an accident.”

“I didn’t know Scott had lost his mom,” Taylor said. “What about his dad?”

“Never met him. When my dad married Cecelia, he gave Scott his last name.”

“How old was Scott when he moved out?”

“Sixteen.”

“And you were okay with that?”

“I didn’t have a lot of choice. Scott threatened to take us to court to become an emancipated minor, and I didn’t want to go through a nasty court battle.” It’d been hard enough dealing with Angie’s depression over miscarrying their baby.

“So, your dad brought home a new wife and baby. That couldn’t have been easy for you. You were what, a teenager, and suddenly you have a little brother?”

“Yeah, almost thirteen.” He smiled, remembering. “Actually, I wanted a mom so bad I gladly put up with a three-year-old. And I know you don’t want to hear this, but Scott was always a good kid . . . until he started drinking. Four years ago, all I knew about
addictions came from a book. Scott’s dependency educated me pretty quick.”

“Four years ago? He was so young. Where’d he get the money?”

“Trust fund his grandfather left him. After that, trouble found Scott, not the other way around. With trust money jingling in his pocket, he attracted bad friends like a sunken ship attracts barnacles.”

“Wow.” She took a sip of her coffee. “I didn’t know.”

“I wish we could work together to find him. You know, combine your talents with my investigator.”

“We’ll see,” Taylor said. “You were saying about the camp . . .”

When Nick was a kid, “we’ll see” meant no. He’d have to change that, if he could figure out how. “Since we couldn’t help Scott, we decided we’d try to help someone else—inner-city boys who might not realize there were options besides gangs and drugs. Angie did the research and planning. Came up with a name—the Walls of Jericho
.
”

“Where’d you build the camp?”

“We didn’t. She died before we found any land.”

A wince flitted across Taylor’s face. “That . . . must have been hard.”

“It’s taken a year to get back on track with the camp.” And everything else in his life except writing.

“You must have loved your wife very much.”

“I did.” Her blue eyes pierced the layers of his heart, and Nick looked away. A man two rows up tucked a blanket around the woman beside him, a gesture too intimate for anyone other than a girlfriend or wife. It was something Nick would have done for Angie. But never again.

“It’s okay, Nick, you don’t have to talk about it. It must have been terrible, losing her like you did.”

The warmth in her voice wrapped around him like a comforter. He wanted to tell her. “We . . . were mugged coming out of a restaurant in Memphis. The Midtown area. It happened so fast. We
were walking to the car, and next thing I know, a guy shoves a gun in Angie’s face and demands our money. I tried to keep him calm, handed over my billfold and told Angie to do the same thing with her purse. I don’t know if she was confused, or just frozen, but she wouldn’t give it to him. Then she shoved him, and the gun went off.”

He swallowed, not wanting to remember what came next. “Angie bled out in my arms in that dark parking lot. The ambulance came, and they took her to surgery, but it was too late.”

“Nick, I’m so sorry.”

“I keep replaying that night, thinking if she’d just given him her purse.” His voice cracked.

“You don’t know if it would have changed anything.”

“If only she’d listened to me . . .”

Taylor had never met a man like him before. The kind of man who stood by those he loved. She didn’t think she’d ever experienced that kind of love. Certainly not from Michael, who’d only wanted a clone of himself, and most certainly not from her father. Not even her uncle, who’d tried to take his place.

She struggled with something to say, but in spite of all her training, she came up empty. Probably why she hadn’t gone into counseling.

“Beating yourself up won’t help.” It was the best she could offer, and his subdued smile almost broke her heart.

“It’s hard not to, but thanks for listening.”

Taylor reached into her bag and pulled out his book. “I got this in the airport.”

Nick’s eyes widened, and she almost laughed, glad she’d distracted him from his grief.

“You bought my book?”

“Actually two.” She pulled out another one. “One’s for my mom, the other for a friend—they like murder mysteries. Although since I’ve gotten to know you, I might read it.”

“Wow, you know how to keep a guy humble.”

She handed him the books. “Would you autograph them?”

“Sure.”

“My mom’s name is Allison and my friend is Olivia, but you better make it Livy.”

Nick inscribed the title pages and handed the books to her.

“Thanks.” She tucked them back into her bag.

A question crossed his face, and she waited for him to put it into words. But the query didn’t come.

“What?” she finally asked.

“I wondered something, just not sure how to ask.”

“How about straight out?”

“How did you crack the Coleman case?”

Taylor hesitated. The case was closed and the kidnapper was dead. “Off the record?”

He nodded.

“Let me give you a little background first. With most crimes, victims have a link to their killer, so I start looking at the victim’s past, trying to find where they’ve crossed paths with the perpetrator.”

“Something like
Criminal Minds
?” Nick asked.

She laughed. “Not at all like the TV show. First of all, I don’t usually work on murders in Newton. There just aren’t that many, and I don’t work on serial killings anymore.”

“Why not?”

Her hands closed in tight fists, and she glanced out the plane window. They were above the clouds, and the white cotton-candy floor reminded her of a time before she learned just how sick the mind could get. The things that man did to those women . . . She turned back to Nick. “After Atlanta, I don’t have the stomach for it.”

He covered her fist with his hand, his touch warm, reassuring. “I can see how that could happen.”

She shook her head to clear it of the memories and reclaimed her hand. “What I do is look for links between the criminal and the victim.”

“So what was the link in the Coleman case?”

She steepled her fingers. “Off the record again, Jim Coleman had been involved in an accident when he was a teenager. And while he wasn’t hurt, and it wasn’t his fault, all four passengers in the other vehicle died—Ralph Jenkins’s family. Evidently Jenkins brooded for years until one day he kidnapped the now-grown teenager’s wife and child. And then kills himself at the scene . . .” Everything fit together perfectly. Maybe a little too perfectly.

“So you’ll never know exactly why he did what he did?”

She nodded. That was one of the things that bothered her about this case. It was like the solution had been wrapped in a pretty box and bow and handed to her, but the box was empty. Sometimes she wished profiling
was
like television and she could see the script.

Nick whistled. “Wow. How did you find out about the wreck?”

“By asking the right questions . . . of the right people. Sometimes you get lucky—and the only person you can ask is where the link happens to be.”

“Are there any other cases you can tell me about? Off the record, of course.”

She cocked her head. “Are you picking my brain for one of your books?”

He gave her a thumbs-up. “Nailed me. I can see writing about a heroine much like you.”

Taylor didn’t know how to respond.

His gaze held hers, then his chiseled lips spread into a heart-stopping smile. For five heartbeats, Taylor forgot to breathe as she imagined his lips on hers. Like that would ever happen. Men like Nick didn’t fall in love with women like her. She was a loser. With a capital
L
.