He didn’t need any, or even an invitation. Ignoring the fact that she was obviously working, a pencil stuffed behind one ear, her reading glasses perched on her nose, and a highlighter pen in her hand, he sauntered in. The center table on which she was working had reports, maps, photos, and files strewn over every inch of its surface. He pushed some charts out of the way so he could sit on the table’s edge directly in her line of sight.
She had no clue why men did that. There were several perfectly good chairs in the room. What was the point of balancing on the edge of a table right in front of a woman’s face? Just to try to get them eye level with whatever magnificence they had in their pants? Men obviously just did not understand women’s brains and how to pique their sexual interest. A point proved every time any man anywhere sent an unsuspecting woman a dick pic.
“I’ve been watching for you all week, but I kept missing you. Guess you’re going in and out a lot, huh?”
Maybe, but she had spent long stretches of hours in this room. Plus, every time she entered the building, she had to sign in. It shouldn’t have been that hard for him to find out she was here working, if he’d cared to look. Though why he would have wanted to, she didn’t know.
Frankly, she was glad he hadn’t. But it was confusing that he now acted as though he’d been staking out the door. Could it be, she wondered, that he hadn’t come into the room before now because Rowan was almost always in there with her? And had he approached her this morning because she was alone? Hmm.
“Um, so what did you need to see me about?”
“Huh?”
“You said you were watching for me all week. Does Captain Avery need something from me?” She started to rise. “Oh, of course, he probably wants me to come into the meeting with Rowan…er, Detective Winchester.”
“Oh, no, it’s not that.”
She waited. He smiled a smarmy smile.
“Is there something I can do for you, Lieutenant?”
“Well, you could start by calling me Carl.”
Carl Carlton. His parents must have disliked him at birth.
She maintained her polite expression but did not reply. After a long moment, he finally said, “Actually, I was wondering if we might go out for dinner tonight.”
“I’m afraid I—”
“Or lunch. I wanted to talk to you about something.”
Oh, here it comes. Will you read my writing?
“I was wondering why you were looking into some old case my uncle worked on way back in the day. It wasn’t connected to a serial crime, so I’m not sure why you would be including it in your book.”
Evie barely managed to stop her jaw from hitting the tabletop. Pushing her rolling chair back, she rose to her feet to get a better view of the man that didn’t involve his crotch.
“Your uncle?”
“Yes. Jack Slaughter is my uncle.”
Slaughter. The name rang a bell. “Wait…Phil Smith’s partner?”
Carlson nodded. “Yeah, those two were together for a couple of years. Then Uncle Jack got promoted here to headquarters and worked his way on up.” He grinned, appearing self-satisfied, and pointed to the ceiling. “His office is on a very high floor.”
Rowan had hinted at Carlson’s family connections the other day. She just hadn’t realized where Carlson’s relative had worked his way up from, and who he’d been partnered with.
“Did Detective Smith call your uncle?”
Carlson tilted his head in confusion. She suspected it was a look he wore often. “I don’t think so.”
“Then how did you know what I’m investigating?”
He chuckled, looking pleased that he had caught her off guard. “I saw the files you requested, including that one, which was just a standard old unsolved murder of some chick from a long time ago.”
Standard murder. Some chick. Wow.
While his words and attitude were gross, his explanation did make sense. On her very first day here, last Monday, when she’d come in to see Avery, she’d had to fill out a lot of forms about her request for information from Avery’s office. Those had included a list of what she was requesting and why. She’d included the twelve murders that had captured her interest but hadn’t gone into detail about why she’d wanted them, merely listing them as research material for her work of nonfiction.
Carlson worked for Avery, though she wasn’t sure what his duties were. Maybe he reviewed those types of requests in an official capacity. At least, she hoped so. The man had made her uncomfortable from day one; she hated to think he’d dug into the records just to get more information on her, especially since her address and phone number were right there. Since the guy hadn’t tried calling her, she had to hope he hadn’t gotten access to that stuff.
“So, what should I tell my Uncle Jack?”
“Why would you need to tell him anything?”
“Well, he wants to know why you’re digging into his…” Carlson drifted into silence, and his eyes grew round. He had been just about to say something he shouldn’t have.
She quickly put it together. If his uncle wanted to know why Evie was looking at one of his old cases, someone must have shared that bit of information with him.
Who else could it have been but his nephew?
Maybe it wasn’t a state secret. Maybe it didn’t violate any confidentiality rules. Maybe it wasn’t even against departmental policy.
But it was really unprofessional, and it really ticked her off.
“You told your uncle about my confidential information request?”
Carlson opened and then closed his mouth. “Uncle Jack and Captain Avery are good friends.”
“Oh, so are you accusing Captain Avery of doing it? I guess he’s the one I’d better talk to, then.”
His face losing all its color, Carlson said, “No, Captain Avery wouldn’t do that.”
But Carlson would?
“I don’t know the public information laws here, so maybe my request is not private. But don’t you think if someone used their position in the administrative offices, it might have been a tiny bit unprofessional to take it right to a family member?”
“I…I wouldn’t think it was that big a deal.”
