The Sabrina Vaughn series Set 2

by Maegan Beaumont

  “Look,” he said, aiming a glance over her shoulder to make sure they were alone. She was suddenly sure he knew more than he’d originally let on and that what he knew wasn’t necessarily something he was supposed to. “Melissa Walker was involved in a murder case a few weeks before she was abducted,” he said, picking at the pressed seam that ran the length of his paper cup. “Some jock kid from Gila Bend was here for a high school football game. Ended up stabbed to death in a gas station bathroom.”

  Andy Shepard. She remembered him. His arrogant smile and careless hands. The way he’d touched her like he had the right. “Did she kill him?” She remembered wanting to. He’d reminded her of Jed Carson, the boy back home who never gave her a moment’s peace. She’d hated them both, the way they thought that anything they wanted was theirs for taking.

  “No.” Alvarez shook his head at her. “She was his waitress that night. He made a pass at her—grabbed her ass. She put him down pretty quick. According to Shepard’s friends, she was so angry about it she was sent home. Another waitress had to finish her shift.”

  She remembered that too. Val dragging her away from the table, the drunken chatter that’d surrounded her fading away. Her glare nailed to the back of Shepard’s head while he played the victim. The same night one of the bus boys told her that someone had been in the restaurant, asking about her.

  Alvarez spoke again and she forced herself to listen, to hear him instead of what was happening in her head. “A few hours later, a car full of them stopped on the way home so Shepard could take a leak,” he said. “Five minutes stretch into ten... fifteen. Twenty.”

  “Twenty minutes and no one went after him?” she said incredulously. “No teenager is that patient.”

  “Yeah, well... none of them were really watching the clock on account of the girl who was with them giving out blowjobs in the backseat to pass the time,” he said, shrugging. “The driver, who got his first, finally got tired of waiting. He goes after Sheppard to tell him to hurry the hell up. He sees the blood leaking under the door and starts screaming his head off. Shepard was stabbed once—clean, between the ribs. Through the lung. Bled out while his buddies were lined up for free hummers in the parking lot.” He shook his head at the ridiculousness of it. “Perp took his hand as a souvenir. No one saw him and if they did, they were too drunk or too busy getting their dick sucked to remember or care.”

  “I still don’t understand what this has to do with Melissa Walker,” she said, allowing irritation to creep into her tone. “Or why your partner blames himself from what happened to her.”

  “Will was part of the inter-department murder investigation—his first lead case. He questioned her, only he didn’t know it was her. She was living and working under a fake name. He knew she had something to do with it. He knew Sheppard’s murder was connected to her somehow...” He sighed, sliding down in his chair until his slumped shoulders hit the back of it, leaving his cup behind. “But then out of the blue, the night clerk at the gas station confessed. Said he’d killed Shepard because he and his buddies had done a beer run there the weekend before and cost him his job. Took his hand for stealing. Evidence found in his possession supported his confession.”

  She remembered. Sitting in a back booth at Luck’s with Santos while he laid it out for her. He told her that the case was closed and thanked her for her time while she’d pretended to be relieved. Pretended to believe it was over. That she was safe.

  But it had been a lie. All of it.

  Wade took her two days later. Snatched her off the street while she walked home from work, leaving nothing behind but a box of leftover birthday cake dumped in the gutter.

  The store clerk who confessed was named Leland Biggs. He’d been convicted and sentenced to life in prison within months of his arrest. Because of his work on the Shepard case, Santos was made lead detective on her disappearance. He was a good cop, he must’ve seen the connection right away. He must’ve at least suspected that the confession was bogus. That he’d gotten the wrong guy. That maybe if he’d pursued it instead of swallowing the hook and allowing himself to get reeled in by the rush of solving his first lead case, he’d have been able to see the truth. A thing like that would eat at a cop like Will Santos. Keep him up at night. Haunt him like a ghost.

