Rowan rushed to the bed, casting a quick, sad look at poor Candace and then cupping Evie’s face. “You’re okay. You’re gonna be fine, Evie. It’s over.”
Unable to even speak, she simply nodded, knowing he needed to assure himself of that before he went back to work.
He shifted from worried lover back into alert cop, crouching down to the floor to check Phil Smith’s vital signs. She watched, seeing the blood all over the man. From the look of it, Rowan’s bullet had hit him in the chest, dead center in his heart.
Dead, she believed, being the key word.
When Rowan stood up and turned his back on Smith, she knew the monster’s evil heart had beaten its last.
“Rowan!” another man’s voice called.
“Here.”
Raine ran into the room, a gun in his hand, a glower on his face. He immediately sized up the situation, his dark gaze assessing the three dead people and then the two living ones.
“Are you both okay?” he asked.
Evie nodded.
“You got a knife?” Rowan asked.
Raine pulled a utility knife out of his pocket and tossed it over. Catching it, Rowan knelt on the floor at the edge of the bed and sawed away the ropes at her feet. When she extended her hands, he cut those away too.
Then, and only then, did Evie allow the dam that had been holding her emotions in check to collapse. She had never really understood the expression burst into tears, having always just started crying when she was sad. This, though, was an utter eruption of sobs and tears. She shuddered and shook, her face was instantly wet, and a wail that she didn’t even realize had been trapped inside her emerged from her mouth.
Rowan didn’t say a word. Instead, he scooped her up into his powerful arms and carried her out of the room. And then right out of the house.
He took her to the front lawn and sat down in the grass, still holding her tightly. His mouth close to her temple, he whispered, “I’ve got you. I’ve got you, Evie, you’re fine. It’s over.”
She let him rock her like a child, let the cool evening breeze coming in off the ocean fill her lungs and blow away the remnants of terror from her mind. The night was starry, the moon bright. Such a beautiful sky shining down. Gradually, she let herself believe his whispered words and feel safe in his embrace.
But she wasn’t sure how long she would allow herself to believe it.
Because life could smack you anytime it wanted.
“Why is there such evil in the world?” she eventually whispered, once she felt capable of speaking without bursting into ugly sobs again. “And why do I keep finding it? Do I attract it or something?”
“You know that’s not true, Evie.”
“Tell that to Candace.” She closed her eyes and buried her face in his neck. “And Blair.”
“There are horrible, awful people in this world, honey. You know it and I know it. That just means that the really good ones—like you—matter even more.”
She merely shook her head.
He squeezed her tighter. “Evie, what you do, the way you can look at things and see them in a different way than anyone else ever has before, that’s a gift. You’re smart, and you’re tenacious, and you’re curious, which is something a lot of people aren’t anymore.”
“It hasn’t exactly paid off for people around me, though, has it?”
“Don’t do this to yourself. I’m so sorry about Candace and Blair. But you can’t carry that weight. They died because two evil monsters decided to kill them. That’s all.”
“But if I—”
“No. No buts. Thanks to you, and the fact that you noticed some damn license tags, Angstrom wasn’t able to hurt anyone else. And again, thanks to you, neither will Phil Smith. Nobody even knew he existed until you put it all together.”
“Not in time to save Candace,” she whispered, knowing that wound would be a long time healing. “He was in there, waiting. We walked right into a trap.”
“Evie, don’t do this to yourself. You couldn’t have known he was there.”
She blinked and looked up at him. “I did, though. Something inside me did know, which is why I changed my mind and refused to go in.”
He gave her a quizzical look.
“I went to get a package off the porch and dropped my purse. Everything spilled out.”
“So that’s why I found your phone outside when I got here. It put my guard up. Then when I heard that screaming, I broke the door down. Guess you didn’t even hear.”
“Not over his howling.”
“You hurt him.”
She nodded.
“Good.”
He brushed a kiss against her cheek. “Sorry, you weren’t finished. You dropped your purse?”
She explained to him what had happened, how and why she had ended up going inside, even after she’d decided not to. It didn’t, by any means, relieve the guilt she felt over Candace’s death, but it was the truth.
“Sorry to interrupt.”
Hearing Raine’s voice, Rowan said, “Hey. Didn’t mean to abandon you in there.”
In that house of horrors, he meant.
“Just did a sweep,” Raine said. “All three DOA.”
From somewhere nearby came the sound of police sirens. They were drawing closer.
Raine looked in that direction. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not get caught up in this if I can avoid it. Especially since I came in after it was all over.”
Rowan nodded. “Go. And, Raine, thanks for coming.”
Evie managed a tiny nod. “Yes, thank you.”
“He’s the hero,” Raine said, nodding at his brother. “Good job, brother.”
Getting on a motorcycle parked in the street, Raine drove away just as two police cars rounded the corner and pulled up out front. A few neighbors had come outside, probably because they’d heard the gunshot and the sirens, but so far nobody had approached Evie and Rowan.
Two uniformed cops got out of the first car. “Are you Winchester?” one of them asked.
