Dark Secrets

by Savannah Kade

  Dark Secrets

  (Dark Falls, CO Romantic Thriller Book 2)

  Savannah Kade

  Copyright © 2018 by Savannah Kade

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Dark Falls

  Also by SK and AJ

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Dark Legacy

  Dark Falls

  The DARK FALLS Series

  Dark Falls - Lori Ryan

  Dark Secrets - Savannah Kade

  Dark Legacy - Trish McCallan

  Dark Nightmares - Becca Jameson

  Dark Terror - Sandra Owens

  Dark Burning - Lori Ryan

  Dark Echoes - Savannah Kade

  Dark Memories - Sandra Owens

  Dark Rage - Becca Jameson

  Dark Tidings - Trish McCallan

  Dark Obsession - Lisa-Marie Cabrelli

  Dark Passion - Lori Ryan

  Novels by Savannah Kade:

  The WILDER Books:

  Our Song

  Heartstrings

  Love Notes

  Music & Lyrics

  The Wilder Complete Book Set

  The TOUCH OF MAGICK Series:

  WishCraft

  DreamWalker

  LoveSpelled

  SoulFire

  ShadowKiss

  The Touch of Magick Series: Complete Set

  The HOLLYWOOD NIGHTS Series:

  Wildest Dreams

  Sunset Promises

  Shooting Star

  Hollywood Ending

  Hollywood Nights Complete Set

  Savannah Kade also writes suspense as

  A.J. Scudiere.

  The NightShade Forensic Files

  Book 1 - Under Dark Skies

  Book 2 - Fracture Five

  Book 3 - The Atlas Defect

  Book 4 - Echo and Ember

  Book 5 - Salvage (A Shadow Files Novel)

  Book 6 - Garden of Bone

  Book 7 - The Camelot Gambit (Available Apr 2, 2019)

  FORTUNE (red)

  FORTUNE (gray)

  The Vendetta Trifecta

  Vengeance

  Retribution

  Justice

  Resonance

  God's Eye

  Phoenix

  The Shadow Constant

  Chapter One

  Grace didn’t usually spray luminol and pull out her black light when she entered a motel room. But today she held the light up and frowned at the blood revealed by the generously applied chemiluminescent.

  Old blood was everywhere. Small spots peeked out from under the edge of the bed where the old polyester blanket touched the carpeting. It looked to Grace as though something had happened in that spot and the bed had simply been moved.

  In one corner, another streak of luminol glowed cautiously, the remnant of a merely passable scrubbing. Some of the luminescent spots revealed that her suspicions had been correct about the old carpeting, about this motel room, and about the stains.

  Crap. This was the last thing she needed. She’d requested this room specifically. She didn’t always spray Luminol and pull out her black light when she rented a room. Then again, she couldn’t recall ever renting a room this awful in her life. She could imagine Jimmy here, though. If he was on one of his serious benders this would be nothing. Unfortunately, that meant there was nothing obvious here that supported her theory about her brother. She’d have to wait for lab results.

  “Oh, Jimmy,” she lamented out loud to the dark room. “What did you get yourself into?”

  The way her heart clenched couldn’t be stopped. No matter what the room looked like, no matter what she might be able to prove, none of it would change the facts. Jimmy was dead. Gone, after a life that had been a struggle from the beginning and continued to be one well into adulthood. Grace blinked back the tears that threatened.

  Many people didn’t know what it was like having an addict in their lives. They were lucky. Addicts stole, they lied, they betrayed. And they often left you with only one option—completely cutting yourself off. She hadn’t been able to do it. Neither had her parents. So they’d all suffered alongside her little brother.

  But, dammit, she’d really thought these last five years had seen a turnaround. He’d been clean and four months shy of his five-year chip. But the Dark Falls Police Department had written of Jimmy’s death as just another junkie overdose. Case closed.

  Grace wasn’t buying it. Jimmy wasn’t using again. She knew it. She’d spoken to him just a few days before he died.

  No one would believe her. No one did. Even her parents were skeptical, but she believed. She’d lived with Jimmy, and watched him turn to alcohol at age ten, then cocaine at thirteen, she’d gotten good at spotting the signs. Lots of siblings did. Sometimes parents tried to deny it. They turned their kids away, or they made up excuses and always believed the best. But siblings of addicts had a radar for it. Their investment was entirely different from a parental bond.

  Grace knew. She’d talked about it in Al-Anon meetings. She’d gone steadily for almost two years, then off and on for another handful. The siblings of addicts all had similar stories. They knew. They could tell when their brothers or sisters were using again. Grace couldn’t count the number of times someone had showed up at a meeting with a suspicion, then even several months later said, “I was right.”

