by Kat Martin
“Nate.” Reese extended his hand. “Appreciate your coming on such short notice.”
“No problem.” In an expensive black three-piece suit, Nathan Temple oozed dignity and class, and there was an air of confidence about him that Kenzie found comforting.
“This is McKenzie Haines,” Reese said.
“A pleasure, Ms. Haines,” Nate said.
“It’s just Kenzie. Thank you for helping.”
They exchanged a few pleasantries, then Temple led her down a long corridor to where Detective Ford waited. They went into a stark white interview room with a mirror on one wall—two-way glass, she imagined, just like in the movies. It was chilly in the room. Kenzie shivered as she sat down in a metal chair across from Detective Ford. She felt Reese’s coat drape around her shoulders before he sat down.
“We’ll take it slow and easy,” the detective said. “As long as you tell the truth, you have nothing to worry about.”
She nodded. “All right.”
“Tell me about the gun.”
Kenzie sat up straighter. “The last I knew of it, Lee had the gun. He took it from me during the divorce.” She went on to tell him the same story she had told Reese. The detective made notes, though he had told her it was being recorded.
“When was the last time you saw your ex-husband?”
“Not since he came to the hospital to check on Griff the day he fell off his bicycle.”
“Speaking of hospitals.” Ford got up and walked away. He returned with a manila envelope he set on the table, reached in and pulled out a set of photographs he spread open for her to see. Kenzie’s stomach clenched seeing the pictures from when she was married, the photos taken at the hospital, pictures of her body, covered with bruises on her arms, legs, and torso.
“What the hell?” Reese said, his gaze slamming into hers. Kenzie glanced away.
“Your ex-husband had a history of abusing you,” Ford said. “Is that correct?”
She couldn’t look at Reese. “It only happened two times and it was over a period of several years.”
“You came into the emergency room on both those occasions. I have other photos if you need to see them. The second incident mentions fractured ribs.”
“I assure you, I haven’t forgotten.” She flicked a glance at Reese, whose jaw looked hard as stone.
“What about your son?” Ford asked. “Was Lee also abusive to Griffin?”
“No. In his own, self-centered way, he loved his son. Lee never touched him. I was the one he blamed for whatever problems he was having.”
“Why didn’t you leave the bastard?” Reese asked harshly.
Her face burned with humiliation. She hated that she had been so weak. “I stayed for Griff. I had no money. I couldn’t afford a decent place for us to live. So I stayed.”
“What changed?” the detective asked.
“I convinced Lee to let me take classes at the community college. I told him I was bored. I needed something to do, and because he didn’t want me working, he agreed. I got a friend to sit with Griff while I was at school, and I was always home by the time Lee got there at the end of the day.”
“You completed the courses?” Ford asked.
Kenzie nodded. “After I got my degree, I got a part-time job. Like before, I was always home when Lee arrived, so he mostly didn’t mind.”
“Mostly,” Ford repeated. “He didn’t like you working. Is that the reason he beat you?”
She shook her head, her dark curls sliding around her shoulders. “It wasn’t that. The times he hit me, he was drunk or had some kind of upset at work. Except for those two occasions, he usually just called me names. As soon as I’d saved enough money, I packed up, left, and filed for divorce. In the settlement I got enough to rent a place to live. My grandmother came to stay with us and after that things got better.”
“Did you kill him because you were afraid that if he got custody he might abuse your son? If so that would mitigate the circumstances of the murder. Is that want happened?”
“No. I had nothing to do with Lee’s death.”
“So you never resented the beatings your ex-husband gave you?” Ford asked.
Temple reached across the table and gently caught her arm. “You don’t have to answer that, Kenzie. I’m sure Detective Ford is smart enough to understand you’ve been past that kind of thinking for some time. You’ve been looking forward, not backward since then.”
It was true, she thought. She’d never forgiven Lee for the way he’d treated her, but she’d moved on. He was still Griff’s father. She hadn’t wanted him dead.
Ford shoved the hospital photos back into the manila folder. “Do you have a key to your ex-husband’s home, Ms. Haines?”
“No.”
“What about your son? Does he have a key?”
Kenzie moistened her lips and reminded herself it was better to tell the truth. “Lee gave Griff a key in case he ever needed it.”
“So you had access?”
She looked up. “I would never go into Lee’s house without permission.”
“There was no forced entry, Ms. Haines. No shattered windows, no broken locks. Someone just opened the door, walked right in, and shot him.”
Her temper heated. “Well, it wasn’t me.”
Reese leaned toward the detective. “There are a lot of ways of getting into a house without a key. A good set of lock picks will do the trick.”
Ford turned his hard gaze on Reese. “You’re saying you could do it?”
Ford was a friend of Chase’s. He probably knew at least a little about Reese’s past. Kenzie knew Reese was involved in Teen Challenge and several other outreach groups for troubled teens. In magazine interviews he talked about his problems as a youth—hard as it was for Kenzie to imagine. He wasn’t proud of his past, but he never denied it.
Reese kept his eyes on the detective’s face. “I could. But I didn’t.”
