by Sarah Andre
“Okay, now you’re out in the parking lot,” Jordan said on his other side—interrogation in stereo. “You hear her say, ‘I won’t tell.’ Take it from there.”
He described his fistfight with Vannini, immediately interrupted by Wolf and another teammate…Vince? He couldn’t remember now. They held him back while Vannini spat blood and spewed some crap in Italian over his shoulder as he staggered to a Lamborghini.
“Then what?”
“I—I turned on her.”
“Physically?” Her voice sounded hushed, and he glanced over with a frown.
“Of course not. What kind of an asshole do you think I am?”
“Sorry.” She waited a beat. “Go on.”
He bullet-pointed the ride home, the silent treatment from Tiff as he vomited accusations and bitter scenarios of her hook-up with Vannini in Milan.
He paused to drink some water and give himself time to think. As he held the glass to his lips, he saw that whole ride as if it’d happened yesterday.
He couldn’t get Tiff to shut up in the bar, but once there was no audience she turned to stone. Stupidly he’d said that aloud when he pulled into her drive.
As he’d climbed out of his Audi R8, she spun in her seat. “You wanna know why I started seeing Roberto, dipshit?”
“Great. Now that the neighbors can hear, you’re gonna start up again?”
“Because you’re a goddamn loser!”
“Get out of the fucking car!”
“He’s got better stats than you. He’s got a villa in Tuscany and a smokin’ Ferrari. His dick—”
He slammed the car door on her words and lunged around to the passenger side. Still she wouldn’t get out. He ended up dragging her struggling body from the car into her condo, listening to her scream words of hate and horror the whole way. He remembered feeling downright dizzy that so much shit had avalanched onto him all that day.
“Lock?”
He blinked several times and sipped the water.
“You’re driving home accusing her, and—? Did she admit to the affair?”
“Yes.” He placed the glass carefully on the table.
His brother leaned over and put the glass on a fancy coaster.
“Why would she have an affair?” Jordan asked. “And why him?”
He didn’t look up. “We hadn’t gotten along for a while. Broken up several times last year. Maybe she’d met him during one of those times. Or met him that week in Milan. As for why Vannini?” He stared at his clenched hands. “Maybe because she knew what hooking up with him would do to me.”
Thankfully Jordan let that moment pass.
“So she admitted to the affair. Then what?”
“I, uh, helped her inside. We continued fighting in there and out on the patio.”
“Fought about what?” Leo again.
“The auction, Vannini, our relationship, who was cheating on whom…” The argument spiraled downhill with no new insight, each ugly accusation just another gouge out of the heart of their relationship.
“How long did this go on?” his brother asked.
Lock forced a chuckle. “Time wasn’t one of the things I focused on.”
“Estimate then.”
“I don’t know, Leo. Forty-one minutes and fifty-three seconds?”
Jordan waved her pen. “Go on.”
Lock scratched his beard rhythmically. “I honestly don’t remember who officially pronounced the breakup, but I knew this time it was for real. I grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and went upstairs to pack my shit. Heard her the whole time through the open window, boo-hooing down in that Jacuzzi…”
Agitation forced him to stand abruptly, scoot by his brother, and go revive the dying fire. Tiff’s high-pitched crying and intermittent shrieks of, “I hate you,” followed him. He jerked his head to get the sound to stop. “I better get more logs from the mudroom.”
“I can do it,” Leo said. “Just keep going.” But he didn’t rise.
Lock white-knuckled the poker. The moment his twin would cease to believe in his innocence had arrived. Somehow the words managed to come. “I packed my shit and drank. Listened to her carrying on out there and drank some more. Then I sat on her bed a while because I was kinda woozy. The more swigs I took from the bottle, the more confused I got. Like I had to do something about us.” Had he gone down and apologized? Or had he gone down and grabbed the butcher knife from the kitchen? His last memory was sitting at the foot of the bed, holding the bottle of Jack.
