“Nice one. Let’s pick him up. Any idea where he is this morning?”
“I assume he’s still at the dive shed.” Freddy Chastain was supposed to be keeping an eye on him without tipping him off. Not easy in this part of the world.
Furlong looked at her oddly. “You OK?”
The thought of seeing Finn again was unsettling. She’d treated him the same way Furlong had treated her, and she knew how bad that felt.
“Just tired.” Right now she was so busy keeping up her own deception she couldn’t really condemn anyone else’s, not even Furlong’s.
“Let’s go pull this guy in for questioning.”
She should be buzzing. They had a viable suspect, one who wouldn’t tie her up in an unwinnable conflict of interest. But she felt hollow. Ashamed of how she’d treated a man she cared for. Really cared for. Messenger came out of the hardware store, and they all climbed into the SUV and headed back to the marine lab.
She’d messed up everything. She’d finally fallen for a guy, and not only had she screwed up her job, she’d walked out on him after mind-blowing sex. And now she was going to have to pretend nothing had changed. That he hadn’t rocked her world and hadn’t moved her so deeply she was still shaken to the core. She was going to have to pretend he was just one in a long line of people she’d interviewed who meant nothing to her. Because otherwise, everything she’d ever worked for was in jeopardy.
She couldn’t risk it. Not even for Finn Carver—who might just be the goddamn love of her life.
Finn surfaced, the seawater on his lips failing to obliterate the taste of Holly imprinted there. She’d walked away. Hell, he’d always know she wouldn’t stay, but somehow last night had caught him like an uppercut to the heart. Unexpected. Raw. Pain.
Which was the other reason he should have steered clear of her in the first place.
He’d worked his balls off, first prepping for the day’s dives. Cleaning and double-checking equipment. Getting two boats ready for an easy wreck dive on the lee side of one of the Broken Islands. Then he’d maxed out on dive time, spent as long as he could under the clear, blue water. Pushing his body, pushing the limit. And still he felt like a damn fool for giving a shit about what a woman had done to him.
They’d had off-the-charts sex. She’d got off. He’d got off. Everything should be golden.
Which was not what he was feeling right now.
He spat out his regulator and pushed his mask onto his head. “Darren—watch your ascent rate next time. Otherwise, you guys did great.” He swiped water off his face and kicked toward the boat where the rest of the students were already on board. Rob was in charge of the second boat and flashed him the hand signal to say everything had gone as planned. Finn hauled himself out of the water.
The eyes of his fellow divers glowed; mouths hovered on the brink of jubilant grins. Nothing could beat a good dive except, maybe, spur-of-the-moment kitchen sex.
“Everyone have fun today?” Inside, his body hummed with unreleased tension. Brent was in a goddamn cell, and Finn had been shagging the cop who’d put him there. He was an ass. He knew better than anyone not to let people get too close. So why the hell had he made such an elemental mistake with Holly? Why couldn’t he resist the pull that existed between them?
Once everyone was sitting down and the equipment secured, he opened the throttle on the way back to his suddenly stagnant, frustrating life.
Rob followed him closely, and they both slowed down when they got inside the inlet. They drew up to the dock and tied up. He made sure the students grabbed their gear to wash it down before hefting his own equipment over his shoulder and striding up the wooden boards.
The RCMP cruiser rolled down the hill, heading toward them at a slow crawl. He could see Furlong driving—bastard—and Holly sitting beside him, avoiding his gaze.
What the hell did they want now, or were they just en route across the inlet, going back to the hotel? He turned away, didn’t care.
Sure.
The students milled around waiting for Rob to unlock the dive shed. It was a pain in the ass to have to be so much more careful than before. He heard car doors slam, boots crunch as the police started doing whatever the fuck they needed to do.
He felt Holly at his side but was too stubborn to acknowledge her.
“Rob Fitzgerald?” she called.
