“As far as I can tell, he thinks they know something,” Joe said.
“But we don’t,” Carly interjected.
Joe shrugged. “He seems to think you do.”
“This is all very interesting,” Marcus said, “but we have nothing more useful now than you did fourteen years ago.”
Again, a long moment of silence fell across the room.
Finally, Drew spoke up. “You said Sophia was smart and organized. Would it have made sense for her to have made a back-up copy of the data she’d gathered?”
Everyone looked his way, but he seemed unaware of the sudden scrutiny; his eyes were fixed on Joe, his stance casual.
“I thought of that and, yes, it would have been like her to do something like that. But when I couldn’t find the originals, I didn’t have much hope that we’d find any back-up she might have created. That said, we did go through everything we could, even the barn and all the kids’ stuff.”
“What about what they took with them to Los Angeles when she sent them there?” Drew asked.
“We went through all that as well.”
That was news to Carly. She glanced at Marcus and, judging by the frown on his face, he hadn’t known about it either.
“What about the earrings?” Drew asked, causing Carly’s gaze to shoot back to him.
“What about them?” she asked tentatively. And for the first time that day, his eyes held hers.
“She gave them to you before you left. She also made a point of telling you they had belonged to Joe’s grandmother. She probably thought that if anything happened to her, you would try to give them back to Joe. After all, it would make sense, even to a sixteen-year-old girl, that Joe might want something to remind him of the woman he loved. Especially if it was a family heirloom.”
She gazed at him for a good long moment as his words sunk in.
“Carly did try to give them back,” Joe said. “Not right away, but about six months later. She asked Marguerite to get them back to me. I told Marguerite I wanted her to keep them.”
“But they’re just earrings,” Carly said. “You’ve seen them.”
“They are and maybe it’s nothing, but I have seen diamonds used to transfer data. A few years ago, a man used a laser to inscribe launch codes he’d obtained onto diamonds and then sold them. Again, it might be nothing.”
“But it might be worth checking out,” Naomi said, clearly as intrigued as everyone else in the room appeared to be.
Carly sat, stunned at the thought that she might have been holding the information needed to arrest Repetto all along. After a moment, she rose and headed upstairs to collect the jewelry.
When she came down, she didn’t know who to hand them to. Vivi set her coffee down and reached out to take them, saying, “We’ll run these up to the lab and see what we can find. In the meantime, we still have a few more things to go through in Albany and I want to make some calls to the doctor who performed Marguerite’s final autopsy and whoever ran the tests on the trace evidence found on her clothes.”
“Now that we have a better idea of who was supposed to be involved in what, Brian and I will run some more queries to see if we can find anything that wouldn’t fit the pattern,” Naomi chimed in.
“And I want to take a closer look at the financials,” Brian added.
“We’ll go with you, Vivi,” Mikaela said. “If there is anything we can find out from Marguerite’s body, I want to be sure we find it.”
And, like that, everyone was gone—off to the lab, off to their computers. Everyone except Drew.
When Carly walked back into her house after watching the last of the cars drive away, she found him in the kitchen, his sleeves rolled up, washing coffee cups.
She watched him, his tall, lean frame somewhat hunched over her sink. She wanted to go to him, but wasn’t sure if he would welcome it.
“Do you really think the earrings might have something?” she asked.
In response, he shrugged and placed a cup on the drying rack.
“I’m sorry, Drew,” she said before she could stop herself. “I shouldn’t have asked you to leave last night. I thought it was what I wanted, but then, after you left . . .”
The only response she got from him was a slight stiffening of his shoulders as he started to wash the coffee pot. She took a chance and approached him. But rather than get too close to him, like she wanted to, she picked a spot near him and leaned against the counter so that she could get a good look at his face.
“You did what you needed to do,” he said. “I’m not angry with you.”
She laughed. It probably wasn’t the best reaction, but she couldn’t help it. He looked up sharply as he set the pot in the drying rack.
“What?” he asked.
“You are angry with me. I can see it in your posture.”
His jaw ticked. After a few beats of silence, he stepped in front of her, crossing his arms as he studied her. “I’m not angry.”
“You are.”
“Why would I be angry with you?”
“Because I pushed you away when you wanted to stay. Because I second-guessed your instincts. Because, when I asked you to leave last night, I made you do something you didn’t want to do. I can imagine there are any number of reasons you might be mad at me,” she said, somewhat aware she was baiting a bear.
She watched his arms come down and his hands land on the counter behind her, bracketing her between them.
“You asked me to leave, you didn’t make me to do anything.”
“You’re right,” she said, suddenly feeling her heart rate kick up. “I didn’t make you do anything. But the fact that I asked you to go, after everything we’ve talked about this past week, after all the time we’ve spent together, pissed you off.”
She could see his jaw tensing again as he leaned even closer to her. She had to lean back a bit to maintain eye contact.
“I still make you uncomfortable,” he said, noticing her movement.
She looked into his blue eyes and wondered where he was going with that comment, but she owed him the truth.
