Love by Association

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “What’s up?”

  “Dr. Albertson’s gone, but I found someone else who talked to me,” he told her. “Someone who doesn’t want to be mentioned.”

  “Another doctor?”

  “Perhaps.”

  She needed to know what he had, so she chose to let the informant particulars go for the moment.

  “Albertson took a job in San Diego shortly after that night,” Max said. “My source said it was a sudden move. Albertson kept insisting she’d met someone and had put in for a transfer, but my source never completely believed her. In any case, Albertson left her one file. Said to keep it just in case. But not to do anything with it unless either Julie or Colin Fairbanks came asking for it.”

  “Which they never would.”

  “No, but I did.”

  “You aren’t either of them. Why’d this person think to tell you about it?”

  “Because I knew about a rape, and because this person is in the emergency room. And has seen some things that are bothersome.”

  Chantel’s nerves started churning until she really did have to pee. “What things?”

  “This person hears details and says that there have been at least three other cases in the past ten years that all have a similar, very bothersome situation.”

  “He’s done it more than once. Julie isn’t his only victim.”

  “The paperwork Albertson left was in a sealed envelope. My source was sworn not to open it. Ever. Of course, my source did open it. She needed to know what she was holding on to, or she wasn’t going to hold it. She knew they were dealing with powerful people and didn’t want to get herself in trouble. At least not without knowing why.”

  “She.”

  “Let it go, Chantel.”

  For now. She might need testimony. And to get her hands on that report, which could come later.

  “She told me that all three victims were drugged in the same way. A unique cocktail combination with aspirin added.” Max delineated each component in medical terms. Again, something she could get later. “And all three were violated in the same way.”

  She wanted to ask more but didn’t. Colin had said Julie had been brutalized. She didn’t need to impinge any further on Julie’s privacy. She had the details she needed.

  “The rapes were similarly situated in ways that are unique enough to leave a signature.” She pulled out the point that was important to her investigation.

  “That’s my conclusion. And my source’s, as well. And, Chantel...the most recent was less than a year ago.”

  Mind spinning, Chantel held her stomach, leaning back against the gas station bathroom wall. “He has to be stopped.”

  “I know. But you’re dealing with some powerful people here, Chantel. Three victims and no charges have ever been filed. Someone’s willing to do what it takes to see that nothing is done.”

  “Your source checked on that?”

  “If your suspect had other charges against him, you’d have known that.”

  He had her there. “And if I don’t do something, he’s just going to keep on, and there will be a lot more than three victims for us to talk about. For that matter, there probably are more. We only know of the ones who’ve gone to the Santa Raquel hospital for help. But what I also know is that the next one will be on my head.”

  Which brought another link to Julie’s and Leslie’s cases. Now they both presented current danger.

  “I hate your job.”

  “I know.”

  “Be careful, my friend.”

  “I will. And, Max? Thanks.”

  She rang off before he could suggest, again, that she get a desk job.

  * * *

  USUALLY ONE TO sit back and let the business at hand take its course—using his father’s advice not to grab at the first chance but rather to build business relationships that would last a lifetime—Colin drove his clients, and their potential Japanese business partners, to work until everyone was almost too tired to think. He had someone call for a meal catered in. And he still didn’t stop. He’d already pushed powerful men to work through the night. It was Monday night at home. And Tuesday morning in Japan. And he was starting to question what in the hell he was doing.

  Strong, lasting business deals, decisions of that magnitude, weren’t to be made through pressure or exhaustion. Some people did business that way. Successfully, even. If all they wanted to do was take the money and run.

  Now Colin just wanted to run. By the time he’d spent one full day away from home, his instincts were screaming at him to get back there.

  In one sense, it was as though the night Julie was raped was happening all over again. He was working, focusing on the deal in front of him, with his sister on his mind.

  That night he’d been waiting for her to get home.

  Because he hadn’t wanted her to go to the party in the first place? The thought rose unbidden. The Smyths had been close family friends for years. They had all spent Christmas together! But there’d been something almost unsettling to him in the way young David had looked that night as he’d picked Julie up. A strange energy about him.

  One Colin hadn’t acted on. Or allowed himself to dwell on since.

  Smyth had looked Colin in the eye. Been perfectly respectful. He hadn’t smelled of drugs or alcohol. There’d been no reason not to let his sister go to the party in the company of so close a family friend. One sanctioned by the friendships their parents had formed with and through them over the years.

  Part of the problem had been that Colin hadn’t been able to put a name to what he’d been feeling.

  Or been old enough to discern it.

  Colin had put it down to teenage energy the night of his first big party. He’d let his sister go and had felt uncomfortable the rest of the night.

  He was feeling the same kind of discomfort as he sat at a board table in Japan, trying his damnedest to get the work done so he could be on a plane back home.