Rowan removed one arm from around her and pulled a badge out of his pocket, flipping it open to show the two officers. “Yeah.”
“Everything all right here?” one of them asked, approaching them across the lawn. “We were asked to come do a health-and-safety check at this house.”
A half laugh, half cry came out of Evie’s mouth. Rowan continued to hold her, not getting up.
“No. It’s definitely not all right,” he said. “It’s a triple.”
The cop, who’d been pretty casual about finding a detective holding and rocking a disheveled, bruised, bloodied woman on his lap in the middle of the lawn finally came to attention. “What?”
“Three. All in the bedroom. You’d better call it in and get forensics out here.”
“Can you walk me through—”
“Fewer people going through the scene the better. We’ll just wait here for a while.”
She rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes, knowing they faced a very long night. But until all that started, they would sit here together, cooled by the night air, tasting the salty breeze, wrapped around each other.
Just for a little while.
* * *
Over the next several days, with the national press focusing nonstop on the woman who had solved not one but two serial murder cases, Rowan did what he could to shield Evie from the spotlight. She didn’t want it, hated it, in fact, and was content to stay in his apartment, the two of them separated from the rest of the world. No one other than immediate family knew where they were. That’s how they both preferred it.
They had left only once, to attend Candace’s funeral. Despite everything Rowan thought he knew about the widower, Marcus Oakley’s grief was sincere and painful to witness. His anguish had turned him into a pale and silent shell. Crying onto her shoulder during the service, Marcus had made it clear he didn’t blame Evie for what had happened.
Perhaps someday Evie would stop blaming herself too.
&nbs
p; Rowan took some time off, not wanting to leave her alone. Her cuts and scrapes healed quickly, much faster than her spirit. Gradually, though, as the days passed, the real Evie began to emerge from the heartbroken shell.
They ate and they talked. They made love and they talked. They slept and they talked.
She cried a lot. He cried with her once.
Then, one day, she laughed out loud.
That was the day he let himself really believe she was going to be all right. Not undamaged by what she had gone through, but okay. She was strong, she was smart, she was determined. And she had him.
“So what did the DA have to say?” he asked her one afternoon, about a week after everything had gone down so badly at her old house. They’d just finished lunch when her phone rang. She’d gone out of the room to talk to the prosecutor in the Angstrom case. He’d busied himself washing dishes, waiting for her to come back.
“The judge set a trial date for next spring. I’ll definitely need to be there.”
He dried his hands and went to her. Crouching down beside her chair, he took her hand. “You okay?”
She smiled a little. “I think so.”
Noticing the way her lips struggled to retain the smile, he twined her fingers in his. “You are one of the strongest people I have ever known, Evelyn Fleming. You can handle anything. But you don’t have to do it alone. I will be there with you, if you want me.”
“I want you,” she insisted, gripping tightly. “I definitely want you.”
The words weren’t flirtatious or sexy. She was assuring him that she wanted him in her life, just as he wanted her in his.
“Then you’ve got me.”
Although Angstrom hadn’t been responsible for what had gone on over the past couple of weeks, he was certainly a cloud on the horizon. But Rowan would make sure that cloud was never able to darken her life again.
They hadn’t made long-term plans, beyond her deciding that, no matter what, she wasn’t going to go into hiding because of a possible future threat. She was staying here in LA, at least for the new few months, writing her book, determined to remain in control of her own destiny.
Frankly, he hoped she decided never to leave. Or if she did want to go, that she wouldn’t mind him coming with her. It really didn’t matter where they went. He liked his job, and had, indeed, been offered a promotion, but it wasn’t like he couldn’t be a cop somewhere else. Or hell, maybe he’d even go back to law school.
After all the years of uncertainty about his own future, and the crazy shit still to be dealt with by his family, the one thing he was sure of was how he felt about Evie.
He loved her. He wanted her. He wanted them. Everything else was secondary as far as he was concerned.
“Thank you.” She leaned forward and pressed her mouth to his. “But let’s forget about that, about him, for now. I don’t want to give him one more moment of my attention than I have to. We’ll deal with it next year.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
They kissed again, and he saw her shake off the dark thoughts that had hit her when she saw the number on her phone screen.
“You know, there’s something else I’ve been wanting to discuss with you,” she said.
“About how addicted you are to having sex with me?”
She waved a hand. “That goes without saying.” She nibbled her lip, and then said, “It’s about the Harry Baker case.”
Although his go-to reaction when that name was mentioned was to clench and heave, he merely nodded. Sliding up to sit on the other kitchen chair, he said, “I know. We never did get back to our conversation about that.”
He had talked to his brothers. They knew what Evie had gone through, and they also knew what she meant to Rowan. They weren’t exactly offering their blessings for him to tell her the whole story, but they weren’t threatening his life about it anymore either.
“Evie, I want you to know what happened. Everything that happened. But before I tell you, I want you to hear me when I say this. I did not kill Harry Baker. Neither of my brothers killed Harry Baker. His blood is not on my family’s hands.”