“Yes,” she replied. Not in the same way as he had when they’d first started spending time together, but she still had the sense that being with him wasn’t a decision to be taken lightly.
“Why?” he pressed as he leaned a bit closer.
“I don’t know, but I might point out that, right now, you’re using your size to intimidate me,” she shot back.
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m a decade older than you,” he said, his eyes dropping to her lips.
She thought of all the things he must have seen in his life, in his job, and everything he must have had to do.
His eyes came up and she held his gaze.
“In probably more ways than one,” she responded.
He stared at her for a beat—a beat in which she felt her heart thudding in her chest—and then his head dipped and he kissed her.
He kept his hands on the countertop by her sides, but his lips came down firmly on hers and she realized in that moment how long she’d been waiting for this. Exactly this. She tipped her head up and tilted it, to give or get better access to him—which it was she wasn’t sure and didn’t care, since all she knew was she wanted more.
And more.
But apparently he didn’t. Abruptly, he ended the kiss and pulled back. His face only inches away, his eyes staring into hers.
“I didn’t want to do that,” he said.
She raised her eyebrows.
“Okay, I did want to do that,” he conceded. “But I made a promise to myself when you first told me I made you uncomfortable that I wouldn’t be the first one to make a move, physically. I wanted you to do it so I could be sure that, when it happened, if it happened, it would be something you wanted.”
She studied him for a long moment. It was just like him to make such a promise to himself.
“I’m not sure I’ll ever be entirely c
omfortable with you. But I’m beginning to think that could be a good thing for me.” She clasped her hands around his neck and pulled him back down to her lips. Back down to where she wanted him.
His arms came around her instantly and within seconds he had her seated on the counter, his hands now buried in her hair as he kissed her. She’d known from the first moment she’d met him that being with him would be like this—this wasn’t just a kiss, but a demand for something more from her. And knowing he wouldn’t settle for anything less had made her hesitant before. But not now. Now her legs wrapped around him and pulled him closer as her hands went to his waist, tugging his shirt free of his pants.
Her fingers encountered his skin and, at her touch, she felt heat shoot through his body. He inhaled sharply and deepened the kiss even more as one of his hands came down to her lower back, pressing her harder against him.
As his hand made its way under her shirt and spread across her back, she leaned away, letting him trail his lips down her neck. She tugged his shirt up more, running her hands up his sides, craving the touch. Craving everything. Deeply.
And then she heard it. Drew’s lips paused below her ear; he heard it too.
A car.
They stayed where they were, chests rising and falling as they each strained to catch their breath, cursing the interruption—or at least she was. Drew raised his head, brushed his thumb across her lips, dropped one more kiss there, then stepped back.
“Do you want me to go see who it is?” he asked with a nod toward the driveway.
She held his eyes, not wanting to turn away, but after a beat she did. From her position on the kitchen counter, she could see out the front window and to the car now parking beside Drew’s.
She frowned.
“Carly?” he asked, instantly alert to her response.
“No, it’s fine.” She slid off the counter and to her feet. “It’s Vic, my boss.”
He said nothing as she straightened her shirt, stepping aside as she made her way to the door. She hesitated before opening it, but then swung it open as Vic climbed out of his car. The look on his face told her she was going to regret his arrival for more reasons than one.
Five minutes later, she walked back into her house, her suspicions confirmed. It didn’t appear that Drew had moved much; he stood waiting for her with his hands resting on the back of one of her kitchen chairs, though he had tucked his shirt back in. She paused and looked at him. It wasn’t a stretch to remember what she’d been feeling mere minutes earlier.
“Is everything okay?” he asked.
She blinked, then let out a long exhale. “No, I mean yes, everything is fine. Sort of. I guess.”
“Sort of?”
She took a deep breath and joined him at the table. Like Drew she didn’t sit; she didn’t have time.
“I had two more days off, today and tomorrow, but Vic said something’s come up in Boston and he has to head out of town.”
“So he needs you to come back to work.”
“Mmm hmm. But the good news is we agreed to extend an offer to a job candidate, so once she starts, assuming she accepts, we’ll only be down one full-time officer.” It would help a bit, but it still left her with all the tasks of the deputy chief of police.
“How are you—” he started, then cut himself off. How are you going to manage the job and the investigation, was what she assumed he was going ask. That was pretty much what had been going through her mind since Vic had told her he needed her to come back early.
“How can I help?” he asked instead.
He couldn’t help, but just the fact that he’d offered meant a lot to her. Funny how a small act of kindness could bring her nearly to tears.
She lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know. Maybe head up to the lab and keep me posted on what’s happening up there? I was going to go myself, but, well . . .” She let her voice trail off, then added, “I know Marcus is up there, but he’s, well, he’s not in a great place right now.”
“Of course.” He pushed himself off the chair. “What time will you be off shift tonight?” he asked as she handed him his coat.
“I don’t know. I’ll know more when I look at the schedules.”
He slid his coat on. “I’ll call you as soon as we learn anything.”
