Текст книги "Vindicate"

Автор книги: Beth Yarnall

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

Chapter 5 Cora

Leo wants more than my trust. He wants to invade parts of my life where no one’s ever been. I’ve been alone with my notes and my reports and my never-wavering faith in my brother. But now he’s here, taking up too much space in the room and asking questions that make me look at my brother’s case the way someone who hasn’t lived it and breathed it would. I can see the holes. In just a few short hours Leo exposed the cracks in the case that make Beau look guilty.

I know Beau’s been hiding something from me and everyone else, including his attorney. It’s one of the reasons he doesn’t want me investigating his case. I get so angry with him sometimes. He sits across from me at that dirty, scarred table, looks me right in the face, and talks about stupid shit instead of giving up his secrets. It’s the talking but not saying anything that frustrates the hell out of me. It’s the beatings he’d rather take, the obliteration of our family, and the blithe acceptance of his fate that I can’t stand. It jolts me out of a sound sleep. It keeps me awake at night. And it rides my shoulders all day.

And now Leo thinks he can get my brother to open up and fill in those gaps? As if one quick trip out to the prison will clear everything up. I’ve got five and a half years of prison visits behind me and not a goddamned thing to show for it. But Leo is going to fix all that. Right.

He asks me to trust him and the stupid, messed-up thing is—I do.

He’s been flipping the pages of my notebook back and forth for nearly an hour now, taking notes. Every once in a while he asks a question or asks me to find a report for him. So far I’ve been able to answer every question except why Beau and Cassandra broke up and why—after months apart—he went to her apartment the night before she was murdered.

“Who found Cassandra’s body?” Leo asks.

He’s been poring over the paperwork on the table for hours and it’s making me twitchy. I want to get out there and do something.

“Her neighbor across the hall. They were supposed to go to a yoga class after work.” I flip through the binder of copies of the police reports I got from Leo’s attorney until I find the right page. “Here.” I point to the entry by an Officer Hannigan. “Zelda Marks. She said she knocked on Cassandra’s door and got no answer. So she called. Again no answer. Cassandra’s car was parked on the street, so she knew Cassandra was home. Zelda used the key Cassandra gave her to feed her cat when she went on vacation and found Cassandra’s body in the bedroom tied to the bed.” I grab a folder and open it. “Here’s the 9-1-1 transcript of Zelda’s phone call at six-thirty-two p.m.”

The transcript doesn’t even come close to the agony in the recording. The horror in Zelda’s voice of finding her friend’s naked, bound body echoed around the courtroom as they played the recording during Beau’s trial, while Zelda broke down on the stand, reliving that moment.

“I have a recording of the call.” I pull a disc from a sleeve between the pages and hand it to him.

“Hang on.” He leaves and comes back in the room with a CD player.

I push back from the table. “Where’s the restroom?”

He glances up at me as the disc begins to spin. “Take a right past Savannah’s desk. Second door on the left.”

“Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?”

I’m out the door before I can hear Zelda’s reply. I don’t need to hear it. I’ve got it memorized. Savannah isn’t at her desk and I let out a sigh of relief. Maybe she went to lunch.

No such luck. I run into her as I round the corner, bouncing off her and back a step.

“Watch where you’re going.” She knocks my arm with her purse as she passes.

I whorl around and follow her. This is going to be a long, tedious three months if I have to constantly put up with Savannah’s bullshit jealousy.

I plant a palm on her desk as she drops her purse into the bottom drawer. “I don’t know what I did to piss you off, but if you bump me like that again you’re going to find yourself on your ass.”

She rises to her full height, which is half a foot taller than me. She doesn’t scare me. I’ve been up against worst bullies than her. Having a convicted murderer for a brother opened me up to anyone who wanted to take a shot. I know how to throw a punch and how to take one.

“I don’t like you.”

“Like I give a shit.”

She crosses her arms over her chest and the advantage shifts to me. I can hit her before she can free a hand to block it.

“Whatever you think is going on or going to go on between Leo and me—isn’t,” I say. “He’s all yours. The only thing I want from him is his father’s help.”

She makes a rude noise and echoes my earlier statement. “Like I give a shit.”

“Look, I’m not going anywhere, so unless you plan on quitting this job in the next five minutes, we’re stuck with each other for the summer. It’s up to you how you want that to go down.”

