A Profiler's Case for Seduction

by Carla Cassidy

  The crimes. She still couldn’t believe that Mark thought Melinda was behind the murders, that she’d staged her own kidnapping to provide a sick but seemingly solid alibi.

  How she wished she knew more about her older sister. How she wished she’d had the guts to ask Melinda questions, to attempt to forge some sort of bond. But there was no question that Melinda was cold and distant and had never encouraged any kind of personal relationship during the three years Dora had lived within spitting distance of her.

  Dora wondered now why she’d decided to help Dora in the first place. Was it possible Micah had made it impossible for Melinda to resist? Or had Melinda wanted Dora close enough to keep an eye on her, to make sure she told nobody about the horrible roots they had shared?

  She leaned back in her chair as a couple of male students came through the door. They were rowdy and laughing, trying on a variety of hats in the school colors and bearing the Gladiators logo.

  “You going to the bonfire, Dora?” one of the boys asked as he took a school ball cap off one of the shelves.

  “I’m not sure.” It had sounded like fun when she’d thought she was going to enjoy the evening with Mark.

  “You’ve got to come,” the other boy said. He grabbed a plastic Gladiator helmet and woofed several times as he pumped his arm in the air. “We’re going to kick some birdie butt on Saturday night, but we’ve got to burn a few feathers on Friday.” He set the helmet on the counter for her to ring up. “You’ve got to come. Our fraternity is providing free marshmallows.”

  As Dora saw the sparkle in the young man’s eyes, the youthful energy that wafted from him, it was impossible for some of that spirit not to be contagious. “I’ll probably be there,” Dora replied with a laugh. “Free marshmallows are a hard thing for me to pass up.”

  Once the customers had left the bookstore, Dora made her decision to attend the bonfire and the game on Saturday night as she always had...alone. Just because she’d made plans with Mark, plans that were now destroyed, didn’t mean she should deny herself the pleasure of the traditional fun.

  At eight-thirty she turned the Open sign to Closed and then gathered her things to leave. She stepped out into the encroaching darkness and saw the tall figure that stood nearby.

  Her heart both fluttered and sank at the same time. He was the person she least wanted to see right now with her heart so bruised and battered, with the spectrum of her past like a ghost between them.

  “Mark, what are you doing here?” she asked, her voice filled with weariness.

  “I figured you might like the company on the walk home.” He stood in shadows, making it impossible for her to see his features, to gauge his mood.

  “It isn’t necessary,” she replied, forcing a coolness into her tone. It was at that moment she realized he hadn’t only hurt her, but she was angry with him. It was the irrational anger that he knew the worst of her, that he knew all her ugly secrets.

  He stepped out of the shadows and into a stream of moonlight that came from the near-full moon overhead. His features were expressionless. “Actually, it is rather necessary,” he replied. “I have some questions to ask you and I’d much rather do it at your place instead of dragging you down to the courthouse.”

  Dora stiffened. “Does this mean I’m somehow a suspect in the murders? Do you think I kidnapped my own sister and plotted with her to commit some heinous crime?”

  “I don’t think that,” he replied, and for the first time his features softened. “But your relationship with Melinda has brought up questions that have to be answered. It’s placed you in the person-of-interest category within my team.”

  Dora considered forcing him to drag her to the courthouse, to do his business officially, but then she thought of how that might reflect on Micah, on everyone who respected her.

  “Come on, then.” She finally relented and started down the sidewalk.

  He hurried to catch up with her and, as they had earlier in the day, they suffered a silent walk to Dora’s house. Dora tried to ignore the scent of him, which smelled of soap and shaving cream and the kinds of things she’d once wanted in her life.

  She tried to forget how it had felt to be held in his arms, to taste the passion on his lips and go to sleep with him by her side.

  Rather, she wanted to stay focused on the stunned surprise that had lit his features as she’d told him about her past. She wanted to remember that after she’d spewed everything that had been inside her, he hadn’t mentioned a word about it, he’d simply asked her about her relationship with Melinda.

  She knew what that meant—that he’d rejected her past, that he’d rejected her. Even though in her long-range planning of her life it shouldn’t matter, that didn’t stop the pain. That didn’t stop the old, hurtful memories from playing in her mind.

  Despite her efforts to the contrary, thoughts of her past had intruded into her afternoon. She’d mentally wrapped her arms around the little girl she had been, comforting the child who had never had a chance, who had only wanted to be loved.

  When they reached her house, she unlocked the door and entered. She left the open door behind her as the only invitation to him. She didn’t want him here but recognized he wasn’t here as Mark Flynn, friend and lover. He was here as FBI agent Mark Flynn seeking answers to a crime.

  When she reached the living room she shrugged out of her lightweight brown jacket and turned to face him, steeled for whatever might lie ahead.

  He sat on the edge of the sofa as if he had a right to be there, and that only stirred the edge of irrational anger a little bit higher inside her.

  “So question me,” she said, refusing to sit. She just wanted this over. She wanted him out of here, where he no longer belonged.

