Damnit.
Because fuuuck…could he ever use a beer. A couple of them. A whole damn keg to knock him out and wash away the constant itch.
He’d thought his hunger for her had been unbearable during that kiss. But that pathetic, uptick in his libido was nothing…absolutely nothing, compare to the constant erection from living with her. Back when they’d been together, he’d been able to do something about his relentless arousal. He’d been able to flush it from his system, he’d been able to put it to good use—with her. But that option wasn’t available now. And too many freaking trips to the bathroom, or too many cold showers, invited too many questions.
So he’d taken to living in sweats, or his loosest cargo pants.
Mason, thank Christ, was oblivious.
Even now, with her tucked away, fast asleep in the first bedroom down the hall, he could smell her perfume. The spicy sassy scent of it. Or the rich vanilla scented lotion she used on her arms and legs—even though applying the stuff must sting like hell. It was only two days post break in. The scratches were still raw, still healing.
He took another long, slow swallow of his iced tea. And by iced, he meant iced. He’d come close to emptying the whole freezer tray of frostbitten cubes down his pants. He’d been that desperate for a chilling effect. For something to neuter the sizzle in his blood and suck the fire from his crotch.
They were only on day two, headed into day three, and he was already tight as a wind up rocket, about to spin off into the stratosphere.
He’d offered to take the night shift, so Mason could sleep. The night shift should be easier, right? He wouldn’t be stuck in the same room with her for hours and hours on end. During the night, he’d have an eight hour break from her perfume, and her scented lotion, and that blinding smile that jackrabbited his heart. Plus, by the time she was waking up, he’d be hitting the sack…or at least pretending to hit the sack.
Except, it hadn’t worked that way.
Night shift meant no conversations, no interruptions, nothing to distract him from the thoughts rolling around in his head. Thoughts of her, of them, of the way things had been between them in the past. Which exacerbated the attraction he was fighting.
She hadn’t changed that much from the girl he’d fallen in love with. She was still stubborn. Still theatrical. Still loyal. Still curious and clever. He smiled at the memory of the tin cans filled with pennies. Hell, he didn’t know of any other woman, in law enforcement, or otherwise, who swept their car for tracking devices before driving it home.
And then there was her open and honest sexuality—which was a blessing in some circumstances, a curse in others.
He’d never had to guess how Ariel was feeling. Whether it was desire, or anger, or frustration, she flaunted those feelings for the entire world to see.
Frowning, lost to the past, he shook his head slightly. Looking back, her open emotions had been one of the things that had driven him away; the way she’d defended her father, her vocal, blind loyalty to him, her constant pushing to get Rhys to see Hamilton through her eyes. Still raw from Rayne’s murder, Ariel’s relentless insistence had needled him. When Ariel’s nagging collided with Patel and Osborn’s certainty that Hamilton had killed his twin, he’d erupted and walked away.
In retrospect, the fact she’d let him go was a clear indication of how hurt she’d been. She’d never tried to persuade him to stay, hadn’t tried to win him back. He knew she’d loved him, had no doubt of that at all. And Ariel loved hard. Without reservations. With something approaching ferocity. As witnessed by her refusal to see her father as anything less than the shining hero of her childhood.
Yet she’d let him go.
The sound of a door opening down the hall, and the soft pad of footsteps, froze the glass of iced tea in midair. They were too soft to be Mason’s, who was asleep in the second bedroom. He listened intently, without moving a muscle, the glass of tea still halfway to his mouth, as she padded down the hall and into the living room.
“Rhys?” Her voice was soft, sleepy.
“Yeah.” He set the glass down on the coffee table in front of the couch, and reluctantly shifted his body to face her.
He wasn’t a fan of torture. And staring at her soft, peach tinged sleepy face, and unpainted, full lips, without dragging her to down to the couch and covering her mouth with—
He shook the impulse off and worked up a tight smile for her. Why, oh fucking why, couldn’t she have waited a couple more hours before joining him? Mason was due to relieve him in three hours. He could have avoided her altogether, escaped to the room he was sharing with Mason and counted the tiles on the ceiling for the next twelve hours.
“Couldn’t sleep?” He asked, skimming her long enough to cataloging her sweat pants and laptop before looking away.
He didn’t ask why she couldn’t sleep. He knew damn well she was as reeved up by their proximity as he was. Every single glance she laid on him told him as much. It was bad enough keeping himself in check, keeping her in check too would prove impossible.
Luckily they had a chaperone. Not much of one, since Mason could apparently sleep through the Armageddon, but he was better than nothing.
“You should head back to bed, try to get some more sleep.” He tried to make it a suggestion, instead of a demand.
She yawned. “It won’t work. Never does.”
He grunted and tried like hell to dampen his annoyance and hunger. As he scanned the room for a topic of conversation, or a distraction, she walked around the back of the couch and curled up in the corner across from him. Without hesitation she tucked her legs between his.
Sonofabitch.
There were two layers of sweat pants between them, but he’d swear on the Bible she was scorching his flesh beneath the fabric. Scowling, his gaze shot to her face. He opened his mouth to lambast her for that Goddamn carnal attack…except there was no guile on her face. No sensual slyness. Just exhaustion and something close to contentment.
