She pushed Rewind again and sighed.
It didn’t make any sense. And since Connor wasn’t here to explain any of it, it wasn’t likely it was going to start to make any sense any time soon.
Plucking up the remote control, she punched the power button. The screen finally went blank and it was if a cord had been cut, releasing her from some sort of trance.
Gathering everything together, she got to her feet, shaking the tingling sensation from her legs. Why had Connor given her the tape? From what she could see, it further strengthened the case against him, rather than cleared him. For whatever reason, he had gone to Melissa Robbins’s house, alone, at the approximate time it was shown she was murdered.
She picked up her bedside clock as if staring closely at the time there would change it. She had forty-five minutes to get to the office. Peeling off the same clothes she’d worn since yesterday morning, she padded toward the bathroom and got into a scalding hot shower. But not even the searing heat could rid her of the knowledge that despite what she had seen on that tape, she still wanted him. Fully. Completely. She wanted him in her bed. In her life. And that, above everything, upset her the most.
She ruthlessly scrubbed her makeup off with a bar of soap. Was she that desperate for male attention? Had she gone without sex for so long that she was willing to let a possible murderer settle between her legs?
Or was she so desperate to believe that Connor was innocent, that she was subconsciously blocking out all evidence to the contrary?
But why? It wasn’t as though she knew him all that well. He was still little more than her best friend’s brother-in-law.
Yet, there it was. Her immediate gut reaction to defend him, to defend herself for her belief in him.
When all was said and done, she sincerely believed that Connor didn’t have it in him to break the law. Not for jay-walking. Not for embezzlement. And certainly not for murder. Even back in pre-law, he’d been as straight as they came. Even a white lie probably caused him countless sleepless nights when he was a kid. He was a man proud of who he was and where he came from. He did what he said, and said what he did.
Then why hadn’t he told her he didn’t murder Melissa Robbins?
He had, last night, a little voice reminded her.
She supposed he had—in a roundabout way.
Still, she needed to learn more. And she needed to know now.
She shut off the shower and rapidly toweled herself dry.
Fifteen minutes later, she called in sick at the office, leaving a message for Greg. Then she was calling the number in the Poconos that Kelli had given her.
Fifteen minutes after that, she got four phone calls, one right after the other. The first from Connor’s father.
Out of all the McCoys, she’d probably spoken to Sean the least during her visits to the McCoy place with Kelli. And Connor certainly hadn’t spoken of him. But their brief conversation revealed Sean cared a great deal about his eldest son and made her promise to contact him when she found out where Connor was. His parting words had surprised her. “I don’t know how close you and Connor are, Bronte. But he and I have had our differences recently. In all honesty, the tension between Con and I goes back a lot further than that. But don’t mistake differences for indifference. I care about my boy more than he’ll probably ever know.”
That particular conversation had left Bronte with far more questions than answers. But she reminded herself that now wasn’t the time for them.
The next three calls came from Connor’s brothers Jake, Mitch and Marc.
Now these guys she knew. While all of them were recently married, she got the impression that they saw it as part of their duty to check out any females that stepped on McCoy land, like a pack of wolves checking out the new addition. They’d given her the once-over but good. She suspected she’d gotten a passing grade from Mitch and Marc, but Jake…well, she didn’t quite know where she stood with him. He was tall, dark and silent, and difficult to figure. It was only when his wife, Michelle, or adopted daughter, Lili, were around that he transformed into a man very happy with his life.
Still, her brief encounters with Connor’s brothers had left her unprepared for their rapid-fire questions over the phone, a couple of them of a personal nature that left her speechless. “Just how close are you and Connor?” Jake had asked in an accusatory tone.
Funny, she’d called them with questions and instead was put on the hot seat herself.
An hour later, feeling much like she’d just spent an entire day being cross-examined by an experienced defense team, Bronte came to an eye-opening conclusion. Reporters weren’t the only ones Connor McCoy was hiding from.
And after what she’d gone through, she couldn’t say she was surprised.
8
DUSK CAST THE SOUTHWESTERN section of Washington, D.C., in contrasting shadows. Connor tossed a leather carryall into his SUV, then climbed into it and again took in the scene outside his apartment building. The six o’clock news van had come and gone, but there was still one television van parked outside, likely fishing for something to use on the eleven o’clock news. Most of the print reporters had already called it a night, however, leaving a garbage can overflowing with spent coffee cups and fast-food cartons behind.
But the reporters weren’t what interested him most. No. What drew his attention was a dark sedan parked the same distance away but on the other side of the apartment building. The interior light in the car flashed on, revealing four men inside. Two in the front, two in the back. Suited men. The driver had needed the light to see his way through a white bag, likely the evening meal. The light went off again, cloaking the foursome in darkness.
Gee, did it really take four plainclothes officers to arrest little old him?
Connor shifted into reverse and backed up to the last crossroads. It wasn’t until he was out of sight that he flicked on his lights and headed out of the city.
