The Watched (CSI Reilly Steel #4) (13 page)

‘And the lab still doesn’t know what the stuff was? Jeez, I thought we were slow.’

‘They’re a good group, just backed-up and busy – same as you guys.’

But she too was wondering exactly when the team in Dublin would complete their analysis and come back with an answer about the mysterious off-white powder.

‘Can’t think of anything off the top of my head that would cause you to black out,’ Todd was saying. ‘Arsenic wouldn’t do anything fast . . . ricin is easy to identify – not to mention that if it was that, you’d already be dead – and white heroin would have you bouncing off the walls. Are you sure it wasn’t just a rogue batch of cocaine?’

Leave it to a pair of crime scene investigators to turn small talk into a discussion about the side effects of chemical compounds, Reilly thought, raising a smile.

She shook her head. ‘I really can’t say. I didn’t get to see, taste or have anything to do with it once I got out of the hospital.’

The peppery creole scent wafting out from the kitchen filled her nostrils, and her stomach growled, threatening rebellion if she didn’t feed it. She closed her eyes and savored the aroma. She’d missed the way her home country’s ethnic cuisine borrowed flavors from so many other cultures. She’d never really taken to the Dublin versions of Mexican, Cuban or Cajun/Creole, where chefs tended to dampen down flavors to suit the Irish palate.

When Daniel came out to serve the food, he was limping.

‘What happened to you?’ Todd enquired.

‘Twisted my knee while playing beach volleyball
earlier.’

‘Nice job, Dad,’ Todd shook his head. ‘You know, you’re not as young as you think you are.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m in my prime,’ his father insisted with a wink.

‘Yeah,
I forgot, you’re Batman.’

Reilly smiled
. It was good to hear the two bantering.

             
She looked at the feast Daniel was laying on the table and nearly jumped out of her seat. ‘Oh my God . . .’ she gasped, unable to believe what was she was seeing. ‘Is that . . . corn bread?’ Homemade Southern-style
American
corn bread was her absolute favorite and she hadn’t tasted the stuff in almost three whole years. She practically launched herself at the plate, grabbing a thick piece and biting down into the buttery, melt-in-mouth crumbly texture. Heaven . . .

             
Todd chuckled. ‘Wow, you really have been away too long, Steel. Don’t think I’ve ever seen a girl get that excited about food. Guess they don’t do corn bread in Dublin.’

             
Reilly smiled happily through a mouthful of crumbs. ‘No – they don’t, not like that. And they don’t do stone crab, or coconut shrimp or creole spices like this . . . mmm.’ She sat forward in her chair, dipping the corn bread into the spicy rice stew, unable to remember the last time she’d felt so contented.

             
‘So now you know the way to this girl’s heart is through her stomach,’ Daniel chided, raising his wine glass to her and Todd for a toast.

             
Then he turned to his son. ‘Well, like I said, I wanted to talk to you about the memorial,’ he continued, his tone softening. ‘Alice decided that she wanted to hold a service next week. Once the body’s released, she’ll have Holly cremated. She doesn’t want to do an actual funeral.’

‘I see
.’ Todd blinked and looked away quickly, seeming to be struggling with his emotions. Reilly guessed there hadn’t been a lot of time for grieving over the last few days and the mention of the memorial was making the loss of their close family friend all the more real.

‘She’s asked if you might read something at the service,’
Daniel continued, ‘and I told her I’d ask.’

‘Sure. Of course I will.
’ His son’s reply was hoarse.

‘
So how are things at the lab?’ Daniel asked then. ‘You guys any closer to finding answers?’ The question was casual, but the atmosphere instantly shifted.

Reilly opened her mouth, prepared to play peacemaker, when Todd surprised her.

‘You’re right, Dad,’ he ran his hand through his hair. ‘What you said yesterday. Priorities are shifting day by day. The mayor is putting pressure on the department to find this missing screenwriter guy – says it’s bad for tourism – and the DA’s now trying to suggest that some of these deaths aren’t related, because we simply don’t have enough evidence to convince him otherwise.’

‘Is there anything
at all we can do?’ Reilly asked, realizing the depth of the frustration Todd was feeling. ‘Not officially, of course, but anything that might help take the load off with Holly’s investigation – grunt work, even?’

She
knew better than most that grunt work was the bane of most forensic departments, yet could often be the most fruitful.

Todd
thought about her question for a moment. When he finally answered, he sounded cautiously hopeful. ‘Bradley pulled Emilie off of trying to track down suppliers for the cameras as it was just too time-consuming given the current workload. It’s probably a long-shot, but do you think you could try that? I can get you details of the makes and models, but not the equipment, obviously.’

‘Of course.’ Reilly completely understood chain of custody issues and she wouldn’t dream of directly handling evidence in such a scenario. But tracking down suppliers was completely above board, and she and Daniel could carry out such work easily if his office provided the tools.

Daniel looked heartened. ‘No problem, son. And anything else you can think of – within protocol, of course – you name it.’

‘I will.’ T
he three glanced at one another, each aware that they were agreeing to a kind of unspoken pact.

Later, after a hearty meal and a hefty slice of key lime pie, Daniel announced that he was going to bed, leaving Todd and Reilly alone at the table.

She looked up at the night sky, her eyes tracing familiar constellations. Despite the changes in location, the same shapes were still there. Strange how some things could be so much the same and so different at the same time. She’d enjoyed the food (especially the corn bread), the few glasses of wine she’d consumed were giving her a nice buzz, and the warm evening air and relaxing sound of the waves were making her feel heady.

It was finally starting to feel like a vacation.