  He frowned and, with a deep sigh, pulled a small notepad and pen from his pocket. “I need to know where you were on the day of Melinda’s disappearance.” He stared down at the paper, as if unwilling to meet her gaze.

  “That’s easy to answer. The semester hadn’t started yet, but I was working six days a week at the bookstore, which was open. After my bookstore shift I was back here alone. It’s going to be a little difficult to provide an alibi for that time because I don’t have friends I invite over to my house. As you should know by now I don’t go out and hang with the younger students. Before you I was completely focused on work and school, not on kidnapping and murder plots.”

  She couldn’t help the bitterness that laced her tone. Even though she understood he was here to do a job, she resented the questions, the inquiry into her very character. It would have been better if the questions were asked by another agent...not Mark, who should already know the answers.

  “Dora.” For the first time his gaze met hers and in the deep depths of his eyes she saw sorrow and regret. She hated him because he was going to make her cry, because even though she refused to be in love with him, he was breaking her heart all over again.

  * * *

  “Dora,” Mark repeated, his heart heavy as he saw the tears that filled her eyes. “You know I don’t believe you had anything to do with any of this, but the questions have to be asked to make a complete record.”

  He patted the sofa next to him. “Please sit down.”

  She resisted for several heartbeats and then eased down on the opposite end of the sofa from him. She didn’t want to sit close enough to him that she could smell him, that she could feel the body heat she knew radiated from him.

  “Let’s just get this over with and then you can be on your way,” she said.

  For the next few minutes Mark asked her the questions he needed to ask to prove that she had nothing to offer the case, that she had nothing to do with whatever theory of the crime Mark believed or that the team believed.

  Her alibi of working in the bookstore was an easy one to check. In the couple of weeks before school
began, the bookstore would be a busy place as students prepared for the coming semester. There would be hundreds of witnesses who could place her there during the time of Melinda’s kidnapping and the murders.

  “Tell me about your relationship with Melinda,” he asked.

  “We don’t really have one.” Dora remained tensely curled up in the opposite corner of the sofa, as if allowing herself to relax would bring about complete disaster. “She’s almost four years older than me and we were never close even as children. When she left Horn’s Gulf at eighteen she never looked back. I didn’t hear anything about her until she appeared in town to grab me by the arm and throw me in rehab.”

  Her cheeks flushed with color and she drew in several deep breaths, allowing the pink to slowly ebb from her cheeks. “When I got here, she made it clear she wasn’t looking for a sisterly bond and I was just so grateful to be here I didn’t pursue one.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about your relationship with her? You knew I was investigating her kidnapping.”

  Dora shrugged. “I also knew I couldn’t help you, that I didn’t know about what happened to Melinda. I’ve never told anyone that she’s my sister. I never wanted her to be embarrassed that her forty-year-old sister was finally getting her life together. The last thing I wanted to be was an embarrassment to the person who gave me a second chance at life.”

  “Sounds to me like you deserved a do-over in life,” Mark said softly. He couldn’t get out of his head what she’d told him about her former life, coupled with what he’d discerned from his talk with her old schoolteacher and the new owner of the Daisy Café.

  She frowned, her eyes the color of dark metal. “Melinda managed to get out. I managed to make bad choices. Despite the fact that my mother was a raging alcoholic, I somehow felt bound to stay in town and take care of her. I’d clean her up when she got sick, I’d sober her up to get her back to my father at the end of the night.”

  She grabbed a bright orange throw pillow to her chest and wrapped her arms around it, her gaze downward as she continued. “I managed to hold things together through my miserable childhood. I even managed to survive the abusive marriage and divorce from Billy Cook. It was Jimmy Martin who was the straw that broke my back.”

  “Tell me,” Mark said softly, and inched closer to her on the sofa.

  She toyed with the fringe on the pillow and he noticed the faint tremble in her hand. “I loved Jimmy—at least I thought I was in love with him, and when we got married I thought he loved me. I truly believed he’d managed to overlook my reputation, my background, and saw the heart and soul of me shining through all the muck.”

  Mark wanted to say something to ease the pain that sparked in her eyes, but he could tell by their unfocused glaze that she’d gone backward in time, apparently remembering things she’d tried hard to forget. Her fingers tightened on the fringe.

  “The first year of our marriage I thought everything was perfect. Jimmy worked at the bank and I was a stay-at-home wife. I tried to do everything I could to make him happy. He came home to a clean house and a home-cooked meal each night. I was a willing and eager lover. I thought we were on our way to building a life together, becoming a family.”

  She fell silent and there was a stillness about her as if she’d disappeared from this place and this time. Mark knew all about falling into the rabbit hole of his own mind and he sat patiently for what felt like forever before he gently called her name.

  She jerked and glanced at him with embarrassment. “Sorry.” She drew a deep breath. “It was in the second year of our marriage that things started to go bad, or at least I started noticing things that bothered me. Jimmy never struck me—he never even showed that he had a temper—but he used words to chip away at my confidence. I’d get dressed to go out and he’d tell me it was a shame I had my mother’s taste in clothes or he’d mention that it wasn’t any wonder I was drawn to whore colors and gaudy jewelry. He never stopped reminding me of where I’d come from, that he was the only man in town who would marry Daisy’s daughter. I was just one step from a heathen, needing reminders about manners and why didn’t I know how to throw a successful cocktail party...and on...and on.”

