The Deception

by Kat Martin

  “My mom ran off with a traveling salesman when I was ten years old. Everything I know, I pretty much taught myself or learned in the marines.”

  She told herself his past was none of her business, but everything about Hawk Maddox intrigued her. “So your dad raised you?” she asked as they reached the garage and climbed into the Yukon.

  “My dad was a no-good drunk,” he said, and started the engine. “A mean one. Same answer, I pretty well raised myself.”

  He didn’t tell her not to ask any more questions, but his eyes had gone flat and hard. She understood he’d had to take care of himself, but she wondered if anyone had ever loved him.

  The way he looked, the guy was a total chic magnet, but lust wasn’t the same as love. So the question lingered, who had loved him?

  Just thinking about the L word in regard to Hawk Maddox made Kate uneasy. They were working together. At the moment they were sleeping together—friends with benefits—but that’s all it was. Though she’d never been involved with a man in a purely physical relationship, that was all it ever could be. And exactly what both of them wanted, she reminded herself.

  While her mind had been wandering, Jase had been driving toward Old East Dallas. As they’d left the apartment, she’d noticed he wore his gun on his belt beneath his T-shirt. It had to mean he was ready for some kind of threat. Though the temperature was climbing toward ninety-five degrees, Kate fought a shiver.

  Jase pulled the Yukon up to the curb in front of Reuben’s Liquor Store, a flat-roofed building with bars over the windows, a place she remembered passing the night they had gone to Mean Jack’s.

  A tall, thin man in a beat-up flat-brimmed straw hat left the store with a brown paper bag in his hand and strolled off down the sidewalk. A kid whizzed past on a bicycle, rolling along without using his handlebars. Other than the few cars passing on the street, there was no one else around.

  “Take a look around,” Jase said as they got out of the truck. “Take your time and be thorough. We might get lucky and find the murder weapon or a piece of it, a bit of fabric, could be anything. Look for any indication of blood, a rusty stain in a crack on the sidewalk, a dark smudge on the side of the building.”

  Kate nodded. “All right.”

  “If you find anything, don’t touch it. We’ll let the CSIs handle it. But I’d feel better calling the cops in if we could find some indication Eli was telling the truth.”

  They started prowling, looking for anything that might validate the story Eli had told. The rain that night would have washed a lot of the evidence away. Add to that, for days people had been walking on the sidewalk, going in and out of the liquor store, up and down the alley beside the building. If it was the original crime scene, it had already been contaminated.

  Still, there might be something.

  Kate kept her eyes on the ground, looking for the tiniest bit of something—she wasn’t sure what. Twenty minutes into their search, she spotted a dark red pattern of spray on the wall that faced the alley.

  Her mouth went dry as she moved closer. Could that really be her sister’s blood? Her stomach heaved. “Jase! Over here!” She studied the red spatter and swallowed past the bile in her throat. “I think I found something.”

  Jase jogged up beside her. His gaze followed where her hand pointed. He crouched in front of the spray. “I think you’re right. It’s the right color, and a pattern like that could easily have come from a blow to the head.”

  He took out his cell and hit one of his contact buttons. “Benson? It’s Maddox. I think we’ve found your primary crime scene on the Christina Gallagher murder.”

  She couldn’t hear what the detective said, but Jase replied, “Heard a rumor on the street and decided to check it out. I think you’re going to find blood spatter, and I think the DNA is going to match Christina Gallagher’s.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Within the hour, Detective Benson showed up with the Dallas PD crime scene unit. Jase had used the time to talk to the owner of the liquor store, Reuben Hernandez, but Reuben hadn’t heard anything unusual going on outside before he’d locked up. Hadn’t heard anything, hadn’t seen anything, didn’t know anything. Yada yada yada.

  In this case, however, Jase believed him. Whoever had followed Zepeda the night he’d forced Tina Galen to leave the rehab center would have been careful not to kill her in front of witnesses.