  “Will never got over it,” Alvarez told her, confirming what she’d just been thinking. “When that thing with Vega happened, he took it personal.” He must’ve finally realized that he’d said too much because his eyes narrowed into slits. “Why are asking about her anyway?” he said, aiming a suspicious look her way. “Melissa Walker? It’s been twenty-years—you’re a little late to the party.”

  “Am I?” she said, setting her own cup aside. “Because the report I read said there was DNA found on the fourth victim—Stephanie Adams. She had Melissa Walker’s blood under her fingernails. Seems to me, I’m right on time.”

  Something close to embarrassment passed over his face. “How do you know about that?” he said, the words falling tight and clipped against her ears. “Those results were struck from the original report.”

  She smiled again, tapping a finger against the badge Church had given her. “FBI,” she said, relying on the one-word answer to explain everything.

  “It was a mistake,” he said, his affable expression slammed shut. “Samples got contaminated. The tech responsible was reprimanded, corrective action was taken and the tests were re-generated.” He fed her the party line before he stood, draining his cup. “If you’ll excuse me, I have some paperwork to catch up on.”

  “Who was it?” she said looking up at him, unwilling to let him go until she got at least one of the answers she’d come for. The tech who’d taken the samples and run the test would know things that had been stricken from the report that even Ben hadn’t been able to get his hands on. “The tech that screwed up?”

  Alvarez bared his teeth at her in something that most people would mistake for a smile. “Does it really matter?”

  “I know you don’t know me very well, Detective Alvarez but I can assure you—” She returned his smile with one that said she he was going to tell her what she wanted to know, one way or another. “I’m not in the business of asking unnecessary questions.”

  Alvarez crushed the cup in his fist before tossing it in the trash can on his way to the door. She was sure he’d ignore the question. That he’d leave without answering her, forcing her to go after him but then he told her. “Elena Hernandez,” he said, forcing the name between clenched teeth just before he disappeared down the hall.

  As soon as Alvarez walked out, Sabrina tossed her own cup and followed him. By the time she reached the bullpen he was at his desk, head buried in a stack of files. He didn’t look up when she passed by, on her way to the conference room she and Church had been assigned. Santos was still nowhere to be found.

  Installing herself behind the computer she turned it on, waiting for it to power up before she typed the first in a short list of names into the search bar.

  PAUL VEGA

  Barely a second after she hit enter, a message flashed across the screen.

  NO MATCHES TO YOUR SEARCH INQUIRY FOUND

  Santos was a major crimes detective. Anything he’d been called to investigate would have carried with it a felony charge. The four majors were rape, murder, armed robbery, kidnapping. Whatever happened, it’d been bad. What had Alvarez said—that they’d closed ranks. Stopped a felony investigation in its tracks. That meant nothing about a felony crime involving Paul Vega would be in the system. But erasing Vega’s involvement didn’t mean they could turn back time. Whatever it was he’d been suspected of doing still happened. There’d still be a paper trail. She thought about it and tried again.

  MAJOR CRIME UNSOLVED, 2000

  A few seconds later, a row of file numbers tumbled down the screen. Nearly a dozen of them. Scrolling the mouse over the first number she clicked it, opening the file. Reports and case notes filled screen. A drive-by shooting in her ol
d neighborhood. She opened the next in line. An armed robbery at a Circle K. She opened the next one. A burned body found in the desert. The next one. A hooker strangled to death in Luck’s parking lot. That one looked promising, even though she had a hard time imagining Vega trolling for prostitutes. She closed it and moved on to the next.

  The file on the screen was an unsolved rape case. According to the case notes it’d been brutal. The victim was a seventeen-year-old girl—a senior at Yuma high school. Cheerleader. Photographer for the school newspaper. Yearbook editor. Solid B student. She’d left home late Friday night, sneaking out of the house after her parents went to sleep. When they woke the next morning, she was gone. Something both of them swore was against her character, despite the fact that they’d waited until after noon to call the police.

