by Paula Graves
“Not entirely. But the other matter can wait for now. I’m rather more interested in your impromptu investigation. Why did you contact Mr. Bearden?”
“If I may ask, how did you learn that I did?”
“Mr. Bearden, his wife and I have mutual friends. We’ve met several times in the past, and when one of my employees made contact with his campaign, he wanted to know why.”
“I see. What did you tell him?”
She smiled. “I told him you were doing a background check on someone looking for work with one of our clients.”
“And did that appease him?”
“He wanted to know who we were vetting.”
“And you didn’t know.”
Cameron’s expression made clear how little she enjoyed being asked a question she couldn’t answer. “I told him you were working under a different division and I would contact you directly for the information.” She sat forward again, closing the distance between them until he felt the intensity of her focus. “Which I am now doing.”
“Her name is Charlotte Winters. I asked Maddox Heller to do a preliminary background check on her—confirm her name, address, that sort of thing. He discovered she was a person of interest in a murder.”
Cameron’s eyes narrowed. “Whose?”
Mike could tell from her tone that she already suspected the truth. “Alice Bearden’s.”
“I see.” Cameron released a slow breath. “Is she still?”
“If she is, she’s never been charged.”
“What do you think of her?”
The memory of Charlie’s quirky smile flitted through his mind, along with her fresh soap-and-water scent. He pictured her long limbs, her coltish gait, her husky drawl and her raspy laugh, and he tried to imagine her hitting Alice Bearden with a car and driving away without trying to help her.
“I don’t think she could have done it,” he said aloud before he could stop himself.
“But you’re still looking into her past?”
“There have been a couple of new developments.” He told Cameron about the car tampering and the break-in at Charlie’s house. “Her cat was injured in the vandalism attack. If Charlie had been home, she might have been the one who was hurt.”
“And this has something to do with Alice Bearden’s death?” Cameron’s voice was tight with doubt.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It seems unlikely that something that happened so long ago would suddenly put her life in danger now. Nothing’s changed in the case, as far as I’ve been able to tell.” Although, he hadn’t contacted the police to see if there might have been a new development, had he? There was a Mercerville cop in his intermediate self-defense course, Archer Trask.
The same cop he’d seen locked up in a tense conversation with Charlie just yesterday.
“What are you thinking?” Cameron asked.
“I’m thinking I need to ask a few more questions. Which is why I tried to talk to Craig Bearden or at least someone who works for him.”
“I told Craig he should speak to you. I’m sure you’ll be hearing from him or someone in his campaign soon.”
“Good.”
“What about the woman—Ms. Winters? Does she have a safe place to stay until her home has been better secured?”
To his mortification, Mike felt heat rise up his neck. Was he blushing? He hadn’t blushed since third grade. But he knew better than to lie to one of his bosses. All three of them—Cameron, Heller and the third partner, Alexander Quinn—had a long history of uncovering secrets people wanted to keep hidden.
“She’s staying at my place,” he said.
Cameron’s gaze was expressionless and she said nothing, letting his last words ring in the silence between them.
“I have a spare room and a good security system. I’m close enough to reach her quickly if she needs my help.”
“That’s rather...altruistic of you.”
“I can also keep an eye on her,” he added, trying not to sound defensive. “If she’s done something to invite danger into her life, I’ll be in a good position to figure out what it is.”
“Makes sense,” Cameron said in a tone that suggested it did no such thing. “Perhaps, given your proximity now, you should ask her a few questions about herself. Get the information straight from the source.”
Well. Didn’t he feel stupid now. “You’re right. I should.”
Cameron pushed her chair back and stood. “I may ask you for your help with a project in a week or two, but for now, I think you should follow your instincts about Charlie Winters. If she is using our academy for questionable reasons, we need to know so that we can put a stop to it. And if she’s genuinely in trouble, well, putting a stop to trouble is one of our prime directives, isn’t it?”
Mike stood as well, aware he was being dismissed. “I’ll keep Heller informed of what I find out.”
“Do that.” Cameron walked him to the door. “And do take care.”
He left her office and took a left toward the gymnasium. While he was here, he might as well put a little time in with the weights. He hadn’t had a chance to work out since Charlie Winters had crashed his life, and working out helped him clear the clutter from his mind and think.
He had a lot to think about.
But he didn’t make it to the weight room. A door opened down the hall, a door from outside, letting in a gust of wind and rain. A tall, long-limbed silhouette filled the rectangle of light before the door closed behind it, plunging the end of the corridor into darkness again.
The dark figure moved toward him, into the dim light shed by the recessed lights in the ceiling. It was Charlie, drenched from head to foot, her red hair dark and curling, and her sweater and jeans plastered to her body, revealing unexpected curves that her loose-fitting clothing usually concealed.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he blurted, taking in her bedraggled appearance. “Did you walk here in the rain?”