  Benson left the white-coveralled CSIs at work on the rusty spatter on the rough brick wall and walked over to where Jase stood.

  “It’s blood, all right,” the detective said. “The lab will test it, see if it matches the victim’s. If it does, they’ll run DNA. You say you heard a rumor on the street? That’s how you found it? You talk to someone who witnessed the murder?”

  Jase shook his head. “Someone saw her in front of the liquor store that night. I came down to check it out. Kate found the blood.” You didn’t give up your sources. Unless, of course, Eli turned out to be the killer.

  “I also heard the vic had only been working in Dallas a couple of weeks. Came to town from somewhere else. Word is, that tat on her neck is a brand. Signifies who she belongs to.”

  “You mean a pimp?”

  “More like a group she worked for. Could be organized crime. Some kind of sex trafficking ring.”

  “I told you, we would have heard something about it.”

  “You just did,” Jase said. The second time he had brought up the possibility.

  Annoyance cut grooves into the detective’s forehead. A light, humid breeze whipped strands of his thinning brown hair.

  “You said the girl hadn’t been in Dallas that long,” Benson said. “She left Rockdale two years ago. Where’s she been?”

  “Good question. We figure that out, we’re going to know a whole lot more than we do now.”

  Benson nodded. “If you come up with something else, let me know.”

  “Same goes,” Jase said, but he didn’t think the detective would go out of his way to keep Jase informed. As Benson walked away, Jase looked at Kate. She seemed transfixed, watching the crew at work in the alley, staring at the place her sister had likely been murdered.

  Feeling a shot of pity, he set a hand at her waist. “Come on, darlin’. Let’s get out of here.”

  She turned to him, the gold in her dark eyes glistening. She blinked away the moisture and nodded, let him lead her away. When they reached the Yukon, she stopped him with a hand on his chest, a simple touch that sent heat burning through him. It was crazy, the constant hunger he felt for her.

  “We aren’t very far from the rehab center,” Kate said. “Would you mind if we stopped by and checked on Holly?”

  “Not a problem. Might be good to talk to her again.” He opened the passenger door and Kate climbed into the SUV.

  It didn’t take long to reach the center, a few blocks away. Standing next to Kate, Jase knocked on the front door.

  Vera Lockwood answered, smiled when she saw them. “Kate and Jason. How nice to see you. Please come in.” She was at least five inches shorter than Kate, small and fine-boned, yet with a presence that commanded respect.

  They followed her into the parlor. “Would you like some iced tea or perhaps a cup of coffee?”

  “Iced tea sounds good,” Jase said.

  Vera motioned to one of the girls who happened to be standing in the doorway, and she disappeared down the hall.

  “We came by to check on Holly,” Kate said. “How’s she doing?”

  “She’s feeling a little tired, but that’s natural so close to her due date. Aside from that, she’s fine. But why don’t you ask her yourself? I know she’d love to see you. After you left, she talked about how good it was to meet Tina’s sister.”

  “We’d love to see her,” Kate said.

  Vera hurried out of the room and a few minutes later, Holly waddled into the p
arlor. Jase thought she looked five pounds heavier, all of it gained in one place.

  Kate leaned over and hugged her, which wasn’t that easy. “How are you?”

  “Miserable.” Holly smiled. “My whole body feels swollen and achy, but I guess that’s normal.” She’d pulled her long brown hair up in a messy ponytail. Her yellow sundress fit loosely, except where it curved around the lump in the middle of her body.

  “I’m pretty sure it is,” Kate said.

  This time Jase sat down in the chair and let the women sit together on the sofa.

  “Did Mrs. Lockwood tell you?” Holly said excitedly. “She arranged a place for me and the baby to live. A private home with an older Christian woman. Her name’s Mrs. Slovenski. Mrs. Lockwood says she’s lonely. She’s really nice and she loves babies.”

