Unleashed (14 page)

“What are you talking about?” Caroline asked, her head tilting forward like she wasn’t sure what she’d just heard.

“It’s quite a coincidence,” Derek said, walking around the table until he stood next to Caroline’s chair, “that the book would suddenly turn up when we find Mom’s body. And well after your husband is dead and unavailable to answer questions.”

“Derek, back off,” Danny growled. He’d had his initial doubts, but he knew in his bones Caroline wouldn’t have kept evidence like that from them, no matter how angry she was at Danny.

Caroline jumped in to defend herself. “Are you kidding me, Derek?” Danny had to give it to Caroline. There weren’t too many women who could go head to head with Derek when he was turning on the cold menace, but Caroline was too pissed to be nervous. “Do you really think I would keep something like that from you?”

“If it meant protecting your husband. You dumped Danny flat on his ass. Why should we think you’d have any loyalty?”

That stung, Danny could tell. Caroline closed her eyes and swallowed hard, and when she opened them up they were shiny with tears. “Whatever you think happened between me and Danny, I loved him,” she kept her eyes carefully averted from his, and Danny felt something twist open in his chest. “And you guys were like little brothers to me. I never would have done that to you.”

Derek and Ethan looked at each other. Their expressions didn’t change, but Danny knew they were having one of their annoying twin to twin telepathyfests, deciding what to do about Caroline. They needed to understand the decision had already been made, case closed.

“Caroline, will you excuse us a minute?” Danny asked. He walked over to her chair and muscled Derek out of the way so he could help her stand. “I need to talk to my brothers in private.”

“Why, so you can talk about me and how you think I hid evidence that would help you find your mother until it was convenient for me to reveal it?” Caroline tried to jerk her arm out of his grip as he steered her to the door. “You told me you believed me, Danny.” Her eyes were dark, pleading for him to trust her.

And the hell of it was, he did. In this anyway. He had from the moment she’d first shown him the book. “And I meant that,” he said, so soft it was almost inaudible. But it was enough to send a wash of relief across her face, for her to reach up and squeeze his arm in reassurance. Sometimes, like right then with her smiling up at him, her beauty hit him like a sucker punch to the nose, taking away his breath, making him dizzy as stars exploded behind his eyes. With her creamy, flawless skin and soft pink mouth, her hair tumbling in waves around her shoulders, she could have easily been the sixteen-year-old he’d fallen in love with practically at first sight.

Danny used every shred of restraint to keep himself from bending his head and covering her mouth with his. But he knew he’d never hear the end of it from Derek and Ethan. Hell, he was in for a major ass chewing as it was. “Go wait in my office—second door on the left. You’ll see my name on the door.”

He turned to face Ethan and Derek, their hostile stances almost identical.

The best defense was a good offense with these two. He walked over to where they stood and got right in their faces. “Lay the fuck off her. She’s been through enough lately without you two jumping all over her.”

“Is this the same guy who accused
me
of thinking with
my
dick not too long ago?” Ethan asked, catching Danny with an openhanded blow to the chest for emphasis.

“You’ve got to admit it looks bad, Danny,” Derek said. “She was married to that guy for ten years, and she never came across it?”

“You both told me I should help her,” he reminded them.

“That was before we knew she was hiding evidence that could have helped us find Mom.”

“She found it right before the funeral,” Danny said. “I know she’s telling the truth.”

“Really?” Ethan said. “The last time you saw her before the memorial service was twelve years ago when she dumped you for not calling her right when you got into town. You really think you still know her well enough to know if she’s lying? Or are you protecting her for the opportunity to dip your wick in an old pot?”

Danny winced at the crudity. “Come on, this is Caroline. Don’t talk about her like that.”

Ethan and Derek’s eyes widened. Yeah, yeah, Danny knew what they were thinking. They were remembering every one of the locker room type comments he’d had about both their girlfriends until it became clear the women were there to stay. Not to mention the crude comments Danny had made about Caroline after she dumped him.

Still, he didn’t want anyone badmouthing Carrie, not even his brothers.

