by Lisa Childs
“I work for Chicago PD,” Sean said, automatically flashing his badge.
“So you’re here to interview Heath Colton and Kylie Givens again?” the dark-haired man asked, his voice nearly quivering with excitement.
“I’m here to talk to them,” Sean admitted. But he wasn’t working the case. The higher-ups had decided he was too involved to be objective, and they were right. He was as involved as if they were his own family.
“Good,” the man replied. “I know that the other detective talked to them already, but I think he bought their alibi way too easily.”
Sean narrowed his eyes. “You don’t think they were really together? That they’re really involved?”
The guy sighed. “Oh, I’m sure they’re involved. It’s the only reason why she has the position she has. She’s hardly qualified for it.”
“I thought she graduated from some Ivy League school.” He’d thought it was the same one Heath had attended—just at different times.
“I meant that she isn’t qualified because of her criminal background,” the man clarified.
“You’re saying Kylie has a record?” Sean asked. Parker hadn’t mentioned it, but then he didn’t think Sean should be involved in the case either. So he wasn’t sharing any details of it with him.
“Well,” the man sputtered, “not her personally, but she comes from a family of criminals.”
“Really? I hadn’t heard this.” And he suspected it might not be true.
“Her mother actually died in prison.”
A twinge of sympathy struck Sean, and he wondered how old Kylie had been when that had happened. He’d recently grown really close to a little girl who’d thought her mother was gone, and he knew the pain it had caused her.
“Why was she in prison?” Sean asked.
“Some drug charge.” He sniffed as if disgusted with Kylie just because of who her mother was.
Would people look at little Maya that way? Would they disrespect her just because of who her father was?
Suppressing the outrage that threatened to grip him, Sean held on to his temper and asked, “And who are you, by the way?”
“Tyler Morrison, I’m legal counsel for Colton Connections.”
Sean nodded as if impressed. But nothing about this man, from his expensive suit to his slicked back hair to his biased gossip, impressed him. “Were you here that night?” he asked. “When they died?”
The guy tensed. “No, of course not. I—I don’t know why anyone would ask me that.”
Maybe lawyers were naturally defensive or maybe this guy had something to hide. Sean suspected the latter. When the elevator stopped on eight, the man stepped out with him and swiped his badge through the security panel to open the doors to the offices. But he didn’t walk through the doors with him. Instead he turned back to the elevator. “I just remembered I left what I needed in my car,” he murmured as he closed the doors on Sean.
Sean stood there, in the doorway between the elevator area and the offices, and watched the lights above the elevator doors. It didn’t go down; it headed up and stopped on the next floor. Sean highly doubted the lawyer had parked his car on the ninth floor.
No. This man definitely seemed to have something to hide. Sean intended to ask Heath about him, but when he walked into the CEO’s office and both he and his vice president jumped as if he’d caught them doing something illegal, he suspected Tyler Morrison wasn’t the only one hiding something. Heath and Kylie were, as well.
But what?
Had they really lied about their alibi like Joe Parker suspected? Usually the only people who lied about alibies were the people who knew they would need one—because they were guilty as hell.
* * *
Sean Stafford didn’t seem to buy Heath and Kylie’s story any more than his colleague had. But Heath wasn’t sure which story he doubted, that he and Kylie were involved or that someone hadn’t purposely tried to run them down.
“Tatum shouldn’t have called you,” Heath said as he walked the detective down the hall toward the elevator. He’d cut the lawman’s impromptu visit short with the excuse that he was just too busy to talk right now. And his constantly ringing phone had supported his excuse. He’d left Kylie manning the phone while he walked Sean out the security doors, so that he could take the elevator down.
“Tatum didn’t call me,” Sean said. “She called January.”
Heath chuckled. “And January called you.”
“We were together, having lunch. Like you and Kylie. I didn’t know the two of you were an item.”
Neither had he—until Kylie had claimed to Detective Parker that they were. “Well, when you spend so much time with someone...”
Sean nodded in agreement. He had to agree since Heath knew that was how he and January had fallen for each other, when they’d spent so much time together protecting the child in one of the cases January had been assigned.
“But why have you kept it so secret from the rest of the family?” Sean asked.
Heath shrugged. “I wasn’t trying to keep it secret. I’ve just been so busy with trying to secure the patent for Pop and Uncle Alfie’s most recent invention.” And now they wouldn’t know when he got it. They would never be able to receive the accolades they deserved for inventing the life-changing medical device.
It wasn’t fair.
“Do you think their murders could have anything to do with the business?” Sean asked.
Heath shook his head. “No. They’re so well respected.” Then he had to correct himself. “They were...”
Sean reached out and squeezed his shoulder. “I know. It’s hard. January is struggling.”
“I’m glad she has you,” Heath said. “To help her through this.”
