Harlequin Intrigue April 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Carol Ericson

  “This isn’t the first time you’ve stepped outside your lines,” Ben contradicted. “I don’t know if this is how things ran when you were on the Rapid Deployment Team...”

  “Not really,” Jax admitted. Yes, he’d shared his insights when he could, but he’d often worked with big task forces. And his time at a particular crime scene had been very focused.

  Alaska was different. The field office was big, but so was the area they covered. When he’d had psychological insight into a case, the agents had listened. To be fair, that had always included Ben.

  Maybe he was stepping over the line with this case. Thinking of his clandestine meeting with Keara just that afternoon, Jax mentally crossed off the maybe.

  “I’m sorry,” Jax said. “You’re right. It’s just that the symbol is really bothering me in this case.”

  “We’re looking into it,” Ben said, but his tone told Jax the truth.

  They’d already decided it wasn’t important.

  “I’m not an agent,” Jax said again, sitting up straighter and making Patches stick her nose between the seats.

  Absently petting her, Jax insisted, “And I’m not a profiler, either. But my background is in psychology. That means I understand a lot about human motivation and people’s desires, especially the ones they can’t seem to help. All of my training, all of my experience, is telling me there’s something to this symbol.”

  There was another pause, but this one was shorter. “Fair enough,” Ben said. “Do you know what?”

  “No. But the fact that you haven’t been able to connect it to anything else? The fact that this strange symbol was also near a murder? There’s something here.”

  He’d been trying to deny it, but he couldn’t shake the gut feeling he’d had from the beginning. “I need a favor.”

  “Okay,” Ben said, reluctance in his tone, but less hostility.

  “Run the symbol through the FBI’s database again. This time do it without the bomb specification. See if that symbol has appeared at the scene of any other type of crime.”

  “I’ll do it,” Ben said, “but look, I’ve been down this kind of rabbit hole before, trying to make connections that aren’t there. Be prepared for disappointment.”

  * * *

  IT HAD BEEN six long years since she’d been embedded in a case like a detective, sorting through the evidence and clues. But sitting in her relaxing Alaskan home—her escape—with her laptop open to two case files and a mug of coffee that had long since gone cold, a familiar buzz filled Keara.

  She loved being a police chief. She liked and respected all of the officers on her force and admired the spirit of the people of Desparre. Moving here had done so much for her mental health. It had made her feel like she was allowed to have a life again, that it wasn’t a betrayal to keep living it, without Juan.

  For the most part she hadn’t really missed being a detective. That role came with too many memories. The surprise party Juan had thrown her when she passed her detective’s exam and got promoted. The initial thrill of working a desk in the bullpen close to him. Working as partners had been against policy, since they’d just gotten married when she was promoted. But seeing him across the detectives’ area each day had reminded her of their early times together, patrolling.

  She’d expected being a detective would bring them closer, feel more like it had at the beginning, when they’d worked together every day. But too quickly, discussions about their cases had started interfering with their relationship. Most of it had been subtle, like the slow deterioration of their romantic dinners into sharing case files over takeout.

  Then there’d been the expectations Keara had never seen coming. Being a patrol officer was dangerous, in Juan’s opinion. But with Keara in a detective’s seat, he’d wanted to try and have kids immediately. While she’d been working late to fit in—being a detective was still a bit of a boys’ club—he’d been imagining babies. Toward the end of his life, when Keara thought they had plenty of time to figure it out, they’d started fighting over what they wanted, and when. Now it was all too late.

  She minimized the case file for her husband’s murder that Fitz had sent her unofficially. It hadn’t been easy to go through, though thankfully, Fitz had left out the crime scene photos.

  Seven years had dulled some of her grief, taken it from a sharp-edged pain that made it hard to breathe to something duller and more manageable. But she couldn’t help wondering if things might have turned out differently if she and Juan hadn’t made a pact to stop talking business and focus more on their relationship in those last six months. Would she have seen the threat coming? Would she have been able to prevent it?

  “You can’t change the past.” Keara repeated the words her police-employed psychiatrist had told her seven years ago, when she wasn’t ready to hear them. “You can only impact what happens in your future.”

  Ironic that more and more, the key to moving on seemed like it would involve revisiting her past.

  And yet, was it too late? Seven years was a long time in the investigative world. There was a reason those cases were considered cold. A reason they were set aside and detectives’ time reallocated to newer cases. A reason they were rarely reopened, unless some new evidence suddenly came to light.

  Rubbing the back of her head, where a headache had started to form, Keara skimmed through Juan’s interview with Rodney Brown one more time. The notes were slim, the interview itself a long-shot possibility. No matter how many times Keara reread them, she didn’t see anything now that her husband hadn’t seen back then. Except...

  Keara jerked forward, yanking her laptop closer as an offhand mention describing Rodney’s house caught her eye. “Lives with a roommate, not home,” Juan had written.

  Juan had originally gone to interview Rodney thinking he might have seen something relevant since his car had been photographed near the crime scene the night Celia Harris was killed. Although it was good police work not to rule anyone out as a suspect too quickly, Rodney hadn’t been considered one initially. The only reason Juan had left that interview with even mild suspicion was that Rodney had denied driving his car anywhere near the crime scene.

