The Kill (22 page)

She hesitated, then nodded.

“Good.” He glanced at his watch.

“But—”

“No buts. You’d better run upstairs and grab your toothbrush, or we’ll have to share.”

As Zack said it, he realized he wouldn’t mind sharing a lot more with Olivia than just a toothbrush.

Brian paced his rat-hole apartment late into the night. He didn’t want to meet with his attorney and a Seattle cop in the morning.

Especially not after what he’d done.

They didn’t know. They couldn’t know. He’d left no fingerprints, no one saw him, there was nothing to connect him to the killings. But his skin prickled and he couldn’t help but feel that his crimes were plastered all over his face.

His attorney had talked him into the meeting.

“Look, Brian,” Miles had said after Brian hemmed and hawed about going down to the police station, “I understand how you feel. I got the D.A.’s office to give you immunity. Nothing you say will be used against you. And if you help them catch this killer, you’ll be a hero.”

“But I don’t know anything! I wasn’t there. I didn’t know the girl. I told you I had nothing to do with it.”

“I believe you, Brian. But the cops think someone you knew may have framed you. Stolen your truck and used it in the crime. Don’t you want to know who’s responsible for your imprisonment?”

“The cops are,” he had mumbled. But ultimately, he agreed as long as he didn’t have to go to the police station. Miles arranged for them to meet at the public defender’s office in the courthouse.

Brian couldn’t sleep because he couldn’t get the thought out of his mind that someone he knew had sent him to prison. Who hated him that much? He didn’t have a lot of friends left in town when he’d come back from Vietnam. Those who didn’t go to war went to college or moved away or looked down on him. He didn’t hang out with the same guys anymore. Someone he worked with at the warehouse? One of the gang of vets he’d met at the club where he’d drunk too much that fateful day?

Dawn crested over the bay before he dozed off. A sick feeling ate at him throughout the night.

Had he killed two people for nothing?

Zack drove from the hotel they’d stayed in outside the San Francisco airport thirty minutes south to Redwood City. Olivia commented that the area had changed dramatically since she’d last visited, but didn’t seem inclined to talk about her childhood.

“When was the last time you were here?”

“Twelve years ago, when I graduated from Stanford.”

“Stanford? Really. What was your major?”

“Criminal justice, psychology, and biology.”

“Three degrees? Wow. So that makes you . . . what, thirty four? No—you’d be thirty-nine.” She was five when her sister was killed.

“It’s not polite to talk about a lady’s age.”

“Went to college late?”

“Something like that.”

Zack stopped pushing. He’d hoped she’d open up and share what had been troubling her, but maybe she was reluctant just being back in the area where her sister had been killed. Remembering her parents—that her mother killed herself.

“Is your dad still here?”

She shook her head. “He sold the house and moved as soon as I left for college.”

“That must have been hard on you.”

“It was harder living in the house after Missy was killed.”

“You don’t want to talk about it.”

He felt her eyes on him and he glanced over, taking in her tired eyes and pale skin before turning his attention back to the road.

She spoke after a time. “My mother never got over Missy’s death. She wouldn’t let us move; she wouldn’t let anyone touch anything in Missy’s bedroom. I tiptoed around the house so she wouldn’t see me, because when she looked at me I saw hate in her eyes.”

“She didn’t hate you.”

Olivia didn’t say anything, and Zack reached over and squeezed her hand. She flinched, but didn’t pull away.

“Why don’t you like being touched?”

“I don’t know,” she said quickly. Too quickly. “I suppose—well, after Missy died I sort of disappeared. To my mom and my dad. It was easier for them that way.”

“You were five!” He couldn’t help but feel hostility toward the parents who’d neglected their living daughter because they were grieving for their dead one.

“When my mother committed suicide I asked my dad if we were going to move. He just shrugged. I think if I had been old enough and put the house on the market myself, he wouldn’t have cared.”

Olivia paused, looking down at Zack’s hand wrapped over hers. Strength radiated from his body, and she was emboldened. She’d never told anyone what happened the day her mother committed suicide.

“I found her body.”

“How old were you?”

