Grave Danger (41 page)

She watched him struggle, knew he wanted to believe her. She waited to see which side of him would win, her lover or the pragmatic cop who didn’t trust anyone—not even, apparently, himself.

His internal battle was over in the blink of an eye—the cop won.

Crestfallen, she pulled out of his arms, surprised the cop would release her, and wondered what the lover, if he had been the victor, would have done. Of course, if the lover had won, they probably would have raced to the damp grass to see who could pull off their underwear the fastest, forgetting condoms, moonlight, and all other considerations. But that was useless speculation and heartbreaking fantasy. With Mark, the lover would never win. He was a cop first, last, and, with her, always.

“Jason isn’t here,” he said. “He’s staying at the Dawes house.”

Perhaps it was progress of sorts that this was not the cop but the jealous lover talking. “I know very well where Jason is staying.”

“I saw him kiss you.”

“I think that was his plan.”

“No. On Monday.”

Monday. Hours before she’d been arrested. A rush of anger took her breath away. She struggled out of his arms. Finally, she gathered enough air to speak. “Does that mean being kissed by Jason is an arrestable offense?”

“You didn’t exactly shove him away. You pushed me away the first time I kissed you.”

“
You
aren’t my client’s son. I had to be careful with Jason.”

“How very pragmatic of you.”

“I’ve learned to be pragmatic the hard way. See you around, officer.” She started for the sidewalk.

“Libby—” He caught her arm, stopping her. “Tell me what’s going on. Who do you think is after you?”

Her bitterness ran deep, perhaps even deeper than before. How could she let him slip past her defenses and hurt her again? She was worse than her mother. “Listen to Angela’s tapes. Figure it out for yourself. We both know you won’t believe anything I say anyway.”

Mark turned her to face him. “I want to believe you, Libby. But I can’t let our relationship get in the way of the investigation.”

She yanked out of his grasp. Another hard-earned lesson from childhood came back to her. She would never again beg a man to stay. She would never be like her mother and beg a man to love her. She was done begging him to believe her. She glared at him. “If you want to believe me, Mark, then just do it—you don’t get to kiss me like you did a moment ago then hide behind your damn badge.”

“I’m not hiding. Damn it, Libby! I’m not even supposed to be talking to you without your lawyer present.”

“No problem. I’ll leave.”

“Wait. Did you sleep with Aaron?”

His words stunned her to the core. Never in a million years had she seen that question coming. She narrowed her gaze. “Who wants to know? The cop or the lover?”

“Aaron called me on Monday. He described your scar.”

Her mouth dropped open. Monday. Again. Before she’d been arrested. “You sonofabitch!” She stepped closer and tapped his chest. “You believed Aaron. Over me. You don’t even know him. But you know me.”

His arms encircled her, trapping her again. “You lied to me.”

“No, Mark. I didn’t.”

“Then how does he know about your scar? Make me understand.”

The fight left her even though the ache hadn’t. Her gaze held his. She loved him. Not even the pain of his distrust could destroy her feelings—no matter how much she wished otherwise. Yet he demanded she explain herself, her past, something she should be allowed to keep locked away in her own box of painful memories.

“I didn’t lie to you. I didn’t have sex with Aaron.” Her voice shook. She cleared her throat. “If you really want to know the story, you have to let me walk away from here after I tell you. You have to leave me alone. Forever.” She refused to be like her mother. She would rather be alone than spend her life pining for a man incapable of loving her back.

“I’ll let you walk away, but I don’t agree to the last part.”

“You won’t have a choice.” She breathed deeply. “Aaron and I were on our third date. I wanted to like him, but somehow, didn’t. I have good instincts, but I didn’t trust them. Aaron was in my house, in my bedroom.” She paused. “My mistake, I know.” A shudder ran through her. She lived with this memory and the aftermath on a daily basis.

“We kissed. I was trying to convince myself he was okay. Things went further than I wanted. He removed my clothing until I wore only my bra and underwear. I was stupid, passive, trying to figure out how I was going to stop him, because I wasn’t interested—I certainly wasn’t aroused. He asked about the scar. It was fresh then—I’d gotten the stitches only a month before.

“He reached for my underwear and a wave of revulsion I couldn’t control came over me. My skin started to crawl. I couldn’t have sex with him. I couldn’t touch him. I couldn’t kiss him, and I certainly couldn’t let him do any of those things to me. I just…shut down. I said no.

“He called me a cock tease and said I owed him. I told him to get out.” She closed her eyes. “He lunged at me, but I shoved him away, so he slammed me into the wall. That dazed me. I had a goose egg on the back of my head that lasted several days.” Of their own accord, her fingers gingerly probed the back of her head, even though the lump was long gone.

“He twisted my arm behind my back and shoved me face first into the wall then ripped at my underwear and said crap about how he knew from the first moment we’d met that I’d like it rough. He tried to kiss me, even then. I jabbed him in the eye with my free hand. He let go of me, and I ran out of the room. He tackled me from behind and slammed me onto the floor.

“I was pinned in the hallway. He slapped me across the face then wrapped a hand around my throat while his other hand worked to unhook his belt.” She opened her eyes again and met Mark’s shocked gaze. “I couldn’t breathe. He lifted his weight off me to loosen his tight belt, giving me enough leverage to knee him in the balls. I was able to shove him off and run.

“In the kitchen, I grabbed a knife and told him to get the hell out, that I’d cut him open if he took one step closer. He laughed and said, ‘Have fun trying to blame this on me,’ then waltzed to the door like nothing happened. He had the gall to say he’d call me as he walked out.”

“I’ll kill him.” Mark pulled her closer and stroked her hair.

Warmth invaded her. He didn’t blame her. He didn’t say she’d asked for it by letting Aaron into her bedroom in the first place.

