Sweet Dreams Boxed Set (40 page)

Bennett cleared his throat.  “Cameron Wilde has been found. He’s okay,” he said quickly when he saw the worry flicker in her gaze. “Seems he was at the beach house, just like you said. He’s coming in so I can ask him some questions about the case.”

“I’m coming, too,” Ivy said immediately.

Yes, he’d thought that would be her response.  But he shook his head. “No dice. The chief gave specific instructions that you were
not
to show up.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw, feeling the scrape of his stubble. “Everyone knows that you’re close with Cameron. The chief said you had to stay away for his interrogation.”

“But—”

“And the press are going to be at the station. Chief Quarrel said it was already a feeding frenzy, and the mayor has given orders for us to lock down civilian access as much as possible.”

Her head tilted as she stared up at him. “I thought that I was under protective custody.”

Her lips were so red. So plump. He leaned down and kissed her. “You are,” he said softly. “That’s why Detective Drew Trout is outside.  He’ll be your shadow for today.”

Her gaze searched his. “Dumping me isn’t cool.”

Keeping you safe is.

“You know…I’ll just contact Dr. Battiste on my own and find out what he tells you.”

Battiste needed to watch his step.  If the mayor found out he was sharing details of the investigation, the guy would find himself in some serious hot water. 

“Keep close to your guard,” Bennett ordered her. “If anything happens to scare you—shit, if you just feel
nervous,
then call me right away.” And he’d be at her side instantly.

Screw the press conference.

Screw everything…but her.

Her lips lifted into a faint half-smile.  “I’m nervous.”

He stilled.

“But that’s not how it works. You have a job to do. So do I.  Go.” She pushed against his shoulders. “And come back to me when you can.”

He didn’t leave, not yet. “Where are you planning to go?” Because he could already see the wheels spinning in her head.

“To see my brother. He’ll need me.”  Her shoulders rolled back. “Then I’ll go pay my respects to Shelly’s family.” Her gaze fell to the covers. “She was my friend, and she deserved so much better than this.” Her breath whispered out. “So did Evette…so did those other women. The councilman.  No one deserved this slaughter.”

And that was exactly what it had been.

His hand lifted and trailed over her cheek. “I’ll be back at your side before you know it.”  She was right—he did have a job to do. Hunting that psycho out there. And Ivy might want to hunt right at his side, but he’d tried working with a partner before…and that man—trained at the FBI Academy—had fallen to a killer’s blade.  Bennett had been trapped with his friend’s dead body.  The blood had leaked toward him.

That won’t ever happen with Ivy.
He would never risk her that way.

So, no, she wasn’t going with him.  He was keeping the guard on her. He was keeping her alive. And he
would
find the bastard hunting in Mobile.

Bennett headed into the den. He grabbed his holster and checked his gun. A quick glance over his shoulder showed him that Ivy had followed him. She stood at the edge of the hallway, with the sheet wrapped around her body.

For an instant, he just stopped.  Lost, in her. “Sometimes, I would forget,” he heard himself say, “just how beautiful you really were.”

Her gaze held his. “I hated what happened. I went to the police, I
told
them that they needed to investigate my father more after that accident. I begged Hugh to talk, but he said…he said he never saw my father take a drop to drink that night. But when my dad hugged me at the scene, I could smell the booze on him.” She shook her head. “I am so sorry for what happened to your aunt. To you.”

He shook his head. “I never blamed you.”

“Didn’t you, Bennett?”  She pulled the sheet up a bit. “Isn’t that why you left?”

He glanced down at the gun in his hand. He put it in the holster. “I left because I was ashamed.  My mother…she took your father’s money.  She took it. She sold her sister’s life for fifty thousand dollars.”

He heard her sharply indrawn breath.  “I didn’t know—”

“It wasn’t just that…” His breath heaved out. “I went after your father.”

“What?”

“I broke into his house.” This was a shame he’d carried for too long. Because he’d broken down and given in to his rage. “You weren’t there. I had this idea,
this crazy idea
, that I could make him confess.  So I went in through the back door. I found the bastard there and he was in his study. Drinking.
Drinking again…
when she was barely cold in the ground.” His chin lifted. “I lost it. I attacked him.”