“Maybe not to you,” she said, her tone cold. “What is Captain Avery going to say when your good old uncle Jack mentions that you shared information like that?”
“Oh, he won’t tell him!”
Bingo. Confirmed.
Carlson must have realized that too. He immediately launched up and strode toward the door. “I have to go.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you do,” she said, wondering who else the annoying man had talked to about her and her work. Jeez, first Marcus, now this guy. Was it too much to ask for a little privacy from people who were supposedly trustworthy?
The door opened, but before Carlson could walk out into the corridor, he was blocked by a big, solid body.
Rowan.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked as Carlson froze in his tracks.
“Uh, nothing. I was just stopping by to offer Miss Fleming some assistance.”
Jesus, did the cop think she was deaf? Had he forgotten she was standing right here? Or was he just so used to talking bullshit that he’d forgotten other people might actually call him out on it?
“Actually,” she said to Rowan, smiling sweetly at Carlson as he swung his head around, “the lieutenant stopped by to tell me he’d been talking to his uncle about my request for information on one of his old cases. One he investigated with his partner, Phil Smith.”
Rowan’s shoulders bunched, and he frowned darkly.
“It’s okay, though,” she added. “Now that I know Captain Slaughter has been made aware of my interest, he might consider making room in his schedule to see me.”
Carlson looked horrified, but it was his own damn fault. He’s the one who had talked about her research. The least his uncle could do was open his office door and lend his insights on the Amy Nolan case. She had be
en focusing on the lead detectives in the cases, but there was no harm in talking to other investigators. Maybe Slaughter would recall something Smith had not. It was worth a shot anyway.
Once the lieutenant scurried out, leaving them alone, Rowan came over and put a hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay? He didn’t…upset you, did he?”
“Of course he did. That jerk talked about me and revealed what I was investigating to his uncle. That upset me.”
He nodded, having already heard that much. “I mean, personally. Did he…do anything?”
Evie’s brow went up. “Um, other than being kinda gross and flirtatious, no.”
Seeing him sigh in relief, she couldn’t help asking, “What is it you so dislike about him? I mean, I know you said he was untrustworthy and used his family connections to rise in the department.” Yeah, good old Uncle Jack. “But is there something else?”
Rowan tensed and walked over to look at the papers strewn on the table. A couple of them had been pushed off when Carlson had just plopped down on them. Bending over to retrieve them, Rowan said, “I know he was investigated for dating teenage girls several years ago. Nobody would testify, so he got off with a finger-wagging, and his uncle made sure everybody forgot about it.”
Wrinkling her nose in disgust, Evie bent to take some papers too. “So Sleazy McSleazeface is what I will now officially call him.”
She and Rowan reached for the same sheet of paper, which showed a photo of a murder victim from about five years ago. Only fifteen years old, she had been very pretty, with long dark hair and a very sweet smile. She wondered if that was why Rowan had grown still, if he was thinking about Carlson’s ugly history and relating to this poor lost soul.
Their fingers brushed. He looked up at her, and she saw his eyes were glistening, gleaming with emotion. Although it could have something to do with the obnoxious man who’d just left, something in her told her it did not.
She clasped his hand in hers. “What is it?” she asked, knowing something else had deeply affected him. “Talk to me, please.”
He didn’t reply, a silence stretching between them in the quiet room. Neither of them got up, both crouched near the table, their hands still clasped.
Finally, he spoke. “Tomorrow would have been Rachel’s thirty-fifth birthday.”
She immediately recognized the name of his only sister. “Oh, Rowan, I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I can’t even imagine what you’re feeling. I honestly don’t know how you ever get over a loss like that.”
“You don’t. Not ever.”
The pain in his voice cut her to her soul. Despite how much they’d annoyed her when they were kids, she adored her two brothers and couldn’t even fathom the thought of losing one of them.
Rowan, as just a young child, only about twelve years old, had not only lost his older sister, but also it had been under such tragic, and very public, circumstances. Rachel Winchester had lived in the spotlight, as had her brothers. Rumors about her drug use and her subsequent death had filled the tabloids and gossipy Hollywood shows for weeks after her death. How did you grieve a loved one when everybody in the world was talking about her, speculating about her, asking about her? Especially when you’re just a kid?
“It must have been hell.”
He hesitated again, only briefly, and then replied, “It drove my mother insane.”
“That’s completely understandable.”
“No, I’m not speaking figuratively. She had, uh…issues. After Rachel, well, she couldn’t deal with them anymore. She spent the last years of her life in a private mental hospital and died there thinking her Academy Award–winning daughter was coming to visit every single day.”
Oh God. Feeling tears sting her eyes, Evie blinked rapidly. “So much pain. How did you survive? You were so little.”
“Don’t feel sorry for me,” he said, slowly rising to his feet, drawing her with him. “My brothers and I had—have—an awesome father who has always been there for us. And my aunt was more than happy to mother us if we’d let her. Mostly Raine, since Reece and I were older. He was so little, only six when our mom had her, uh, breakdown.”
She took back the snotty thought she’d had about the youngest brother. If anyone had a reason not to smile much, it was him.
