Lethal Confessions (17 page)

Beckett shook his head. “Amélie Robitaille has just the right sound. It’s perfect.” He gave her a sly smile. “Would you mind if I sometimes use Amélie?”

Nice maneuver, Beckett
. Still, it felt good to hear somebody other than her parents use her proper name. “Maybe when we’re outside HQ,” she said with a grudging nod. “And it’s not reciprocal. You’re still Beckett, Beckett.”

He laughed full out, a sound as rich and deep as the glorious Scotch she was sipping. “You are a total hardass,
Amélie Robitaille
.”

“Interesting you should say that. Poushinsky made the same comment yesterday. Let’s just say it runs in the family.” She drained her glass and resisted the temptation to call the waiter over for a refill.

“Your father?”

“And mother, too. Both former cops. Hell, they make me look like a freaking marshmallow.”

He gave her a disbelieving chuckle. “No way.”

“Way,” she said firmly. “Papa ran the homicide unit for the Montreal police for ten years before he retired. Mama was a diver for the Quebec Provincial Police before she took a desk job.”

“Nice pedigree for a cop. How’d you end up down here, then?”

She couldn’t help grimacing. “My father and one of his golf buddies hit the Lotto 6/49 jackpot. A big one. They split a nineteen million dollar win, and in Canada lottery winnings are tax-free so he was instantly rich. After that, Papa gave the force two months notice, and as soon as it was up, he yanked my sisters and me out of school and moved our family to Florida. He didn’t even wait until the end of the school year.”

Beckett looked kind of stunned, which was the usual reaction she got. “That’s a hell of a story. It must have been pretty cool to win all that money.”

Amy shook her head. No one ever understood. “Beckett, when he won that goddamn lottery it completely screwed my life. It was hard enough on my little sister, but it really hammered my twin and me. Do you have any idea what it’s like for seventeen-year old girls to be uprooted from their friends—from their whole lives—and plunked down in a foreign country where they could barely cope in the language? And where everybody made fun of them? Not cool, Beckett. Not cool at all.”

He didn’t look the least bit chastised. In fact, he seemed to think she was nuts. And that was the usual reaction she got, too. “I guess.” He signaled the waiter to come over. “I bet the last thing your folks wanted was for you to become a cop.”

She could tell from the sympathy in his eyes that he understood that part, at least.

Their waiter efficiently took their orders. Steak medium rare for Beckett. Amy resisted the red meat temptation, opting for the sea bass. Both ordered wine by the glass, a California Pinot Noir for him, a Sancerre for her.

Her cell phone vibrated as the waiter turned away. “I have to check this,” she said. She always checked the caller ID.

Her sister. Was M.L. worrying about the murders? Amy hesitated a moment before deciding to let it go to voice mail. She’d call her back soon.

“Okay, to get back to your question,” she said, “maybe it wasn’t the last thing they wanted—I think they might have put me becoming a stripper a notch lower. Maybe.”

She’d never forget how her parents had tried every incentive they could conjure up to lure her away from her career obsession, including an offer to pick up the full tab of an undergraduate degree at the Sorbonne. She’d spent a month in Paris, supposedly thinking about the prospect of university there, but in fact spending her days sightseeing and her nights partying.

“My parents wanted me to study in France, and they were royally pissed when I chose a criminology degree at the University of Florida. But I never had any doubt about what I wanted to do. I knew from when I was a little kid that I had to work in front-line law enforcement.”

“So, we both copied our fathers,” Beckett said. “But it worked out, didn’t it? We’re both lucky to have been able to do something we love and get paid for it, too.”

Beckett hesitated, then gave her a sheepish grin. “I might as well tell you we have another thing in common. My mother was a cop.”

“No way,” she said, stunned.

“Way. So, I can relate a little to what you went through.”

He’d certainly managed to pique her curiosity. “And your dad was a ballplayer, right?”

Beckett nodded. “He played in the high-level minors for years, but could never stick for any length of time in the majors. When his knees gave way, his career tanked, so he got a job coaching baseball at my high school in Baton Rouge. That turned out great for me, because Dad was home all the time and was able to help me develop as a player. I never thought of doing anything other than playing baseball. Call me cocky, but it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t make it to the big leagues.”