  Happening to be near a crime scene wasn’t a crime. Still, Juan had thought it was more likely Rodney was just afraid of police after his various assault arrests rather than a legitimate suspect, especially since he had no apparent connection to Celia. While the assault charges and the probable sexual assault told them he wasn’t a nice guy, the specifics didn’t suggest possible serial killer.

  Like hundreds of other people who’d been interviewed in the Celia Harris murder, Rodney Brown had been pushed to the bottom of the list of people who might know something. But what if Juan had been approaching it from the wrong angle?

  What if the reason Rodney had so vehemently insisted he hadn’t been driving anywhere near the crime scene that night was because he hadn’t? What if the roommate had used his car?

  A thrill ran through Keara, a jolt of adrenaline she hadn’t felt in a long time—the gut feeling that she was onto something with a case.

  When Rodney had disappeared, the follow-up interview by Fitz said the house had been cleared out. So that meant the roommate had disappeared, too. Had they left together? Had they been in on Celia’s murder together?

  Or maybe her earlier theory had been right all along. Maybe the person who’d set the bomb had intentionally used the symbol from Celia’s murder to throw suspicion on someone else—his roommate.

  If she was right, that triggered a lot of new questions: Who had killed Celia and who had set the bomb? Which of those two had killed her husband, Rodney or his roommate?

  And where were they both now?

  CHAPTER TEN

  Every officer in the Desparre police station turned to stare at Jax as he strode through the station, following Officer Tate Emory to Keara’s office.

/>   Jax tried not to feel self-conscious as he juggled two cups of takeout coffee, wondering why he was getting so much attention. He’d been here before; it wasn’t like the officers didn’t know who he was. Maybe it was the overstuffed bag he had slung over one shoulder, full of FBI case printouts Ben had handed him that morning. Or maybe they could read his newly cautious hope about what those printouts might contain.

  As Jax gave subdued nods of greeting to the officers who met his gaze, Patches bounded around him, occasionally darting to a desk for a pat from one of the officers before running back to his side.

  “What’s going on?” Jax asked Tate softly.

  Tate’s gaze briefly scanned the room before coming back to him. “Something’s up with the chief,” he said, then knocked on the door to Keara’s office before pushing it open.

  From across the station’s bullpen, through the glass walls into her office, Keara had merely appeared hard at work. From a distance, he’d assumed her normal professional face was on. It was calm and serious and confident, probably something that had helped her win Desparre’s trust when she’d first shown up here, an outsider and young for a police chief job.

  Jax had known from her frantic call at seven that morning—when he and Patches had barely been awake—that she was reenergized about the bombing investigation and its possible connection to Juan’s death. He should have realized this new information about a roommate she’d discovered would only fuel Keara’s desperation.

  Up close, he could see the dark circles underneath her eyes that suggested she’d been awake long before she’d called him, maybe that she hadn’t gone to bed at all. Jittery energy radiated from her.

  As he stepped more fully into the room, she stood and reached for one of the coffees he held. “Is this for me?”

  “Yes,” he answered.

  Woof! Patches circled Keara, tail wagging.

  “Easy, Patches,” Jax warned her, not wanting his dog to trip Keara.

  “She’s fine,” Keara said, bending down to pet Patches and getting rewarded by a dog kiss across her cheek. Keara laughed, then took a long sip of coffee, closing her eyes like she’d badly needed the caffeine jolt.

  Tate gave Jax a raised-eyebrow look that seemed to say “See what I mean?” before he left the office, closing the door behind him.

  Jax took a minute to watch Keara while she had her eyes closed, exhaustion and hope battling on her face. All the while, she pet Patches.

  His dog’s tail wagged, but she glanced back at him, as if she also wondered what was going on with Keara.

  What must it be like to have spent seven years knowing someone she loved had been murdered and not being able to do anything about it? What must it be like now, to have this sudden, long-shot hope again?

  Dread tightened his chest, knowing he was partly responsible. If they were both wrong, how much worse would it be for Keara?

  Her eyes opened, her gaze instantly locking on his like she’d read his thoughts. Instead of making him feel more guilty, the intensity there made his own hope ignite.

  What if they were right? What if they could solve her husband’s murder? What if she was finally able to get closure and move on with her life? He lived too far away to be a part of it in any meaningful way, but knowing that didn’t stop a sudden longing.

  She broke eye contact, standing, and her tone was all business when she said, “Let’s get to work.”

  He’d spent the morning like he had almost every other morning since he’d arrived in Luna, talking to victims and their families. Today he’d mostly been returning personal effects. For some of the victims, it was a welcome visit, a sign of moving forward. For others, it was a stark reminder of what, or who, they’d lost.