“Besides,” he continued, “I’m not dipping my wick anywhere—”

“Yet,” Derek and Ethan interrupted in unison.

Okay, he’d give them that. “I’m treating her like a regular case.”
Liar. You’ve never had a client you wanted to strip naked and bend over your desk
. “Someone killed her husband and, based on what happened yesterday, is trying to kill her too. In the meantime, she’s helping me figure out what James Medford had to do with Anne’s disappearance.”

“Fine, assume she’s telling the truth,” Derek said. “Why the fuck would you keep something like this from us?”

“I wanted to wait and see if there was anything to it.”

“How could you not think there was anything to it, when we already know about his first wife owning the land where the bodies were found?” Ethan said.

“I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up.” The excuse sounded lame to his own ears. They knew he was working with Caroline, knew about the connection to James’s first wife. He had a bad feeling he knew the answer, and it wasn’t one he liked. He’d hidden it from his brothers because he’d wanted to avoid this conversation. Didn’t want them to question his judgment about the only woman who’d ever been able to get under his skin. “And I knew the second I told you anything, you’d drop everything else. We have clients who have hired us, and we can’t ignore them to focus on this investigation.”

“Controlling son of a bitch,” Ethan bit out. “You had no right to keep us in the dark. And while you were off playing cowboy, we could have been helping you.”

“And that’s why I’m here now,” Danny said. “You guys are pissed. I get it. But we can either keep yapping about this like a bunch of blue hairs at a bridge game, or we can get down to business.”

Caroline did another circle around Danny’s office, too keyed up to sit still. The furnishings were spare. A wide maple desk topped with a flat screen monitor. A leather rolling desk chair and a built in bookshelf full of books about World War II. The only decorations were a picture of him with his father and brothers. All three Taggart boys were dressed in their military dress uniforms, Danny and Derek in olive green, Ethan shining in Navy whites. Tall and strong and every girl’s soldier fantasy come to life.

Caroline had been devastated when Danny told her he was going to West Point. But she still remembered how the sight of him in his dress uniform made everything below her wasit perk up and say hello.

Don’t go there
. She turned away from the picture and focused her attention on the desk. Papers and files covered the surface in haphazard stacks. She started straightening to give herself something to do. Within seconds a familiar calm came over her. Her world might be spinning out of control, but she could create order, no matter how insignificant.

“Were you really engaged to Danny?”

Caroline looked up from her organizing to see Toni, the tall, dark haired woman she’d seen with Ethan at the memorial service. The woman was beautiful, with Snow White coloring and a lean, athletic body. Her heavy dark rimmed glasses, severe haircut, and outfit of skinny jeans, T-shirt, and hoodie gave her the look of an indie-rock star.

Caroline lined up a stack of files so the edge was parallel to the edge of the desk. “It was a long time ago.”

“I just can’t believe Danny was ever close to getting married. I mean, he barely has any friends, much less girlfriends.”

“He was a lot different back then. We both were.”

Toni cocked a dark brow over her glasses. “Yeah? How so?”

“We were high school sweethearts. Really young.”
Really dumb. Really naïve. Really foolish
. She thought about the last year of her life.
Maybe I haven’t really changed that much
.

“They’ve been talking about you since you showed up at the memorial service,” the woman said, staring at Caroline like she was a particularly exotic animal in the zoo.

“I didn’t realize you worked here too,” Caroline said in an attempt to ease the awkward silence.

“Danny calls me the nerd patrol,” she said with a smile. “I specialize in electronic investigations. I’m also Ethan’s girlfriend.”

“Now there’s a guy I never thought would settle down.” Even as a teenager, Ethan had been a Lothario in training.

“Exactly my impression when I first met him,” Toni said, her red lips slanting in a grin. “But within a week he’d saved my life and moved me into his place, and the rest is history.” Her smile took on a dreamy, satisfied look that left no doubt Ethan was taking
very
good care of Toni in every way that counted. “Back to Danny,” Toni said. “Were you seriously high school sweethearts? Personally I can’t imagine Danny ever being sweet to anybody.”

Caroline’s mouth stretched into a smile at the woman’s brazen curiosity. “Sweet? No Danny was never sweet. But he was—”

“Huge? Hot? A total stud in the sack?”

