Silent Scream (7 page)

“I prefer to think of him as my confidential informant,” Paige said archly, then sniffed. “You smell like an old fireplace.
What happened tonight?”

“Fire. Two dead,” Olivia said briefly, sharing no more than the reporters knew.

But Paige had known her a long time. “You had to inform the families.”

“Just one. So far anyway.”

Paige winced. “The other’s a John Doe?”

“Jane.” Olivia swallowed hard, remembering the girl’s ashen face. “Just a kid.”

Paige squeezed her arm. “I’m sorry, honey.”

“Me too.” She cleared her throat. “I’m not going to have time to work out later, so I stopped by on my way home for just a
few minutes. I was going to call you.”

“You’ll call me. Famous last words of Jasper.” Paige pointed at the Nautilus equipment. “You’re warmed up already, so let’s
get started.”

Olivia hesitated. “That’s okay. You don’t have to stay.”

“I know. But if I don’t, you’ll keep avoiding me like you have for the past few months. So get to the leg press, Detective.”

Sulking, Olivia obeyed, giving Rudy a dirty look as she passed him. “Traitor.”

“Leave him alone,” Paige murmured. “He’s worried about you. So am I.”

Olivia flopped onto the first machine. “Let’s get this over with.”

Paige said no more of a personal nature, simply counting reps. They moved through the rotation as they had a hundred times
before, Olivia mindlessly going through the motions. It wasn’t until they were near the end that the wall crumbled.

“She was expecting us.” Olivia was lying on her back, staring at the tiled ceiling.

Paige was sitting on her heels, next to the bench. “Who?” she asked, unsurprised.

“The widow.” Olivia never gave names and Paige knew not to ask. “The daughter saw the fire on the news, knew it was dad’s
shift. She went to sit with mom and wait for us, the bringers of great joy to all people.” Her words were bitter. “He’d been
a cop.”

“Oh no. Liv.”

“Yeah. Did his twenty-five years and retired. Never took a bullet. Tonight he did. And all I had to say was ‘I’m sorry for
your loss.’”

“What else could you say?” Paige asked logically.

“I don’t know. All I know is I’m damn tired of saying it.”

“You’re just damn tired. Your boss offered you a vacation. Why don’t you take it?”

A vacation.
Right
. “I tried,” Olivia spat. “It was too quiet. All I could see was…”

“The bodies in the pit,” Paige finished for her.

Olivia sat up, glared at Paige through narrowed eyes. “And then
he
shows up.” Which was what she’d wanted to say all along and been afraid to, all at once.

Paige’s black brows went up, surprised now. “Who?”

“That guy. From Mia’s wedding.”

Paige blinked. She was the only one who knew the
story which had only been pried from Olivia’s margarita-numbed lips. “You mean your sister’s wedding? No way. That was two
years ago, in Chicago. He just showed up, after all this time? What a jerk.”

Olivia flicked her gaze back up to the ceiling. Paige hadn’t been updated recently. “Two and a half years, and actually, he
lives here now. Moved here seven months ago.”

“Lots of stuff happened seven months ago,” Paige observed quietly. “Why did he move here?”

“His friend lives here. You met her. Eve.”

“The one you saved from Pit-Guy? Rest over. Another set. Go.”

Olivia winced as she pumped. “Pit-Guy” had killed dozens of people, most of them women. Eve had come within a hair of being
his thirty-sixth victim. “Another cop saved Eve, not me. I got there after all the killing was done, just in time to clean
out the pit.”

Paige sighed. “Two more. One, and you’re done. So what about Wedding-Guy?”

“Came to visit Eve, ended up buying a place. She told me. He hasn’t said a word.”

Paige winced. “Not a word? So, does Wedding-Guy have a name?”

Olivia’s throat closed and she swallowed harshly. “David.”

“And what does David the wedding-guy do?”

“He’s a goddamn firefighter.” And from the corner of her eye she watched Paige’s black eyes flicker. “What?”

“Just that he was at the fire tonight and you got the homicide. Helluva coincidence. So he’s been here, in
Minneapolis, all this time? And he didn’t, like, call or anything?”

“Not once.” And that hurt. A lot.

“Pig.”