This was the first time in four days that he’d dared return to his apartment. Aside from needing to see that the place still stood, and confirm that, yes, indeed, he had a home, he had to pick up some clothes and some surveillance equipment. He’d methodically mapped out his entrance and exit, timing it for dusk, when there would be just enough light for him to see around the place, but not enough for those outside to see movement within. A simple quick in and out through the back basement window had gained him access—after, of course, riling up the dog on the corner, so that his incessant barking would draw his visitors’ attention.
He pulled to a halt at a stop sign and sat staring absently at the crossroads in front of him. A part of him wanted to turn left and head on over to Bronte’s house. But after what had happened between them last night…
Correction. What had almost happened between them last night. And the night before that….
He turned right.
One minute he and Bronte had been scarfing down Italian food like starved souls, the next they had been going at each other like nobody’s business.
God, she had felt good. Her skin was so soft and firm and warm to the touch. He could spend forever touching her and still not get enough. Then there was the way she tasted. Spicy, hungry, and all too willing. But it had been her readiness for him that had nearly done him in. There had been a moment there, when his fingers were surrounded by her hot flesh, when he feared he wouldn’t be able to turn back. Her hands had been boldly exploring his erection, then fumbling for the button on his jeans, and all he’d wanted was to be inside her. To thrust deeply into her and forget the rest of the damn world even existed.
Then she’d pleaded for release. The sound of her voice, even husky and needy, had been enough to set off a tape recorder in his head. All he could hear was her asking him whether or not he’d been intimately involved with Melissa Robbins. And all he could think about was that if he had sex with her then, took all that she offered, and gave even more, that whatever was happening between them would take a nosedive in the wrong direction.
Within minutes, Connor found himself on the highway heading for Manchester. Oh, yeah, he thought, there was definitely something going on between him and Bronte. Always had been. But back in college he’d been too much of a coward to pursue that something.
Hell, as long as he was being honest with himself, he was still too much of a coward.
Bronte O’Brien had always made him feel…different. The instant he looked at her, background sounds seemed to fade away. When he was around her the world narrowed down to her and only her. He’d never felt that way before. And he wasn’t sure he wanted to feel that way now. That’s exactly the reason why he ran from her every time their paths crossed at G.W.U. And it’s exactly the reason why he was running in the other direction now.
As the city slowly slipped away in his rearview mirror, so did some of his tension. D.C. was hectic and heady and demanded every bit of a person’s attention. Traffic was thick. Streets many. Lights and signs and restaurants and shops all drew the eye, tempting you away from your thoughts and filling your head with others. Just being inside made Connor feel energized, pumped up, ready for anything. Only now, with his impending arrest, and his attraction for Bronte playing havoc with his mind, it was all a little too much. Overwhelming, almost. His muscles bunched, his nerves hummed, like he’d just downed two pots of full-octane coffee. He felt wired. Only this type of buzz didn’t wear off with time. It only grew more acute, giving him the feeling that something was about to snap. And he was afraid that something was him.
He rubbed his face with his free hand. If he didn’t shave soon, he’d end up with a full beard. He’d meant to check into a ratty hotel somewhere on the outskirts of town last night, but he’d somehow never gotten around to it. That evening he’d hoped to run into an ex-con he’d once apprehended who had recently been paroled. He’d been waiting for him to make his appearance at his usual hangout, but had ended up nodding off in his car. He’d woken up five hours later with a stiff neck, and looking even worse than he had before he’d fallen asleep.
And he never did catch up with that ex-con, a man who had a murky association with Leonid Pryka.
But there had been others. His day had been filled with them. A never-ending stream of faces and voices claiming to know nothing and no one who could help him find what he was looking for.
No, there was no word on the street of a hit being put out on Melissa Robbins.
No, Leonid Pryka, her ex-benefactor, didn’t seem the slightest bit concerned about her testifying against him.
Yes, everyone believed that he was the one who had wrapped his hands around Melissa Robbins’s neck and choked the life out of her.
The further he dug, the guiltier he appeared to get.
The knotting tension returned to his shoulders. It didn’t make any sense. How could everything point to his having done something he never in a million years would have done? The only answer was that he was being set up. It didn’t take a law grad to figure that one out. His problem was trying to figure out who and why, before he found himself sitting in a six-by-nine for what remained of his natural life.
The problem was he’d nearly exhausted every one of his human resources. His list of contacts was dwindling fast. And he was coming to the point to where he couldn’t come up with another plan of action.
Hell, who was he kidding? After today even he was wondering if he’d done it.
Aside from the security video that seemed clearly to show him entering and exiting Robbins’s room around the time of her death, there was also physical evidence linking him to the crime. No, no semen had been found. Thank God for small favors. If semen had been found, he probably would have turned himself in at the first precinct he passed, though he’d never had sex nor laid a hand on that woman in the short time he’d been assigned to protect her. In fact, he’d barely said more than the necessary words to her, such as “this way” or “stay put” or “we’ll be right outside.”