  Only the possibility that he was letting his emotions get to him, get in the way—that his unrest was derived from the fact that he wanted to be in Chantel’s bed because he had no idea how long he’d have to convince her to stay—had him finally backing off and agreeing to a traditional Japanese breakfast with their hosts before heading to his hotel for some rest.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  SHE’D MEANT TO handle Julie with kid gloves. Because Colin did. Because he’d want her to. Because she now knew far more about the nature of the horror the other woman had suffered and couldn’t imagine living with those kinds of memories.

  But somehow, sitting with Julie over a glass of wine on the huge, soft leather sofa with reclining everything in a place she called the rec room, facing the largest television she’d ever seen in real life, Chantel allowed herself to follow the course of action Harris placed upon her.

  They’d never gotten around to turning on the television to figure out what girlie movie they were going to stream in the soundproof room. Julie talked about her work, about the possibility of starting to send out query letters. She’d shown Chantel a few pages of finished art with calligraphy lettering.

  They talked about literary agents. And in the end, Chantel promised to contact her family the next day, to see what they could do.

  She’d already called her mother—had been on the phone with her the second night Colin had shown up at her hotel room—to ask her to get in touch with the sister she hadn’t had much to do with for years. To let her know that if anyone called for a Chantel Johnson, it was her. And not to say she was a cop, just that she worked at the very small publishing operation—as she had for a brief stint when she was a teenager.

  And then had to assure her mother that she’d only changed her name and hadn’t gotten married. She’d said she’d explain later.

 
; Her mother, who spent her life with the guilt for what had happened to Chantel growing up, had agreed to do as she asked. She’d texted Chantel the next day to tell her that she’d spoken with her sister, no one had called and Aunt Pam was happy to do whatever Chantel needed.

  She also asked that Chantel give her a call.

  So now she would.

  But first...

  “I need to speak with you, Julie,” she said. An idea had been forming since the second she’d gotten off the phone with Max. She knew what she had to do.

  She just wasn’t sure about all of the details yet. She had ideas. Good ones. A solid plan. One that would work.

  But she needed help. At the very least, she’d need someone to control the lights at the library the night of the gala. Someone who would blend in as a member of the elite crowd without raising any suspicions.

  Ideally, she wanted someone who could have her back enough to get help if something went wrong. Someone who was in on the plan.

  Someone who might have to testify in court...

  But she was getting way ahead of herself. How much did she say? Where did the subterfuge and reality collide? Or coexist?

  Could she trust Julie with the truth?

  She had to be the absolute worst undercover officer of all time....

  “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” Julie’s frightened tone brought her back to the moment—and the realization that her silent introspection was scaring the younger woman. “You heard something about Colin...”

  “No!” She covered Julie’s hand with her own and then sat back. “No. I mean, yes, I’ve heard from him. About half an hour ago actually. And he’s fine. Having breakfast and wishing he was on a plane home.”

  Because he wanted to be in his bed with her that night. She opted not to share that part.

  “He misses you already, huh?” Julie asked, an impish smile replacing the fear of seconds before.

  “He misses you, too,” she said to cover her embarrassment. She wished things were different, that she could just be open with Julie, tell her everything, like she’d always done with Jill.

  “He might, but not enough to want to rush home,” she said drily. And then, with a less teasing grin, she said, “What was it you needed to speak with me about?”

  “I want you to help me with something. What I’m going to ask isn’t going to be easy. But I believe all the way down to my soul that it’s vitally important.”

  “If you think it’s that important, then, of course. I’ll do whatever I can.”

  Chantel nodded. And started with first things first. “You know Leslie Morrison pretty well, don’t you?”

  “Yes. But you know that already.”

  “If you told her something and asked her to keep it to herself, would you trust her not to tell your brother, her husband, anyone?”

  “Absolutely.” Julie paused, and then said, “There’s a bond between women who’ve been...mistreated. A level of trust that runs pretty deep.”

  Julie seemed to be including her in that bond. Chantel didn’t want to accept it. She hadn’t been hurt as badly as Julie had been, as she expected Leslie had been. But...

  Being included in that bond would help her help them...

  She’d been about to ask about including Leslie in her plan. Having the evening’s organizer on board could greatly escalate her chance of success. Most particularly considering that she was going to need to change the script. She thought she’d have to work up to the other point she wanted to bring up—getting Julie to confide in her about Leslie’s home life.

  Instead, she’d been handed the “in” she’d needed. Fate again.

  “And you know for certain that Leslie has been mistreated.”

  Julie nodded. Then she jumped up to grab a couple of throw pillows off a chair and sat back down, hugging one to her chest. Her glass of wine sat, mostly untouched, in a built-in holder in the arm of the couch. “I think you have, too,” she told Chantel. “I don’t mean to pry, but we’ve done all this talking about me and I don’t think I’m the only one who knows what we’re talking about.”

  Whatever Chantel might have said stuck in her throat.