  She’d had that feeling about Jimmy before. It happened the first time he’d gotten clean. He’d stayed clean for six months before relapsing. The second time—after their parents had paid to put him through an expensive rehab program—he’d stayed clean a year and a half. But Grace knew that his eighteen-month chip was an excuse to celebrate, to think he’d been cured only to have him slide back. But she didn’t have that feeling. Not this time. The third time seemed to have stuck.

  Jimmy had moved to Dark Falls, something their mother had protested with every fiber of her being. He should be close to home. Part Vietnamese, part Chinese, and gay as the day was long, Jimmy wanted to get out of the South. Grace understood. She’d supported him. They texted daily, and she talked to him just a few days before he died. She did not believe he was using again.

  She’d even demanded a full autopsy. She checked off her mental list as she looked around the room at the various splotches her quick test had revealed. She’d want samples of them all. Jimmy’s death was listed as an overdose. Had there been fresh blood, the police wouldn’t have been able to write it off so easily.

  Grace had only pulled out the Luminol on a whim when she’d seen the dark patches in the carpeting. It could have been wine or cheap beer, but her senses told her to test it.
Shit. She looked around behind her, holding the light up. A lot of it was faint, old, but she needed to know what it was.

  She had her work cut out for her.

  After gathering samples from at least five spots around the room—samples that she highly suspected would be all different—she turned off her black light and clicked the regular light back on.

  Surveying the horrible room she didn’t want to be in, she pulled out her phone and called her oftentimes partner, Brad, back home. “Brad, I was right.”

  “Well, that sucks. What did you find?”

  She sighed. She’d kind of wanted to be wrong. She didn’t believe Jimmy had died of an overdose. But if she’d come all this way and found evidence that he had, she would have told herself to accept the truth and go back home. That wasn’t happening. “I have five blood samples I need tested. Can you find me a good lab out here?”

  “Will you love me forever?” Brad asked, and she heard his fingers already at the keyboard.

  “Already do, Brad.” It was common banter between the two of them.

  “Then what’s my incentive, Grace?” He probably already had seven local labs pulled up.

  “Coffee. Large. Perfectly doctored, on me.”

  “I’ll take that!” The happy tone in Brad’s voice filtered through the line and made Grace smile for the first time in two days. Brad was a great friend and he was cheap. His voice was too chipper for the situation, but she needed that. “I have three labs, I’m sending general links as well as price lists. This could get bad out of pocket.”

  “I know, but it’s my brother. What would you do?”

  “Honey, I don’t know. I don’t have a brother.” It had been his response for years. Brad was an only child, but a great ear for when she had Jimmy woes. He’d been around long enough to hear her prayers that Jimmy stuck with this latest round of rehab.

  “Thanks, Brad.” Her phone pinged as she got the email from him.

  Flipping the black light on one more time, she made another sweep around the room. She shuddered and ignored the other things this particular wavelength revealed. Jimmy had died here four days ago, but they already had it “cleaned” and turned over for use. The police had not kept the crime scene tape up for more than a few hours as far as she could gather. But she’d been in town less than twenty-four hours, so she couldn’t be sure.

  She had more rooms to rent. More money to shell out for Jimmy even though he was gone. More samples to take. Luckily, it was two in the afternoon and most of the rooms were empty. She just didn’t know what she’d find.

  Chapter Two

  Nate Ryder had been expecting her. He just hadn’t been expecting her. It was all he could do to keep his jaw shut as the dark haired beauty swept into the detectives’ bullpen like an avenging angel.

  She’d told him her name on the phone, but with her Southern lilt he’d heard “Grace Leigh” and expected a manicured and hairsprayed, plasticky beauty queen type who would only use her first name. Or would maybe say something like, “Grace Leigh Collins of the Macon Collinses.” The shape of her eyes and the flash of her badge told him she was “Grace Lee.” The flare of anger in her eyes told him she was not to be trifled with.

  She headed right toward him, her straight black hair flaring out as though she was in a shampoo commercial. He was wondering how she did that, and why he felt it in his gut, when he noticed her expression was much more like that of an attack dog than a shampoo model.

  “Detective Ryder?” Her tone was sharp.

  “You must be Grace Lee.” He tried to sound genial. Who else would be in here flashing a GBI badge in Colorado? “The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is always welcome in Dark Falls.”

  “I’m not here officially with GBI,” she pushed the words out as though they hurt to say them. So, she understood that in spite of flashing her badge, she was merely here as a sister of the deceased and would be welcomed as any sibling would with a closed case.