Nathan Temple rose from the table. “I read the report, Detective. You have no fingerprints, no DNA, no gunshot residue, and aside from the fact that the pistol was registered to Ms. Haines, no way to connect her to the murder. You’ll need a lot more than that if you expect to bring charges against her.”
Kenzie prayed the attorney was right. But aside from her amazing son, since the day she’d met Lee, he had never brought her anything but grief.
The detective rose from the table. “We may have more questions. In the meantime, don’t leave town.” He flicked a glance at Reese. “That applies to both of you.”
EIGHTEEN
It was getting dark outside, the evening slipping away. Arthur Haines sat in the study of his Turtle Creek home, elbows on his polished mahogany desk, his head tipped forward into his hands.
“I’m sorry for your loss.” Troy Graves sat across from him in a high-backed rose velvet wingback chair, a leg crossed over his knee. The only son of Arthur’s late partner, William Graves, Troy had inherited his father’s half of the company, making him co-owner of Black Sand Oil and Gas.
Arthur straightened. “I appreciate your condolences, but you didn’t come here tonight to talk about my son’s murder.”
“No, I didn’t. Though I sincerely regret the pain Lee’s death has caused you.”
The kid had no idea. Lee was dead because of him. Because of the mistakes Arthur had made. Mistakes he desperately needed to remedy before someone else got killed.
Troy’s hand slid over the straight black hair he slicked back with pomade, and Arthur bit back a laugh. Who did the kid think he was? Fucking Elvis Presley?
Troy had his mother’s pretty face, but a weak chin and devious eyes. When it came to women, his old man’s money made up for it.
“I need to talk to you about the latest developments in the Poseidon deal,” Troy said.
“What about them?”
/> “Surely you can see this whole thing has gotten out of hand. The helo crash was only supposed to be another accident. No one was supposed to get killed. Garrett wasn’t even supposed to be aboard. For God’s sake, his brother’s a detective. His whole family’s connected to law enforcement in some way. All hell would have broken loose if he’d been the guy who took a chunk of rotor blade between the eyes.”
Arthur leaned back in his chair, making the springs squeak. He was forty pounds overweight and had a heart condition. Too bad the guy who’d killed his son hadn’t shot him instead—saved everybody a lot of trouble.
“You’re the one who came up with the idea,” Arthur reminded him.
“True, but—”
“You and Reese Garrett have a history, as I recall. You went to college together. According to your dad, Reese beat your ass at pretty much everything you competed at, including women.”
“I don’t like the bastard. That wasn’t the reason I suggested we try to take over the deal.”
“No?”
“Dammit, we need that platform. Our market share is in the toilet. First those North Texas wells fizzled out, then we hit a couple of expensive dry holes. We’re on the verge of bankruptcy. We have to do something to save the company.”
“We are doing something. Soon as Garrett pulls out, we’ll be taking over the purchase of the rig.”
“We should have bought the Poseidon when it first came up for sale.” The rig was the best deal to come up on the secondary market, located just ninety miles off the coast and a good, steady producer.
“We didn’t know it was going to sell so cheap,” Arthur reminded him. “Now, with all the accidents, it’s worth even less than it was then. If we take over Garrett Resources’ position, we’ll be able to raise the capital we need to close the sale. Once we own the platform, we can expand even further into offshore drilling. Our market share will go back up and the company will be worth something again.”
Troy fell silent. Until recently, the kid was used to living the high life: trendy designer clothes, accounts at the finest restaurants, a silver Porsche Carrera. With business way off, he had to be worried as hell.
Arthur shifted in the leather chair behind his desk. “I say we keep at it awhile longer. Garrett is good at his job. All the problems with the rig, he’s bound to be thinking of cutting his losses. Once he backs out, we step in and close the sale.”
Troy nodded, the hint of a satisfied smile on his face. Arthur had a feeling he was doing exactly what the kid had intended from the start.
“I don’t like it,” Troy said. “But I guess we’ve got no choice. I’ve got a couple more things already lined up. We can move forward with those, but if Garrett still doesn’t back out, we need to try something else.”
“Agreed,” Arthur said. But there wasn’t anything else to try. He had already exhausted every avenue he could think of before his new partner had talked him into this crazy scheme.
He glanced at Troy, saw something dark in his eyes. The kid was far more ruthless than his father, something Arthur had only recently discovered. A real wolf in sheep’s clothing and used to getting his way.
Nothing Arthur could do about it, and he had his own problems to solve. He only had one more son. Daniel was the best thing he had ever done is his misbegotten life.
Arthur didn’t want to lose that son, too.
* * *
Reese sat at his desk the following morning. He hadn’t slept well again last night. After his meeting at police headquarters, he and Kenzie had returned to the office. Immersed in an important budget meeting, he’d had no time to talk to her. The abuse she’d suffered at Lee Haines’s hands was just one of the things they needed to discuss.
As CEO, juggling his busy schedule, keeping all the balls in the air was never easy. Now he was in the middle of a murder investigation. And there was Kenzie. Everything about his attraction to her screamed wrong place, wrong time.
Wrong person.