  “My brother tends to think that I’m the only one who’s ever been raped,” she said, seeming to be able to talk more easily about her ordeal just in the ten days she’d known her. “He likes our world to revolve around me. He can’t seem to understand that sometimes his hovering just makes things harder. He makes me feel like a freak, like something’s wrong with me. I’m not the only one here who matters.” Her voice gained conviction at the end.

  Chantel had to give her something, but telling her about her stepfather’s behavior didn’t seem like it was going to cut it.

  She hadn’t suffered as Julie had. She hadn’t been raped. Not even close. She’d been neglected. The state had charged her mother with that on one occasion, between divorces. She’d been dating a lot and forgot to come home sometimes. She’d been touched. She hadn’t been raped.

  Rape was something she couldn’t lie about. Most particularly not to a woman who had been.

  “I watched my best friend die.” She heard the words before she’d made any conscious choice to say them. “We were out,” on a call. Jill and her partner had been first responders. Chantel and her partner had arrived on the scene in time to watch every detail of those last few seconds...

  “A thug on the street...” A perp Jill’s partner had approached for a drug collar. “He pushed her down on the pavement right in front of me...” After she’d lunged for his gun just as he was getting a shot off at Jill’s partner. Her partner hadn’t been harmed. “He held her down with a boot on her chest. And while she was lying there on her back, looking up at him, he shot her right between the eyes.”

  Jill’s partner shot him, too. But not in time. Chantel, who’d been running up to the scene among tourists and other pedestrians, had her gun in her hand but hadn’t been able to get a clear shot off in time, either.

  “Was he arrested?” Julie’s eyes were wide and filled with compassion.

  “No.” He was dead. Nothing to arrest. But she knew what she had to do to get Julie’s cooperation. Develop trust with your subject, she remembered from one of her investigative classes. Find a rapport. If his brother died, yours did, too. Your goal is to save lives. And in order to do that you have to get the confession. Or the information.

  “And this is kind of what I wanted to talk to you about,” she said, hating what she was doing even as she said the words. “It eats at me, Julie. Every day. That he didn’t ever have to pay for what he did. I lie awake at night, or most often wake up in the middle of it, and all I can see is Jill lying there, with his foot on her chest, trying to get up. Looking at his gun. And that bullet hitting her...”

  Tears came from somewhere, blinding Chantel to the vision that did still haunt her dreams. It would debilitate her nights, too, if not for the sitcoms she’d trained herself to concentrate on so she could sleep.

  She didn’t just have water in her eyes. It spilled down her cheeks. In rivulets.

  Something was happening to her. Something she didn’t understand. Something that scared her to death.

  She was crying like a baby, which she hadn’t done even as she’d said her final goodbyes to the only person in the world she’d truly loved.

  * * *

  COLIN WAS BACK in his hotel room, with a promise to be showered and at the board table with his clients by two that afternoon, when he got Julie’s text.

  Chantel’s asleep. She told me about her friend’s murder and was pretty upset. Her phone keeps going off. I assume it’s you texting her. I’ve got this. Let her be.

  His baby sister had his lover’s back.

  Colin crawled into bed without brushing his teeth and fell immediately to sleep.


  * * *

  JULIE WOKE CHANTEL up to get her into Colin’s bed. It felt strange, crawling beneath his king-size sheet, laying her head on his pillow. But with his sister right there, pulling the covers up to her chin, she felt completely safe.

  She thought about finding a remote to turn on the television mounted to the wall opposite his bed, too, but she was asleep before she did anything more than think.

  She didn’t wake up again until morning.

  * * *

  COMPLETELY DISORIENTED AND out of sorts, Chantel showered in Colin’s bathroom. Her bag was there, waiting for her—Julie obviously had brought it in the night before. She donned a pair of Johnson’s designer jeans and a black silk contoured blouse and slipped into black wedge sandals. Got through the painfully awkward process of putting on makeup. Fluffed the hair she’d covered with a shower cap so she didn’t have to deal with drying it and found her way to the dining room she’d eaten in once before.

  Julie was already there, sitting with a cup of coffee and a drawing pad.

  “I am so sorry,” Chantel said. “I swear to you, I didn’t have anything to drink before I came here last night...”

  Waving a hand in the air, Julie smiled at her. “Don’t,” she said. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

  “But...”

  “Forget it.” Julie stood as Chantel dropped down to the seat she’d occupied the last time she’d been there, for brunch with Colin and Julie after Saturday’s library meeting. Just three days before?

  How could three days seem like more than a lifetime?

  “Do you realize that last night was the first time in ten years that a friend leaned on me?” Julie asked. She’d stopped in the doorway between the kitchen and the breakfast room behind it.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d leaned on anyone.

  Well, yes, she could actually. It had been the night before Jill had been killed. A night she hadn’t thought about in years—maybe since her friend had died. Odd that she’d wiped it out of her memory. It hadn’t been anything earth-shattering—just her lamenting about never finding a man like Max, one who loved her in spite of her job. And about wanting kids of her own...