Guilty as Sin

by Jami Alden

  Memories of him, both past and recent, played in her head on an endless loop. Tommy at age sixteen, howling like Tarzan as he swung out into the lake on a rope swing, taunting Kate mercilessly until she did the same.

  Their first kiss, the explosive discovery of how much pleasure she could feel at the slightest brush of his lips.

  A pleasure that was nothing compared to what she’d found in his bed the night before. Mind blowing, world altering, all the more powerful because it went so far beyond physical connection. The memory of Tommy looking into her eyes, his features pulled tight with pleasure as he drove her over the edge, brought a pain to her chest so fierce she felt tears leak from the corners of her eyes.

  Once started, they wouldn’t stop, an endless stream fueled by the memories of his reluctant smiles. The conviction in his voice when he held her in his arms and told her he wanted the Kate she’d become and so carefully traced the faint scar on her wrist.

  Kate finally drifted into a fitful sleep. She awoke, gritty eyed and foggy headed, unable to escape the nagging sense that she was going to regret pushing Tommy away for the rest of her life.

  She dressed quickly and went down to the kitchen to bolster herself with some caffeine. Magda was at the sink, and Kate brushed off her offer to get coffee for her.

  “Mr. Burkhart told me to tell you he’s sorry he cannot stay for breakfast, but he has many meetings this morning.”

  “That’s okay,” Kate said truthfully. She wasn’t up to morning chitchat. She finished her cup of coffee and politely refused Magda’s offer to make her breakfast. Her stomach was too twisted up to make room for food.

  “You need anything from grocery store? I go soon.”

  Kate said no and thanked her. After she left, Kate headed out to the lake, hoping the fresh air would help clear her head. As she walked aimlessly along the shore, thoughts of Tommy consumed her.

  Now, after the initial shock of seeing Maura Walsh’s report had passed, several things became very, very clear. The press could say whatever they wanted about her and Tommy, drag them through the mud until they’d covered every salacious angle.

  But that didn’t change the fact that she loved him. A deep, passionate love that had survived a terrible tragedy and over a decade of separation but was still there, right underneath the surface. Just waiting to be set free.

  More than that, she needed him. Needed him to stand by her side and have her back and hold her at night and tell her everything would be okay. Needed the peace she found in his arms and the excitement she found in his bed to make her feel whole in a way she never had.

  And she knew with gut-deep certainty that she would need his help in the coming weeks, months, however long it took her to find out the truth of what happened to Michael. Not just his skill as an investigator. She needed him. Needed his strong, steady presence, his voice rumbling in her ear as he assured her that he was there for her, that he’d never turn his back on her.

  She brushed away the tears that streamed down her cheeks, ashamed of how she’d turned on him so quickly, instinctively pushing him away instead of grabbing on and holding tight. Instead of realizing the truth, that whether she ended their relationship or not, the press was going to play the story out for as long as it had legs. In fact, her outburst had no doubt added more fuel to the fire.

  But there was an even more basic truth. One that had nothing to do with her reputation.

  The truth was that Tommy stirred something up inside of her that she’d never come close to feeling for another human being. Something that made her well up with happiness at the sight of him, something that made her feel like she was lit up from the inside every time he touched her.

  And even more mind blowing was that he felt the same way about her.

  And even though the things he made her feel were so powerful they were scary, the way they made her throw caution to the wind and act in ways she didn’t realize she was capable of, she also knew he had the potential to make her happier than she’d ever dreamed. With Tommy, she had the chance to be happier than most people on the planet had ever dreamed.

  She knew that, down to her very core. And if a tragedy like what had happened to Michael couldn’t destroy that conviction, she would be an idiot to let a publicity-hungry bitch like Walsh destroy it.

  She turned back toward the house, full of renewed purpose, her chest swelling with hope that Tommy would accept her apology and they could get back on track. Doubts nipped at the back of her mind. He’d already been burned by her choosing the need to avoid scandal over him. The man Tommy had become didn’t seem big on multiple chances.