Her gaze flickers to the doorway of the conference room. I follow her line of sight. Leo is leaning against the door frame, his hands tucked into his front pockets, looking way too satisfied with himself. He thinks we’re fighting over him. What an ass. I head for the bathroom and away from his smug face.

I close myself in the restroom. Savannah and Leo’s voices come through the thin wall. She’s giving him an earful about broken promises and how he just fucked her because he was bored. Ouch. No wonder Savannah’s carrying a grudge the size of Nebraska toward me. She’s got it bad for Leo. I can totally see why. He’s hot. Not my type at all, but hot just the same. The two of them make an impressive couple.

I finish my business and wash my hands, but the two of them are still going at it. Leo is apologizing and she’s having none of it. He tries to placate her by telling her he’s not good enough for her. He’s got that right. She deserves way better than him. He tells her that it was fun, but it was just a fling. Oh, jeez, this guy’s such an idiot. That’s just what every girl wants to hear—she didn’t mean anything, she was an itch he scratched and nothing more.

Savannah is crying. I can hear it in her voice. The way it wobbles rips at me. Why is she wasting her tears on this guy? She can do way better. I can’t walk back out there with all of that going on and I can’t stay in here. She’ll probably want to wash her face or something.

I crack open the door and glance up and down the hall. My options are limited. There’s only one other door. I take it and find myself on a balcony overlooking the back parking lot. An orange cat winds its way around the dumpsters, sticking to the shadows. It reminds me of Oliver and the way he hugged the walls, trying to maintain as much distance from me as possible for the first few months after he came to live with me. Since then we’ve reached a wary kind of peace. I don’t try to pet him and he eats the food I give him and doesn’t shit where he’s not supposed to.

After five and a half years of living together we aren’t any closer than the day I found him hiding in the shrubbery outside of Cassandra’s building. I still don’t know why he let me pick him up and put him in my car. I don’t like cats and he doesn’t seem to like me. We have an unspoken pact—other than when I have to cram him in his carrier for vet visits, I don’t touch him and he doesn’t try to sit on my lap or rub up against me in any way. I have no idea why he doesn’t run away. Maybe he realizes his situation. I don’t know.

“There you are.” Leo joins me on the little balcony, stuffing his hands into his pockets. He stands shoulder to shoulder with me and we watch the cat eat something off a paper wrapper. “Savannah and me…” he begins.

“I really don’t care.”

“No. I know. It’s just that…” He kicks the metal balcony railing, making it vibrate. “I’m sorry you had to hear that.”

“Me too.”

“I’m not really like that.”

“It doesn’t matter to me what you are or aren’t like.”

I try to go around him, back through the door, but he puts a hand on my arm to stop me, then pulls it at my glare.

“What I’m trying to say is…” He lets out a frustrated sound. “Things’ll be cool now between you and Savannah.”

“Okay.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

He shrugs a shoulder. “All that happened last summer with me and Savannah. It’s ancient history, you know?”

“Apparently not.”

“It definitely is now. Okay?”

“Sure. Whatever.” What does he expect me to say? What does he want from me? “Can we go back inside?”

He opens the door and holds it for me to pass through first. I look for the orange cat one last time, but he’s gone. I think of Oliver and our understanding. Maybe Leo and I can work out the same kind of unspoken deal for the summer, where we coexist in the same space without getting attached, where we get what we need from each other and then go our separate ways. But as I brush past him, I realize that his confession and apology have made it a little harder to breathe around him. He takes up so much space—both physically and figuratively—that it’s hard to be comfortable around him.

I’m learning that despite appearances there is something more to him than a pretty face and an I-couldn’t-give-a-fuck attitude. He does, actually, give a fuck. More than he’d want known. And if he knew how badly he failed at hiding it sometimes, he’d only respond by doubling his efforts to cover it up. I wonder how many people know that about him, how many look past the clothes, body language, and arrogant facial expressions to see what lies beneath it all. And if they did, would they see what I was beginning to see?

Chapter 6 Leo

I follow Cora back to the conference room past Savannah’s now empty desk. She took off for lunch after I got her calmed down. After I practically begged her to leave Cora alone and took everything she threw at me. I had it coming. I never should’ve touched her, no matter how many times she “accidentally” brushed her tits over my arm or leaned over so I could see down her top. I knew better. But at the time I was just so knocked out that she even wanted me, especially after my girlfriend of six months had dumped me right before summer started.

