The Third Secret

by Tara Taylor Quinn

“Where are you?”

  “Home.”

  “How’s Steve?”

  “Fine.”

  “You’ve talked to him this morning?”

  “I spoke with Jill. Why?” His tone sharpened. “Do you know something?”

  “No.” She glanced around the room, trying not to cry. “At least, nothing to do with Steve.”

  “You sound…odd. What’s wrong?”

  Erin started to chuckle and choked. “I don’t know why I called you,” she said, feeling cold. And confused. “I…” She had to call 9-1-1. Someone had to see the place. It was a crime scene.

  “Where are you?”

  “My office.”

  “Erin, what’s going on?”

  “I… It… The place is a shambles.”

  “Someone’s been there?” The urgency she heard was new.

  “You could say that.”

  “Is anything missing?”

  “I have no idea. I’ll have to sift through the piles of everything I own on the floor before I could tell you that.”

  “Have you touched anything?”

  “No. Just closed and locked the door.”

  “You’re sure you’re alone in there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t touch anything. Call Sheriff Johnson directly. Don’t speak with anyone else. And don’t leave. Not until we’re sure the area’s secured. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Do I need a special code to get in the front door?” There was that authority again. And she didn’t think to question him. It was why she’d called him.

  “It’s locked,” she told him. “Call me back when you’re outside and I’ll come and open it for you.”

  “Call the sheriff, Erin.”

  “I will.”

  24

  Rick considered all the possibilities as he sped the few miles across town to Erin’s office. The perpetrator could’ve been Paul Wagner, the recently enlightened husband of Cook’s lover. Maybe he wanted to find out if they knew about him, if he was a suspect in Cook’s murder. Or anyone connected to any of the other cases Erin had defended or was currently defending could have broken into her office. Looking for something. Maybe even revenge.

  That was precisely why Rick wanted Sheriff Johnson there. And only the sheriff. He didn’t trust anyone else in this town.

  Not after deputies had “found” a murder weapon in his bedroom.

  He didn’t wholly trust Johnson, either, but of the law enforcement choices available to them, Johnson was the best.

  Rick had to beat the sheriff to the scene, though. Because if this had to do with him, with Tom Watkins, gun runners’ muscle, he had to get to the evidence first. And to make certain no one else saw it.

  If this did have to do with him, with Tom, Erin was in more danger than anyone could know. Real danger. And Rick was responsible.

  If the violation of Erin’s space was because of him, he owed her his protection. Until he could figure out how to separate her from his mess.

  Dressed in jeans and a light blue sweater, Erin pulled open the heavy outer door of her office building with more force than finesse.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said. “I don’t know why I called you. I mean, I didn’t call any of my other clients. But I’m glad I did….”

  She was rambling, her stride fast, as she led him back to her office.

  “Sheriff Johnson is on his way and I haven’t really touched anything, except my files. These were in the cleaning closet….” She held up her hands, which were covered with thin latex gloves. “I couldn’t leave confidential papers strewn all over. I haven’t looked through everything, not by a long shot, but I searched specifically for my current case files.”

  She stopped just before her office door, turned and pinned him with a look he couldn’t quite decipher. She was afraid. Which was understandable. She’d just been vandalized. What he didn’t understand was the apology he read in her expression.

  “Sheriff Johnson told me I could secure my files. From what I can see without touching, my miniclock collection is missing. And the clock on the wall. The MP3 player and stereo I had set up over there on the bookshelf. My computer’s been disassembled. I found papers from all my current case files except yours.”

  “Mine.” He finally got a word in. The clocks sent a clear message. Time was of the essence.

  She nodded. “I don’t get it, Rick. Some of my other files are missing. I color-code old files according to type, and the orange ones are my divorce cases. They’re all gone. They mean nothing, but yours… Why would anyone want my notes on your case? Or copies of papers they could get at the courthouse? Who would want them?”

  He could name a few possibilities.

  Not waiting to hear any more, Rick stepped past her and entered the office. Entered—and stared. The destruction was acute, far more than would’ve been caused by someone merely looking for something.

  A tornado ripping through the room would have been kinder.

  Even her desk chair had been cut, stuffing and springs spilling out.

  And his seemed to be the only current case file missing.

  Their warnings were getting closer. They’d attacked his attorney. Who would be next?

  No matter what Sarge thought, come Monday, Tom Watkins was going back to work. One way or another, this had to end.

  It hadn’t taken Erin long to figure out that she’d had no business calling Rick Thomas because her office had been vandalized. About two seconds after she’d hung up the phone she’d been filled with mortification, which was further enhanced when the sheriff, having been paged out of church to take her call, arrived. He’d immediately frowned when he saw the murder suspect looking over every detail of the damage done to her office—without touching or moving a thing.

  “What are you doing here?” His question was abrupt. Accusatory.

  “I called him,” Erin said, feeling a need to protect Rick as she placed herself between the sheriff and his view of Rick. “His file appears to be missing….”

  She couldn’t look at Rick when she heard the words come out of her mouth. Because he knew she’d called him before she’d known about the files. She quickly told the sheriff about the other things that she’d discovered were missing.