He gave her a quirky grin that softened his arrogant statement. “I inherited great baseball genes and I had an incredible coach. I only wish Dad could have lived to see me drafted by the major leagues. In my dreams, Dad was always there beside me at the draft, getting his picture taken with me, full of pride. But he died a month before the big day, and I ended up going by myself.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, meaning it. She really didn’t want to probe, but she found herself doing it anyway. “You had no other family to be there for you?”

He shook his head. “Mom died before Dad. From breast cancer. She was only fifty-four. But we weren’t really close any more. She and Dad had divorced years earlier. When she moved out, I stayed with Dad.”

While sounding carefully casual, he couldn’t hide the depth of emotion in his eyes—not from a pro like her. Luke Beckett hadn’t completely come to terms with his mother leaving him, or with the early deaths of both parents. Who would have?

“No siblings?”
Calice, why the hell am I asking him all these questions?

He actually turned away from her this time, staring for a moment out the narrow window next to their table. Amy couldn’t take her eyes off his rugged profile—the deep-set eyes, the high cheekbones, the strong jaw line. Heavy stubble darkened his tanned, lean cheeks
.

“I had a sister,” he finally said, turning back to face her.

Amy’s heart plummeted at his use of the past tense.
Not Beckett, too.

“Kate was a reporter,” he continued grimly. “She was on assignment in Bosnia when I was drafted, doing a story about the rebuilding process after the war ended. She sent me a video clip telling me how sorry she was to not be able to be there, and how proud she was of me.” He gave her a smile that held a universe of sorrow. “God, after all this time I still get dopey when I think about that,” he said, his voice husky.

She reached her hand across the table and slid it lightly over his. To his credit, he didn’t try to hold it, or cover it with his own. He simply nodded, as if grateful for her small gesture.

A flush of shame made her suddenly hot from the top of her head to her toes. Like an idiot, she’d assumed Luke Beckett enjoyed the careless pleasures of the rich, single athlete. But she could see now that he still grieved his own losses, just like she did. Their kind of emotional hurt went on and on, forever present. And even when it just lurked in the mental background, it was always deep inside the heart.

“You lost her, didn’t you?” Amy wanted to say something profound, or at least comforting, but all she could manage was a dumb question that she already knew the answer to.

He raked a hand impatiently through his hair. “How did we get into this discussion, anyway? We were talking about you. About how your parents didn’t want you to be a cop.”

“I guess we were,” she agreed, not unhappy to be shifting the conversation away from a subject obviously too uncomfortable for him. For both of them. The last thing she needed was more distracting feelings for Beckett.

“So, how do they feel about it now? Worried? Proud? Both?”

Amy couldn’t help a wry smile. “Now they just ride me to be the best damn cop in the country.” As soon as she’d joined the Sheriff’s Office, her father in particular had relentlessly—and unnecessarily—pushed her to fast track her way to a detective shield. “My father was the toughest, most demanding son of a bitch on the Montreal force until the day he retired. When he realized I was going to be a cop no matter what he said, he—”

“Wanted you to be the toughest son of a bitch on the force, just like him,” Beckett said, finishing her thought.

Amy smiled. “Yeah, absolutely. Now, how about we talk about the weather? Or even baseball, if we must.” She couldn’t believe she’d let the conversation turn so personal, so dangerous. “Anything but our families or the case.”

In minutes, so much between them had changed. Beckett still looked and acted like a hot, studly guy intent on having his way with her, but he’d allowed his defenses to come down long enough for her to see the man hurting inside. That much they had in common, and she knew that kind of bond could run very deep.

For a moment, Amy even found herself on the verge of blurting out her pain to a man who was a virtual stranger. She had to summon up all her discipline to keep that story firmly locked up deep in her heart, exactly where it belonged.

Friday, July 30

9:50 p.m.

Luke Beckett was no stereotype.

Amy sat in her car frozen with embarrassment as she watched Beckett stride across the parking lot to HQ.