She took a step toward him.

She should be backing away.

“Hugh was there. He pulled me off your father. Told me to get the hell away. To stay away—from his father. From you. He said I was the dangerous one.”  He could still see that scene. His first punch had busted the senator’s nose.  The man hadn’t even tried to fight back. He’d just taken the blows.  “I think Hugh was right.”

Ivy shook her head.

“I’m the one who attacked.  I’m the one who fought.  I’m the one who could have gone to jail.” His laughter was bitter. “One phone call. That was all it would have taken. Your father came to see me the next day, you see. He made me a deal…get the hell out of town.  Or go to jail.”

“No!”

“Oh, yeah, he did. But that trip out of town—it came complete with a college education. A ticket to start over, just like the ticket he had given my mother.”  His breath rushed out as shame burned through him. “And dammit, I took that ticket.”

She touched his arm. “You were young, Bennett. You—”

“Didn’t want to go to jail? Didn’t want to throw my life away? No, I didn’t. I gave in to his threats. I took his money—just like my mother did—and I left behind the only thing I really cared about.” 

Her hand squeezed his arm. “I’m here now.”

She was. 

“We can’t change the past,” Ivy told him starkly. “I wish to God that we could, but it’s over.  The most we can do is go forward. Try to make things better.”

“Like you did with the Sebastian Jones murder?”  He threw that out to see her reaction.

Her expression shut down. “I guess I should have expected you to go dig in my life. Only fair, since I was doing the same thing to yours.” Her smile turned bittersweet. “Let me guess…was Dr. Battiste the one who told you about that case?”

Bennett nodded. 

“I figured he might do something like that,” she murmured. Then she softly sighed and said, “When he learned about the
accident
that my father caused, my grandfather had a stroke. He was in the hospital for months.”

And I was gone. I’d left Ivy.

“My grandfather’s recovery was slow. He had to learn how to speak again. How to walk. Every moment tore out my heart, and I just wanted to help him.”  She glanced down at her hands. “So I didn’t go away to college. I transferred to a school here. I stayed close to him. I visited him as often as I could, and I tried to give him a reason to fight.”

He waited.

“Cold cases.”  She nodded. “That’s what we started with.  The cases that the cops weren’t trying to solve.  I would go in to his room each day. Tell my grandfather about them. Read the files.  He had…friends…who were happy to pass those files along to me.”

“Friends like the chief?” Bennett murmured. “And Dr. Battiste?”

“He wasn’t the chief back then.”  She turned away. “But yes, like them.” The sheet trailed behind her. “My grandfather’s body was weak, but his mind was sharp.  He hated the way things had become with my family. Once, his investigations business had thrived. It had the best reputation in the southeast.” She glanced back at him. “He didn’t know that my father had used the employees there to dig up dirt on his competitors so he could win political races. He didn’t know that the business he’d built with his blood and his sweat had become a blackmail tool for my dad. We all learned that, too late.”

Her father was a real prize.

“As I sat in the hospital room with my grandfather, we made plans to change the business…to get it back to the way it used to be.  And we decided we’d just start with two employees.”  The sheet rustled as she walked. “It was just me and him. And our cold cases.  With cold cases, sometimes you just need a fresh pair of eyes.”

And he was betting her eyes had been plenty fresh.

“As my grandfather and I poured over the notes, we started to find small clues. Details that others had overlooked.  Our first big break came with the Sebastian Jones murder.”

Thanks to the tip-off from Dr. Battiste, Bennett had pulled up the original case file for Sebastian Jones. Sebastian had been a sixteen-year-old boy—a boy whose body had been found slumped near a dumpster on the outskirts of the city. Drug paraphernalia had been found on the boy, and he’d been shot in the heart.  From all accounts, it had looked like a drug deal gone wrong—with the kid’s shooter just vanishing into the night.

Bennett had wanted to dig deeper into the case, but he hadn’t been given the time.  He waited for Ivy to tell him the rest of the story.

