Dark Legacy: (Dark Falls, CO Romantic Thriller Book 3)

by Trish McCallan

  He was wrong. She had plenty to be sorry for. His sister, for starters.

  She hadn’t understood that kind of loss back then. The way it rocked one’s world, and drew down the darkness of despair.

  Oh, intellectually she’d realized he was grieving and that Rayne’s death had hit him hard. But emotionally…emotionally she hadn’t had a clue. She hadn’t felt the hollowness that death brought. The emptiness. The sense of aloneness, as though you were the very last person in the world.

  But then she hadn’t experienced how hideously, isolating death was. Not back then, anyway.

  She understood it now though.

  She’d felt that emptiness at her mother’s funeral, and even more so at her father’s death. Something had ruptured both times. Like there had been some kind of thin, intangible thread that connected her to the universe. And when that had been cut, she started drifting, no anchor in sight. Alone and vulnerable.

  But she’d had Ashley, a third thread. A third anchor.

  Only now that anchor had been cut. And she was drifting again. Alone.

  While she might not have lost Ashley to death, it felt like she had. It felt like her little sister was gone. Vanished. Swallowed by fourteen years of lies. Of deceit. Of betrayal.

  Ashley hadn’t just betrayed their father when she turned him into the cops. She’d betrayed Ariel too. Her sister had taken so much from her with that ill-advised phone call. She’d stolen Ariel’s father, her college fund, even their mother, who succumbed to pneumonia, brought on by the common cold.

  Or at least that’s what the death report said. Ariel knew better. Her mother had died of heartache and stress.

  Ariel wasn’t even sure if her mother had died believing that her husband was innocent.

  She wasn’t aware she was crying until dampness touched her cheek. She pulled back in confusion and discovered her tears had soaked Rhys’s shirt.

  Man…she hated crying.

  “Sorry.” Her voice was gruff, still clogged with tears. Sitting up, she scrubbed at her wet cheeks with her palms.

  When she tried to squirm away, he tightened his hold, cradling her even closer to his chest. She considered struggling, fighting for her independence, but that was the last battle she wanted to win right now. She wanted to be cuddled, to be soothed, to feel his warmth surrounding her and his heartbeat against her ear.

  So she sighed, nuzzled against him, and listened to the slow, steady pounding of his heart. The grief eased, along with that awful churn of volcanic fury. When her sister’s betrayal tried to force itself into her thoughts, she blocked the memory from her mind.

  There would be time for decisions later, when the hurt wasn’t as raw, and the betrayal so fresh. But at the moment…she sighed…relaxing against him…at the moment she was exactly where she needed to be, with the man she needed to be with.

  That was enough for now.

  For a long time, a very long time, she simply laid there against him, soaking in his heat and his silence and the ease between them. It was the strangest sensation, this sense of rightness, as though they’d been doing this forever, as though her body and mind had misplaced those lost fourteen years.

  But eventually the aching started, the slow sultry flush to her flesh. Her skin prickled. Her blood heated. Her breathing turned raspy and raw. She shifted on his lap, rubbing herself against the firm ridge of flesh pressing against her ass.

  “Jesus, Arie. We need to stop. Now.” His tone held reluctance, but his words were guttural, thick with need.

  To hell with that…

  She rubbed herself against his erection again. And because he’d told her to stop, she did it a third time for good measure. When a deep, rumbling groan broke from him, she smiled. He sounded hungry. She knew just the thing to satisfy his appetite.

  Shifting again, she stretched up and pressed her lips against the hollow of his throat and suckled. His entire body jolted as her mouth went to work. The involuntary spasm, was followed by total rigidity.

  He tasted salty, and earthy, and intrinsically male. She drew that taste deep inside her, along with the musky scent of his skin, and the freshness of the shampoo and soap he’d used. Her mind went hazy. The combination of his taste and scent acted like an accelerant.

  Whoosh

  Her desire exploded. She crawled forward, pressing herself as hard against him as she could.

