Quinn didn’t reply to his reasoning. She’d disclosed that she was constantly on pins and needles. Mentally, she’d already given the unsub power by giving him a fear-inducing identity. Taking it away would be the first step in diminishing his power.
“What made you become a profiler?” Quinn asked, changing the subject. Even so, she seemed to truly want to know the answer. He couldn’t stand the way her shoulders slouched slightly in defeat. Whatever had transpired during the day had settled over her like a despondent blanket. “You mentioned it was because of your parents, but was there anything else?”
“Not really.”
Linc thought over his childhood as he settled back on the stool. He’d already polished off two pieces and was halfway done with a third. Grabbing his beer, he ventured into his past, hoping that his gesture would have her do the same.
“Sitting around the dinner table and hearing Mom and Dad talk about their patients was fascinating to me,” Linc willingly shared. “The mystery of why people acted the way they did began to unravel for me. More often than not, people’s motivations were so deeply ingrained that they weren’t truly aware of why they reacted. Eventually, it became a challenge to make a diagnosis and see if I was right and why. Of course, that was all before HIPAA and the privacy laws went into effect. My parents kept their professional discussions limited to the office or in the study after society in general became wild about suing their therapist for just about anything. People in general tend to blame others for their own shortcomings. It’s a common defense mechanism.”
Quinn gave a small laugh, which had been his intention. There was a reason for privacy laws, and he respected them. He took another drink of his beer. He was hoping she’d volunteer something about what had led her to journalism, but she continued to pick away at her pizza.
“By the time I was seventeen, 9/11 happened.” Linc recalled that specific day as if it was yesterday. “The world as we knew it changed in an instant. My world focused on helping us as a society be safer, and I wanted to do something in a manner that was different than my parents. I joined the Navy the day I graduated high school.”
“You were in the Navy?” Quinn gave his upper body a once over, before following up with her review. “I figured Agent Malone was military. Marines, most likely, but you? Not so much.”
“I’ve been able to adjust a little better to civilian life than Dean,” Linc replied with a laugh. “He still gets the high-top haircuts, shines his shoes every morning, and most likely makes his bed with hospital corners every morning.”
“Are you saying you don’t make your bed?”
Linc raised his bottle in salute to her wry comeback.
Had he met Quinn under any other circumstance, he would have shot back with an instant reply that she should find out for herself. He found her fascinating, and he certainly couldn’t deny the underlying attraction. As it stood, he had a job to do and that didn’t include bedding a material witness. He’d never lead her astray, either professionally or personally.
“Let’s just say that I’m a little more laid-back than Dean,” Linc said with a grin. He set his finished beer back on the counter. “After serving my five years and completing my degree, I applied for the academy. The rest is history, as they say.”
Linc continued to carry on the conversation, sharing some of his stories about the academy and choosing a few of the more notorious cases that had made the headlines. He’d zeroed in on her comfort zone, and it wasn’t long afterward that she began working on her second piece of pizza. Soon afterward, they replenished their beers and retired to the living room.
“How did you find out about Aaron?” Quinn asked softly, pulling her legs up underneath her as she settled onto the couch. The move must have signaled to her that it was time for business because she adopted a different demeanor. He honestly hadn’t thought she’d dive into her past so soon, and not without a little prodding, but he let her run with it. “My mother was friends with his mother. We basically grew up together.”
Quinn tucked her chestnut brown hair behind her ear when it brushed against her cheek before picking away at the label on her beer bottle. Thinking back to that time clearly made her anxious, but there was an unmistakable fondness in her voice when she spoke of Aaron. She had clearly loved him in the way only a young girl could admire her first love at the tender age of seventeen.
“I asked Deputy Chen about you,” Linc replied truthfully, having claimed the overstuffed chair so that he wasn’t crowding her. The last thing he wanted was to make her feel uncomfortable, though she had voluntarily sat on the cushion closest to his seat. “I figured the two of you were around the same age, so there was a good chance he knew you back in high school.”
Linc purposefully omitted Jonah’s thoughts on the losses in her life. She’d most likely believe that he pitied her. That would inevitably have her putting her defenses back in place, pausing the advances he’d made in getting her to trust him. A part of him recognized that his need not to hurt her had nothing to do with the investigation. He needed to keep his answers short now and allow her to carry the conversation.
“Jonah is a year older than me.” Quinn paused, almost as if she were debating on putting an end to this entire conversation. She then jumped into the deep end with both feet. “I can only imagine what he told you, but he couldn’t have said a lot. Jonah didn’t really hang out in my circles. Did he mention Nick Rockwell?”
Linc didn’t have to ask her how Nick was related to Aaron. The background check had given a detailed report about his family members, though that had been about it. There had been mention of Aaron being a baseball player, on the debate team, and an average student. His family had attended one of the local churches and were very involved in the community. His death had had been a blow to his classmates and the community as a whole, not just his family and Quinn.
“No, Nick wasn’t brought into the conversation.” Linc wondered what Nick Rockwell had to do with her story, especially since he’d passed away a few years ago from lung cancer. He’d been a heavy smoker, according to the autopsy. “Were you close to him?”
