Possibly the same person who’d clued Stetson into his past in Rebel. “Can you run a report on a kid for me?” Mitch fisted his phone and emailed the picture of Stetson to the detective’s personal email.
“Sure. What’s the name?”
“Bret Adams. Just sent the picture.”
The bedroom door squeaked open. Lacy, swallowed by one of his white undershirts, stood against the doorframe. Her tanned legs crossed at the ankles, and she held the frame like a life preserver. She rested her head on the wood.
God, in white she really did look just like his angel.
His. He caught himself thinking in time to catch the unguarded look in her eyes. The softness of her. The trust.
Shit. She’d dropped her walls for him. Trusted him to protect her. To not do whatever the hell the last officer in her life did, and now he was about to dive into her family’s past to expose a killer. What the hell kind of asshole did that?
“Thanks, Bishop. Gotta go.” He bit the inside of his cheek, stifling a curse.
“Pretty thang must be awake. Listen, Mitch. Don’t be stupid. Let our boys do their job, and keep your name out of this. Your job is on the line if this gets screwed. Let them bring Wray in the right way.”
Mitch lowered his head and dropped his voice enough to keep Lacy out of earshot. “If that’s what you really wanted, you wouldn’t have called.”
“Good to know your head’s clearing up.” Bishop hung up.
Mitch clicked the phone off and took a deep breath before stepping back into the kitchen. He needed her to trust him now more than ever.
He turned his back to her, shielded his expression, stalled just long enough to shove what Bishop said down deep enough she wouldn’t be able to read it on his face.
“Mitch?” He felt Lacy stalk toward him. “Everything all right?”
No. And it wouldn’t be until he found out what this whole damn town was trying to hide and what part she held in it. “Sit.” He wheeled around on her, two cups of coffee in hand. He set one on the kitchen table and pulled out a chair for her then sank into another.
“Bad news from Nashville?” Lacy cradled the offered mug in her hands and sat, pulling her feet to the chair and her knees to her chest. She stretched the shirt over her knees. It wasn’t until she took a sip that he noticed her hands shaking.
“Nothing I can’t handle.” Though the flaming anger burning a hole in his belly begged to differ.
“Something to do with the files in the bedroom?” Her voice cracked. The shaking hands he could contribute to the chill in the room, but not the weary look in her eyes. That came from somewhere else. Some deep-rooted fear that made her hide in bathrooms and shake in his presence. He hated it.
He sat back in his chair and examined her body language. Reading her. The tucked legs. The death grip on the coffee mug. The way she glanced at her knees every time he leveled a share in her direction.
What the fuck had happened to her?
“Yes,” he answered slowly, weighing her reaction carefully. Testing her. “The call was about the man in the file.”
She had the mug to her lips when she spoke, and he didn’t miss the small choke on coffee she tried to hide under a cough. Her eyes didn’t leave his. She knew something was up, and by her reaction last night, she knew it had to do with Wray.
“What do you know about Richard Wray?”
CHAPTER TEN
Lacy balked at the harsh tone in Mitch’s question. The coffee she’s swallowed down the wrong way burned like hell, but she didn’t dare flinch. He knew the truth. Or at least a version he thought was the truth. She just needed to find out exactly what version that was without giving away her secret.
When she didn’t answer right away, the compassion drained from his features, leaving the all-business Mitch judging her with a scrutinizing stare from the opposite side of the table.
From what she’d overheard of his phone conversation, he’d come dangerously close to finding out the truth she’d kept hidden for thirteen years. The truth that would cost her father his job and tear her family apart for good. She had to play this right. Throw him off the lead and make sure her father never found out Mitch was on to them.
Lucky for her, Mitch stared only a few seconds longer before he scraped his chair over the titled floor and stalked off for the bedroom.
She welcomed the chance to clear her throat of the burning liquid with a cough and regain her breath with a gulp of air without him analyzing her every move. Shit. How was she going to pull off the biggest lie of her life?
Mitch disappeared through the bedroom door and returned, plopping a thick case file by her coffee. The mug rattled under the weight. “You locked yourself in the bathroom after knocking this file on the floor. I need to know why.” He crossed his arms over his chest as he towered over her. The heat radiating off him soaked through her thin shirt, which should have stopped her shiver, but only added to her fear. She’d never felt intimidated by him in the way she knew she should from a detective – until now.
Maybe this was her chance at redemption. Maybe she could tell Mitch everything. Finally let go of the guilt that had weighed her down for thirteen years. Let the truth finally rise to the top.
No.
How could she even let that thought sink in long enough to register? Her father had given up so much to protect her. Put his career on the line and lost his best investigator. The next thought made her physically sick. She’d never asked, and her father had never told, but she was damn sure her kidnapping and the events that followed had been the final straw to end her parents’ marriage.
She flipped the file open. Her stomach quivered at Wray’s picture, and her mouth went dry. Play coy, Lace. See what he already knows. “It’s not every day you pick up pictures of mutilated young girls off your boyfriend’s bedroom floor. Of course I ran for the bathroom.”
