by Stacy Green
“According to Mark, I assume.”
“I suppose,” Bobby said. “But then I remembered that argument. And I know that day stuck with Maddie.”
“What do you mean?” Nikki’s head felt heavy, and her chest tight.
“Maddie told me that after they went home, she heard her parents fighting about it again. She never told me details, but I suppose I wonder what was said. And if she ever pressed her parents about it. Maddie wasn’t the type to let things lie.”
“Thank you for the information.” Sweat beaded across Nikki’s brow. Her coat felt five pounds heavier. She needed to get out of this stuffy lobby. “I understand that you’re protesting, but can you keep this between us? Newport will stir things up and make it harder for us to find out what really happened to the girls.”
“I never thought of that. Of course, I won’t say anything.”
Nikki couldn’t stay in the hot lobby another minute. She shoved open the door and breathed in the cool air.
“Agent Hunt?” Bobby touched her shoulder. “Are you all right?”
“It’s just been a long day. Thank you for the information.”
“No problem,” he said. “Just please promise me you’ll find out who did this to Maddie and her friend.”
“I’m doing everything I can.” Nikki closed her eyes as a wave of vertigo struck.
Headlights bore down on them, accompanied by the low rumble of an engine. The truck screeched to a halt.
“What’s going on?”
Nikki’s eyes snapped open at Rory’s voice. She took a deep breath and focused on his face. Sunglasses held back his wavy hair, and he glared at Bobby.
“Bobby just came to make a statement regarding the case.” Nikki’s vision had cleared, but her legs were still weak, and her stomach suddenly ached with hunger. “I haven’t eaten since this morning. It just caught up with me.”
Bobby looked nervously at Rory. “Well, if you’re okay and don’t have any more questions for me—”
“I don’t,” Nikki said. “You’re free to go.”
He looked like he couldn’t leave quickly enough. “Have a good night.”
Bobby gave Rory a wide berth and hurried toward the lot’s exit. He lit up a cigarette and glanced back at them before he turned the corner and disappeared.
“You okay?” Rory asked.
“Fine.” She drew a ragged breath. “You’re late.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I got hung up at a job.”
“It happens.” Nikki tried to ignore the jittery feeling racing through her since Rory had arrived.
“You okay to drive?” The kindness in his voice made her throat tighten.
“Fine. But I thought you wanted to talk.”
He shook his head. “Yeah, but it’s getting late, and I’m sure you have family to get home to.”
Nikki zipped her coat back up. “I’m staying at the Comfort Inn and Suites for a few days. But I’m freezing, so can we take this somewhere else? Preferably some place that serves food.”
“There’s a bar across the river. Good pizza and wings. Total dive, but it won’t be busy.”
“Meaning you won’t be seen with me,” she said. “Makes sense.”
“I don’t care about being seen with you. I just don’t want you to deal with any more bullshit tonight, especially since those protesters are still around.”
“I appreciate that. I’ll follow you there.”
Sixteen
Rory hadn’t been exaggerating about the bar being a dive. Nikki had spent plenty of time in them during her wilder days, and the dark interior and dated red leather booth gave her a strange sense of comfort. Nikki ordered a club soda and mozzarella sticks. Not exactly brain food, but at least she’d have something in her stomach. Her skin felt clammy beneath her warm clothes. She’d already put her hair into a ponytail but sitting across from Rory and his unreadable eyes felt like standing beneath a spotlight. She wriggled out of the sweater and fanned the collar of her thin shirt.
Rory’s gaze swept over her. “Where’s the scar from?”
She’d forgotten the V-neck didn’t cover the pencil-thin scar below her collarbone. Three years ago, Nikki had foolishly gone alone to interview a potential witness of a second abduction, but the man was already dead by the time she arrived, and she’d been left with a scar of her time confronting the killer.
“It’s nothing,” she replied.
“How do you do it?” Rory sipped his beer.
