He cringed. “When you say it like that, it sounds so crass. But yes, I tended to avoid virgins in the past. I might have been a jerk, but that was a line I never wanted to cross. I couldn’t be responsible for a girl making that decision and then regretting it. I figure the first time is something a girl remembers pretty much for the rest of her life. I didn’t want to be responsible for a bad memory, you know?”
“What changed your mind about me?” I asked.
Lacing his fingers through mine, he raised my hand and kissed the back of it. “I care too much about you not to work my hardest to make it a good experience. And if you did wake up regretting it, then I’d do whatever it took to make it up to you.”
Pulling our hands back to my side of the table, I mimicked his actions and kissed his knuckles. “Don’t worry. I woke up this morning with no regrets. I’m happy we did it, and I wouldn’t have chosen anyone but you to have my first time with.”
Nodding, he went back to his breakfast, attacking his omelet with far more gusto now that the air had been cleared between us. Taking my hand back, I did the same.
“If you’re going to walk around all day looking like that, it might just happen again,” I teased, giving him a once-over with my eyes.
The suit he wore fit him like a glove, the jacket hugging broad shoulders, and the stripes in the tie bringing out the green hue of his eyes. He’d slicked his hair back from his face, parting it on one side.
He grinned. “You like FBI Special Agent Tate Baldwin? He’s pretty suave, isn’t he?”
I laughed. “Let’s just hope Mrs. Vasquez will buy it.”
“Oh she’ll buy it,” he replied. “The FBI badge design was ridiculously easy to find online, and adding my photo only took a few minutes. Besides, she’ll be so uncomfortable looking at my face, she won’t take too close a look. I doubt she’ll notice how young I am.”
I paused, my fork halfway to my mouth. “Stop staying stuff like that about your face. I don’t like it.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “Look, I’ve been walking around with this mug for two years. Granted, I spent much of that time locked in my room, but I’ve been around people enough to know how it goes. Illness and disability make people uncomfortable. They don’t want to look straight at it, because it reminds them of how fragile they are, too. It’s just a fact… one we will use to our advantage to get the information we need.”
Grudgingly admitting he had a point, I went back to eating. I still didn’t like it, but he was right. Whatever it took to get us through the door, we needed to use it. My leg bounced under the table, my nerves making themselves apparent. I was anxious to get this over with, but still afraid to proceed. Tate impersonating an FBI agent had to be a crime, and I didn’t want him to get caught. But we’d come too far to stop now. We could be one interview away from solving our little mystery.
Once finished eating, we returned to the car, with Tate feeling well enough to get behind the wheel. Plugging Rosita Vasquez’s address into the GPS of my phone, I guided him to the house where Camila and Isabella had grown up. We found it easily—a charming two-story house with an old-fashioned Victorian feel to it. Flowers bloomed from patches closed in by tiny little white picket fences. The large porch held wicker rocking chairs and several potted plants, along with a doormat that read Bienvenidos in a cursive scrawl.
“Welcome,” I read, remembering the Spanish word from the little I’d retained of last year’s required class. “Hopefully, she’ll be as welcoming as her porch.”
Adjusting his tie, Tate reached out and rang the bell. A soft breeze shifted through the air, jingling a few wind chimes hanging above us. A few moments later, a slender Hispanic woman with deep brown skin and dark hair streaked with gray answered the door. Her face was heavily lined with wrinkles, her mouth pinched and turned down. As she pushed open the screen door, I was struck by the sadness in her dark eyes.
“May I help you?” she asked in a thickly accented voice.
“Rosita Vasquez?” Tate asked in a short, clipped tone. He sounded just like a TV cop.
“Si, I am Rosita,” she replied, giving us wary looks. “What is this about?”
Reaching into the inside breast pocket of his jacket, Tate retrieved the little leather wallet holding his fake ID badge and held it up, flipping it open.
“Special Agent Baldwin, ma’am,” he replied. “And this is McGuire—a trainee at Quantico. She’s shadowing me to learn the ropes as part of her education.”
