How had Lydia found her, though? And how long had she been here? Caitlin knew her trail wasn’t impossible to follow, but she’d never viewed Ryan’s ex as particularly technologically savvy. She certainly hadn’t been all that adept at disguising her online activities. Initially, anyway.
But it seemed that she was savvy enough to avoid the police over the past two weeks. Running from Ryan’s murder.
Caitlin closed her eyes. She really did need to contact Darius Presley, and let him know what was going on. Including all the stuff about Ryan that she should have told him months ago. He was retired, but he still kept in touch with local law enforcement. And she had no doubt but that they would want to speak with her soon.
A sound in the hall caught her attention, and Caitlin turned her head. She was expecting Jack, but was surprised to see her brother instead.
“Lance.” And just like that, her throat clogged with emotion. She and her brother were sometimes at odds – mostly due to his overprotective nature – but she loved him. Fiercely. And she didn’t realize until that moment how badly she’d needed to see him. As much as she loved Connie, it wasn’t quite the same. Lance was Caitlin’s only close blood relative left.
Caitlin launched herself out of the chair, essentially throwing herself at her brother. He grabbed her into a hug, the tightness of which seemed to squeeze what breath she had left from her body.
But Caitlin didn’t mind. Nor did she care when he called her “Bug,” the pet name he’d coined for her as a kid when she’d gotten her first pair of glasses. She’d been a messy-faced, lopsided pigtail-wearing tomboy who spent more time playing in the dirt than she had with dolls, so it hadn’t been quite the insult he’d probably been going for. However, he hadn’t called her that in years. And the sound of it brought her right back to their big backyard, their parents having cocktails with Connie’s dad and the Eastons while the kids all ran around chasing lightning bugs and throwing water balloons at each other.
Things had been so simple, before Connie’s father’s descent into addiction and the plane crash which took her and Lance’s parents and Peyton’s dad. Part of her yearned for that trusting, joyful innocence inherent in a child who knew they were safe and loved.
But as much as she would like to go back, and as relieved as she was to see her brother, they’d come a long way from those halcyon days. And they were neither of them children.
“Lance,” she repeated. “I’m sorry.”
“What? You’re sorry?” He leaned back, placed his hands on her shoulders so that he could study her face. “Why would you say such a stupid thing?”
“Because last month I went on a rant and told you, in no uncertain terms, that I could handle my own affairs. And to mind your own business. Yet here I am, practically blubbering with relief because my big brother is here to make things all better. Which is pretty humbling. Not to mention hypocritical.”
“Caitlin.” He shook his head. “This is what we call an extenuating circumstance. It’s a crisis, and coming together during a crisis is what families are supposed to do. If you think I’m going to hold that conversation over you at a time like this… well, quite frankly, I’m insulted. Are you okay?” He ran a thumb gently over her cheek, frowning at the bruise she knew had formed there to compliment the road rash. “I don’t mean physically, because Wellington already told me about your near miss. But emotionally. You’ve been through a shit storm, little sister.”
“I wish I could say that the storm is over, that it’s only the aftermath we have to contend with now. But you’ve obviously talked to Jack. And speaking of, where is he? And Connie?”
“Connie went to the bathroom. Her stomach seems to be giving her trouble, probably due to all the stress. And don’t say you’re sorry. You didn’t create this situation.”
Caitlin nodded. “You’re right. I’m trying to remind myself of that.”
“Wellington wanted to give us a couple minutes alone, before we talk over some of the… well, let’s just say before we talk about where we go from here. But Caitlin.” Again, he put his hands on her shoulders. “I want you to tell me, straight out, whether or not you feel comfortable with this guy.”
“With… Jack? I was sure you would have researched him before retaining him. And I know Connie did. He’s the most sought after criminal defense lawyer in the city.”
“I’m not talking about professionally. Yeah, he’s good. I meant on a personal level.”
