Down and Dirty Read online

  I mentally stuck my tongue out at the phone every time it dinged with another one of Vaughn’s messages, and finally he got the hint and didn’t send anything else after he told me it was fine with him if I wanted to have troll feet at my wedding. I personally didn’t think my feet looked troll like, but just in case I was grateful my shoes had closed toes.

  The problem with all the information rattling in my brain was that subconsciously I knew the answer was there. The problem was sifting through all the bullshit before I found what I was looking for. I just had a weird feeling about the whole thing. Like maybe we were making things too complicated.

  I’d somehow found myself dressed in a lavender sheath dress, stockings, and dark purple heels. Vaughn had picked everything out, so I knew I didn’t look like an idiot. Even though I felt like one. And I’d even managed to find the time to have Roberta Cleary trim my hair when she came by the funeral parlor to touch up Chloe Anderson’s hair and makeup.

  Jack came downstairs dressed in a dark suit and tie and I just stared in appreciation. I was one lucky woman.

  “How much time do we have before the thing starts?” I asked.

  “We’re supposed to meet at the church in an hour and do a quick rehearsal of what’s going to happen tomorrow, and then we’re supposed to have dinner at the country club after that. They’ve got a private room set up for us there. Why?”

  “Do we have time to run an errand?”

  “Depends on the errand. Are you wanting to go to Vegas again?”

  “Also, why do we have to rehearse what’s going to happen tomorrow? It makes no sense. If we’re doing it tonight we might as well get married tonight. Why do it twice?”

  “Strangely enough, I agree with you completely about this one. I don’t get it either. But it will make my mother and Vaughn happy so we’re wearing our fancy clothes and are going to show up. Now what’s the errand?”

  I shrugged and grabbed the matching sweater that came with the dress in case it turned cool that evening.

  “Do we have time to pay a visit to Kelsey Donaldson? There’s just something weird about that whole thing.”

  “Like what?”

  “The timeline. Michael Bruce said he left the Connellis around six o’clock. And Kelsey works in D.C. and said Michael was waiting for her there at the hotel after she got off work. She said she was there before seven, but she didn’t get off work until six o’clock. It takes more than an hour to get from D.C. to Fredericksburg. And this would have been Tuesday night. You remember what happened in D.C. on Tuesday night?”

  Jack thought for a second and then it came to him. “The union protestors,” he said. “The police had to block off six square blocks around the capitol building because of the number of people who showed up. If Kelsey works at a restaurant by the capitol building she would’ve been stuck there for a while. The news said traffic was at a standstill for almost two hours while commuters tried to get home from work and avoid the protestors all at the same time. Yeah, I think we have time to pay Kelsey Donaldson a visit.”

  Carver came bounding down the stairs about that time dressed in a navy suit and a Star Wars tie.

  “Did I just hear you say you were going somewhere besides your wedding rehearsal?” he asked, looking back and forth between us expectantly. “Because I could be wrong, but I think it’s a requirement for the bride and groom to be at shit for their wedding.”

  Jack explained about the timeline discrepancies with Kelsey’s story and Ben nodded in agreement. “If we leave now, we can be back by dinnertime and you only have to miss the rehearsal part. I don’t see the point of the wedding rehearsal anyway. Why not just get married if you’re going to the trouble to walk down the aisle and say your vows anyway?”

  “I never thought of it that way, Carver,” Jack said, straight-faced. “If anyone asks, we’ll tell them this was your idea.”

  ***

  The closer we got to Kelsey Donaldson’s house, where she lived with her aunt, the more my gut churned, telling me I was missing something important. I looked through Kelsey’s file again, and read the transcript of her interview with Lewis.

  Jack got on the phone and called his mother, letting her know to go ahead and go through the rehearsal without us and to give people plenty of wine so they don’t notice we’re not there.

  “I feel a little like a third wheel,” Carver said from the back seat of Jack’s truck. Since we were all dressed up, we decided it probably wasn’t the best thing to take Jack’s unit and put Carver in the back seat like a criminal.

  “Going to talk to someone related to a murder investigation isn’t a normal date night for us, you weirdo,” Jack said.

  “Hey, how am I supposed to know that? It seems like something you two might do. Y’all are the weirdos.”

  By the time we pulled up at the little house Kelsey shared with her aunt, my Spidey senses were tingling. Jack and Ben’s must have been too because Jack reached under his seat and pulled out a backup weapon and tucked it in at the small of his back.

  It was a small box of a house, dingy white with peeling paint and a sagging porch. I was feeling rather naked without being able to wear my own weapon. It was tucked in my handbag, but I’d gotten into the habit of having it on my body at all times.

  “I’ll slide around to the back door,” Carver said. “Just in case.”

  Jack nodded and we waited until Carver started around the side of the house before we got out and made our way to the front door. We’d just rung the doorbell when Carver came back around the side of the house.

  “Nobody’s going to be answering that door today,” Carver said. “I can see a DB through the window.”