His eyes widened for a second, just long enough to prove boyfriend hit its intended mark, then went stoic again. “You’ve been around officers all your life. I’m sure you’re used to the gruesome details of the job.”
“Not officers who keep such graphic pictures from secured files by their bed,” she lobbed back in his direction. “Those are Rebel files anyway. How did you get them?”
His mouth twitched. “I asked.”
“And Dad just handed them over?” Not likely. The chief kept his own files locked away in his office. The real case files with the information linking Wray to her kidnapping. Files that would never see the light beyond his home office.
His face turned stony again. This was a different side of the man she thought she could trust. Hard. Mincing. Calculated. Scary as hell.
If he stared at her with those piercing eyes much longer, she’d break.
She whirled up out of the chair and pulled the hem of her borrowed shirt down to cover her ass, the sudden feeling of exposure flipped her stomach. “I’m calling Connie and getting dressed.”
She tried to pass him for the bedroom door, but he sidestepped and blocked her retreat. The cold look in his eyes, painful. “What do you know about Wray?”
Stunned, she flipped her hair back and lifted her chin, faking bravado. What did she not know about the man who’d wanted her dead? “I told you. I know what every cop in Rebel knows. Nothing more.”
Mitch leaned in. “I don’t believe you.” His voice hard. His eyes piercing. “Why have you stayed in Rebel? There’s nothing for you here.”
“What the hell?” She crossed her arms. “Where do you get off judging my decisions, and what would that have to do with Wray?”
He leaned back, giving her much needed breathing room. “Maybe nothing. But even you have to admit plans to open a bar in backwoods Rebel isn’t enough of a draw to keep you happy here. There must be something else.”
“Yeah. Family,” she tossed with enough sarcasm to make the word sting, but Mitch brushed it off.
“Not the way you look at your father and your brother. I’ve seen t
he contempt you have. There has to be another reason.”
“Really.” She tried to sidestep him but ended up pinned between his chest and the back wall of the kitchen. “Not everyone in this town has an agenda, Detective. Maybe I’m not so easy to figure out.”
“Maybe.” He rubbed his chin. “But keeping a secret about Wray from me could be dangerous. Wray could be dangerous.”
Like hell anyone knew that fact better than she did. From the wisps of gray hair just forming at his temples to the vacant darkness in his eyes, his touch, the feel of his hot breath on her neck, the smell of his cheap cologne, the way he’d almost convinced her she deserved to die. It all flooded back.
She shut her eyes tight against the memory and swallowed the lump chocking her throat before answering. “I live with the freaking chief of police. If anyone knows just how dangerous that man could be, I do.”
Mitch growled from deep within his throat and stepped forward until she had no choice but to crawl into the wall or fall back into her chair. “If you know everything, maybe you can explain to me why some of the information from this case file is missing?”
Shit on a stick. She hoped she didn’t look like a guppy gasping for air.
Mitch took the chair beside her, slid it across the kitchen floor and sat so close the heat radiating off him scalded her bare legs. He rubbed a tight hand over a day’s worth of stubble and pulled his chin. “This is serious, Lacy. Someone in Rebel is doctoring files, and a serial killer might get away because of it.”
If picturing Wray wasn’t enough to send her reeling over the edge of control, hearing Mitch call her Lacy instead of Angel finished off the job. If she didn’t puke, it’d be a damn miracle. She just had to stall long enough to get out of his place without divulging too much. “I am being serious, Detective. You’re accusing my family of something horrid. How should I react?”
“Shocked?”
“I am.”
“Defensive is more like it.”
“Isn’t that how people normally act when they’re being attacked?”
He squeezed her thigh. “Lace? What are you talking about? How do you know this man?”
Mitch was playing stupid. She’d seen her father work that tactic hundreds of times, and she’d seen the best criminals in Rebel confront him for it.
She barked a hollow laugh. “That night in Charlie’s. You came there to find me. You sought me out. And I let you take me home. How convenient for you.” She slammed her hands into his chest and pushed away to stand, but he wrapped his fingers around her wrists.
“Lacy. What do you mean, came for you?” Capturing both wrists in one hand, he flipped the file open to her kidnapper’s face again. Her heart thumped in her ears. “What do you know about him?”
Lacy shut her eyes, trying to push his image out of her mind, but the picture wouldn’t disappear.
She felt Mitch take a shallow breath, his fingers bit into the skin along her writs. “Did your father tell you about him? Really tell you what a man like Wray is capable of without sugar coating all the gory details.” His eyes narrowed. “Did he tell you what this man is accused of doing to little girls?”
She didn’t answer, her brain stuck on Wray’s fresh image. How could she have been so stupid? A detective? Of course he’d known. He’d hunted her down. Befriended her. Gained her trust.
“Lace, Angel?” Mitch moved his hold up her arms to her shoulders and shook her when she didn’t answer. The strained look on his face came close enough to passing for concern she could almost convince herself he wasn’t playing stupid.
Mitch released her shoulders and paced the room, pinching the bridge of his nose. He picked up the file and dropped it open on the table. He seemed to be changing tactics, playing good cop and bad cop like a one-man debriefing team. “His name’s Richard Wray. He worked as an animal trainer for a traveling circus in the Southeast. On his off nights, he hunted young girls and at times, young women. He promised them free tickets and animal rides to earn their trust.”