“On a…” There was that phrase again. “Why would you ask me that sort of question? Because I made such a huge mistake with Ryan? Good grief, you sound like Connie. Jack’s my attorney, for God’s sake. Surely you don’t think I’m incapable of exercising even the tiniest bit of rational thinking when it comes to attractive men?”
“That’s not what I meant. At all.” Lance rubbed a hand over his face. “Look, if he makes you uncomfortable… for any reason, I want you to say so now. We’ll walk out of here and find another lawyer.”
“Lance,” Caitlin said, her suspicion mounting. “What’s this all about? Has he done something to make you think he’s untrustworthy in some way?”
“The opposite, actually. It’s only that… shit,” he muttered when they heard voices in the hall. “That’s Connie and Wellington. Just tell me, Bug. Do you feel safe with him?”
“I… yes,” Caitlin said. “I do. Very much so.”
Lance nodded. “Okay. But if anything changes, I want you to tell me right away.”
Caitlin didn’t have a chance to question him further, because Jack and Connie were at the door. Caitlin’s gaze immediately went to Jack, who returned her look with an intensity that she couldn’t mistake for anything other than sexual attraction. She’d seen hints of it over the past few days, but it always seemed tempered by professional reserve. Heat rushed through Caitlin, warming her cheeks and certain other areas further south. She heard Lance mutter something about answers that before he stepped around her to walk over and put his arm around Connie.
Caitlin’s attention shifted, and she noticed the sickly pallor of Connie’s face. Given that her friend had gorgeous caramel colored skin and was usually rosy with good health, Caitlin’s own stomach plummeted.
“Oh honey. I’m sorry.”
Connie waved a hand. “I’ll be fine.” She turned to look at Jack. “Can we sit down? There were things I wanted to ask you at the diner, but… well, I felt sick and then we left before I could.”
“Please. Be my guest.” He directed her into one of the padded leather visitor’s chairs while Caitlin said “Diner?” dividing a look between Connie and Jack.
“Jack met us at the airport,” Lance told her. “And brought us up to date with regards to your run-in with Fasteland’s wife.”
“I see,” Caitlin said, glancing at Jack, who for a change wasn’t looking back. “And it didn’t occur to you, Jack, that I should be a part of said discussion?”
“It occurred to me that you’d barely escaped being run over like a stray dog, and needed to rest. It also occurred to me that even though we think we have a good idea about who was driving the vehicle, we don’t know for sure. Nor do we know whether said person is armed, with what they might be armed, or what their intentions might be. That’s why I made the unilateral decision to have you rest at my house, under the protection of my well-armed and well-trained brother, whom I know I can trust. And speaking of which, where the hell is Jesse? I should have at least passed him in the hall.”
“Oh,” Caitlin said, torn between wanting to take him to task for acting without consulting her wishes and excitement over the news she had to impart. “He left. His wife went into labor.”
Jack, who’d been about to sit down behind his desk, looked up sharply. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.” Caitlin smiled. “I guess this means you’re about to be an uncle.”
The grin was more slow to form, but was as blinding as his brother’s. “So I am. Hot damn.” He started to reach for his phone, and t
hen shook his head. “I’ll wait for him to get in touch with me. Or for my mom to do so, which is probably more likely. Don’t want to call and disturb them.” One side of his mouth tilted up again. “A new little Wellington. God help us. Good thing I already bought a football.”
“You’re so sure it’s a boy?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “I come from a family of five brothers. Do the math. Anyway, please. Be seated.”
Lance sat between her and Connie, taking Connie’s hand.
“Would anyone like a drink before we get started? Connie? Okay then,” Jack said when she answered in the negative. He sat down, rolling up his sleeves. “What was it that you wanted to ask me?”
Connie glanced at Caitlin before clearing her throat. “Caitlin said that you had a private investigator who runs a parallel investigation. Is he still on the job?”
Caitlin’s brows drew together, but Jack didn’t seem too thrown off by the question. “Until I pull him off,” he said evenly, before adding “which I have no intention of doing.”