  Mark slid closer to her, close enough that he could smell both her wildflower scent and her sorrow. He wanted to touch her, but she remained in a defense position and he had a feeling any touch from him at that moment would be unwelcome.

  “I tried. I tried to be everything he wanted, but one night as we were making love he whispered into my ear that I really was my mother’s daughter, just a whore with bad taste.”

  She sucked in her breath, as if feeling a physical blow to her stomach. “I let him finish with me and then I got out of the bed, got dressed and walked down to my mother’s café.” Her voice was flat, without affect. “I went into the back room where my mother kept her bottles of gin and I drank until I couldn’t feel anymore, until I couldn’t think anymore.”

  Her gaze finally met his and he realized she was back in the here and now. “I stayed my mother’s daughter until the day Micah and Melinda plucked me out of the gutter and put me in rehab. That’s where I came from, Mark. And that’s why I didn’t want anyone to know that I was the great, illustrious professor Grayson’s sister.”

  His heart was so filled with her damage he couldn’t speak. The great brainiac couldn’t find the right words to verbalize the depth of his sorrow, of his grief for her.

  “Just go, Mark,” she said, the weariness back in her voice as she raised a finger to point at the door. “I was fine before you and I’ll be fine after you. Get back to your crime investigation and tie things up here in a neat knot so you can get back to your life and I can continue with mine.”

  “I wish I would have been there for you.” He finally found his voice. “I wish I would have been there to beat up all the children who bullied you, to shoot your father dead the first time he broke one of your bones. I wish I would have been there to sweep you out of town and save you from the horrors you went through.”

  Her eyes widened in surprise and then immediately narrowed as she shook her head. “I didn’t need to have a hero in my life, Mark. I needed to figure out how to be my own hero. I took the easy way out. I allowed small-town people to label me and then I did my very best to live up to the label they’d provided. It’s taken me thirty-seven years to realize I don’t need a hero. I’m all I need and I’m strong enough to build the rest of my life alone.”

  “But, you still need a date to the bonfire on Friday night. Why not allow me to accompany you?” He couldn’t just walk away from her now. It all felt so unfinished.

  “Why would you want to do that?” she asked. She lowered the pillow from her chest and set it on the sofa between them.

  “Because for the last week I’ve heard nothing but how amazing the bonfire is, how the burning of the effigy isn’t to be missed, and I can’t think of anyone I’d like to share the evening with more than you.” There were so many more things he wanted to say, but she looked beaten and bruised from her walk down memory lane.

  “It’s foolish for us to have anything more to do with each other,” she countered.

  “I don’t want it to end like this, Dora. Come to the bonfire with me. Let’s have one more night with no past and no future between us, just the here and now. It will be a night to enjoy together as friends.”

  Her eyes filled with a swift yearning, only there a moment and then hidden as she blinked it away. “Won’t that somehow compromise your investigation if I’m a person of interest?”

  “You’re only a person of interest to me, and that has nothing to do with the crimes,” Mark said truthfully. He held his breath, wanting, needing her to give in to this final wish. He needed one last night with her, a night of laughter and fun before she kicked him to the curb to get on with her new life.

  “Okay,” she said, although
it hurt him that there was no joy, no sweet smile accompanying the word. She stood as if to indicate that she was done, fried to a crisp and more than ready for him to leave.

  “Why don’t you come by here at seven on Friday? The bonfire is lit at nine and that will give us a couple of hours to mingle and hang out with the crowd.” She looked at the door, an obvious indication that she had said her piece and now it was time for him to leave.

  Reluctantly he got up from the sofa and walked to the front door. “Then I’ll see you Friday night at seven,” he said. She nodded and he realized that was all she had left.

  He stepped outside her door and gently closed it behind him. Failure. Somehow he knew he’d failed Dora and for the life of him he didn’t know how to fix it.

  Chapter 15

  Dora awoke Thursday morning after a night of bad dreams. In her dreams she had been back in Horn’s Gulf and she’d awakened with the bitter dredges of memory in the back of her throat.

  Buck Grayson had been a brutal man, but through the first ten years of her life Dora had learned what set him off, how to dodge and weave most of the physical blows he tried to deliver to her. By the time she was fourteen she was spending almost no time around Buck at the family ranch, rather she spent most all of her time with her mother at the Daisy Café.

  She now recognized that her mother had been as, if not more, abusive than Buck. Her mother hadn’t hit her or broken any bones, but she’d bound Dora to her and her lifestyle through threats and guile, through manipulation and guilt.

  She’d stopped asking herself a long time ago why, when she was young, nobody had stepped in to save her from her father, from her mother or from herself. She knew most of the people in the small town had been afraid of Buck, which made it easy for them to turn blind eyes when Dora showed up with yet another bruise or a broken bone.