"Sugar, I've been trying to tell you for years," he said, smoothing her hair.
"Are you staying?" She had designs for the night now that all her nightmares from work were safely tucked away.
"You're going to have a hard time getting me to leave."
CHAPTER SEVEN
______________
SLOANE
She reluctantly dropped his hand to press her thumb against the electronic pad that granted her access to the elevator. Thumb. She shivered as the door opened, and Marc logged his entry as well. Well, maybe she’d compartmentalized too well if just the opening of the elevator door made "thumb” a four-letter word. Marc slipped his hand back into hers, and they walked through the bustling hallways. No one seemed to notice the two of them. She was part of a “them.“ Were they a “them?”
They walked toward their labs and parted ways at the doors; she squeezed his hand in a silent goodbye before slipping in her earbuds and preparing herself for work mode. Her heart fell as she passed by her desk and saw the screen was still blank. The snuff-film fucker was still offline.
On the bright side, her decryption software had worked, and the contents of the hard drive was laid out before her like a fucked-up buffet.
She sifted through a series of crime scene photos, in the woods. The body had already been removed, but pieces of evidence were numbered with bright yellow markers. She recognized a crime scene investigator in the background.
"Carey," she whispered to the empty room. She'd started just before Sloane, so this crime scene wasn't very old. Five years, tops.
She kept clicking through the pictures hoping to find something identifiable but never came across anything that included a case number. Truly, the forest in those pictures could be anywhere. This whole area was surrounded by acres and acres of state forest, and most of it somehow fell under their jurisdiction.
Suddenly the greens of the forest stopped, and she was looking at a baby-faced Taylor in her blues, sitting in her squad car. The picture looked like it had been taken from a long distance away, possibly through glass. Her heart raced, and she sped through the next few pictures. There was Carey again, young and smiling outside the lab building. The next photo was inside the district courthouse, an image of prosecuting attorney James Dawson taking a drink from a drinking fountain. Each photo was followed by a series of shots taken seconds after the initial one, capturing a complete moment in the subject's life without their knowledge. The next set was Detective Grant DeWitt hugging a young redhead she didn't recognize.
She clicked to the next picture, and her heart dropped to her stomach. She sat frozen as her finger pounded on the mouse two, three more times
"Marc!" she screamed. "Marc!"
She pushed herself out of her chair, using her arms more than her legs and staggered across the floor. Her feet felt like leaded weights, and her heart raced from panic or overexertion; she really had no idea.
Marc came tearing through the door with a file in his hand. As soon as he saw Sloane, he threw his papers on the closest desk and ran toward her, folding her into his arms. "What's going on?" he asked, smoothing hair back from her face, searching for answers.
She pointed at the computer screen and wheezed, "Panic attack?"
"Sloane. You aren't that frightening," Marc teased as he eased the two of them down to the floor and nestled her between his legs with their backs to the computer she'd been working on.
"Fuck you," she said breathlessly, still unable to inhale fully. "It's not…"
"Shh," Marc whispered into her ear. He'd wrapped his arms around her stomach, and his thumbs stroked the sides of her ribs gently. "Shh, first calm down and breathe, then we'll talk. Okay, sugar?"
"That's not my…" Sloane gasped, trying to explain. “Stop, other people will…”
Marc dug his fingers into her sides. "Do not speak."
Her back straightened in response to his biting nails, but she slowly relaxed into him. Her back curved into his chest, and her head rested next to his. All the while he murmured inaudible things into her hair. As her body relaxed, so did his hands until they returned to softly stroking her sides. She lay in Marc's arms with her eyes closed, wishing she didn't have to face the reality of what awaited her on that computer.
"What happened?" he finally asked.
She didn't open her eyes, choosing to stay in her dark, imaginary cocoon of safety instead—compartmentalization, eh? "Taylor's flash drive has pictures of a crime scene. And her. And C.S.I. Carey Hatfield. And Detective DeWitt. And Prosecutor Mulligan. And me."
"Fuck," Marc said under his breath. “But we don't know what that means. There's no reason to lose our minds yet."
Sloane shot out of his arms and stood up, glaring at him, wincing as her eyes adjusted to the light. "What do you mean?" But her eyes went right over his head, and she immediately forgot about the photographs.
"Marc! He's back online!" She ran to her computer and saw The Yellow Wallpaper woman making her usual rounds along the walls.
"Hey, Sloane, let's focus. Half a dozen of our colleagues' photos were found on that hard drive, and I got a few hits on the thumbs Taylor brought. Your guy hasn't changed anything in days. You can deal with him later."
"Let me have this small victory, please. Tell me there's more good news with the thumbs."
"They were all civilian hits, nothing criminal." He bent his head and read from his discarded file: “Thirty-four-year-old, African-American schoolteacher; seventy-nine-year-old, retired bank manager; daycare provider; absolutely no pattern.”
Sloane sat down at her desk and rested her head on her hand. Who would have thought she would have found this comforting? She watched the woman make her laps around the room and tuned out Marc. This made sense. Taylor and her thumbs and all those photos did not. Her snuff-film creep was someone she knew.