  A search crew found her in a pump house four days later, chained to the water wheel, naked and badly beaten. Severely dehydrated. She’d been raped and beaten repeatedly. Sodomized. Forced to perform sex acts on her assailants before being left to die. The pump house she’d been found in was one of twenty-two belonging to Vega Farms.

  The victim’s name had been Rachel Meeks.

  38

  Kootenai Canyon, Montana

  “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

  Christina looked up and over at him from the driver’s seat of the Challenger. She looked terrified and exhilarated all at once and he tried not to laugh, he really did.

  “Are you laughing at me?” she narrowed her eyes before aiming them out the windshield, delicate fingers wrapped around the steering wheel.

  “What?” Michael cleared his throat. “No, I would never—”

  “Because I’m only thirteen,” she sniffed at him. “I shouldn’t be driving.”

  He swallowed another burst of laughter, angling his head a bit lower so she couldn’t see it. “Christina, I’m asking you to pull the car into the grass, not jump it over a dozen flaming school buses. You’ve done it a hundred times.”

  “Yeah, with you in the car with me.” She glared at him for a moment before dropping one of her hands to the gearshift while she pressed the clutch into the floorboard. She gave him a long-suffering sigh. “Whatever. Move or I’m going to run you over.” She slipped it into first and eased off the clutch, exchanging it smoothly with the gas pedal. The Challenger inched forward, carried through the open barn door by the rumbling engine.

  Like he’d been told, Michael stood straight, backing away from the car so she could guide it from the barn onto the grass, in front of the house. She did perfectly, moving slowly, like he’d taught her. As soon as the Challenger was where he’d told her to put it, Christina shifted into neutral and cut the engine. She even set the emergency brake. But she didn’t get out of the car. She just sat there, staring straight ahead.

  Michael closed the distance between the barn and the car. “You gonna pout all day or are you gonna pop the hood so we can—”

  “There’re bug guts on the windshield.” She finally looked at him, her tone careful and even. “Why are there bug guts on the windshield?”

  Shit.

  “You left,” she said, dark brown gaze narrowed on him accusingly. “You left me—you left us.”

  “Christina, I—”

  “You said you wouldn’t do that,” she said, lunging out of the car to push past him.

  “Just let me explain,” he said, voice raise louder than it should have been.

  “Explain?” She turned on him, jabbing an accusatory finger in his face. “You said you wouldn’t leave.” He reached out to catch her arm but she yanked back before he could make contact. “You promised.”

  “What was I supposed to do, Christina?” He finally caught her arm and she went still, turning on him, waiting for him to let her go. “She’s out there—alone—and I—”

  “Is that why Miss Ettie is here?” Christina said, her arm tense and heavy in his grip. “Just in case you decided that sticking around was too much of an imposition?”

  “What?” He jerked back, his hand dropping away from her. “No.” He shook his head, sagging against the fender of the car. “You’re a kid, Christina. You don’t understand.”

  “Then explain it to me,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Because the way I see it, Sabrina left us.”

  “It’s not that simple,” he said, shoving his hands into the front pockets of his jeans while glaring at the toes of his boots. “All of this is my fault. All of it—the last four years of her life have been a waking nightmare and that’s because of me. I’m the one who brought her brother to her doorstep. I’m the one who brought it all to her doorstep. If I’d have left her alone, she’d still be in San Francisco. She’d still have her family. She’d be—”

  “Bullshit.”

  The curse jerked his head up and had him swinging his gaze toward her. She didn’t look like Christina anymore. Her jaw was set in silent challenge, her dark eyes wise and older than they had a right to be. She looked like Lydia. She looked like her mother. Seeing his lost friend in her daughter was suddenly too much.

  “What?”

  “You heard me,” she said, losing some of that hard-won nerve but still refusing to back down. “You act like she’s not capable of making her own choices. She knew what she was signing on for when she came here. And she understood what would happen if she left.”

