Tenderly he touched her hair. “Yes, you do. You look exhausted.”
“Thanks,” she said with an anemic laugh as she put her phone on the nightstand and her head on the pillow.
Parker switched off the light.
She turned to him this time, burying her face in his shoulder. Even if she was mad at him, she needed his warmth, his comfort. Somehow, despite everything, he made her feel good. Wanted.
She closed her eyes, hoping that warmth would chase away the nightmares.
Just as she was drifting off a question floated into her mind. An unspoken question that had been at the edge of her brain since Templeton’s call. A simple question. A question with no answer.
If Leon killed Lydia Sutherland, where did Adam Tannenburg fit in?
Chapter Fifty-Five
“You were married to this guy?”
Miranda smothered the awkward, embarrassing feelings of humiliation in her stomach and looked Templeton straight in her flat brown eyes. “Yes. A long time ago.”
“And he’s dead now?” Demarco asked.
The four of them were sitting in an interview room down the hall from the Homicide area in the Larrabee station. Demarco, Templeton, Parker, Miranda. The evidence from the Lydia Sutherland case lay before them, spread out on the table.
Miranda had spent the last half hour going over her former relationship with Leon Groth and the details of his demise. At her side Parker was quiet for the most part, knowing she wanted to handle this herself.
She took another deep breath for control and turned to the sergeant. “He looked pretty dead when I shot him.”
Demarco stared at her with a mixture of shock and admiration.
“The records concerning Mr. Groth’s death are filed with the state of New York,” Parker said. “They should be easy to find. In addition, the case was widely reported on the news at the time.”
Demarco sat back, the toothpick in his mouth still for a change. Then he shut the folder in front of him. “Then I’d say we can declare the Lydia Sutherland case closed.”
No one to hunt down. No one to prosecute. Miranda had taken care of that almost a year ago.
So that was that.
Parker left the room with Demarco to discuss whatever secrets he was hiding while Miranda helped Templeton gather up the evidence to go back into storage. This time with the closed cases.
“I’ve got to say, I’ve enjoyed working with you on this case, Steele.”
Miranda hadn’t thought she’d hear that from the woman who’d resented her coming here from Atlanta and taking over. But she’d grown to respect Templeton.
“Likewise,” she said.
“I learned a lot from you.”
“Oh? Like what?”
“Persistence. Patience. Not to go around with a chip on your shoulder.”
Templeton had learned all that from her? Kind of funny from someone who was known for her temper and used to carry a chip on her own shoulder as big as the Sears Tower.
“I guess I learned over the past year, it just doesn’t pay.”
“I hope I can remember that when I’m working with Kadera.”
Miranda laughed. “If you can keep your cool around him it would be a true accomplishment.”
Chuckling, Templeton picked up the plastic bag with the ankle bracelet Lucky had found last night. Under the harsh florescent lights the gold still had a dull glitter despite its age and tarnish.
“You want it?” she said.
Miranda frowned. “What do you mean? It’s still evidence.”
Templeton lifted a bulky shoulder. “Of what? Adam Tannenburg didn’t kill Lydia Sutherland.”
And his mother’s death in that fire had probably been an unfortunate accident, as the fire marshall’s report had stated.
But what would she want with an old ankle bracelet that had belonged to someone her ex-husband had killed? Miranda wasn’t sure, but something about the way the light caught those initials intrigued her.
A.T.
She held out her hand. “Sure. I’ll take it.”
And Templeton opened the bag and emptied it into her palm.
###
She and Templeton drove downtown in her SUV to see Dawn Sutherland at her art gallery. At first the woman was shocked at the news that her sister had been killed by a policeman. She cried a little and hugged both Miranda and Templeton, thanking them over and over for not letting her sister’s case die with her.
By the time they left the gallery Miranda saw acceptance taking hold of the woman. At last Dawn Sutherland had closure. At that thought a feeling of profound satisfaction burrowed deep into Miranda’s heart.
This case had definitely been worth the trouble.
She met Parker back at the station, said goodbye to Demarco and Templeton. Their bags were already packed, so they took off for the airport in the rental. The car had changed, Miranda noticed for the second time that morning.
Parker must have turned in the Audi when he went to Florida.
She wasn’t going to bring that up yet. But when they got home, she’d have it out with him.
Then she remembered tomorrow was their anniversary.
Chapter Fifty-Six
It was late afternoon.
They were back in Atlanta, back in the master bedroom of the Parker mansion unpacking. Miranda dumped her dirty clothes into their fancy brass hamper for the staff to pick up in the morning. There were perks to being married to Parker.
But her mind wasn’t on perks. It was back in Chicago on the Sutherland case. Specifically on Adam Tannenburg. What had happened to him? Why had he changed his identity and run away?
She’d probably never know.
And then her mind went to those interviews of Parker’s.
Here they were. Home. No case to think about. No loose ends to tidy up. It was too late to go into the office. Everyone would be leaving for the weekend. Tomorrow was Saturday and the party Fanuzzi was throwing for them. She realized she still hadn’t gotten Parker a gift.