“What happened next?” Jordan sounded breathless.
The little detail the whole world wanted to know, and no one more so than him.
He stared into the hearth. “That’s all I remember.” He let the sentence hang. The scratching pen stopped.
“All you remember?” Leo sputtered.
Lock dared himself to look over at his brother’s face but wussed out.
“Lock?” Jordan spoke sharply.
“Yeah, that’s all,” he answered reluctantly. “I blacked out.”
He had no sense of time in the appalled silence. It went on forever. He stood in front of the fire, paralyzed and perspiring, listening to the occasional snap of dwindling embers.
“So technically,” Jordan said softly, “you could have stabbed her eleven times.”
“Technically,” he answered, freshly horrified that Jordan spoke the words he’d been thinking all these months. But inside he held onto two threadbare beliefs: Parker’s authority testifying that the assailant was left-handed. And Jefferson-the-PI’s earth-shattering words: Vannini killed your girlfriend. Was Vannini left-handed?
Please, Jordan, find proof it wasn’t me!
Her voice came from far away. “Maybe you were drugged.”
Before he could answer, his brother said, “There were no drugs, Jordan. It was a simple, drunken blackout.”
The certainty and disgust in his brother’s tone was a punch in the gut. Lock didn’t bother defending himself. Leo spoke the truth. If only he could blame a different source than the dark, sick side of him.
“In past relationships did you fight like this? Drink yourself unconscious? Lose control with girlfriends?”
“No.” Not girlfriends. Only brothers. He finally raised his eyes. Like a moth to a flame, his gaze darted to his brother’s face, and everything he’d feared these last ten months lay in Leo’s expression. In the glance that flashed between them, it was crystal clear both of them grasped the high probability that he was guilty. I’m so sorry, Leo.
Thankfully Jordan missed the exchange as she reached for her glass of water. Her hand noticeably trembled, and her skin looked moist even though they were down to burning cinder and ash. Luckily her condition captured Leo’s attention too, and he slid toward the club chair.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yeah.” Her voice sounded too high. “It’s a little hot in here is all.”
“Maybe your fever’s coming back,” Lock said. “We should quit for a while.” He could sure use the break. Shovel the drive or log a tree—anything to exhaust himself physically.
“No.” She swallowed some water, and picked up her pen. “Now it’s the next day and you—what? Wake up? Regain consciousness?”
He clamped his lips on the hovering retort. “I laid there dealing with my hangover, but knew something was wrong.” He scratched his beard. “She’d never come upstairs and kicked me down to sleep on the sofa.”
“So?”
“So, I went downstairs.” He sat next to Leo again and hunched forward, already reliving the descent into eerie silence. “The sliding door was open, and I could see her…out there…facedown.”
All the blood. Splattered and pooled and jelly-like. He shuddered now.
It seemed like hours passed before Jordan’s quiet tone drew him back. “Did you go to her? Hold her?”
He shook his head, unable to hide the shame. “No. It was so gory. Unlike anything you see in the movies. I hurled right where I was stan
ding.”
“But how did you know she was dead and not just injured?”
Fucking reporters! He turned to her, snarling, “She had multiple stab wounds. There was a goddamn knife sticking out of her neck!”
“There’s no need to shout,” Leo snapped.
“I’m not shouting!” He leaped up and paced to the end of the room.
“Let’s take a break.” Jordan tossed her pad down and carefully stuck her foot inside the boot. She stood with a waver. “I’m going to use the facilities.”
Instinctively, Lock stepped toward her, but she waved him off.
“No more carrying me, thank you very much.” She limped up the stairs, and the two brothers watched until she was out of sight.
Lock knew he needed to address the elephant in the room. This would probably be his only time alone with Leo. But what to say? “About the blackout…” No, too flippant. “I didn’t kill her…” He grimaced. No proof of that. “This time was different…” Christ. He was so fucking rotten inside.