“Losing my mom to an institution was just like another death, within just a couple of years of losing Rachel.”
Mother and daughter. So tragic.
Rachel. Beautiful, lost Rachel, so full of promise with a long life to live, had been cut down at such a young age, maybe any mother would go mad from the grief. But with three other young children to care for, she couldn’t help wishing Rowan’s mother had been strong enough to get through it, for the boys’ sakes.
She glanced at the page in her hand as she put it back on the table. Spying the picture of the victim again, she realized what had likely caused Rowan’s disquiet. The girl was probably about the age his sister had been when she died. She was similarly colored, with a sweet smile.
“She must—”
“Evie, there’s—”
They smiled faintly. They both waited for the other to speak. Finally, he did.
“Look, there’s something you should probably know,” he said, the words slow and halting, as if hard for him to get out. “Something that has, uh, affected me and you. Us.”
Incredibly curious, she dropped a hand onto the back of the chair she’d been sitting in. She didn’t even know why she reacted that way, but something about his expression told her this wasn’t going to be easy to hear. How he’d drawn a line connecting his lost sister to them she had no idea. But it appeared she was about to find out.
“My sister didn’t just fall in with a wild crowd and become a reckless drug addict.”
She would never have said such a thing, though she knew that had been the regularly reported story all those years ago. Evie had been just a kid, but she’d been a big fan of the teen star, and she’d been very disappointed to hear about her spiral.
“Rachel went a little wild, yes. She started doing drugs. But it wasn’t because she wanted to party with the in-teen-crowd in Hollywood.”
His throat worked as he swallowed hard. Although they were no longer touching, she felt the tension in his powerful body. It almost rolled off him, filling the small office with anger, with grief, with pent-up emotion.
“She was being molested.”
Sucking in a shocked, horrified breath, Evie tightened her grip on the chair, squeezing it almost painfully.
“By somebody who the entire family trusted. None of us even knew about it until after she was dead. Once we found out, it, uh, brought everything into focus.”
It took no more than five seconds for the truth to burst into her brain. Suddenly, the tears that had been building in Evie’s eyes burst from them, spilling down her cheeks. “Harry Baker.”
Rowan nodded.
“That monster,” she whispered, knowing very well what the man’s relationship with the Winchesters had been like.
He had never been just a business associate. He had, it appeared, insinuated himself deep into their family. She’d thought it was because of the rumors about his involvement with the mother. This was so much worse. Absolutely insidious. Evil.
She’d seen many pictures of the man when researching his death, and a lot of them had been with his child clients, especially the Winchesters. There was an entire spread in a teen magazine about the Winchester kids in Disneyland with their ultra-glam mother and their “Uncle Harry” who had put them on the rides. In one, little Raine had been on the man’s broad shoulders, and Rachel had been holding his hand trustingly. There’d been shots of him on film sets, in back lots, one showing him smiling broadly, his arms around Rachel and Reece as they showed off their Kids’ Choice Awards. His big, jowly face was always creased in a smile that made him look something like a jolly, beardless Santa Claus.
He’d been a sick, twisted monster instead.
“I can’t ev
en stand to hear his name,” Rowan admitted, staring at her evenly.
She caught the underlying message and closed her eyes, shaking her head. “And I kept throwing it in your face.” Stepping close, she lifted a hand and placed it on his chest, touching lightly, offering tenderness and support and not demanding anything at all from him…as she had since the night they’d met.
“I am so sorry, Rowan. I promise you, I will never mention him to you again.”
He caught her hand in his. “Do you understand why I didn’t want him in your book at all?”
Of course she did. “Because it will stir up interest in him all over again.”
“Yes. And one of these days, somebody’s going to find out what was discovered on that bastard’s computer—his ex-wife and son managed to get that kept out of the press.”
She could muster no surprise that he hadn’t stopped at one victim. Filth like that never did.
“He was a slime and a pedophile, and yeah, he deserves to be remembered that way. But if that comes out, then what he did to Rachel will come out too.”
She caught her lip between her teeth and nodded. Of course they wouldn’t want their sister’s secret trauma to be dragged out of the vaults of history and splashed all over the news. Rachel was resting in peace and had been for almost twenty years. Was there really any reason to disturb her memory by exchanging it for a wild-child who overdosed and fell off a balcony to a sexually abused victim who, she strongly suspected, might not have fallen?
“Maybe someday one of the other victims will want to come forward. This past year, with all the Hollywood revelations, I’ve almost held my breath, waiting for it.”
He was probably right. Baker had managed many child actors, some of whom were still in the business and successful. Some of whom weren’t and had probably ended up making the same choice Rachel had—to drown the pain in drugs.
“And you and your brothers,” she murmured. “You were so close to him as kids, you’ll get asked a million questions all over again.”
He nodded. “Yes, we will. Our relationships with Harry got very…ugly once we knew the truth. I might be willing to talk to you about it, but it’s not my call. And I’ve probably already said too much. The thing is, this affects everyone in my family. So you see, Evie, I just can’t do it. I can’t help you do something that could hurt my brothers.”
Wanting You Page 17