“Why didn’t you report the assault?”

“I was nearly naked with him in my own home. I let things go too far. Be honest. How well would the system have treated my assault case in those circumstances? Keep in mind the accused was a cop.”

“It would have been difficult. But you had bruises to back up your claim.”

“I told the crew I had the flu and stayed home for a week.”

“No one saw your bruises.”

“No one.” She touched her neck, remembering the pain of Aaron’s fingers. She’d told Mark more than she’d ever told anyone. “I didn’t want to fight a public battle. The guy was my client’s brother. I had a crew to pay, a project to run. I wanted to forget what happened and move on.”

“And after you healed and no longer had physical evidence, Brady started stalking you.”

“Yes. I had a lunch meeting with my client. Aaron showed up and acted as though nothing happened. I was in a fix. I hadn’t reported the assault. I certainly couldn’t accuse him of attempted rape in front of my client. I was forced to pretend everything was fine. Then the stalking started.”

She leaned back and studied him. She’d learned to read him and knew he believed her. Her heart broke that he was willing to listen now. Her voice hardened. “Don’t think for a minute that every time Jason called a business meeting a date I didn’t want to run away screaming. You want to know why I didn’t shove Jason away when he kissed me? Look at what happened when I shoved Aaron away, and ask yourself, do you really think I could have handled my client’s son any other way? I
had
to be pragmatic.”

His arms tensed. “I’ve been a complete ass.”

“True. Now we made a deal. I told you about Aaron. You have to let me go.”

His hands dropped from her waist and she was free. Before he could change his mind, she bolted and ran all the way home.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-
T
HREE

M
ARK WATCHED
L
IBBY LEAVE
, stunned to the core. Why hadn’t he guessed Aaron had beaten her? All the signs were there. He remembered her reaction to hearing the sound of someone being choked in the blackberries. No wonder she’d been terrified. No wonder she’d been convinced Aaron was stalking her again.

He leaned against the tree. He was the fool Jason had called him and worse. If she hadn’t stopped him, he would have made love to her right there up against the historic oak planted by James Thorpe in honor of the birth of his first child in 1855. He grimaced, remembering he’d learned that fun fact from Libby when they drove around Coho last Thursday.

She had him in knots. He wanted to go after her. He wanted to beat Brady to a bloody pulp for assaulting her. He wanted to undo the hurt he’d caused her and beg her forgiveness.

But he could do none of those things.

He went home and managed a few hours of fitful sleep, but by six a.m., he was wide awake and thinking about Libby’s answer when he asked who she suspected was after her:
“Listen to Angela’s tapes. Figure it out for yourself.”

As soon as he arrived at the station, he put Sara back on the task of going through Angela’s research notes, starting with the cassettes. Nothing of interest had turned up in the initial inspection done by other officers over the weekend. Mark himself had only done a cursory examination. If Sara failed to find anything of interest, he would take a turn. For now, he had a huge backlog of paperwork to complete. Unfortunately, said paperwork was what threatened to put his exhausted body into a state of slumber he hadn’t been able to achieve the night before.

After an hour at his desk, the page before him blurred, and he stood to refill his coffee mug.

“Chief, this just arrived for you.” His receptionist crossed his office and handed him a spiral-bound notebook. “It’s from Jason Caruthers.”

Mark quickly read Jason’s cover letter and found he was suddenly wide awake. Thirty minutes later, he put down the notebook and paced his office. Angela’s journal was important. He just had to figure out which details were relevant to her death.

Sara knocked on his office door. She held a cassette in her hand. “Chief, I think I’ve found what we’re looking for.”

Mark, Luke, and Sara gathered in the investigation room. Sara put the tape in the cassette deck and they all listened to Angela’s interview with Frances Warren, in which Frances described a will Millie Montgomery supposedly made just hours before she died.

“Why wasn’t this brought to my attention on Monday?” Mark asked.

Luke answered. “I didn’t listen to the tape. I spent hours listening to some of the other tapes then found the transcripts and realized I could have saved time. I planned to match each tape with a transcript, then listen to the ones that hadn’t been transcribed.”

“But you didn’t do that.”

“No.”

Instead, he’d spent his weekend hours investigating Libby. Mark swallowed his anger and addressed the issue at hand. “Next time I give you an investigative task, I expect you to follow it. All the tapes need to be listened to, whether they were transcribed or not.”

Luke looked down. “Yes, sir.”

Mark flipped through the notebook Angela had used as a journal. After listening to the tape, he understood Angela’s obsessive search for proof Lyle had killed his wife. “Angela believed Frances Warren’s story about the will.”

“So?” Luke said. “What does Millie have to do with Angela’s murder?”

Jason was right. Luke was too green to have been trusted with investigating Libby’s assault. Mark’s fault again. “Frances said she believed Angela could find the will. I think Angela was looking for it.”

“Why do you think that?” Sara asked. At least she was asking the right questions. Plus, she’d immediately recognized this interview was important, proving she had good instincts.

He held up the notebook. “I just read her journal. She never mentions the will explicitly. But it’s there. She was looking for something to prove Lyle killed Millie. At one point, she worries that if Jack finds out what she’s doing, he’ll be upset that she’s trying to give Jason’s inheritance away. She was looking for Millie’s will.

“Luke, I want you to go to the library and get copies of all newspaper articles about the crash that killed Millie. Contact the sheriff’s office and request the investigation file from their archives.”

He nodded but said, “What’s the point? We’re investigating Angela’s death, not Millie’s.”

Luke had no idea his job was hanging by a thread. “It’s likely Angela was killed because she was looking for the will. Losing TL&L is a pretty strong motive to kill someone. Especially if she found it.”