  At lunchtime, when his mind had been ping-ponging between the idea of Rodney Brown having a roommate and the needs of the bombing victims, Ben had asked to meet. He’d handed over a stack of printouts and told Jax, “This is your theory, so I’m going to let you run with it. It’s not protocol and I’m definitely going to be reviewing all of this myself as soon as I get a chance, but I’m expecting you to return the favor. You find something—anything at all—and I want to be your first call. Deal?”

  Jax had looked down at the massive stack of printouts, then back at Ben, who’d grinned and said, “Our databases aren’t magic. I input the details of the symbol, but with parameters this wide—connected to any crime over the past seven years—it spit out a lot of cases across the country. There’s a good chance none of them are connected to the bombing or the murder, because the system matches descriptions. And it’s all different law enforcement entering them, not just FBI. It’s you who has to pull up the actual pictures and do a visual comparison. Still...”

  “There’s a chance,” Jax had said. “It’s a deal. I’ll call you if I find anything,” he’d agreed, although the first thing he’d done when Ben left the room was call Keara and let her know he was coming to the station and needed her help. He knew Ben had thrown the material at him because he still felt doubtful about a connection to the symbol and was more than willing to let Jax do the heavy lifting on that aspect of the case.

  “Let’s see the cases,” she said.

  “There are a lot,” he warned, pulling out the massive pile of paperwork. “The database spits out all possibilities. It’s up to us to wade through them all and narrow it down.”

  She gave him a one-sided grin and held her coffee cup up like she was making a toast. “Welcome to the life of a detective, Jax. Let’s take a look.”

  As she cleared off some space on her desk and gestured for him to take the seat across from her chair, she asked, “Does the FBI know I’m helping you with this?”

  “No.” He settled into the seat and set half the stack in front of him, passing her the other half.

  Instead of sitting beside him, Patches followed Keara around to her side of the desk.

  As Keara dug into her stack of files, Jax couldn’t help but stare at her carefully tied-back hair and light, professional makeup. Even the first day he’d met her, dressed down in jeans and a raincoat, she’d looked like someone who was in charge. But the day he’d stopped by her house unannounced...

  He smiled at the memory of her hair spilling over her shoulders, the cabernet staining her lips like a funky lipstick. It was a look he doubted many people in Desparre got to see, even on her days off.

  “Stop staring and start reading,” Keara said, without glancing up.

  The smile grew and he held in a laugh. Why couldn’t he have met her under different circumstances? Without her husband’s unsolved murder hanging over her head like a dark cloud? Without four hundred miles between their homes?

  As his smile faded, he asked, “Any luck finding the roommate?”

  Her gaze met his, serious and determined. A look that said she would search as long as it took. “No. Assuming Juan was right, this guy wasn’t listed on the lease with Rodney. I haven’t been able to dig up so much as a name.” Her lips tightened as she blew out a heavy breath. “Whoever he is, he’s as much of a ghost as Rodney, maybe even more so.”

  As Jax stared at her, she broke eye contact, lines creasing her forehead. There was a hint of fear underneath her words as she said, “Seven years is a long time. I’m scared I won’t be able to track him.”

  “We can do it,” Jax said, resisting the urge to reach his hand out and take hers.

  From the other side of the desk, Patches made a slight whining sound, her way of getting attention when she knew someone needed her but wasn’t paying attention. From Keara’s suddenly surprised look, Patches had also pushed her head into Keara’s lap, insisting on being pet.

  Some of the lines raking Keara’s forehead disappeared as she pet Patches.

  He said a silent thank you to his dog, then continued, “There is one piece of good news here.”

  She looked up at
him again.

  “If he’s trying so hard to stay beneath the radar that you’re struggling to even find mention of his name, there’s probably a reason. We might really be onto our bomber.”

  * * *

  “THERE HAS TO be something here,” Keara muttered as she set aside yet another case description in her No pile.

  She and Jax had been sorting through the huge stack of cases he’d brought for almost an hour. In that time, Jax’s stack of unrelated cases had grown almost as high as hers. They had a few Maybes, but years spent as an officer, then a detective, then a police chief told Keara none of them were likely to be connected to the bombing, Celia’s murder, or Juan’s murder.

  She’d been so hopeful when Jax had walked into her office, carrying such a big stack of possibilities. After her sleepless night, having Jax to help—along with his calming presence and Patches’s cute distraction—had made her feel like answers had to be in sight.

  She wasn’t so far removed from her time as a detective that she’d forgotten the slog of it all. The hours that felt unending and pointless until one small detail broke open a case. Both Juan’s and Celia’s cases had remained open for a year, with Houston detectives logging thousands of hours on them, and they still hadn’t found that one detail.

  Lately, Keara had spent too much time fighting a roller coaster of emotions, rocketing from a certainty she’d finally get closure to the fear that she’d get nowhere and just end up back where she’d been six years ago. Grief-ridden, brokenhearted and stuck.

  Back then she’d reacted by finding a tiny job posting across the country, far from anyone she knew. Getting the job had been a surprise; when she’d taken it, her family and friends had all been shocked. Until five days ago, it had felt like a brand-new start.

  “We’ve got a couple of possibilities,” Jax reminded her, his dark brown eyes full of determination, like he was trying to lend her strength.