"Taylor." Marc knelt down next to her. "Please, focus."
"Can we just watch The Yellow Wallpaper for a few minutes? I can't think. I can't deal."
He sighed and turned toward the screen. "What happened to her hand?" Marc asked, leaning over her arm.
"What do you mean?"
"She's holding it to her chest, and you can see right here." He pointed to a flash of white nestled in her brown coat. “It looks like a bandage."
"Shit, Marc. I never noticed that before." She bent closer. She could definitely see what he was pointing at. "Then again, it could just be a tissue or a shirt sleeve."
"Her shirt isn't white. And you've been watching her for hours. Has she wiped her nose?"
Sloane rubbed her eyes as if somehow that would make the picture in front of her suddenly clearer. "Fuck, I don't know."
"Your old man, yesterday, had a bandage on his hand too."
"How do you see shit like this?" Sloane yelled as she wheeled around, frustrated with her own lack of observation.
"A white bandage on a black man kind of sticks out like a sore thumb, even on shitty video. How did you not notice?"
"I was just happy that I had a group of victims that weren't reduced to unrecognizable piles of bruises, and blood, and broken bones, and—what the fuck did you just say?" Sloane bounced on her toes.
Marc repeated himself slowly. "How did you not notice the injuries on your victims?"
"No, before that."
"A white bandage on a black man sticks out like a sore fucking thumb."
"Yes, yes, yes." Sloane was practically jumping. "Didn't you have a thirty-four-year-old, African American schoolteacher."
"Yes," Marc said, rummaging through his reports. "And a seventy-nine-year-old, African American, retired bank manager. How about midthirties, white, male brunette?"
"Fuck, yeah!" Sloane jumped and clapped her hands.
"Scott Fredricks, local real estate agent."
"Are all three of these people local?" Sloane practically wanted to rip the pages out of Marc's hands.
"They are. The fourth hit is a twenty-four-year-old, blonde female. She w
orks for the postal service."
"I haven't seen her. Fuck, Marc. I haven't seen her! The daycare provider, let me see her picture.”
Marc held up a DMV photo of a woman in her midsixties with perfectly curled hair.
“She’s the one who sits in the corner! How did I not notice their injuries? What does this mean? Why send Taylor all of this?”
"Listen." Marc placed his hands on Sloane's shoulders, squeezing her until she stopped moving and looked at him. "We need to call Taylor, and we need to call everyone in those photos, and figure out what the fuck is going on. I’ll call Carey and you call Dawson. We'll start there."
Victim of Revenge
Hot Pursuit
Liza Mitchell
Published by Feather & Bleed Press, 2019.
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations used for review purposes.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book is intended for mature, adult audiences only. It contains extremely sexually explicit and graphic scenes and language that may be considered offensive by some readers. This book is strictly intended for those over the age of 18.
All sexually active characters in this work are 18 years of age or older. All acts of a sexual nature are completely consensual. No one is related in this book.
PRIVATE LESSONS
Copyright © 2019 Liza Mitchell
Edited by Jennifer at Mistress Editing
CHAPTER ONE
______________
CAREY
What the hell was he doing here?
She tried to pull away from his deep green eyes—they’re hazel, he’s not that special—but they held her with an intensity that she’d completely forgotten.
“Ms. Falzon, could you answer the question?” the judge prodded her gently, trying to keep the trial and her testimony moving along.
“I’m sorry, Your Honor.” She was completely exhausted. She’d been on the stand for hours. Their lunch break kept getting pushed back further and further. The prosecutor seemed relentless in his cross-examination, but she could almost feel it coming to a close, and she might, might, make it out alive.
It had been years since she’d testified as an expert witness, and she’d absolutely dreaded the day that she’d have to return to the courtroom. Carey was sure that any prosecutor, any good prosecutor, would bring up her absence to challenge her credibility. This one had yet to do so… He might have something to do with it.
“Can you repeat the question?” she asked the attorney contritely.
“Of course. How much were you paid by the defense for your expertise in crime scene analysis?”
“The defense didn’t pay me directly. I work for the private investigator, Mr. Canter, and he paid my fee of fifteen hundred dollars.”
“And how long have you worked for Mr. Canter?”
“Three years.” Her palms broke out in a cold sweat. She unfolded her hands and placed them on her thighs. The most important thing is to remain unemotional.
“Where did you work prior to being employed by Mr. Canter’s agency?” The prosecutor shuffled around some papers on his desk like the answer was right there, but maybe she could help him out.
“Objection, irrelevant,” the defense attorney called out calmly.
“It speaks to her credibility and expertise,” the prosecutor countered.
“Overruled.”
Unemotional. “I worked for Lakeside County,” she said, her gaze fixed on the set of hazel eyes at the back of the courtroom.
“For how long?”
“Eight years.”
“Ms. Falzon, why did you leave your position as Assistant Director of Lakeside County’s Crime Scene Investigation Unit?” He’d stepped around in front of the table and crossed his arms, impatiently waiting for her answer before he’d even finished asking the question.