  The sheriff nodded, took notes then stepped up to Rick. “Where were you this morning?”

  “At home.”

  “Can anyone verify that?”

  “No.”

  And Erin went cold. It should’ve occurred to her that…

  “You think he has anything to do with this?” she asked the man she’d always respected and trusted.

  “I wouldn’t be doing my job if I just assumed he doesn’t.”

  What was wrong with her? Why hadn’t she realized that Rick Thomas, like any of her other clients, could be a suspect?

  Even when she’d noticed that his file was the only current one missing, she hadn’t thought for one second that…

  “I’m not even sure it happened this morning,” Erin said as the two men, facing each other, surveyed the damage. “I haven’t been here since Friday night.”

  “Have you called anyone else in the building?”

  “Yes. Everyone,” Erin said. There were only a handful. She’d called them while waiting for Sheriff Johnson to answer his page. “No one was here yesterday. And I don’t think any of the other offices were touched. The doors are all locked.”

  Sheriff Johnson looked back at Rick. “Where were you yesterday?”

  “He was in Ludington,” Erin said. “All day. I…saw him there.”

  “Right. At Lakeside. With Steve Miller.” The sheriff studied Rick. “I’m sorry about the Halloway mistake. It won’t happen again.”

  “No harm done.” Rick’s tone was even, as was his expression. Giving away absolutely nothing.

  She’d had the urge to hug him when she’d seen him standing outside the office door half an hour before.

  “As for this—” Rick motioned to the room “—I h
ave no need to steal my own file from my attorney. I have complete access to everything in there, unless you want to build a theory around the supposition that I don’t trust my attorney to be open with me about my business. In which case, I’d simply fire her and request my records. And I have no need for a new stereo, either.”

  Sheriff Johnson sighed. “You’re right, of course. But since your file is missing, I’d like to speak with you. I’ll need a listing of everyone you know who might have any interest in your information. Could you bring it to me by noon tomorrow?”

  “I’ll get that list for you, Sheriff,” Erin said, glancing at Rick. There was no real reason not to let the two men have the private meeting the sheriff suggested, but Erin wasn’t going to let it happen, anyway. She was Rick’s counsel. He talked to no one without her.

  Erin’s heart jumped as the outer door banged and it took a couple of seconds for her panic to subside. The forensic team, such as it was—two deputies with bags and a fingerprinting kit—had arrived.

  “We’ll need the room for an hour,” Sheriff Johnson told her. “Maybe more.” She and her client were being dismissed. “I’ll call you when we’re through.”

  Erin nodded, grabbed her purse and followed Rick Thomas out the door.

  “I’m sorry about that,” she said as soon as their silent walk down the hall and out the main door had ended.

  “Why? Are you responsible for his thoughts?”

  “No, but I should’ve seen it coming. I mean, in his eyes you’re a…”

  Rick had been planning to get in the truck, put the pedal to the metal and speed his way to Steve. Erin’s words stopped him.

  “A murderer?” he finished for her.

  “I’m sorry.” Her chin lowered and then she looked back up at him, squinting in the sun. “I guess I don’t believe you are one.”

  He said nothing.

  “I can’t see you as a murderer.”

  He suppressed the pleasure her words brought him. He couldn’t afford pleasure. Not now. And his alter ego, Tom, had committed murder.

  There hadn’t been one damn thing identifying anyone in the devastation he’d just left. No “signature” that he recognized. No familiar mark, cut of a blade or operating method. Destruction without order. No clear motive.

  Unless that was the motive. Destruction as a distraction. Because if just Rick’s file was missing, the theft would be too obvious.

  “How sure are you that mine is the only current file that’s gone?” He’d asked already. He asked again.

  “As sure as I can be with that mess in there. I found at least some of the papers from every other current file. But none from yours.” Erin’s shrug was an expression of vulnerability, not nonchalance. She’d been vandalized. He knew how that felt.

  He should offer to help her clean up the place. In fact, he felt compelled to do so since he was probably the cause of the crime.

  But a whiff of her scent caught him. The same scent that had lingered in Steve’s room the afternoon before. Making Rick feel restless.

  Filling him with wants he couldn’t have, needs he had to ignore.

  “I’ll need that list the sheriff asked for. Anyone you know of who might have an interest in your information.”

  He and Sarge were way ahead of them.

  He nodded. He’d give her a list. Just not the real one. “Call me if Sheriff Johnson finds anything. Or if you discover that anything else is missing,” he said, turning toward his truck.

  “I will.”

  Arms crossed over her stomach, she hadn’t moved.

  “I can help clean up.” The truck key dug into his palm. She shouldn’t be there by herself. In case the break-in had been a warning that more damage was on the way. An attempt at intimidation before demand.

  She shook her head. “I’ve got friends coming to visit. And someone staying with me right now. And Noah’s brothers…”

  She didn’t need him.

  Good.

  “Do me a favor?” he said.

  “What?”

  “Don’t go back to your office alone. Not when the building’s empty.”

  Her chuckle was strength and fear all in one. “No worries there,” she said. “You couldn’t pay me to do that.”