  She continued down the beach, heart in her throat, mentally scripting exactly how she was going to beg for Tommy’s forgiveness. She reached the steps leading to John’s deck and was distracted by the figure of a man sitting hunched over a few feet past the wooden staircase, hidden in the shadows.

  Panic leapt in her throat a split second before she recognized Magda’s son, Christian. His gaze was focused on his cupped hands, and Kate heard the telltale electronic bleeps and blips of some kind of game device. He was so engrossed in his play he didn’t even register her approach until Kate called out a greeting.

  He jumped up, startled. Instead of saying hello, he darted out from under the deck saying “I’ll put it back. Please don’t tell” over and over, casting furtive looks at her over his shoulder.

  “Don’t tell who?” Kate asked.

  At that moment Christian caught his foot on a log partially hidden in the sand. He went sprawling and the game device arced up in the air to land a few feet from Kate.

  She picked it up, ignoring his panicked protests. “I’m sure it will still work,” Kate said as she brushed the sand off. The device was an older one, she realized, with a black-and-white screen and actual buttons to push instead of a touch screen.

  Her heart twisted as she recognized that it was very similar to the one Michael had played with so often that summer that they’d joked it was going to graft onto his palm. Then she turned it and felt all the blood rush from her head as she saw the tiny block letters written in permanent marker along the base.

  Though time and wear had rubbed some of the ink away, at that moment Kate would have bet her life that it read “PROPERTY OF MICHAEL BECKETT.”

  In that instant he snatched it from her hand and sprinted down the beach.

  “Come back here,” Kate shouted as she ran after him. “Tell me what you’re doing with that!”

  Christian pounded down the boat dock. Kate followed suit, her heart thudding in her ears. He ducked into the boat house at the end of the dock.

  It took Kate’s eyes a few minutes to adjust to the dark interior, but she saw him in the far corner in front of a chest that held boating and safety equipment. Carefully making her way around the three-foot-wide platform that surrounded John’s 25 foot cruiser, Kate came up behind Christian just as he was closing the lid to a small wooden case tucked inside the chest.

  “Please,” he said, his eyes open so wide with fear Kate could see the whites even in the dim light. “Please don’t tell him I found his treasures.”

  Treasures? Kate shoved him aside, and though he was taller than her by several inches and outweighed her by at least fifty pounds, he skittered away as quickly as he could.

  The roaring in her ears was so loud Kate barely heard his continued pleas for her not to tell on him.

  Kate went to flip the lid open, cursing when she met resistance. She looked closer and saw that there was a combination lock holding the latch closed.

  “Please, put it away. Put it away so he doesn’t find out,” he pleaded, from the opposite corner.

  Ignoring him, Kate pulled the box out of the chest and carried it to the patch of sunlight that shone through one of the dusty windows. She studied the contents, her breath catching in her throat as she saw several pieces of women’s jewelry, a hair clip. And no, she wasn’t imagining it. The Game Boy Michael had taken upstairs with him the
night he was kidnapped. Kate’s breath froze in her chest when she heard heavy footsteps approaching on the dock.

  Before she could react, Christian jumped into the water next to the boat and disappeared under the boathouse. Kate stumbled across the platform, scrambling to pull the lid of the chest back into place.

  Just as she turned the door was flung open behind her.

  Kate turned, her blood turning to ice when she saw John.

  “Kate, what are you doing in here?” he asked as he skirted around the back of the boat and walked over to her side.

  Her brain scrambled for an excuse, but she couldn’t think past the voice screaming at her to get out of there, away from him. “I didn’t think you’d be back until later,” she said weakly.

  “And you thought you’d do a little canoeing?” he replied. His gaze flicked knowingly down to the chest.

  Her gaze instinctively followed, and she felt all the breath whoosh from her lungs as she saw that the lid was slightly askew.