She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. When she reopened them, he was still there, still staring, still the drawing her in. “I needed a change.”
“Let me rephrase. Was your separation from that position voluntary?”
“Objection. Relevance. Your Honor, we’ve established Ms. Falzon has a long history as a crime scene investigator.” The defense attorney waved his hand as if he was bored, but Carey knew it was an act. This was the moment they’d feared. Hopefully, his objection would be upheld.
The judge shook his head, unmoved. “Overruled. I’m sure there’s a point to the line of questioning.”
“I chose to leave the county.”
“Really? When did you resign?”
“July.” Keep your answers short. Answer only what is asked.
“When did you start working for Mr. Canter?”
“January.”
“You didn’t work for six months? What were you doing?” The prosecutor was still leaning against his table with a smug fucking look on his face. Carey wasn’t sure if she just wanted him to go for the throat and get this over with, or maybe if she danced just right, she could dodge the question he was building up to.
“Objection, Your Honor.” The defense attorney had amped up his attitude to faux exasperation. “Is it really relevant whether Ms. Falzon did crosswords or cross-country skiing for six months?”
“Sustained. Get to the point. Let’s wrap this up.”
Thank fuck.
“Sure, no problem.” The prosecutor sprung from his recline position, grabbed a piece of paper off his desk, and sauntered over to the witness stand. “Could you please read this internal memo from the District Attorney’s office sent to your Director the day you handed in your voluntary resignation?”
She glared at the prosecuting attorney as she took the paper from him. What she wanted to do was grab his head with both of her hands and slam it against the railing in front of her. She didn’t know him; she had nothing against him except that he was being a cutthroat motherfucker, and if she were a man, this memo wouldn’t mean shit.
“Objection. This memo was not turned over in discovery, Your Honor.”
“Ms. Falzon,” the judge said, with his hand outstretched.
She passed him the paper. Her cheeks were on fire. She ground her teeth so hard that her ears started to ring. So much for remaining emotionless. And all the while, she glared at the emerald green eyes at the back of the courtroom. He’d come here to watch her be destroyed, humiliated. He didn’t have the decency to stay away.
The three men whispered next to her, deciding her fate, and she just tapped her foot anxiously. See, because a court is the worst place to be with a secret—that seems obvious. But if she had to read this memo, she couldn’t explain it. She couldn’t defend herself. Unless the defense attorney rescued her on redirect, but his obligation wasn’t to her. It was to his innocent fucking client. Which was the only reason she was here in the first place.
She’d worked for Mr. Canter’s agency for three years. All he did was independent consulting for defense attorneys. Three years, and this was the first time she’d had to come to court to testify. In three years, she’d helped him comb over police reports and crime scene photos and lab reports to help innocent people mount an adequate defense… plus answered his phones, bought him coffee, picked up his dry cleaning—well, that last one was an exaggeration.
When she took the job, her one requirement was that she’d never have to step foot in the county courthouse again. Now this prosecutor wouldn’t accept her collaboration without her testimony. Probably because someone had tipped him off about what was in the damned memo.
Because the thing was, that memo? It wouldn’t hurt their case. It wouldn’t hurt her credibility. Shouldn’t. But now her credibility had been c
hallenged, and even if wasn’t read, the jury would have this nagging mistrust of her in the back of their heads. There were rules and things they have to disregard and blah, blah, blah, but it’s all a game. And he knew it.
So if she didn’t read the memo, there’d be an ominous shadow hanging over her testimony. If she did read the memo, there’d be a real shadow hanging over her testimony that shouldn’t affect her credibility. But it would.
You know who would walk away from that memo un-fucking-scathed? He would. Again.
CHAPTER TWO
______________
DAWSON
He’d almost given up on the idea that fate would bring them together again.
Almost.
Of course, his Assistant District Attorney had run his prosecution strategy by him before the trial, and Dawson knew he couldn’t say no. Honestly, he was shocked it had taken this long for his office to unearth this little piece of dirt on Carey. She and Canter had been destroying their cases left and right for years. One would have thought her termination—separation—would have come up sooner.
He couldn’t say no. He couldn’t put himself before the case. He wished he could save her, but he also knew that this would bring her into the courthouse. Finally. She would be within his reach.
Dawson had been waiting outside the courtroom, hoping to catch her after her testimony. Maybe take advantage of her exhaustion and get her to agree to a lunch or even a coffee. But her damned testimony carried on and on and he couldn’t take it anymore, knowing that she was right there. He hadn’t seen her in years, and she’d been the only woman on his mind.
Carey’s eyes found him the second he snuck in the back of the room. And if looks could kill… He’d be dead right now, but he’d die a happy man having her face be the last thing he saw.
Truth be told, he’d thought of destroying that memo a dozen times. Especially after he’d received the promotion to District Attorney. But he’d already jeopardized his career once and survived; he didn’t need to invite another scandal. Which probably made him quite the asshole and very deserving of her vitriol. But that wasn’t going to stop him from winning her back. Well, winning her, period.
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