Rosita’s eyes widened. “FBI? Did you work with my daughter?”
Flipping his badge closed, he replaced it in his jacket. “No, ma’am, but we’re looking into a few open cases she was investigating before she passed away. We were hoping you might be able to help us with one of them.”
Nodding, Rosita held the screen door open wider. “I don’t know if I can be of much help, but I can try. Please, come in.”
Tate and I exchanged a glance before stepping inside. He looked as shocked as I did that it had been so easy. Rosita ushered us into her kitchen, where she motioned for us to take a seat at the table.
She offered us water, but we both declined, so she took a seat across from Tate. As he’d predicted, Rosita seemed uneasy about staring at him head on, averting her gaze to the surface of the kitchen table.
“Camila was very dedicated to her work,” she said. “She would have wanted her open cases solved. My husband is at work right now but if I can help you, I will.”
“Thank you,” Tate replied, folding his hands in front of him on the table. “We’re sorry for Camila’s loss. She was a superb agent and will be missed.”
Rosita inclined her head in acknowledgement of his words, but didn’t reply.
“When she passed, Camila was working on a case in Wellhollow Springs… a death that was ruled a suicide. She seemed to think there might have been foul play.”
The woman’s eyes filled with tears, and she nodded. “Si, her sister… Isabella.”
She gestured toward a photo hanging on a nearby wall. I stared at the image of three people—a man who could only be Rosita’s husband, along with Camila and Isabella. The differences between them then and now were striking. They’d both been beautiful in life, and they seemed much happier in the photograph.
“Yes,” Tate agreed. “It would seem that Camila became involved in investigating her sister’s death, despite being warned against it.”
“It had become her life—trying to prove that her sister had been murdered,” Rosita replied. “No one could convince her otherwise.”
“Did Camila ever tell you why she suspected foul play?” I asked.
Rosita shook her head, reaching up to swipe away a tear. “No. My husband and I had very little contact with Camila after Isabella’s death. We begged her to let it go. Isabella had a troubled past, and we hadn’t heard from her in years. She was no longer the woman we’d known, and her suicide came as a surprise to no one but her sister. Camila could not accept the truth.”
“Do you mind if I ask why Isabella’s death did not surprise you?” Tate asked.
Lowering her head, Rosita took a deep breath, releasing it on a shaky exhale. “I don’t know where we went wrong. Marco and I tried to be good parents. We raised our girls right, but they turned out so different from each other. Camila was an overachiever—perfect grades, good behavior, ambitious. Isabelle was her complete opposite—wild, untamable, rebellious. It led her down a dark road. Her drug addiction and partying created a rift between her and the family. We tried to help her, but she resisted and eventually left home altogether. She lived a lot of places, but had settled in Wellhollow Springs a few years before she died. Camila found out that she… she worked as a prostitute.”
Rosita sniffled, cringing as if ashamed to even speak of her daughter’s illicit activities. “When she turned up dead, the coroner in Wellhollow Springs declared her death a suicide. All the evidence suggested she hung herself, and she was found dangling from the ceiling, an ove
rturned chair beneath her. What else were we to think? But Camila insisted she had been strangled, and she set out to prove it. I’m sure you know how much trouble it got her in with the FBI.”
Tate nodded. “Yes, she was on administrative leave pending a psych evaluation when she died. Ms. Vasquez, do you know if Camila’s investigation led to anything? Did she ever share her findings?”
Rosita shrugged. “After she died, we traveled to Wellhollow Springs to collect her remains and her belongings. In her car were a bunch of files and papers, but the FBI didn’t seem interested in taking them. So, I boxed them up with the rest of her things and put them in the basement. I couldn’t bring myself to toss any of it out. I glanced at some of the files, but none of it made sense to me. There were case files in the box that had nothing to do with Izzy… so I simply…”
I nodded, sympathy pricking my heart for this woman who had been forced to bury both her daughters. Losing my mother had caused the worst pain I’d ever felt, so I couldn’t even fathom what she must be going through.
