Say You're Sorry (Morgan Dane Book 1)
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Table of Contents
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ALSO BY MELINDA LEIGH SCARLET FALLS NOVELS Hour of Need Minutes to Kill Seconds to Live SHE CAN SERIES She Can Run She Can Tell She Can Scream She Can Hide He Can Fall (A Short Story) She Can Kill MIDNIGHT NOVELS Midnight Exposure Midnight Sacrifice Midnight Betrayal Midnight Obsession THE ROGUE SERIES NOVELLAS Gone to Her Grave (Rogue River) Walking on Her Grave (Rogue River) Tracks of Her Tears (Rogue Winter) Burned by Her Devotion (Rogue Vows)
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Text copyright © 2017 Melinda Leigh All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher. Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle www.apub.com Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates. ISBN-13: 9781503948709 ISBN-10: 1503948706 Cover design by Damonza
For Roxy aka “Rocket Dog.” We rescued each other.
Contents Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty-One Chapter Thirty-Two Chapter Thirty-Three Chapter Thirty-Four Chapter Thirty-Five Chapter Thirty-Six Chapter Thirty-Seven Chapter Thirty-Eight Chapter Thirty-Nine Chapter Forty Chapter Forty-One Chapter Forty-Two Chapter Forty-Three Chapter Forty-Four Acknowledgments About the Author
Chapter One Darkness. Tessa had been afraid of it most of her life. For as long as she could remember, she’d gone to bed dreading nightfall, looking under the bed, double-checking her nightlight. As if a lightbulb the size of a lit match could possibly banish her nightmares. But tonight, she prayed for the blackest of nights. For the moon to stay hidden behind the shifting clouds. For the shadows to make her invisible. The darkness had changed sides. Head spinning, lungs screaming, she ran into its embrace. What had once been her greatest fear could now be her savior. Her miracle. That’s what it was going to take to keep her alive until the sun rose. “Tesssssa.” The voice floated over the forest. “You can’t get away.” Where is he? Evergreen boughs grabbed at her arms and scratched her face as she plunged through the forest like a panicked deer. Her heart beat with the frantic staccato of a prey animal. She slowed, her body protesting the abuse of little-used muscles. She passed the sco
Chapter Two He stumbled out of the cattails and stared down at his hands. Blood, slick and dark and oily, covered his gloves and the knife. He turned toward the water and squatted at its edge. Setting the knife on the bank, he stuck the gloves into the shallow water. He rubbed his palms together and washed away as much of the blood as possible. Then he stripped off the gloves and set them aside. Specks of blood dotted his forearms. He scrubbed at them, scooping a handful of mud from the lake bottom and using it as a cleanser. There’d been so much blood. He’d never wash it all off. He glanced back into the reeds. What had he done? Something that couldn’t be undone. His gaze landed on the knife at his side. His stomach turned over at the sight, and he ripped his eyes away. How many times had he stabbed her? He couldn’t remember. Rage had completely short-circuited his brain. The last twenty minutes were a blur. A violent, frenzied blur. He heard screaming, pleading, crying, the sounds of
Chapter Three Morgan Dane toyed with her steak salad, but the weight of the decision on her mind dampened her appetite. The waitress returned to the table. “Anyone need another drink?” Morgan shook her head. “No, thank you.” She’d had exactly two sips from her glass of house red. Across the table, District Attorney Bryce Walters finished his single glass. “Is something wrong with the wine?” “No. It’s fine. I’m not much of a drinker.” The truth was she had no tolerance for alcohol, and the only thing worse than a kaleidoscope of butterflies flapping in her stomach were stumbling drunk ones. “Well, that’s a good thing.” He smiled, his teeth even and white. She should probably be attracted to him, but she wasn’t, which was for the best. This was not a date. As long as Bryce hadn’t changed his mind about offering her a job since their last meeting, he was going to be her boss, not her boyfriend. He set aside his empty glass and ordered coffee. Morgan declined. The man’s superior genes coul