She thought about those text messages on her old cell phone. The ones she’d been hiding from him. Confessing them would make a nice present. And if she came clean about them, maybe he’d come clean about those interviews.
Parker was at their walk-in closet, getting the suits he’d worn in Chicago ready for the dry cleaners. Looking handsome and unruffled as ever he was still in the crisp white shirt and charcoal dress slacks he’d worn on the plane. She’d changed into jeans and a red tank top for travel and was still in them as well.
Running her hand along the dresser she cleared her throat.
He turned to her, a dark expressive brow raised. “What is it?”
“I have something to tell you.”
His gray eyes were sharp, piercing. “I have something to tell you, as well.”
Her heart jumped. Was he going to tell her about those interviews in Chicago? He was going to tell her the truth?
“You first,” she prompted.
“Tomorrow is our anniversary party.”
“Yeah. I know.” She forced out a strained little laugh. “Did you think I’d forget?”
He didn’t reply. Instead he stepped over to her and took her hand. “I thought we could take some time off after the party. Perhaps go back to the North Georgia Mountains for a few weeks.”
That’s what he had to say? They’d just been to the mountains before this case. She pulled out of his grip and moved back to her open suitcase on the bed.
She picked up a T-shirt and began to fold it. “Silly me,” she blurted out. “I thought you might confess to me where you went in Chicago on those ‘interviews’.”
Parker remained silent.
“Guess it was too much to ask.”
She looked up and saw his eyes flare, the muscle in his jaw clench. It only made her temper blaze.
She struggled with the shirt. It wouldn’t behave.
Still fighting with it she turned to him. “I know Demarco didn’t call us
in on the Sutherland case. You maneuvered us in there. I just don’t know why.”
He stared at her a long moment, his chest heaving. At last he spoke in a low, dark tone that was a little frightening. “Do you really want to know what I was doing in Chicago?”
She dropped the T-shirt and put her hand on her hip. “Yeah, I really want to know.”
His gaze was the long gunmetal stare he gave criminals. As if he were weighing whether she could handle what he had to say.
“You’re right, Miranda,” he said at last. “I wasn’t interviewing potential employees for the Agency. I was interviewing convicted rapists. I was looking for Mackenzie’s father.”
“What?” Miranda sank down on the bed more stunned than if he had hauled off and cold cocked her.
For a moment she couldn’t breathe.
Her head spun with his words. Parker had been looking for Mackenzie’s father? For the man who had raped her fifteen years ago?
She stared at him across the room. She didn’t know him anymore. “How could you do that, Parker? How could you do something that would bring that bastard back into my life? Into our lives?”
He turned, his face as hard and cold as an iceberg. He reached into his pants pocket, pulled something out, tossed it on the bed beside her.
“He seems to already be in your life.”
She stared down at what lay on the mattress and the room began to shift.
She got up and stumbled back and away from it as if it were a snake. Her chest ached with the pounding in it. The pain matched the pounding in her head. Again she couldn’t catch her breath.
Her cell phone.
Parker had her old cell phone. He’d been carrying it around in his pocket. She’d been right. He knew about the text messages.
“How long have you had that?” she gasped at him.
“Since we came back from Brazil. I found it on Dave Becker’s desk in the lab.”
Oh, my God. She put her hand to her head. “Did Becker—?”
“Don’t blame him,” Parker growled. “I forced him to tell me what he was doing with it.”
She couldn’t speak. Wouldn’t know what to say if she could. Her work buddy, the man she’d risked her life for a few weeks ago had broken his promise and told Parker her secret? And now Parker was searching for the originator of those texts behind her back? And he thought—?
She put a hand to her head, trying to keep the room from turning completely upside down. “Wait. You think the sonofabitch who attacked me sent me those texts?”
“I haven’t determined that yet.” His voice was as cold as ice.
“What have you determined?”
“All we know is that the first call originated from Chicago.”
Chicago? That’s why they’d gone to Chicago. “And you think…because of that…the caller was the man who…the man who’s Mackenzie’s father?”
He slipped his hands in his pockets as casually as if he were watching a ball game. “It’s a possibility I wanted to eliminate.”
“A possibility? A possibility?” He was talking as if the man who raped her was a number on a spreadsheet. “Don’t do this, Parker. Don’t shake that cockroach out from wherever he’s hiding.” She picked up the cell phone and shook it at him. “This caller was just some crank. Some media whore, some guy somewhere who wants attention. Or some woman. Maybe a kid.”
“You don’t know that.”
“You don’t know it isn’t.”
“I can’t take that chance. Besides, Mackenzie wants to find her father. And she will sooner or later. It’s best we do it first.”
“We? I don’t remember being consulted.” She tossed the phone back at him.
He took a hand out of his pocket and caught it. His jaw clenched, he turned away.
She couldn’t stand this. Why had he kept all this from her? “We had a deal,” she said loudly. “We made a promise to each other in London. No more secrets. Don’t you remember?”
His back to her he lifted his face to the ceiling and laughed. A deep, dark dangerous laugh. Then he spun around and his eyes glowed with that same danger.