“I never really thought you—”
“But we were there.”
Her mouth fell open, and she simply stared at him.
“Everything I told you about Raine waking up, finding Harry assaulting that girl, all his memories coming back—every word is true.” He swallowed hard. “It’s just not all the truth about that night. After Raine left…after he told us what had happened both that night and the night Rachel died, Reece and I went over there.”
It was her turn to reach out and clasp their hands together. “And he was already dead.”
“Yes.”
“What if he hadn’t been?” Rowan stared steadily into her face and told her the truth. “If he’d still been alive, I don’t know what would have happened. Could I have killed him? Could Reece have? Sometimes I think…yes. But we’ll never know.”
She nodded, her eyes narrowed in thought. “What did happen when you went there and found him dead?”
“What do you think?”
It took her less than a second. “You thought Raine did it.”
“Of course.”
She took that final step on her own too. “And you covered it up so he wouldn’t be charged.”
Ding ding ding, she won the prize.
“It’s not something I’m proud of, Evie. You have to believe that.”
“Of course I believe it.” She lifted a hand and ran it through his hair. “I know you, Rowan. I know who you are.”
He caught her hand in his and kissed her palm. “It was years before Reece and I found out that Raine was actually innocent. Can you believe we were assholes enough to never actually ask him? Steve Baker is the one who told us that. Meanwhile Raine had thought all along…”
“That you two did it.”
“Right.”
She blew out a slow breath as she took it all in. “And I thought my brothers didn’t communicate.”
It wasn’t precisely a joke, but it wasn’t too far out of that ballpark.
“And how did Steve Baker find out?”
He told her about the stripper who’d paid Steve a visit, demanding money for information on the night his father had died. And what she’d said about teenage Raine staggering away while Harry was screaming after him on the front porch.
“That’s why you need to find this girl.”
“Yes. She told Steve something else—that she saw a car come back. And despite what she thought—or thinks—it wasn’t us. We showed up even later.”
“So either the girl came back and killed him for what he’d done to her—and lied about it to blame it on you and your brothers—or someone else showed up and did it.”
“Right. That’s where I was supposed to be going with Raine last Monday night. He thought he’d tracked her down finally. He’s been looking for her for months—Steve gave us a first name, a description, and said she’s a stripper.”
For the first time since he’d started talking, Evie frowned, looking confused.
“That doesn’t sound right.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, one of the reasons I went back for my file box that day was because I knew I’d read something, somewhere, about a half-naked girl running screaming down Baker’s street the night he died.”
Rowan sat up straight, stunned. “What? Where? I haven’t seen anything like that.”
Evie bent down to dig into a box of papers she’d been reading before they’d cleared the table to eat. When she found what she was looking for, she handed it over. It was a printout of an email, sent to Evie about three months ago, from someone named Mike Dillon.
“What is this?”
“He was Baker’s neighbor. He heard I was writing a book on the case—which I’m not—and contacted me with some information he thought I might find interesting. I guess he’s a fan; he asked for some autographed books.”
Rowa
n read the brief email.
“Holy shit, he knew her? He knew the girl? He recognized her?”
“Yes.”
“Chelsea Voss,” he murmured. “Her name is Chelsea Voss.”
“Uh-huh. She was another neighbor. He saw her running away, her clothes torn, crying. He thought she’d had a bad breakup or a boyfriend had hurt her.”
Rowan continued reading. This neighbor had reached out to the girl’s widowed father, who said he would find out what had happened.
“How could he not have associated it with Baker’s murder that same night?”
She shrugged. “Some people aren’t like us, Detective. Harry Baker was everybody’s favorite Hollywood neighbor. Never a whiff of scandal. Such a tragedy. What would that have to do with the fourteen-year-old girl up the street having a fight with her boyfriend?”
Fourteen. Jesus.
“It wasn’t until a couple of years later, when the neighborhood starting whispering that there’d been child porn found on Baker’s computer, that Mr. Dillon started wondering if it was relevant. But by then he felt like it was too late to go to the police. The girl was doing well, and he didn’t want to mess up her life.”
That confused Rowan. From the sound of it, this girl, Chelsea, wasn’t doing well at all. She was scarred, she went by the name Marley, she was a stripper. Not the ideal life for any twenty-year-old who’d grown up in the neighborhood where Harry Baker had lived.
“It just doesn’t compute, not with what we learned from Steve.”
Evie pulled out another sheet of paper and pushed it over. “That’s because you’ve been looking for the wrong person.” She tapped on a black-and-white photo of a pretty young woman wearing a graduation gown. “This is Chelsea Voss. She graduated top of her class and is now a college student…in Chicago. No scar. And she’s most definitely not a stripper.”
What the actual fuck? It made no sense. Could there have been two girls of about the same age and appearance traumatized on that block that very same night? It defied the odds.
“You’ve really been working on this,” he said as he skimmed the information Evie had found about the young woman.
“Yes. I wanted to help if I could. You know me, I always like digging into mysteries.”
Wanting You Page 29