Unforgivable (30 page)

But then he remembered her in the bath last night, her full, pink-tipped breasts rising out of the water. He
thought of all that glistening skin and decided that catching her by surprise again might be a good thing.

The music coming from the bedroom lowered. “Ric?” she called.

“In the kitchen. You need anything?”

A pause.

“A beer or anything?”

“No. Thank you.”

She was in polite mode again. That would make it easier to keep his head in the game but wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining. She was much more fun when she let herself flirt.

He grabbed a beer from her fridge and checked the bag of tamales he’d left yesterday. She’d had a few for dinner, from the looks of it. Next time he saw his mom, he could honestly tell her that he’d shared them with a friend, which would make her happy.

He walked through the living room and checked the blinds on the windows. No gaps. He noticed the card-board file box parked beside her front door. Jonah had dropped off the case files earlier on his way home from the station, and Ric planned to spend his night poring through everything. Somewhere in all of that paper-work, he was determined to find probable cause for a search warrant of Jeff Lane’s lake house.

Jonah had told him he was wasting his time, but Ric wanted to look anyway. Deep down, he was an optimist. If he hadn’t been, he would have quit the job ages ago.

Ric followed the soft tribal music down the hall to Mia’s bedroom. She was probably the only person he knew who listened to NPR at night.

She sat cross-legged on her bed amid a sea of files and
papers. Her hair was twisted in a knot at the top of her head, and it was damp. He’d just missed bathtime.

He sighed and leaned against the doorframe. “Hi.”

“Hi.” She glanced up. She had that distracted look he’d seen on her face in the lab before.

“Work?”

“Catching up on reports.” She dropped her pencil onto whatever she was reading and looked at him. “Sorry to pull you away from Ava.”

“You didn’t. I don’t keep her out late on school nights.”

She looked down. Cleared her throat. “On the phone earlier, you said you missed her last weekend.” There was something wary in her eyes. “It was your weekend to have her then?”

“We trade off.”

“I never realized.” She shook her head. “I feel bad for taking you away from that. You could have just told me.”

Ric stepped into the room and looked around. He’d been in here before, briefly, just last night. But it seemed different with Mia in it. She had on one of those T-shirts she liked to wear with pajama pants. Thick woolen socks covered her feet. She’d known he was coming over, and he doubted it was an accident that she’d picked something completely unseductive to wear.

“She spent Saturday at my mom’s,” he said. “They’re close, so it worked out all right.” Ric had picked up his daughter and returned her to Sandra’s place Sunday evening, right after dropping Mia off. Maybe if he’d told her where he was going, she wouldn’t have rushed over to Black’s place in such a hurry.

He walked over to her dresser and rested his beer on
a glossy magazine.
Cottage Living
. On the wall nearby were several patches of paint, all different shades of red.

“Redecorating in here?”

“Thinking about it.” She watched him from her bed. It was covered in a purple down comforter with lots of matching pillows. He’d never understood the thing with women and pillows.

On the wall above the dresser, where most women would have a mirror, she’d hung a series of photographs—six different shots, all bright colors and patterns. He leaned closer for a better look. Several were closeups of butterflies. Others were too abstract to tell. There were some bright green netlooking things that could have been insect wings.

“You take these?” He turned around, and she was reading her papers again.

She glanced up. “It’s a hobby.”

“Insect photography?” This surprised him. He’d always thought of her as a scientist, cool and clinical all the time. He hadn’t realized she had an artistic streak.

She looked up again and seemed to realize that he was waiting for an answer.

“When I was a kid, I wanted to be an entomologist. I didn’t know the word, but I knew I wanted to study bugs.”

He leaned back against the dresser. “When’d you change your mind?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Middle school, I guess.”

“Hit about twelve, suddenly took an interest in forensic science?”

Her gaze narrowed.

“I know about Amy,” he said, and she looked down at her papers. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

She wouldn’t look at him, wouldn’t answer.

“Mia?”

“Why would I tell you?” she asked, and for some reason, that ticked him off.

“I don’t know, maybe because we’ve worked on about a dozen murder cases together? Maybe because I’m a homicide detective, and I’ve dealt with families like yours? Maybe because we’re friends?”

Her eyes flashed up at him. “You don’t know anything about my family.”

“Actually, I do. Did some interesting reading while I was up in Fort Worth. One of the detectives on the Laura Thorne case had your sister’s picture in the file, as a matter of fact. He’d saved a news story because the case reminded him of Laura Thorne.”

She was glaring now. He’d touched a nerve with this topic.

“You were the one who pointed me to that case, Mia. And it wasn’t because of some ‘feeling’ you got. You remembered that girl because she reminded you of your sister.”

“So what?”

“So I’m just asking for some honesty, that’s all. Shit. I haul my ass all the way to Fort Worth to look at a cold case based on your supposedly objective professional opinion, come to find out you’re not objective at all. This is personal.”

“Fine. It’s personal. My entire career choice is personal. Every time I set foot in the lab, it’s personal. What’s wrong with that?”

“I just want you to admit it.”

“Why? So you can accuse me of being emotional? Oh, wait, you already did that. So you could tell me I didn’t know what I was talking about, that I was just worked up about my sister? There
is
a link between Ashley and Laura. I didn’t imagine it.”

Ric folded his arms over his chest as she got up from the bed.

“And anyway, why is it always my job to tell you things? To open up to you? When have you ever told me anything?”

“Like what?”

“Like
any
thing.” She stepped closer and swiped a curl out of her face. “You don’t ever share anything personal. You’re an island. We knew each other almost six months before I even knew you had a daughter and an ex-wife. You think I might have wanted to know that?”

“Why would you want to know that?”

