“I flushed out some important details on each,” Blayze continued, “and cut that number in half, leaving us with what I believe are the three most likely suspects.”
“How’d you do that?” she asked. “Let me guess… your mind maps?”
A smile tugged at the corner of his lips. “Yep. Fail-proof method. I’ve already asked our tracking team to find out where they are now, and what they’ve been doing over the last few years.” He tapped at the iPad screen until an image came up. A mug shot of an older man with thinning hair. “This guy’s name is Leo Smalls. He was prosecuted for insurance fraud.”
Sophia tested the sound of his name in her mind. Could he be the one who ran her mother off the road that day?
“What stands outmostabout this guy are the dates,” Blayze said. “Mr. Smalls was sentenced to twenty-four months in prison shortly after your father got put into office. Smalls ended up serving a little over seventeen months, which put him out of jail two days before your mother’s death. We can’t find any other connection between him and your father, besides the letter of complaint, but the dates are just too suspicious to ignore. Also, the guy’s kind of a loner. No wife or kids. I imagine he lost some of his rich friends in everything. People are more likely to do crazy things when they don’t have someone in their lives to ground them, you know?”
“That makes sense,” she said with a nod. “So, Leo Smalls. Who else?” Sophia didn’t know what she expected to feel, but she couldn’t help but think she’d have some sort of inner reaction to seeing her mother’s killer. As if she’d know him when she saw him.
“Next we have Dr. Shawn Hernandez. He’s a plastic surgeon who was convicted of malpractice following a class action lawsuit. The women claimed he’d left scarring during an assortment of surgeries. It was too small a group to allow for a class action, but your father reviewed it, determined it should go to trial, and the doctor was later found guilty.
“Hernandez lost everything, including his right to practice. The time frame fits with this guy, but what makes him moresuspect is the fact that his wife, who’s a good twenty years younger, later wrote a seething letter to your father. She said she expected your father to protect someone of similar heritage, and that a case like his should never have made it past the DA. In this case, I suspect the wife as much as I do the doctor himself.”
The idea of the hostile being a woman didn’t sit right with Sophia. She studied Dr. Hernandez’s photo. Kind eyes, round face, and a bulbous nose that made the man—though he was most likely in his fifties—look childlike.
“Okay,” Sophia said, her stomach growing sick. “So, who’s the last guy?”
Blayze swiped the screen and turned to her, a determined look in his eyes. “This guy raises more red flags than all of them.”
Sophia leaned her elbows on her thighs to close the gap, taking in the face on the screen. A man in his early forties, maybe. Pale skin. Dark hair. Clean shaven. Light green eyes. Eyes that almost looked familiar.
“Charles Locklear. This guy was filthy rich. He had a massive home in L.A., in addition to several elite cars, a private helicopter with a license to fly, and a dozen vacation homes. He was found guilty of fraud.
“Basically, he would create false hype over a specific stock. The value would rise with the artificial demand, and then Charles would hurry and sell his stock while the value was high. At some point, the new stockholder would find out they hadn’t made a good investment after all. Anyway—here’s the kicker—he was abigsupporter of your father.”
Sophia lifted a brow. The photo, though it was obviously a mug shot, looked like the face of a man she’d seen at one of her father’s parties. “Does he have a family?”
Blayze nodded. “A wife and two sons. He made a practice of rubbing shoulders with the wealthy. When people in his circle lost big on the stock he suggested, he’d say he had an error in judgment and that he lost too. They were rich, they liked the guy, and he was big on donating to their causes. That’s why he pulled it off for so long.”
“Huh,” she said, giving that some thought. “So, do you think he and my father were friends?”
“Your dad said they weren’t any closer than a lot of his supporters.The guy was a real schmoozer, the friends-with-everyone type.”
“But if he invested in my father in order to get him in the district attorney’s office,” Sophia said as it linked together, “then he might have sensed somebody was on to him. He was probably counting on my father to repay a favor by dismissing his case before it got to trial.”
Blayze nodded. “Exactly. But here’s the most chilling part. His parole date was set for a week before your mother’s death.”
Sophia threw a hand over her mouth, her heart pounding out a sickened beat as she took in the man’s face on the screen. “That’s got to be him.”
“A lot of times prisoners are released prior to their parole dates, so we’ll have to investigate that further. But at this point he’s my prime suspect. My guys are trying to locate these men now, get an update on where they’re living, working, that type of thing. That alone could narrow this down even further. If all three leads go cold we’ll go back to the other three and take a closer look at them.”
“Wow,” she said, her head getting light suddenly. “Sounds like you’ve really got some solid leads then… that’s good.” A thick bout of nausea rolled through her stomach as she stood up from her spot at the coffee table. “Thanks for going over those with me,” she managed.
“Wait, are you okay?” Blayze’s voice, though drenched in concern, sounded a million miles away as she circled the couch. He was at her side in a blink, one arm around her back, the other cradling an elbow.
“I’m fine,” she assured. “I’m just… going to take a bath now.” She hurried toward the hallway with numb legs and tingly, half-asleep feet. Perhaps the warm water would counter the chill in her blood. Thoughts of a man out for revenge. Driving her mother off the road. Something she still hadn’t let herself accept was hitting her in the gut like a sucker punch. Perhaps she was a sucker for thinking that—maybe, despite the threats—it’d only been an accident after all. But seeing those faces, hearing Blayze talk about each guy and their past… all of it made the situation more real than it’d been the day before.
That, coupled with the new doubts in her head about Blayze’s feelings for her, and Sophia suddenly felt very far from solid ground.
Once the water was running, loud enough to cover up the sound, Sophia dropped to her knees and let the tears flow too, giving in to the longing ache in her heart.I miss you so much, Mom.
* * *
Dread. Blayze couldn’t remember being gripped by such an overwhelming amount of it. And he’d had a lot to dread over his lifetime. Everything from torturous training, firefights, and even his mother’s prognosis. But there was something about this situation that wrecked him in an entirely new way. Perhaps he thought—before this case came along—that he’d made it through the more difficult parts of his life. That he could exhale for a while. But as he thought of Sophia Vasco, the sensational woman she was, he couldn’t take the idea of seeing her harmed.
He pulled his elbows onto the railing along the deck where he faced the great span of redwoods. Mighty and tall, like an army of its own. Managing to shade the bulk of the patio, despite the sun’s best efforts to peek through the thick leaves and woven, bark-covered branches. He breathed in the crisp aroma, hoping to distract himself if only for a moment.
