“So is there anything more you’re not telling me?” she asked quietly.
A muscle leaped in his jaw. “What makes you ask that?”
Defensive. Coldness stole the warmth from his eyes. Cat frowned. “I can tell by the way you’re looking at me. You want to tell me something but you’re not sure how...or if you should. Am I right?”
Their eyes locked before he looked to the window. “I’m struggling with the fact that I have no clue what was going on with Sarah before she died. If I knew that, maybe she wouldn’t be lying in the morgue right now.”
Cat studied his profile. Watched for the tell-tale signs of darting eyes and shifting shoulders. Signs that he was uncomfortable, lying, hiding from her scrutiny. All she saw was the slumped shoulders of sadness...worse, failure. She swallowed her burgeoning sympathy.
“Why didn’t you know? You and Sarah were friends. Good friends.”
He dropped back in his chair, closed his eyes. When Cat had a perpetrator in the interview room who did the same thing, she referred to it as “closing the curtains.” She pursed her lips together to stop herself from talking. He needed to fill in the gaps. If she stormed in with a load of uneducated guesses, she could easily end up with nothing but a sticky mess of misunderstandings and excuses.
He blew out a heavy breath and opened his eyes. “Let’s just say I’ve been busy. Busy at work. We lost contact.”
“You and Sarah?” She shook her head. “That’s impossible.”
“Friends grow apart.”
She stared. Her gut knotted. He was lying. “Well, if that’s the case, why are you looking as though you should be hung, drawn and quartered?”
His gaze darted over her face and the skin at his neck shifted. “I haven’t taken a lot of notice of what was going on around me for the last few years. Things I should’ve cared about. Friends, especially.”
“Why not?”
Anger flashed in his eyes. “What is this, Cat?”
“This is me investigating my friend’s murder. What you asked me here to do. If you don’t like it then I don’t understand why you made that phone call in the first place.” She leaned forward, kept her voice low. “I’m a cop, Jay. I view everything and everyone with suspicion until the right person is under arrest.”
“Including me.”
Guilt scratched at her heart and she slammed the door on her love for the man sitting in front of her. “Including you.” She swallowed. “This time last week I was dealing with my own work...and other stuff. Now I’m on a train with one friend I haven’t seen in far too long, and another is dead.”
An invisible connection hovered between them before he slumped back in his chair a second time. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
Inhaling a long breath, Cat exhaled it in a rush. “Let’s talk about this when we’re at your place. Not here. Okay?”
He nodded, his gaze somber and intense. “Whatever you say, Detective.”
Cat resisted the urge to buckle under the disappointment in his gaze. This was going to be fifty times harder than she anticipated if Jay didn’t understand that he was equally in the line of fire as anyone else until she knew more.
She dragged her eyes from the dangerously hypnotic power of his and turned to the window. Before she looked away, Cat could’ve sworn his eyes glazed with unshed tears. Something deeper was definitely going on. The Jay Garrett she knew was bold as brass and far more sure of himself than the gorgeous man in front of her with his shoulders rounded in a classic image of exhaustion. She wouldn’t push him. Bigger questions, the personal ones, could wait. The first thing she needed to deal with was Sarah. Jay was alive—and a suspect.
CHAPTER THREE
THE TAXI PULLED TO A stop outside Jay’s house and he opened the passenger-side door. Watching Cat over the roof, he smiled as she stared up at the cabin, her eyes alive with awe. He drew in a long breath through flared nostrils. He’d bought the cabin because of her. Cat loved this house. Always had. He leaned through the window and paid the driver. After he’d taken her suitcase from the trunk, the taxi turned around and made its way back down the spiraling road into Templeton Cove.
He stood next to her and gestured toward the cabin. “What do you think?”
She shook her head. “You know exactly what I think. I absolutely love it.” She turned to look at him, a smile softly curving her lips. “You must have done well for yourself since I last saw you.”
Jay’s smile dissolved. “Yeah, well, money doesn’t count for anything when one of your friends turns up dead on the edge of your land.”
Guilt knotted inside him for chilling the atmosphere so succinctly, but he didn’t deserve the admiration shining in her eyes. He didn’t deserve her looking at him as if he was anything more than he was. A man who’d gotten so tied up in his own life, he hadn’t noticed the trouble Sarah was in.
She looked across the grassy hill running down to the forest at the edge of his land. “Sarah was found on Clover Point?”
“Yes.”
She turned. “I’m so sorry.”
For the twentieth time since he’d spotted Cat’s gorgeous red hair over the top of the train seat, Jay curled his itching hands into fists. He wanted to touch her as though he needed to make sure she was real. She looked different. Just as beautiful, but different. Far too underweight for his liking and the gray smudges under her eyes told him she could do with staying in bed for a week. Yet she’d come as soon as he called.
“Her body was found meters from my property.” He dragged his gaze from hers to stare at the forest. “I’m a suspect because I knew her and she was here. I don’t blame the police for jumping on me straight away.”