  Kate smiled. “That’s wonderful news, Holly.” One of the young women returned with a tray carrying glasses and a pitcher of iced tea, which was great in the rising heat. Glasses were filled and passed around.

  Jase tuned out as the women talked about babies and being pregnant—way too much information for him. But Kate was smiling, clearly enjoying the conversation. She’d probably want a family of her own someday.

  The thought unsettled him, though he had no idea why. Kate was a woman. Of course she’d want babies. As for him, he’d never considered having kids. His lifestyle wasn’t conducive to marriage and family. He’d made his peace with that a long time ago.

  “We’d better get going,” Kate said as the conversation wound to a close.

  “Take care, Holly.” Jase drained his iced tea and set the glass back down on the tray.

  Holly’s gaze swung in his direction, and uncertainty clouded her features. “Did you talk to Eli?”

  “We did,” Jase said. “Eli didn’t kill Tina.”

  Surprise widened her eyes. “Are you sure?”

  “Someone killed her after he left her. We think it was one of the men she was running away from when she came to Dallas. You know anything about that?”

  Holly shook her head. “Tina wouldn’t talk about her past. I figured something bad had happened to her, but then we’ve all had problems. She said she left it all behind when she came to Dallas. I think she was planning to keep moving, keep traveling till she found a place she felt safe. Then she found out about the rehab center and that gave her hope. She was planning to make a new life here in Dallas.”

  Too bad Tina never got the chance, Jase thought, hardening his resolve. They needed to find the truth of what had happened—before it happened to someone else.

  “What about Eli?” Holly asked. “Did you...um...tell him about me?”

  Kate reached down and gave Holly’s hand a squeeze. “Eli doesn’t know anything about you, and he’s never going to. You don’t have to worry.”

  Holly relaxed. “Okay.”

  They said their farewells. Holly left to continue her assigned duties, and Vera returned to the parlor. She walked them down the hall to the front door.

  “Thanks for coming by,” she said. “With the no-family restrictions, the girls get a little lonely. But we have to be careful who they interact with. They do better if they’re away from whatever sent them spiraling into drugs in the first place.”

  Kate nodded. “I’ll stop by the next chance I get. Tell Holly I can’t wait to see her baby.”

  Vera smiled and waved as they walked down the front steps and climbed into the Yukon.

  “I’ve been thinking about how I can help the center,” she said as he pulled the vehicle into the street. “They’re doing wonderful work. I’m not a counselor or anything like that, but I am a businesswoman. I think I might be able to help them raise money to keep the center running.”

  “Sounds like a great idea. From what I’ve seen, seems like you can do just about anything you set your mind to.”

  Her expression softened an instant before she looked back at the road. “The thing is, I do consulting work for major corporations, which means I have contacts with top level people. Some of them might be willing to convince their companies to act as sponsors for the home.”

  Jase flicked her a glance. “Why don’t you talk to Chase about it? Garrett Resources might be willing to make a sizable donation.”

  “I don’t know him,” Kate said. “I came to Maximum Security because of what I read about the company on the internet. Chase has a reputation as one of the best investigators in Dallas, but I’ve never met him.”

  For which Jase would be eternally grateful. “I can help with that. I need to stop by the office and check on a few things. If he’s there, I’ll introduce you.”

  Kate smiled brightly, and a ripple of heat moved through him. Since they still had work to do, he determinedly ignored it.

  “I’ll introduce you,” he repeated. “Long as you keep in mind Chase is a happily married man.”

  Kate grinned. “That’s okay. One hot cowboy is all I can handle.”

  Jase laughed and ignored a vague sense relief.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Kate had been inside the Maximum Security offices before, the first time was when she’d come to hire Chase Garrett and wound up hiring Hawk Maddox instead.

  Only a few people had been working in the office that day. Today the place was hopping. She recognized the petite dark-haired receptionist, Mindy—the name on the brass plate on her desk.

