by Kelly Irvin
“King is a smart man. He’s intuitive. He’ll see right away that none of them are killers. He’ll start with the judge’s cases and work up a list of folks who left his court unhappy. Those big settlements you talked about. It has to be something related to his job.”
“Sure they’ll look at it. Eventually. But first they’ll leave no stone unturned regarding your sweet girl. She was home alone with Daddy and he was a hard man to live with.”
“She’s not my girl.” Aaron let his feet drop to the floor. Not anyone’s girl. She had trust issues, but someday. Someday soon he would find himself on the other side of those barriers. By being the one man she could trust. By showing her she could trust him and God. Please, God, let me be that man.
“By the time they get done with Nina, her reputation will be in tatters. She’ll be remembered as that woman suspected of killing her adoptive father after he rescued her from a life of abject poverty and abuse.
“So, for the sake of this story, we’ll pretend she’s not your girl so the boss doesn’t pull you from it.” Melanie took a straw and stuck it in a twenty-two-ounce Styrofoam cup of Diet Pepsi. For such a young woman, Melanie was wise. “I’ll start researching his cases from the last five years.” She started a new list. “First thing tomorrow morning, I’ll do follow-up rounds to see if anyone bites. They won’t want to talk at work, but I may be able to arrange something off-site. Coffee. Lunch. On me. Well, on Fox.”
“It’s twelve thirty. It’s already Wednesday morning.”
“When the courts open.”
“You’ll be up at eight?”
“We’ll see, A-Plus.” She rumpled his hair. “Don’t take it so hard. She’ll be okay.”
“Don’t call me that.” He ducked his head. “Leave me the list of names. I’ll make the rounds in the morning.”
“My sources. They’ll talk to me. They see you coming and they’ll hide behind their desks. They’re camera shy.”
“They like me. They know I’m always neat and presentable and respectful and I don’t put jurors on TV. They trust me.”
“They love me.”
Melanie was sure everyone loved her. She was the “Gotta Love Me” of San Antonio TV news. The camera loved her so everyone else must too. She headed toward the door. Her phone jangled a Justin Timberlake tune. She popped it to her ear. “Serena? Yeah, thanks for calling me back. I know it’s a tough time for everyone.” An excited grin on her face, Melanie gave Aaron a thumbs-up and headed toward the door. “I know. I can’t believe it either. I don’t think anyone is sleeping tonight.”
The sound of her voice dwindled and then dissipated as she slipped through the double doors without telling him what the thumbs-up meant. The woman liked to play her cards close to her vest. They were a team, but she was the quarterback and she never let anyone forget it.
Not a problem. As long as they cleared Nina’s name, he didn’t mind getting the story too. The girl first, and then the story. With Melanie, it was always the other way around. Until now that had been true for Aaron.
Never had so much been at stake. Personally or professionally. He should go home. He should sleep. He should pray. He should do all three.
Instead, he trudged to an edit bay. He could do what he did best. Edit video for the exhibit he and Nina would share when this was all over. When night ended, he’d go back to his other job—and saving the damsel in distress.
He flipped on the light and chuckled for the first time that day. Nina a damsel in distress?
Very funny, McClure, very funny.
Nina might be an artist and a poet, but she could take care of herself.
One of the many things he loved about her.
* * *
A floorboard creaked. A window rattled. Or a door squeaked.
Startled from a light, restless slumber, Nina rolled over. She was falling, falling. She opened her mouth and shrieked. No sound echoed in the night.
Heavy footsteps sounded in the hallway.
Someone was in the house.
It’s a dream. It’s a nightmare. Just wake up. Wake up.
A veteran at fighting nightmares, Nina forced her sleep-deprived, burning eyes open. Darkness broken only by moonlight that seeped through the half-pulled drapes created strange, skinny shadows on the walls, like bars. Her hands groped in the dark. Floor. The rug in the living room. She’d fallen from the couch. Images grouped and regrouped in a strange kaleidoscope of memories. Dad dead in his office. Blood. Detective King. Divorce. Grace among the flowers. Aaron with his auburn hair and blue-gray eyes and warm touch.
