He glanced around the room. They were alone, but that could change at any moment. Still, she couldn’t take it much longer. A man who sends lavender roses had better be prepared to back up a statement like that.
“Fine. But this could make things awkward later.”
“I do awkward all the time. I’d rather have awkward than tense.”
He smiled a little at that. He took one step toward her and reached for her hands. He was tentative and unsure. Not at all like he’d been yesterday. He’d definitely heard her last night, but he was still there. Still trying. Still fighting for them. And that made it so much harder for her to be rational.
Especially when her hands slid into his again like there was some sort of magnetic force pulling them together.
“I want you to know I heard you last night. I did. And I get that I’m probably more trouble than I’m worth. There’s a lot of family stuff, and social stuff, and I get that those are huge negatives. But I want to be clear. I’m not looking for someone to throw dinner parties. I’m not interested in someone who can charm investors or make nice with my partners’ wives. I’m not even looking for someone who pleases my family. Those things simply aren’t important to me. And if they were important to you, honestly, that would be a problem for me.”
She had no idea how to respond, so she nodded.
“If you truly don’t want to be anything more than friends, I’ll respect that. But before you decide, you need to know that I’d love to have the opportunity to show you that being with a Campbell isn’t as bad as you seem to think it would be. It might even turn out to be so much fun you never want it to end.”
He might be right about that.
“You don’t have to answer me now. Or even this week. But I would very much like to take you out on a date. And then another and another. Until you have enough information to make an informed decision about me.”
The smile he gave her was so tender and hopeful and nervous that she couldn’t answer him fast enough. “I’d love to go out with you. Thank you for asking me.”
He squeezed her hands. “I should have asked you two years ago.”
“Better late than never.”
Her hands trembled in his. She was saying yes. And everything about her body language agreed with her words, but she was terrified. He didn’t think she was afraid of him but maybe of what going out with him might mean.
He would have to be very careful. Take it slow. Not pressure her into anything. Let her set the pace and have time to get used to what her heart wanted.
Because he was pretty sure her heart and her mind were not in full agreement at the moment. His mission was to get them on the same page.
A sharp rap on the door shattered the moment. Sabrina jerked her hands away like they were on fire. Or like she was going to get in trouble if they got caught.
“Come in,” he said.
“Adam!”
His mother rushed in and threw her arms around him. He couldn’t quite stop the grunt of pain her ferocious hug generated. She released him immediately, but her hands moved to his face and she studied him the way she’d done for as long as he could remember.
Over her head, his father stood in the doorway beside the captain. Both of them wore bemused expressions. Sabrina had plastered herself to the wall. Her expression leaned more toward horrified.
“Thank you.” His father shook the captain’s hand.
“My pleasure.” The captain nodded in Adam’s direction. “You’ll escort them out when they’re ready?”
“Of course, sir.” His mother had stopped examining him and now stood with one hand on his arm.
“Very good. I’m heading out.” The captain caught sight of Sabrina. “Dr. Fleming. How are you?”
Sabrina peeled herself from the wall. “I’m fine, sir. Thank you.”
The captain clucked his tongue. “I think you both should be home in bed, but I appreciate the dedication. Don’t overdo it. That’s an order.”
“Yes, sir,” Adam and Sabrina answered the captain and he left the room.
“Dr. Fleming?” Adam’s mother rounded on Sabrina.
Oh no.
She approached Sabrina, arms outstretched. Awesome. Mom was going for the “we’ve never met but we’re going to hug anyway” move. So much for his plan to ease Sabrina into Campbell life.
“Dear. How are you?” The hug she gave Sabrina was brief and gentle, and Sabrina looked more surprised than traumatized. “We’ve heard so much about you. It’s a thrill to finally meet you.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Campbell,” Sabrina said. “It’s lovely to meet you.”
His father eased his mother to the side and extended his hand toward Sabrina. “Art Campbell. This is long overdue.”
Thanks, Dad.
“It is. Thank you, Mr. Campbell.”
“Enough of that,” Adam’s mom said. “It’s Art and Abby. If you call either of us Arthur or Abigail, we’ll refuse to answer. And anytime someone says Mrs. Campbell, I get a little twitchy.”
“Ha-ha, Mom. Not that I’m not thrilled to see you, but what are you doing here? I didn’t think you were coming home until the end of the week.”
His dad pointed at his mom. “We changed our tickets as soon as Alexander called. We drove straight here from the airport. Haven’t even been home.”
“I needed to see your face, dear.” His mom’s voice quavered.
What?
“Imagine getting a phone call in the middle of the night that your baby boy has been blown up.” His mom shuddered.
“I told you I was fine,” Adam said.
“In a voice mail,” she said. “Not good enough. I needed to see for myself. I know how you are. I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d gotten home and found you in traction.”
She turned to Sabrina. “This one hates to make me worry. I never had to worry about him getting into real trouble. But I did have to worry about him downplaying his injuries.”
“He’s still doing that,” Sabrina said in a conspiratorial whisper.
His mother ate it up. “You’ll tell me the truth, won’t you, Dr. Fleming? How is he really?”
“First, it’s Sabrina. And second, a big chunk of the roof landed on his back because he was protecting me.”