Chapter Four Lance Kruger hunkered down in the front seat of his Jeep and stared at the one-story motel across the street. In the center of the long building, the curtains of room twelve were drawn tight. The camera on his passenger seat, complete with telephoto lens, waited. His phone vibrated, shimmying across his dashboard. The display read SHARP. His boss. Lance answered the call, “Yeah.” “Catch them yet?” Former Scarlet Falls detective Lincoln Sharp had retired after putting in his full twenty-five and had spent the last five years as a P.I. “Got individual photos of each of them entering the motel room. They haven’t come out yet.” Photos of a lusty good-bye in the parking lot would solidify Mrs. Brown’s claim of adultery. “They’re still in there?” Sharp whistled. “Impressive. I wouldn’t expect Brown to have that much stamina.” “He probably fell asleep.” Sharp snorted. “If you can’t sleep, you can always take over tonight’s surveillance.” Lance shifted in the seat, trying to get c
Chapter Five Morgan rubbed her hand, still warm from Lance’s touch. It was nice to know she wasn’t dead, but the prick of interest made her uncomfortable, clearly a reaction she wasn’t ready to explore. She’d intended to look for Tessa alone, but she hadn’t protested when her grandfather suggested she call Lance. The fact was that she felt much safer with him. But tonight, he was acting . . . different. Interested? It must be her imagination. Like he’d said. They were friends, and friends helped each other. That was all there was to it. Her discomfort had nothing to do with the way all six feet two inches of him filled out his cargos and T-shirt, the way his blue eyes always seemed to be focused on her, or the fact that she genuinely liked his personality more than his blond buffness. But how did she reconcile her attraction to Lance while John was still in her heart? The love ballad playing softly on the radio wasn’t helping. She reached forward and turned off the radio to answer the
Chapter Six “Back up.” Lance steered Morgan away from the body. Part of him wanted to take a closer look. Another part wanted to run like hell. From the brief glimpse he’d gotten of the body, it was a particularly nasty scene. Not that it mattered. He had no business getting near that body. He wasn’t a cop anymore, and the SFPD was en route. Under his hands, Morgan’s body shook, and her teeth chattered. Worry for her quickly wiped out any concern for himself. This wasn’t his first death scene, but as a former assistant prosecutor, Morgan’s experience with homicides would be one step removed. Viewing photos was not the same as seeing the body in situ. He guided her toward his Jeep. He opened the hatchback and took out a warm jacket. He helped her into it. The sleeves covered her hands, and the hem fell to her thighs. Before he could think, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to his chest. She fit against him perfectly. As wrong as the scene behind him was, having Morgan in his
Chapter Seven It was Wednesday afternoon. Lance leaned on the outside of his Jeep and waited for Jamie Lewis’s best friend. Seventeen-year-old high school dropout Tony Allessi worked at the bowling alley. Neither the police nor Jamie’s pa
rents had been able to get any information out of the kid, but Lance wasn’t an authority figure. Somebody had to know where Jamie had gone. With teenagers, friends were the best possibility. Tony was easy to spot crossing the parking lot. On top of a lanky, six-three frame, his four-inch blue-and-red Mohawk didn’t exactly blend into a crowd. He looked like a parrot. Lance pushed off the door of his Jeep. “Hey, Tony!” The teen turned at the sound of his name. He wore ripped jeans and a vintage Ramones T-shirt. “I hear you’re good friends with Jamie Lewis.” Lance looked beyond the nose ring, eyeliner, and twin ear gauges the size of dinner plates. Under all his facial modifications, Tony’s eyes were sharp and suspicious. “Yeah. So?” “I’m looking for her.
