Authors: Cameron Dane
She walked into his room, taking in the white sheet pulled to his waist. His clothes littered the floor at the foot of his bed, and she knew he was nude under that thin layer of fabric. Tearing her gaze off his chest, she moved to a softly cushioned chair by his window. She took a seat there, curled up on her side, and drew her knees to her chest.
Jace's eyes widened for a split second as he saw her. He watched her take a seat but quickly slipped back to a cool look and folded his arm behind his head. “You don't have to keep me company,” he said. “I'll be all right.”
“Maybe I need to be close to you too,” she admitted. All the people she'd had to let go of in her life washed over her in a rush and turned her voice weak. “Is that okay?”
Jace shifted on his side, scooted down in bed, and laid his cheek to rest on his pillow. He finally, finally nodded with a jerky movement. “Yeah. It's okay.” He tucked his hand under the pillow, facing her.
They stared at each other, quietly, never looking away, until they succumbed to sleep.
Jace sat across from Beth in the interview room early the next evening. Cade was at his side ready to note anything that seemed the least bit helpful. Duke watched from behind the twoway mirror, purely as a third set of eyes to see if Jace's gut about Beth was correct.
Beth sat with her hands folded on the table in front of her. She had her long blonde hair coiled in a loose knot at her nape and wore a tailored blouse and skirt befitting the fact that she'd come straight to the station from her job. Minimal makeup graced her pretty face, and it wasn't nearly enough to hide the puffiness under the rims of her pale blue eyes. There from crying over the loss of her friend, Jace wagered. That was good. It gave him a better shot at persuading her to help.
“I didn't think it was a smart idea to say no to the cops,” she answered, her voice cool.
Okay, so that's how we're going to play it. I can work with blunt.
Leaning in, Jace spread his fingers flat on the table. “Here's the thing, Beth, and I'm going
to be straight with you because I want to solve your friend's murder, and I think behind this attitude you have working for you that you want her killer caught too.” He studied her, but other than a flare of her pupils, she didn't move. Biting down the need to shake some emotion out of her, he went on. “Here's the deal. I'm coming across a lot of interesting secrets Ginger had, but I'm stuck with a lot of half information where I'm drawing my own conclusions and hitting a lot of dead ends. I need some help filling in the blanks. There are a limited number of people I can go to who will have those answers.” Jace held Beth's gaze and gentled his tone. “Ginger mentioned you often in her journals and seemed to consider you her best friend. I think you might be the person who knows more about her life than anyone else. I think you are the one who can fill in the blank spots for me.”
“I don't know what you're talking about,” she replied, sounding almost bored. “I hoped you wouldn't say that, but okay, you're free to go.” Beth got up. Jace waited for her to get to the door before he added, “I didn't want to do it, but I guess I'll take my suspicions of Ginger's secret life as a prostitute to her parents and teenage sister. I'll see if they had any suspicions about how she came to have enough money to handle a mortgage payment and still be able to take all those weekend trips.”
Stopping with her hand on the knob, Beth turned her head, giving him a partial profile of her downturned head. “You wouldn't do that.” Her voice wavered and revealed the first crack in her armor.
Hardening himself, Jace started chipping away at the weakening wall. “Understand something. My job is to catch Ginger's murderer. Not to preserve her reputation.” He sounded like a heartless bastard, and for the moment, he needed her to believe he was. “My boss would just as soon I not hurt that family any more than they already have been, but I have to ask myself in the long run what would hurt them more: Never having their daughter's killer caught and brought to justice? Or learning some tough truths about their child, but ultimately being served by catching a criminal and putting the questions about her death to rest so they can move on?”
Beth returned to the table and sat down. “Don't go to them.” Her eyes filled with wetness, and she clutched her purse hard enough to turn the tips of her fingers white. “Ginger never wanted them to know.”
Success
. “Then I need you to help me. Confirm for me that Ginger was working as a prostitute. Give me the names of her clients, and I will talk to them as quietly as I can.” Cade slid a pad of paper and pen across the table as Jace spoke. “I will do everything in my power, as will my boss, to give her parents this information as gently as possible should it become something they have to know.” Jace couldn't promise this would never come to light. If they made an arrest and it went to trial, the defense would drag Ginger's secret life into court in an effort to save their client. “That's the best I can do except to say that I am sincere. I don't care what she did with her private time; I don't judge her for it, but I do need to know everything about it so that I can figure out who took her life.”
Beth took the pen in hand but didn't write. “I didn't know them all,” she answered. “In fact, I didn't know most of them, but they might know each other. One guy might have recommended a new guy she could trust; I don't know. She had regulars, and those are the only men she did for money. I think there were maybe ten. She didn't just walk the streets and sell herself; Ginger wasn't like that.” The passion that had lain dormant in Beth suddenly ignited. “She had this need to get away and become bigger and more, but when she went away—even for just a short trip— she always missed her family and friends and wanted to come home. Then she would start wanting something more all over again, so she'd do what she needed to earn the money to leave for a little while.” A soft sigh escaped Beth. “It was a cycle that tore her up inside.”