“Sebastian was a straight A student,” Ivy said. “His mother told me that he was determined to get a scholarship. He wanted to be a doctor. He wanted to save lives. To change the world. She was adamant that he would
never
be involved with drugs, and the ME’s report—”

Ah, that would be her friend Dr. Battiste…

“It showed no drugs in his system. It
did
show gunshot residue on his hands, consistent with him fighting his attacker, trying to wrestle the guy away.” Sadness softened her voice. “In the official report, the cops noted that Sebastian’s mother had just sent him out to the grocery store.  That he had one hundred dollars and that he was supposed to buy a few things on her list.” Her voice softened. “We realized he was robbed for that money, and his body was just dropped in that spot—because it was an area well-used by drug dealers. When Sebastian was discovered there, the authorities thought just what the killer wanted…”

“That Sebastian was a drug dealer.”

She turned toward him. “So the cops were focusing their efforts on the gangs and the drug trade and they didn’t look close to home…”  Her smile was bitter. “Home isn’t always the safest place, you know. Sometimes, that’s where the real monsters live.”

He knew just how true that was.

“I went back to Sebastian’s home. I interviewed his mother. His step-father. I talked to the neighbors. My grandfather was starting to get better, but it was slow. All so slow…he told me not to go alone, but I had to investigate. For him. For Sebastian.” Her breath expelled in a rush. “
For me
. I had to prove that I wasn’t going to be like my father. I wasn’t going to take an easy way out. I just—
I wasn’t.”

Her hand lifted and she brushed back her hair. “You can’t really see the scar now. And it seems almost stupid to show it…considering what you went through.”

Scar? She didn’t have a scar. He’d touched every inch of her smooth skin.

“Sebastian’s step-father kept acting odd. So jittery. His eyes were bloodshot. His answers too fast. No, he hadn’t seen Sebastian when he left. Yes, he thought the boy had been trouble—‘
always acting so high and mighty when he was no better than me’.
That’s what he said but…I thought Sebastian
was
better, way better than the image that guy was presenting to me. So I followed the step-father, acting on a hunch…and
he
was the one doing drugs. The one getting high before he’d go home.  And I realized…he was the one who took that hundred dollars from his own step-son, and he left Sebastian to die with the garbage.”

He crossed to her. She’d pulled the hair away from the nape of her neck, and now he could see the faint, white line that sliced from just behind her ear around to the back of her head.

What the hell?

“The step-father didn’t like being followed, so he turned the tables and he started following
me
. He tracked me to the PI office.” Her eyelids lowered. “I didn’t realize he had the knife on him.  He’d sliced me before I even knew what was happening.”

His hand rose to her neck. His fingers traced that scar.

“I hit him, drove at him as hard as I could.  He fell back but jumped up and was coming at me again, yelling that he wasn’t going to prison because Sebastian had died. He screamed that if Sebastian had just given him the money, the boy wouldn’t have died. Sebastian’s mistake was that he fought back.” Her lashes lifted as her gaze held his. “I fought back, too. I grabbed the lamp from my grandfather’s desk, and I threw it at him.  Even as it shattered, the office door was flying open. Hugh and Cameron rushed in. They’d heard the guy’s confession.  He went to jail. Sebastian got his justice.”  

Yes, he had.

“And I got a new job. One that was scary and hard and so worth every single moment and every drop of sweat and fear.  It’s a job I intend to keep working, no matter what.” 

And I thought she wasn’t strong enough to handle the dark? I am such a fucking fool.

He bent, and his lips brushed against her scar.  He kissed it softly, the same way she’d kissed the marks on his body. “Something you should know,” he said.  She was naked, sexy as all hell, stronger than steel and… “I love you, Ivy. Sometimes, I think I always have. And I know I always will.”

“Bennett?”

He forced himself to step back.  “If I get a break in this case, I will be calling you,
partner
.” 

Her eyes widened.

“Now if I don’t get the hell out of here…” His gaze dipped down her sheet-covered body. He swallowed. “I’ll be getting you in bed. And as much as I want that—want you—the chief and the mayor are waiting.”

He’d said that he loved her. She was pretty much staring at him in shock now. Had she really not known how he felt?  Did she truly believe he’d left her before without a second glance? Leaving her had gutted him. For months, he’d walked around like half a person—because he’d left his heart with her.