“Did you catch how she looked at me?” he murmured instead, still staring up the staircase. “Like I was a psycho? Guess I better get used to it. I’m going to see that a million more times next week.”
“Parker will get you off.”
“But he can’t make that look go away.” It’s even on your face, bro. “Nothing ever will. I’ll be like O.J.”
His brother turned away. “You should probably call and tell him Jordan is helping out.”
“Call Parker and inform him I saved the life of a reporter who’s now bulldozed her way deep into my case?” He rubbed his beard. “Christ, this day just keeps getting better.”
Upstairs the toilet flushed. Too late to start the blackout discussion now. A part of him relaxed, while another side, the side that stared fearlessly down icy slopes, lunged to the surface.
He kept scratching his beard. “Any way we could drive into town this afternoon or something? Just the two of us?”
“Sure,” Leo said. “I look forward to it.”
Chapter Fourteen
“You what?” Parker yelled over the line. Lock winced and slouched further in his brother’s creaky office chair, crossing his ankles on Leo’s orderly desk.
“Look, what’s wrong with one more person helping my team?”
“She’s a reporter.”
“With PI connections.”
“You have one of the best investigators in the state on the payroll, Lock. Do not utter another word to this woman.”
Lock flipped a pen over and over in his hand as the silence lengthened. He’d never been any good at obeying authority figures, and right now his lawyer’s tone and the annoying way he emphasized words when he was angry irked him big time. And yet Parker was right about the reporter side of Jordan. Lock knew there was more to her offer of help than she let on. She could spill his defense strategy anytime in the next four days and watch her journalism career skyrocket.
“Look, Lock, once again—the burden of proof is one hundred percent the responsibility of the prosecutor. Every time they present a theory or a witness, all we have to do is establish doubt. Just let me do my job and keep her the hell out of it.”
“Okay.” Lock sighed. But that sharp baritone of her boss still rang in his ears. What if they uncovered one tiny detail his team missed? Hell, he wanted Jordan’s help just to convince him he wasn’t capable of murder. His team hadn’t done that in ten months.
Anxiety pumped through him, and he had a sudden urge to do something physical. Violently physical.
“If she asks any more questions—”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll shine her on.”
“We’re going to get you off. Trust me. The D.A.’s under enormous pressure to prove felony murder. He’s facing the trial of a lifetime, the gory murder of a van der Kellen…a case that’s obsessed the nation. A conviction will propel him straight into the governor’s office next year. But the charge is too high. There’s no way on God’s green Earth he can prove intentional murder.”
“Right.”
The agitation of the morning hadn’t lessened with Parker’s emphatic speech. Lock muttered the appropriate niceties and ended the call, but the coil of terror in his gut tightened.
…
Jordan returned to an empty living room then caught sight of Lock out back, shoveling his brother’s station wagon out of a three-foot snowdrift.
She pressed up against the windowpane, appreciating the candid glimpse. He’d shed the flannel shirt, so white long johns molded to a sleek torso and brick-house abs. When he rotated and flung the thick snow far into the woods, the ripple of back muscles resembled fluid art.
Even in this tedious task, Lock emitted a primitive sexuality. The plunge of the shovel, the undulation of muscles, that violent body twist as snow hurled through the air.
Scoop, fling, scoop, fling. His rhythmic pace paired seamlessly with his breath, which flowed in steady streams of mist. Under his hunter-green knit cap, his eyebrows knotted fiercely, like clearing the drift required his undivided attention.
But snow didn’t require concentration. Was he reliving that awful night? Or the next morning? Or did he fixate on the immediate future—a murder trial beginning in four days? Jeez, this guy’s life was in the toilet.
How sad that most Americans believed he deserved this after years of bad-boy antics. She’d believed it herself just days ago. If only he’d shared Lock Roane with them—a guy who saved car accident victims, and traded in his career to pass out pretzels. A guy who shoveled out his brother’s car.