“I know, right? Except…” Olivia closed her eyes.
Be truthful, at least to yourself.
“Except he’s a nice guy. He likes cartoons and dogs and loves his mother. He cooks and fixes cars. We’d read the same books,
liked the same music, dreamed of traveling to all the same places. He volunteered in shelters for women and teen runaways,
fixing plumbing and roofs and whatever got broken. He did karate, too. Like you.”

“Oh? Really?”

Olivia nodded. “He was a brown belt, practicing for his black-belt test. He also taught a class at the Y in Chicago, to kids.
For free. I’d have thought he was lying, that nobody could be so perfect, but Mia had already told me he was a nice guy.”

“Wow.” Paige looked stunned. “I thought you’d only met him that one night.”

“Two, actually. We met at Mia’s rehearsal dinner. It was spring, and I guess I was wide open for getting swept off my feet.
A weekend fling. How cliché.”

Paige frowned at her disparaging tone. “Liv. You’d gotten dumped by your ass of a fiancé just a few weeks before the wedding.
I’d still like to use him for a punching bag for what he did to you. Going back to his old fiancée. Who was a ho.”

“I remember,” Olivia said dryly. “I was there.” Paige’s punching bag had been named Doug for quite some time after that.

“Then, not a week later, finding out the father you’d
never known was dead? Then finding out you had two half sisters?”

“The cop and the con,” Olivia said affectionately. “Meeting Mia and Kelsey was the only good thing to come out of all that.”

Paige’s scowl relaxed a little. “I’m just saying that you’d been through a lot that winter. To fall under the spell of a sexy,
nice Mr. Perfect could happen to any of us. He took advantage of you.”

Olivia shrugged. “Probably. The day of the rehearsal dinner, I was kind of a mess. I was late. I’d just come back from meeting
Kelsey for the first time.”

“At the prison,” Paige murmured.

Where Olivia’s half sister was serving eight to twenty-five for armed robbery. “Yeah. The prison’s about an hour away from
Chicago, and I hadn’t been able to get out there before then. I was kind of shaken up, meeting my sister that way, behind
the glass. I got to the church late for the rehearsal and was running up to the steps on these stupid high heels, and then
I saw him sitting there.”

“This David guy.”

“Yeah.” Olivia closed her eyes. “It was like getting kicked in the gut. I was mesmerized. His face… just, wow. He’s got this
face, Paige. And the shoulders. And the rest of him… You can’t forget him. I was staring at his face when my heel hit a rock
and I tripped. Flew right into his lap. I was too star struck to even be embarrassed.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever known you to be star struck,” Paige said quietly.

“I never was before. Not with Doug, not with anyone. I’d skinned my knee and he patched me up.” Her
lips curved bitterly. “He had me at hello. It’s a wonder I got through the rehearsal and the dinner. All the women looked
like they wanted to gouge my eyes out because he stayed with me. And we talked. We talked all night.”

“Did he know about Doug?”

“God, no. I didn’t want to look pathetic. I didn’t tell any of them. Mia didn’t even know. And frankly, sitting there with
David, Doug was the last thing on my mind. He never took his eyes off my face. I felt… important. Sounds stupid now.”

Paige’s brow creased in sympathy. “It sounds normal to me.”

“I guess I really wanted to feel important to somebody, you know?”

Paige squeezed her hand. “Yeah, babe. I know.”

Olivia’s eyes stung and she willed back what would have been mortifying tears. “It wasn’t all bad, though. I told him about
Kelsey. He’d known Mia for a long time, knew about our father. About the abuse. I was so sad to see Kelsey there, in prison
like that, even if she did do the crime. David suggested volunteering with teen runaways, to help give them a chance. To help
them not turn out like my sister.”

“And you do. It’s good work, Liv. You make a difference in those kids’ lives.”

“Thanks. So like I said, it wasn’t all bad. The rehearsal dinner was wonderful. It was the night after the wedding that went
wrong.”

“After it went really well,” Paige said, brows lifted meaningfully and Olivia sighed.

“I wish I’d never met him, because I can’t imagine it ever being that good again.”

“But you didn’t…”

“Not all the way.” She sighed again. “But based on what did happen, I think all the way would have freaking killed me.”

Paige was quiet a moment. “Maybe he just lied about doing all that nice stuff. Maybe he’s really a colossal jerk.”

“I wish. Since he’s been here, he donates his time to charity. Habitat for Humanity, fixing stuff at the local shelters. Eve
tells me about him all the time. She thinks David hung the moon. He really is a nice guy. He just… doesn’t want me.”