Finn gave a little shake of his head. She wasn’t even here for him. Must be Rob’s time for a roasting. He watched the young man he’d worked with for the last eighteen months turn toward Holly. Rob’s face drained of blood and he lunged toward her sidearm.
Sonofabitch! Finn caught Rob’s hand, swung him around by it, and had him facedown in the grit, foot on the back of his neck, with Rob’s arm bent at what he knew to be an excruciating angle, in under a second.
Holly and the other officers were staring at him a little wide-eyed, as were his students.
“What the hell is going on?” he demanded. Rob liked a good time, but had always been reliable and easy to work with. Didn’t mean he wasn’t a killer, his brain taunted.
Holly nodded to Messenger, who put handcuffs on Rob’s one wrist.
“We just need to talk to Mr. Fitzgerald,” Holly said calmly, still not looking him in the eye.
Finn handed over Rob’s other wrist for the steel band. “Why?” he demanded, getting in Holly’s face. Why did you walk out last night? Why will you not talk to me?
She narrowed her eyes at him. But at least she finally connected.
“We’ve got some questions to ask him.” She looked beyond him into the dive shed. “I’d appreciate it if you’d find us some dry clothes for Mr. Fitzgerald so we can make his interview more comfortable.”
Suggesting they were going to question him for some time. Finn turned his gaze to Rob. The guy looked like he was about to open his mouth and start begging.
“If you had anything to do with Gina’s death you better hope they keep you locked up nice and safe.” Anyone who lunged for a gun had something to hide. Not even Finn had been that desperate—no, he’d just lied and manipulated his way into the investigation. Finn shook his head at himself as he walked into the dive shed, grabbed Rob’s bag, and stuffed in jeans and T-shirt that he knew belonged to his assistant. When he walked outside, Furlong, Messenger, and Rob were already heading back to the SUV.
He handed the bag to Holly. “And how are you this morning, Sergeant Rudd?”
She took it, head down, muttering, “If anyone finds out about last night, I’ll get suspended.”
“Who exactly am I gonna tell?”
“People will just know.” She shot him a sideways glance. “I can’t talk about it right now.”
He gave her a look that let her know he thought she was insane. “So that’s it?” He leaned closer. “That’s all you’ve got to say to me?”
“Right now it’s all I can say. I’m sorry.” She marched away with Rob Fitzgerald’s stuff under one arm. The car door slammed and they drove away.
His heart felt as if it had spent the night in the deep freeze and then been hit full whack with a sledgehammer. And in the blink of an eye he was once more the little kid who nobody wanted. Well, fuck that.
Rob Fitzgerald sat at the interview table with an insolent jut to his jaw. The charm had fallen away to reveal a surly, whiny individual with a sealed—until now—juvenile record for drug possession and theft.
“You knew about the shipwreck. didn’t you, Rob?”
His eyes hardened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about the fact that you talked Len Milbank into going down there to look for treasure, and as soon as you got him there, you stuck a knife in his chest and then dumped the body.”
He pressed his lips together. “I didn’t do that.”
“So tell us what you did do,” Holly urged.
“I never killed Len.” He started chewing his lip, a sure sign of nerves.
“But you knew him.” Hal
f an hour ago they’d gotten phone records, going way back, that showed a series of phone calls between the two men. The calls stopped when Rob started working at the marine lab, but Holly would bet a month’s pay they’d used a burner cell to communicate after that. “You were the inside guy for his smuggling operation.”
Rob started tapping his feet on the floor, making his knees bob rapidly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, come on.” Holly paced, unable to settle in the chair beside a glowering Furlong. She’d do better without him here, could finesse Rob Fitzgerald with a few friendly smiles. But right now she didn’t feel like smiling. She felt dead inside. Blackened and charred as if a forest fire had swept through her heart. She’d told Finn from the beginning they had no future, nothing but some weird chemistry. But she’d hurt him. She’d seen it in his eyes and felt it reflected in her own feelings. She’d messed up. He must hate her now.
“We know you made a call about that knife,” she said.