She looked past him to the forest, her cheeks darkening. “What happened with the police? I assume you were questioned pretty much as soon as she was found.”
He followed her gaze, wishing she’d look at him. Her eyes were the only window he had into a brain that worked like a machine and a heart that he’d hoped would be his one day. She had to believe him innocent. If she didn’t, he had no idea where to turn next.
“Inspector Bennett, the senior investigation officer in Sarah’s case, arrived the next day. He questioned me here. He stood on the deck, firing questions at me as though I was the type of guy who could choke a woman to death and then drink his morning coffee without a care in the world.” He shook his head, his jaw clenching. “I didn’t even know she was dead until Bennett and his team turned up.”
She shifted away from him, her gaze turned from his. “What did he say? Do you have an alibi?”
Nausea furled in his stomach. The space she’d opened between them spoke volumes. Jay swallowed against the pain that struck him deep inside. “He goaded me for over an hour, insinuating I had both access and probable cause to hurt her because of...our renowned fall out.”
“The fall out you’ve yet to tell me about.”
He watched her profile. Her jaw was clenched and her eyes were narrowed. He felt guilty of everything Bennett accused him of. Having Cat looking away from him scratched at his soul, caused an ache in his heart. “I have an alibi, Cat. Four alibis.”
She turned. “Four?”
Jay nodded. Was that relief in her eyes? “I was with some visiting French investors that evening, well into the night.”
“So you’re no longer a suspect?”
Jay lifted his shoulders. “I have no idea. Bennett took their names and said he’d be in touch. I have
n’t heard anything from him since so I’m assuming he’s happy...although...”
She frowned. “What?”
“Nothing else has been done or said by the cops in over a week. There hasn’t been as much as a press conference since. No reconstruction, no information about the killing made public at all. It’s why I called you.”
“Well, they’re hardly likely to tell you what they’re doing. If you had probable cause and access, you will be on their radar until someone else is found and charged.”
Jay stared, imploring her to believe him innocent. “That’s what I thought.”
Without thinking, he brushed back some of the thick red hair that blew across her cheek. “You’re back where you belong, Cat.”
She stiffened beneath his fingers. “No, Jay, I’m not. I’m here for Sarah...and then I go home.”
She strode past him to sit on a bench that overlooked the forest. Jay exhaled and followed her. The tension hummed around them like an invisible force field. Sitting beside her, he planted his elbows on his knees and stared ahead. He never could have anticipated the effect Cat looking at him with suspicion in her incredible, ridiculously green eyes would have on him.
She looked amazing despite the sadness he sensed hovering around her. Why the hell hadn’t he called her before? Why wait until Sarah’s body was found on the grounds of his estate before bringing her back into his life? He yearned to turn back the clock and make everything right in the world. He’d been a stupid, blind, money-hungry dickhead.
He forced his mind to focus on the macabre and faced her. “They found her body in the forest.”
She stared at him for a long moment before looking down at her hands. The knuckles showed white. “I was shocked when you called. Scared. Now I feel this is where I’m supposed to be. Right here with you, doing whatever the hell I can to put Sarah to rest.”
“Even if it gets you in trouble?”
A wry smile curved her lips. “I’m more used to trouble than you can imagine. I want to find whoever did this as much as you. She was an amazing friend to both of us.”
Jay ran his gaze over the face he’d once known so well but hadn’t taken the time to watch change and grow. Who was Cat now? Who had Sarah been? His heart kicked painfully.
“Yet neither of us bothered to pick up the phone and call her for God knows how long, did we?”
Irritation flashed sharply in her eyes. “Accusations and blame don’t help. Not ever.”
“We have nothing to work with, Cat.” Frustration sharpened his tone. “As long as the police still think I might have had something to do with this...”
She flicked her long auburn hair over her shoulders. “If we’re going to prove your innocence by finding out who killed Sarah, the first thing we need to do is build a picture of who she was before she died.”
She believes me. Hope dared to ignite like a flame behind his rib cage. “You believe I had nothing to do with this?”
She frowned but her gaze never left his. “I want to. More than anything. But I’ll treat this case the same as any other. We live in a world of innocent until proven guilty, remember?”
Her words were thinly veiled. She wanted to believe him but didn’t. Not yet. Authority and linear thinking ruled Cat’s world; his was ruled by the next deal, the next pot of money. He needed to focus on the future without looking back. If he looked back too hard, it would kill him.
Yet he needed to look back if he had any chance of proving his innocence and Cat would have to let down her professional guard and look into her heart to truly believe he could never harm Sarah.
There was no other way. Cat didn’t know him anymore. No one did.
He turned his gaze to the forest. “I hadn’t spoken to her in months. I didn’t know a damn thing about what was going on with her.”
The seconds passed like heartbeats until Cat spoke again. “Do you think I knew all the murder victims I’ve helped lay to rest over the years? This blame you’re drowning under stops now. People lose touch, grow up, change. Look at you.”