Her hazel eyes were wide and dark in her pale face, and she was shivering. “You had a phone call. I took a message.”
Even through chattering teeth, she conveyed an unmistakable tone of anger. He took an instinctive step back from her, out of her reach.
“Yeah? It was important enough to risk your life and health to walk a mile in a cold rain to get here? Wouldn’t a phone call have been more logical?”
Her eyes flashed irritation at him. “Are you mocking me?”
He shook his head quickly. “I’m just trying to understand why you’re here.”
“I’m here,” she said tightly, her teeth still clacking together as she spoke, “because the person who called was a man named Randall Feeney.”
Oh. “You answered my phone?”
“Is that a problem?”
“You could have let the voice mail pick up.” He tried to sound nonchalant, but he didn’t seem to be succeeding, if the thunderclouds in her expression were anything to go by.
“I might have, but the name was familiar. And insatiable curiosity is one of my worst flaws.” Her hair was dripping rainwater down her face in rivulets; she pushed the soaked curls back away from her face and ran her palms over her damp cheeks. “Why did you want a meeting with Randall Feeney?”
“Listen, I’ll be glad to talk to you about this. But you’re dripping all over the hall. You have to be freezing.” He put his hand on her arm, felt the icy chill of her wet sweater and shivered himself. “Let’s get you into some dry clothes, how about it? Before you become hypothermic.”
She pulled her arm away from his grasp. “Don’t handle me, okay? Just tell me the truth. Are you investigating me or something?”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because you’ve taken an unusual interest in my well-being all of a sudden. Coming to my
rescue, standing guard over me and now moving me into your house, where you can keep an eye on me. Am I a suspect?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I just know that you didn’t join my self-defense course out of the blue, for no reason. You had an agenda. You pinged my danger radar the very first day.”
“Is that why you put me in your intermediate course?”
“No, I told you the truth about why I switched you to the new class. But I can’t help but wonder at the coincidence of your starting a self-defense class just a couple of days before your car’s brakes were tampered with and your house was trashed by an intruder.”
She stared back at him wordlessly for a moment. Then her gaze dropped, and she lifted shaky hands to her head again, shoving her fingers through her damp hair. “I’m freezing.”
“I know. Let’s find you something to change into.”
* * *
THE SWEATSHIRT AND jersey-knit workout pants borrowed from one of Mike’s female colleagues were a little short for Charlie’s long limbs, but they were dry and blessedly warm. She huddled in a shivering knot in the chair in front of Mike’s desk and watched him dig through a battered military-green footlocker until he found what he was looking for—an olive drab blanket that looked as if it had seen a few rough tours of duty.
“Sit forward,” he said gruffly. She did as he said, and he wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. “It’s warmer than it looks.”
She pulled the blanket more closely around her as he took his seat behind the desk. “Thanks.”
“Warmer?”
She nodded.
“Ready to tell me why you walked all the way here in the rain?”
“I told you.”
“You found out I was trying to make a meeting with someone from Craig Bearden’s campaign.” His eyes narrowed. “But you didn’t explain why that was alarming enough to make you come dashing over here in the middle of a storm.”
“Why did you contact Randall Feeney?”
He didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he leaned back in his chair and looked at her with an uncomfortably direct gaze, as if taking her measure. The silence unspooling between them had become uncomfortable before he finally spoke. “You set off my radar in class.”
“I know. You told me that.”
“I asked one of my associates here to look into your background.”
She stared at him. “You did a background check on me?”
“I needed to know if you had an ulterior motive for joining my class. What we do here at Campbell Cove Academy is important work. We’re training people to protect themselves, their families and their communities in the case of a terrorist attack or some other mass-casualty event. Or to prevent those events, if possible.”
“I know your company’s mission statement.” She waved one hand with impatience. “You actually saw me as a potential threat?”
“I have to assume everyone is a potential threat,” he answered with equal exasperation. “I have to run all the scenarios in my head and make sure I’m not letting an enemy through the gates.”
“Which you thought I was.”
“I thought you might be, so I had someone check your background.”
“And that led you to Craig Bearden.” She wiped a drop of rainwater away from her forehead, wishing she’d asked for a towel to dry her hair.
“You were with Alice Bearden the night she was killed. The police considered you a person of interest for a long time.”
“I wasn’t driving the car that hit Alice.”
“So what happened that night?”
She looked at him through narrowed eyes. “Didn’t your background check give you all the details?”
“Not everything. Not the things you could tell me.”
She tucked her knees up to her chest and pulled her cold, bare toes beneath the soft cotton of the olive drab blanket. “Why does it matter now? It was so long ago.”
“Ten years, right?”
She nodded. “Give or take a few months.”
He rose and came around the desk to stand in front of her. “Did it have anything to do with your decision to take a self-defense course?”