In utter fascination, she watched him bend and straighten over and over, marveling at his natural grace and brute strength. He barely appeared winded, although his rosy cheeks glistened, and twice he swiped his sleeve across his forehead as he surveyed the areas still blanketed in snow.
How often did he think about Tiffany? And when he did, was it the good times or the downhill slide?
Jordan cringed at the prick of jealousy. She was not, repeat not, going to imagine any kind of future between her and a guy about to go on trial. Talk about baggage. But his magnetism, the way their control-freak personalities sparked… That kiss she couldn’t stop thinking about.
She shook her head. It didn’t matter. She had a story to write and a mom to keep safe. In the meantime, so what if she fixated on that tight ass in faded jeans each time he bent over? Nothing would come of it.
When he moved on to clear the driveway, which appeared to curve steeply down the backside of a hill, she raised her knuckles to the pane.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Leo warned, right behind her.
She started, and her rib tweaked. “Ow. I have more questions.”
“Yeah, that’s why I stopped you. He’s like a caged animal right now. You can see it in his face.” He jerked his head toward the window. “When he gets like this, it’s best to let him work it off.”
She pivoted and scrutinized Lock again. Leo was right. She’d labeled it focused, but there was something in the set of his face, like he was throwing out vibes for the whole world to back off. Her skin prickled at his intensity. She touched the chilly pane. “How often does he get like this?”
“Almost daily, now that the trial’s here. It’s why he disappeared in the snowstorm yesterday. No one else would risk that squall to retrieve your purse.”
She followed Leo into the kitchen. “None of my research mentions how they met.”
“I introduced them.”
She halted mid-step. “You?”
He smiled. “Does that put me on your list of suspects?”
“Of course not. It’s just—strange that someone like you knew someone like her.”
“You mean a cripple?”
She sucked in a breath. “No, Leo. An introvert who stays in his cabin writing crime novels.”
He gestured to a chair and limped over to the empty coffee pot. “Before I moved here to write, I lived in Aspen. Tiffany and I sat on a jury that lasted t
hree weeks.” He measured scoops slowly and precisely with his left hand. Didn’t these twins have anything in common?
“When strangers are thrown together for that long,” he said, “there’s a tendency to get to know each other, and I thought she was very nice.”
Nice? “How many years ago?”
“Oh…” He frowned into space. “Four? She wasn’t hooked on drinking or drugs yet.”
“I thought you and Lock never hung together.”
Although he smiled, he stood way too stiffly. “We don’t, but for some reason, even as kids, when Lock’s in bigger trouble than usual, he calls me. That time his license was suspended, and he needed a ride to the courthouse. Evidently he was too ashamed to call one of his posse, so I drove. We walked in as Tiffany was walking out…the rest is history.”
“What did you think about their relationship?”
“Besides feeling guilty every damn day about introducing them?” Leo laughed without amusement and flipped the machine on. “They loved each other and hated each other with a passion that’s off the charts. But bottom line, Lock always had her best interests at heart.”
Best interests? “In the YouTube segment he looks enraged. Grabbing her and trying to haul her out the door. Like he’s capable of violence toward women. That won’t go down well with the jury.”
He cocked his head, his expression gentle. “What happened in Alabama, Jordan?”
The question floated out so softly, she was sure she misheard.
“Was it self-defense? Was your father abusing you?”
She gaped at him. How could he possibly know? She’d hidden her past so carefully. Oh Christ, her stupid name! The real name she gave them to hide her media identity now exposed something much worse.
A long moment passed, and still words didn’t come. Shock and shame made her tremble like the final leaf in late fall. As much as she’d educated herself with self-help books through the years, the lingering certainty that somehow she deserved the abuse festered back to the surface like a raw, pus-filled wound. And now Leo knew. Would he call the authorities?
Finally, he turned away. “This must be a difficult interview for you,” he went on, as if she’d confirmed his questions. “Volatile doesn’t even begin to describe their relationship.”
