Loyalty Under Fire (Operation: Hot Spot Book 3)

by Trish McCallan

  Then they were through the red arch and converging on the nursing home’s glass doors. The men swept her through the entrance and into the lobby. Instantly the cluster of men surrounding her slowed and stepped to the side. Tram jogged toward the receptionist desk, which was a waist-high blue half circle at the back of the room.

  After a brief discussion with the woman manning the desk, he jogged back again.

  “Room 118.” Tram started down the hallway in front of them.

  Becca followed behind, Rio at her side. His hand was still on her elbow… had he forgotten about it? The warmth of his touch was doing annoying things to her pulse and breathing. Heck even her skin was getting in on the act, sending chills down her spine and perspiration across her palms. Time to nip this crap in the bud. She took a long step to the side, relaxing as his hand fell away.

  He shot her a questioning glance, which she ignored.

  Luckily, room 118 was three doors down the hall. Tag and Tram took up positions against the wall on either side of the door as Becca and Rio entered the room.

  Hilde was a long, shallow lump beneath a baby-blue comforter. Her face was deeply lined with wrinkles bracketing her faded blue eyes and chapped mouth. A halo of crisp snow-white hair turned the pillowcase beneath her head a dingy gray.

  “Rebecca?” A startled huff of breath escaped the pallid lips, as a fragile, translucent hand rose to clasp Becca’s fingers.

  “I’m here, Hilde. It’s so good to see you.” Without letting go of the thin, blue-veined hand, Becca caught the armchair beneath the window with her foot and dragged it forward.

  “You look just like your mother…” Hilde’s voice trailed off, but the fragile hand tightened around Becca’s fingers as Becca sank into the chair beside the bed. After a second, the watery gaze dipped to the sling that bound Becca’s arm to her chest. “Oh dear, what happened?”

  “A minor mishap, but I’ll be fine.” Becca brushed the question off. She glanced around the room. “Are they treating you well here, Hilde?”

  The room was larger than she’d expected, with twin beds separated by a wide aisle. The side walls held banks of built-in closets and drawers. The entire room from corner to corner was carpeted with a thick, plush carpet, rather than industrial grade. The window, shielded by a trio of blinds, stretched across the back wall and allowed the bright, San Diego sunshine to flood in.

  “Ah, Becky, it’s been so long.” Hilde’s voice quavered slightly, as though emotion tore at her words. “I should have done more. I should have tried harder to reach you.”

  Becca’s chest tightened beneath a wave of regret and shame. “No. No. Please don’t blame yourself. I should have reached out to you, visited you. I just…” She swallowed hard. “It’s just…”

  The shame burned hotter. Avoiding the old woman because the memories brought so much pain wasn’t an excuse. Not a good one anyway.

  “I should have fought back.” The thin voice quavered and broke. “I shouldn’t have let that awful woman intimidate me.”

  What? Intimidate?

  “Wait.” Still holding the old woman’s hand, Becca leaned forward. “What do you mean? Who intimidated you?”

  “That horrible, horrible woman your father was married to.” Hilde’s fingers tightened so hard over Becca’s hand Becca’s knuckles ground together. “I tried to see you, several times. I sent you letters. I called. But I couldn’t get through.”

  “I didn’t know,” Becca whispered, lifting the brittle, thin hand to her mouth. The skin felt parchment dry and thin beneath her lips.

  “She claimed I was stalking you. Said she’d take out an order of protection against me if I didn’t leave you alone.”

  “But why?” The bewilderment flooding her echoed in Becca’s voice. “What could she possibly gain from keeping you away from me?”

  “She didn’t want you to find out the truth.” Hilde’s voice wavered and broke.

  “About what?”

  But the question didn’t come from Becca, it came from Rio, who’d taken a step closer and loomed over the bed.

  “I knew when they said it was a suicide that I had to talk to you. Your mother didn’t kill herself.” Hilde’s gaze didn’t budge from Becca’s face, but the thin, blue-veined hand let go and retreated to the bed. “You know that, right? She would never have done that to you. She would never have done that to the child she was carrying.”