Nina had curled up on a couch and pulled a comforter over her exhausted body after she talked to Aaron. She had to call him. The fight with Jan had been too loud in her ears to sleep, despite having been up forty-eight hours straight. He could come over and they could search for the papers in Dad’s office.
“Wait until morning,” he said. “If you still want to do it then, we’ll do it. I’ll be back. I promise.”
But sleep first.
As if she’d ever sleep again. Tick-tock, tick-tock. The dong-dong of the grandfather clock had marked the passing of each hour. Nine o’clock. Ten o’clock. Eleven o’clock. Midnight.
Noise. Footsteps. Her heart revved. Her lungs constricted. The muscles in her legs and arms turned to water. Her pulse pounded in a crazy rat-a-tat-tat.
It’s just the wind. God, let it be the wind. Can’t You see? I can’t take any more of this. Just once, give a break, will You?
They lived in an old house. Sometimes it seemed alive. It wiggled and settled like an old lady trying to get comfortable on her bed.
Just a dream. Just a nightmare. Nina forced herself to her knees. She leaned on the couch and hoisted herself to her feet. Her legs wobbled. Breathe. Count one, two, seven, five. One, two, seven, five. Her therapist’s directions kicked in. Count. She couldn’t panic and count out of order at the same time.
Breathe. Breathe. She had to check for herself. Act. She wiped her slick hands on her sweats and felt around on the table next to the couch. No phone.
She didn’t want to talk to anybody, especially not people calling to give their condolences but really wanting the rest of the story. Her cell phone was still plugged into the charger in the kitchen where she left it after she talked to Aaron
Go to the kitchen and get the phone.
What if it was nothing? What if it was her overactive imagination fueled by a lifetime of ugly scenes—some she remembered, some tucked away in the part of her psyche that protected her from too much too fast for a little girl to assimilate?
Just look.
She stumbled barefoot to the door that led to the hallway and her dad’s office. The tiny lead-glass window in the front door allowed a shaft of light from the front porch security light to shine on the tile in the foyer.
Nothing. She cocked her head and listened. A scrabbling noise. One of the cats probably. “Daffy? Mango?”
The scrabbling noise stopped. It had been coming from Dad’s office. An intruder. Or her imagination?
The study door stood open. Not her imagination this time. Nina’s stomach roiled. She eased into the hallway. The intruder would hear her fearful breathing. Everyone in King William would hear it. She inhaled and held her breath. One step, two steps, three steps.
A black ball of fur streaked past her toward the door.
She shrieked and clapped her hand to her mouth.
The guns in the gun case.
The key was in the kitchen on the key rack with the extra house and car keys. No time to run for it. Nina didn’t care about her own life. It was piddling. But Brooklyn and Jan? Trevor and Grace? The animals? Doubt disappeared. She’d kill for them without blinking.
She could go for the phone. The police would come. What was hidden in Dad’s office? What did the intruder want? And what about the box of receipts that would destroy Dad’s reputation? She needed to get to it first. The intruder couldn’t have it. Nor could the police.
/> Acid burned the back of her throat. She swallowed and gritted her teeth. Chin up. She touched the door with one finger. Easy. Easy. She pushed it farther back, a bare eighth of an inch. Another half inch. She eased through the door until both feet were in Dad’s office.
A fist came at her, square in the face. Then another.
Pain shooting through her nose and mouth, she lost her balance and fell backward. Her head banged on the tile. More excruciating pain. “Ow, ow, ouch!” Purple dots and white stars danced in her vision. Blood spurted from her nose. Trying to quell the bleeding with one hand, she propped herself up with the other.
A dark figure dressed in black shot down the hall.
“Stop, stop!”
He—or she—paid no heed to Nina’s breathless command.
The front door slammed shut. The intruder was gone.
