She wasn’t willing to tell anyone yet. Not when it could, quite literally, be all in her mind. ‘There isn’t a “he”. Not until one of us makes a move. Assuming one of us ever does.’
‘If he’s not dead, he’ll make a move,’ Bryan predicted grimly, then turned and walked back to his car. ‘I guess I’ll see you . . . when I see you. Next month for sure.’
Scarlett nodded, still feeling sick. ‘For sure.’ When Michelle’s friends would gather by her grave on the anniversary of her death and remember the woman whose loss had scarred them all. She stepped out of the way as he slammed the door of his Jag and revved the engine loud enough to wake everyone on the street. Peeling out of her driveway with a squeal of tires, he set off down the hill at a speed far too high to be safe. Scarlett might have whispered a prayer for his safety . . . if she still believed in prayer. Which she had not since the moment she’d found Michelle’s body in that alley, covered in blood.
The thought of bodies and alleys jerked her out of the past. Tala. Michelle had never gotten her justice, but Tala sure as hell would. Digging deep for the anger that had kept her going for ten long years, Scarlett straightened her spine, marched up her front steps, unlocked the door and stepped inside. As she locked it behind her, the sob she’d been holding back barreled up from her gut like a tornado, stealing her breath. Slumping against the foyer wall, she slid to the floor, burying her face against her bent knees as she rocked herself for comfort, her keening cries echoing in the empty space.
The uneven patter of claws on her newly laid hardwood floor cut through her tears, giving her a moment’s warning before a sandpapery tongue licked her cheek. Choking on a wet laugh, she threw her arm around the three-legged bulldog whose life she’d saved the day she’d brought him home from the shelter. ‘Hey, Zat,’ she whispered, still surprised at how quickly he’d wormed his way into her heart.
She sat there with the dog for several minutes, then pushed herself to her feet and climbed the stairs to the one bathroom she’d finished remodeling. A shower, clean clothes and some coffee, and she’d be ready to start searching for Tala’s identity. And her killer.
That the search might include more interactions with Marcus O’Bannion shouldn’t seem like a silver lining, but it did. ‘And who knows,’ she murmured as she turned on the shower. ‘Maybe I’ll be the one to make the first move.’
Three
Cincinnati, Ohio
Tuesday 4 August, 5.15 A.M.
‘You’re here awful early, boss.’
Shock had Marcus jerking his gaze from his laptop to frown at the woman who leaned against his office doorframe looking sleep-rumpled, her curly hair all over the place and her clothes crushed and wrinkled.
Jill Ennis was not supposed to be here by herself. She was not one of his trusted staff. Not yet. And maybe not ever.
She’d never done anything overtly untrustworthy, and her work was impeccable, but she gave off an odd vibe that made Marcus uncomfortable, though he wasn’t sure why. He would have fired her months ago, except that she was Gayle’s niece, which put him in one hell of a bind. Jill’s parents had died five years before, and she’d moved in with Gayle. She had graduated from high school a year ago, and Gayle had asked Marcus if he would give her a job while the girl decided what to do with her life.
Marcus had never been able to deny Gayle anything, so he’d said yes. Jill had been tasked with updating their website, and she did good work. But recently she’d started college and had taken to coming in after hours to finish her work, often having to be almost kicked out when the others went home at two A.M., when the paper went to press.
‘Why are you here?’ he asked, wondering what Jill had overheard.
‘I was working on an ad layout for a new client and couldn’t get it quite right. I fell asleep at my desk. I dreamed someone was cursing, then woke up and realized it was you. What’s going on?’
Ignoring her question, Marcus refocused his attention on the list of threats that filled his computer screen. The last time he’d seen the list was more than nine months ago, and it was far longer than he remembered – with too many totally capable of taking a shot at him. Or at someone standing next to him. He couldn’t give this entire list to Scarlett Bishop. She was smart enough to see patterns. To figure out that he was doing a lot more than simply publishing the news.
‘You wouldn’t keep falling asleep at your desk if you weren’t burning the candle at both ends,’ he grumbled. ‘I pay you well enough that you shouldn’t need to go to school after working here all day.’
‘You pay me far too well,’ Jill said mildly. ‘That’s never been an issue.’
He looked up from the list. ‘Then what is the issue? Why are you killing yourself like this? You know I don’t care about any stinkin’ degrees.’
Her lips curved, but it was nowhere close to a smile. ‘You don’t really want to know the answer to that question, Marcus.’
Startled at the anger behind her words, Marcus shoved his own irritation back down, made his voice civil. ‘Try me.’
‘Okay, fine.’ Jill crossed her arms loosely over her chest and gave him a look that reminded him of Gayle when she’d scolded them as children.
‘Your aunt could freeze me with that look when I was a kid,’ he commented, leaning back in his chair, wondering what could have put that expression on Jill’s face.
‘I know. She said that Stone was always able to charm her out of it and into giving him cookies, but that you would always confess whatever “misdeed” you’d done.’
‘That’s pretty accurate,’ he said. Of course there was one childhood misdeed that Marcus had never confessed to Gayle or to anyone else, partly because he was ashamed. Partly because he was worried about the impact the truth would have on his mother and Stone. But mostly because he’d only been eight years old at the time, a traumatized little boy in a situation no child should ever need to face.
He hadn’t needed to confess to Gayle. She’d seen the whole thing and had kept his secret for the past twenty-seven years. Her love and care had ensured that his eight-year-old self hadn’t fallen into the abyss that called to his adult self. He sat here today because Gayle had never given up on him.
Now he faced her furious niece calmly. ‘But I’m not a kid, Jill, and you’re not Gayle. I’m your boss.’ He let the sentence hang, hoping to see some respect in her eyes. When she continued the staring contest, he sharpened his tone. ‘Why don’t you tell me exactly what it is that I don’t want to know?’
Jill squared her shoulders. ‘You’re looking at the threat list. Why?’
Marcus stiffened in shock, the anger he’d been controlling for hours suddenly collapsing into an icy ball in his gut. How had she known that? He hadn’t trusted her with the true mission of the paper, so he’d kept her access to sensitive information to a minimum. ‘How do you even know that such a list exists?’ he asked quietly.
‘My aunt told me.’
Impossible. ‘No, she didn’t tell you, I’m sure of that.’
Gayle was the only person Marcus would ever have trusted with the task of cataloguing the threats to his life. She would never have told anyone outside their specific small circle.
‘Okay, fine, Aunt Gayle didn’t tell me. I hacked into her computer and figured it out for myself.’ Her jaw jutted out, her gaze daring him to condemn her.
The hairs lifted on the back of his neck. Something was very wrong here. And considering he’d just witnessed a seventeen-year-old girl being gunned down in front of him, that was saying something. Jill’s mild manner a few minutes before had been a facade. She was furious with him. He wondered how long she’d carried her rage.
‘When?’ he asked.
‘The day Mikhail died.’
‘Was murdered,’ Marcus corrected, his words clipped. ‘Mikhail was murdered.’