Guilty as Sin

by Jami Alden

  CJ was about to lead the first team out when the front door opened.

  “I don’t think she’ll want to see you.”

  The hardness in CJ’s voice cut through the din of the crowd like a knife, stealing Kate’s attention away from the deputy who was giving her an overview of the search areas they would be focusing on today.

  At first she didn’t recognize the slight, dark-haired woman who was pushing her way through the crowd toward her despite CJ’s attempts to stay her.

  Her hair was dark, almost black, and cut in short, pixie layers that framed one of the most beautiful faces Kate had ever seen. Dark eyebrows arched over large, thickly lashed gray eyes. Her nose was small and slightly tilted at the tip, giving her an almost elfish look. Her full lips were pressed together, her look uncertain.

  “Erin,” Kate said, her stomach flipping over as she matched this lovely young woman with the thirteen-year-old girl who’d tromped down the beach in scraggly cutoffs and a stretched-out tank top selling cookies to whoever would buy them. “It’s been a long time,” she murmured for lack of anything else. What did one say to the niece of the man who’d murdered her brother?

  “Erin, come on, why do you have to show up where you know you’re not wanted?” CJ said.

  Hurt, raw and deep, flashed in Erin’s eyes at CJ’s cutting voice. She shot CJ a snide look. “Why do you always have to push your way into my business?” she shot back.

  The hurt gone in an instant, and Kate was sure she was the only one who saw it. Sympathy momentarily overrode her bad memories of Erin’s family. Kate hadn’t known Erin well, but she remembered a scrappy, smart girl who was doing what she could to outplay the awful hand she’d been dealt by being born into the notorious Flannery family.

  Her only involvement with Michael’s death was being unfortunate enough to be related to the man who’d killed him. “Who says she’s not wanted?” Kate said.

  Erin flashed her a quick, grateful smile.

  “I brought some pastries and coffee from the restaurant,” Erin said, drawing Kate’s attention to the bags she held in each hand. “It’s too busy right now for me to help with the search effort, but at least I can offer up free food.”

  “Thanks,” Kate said with a smile, clearing a space on the table for Erin to put out the food. Kate hadn’t woken up with much of an appetite, but when Erin opened the first box and the scent of fresh-baked croissants wafted through the room, she couldn’t resist.

  Her eyes closed in ecstasy as she bit into a still-warm chocolate croissant. “This is amazing, Erin.”

  Erin’s smile brightened. “Thanks. The croissants are kind of my specialty.”

  “You make all of this?” Kate asked, impressed at the variety of pastries packed into the four pink boxes Erin had brought.

  “Yep, every day, from scratch, ever since I took over for Mary.”

  “I didn’t know you were running the cafe.”

  “Mary had me take over a couple years ago,” Erin replied with a faintly challenging air. “When she died she left me the deed to the building as well.”

  “Based on the line you had out the door yesterday at lunchtime, I’d say Mary made the right choice.”

  The search volunteers were similarly enthusiastic about the free food and coffee, crowding around the table and good-naturedly elbowing each other aside to get to their favorites as they sang Erin’s praises.

  Only CJ, she noticed, hadn’t eaten a bite. “You’re not having any?”

  “I’m not hungry,” he said impatiently.

  Erin was restocking the napkin supply, but Kate saw her shoulders stiffen. Something was going on between those two.

  “I need to get back,” Erin said. She turned to CJ and held out a small box emblazoned with the restaurant’s name.

  “What’s this?” CJ took the small white box gingerly, as though it might contain a rattlesnake.

  “It’s for Travis. Raspberry cream cheese croissant. It’s his favorite.”

  CJ grunted something that could have passed for thanks.

  Erin stared at him hard for a beat, then turned back to Kate. “I’ll bring sandwiches by this afternoon.”

  “That won’t be—” CJ began.

  “That’s extremely generous of you,” Kate replied, and shot CJ a hard look.

  Erin shrugged. “It’s the least I can do,” she said, and held out her hand tentatively, as though she was afraid Kate would refuse it.

