Loyalty Under Fire (Operation: Hot Spot Book 3)

by Trish McCallan

  “I saw him. At the police station. But we didn’t talk about what happened that night.” She hesitated before asking slowly, “I take it nobody bothered to tell him I’d been drugged?”

  “I don’t think so.” Adele winced. “I didn’t. And Adam sure as hell wouldn’t.”

  No… Adam wouldn’t have owned up to it. Her brother had been far too determined to break them up. She still didn’t know why. Sure, Lena had wanted Rio for Adele, and Adele had wanted Rio for herself, but what had Adam gained by deliberately breaking them up?

  It had never made sense.

  At first she’d thought Rio would track her down once he found out how they’d been set up, if for no other reason than to apologize for turning his back on her at that party and leaving her alone and vulnerable.

  Except he’d never reached out to her. Either he hadn’t found out… or the circumstances behind what he’d seen that night hadn’t mattered to him.

  “I don’t think Rio and Adam have much to do with each other anymore,” Adele said, wandering closer to the window. “Drifted apart, I guess. He doesn’t come out to the house anymore. Not since Rosaria died.”

  “His grandmother died?” Becca repeated, only to mentally smack herself. She wasn’t interested in Rio’s history, dammit. That bridge had blown up long ago.

  “Yes, she died a couple of years after you took off. Cancer. He left the SEALs to take care of her.”

  Of course he had. She wrestled back the bitterness. He’d refused to leave SEAL Team 7 when she’d asked him to. But he’d left the team for his grandmother. But then he’d been devoted to his grandmother. While Becca… well, clearly she had been nothing more to him than a sexual convenience.

  “What does he look like now?” Adele asked, turning from the window. “He was always so good-looking.”

  Flat blue-gray eyes and a square, chiseled face flashed through her mind. “He looks the same.”

  Only better. Unfortunately.

  Adele nodded slightly, a frown wrinkling her tight brow. She hesitated and took a deep breath. “Do you want me to talk to him? Tell him what really happened at that party? Maybe knowing you weren’t cheating on him will affect his attitude toward you now. Maybe he’ll be more willing to check into your mom’s case.”

  “No. I’m hiring a private investigator.” If Rio allowed a decade-old grudge to get in the way of doing his job, she could do without his help anyway.

  “Okay.” Adele stood there for a moment, staring out over the bay, her shoulders drawing tighter with each second of silence. “Can you forgive me? I’m so sorry. I really am. I regret that night more than you could imagine.”

  “I don’t know,” Becca answered honestly, watching the flinch twitch through her half sister’s emaciated frame. What Adele and Adam had done that night had been unforgivable.

  She expected such obnoxious behavior from her half brother. Adele though, Adele had been her friend. Even amid the tension that Rio’s arrival had shoved between them, she’d still trusted her. If Adam had handed her that Diet Pepsi, she never would have taken a sip. But she’d trusted Adele, at least until she’d woken up the next morning.

  “Jesus, Adele. You must have known how dangerous giving me that drink was. God knows what would have happened if Kenny hadn’t stepped in—” She broke off to shake her head. “What was in that thing anyway? I still don’t remember anything that happened that night.”

  Adele caught her bottom lip with her teeth. “I don’t know. Adam just handed me the can and said to make sure you drank it.”

  “But you knew what it would do to me.” There was no doubt of that in Becca’s mind. The guilt had been plastered all over Adele’s face the next morning.

  “I knew,” Adele said on a shuddering breath. “I honestly don’t understand how I could have gone through with it. I’ve replayed that night over and over in my mind, and I’m horrified every time.” She broke off to swallow hard. “Mother was constantly on me to make a play for Rio. And then Adam came along with this surefire plan to make sure you two stayed broken up. I just didn’t stop to think.”

  Becca eyed her visitor. From her appearance, something was haunting Adele, maybe a portion of her stress was regret over her actions that night. Some of the petrified anger toward her half sister softened. Adele hadn’t been any happier in that house than Becca had been. Lena had wielded her love as a club. Withholding her affection to force Adele into line or showering Adele with endearments whenever Lena got her way. The woman had been a master at manipulating her family.