“Not really, but then again, he was a year older than me and his brother.”
Quinn sighed and leaned forward to set her drink onto the coffee table. She then sat back and slid her hands between her legs as if she were warding off a chill. He understood the reason why when she began to tell her story. There were some memories that were best left forgotten.
“You already know that Aaron and I grew up together,” Quinn said softly. “Our being with one another was just so…natural. We were those kids who passed notes back and forth in third grade with hearts all over the outside. We went to dances together in middle school, and we started out high school with so many plans for our future. By our senior year, we were contemplating how college would work if he stayed here locally while I went out of state.”
Linc’s research had also produced some paperwork, such as Aaron’s application to the community college in town. Nowhere did it give the reason of his choice, but Linc would base it on the fact that Aaron hadn’t quite known what he’d wanted to do with his life at that time. Community college allowed him to keep his part-time job at the grocery store, while taking credits in general education classes to get them out of the way. It left the option of transfer to any other accredited university on the list of possibilities once he decided on a path.
“We went to a party on the cliffs right outside of town in our senior year. Debbie Tappe was the head cheerleader, and she’d gotten her older brother to supply the kegs of beer. It was going to be the party of the year,” Quinn surmised, her tone indicating something else entirely. “Had I known that it would completely ruin the lives of the people I care about…well, I would’ve said no and stayed home.”
“Said no to what?” Linc asked, a little lost when it sounded as if Quinn wasn’t referring to the party at all.
Quinn unfolded her legs and pushed herself off the c
ouch, as if the words were becoming too difficult to say aloud. Linc fell quiet, not wanting to say the wrong thing in fear that she would stop recounting the tales of her past.
Debbie Tappe.
It was a name that Linc would be able to look into tomorrow.
The newspaper hadn’t mentioned a party, and the police report had merely made note of a small get-together that Aaron Rockwell had attended that night. Why had the deputy or sheriff downplayed such a pertinent fact from their criminal investigation summary?
Linc began to wonder if there had been a coverup to protect the identities of the other teenagers who might have been there. A shape was being formed by her words, and it wasn’t a picturesque landscape.
Quinn walked over to the fireplace, though it wasn’t woodburning. She flipped a switch on the wall beside the mantel, bringing to life the gas unit with a whoosh of flames. The blaze began to dance with its hypnotic effort, seeming to soothe her apprehension.
“You don’t see things as black and white, do you?”
Quinn’s question came out of nowhere.
Linc leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he tried to figure out why she’d changed tactics. She was no longer telling a story, but instead testing the waters on the outlook of his job.
He was no one’s fool.
Whatever she was about to tell him could potentially hurt her or someone else. Maybe even someone she was protecting. He needed to tread carefully, because he wouldn’t promise something that he couldn’t deliver on.
“I’m not sure how to answer your question,” Linc began rather guardedly, setting his beer on the coffee table next to hers. He had a feeling that he was going to need all his wits with what was to come. “I’m a profiler, so in a sense what I do isn’t cut and dried. With that said, I am a federal agent. It’s my duty to uphold the law and to serve justice.”
Linc was well aware that his answer didn’t sit completely right with her. She was still facing the blazing fire that was dancing behind the glass display. Would she opt to continue, or would she end this so-called confession right now?
He was betting on the former.
Whatever it was that she was keeping close to her chest could very well blow the current case wide open.
Linc stood, unable to stand seeing her struggle with such a monumental decision. He stopped a foot away from her, being very careful not to cross that invisible line that he’d drawn in the sand.
“Quinn, my goal is to apprehend a serial killer who has been preying on the widows of Winter Heights. I have no interest in something that happened fifteen or so years ago.” Linc carefully worded his next statement, crossing his arms to prevent himself from reaching out to touch her. It was instinctive to touch someone when wanting to comfort them by giving reassurance, but that wasn’t his role right now. “Did you kill Aaron?”
“What?” Quinn was clearly shocked that he would have asked her something like that outright. She’d spun to face him, not hesitating in meeting his gaze head-on. Those pretty golden eyes of hers darkened with indignation. “I might have only been seventeen years old, but I loved Aaron with all my heart. I would never have hurt him, Linc. He asked me to marry him that night. We were going to be together forever.”
With Quinn’s admission to such a proposal, Linc no longer doubted his theory that the unsub truly believed she was a widow.
Somehow, someway, the unsub had known about the proposal.
Linc would wait to hear the rest of her story before figuring out how to take the next step, besides looking into the other people who’d been in attendance the night of the party near the cliffs.
“Aaron died that night by slipping off the edge of the cliff,” Linc said softly, filling in the blanks from the news articles and the autopsy report. “You wouldn’t have had to time to get married.”
“No, we never legally married,” Quinn confirmed, as she had said so many times before. “Our parents wouldn’t have allowed such a thing, anyway. We exchanged vows as only two seventeen-year-old kids can, with limited knowledge of the world and fully believing that we would be together until the end of time.”
“That’s not what happened, though.”