  Kate clasped it in both hands. “Thank you.”

  Erin smiled, though her eyes were suspiciously damp, and Kate felt her own eyes burn with emotion.

  After Erin left, Kate turned on CJ. “What was that all about?”

  “What?”

  “You were really rude to her.”

  He stiffened. “I’m sorry if you saw it that way. I was just looking out for you.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “You really want her dropping by, hanging out, reminding you of what happened?”

  Her shoulders tightened with irritation. She didn’t know why she felt so compelled to defend a woman she barely knew and who came from the same family tree as the man who had murdered her brother. Maybe it was because she recognized something in Erin’s stormy gray eyes: a deep sadness mixed with guilt that wasn’t hers to bear but was no less keenly felt. A wariness that came from years of being judged and having people you love push you away.

  “The moment I pulled into town, those memories have been front and center,” Kate said ruefully. “I appreciate the concern, but it’s going to take a lot more than Erin Flannery’s offer of muffins to push me over the edge.”

  CJ shrugged, having the grace to look a little ashamed. “Sorry.”

  “I’m not the one you should apologize to.”

  CJ gave a noncommittal grunt.

  “It’s not her fault she was born into the trashiest family in the county. Looks like she’s managed to turn her life around in spite of that. Maybe you could give her a little credit.”

  “I do,” he said defensively. “But a lot of people in this town have long memories and strong opinions. And I hate to see her get hurt.”

  Kate shook her head and gave him a quizzical smile. “Seems like you’d accomplish that better by being a little nicer to her.”

  “Tried that once,” CJ said curtly, his mouth pulling into a grimace. There was a flash of something on his face—a combination of guilt and regret that told Kate something must have happened between the town’s golden boy and the feisty daughter of the family responsible for most of the crime in a fifty-mile radius. Whatever it was, CJ didn’t seem inclined to elaborate, though there was no mistaking the fact that the memory caused him obvious distress.

  Without thinking, Kate reached out and pulled him into a quick hug. “I know you’re a nice guy, CJ. Sometimes people who haven’t had a lot of kindness in their lives have a hard time accepting it.”

  Chapter 8

  Tommy stood in the doorway of the volunteer headquarters feeling his jaw clench as he looked over the heads of the volunteers milling around and saw Kate and CJ tucked into a cozy corner, their heads close together as they spoke, acting like they were the only two people in the room.

  Unbidden, his stomach burned with the unfamiliar, unwelcome sensation that had overtaken him yesterday when she’d left his house with CJ. The same feeling that had eaten at him every time she smiled and spoke easily with CJ. A sharp contrast to how she eyed Tommy like a nervous cat circling a junkyard dog.

  Christ, he was jealous, uneasy in a way he hadn’t been since he was a goddamn clueless teenager, working up the nerve to talk to a girl. Working up the nerve to make a move on Kate when she could have her pick from a crew of good-looking guys her age who were richer, more polished, and way more likely to be approved by daddy dearest than he was.

  Part of him—a cowardly, yellow-bellied part of himself he didn’t even realize was in his makeup—wanted to back out the door. He was a fucking idiot for coming here in t
he first place. Every bit of information he’d discovered could have been easily given over the phone or, hell, even email. Would have been better if he’d done that if he wanted to keep it safe from prying eyes and curious ears.

  But no, for some stupid reason this morning he’d woken tortured by images from his sex-soaked dreams—starring Kate, natch—and an undeniable compulsion to see her in the flesh.

  And damned if she didn’t look good, he thought with no small amount of irritation. Not that she was trying that hard, wearing jeans and a green-and-blue plaid shirt, her red-kissed blond hair pulled into a low ponytail that fell midway down her back. Still, Tommy felt his gaze drawn to her bare neck, the pale skin of her throat and the hint of collarbone revealed by her collar.

  “Excuse me,” a male voice said, jostling into the backpack slung over Tommy’s shoulder as he passed and jerking him out of his daze. Christ on a stick, this was not the time to indulge in memories of how sweet and smooth the skin of Kate’s throat had been against his lips.

