Reluctant Suspicion

by Finn, Scarlett

  ‘I promise,’ she whispered.

  ‘Thank you. You need to get some sleep.’

  ‘I have work to do tomorrow. I have an assignment due,’ she said.

  ‘An assignment?’

  ‘I am doing an online course. I’ll have my degree in business by the time I’m done.’

  ‘Really?’ he said, pulling back some.

  She nodded. ‘I enjoy it, and it gives me options for the future.’

  ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘I am impressed. What are you working on just now?’

  ‘Economics,’ she said, with a smile touching her lips. ‘It’s tough work.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Blake said.

  Though she didn’t voice it, her smirk revealed the pride that she had in her work. As much as Blake knew most of these facts about her already, it was uplifting to have her share them with him herself.

  The sparkle in her eye that transfixed him was highlighted by the blue and white lights around them, and it made him ache for her all the more.

  ‘The music has stopped,’ she said.

  He hadn’t even noticed, but she was right. ‘I was wondering when you would realise that,’ he said, and she laughed into his chest. ‘Come on, it’s getting late. You should get some sleep.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I told you I would stand guard if you needed me to.’

  ‘You don’t have to do that,’ she said. ‘You can crash here… if you want.’

  One side of his mouth tipped up. ‘Thought you’d never ask.’

  Molly switched off the lights and the music, then returned to him. They left this space hand in hand, and she closed the door behind them. Blake leaned over her and tried to turn the key, but it stuck. She laughed and threw her weight behind the door, but still the key didn’t budge. With shared amusement they both threw their weight at the door and the lock clicked into place. Molly was ready to transfer the file cabinet to its original position, but he put his hand to her stomach and urged her away so that he could shift the furniture back into place himself.

  ‘You’re such a show off,’ she said, as he brushed his hands together.

  He shrugged and swaggered toward her. ‘Playing the brute is all I know.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ she said with a sway of her head. When he linked their fingers again, she relaxed into his torso. ‘About tonight…’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘We shouldn’t tell Vanessa or the others what happened here tonight.’

  ‘Downstairs or up here?’ he asked, stroking her hair from her face.

  ‘Either,’ she said. ‘But I meant downstairs. I don’t want to scare her, and she’ll be angry that we let them go.’

  ‘With good reason. It could be her alone in here the next time.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ Molly sighed, and dropped her attention.

  Blake slid his finger under her chin to bring her gaze back up to his. ‘People like that always get their comeuppance. They’ll get what is coming to them.’

  ‘No, they don’t,’ she said. ‘In an ideal world they would, but not in this one. No one was ever prosecuted for my brother’s death… What does that say to people? That he was the one responsible?’

  ‘No,’ Blake said. ‘It was a tragic accident.’

  ‘He was in our lane, there was nothing Cal could do… nothing. There was alcohol in his system… not enough to exceed the limit, but… he got no punishment for causing my brother’s death.’

  ‘Was anyone in the other car injured?’

  ‘Nothing critical,’ Molly said. ‘The same as the rest of us.’

  ‘How many of you were in the car?’

  ‘Five in ours,’ she said. ‘There were two in the other car.’

  ‘Had your brother been drinking?’

  She shook her head. ‘It wasn’t his fault.’

  ‘I’m sorry that your brother lost his life. It was a terrible accident; you were all in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have happened to anyone.’

  Removing herself from him physically created a gulf between them that erased the ease that had existed between them tonight. ‘You sound like them,’ she muttered. ‘It was no accident.’

  ‘Sugar—‘

  ‘Stop,’ she said. ‘Don’t say anything else about it. You should go home.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t want to be alone,’ he said.

  ‘It’s nearly daylight,’ she said, shutting down on him. ‘I’ll live.’

  ‘I’ll get my boots from your bedroom.’

  She turned her back on him to exit, which left him no option except to leave himself. Molly entered the bathroom, and the sound of the lock sliding into place was very final.

