Chapter Ten
Winnie flinched before cutting her attention back to the photo, and his stomach flipped at her discomfort. Just one of the many times he was responsible for the dozens of small invisible cuts she’d sustained over the years since meeting him.
He needed her to understand. Not Baxter, not the rest of his team.
He needed the woman in front of him to understand that he wasn’t the man she’d loved all those years ago.
That part of him didn’t exist anymore. Likely never would again.
He didn’t feel things like he used to. Didn’t care as much as he should.
While he’d had every good intention of taking on the cases most law enforcement had given up on, it’d been for entirely selfish reasons that Cold Hollow Investigations had been born.
“I’m sorry.” Those simple two words left her mouth as nothing more than a breathless whisper.
Her slim shoulders took on a life of their own as she inhaled to what he thought might be a count of four.
Winnie licked those perfectly pink lips, and his mind instantly went to that kiss that shouldn’t have happened.
How soft her mouth had been beneath his, even as the rest of her had locked up from surprise.
It’d taken less than a second for him to taste her peppermint toothpaste and feel the warm-blooded rush she’d triggered in his veins.
And, hell, he hadn’t felt anything like that in a long time. “How long ago?”
“Two years.” Adrial cleared his throat. He’d started this for a reason, but his skin felt as though it was too tight and infested with thousands of unseen spiders tiptoeing beneath the surface.
His throat spasmed around nothing but a burn of air, and all he could do was focus on that single photo.
Katie in her veil, looking over her shoulder with that smile that lit up every time he walked through the door.
He couldn’t picture it as often as he used to be able to.
“She was found a few blocks from our town house. The medical examiner said the blow to her head killed her instantly, though he couldn’t determine what she’d been hit with.
The detectives investigating the case concluded it was a mugging gone wrong.
Her wallet and phone weren’t with her, but the tech guys were never able to pinpoint a signal.
There were a couple hits on her credit card at nearby bodegas, but no surveillance footage to identify who was using the card.
After that, everything came to a standstill. ”
“That’s why you came back to Black Hollow?
” Winnie’s voice threatened to coax him out of the comfort of facts.
If he could stick to the facts, he didn’t have to feel anything, but there was a crack that’d fissured the second she’d walked into his office and seemed to keep spreading every time they were in a room together.
But she’d always held the power to unravel his defenses from a cellular level.
“The case stalled out. There was no reason for me to stay. I could’ve gone anywhere, but I had this house and my parents’ place, and the number of cold cases in Black Hollow was on the rise.
Felt like it was time to start over.” He’d loved his wife—wanted nothing more than to find the people responsible for taking her from him—but even he had recognized the path he’d started down.
There was a reason law enforcement officers weren’t permitted to work personal cases, but Adrial hadn’t cared.
Until it was too late. He scrubbed a hand down his face.
“Katie and I were only married five years. It sounds like a lifetime, but it didn’t feel like it.” That knot he couldn’t swallow doubled its effort to suffocate him from the inside out. “We were expecting our first kid when she was killed.”
“Adrial, I’m so sorry.” Color drained from Winnie’s face. Her nearly soundless inhale echoed through him, louder than his own pulse. She slipped her hand along his forearm, and his entire nervous system revved down a gear. “Did the police ever find the person responsible? Did you?”
“No.” No amount of time staring at the case file he kept in his desk, going over the evidence, the ME’s report or the location she’d been found at had revealed a suspect.
Not even when he’d expanded his theory to include that she’d been targeted by one of the perpetrators he’d arrested.
In the end, Chicago PD had been forced to move on to higher-priority cases, and Katie’s had been left in a box stored in the back of an evidence warehouse, where she’d been forgotten.
“I think I understand now. When you said she’s with her family in Chicago, you meant she was buried out there.
With them.” Sunlight cut through the living room window to their left, highlighting the silvery sheen in Winnie’s eyes, and he couldn’t help but want to swipe away her sadness.
She didn’t have any reason to feel that for him, but she’d always led with her soft heart.
She’d always tried to see the best in people—even the ones who’d never deserved her forgiveness—and offer them the benefit of the doubt. Including him.
“With her parents. Her brother is still alive. He visits her and takes care of the grave, brings her flowers every week. I talk to him every couple of months or so, but the time between calls keeps getting longer.”
“There weren’t any other investigators assigned to working the case?” She seemed to catch herself, answering her own question. “There were, but there were no leads and probably no resources to devote to a random mugging. How long before they stopped investigating what happened?”
Hell, she was smart. More than she liked to let on, and he’d never understood why she’d gone out of her way to hide away pieces of herself. He finally worked through that knot in his throat, like letting all of this out had somehow cleared up room for him to breathe a bit easier. “Six months.”
“I’m sorry. I know I said that before, but I am, Adrial.
I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with not only losing your wife, but feeling you needed to be the one to work her case.
No one should have to deal with that alone.
” Winnie swiped at her eyes as though she could erase the glimpse of emotion clouding her gaze and folded her arms across her chest. While she’d always let that big heart of hers lead her choices, she’d never been comfortable showing vulnerability.
A by-product of Henry and Darby’s idea of friendship growing up.
And a way to convince her father she was someone worthy of his attention.
