See No Evil

TWELVE

Julia was drunk.

If she hadn’t been leaning so heavily against him on the way out of Dillon’s house, Connor wouldn’t have believed anyone could get drunk on three beers.

“You’ll make sure she gets home safely and unmolested?” Dillon asked, raising his eyebrows.

“Very funny,” said Connor. “I don’t even like her. I’m not going to take advantage of her.”

“I knew you didn’t like me.” Julia pouted.

“Like that’s a big revelation,” Connor muttered.

“And I’m not drunk.” She hiccupped. “I just haven’t eaten.”

“Since when?” he asked as he slid her into the passenger seat of his truck. He and Dillon had eaten all the pizza he brought before Julia showed up.

“I don’t know.” She hiccupped again. “Yesterday, I think.”

“Great.” He slammed the passenger door shut. Now it made sense. Three beers, empty stomach. And now the counselor was his responsibility.

He should have asked Dillon to take her home.

He started up the engine of his truck. He lived only a few blocks from Dillon, but he wasn’t taking Julia to his house.

He glanced at the counselor. Her eyes were closed, but she wasn’t sleeping.

“Tell me the truth, Connor,” Julia said quietly, not opening her eyes. “Do you think Emily is guilty? Do you think she helped kill Victor?”

How could he answer that? He’d been a cop, cops looked not only at the evidence but used their experience and instincts to figure out who was lying and who was telling the truth. Leave the facts to scientists like Jim Gage; the truth was cops bartered lesser evils. So did prosecutors. That’s why the two professions were usually tight. They needed each other. A prosecutor may have a solid case, but they might turn free a drug addict in exchange for testimony to nail the coffin shut on a killer.

“You do,” she said when he didn’t answer right away. “Take me home.”

“You need to eat.”

“I have food. I think.”

“Julia, I don’t think Emily did it, but you need to face the fact that she may have played some role in the murder.”

A sob escaped her chest. Don’t cry. Dammit, Julia, don’t cry. I can’t handle tears.

But she didn’t cry. Instead she said, “The last thing my brother said to me before he died was ‘Take care of Emily.’ I didn’t protect her, and she ended up being raped, running away from home, and possibly involved with a murder. I failed in the only thing I ever cared about: living up to my promise to Matt.”

Connor glanced over at Julia when he stopped at a light. He instantly regretted it. She was looking at him, her face a mask of torment, her eyes dry but full of pain. “Matt gave me the world. He gave me freedom to do what I wanted to do with my life. He became the perfect son so I wouldn’t have to be the perfect daughter. All he wanted, all he ever asked of me, was to take care of his daughter. And now…” She turned her head, looked out the window. “Emily is already going to pay the price of my incompetence for the rest of her life.”

“That’s alcohol talking,” Connor admonished.

“It’s the truth.”

Connor drove over to La Honda, a restaurant owned and operated by his mother’s best friend, Felicia, another escapee from Cuba. Though crowded, it helped being family friends. They were seated immediately.

Felicia, a small round woman, came over, hugged Connor, and smiled wide. “The usual?”

“Absolutely.”

“You’ve never brought a lady friend in before.” She beamed at Julia.

“We’re not friends,” Connor and Julia said simultaneously.

Felicia’s smile only widened as she left to fill their order, coming back immediately with two beers, chips, and salsa.

“It’s hot,” Connor warned.

“I love salsa,” Julia said, scooping a huge chunk onto a chip and popping it into her mouth.

Connor covered his mouth to keep from laughing out loud. As the heat from the habanero peppers reached Julia’s sinuses, her eyes watered, her nose began to run, and he could almost see sweat form on her brow. He had to give her credit for chewing and swallowing, before draining her water glass, and then his.

“I warned you,” he said.

“Next time, I’ll listen.”

They ate in silence, and Connor was surprised when the tension dissipated. Julia cleaned her plate, drank another beer, and lost the ghostly pallor she’d had since arriving at Dillon’s earlier in the evening.

They stared at each other in silence. Connor asked softly, “What happened with your brother? I heard he died in a car accident.”

She nodded, picked up her beer, and took a long swallow.

“Were you there?”

She nodded.

“And?”

Julia’s face contorted in pain and anger. “I was driving the car.” Softer, “I killed him.”

“You didn’t kill him.”

“I know that road like the back of my hand. Every bend and turn. It was my car, my road, and-”

Connor regretted bringing it up, but he couldn’t stop now. He didn’t have to know the truth; he wanted to know.

“It was raining and I skidded. Crashed into a tree.” Her voice was quiet, matter-of-fact, as if she were a witness on the stand. “I swerved, acting on instinct-self-preservation-and turned the car. The passenger side slammed into the tree trunk. We were going about forty. Matt-” her voice hitched, she took a deep breath, then said, “Matt was crushed. He died there, before the paramedics came. Before anyone came.”

Connor took her hand. It was soft yet firm, feminine yet strong. “It was an accident.”

Julia couldn’t believe she was telling Connor Kincaid, of all people, about the night Matt died. Her chest tightened-is this what a heart attack feels like? The pain was real, hot, twisting and climbing, taking over.