“What about me?”
“I look at you and I don’t see the boy I shared every summer with growing up, I see...”
He looked at her. Two spots of color stained her cheeks, her eyes wide. “You see what?”
“I see someone older, wiser...maybe a bit afraid there are bigger things out there than even the great Jay Garrett can handle. It makes a welcome change. You’ve grown up. It suits you.”
Unease rippled along his nerve endings. She’d always read him like an open book, but he thought with all the years that passed, she wouldn’t know, wouldn’t guess. He was wrong. He already felt exposed...ashamed.
“Your coming to the Cove wasn’t supposed to be about me, but I’m scared to death you think me capable of murder, Cat. I asked you here for Sarah. The feeling rocketing through me at a hundred miles an hour, telling me you were the best thing in my damn life, is as unwanted as it is unexpected.”
Self-hatred simmered in his chest and gut like pools of boiling tar. He leaned forward on his elbows again, unable to bear looking at the wariness in her eyes. “You’re right, I have grown up and I want to make up for the mistakes I’ve made.” He stared ahead and then leaped straight in with the question he’d really wanted to ask her since he saw that first flicker of regret in her eyes. “How about you?”
“What about me?”
He huffed out a laugh. “You can’t lie to me. I sense something bothering you, too. Something personal.”
Silence.
He turned. She stared at the forest, her jaw tight. “Yes, well, the mistakes I’ve made can’t be put right. At least not yet, so I’m going to try to forget about them for a while and concentrate on Sarah.”
Jay watched her. He recognized the passing shame as it whispered across her eyes, the way her mouth opened and closed in hesitation. Witnessed her brain and conscience battling with the age-old human need to share. They were special. Cat and Jay, Jay and Cat. Cat, Jay and Sarah, Sarah, Jay and Cat. Every summer they’d been a unit—a whole.
It looked as though two out of three still were. It was impossible Cat didn’t feel the out-of-bounds pull between them. Memories of their single night together seven years before crashed into Jay’s mind as he stared at the thick red hair he’d finally managed to bury his face in all those years ago. She’d given him the gift of her virginity, neither of them knowing that the following day she’d leave Templeton Cove, never to return.
He followed her gaze toward the forest. “You’re right. Sarah is all that matters now.”
“Good, because murder starts with the victim every time. We have to find out who Sarah’s friends were before she died, her lovers, work colleagues...the list goes on.”
“What if we don’t find out any of that stuff? Then what? Surely it can’t always be the victim that holds the key to their murder.”
“It is. Every time.”
Jay stared as the blood roared in his ears and frustration hummed through every fiber of his body. He’d done nothing to help Sarah. Nothing to stop her from being killed. Her body was found on the edge of his property. It had to be about the killer...because if it was about Sarah, he was partly to blame. She’d tried to contact him several times when he was using but he’d been too messed up to care. When he got clean, she didn’t want to know him. He did something so bad when he was high, she never forgave him. Until the day she was killed and she’d phoned asking to see him.
; Sweat broke out on his upper lip and he dropped back against the bench. “She called me.”
“What?”
“Sarah. She called me the day she died. She asked me to meet her at Marian’s—”
“Who’s Marian?”
He turned. The tone of her voice wasn’t gentle, it was demanding. His gaze dropped to her full, pink-painted lips and the desire to kiss her shuddered through his body. Always strong, kind and capable, Cat had grown even more so in the years since he’d seen her. Whereas he’d diminished, allowed himself to be taken under by drugs, succumbed to their power and ruined lives. Yet for the first time, someone else’s confidence was the balm he needed to soothe his gut-wrenching fear that Sarah’s parents, Cat, the entire community, could think he killed one of the loveliest people on the planet.
He drew in a breath, exhaled. “Marian works in a bakery by the beach. I’m in there a lot. I...” He stopped, waved a hand. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is Sarah never turned up, but worse, I never went looking for her.”
“Didn’t you call her?” She frowned.
“Yes, but there was no answer. Now we know why.” He shook his head, regret and loss beating hard in his chest. “A few days later I started hearing rumors about her that made absolutely no sense, but we should at least check to see if they have merit.”
“What rumors?”
He sighed. “Sex, drugs and rock and roll.”
Her eyes widened. “Sarah?”
“Yep.”
She tutted. “Well, no wonder you didn’t believe them. The Sarah I knew was as likely to take drugs as I am to run naked through Templeton Cove town center.”
He managed a small smile. “Hey, never say never.”
“In your dreams, Jay Garrett.” She shook her head, the hint of her humor in her eyes dissolving. “These next few days are going to be tough. No investigating team or officer is going to appreciate an off-duty cop from a different jurisdiction poking around in a murder case. So both of us need to be our most charismatic, charming and manipulative throughout this entire process.” Her eyes sparkled with raw intent.
Finding Justice Page 3
