His admission brought her gaze to the banker’s box beside him. The hair on the back of her arms stood up and she suddenly realized Wade had gone quiet inside her head. Like he was waiting. “What’s in the box, Croft?”
Realizing he suddenly had the upper hand, he took the opportunity to ask a question of his own. “He’s the reason you’re here, isn’t he? Wade—he’s connected to the murders. The crime scene I saw you at today.” He pushed his shoulder off the back of the booth, his tone hushed and eager. “It’s got something to do with him.”
“You may not be a reporter anymore, Croft, but you still get this excited gleam in your eye when you smell a juicy story.” She sat back, forcing her jaw to loosen as she folded her arms across her chest. “It’s kinda disgusting.”
He jerked back in his seat, rubbing his hand across his mouth like she’d punched him in it. “People have a right to know the truth. To be able to find a way to move past it.” He leaned forward again, having the sense to drop his voice before he continued. “Not everyone has the luxury of just disappearing from their lives without a trace when shit goes sideways.”
Fuck this. “I hope you die in a fire,” she said, moving to leave.
“Letters,” he blurted out, grabbing at her with his words, nailing her in place. “They’re letters. Newspaper clippings. Sent from someone here in Yuma, to a P.O. box in Marshal. Wade’s P.O. box.”
“You’re lying.” She said it plainly, sounding more certain than she actually felt. “No one here knew Wade. What he did to me. No one.”
Croft shook his head, his jaw set at a tight angle. “Not no one. Someone knew. They’re tons of them. Whoever wrote them claims to have seen him the night he left you at the church. Describes it to a tee. What he wore. Where he left you… right down a description of the blanket he covered you up with.”
Each word sucked more and more oxygen out of her lungs. Spun it away from her. Making it impossible to reclaim. She recalled none of it. The caustic sting of bleach when Wade washed traces of himself off her skin. The darkness of the trunk he’d put her in. The frigid bite of the cement bench he’d left her on. But someone else did.
Someone else saw it all.
“Is everything okay here?”
She looked up find Manny standing over them, coffee pot in hand. She forced herself to smile and nod. Looking past him she could see several diners glancing nervously in their direction. “Everything’s great, thank you,” she shot a look at Croft across the table and he nodded in agreement.
Manny wasn’t buying it. “Just try to keep it down, okay?” he said, tipping more coffee into her mug. “I don’t want to have to ask you to leave.”
She nodded, not really trusting herself to speak. As soon as Manny was gone, she leveled a look at Croft.
“He idolized Wade,” he told her, confirming her worst fears. “They wrote back and forth. Talked about… things.”
Something cold did a slow crawl under her skin and she fought the urge to brush it away. “What sort of things?”
“You.” Croft said, that excited gleam in his eye replaced by something that looked almost like regret. Like he wished he’d never started down this path. The one that led him to her and the story of what Wade had done to her. For a moment, he looked like he wished he’d never heard her name. “They mostly talked about you.” He didn’t have to tell her any more than that. She understood what that meant.
“None of that explains why you asked me to meet you here,” she said, her voice so flat and calm, the sound of it terrified her.
“Really?” Croft gave her an exasperated shake of his head. “Okay let me spell it out for you—the guy who wrote to Wade is the same guy who’s been killing people here for the past year. He’s picking up where your brother left off.”
25
“Half. Brother.” She bit each word in half, spitting them at him from across the table. “Wade was my—“
“If splitting hairs makes it easier for you to deal—fine.” Croft said, leaning into her, batting her anger away like it was a waste of time. “Personally, I think it’s a waste of goddamned time. This freak is killing people.”
“People,” Sabrina said. “Not just girls. Not just blue-eyes waitress. Women. Children. All shapes and sizes.” But even as she said it, she knew she was grasping at straws.
“There’re those hairs again.” Croft shook his head, jaw clenched in what looked like disgust.
The silence inside her head was deafening. It was how she knew Croft was right. That he was telling her the truth. Whatever he had in that box could be the key to finding her killer. Or at the very least, the key to figuring out how her 20-year old DNA could have ended up under the fingernails of a woman who’d been abducted and murdered only a few months ago.
“Is that why you’re here?” Sabrina said, turning in her seat to look at him, doing her best to keep her gaze from landing on the box sitting beside him. It was all about power with Croft, if he thought he had any, he’d exploit it shamelessly. “You found a few pieces of paper in a storage locker so you hauled ass to Arizona?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” he said, gaze roving over her face, looking for a crack in the smooth surface she was showing him. “What could possibly have happened that’d force you leave whatever tropical island you and your contract killer boyfriend have been sunning yourselves on for the past year? Had to have been pretty big.”
“I don’t have a boyfriend. Never have.”
“Okay—” Croft snorted in disbelief. “Whatever Michael O’Shea is to you then.”
“What Michael is, is dead,” she said, forcing her voice flat. “He died in a helicopter crash off the coast of Columbia a year ago.”
“Dead…” Croft let out a short bark of laughter. “Sure he is—just like you were until about six hours ago.”