Still, when he’d seen her first thing that morning, he’d felt the same kick, the same fierce pull of attraction that had drawn him to her from the start. He’d wanted to take her right there in his office, forget his problems and satisfy the hunger he felt just looking at her. He’d wanted to drag her down on top of his desk and bury himself as deep as he could possibly get.
He’d wanted just to hold her.
For the past few hours, he’d managed to force thoughts of her from his mind and concentrate on work. Then her familiar rap again came at his door, the door opened, and she walked into his office.
“Derek Stiles is on the line.” The color was back in her cheeks, her shoulders squared. Just the sound of her voice made him hard. “He’s calling about the Poseidon. He says it’s important.”
She was wearing a peach knit skirt suit with a perky little peach-and-blue print scarf. She was back on her game, he could tell, ready to face whatever lay ahead. Her resilience was one of the things that attracted him so strongly.
“Put the call through.” Forcing himself to ignore the lust he shouldn’t be feeling, he slid the Poseidon file out of the stack of folders on his desk. It was all on his computer, of course, but he liked to have the actual paperwork in front of him.
He flipped open the file and looked up at Kenzie. “I’d like you to sit in on the conversation.”
She nodded, sat down in her usual chair across from him, smoothing her skirt as she crossed her legs. He thought of those pretty legs wrapped around his hips, and his groin tightened.
He hit the speaker button. “What’s going on, Derek?”
“Sorry to start your day off on a sour note, but we’ve got another problem with the rig.”
The way things had been going, he wasn’t surprised. “What is it this time?”
“Gas leak in one of the platform pipes.”
He flicked a glance at Kenzie, saw her make a note on her iPad. “How serious is it?”
“They found the leak and repaired it, but the foreman says it shouldn’t have happened in the first place.”
Reese shoved back his chair and rose, paced a few feet away, then back. “I need to get out there. I want to talk to the foreman and some of the crew, get their opinion on what’s been happening and why.”
“Maybe it’s time to think about cutting our losses. I know we’d lose money, but taking over a rig with this many problems might end up being worse in the long run.”
“I’ve thought about it, believe me. I just don’t like the idea that someone might be playing us. This rig represents all kinds of opportunities. If Sea Titan wasn’t making some major internal changes, they never would have put it up for sale.”
“Yeah, and certainly not at that price.”
“We’ll hold awhile longer. I’ll have Kenzie set up the trip.”
“You want me to go with you?” Derek asked.
“I need you to stay in Houston, keep things running on your end.”
“I can handle that.” Derek was a navy vet, former jet fighter pilot. He was one of the company’s most valuable employees. The call ended and Reese sat back down in his chair.
“I want you to take me with you,” Kenzie said, catching him off guard.
“Why?”
“First, because I think I could be useful. Also because of this.” She set a folded copy of a newspaper on top of his desk and smoothed it open. The Spectator was a tabloid full of splashy headlines, candid photos, and gossip, most of it total BS.
On the cover of the weekly issue was a picture of him and Kenzie getting out of the stretch limo in front of the Adolphus the night of the benefit. “Dallas’s Most Eligible Bachelor, Reese Garrett, and His Executive Assistant, McKenzie Haines.”
In smaller print, “Sexual Favors Part of the Job at Garrett Resources?”
Reese cursed under his breath. “I was hoping this wouldn’
t happen.”
“I can’t imagine what the papers will say when they find out I’m a suspect in my ex-husband’s murder—and you’re my alibi.”
“I don’t care what they say.” Rising, he rounded the desk, caught her shoulders, leaned down, and kissed her. For an instant, Kenzie stiffened. Then her mouth softened under his, and she returned the kiss, a small sigh of pleasure slipping from her throat.
“I want to see you,” he said. “I don’t care what the tabloids say. What about dinner tonight?”
“You have no idea how much I want to be with you. But you need to think about the consequences, Reese.”
He thought of his brothers and what they would say when they found out about the article. He thought about the people who worked for him, people he liked and respected. People who respected him.
“All right. We’ll leave town for a couple of days, fly back down to Houston, spend the night, and make that trip out to the rig the next day. You’re my assistant. You go where I need you. Fuck them if they don’t like it.”
Her mouth twitched. He wanted to kiss her again, feel the satiny glide of his tongue over those soft pink lips.
“I can’t leave tomorrow,” she said. “Lee’s funeral is tomorrow afternoon. I’m keeping Griff out of school. I can set up the trip for Friday and we can come back on Sunday.”
He thought about it. As much as he wanted to be with her, he knew it wouldn’t be fair to Griff. The boy needed his mom right now.
“Set it up for next week. We’ll fly down Tuesday morning, go out to the rig on Tuesday, come back Wednesday morning. That gives us a couple of days together, and you’ll still have the weekend with your son.”
He caught the flash of emotion in her eyes. He knew she was worried about Griff. From what she’d said, the boy had taken his father’s death harder than she’d expected. Lee’s murder had been all over the news. Griff was waiting for the police to find the killer. He wanted justice for his dad.
So far he didn’t know his mother was the number one suspect.