  Closing his eyes and clenching his fists, Blake swore at himself as he marched back to her bedroom. Sitting on the bed, he groped beneath it to find the boots he’d nudged underneath out of the way. On finding one, he pulled it out, but when he glanced down to put his foot in it his expression immediately hardened. There, looped just around the front of his boot, was a scarf. The water in the bathroom was still running, meaning he had time to investigate.

  Dropping to his hands and knees, he peeked under the bed. A shallow wicker trunk lay next to his other boot. Hanging out of the trunk was another scarf, and when he slid his fingers across it, his eyes slipped shut. The texture of silk was unmistakable, there was no doubting it.

  The sound of the water still drifted from the other room, so he tugged the trunk out from under the bed. The buckle fastener was hanging loose, causing him no resistance. With a silent prayer of hope, he flung open the top and the sight that struck him caused a deep plunging agony to twist in his chest. Letting his hands fall into the basket, he fingered the dozens of streams of fabric. It was full of silk scarves.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘It’s not looking good for the landlady now, is it?’ Jason said, running the scarf that Blake had secreted out of Ashton’s though his fingers.

  Blake was in his office with his partner. Most of the morning had been taken up with processing Molly’s assailants from last night. The trouble was, the DA was already looking for Molly’s statement, which would be needed to guarantee the conviction. But that was a problem for another time. He could give the DA the run around, and Williams would take the heat on that for a while.

  With his elbows on the arms of his chair, Blake steepled his fingers over his mouth and swung his seat from side to side slowly. ‘I thought she was innocent. I was starting to feel guilty about lying to her, about us suspecting her at all.’

  ‘Our pool has been getting smaller every day,’ Jason said. ‘I’ve discounted two more possible suspects. Neither had solitary contact with the victims and best I can establish, they both had alibis for the nights of the murders.’

  ‘It doesn’t fit,’ Blake said from behind his fingers. ‘Ashton doesn’t seem like the type.’

  ‘They never do,’ Jason said, tossing the scarf to the desk. ‘We’ll get it processed and see what the lab comes back with.’

  ‘I can’t see it. I can’t see her being capable of it.’

  ‘Three victims,’ Jason said, and dropped his elbows to his desk. ‘Andrew Forsyth, Patrick Carmichael and Steven North.’ He held up fingers for each of them. ‘We know Ashton was in Steven and Patrick’s homes. She has no alibi for the nights of the murders. The murders stopped eleven days ago, right when she had to start working in the bar fulltime. If we get a forensic hit with the scarf or she doesn’t have an alibi for the next murder, we have to bring her in.’

  ‘It’s flimsy,’ Blake said. ‘It would be a big risk.’

  ‘It’s not that much of a leap,’ Jason said. ‘She hates the police. She let the men that attacked her in her bar go free. She isolates herself from people, preventing anyone from getting too close. It would explain why she got so turned on after the attack last night.’

  ‘She wasn’t turned on,’ Blake said, and his hands dropped to his lap. ‘She was scared. She react
ed the way any rational, sane woman would. She didn’t want to be alone, she wanted to feel protected.’

  ‘And you stepped up to the plate,’ Jason said. ‘This has worked out majorly to our advantage, you can’t deny that. It was an amazing stroke of luck that you went back there last night. We might have had two more victims on our hands.’

  ‘She didn’t know I was there,’ he said. ‘If she had the ability to kill them, she would have done it before I showed myself. You weren’t there, Jase. Her face was white as a sheet and she was shaking like a leaf when I pulled that guy from her.’

  ‘She’s a good actress,’ Jason said. ‘Don’t start feeling sorry for her, Carson. You let your guard down with this one and you could end up dead.’

  Blake shook his head. ‘I won’t. I wouldn’t. But you have to remember that there is every chance in the world that she’s innocent. We can’t prove anything otherwise.’