  Adele had spent as many nights crying into her pillow as Becca had spent crying into hers. What a miserable pair they’d made.

  “But I never wanted anything bad to happen to you, Becca. I hope you know that. That’s why I asked Kenny to keep an eye on you and make sure nobody tried to take advantage of you while you were out of it.”

  That was news to Becca. “You asked Kenny to take care of me?”

  “Yeah.” Adele’s gaze flitted to Becca’s face and then away. “I told him you’d had too much to drink. Once Rio had come and gone, Kenny and I took you home and put you to bed.”

  “Adam left that part out of his account,” Becca said dryly. “I thought I’d gotten lucky with Kenny being at the party.”

  She knew the basics of that night from Adam’s self-satisfied rundown the next morning. How Rio had walked in, saw her making out with Kenny, and walked back out again. She hadn’t believed Adam. Not at first anyway. She’d been so certain Rio wouldn’t just leave her there. Apparently she’d had more faith in Rio than Rio had had in her.

  Yes, she’d argued with him earlier. But he must have realized she wouldn’t turn to some other guy less than four hours later? Surely he’d known her better than that? He must have known something was wrong.

  When her calls to him had gone unanswered, it had become crystal clear that either he hadn’t known her at all… or he hadn’t cared.

  “I know I have a lot to make up for. And I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t want to have anything to do with me.” Adele swallowed, following it up with a heavy sigh. She closed her eyes, her breathing hitchy. “But I’ve missed you.”

  Becca didn’t doubt that. The decade-old calcified rage within her softened even more as suppressed memories trickled up. Adele had been such a cowed teenager, tormented by her sociopathic brother and completely beneath her mother’s thumb. She’d been isolated, friendless. Lena had made sure of that. Prior to Becca’s arrival, she’d had no one to confide in. No one to run to for comfort when Adam or her mother were particularly nasty.

  She’d been an incredibly lonely and anxious girl.

  Considering her brittle physical exterior and the anxiety brimming in her eyes now, not much had changed.

  Sighing, Becca pinched the bridge of her nose as sympathy whittled away at the resentment. “I don’t suppose it would hurt to remain in touch.”

  It was an easy compromise considering Becca lived in Olympia and Adele in San Diego. With twelve hundred miles between them, she wouldn’t be spending any physical time with her half sister anyway. At the most, she’d be out a few hours of phone time every month.

  Adele’s eyes brightened. “That would be so wonderful! Thank you! I promise, you won’t regret giving me another chance.”

  With no clue how to verbally respond to that heartfelt exclamation, Becca simply nodded.

  “How long will you be in town?” Animation lit Adele’s face, and some of the anxiety disappeared from her eyes. “Maybe you can come to dinner tomorrow night.”

  Before Becca had a chance to decline the invitation—she wasn’t quite ready to break bread with the woman who’d drugged her—Adele was talking again.

  “Maybe you could fly out for the wedding? It’s too late to include you in the wedding party, but I’d love to have you at the ceremony and reception.”

  Wedding?

  “Who’s getting married?” Becca asked and watched the animation on Adele’s face drain into
dread.

  “Why, I am, silly,” Adele said, her voice climbing shrilly.

  Oh dear…

  From the barely contained hysteria in her half sister’s voice, there were some serious nuptial nerves at work here. Obviously, most of Adele’s stress was wedding related.

  “You’re getting married? Congratulations!” Becca tried for enthusiasm but could hear the worry in her tone.

  “Thanks,” Adele said, her expression more terrified than thankful. “He’s a friend of mother’s.”

  He? No name, just he? And the wedding, not my wedding? The wrongness tugged at her.

  Oh hell…

  She could feel it happening. The Hart family’s soul-sucking dynamic was trying to drag her off the deep end again.

  Chapter Four

  Six hours after Becca’s curvy little ass stalked out of interview one, Rio settled the receiver of his desk phone back in its cradle.

