Yeah, starting with Sierra at the Veritas Center going to my apartment to search for clues on the man who’s stalking me.
Of course Kinsley wouldn’t say that to Jada just when her friend was dropping off to sleep, so she silently padded to the door and eased out into the family room. She was expecting darkness, but the lights were on.
Dev sat at the dining table when she expected everyone had gone to bed. Her binders and computer were open in front of him. He looked up and caught sight of her, a lopsided smile spreading across his face and reminding her of the teenage boy she’d wished would’ve smiled at her like that.
Her heart flip-flopped. Somersaulting, over and over. She swallowed to stop the flow of feelings she shouldn’t be having. Feelings that could only hurt her best friend. She curled her fingers into tight fists until she had control, then crossed the room to him.
Guilt ate away at her for the hours of enjoyment with Jada while he searched for her shooter. “You’re still looking at my files?”
He leaned back and rubbed his eyes. “I couldn’t sleep and thought maybe if I reviewed your investigations some red flags would pop up.”
“And did they?”
He tapped a legal pad with three items noted and numbered. One of them was underlined with a dark black stroke. “Other than Luongo and Huff, I found a couple things I think we should look at. They date back to when you first started your career.”
She tried to make out the details, but wasn’t close enough and was hesitant to move nearby in case her tiredness let her ignore the precarious control she had on her feelings for him.
He slid the notepad across the table to her. “The one I underlined is an investigation you worked for the Veritas Center.”
She grabbed the pad and perched on a nearby chair. Her heart sank. He’d chosen the Porter Mooney investigation.
He watched her as if she were a wayward criminal. “You didn’t tell me you worked another murder investigation.”
Oh, no!He thought she’d kept this from him on purpose. Or at least his tone and look said that. As if he didn’t trust her.
Was it something she’d said or done, or had being left at the altar leave him with trust issues? Maybe he hadn’t gotten over the betrayal. If he was unable to trust, it didn’t bode well for a future relationship with a woman. She was sorry for his pain, if indeed he had trust issues, but it didn’t impact her future. Due to her love for Jada, that woman would never be her.
Didn’t mean she still didn’t want a future with him. She just couldn’t have it and had to find ways to cope.
She gripped the pad tightly to remind herself of that and looked up.
He was studying her carefully. “Tell me about it.”
She didn’t want to recall the events, not at all, but he deserved her honest response after all the help he was providing to keep her safe. “This happened a little over a year ago. While I was investigating Mooney, an anonymous source told the police he’d killed his business partner.”
Dev continued to look at her. “What was his motive?”
“He never admitted to the murder, so of course he didn’t say, but the police believed the partner was going to turn him in for cutting corners, so Mooney ended his life. They also speculated that Mooney buried him in concrete on a home addition he was building. He served as the general contractor and could have pulled it off.”
“Did they search the site?”
She nodded. “PPB called in Veritas to do X-rays. They agreed, but they wanted to enhance the concrete findings while also using a lower radiation density than conventional human X-ray devices. That’s when they brought me in to use my contacts to source a portable machine that fit their criteria.”
Dev clamped a hand on the back of his neck. “But it wasn’t quite that simple, right? You didn’t just provide equipment, but you also assisted in the concrete search.”
“Yeah, and found nothing.” She rubbed at a sudden chill on her arms. “That was one of the most disappointing days of my career. His partner had gone missing, and he was the only suspect in his disappearance. The victim had three children under the age of seven. I felt so bad for those children not having closure, so I kept working the investigation.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Doing what?”
“I tried to think about where and how he would hide the body. Had he chosen to dismember his partner? If so, I needed to find a location where he could’ve disposed of individual body parts. As I mentioned, he was a general contractor, and his home project wasn’t the only active construction site he managed. There were ten others, so I began to investigate each one of them.”
His whole body went still, and he peered at her. “Which led you to find something.”
She nodded. “Not that it ended up doing us any good. He was never convicted. But there was a large pond—a commercial site where he was building an office complex closest to his home. I thought if he didn’t bury his partner in concrete perhaps he disposed of him in the pond.”
Vivid visions of the day of the search flooded her brain. The crisp fall air. Dark clouds hanging overhead mimicking the emotions of all the participants. The divers in the water searching and searching for anything that could help.
“So you had the pond searched?”