  Silence gripped the room for one heartbeat… two… three before Becca coughed to clear the rasp from her throat. “Mom was pregnant?”

  She’d known it, instinctively, since she’d found the ultrasound, but to have it proven so suddenly… it felt surreal. Her chest tightened, and those earlier flight-or-fight nerves kicked in. How silly, this conversation was the reason she was here. Yet now that the moment was upon her, she wanted to back away, close her ears, ward off the pain.

  “Did she say who the father was?”

  Once again, the question didn’t come from Becca. The snow-white head shifted on the pillow as the lined face turned toward Rio’s towering form.

  “The mayor. Aaron Hart. Rachel was ecstatic. She said he was going to tell that awful woman that he wanted a divorce. She said they were finally going to be a family. Him, her”—the cloudy gaze drifted back to Becca—“you… the new baby.” Grief echoed in the shaking voice. “That poor, poor girl. She didn’t kill herself. She would never have killed herself. I tried to tell them that, the detective who came out to do his so-called investigation, the officers at the police station. But no one would listen.”

  “You told this to Detective Foster?” Rio’s voice was quiet, but grimness spread across his face.

  A frustrated breath huffed out of Hilde. “I told everyone, at least until the police chief came out. He said he’d revoke my permanent resident card if I continued making false claims and harassing everyone.”

  Another beat of silence fell. Rio was the first to stir.

  “Why didn’t you go to Hopewell?” Rio asked quietly.

  “I did.” Bewildered disappointment flooded Hilde’s face. “He didn’t believe me. See, Mr. Hopewell had talked to Mayor Hart himself, and the mayor told him he’d never intended to ask for a divorce. And then the doctor who did the autopsy told Mr. Hopewell that there had been no baby. And the police chief said she’d left a letter before she hung herself, which made it clear her death was self-inflicted.” She paused to hiccup out a raw breath. “They convinced Mr. Hopewell she’d taken her own life. But he didn’t know Rachel like I did. That poor, sweet girl would never have done that to you, Becca. Never.” She choked out a couple of raspy breaths before continuing. “Mr. Hopewell said I would just make things harder on you by filling your head full of conspiracy theories. So I backed down. But I’ve regretted that decision ever since. I should have stood up to them. I should have stood up for you.”

  Becca sat there frozen, Hilde’s rundown of events reeling through her mind. The ultrasound couldn’t be faked… could it? Or had her mother gotten ahold of some other woman’s ultrasound? If the autopsy had proved her mother hadn’t been pregnant and there had been a suicide note… no wonder the SDPD had refused to reopen her mother’s case.

  Hilde had discounted everything the police and Harold had told her, because she’d had faith in her friend, but Rio was trained to judge on evidence. Would the facts Hilde had laid out convince him her mother’s case wasn’t worth reinvestigating?

  She couldn’t tell from Rio’s flat, distant expression what he was thinking.

  “What about that day? Did anything strange happen. Did you see anyone around the estate?” Rio asked, his voice thoughtful.

  Hilde shook her head, her platinum hair dragging across the pillow. “Not really. Well, I mean, other than the gate being open when we returned from town.”

  Rio frowned. “You weren’t at the estate?”

  With a deep sigh, Hilde seemed to sink deeper into the mattress. “No, we’d gone into town. Mathias and I, we picked up groce
ries for Rachel and seed and fertilizer and then went to lunch. When we arrived back at the estate, the gate was open.”

  “Was that unusual?” Rio asked.

  At least he was still asking questions, rather than just accepting his police chief’s account.

  “Oh yes, Rachel was paranoid about security. Harold collected many things, much of which was priceless. She was conscientious about making sure the gate was closed and the alarm was armed both night and day.”

  “What about the alarm? Was it armed?”

  Hilde’s gaze shifted back to Becca, sorrow blurring the faded blue eyes. “No. At least not when we entered the house after Becca started screaming. But she’d just returned from school; perhaps she’d turned it off to enter the house?”