Thank God Dad wasn’t here to hear Savannah and me go at it. As far as I know he doesn’t have a clue about what happened between us. But Cora does and now it’s stressing me out that she thinks I’m an even bigger douche bag than she originally thought. She wouldn’t look at me out there on the balcony, while I stammered out my lame-assed explanation and apology. I don’t know why I felt like I needed to apologize to Cora. Maybe because Savannah sucked her into our drama just to get back at me and screw me over with Cora before I could even manage to get anything started.

Cora sits in the chair she was in before and starts going through her bag. She’s still not looking at me.

“Are you hungry?” I ask. “There’s a pretty good sandwich place down the street.”

“Nope.” She pulls a sandwich from a brown paper bag, takes a bite, and chews.

“I’ll run down there by myself, then. Want anything?”

“Can you make it quick? I want to finish going over this with you so we can finally get started.”

“Sure.”

She pulls out her phone and jabs in a text as she munches on another bite of sandwich. I’m ignored. I run down to the shop and get back in record time. I’m hardly breathing heavy, thanks to the deep breaths I took before returning to the conference room. She’s on the phone with someone. I slide into my chair and go through the motions of tucking in to my sandwich.

She tilts her head back and laughs. It’s the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen, but inside I’m dying. Who is she talking to? What did they say to her to get her to smile like that? It creases her face and reaches her eyes. For a split second she looks at me with that smile and I pause mid-bite, my mouth hanging open above my sandwich. Then she turns away and mumbles something into the phone. Her low, sexy chuckle at whatever the asshole she’s talking to says in return makes the bite I just took taste like shit and I fight to swallow it.

I toss the sandwich aside and watch as she strolls the edge of the room, twisting a piece of blue hair around her finger as she talks. More throaty laughter. I imagine making her laugh like that as we roll around in bed. She’d be insane between the sheets. I just know it. The thought of her naked with me gives me a boner that could pound rocks. I want her. I want her in a way that I’ve never wanted anything or anyone ever. Before her I thought I knew what it was to get a hard-on for a chick where you just can’t get her out of your head, where all other girls go away for you and it’s just her. That was nothing compared to the way my hands shake and I have to fist them to keep her from seeing. I know where she is in the room at all times, like my body is a big, giant homing beacon set to her frequency. I can feel her and yet I only ever touched her that one time out on the balcony.

She punches the end button on her phone and pockets it.

“Was that your boyfriend?” I ask, trying for casual, but I’m unable to keep the jealousy out of my voice that’s burning a fire through me.

“No.”

Just that one word. No explanation. Was that No, I wasn’t talking to my boyfriend or No, I don’t have a boyfriend to talk to? I can’t tell. Nothing in her answer or her movements gives me a fucking clue which it is as she takes her seat again.

“You listened to the 9-1-1 call,” she prompts me.

“Yeah. Right.” I pull my notebook toward me and try to come up with something to ask her. Something intelligent. But all that comes out is, “What happened next?”

She searches through her stack of folders until she finds the one she wants. “According to the police report, the first detective to respond was Paul Winfro. He assessed the scene and called it in. A supervisor arrived, then crime-scene techs, the coroner, and so on.”

“What time was that?”

“I told you, about six, just after Cassandra would’ve gotten off work. The neighbor and the yoga class?” Her impatience with me kicks up a dozen levels.

“Right.”

“If you’ve got somewhere else you’d rather be, don’t let me stop you from taking off. Your dad gave me the password to the Wi-Fi here and the login and passwords for the websites the agency uses for searches. There’s lots I can do without you if you’re bored.”

“I’m not bored.”

She makes a sound like she doesn’t believe me.

“I’m not,” I insist. “Tell me about what happened next.”

I listen and take notes like I’m in class and there’s going to be a test. I ask good questions. By the time she’s done walking me through it I almost feel as though I know Cassandra. My dad said to start with the victim, but there was no one and nothing in Cassandra’s life that should’ve led to her murder. She was an ordinary eighteen-year-old. Who would want to kill her in the horrible way she died and why? I have to talk to Beau. I feel like I can get something from him that Cora couldn’t.

It’s nearly dark out by the time we’re finished. Dad’s talking to Savannah about tomorrow’s appointments and Cora and I have a solid plan to start working on in the morning. I help her pack her folders and binders into her box. When we’re all done, she puts the lid on and I carry it to the storage cabinet and lock it up. By the time I get back, she’s got her bag on her shoulder.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she says, and starts to leave, then turns back.