  Urgent hands locked around her hips, and this time he did the rubbing, shifting her back and forth across his erection.

  She’d hadn’t thought he could get any bigger or harder down there.

  Good lord had she ever been wrong.

  Fingers slid into her hair to cradle her skull. And he titled her head up. She let go of his throat to accept his mouth—

  “Earth to Rhys. Earth to Ariel.” An amused male voice called from the entrance to the sitting room. “You two might want to dial that back a bit. While I can get into a good skin flick every now and again, I’m not much of a live action kind of guy. At least when I’m not a participant.”

  Three days later, during the middle of the afternoon, Rhys climbed into the Volvo the boss had procured and drove away from their current safe house.

  The house Scanlon had found for them offered plenty of favorable conditions, the chief of which was the fact nobody could tie it to the Dark Falls Police Department, or Rhys, or Mason.

  But it had one big glaring fault too. There was no residential phone on the premises. The owner probably had a cell phone and didn’t see the benefit of paying for two amenities that basically provided the same service. Hell, he knew plenty of people who were controlling costs by cutting double expenditures out of their monthly budget. Times were tough and few people these days had the money to burn on both a cell and land line.

  No big deal…normally.

  It only became a big deal when there were no cell phones available on the property either. Which was the situation Rhys found himself in.

  Before heading off in the car the boss had procured for them, they’d handed their phones over to the captain. The risks associated with keeping their cells on them had outweighed any benefit. It was too easy to track a cell phone, particularly if you were a cop.

  And there was little doubt in Rhys’s mind that their perp was a cop.

  Of course, at the time he’d handed his cell over, it hadn’t occurred to him that the house would be technology vacant. It should have occurred to him. But it hadn’t. So now they were totally cut off from Scanlon and the rest of the Major Crimes team. Being adrift from his unit was a mixed blessing. While their perp, if he was a Major Crimes detective, couldn’t find them, there was no support system in place either. Plus, he was out of the informational loop.

  The lack of a computer or phone meant daily check-ins with the boss were handled off site, at a payphone a couple miles away. Mason had taken the first two check ins, leaving Rhys alone to guard Ariel. Rhys considered Mason’s willingness to leave him alone with Ariel after witnessing that carnal display in the armchair a serious character flaw in his buddy. But he’d accepted the arrangement, because the thought of trusting anyone other than himself to protect the woman he loved was—

  Whoa…

  Rhys’s thoughts splintered. His foot instinctively slammed down on the brake, as though that would put a stop to his runaway thoughts. He glanced in the rearview mirror and relaxed. Thankfully. there was no one behind him.

  Loved?

  He examined the thought, tested the strength of the emotion, only to find the certainty of his feelings for her sat solid, and unyielding inside him.

  Of course he loved her, he’d always loved her. He’d fallen in love with her at first sight, back in the halls of their high school, and he’d never fallen back out. Grief and rage had obscured those feeling fourteen years ago. But something in him had withered without her in his life. The world had been darker. His life bleaker. Nothing had mattered except the job.

  And then she’d returned, and his world had br
ightened again.

  Nobody was going to take her away from him again. Nobody.

  And that included this maniac who was after her—whether it was the X-Factor Killer or not.

  Rhys frowned, his thoughts shifting to the silver etchings on the gun safe’s casing. He’d quietly pulled Scanlon aside at the apartment, while the lab tech was processing the letter their perp had hand delivered to Ariel. The cap had promised to look into the lab results, as well as the technician who’d processed the evidence. She’d also told him to keep his suspicions to himself.

  He had, which was why he was driving to the pay phone today instead of Mason.

  It had been three days. Scanlon should know something by now.

  He spied a pay phone along the wall of a mini-mart, but kept driving. From Mason’s description, this looked like one of the phones his partner had used earlier. They’d decided to use a fresh phone each day. If their perp was monitoring Scanlon’s phone, and had contacts in the phone company—which most of the detectives in Major Crimes did—then he could potentially locate the pay phones they were using and stake the phones out.