  “I understand, Ms. Lee. You’re still welcome.” The chief wanted them to have solid community relationships. It did make their job easier, but Nate was already regretting his words.

  He’d been looking her up online when she’d come through the door. Surreptitiously, he clicked his old-school mouse, opening the main info page.

  Shit.

  Even as he smiled at her, he realized he was in trouble. She was one of Georgia’s premier forensic scientists. She was merely a consultant with GBI—in her home state of Georgia—and often traveled around the country when most serious cases were called in. When the big, scary missing persons cases were solved, Grace Lee was usually involved.

  Suddenly, his brain put it all together. She’d only said she was with GBI and that she was coming to see him about a personal issue, then she’d showed up before he could ask why. But her badge and the shape of her eyes and the stare that would have taken out a lesser man on contact made it all click.

  She was related to Jimmy Lee, the overdose death from four days ago. Open and shut case. Her expression said Ms. Lee wholeheartedly disagreed. Divert, he thought. “You said this is a personal matter. Can I get you a coffee? There’s a great shop next door and we can chat there.”

  He was moving out the door before she could protest, and it was clear his manipulation hadn’t escaped her. Luckily for him, she didn’t have much choice but to follow. Since he was the detective who’d signed off on her brother’s case, she couldn’t just choose another officer to pick on.

  This wasn’t the first time someone had disagreed with his handling of a case. Usually, it was the other way around—that he investigated something the family was convinced was accidental. Or they were trying to convince him was accidental. A few times over the years he’d seen a grieving family member try to reopen a closed case or a cold one, but they tended to do it with tears and pleading. He sensed nothing of the sort would come from Grace Lee. He hoped coffee would help. Maybe it would help him if it didn’t help her.

  He nodded back toward his partner, new Detective Marisol Zaragosa, to hold down the fort for them, then he shrugged into his coat as he held the door for Grace, winter chill hitting him as he walked out behind her. She stayed quiet on the short walk and he found himself growing intrigued. He’d been braced for demands, but she’d made none. In fact, she stayed silent until they had their coffee in hand and were seated at one of the more private tables in the back.

  She took one sip, smiled like she liked it and pinned him with a razor sharp stare. “You were on Jimmy Lee’s case.” She didn’t ask, and he didn’t answer. She clearly had done her homework. “He didn’t die of an overdose, or if he did, it was flat out murder.”

  Now, this, he’d been expecting. Having learned not to go on the defensive too quickly, he tried to placate her by asking, “What makes you say that?”

  “You remember the details of the case?” she asked him as though he might have forgotten a dead body from a mere four days ago. Then again, she was in the crime business, too, even if she wasn’t an officer. Maybe she was just making sure he’d been more than a signature or wasn’t buried under so many cases that they disappeared from his mind as soon as the case was closed.

  Deciding to believe she was being thorough rather than taking it as a personal offense, Nate answered, “I was at the scene.”

  That sobered her for a moment and he cursed himself. She might be in the crime business, but the dead body he was talking about—the case he wasn’t going to re-open—was her brother.

  Grace pulled it together with another sip of coffee and started listing facts. “He was found on the floor, eyes open, needle in his arm.”

  Nate nodded. Then he played his own card, hoping to have this cleared up before the coffee was done. “You may not have known it, but your brother was clearly an addict.”

  “I’m well aware that my brother was a junkie.”

  Nate listened, stunned, as she listed Jimmy’s very young forays into alcohol, cocaine, party drugs, and eventually heroin. Gr
ace had no illusions about her brother. She told him how she was the straight-A student and her parents had hidden Jimmy’s problems from her as long as they could.

  “As an adult, I was right every time he was using again. And every time he wasn’t.” She paused, and Nate saw what was coming at him like a Mack truck. “Jimmy wasn’t using.”

  He was about to tell her that her intuition wouldn’t make them re-open the case, but she should know that.

  Grace Lee didn’t disappoint. “That’s just incidental. Who signed off on the case? No one should have.”

  “I don’t understand.” Nate’s coffee was all but abandoned.

  “First, I’ll bet you a thousand dollars that Jimmy has no puncture marks in either arm or anywhere a good M.E. can find other than the needle that killed him. Because he wasn’t using. So this was his first hit in five years.”

  “Right. That was the guess, that he’d been clean long enough to have the dosing affect him.”

  She shook her head. “Doesn’t quite work that way. Addicts are always resistant. They basically pop back to their current level of addiction the moment they start using again.”

  “Is this personal experience?” He’d had his own experiences with addicts from his time on the force.