  Son of a bitch…

  This news put a hell of a wrinkle in his day. After checking the database and finding no record of the Blaine suicide, he’d descended into the bowels of the station to search for the hard copies. Only there was no record of the case files in storage either.

  Both the computer file and the hard copy were missing?

  Yeah, that’s not shady as hell.

  By the time he’d called the medical examiner’s office, suspicion was rising fast. His conversation with Nina Cabrera jacked those misgivings into the stratosphere.

  Rio rubbed the back of his head, a scowl spreading across his face. What were the odds that the computer file, hard copies, autopsy report, and intake paperwork would all go missing? Not very likely, those were the damn odds. The data file and hard copies—okay maybe—sometimes files were misplaced or misnamed. But that wouldn’t account for the missing autopsy report and intake papers. Not when the woman who ran the medical examiner’s department was an organizational ninja. There was no fucking way the report and intake papers would have vanished beneath Nina Cabrera’s supervision. Not unless someone had made certain they disappeared.

  Sure, evidence went missing off and on, most of the time thanks to the human factor, and he knew for a fact that human error was alive and thriving in San Diego but not within Nina Cabrera’s jurisdiction.

  He scrubbed a hand down his face. Fuck, this news reeked. Nina had never even seen the autopsy report. It had been handled directly by Henderson, the chief ME back then. That alone was enough to raise eyebrows. Autopsies were almost always handled by assistant medical examiners. Add in the fact that Henderson had never turned the report or intake paperwork over for filing and that it had disappeared at some point since.

  All of which was suspicious as fuck.

  He’d check with the evidence locker, see if anything from the case still existed. During the beginning of an investigation, potential suicides were treated as homicides. Evidence would have been collected in Rachel Blaine’s case—the victim’s clothing, the rope from the knot down, any pertinent fibers or hair or particles. But once her COD was determined to be self-inflicted, the accumulated evidence had probably been discarded. It was extremely unlikely that any of it remained, but hell—he’d do his due diligence and check.

  A quick call to Phil, the day shift evidence officer, was enough to sink that faint hope. The Blaine boxes had been tossed as soon as the COD had been established.

  He glanced thoughtfully toward Fuentes’s office. His CO had been working cases as a plainclothes back then. Maybe he remembered who had caught the case; talking to the lead detective would be the obvious place to start.

  Fuentes’s office door was open. The sound of the police scanner the captain obsessively listened to drifted into the bull pen on bursts of nasal voices and static. Fuentes was a straight arrow. He put the job before politics and looked out for the men and women beneath his command. It was enough to float him some slack for his weird fixation with the scanner and the collection of plants taking over his windowsill.

  Rio gave the glass a light rap and waited for his CO to turn from the window ledge and the leafy plant he was messing with.

  “What’s up?” Fuentes asked.

  Instead of facing Rio, he bent to pick up the small garbage pail next to his desk. Returning to the window, he used the side of his hand to brush a pile of dried leaves into the trash can.

  Rio closed the door behind him, and the captain turned to face him with an enquiring look in his dark brown eyes. After detouring to the bookcase behind his desk to turn the scanner off, he stared at Rio with raised eyebrows.

  “I was asked to look into a closed case. Rachel Blaine. A suicide.”

  “I heard.” Fuentes’s brown eyes narrowed. “She used to be the mayor’s side piece. Or so the rumor mill claimed. Why the relook?”

  “The daughter found the victim’s diary, which included a fetal ultrasound. She’s certain her mother was pregnant and that the pregnancy would have prevented her from suiciding. She thinks her mother was murdered.”

  “I don’t remember any talk of her being pregnant during the investigation.” Fuentes shook his head, his frown a little heavier. A distant look entered his eyes as though he were remembering back. “Was she?”

  “That’s the problem.” Rio kept his tone neutral. “The autopsy report is missing as are the case files in both the database and hard storage.”

  Fuentes froze, and then his face hardened. “Missing? Both sets of case files? And Nina can’t locate the autopsy report?”