“Six.” She closed her eyes and pictured her mother’s bloody remains. Her mother had taken sleeping pills with a vodka chaser, but may have survived that. To ensure her death, she’d put a gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger.

“She shot herself. In Missy’s room, on the anniversary of her death. I heard the shot. Dad was at work. I’d just gotten home from school. There was so much blood. On the wall behind Missy’s pretty white bed. All over her dolls and toys. Everywhere.”

“Oh God, Liv.”

Suddenly he pulled off the freeway. Olivia opened her eyes and was surprised when Zack turned off the ramp and into the parking lot of some business. He shut off the ignition.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up,” she began.

He grabbed her chin and forced her to look at him. At first she thought he was angry with her, and maybe he was, but not for the reason she thought.

“Stop saying you’re sorry.” His voice was low and gruff, full of restrained emotion.

She was drawn toward Zack, his dark eyes searching hers, as if sharing his vitality, his strength.

“Liv, you’ve been blaming yourself for something that is simply not your fault.”

“I don’t blame myself.”

“Don’t you?”

What did she really think? “I don’t know.”

“Who, then? What’s eating you up inside? Your father? Your mother?”

A tear leaked from an eye, the unfamiliar wetness sliding down her cheek. “I blame Missy’s killer for taking her. God for creating him in the first place. I blame me for not stopping him. I blame Missy for not leaving the park when I wanted to. My father for walking around the house like a ghost. And my mother for . . . for looking at me as if I should have been the one to die!”

Zack gathered Olivia in his arms as she cried silently, her body heaving but little sound escaping, as if she were fighting each tear. God, he wanted to take her pain. He would gladly shoulder the burden of her anguish if he could.

His mother had dumped him. She’d left him because it was convenient. She left Amy because it was convenient. He’d had a hard time with it when he realized his mother loved her freedom more than her children. He’d felt abandoned by his mother, but Mae had never made him feel unwanted or unloved.

Everything became clear to him. Olivia’s reaction to Brenda Davidson and little Amanda. Her obsession with the case. Her reason for joining the FBI in the first place. Justice was a powerful motivator, and while she’d believed her sister’s killer had been behind bars until recently, she was fighting for the living victims as well as the dead.

She’d spent her life fighting for victims like her.

He smoothed her hair, breathed in her freshness. He kissed her temple. Then her cheek. He tilted her chin so she looked him in the eye. Her lip quivered and her cheeks were bright with emotion.

“Olivia, when this is over I’m taking you away someplace. I want time alone with you. Without this case hanging over us, where we can really talk.”

Her mouth opened in protest. He put his finger to her lips.

“Shh. We deserve it, Liv. I need to know everything about you. How you grew into this incredible woman sitting right here. You’re smart and sexy and I’m damn glad you came to Seattle, not only because of the investigation.”

He leaned in and touched his lips to hers, remembering yesterday when he’d spontaneously kissed her in her hotel room. She’d been so enticing in that thin robe that molded to her full breasts, showing everything while hiding it at the same time.

That image had been in the back of his mind for the last twenty-four hours. Thinking about how enticing she looked then, how beautiful she was sitting beside him now, he wanted to disappear with her. The two of them together. Alone. In bed.

He intended the kiss to be light, gentle, loving. She needed affection, not passion. But one taste of Olivia wasn’t enough. She brought out the passion in him, a deep longing that he hadn’t felt for a long, long time. An intense need to connect with her on every level he could. To know her mind, her body, her soul.

He deepened the kiss, her lips salty from her tears.

She moaned into his lips, a small but deep sound that bespoke desire. He swallowed her need, taking the kiss deeper, his hands wrapped around her delicate neck, her silky hair entwined in his large hands. He rubbed her shoulders, his hand trailing down to the curve of her round breast.

They pulled back at the same time. He swallowed, his heart pounding. Her hazel eyes glistened, coated with emotion and desire. Her mouth was red, lush, swollen from his furious kiss.

Reluctantly, he let her go. “I definitely want more time with you.”

“After we catch this guy.” Her voice was rough, but she had already gathered up the strength he’d seen in her the first day they’d met in Pierson’s office.