Was Sabrina getting choked up? His mom certainly thought so, because she patted Sabrina’s arm.
Sabrina kept talking. “He’s hurting more than he’s letting on. His back has some bad lacerations and is probably starting to turn purple by now. But I’ve been assured it’s nothing he won’t fully recover from. And the more he moves, the better off he’ll be. If he lies around, he’ll get stiff and hurt even worse than he does now.”
Leigh must have told her that. He owed Leigh big-time.
“Thank you, dear. I never would have gotten that information from him.” His mom shook her head in overdone sadness. “And how are you?”
As if Sabrina’s scraped-up face and almost-black eye didn’t make her condition clear enough. “She has a concussion and lacerations and stitches in her head,” Adam said.
His mom looked between him and Sabrina. “I think the captain was right. You shouldn’t be working.”
“It’s a big case, Mom. And like she said, sometimes it’s better to keep moving than it is to sit around.”
“I guess.” His mom had a look on her face that Adam recognized. And feared. “How late are you working tonight?”
Where was she going with this? “I don’t know yet. We’re having a meeting at four thirty. It will probably last a couple of hours. We may call it a night then.”
“Excellent. You can come for a light supper at seven.”
What? No. He tried to catch his dad’s eye to get him to help, but his dad was eyeing the wall of photos and papers. “Mom—”
“You have to eat. It won’t be formal. We’ll have chicken salad and chat for thirty minutes and you can go home and crash. Sabrina, this includes you, dear.”
Sabrina’s mouth move
d a few times before anything came out. But then an expression settled on her that he didn’t recognize. “Abby, we’d be delighted. But there’s no guarantee we won’t wind up working late.”
“I understand,” his mom said. “You call around six thirty and let me know if you’ll be able to make it?”
Sabrina nodded. “We will.”
We’d be delighted? We will? Where did all this we business come from?
“Abby, if they have a meeting at four thirty, we probably need to have Adam walk us back to the car.”
Oh, so now his dad stepped in. After his mom had invited them to supper.
“Oh, of course. You’re working. We’ll go. See you tonight, Sabrina.”
Sabrina nodded and smiled. Adam ushered his parents out of the room. “Be right back,” he said. Then he mouthed “I’m sorry” as he closed the door.
Sabrina stuck her tongue out at him.
He wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.
His parents didn’t say much as they wound through the office and to the elevator, but as soon as they got outside his mother turned to him.
“She is beautiful. Stunning. Even with her injuries. I can see why you’re smitten with her, dear.”
“Abby.” His father’s laughing reproach fell on deaf ears.
“I love her already.”
“You don’t know her, Mom. How can you love her?”
His mom shook her head. “Because you do, dear. That’s enough for me. Always has been.”
“Mom—”
“Best not to argue, son. Especially when you know she’s right.” His dad gave him a gentle hug. When he pulled back, he looked deep into Adam’s eyes. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Abby Campbell? What are you doing here?” A woman Adam didn’t recognize rushed up the steps toward his mom.
His dad pulled him to one side as his mother and the woman chatted.
“You scared us, but Mother says you were quite brave and you saved your friends’ lives. I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard her be quite so demonstrative in her praise of you.”
“She came to the hospital. She kissed my cheek. She even offered to send Marcel home with me.”
His dad laughed. “She has her moments.”
“That she does.”
“Son, I know you’re tired and you’re hurting more than you’re letting on. But try to come by tonight. It will do your mother good. She’s actually holding it together quite well, but she was a wreck.” He took a deep breath. “Truthfully, we both were.”
“I’ll come.”
“Bring Sabrina.”
“I’ll try. I just got up the nerve to ask her out. I wasn’t planning on subjecting her to a family dinner this soon.”
“This will be family dinner lite. Think of it as a practice run.”
“Great.”
“Tonight.” His mom rejoined them and took his dad’s arm.
“Yes, sir.”
As they walked down the steps, his mom turned back and gave him a soft smile, tears shimmering in her eyes. She would never make a scene. Especially not where he worked. But those tears . . .
“Mom. Wait.”
She released his dad’s arm and ran back to him. Her tears fell free. “I wouldn’t know what to do if I lost you. I don’t tell you that often enough,” she said.
“I know. I’m sorry you were scared. But I’m fine. Really.”
She squeezed him close again. “Okay, baby.”
“I’ll see you tonight.”
She sniffled and patted his arm. “You’d better.”
His dad gave him a nod. The kind that said “Good job” and “Thanks” all in one.
As soon as they disappeared from view, Adam headed—as fast as he could, which wasn’t saying much at the moment—back to Sabrina.
Voices reached him before he got to the homicide office door. Gabe. Anissa. Ryan.
This was going to be awkward.
He opened the door. Everyone was seated around the conference room table except for Gabe, who stood by the wall. “Good. You’re here. Let’s get to work.”
14
Poor Adam.
He looked . . . awful.
“Dude. Did someone run over your cat?” Gabe frowned at Adam.
So it wasn’t her imagination.
“I’m fine.” He eased into the seat beside her with a small grunt as he tried to find a comfortable position.