Connie nodded. “Okay. So this investigator. He checks out physical evidence as well? Like fingerprints and stuff?”
“He gathers physical evidence, yes. And while he can collect prints and have them analyzed in a lab, he doesn’t legally have access to AFIS, which is the automated fingerprint identification system used by law enforcement. So we either have to have a verified print from somewhere else to match them to, or we have to wait for the prosecution to turn over their evidence in discovery.” He paused. “Do you have a specific reason for asking?”
“What? Oh. I was just wondering if there was a way of identifying who the… man was. The police must know, right? It doesn’t seem fair that we don’t have a name yet.”
“Oh,” Caitlin said when Jack shot her a questioning glance. “I didn’t tell her. I was having a hard time even thinking his name, let alone saying it. It made it too real.”
“Wait,” Connie leaned forward to look around Lance. “I thought you said you didn’t recognize him.”
“I didn’t. The cops told us his name.”
“Henry Cox,” Jack said, sparing Caitlin from having to say it. “One thing my investigator can do is run a full background check, which he should be finished with any time now.”
“Wait.” Lance held up a hand. “His name is Henry Cox?”
“Yes. Why?”
“It’s nothing. Just a weird bit of coincidence, I guess. I went to school with a guy named Henry Cox. He and his twin brother, Hal. But Henry’s in a facility somewhere because his addict brother had a car accident that nearly killed him.”
“Wait,” Caitlin said. “Wait. I remember hearing something about that, now that you mention it. But I don’t recall them from high school.”
“They were a bit younger than me, but you were quite a few years after me,” Lance pointed out. “Plus the boys and girls were pretty much segregated. Catholic school,” he explained to Jack.
Jack narrowed his gaze. “Hang on.” He booted up his computer.
“What are you doing?” Connie wanted to know.
Jack flicked a glance her direction before he continued typing. “One thing you learn being in the criminal justice business – on either side – is that coincidence is kind of like Big Foot. Lots of people believe it exists, and they go to great lengths to prove it, but it usually turns out to be a hoax. Here. Some articles about the accident. Complete with a photo of Henry and a mug shot of Hal.”
He turned the monitor their direction.
“Oh my God.” Caitlin brought her trembling hand to her mouth. “It’s him. That’s the picture Detective Donaldson showed me.”
“They showed you the picture from Henry Cox’s driver’s license?”
“Yes.”
“But how can that be,” Lance asked, when he’s been paralyzed from the neck down for the past several years?”
“They ID’d him as the wrong brother,” Jack said, his professional instincts kicking into overdrive. Misidentifications happened, and Detective Clark hadn’t followed protocol by revealing the victim’s identity until they had positive confirmation and notified next of kin, but that wouldn’t garner more than a possible slap on the wrist. However, the fact that the man had gone to school with Lance Cavanaugh could either work for or against them.
“They’re going to try to show that you knew him,” Jack said to Caitlin. “Which will add obstruction to any other charges they may file against you.”
“Wait a minute,” Lance said, leaning forward in his seat, and Caitlin shook her head even as her heart thumped almost painfully in her chest.
“I didn’t know him,” she insisted. “Even if they were a couple years behind Lance, they would have graduated four years before me. Do you know everyone who has ever graduated from your high school?”
“This isn’t about me, but no, of course not,” Jack answered calmly. “I’m just telling you what angle the detectives will almost certainly take. What concerns me more, at the moment, is the fact that Harold Cox – Hal, since it has to be him that ended up in your bedroom that night – may well have recognized you. And I’m trying to figure out how or if that fits with the theory that your brother and I discussed earlier.”
“What theory?”
“If I understand what Lance said correctly,” Connie began, while looking like a wax version of herself. “He thinks that Lydia Fasteland may have hired this… Cox to kill you. Rape you and kill you. Like you picked up the wrong guy in a bar. To make you look bad, I guess.”