“And I’m glad you have Kylie,” Sean said, but he studied Heath’s face as he said it, as if he was waiting for some indication that Heath had lied about their relationship.
But Heath wasn’t lying when he said, “She’s really been there for me.” More than he had ever expected she would be.
“So you should keep her safe,” Sean said, “make sure she’s not in danger.”
The only danger Heath thought she was really in was getting caught for lying during the course of a police investigation when she provided his false alibi. “I don’t think that car was trying to hit us,” he said. “I was just distracted and stepped off the curb without looking.”
“So you didn’t have the crosswalk sign?”
“I did but—”
“Then the vehicle shouldn’t have turned when you were walking,” Sean persisted.
“Like I said, we had just stepped off the curb,” he said. “They probably thought it was clear and the driver must have been in a hurry with as fast as they were driving.” So fast that Heath hadn’t even gotten a good look at the vehicle.
Sean narrowed his eyes, his skepticism clear now. “I don’t know, Heath, if it was as accidental as you want to believe it was.”
He did want to believe that. The murders were already too much to process. He couldn’t accept that he might be in danger as well or worse yet that he was putting Kylie in danger. He shook his head. “I’m sure it was nothing.”
“Just be careful,” Sean advised him. Then the elevator arrived, saving Heath from more of the detective’s questions.
“Thanks,” Heath said as the doors closed on the other man’s face. He would heed the detective’s advice, more for Kylie’s sake than his own. He didn’t want to put her in harm’s way more than she already was with the danger of being arrested over the fake alibi she’d given him.
When he stepped back into his office, he found her looking flustered as she spoke to someone on his phone. “That is kind, Mrs. Colton... Fallon, but I really...”
Her face lit up with relief when she noticed him standing in the doorway, and his heart did
a strange little flippy thing in his chest.
“I really should have you speak to your son about that,” she said, and she thrust the phone in his direction.
His fingers brushed hers as he took it from her hand, and a little zinging sensation arced between them. Or at least he thought it did. She must have felt that, too.
But she lowered her gaze, staring more at his chin than his eyes. Then she rushed around his desk toward the door.
Covering the receiver with one hand, he asked her, “Where are you going?”
“My office,” she said as she whirled and headed out of his doorway.
What had his mother been telling her? It wasn’t like Kylie to shy away from a conversation with anyone; she was much more of a people person than he was. He uncovered the phone and spoke into the receiver, “Mom?”
“Yes, dear, I was just talking to Kylie about coming to dinner tomorrow night, but she deferred to you before replying,” she said. “She’s such a sweet young woman. I’ve always liked her.”
“Me, too,” he said. And it was true. He’d clicked with Kylie from the moment he’d interviewed her. But then he’d only been considering her a colleague. Somehow she’d become so much more.
A friend.
And...
That kiss burned in his mind, on his lips. He could still taste her, feel her.
“Heath?” his mother called out to him.
“Yes?” he replied, wondering what he must have missed that she’d asked him.
“So you’ll both come to dinner tomorrow night,” his mother said as if it was fait accompli. “That’s wonderful. We all need to be together now. It’ll be especially good for Farrah. She’s been so distraught.”
He suspected her twin wasn’t the only one who was distraught. His mother needed to keep busy and didn’t want to be alone. Unlike his aunt Farrah who lived with Grandmother, his mother had nobody living with her now. A pang of guilt struck his heart.
“Of course I’ll be there, Mom,” he promised her.
“And Kylie,” she prodded him. “I want to get to know her better.”
So did he. He didn’t know his friend nearly as well as he’d thought he had. He hadn’t had any idea what she’d gone through, with her mother being arrested, jailed, dying.
Another pang of guilt struck his heart. She’d always been there for him, listening to him go on and on about work, about Gina, about his family. He’d never been there for her like that, had never learned the most important things about a woman who had become very important to him. Maybe that was why he was single yet...because he was as selfish and self-centered as Gina had once accused him of being.
He glanced at his cell, seeing he’d missed more calls from Gina. And voice mails.
He wasn’t going to play any more of them. The only one he’d played had been a warning about Kylie, about not trusting her. He was beginning to think Kylie was the only one he should trust right now.
But then he headed the short distance down the hall to her office and found it dark and empty. She had lied to him. She hadn’t gone here; she’d left. And she must have sneaked down the stairs since he hadn’t even heard the elevator ding. But then he hadn’t even heard his mother ask him to dinner either.
He’d been so damn preoccupied with that kiss. Just like he’d been when they’d nearly gotten run down. That had been his fault, though, for being distracted.
Nobody could really be trying to kill him and Kylie.
Because if someone was, Kylie could be in danger. And all alone...