‘I’m glad you and your dad get along so well,’ she commented idly. ‘It’s nice to see.’

Todd laughed
, and she couldn’t help but hear a hint of disbelief behind the tone. ‘Reilly, how long have you known my father?’ He stood and stepped down to the edge of the pool. ‘You can’t tell me that in all these years you haven’t figured out his relationship with me.’ He gave another bark of a laugh. ‘And here I thought you were supposed to be the smart one.’ Then he suddenly pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it onto a nearby sun lounger. ‘I want to go for a swim.’

Before
Reilly could respond to the sudden shift in conversation, Todd stripped off his dress pants and, wearing only a dark pair of boxers, dove straight into the water.

He
popped back up to the surface, his face now sporting a daring grin. ‘Well, Steel?’

All right,
Reilly decided, why the hell not. She kicked off her shoes and stood. Then quickly, so she couldn’t second-guess herself, she pulled her sundress over her head and dove in as well.

The cool water was like silk on her overheated skin. She’d been away from
warm weather for far too long. When she broke through the surface, she found Todd staring at her, an appreciative look in his clear blue eyes.

While her
sporty dark blue underwear covered more than most bathing suits, she found herself flushing. She wasn’t sure how she felt about Todd looking at her that way. It had the potential to become very awkward, very fast.

As much to d
efuse the moment as anything else, she decided to address his previous rhetorical question. ‘I do, by the way, have you and your father figured out.’

‘
Oh really?’ Todd seemed mildly amused. He swam toward her. ‘Enlighten me.’

Reilly
waited until he was just a foot away before answering, her voice coming out more at ease than she felt. ‘You two butted heads even before the divorce, so when your mom said that it was his fault, you believed her. When you finally found out the truth – that she was the one who cheated, the one who wanted to leave – you stopped hating your father and started trying to be like him.’

Reilly
had heard the divorce story years before, but was just taking a stab at the analysis. As she said it though, it made sense. ‘Just like your father, you’re too proud to admit you were wrong, so you try to make him proud of you. But because you two are so much alike, you still butt heads and you end up resenting him for you trying to prove yourself.’

‘You missed one thing.’
Todd’s smile appeared frozen. He swam over to the edge and lifted himself out. ‘You forgot to add into the mix the perfect little protégé prodigy who aced every test, solved every crime and did it all while charming juries and lawyers alike.’

Reilly
was startled by the hurt in his tone as he said this. Was Todd . . . jealous of her and Daniel’s relationship? Like she’d explained to Mike, it had always been more of a father/child thing than anything romantic, but now she wondered if perhaps it had been too much like that, and at Todd’s expense. ‘I never—’

‘I know
. . .’ The moonlight glistened on the drops of water running down Todd’s body. ‘It wasn’t your fault, isn’t your fault, I get that. You were needy, maybe an emotional orphan with an absentee father, I don’t know. Looking for a father figure no matter the reason. My dad just happened to forget that he already had a kid who needed guidance.’ He picked up his clothes. ‘I have to get going. Lots to do tomorrow.’ With that, he disappeared into the house, leaving Reilly treading water.

‘
Yeah, so this isn’t going to be awkward at all,’ she muttered. She ducked back under the water and swam a few laps, her arms cutting through the water with graceful precision.

So much for breaking bread.

CHAPTER
14

Reilly set aside the laptop Daniel had had delivered to the beach house from his office earlier and stood. She stretched her arms over her head, bending backward until her spine popped, and she let out a moan of satisfaction.

Despite her misgivings about getting involved in the investigation of Holly Young’s murder, she couldn’t deny that it felt good to be back in the saddle again.

Hell, she wasn’t the vacation type anyway.

Still, trying to track down anything on the camera information Todd had provided
was proving annoyingly fruitless. As far as she could tell, the cameras found at the scene of Holly’s death and the others could’ve been bought anywhere from a local electronics store to online; without a serial number, they were virtually untraceable.

She let her gaze wander around the
living room.

A
certain Quantico mentor had taught her that, for some people, the best way to come at a problem was from the side. If she let her brain focus on something other than the problem at hand, some outside stimulation such as music or painting, or even appreciating the surprisingly stylish furnishing of that same mentor’s home, and his impressive books collection, the rest of her mind would continue to work the problem. It had served her well back in Dublin as she’d actually hit on quite a few answers to problems while cooking.

As
Reilly’s attention moved away from Daniel’s bookshelf, her eyes fell on the picture on a side bureau next to it and she smiled. Todd’s college graduation. Daniel and his ex-wife Stella stood on either side of their son, all animosity set aside as they beamed at the camera. For all of their problems with each other, the one thing Todd’s parents had always agreed on was how much they loved their son. Reilly could almost feel the pride radiating off of them both.

Pride .
. .

Something that Todd
mentioned before suddenly came back to her. According to his computer expert, the killer had been sending footage of the murders to an email address.

They also knew h
e’d spent a lot of time painstakingly staging each murder. For maximum dramatic effect, Todd had said.

Was the video footage
for the killer’s sole entertainment, or was he sharing his work? Reilly’s intuition was telling her that such a creative type was unlikely to pass up the opportunity to broadcast his ‘talent’.

Which made her think about something else; something about the recent boiling-water death that had been niggling at her.

Reilly returned to the laptop on the couch and started a new internet search.

This time, she typed in
a few key words unique to Holly and her boyfriend’s murder, grimacing as she did so.

There were some seriously sick people out there, she decided, as the search returned over
1.5 million hits. Reilly skimmed each of the descriptions, her stomach churning as she read through the listings. Some were legitimate news stories, including one or two short references to the recent murder, but others were websites and jokes and . . . wait.