Without thinking, Jace reached across the table and squeezed Beth's hand. “I'm very sorry to hear that.”
“I think you actually might be.” Offering a tight, sad smile, Beth clicked the tip out of the pen. “I'll give you the few names I know.”
“Thank you.”
A soft knock sounded at the door, and Duke entered the interrogation room. He slid a sheet of paper in front of Jace, nodded, and left the room. Taking a second, Jace glanced at the missive and was surprised his jaw didn't hit the table.
What the fuck? No way
. He had to read it again.
Thumbprint match found behind ear of Ginger Carlton belongs to Bethany Fletcher
. The information was in Duke's handwriting and went on.
Just got this in. You've established a relationship. She trusts you. Bring it home.
Reaching out, Jace covered Beth's hand and stopped her writing. “Is there anything else you want to tell me right now?” he asked. “About Ginger? About you?”
Beth's skin went ice-cold under his palm. “No.”
Lying. Big-time
. “You sure?” he pressed. “You didn't see Ginger on Friday at all?”
“I saw her at work,” Beth answered. What little bit of relaxation he had pulled out of her a minute ago disappeared. “I already told you that.”
“That's right; you did. And you assured me you didn't see or talk to her again.” Jace fought a swell of anger—
She's impeding the investigation of her best friend's murder!
—and just managed to keep his voice monotone. “Do you want to think about that again?”
She pulled her hand out from under his and hid hers under the table. “Do I need a lawyer?”
Jace's jaw clenched to the point that it ached, and most of the mask of compassionate cop slipped away. “You need to tell me why your fingerprint was found on Ginger's body, Beth. And don't tell me it was from when you saw her at work. I think it likely this girl went home, showered, and changed before she drove out and had her meeting with her john, so you need to tell me how your fingerprint ended up on her body, before I arrest you for her murder.”
Turning her head away, Beth pulled her lips between her teeth, and her chin wobbled.
Sympathy filled Jace's gut, but he had a case to solve that he had to care about more. “You need to talk to me, Beth, and you need to do it now. Time is running out for you.”
She blinked and blinked and blinked.
“If you're worried about getting in trouble for doing something illegal with her—”
Beth whipped her head around, and knowledge of where Jace was leading lit her eyes. “I didn't hook with her.” Vehemence filled her voice. “I
hated
that she did that to herself.”
“I have your print on her dead body, Beth!” Jace smacked the table, losing patience. “If you weren't selling yourself alongside her, then tell me why I shouldn't arrest you right now.”
“I can't!”
“Tell me!”
“Because I was in love with her!” Beth screamed, her eyes suddenly wild. “And she was in love with me!” Devastation and vulnerability drenched her voice and coated her like a second skin. She slumped in her chair, and her voice dropped to a broken whisper. “She was in love with me.”
Swallowing the hypocrisy of his own bisexuality, Jace had to force the issue. “I've talked to a lot of cowboys claiming to be a boyfriend of Ginger's at one time or another.”
“Ginger was running from what she felt for me, even trying to deny it to herself,” Beth answered softly. “All those cowboys were her attempts to hide from what she really wanted and to get me out from under her skin. She was living a lie, pretending to herself, but most of all to her family. She did not want them to know she had feelings for a woman that she could not walk away from, no matter how much she wished she could.” The tears she'd successfully held back filled her eyes, turning the color to glacier. “Half the time when Ginger had sex with a man, particularly lately when it was with one of her johns, she would call me afterward, feeling disgusted with herself. She would plead for me to come to her and help her feel human again. I always came running, even though I knew as soon as it was over she would push me away again.
“I went to the motel on Friday night after she finished with her client. She needed me; she was desperate. We made love, right there on the same bed where she'd just let a man pay to fuck her.” A hint of hardness slipped into Beth's tone. “Afterward I told Ginger I couldn't keep doing this and that I needed something more from her, something real we could build a life on together. She just kissed me, rolled out of bed, and went into the bathroom to clean up.” A devastatingly sad smile graced Beth's lips, and it revealed her true, stunning beauty. “I can remember lying in that bed watching her wash up at the sink, the door open, giving me an incredible view of this woman I loved, who was about to walk away from me. I think she did it on purpose. She knew I couldn't look away, and she was right. It hurt so goddamn much to know she was probably going to hit a bar and look for a cowboy to help her forget about what we'd just done. It was a vicious circle for her. I told her not to do it, or I wouldn't come running the next time she called. She tried to brush me off with this charming way she had, but I was mad. I got dressed and left her with that ultimatum to make up her mind by the end of the weekend.” The pale column of her throat bobbed visibly as she swallowed down emotion. “Now all I have left of her is a phone message.”
Jace sat up straight. “She left you a message?” He could hardly believe he managed to keep himself seated when all he wanted to do was leap across the table and grab Beth right out of her chair. “Ginger left you a message on your phone? That night?”
“Yes.” Beth pulled her cell out of her purse, pressed some buttons, and set it down on the table. “Here it is.”