“Would it be too much trouble to ask for those files?” Tate asked, his voice low and soothing. He was doing a great job of conveying both authority and empathy. It was working.
Rosita sniffed again and wiped at the tears pooling beneath her eyes. “Of course. If you give me a moment, I’ll go find them.”
“Take all the time you need,” he replied with a smile.
With a nod, Rosita stood and exited the kitchen, still sniffling and wiping her eyes as she disappeared down the hall.
I didn’t dare speak, worried Rosita would hear something she shouldn’t. So, I simply sat in silence with Tate, his impatience becoming more evident with each passing second. Sitting back in his chair, he furrowed his brow and stared down at the table. His knuckles rapped against the surface in a steady rhythm, impatience seeming to set in while we waited for Rosita to come back.
After a while, she returned, a small cardboard box in her hands. She sat it on the table in front of Tate.
“This is everything they found in the wreckage of her car,” Rosita said. “Some of the pages are smudged and wrinkled, but it’s all there.”
Reaching into her back pocket, she retrieved something small and rectangular. Placing it on top of the box, she revealed a cell phone with a cracked, black screen.
“This is Camila’s phone,” she added. “The screen is cracked, but it still works. It just needs a charge. Maybe it can help you, too.”
Taking the phone, Tate stood, opening the box and putting it inside on top of a stack of file folders with stained pages sticking out of them.
“I’m certain it will, ma’am,” he said. “Thank you for your help.”
I joined them on my feet, watching the exchange in silence. Tate extended a hand to Rosita. She shook it, and then offered her hand to me.
“I hope you can finally put this to rest,” she said while shaking my hand.
“I do, too,” Tate replied. “I have just one last question before we go.”
She inclined her head. “Of course.”
“Camilla’s accident… did it seem strange to you, the way she died?”
Rosita frowned and shook her head slowly. But then, she raised her eyebrows as if having just thought of something. “Her father mentioned that the junkyard owner in Wellhollow Springs had inspected her wrecked car and said that the brakes were badly in need of service. The brake light would have come on, but maybe Camila forgot to get them checked out. Her father seemed convinced that she would never let something like that slide. Camila was a stickler for that sort of thing. But… as I said, she changed in her last few months of life. She forgot about everything except her sister’s death.”
Tate’s jaw hardened, but he nodded and forced a smile. “Thank you. We’ll get out of your hair now. Have a nice day.”
“Gracias, you too,” Rosita said before ushering us to the door.
She stood on the porch watching as we walked to the car. Tate placed the box in the backseat, and then slid into the driver’s seat beside me. He cranked it and backed down the driveway in silence, his grip tight on the wheel.
He waited until we were no longer in view of the house before speaking. Braking at a stop sign on the end of the street, he turned to look at me.
“Okay, that’s it. We are done.”
I started, wrinkling my brow. “What do you mean?”
Shaking his head, he fixed his mouth in a grim line. “This little investigation is over.”
“Tate, I know what we just found is scary, but we can’t stop now. We’re too close to unlocking the truth!”
Avoiding my gaze, Tate kept his eyes fixed on the highway in front of us, his jaw clenched. We’d made a quick stop at a gas station so Tate could fill up and change out of his suit. Now on our way back home, we had five hours to hash it out over his declaration that we could no longer involve ourselves in the deaths of Isabella and Camila.
“Listen, I agreed with you before,” he retorted. “But that was before Rosita dropped that bomb on us about Camila’s brakes. Her accident, just like all those others, doesn’t make sense. Which means whoever killed those other people also killed Isabella, and then Camila, to cover their tracks.”
“We’re in no more danger than we were yesterday,” I argued. “We’ve dug so deep that whoever knew Camila was investigating Isabella’s death has to know that we are, too.”
“Is that supposed to be comforting?” he snapped. “Because it isn’t. Look, I know you wanted to help me get rid of the ghosts, and possibly my illness. But this has gone too far, and we’re in over our heads here. It isn’t worth it.”