He slowly closed his mouth again. She had no clue what she’d done. No idea—at least at the moment—what she was doing to him. She’d simply adopted a position they’d shared hundreds of times in the past. Pure instinct, even muscle memory, combined with trust. He couldn’t fault her for that.
He shifted carefully on the couch, hoping to ease some of the restriction in his crotch. She glanced up at the movement and scooted further into the corner, trying to give him more room. Her new position pressed the armrest into her spine, which couldn’t be comfortable.
His chest softened beneath a wave of warmth. She’d often put his comfort, before her own.
It looked like that hadn’t changed either.
His attention fell on her laptop and he seized on the distraction. “What are you working on?”
From ease dropping on her conversations with Mason, he knew she was working on a new book and that the writing wasn’t going well.
“Dad’s defense lawyer sent me the case files and photos after dad died. I wanted to check something out.”
Rhys’s interest instantly cooled. He stiffened, then forced himself to relax. It was a testament to Ariel’s exhaustion, that she didn’t pick up on his tension, or lukewarm reaction.
“It was the lock picking.” Ariel continued absently, tapping away at her laptop’s keyboard.
“Lock picking?” Rhys frowned, and searched his memory. He didn’t remember any evidence of lock picking in the X-Factor case.
“Yeah, at the condo.” She looked up, her gaze less exhausted, more focused. “The patio door?”
Okay, he’d bite. “How does that fit into your dad’s case.”
“Mason showed me the photos of the patio door lock. Scratches from tools can be as unique as finger prints. I wanted to compare Mason’s photo of the scratches on the patio door lock, to the scratches documented on Dad’s gun safe. There’s evidence the lock on the gun safe was picked too.”
So said she…constantly. The forensics had said otherwise.
Frustration swelled. She was still obsessed with that argument? It was old fucking news. One they circled around countless times in the past.
She glanced up, saw his face and froze.
“Never mind.” Her voice went flat. Hunching over her laptop, she ignored him.
Okay…that was new. The old Ariel would never have turned away from a chance to expound on her father’s innocence. He watched her fingers move nimbly across the keyboard. A minute ticked by, then another. she never looked up.
Maybe she’d changed after all.
Hell, it wouldn’t hurt to look at her photos. He could offer a rational counterpoint to her deductions. “Did you find the picture.”
Her head popped up. Her eyes had lost the sleepiness completely and were suspicious as hell. “Of what?”
“Your dad’s safe.” When the suspicion in her eyes deepened, instead of lessened, he sighed and held his hands up—palms out—in the universal I’m-not-out-to-get-you gesture. “I’m not saying I buy into your lock picking theory. But it’s not gonna hurt to look.
She frowned back at him, the suspicion in her gaze slowly fading to cautious optimism. “Hang on.”
She tapped a few more keys, moved her fingers over the mousepad, and then picked the laptop up, turned it around, and presented it to him. The picture was tightly focused on a key hole.
The shiny, silver etchings across the bottom and along the sides of the metal casing sure as hell looked like tool scratches.
Fuuuck.
A hole opened up in his gut. He leaned in closer to the screen, praying like hell he wasn’t seeing what he thought he was seeing.
“This is the picture of the lock on the patio door?” he asked, hoping against hope that it was.
Although he was pretty sure it wasn’t. She wouldn’t have photos from an ongoing criminal case on her laptop.
“Nope.” Her voice throbbed with triumph. “That’s the casing on Dad’s old gun safe. If you hit control minus, you can zoom out. That will show you the entire safe.”
He held the control key down and tapped the minus button until the entire gun safe filled his screen. Not because he didn’t believe her. But because he wanted a minute to assess, he wanted a minute to mentally argue with what his instincts were insisting.
Those were fucking pick scratches on the casing. He’d seen enough of them to know what they looked like. The etchings were unmistakable.
How the fuck…how the fuck had this been missed?
It hadn’t been. It couldn’t have been. He forced his lungs to take in giant chunk of air and tried to breathe through his shock.
After a moment his brain started working again. Maybe this wasn’t her father’s safe. Maybe it was an identical safe, but not the one her father had bought.
Had she fabricated the scratches on an identical safe in the hope of convincing him her theory was solid?
He disregarded the thought immediately. Ariel was one of the most honest women he knew. She wouldn’t have fabricated those scratches, not even to cast doubt on her father’s guilt.
Besides, it would be too easy to prove the picture was a fake. Her father’s safe was still sitting in off-site storage. It would be easy to compare the actual lock casing against the pictures.
He’d been pulled off the Hamilton case last week, prior to getting his hands on the forensic reports. But from what he remembered, the lab had reported that the scratches were general wear and tear. When Hamilton’s defense team had submitted the scratches as evidence of a possible frame job, the lab tech who’d processed the safe had refuted their suggestions so thoroughly the jury had unanimously voted guilty.
“You see them too, don’t you? That’s not general wear and tear. They’re scratches, Rhys.”
