Cold Hearted (Cold Justice Book 6) (14 page)

“Well, they succeeded.” A wave of weariness washed over her as she pulled her truck to a stop in front of her farmhouse. “I have to go, Linus. I really appreciate the offer to look at Mandy’s essays, and I’m sorry you lost a friend.”

“Yeah. Thanks. Talk to you tomorrow.” He hung up.

She slumped her head on the steering wheel, forcing herself to move before she fell asleep in the truck. She jumped out and ran to the backdoor. Her cell rang, but she let it go to voicemail. She didn’t have the energy to talk to anyone else. Inside, she strode to the thermostat and hit boost because no matter how many layers she wore, or cups of coffee she drank, she still couldn’t get warm.

Except when she was with Darsh Singh and trying to forget all the sins they’d committed.

Dammit. She didn’t want to think about him.

Tossing her keys and bag on the table, she stripped off her coat and hung it over the back of a kitchen chair. Then she sat and yanked off her boots, dropping them to the hardwood floor with a loud thud.

She was hungry, but too tired to eat. Her footsteps echoed hollowly on the bare wooden treads as she headed upstairs. One day she’d find the time to buy some carpet. She went to the bathroom, palming her Glock, unbuttoning her slacks and dropping her pants along the way. She washed her hands and face, cleaned her teeth, and avoided the mirror. She dumped her clothes in the hamper and stumbled to her bedroom. She didn’t bother with the light and didn’t need one as the moon shone brightly through the thin drapes.

She snatched up her nightshirt off the floor and tugged it on, shivering as the cold cotton pressed against her skin. Her suitcase still sat on the floor ready to be unpacked. Tomorrow, before she left for work, she needed to toss laundry into the machine. Right now she didn’t care if it crawled there on its own. She turned off her cell, put her sidearm on the bedside table, and slipped into oblivion.

*     *     *

Darsh bit into
his deli roll as he dialed Mallory Rooney’s cell.

She answered on the third ring. “Hey Darsh, how’s it going?”

He liked Mallory. She’d only worked in the BAU-4 for a few months but she was smart, driven, and had not only faced evil head-on, she’d fucking crushed it.

“Mal. You’re not at the office, right?”

He’d been there when she’d had a scare with her pregnancy not long ago. She was officially on bed rest, but she’d declared that if she had to spend one more hour watching daytime TV, she would literally go insane. Hence his phone call.

“Nah. I have my feet up on Alex’s leather couch, and he’s hovering over me like a momma bear.”

“He’s worried about you. We all are.” Her fiancé, Alex Parker, was a cyber security expert who now consulted for the BAU-4. The guy was cool. Darsh, Mal, and Parker had spent some quality time together before New Year. Mallory was a good shot—women often were—but at close-range, Parker was a frickin’ virtuoso, practically putting a bullet through the same hole even when he was moving. Darsh had never seen shooting like it, and he’d met some excellent marksmen in the military. Darsh’s talent was distance. Even Parker had conceded defeat with the long rifle.

Darsh’s skills with a rifle had earned him a coveted spot in USMC Scout Sniper School. He touched the hog’s tooth necklace he wore under his shirt. His good luck charm. He eyed Rosie, who he’d propped in the corner of his matchbox-sized office. He never traveled without the Remington sniper rifle and hadn’t wanted to leave it in the back of his rental car. Going to the range was how he relaxed when he had downtime. Ironically, he hadn’t touched a gun until he’d hit Parris Island for boot camp. His family had crossed the pond from England back in ’82, and his father had embraced American culture in every way, except for firearms. He’d refused to have a gun in the house. But it turned out shooting was easy if you remembered the sniper’s mantra—slow, smooth, straight, steady, and squeeze. It worked on women, too. Erin’s face flashed through his mind. His mouth went dry, and he forced himself to swallow.

“So despite the fact there’s been some interesting developments in other areas of our band of merry men, I’ve been digging into Erin Donovan’s background like you asked,” Mal told him.

“Other developments?” he asked.

“Nothing you need to know about unless you fancy a trip to the Caribbean.”