Instead of arguing with him, she just smiled. The last time they did this, there’d been nothing smooth about her. Wade had been chipping away at her sanity, tearing her apart from the inside out and it’d showed. She’d been vulnerable and desperate.
This time she was neither.
“You want something from me—that much is obvious,” she said, carefully folding her hands on the tabletop between them. “So, why don’t you just nut up and ask.”
“A few years ago, you promised me interviews.” He looked at her hands. Probably making sure they weren’t about to reach out and throttle him. “I want them.”
“I didn’t promise you anything, Croft.” She shook her head slowly. “You blackmailed me—don’t get it twisted.”
“And I could do it again.” His expression hardened under the glare she gave him. “Wouldn’t it just be easier to give me what I want?”
“Easier?” The corner of her mouth quirked up in the kind of exasperated half smile you gave an over-indulged child. “No… what would be easier would be for me to have you killed.” The half-smile bloomed into a full-fledged grin. “Seriously. It would take less than five minutes.”
The color drained from Croft’s face but he stood firm. “I thought you said he was dead.”
“I’m swimming in shark-infested waters these days, Croft…” She smiled softly. “Michael isn’t the only killer I know.”
He must have heard the truth in her voice because he visibly blanched. “You wouldn’t do that,” he said, not sounding at all confident.
“Are you sure?” she said, bluffing him flawlessly. “I’m not the person I used to be.”
“Look, I didn’t come here to blackmail you,” Croft said, losing his nerve. “I came here to propose a trade—I’ll give you the box and everything in it if you agree to give me my interviews.”
She eyed him for a moment, shifting her gaze between Croft and the box. “It’s all in there?”
He sighed, suddenly sounding tired. “Yes.”
“Then you know everything,” she said. “You don’t need me.”
“I know what he knew—Wade.” He swiped a rough hand over his
face. “I know what he felt… his reasons for doing what he did,” he said, looking sick. “I want your side of things.”
She studied the box. What Croft was proposing made her want to throw up but she didn’t have much of a choice and he knew it. Still, she didn’t have to make it too easy. “I’m dead remember? How can I talk to you and stay that way?”
“I’ll backdate them—make it clear you granted me interviews before your death. I won’t tell anyone about… this. I swear,” he said, reminding her he might be a lot of things but he’d never been a liar.
“Okay.” She stood from her seat and this time he didn’t try to stop her.
He looked up at her, relieved she’d agreed. “How—”
“Meet me here—day after tomorrow. Same time.” She held out her arms, gesturing for the box.
Croft hesitated, but only for a moment before he lifted to box and gave it to her. “There’s other stuff in here too,” he said, averting his gaze while setting the box into her arms. “Journals.”
Journals. Wade had kept journals.
She almost dropped the box. The way he couldn’t look at her told her more than a direct answer from him ever could. Croft had read them. He knew everything.
Sabrina balanced the box in one arm while she dug a few crumpled bills from her pocket. “See you later,” she said before she dropped the cash on the table and left, a box full of secrets tucked against her hip.
26
The box sat on the seat beside her, lid crammed tightly in place. She couldn’t stop looking at it. Sabrina drove, making turns and stopping at traffic lights without having a clear idea of where she was headed. Within minutes, she was miles from her truck stop meeting with Croft. Heading as far away as she could from what he’d told her.
Wade had kept journals.
We both know you’re dyin’ to, darling, so why don’t you just ask?
He’d been heckling her for a while now. Pushing her. Poking at her. Reminding her she’d never be rid of him—not really—and she’d been a fool to think otherwise.
She needed to talk to Ellie. It was obvious she knew more than she was letting on. If she could just talk to her, ask her—
You want to know if I told him about all the things I did to you in the dark...
Before she knew was she was doing, she jerked the wheel to the right, piloting the car into a deserted dirt lot. She barely had the car slammed into park before she was grappling with the door handle, getting it open only seconds before she threw up, coffee and stomach acid splattering against the hard-packed earth beneath her.
It was something she never talked about—couldn’t talk about. Twenty years later and she’d never told a soul. What he’d done to her. How badly he’d hurt her. How she hadn’t been able to stop him. The shame of it stung. Tears prickled at the corners of her eyes and she squeezed them shut, forcing them back.
Come on now, Darlin’… be a brave little toaster and ask. Isn’t that why you came here? To figure it all out? To finally understand why?
Knowing that Wade had written it all down, poured over the pages, carefully choosing each word, using them to describe what he did to her so he could relive it. So he could share her shame with someone else…
The truth. She was here for the truth.
She pressed her forehead against the armrest attached to the car door and squeezed her eyes shut. “Did you?” she whispered, ignoring the loosening sensation in her gut that saying the words out loud caused. Like her fingers were peeling back from the edge she always seemed to be dangling over. “Did you…”
Did I what, Darlin’? Laughter rang inside her head. Did I tell him all about it? Every time I chased you. Every time I cut you. Every time I forced my way inside you…
“Stop.” The word ground against her throat, harsh and angry, like a threat. She wiped her mouth against the back of her hand before pulling the door shut. Sitting in the dark she wrapped her hands around the steering wheel, tightening their grip until she could pretend they weren’t shaking.