  “Nina never got it. Henderson took care of the autopsy personally, even refused an assistant. He never handed the report over for upload to the computer system. Nor was there ever a hard copy filed.”

  “Why? Did she say?”

  From Fuentes’s grim expression, Rio wasn’t the only one envisioning the shit storm of accusations about conspiracies and police obstruction that was about to descend on them.

  “He told her he was taking precautions because of the victim and her previous connections to the mayor. Apparently the press was all over the case. He didn’t want details from the reports leaking out before the investigation was complete.”

  “He was right about that,” Fuentes said slowly, some of the anger draining from his face. “Reporters were everywhere, jumping on anyone who stepped out the precinct door. It was a complete clusterfuck.”

  From the relief ghosting across the captain’s face, he obviously found Henderson’s excuse plausible. Rio wasn’t so sure. And what about the missing case files?

  “Who ran the investigation?” Maybe the detective who’d caught the Blaine death would remember what the autopsy report had revealed.

  “Colin Foster.” Fuentes’s voice and face went flat.

  Ah hell… Rio groaned internally. Not only had Foster been a lazy detective more interested in closing his cases than investigating the facts, he’d also died the year after Rio had joined SDPD. Rio could easily imagine Foster forgetting to hand the file over for uploading to the database and/or even losing the paperwork altogether. The guy had been a walking disaster.

  He frowned, the suspicion digging in a little deeper. If one wanted to make certain a case was never properly investigated, they’d give it to someone like Colin Foster.

  “What about the daughter,” his CO asked slowly, his forehead wrinkling. “If there really was a child on the way, does she know who the father was?”

  “She’s certain the father was Aaron Hart,” Rio said quietly.

  Fuentes swore softly, his gaze sharpening. “Moyer was chief back then. He, Henderson, and Hart were golfing buddies. Longtime friends.”

  “If Rachel Blaine was pregnant and Hart was the father, would Moyer and Henderson have suppressed the evidence?” Rio asked.

  If Rebecca’s mother had been carrying Hart’s second child, he’d probably want to hide that fact. The first time the news had broken of Hart’s illicit relationship with Rachel Blaine and the child it had produced, he’d come close to losing his career and marriage. Without
doubt, a second foray into that landmine would have had explosive consequences.

  As for Moyer… he could personally attest to Chief Moyer’s willingness to pull strings for Aaron Hart. Although he hadn’t discovered it until years later, his application to the San Diego Police Department had been personally expedited by Chief Moyer, who’d approved the application during the middle of a hiring freeze as a courtesy to Mayor Hart. Hart had requested Rio’s hiring as a favor to Rio’s grandmother. Without the interference of the two men, it would have been years before Rio had been hired by the SDPD.

  But approving a departmental hire was a far cry from suppressing evidence and burying a possible murder.

  “I don’t know.” Fuentes gave a slow shake of his head. “If he was involved, he couldn’t have done it alone. Henderson and Foster would have to be involved too.” The captain’s grimace said it all. “Talk to the daughter. Find out who her mother’s friends were. Who she worked with. Hell, who her hairdresser was. If she was pregnant, someone would know. I’ll talk to Moyer and Dr. Henderson and get a team to comb through the database and storage. Maybe we’ll get lucky and the files will show up.”

  Rio nodded and turned toward the door.

  “Addario.” Fuentes’s grim voice echoed in the room. “Not a word of this to anyone.”

  Rio nodded as he opened the door. Next order of business was to track down Becca. Find out everything she knew about her mother’s friends and what she remembered about the Hopewell estate. Had her mother been Hopewell’s sole employee? Or had other employees shared the house and grounds with them?

  If Rachel Blaine had been pregnant, she must have confided her condition in someone.

  Of course, interviewing Rebecca again meant… well, seeing her… spending time with her. Something his accelerating heart and respiration found far too titillating. He’d hoped to avoid a second encounter, hoped to starve this unwelcome attraction.

  Instead, he was walking right back into the fire.