“Has anyone ever said no to a trip to the Caribbean?”

Mallory grunted. “Ask me again in a few days—or better yet, don’t ever mention it again.”

The woman was confusing the hell out of him, but what else was new with females.

“Donovan’s record in the NYPD was exemplary. She was a beat cop for five years before taking her detective’s exam. She was one of the youngest officers to make detective in its history, let alone female.”

He felt a weird swell of pride.

“Naturally, there were rumors of nepotism. Her dad and uncles are lieutenants, three of her brothers are detectives, and she has another brother who’s the captain of his own precinct.”

“So NYPD is the family business. Why’d she leave?”

“Like I said, her work record was exemplary, but her private life was a mess. She married in 2009 when she was twenty-six to a guy called Graham Price.”

“She never changed her name?”

“No, she didn’t. Maybe she liked playing off the family ties?”

“You going to change your name?” he asked, knowing he was delaying finding out about Erin’s husband.

Mal laughed. “I haven’t thought about it but, yeah, probably.”

“You could always hyphenate.”

“Mallory Rooney-Parker? I sound like a law firm or a production company. Although I guess you could call me a production company right now.”

He could hear her grinning. Mentally he braced himself. “So what happened after they got married?”

“They met on the job. Donovan switched precincts so they worked in different places. All was quiet on the home-front until she filed for divorce in September 2011.”

He blew out a short, relieved breath. They’d hooked up in October 2011, and while she’d technically been married, it wasn’t quite the same as cheating.

“Why’d she file for divorce?”

“Irreconcilable differences was what she cited in the papers. She actually attended a training course at Quantico that October.” Darsh kept quiet and hoped Mal couldn’t read minds. “The real drama happened in December, just before Christmas that year. Price walked into her precinct while she was booking a suspect, pulled out his off duty weapon, and blew his brains all over the ceiling tiles.”

Nausea swirled in his stomach. Fuck.

“She applied for the job in Forbes Pines that January.”

No wonder she didn’t want to talk about it.

“There’s something else. Alex found it somewhere he shouldn’t have been. There’s a hospital report filed for Erin Donovan. Bunch of photographs and x-rays. Looks like someone beat her up that June.”

“Anyone arrested?”

“There was no police report about the incident, just the hospital report. And, hell, he just found another one at a different hospital.”

Darsh climbed to his feet, unable to pace in the cramped confines of his broom cupboard but unable to remain still. “That asshole
hit
her?”

“Or she was incredibly clumsy when she was married to him.”

He thought of the woman who took down two-hundred-thirty pound athletes without blinking. The one who’d given him one of the best nights of his life. Had her husband taken his fists to her? Was that why she was so good at taking care of herself now? Rage burned through his mind and made him miss what Mallory said next.

“Sorry?” he said.

“I said how’s the case looking?”

He rubbed his forehead. “Complicated.”

“Where you staying?”

He laughed and looked around his six-by-six-foot office currently stuffed with boxes. “At the police station. The press descended and someone forgot to book me a hotel room.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Doesn’t matter. I’ve got about a billion statements and pieces of evidence to go through tonight anyway.”

“Anything we can do to help?”

“I might take you up on that tomorrow, after I’ve looked the evidence through. Right now I don’t know my ass from my elbow. There is one thing. Can you check out the football team and coaching staff for any previous assault or rape allegations?”

“Sure, I’ll get Agent Chen on it tomorrow.”

Ashley Chen—a new agent in BAU-4. “How’s she working out?”

Mal laughed. “She’s difficult to read. A hard worker who doesn’t like being told what to do, but I can’t exactly talk.”

Darsh took a slurp of hot coffee. “You’re an excellent agent, Mal. A good team player. You’re doing better than I did at your stage.” Maybe better than he was doing now. The constant need to prove himself got old.

“Oh, please. We’ve all heard about your wicked undercover work.”

Darsh grinned. “Sometimes prejudice works in the good guys’ favor.”

“You’re a badass.”

“Roger that.”

“Alex isn’t too keen on Agent Chen. Doesn’t trust her. Says her background looks suspect.”