  An odd, almost satisfied smile stretched across John’s face. “I see you’ve discovered my secret.”

  Chapter 29

  Tommy rubbed at his gritty eyes and took another look at the information displayed across his laptop screen. After he’d left CJ’s, he’d headed back to his place and spent the entire night, chasing bank account numbers, connecting transactions to a dozen different shell companies, following the money through wormhole after wormhole. Now he’d parked himself in CJ’s office at the sheriff’s headquarters and was trying to make sense of it all.

  Again he squinted at his screen, wondering if his powers of reason had fully deserted him. It was entirely possible that sleeplessness combined with the emotional stress of what had gone down with Kate was causing him to hallucinate.

  Bullshit. You’ve gone without sleep for days and dealt with the emotional trauma of having your buddy’s leg blown off less than two feet away, and you didn’t hallucinate then.

  “Son of a bitch,” he muttered, adrenaline spiking in his blood as the implications hit home.

  “You find something?” CJ looked up from the paperwork spread across his desk.

  Tommy didn’t say a word, just turned his laptop around so CJ could see the website displayed on the screen. “Mountainside Real Estate Development Company,” Tommy said grimly. “I traced Tavers International back to it.”

  CJ’s skin paled. “That’s the company that bought Burkhart’s company.”

  Tommy nodded and rose to his feet as he closed the laptop. “And kept good old Johnny on as vice president of sales.”

  “Jesus, you don’t really think…” CJ said, trailing off as it became clear that yeah, he really did think too.

  “CJ, right now I can’t think about much of anything beyond the fact that right now, Kate is alone in a house with a man who likely raped and murdered several women.”

  “Why,” she started, but seemed to choke on the words, her mouth as dry as the Sahara. When she spoke again, her voice came out reedy and thin. “Why do you have Michael’s Game Boy?”

  John gave her a look that was a mixture of condescension and pity. “I think you know the answer to that.”

  She struggled to take it all in, her brain unwilling to accept that this man who’d known her for her entire life, who’d been one of the few people to reach out to her in the wake of her brother’s death, was the one who’d murdered him.

  And murdered at least four other girls after that.

  Pure instinct had her hurtling for the door. He caught her arm in a vice grip as she passed. She jerked and kicked, freezing when she felt the cold press of metal and heard the unmistakable click of a revolver being cocked.

  “Don’t,” he whispered. That menacing whisper sent a chill down her back, and in that second she knew he was the one who attacked her in her townhouse. “I don’t want to shoot you yet. Not when I’ve waited this long to finally get my hands on you.”

  The last piece of the puzzle snapped into place. “It was me,” she breathed, sick, twisting vertigo making her vision swim and her legs wobble. “You didn’t come for Michael. You came for me.”

  John’s hand slid up her chest, his fingers curled around her throat. “Imagine my surprise when I unwrapped that blanket and found Michael instead of you.”

  “You didn’t have to kill him,” she choked on a sob.

  “Of course I did. The sedative wore off too soon and he saw me. Think about it, Kate, if only you’d kept your legs shut, Michael would still be alive. Now get on the boat.”

  Frantic sobs ripped from her chest as thoughts of Michael’s last moments bombarded her. Waking up confused, drugged, to see a person he recognized and trusted. And to have that person… “Why did you… hurt him?” She couldn’t even get the words out.

  John shrugged. “I thought it would make it look more convincing.”

  It should have been me. It should have been me. Fresh guilt crashed over her in a wave, threatening to consume her. She’d done this. She’d unwittingly lured the monster to their door. And her brother died because of it.

  “Now get on the boat.”

  Kate shook her head and tried to tear herself from his grip, not stopping even as his hand tightened around her throat while the other pressed the gun barrel against her head with enough force to split the skin.

  She couldn’t let him take her. If he did she was as good as dead. She felt the sickening pressure of his erection against her spine and knew he wouldn’t just kill her outright. She threw her elbow back against his ribs, but the blow was weak as she struggled for air. Her vision tunneled, dimming as she felt herself being dragged onto the boat.