  Rio turned to Becca, that distant look still stamped across his face. “Did you turn it off that day?”

  Becca cast her mind back, but all she saw was blackness and her mother’s limp, dangling body. She flinched, then closed her eyes and practiced deep even breathing until calm and reason returned.

  “I don’t think so,” she said as her memory started working again. Not her memory of that day but of the hundreds of times she’d returned home while she’d lived at the mansion. “I never turned the alarm off. I just opened the door and punched the rearm code into the panel. There was a two-minute delay. If the code was punched in, the alarm would simply cycle back on. I never needed to turn it off.”

  Her breath caught as the reason behind Rio’s questions hit home. The gate had been open, which meant her mother had let her killers inside the mansion. And then there was the alarm. Whoever had killed her must have been familiar enough with the security system to turn it off. Otherwise, within minutes of leaving the house, the alarm would have sounded. After phoning in and not getting ahold of anyone, the security company would have sent someone out to physically check things out, and they would have found her mother’s body long before Becca arrived home.

  Her mother must have known her killers.

  Chapter Ten

  With the television a low drone in the background, Rio took a long pull on his beer bottle and turned another page in Rachel Blaine’s journal. Although really, the book was more sketch pad than diary—with Becca playing a starring role on the pages.

  The sketches fascinated him, maybe because of the happiness Becca exuded throughout the pages. The pictures reminded him of what she’d been like on the good days back when they’d been together. How she’d radiated joy. How she’d found contentment in the smallest of things, like walking beside him hand in hand or cuddling against his chest with her head on his shoulder. How she’d beamed with pleasure simply because they were together.

  She’d made him feel like the king of the world… the center of her universe… at least until that switch in her flipped and she’d morphed into a screaming, crying, hysterical banshee.

  He scowled, shaking his head in self-disgust. The severity of her mood swings should have tipped him off that something was wrong, that she was emotionally and mentally struggling. Rather than shrugging off her extremes as just Becca—part and parcel of her personality—he should have gotten her the help she’d needed.

  Instead, he’d been oblivious to the underlying cause of her behavior.

  He rubbed his tight chest, the regret stronger than ever. He’d failed her. That’s what it boiled down to; he’d failed her. And if Tag and Tram were right, if she had been drugged—he shuddered—well, hell, then he’d failed her in more than one way.

  The Becca of today, the one currently asleep in the bedroom across the hall, was a thousand times more stable than the girl he’d known all those years ago. The mood swings were gone, but then so was the happiness that infused the pages beneath his hands. When she’d caged the dysfunctional Becca, had she caged the joyful one too?

  His heart aching, he turned the next page in the diary.

  The drawing that appeared was one of his favorites. Becca must have been around five or six. She sat in a wind-whipped explosion of wildflowers with a dreamy look in her dark eyes and a lopsided crown of dandelions atop her rebellious curls.

  The sketch, like the dozens of others among the pages, was so detailed he could almost smell the sweet scent of the wildflowers, feel the wind against his skin. Rachel Blaine had been an incredibly talented woman; every stroke of her pencil demonstrated that. Just as most of the sketches illustrated how much she’d adored her daughter.

  Would the woman who’d sketched Becca in such loving detail really kill herself in the foyer? She must have known Becca would be the one to find her dangling body. Would she really put the daughter she so obviously cherished through that kind of trauma?

  Hilde Birkeland said no.

  Chief Moyer said yes.

  Only one of them could be right.

  He continued flipping through the pages until he reached the final entry. Frowning, he paused to study the sketch… again. The illustration was of a pendant, with its stone set in a fragile web, almost like a tiny dream catcher. The damn thing was familiar as hell, but he couldn’t place where or when he’d seen it.

  The creak of a door opening and the soft fall of footsteps came from behind the couch. Becca had finally awoken. He set the diary and his beer down on the coffee table and rose to his feet, turning to face her. Her cheeks were soft and slightly flushed, but her eyes were turbulent and raw, like the dreams she’d been immersed in over the past four hours had been dark and sad.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked quietly, stepping around the corner of the couch.