“He isn’t keen on anyone he hasn’t personally vetted from their day of birth.” It had made Darsh uncomfortable at first to realize Alex knew all about his mother’s murder, but the guy had kept it to himself. Darsh didn’t think he’d even told Mal—although if anyone understood, it might be Mal.

“That’s what I told him.”

“What do you think of her?” Darsh had only met Agent Chen briefly. She had classic Asian features and a New York attitude. He knew someone else with a New York attitude, and hell if he didn’t like it.

“She’s intelligent and hardworking…”

“But?”

“There’s a wall there when it comes to her private life. She doesn’t trust us yet.”

He thought of Erin. She had walls too. Maybe he was beginning to understand why.

“I gotta go. Alex is tapping his watch. Hey, Frazer’s getting out of the hospital soon, but he’s taking two weeks leave.”

“Leave?” That was a surprise. Darsh didn’t remember the guy ever taking a break.

“I think there might be a woman involved.” Her voice was full of intrigue.

Darsh’s gut tightened. “Lucky bastard.”

“Lincoln Frazer is many things, but lucky isn’t one of them.”

Darsh grunted. “Okay, true, thanks for the information. Call me if anything comes up, but
don’t
stress.” The last thing he wanted was to put the baby at risk.

“Gotcha.”

He ended the call and slumped in his chair, tiredness pulling at his muscles so much he wanted to lay down his head and close his eyes. Then he stared at the piles of reports and dragged the first box closer. The sooner he could decide on whether the old rapes and new murders were connected, the sooner he could get out of Forbes Pines and leave behind the temptation of Detective Erin Donovan.

E
rin wore Lycra
pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt with a thin fleece jacket thrown over the top and fine black gloves. Her blonde hair was hidden under a thin wool cap, which she pulled as low as it would go over her ears. She turned on her headlamp and pressed start on the stopwatch. She jogged down the alley at the back of Cassie’s house and swung south. The cold air pierced her lungs. It was dark and dank with dense fog swirling in the rapacious breeze. She scanned the tarmac for patches of ice, kept up the pace, knowing a younger athlete would leave her in the dust.

She cut down another street and headed into a small park. There were a couple of lonely street lamps spread out at wide distances, their halos hovering over the ground just visible in the frozen mist. She ran through a small wooded area, branches rattling, making her nerves dance and her heart beat faster in eons-old fear. She’d checked the route on her phone before she set out, and this was the shortest distance from A to B.

Her blood was pumping now, her internal furnace firing up and combating the icy chill. Besides the woods, the only sound was her feet hitting the pavement, and her breath sawing in and out of her chest. She entered the college grounds, and the dense fog cleared a little as she weaved between Biological Sciences and Chemistry. Her foot skidded, and she threw her hands in the air, but righted herself before she hit the ground. She carried on running. It was six AM, but there were already a few people around. Cyclists. Another intrepid runner. A campus security cop making his rounds. She glanced up as she ran, looking for surveillance cameras. She didn’t see any, but she made a mental note to ask campus security if they had any that covered this area.

She ran past the gym complex and up onto the sports fields where the mist gathered in thick sullen patches. The grass was crisp under the soles of her Nikes. A group of guys appeared out of nowhere. The football team running drills. Morning practice. She veered away from them. Someone wolf whistled, proving they couldn’t see her face. The last thing she wanted to do was encounter Jason Brady when she was trying to figure out whether or not he’d had the time to kill Mandy and Cassie the night before last.

She kicked hard and hit the rim of the fields, hooking a right as she crested the embankment, running along the top toward the frat houses, and came to a halt exactly where she’d seen Brady that night. She jogged on the spot and checked her stopwatch. Six minutes forty-eight seconds. She took a different route back, avoiding the sports fields by running along the road to where she’d parked her truck on Cassie’s street. She checked her watch again. Nine minutes. She bent over and caught her breath. They needed to check Brady’s alibi from that night, but at least she now knew it was physically possible for the guy to have made the 911 call from Cassie’s house at 9:54 PM and run back to the frat house in time for when she drove past.