  As his gaze locked on the flyer clasped in one of the volunteer’s hands, he fixed his mind on the image of Tricia Fuller and reminded himself that he had an important reason to be here, one that didn’t involve alternately ogling Kate Beckett and indulging in adolescent angst because she seemed to enjoy the handsome sheriff’s company a bit too much for his liking.

  He wove through the crowd, nodding in greeting to the volunteers, most of whom he knew. As he got closer to Kate, he picked up on the snippets of their conversation.

  “Nice, huh?” CJ was saying. “That’s exactly how guys like to be described.”

  “What’s wrong with nice?” Kate asked.

  CJ laughed. “Nice is the kiss of death for a guy. It’s like saying a girl has a nice personality.”

  Despite his resolve to be all business, Tommy felt his hackles raise and his fists clench as Kate gave CJ a playful swat. “Based on what I’ve seen out there,” she said, “you could do a whole lot worse than nice.”

  “You two look cozy,” Tommy said, regretting the words and his peevish tone the instant they left his mouth.

  Kate looked up, her smile dissolving as she met Tommy’s hard stare. “I wasn’t expecting you this morning.”

  “I managed to ID Moto98 based on the IP address—”

  “You could have called me. No need to come all the way down here,” CJ said, one dark eyebrow cocked as though he knew exactly why Tommy had gone to the trouble.

  “There were other developments I wanted to go over in person,” Tommy said, schooling his expression into an impassive mask.

  CJ made a quick announcement that his deputies would lead the first two search teams out as scheduled, while his team would be delayed.

  The three went to the small office in the back of the space, ignoring the curious stares and whispers from the volunteers.

  “So?” CJ said, his arms folded across his chest, his feet spread apart.

  The office didn’t have any furniture except for an empty bookcase in the corner, so Tommy pulled his laptop out of his backpack and set it on top.

  “I traced the IP address on the account back to a Roger Frankel of Grand Junction, Colorado.”

  “I’ll call the local authorities and see if they can find him for questioning.”

  Tommy shook his head. “Roger Frankel is seventy-eight years old and in a wheelchair.”

  “That doesn’t mean he can’t be making inappropriate contact with underage girls online,” Kate pointed out.

  “But it does make him an unlikely candidate to physically carry off a healthy, able-bodied girl like Tricia,” Tommy said. “Besides, Frankel has no record or arrests for sexual misconduct. And then there’s the fact that his house was robbed over six months ago and the computer was among the items stolen.”

  “You could have told us that to start,” Kate said. “How did you get all this anyway?”

  Tommy gave her a pointed look.

  “Right, you have your ways,” she said, exasperated. “I hope we never need to rely on any of this in court, because none of it will ever stand.”

  “You can have a trial or you can have Tricia back safe.”

  Kate recoiled from his harsh tone, and Tommy tried to ignore the pinching feeling in his chest. It wasn’t his job to make her feel good. “But here’s the really interesting bit I uncovered,” Tommy added, pulling a map up onto the screen. “When I look at the activity log on the wireless network at Jackson’s rental house, look what comes up.”

  “Holy shit, that’s the same IP address,” CJ breathed. Tommy didn’t say anything, letting them read through the logs so they could reach the same conclusion he did. “He was using their network.”

  “How close would he have to be to pick up the signal?” Kate asked.

  “The network there has a range of about three hundred feet,” Tommy said.

  Kate shivered beside him, and he could feel it ripple through every nerve. “He was so close, and no one ever saw anything.”

  “There’s that pretty densely wooded area close to the house. Easy enough to hide, especially when he was there mostly after dark,” CJ pointed out.

  “He was lurking on their network for two days before he made any contact,” Kate said. “Was he monitoring her, figuring out how she spent her time online? Is that possible?”

  Tommy nodded. “It would take a sophisticated user, but it’s definitely possible.”

  “So he stalks her online, befriends her, and encourages her to go out so he can be sure she’ll be alone and vulnerable,” Kate said, her voice tight with emotion.