He. No woman hit that hard.
12
The frantic, incoherent call from Nina at four thirty in the morning had aged Aaron ten years. The kitchen light made his head hurt. He rubbed his forehead. “Let me call the police.”
“Not yet.” Her voice was a whisper. She’d been adamant that she didn’t want to wake up her mother or Jan. She always wanted to carry the load. She was wired that way. “We have things to do first.”
“You need a doctor.”
“Be quiet, please. I’m okay.” Seated on a stool at the island, she held a bag of frozen peas wrapped in a dish towel to her nose. Dried blood decorated her swollen upper lip. Her nose was so swollen she sounded like she was getting a cold. A livid purple bruise spread over her right cheekbone. Her eyes were red rimmed. “I’ll live, I promise.”
Who hit a woman like that? Whoever it was, Aaron couldn’t wait to hunt him down and return the favor. He never considered himself a violent man, but one look at Nina’s bruised and bloody face had him pounding his fist on the table. He took a long breath, and then another one. “How did he get in?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense. The lock on the front door hasn’t been jimmied. As they say on the cop shows, there’s no sign of forced entry.”
“Someone has a key?”
“Everyone who has a key is in bed asleep right now, besides me. And Trevor, I guess, and he wouldn’t hit me. He hasn’t hit me since we were little and we used to wrestle. He hits like a girl.”
She was definitely sleep deprived. “As far as you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“There was so much you didn’t know. Your dad led a life you didn’t know about. Who’s to say he didn’t give a key to someone? Or they took it? Maybe he got rolled in Vegas and someone took his keys and his wallet.”
“And I thought I had a wild imagination.”
“There’s so much we don’t know at this point.”
“So let’s get in there and find out some things.”
“Let the police do it.”
“If there’s evidence of Dad’s gambling in there, we can’t let the police find it.”
He picked up a clean washcloth and dabbed at the blood on her face. “Are you sure you want to conceal evidence from the police?”
Silence. She winced, closed her eyes, and allowed him to clean her face.
The desire to kiss away her pain flowed through him. He cleared his throat. “At least take a quick shower and change your clothes. You don’t want your mother to see you like this. And it’ll give you time to think about it.”
She opened her eyes. Her lips trembled. “How did you get so smart?”
“From hanging around you.”
“I want to know what evidence is in that box of receipts. I’ll get cleaned up and then we take a quick look. Then we decide what to do next. The crime scene is already messed up. King won’t be able to tell.”
“I’ll make coffee. I can’t make any decisions without caffeine.”
He already knew what he would do. What he was willing to do. Whatever it took. First, Nina found her father murdered, then she found out he’s living a double life. Now some guy broke in and popped her in the face. How much could a woman take? A beautiful woman who made him crazy and made him want to do all sorts of man-of-steel, knight-in-shining-armor stuff.
Rick Zavala’s kissing Nina had been like a sucker punch. Like watching a pit bull maul a kitten. Time to put up or shut up.
A half hour later she was back and looking more determined than ever. She took the large mug of dark roast Costa Rican coffee and offered him a pair of purple latex gloves. Fortified with two cups of black coffee, he took them. “You sure you’re up for this?”
“It was my idea, remember?”
The bite in her tone warmed him. She might appear fragile, but she’d always had a steel beam for a backbone.
“Just remember, everything I’ve told you is off the record. You can’t tell anyone.”
Counting to ten twice, then once backward, Aaron waited for the sting to subside. “Either you trust me. Or you don’t.”
“Sorry. When it comes to trust, I’m a work in progress.” She ran a hand through her still-damp hair. “Let’s just get it over with.”
“It’s still illegal, whether someone else did it first or not.”
“This is my parents’ home. My home. I live here. It’s not like I’m breaking and entering.”
“This is a crime scene—twice over.”
“You want to tell me about that? I was the one who found him—”
“I know, I know.” He held up a gloved hand. “Let’s just make it quick, okay? Don’t touch anything unless you absolutely have to.”
