Cold Midnight (6 page)

He wasn’t feeling so soft and sweet on the inside at the moment. More like the middle of a compost heap. “I’m not talking about the aftermath,” he said tightly.

“So, let me get this straight. You’re still bent out of shape that I wouldn’t open up to you about it back then, so you’re using your job as an excuse to force it out of me now. Is that it?”

“If that’s the way you want to look at it. Either way, you need to tell me. From the beginning. In detail.”

She didn’t respond for a long moment, as though debating her options. But he already knew she wouldn’t walk away. He’d issued a challenge that her competitive spirit, her drive to prove that she was A-OK, wouldn’t allow her to rebuff.

Finally, she gestured toward the empty, paved track that circled the health club. “Can we walk?”

He nodded and fell in step beside her, catching her scent on a shift in the wind. Cocoa butter and vanilla. It sparked a memory of being sprawled on the beach with her. The water had lapped at the sand near their bare feet. They’d been relaxed and happy, curling easily against each other. He hadn’t felt like that, like he’d been home, since. The very next day, while he sat in English class at Kendall Falls Community College, two fuckwads took her down with a blue aluminum baseball bat.

She didn’t speak until they’d reached the first curve in the track, until the change in direction and the approaching thunderheads provided a cooling breeze. “You already know the basics. I was out for a run. Usual time. Usual place, on the path through the wooded area behind the Bat Cave.”

He remembered that path like it led through his own back yard. They’d run it together a million times. He’d run it a million times since, catching himself still looking for clues, stopping sometimes to catch his breath at
the spot
. He remembered vividly what the area looked like after the attack—the plants, dead leaves and pine needles inside the circle of yellow crime-scene tape trampled flat and spattered with blood.
Kylie’s
blood.

His own blood had ended up on the trunk of a nearby tree, which he’d mindlessly hammered with his fists the day she’d walked away from him.

He glanced sideways as she put her sunglasses on, despite the growing darkness of impending rain. Tension bled off her like waves of heat, and his need to hear, in her words, what happened wavered. But he had to do his job.

“Ky?”

Her chin inched up, and her shoulders squared. An ingrained response. “There were two of them,” she said. “Both slim and wiry. Most likely teenage boys.”

“Wearing?”

“Blue jeans. Both of them. Ratty, with holes in the knees. The one . . . the leader wore a black T-shirt with some kind of red band insignia on it. Aerosmith, I think. The other one had on a gray T-shirt that had ‘XXL’ on the front, like a generic gym shirt.” She glanced quickly at him. “Not a Kendall Falls High shirt. Those are red and white.”

He acknowledged that with a nod. “Neither was wearing the shirt we found with the bat. What else?”

“Black ski masks. That was my first clue that I was in trouble. Funny, really. You’d think my first clue would have been the bat. The one in the black shirt was slapping it against his palm like . . .”

Chase waited her out like a cop was supposed to.

“When I turned to run the other way,” she continued, voice still strong, “the second guy was behind me, blocking me. I ran off the path, into the woods, but it was muddy and slippery. Maybe if I’d stayed on the path, I could have outrun them. I probably could have gotten past the second guy. He was smaller than the first, weaker.”

Amazing, Chase thought. Monday-morning quarterbacking her own attack.

“They caught me easily. The one without the bat seemed reluctant, like he thought it was a joke at first. He kept saying, ‘I can’t.’ He sounded like he was crying, like he—” She stopped as her voice cracked for the first time.

Chase curled his right hand into a tight fist. A crack in Kylie McKay’s voice was the equivalent of a screaming sob from any other woman. Instead of responding to it, he tried to nudge her along. “Did you recognize anything about their voices?”

Shaking her head, she cleared her throat. “Just that they sounded like boys. The leader bullied the other one.”

Chase’s steps faltered. This was new. “Bullied him how?”

“He kept yelling at him, calling him names. Pussy and dickweed. He seemed kind of over the top with it, actually. Giddy one minute and mean the next, like he was high.”

This also was new. He wrote “high” in his notebook and put two question marks next to it. “So the leader was aggressive toward his partner,” he said, more to prod her along than to clarify.