He’d thought he’d wanted the killer bad before.

He wanted him even more now.

Olivia watched the interview from a secure room next to the public defender’s conference room. She wished Gary Porter had come, not only because he’d set the wheels in motion but also because he’d always been by her side when she had to face Brian Hall. Instead, a young cop stood sentry at her side, his face blank.

Of course, Hall was innocent and she shouldn’t fear him. Yet she did, an irrational and very real sensation that made her heart pound and her hands wring.

She couldn’t believe she’d cried in Zack’s arms. She felt foolish, but comforted at the same time. And then the kiss . . . her hands fluttered to her lips.
That kiss
.

She had to put it aside, think about it later.

When was the last time she’d cried? It might have been the day Missy disappeared. She had cried herself to sleep late that night, alone. She had tried to crawl into her mother’s bed, but her father told her to leave, that her mother was sleeping in Missy’s room until she came home.

Missy never came home.

Stop it. Stop thinking about it.

Olivia hadn’t realized until today how much internal anger she still had at her parents. And at Missy, though her frustration with her sister was more that she was gone, and that wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t rational, Olivia knew, but there it was, laid out for her to cautiously examine.

It had been easy to hate Brian Hall when he was the villain, the man who stole not only her sister’s life, but her family and security. His release brought back the other feelings she’d suppressed for so many years, like her anger at her family, particularly toward her mother. She should have seen it coming, especially after her confrontation with Brenda Davidson, but it wasn’t until Zack’s question earlier that day that Olivia
knew
she’d never forgiven her mother for treating her like a pariah.

For years, Olivia had wondered whether her mother would have felt the same way toward Missy if the roles had been reversed. If Olivia had died and Missy had lived. Would their mother have ignored Missy? Would she have mourned Olivia so deeply that she couldn’t function any longer?

As a child, Olivia believed her mother would rather have had Olivia die and Missy live. As an adult, Olivia knew it wasn’t as simple as that. It was like being in a burning building and only able to save the life of one of your two children: who would you pick? No matter which you chose, you would be filled with guilt over the one who’d died. You would look at the one left behind and wonder if you should have made the other choice. Bitterness and grief and pain would paralyze you until you couldn’t look at your child without regret.

With years of psychology classes and science behind her, Olivia intellectually knew that her mother had a psychosis and was mentally unstable. Perhaps Missy’s death triggered it, or maybe she’d always had borderline personality disorder. Intuitively, Olivia knew she shouldn’t blame her mother for everything she’d said and done—or hadn’t said, hadn’t done. In that case it was her father who should have stepped up and done something to get her mother help. To fill the role of both parents since her mother was incapable.

But the child inside Olivia just wanted to be loved completely, without reservation, because of who she was inside.

She didn’t know if there was anything left inside worth loving.

Blaming others wasn’t getting her anywhere. The guilt had been eating her alive. Zack was right—she apologized for everything, whether it was her fault or not. She had to stop.

She looked through the one-way mirror and saw Brian Harrison Hall step into the room. The familiar
thump-thump-thump
of her heart thudded in her chest, increasing in tempo. Even knowing he didn’t kill Missy—and she no longer believed he was even involved—he still elicited deep, numbing fear within her.

She took a deep breath and focused on Zack. He faced her, looking into the mirror as if he could see her. His face reassured her, strengthened her.

This was it.

Zack sensed Olivia’s tension on the other side of the mirror, then dismissed his feelings as ridiculous. She’d been upset when they’d first arrived, so it was natural he’d think she was still unnerved by the whole thing. Coming back to her hometown. Facing the man who for thirty-four years she believed killed her sister. Dealing with her own fears.

“They’re on their way in,” Assistant District Attorney Ross Perdue told Zack after closing his cell phone. Zack had been so lost in thoughts about Olivia and what she’d gone through that he’d almost forgotten the man was in the room with him. Perdue was a young, slick-looking lawyer, about thirty, who wore an expensive suit and Rolex watch. Zack wondered if he was from money, because public service certainly didn’t pay that well.