Ohhh… The voice went velvety soft within her head. You wanna know if I told him how much you liked it.
Her hands cranked around the steering wheel, lip curled in a snarl, lifted by the guttural sound that ripped its way from her mouth. “You disgusting piece of—”
Something thumped against the glass, the hard, fast knock of it jolting her in her seat. She wrenched around in her seat, aiming her gaze out the window, at the source of the sound.
There was a man standing on the other side.
As soon as she turned to look at him, his knuckles fell away from the window, leaving dark, bloody smudges in their place.
27
“Miss, are you okay?”
The voice on the other side of the window sounded concerned, the question it conveyed at odds with the blood his hand left behind on the glass between them. Shrouded in shadow, the man was nothing more than a towering figure. His features lost in the dark.
Behind him Sabrina could see the squat outline of a low-slung building, sprawled in the dirt. From the gentle peak of its roof rose a plain wooden cross.
Looking at the blood he’d left smudged on the window, the man took a step back. She caught a flash of white at his collar. Relief washed through her as she reached down to open the door.
Ain’t this how things went down between you and me? I coaxed you out the car and then I shot you… good times.
Her hand stalled on the handle for a moment, her gazed fixed on the blood streaked across her window. A priest. He was a priest.
She could trust a priest.
And I was a cop. You trusted me and look what happened.
She yanked on the handle, pushing the door open to step out, driving him back even farther. “What church is this?”
“St. Rose of Lima,” he said, looking around like he wasn’t sure himself. He glanced hopefully at his watch. “Are you here for mass?”
St. Rose.
Somehow she’d ended up at the same church Wade had left her for dead. How was a mystery. She didn’t remember this place. Had never been here that she could recall. “Why is there blood on your hands?” she demanded, her words hard and fast, gaze falling to his hands. They were stained dark, clasped in front of him. Her hand found the grip of her Kimber, wrapping around it. “I’m not going to ask again.”
“I—” He looked down at them, his expression going blank for a moment before he reached into one of his front pockets.
She pulled the gun off her hip and waited.
“There’s a stray cat in the prayer garden,” he said, pulling out a handkerchief. He was frowning, too busy rubbing at his blood-coated hands to realize she’d drawn her weapon. “I think a coyote got ahold of it. I was trying to—”
“Show me,” she said, reaching into the car to pull the keys from the ignition. Turning back around, she caught him shaking his head no.
“It’s dead. There is nothing you can—”
She reached into the car again and pulled out the credentials Church had given her. “Show me,” she said again, flashing the badge before using the key fob to lock the car.
He finally noticed the gun, his gaze falling to it for a moment before finding her face again. This time, instead of refusing the priest merely nodded. “This way,” he said, tipping his head to indicate the direction. If he thought it was strange that a semi-deranged FBI agent wanted to investigate a dead cat, he didn’t say so—just led the way around the side of the church toward a wrought iron gate. “I think she must have climbed the wall, trying to get away from the coyote,” the priest said, angling his body away from the gate so she could pass through it ahead of him.
The prayer garden was small, a nearly perfect square surrounded by a stucco wall, easily twice as tall as she was. Cobblestone pavers cut down the middle of it, lined on either side with rain-battered rose bushes. Under the garden’s tree stood a bench—black marble stretched between two squat cement pillars.
Sure you don’t r
emember this place? I sure do.
Splayed across the bench, was a cat. At least she thought it was a cat. It looked like a lump of dark fur, tattered and matted with blood. Without even thinking about it, Sabrina reached into the pocket of her jeans for a pair of gloves but came up empty. It’d been a long time since she’d broken the habit of carrying gloves with her wherever she went.
Old habits die hard, huh, Darlin’?
Scanning the cobblestone for footprints, she hunkered down to examine the cat, hands hovering at her sides. She didn’t need to touch it to know whatever killed it hadn’t been a coyote. Looking up, she found the priest watching her, standing a few feet away. “Poor thing,” she said, not having to fake the remorse in her tone. “I’ll take care of this for you.” She forced her mouth into a small smile. “Do you have a paper bag or a box to put her in?”
He nodded, seemingly relieved she’d given him something to do. “Yes, I’ll go get it,” he said, ducking back into the church.
As soon as he was gone she pulled her cell out and started to take pictures, snapping off several, she caught the glint of something with the flash. Circling around the bench, she reached into her pocket. Pulling out the knife Michael had given her, she used the tip of it to lift at the collar. An ID tag—the name Cuervo engraved across its front. The cat was no stray. It belonged to someone.
Snapping a picture of it, she moved on. There were footprints in the dirt surrounding the bench but their impressions were obscured. Whoever had left them had worn shoe covers. She took pictures anyway, hoping there would be something similar in the file Maddox had given her.
“Here you go.”
Sabrina looked up to find the priest standing over her again, a cardboard box in his hand. “I got new shoes last week,” he said, a regretful smile on his face. “The first time in ten years.”
The Sabrina Vaughn series Set 2 Page 45