  What he couldn’t do, unless he was psychic, was locate a phone they hadn’t used yet.

  The strategy was solid, Rhys knew that, but it would be much easier to deploy if pay phones hadn’t become obsolete. It took him forever to find one that Mason hadn’t described. This particular pay phone was next to a bus stopped. Rhys parked the Volvo across the street and jogged over to the phone, his hands already digging into his pockets for spare change.

  Scanlon answered on the first ring.

  “Captain,” Rhys said, immediately diving into his questions. “Any word on the gun safe lock?”

  She’d already updated Mason on the result from the testing on the new letter. No fingerprints. The paper and envelope matched those sent to Rhys, and both were freely available in just about every store in town. In other words, a big fat dead end.

  The results from the investigation into the condo break in had been more of the same—nada.

  Their perp was a fucking ghost.

  “Yeah, about that.” Scanlon’s voice was flat, tight, which shoved a prickle down Rhys’s spine. She’d found something.

  “The technician who pulled and processed the sample was Jeremy Zimmerman.”

  Rhys froze, the name exploding in his ears. Son of a bitch. “Well that isn’t suspicious at all.”

  Zimmerman had been killed during a home burglary. Fuck, Rhys had gone to the guy’s funeral. He’d just entered the Dark Falls Police force back then, but he knew the guy enough to say hi. Besides, Zimmerman had been one of them, which meant the department showed up in mass to offer support. Not to the dead. To the family.

  “Was that homicide ever cleared?” He frowned, and scanned the street, relaxing to find it empty and quiet.

  “No.” The sound of Scanlon’s voice faded, as though she’d turned her head away from the phone, but the words still carried clearly to his ears. “And believe me, every avenue of investigation was explored.”

  He wasn’t surprised, he wouldn’t have expected anything less.

  “The timing is off if you’re thinking the X-Factor Killer got to him,” Rhys offered. “Zimmerman was murdered years after Hamilton went to prison. If he had altered the lab report, it wouldn’t have mattered by then. The likelihood of anyone discovering it had diminished considerably.”

  “True.” But Scanlon’s voice didn’t sound relieved, it sounded thoughtful. “If he did fabricate the reports, though. He probably did it for money. That kind of morality lends itself to blackmail. Maybe the killer was tired of paying.”

  Rhys absently nodded.

  The captain’s voice picked up tempo. “Regardless, I sent Cross down to offsite storage to pull more samples. She’s doing the testing on the downlow. This needs to stay between the three of us, got it?”

  “Yes Ma’am.” He understood and agreed with the secrecy. Zimmerman had been one of their own. Before destroying the guy’s reputation, they needed to make damn certain the report he’d written actually had been fabricated. “Have you heard anything back from Cross yet?”

  “Not yet. But I’ve been swamped. Between those damn fires and our homicide and now this—” She broke off with a sigh. “Call her, ask for an update. She knows you’re in the loop.”

  As soon as he hung up, he called the lab. The minutes ticked by as he waited for Cross to come to the phone. He shifted restlessly, the urge to return to the house and Ariel digging in.

  She was fine. Mason was with her. If his partner had wanted to hurt her, he’d had plenty of opportunity to do so before now. Mason wasn’t a threat.

  “Detective Evans,” Erica Cross said, in her slow southern drawl. “Was wondering when you’d be calling. And to answer the question I can hear hovering on your tongue. No. The results aren’t back yet. I’m expecting them later this afternoon.”

  Damn. Rhys scowled, frustration rising. It would have been nice to get at least one of his questions answered. Of course there were other questions he could ask, and the opportunity was ripe for the asking. “How long have you been with the crime lab, Erica.”

  “Long enough,” her voice sounded amused. “And yes. I knew Jeremy. I worked with him.”

  Well that had expediated things. He grinned slightly. The lady didn’t waste time. “What was he like? When you think of him, does anything jump out as unusual?”

  “You mean did he spend money, like it was going out of style?”

  Rhys relaxed, so the captain had shared her concerns with Cross. He hadn’t been sure how much Erica knew. “Yeah, stuff like that.”