  Jack called the Chief of Police in Fredericksburg, who was a friend of his, since this wasn’t our jurisdiction and we didn’t have the right to enter the house or examine the dead body. Or bodies. Once the first responders came they ended up finding the body of an older woman—my guess was the aunt—in one of the bedrooms. Both she and Kelsey had been shot at close range.

  “We’re just going back to the wedding rehearsal?” I asked.

  “Be thankful you were able to get out of the rehearsal part,” Jack said. “But we shouldn’t push it about missing the dinner. It’s not a good idea to cross my mother. Besides, there’s nothing we can do there except wait to get a report from the investigating officer. It’s not my city and those aren’t my bodies. He said he’d send over initial findings as soon as he could. Which will be Monday at the earliest. And we’ll be gone anyway.”

  “We need to find Michael Bruce. I called my old boss in D.C. and they’re going to send someone to do drive-bys to see if they can spot him.”

  “But what’s his motivation?” I asked. “He’s a kid that’s got everything in the world at his fingertips. His parents seem to be good people. Why would he kill five people?”

  “We won’t know until we talk to him. But he’s found himself in a position of not having two best friends. His friends are now a couple and he’s the odd man out. By all accounts, there’s some rivalry between him and Damian Connelli at school as far as their class rank. And now all of a sudden he’s the first in his class. It could be something as simple as that. We need to find him and talk to him.”

  “The Bruces are going to put up roadblocks,” I said.

  “Yep.”

  “Ben, can you do an in depth search on Michael Bruce?”

  “Umm…of course I can. I’m brilliant and amazing at my job. No one’s secrets are safe from me.”

  “A disturbing thought,” I said.

  “I thought you already read through his file,” Jack asked.

  “I read through the one you guys did at the house. He’s got a ridiculous trust fund, but other than that there was no information other than school records and his community service history. I want to see if Carver can find something deeper.”

  “The kid’s only seventeen,” Jack said. “I don’t know how much deeper you can go.”

&n
bsp; Ben set up some kind of remote wireless system in the back seat of the truck and got out Matilda.

  “You really do take her everywhere,” I said. “It’s a little creepy.”

  “Don’t judge what you don’t understand, Graves. You’d want me to leave her at home by herself when everyone is going to be out having a good time tonight? That’s just cruel.”

  We were silent a few minutes while Carver worked and then he finally said, “Nope, Jack’s right. This is a seventeen year old kid. He doesn’t have much of a secret life. At least not that I can find, which means it doesn’t exist cause I can find anything.”

  “The ego—”

  “I like to call it confidence.” Carver scrolled through some more information. “But listen, there’s nothing here. The most exciting thing that’s happened to this kid is when he broke his arm a couple of years ago. Bone broke through the skin and they couldn’t get it to heal right. They ended up testing him for cancer, but the scans came back negative.”

  “And there it is—” I said as the tumblers in my mind all fell into place. “Jack, you remember when we were talking to the Bruces and they mentioned the paper cut on his finger that was still bleeding through the Band-Aid?”

  “Yeah, because he went out dirt biking. I got the impression that he had some kind of disease.”

  “Yeah, I bet you a million dollars he’s got Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and it’s never been diagnosed. It’s often overlooked when people show the symptoms with skin first and not their joints.”

  “You said that was hereditary,” Carver said.

  “It is. And I bet you double or nothing that Lance Owens is Michael Bruce’s real father. The odds of them both having the disease without sharing blood would astronomical.”

  “I wonder if Michael knew Lance Owens was his father,” Jack said.

  “If he did, he might be pretty pissed. Though I’m not sure why the Connellis would be his target.”

  “Maybe the Connellis weren’t his target. Maybe the girl was all along.”

  Jack called into the station and asked for officers to be dispatched to pick up both Michael Bruce and Lance Owens. “Lewis and Martinez can deal with it tonight. Actually, they’re going to have to wrap up the whole thing. We have things to do.”

  We’d just passed the sign on the road letting us know we’d entered King George County when a black SUV came out of nowhere and rammed us from behind. My head jerked and hit the side of the window hard enough that I saw stars. Whoever hit us hit exactly at the right angle on the bed of the truck to send us into a spin.

  Jack was a good driver and was able to minimize the damage, but there was only so much he could do. The airbags deployed and I jerked against the seatbelt, and then the truck tilted and we went face first into a culvert.

  I sat slumped against my seatbelt, my mind not caught up with what had just happened. I was stunned, but my medical training kicked in and I started cataloging the different aches and pains through my body to see if any of them were serious.

  A different kind of training kicked in for Jack. By the time I was able to lift my head, he’d cut through his seatbelt and was out of the car, drawing his weapon. Two shots were fired and I held my breath until I realized they were from Jack’s weapon and not someone shooting at us.

  I was pretty much trapped in the truck since we’d hit the culvert on my side, and I couldn’t get the door open. I struggled with my seatbelt and pushed myself up so I could see out of Jack’s door to the street. The SUV that had hit us had swerved out of control and Jack had shot out the tires before the culprit could drive away.

