Alone in the Dark (47 page)

Scarlett had sobered at Lynda’s earlier rebuke. Now she tried to smooth the waters, because Marcus’s request was not an unreasonable one. At the same time, they’d lost a man today, so she could see Lynda’s point of view as well. Lynda was voicing the same fears she herself had harbored before she’d gotten to know Marcus. ‘He’s been on the up and up so far,’ she told her boss rationally. ‘That article this morning had nothing in it that I hadn’t okayed. And he is right about getting the story out. This is important, Lynda. And I trust him.’

Lynda gave her a hard look. ‘He’s a loose cannon. He nearly got the two of you killed sneaking into the Anders house, and he may have gotten Agent Spangler killed too.’

Marcus opened his mouth to blurt what would have been an outraged denial. Scarlett held up her hand to stop him, grateful when he restrained himself.

‘We have no reason to believe Marcus had anything to do with Agent Spangler’s death. And . . .’ Scarlett drew a breath, knowing she was about to draw her boss’s ire, ‘I figured he’d try to get into the house. I didn’t tell him not to.’

Lynda sat back, her gray eyes gone stone cold. ‘You
knew
he was going back there?’

‘I expected him to at least consider it. When I realized he was gone, I followed him.’ She sat in the chair between her boss and Marcus. ‘Lynda, our hands were tied until we got a warrant. What Marcus did was not illegal – and his actions likely saved Tabby Anders’s life. She might have died if she’d had to wait for us to get a warrant to enter the house. Because he found her, we now have Tala’s baby safe and sound and we know the names of the other two women. He’s been quite useful.’

‘Thank you,’ Marcus muttered dryly, extremely annoyed. ‘I’m so happy to be
useful
.’

Scarlett shot him a be-quiet glare, then turned back to Lynda. ‘Let him watch us. We have nothing to hide. He’ll let one of us read his reports before he uploads or prints them.’ She looked over her shoulder to find him definitely unhappy. ‘Right, Marcus?’

Twenty

Cincinnati, Ohio
Tuesday 4 August, 7.00
P.M.

It was all Marcus could do to keep his temper under control. Let the cops read his reports before he uploaded them? How Scarlett could even think he’d consider that . . .

Meeting her eyes, he shook his head. ‘No way,’ he said firmly. ‘That’s censorship. I print the truth, whether it’s pleasant for you or not.’

Isenberg’s nostrils flared in anger. ‘I knew he’d say that. He’s a reporter. They’re all about their First Amendment rights, but care nothing about the rights of the officers – or victims – they place in danger. They stick their mikes in your face and demand details that could destroy lives, just so they can get their damn story.’

Scarlett had winced at Marcus’s words, but she visibly flinched at Isenberg’s. Settling herself in her chair, she leaned away from both of them. With a single long blink she’d become grim, and his gut didn’t like that at all.

‘Scarlett?’ he asked. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ she said coolly. ‘I’m fine.’

She was not fine. Her eyes had gone beyond expressionless. They were blank. Even Isenberg looked concerned, but Scarlett waved away her boss’s questions.

‘I said I’m fine.’ She turned to Marcus, a determined set to her jaw. ‘I’m not telling you not to print the truth. I’m saying that there may be things we’ll want to hold back, like this morning. You agreed then. What’s different now?’

‘Nothing,’ he murmured. ‘But I don’t want anyone thinking they can “approve” my work. You need to trust me that I’ll keep my word when we decide what gets kept out.’

He held his breath, waiting for her response, knowing that it was a critical moment for the future of whatever relationship they would have.

She held his gaze for a few heartbeats, then shifted her attention back to her boss without a flicker of emotion. ‘You don’t trust him,’ she said, her tone so coldly logical that Marcus wanted to hit something. ‘I understand that. I have a hard time reconciling trust and journalists in the same sentence too. They make their living digging up the news and don’t care about the damage they leave behind.’

Fuck, no
, he thought viciously. He was not going to take that from anyone, least of all from her. He opened his mouth to protest, but sensing it, she raised her hand just high enough for him to get her message.
Be quiet
.

He bit down on his tongue until he tasted blood, and said nothing.

‘But,’ Scarlett continued evenly, ‘Marcus has never given us a reason to doubt his word. He helped us find the Anderses in the first place by identifying their dog. He had their name a full half-hour before we got to their property, but he didn’t print it or upload it. He still hasn’t. He’s not like most of the other reporters either of us have dealt with. If you don’t trust him, then trust me. I’ll take responsibility for anything he prints.’

‘I don’t want or need you to take responsibility for what I do,’ he said firmly.

Scarlett met his eyes, hers still cold. ‘This is my world, Marcus. This is how it needs to work. If you want me to trust you, then you have to trust me too.’