  No matter what she thought, there was still a lot she didn’t understand. A lot they’d chosen not to tell her. “Like I said, you’re a kid,” he pulled his hands from his pockets and straightened himself off the hood of the car. “You don’t understand.”

  “I understand that you’re going to have to choose, Michael,” she said, her arms tightening against her frame, like she was afraid of what came next. “Her or me. You can’t keep your promises to both of us.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, kiddo,” he told her with a sad smile. “Because when she left she made me promise not to go after her. She made me promise to stay here, not to go after her, no matter what. I broke my promise to both of you.”

  Her arms dropped away from her chest, her eyes filled with tears. “Then why—”

  “Because I love her. Because I can’t just leave her. She’s in danger, every moment of every day—” Michael swiped a hand over his mouth. “and that is my fault. At least when she’s here, I can protect her…” He sighed. “I just made a phone call. That’s it. That’s all I did.” It was all he could do. The uselessness he felt chewed at his gut, making him want to throw up.

  “A phone call?” she looked at him like he’d lost his mind, eyes wide with disbelief over his recklessness. “You used a phone?”

  “It’s an old analog—practically untraceable. I was almost three hundred miles away before I turned it on and the call lasted less than two minutes. After I was finished, I wiped it down, destroyed it and tossed the pieces into a lumber truck headed for Idaho.” He forced a reassured smile onto his face. “And the person I called is just as careful, I promise.”

  “Who?” she said quietly. “Who did you call?”

  He thought of Phillip Song, struggling to find a way to describe him that wouldn’t make him sound like what he was—an alleged gangster. Possible drug lord. Probable murderer.

  “Someone who can help her.”

  She didn’t push it, instead she nodded, chewing on her lower lip. “She said the same thing, you know,” she said, fixing him with a look that said she finally understood. “That day the Senator came… she put Alex and me in the lift by ourselves and I freaked out. She told me she loved you and couldn’t leave you. I was relieved that you wouldn’t be alone but I was scared too.” Tears stood out in her eyes and she gave them an irritated brush with her fingertips. “I know you and Sabrina would die for each other…”

  “It’s not just me she’s willing to die for, Christina.” He reached out, pulling her into a hug. This time she left him. “Sabrina will do whatever it takes to keep you and Alex safe. She’s a figh
ter. Hiding isn’t in her nature.”

  “It not in yours either.” She said it against his chest, her hands gripped tightly against the thin cotton of his T-shirt. “That’s what scares me.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, running a gentle hand over her sun-warmed hair. “I’m not going anywhere—not again. I’m keeping my promise to the both of you.”

  She didn’t answer him. Didn’t say she believed him. Probably because she didn’t.

  39

  Yuma, Arizona

  She didn’t wait for Detective Santos to show up. Closing the file, she hit PRINT ALL. If someone searched her computer history, it would look like she was interested in all unsolved cases, rather than focused on one in particular. She had no idea if Vega still had someone in the department, mopping up after him but until she could hang him, Sabrina planned on making herself as small as possible.

  Stopping at Santos desk, she wrote a quick note, telling him she’d be out in the field, following it up with her cell number. Alvarez sat a few feet away, head still buried in a stack of files. Still ignoring her. She decided she didn’t care and left without saying goodbye.

  As soon as she hit the stairs, she pulled her cell from her pocket. Stopping long enough to punch out the number Ellie had given her yesterday.

  Whatdya think you’re doin’, Darlin’?

  She listened to the phone ring, ignoring the voice in her head, while she jogged down the stairs.

  Calling that girl ain’t the smartest thing you’ve ever done. The more time you spend with her, the more chance there is she’ll recognize you.

  “This is Hernandez,” Ellie said.

  “Hi, this is Agent Vance,” Sabrina said, walking across the lobby toward the parking lot. “Any chance I can get you to meet me?”

  Maybe that’s what you want. Maybe you want Ellie to see you for who you really are. Maybe you want her to know. Maybe you want them all to know...