My mouth fell open in shock, and, for a moment, I couldn’t speak. Fumbling for words, I tried to think of how to convince him that we had no choice but to follow through on this.
“Tate, you could get sicker,” I argued. “Parry-Romberg has no cure, and remission isn’t always permanent. You could continue to degenerate until it affects the entire right side of your body. The seizures could get worse. You could have a stroke. The pain—”
“I’m well aware of the realities of my disease, Bell,” he muttered between clenched teeth.
“What about Camila and Isabella?” I argued. “They chose you in an outright challenge. They watched you stand by and do nothing while Lindsay was tormented by your friends. They’re waiting for you to man up this time, and they will continue to punish you for your inaction.”
And possibly me as well, I realized as I thought back to coming face to face with Isabella the other day outside Baldwin House.
“I’m nineteen freaking years old,” he shouted. “What the hell do they expect me to do?”
“The right thing,” I answered, keeping my voice level despite his red face and sharp tone. “We have information concerning a murder. It would be wrong of us to sit on it.”
“Not if acting on it could get you killed,” he said, his voice a bit gentler now.
“I’m not going to get killed.”
He snorted. “I’m sure Camila thought the same thing. Whoever murdered Isabella staged Camila’s car accident to keep her from exposing the truth. If they’re onto us, we could be next.”
Falling silent, I stared out the window, hands clenched together in my lap. I didn’t know what else to say to get through to him. His fears were valid, but as far as I was concerned, we had already gone too far.
“The only way to eliminate the danger now is to see this through,” I reasoned. “If we can catch this guy, he can’t be a threat to anyone else.”
Tate shook his head. “After we get back home, I am going to give Camila’s case files to the sheriff and tell him our suspicions. The police can take it from there. The ghosts can’t blame me for giving this over to the authorities. They wanted justice, and those are the people who can go about getting it for them.”
Shaking my head in disbelief, I lapsed back into silence. Trying to talk some sense into Tate felt too much like arguing with a tree. I was
wasting my breath, and the tree wasn’t listening. Busying myself with looking out at the passing scenery again, I found myself wishing I’d brought a book. I hadn’t thought I’d need one because I’d be busy talking to my supposed boyfriend. Now, I wanted to punch him in his stupid, arrogant face.
Except I didn’t want to punch his stupid, arrogant face. I wanted to kiss that stupid, arrogant face, just as I had the night before. His entire argument against pursuing this further centered around protecting me. I couldn’t fault him for that. In fact, I was pretty sure I had to admire him for that.
I was just about to apologize and try to change the subject when a black shape caught my attention in the side mirror. The sound of my sharp inhale was like a gunshot in the quiet car, drawing Tate’s attention.
“What’s wrong?” he asked grudgingly—plainly still pissed at me, but not so much that he’d stopped caring.
“Nothing,” I replied, aware that my voice sounded high and squeaky.
The dark shape was following us—the same black Lincoln that had tailed me home after our visit to Grayson Smith’s house.
Don’t be ridiculous. There have to be hundreds of those black Lincolns in the state of Georgia.
Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling in the pit of my gut telling me that we were being followed. My hands began to shake, and I clenched them tight in my lap, my throat constricting as I kept my gaze on the mirror. The car switched lanes every time Tate did, while maintaining a bit of distance. If I hadn’t been paying attention, it would be easy for the car to simply blend in with the others traveling down the highway.
Not wanting to panic just yet, I took a deep breath and forced myself to speak. “I need to pee.”
Tate frowned, glancing at the clock on the dashboard. “We’ve barely been on the road thirty minutes.”
“Tell that to my bladder,” I muttered. “Look, there’s an exit up here and a sign with some gas stations on it. Can we stop, please? I won’t be long.”
Sighing, he nodded silently, hitting the turn signal to exit. I fixed my gaze on the mirror, watching as the black car mimicked our actions, having to cross three lanes of the highway to exit behind us. Okay, still suspicious, but not a certainty. I would know for sure soon enough.
Bellamy and the Brute Page 23