Rob’s blue eyes met hers, and she read calculation in them, guile. “I made the call about the knife. I recognized it, but I didn’t want to just up and say anything in front of anybody. It was my boss’s knife.” He leaned forward over the desk, all boyish sincerity. “I need this job.”
“You made another call not long after that one.”
He frowned.
“That call was to Brent Carver. Someone told him there’d been a murder on Deerleap Road—”
“What?” His eyes went wide. “I didn’t make any calls to Brent Carver. That guy is not someone I’d be messing with.” He shook his head, then his eyes whipped forward. “You don’t think I killed Gina—”
“Did you?”
“No! I liked Gina.”
“But you didn’t like Len.”
He slumped back in his chair. “No one liked that motherfucker.”
“So why’d you work for him?”
He rubbed long-fingered hands over the back of his neck. “I never had a choice,” he admitted. “I managed to kick drugs after I got busted a few times. I went away, but as soon as I came home the scumbag got me hooked again.”
Did he force them down your throat or into your veins? It was always someone else’s fault that users couldn’t resist temptation.
“He told me that if I moved down to Bamfield and just acted as the occasional go-between with a guy he knew from down the coast, he’d make sure my life was rosy.” He scanned the interview room and rolled his eyes. “Milbank always was a fucking liar.”
“So you killed him?”
Rob pulled his long hair out of his eyes, incredulous, or a damn good actor. “I worked for him because he scared the shit out of me. I didn’t kill him, for the same reason.”
“What about Gina?” Furlong spoke up. He slipped a photograph across the table.
Rob’s eyes bugged and he put his hand over his mouth. “Whoa. I never hurt Gina. I don’t need to attack ladies to get some, you know.” He shot Holly a god’s-gift-to-women smile and she wanted to slap him. But he’d assumed from Gina’s naked body that she’d been sexually assaulted, and as far as the coroner could tell, she hadn’t been. Or he was a hell of a liar. She pressed her lips together and studied him carefully.
“We have a witness that says you used the call box yesterday morning. There were only two calls made from that phone around that time. One was about the knife. The other was about Gina.”
His skin bleached and he shook his head. “I never touched her, or Milbank. Where’s my lawyer!” he started yelling and bumping the table with his legs.
“Tell me what happened with Milbank,” she asked when Furlong had gone out the room to “look” for the guy’s lawyer.
“Milbank was convinced he was being watched by the cops, though if that was true he probably wouldn’t have wound up dead.” He stopped moving. “Look, I’m not admitting anything. But it is possible Milbank gave a certain someone drugs destined for up north, which they might have swapped for money way out to sea. And a couple of days later, it’s possible that same someone met up with Milbank to give him his cash and then went quietly home with a small payment for services rendered, only to hear the ugly bastard had got himself killed and the cash was nowhere to be found.” The guy wiped his nose on his hand.
So he had been Milbank’s connection. “That someone is going to have to come up with a few names and times.”
“I’m not fessing to anything until I talk to my lawyer.” He shrugged a bony shoulder.
“Lawyer’s coming. Did you ever have sex with Gina?”
“She wasn’t my type. Too old. Although she was hot under those old granny blouses—who knew?” He whistled as if remembering Gina’s naked body from the photograph they’d shown him. Even if he didn’t kill her he was a sick puppy.
She hid her disgust. “Would you willingly provide us with a DNA sample to eliminate you from our inquiries?” They could get a warrant. They already had his prints. “It’ll go a long way to proving your innocence if we don’t find your DNA at Gina’s house. Or you could just come clean and tell us what really happened.” Her impatience leaked out, or maybe it was pure exhaustion. She didn’t remember the last time she’d slept.
He leaned back in his chair, considering her with a hard, calculating gaze. “You think you’re something special, don’t you?” He sneered. “Better than me? I don’t think so.”
“Pardon me?”
“I know what you did last night.” His eyes gleamed with a sly edge. “I saw you getting drilled by Finn last night. Cut me some slack.” He eyed the door. “And I won’t tell your boss.”