From the get-go, Robbins had rubbed him the wrong way. She was too blond. Too buxom. Too flirty. Too just about everything. And the unreasonable demands she’d made had set his teeth on edge. No, she hadn’t wanted fast food. She’d acquired a certain taste for the good life while with Leonid and was determined to keep it. And from the start she’d complained about the accommodations. He’d decided to hole her up in the small house on the shores of the Potomac, the same house Marc had borrowed a year ago to protect Melanie. His reasons had been simple. Aside from giving Robbins privacy, the remote, coastal location demanded little outside protection after the first couple of days. Only two marshals around the clock. One close to the house, another on the perimeter.
Connor squinted against the headlights of an oncoming car. Most witnesses were thankful to be safe. At least before the reality of their situation settled in. It was only natural that restlessness and frustration would soon follow. But with Robbins, it had been more than that. She’d seemed…put out, somehow. Disappointed that the WitSec life wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
One of the interesting tidbits he had picked up on the street was that when Leonid booted Melissa out a little over two months ago, the wealthy import/export businessman had given her little to take with her. She’d virtually been deposited outside the security gates with no more than the clothes on her back. And whatever jewelry she’d had on she’d hocked over the next few days. He deduced that she’d shown up on Bronte’s office doorstep the instant her cash ran out.
He absently rubbed the back of his neck. Of course, none of that changed the fact that the U.S. attorney’s office did have some sort of damning physical evidence against him. More than that damn security tape. Strands of his hair had been found in Melissa’s hands.
How could she have had his hair in her hands?
He didn’t have to ask how they knew it was his. The U.S. attorney’s office had likely already served a warrant on his place and taken a sample from his bathroom, or even from his bed pillow. All they needed was one to compare against the evidence. And unlike DNA, hair tests were notably quicker, and nearly as irrefutable.
But that still left the question of how in the hell his hair had gotten into her hands in the first place.
Enemies. Lord knew he had plenty of them. Every con he’d ever retrieved or transported probably held a celebration bash when they heard the news of his pending arrest. But not one of them had the type of access needed to execute a plan of this nature. Protection witnesses were very well protected. He should know. He protected them.
Enemies at the department….
He couldn’t come up with a single person who would want to see him fry. Sure, there might be a couple, two or three who might want to see him fired. But not fried.
The only others who had access to the witness were from the U.S. attorney’s office. But even then, their access was limited. And their involvement in the murder would have come after the crime had already been committed.
Besides, the logistics didn’t make any sense. Crucifying him meant letting Pryka off the hook.
In front of him, Manchester emerged from the darkening horizon. Storm clouds had begun to creep up from the west and the sun’s rays bruised them, turning them ominous shades of purple and pink. Connor turned off the main road and onto an old dirt one that cut through Gerard’s old tobacco field. He couldn’t afford to drive through town. Lord only knew who he might run into. And the main McCoy place was also out of the question.
No, he planned to head out to his grandfather McCoy’s old place that sat on some fifty acres on the other side of the new McCoy spread, the only parcel of land he’d balked at allowing Mitch to purchase when he bought Pops out last summer. Though for the life of him he still couldn’t figure out why.
God, how long had it been since he’d last been out there? When he was a kid, before his mother had died, he used to ride out there on his dirt bike to escape the nonstop noise that was as much a part of the McCoy place as the paint. After she died…well, it was where he used to go
to think things out. To work out a problem he couldn’t get a handle on. To recover some of the peace looking after his brothers used to drain out of him.
Then, when he was fourteen, Pops had finally uncovered his safe haven. And he’d never gone back there again.
Hell, he wasn’t even sure the old place was still standing. Time and the elements had a way of taking their toll on an abandoned house. Still, as he grew nearer the old southern colonial, he felt a tinge of excitement.
As immature as it was, he couldn’t help thinking that this place had been his, and his alone. No one else had ever gone out there. He used to take great pride in repairing things. The front step that had rotted out. The upstairs window that had broken. The pump that had once supplied the house from the property’s wells.
This was where his father had been born and raised. His mother’s family had bred horses on the opposite side of the tract; his father’s had farmed this part of the land. When he was younger he’d thought it romantic, his parents living on the same stretch of land, but being worlds apart. He’d once asked Pops why he hadn’t continued the McCoy family tradition of farming. He’d expected to hear that he hadn’t wanted to. That he’d found farm life boring and tedious. He’d been surprised when Sean had told him his decision had been based on strictly financial issues. That his own father had barely eked out a living and that he’d had to go into the city to find a job while he was still a teen. It was then, after he’d interfered and stopped a robbery at a small grocer’s, that he’d formed a friendship of sorts with a beat cop. That beat cop had taken him under his wing and been a mentor to him, helping him enroll in the academy and earn a spot on the force once he was old enough.
And Pops had never looked back since.
Connor hadn’t known his grandparents. His grandfather had died shortly after he was born, and his grandmother had moved to a retirement home and passed on a short time after that. But he liked to think that he would have liked them. That possibly he would have had more in common with them than he had ever had in common with his own father. Often when he was younger, he’d pretend that they were still alive. He’d ride up on his bike, lean it against one of the front columns, then rush inside to find them both waiting for him with a glass of milk and a plate full of home-baked chocolate chip cookies. Something out of a Rockwell picture he once saw.
Never Say Never Again Page 11