“Do what?”
“This job. Your life is on the line every day. Not to mention the things you’ve probably seen.”
“After you find your parents murdered, you start to become desensitized,” Nikki said, and she realized the words came out harsher than she’d intended.
Rory looked down at the table, a lock of hair falling into his eyes. “Guess I set myself up for that.”
Nikki’s mozzarella sticks arrived, and she ate in silence for a few minutes. Why did she feel like the bad guy right now? Rory was lucky she’d even agreed to talk to him.
“You know that kid you were talking to was out protesting today.”
“He told me.”
“And you still spoke to him?”
Nikki dropped a half-eaten mozzarella stick onto her plate, irritated at the edge in his voice. “I was interviewing him. Why do I need to justify that?”
“You don’t.” His green eyes bore into hers, and a fresh wave of warmth spread through her body. She took another sip of club soda. Why did her brain get so muddled every time she tried to ask him a simple question? “You said you got tied up at a job. And then you show up while Bobby’s hanging around.”
He’d started to take another drink, but Rory slowly lowered the bottle. “What are you asking, exactly?”
“I’m just curious about your timing. Maybe you saw him show up to talk to me. And then you wait until the right moment.”
Rory stared at her for a few seconds, his expression more confused than angry. “For what, exactly?
“You knew he was a protestor. There’s a good chance the two of us argue. If you come in and break things up—save me, even—you might gain my trust,” she said. “Putting me in a position of owing you a favor might persuade me to look at Mark’s file.”
He leaned forward and folded his hands on the sticky table. “But I know you can take care of yourself. You carry a gun. You don’t need saving.”
His husky tone and unrelenting gaze made her feel light-headed. Did he turn this kind of charm on for everyone? “No, I don’t. But your timing—”
“I fired Ricky,” he said quietly. “I didn’t want to, but he admitted to me that he had been dealing at one of my job sites. He says he’s done, but I can’t allow that. I’ve worked too hard to risk my business and reputation.”
“You did the right thing.”
He peeled the label off the beer bottle, his gaze boring straight into her. “Nicole, I didn’t wait around to see what the protestor would do. I’m grateful you’re talking to me.”
“Fine.” Nikki believed him for now. “It’s the cop in me. I’m naturally suspicious.”
“So, what’s it like to be a mind reader?” Rory asked, still looking at her intently.
“We hate that term.” She felt bad being so blunt with Rory, unsure what he wanted to gain from making conversation with her. “We study behavioral patterns, in an attempt to understand how one piece of behavior predicts another and then another. It’s not mind reading.”
“And it works?” Rory asked, intrigued.
“It’s a tool. If it were a magic solution, Frost would be in prison.”
“You learned all of that from the FBI?”
“I have a master’s in psychology. I wouldn’t have made it into the academy without it, much less gone into profiling.”
“But you get why people do the things they do.” He said it flatly, and she realized where this conversation was going. That’s what they had come to do. Rory probably had lit
tle interest in her life outside of that.
“To an extent,” she said. “But that comes over the course of an investigation.”
Rory pushed his beer aside and folded his arms on the table. “But you’ve never looked at my brother’s case with a trained behavior analyst’s eye, have you?”
“No,” she said. “Do you really think I could be objective?”
“If you knew the things I do, yes. It would be hard, but you’re too good at your job not to be.”
“You overestimate my—”
“I’ve read all about you,” he said. “You’ve been featured on a couple of police shows, and your peers were kind of in awe with how well you read people.”
She flushed at his compliment, not knowing why she felt embarrassed by Rory saying this. She was used to being analyzed in the press for years, but it felt different coming from him. “I guess seeing violence like I did is both a curse and blessing. It made me hyper aware. Obsessed, almost. If I’d only understood him better, I would have realized what your brother was capable of.”
“You didn’t realize because he isn’t capable of it.”
Nikki admired Rory’s loyalty. “What did you want to talk to me about, specifically?”