  ‘Not yet,’ Jason said. ‘If she’s innocent then I am truly sorry, really I am. She should never have had to put up with lowlifes like that last night. But you did your duty, she’s fine, she’s safe.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Making a move on her last night was out of the question as far as he was concerned. The shock came when Molly put the moves on him. In a typical scenario, if he’d been alone with a woman who wasn’t a suspect, he wouldn’t have taken advantage. If Molly was Choker then last night wasn’t a typical scenario for her either, and it was unlikely that she would have made a homicidal move on him. Maybe Keane was right and the danger had turned her on. She didn’t kill men in her own home, but that didn’t mean she didn’t sleep with them for recreation. Still, Blake wasn’t comfortable jumping to conclusions just yet, he wanted to investigate further.

  ‘I want to see the file on her brother’s accident,’ Blake said.

  ‘Why? No charges were brought on anyone. It’s mentioned in Ashton’s file, didn’t you see it?’

  ‘I did,’ Blake said. ‘But I didn’t give it that much notice. It was a sentence and a half in her file, there for the sake of research into her history.’

  ‘What is it now?’

  ‘She doesn’t think it was an accident.’

  Jason shook his head. ‘Don’t do that. Don’t go on a crusade for her.’

  ‘They would never have given it any attention. Traffic cops are useless for seeing anything other than the wreck.’

  ‘It was investigated at the time,’ Jason said. ‘You’re really telling me that you want to solve a fourteen-year-old crime that no one else knew was a crime at the time?’

  ‘It can’t hurt to look,’ Blake said with a shrug of his shoulders, then turned his attention to his computer.

  ‘Blake,’ Jason said, drawing Blake’s gaze.

  Blake frowned at his partner, who stared down at the pen he slid between his fingers. ‘She’s beautiful… I’m sure she is smart and funny, I know she is sexy as hell, but—‘

  ‘But?’ Blake growled.

  ‘You can’t fall for this girl. Innocent or guilty, Williams would have your balls.’

  ‘I’m not falling for anyone. You’re right, all the evidence is pointing at her. Investigating the accident could give us more answers.’

  ‘It’ll take us a day or so to get the file.’ The way that Jason waggled a pen between his fore and middle fingers told Blake that his partner had something more to say. ‘You’re the best at this. You’ve always had a… sense about this stuff… but I’ve never seen you like this.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve been almost… tolerable the last couple of days. Practically bordering on…’ Jason cleared his throat. ‘It pains me to say it, but… nice.’

  ‘Give me a break,’ Blake said, switching his attention to his computer.

  ‘Don’t let her get under your skin,’ Jason said. ‘You’re a bastard, but I wouldn’t do this with anyone else.’

  ‘You want to fuck me now?’ Blake growled. ‘Put it back in your pants unless you want to lose it, pretty boy.’

  A smile moved to Jason’s lips. ‘That’s a little bit more like it.’

  ‘Closest you’ll get to sucking me off is when I pay your girlfriend to do it.’

  ‘She left me,’ Jason said.

  ‘Sure she did… she couldn’t stand sloppy seconds anymore.’

  Peering at Jason from the corner of his eye, Blake saw Jason’s smile turn to a grin. He shook his head and began typing.

  Molly stood in the middle of the bar with her chin propped on the mop she’d been using to clean up Joel’s spilled beer. His need to check out the women who had entered the bar had left the liquid scaled across the floor. Much as she had told him that it was fine, she was feeling the strain of the day as the work piled up. She’d been working on her assignment on her laptop behind the bar because she had to staff the bar today, but her concentration was being broken too often for her to be properly effective at either task.

  Joel twisted in his stool to survey the floor she’d just cleaned. ‘Good job.’

  Molly glared at him. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You should be on this side of the bar more often,’ Joel said. ‘Let me get you drunk sometime.’

  ‘We’ve had this conversation, Joel,’ she said, and heaved the bucket to the side of the room before she went back to retrieve the mop.

  ‘You’re a super cheap date, drunk after half a glass if I remember right.’

  Just as Molly picked up the mop, the front door burst open and heavy footsteps pounded into the building. She spun to see who was in such a rush, but she had no time to focus because the mop was ripped from her hand and thrown to the floor. Whoever had done that grabbed her hand and hauled her toward the back. Pulling away, Molly tried to free herself by throwing all her weight behind her and yanking, causing the muscles in the arm detaining her to ripple.