  Mindy looked up, spotted Jase, remembered Kate and smiled. “Ms. Gallagher. It’s nice to see you again.” Her gaze slid down to the hand resting possessively at Kate’s waist. “I hope Jason’s taking good care of you.”

  Kate thought of what he had done to her in bed last night, and felt the heat creeping into her face. She had a feeling the receptionist didn’t miss a thing. She inched away, putting some space between them.

  “He’s...ah...been working very hard on the case,” she said.

  “We both have,” Jase added easily. “Is Chase in?”

  “He’s with Harper in his office.”

  “Great. Buzz him, will you? Tell him I’m headed his way.”

  His hand returned to her waist as he ushered her toward an office in the corner with the door standing open. Clearly Jase didn’t intend to wait. Rapping lightly on the frame, he guided her inside without his boss’s permission.

  “Got a minute?” Jason asked.

  “Sure.” Chase Garrett rose from the leather sofa where he sat next to his wife, who also rose to greet them. She was lovely, fine featured, with a slender figure and sleek shoulder-length blond hair much lighter than her husband’s dark gold.

  The office was roomy. Like the rest of the building, it was decorated in a Western motif, with a wide oak desk and oak coffee tables in the seating area, where there was a brown leather sofa and chairs.

  “This must be Kate,” Chase said, closing the few steps between them. She was only a little surprised he knew who she was. She wondered how much Jason had told him about her.

  Kate extended a hand. “Kate Gallagher. Nice to meet you.”

  “This is my wife, Harper.”

  “Hello.” Kate shook Harper’s hand. She’d seen pictures of Chase Garrett on the internet, a wealthy blond Adonis who, before he’d married, had women all over Dallas falling at his feet. From the warm looks passing between him and his wife, he was definitely off the market.

  Garrett returned his attention to Jase. “What can I do for you?”

  “I wanted Kate to meet you. I’ve been keeping you updated on the case so you know what happened to her sister and where we are in the investigation. We ran across a place that helps young women like Kate’s sister, girls trying to turn their lives around, get off the street. The New Hope Rehabilitation Center. Kate wants to help the home raise money.”

  She managed a tentative smile. She wasn’t expecting this, hated being put on the spot and not be
ing prepared, but she wasn’t willing to waste an important opportunity.

  “It’s a small private home,” she said, “but they’re doing a wonderful job. I’d like to help them raise enough to keep the center running and maybe even expand. I was hoping you might find time in your schedule to talk to me about it.”

  Chase turned to his wife. “Harper?”

  She smiled. “I can put you in touch with the man who handles the Garrett Family Charitable Foundation. I like being involved, so I’ve been working with him on a fairly regular basis.”

  “Oh, that would be wonderful.”

  “Your timing is good,” Harper said. “Charles is working on a benefit to raise money for a number of smaller projects. If you could put a proposal together, I could certainly get you a meeting.”

  Kate beamed. “That would be great. I really appreciate it, Harper.”

  “Why don’t we get a cup of coffee or a Coke?” she suggested. “Give the guys a minute to talk.”

  “A Coke sounds great.” Excitement coursed through her. Tossing a glance at Jason, she followed Harper out of the office. She could feel his eyes on her as she walked past, as blue and hot as a flame.

  The air seemed cooler as they made their way through the office. She took a deep breath and continued behind Harper into the break room.

  “Diet or regular?” Harper asked, pulling open the door to a refrigerator at the end of the kitchen counter.

  “Diet for sure.”

  Harper grinned. “Definitely.” She pulled out two ice-cold cans and handed one to Kate. Sitting down at the table, they popped the tops on the cans and each took a long, refreshing drink.

  Like the rest of the office, the walls in the break room were adorned with antique farm tools, but in here there were also photos of the men and women who worked in the office. A picture of the Garrett brothers at the company Christmas party hung next to one of Chase standing beside a sleek twin-engine airplane.

  “Your husband flies?”