“
I don't want to love you
.” Ginger's voice filled the interrogation room like a symphony in an empty hall. A very long pause crackled through the phone into the air. “
But I do
.” Another heavy silence. “
I'm sorry
.” A doorbell rang in the background. “
I have to go
.”
Holy fuck.
Jace turned to Cade, who had the same thought registering in his dark gaze: that person ringing the doorbell is our killer.
Cade already had his hand reached across the table, hovering over Beth's phone. “May I borrow this for a few minutes?” he asked.
Beth nodded, and Cade left the room with the phone.
Loss layered Beth in the way cool control had in their first meeting. “I wasn't trying to deceive you,” she said. “I want Ginger's killer caught as much as her family does, but she had such fear about her parents finding out about us, maybe as much as about the prostitution. I didn't want to blab her secrets just because she's gone.” Her gaze drifted, and her face softened to match the wistful tone in her voice. “Her death made me want to protect her even more. To preserve what she wanted, even though I wished every day, with every fiber of my being, that she would come clean to everyone and let us be together openly.”
Sympathy swamped Jace. “I understand your desire to protect her.” He took one of her hands again, squeezed, and held it for a moment. “I'm very sorry for your loss.”
Wiping tears, Beth said, “Nobody has been able to say that to me who”—she had to stop, and it was clear the loss of her lover hit her anew—“who really knows how much I lost.”
Jace nodded, his chest aching for Beth finally being able to release some of her burden.
Cade came back in with Beth's phone and returned it to her. Beth pulled herself together enough to give them the names of three of Ginger's clients along with a promise that if anything else came to her, she would contact them.
After Cade and Jace walked Beth out, Duke emerged from the viewing room and joined them. “Good work, Jace,” he said.
“Thanks.” Jace leaned against the edge of his desk, still staring at the front door Beth had just exited. “That wasn't exactly what I thought she was hiding, but at least we have a few names to run now.”
“I'll look at the lives of those men first,” Duke said, “and then I'll decide where and how to approach them.”
Just as Jace handed the notepad to Duke, the door to the station swung open, and a man with long blond hair entered, followed by Max and Carson. Jace immediately pushed upright, and curled his hands into fists as he recognized Samuel Simmons. Jace glanced at Sarah at the same time Samuel did, and every protective juice boiled right to the surface.
I will cut his eyes out for even looking at her.
Cade put a firm hold on Jace's arm before he could take a full step forward.
“Boss—” Max started.
“Well what do we have here,” Samuel interrupted, talking over Max. He pulled himself right up to Sarah's reception desk and assessed her openly. “You must be the pretty Sarah I've heard so much about,” he drawled. “And word is right. You are pretty. I understand my baby brother has been sniffin' around you—”
“Hey!” Jace spat out from his position, Cade's hand still wrapped around his biceps. “Shut the fuck up, asshole.”
“You shut—Ow, bitch.” Samuel glared at Max as she yanked his arm and dragged him away from Sarah's work space. “Ease up your hold. I was just sayin' hello. No need to get rough. I came without a fight.”
Max ignored Samuel and looked to Duke again. “Boss?”
“Interview room,” Duke answered. “Wait with him.”
Jace narrowed his gaze and bared his teeth at Samuel. “Let's go have a chat with Mr. Simmons.”
Cade maintained his grip on Jace's arm. “Why don't you let me handle this one?” he said, no actual request or question in his tone. His dark eyes gave no quarter either. “I'll take it with Max, okay?”
“Jace, why don't you take a break?” Duke said. “Maybe get some fresh air. Sound good?”
Shit. Great going, Maxwell. You let your feelings slip up at work, and now you're sitting out of interviews.
Without glancing at Sarah, Jace knew she had absorbed the tone and content of the conversation too. Goddamn. Shit. Fuck. He probably made her even more nervous about Samuel by overreacting to the bastard's crude comments.
“No problem.” Jace forced the tension out of his limbs, and only when he did, did Cade let go. “Whatever you want.”
Jace waited for Cade and Duke to disappear down the hall, with Carson in tow—probably to listen in the viewing room and gain interview tips—and then moved to Sarah's desk, unable to help it. Christ, the pull to guard her from anything that might do her harm overwhelmed him. More so every day.
Looking up, Sarah offered a gaze full of knowledge and a smile full of empathy. “Are you okay?”
He tugged the end of her ponytail. “I'm supposed to be asking you that.”
“I just think about Jasper having that guy as a brother…” She trembled. “And that he's alone when he doesn't have to be.” The same sadness Jace had fallen asleep staring at last night loomed in Sarah just as powerfully today. “I just wish he would let me in, let me help him.”
“I know.” Brushing the back of his hand against the softness of her cheek, Jace tried to lend support and absorb her hurt at the same time. “He'll come around.”
She nuzzled into his touch, but he could see the worry still lingering in her eyes. “So you keep saying. But if his brother sticks around in this town, I don't know if he will.” Her phone trilled at a low volume, drawing her attention. “Excuse me.”