Caitlin stared at her, horrified and appalled. “I won’t even speculate as to her motivation, because I think we all know she’s crazy. And if she murdered Ryan, that would almost certainly push her over the edge. Or show that she was already over it. But how did she find Henry… I mean Hal Cox? It seems awfully weird that she would hire someone who happened to know Lance back in high school. She wasn’t even from the Atlanta area. She and Ryan moved there when he took that job.”
“All good questions,” Jack said, and Lance clenched his fist, pounding it on the arm of the chair.
“It was bad enough when it was just some random stranger,” he said through clenched teeth. “But to think that some punk from high school tried to do that to my sister…”
“Did you ever have any problems with either of the Cox brothers?” Jack asked. “Is it possible he saw Caitlin in the bar that night, recognized her, and saw an opportunity for payback?”
“Not any problems that would warrant murdering my sister, for God’s sake!”
“Maybe he didn’t plan to kill her. Maybe he only planned to rape her, and make it look like she consented.”
“Only rape?” Lance said in tones of disbelief.
“I’m not minimizing that crime. Just pointing out that it’s on a different level than homicide.”
Lance’s throat worked for a moment, and then he reached out to take Caitlin’s hand. “No,” he finally said. “I mean, you know how it is in high school. Teenagers are assholes. But I can’t recall any specific instances that would lead to this sort of grudge.”
“Wait,” Connie said. “If this were about Lance, then all this stuff with the Fasteland woman wouldn’t be connected, right? But just… really bad luck for Caitlin? Doesn’t that sound like a stretch?”
“There’s still the matter of the manner of Fasteland’s death being so similar,” Jack agreed. “Which is one of those coincidences that I side eye. But perhaps – and this is a big stream of speculation – perhaps if she did in fact kill her husband, and then came to Savannah, and happened to hear about Caitlin defending herself in a manner that was eerily similar to the way she’d murdered Ryan, it’s feasible that caused her to finally snap. But we’re pulling theories out of our ass here, based on little more than a handful of facts and conjecture. Until I have some concrete evidence to go on, we’re unfortunately going to have to ride some of this out.”
“Ride it out how?” Caitlin wondered.
Jac
k’s gaze met hers again, and this time it held something that she couldn’t quite identify. “That’s what I’d like to talk to you about. Privately.”
Her brother frowned at Jack, and Jack stared levelly back, until some sort of unspoken agreement between them seemed to be reached.
“Connie and I are going to wait in the lobby,” he told Caitlin, although he didn’t seem all that happy about it. “And remember what I said earlier. You just tell me what you want. That, and your safety, are all that matter.”
Slightly mystified, Caitlin nodded as her brother and Connie stood. “Okay.”
When they left, Caitlin looked at Jack. Trepidation, and something more elusive, trickled through her when he stood up and walked around the desk.
He strode to the door, closed it, and then seemed to hesitate before turning around. Caitlin hadn’t known him very long, but she thought that hesitation was very uncharacteristic.
“What?” she finally said.
He studied her face for a long moment. “We need to talk.”
A momentary feeling of uncertainty caused Jack to freeze with his hand on the door before he turned around. Despite the fact that most would consider him cocksure, he wasn’t an impulsive man. He carefully weighed probable outcomes before he made a decision, although once made, he became a bit of a steamroller, obliterating any obstacle that stood in his path.
But he couldn’t steamroll Caitlin. Pushy as he was, he was smart enough to realize that this was a highly emotionally charged time for Caitlin, and she could very well tell him to go jump off a bridge. And while he didn’t have to follow her directive literally, he did have to accept that this… thing he felt might be one-sided. He doubted that highly – he wasn’t obtuse, after all – but even if she did share his attraction, the timing was shit.
Regardless, he stood by his decision to remove himself from her case. He wouldn’t compromise his professional ethics, or her legal future, simply because he’d developed feelings – Jesus, he couldn’t believe he was using that word – for his client.
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