  She was a smart woman. An independent woman. She’d be fine.

  As long as Rick figured out who was after him and took care of business before any more of it spilled over onto her.

  Or Steve.

  The sheriff’s department couldn’t lift any fingerprints from Erin’s office. Or from the building. Not from the outer door or the rail leading up the steps. There appeared to be no point of entry. Or exit, either. Her lock hadn’t been broken.

  No one in the area had seen anything unusual or noticed anyone they didn’t know hanging around.

  Her unease over the incident drove Erin to Ludington without hesitation when she got a call from Ben Pope late Sunday afternoon. Caylee was with Daniel and his family at their home. Erin hadn’t told the Fitzgeralds about the break-in yet. Or Kelly.

  Kelly and her young charge were on the road, on their way to Temple. Now more than ever, Erin needed Kelly in a professional sense—to speak with Rick Thomas.

  But until she knew whether or not she was a target of the attack or merely a conduit to Rick Thomas’s information, she wasn’t so sure her guests should be staying at her home. Before she went to Ludington she called a woman she knew from church who ran a lovely bed-and-breakfast down the road from Erin’s home. And because it was off-season and the end of a weekend, the place was empty. Putting the bill on her credit card, Erin booked a two-room suite there for Kelly and Maggie. And another room for Caylee. She wanted them someplace else until she could be sure her home was safe.

  Ben’s office was sandwiched between a deli and a cellular store in a strip mall that also housed a hugely popular Mexican restaurant, a large card and gift shop and a shoe outlet. While some of the stores were closed on Sunday, there was enough traffic around for Erin to feel comfortable leaving her car unattended, but she palmed her keys and watched her back as she approached the investigator’s glassed door.

  He was waiting for her. Ushered her to his office and, as always, got straight to business. Ben, an average-size dark-haired man, had never once asked her how she was. She didn’t ask how he was, either.

  “I got your DNA information,” he said, opening the top folder on his desk. Withdrawing a sheet of paper, he slid it across to her.

  She glanced at the paper. And then back at the man she’d been doing business with since she’d first moved to Temple.

  Ben was an organized man. A thorough man. A calm man.

  Paperwork was stacked in labeled bins on his desk. His phone was within easy reach. A holder with pens within even easier reach.

  The photographs on his walls were nondescript. Trees. A bridge. A country home. They reminded Erin of the sample pictures that came with new computers.

  Her heart still pounded, but she was breathing more normally.

  Sitting back in the single leather chair opposite Pope’s desk, she picked up the sheet. Ben was waiting for her comments.

  Or, more likely, her questions.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I can’t speak for the man you know to be Rick Thomas,” Pope said, “but the DNA sample you gave me came from a man named Tom Watkins.”

  Yes. She saw that. The words, anyway. She didn’t get the connection.

  “Tom Watkins was convicted of illegal entry and trespass.”

  “In a secure government facility.” Ben added what wasn’t written in front of her. “That’s the official scoop.”

  “And unofficially?”

  “I did some checking with some people who you don’t want to know about. Something about that Arizona deal sparked a memory. It’s not every day a man’s caught trying to steal drugs from a government safe. Anyway, based on what I’ve heard, and this is strictly rumor from people who can’t be trusted as far as you
can throw them…”

  Erin nodded, understanding, feeling nothing.

  “My contact has some ties to the drug world. I’m talking big-time stuff, not street-peddling.”

  “And?”

  “Tom Watkins was a name associated with some of the biggest gunrunners. He could have ties to a couple of drug cartels as well and probably has contacts in Mexico, Costa Rica, Miami and Arizona, to name a few.”

  She continued to listen. To consider. She just didn’t believe. Not yet. “It says here that before the Arizona incident, he had no priors.”

  “That’s right. I heard that for a while there his name on the street was ‘magician.’”

  Erin didn’t want to know where Pope got that information. She didn’t want to know who he associated with. She didn’t want any of this information.

  “Magicians are masters of deception,” she said.

  “He survived tent city.” The infamous jail in the middle of the Arizona desert, where three meals a day weren’t guaranteed and air-conditioning wasn’t provided.

  But pink underwear for male inmates had been.

  “What about in the past year? What’s Tom Watkins been up to?”

  “Nothing,” Ben said, his brow creased as he met her gaze. “The man left prison on an early release, cleared out the room he’d been renting before his arrest and disappeared off the face of the earth.”

  No, he hadn’t. He’d moved to Temple, Michigan. Changed his name to Rick Thomas. And gotten work as a handyman.

  Erin had questions. A lot of them. But she had answers, too.

  Like the fact that she was removing herself from Rick Thomas’s case.

  As soon as possible.

  25

  Rick was sitting with Steve, watching football, when his phone vibrated, signaling a call. Because it was from Erin—and he’d been sitting there thinking about her, about the attack on her office, about Tom Watkins and Eddie Nogales being scared enough to sell Tom up the river—he took the call.

  Eddie Nogales didn’t scare easily. And after having worked with the man, having watched Eddie torture a guy for being disloyal to him, he didn’t believe for one second that marriage and a kid had made him soft.