There.
She’d said it out loud.
I should be feeling better now
. But she wasn’t.

“Liv, did it occur to you that maybe he’s waiting for you to make the first move?”

Olivia scoffed. “In my fantasies, sure.”

“Liv?” Paige waited until Olivia looked at her. “If I were a guy and we’d parted ways under the circumstances you described?”

“Only after you got me drunk,” Olivia interjected, frowning.

“Like you would have ever told me otherwise? Duh. Of course I got you drunk. But as I was saying, if I were Wedding-Guy, I’d
be waiting for you to make the first move.”

Olivia remembered the tilt of David Hunter’s perfect chin before she’d driven away. It had felt like a challenge. But she
also remembered that one night vividly. She remembered the one word, that one name he’d said, even more vividly. “No.”

“Why not?” Paige asked, exasperated. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“The same thing that happened the last time,” Olivia said darkly, and her body throbbed in places that had nothing to do with
her workout.

“And that would be a bad thing, how? You haven’t had anyone since. You’re under so much stress that you’re about to crack
wide open. What’s the harm in a fling? So he used you. Use him back. What’s the worst that can happen?”

Olivia sat up and swiped at her neck with a towel.
I become like you
, she thought,
with so many boyfriends I need a spreadsheet to keep track of them all
. But of course she said nothing of the kind. Paige was her oldest friend. “I’ll think about it,” was what she said instead.
“Let’s stretch. I have to catch a little sleep before morning meeting.”

Monday, September 20, 7:10 a.m.

“Whoa.” Jeff Zoellner stood on the condo’s first floor, staring up through the room-sized hole that went all the way up to
the fourth floor. “You woulda felt that for sure.”

Grimly, David followed his gaze up, then looked down into the basement. The first floor had also been burned through. “Yeah.
I guess I owe you one.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll think of something.” Jeff starting walking again, tapping the handle of his ax on the floor as he sounded
for weak spots. David did the same with the end of his Halligan, and together they moved toward the back of the condo. Each
of the six floors had six units, but the units on this side of the building had sustained the worst damage. “I think
we’re solid from here on out,” Jeff said. “We can let Barlow in now.”

Micah waited in the doorway. He wore a hard hat and boots, but was otherwise dressed like a detective. The end of his yellow
tie poked up from the pocket of his suit. He held a video camera in one hand and a light bar in the other, and had worked
alongside them diligently but intelligently, treading in areas they’d declared safe.

And he hadn’t said another word about Olivia and for that David was grateful. There were too many dangers here to be thinking
about anything else but the job.

Which is what David had told himself every time he caught himself thinking about her, wondering why Micah Barlow felt she
was his business, wondering if the two of them had history, not wanting that picture in his head. David grimaced. Except now
that he’d thought it, the picture existed, if only in his imagination. Taunting him.

If Micah and Olivia had a past, at least they had no present. David had kept a close enough eye on her that he’d have known.
But if she did have someone?
I’ll walk away.

And if she doesn’t have anyone but just doesn’t want you?
Given the facts, that was the more likely outcome.
I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.

“Where can I step?” Micah called from the doorway.

“Floor’s solid where you’re standing,” David said, forcing himself to focus yet again, “but it gets spongy about two feet
from the edge of the hole.”

Micah looked up, then down, just as David had. “Goddamn. You’re a lucky bastard.”

“Yeah, I got that part,” David said. “Over here was
what we wanted you to see. They poured the carpet padding glue along this line.” David pointed to the pour patterns zigzagging
from the front door of the unit to the hole, continuing through to the back bedrooms. “It’s the same pour pattern we found
on the second floor. I think they poured a line from the door and from the back of the unit, meeting here.”

“Makes sense,” Micah said, filming. “They probably dumped what was left in the cans where the floor failed. Fire would have
been hotter there. The manager said rolls of carpet were stored here, same place on each floor. Waterlogged, that would have
been enough weight to crash through the second and third floors. When the first floor collapsed, all three carpet rolls fell
into the basement.”

For a minute David thought Micah would venture to the edge of the hole to get video straight down, but he stopped while still
in the safe zone. From the corner of his eye, David could see Jeff’s mouth snap shut, discarding the warning he’d been about
to bark. It hadn’t taken more than a few runs with Jeff to know cops made him real edgy.