The three homicide investigators were staring at Adam. What were they looking for? And what did they see that made all three of them—Anissa first, then Gabe, then Ryan—return their attention to the wall where photos of the victim, crime scene, and evidence were lined up in rough chronological order?
What made them decide Adam was okay? Or was it that they decided he didn’t want to talk about it? Whatever it was?
Sabrina still hadn’t figured it out when Gabe dove in.
“I realize it’s late, and three of us got blown up yesterday, and we’re not feeling awesome today. So I’m going to hit this hard and fast. Once we have a strategy, we’ll call it for the night and reconvene tomorrow.”
Nods all around.
He began with the timeline of events. Lisa Palmer coming to the sheriff’s office to see Adam. Dropping the briefcase of photos into the lake. Returning home or somewhere near it based on the GPS in her car and phone.
“The ME thinks the time of death is a few hours before Lisa Palmer went into the lake on Saturday night/Sunday morning,” Gabe said.
“I thought you said she drowned,” Anissa said.
“She did. But Dr. Oliver is certain it was earlier in the evening. She was already dead before her car went into the water. Sharon’s running some tests on the water in Lisa Palmer’s lungs, but unless we get a confession we’ll probably never know exactly where she was drowned.”
Adam leaned forward. “Just to be sure I’m following you, Lisa Palmer did drown, but not in the lake. And if she hadn’t written that note on her abdomen . . .”
Gabe’s nod was grim. “Dr. Oliver says we might never have realized it was anything other than an accident or a suicide. There would have been no evidentiary reason to suspect foul play.”
Wow. This woman was actually helping them solve her murder from beyond the grave.
Sabrina wasn’t sure if that was cool or creepy.
“There has to be something significant about the photographs. She had that briefcase with her when she came to the office to see Adam,” Gabe said. “This is conjecture, of course, but it would make sense to me that she wouldn’t have been comfortable driving around with incriminating evidence. She would have wanted something she could use to prove her point, but only if she was telling the story. If anyone else saw the contents of her briefcase, it would be meaningless to them.”
Sabrina looked at the photographs again. “We need to find out what they have in common,” she said. “It could be anything from a single employee who has worked at all of those places to a paper supplier or a loan officer.”
“I agree,” Gabe said.
“And I still think it would help if we could get a list of her clients and see who she’s worked for,” Adam said. “We need to be careful not to assume anything, but given that she was coming to see me, it makes sense that she was planning to report some type of economic crime.”
“There’s a team of forensic accountants going through the files I recovered from the hard drive,” Sabrina said. “And Mike—Dr. Bledsoe—is looking to see if he can find another level of encryption or some backdoor stuff.”
“Any idea when he’ll be done?” Gabe asked.
“I talked to him this afternoon. He said Wednesday late. Maybe Thursday before he can get you anything. And your forensic accountants said it could be next week for the first round of information. It will take months for them to get through it all.”
Gabe pretended to pound his head on the wall. “We don’t have until next week, much less next month.�
��
“I . . .” Sabrina turned to Adam. She needed some help here. “I don’t think there’s any way to get this sooner, Gabe. Mike’s the best. And he’s working hard on it.”
“Gabe knows that, Bri. He’s just tired. And frustrated. We all are. We have a lot of hunches and almost no hard facts. It’s—”
“Awful,” Gabe said.
They discussed every angle of the case for the next thirty minutes before Gabe threw up his hands. “I give up. We have a whole lot of nothing.”
“We have the potential for a whole lot of something,” Anissa said. “I’m still working through everything we found in and around the car as well as what we found under the bridge. You’ll just have to be patient.”
“I don’t do patient.”
“I’ve noticed.”
Gabe ignored Anissa’s comment. “Okay, tomorrow our number one priority is figuring out the unifying factor behind these photographs. There has to be one. Let’s meet around ten. And let’s not forget these people have already tried to take Sabrina out twice. And almost got Adam and me as well in their quest to destroy evidence. They’ve been quiet today, but I’m afraid the closer we get to the truth, the more dangerous they’ll be.”
More nods. Chairs scraped as everyone stood.
“Leigh said you’re all welcome for dinner.” Ryan looked at Gabe and Anissa, both of whom nodded and said “I’m in” at the same time.
“Great.” Ryan turned in her direction. “Sabrina? Adam?”
Adam looked like he’d swallowed an ice cube. Would he lie? Or maybe leave out a few key parts of the story?
“Can we get in on dessert later? My, um, my parents want us to come for dinner tonight.”
“We? Us?” A grin flashed across Gabe’s face.
“Sabrina and I.”
“Wow. You move fast.”
Adam gave Gabe a grin so fake even she could tell he didn’t mean it. Did he not want her to go to his parents’? Or did he not want the others to know he’d asked her out?
An emotion she couldn’t name flashed through her.
“Ignore them,” Anissa said, waving between Gabe and Adam. “Gabe’s being a smart aleck and Adam’s trying to be polite when what he wants to do is tell Gabe off.” She grinned at Sabrina. “The Campbells are lovely. I’m sure dinner will be fantastic. And I’ll be sure we save some of whatever dessert Leigh makes.”
In Too Deep Page 17