  “Nah. I didn’t know him well. He kept to himself. Wasn’t really friendly.”

  Damn. Rhys grimaced. Guess he wouldn’t be getting any of his questions answered there, either.

  “Okay. I’ll check back tomorrow.” Hopefully she’d have some answers for him by then.

  “Or…I can call you when the results come in.”

  He cocked his head, searching for any subterfuge in the offer. But her voice sounded absent, rather than calculating—as though she were multitasking—and hell, the offer was normal. He would have jumped at it under other circumstances.

  “I’ll call,” he said, he said without explaining the circumstances of his missing phone.

  “Whatever floats your boat.” She didn’t sound like she cared one way or another. Before he had a chance to hang up and rush back to Ariel, she started talking again. “I can’t believe Patel’s still on the job. You guys should be stomping on that shit. Forcing him down.”

  What the hell?

  Rhys pulled the phone from his ear, to stare at it quizzically. While the detective might be a pain in the ass sometimes, and getting close to retirement, he was mentally sharp. “He’s still got a few good years left. Can’t force him to retire.”

  With a frown, Rhys rubbed at the sudden tight band around his forehead…although, if Patel was the cop they were looking for…and God knows he fit the profile—

  “Oh my God.” Erica’s voice sharpened with shock. “You guys don’t know?”

  Rhys shook his head in confusion. This conversation had certainly taken a hard twist. “Know what?”

  “He’s sick. Cancer. He goes to the same oncologist as my mom. When mom found out he worked in Major Crimes, she told me about him. It doesn’t sound like he’s got much longer. Why in the world he’d want to spend what time he’s got left on the job—” Her voice stopped

  Everything in Rhys stilled. The world seemed to hush around him. “What makes you think he doesn’t have much longer?”

  “Mom ran into him. Says he has the smell of death. It’s distinct, you know? Kind of sickly—”

  Jesus Christ.

  He hung up and dialed Scanlon’s number, while he stared at his shaking fingers. Everything started falling in place. The cologne he covered himself in, the coughing, the sudden return to killing after a fourteen year hiatus.

&nbs
p; Scanlan’s voice came over the line. “Did Cross—”

  “It’s Patel.” He broke in.

  Just as Ariel had suspected…no, just as Ariel had claimed.

  “What?” At first Scanlon’s voice was confused. But it quickly climbed, sharp and shrill. “What?” She said again, as though she didn’t want to believe the news.

  “It’s Patel.” Rhys said again, his voice urgent. “He’s our guy.”

  “What evidence do you have to back this up?” Scanlon asked, her tone tight, deadly.

  “He’s dying. Cancer. Cross’s mother shares an oncologist with him. She mentioned a smell.” He pushed the words out as fast as he could.

  “Sickly sweet.” Scanlon said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Shit.” Turbulent silence rolled down the line. “The cologne…”

  “Yeah,” he said again. The cap was putting it together now.

  Her voice turned brisk, commanding. “Stay put until we have him in custody. I’ll come get you.”

  Sounded good to him. He hung up without bothering to respond, and scanned the street before racing for the Volvo. As he gunned the engine and shot out into the street, one thought kept rolling through his mind.

  Ariel had been right…again…she’d been right about everything.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Ariel was curled up in the “porn chair” as Mason had taken to calling it. A book, one from the overflowing shelves behind her, sat unread in her lap. While their unaware hostess was a big time reader, her literary choices didn’t mesh well with Ariel’s own. The shelves were full of fiction—best sellers, mysteries, thrillers, even a romance or two.

  Not the kind of books Ariel gravitated to, which was almost exclusively non-fiction categorizing criminal behavior, or criminal profiling, or true accounts of monstrous acts of violence.

  Frowning, she closed the book. Her reading preferences were a clear indication of how obsessed she’d become with all things criminal. Maybe it was time she took a step back. Maybe it was even time she got a life. She nestled into the armchair with a smile, memories of Rhys playing through her mind.