“No,” Quinn agreed softly, wrapping her arms around her waist as she finally revealed what happened that fateful night. “Nick Rockwell killed his own brother instead.”
Chapter Nine
Quinn let those ill-fated words that she’d never once uttered aloud fall from her lips like dropping boulders off the face of a cliff. Surprisingly, the world hadn’t stopped turning, and lightning hadn’t struck her down from above.
She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, but it certainly hadn’t been deafening silence.
She could feel the weight of Linc’s intense stare, as if he was attempting to choose his words individually from a vault full of possibilities. It was best to get in front of whatever he might be thinking or what course of action he might be considering, especially since Aaron’s parents didn’t know the truth.
She’d tried so hard to come clean with them today, explaining in detail what happened that night and how much Nick had regretted his actions. From her understanding, Nick had never touched a drop of alcohol after that night. Unfortunately, the tremendous load of overwhelming guilt had never left his shoulders. He’d only switched his addiction to smoking cigarettes in his crippling endeavor to overcome his burden.
The end result had still been his own death.
“Nick was drinking quite heavily that evening,” Quinn explained, turning back to the comfort of the fire. She leaned down and turned on the blower, somehow still needing the warmth from the flames to chase the chill from her bones. Had she ever truly been warm and secure since that fateful night? “He’d heard about the party and wanted to visit some old friends. He was only a year older than us, so the two pretty much hung out with the same crowd.”
Quinn didn’t want to go back to the couch and give up the warm air from the blower, so she lowered herself to the floor. The cream carpet had come with the townhome, but it was still in pretty good shape for its age. She wrapped her arms around her legs, pulling her knees closer to her chest.
She’d fully expected Linc to reclaim the chair, but he surprised her by sitting next to her. His large frame folded easier than she would have expected, and he stretched his legs out in front of him. He was listening intently now that the words were flowing.
“I’m assuming that whatever happened with Aaron wasn’t in plain sight of everyone at the party,” Linc surmised, and he’d presumed correctly. “What really happened that night, Quinn?”
“Someone had one of those old-fashioned Cracker Jacks boxes,” Quinn recalled with a lopsided grin. It was hard not to smile at the recollection of Aaron snagging the prize from the box. One would have thought he’d won a million dollars, he was so pleased with himself. “He found a ring inside. I didn’t know it at the time, but he’d stuck it in the pocket of his jeans for later. My best friend and I had heard that a huge lightning storm was rolling in, and we wanted to get a better look at the stormfront. Aaron led the way, and the three of us hiked up the ridge to get a better view. I’m not going to be the cliché Girl Friday here and say that it’s all my fault Aaron died. I spent years coming to terms with what happened and my culpability in it all, reliving that moment over and over in my mind until I was physically nauseous. Some days I blame myself for not seeing what was about to happen, and other days I accept that I would have gone into the abyss with him had I taken one more step forward.”
The twirling orange and yellow flames slowly morphed into a mirage of that fateful night. It was as if she’d been taken right back to that moment, the years between then and now just fading away into nothingness.
“…marry me?”
“Did you get that ring from the Cracker Jacks box?” Quinn asked after bursting out laughing at seeing Aaron down on one knee.
The cold front was pushing the warmer air up the slope. It see
med to pick up from the incoming storm, causing her long hair to cover her eyes. She fought with the curled strands that had taken her over an hour to do in her small bathroom at home, managing to get them behind her so that they were blowing away from her face. Aaron’s short blond hair barely moved in the breeze, but his smile was certainly infectious.
“Nothing but the best for my girl,” Aaron exclaimed, holding up the ring with his right hand. “And when we graduate college, you can expect a real diamond. I love you, Quinn Teressa Simmons.”
Quinn’s laugh got caught in her throat when she realized that Aaron was serious about a real wedding after college. Four and a half years seemed like such a long time, but it didn’t matter since they knew what they wanted. They’d already made plans on how often they would see each other, how often they would talk to one another, and now they were making plans for their future.
She’d never been so happy in her entire life.
“You guys should exchange vows now,” Lisa said, clapping her hands in excitement. “Practice for the big day and give this girl hope that my soulmate is out there somewhere. I’ll even officiate!”
Aaron slid the oversized ring on her finger before standing up. It might have been cheap plastic, but it would always be a priceless treasure to her. It didn’t matter in that moment that a storm was rolling in, the winds were ravaging their clothes, or that the tumultuous crash of the waves below were practically drowning out their voices.
It was a moment in time that was as close to perfection as one could get in his or her life.
“Moments like that are to be treasured, Quinn.” Linc seemed to understand that the sliver of happiness was the last she’d ever experienced with Aaron. “Whatever happened next doesn’t make that time any less important.”
“It made it all disappear, though,” Quinn admitted softly, grateful that the warmth of the fire was still moving over her body. Unfortunately, nothing could take away the coldness that had settled inside of her soul. It had become a part of her, like a scar in her heart that received no blood. “We exchanged sappy vows in a way that only two naïve teenagers can, with Lisa pretending to officiate the ceremony.”
The Isolated Widow (The Widow Taker Book 2) Page 8