* * *
Kylie needed to be alone, which was ironic given that she usually envied those with big families, like Heath. But when his mother had been interrogating her on the phone, Kylie had gotten flustered. She didn’t want to lie to the woman who was very sweet and still so fragile over the recent loss of her husband. So Kylie had no intention of going to that dinner with Heath, no intention of going anywhere with him for a while—despite his insistence that they sell the fake alibi and relationship she’d told Detective Parker about.
Now another detective had come to question them. She had no doubt that was really why Sean Stafford had stopped into the office, not to check on them but to check up on them.
Panic pressed on Kylie’s lungs, and it had nothing to do with the exertion of walking down eight flights to the first floor but everything to do with that feeling she’d had when her mother had been arrested.
Would that happen to her for lying during the course of a police investigation? She was less concerned about lying to the police, though, than she was about lying to Heath’s sweet mother.
Kylie didn’t want to fool his family. She respected them all too much and was too worried about them now, with the loss they were suffering. So she had done the right thing in providing him an alibi.
The last thing his mother needed now was her son getting arrested for murdering her husband and brother-in-law.
No. She’d done the right thing. But as she walked out of the building, a chill raced down her spine, and she shivered. That strange sensation rushed over her again, as if she was being watched.
Was Heath watching her walk to her car from his office window? No. His office was at the front of the building. But when she glanced up, she noticed a shadow at one of the windows on the ninth floor. Someone was up there, watching her.
Who?
She hadn’t noticed anyone else at the office but her and Heath. And that window would have been in the creative space where Ernie and Alfie had worked with only a few other inventors and sometimes Heath.
Heath was just as creative as his dad and uncle, but he’d insisted he preferred running the business to creating business for himself to run. Had he gone to the lab, maybe to feel closer to his father and uncle?
She stopped and squinted up at that window, but the shadow disappeared.
Had she only imagined it?
She considered going back up to find out if anyone was there. But it had probably been just Heath, and she was uneasy being alone with him right now.
With no witnesses, he would have no reason to kiss her again or act like her boyfriend. But with no witnesses, she might be the one tempted to try to kiss him again, to see if it had really been as hot and heart pounding as she’d thought it had been.
But maybe she had just imagined all that, like she was probably just imagining someone was watching her—at the restaurant and here. When she opened her car door and slid behind the wheel, she glanced up at the building again. The shadow was still gone, but that feeling was back. And it was so persistent, so nagging, that Kylie was nearly certain: someone was watching her.
Why?
Chapter 11
Fallon spread the cream cheese frosting over the carrot cake which had cooled on the island in her sister’s kitchen. She preferred to cook here and not just because Farrah cleaned up after her. She preferred being here now to being alone in her own house.
“The kids should be here soon,” she told Farrah. “I’m so glad that all of them are coming. Heath is even bringing Kylie.”
“That’s good,” Farrah said. “I’d like to get to know her better. Alfie was so impressed with her.”
“So was Ernie...” A twinge of pain struck her heart as it did every time she thought of her husband because she immediately thought of his being gone. Forever now.
“The police need to release their bodies,” Farrah said. “Everyone keeps asking when the funerals will be.”
Fallon began to shake, and the cake knife dropped from her hands, clattering onto the countertop. Tears rushed to her eyes, but she tried to blink them back and focus on the cake again. Bodies.
Whenever she was alone, that was all she could think about, the murders and of what her husband and brother-in-law had become.
“Bodies...” the word slipped out of her quivering lips.
“Why not? It’s what they are now, not the men we knew and loved—they’re not here anymore.” And the house felt so empty without them. She felt so empty without them.
“They’re here,” Farrah insisted. “They’re with us always and with our children. They’re not gone. Never.”
Fallon hugged her, and then suddenly other arms wrapped around them both—slender arms. Their mother.
Despite her age and size, Abigail was strong. She’d been so strong for them. Fallon needed to be strong, like her mother, for her children and for her nieces and for her sister. She had to show them that she would fine.
And she would be. Maybe not now or anytime soon.
But eventually she would be fine, just like her mother had been, after Daddy’s death. She’d survived. And so would Fallon and Farrah.
* * *
Dread settled heavily into the pit of his stomach as Heath parked on the circular drive behind a row of other vehicles. “Everybody’s here.”
Would they treat him like they had the last time they’d all been together here? Would they be unable to even look at him? After how Parker had been questioning them, he’d rather they not look at him than look at him like the detective did: with suspicion.
“I shouldn’t be here,” Kylie said from the passenger’s seat. “This is a bad idea.”
“No,” he said. “Lying to the police was a bad idea. This is damage control. Detective Parker has already questioned all of them about us. We need to assure them that we’re not lying. Or else they’ll be worried about me, and they all have enough to worry about right now.” That was the argument he’d used to convince himself to come—that he needed to assure his family that he was being honest about everything, even the lies.
Kylie’s face flushed. “I’m sorry.”
“You were doing what you thought was right,” Heath said.