“Because I want to know
you
! God, why do I have to spell it out?” She sank onto the bed and looked down at her feet, as if she was trying to collect herself.

Ric stood watching her, wondering what he was supposed to say now. She wanted to know him, but he didn’t want a relationship. Or at least, he hadn’t. He didn’t know anymore. He didn’t know shit.

He stepped closer and reached out to lift her chin so that he could see her face. Her blue eyes were filled with a mix of anger and hurt, and he remembered Ava looking at him much the same way. He was 0-for-2 tonight.

She pulled back and looked down again. “I lied when
I said I just wanted sex with someone. You read me right the first time.” She cleared her throat. “Actually, if you want to know the truth, I have this tendency to fall in love really easily. So unless you want to settle down and have two-point-four kids and refinish my cabinets, we should probably back away from this … whatever it is.” She glanced up and gave him a quirky smile. “Wow, you should see your face right now.”

He was completely at a loss for words.

“Don’t worry, it hasn’t happened yet or anything, I just wanted to warn you.” She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “Anyway, I’m not ashamed of what I want. And I think I need to stop making compromises, or I’m never going to get it.”

“What does that mean?”

She waited a beat. “I don’t think you should come over anymore. I’d prefer it if you didn’t.”

He watched her closely, but he couldn’t tell whether she was being straight with him. “You can’t stay here without—”

“If someone really has to be here,” she said, “I’d rather it be Jonah or one of the FBI agents.”

He watched her for a few more seconds. “Is that what you want?”

“Yes.”

“All right, then.” He picked up his beer bottle and walked to her door, then turned to look at her. She sat on her bed, watching him, and he realized he’d never even slept in it with her. He hadn’t known until that moment how much he’d wanted to.

“Tomorrow Jonah can stay with you,” he said.

“Are you sure that’s even necessary? I mean, why can’t we all trust the surveillance team to do its job?”

“It’s either him or me, Mia. You’re not staying here alone.”

She pulled some papers into her lap and pretended to be reading them. “All right, then, thank you. Tell Jonah I appreciate it.”

CHAPTER 21

Mia made one last pass with her blue light before giving up and jotting the result down on her notepad:
No blood evident.

The room brightened, and she glanced up to see Mark standing in the doorway between her office and the lab.

“You coming down?”

“Down where?” She pushed up her orange eye shields and rested them on top of her head.

“Evidence room. Special delivery. From what I hear, I’m gonna need a hand with this one.”

Mia tucked the sneakers she’d been studying back into the evidence bag. The shoes belonged to a suspect, and the investigator who’d sent them to her wasn’t going to be happy with her results. But at least she felt confident that she’d done a thorough search. She resealed the bag with tape.

“Mind if we drop this off first?”

“No problem.”

They swung by the evidence refrigerator, and Mia noticed the overflowing shelves. Was it a fluke, or did her absence have something to do with the pile-up? She
resolved to put in some time that weekend to help her department get caught up.

“What’s coming in?” she asked Mark as they rode down in the elevator together.

“Trash dump. I hear it’s a big one, too, and Snyder’s got a bee in his bonnet for some reason. I’ve been ordered to drop everything.”

After reaching the ground floor, they wound through some corridors to the intake desk, where Delphi’s evidence clerk accepted deliveries from law-enforcement agencies around the country. Mia heard a familiar voice, and her footsteps slowed.

“Which case did you say this is?” She looked at Mark.

“SMPD, I think. Why?”

Before she could respond, the door to the evidence room opened, and Ric stepped out, followed by Jonah. Both detectives carried several white plastic trash bags in each hand.

“We going to need our gas masks for this one?” Mark asked.

“You might. This stuff’s pretty ripe,” Jonah said.

Ric glanced at Mia, but didn’t say anything, and she pretended not to feel slighted.

“We collected it last night, about eleven,” Jonah said. “It’s been sitting in the trunk of my vehicle. I’m definitely gonna have to hit the car wash.”

He and Ric carried the bags into a small, windowless room known as the Dump. It was just what the name implied: a place where people deposited large quantities of garbage, usually collected from people’s curbs on trash day. The room had cinder-block walls and a drain in the middle of the floor, because it had to be hosed down and disinfected after each use.

A box of heavy-duty rubber gloves sat on a counter beside an industrial-sized sink. Ric grabbed some and passed them to Jonah. He pulled out some for himself before offering the box to Mark, who shook his head.

“Don’t want to get in your way here,” Mark said with a smile. “I think I’ll hang back and consult.”

He and Mia watched from the doorway as Ric crouched beside one of the bags and pulled out a pocket knife. He slashed through the plastic. Trash tumbled out, and everyone drew back at the stench.

Jonah kneeled down beside the mess and shook his head. “It’s no wonder the suits got tied up last night.” He shot a grumpy look in his partner’s direction.

“This is why they pay us the big bucks,” Ric muttered.

By “suits,” Mia guessed Jonah meant FBI agents. Any doubt she had that this Dumpster dive pertained to the Ashley Meyer case disappeared. Mia wasn’t supposed to be working this case—at least, she’d been told not to conduct any testing—but no one seemed to mind her observing, so she stayed. She’d tell Mark he’d have to get someone else to lend a hand with the actual lab tests.

If
they found anything to test, which certainly wasn’t a given. If the suspect was someone prominent, as Mia was beginning to believe, he probably had other people living in his household with him. Whatever DNA they found in these items could belong to a wife, a child, a maid, or a cook.

“I thought Rachel wasn’t big on the surreptitious sampling,” Mark said, referring to the method by which cops collected DNA samples on the sly when they either couldn’t obtain a warrant or didn’t want to.