How could she answer his question without revealing just how much of a hidden agenda she really had? She hadn’t told anyone in her life about her decision to take a new look at Alice’s death because everybody, including Alice’s parents, considered her death a closed chapter. She’d died in a hit-and-run accident. Period. Someone had gotten away with vehicular homicide, but it wasn’t as if her death had been premeditated, was it?
Except Charlie was starting to think maybe it had been premeditated. Or, at the very least, her death wasn’t nearly as cut-and-dried as the police reports had finally concluded.
Charlie’s memories were incomplete. But fragments had begun to emerge in her dreams recently, revealing enough mysteries and unanswered questions to pique her lifelong curiosity.
Charlie needed the questions answered. The mysteries solved.
But could Mike Strong understand that need? And if he did, would he really be willing to help her find those answers?
“Just say it, Charlie.” He crouched in front of her chair, his voice low and soft, a seduction. Not just a physical temptation, though she was already resigned to her physical attraction to him. It was the emotional attraction she felt, the all-too-enticing desire to pile all her fears and troubles on his extrawide shoulders and let him handle things for a while, that left her feeling upended and unsettled.
She told herself she couldn’t let herself surrender. She’d survived the harsh world of her childhood by never depending on anyone else for anything.
Could she really start now?
But she hadn’t exactly done a great job of going it alone, had she?
He touched her hand where it clutched the blanket. “You want to tell me, but you’re afraid.”
She met his gaze, remaining silent.
“Do you remember something new?” When she didn’t answer, he added, “Someone seems to think you do.”
He was right. And she was foolish to think this time she could handle things alone. She had to trust someone.
Maybe it could be Mike.
“Tell me, Charlie.” His growly whisper sent a shiver through her. “Someone tried to kill you. They trashed your house. They’re not playing games. They’re serious.”
“I know.” If she let herself think about it, the memory of pressing her foot on the brake pedal and feeling no response at all could send panic rocketing through her again. “I just don’t know why.”
“Are you sure?”
“Mike, I don’t remember most of the night Alice died.”
“Why? Were you drunk?”
“I shouldn’t have been. I’ve never been much of a drinker. I grew up with drinkers, and all alcohol ever did for them was raise their levels of stupidity to legendary heights.” She shook her head. “I wouldn’t have drunk enough to pass out. I just wouldn’t have.”
“So why don’t you remember?”
He was too close, the heat of his body too intense. She pushed back her chair and rose, wrapping the blanket tightly around her as she crossed to the window. Outside, the day was drenched and gloomy, drizzle pebbling the window to render the view of the parking lot misty and dreamlike.
“I think maybe I was drugged.”
She’d never said the words out loud before, never let herself consider the ramifications. But it was the one thing that made sense of what little she could remember of that night.
“Were you—” Mike’s voice was unexpectedly close behind her.
“No,” she said quickly, turning to face him. In a bar situation, a dose of Rohypnol or GHB—gamma hydroxybutyric acid—was usually the precursor of sexual assault.
Charlie hadn’t felt as if she’d been assaulted in any way when she woke cold and damp in her backyard early the next morning after her night out with Alice.
Well, her head had been fuzzy and throbbing, and her memory was a wide vista of nothingness, but her clothes were all in place and she didn’t have any of the morning-after sensations she associated with sex. “I don’t think I was raped. I think I was...removed from the situation.”
He cocked his head. “Meaning?”
“I think Alice went to the Headhunter in hopes of running into someone else. She took me along so she didn’t spend the whole night fending off pickup artists.”
“Did you tell the cops your theory?”
“I wasn’t sure. By the time I had a chance to think anything through, the story was already set in the news. Bar sells alcohol to underage teens. One of them dies in a hit-and-run accident outside the bar. The grieving father vows to honor his daughter’s memory by working to close the gaps in the law that allow those things to happen.” She shook her head. “Nobody wanted to hear an alternative theory.”
“I do,” Mike said gently.
“So do I,” she said. “But the problem is, I still don’t have one. At least, not one I can prove.”
Mike lifted his hands to her cheeks, his palms warm against her cold cheeks. His thumbs brushed lightly across her cheeks, smearing moisture, and she realized she had been crying.
“Then let’s find some proof,” he said.
“How? It was ten years ago.”
“We do what a cop would do,” he said with a gruff firmness that gave her an idea what he must have been like as a Marine. “Tomorrow night, we’ll start at the scene of the crime.”
Chapter Nine
Charlie hadn’t expected to sleep much on her first night at Mike’s place. Besides the strange bed and the strange man in the room across the hall, she’d also had to contend with a grumpy Siamese cat in a plastic cone collar and a scaredy-cat tortoiseshell cat who jumped at every strange noise.
But the walk in the rain and the stress of the afternoon as she and Mike mapped out their plan for a trip to the Headhunter Bar on Saturday night had apparently wrung out all of the adrenaline left in her body, and she slept all night, waking only when Hizzy plopped onto her chest and butted her with the sharp edge of his plastic cone.