  “It’s a good bet he was watching her in person too,” Tommy said.

  Kate nodded. “She might have even seen him, Brooke and Jackson too, and not even known it.”

  “What else did you find out about Frankel?” CJ asked. “Any adult children who fit the profile who would have access to his computer?”

  Tommy shook his head. “No children, no relatives that came up on the first search, but his insurance records show payments to a home healthcare service. I was planning to pull up records on anyone who visited his house in the past year.”

  CJ nodded. “That would be great, and in the meantime, I’ll call the locals down there and make sure we get their cooperation in case we need to go and question anyone.”

  Kate shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know if it’s such a great idea for you to be hacking into the files of a private corporation—”

  “It is if it leads us to whoever took Tricia,” Tommy snapped.

  “If it somehow gets out to the press that we’re using illegal methods to get our information, it could ruin the case, not to mention my reputation and the image of St. Anthony’s—”

  “I don’t see how it will get out to the press unless one of us leaks it,” Tommy snapped. “And from what I’ve seen, you did a damn good job of trashing your reputation long before I ever came back on the scene.”

  Kate’s face went white, and the look of devastation there hit him like a punch in the gut.

  “Shit,” he said, “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for—”

  Kate held her hand up. “No, you’re right. As long as I can trust you two to keep this quiet we’ll be fine.” She looked at her watch and swore softly. “Speaking of the press, I’m scheduled to give a statement in twenty minutes and I need to prep.”

  “We can meet back at my place,” Tommy said.

  Kate shook her head. “John is expecting me at his place for lunch.”

  Tommy couldn’t have stifled his snort of disdain if there had been a gun to his head.

  “What’s your problem with him?” Kate snapped. Tommy was happy to see the color in her cheeks, the fight back in her after his cheap shot.

  “He’s an entitled, self-important prick,” Tommy said, “who thinks his shit doesn’t stink.”

  “He’s being very generous with the reward money.”

  “Money he inherited from Daddy,” Tommy muttered.

 
“The business has been very successful since he took over, even in a recession. He must be doing something right,” Kate snapped back.

  Tommy shrugged. “He always acted like the locals were beneath him, and that hasn’t changed a bit no matter how he thinks he’s going to come back and help the little people.”

  “That’s not true—”

  “It is kind of true,” CJ said. “Don’t get me wrong”—he backpedaled as Kate’s eyes narrowed—“I’m grateful for what he’s done for the town and the help he’s providing, but you have to admit he’s kind of a tool.”

  Kate rolled her eyes. “You can think whatever you want of him, but I will always remember him as one of the few people who reached out to me at a time when most of the people I cared about wouldn’t even look at me, much less speak to me.”

  Her barb hit its mark, catching Tommy square in the chest even as he bit back the urge to correct her. Jesus, it shouldn’t hurt so much. He hadn’t let it hurt in years. She was just a kid, he’d told himself. They both were. She barely had any more control over the situation than he had.

  Yeah, he could tell himself that all he wanted, but that didn’t keep the memory of the gut-twisting pain he’d felt all those years ago from trying to claw back to the surface. The memory of how he had reached out. And it had been Kate who had left him twisting in the wind after he’d opened up a vein and poured it onto a page, then stood by silently while her father did his damnedest to destroy his future.

  She didn’t give a crap what Tommy Ibarra thought of her. No matter how many times Kate repeated it to herself, she couldn’t shake the sting of his words, the bone-deep hurt at the way he’d lashed out, striking her in what he knew to be her weakest point.

  Of course his anger was to be expected. But it was still hard to reconcile the good-natured, smiling Tommy of her memories with the cold-hearted stranger who cared nothing for her and her feelings.

  As he’d told her so bluntly, he wasn’t the same person he’d been. None of them was, and she’d do well to watch her back. Kate’s anger at Tommy disappeared as she pulled up in front of John’s lake house, overpowered by the wave of nostalgia that washed over her at the sight, so keen it stopped her breath in her chest.