He ran a hand through his hair and Nikki couldn’t help but watch, her eyes trained on the way it settled on his brow. “I’m absolutely positive that you would see things differently if you sat down with the case file. There are so many things that don’t add up.”
“D.A. Mathews told me that was the defense’s position.” Her stomach knotted. “Did you leak any of the new details about the case to Caitlin?”
“I would never do that,” he said. “It was probably someone from the Innocence Project.”
Should she really trust him? What if he was recording the conversation?
“Can I see your phone?” she asked.
“Why?” he replied, moving back slightly as if shocked by the question.
“I want to make sure you’re not recording me. I’m here to talk to you, not the attorneys.”
Rory looked irritated but slid the phone across the table. “It’s unlocked.”
He didn’t have a lot of apps, and voice memo wasn’t turned on.
“Thank you.” She slid the phone back to him. “Look, I know you want to believe your brother, and I’ve been told about the new DNA testing and evidence. But it doesn’t change what I remember. You know what happened earlier in the night from my testimony. John found Mark on top of me at that party. I woke up and Mark was hovering over me and I screamed.” Nikki hugged her arms to her chest to hide her balled fists.
“Is that how you remember it?” he asked softly.
She hesitated. “Yes.”
“There’s no way you don’t have blank spots. Mark says you were completely blasted and passed out. You didn’t go into that room to sleep if off.”
“I’m sure that’s his version. I never denied drinking, but I was told my sobriety was confirmed when I gave my statement. There’s nothing unreliable about what I saw.” She waited for him to mention the missing report, but he didn’t seem to know.
“You’re remembering what you’ve been told happened.”
“That’s not true,” Nikki said, anger growing inside of her.
“Nicole, how do you know Mark was going to rape you?”
“His hands were on my shoulders. He was straddling me.”
“And then John’s your hero,” he said dryly. “Do you remember fighting with him earlier that night?”
“Yes.” John always had to be the center of attention, especially hers. He didn’t like her mingling with other people at parties. Nikki usually complied, but that night she’d drunk enough that she didn’t care. John had pulled her into the hallway, and they’d argued. He’d gone on about her embarrassing him, how she’d been flirting with every guy. He usually succeeded in manipulating her into an apology when they argued, but her liquid courage had prevailed. She’d told him to shove it and gone for another drink. And then another. “We argued all the time.” Nikki shouldn’t be talking about John to anyone given her involvement in Madison’s case. “But I’m not sure what that has to do with Mark. He’s the one who killed my parents and waited around for me so he could finish what he’d started at the party.”
Rory’s eyes shined with sympathy. “I’m sorry for what you went through, but Mark didn’t do it. He’d come over to wait for you, yes. But then he heard the shot and went inside. That’s why the front door was broken into. He found your mom, but he was hit on the back of the head before he was able to get help—”
“Why didn’t the killer shoot him?” Nikki asked. “He’d already killed one person and a second one was dying. Shooting Mark would have been the only option.”
“The killer used your dad’s gun. The chamber was empty. He had to subdue Mark,” Rory said. “Mark was hit on the back of the head—that’s a documented injury.”
“From John kicking his ass earlier in the night.”
“His skull was cracked. The X-rays were taken two days after the murder, so the prosecutor got them ruled inadmissible. You’ll see them when you look at the case file.” Rory was leaning against the table again, his hands close enough to touch.
Nikki set back against the booth. “Then he smacked his head hard during the fight. It’s easier to crack a skull than you might think.”
“Was he bleeding from the back of the head when he left the party?”
Nikki didn’t reply; she couldn’t remember if she’d been inside the house or standing in the front yard when Mark ran off.
“He refused to go to the hospital and get stitches because he knew the cops were already looking for him,” Rory said. “He has the scar to prove it.”
“Then it must have been bleeding when he left.”