“I got it.” She squeezed past him, her lips pressed in a thin line that told him she was trying hard not to show how gut-wrenching this really was for her. “Are you coming?”
He’d never been in the judge’s study before. Furniture was askew. The EMTs had left the remnants of their lifesaving efforts on the carpet. Law books and the pages of Wall Street Journals were strewn across the floor, mixed with legal briefs with blue covers. It looked like a fierce wind had raced through, followed by a sudden, still quiet.
“Is it the same as yesterday, or did the intruder mess it up more?”
Her eyes brimming with tears, she shrugged. “It’s worse. More stuff moved.”
The computer had been knocked over. The laptop was gone. “Did the police remove everything, or was something stolen from his desk?”
“King said he would be back with a warrant for the computers and the files. He said they would show probable cause that the computers might have information on cases he presided over that might get him killed.”
“A federal judge who oversees civil cases. Who would have thought it possible? What about the guns? I’m surprised they didn’t take those.”
“No probable cause if they already have the murder weapon.”
“If not, they’ll be back for them too.”
It had to be the murder weapon. Left just beyond reach of her dying father’s hand.
Nina took a few steps toward the middle of the room. Her fair skin was so white it seemed translucent. Her hand fluttered to her mouth.
Aaron stepped between her and the desk. “You don’t have to do this. I can find the box and bring it out.”
She whirled and strode toward the far wall and an open door. Away from the desk and the spot where she’d found Geoffrey, bled out from being shot twice, and tried to resuscitate him. “Grace said the box of receipts was in the back of the closet.”
“What makes you think the police didn’t take it?”
“They couldn’t take anything they couldn’t connect to the crime.” As the daughter of an attorney and judge, Nina knew more than he did about these things. More than she wanted to know, most likely. She tugged open the closet door, flipped a switch, and disappeared inside. “Let’s get this over with.”
Aaron followed. The walk-in closet was almost as big as his apartment bedroom. It smelled musty, like dust and old papers. A single bare bulb lit the space. Boxes full of fil
es were squeezed into corners. Shelves had been added. They were crammed with books, mostly law tomes, but there were a few legal thrillers by a local author and even some books of poetry. “Your dad is full of surprises.”
The words hung out there. How Aaron wished he could take them back. He never managed to say the right thing at the right time.
Nina, who already squatted by a box, both hands on the lid, released a small burble of a chuckle, then guffawed. He didn’t dare laugh with her. Did he? “What are you laughing at?”
“You. You have a penchant for stating the obvious.” She stood and stepped over another box, squeezed between two more, and wiggled her way to the back of the closet. “You make me laugh. That’s one of the many things I love about you.”
Love. Many things. Heat coursed through him. He longed to hear more. But this wasn’t the time or place. Breathe. “So my corny jokes are what keep me in the running?”
“The running for what?” She looked back. Her pale cheeks stained a pink color like roses at odds with the bruises. “Don’t answer that. Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to search for the receipts?”
“Right.” Sure his head would explode if he kept looking at her, he averted his gaze. Concentrate on the job at hand, McClure.
He popped the lid off a box and pawed through the contents. Old tax returns neatly arranged by year. Going back three years. Good boy. “Nothing here.”
They worked in silence for several minutes, methodically going box by box.
“Whatcha’ doing?”
He jumped three feet. Nina shrieked and slapped her hand to her heart. “Brooklyn! What are you doing up?”
“I’m hungry.” The girl, feet bare, dressed in an oversized Dallas Cowboys T-shirt that apparently served as pajamas, frowned. She rubbed her face against Daffy’s head, light against the dark. The cat, ensconced like a baby in her thin arms, yawned and burrowed her petite face into the girl’s chest. Next to her stood Runner, an oversized brown and white greyhound that never spoke unless spoken to. At least that had been Aaron’s experience. “Grandpa told me I couldn’t come in here. He said it was off-limits.”