  She’d been quiet on the trip back to Emma’s house. After barely touching the lunch their hostess had provided, she’d cited exhaustion and returned to bed.

  “I’m okay.” She looked around the silent house. “Where is everyone?”

  “Emma and Tram went out to dinner and a movie. Tag’s back at his place, checking mail and messages.”

  “Ah.” She raised her eyebrows. “Emma must have taken Cuddles?” At Rio’s nod, she directed a wry smile his way. “It’s probably for the best. That dog doesn’t like you at all.” Her mouth tilted slightly. “I take it you’re on guard duty? I hope giving Tag and Tram a break didn’t put too much of a crimp in your day.”

  “Nothing’s been put off that can’t be handled later.”

  He’d called his captain and passed on everything Hilde Birkeland had told him. His CO had updated him in return. What Harold Hopewell had told Hilde matched perfectly with what Chief Moyer had told Captain Fuentes during their meeting that morning.

  Which would have put the fucking investigation to bed if there had been anything to back up Moyer’s version of events. With the missing case files and autopsy report, the whole damn thing distilled down to he said, she said.

  According to Fuentes, Moyer had appeared surprised to hear of the missing files and autopsy report and claimed to have no insight into what had happened to them.

  Rio wanted to believe him. Hell, Moyer had given him a new career after he’d left the teams. But dammit, there were too many things that didn’t add up. Like the open gate and dead alarm the day Rachel Blaine had died. Like a doting mother killing herself knowing that her daughter would walk in on her body…

  …like the two attempts on Becca’s life.

  He studied her wan, tired face. She might have lain down for a nap, but from the exhaustion dulling her eyes, it didn’t look like she’d slept well. Uncertain of what to do or how to help her, he stepped to the side as she headed toward the kitchen.

  “How’s the pain?” At least he could make sure the physical discomfort was held at bay. “You’re due for another pill.”

  “I’m…” Becca cocked her head to the side and paused, as though she were assessing her condition. “…okay.”

  Rio followed her into the kitchen, watching as she filled a glass with water and drained it. “Emma left a casserole. If you’re hungry, I can put it in the oven.”

  It was barely five, but she hadn’t
eaten much breakfast or lunch.

  “That sounds good, although I wish Emma wouldn’t wait on me like this. She goes above and beyond.” Turning to face him, Becca leaned a hip against the sink. “Do you think she’d be offended if I left her some money when I return home?”

  Surprise wrinkled his forehead. There she went again, blowing his perception of her to hell. For someone who—according to her family—was selfish beyond belief… only interested in getting her way, she had been consistently thoughtful.

  “According to Tram, she loves to cook. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  “My meals shouldn’t come out of her pocket,” Becca said absently. “What happens now?” she asked as they waited for the oven to preheat.

  At Rio’s glance, she shrugged, her face calm, eyes sharp. “You must have told your captain what Harold told Hilde. Did he tell you to drop the investigation into my mom’s death?”

  It didn’t surprise him how calm and rational the question was. Not now anyway. At some point in the intervening years, she’d learned how to process her emotions.

  Rio hesitated… before mentally shrugging. “My CO talked to Chief Moyer this morning, and Moyer cited everything Hopewell told Hilde.”

  Becca didn’t look surprised.

  “He was police chief back then?” At Rio’s nod, she sighed. “Then of course he corroborated Harold’s account. He’s the one who fed Harold all that bullshit in the first place.” Her eyebrows drew together. “Did your police chief tell you to drop it?”

  “Moyer retired. He has no say in this case any longer.”

  Becca scratched behind her ear, her face conflicted. After a moment, she squared her shoulders and looked him straight in the eyes. “What about you? What do you think happened?”

  “I think there are too many unanswered questions. Why is someone trying to kill you? Why was the gate open and the alarm off the day your mom died? Hell, the fact all the paperwork is missing is shady as hell.”

  She nodded at each of his questions. Her body relaxed, and the eyes that held his softened with relief. “Okay. What now?”