Chapter Eight Rain tapped on the kitchen window. Morgan sipped a cup of coffee and read her emails from the DA’s office and the Human Resources department. Filling out employment and insurance forms made her new job real, and the first glimmer of interest in something outside the walls of the house flickered inside her. Next to her, Sophie ate one tiny triangle of her peanut butter and jelly sandwich and worked on a drawing. Morgan glanced at the picture. The wild arcs of color were typical Sophie. Fresh bursts of sadness and anger shot through her. Once Tessa had been a little girl, coloring at her kitchen table. She should have had a long, happy life. Morgan blinked away an image of the girl’s ruined body, the same picture that appeared in her nightmares over and over every time she closed her eyes. “It’s nap time,” Morgan reminded her youngest. Sophie looked up from her lopsided rainbow. As usual, tangled hair swayed around her daughter’s face. “I’m too old for naps.” Morgan ignored
Chapter Nine What the hell? Lance parked at the curb in front of Morgan’s house. Across the street, four police cars were parked in Nick’s driveway. A news van had arrived. A reporter and her cameraman scurried up the grass like rats with microphones. In the center of the front lawn, a cop knelt on a man on the ground. Another man in a red shirt was lunging at the pair on the grass. Nick’s dad? Morgan stood in front of him, holding him back with both hands on his chest. The reporter shook out her hair, lifted her mic, and checked her lipstick in the lens of the camera. The cop on the ground jerked the handcuffed man to his feet. Shit. That was Nick. The scene came together in one, horrible rush. Nick was being arrested for Tessa’s murder. The young man stopped struggling. His body went stiff, his face completely impassive, as if he’d simply shut down. Lance got out of the car. He was not getting involved in Tessa Palmer’s case, and Morgan shouldn’t either. The DA wouldn’t be happy to f
Chapter Ten He turned off the television. Nick Zabrowski had been arrested for Tessa’s murder. His plan had worked. He should be happy, but it didn’t feel real. Standing, he walked to the window, almost expecting to see a police car outside. But the scene outside was the same as always. A squirrel bounded across the grass and raced up a tree. Could he really have gotten away with what he’d done? He glanced down at his hands. No matter how much he washed them, he couldn’t seem to get rid of the imaginary bloodstains. He curled his fingers into tight fists. His nails dug into his palms. The sharp bite of pain was grounding. It amazed him that he could walk around in public, and no one saw through him. He knew what he was, and it wasn’t normal. Other people would be horrified at the things he dreamed about. He worked hard to pretend he was like everybody else. All that hard work had paid off after he lost it Thursday night. He had gotten his shit back together and taken care of business.
Chapter Eleven Morgan opened her eyes to a throbbing headache. She hadn’t slept much since finding Tessa’s body, and Nick’s arrest the day before had kept her awake long into the night. When she did manage to drift off, her nightmares were filled with images of Tessa and Nick and blood. Eventually, her subconscious got around to substituting her own girls in Tessa’s place. Wasn’t that part of what drove her denial? She didn’t want to believe she’d let a murderer into her home. That she’d introduced Nick to Tessa. She glanced at the clock on her nightstand. Seven o’clock! She hadn’t slept past the crack of dawn in years. She stumbled out into the hall and glanced in the girls’ bedroom. Empty. Mia and Ava had school today. Were they ready? She ducked into the kitchen. Used cereal bowls in the sink reassured her that they’d eaten. She poured a cup of coffee, downed two ibuprofen tablets, and continued her search. Giggles drew her out onto the deck. In the morning light, the girls chased g
Chapter Twelve There was no sneaking up on the Barone family. Two large German shepherds barked from the end of their chains as Lance stopped his Jeep in front of the house. Red Noneofyourfuckingbusiness, aka Robby Barone, lived with his parents on a small working farm on the edge of town. A small satellite dish topped the roof of the two-story basic-blue farmhouse. The lawn was mostly clover but freshly mowed. There were no flowerbeds, no wind chimes. No furniture adorned the weathered gray porch. Instead of children’s toys or a swing set, two clotheslines and a neatly planted vegetable garden filled the rear yard. A barn and multiple outbuildings were clustered together at the rear of the property. A dozen chickens occupied a fenced run and large coop. A second pen held two pigs, and three cows grazed in a small pasture enclosed with barbed wire. A stock trailer and an old school bus were parked alongside the barn. Everything about the place said function over frill. There was an air