“Normal metal wear and tear includes scratches,” he finally said. But he could feel a muscle twitching in his jaw.
Because normal wear and tear didn’t just include scratches. It included dents and gouges too—none of which were evident in the picture.
“Did your dad’s defense team perform their own set of tests on the safe?” Rhys forced the question out. Double testing was standard procedure in murder cases.
But Christ, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He already felt like she’d detonated a bomb beneath his feet. His world was still rocking and rolling.
“Of course. The lab they’d used reported indications of tool etching. But the specialist the defense team had hired to testify on Dad’s behalf was destroyed on the stand. The prosecutor shredded his reputation. By the time the cross examination was over, we’d lost the jury. You could see it in their eyes.”
Rhys grimaced. Sometimes a conviction had nothing to do with guilt or innocent. It was all about which lawyer put on a better show.
“What are you going to do?”
And there it was. The question he’d been trying to avoid. This was bigger than him…or her. If those really were scratch marks, then someone in the lab had fudged the report.
He flashed back to Nate and Grace’s experience weeks earlier. One of the assistant coroners had been corrupt. She’d falsified autopsy reports. There had been a lab tech on the take too.
Fuck, the department was still trying to shake off that cloud. Dozens of requests to void convictions had come down because of those two bad apples. If one test could be altered, so could two, so could a dozen, which meant every conviction using the evidence processed by those two corrupt individuals had to be processed again, assess through a fine toothed comb.
This new development, if it was true, would make Nate’s case, involving Grace’s brother, look like a Sunday drizzle, compared to a category five hurricane.
Fuck…fuck…fuck…
“Are you going to check into this?” From the suppressed glee in her voice, Ariel already knew the answer to that.
She knew him too well. Or thought she did.
“Yeah. I guess I am.” He forced the acknowledgement out through gritted teeth.
God Damn it.
Guess he hadn’t changed much either.
Chapter Fifteen
He was exhausted by the time he returned home from investigating the crime scene at the condo he’d broken into mere hours earlier.
Exhausted and frustrated and furious.
Fuck. He’d barely made it home before the boss’s call had hit his work phone and he’d been summoned out again. A quick shower, a change of clothes, a dose of amphetamines, and he’d been back out the door.
At least the drugs had kicked in by the time he arrived at the crime scene—his fucking crime scene—and in more ways than one.
His grin was tight and pained.
Things were unraveling, he could sense it.
How in the fuck was he supposed to have known the bitch would build a fort of cans in the doorways? Or that she’d have a fucking gun? Or that she’d be willing to use the fucking gun?
He’d been damn lucky to escape the house without a new hole or two, or leaving a sample of his blood behind.
Admittedly, the gun was on him. He should have done a search on her name pertaining to firearm registrations. The fact he hadn’t showed how the cancer had infected his brain. She would never have gotten away from him in the old days…back when he’d been healthy enough to chase her down.
And now she was holed up in the squad’s flea-bitten safe house. The apartment complex they’d taken her to was wired, but he knew how to circumvent that. No big deal. He knew where the cameras were. He could avoid them.
Before the end game, he had one final message to deliver. Something for her to chew on. Something that would torch her relationship with her little sister. Something Agent Ashley had been hiding all these years.
Before she died, Ariel was going to learn everything.
All the nasty little secrets that had been just beyond her purview.
With Mason beside her on the couch, watching one of those sword making shows on the television, Ariel hunched over her l
aptop, trudging away on the piece of shit masquerading as her current manuscript.
She’d spent most of the morning and afternoon after her discussion with Rhys walking on cloud nine. Or doing the happy dance. Or any of the other euphemisms that existed for a euphoric state.
Finally, after all these years, she’d gotten Rhys involved in her dad’s case. True, he was locked onto a very small part of the puzzle—but still, it was a start. If he discovered there was something fishy about those scratches, or the lab report that had helped put her father in prison, he’d investigate. He'd check into the entire case. He wouldn’t let her father take the fall if the evidence proved her dad had been innocent.
Rhys was an honest cop. A good one. She could trust him to follow the truth, whether it was convenient or not.
For most of the morning, after Mason walked in for his shift and Rhys had disappeared into the second bedroom to catch some sleep, Ariel had pored over the reams of case files the defense lawyer had sent her. She’d uploaded everything to her laptop—it saved hauling around boxes of paper—plus it was available for perusal whenever she wanted to look something up.
Like the scratches…
She’d already read every file at least a hundred times, and nothing new had jumped out at her. Disgruntled, she’d given up and switched to her manuscript file. Not that switching focus to that had been any more productive.
What she really needed was a new avenue to investigate. She’d wanted to interview the medical examiner while she was in town, visit the local paper, maybe talk to some of Rayne’s old friends. As the last victim of the X-Factor Killer, Rayne would be the place to start. The killer had framed her dad immediately after Rhys’s twin’s murder. He’d stopped killing too. Somehow those two things seemed important…connected. Like they held a clue to the killer’s identity, if she could just piece together how they were connected.
Dark Legacy: (Dark Falls, CO Romantic Thriller Book 3) Page 13