  “Get out of the car slowly. Hands up and away from your body,” Jack said.

  My muscles trembled as I held myself up, and I was losing strength. My vision was starting to go blurry and I was pretty sure I had a concussion after my head made contact with the window. I saw he had everything under control and dropped back into the seat.

  “Get your hands up and get on the ground,” I heard him say.

  I looked back at Carver and saw he was knocked out cold. Matilda was a mess of pieces across the seat and floorboard. I unbuckled my own seatbelt so I could turn around and I put two fingers against the pulse in his neck. And then I opened up his lids to check his pupils. I didn’t see any external bleeding, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have internal issues.

  I called 911 and talked to Kendra in dispatch to request an ambulance and backup officers. Almost as soon as I made the request, I heard the sirens blaring. I could feel the blackness closing in on me. I shook off the blackness that kept encroaching, not wanting to leave Jack alone until backup arrived.

  I heard the sirens get closer and car doors slam, but I couldn’t stay awake any longer. The blackness came whether I wanted it to or not.

  ***

  I’d regained consciousness by the time they loaded me in the ambulance to take me to the hospital. Jack rode beside me, and he looked a bit like a pirate with a bandage wrapped around his head and blood dripping from the corner of his eye.

  What they say about doctors making the worst patients is true. We weren’t halfway to the hospital by the time I was asking them to take out the IV and let me go.

  “I’m still getting married in the morning, Jack Lawson. Don’t you dare try to make me stay in the hospital. I’m fine. I just got my brains scrambled a little. I’ll have a headache and we’ll both be very colorful tomorrow if my aches and pains are anything to show for it, but I am walking down that aisle no matter what.”

  His teeth flashed white and he winced as it opened the cut near his eye again. “I wouldn’t let you miss it for the world.”

  “Was it Michael Bruce?” I asked.

  Jack nodded. “It’s a damned shame. He’s a bright kid. But he’s been sheltered his whole life in this perfect world created for him, and then all of a sudden he finds out it’s a lie. He’d confessed to everything by the time they got you and Carver out of the car.

  “It turns out he and Cassie are the ones who had a thing going for a little while. And then he found out about his mother’s affair with Lance Owens and when he confronted her about it she told him the truth. But by the time he knew Cassie was his half sister, the damage was done. He broke things off with her and the only explanation he gave was that he liked it when they were all just friends better. She was obviously hurt, but her reaction was to move onto Damian Connelli as kind of a big middle finger.”

  “That’s a really big middle finger,” I said, wincing.

  “Yep, and he was really pissed. I told you his IQ was off the charts. And a sociopath with a high IQ is always a dangerous thing, even at a young age. But he’s got a bit of a temper and that’s his weakness. If he’d have laid low and not overreacted when he saw us going back to talk to Kelsey he might have gotten away with it. He’d set up Lance Owens to take the fall pretty convincingly.

  “We would have found the drug you found in the Connelli’s system missing from the hospital with his signature on the line. And I guarantee the blood Walker found on the coffee pot would’ve belonged to Owens too.”

  “Creepy kid,” I said, shuddering. My body was coming out of shock and I couldn’t keep myself from shaking, so I just let it run its course. “I hate to break it to you, but I’m going to be out again here in a second or two. Just make sure you wake me up for the wedding.”

  “Will do, Doctor Graves.” He brought my hand to his lips and kissed my fingers, and that was the last thing I remembered before sliding into sleep.

  EPILOGUE

  There are those snapshots in time—the ones that are imprinted in the mind forever—when everything becomes slow motion and in focus so you can see every particle of the moment being captured.

  Today was that moment for me.

  I wouldn’t necessarily remember every detail of my dress, the cake, or the faces in the crowd when I was ninety years old and playing the memories of my youth on a loop through my mind. If I had to forget anything it would be the aches
in my body and the bruises that covered my torso, but even those were their own memory—another story of our life to tell.

  I might not remember details about myself, but I’d remember everything about Jack. The way the setting sun haloed around him, casting a golden glow across everything it touched, and the black eye and stitches along the outside of his eye. God, we looked like a pair and my lips twitched as I had the thought.

  But it was the look of complete and utter awe on his face as I walked toward him—the love there so radiant and pure that I wondered how anyone could miss it—that made me forget the aches and pains.

  I knew family and friends surrounded us, but for that snapshot in time it was only me and Jack. It had always been the two of us. It was a little strange to think of myself as someone’s wife—Jack’s wife—but that’s what I wanted to be.

  And as I met Jack beneath an arch of white flowers and took his hand, I made those vows, and promised to love, honor, and cherish him until death did us part. For once the thought of death didn’t weigh heavy on my heart, because in that moment, so filled with the promise of our love to each other, I knew that not even death could separate us.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Liliana Hart is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than thirty books. She lives in Texas in a big rambling house with her laptop and cats, and she spends way too much time on Twitter. She loves hearing from her readers.

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