  Recognising the arm, her gaze jumped up to see the back of Blake’s head. He shoved the door to the back open and it thumped against the wall. It almost hit her on its way back, but she bounced out of the way when it flew in her direction.

  ‘Blake!’ she barked at him, but he didn’t stop.

  He yanked her into the kitchen and kicked the door closed behind them, though this door was never usually closed. Molly was about to tell him that, but he whipped her around and took her off her feet. Blake carried her to the counter where he dropped her down, wringing a shriek from her, but her protestations went unheeded. He shoved his hands under her skirt, digging his fingers into the flesh of her behind, to snatch her forward and drape her legs over his hips. She gasped when she found herself flush against him.

  ‘What are you doing? I—‘

  One hand came from under her skirt to grab the back of her head and her words were cut off by his mouth devouring hers. Her arms were trapped between them so she put her weight against them, but her fight was fruitless. In truth, her effort was only half hearted because when his tongue darted into her mouth, she melted against him. All of her fight was gone, and she splayed her palms against the solid wall of his chest and closed them around the fabric of his tee-shirt.

  When her head fell back, his mouth followed the new route exposed on her neck. She whimpered at the delight of his mouth possessing hers. He was so forceful that there was no doubt about what was on his mind. She should be offended. She should tell him where to get off. This kind of behaviour should be unacceptable. But if she was honest, she had spent all day sharing private smiles with herself caused by the memories of the night before, and Molly berated herself for the pleasure they ignited within her.

  Being in his arms brought her a security that she had never known in the past. Without any effort, he protected her. The previous night, she had seen what he was capable of physically, but the safety he enveloped her in went beyond that. He had listened to her, held her hand, and tried to cheer her up.

  Her pounding heart moved in time with his, and a film of sweat developed when his hand thrust deeper into her hair. Still, he palmed h
er behind under her skirt, holding her close, and she couldn’t stop herself from moving against him. The pulse between her legs shot liquid flames to her soul. The prickle on her skin rivalled that brought on by the adrenaline of the hold up. She could drown in this moment and never regret a second of it.

  As quickly as he had taken action, his mouth vanished from hers. Without his weight countering hers, she lurched forward and slid from the kitchen counter. Her eyes hadn’t had a chance to open, but a heavy hand caught her forearm to steady her. When she did open her eyes, she saw him there, in front of her, checking her balance before he moved further away.

  ‘I’m going to fix the cellar lock,’ he said. ‘It’s worth installing a deadbolt on it. The padlock was fine, but this will be more secure.’

  ‘You know how to do that?’ Molly stuttered through swollen lips.

  ‘Piece of cake,’ Blake said. ‘We were broken into at least once a month when I was a kid.’

  Molly swallowed down her shock at what had transpired and nodded, wide eyed, at his casual figure. All she could hear was the rapid tattoo that radiated from her crotch; it tickled in its ache for more.

  Blake ran his fingers into his hair and nodded once. ‘I’ll get the stuff from the truck.’ He began to move to the door.

  ‘Wait!’ Molly said, bringing his attention back to her. The questions buzzing through her were plentiful—she wanted to ask what the hell that kiss was all about and why he had dragged her from the bar. Most of all, she wanted to ask why he’d stopped. ‘Let me know how much will cover it, and I’ll pay you.’

  The truth was, she didn’t want to question his actions. If she did that, then he might not do it again, and she wouldn’t want him to think that she didn’t like it. Because although she cursed herself for it, she did like it.

  One side of his mouth tipped upward. ‘Babe… I think you just did.’

  His departure left her blinking in astonishment. Did that imply that she was prostituting herself? No. How much was a lock or a locksmith? She considered this and realised it could be expensive. Surely it was just a friend helping out a friend. Or did he really care about her? Molly rolled her eyes and sloped back toward the bar. This was why she avoided relationships and dating. There were always more questions than answers.