Chapter Thirteen Jail, day 1 Naked, Nick shivered as he hustled into the room, a bundle of clothes under one arm. The door behind him closed with a surreal and metallic clank, muffling the moaning and shouting of the booking area. With almost everything made of block and steel, sounds echoed with a harsh intensity that made him jump constantly for the whole first hour at the county jail. The small room was built of cinderblock with a locked steel door on each end. There was one small, wire-reinforced window in each door. Every few seconds a guard looked in. The room smelled like bleach and piss. A puddle of urine surrounded the stainless steel toilet in the corner. Nick needed to pee but couldn’t figure out how to do that without getting piss all over his feet. But, on the bright side, this holding area was empty. For the first time since he’d been brought to the building, Nick could almost draw a full breath. Even though he knew the camera in the ceiling corner was watching, the absen
Chapter Fourteen Everyone looked guilty in an orange prison uniform. Friday morning, Morgan sat at the table in a cell-sized interview room at the county jail. The cobalt blue of her suit was the sole spot of color in the gray-on-gray color scheme. She’d tried to see Nick the previous afternoon, but his official transfer from the SFPD and intake into the county jail hadn’t yet been completed. Nothing was more important to the law enforcement system than paperwork. A guard escorted Nick into the room and removed his handcuffs. Rubbing his wrists, Nick slid into the chair opposite Morgan. His face was expressionless, and a bruise darkened his chin. He stared at the wall as the guard retreated. “He hasn’t said much since we booked him,” the guard said. Good. He’d listened. “I’ll be outside the door.” The guard shot Nick a warning look. “We’ll be fine, but thank you.” Morgan waited for the guard to withdraw to the other side of the door. Once the door had closed, Nick’s gaze shifted to her
Chapter Fifteen “A knife through the heart?” Anger surged through Lance as he viewed the photo Morgan handed him. “The symbolism is clear.” Morgan rubbed her biceps and perched on the second folding chair he’d brought into his makeshift office. By agreeing to defend Nick, in the neighbors’ eyes, Morgan had turned on them. “It’s a cow heart. I reported it to the police.” Morgan shivered and crossed her long legs. “They took pictures and filed a report. I doubt anything will come of it. No one in the community except Bud is on Nick’s side.” She pressed a hand to her forehead. “Where can you get a cow heart? I called the local grocery stores and butcher shops. No luck.” “Have you called the ethnic markets? There’s an Asian supermarket out near the interstate. Sharp goes there to buy sweet potato greens. I know they carry more than the usual cuts of meat. I’ve seen whole chickens and pig heads.” Lance handed t
he picture back to her. “What about your grandfather’s surveillance camera?” “It’
Chapter Sixteen Morgan couldn’t imagine having one of her girls missing for two months. Just the thought of it made her queasy. In the tiny living room of a two-bedroom apartment, Vanessa Lewis sat on a plaid love seat and stared at the picture of her daughter. She wore no makeup, and her straight brown hair was cut in a short wash-and-wear cap. “I can’t believe this was taken last Thursday night. Why would she still be in Scarlet Falls and refuse to come home?” She blinked a tear from her eye. “We’ll find her.” Sitting next to her, Vanessa’s fiancé, Kevin Murdoch, reached for a tissue box on the end table and handed it to her. Morgan and Lance sat in two wingback chairs on the other side of the glass coffee table. “Did something unusual happen before Jamie ran away?” Morgan asked. Vanessa nodded. Her eyes and nose had reddened. “Kevin asked me to marry him. I was so happy. But when I told Jamie he’d be moving in with us, she exploded. She’s always been difficult. Moody. Explosive. Opp
Chapter Seventeen The picture of Tessa stared back at him from his computer screen. Her dark hair was pulled away from her pretty face. It seemed like she was smiling for him. At him. He couldn’t use the Internet without seeing her. She was everywhere. And in none of the photos on the news was she covered in blood. So much blood. I miss you. He looked at his hands. Clean. He closed his eyes. How was he going to get over her? He sucked in a deep breath. On the screen, a reporter talked to Morgan Dane. He turned up the volume. In a taped sound bite from the day before, she claimed to know that the wrong person had been arrested for the murder of Tessa Palmer. Impossible. Only two people had been in the woods that night, and one of them was dead. She couldn’t possibly know the truth. But doubt lingered under his certainty. He’d lived in constant fear that someone would discover his game and call him out. But people saw what they wanted to see—and no one wanted to believe a killer could ac