“He was my best friend,” she said quietly, not able to look at Connor. “My only friend.”

And it was true. She’d distanced herself from her family; and by doing that, she had also separated herself from the friends she’d grown up with. If she could call any of the wealthy families her parents allowed her to associate with her friends. Matt was her only true friend, her brother, her mentor, her savior in so many ways. When he was gone, she had only her work. And Emily.

“I’m sorry about your brother, but it was an accident.”

“So?”

“You weren’t drinking-if you were, you’d have been disbarred and probably imprisoned. It was raining, but I’ll bet if I went up to that road the posted speed limit would have been forty.”

Julia stared at Connor. She remembered five years ago when he was a hot-tempered cop stuck in the middle of an internal investigation he wanted no part of. He was still hot-blooded, but age-and experience-had calmed him.

Or had it? What did she really know about Connor Kincaid’s life since she told him his choice was testify or prison?

And for the first time in the last five years she wondered if she had made the right decision.

Connor had gone against orders and involved himself in the takedown of crooked cops he was ordered to stay away from. Not only that, but he broke more laws than Julia could count on both hands.

Laws must be upheld. They had to mean something. If they could be disregarded at any time, whatever the reason, wasn’t that the first step toward anarchy? The law grounded Julia, gave her strength and purpose. But Connor Kincaid was a good man, and maybe she should have looked more into giving him a second chance than laying down the rule of law and lecturing him on right and wrong.

Julia had broken no laws when Matt was killed, but she harbored more guilt than most criminals. She didn’t understand why her niece didn’t confide in her about the rape, but she did understand why Emily didn’t turn Victor in.

And for the first time, she began to understand the rocks Connor Kincaid had been wedged between when he broke the law for justice.

She was on the other side of the door. Connor hoped she wasn’t naked, that she had the sense to sleep in her clothes.

He had locked his door. Not that Julia Chandler would step foot into his bedroom, but it would make him pause long enough to unlock his door and think about what he would be doing if he touched her. Stop long enough to remember.

He still couldn’t believe he’d brought her into his house. He never brought women home. Of course, Julia wasn’t really “a woman,” someone he was dating or thinking of dating or sleeping with or thinking of sleeping with, or any other foolish thing like that. She was a district attorney and she’d hired him.

Yep, keep the facts firmly planted in mind. Don’t think about her long legs or big eyes or silky hair or the way her head fell against his shoulder when she drifted off to sleep in the truck. Don’t think about those lips and how much he wanted to kiss them. Don’t think about Julia naked and underneath his body asking him to make love to her.

Damn, he needed a shower. Cold.

Remember that she forced you to give up everything you believed in, everything you ever wanted to be.

How could he forget? She’d manipulated him into an internal affairs investigation he wanted no part of. He wasn’t going to turn on his own. He’d wanted to handle it his own way.

Two dead girls sealed his fate.

In the heat of the summer, Connor Kincaid had gone out on a call. He’d just taken his detective exam and was awaiting results, hoping to land in the gang resistance detail. He had hope for some of these kids. Not all of them, not most of them, but a few of them. That was all he needed. They were the consummate underdogs, kids whose fathers were dead or in prison and whose mothers worked two jobs or did drugs or plain didn’t care. Many of these kids were in foster care, a system so broke that it would have to be destroyed completely before it could be rebuilt. Connor learned early on that he had a knack for working with these kids. But for now he was a street cop, one of the best.

The call came from the San Diego Mission de Alcala, the first mission in the California chain and an active Catholic parish and tourist attraction. But it was now five in the morning and he was coming off graveyard shift, first responder to the tragedy.

The dead girls were huddled together in a pew in a small chapel off the main church. They’d broken into the church instead of going to the hospital or to the resident pastor who lived in a small bungalow on the far side of the Mission. One look and Connor knew why they hadn’t sought medical care for their extensive injuries. They were illegals. They didn’t want to be sent home.

The young priest had a long face, made more homely and sad when looking at the girls. “This isn’t the first time.”

“Excuse me, Padre?”

“The young girls-they bring them over the border every day to sell their bodies for a chance at freedom. When they don’t perform, they are killed. Disposed of like garbage.” He looked at Connor, imploring him with eyes so blue they seemed heavenly even surrounded by death. “But you know of this, don’t you?”

“Me? I have nothing to do with this. I agree it’s-”

The priest shook his head. “Your kind. The police. If you look where you don’t want to look, you’ll see the truth.” Again, the priest stared at him and Connor, not a particularly religious man, felt for the first time that maybe someone with more authority than the priest was speaking to him.

“People believe what they want to believe. They see no evil because they don’t want to. But evil is out there, and this is the result.” The holy man gestured to the dead girls. “You might not see the evil, Officer Kincaid, but you can see its handiwork right here.”

Quietly, Connor kept tabs on the investigation of the girls’ deaths. Almost immediately they were put in the cold case file. Two illegal Jane Does. No one cared.