  He was going to take her. And this time Tommy wasn’t going to show up in time to stop him.

  Chapter 30

  Tommy hit the parking lot at a dead run, ignoring CJ’s shouts for him to wait and let him assess the situation.

  Wait? Assess? While Kate was in the same house with a brutal murderer? Fat fucking chance.

  As he started to pull out in his truck, he heard the wailing of sirens as CJ and another deputy fired up their cruisers. Realizing that if he went tearing through town he was likely to take down a pedestrian or two, Tommy set himself right on CJ’s bumper and drafted off of him all the way to Burkhart’s.

  If that sick fuck harmed a single hair on Kate’s head… Tommy shoved the thought away, trying to convince himself that it wasn’t likely Burkhart even knew they were on to him. Even if he’d pumped Kate for information, as far as she knew, Tricia wasn’t even close to making an ID. And even in the unlikely event Kate let the new information they had about Michael’s case slip, there was no reason for John to think he was under suspicion.

  But the fact that Kate hadn’t picked up her phone the half dozen times he’d dialed her wasn’t reassuring.

  As he followed CJ’s speeding cruiser through the streets of Burkhart’s neighborhood, he couldn’t get visions of the man’s other victims out of his mind. Their bruised and battered faces and bodies, some with injuries so severe their own parents had trouble identifying them.

  The thought of Kate, her delicate nose and chin crushed under the impact of those fists…

  As CJ got closer to the house, the sirens ceased. It made sense. If Burkhart heard them coming in hot and got spooked, it could get real ugly, real fast.

  He took it as his own cue to settle the hell down. He wouldn’t do Kate any good if he lost his head.

  He pulled in behind CJ and heard the other cruiser pull in behind him.

  Tommy got out of his truck and started to rush the door and shot CJ an annoyed look when the other man grabbed him by the arm to stay him.

  “We have no reason to assume there’s trouble, so let’s not cause any,” he cautioned.

  Tommy grudgingly obeyed and clenched and unclenched his fists as CJ pressed the doorbell.

  “Technically you shouldn’t even be here,” CJ said as they waited for the door to open.

  Tommy shot him and Deput
y Roberts a stony glare. “Try and move me.”

  Deputy Roberts took a half step back. CJ shook his head in exasperation.

  After a full minute, two more rings at the doorbell, and no answer, CJ tried the knob.

  When he found it locked, he and Tommy exchanged a look. Two size twelve booted feet hit the door in perfect unison, sending the heavy wood swinging in with an ear-splitting crack.

  “Are you sure this is okay?” Roberts said nervously. “It’s not going to look good if we don’t have a warrant—”

  “You want to wait outside for Burkhart to let you in”—Tommy wheeled around on him—“you go ahead. I’m not leaving till I know Kate is safe.”

  Tommy felt the hairs stand up on his arms as the three did a quick sweep of the downstairs. It was empty and eerily silent, though the dishes on the table suggested recent activity, and the sliding glass door that opened onto the deck was open, letting fresh air in through the screen.

  Tommy started up the stairs, pausing when he heard what sounded like crying coming from outside.

  His stomach lurching, he called for CJ as he ran over to the screen door and slid it open, his boots pounding on the deck as he followed the sound down to the beach.

  It took him a moment to realize the sound was coming from under the deck. Tommy ducked underneath and saw that the sobbing was coming from a large male figure. As his eyes adjusted to the shadows he recognized Burkhart’s housekeeper’s kid huddled in a ball, sobbing incoherently.

  Tommy’s stomach clenched with dread. He’d seen the kid around town, knew there was something not quite right about him, but had no idea whether the kid might be violent.

  “Where’s Kate?” Tommy shouted.

  At the sound of his shout, the boy’s head shot up, his expression full of fear. “I was only looking at the treasures, I didn’t mean to get her in trouble.”