Numbness crept up around Holly’s heart. He was bluffing. He had to be bluffing.
His eyes started to dance as he read her reaction. “You don’t believe me? I went to see him last night, during the storm.”
Her nerves buzzed.
“Got quite an eyeful, Officer. Nice ass, by the way.”
She gritted her teeth. “You’re full of shit, Fitzgerald, and you are going down.”
His gaze slithered over her skin. “Unlike you guys, huh. Oh well, maybe next time?”
Her chest squeezed so tight she thought she was having a heart attack. The interview was being recorded, and he’d just fried her career with a few careless words. What was worse, he’d watched her and Finn making love. She felt violated. Dirty. Revulsion flooded every cell in her body.
Her legs wobbled as she got to her feet. She didn’t deserve this job. She’d never deserved this job. She picked up the case file and left the room. On the other side of the door, Furlong stood staring at her, openmouthed.
“I’m done. Someone else can take over as primary.” Her hands were shaking. “I’m not jeopardizing putting that asshole in prison.”
Furlong snapped his mouth shut, his eyes dark and troubled.
“Don’t worry,” she said bitterly, “I’ll call my father.”
“Finish your vacation.” He took the files out of her arms. “Lie low and don’t talk to anyone about this. I’ll handle things.”
“Handle things?”
“I’ll figure something out. Don’t tell anyone.” He stepped toward her and lowered his voice. “How could you be so fucking irresponsible?”
“Believe it or not, I don’t make a habit out of it.” She glared. “I don’t want you to handle anything. I’m going back to Bamfield to grab my gear and then I’m going to Victoria. I’ll call my dad. That little shit is not going to blackmail cops or wriggle out of everything he deserves.”
“Holly…” He touched her arm and grimaced. “I wish I could ignore this. But if he’s guilty, if he goes to trial, he could twist the evidence to make it look like a conspiracy theory to clear the name of the primary investigator’s lover’s brother.”
She closed her eyes. It was so goddamn sleazy. Drained from lack of sleep and plain, old-fashioned humiliation, she wanted to curl up on the floor and die. “I’m taking myself off the case. I never interviewed him until afte
r his arrest. The case is rock solid. You’ll have to decide if I face disciplinary action or not, but…” Her throat felt like crushed glass as she swallowed. “Just give me a few hours to talk to my dad, OK?”
“I’ll handle it,” he repeated.
She marched away with her head high. How could she have thought she’d get away with such a massive error in judgment? She burst into the reception area, and there was Thomas Edgefield, waiting patiently on one of the chairs. Brent Carver was still being questioned. Christ. She ran her hands down her face. It was a nightmare.
“Holly! Sergeant Rudd.” He held up a flash drive. “I heard you were here and thought I’d take the opportunity to give you all the details from my wife’s murder investigation.”
She snatched it off him and sailed out the door. Her fingers curled over the small flat object. She may as well look at Edgefield’s case. Christ knew she had nothing better to do.
CHAPTER 18
She hired a car to drive back to Bamfield. She could have asked Steffie or Messenger to ship her stuff to Victoria, but she’d be damned if she’d ask for any favors. And she wanted to face them. Apologize—rather than slink away like a rat. Trouble was, there was no one at the hotel, and she figured they must still be re-canvassing the locals in the wake of the second murder.
Was Rob Fitzgerald their killer? She hoped so. The sick voyeur could rot in prison, and people here could get on with their lives without living in fear.
She used Steffie and Messenger’s room to get changed out of her uniform and into plain clothes and made it back across the inlet to the bar where she’d left the rental car. She leaned against the hood. The thought of another two hours on that god-awful road just to get to Port Alberni brought her to a standstill. She couldn’t do it. Could not climb behind that wheel. She glanced up at the painted wooden structure of the motel at the back of the bar and walked inside the small reception area. A young girl, about sixteen, manned the desk.
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