Connor couldn’t stop thinking that but for his birth in the land of opportunity, he and his brothers and sisters would be fighting to come to America. Or dying under Castro’s brutal regime like nearly everyone on his maternal family tree.

The dead girls were only fourteen. Beaten to death on the grounds of a sacred place, crawling inside to die in front of Jesus, the only sanctuary they had.

Then he learned that his mentor, Detective Wayne Crutcher, who had helped him with his exam and smoothed Connor’s path into his move from street cop to detective, had been taking bribes to look away.

Connor didn’t want to believe it.

“Who was that guy?” he asked Wayne. He’d been quietly following him for weeks, compiling evidence he didn’t know yet how he was going to use. But he saw the exchange. He couldn’t lie to himself anymore.

Wayne had been surprised to see Connor, though he hid it well. “A snitch.”

“We pay snitches. They don’t pay us.”

As he said it, Connor realized he’d signed his death warrant. But he didn’t budge.

He pictured his little sister Lucy’s face superimposed on the dead girls. The dead girls deserved justice as much as anyone.

Wayne’s face hardened. “Walk away, Kincaid.”

Connor still didn’t know exactly what it was that set him off. If it was the hard smirk on Wayne’s face or the indifference in his bleak eyes. Connor struck him across the face. Once, twice, three times before the detective punched back.

The fight brought down Internal Affairs. Both Connor and Wayne clammed up and called in their union representatives. Connor’s direct supervisor, Lieutenant Todd, came to Connor at his house. “Crutcher has been transferred to the Northeast substation. He won’t be a problem anymore.”

“Transferred? That doesn’t solve the problem.”

“What do you suggest I do? Go to Internal Affairs and have them up my ass and yours? I’ve fixed the problem.”

In the end, Connor couldn’t walk away, even if he wanted to. Internal Affairs came to him. He turned over the documentation he’d compiled, thinking it would end there.

It didn’t.

Connor was no longer a cop because of Julia. And yet the sexy counselor slept on the other side of his door, and he stood here with a semi-hard-on and thoughts of taking her into his bed playing with his mind.

For the second time in as many days he took a cold shower.

The stainless-steel blade had been sharpened to its maximum, the long straight edge curving slightly toward the deadly point. The shiny blade reflected the moonlight that filtered through the long, narrow windows of the Spanish-style mansion she’d lived in since her mother deserted her ten years ago.

Faye’s father wasn’t home, not that it would matter if he were-Blaine Kessler had virtually ignored her since her birth. He had come to her six times without a thought to being caught. Meanwhile, her father was usually in his own room with his own woman.

The one who came to see her was an angel. It wouldn’t surprise Faye if no one could see him but her, because she was the one he’d chosen.

“Why aren’t you with Cami?” she’d asked the second time he came to her house and made love to her under her father’s roof. The night Skip had shot the teacher in the eyes and she had watched.

“Why would you ask that?” His fingers skimmed her breasts, her stomach, her thighs.

“She’s beautiful.” Her words came out a croak. The truth was ugly, like she was. Men wanted Cami because she was beautiful and sexy.

“Cami is selfish,” he said. “Her own pleasure is more important than mine.”

“I can’t believe that.”

“You think I’m lying?”

Faye shook her head.

He kissed her. That night, like tonight, had a near full moon. “You are precious to me. Cami is important, but you are my rock. I trust you. You would never betray me.”

“Never.”

“That’s why no one can know about this.”

“I understand.”

“Even Cami.”

“I didn’t tell her last time.”

“I know.” He kissed her, touched her gently. “Do you trust me?”

Her lip trembled. “Yes.”

He picked up her knife. “I trust you.” He handed her the blade. She stared at it, blinded by the power of the steel. One slice and he’d be gone, she’d be gone. “Cut me,” he whispered, his hot breath against her face.

He rolled over to his back, his arms outstretched. She straddled his naked body, slid onto him, gasping at the invasion within her. She lowered her hand, the hand wrapped tight around the blade’s pearl handle. Showed him the knife, just as he told her the first time. He licked his lips, closed his eyes.

“Now.”

She sliced his skin, a mere sliver, but the pain of the sudden piercing made him gasp, tremble, and grow harder within her. The sight of the blood, dark in the moonlight, excited her and she rubbed her chest against his, his blood on her, the thrill that he trusted her with his life, that one slice too deep and he would be gone, his blood on her hands, in her body, staining her soul.

They rose together, peaked, and as he toppled over the edge she cut him once more and tasted his coppery heat.

Every time it was deeper, harder, rougher. The pain of the first night was nothing compared to today. When would it stop? Faye didn’t want it to. But tonight he’d lost blood and slept in her bed, something he’d never done before. She had him all to herself and she lay awake and stared at him through the night. She touched his hair. He was real. When he woke, she apologized, she hadn’t meant to go too far, they’d gotten carried away.

“It was heaven, my darling,” he said. “I’m fine. Better than fine. You make me alive.”

Faye had never felt alive. She stared at the blade. Just once. One more time…

Gently, carefully, she sliced her arm and watched, enchanted, as blood seeped out and dripped onto her sheets.