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
He stopped in front of her and she wondered if he was going to kiss her again, but then he stepped back. “Call me at any time.”
She nodded. “Oh, Drew?” she said as he opened the door.
He turned back. “Yes?”
“Find him, will you? Repetto. I know Joe said he’s in DC, but if he thinks someone might be on to him, I don’t want him to run. Not now that we finally know what happened.”
Drew studied her, then dropped his hand from the door and took the two steps back toward her. This time he did kiss her. Just briefly. Then he said, “I promise you, Vince Repetto will not get away this time.”
She had a fleeting thought of what a trained CIA agent could do to ensure a promise like that, but she was pretty sure that wasn’t what he’d meant to imply. Pretty sure.
“Drew,” she said, wanting to be sure.
“Go do your job. Call me if you need me. You know where I’ll be and I’ll certainly call you,” he said then stepped away. He closed the door behind him before she could say any more.
Several moments passed as she stood there in the silence of her kitchen. Her mind toyed with the idea of letting what she’d learned in the last twenty-four hours filter through her thinking, but if she started to let it process, she wouldn’t be able to stop. And between Vic bringing her back to work, learning who killed her mother and why, and knowing they needed to bring him to justice but not knowing how they would do it fourteen years later, Carly could feel herself teetering on the edge of being swept away by how overwhelming it all was.
For a fleeting moment, she wondered what it would be like to break down, to truly fall apart. She hadn’t ever let herself. Maybe because she was afraid of seeming weak—if only to herself. Or maybe because she was afraid of what she might find out about herself if she gave herself permission not to stay strong, not to power on.
She sighed and started up the stairs to change into her uniform. Maybe someday she’d give herself permission. But today was not that day.
Chapter Seventeen
Drew stared intently at a photo of Vince Repetto that Joe and Vivi had tacked to a whiteboard in the lab conference room they’d co-opted for their purposes. Behind him, Naomi and Joe were huddled around one computer going through Repetto’s life history while Brian and Wyatt were huddled around another looking into the electronic traps and backdoors that had been set up to monitor searches of Marguerite, Sophia, and Tony. Repetto was smart, but not smart enough to have set up the kinds of things Naomi had found when she’d first started looking into him, nor did he have the ability to remove Marguerite from the fingerprint databases Vivi had used when the body first came in. Clearly, he had an accomplice or two. Even though his career had stalled out under the supervision of Perelli, Repetto had been on the job for over twenty years—a man could make a lot of friends in twenty years.
Turning around, Drew took in the room’s activity. Vivi, Daniel, and Dr. Buckley were deep in conversation about something—a report that Vivi held and they all scrutinized. Mikaela and Mario were looking at a map of DC, using the information Naomi was digging up and trying to track Repetto’s movements in the weeks prior to Marguerite’s death.
And then there was him. Standing there on his own with nothing to do. He wasn’t well versed in this type of investigation. He didn’t have the expertise to read an evidence report on the trace elements found on Marguerite, nor did he have the technical abilities of Naomi and Brian. There were a lot of good people trying to resolve the situation, and for that he was very pleased. But he was feeling more and more useless by the minute.
“I have those financial reports you printed, Naomi,” Ian said, e
ntering the room with a stack of papers in one hand and several bags clutched in the other. After leaving a meeting in Albany and before heading to another back in Riverside, he’d stopped by to check in and run a few errands for the team—which included picking up lunch from a local deli and, apparently, the documents from the printer down the hall.
Finally, a report Drew could sink his teeth into. “If you’re still doing your searches, Naomi, I can read through the financials. See if anything comes up,” he offered.
Naomi didn’t move her eyes from her screen, but gave him a wave as if to say “Carry on.”
He glanced at Vivi to get her take—she’d become the natural leader of the group—only to find her watching him. “Does that work for you?” he asked her.
“Of course,” she said, handing Daniel the report she’d been holding and approaching Drew. When she’d reached his side, she asked, “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” he said, eyeing the papers Ian had placed on the table with the sandwiches before walking over to talk to Wyatt. When she didn’t say anything in response, he turned his gaze to meet hers and felt a bit disconcerted by her scrutiny.
“Should I not be?” he asked.
Vivi tilted her head and studied him. “This isn’t easy for you, is it?”
Great, the last thing he needed was to be subject to a shrink, especially not in front of everyone else. “It’s fine,” he said, adding a note of insistence to his voice. “I’ll just take these.” He reached for the papers. But she put a hand on his arm. He glanced up, catching the look Ian shot in their direction.
“Come get some coffee with me,” Vivi said.
Drew thought Ian might try to save him from her meddling, but no such luck. The sheriff gave a tiny shrug and turned his attention back to Wyatt.
“Fine,” he said and followed her out. “Have you found anything in the reports?” he asked as they made their way down the hall.
“A few things we’re following up on. It would be easier if we could figure out what items were used to cause all the different types of damage to Marguerite’s body and then find those things, but we’re working on it.”
An Inarticulate Sea Page 24