Behind tightly shut eyes, Lacy fought the memories. Should she come out and tell him? Was there any use in hiding what he’d eventually find on his own?
Something inside her slammed down. No. She could never tell. Especially not a Nashville detective. They’d throw the chief in jail for obstruction and expose her for the fraud she was.
Tears burned the corners of her eyes, and when she reached to wipe them away, they flooded over her cheeks.
His eyes went dark, and her body chilled. “Wray hid his victims in abandoned buildings,” Mitch went on. “He tied and gagged them. When no one found them, he claimed no one wanted them, and he loved them the only way he knew how. To death. He’s a sick son of a bitch who thinks he’s doing the world a service by killing.”
Her stomach twisted so tight, bile leached up her throat. She kept her gaze hard on his. She wouldn’t back down.
“He killed six girls before the FBI caught on to the serial pattern. Six before they figured out his fetish for young and pretty. Every six months or so, like a clock ticking away in his deranged head, he’d live a normal life. Work the fair, pass out tickets, interact without the need to kill, then the time bomb would explode and some innocent little girl would go missing only to end up in a shallow grave days later.
“Everyone thought it was over. He’d killed for the last time, or even better, his last victim had taken him to hell along with her. A year without a killing. Without the loss of a young girl. But we were all wrong. We let our guard down just long enough to let him back in to take another.”
Lacy’s head fell back. A lead ball of guilt rolled down her throat, cutting off the air to her lungs and her ability to speak.
Something sparked in his eyes. Something tormented and deep and agonizing to watch spread across his face. His mouth hardened.
“If you know anything about this case, Lace. Anything. You need to tell me now.”
Steel bands wrapped around her waist, pressing her body against his. She couldn’t take it anymore. She breathed deeply and steeled herself. “I don’t know anything about this man.”
“But you live with cops. You know everything.”
Her resolve began to crack. “I was twelve when the news broke about him around here. Too young to remember anything.”
His gaze softened. “The perfect age to have been one of his victims.”
If he hadn’t been standing so close she was sure she would have hit the floor. She swallowed the guilt and pain and memories of Wray, telling herself she only had to make it through his questioning, then she could break down.
With defiance she wasn’t sure she could hold onto long, she looked into his face. “Well thank God I wasn’t or I’d be dead.”
She didn’t wait for him to move before shoving against his solid chest and pushing her way into the bedroom.
Too afraid Connie would freak at the anger in her voice, she texted her instead and in the mess of sheets and blankets found her discarded closes and pulled them on.
She had to find a way to tell her Dad Mitch was searching for Wray without sending the man into cardiac arrest. He’d done what he’d done for her. Committed a mortal sin to save his daughter, and she’d be damned if he’d suffer one night in jail because of it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Give me a second to change, and I’ll take you home.”
“Don’t bother.” Lacy stepped clear of the bedroom door to find Mitch in the exact spot she’d left him, leaning over the kitchen table with a pained expression on his face.
He looked up. His forehead winkled. His eyes red. “You’re not going alone.”
She glared at him. Years of hate for the man who’d kidnapped her fueled enough rage to resent the man bringing her past back to life. “Walking home is safer than going anywhere with you.”
“Fair enough.” Mitch pushed up off the table and strengthened. He towered over her. Easily twice her size and her strength, but with anger burning through her veins, she
felt every bit his match tonight. “What about Connie? Can she give you a ride?”
“She didn’t answer her phone.”
He reached in his pocket and retrieved his cell. “A cab then?”
She wanted to break. Wanted to pound her fists into his chest. To scream and yell and unleash the fury he’d created brining up Wray. But, she kept her body still and her voice cold. “I’ll wait outside then.”
Mitch let her pass. She’d let him push her far enough tonight to make two things clear. She knew more about Richard Wray than he did, and she wasn’t giving in to his scare tactics.
She’d just reached for the doorknob when she heard him step forward.
“Angel.” He spoke to her back. “You don’t have to believe me, but before you walk out that door, you have to hear me say it. I didn’t know. Whatever it is you’re fighting so hard to hide from me, I wasn’t taking advantage.”
Lacy let that admission sink into her turned back. Damn he didn’t know. He was a fucking detective. He’d calculated out every step from challenging her at the bar to Stetson’s little tirade to – oh God – her stomach tightened with the thought of what she’d done with him, allowed him to do to her all in the name of trust. He’d made her trust him. Give in. Surrender. What a fucking idiot.
Too angry to just stand any longer, she pushed through the screen door and let it slam behind her. If he had an ounce of chivalry, he’d let her go without following. Thank God he did.
Outside, she paced the narrow gravel driveway, checking her phone every five seconds for a message from Connie and tossing heated looks at the front window.
He wasn’t fooling her. She could see the steam billowing off his coffee cup in the shadows of the heavy drapes. He’d held his phone to his ear long enough to call the cab company, then turned his full attention back to her. Looking for clues she’d been lying to him no doubt.
Confess (The Blue Line Series Book 1) Page 13