She nodded. “He threatened to kick his ass if he didn’t hand him the bat.”

“Wait, I thought the leader had the bat.”

“He dropped it when he hit me.”

“He hit you?” That sure as shit wasn’t in the case file, and he had to fight the swell of hot rage that started in his gut and blazed to the top of his head. The attack as he’d understood it from the report had been bad enough, and that had been without punches being thrown.

“He was trying to subdue me, and I kicked him. In the shin, I think, and it made him angry. It was more of a slap than a punch.”

She had the unemotional tone down to an art.

“And after he slapped you?”

“I started screaming my head off, so he put his hand over my mouth. It smelled like peanut butter and gasoline, like he’d put gas in his car before he had a sandwich.”

Chase’s stomach turned, and it took all his cop training to stay on track. “And then?”

“I bit him.”

He almost smiled. He hoped she’d drawn blood.

“Dumb move,” she said. “
Really
dumb, actually. He hit me again, with his fist this time, and I almost blacked out.”

Bastard. Fucking bastard. And why the hell wasn’t any of this in the file? Had the cops not questioned her closely? “Keep going,” he prodded, his tone as level as hers. Maintaining that tone, and his distance, was getting harder, though.

“He yelled at the other one to hand him the bat. The weaker one gave it to him, and that’s when I saw it the most clearly. It had ‘killer’ written in big capital letters in black marker on the grip. The one guy was crying by then, and the leader called him a fucking moron and told him to snap out of it and help him.”

Jesus
. “And then?”

She compressed her lips into a grim line, her jaw tight.

“I need you to tell me what happened next, Ky.”

She stopped walking and faced him, pulling her sunglasses off at the same time. Gray blue eyes that flashed with silvery light under the darkening clouds clashed with his. “The weaker one held me down for what seemed like minutes, but it was probably only a second or two before he let me go and ran away. I thought it was over, and just as I started to roll over to crawl away, the leader hit me with the bat. I heard the crunch before I felt the pain, and then it was like my leg had caught on fire. The second time he swung the bat, I lost consciousness.”

Chase stared into her eyes, floored by the unwavering way she stared back. Sick didn’t begin to describe the greasy feeling in his gut as the images in his head spun out. She’d been alone out there, bleeding and unconscious for who knew how long. Vulnerable and unable to defend herself from further harm.

“Any other questions?”

He blinked, surprised at her terse voice, her straight-on gaze. He’d helped train her, had witnessed her father’s coaching, and neither of them had had such ironclad focus or expected it.

When one eyebrow ticked up, indicating the wane of her patience, he cleared his throat. “Do you remember how you got to the ER?”

“The police think the one who ran away called 911. I suppose I should be grateful. I could have lost my leg.”

Or bled to death. His rage returned, and it wasn’t the first time he understood why certain people sought vengeance.

As the first roll of thunder rumbled in the distance, Kylie slid her sunglasses back into place with a hand that was steadier than Chase’s whole body. When she spoke again, her voice held no tremor, no doubt. “There’s no way my brother had anything to do with that.”

8

CHASE TAPPED HIS THUMBS ON THE STEERING
wheel while he waited for his partner to finish talking to Quinn McKay. The rain had started, and it flooded down the windshield in torrents. Thunder boomed so violently that the truck shook.

He couldn’t get the damn ache out of his throat, and he knew exactly what caused it: The woman he fell in love with was gone, probably forever. He couldn’t even reconcile the woman he’d just talked to with the woman he’d made love to for the first time. That Kylie had been open and trusting, easygoing and relaxed. Being that close to her, connecting with her in a way that no one else ever had, had been incredible, mind-blowing. He remembered how good she’d felt around him, so tight and hot and wet, and how he’d climaxed too fast. He’d regretted that, being so greedy for his own release that he hadn’t made it just as memorable for her. Luckily, she’d let him make it up to her later.

The passenger-side door jerked open, startling him as Sam all but dived into the SUV to escape the slashing rain.

It took Chase a moment to shake the memories, to refocus on work. “How’d it go with Quinn?” he asked.

“Didn’t get much.”

“Not surprising. The game face must be a McKay gene. What’d he say about the shirt?”