Knowing Winnie, she’d stuffed her feelings down for years or cut herself from them altogether.
Problem was, no matter how much a person ignored them, they never went away.
He served as the prime example that there was always a breaking point.
“So Katie’s case made you want to work cold cases.
I guess it’s a good thing Black Hollow has so many to offer. ”
Right. The case. He didn’t miss her change in subject and knew this was one of those times Winnie recognized what he needed before he did.
Adrial stepped into the center of the living room he’d once fantasized being filled with redheaded menaces screaming and streaking through in an attempt to escape his laughing wife running after them.
His breath lodged in his throat as Winnie looked up at him with evidence of a fledgling smile.
More brittle than real, but gut-wrenching all the same.
He didn’t deserve her smiles. He didn’t deserve to have her sympathy or her scent in his lungs.
And yet, here she was, willing to put everything she had at risk of helping a victim she didn’t even know.
Because that was the kind of woman she was.
“A contact in Black Hollow PD was kind enough to share the official case file.”
“Then we should be able to compare the evidence lists from my father’s notes with what was cataloged.
” She scanned the living room, seemingly taking in the clean lines, dark wood and pale stone emphasized by the black bookcases framing the fireplace.
Her throat bobbed with a swallow. “The house is exactly as I imagined it would be. It’s beautiful.
Did Katie get to see it before she died? ”
“No.” He suddenly felt too big for the space, out of place. “No one else has lived here since I bought it but me. I planned on renting it out while I was in Chicago, but I never got around to it.”
“That’s too bad. A house like this deserves a family who loves it.
” She hugged the case file into her chest, an insufficient barrier to block out the unsteady tremble in her lower lip.
That slip in her expression was gone before he could question whether it’d been a product of his imagination. “Shall we?”
Her boots echoed off the hardwood floor as she headed back into the hallway, toward the back of the house and into the kitchen.
Like she belonged. Which was a ridiculous idea, but one Adrial couldn’t dislodge right away.
Not when it was layered by that kiss when he’d found her talking to Henry and Darby Forbes on Main Street earlier.
He’d merely meant to walk up to her. Instead, his instincts had urged him to pull her close, to press his mouth against hers.
As though they’d done it a thousand times over and not a single day had passed since the last time he’d touched her.
It’d felt natural and a little disconcerting to publicly claim her right in the middle of town, to make it clear to Darby and Henry that Winnie was off-limits, but it’d also felt…
right. Like he’d been holding his breath all these years and that one point of contact had cleared the pressure from his chest.
He hadn’t ever felt that with Katie. Like he would die without touching her.
They’d had a good marriage. They’d laughed at their own inside jokes and made memories between the sheets and in the back of his cruiser.
They’d fought over the things married couples always did—finances, sex, the future.
They’d made up and worked hard to meet each other’s needs, but all of it had required a constant effort on both of their parts.
And this… Being around Winnie was easy. Not effortless, but close.
A relief from all the weight he’d been carrying. And that… That was dangerous.
She took a seat at the dining table, opened the folder she’d brought and pulled a single sheet of paper from what she’d reconstructed from Arthur’s files.
“I’ve been through every box and piece of paper in that house.
This is the only evidence list I was able to recover.
It’s in my dad’s handwriting, but I don’t know why it wouldn’t have been submitted to be included in BHPD’s file. ”
Adrial had some idea. He grabbed the official case file Baxter had all-too-willingly leveraged access to, then took a seat opposite from her.
Enough distance from Winnie that he could slip back into that empty shell he’d become.
He’d already rearranged the file with the official evidence list taking center stage and turned hers toward him on the table.
“I never saw this list until yesterday, when you pulled it out of Arthur’s file box. ”
And there were obvious discrepancies. Items listed in the original that never made it into the BHPD file.
Why? Where had they gone? “The tarp Lila Mercer was found wrapped in and the chains anchoring her to the bottom of the lake are on both lists. The clothing she was found in, too. A pair of scrubs, her bra, socks, shoes, even a hair tie.” Adrial caught the first difference, his eyebrows drawing together.
Her bra had been logged, but— “Her underwear is missing from the official list. So is the strand of hair the detectives found caught in one of the chains that was sent to the lab. Neither of those were mentioned when I was working the case.”
“Seems like a pretty significant hole in the investigation if the officers working it don’t even have access to everything recovered from the body.
The hair I understand. If the killer accidentally left it behind, it could identify him, but the evidence in a case like this is under lock and key.
How would the killer even be able to get to it?
” That was a great question. Understanding jerked her gaze to his.
“What if my dad was wrong about Lila Mercer seeing someone? What if her underwear held traces of proof?”
“It’s possible. Arthur most likely made your evidence list at the scene while the techs were collecting evidence.
It’s possible some of it was lost on the way to the station or this could all be some kind of administrative error.
” Though Adrial doubted either theory. Not with what he knew about Arthur Hutton.
The two items that might be able to identify Lila Mercer’s killer had vanished under police supervision?
Too much of a coincidence. “We might not have access to that evidence, but there is something we can do.”
A shiver shook through her as his intentions became clear. Winnie’s mouth parted. “We need to visit the scene.”