If he hadn’t known how much emotion she was capable of, he would never have guessed at what had to be churning behind that icy stare. The crazy thing was, that made him trust her more. She had more self-control than anyone he’d ever met. More than was healthy, he thought. He, of all people, knew how damaging shoving all one’s emotions down deep could be.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘I guess in your place I’d demand the same thing. Especially since you all lost a colleague today.’ He watched for any flicker of relief in Scarlett’s eyes, but there was none.

‘Thank you,’ she said, her detachment beginning to make him nervous. ‘Is this an acceptable arrangement, Lieutenant?’

‘Yes,’ Isenberg said. She gave Marcus a sharp look. ‘Don’t make me regret it.’

It was obvious that nothing he could say was going to change the lieutenant’s attitude, so he only sighed and shook his head.

Scarlett stood up. ‘I have to meet Deacon at the FBI field office. They haven’t agreed to your presence, so it’s better if I meet you afterward. I’ll broach the topic when I’m with them.’

‘What’s the meeting about?’ he asked.

‘We’re speaking with the person leading their human trafficking investigation team,’ Scarlett said evenly. ‘I’m not sure what we’ll learn, but I’ll share all I can.’

‘That’s all right. I have some things to take care of at the office.’ He pushed to his feet. ‘You can escort me out,’ he said to Scarlett, then gave Isenberg a nod. ‘Lieutenant.’

Marcus was quiet as he followed Scarlett out, trying to figure out what had extinguished the lights in her eyes. Then he remembered, early that morning, the look on her face when he’d said that he made his living digging up the news. Her eyes had gone blank then too. He hadn’t understood at the time that that meant she was hiding a very emotional reaction.

He waited until they were in her car before asking, ‘What did the reporter do?’

She whipped her head around to stare at him. ‘Excuse me?’

‘You shut down in there as soon as Isenberg started talking about reporters. Please tell me,’ he coaxed. ‘It matters to you, obviously. So it matters to me. What did the reporter do? I know it was personal, Scarlett. It’s written all over your face.’

She frowned again as she pulled out into traffic. ‘I had a poker face before I met you.’

He wanted to smile at that, but couldn’t let her distract him from what was at the root of the issue. ‘The reporter, Scarlett. What did he do?’

She clenched her jaw, grinding her teeth. ‘I told you that my friend was murdered.’

‘Yes, back when you were at college. Her name was Michelle. You said her killer never got justice.’

She nodded, seeming to relax a fraction when he remembered the details. ‘What I didn’t say was that I know exactly who killed her. Trent Bracken. He was Michelle’s boyfriend.’

Marcus blinked at the venom in her voice. ‘Then why is this Bracken not in prison?’

‘Because his daddy hired a high-powered attorney who got him off scot-free,’ she said bitterly. ‘Now the SOB is a defense attorney himself, right here in town.’

‘That has to kill you inside,’ Marcus said gently. ‘Knowing he’s free. But what does that have to do with reporters?’

She sighed wearily. ‘When Michelle went missing, we – her friends – told the police that Trent was abusive, that Michelle had been afraid of him. Which was all true. The cops were watching Bracken, but he didn’t know it then, because they were keeping it quiet.’

‘I take it that he found out.’

She nodded. ‘Because some narcissistic, big-mouthed, tiny-dicked
reporter
told everyone in town.’ She’d said ‘reporter’ with an angry sneer, but it was the ‘tiny-dicked’ adjective that made Marcus cringe. ‘At that point Michelle was still alive. But Bracken saw his name in print and went ballistic.’ Her throat worked as she tried to swallow. ‘I found her body the next day. She was still warm. Her blood was still warm. Still dripping down the wall of the alley where he’d dumped her.’

In an alley?
Hell, this day had been a bad one for her. Finding Tala’s body in the alley this morning had to have yanked her back in time. He could offer his sympathy, but he didn’t think she wanted to hear it right now. Plus, there was more to this reporter issue. He could feel it. ‘How did the tiny-dicked reporter find out that Bracken was a suspect?’

Her lips twisted. ‘
I
told him.’

Marcus blinked again, definitely not expecting that. ‘You talked to the reporter? Why?’

‘Because I didn’t know he was planning to become a reporter. When I told him, he was just my boyfriend.’

‘Oh.’ Marcus tried to find something to say. ‘Tiny-dicked’ made a little more sense now, and he couldn’t honestly say it bothered him to hear it. ‘That’s one helluva betrayal.’