“Said it rained that day, and he got wet. Took it off while he was hanging out at the abandoned house—”

“The Bat Cave,” Chase said.

“Right, the Bat Cave. Anyway, says he forgot it when he left.”

“So whoever buried the bat could have grabbed the shirt when he needed something to clean it up. Can anyone vouch for him leaving the shirt?”

“Says he was there alone.”

Of course he was. Chase started the SUV, and the windshield wipers began to flap. As he steered into slow-moving traffic, he asked, “Where did he say he was when Kylie was attacked?”

“In their parents’ garage getting drunk.”

Chase’s brain seemed to give a little jerk as he thought about the note he’d made when Kylie mentioned the giddiness of the lead assailant. Could he have been drunk rather than high, as she assumed? “Was he drinking with anyone?”

“Nope. Says he was all by his lonesome.”

“Figures.”

Sam flipped through his own small notebook. “Quinn was in my high school class,” he said as he scanned his notes and absently rubbed at the side of his hand like he had an itch. “Weird to think we all went to the same school.”

Chase didn’t even remember Sam from high school, probably because Chase was a senior when Sam and Quinn were freshmen. And he had other things on his mind as a senior, such as behaving himself as Kylie’s three-years-older training partner, at least until her dad wouldn’t be inclined to kill him once he found out they’d fallen for each other.

Chase shook the memories out of his head. Useless to go there now. “You remember anything in particular about Quinn?” he asked.

“You probably know more about him than I did, considering you were dating his sister.”

“Tell me anyway. I was biased.”

“He struck me as one of those angry guys,” Sam said. “Quick to throw a punch.”

A punch? Chase remembered strong words and attitude, but no punches. “You saw this in person?”

“A couple times. Nothing major. You have any insight?”

Chase shrugged. “The McKays weren’t your typical family.”

“That’s what happens when you’ve got a star athlete at home, huh? The siblings get resentful.”

“It wasn’t just that. The family dynamic was . . . off.”

“Off how?”

“Most people don’t even know this, but Lara McKay isn’t Kylie’s biological mother.”

“No kidding? She calls her mom, doesn’t she?”

“Yeah, but Ky’s real mom died when she was a baby. Her dad, Nolan, remarried fairly quickly, though, so Lara’s the only mother she’s ever known.”

“So Quinn and Jane are actually Kylie’s half siblings.”

“A technicality most of the time,” Chase said.

“But Quinn liked to poke at her about it?”

“When he was at his surliest, he’d tell her their mom didn’t love her as much as she loved him and Jane. Bullshit, of course. I saw Lara in action, and she loved her stepdaughter just as much as her own kids.”

“Did Quinn ever get physical with Kylie?”

“Not that I saw. I mean, I wanted to punch his lights out more than once for the way he talked to her. Kylie shrugged it off, for the most part. I know it hurt her, but she wasn’t afraid of him. Not that she ever indicated, anyway. More often than not, she defended Quinn. Her dad didn’t pay enough attention to him, she’d say. That’s all he wants: attention.”

“I have to say all this puts a disturbing spin on the shirt,” Sam said.

Chase reluctantly agreed.

“So what do you think?” Sam prodded. “You like him for the attack?”

“What would be the motive?” Chase had his own ideas but wanted to hear Sam’s unbiased opinion first.

“Jealousy,” Sam said.

Check.

“Resentment.”

Check.

“Sibling rivalry.”

Check. Same page, all the way.

“You want to bring him in?” Sam asked.

“I think we should wait until the results come back on the shirt. If that blood isn’t Kylie’s, we’ll be at a dead end all over again.”

Sam nodded. “Works for me.”

“In the meantime, who else have we got?”

“According to the case file, cops looked at the usual suspects, mostly competitors, considering the nature of the attack. But they didn’t come up with anything.”

“They talked to me,” Chase said. And he’d had a hell of a time answering questions when all he could think about was getting back to the hospital. At one point, he’d leapt out of his chair, ready to take the cop’s head off when he suggested Chase might have resented the fact that Kylie was a better tennis player, that maybe his ego couldn’t take it and he’d lashed out.