“Sleep okay?” Ethan asked mildly as he started back to the kitchen, unaware—thank God—of her former near-catatonic state.
“Yes, thank you.” Knowing he was close by, feeling safe and protected, she had fallen deeply asleep and hadn’t stirred till morning. But she didn’t tell him that. He was in her space too much already.
He folded his blanket and set it on the sofa, placed the pillow neatly on top of it. She watched as he zipped his orange duffel closed and set it on the floor next to the couch.
“I see you came prepared,” she said with a trace of irritation. She didn’t like being ordered around, no matter the reason.
“I keep a go-bag in my car—a couple of T-shirts, a razor, deodorant, enough underwear to last a few days. I dropped by my apartment yesterday during the rehearsal and packed a suitcase to take with me to Dallas. It’s in your hall closet.”
“If you’re planning to stay here that long, you must not think they’re going to catch the killer any time soon.”
“I hope they do. I was on the phone with Lieutenant Hoover when you walked in. I was hoping the cops would find fingerprints, footprints, DNA—something useful at the crime scene. But the place was clean. This guy knew what he was doing. That makes finding him a whole lot harder.”
She glanced down at the laptop sitting on her mahogany dining table and wandered in that direction. She and Mom had hit local yard sales to furnish the duplex. They’d stumbled on the Duncan Phyfe drop-leaf table and four matching chairs, and Val had instantly fallen in love with the set.
“So you’ve been working,” she said. The silver apple on top of his open computer dubbed him a Mac user. She was a PC girl herself.
“I’m collecting background information, trying to find out if any of the girls who got notes had contact with the killer at some point in their lives. A guy one of them might have pissed off, someone who might want revenge.”
“Lieutenant Hoover questioned me about that when I talked to him. He asked if there was anyone I might have known, someone I had a run-in with who might want payback.”
“Was there?”
She shrugged. “Not that I know of.” She glanced down at the screen, saw Carmen Marquez’s high school transcripts, and uneasiness crept through her. Carmen was one of the models who’d received a note.
She pointed to the screen. “How did you get that information?”
Ethan’s dark eyes searched her face. “A lot of it’s public record. You just have to know where to look.”
“So that’s it? You’re just looking at what’s in public records?”
His gaze seemed to sharpen and she wished she had left the subject alone.
“Does it matter where the info comes from? We’re trying to catch a killer before he kills someone else.”
He was right. Finding the killer was more important than her personal privacy.He won’t find out, she told herself. Her juvenile records were sealed. No way could he get into sealed police records.
“What is it, Val?” Ethan asked softly. “If there’s something in your past, I’m going to find it. If it’s important, be easier if you just told me now.”
Her unease turned to worry and her chest clamped down. It was none of his business. Not anyone’s business but her own. “It isn’t important. I was just a kid back then.”
He looked at her, and there was something in his face. It was compassion, she realized, and it made her eyes sting. “It was a long time ago,” she said with a hint of panic. “The records are sealed. I told you, I was only a kid.”
Ethan walked toward her, reached out and tipped up her chin. “We all make mistakes, Valerie. Whatever you did back then isn’t important unless it somehow ties to the murder. I can find out. But I’d rather hear it from you.”
“You can’t find out.”
“I can, honey. If you tell me, whatever you say won’t go any farther than this room.”
She turned away, walked over to the window, stared out at the lawn she had paid one of the neighbor kids to mow. What did it matter? It was all in the past. So what if Ethan Brodie thought less of her because of it?
She released a shaky breath, resigned to telling him what he was so determined to know. “My parents were killed when I was ten. Car accident in Michigan.”
“I’m sorry, Val.”
She ignored him, kept talking; she wanted this over and done. “I didn’t have much family, just a few distant relatives. One of my older cousins was married. Alice and her husband, Ray, lived in Seattle. They took me in. From the start they made it clear they didn’t want me. They treated me like a servant, kept me cleaning and doing their dirty work from dawn till dark. I didn’t mind the work so much. It was the attitude, the feeling that they were doing me a favor just letting me stay in their house.”
She didn’t look at Ethan, just forced air into her lungs and kept going, desperate now to get it all out. “The abuse was mostly verbal, but I took a couple of slaps I didn’t deserve and I started getting a bad feeling about Cousin Ray. He came into my room one night and just stood there in the dark watching me. The next day I ran away.”