Hot color flooded Caroline’s face when she heard Danny’s voice.
All of the above
. “I was going to say intense,” she said and he arched his left eyebrow. “And you can take that however you want to.”

“Toni, if you’re done trying to pry into my love life, I have a system I need you to hack.”

Toni gave Danny a mock salute and clicked her heels. “Aye, aye,
mein führer
. Let me get my system up and I’ll get on it.”

Danny rolled his eyes but didn’t say anything as Toni disappeared down the hall. Caroline made to follow but was stopped by Danny’s hand on her arm. She could feel the heat of that touch all the way through her wool sweater and cotton T-shirt underneath.

“Intense, huh?” He stood with his head bent intimately over hers, so close she could feel his hot breath tease her hairline. Her nipples chafed inside her bra, and she fought the crazy urge to rub up against his chest for some relief.

Danny’s office was suddenly ten degrees warmer. She wanted to strip off at least one layer of clothing. What was wrong with her? They were supposed to be investigating a murder, if not two, and she was letting herself get carried away by memories of the past.

And the present
, she thought, unable to get the taste of his kiss from the night before out of her mouth. It was exactly the same, and completely different, and part of her—the foolish, impulsive part of her that never seemed to learn its lesson with him—wanted to strip him down and catalog all the ways he was the same and different after all those years. She gave herself a mental shake and pulled herself out of it. “There were a lot of things I could have said,” Caroline said, deliberately stepping back and pulling her arm from his grip. “But I get the feeling Toni likes you, and I didn’t want to badmouth you to a friend.”

His full lips quirked into that sexy half smile and she knew he wasn’t buying it for an instant. He let her walk past him down the hall, but she knew her reprieve was only temporary.

Danny pointed her a few doors down. She stepped into an office where Toni sat behind a desk outfitted with half a dozen computer monitors and a laptop. Two standard tower units hummed under the desk. Ethan stood behind Toni. His hand rested on her shoulder, his thumb moving back and forth in an absentminded caress that spoke volumes.

“Okay, I’m all fired up. Tell me what we’re looking for.”

“I need you to get into the records for Harmony House. It’s a shelter for pregnant teens in San Mateo. We need to know who the residents were in the six month window around when Anne disappeared.”

Irritation pricked at the back of Caroline’s shoulders at his continued use of his mother’s first name, as though he could keep his distance, forget he was emotionally invested in the case as long as he didn’t acknowledge their relationship. “We know your mother,” she emphasized the syllables, “started in May, and according to Ines she stopped showing up in July.”

To Caroline’s astonishment, Toni had the records within minutes. There were six names on the list. Toni quickly printed out the list and handed it to Danny.

“Okay, let’s divide and conquer. I’ll take these two, Ethan, you take these, and Derek,” he said to his brother who had joined them, “take these. Let’s find these girls and try to set up face to face meetings if they’re still local. We need to know everything they remember about Anne and James Medford.”

Within a few hours they had located all but one of the girls. Two lived out of state—Amber Tomkins lived in Tacoma, Washington, and Maria Lopez lived outside of Phoenix. Another, Serena Washington, had relocated south to Los Angeles, and Constance Morales lived outside of Sacramento. Only one—Lauren Adams, now Lauren Schiffer—was local. She lived about five miles away in Palo Alto.

There was no sign of the sixth girl, Emily Parrish. According to the records, she’d moved out of Harmony House on June 26, and vanished into thin air.

“Doesn’t look like anyone was too worried about her though,” Derek said. “No missing persons reports were ever filed.

“Okay, let’s try to get everyone to talk over the phone. I’m going to try to set up a meeting with Lauren Schiffer.”

According to their research, Lauren lived in Palo Alto with her husband, a professor at nearby Stanford University, and her two school-age sons. It hadn’t been easy to get Lauren to agree to talk to them. At first she’d insisted she’d never lived at Harmony House—they must have the wrong woman.

“I’m investigating the disappearance of Anne Taggart,” Danny said. “I promise I won’t take up much of your time.”