It’s the first time I’ve seen her nervous. My curiosity kicks into high gear.

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” she blurts out, then bolts for the door. She’s gone before my brain can restart to stop her.

I lean against the door frame, a dumb-ass smile on my face, and that’s how Dad finds me.

He glances from me to the door, then back again. “No. Absolutely not. She’s a client.”

“Isn’t she more of an employee?”

“In my office.”

I follow him down the hall, feeling like that time I was sixteen and I accidentally backed his truck into a pole.

He closes the door after me. “Sit down. You and I need to get something straight.” He waits for me to take a seat. “I thought it was fairly obvious, but after what happened last summer between you and Savannah, I feel like I need to set some boundaries here.”

Shit. He knows about Savannah and me.

“I remember what it’s like to be your age.” This is going to be one of his long talks, when I’m expected to sit here and listen without comment, then totally change my behavior forever. “Pretty girls turned my head too, but you have to have some common sense. This is a place of business, not a pickup joint. I didn’t say anything about you and Savannah, figuring it would work itself out one way or the other. But it hasn’t. I regret not putting a stop to that. And now you’re looking at Cora that same way and I won’t have it. That girl’s been through enough.”

“I—”

“I’m not finished. I’m serious here, Leo. Leave her be. You have no idea what she’s been through. Her family—”

“You investigated her?”

“We investigate all of our clients. You should know that. We have to be sure they are who they say they are and that they’re hiring us for the reasons they give us. We don’t want to inadvertently help an abuser find their victim or help them break the law.”

I should know that, but I didn’t. “What did you find out about her?”

“All you need to know is that we’re working on a very real case. Cora is who she says she is and the circumstances are exactly as she described them.”

I expected that. “Yeah, but what did you mean that she’s been through enough? Don’t you think I should know what you know if I’m going to work with her?”

He considers this, staring at me for a beat, then two, before he speaks. “During the trial her parents separated, then divorced shortly after that. At sixteen, Cora fought to become an emancipated minor and won. She got a job, moved out on her own, and has been living as an adult ever since. She tested out of high school two years before graduation. She’s been completely on her own for more than five years. She’s not…How can I put this? She’s not the kind of person who screws around. She’s serious. Her brother’s case has been her life. Every job, every community college course she’s taken, has been in relation to what she can do to help her brother.

“I’m telling you this so that you can understand where she’s coming from and take it into consideration. I need you one hundred percent on the job and not trying to get into her pants. She needs you one hundred percent. This isn’t a hobby to her, a way to kill a summer. This is her life. Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?”

“Yeah, that you think all I want to do is sleep with her. Thanks, Dad.”

“I see the way you look at her. And I know she’s the only reason you volunteered to help with her brother’s case.”

“Yesterday, yeah. But today? Today I want to be the one who helps her find a way to free her brother.”

“That’s not all you want.”

“No, it’s not, but it’s what I mostly want.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you mostly want to help her free her brother if it’s not to eventually sleep with her?”

The way Cora looked when she practically stormed into Dad’s office and demanded our help, the way she stroked Cassandra’s photo, the way she talked about her brother, and her box full of papers that’s been her life fill my head until I can’t think of anything else. She deserves—more than anyone else I’ve ever met—to get what she wants. She’s worked damn hard for it. I respect the hell out of her. I genuinely like her. All of these things roll around in my brain, but looking at my dad, I can’t seem to form any of the words to tell him exactly what I’m thinking.

All that comes out is a pathetic “She needs me to.”

Surprise flashes across his face first, followed by the barest trace of a smile that he somehow manages to make look stern. “Okay, then.”

“Okay.” I stand to leave, but Dad’s not done.

“Fix things with Savannah.”

“I already did.” Mostly. As best as I could for the moment.

“Then I guess I’ll see you at home later.”

“See ya.”

I head out to my car and climb in. The summer sun turned the interior into an oven, but I’m not really feeling it. I’m still back in the conference room doorway at the moment that Cora told me she doesn’t have a boyfriend. Her words loop over and around like a roller coaster, making my stomach whoosh, and I can’t help the stupid grin that splits my face. Because maybe, just maybe, Cora might like me too, or at the very least she’s beginning to. I rub the back of my hand across my mouth, but I can’t wipe away the smile or the hope.