‘Yeah,’ she muttered. ‘All the reporters had been bugging me for interviews. Because I was Michelle’s best friend, they figured I knew things, and I did, of course. I kept saying “no comment”, but the assholes wouldn’t leave me alone. As if it wasn’t bad enough that my best friend was missing . . . Getting back to my dorm room had become worse than running the gauntlet, so I’d been hiding out in Donny’s dorm room.’

‘Who was Donny?’

‘My boyfriend.’

Marcus frowned. ‘I thought Bryan was your college boyfriend.’

Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel. ‘No, Bryan and I have always just been friends. I already
told
you that.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly, soothing her with his voice, because she was sending out serious touch-me-and-die vibes. ‘You did tell me that. So why didn’t you just go home? I would think that your six brothers could have scared off any reporters.’

Her chuckle was mirthless. ‘Colin and Gil were married and in their own homes, and Phin . . . he was on tour in Iraq. Sawyer and Dorian were still in high school, and they wanted to scare the reporters off but Mom wouldn’t let them. Arrest records play havoc with college scholarships. Nate was still in elementary school, still a baby. I did go home, though. After.’

‘After you found Michelle’s body.’

A sharp nod. ‘For a few days. I couldn’t stay too long. We were headed into finals week and my parents had sacrificed a lot to send me to college. So I manned up and went back so that I could finish the semester.’ One side of her mouth lifted in a bitter half-smile. ‘Donny actually had the nerve to come up to me and ask for a follow-up interview.’

‘What did you do to him?’

‘Made it so that he’d never get a TV job. He was pretty before I bloodied his fucking nose. Afterward, not so much.’

‘Good,’ Marcus said grimly, then frowned. ‘But I jumped ahead. You were saying that you’d been hiding out in his dorm room.’

‘Yes, because I was a Class A idiot, trusting the limp-dicked asshole.’

‘How old were you, Scarlett?’ he asked kindly.

She swallowed hard. ‘Twenty,’ she whispered, and a single tear streaked down her cheek. ‘Twenty and so goddamn stupid. I didn’t think he loved me, but I never dreamed he’d use me like that.’

Marcus trailed the backs of his fingers over her damp cheek. ‘What did he do, honey?’

‘He’d been there for me, listening, letting me cry on his shoulder. I didn’t know he’d been taking notes the whole time. He sold his story to one of the network affiliates, with the proviso that he got to be the guest reporter.’

‘What news show would have agreed to that?’

‘The one that wanted the story the most.’

‘So Donny just up and decided he wanted to be a TV reporter one day? Was he taking journalism classes?’

Her mouth tightened, little frown lines spidering into her cheeks. ‘No, he was a psychology major. His plan was to use the story to get a job with one of the network shows like
20/20
and become famous using his psycho-know-how to trick people into revealing all.’

Marcus scoffed. ‘Was he delusional?’

‘As it turns out, yes. I didn’t know he wanted to be a reporter. I didn’t know he wanted to be famous. I don’t think he realized it until Michelle’s disappearance became national news.’

‘Did he get a job?’

‘Yes, but not with the network.’

‘Because you broke his fucking nose,’ Marcus said with satisfaction, earning him a small smile.

‘Exactly. He wrote for a tabloid rag, but never got rich or famous. His writing sucked and his story was a one-hit wonder, so to speak. He never got another big scoop and ended up being fired. He didn’t get into grad school for his psych degree either. Now he sells cars.’

‘Using his psycho-know-how to get people to buy cars they don’t yet know they want.’

‘Exactly,’ she said again. ‘So that’s why I don’t trust reporters.’

Marcus shook his head. ‘He wasn’t a real reporter, honey. I think you nailed it when you said he was a narcissist.’

‘Once Donny broke the story,’ she said far too quietly, ‘the
real
reporters were all over me. They would not leave me alone. They followed me from class across campus, sticking their microphones in my face. I’m glad I wasn’t carrying back then. I would have shot them.’

He had no doubt that she spoke the truth.

She said nothing for a long, long moment, then sighed heavily. ‘I couldn’t deal with them at that point, so I hid out in church.’

‘Your uncle’s church?’

‘Yeah. I’d spent a lot of time in the school chapel up until that point, but the reporters followed me in there too. So I called Bryan, because he had a motorbike. He picked me up outside the chapel. Stopped just long enough for me to climb on, and then he was off like a damn rocket. He lost the reporters, then took me to my uncle’s church, where he and Uncle Trace waited up with me for most of the night, along with Michelle’s family and the rest of mine. She and I had grown up in that church, been confirmed together by the priest before Uncle Trace. We spent the whole night on our knees, praying. Except when we were answering our phones. The damn things buzzed all night. The reporters had gotten our numbers and kept calling. We wanted to turn off the phones but we all kept thinking Michelle might call. That
something
would happen.’