“There was no blood on the side of your house where he supposedly climbed into the window. None on the windowsill. They did find his blood in your parents’ room, several feet from the bed. He was knocked out, his skull cracked and bled on the floor. He came to and went downstairs looking for a phone. You came home. He panicked and almost ran. But he didn’t know if the killer was still inside, so he went upstairs to get you.”
So now Mark was actually her knight in shining armor. “His memory’s awfully good for someone hit hard enough for the skull to crack.”
“He didn’t remember all the details right away, but it didn’t matter because Hardin made up his mind the minute you told your story. Getting even with Mark fell right into his lap.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Mark was having a relationship with Hardin’s wife.”
Bitter stomach acid rose in Nikki’s throat; she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “What?”
“She was only a few years older than him. He worked for them during the summer, cutting their grass and doing odds and ends. She was lonely, I guess. Mark said she invited him in to cool off, and one day, things went too far. It went on for months, but Hardin caught them after a while.”
“That is—” She couldn’t get the words out.
“Relevant,” Rory said. “Hardin busted Mark for possession of weed two days later—weed that Mark had never seen. Mark spent two weeks in jail. Few months later, he’s in the wrong place at the wrong time and Hardin’s the officer in charge. You honestly think he’s going to be impartial?”
“Hardin wasn’t the only cop…” Nikki’s voice faltered. Someone else had collected the evidence, which meant Hardin hadn’t worked the case alone. “Of course Mark’s going to say all of this, but it doesn’t mean you should believe him,” Nikki said.
“Hardin and Marie got divorced six years ago. She confirmed everything. If you read the case file, you’ll see why Patsy Moran believes Mark.”
Nikki’s head spun. She was able to tell herself the new evidence was a mistake, that she was drug tested, that her own testimony was reliable. But she’d never considered any of these motivations before. Had Ha
rdin really railroaded Mark Todd for revenge? “Mark was there. No one else had motive.”
“Hardin never looked for anyone. And that’s not all—”
“I’ve heard enough.” Nikki needed space to think and she needed to focus on Kaylee and Madison. This wasn’t why she’d come back to Stillwater, and she wasn’t going to let anyone else be killed because she couldn’t handle her emotions. She put a ten-dollar bill on the table and stood. “I need to get some rest. I have the double homicide of two teenaged girls to focus on. I can’t be distracted, I’m sorry.” She hurried out of the bar, fighting tears.
“Nicole, wait.”
She didn’t stop walking, but Rory’s long legs easily surpassed her stride and blocked her path.
“Why are you telling me all of this, Rory? If you believe Mark’s innocent, then you should hate me, and it doesn’t matter if I’m aware of all of this or not. I can handle you hating me.” Much better than she could handle his kindness.
“Maybe I’m weak. That’s what Newport said when I refused her interview about your being back in town.” Rory stepped into her space, close enough that she could smell the sweet scent of his laundry powder. “You were a traumatized kid. When it comes out that the DNA doesn’t match Mark, you’ll be the scapegoat. You aren’t the bad guy. You lost your parents. Hardin and anyone who helped him screw my brother are the ones who need to be held accountable. And they will be. And you forgot your coat.”
“Thank you.” Nikki looked up into his green eyes. He was taller than she’d realized. She pulled her coat on and walked to her jeep.
“Drive safe,” Rory said.
She waved her hand without looking back. The jeep’s cold engine sputtered to life. Nikki didn’t wait for it to warm up, driving too fast out of the parking lot, finally letting the tears fall.
Seventeen
Nikki gave up on sleeping around 3:00 a.m. Between her dreams and everything Rory had said, her exhausted brain wasn’t sure what it actually remembered.
She made a pot of coffee and sat down at the little table next to the hotel window. Miller planned on searching Hanson’s house this morning, but she didn’t think he’d find anything. He’d also said Hanson’s mistress had backed his alibi, and St. Paul police confirmed the two of them had been at the hotel the afternoon the girls disappeared.