“You dare to ask if I remember that promise? You were the one who broke it first.” He held up the phone.
Okay, he was right. She should have told him about those texts long before now. Her conscience had bothered her ever since she got the first message.
But she had a good reason not to say anything. “I didn’t want to worry you. You worry about me enough.”
“I’d say I don’t worry about you enough.”
She waved her hand at him. “See? That’s just what I mean. I know how you get.”
“And I know how you get. That’s why—” He stopped and leaned against the dresser as if wrestling with himself.
Parker forced air into his lungs, forced himself to calm down. He didn’t want to fight. He didn’t want to argue with Miranda like this, but she made him so angry. She could make him lose control over his senses faster than any woman he knew. But he had to protect her. This life they’d been leading, this profession was too dangerous for her, too damaging to her psyche.
He ran a hand over his face. “I didn’t want it to be like this.”
Miranda felt a cold shiver whisper down her spine. “Want what to be like this?
“I want to start a new life, Miranda.”
Heart stopped she stared at him. “What sort of a life?”
“An easier life. A slower-paced life.”
She sank down on the end of the bed again, her stomach churning. “What do you mean?”
He came over, shoved her suitcase aside and sat down beside her. “I mean I want to retire from the Agency and live out the rest of my days with you in peace.”
Her throat tightened. “What? What about Parker and Steele Consulting?”
He took her hand, turned it over, began idly tracing the lines of her palm with his finger. “I’m shutting it down.”
She pulled her hand away. “Shutting it down? Shutting down Parker and Steele Consulting?”
His handsome face was creased with lines she hadn’t noticed before. There was more gray scattered in his sexy salt-and-pepper hair. His eyes were sharp but there was a weariness in them.
“It’s over, Miranda,” he said softly. “We can’t keep going on like this. One of us will end up dead.”
Dead? They weren’t dead. They were alive and well. They’d made it through so much.
“And so you want to shut down Parker and Steele Consulting.” She repeated it just to make sure she wasn’t hearing things.
“Yes,” he said with the firmness of a bank president turning down a loan.
She put her hands to her face. This couldn’t be true. Parker couldn’t mean what he was saying. But deep down she knew it was exactly what he meant. He’d been worried about her ever since they started this venture. Worried some psychopath would kill her. Worried he’d lose her the way he’d lost his first wife, Sylvia. The way he’d lost his first love, Laura.
They could fix anything. Any problem between them. The secrets they’d kept. The things they’d done behind each other’s back.
But they couldn’t fix this.
And yet she had to try. “Maybe you just need a rest. We’ll take that long vacation you were talking about. It’ll be my anniversary gift to you.” She forced out a desperate laugh. “I didn’t get you anything yet.”
He smiled sadly and shook his head. “It wouldn’t be enough. That isn’t the problem.”
No, the problem was that he was too anxious about her and her well being. He didn’t believe she could take care of herself.
She tried again. “Parker, you were the one who brought me into the Agency.”
“Yes, I did.”
“You said I had potential.”
He obliged her a nod. “You have extraordinary talents as an investigator.”
“And so do you. You’re one of the best in the business. You can’t walk away from it.”
His face was granite. “I can and I will. Everything comes to an end, Miranda.”
That was true. She could feel it all slipping away from her right now. She felt as if the floor beneath her were sinking away under her feet like a lost ship. She was alone, afloat on the ocean, the waves about to take her under.
She wiped her hair away from her face. How could he want to retire? He was only forty-five. Had the cases they’d been on taken that much of a toll on him? She guessed so. That and his anxiety over her safety.
She looked around the room, taking in its familiar features. The gray gauze curtains against the tall arched windows, the designer blue walls, the cherry-and-plum furniture. The huge bed with its silky white comforter where they first made love. The sitting arrangement in the corner where she first told Parker about Leon and the nightmare that had happened to her fifteen years ago.
She felt dizzy, sick. This couldn’t be happening.
“Parker,” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper. “You know this work is my destiny.”
“You can’t fulfill your destiny if you’re not alive, Miranda.”
And if she didn’t fulfill it, she might as well be dead. Why didn’t he understand that?
She shook her head back and forth. Sheer disbelief whirling in her brain. “I don’t know you anymore.”
“Miranda—”
She held up a hand. “Parker, I love you. You know that. I’ve never loved any man the way I love you. No man has ever done as much for me as you have. But I—” Her voice broke and the tears choked her. “I can’t live without my work.”
He reached for her hand again. “You’d just have to get used to the idea. We have each other.”
“This doesn’t make sense. It was you who gave me this work. You gave me this opportunity, gave me what I live for.”
“And now it’s time to simply live.”
He was so impossibly stubborn. Why wasn’t he hearing her? “I can’t do that, Parker. I just can’t.”
He was silent. Stolid.
She wouldn’t change his mind no matter what she said. She saw that now.
She dropped his hand and got to her feet. Her gaze wandered to her open suitcase. “Guess I shouldn’t have unpacked.”
Trial by Fire (A Miranda and Parker Mystery Book 6) Page 23