At the restaurant, she’d been surprised by the depth of emotion when he talked about his sister. That was probably more a reflection on her ingrained cynicism when it came to men than anything else, though. She should have stuck to the plan to avoid heavy topics—especially their tortured family histories—but she’d found herself consumed with curiosity to know more about him.

Even worse, she’d wanted to tell him things. About herself and about her twin sister.

On the way back to HQ, she couldn’t seem to keep her mouth shut and she’d finally asked him straight out what happened to Kate. He’d deflected the question, but that only made her more determined to get it out of him. Amy wanted to believe it was because she was cop, and always wanted to get to the bottom of the mysteries people tried to conceal from her. But that was a load of crap and she knew it. So, she’d asked him again, fully expecting he would tell her to mind her own damn business. She would have done the same, just as she did whenever anyone tried to talk to her about Ariane’s murder. Maybe, in some screwed up way, her need to know what had happened to
his
sister had as much to do with the legacy of her relationship with Ariane as it did with her inexplicable need to know Beckett’s secrets.

But instead of rebuffing her, he’d surprised her again. As they parked in the HQ lot, Beckett had inhaled a deep breath and told her the story in a flat, controlled voice. Staring straight ahead into the halogen-lit glow of the night, he described how Kate had been taken hostage and later murdered by a terrorist cell in Baghdad. He’d been proud of her courage in taking the Iraq assignment, and it had barely crossed his radar screen that she could be killed because Kate was too smart to let that happen. For Beckett, she’d been invincible, the rock in his life. A tough, savvy survivor who would never make the kind of mistake that would get herself murdered.

Beckett kept it short, and spare on details. When he’d finished, he didn’t even look at her. He simply got out of the car and walked away, not even bothering to glance back to see if she was following. So, Amy had just sat there, hating herself for pressuring him into revealing the gaping wound in his soul.

Asshole.
She should have just Googled Kate Beckett’s name. Apologies weren’t her forte, but she had to suck it up and do it. Beckett deserved better from her than he was getting so far.

Sighing, she got out of her car and trudged across the parking lot, pressed down by the brutal heat and humidity of the July night. When she reached the Floor, the click of her shoes echoed through the nearly-deserted space. Only two detectives from the late shift remained. Plus Beckett, already plunked down at her desk, his head dipped to peer at her monitor. He was already immersed in his task of fixing her pathetic first shot at a press statement. After that scene in the car, she was surprised he could shift mental gears so rapidly.

A disciplined man.

She stopped beside her cubicle, hung up her jacket and looked down at him. His long fingers moved smoothly over the keyboard as he tapped out words with surprising speed.

“Beckett, stop for a minute.” He ignored her, so Amy put her hand on his shoulder. “Please.”

He pulled away from the keyboard and swiveled the chair until his eyes met hers. They held no obvious anger, but his expression seemed too carefully controlled. “What, Robitaille?”

She couldn’t help a wistful smile as she drew her hand away. “I thought it was going to be Amélie.”

“You said only outside HQ. We’re not outside.”

“
Criss
, do you always take everything so literally, Beckett?” she said impatiently. “I meant when other cops were within hearing distance.” She flicked her head toward Gomez and Hardisty, deep in conversation at the far end of the Floor. “Those guys aren’t.”

“I guess I’m a literal kind of guy,” he replied with enough sarcasm to make her wince.

Steeling herself, she launched into it. “Look, when I bugged you to talk about your sister, I was way out of line. I don’t know why I did it, and I’m really sorry.”

Not exactly the smoothest
mea culpa
, but at least she meant what she said.

He swung back to face the screen. “Forget it. For some reason I must have wanted to tell you. I don’t talk about something unless I want to.” He immersed himself again in the writing.

Amy wasn’t so sure about that, but she couldn’t help a breath of relief escaping her lips. Beckett sounded sincere. She watched him work, her gaze lingering over his broad shoulders and his strong neck. She was shocked to find herself thinking how much she’d like to wrap her arms around those shoulders and nuzzle her face into that neck. Breathe in his clean, masculine scent like a drug. And,
calice
, where would that lead?