If She Saw Read online

  “Oh, I feel the frustration, too,” Kate said. “But there’s a really bizarre working arrangement with me coming back from retirement. Until something more concrete is established, I can’t rock the boat too much.”

  “I imagine it’s a little easier to be back in DC, though, right?” DeMarco asked. “I mean, with your granddaughter.”

  “Yeah,” Kate said, feeling a sting in her heart when she was reminded of how she had ended her night yesterday.

  Hard to think of it as yesterday when I still haven’t slept, Kate thought.

  “What about you?” Kate asked. “Any reason for you to not want to be around DC?”

  “No, not really. I’ve always liked to travel, so the job suits me. My mom lives in Bethesda, but other than that there’s no family around up there. No love interests, either.”

  “Yeah, you mentioned that on the way down here,” Kate said. “And I have to admit…I feel like I need to apologize. I haven’t really done a good job in getting to know you. I had no idea you were gay.”

  DeMarco shrugged. “I’m not the type that lets it define me, you know? I don’t have it on my business card or monogrammed on coats or anything. You and I…we just never had a conversation where it came up in a normal fashion.”

  “I know,” Kate said. “And I think that might be because the conversations have always been about me and what it’s been like to come out of retirement. Kind of selfish of me.”

  “No worries at all,” DeMarco said. “I can’t even imagine trying to stay on this job when you have grandkids. And you’ve done it well for so long.”

  Kate said nothing, though she wanted to explain to DeMarco that her dedication to her work had been a huge strain on her family. She also kept all thoughts of her husband, Michael, at bay, certainly not wanting to tell her that even after Michael had been killed, work had come first. It had simply been something she had never been able to unhinge herself from.

  “You said your mom lives in Bethesda,” Kate said. “Are you guys close?”

  “I suppose. We’ve never been really tight or anything. But I’m all she’s got, as sad as that sounds, so I suppose we’re close enough.”

  DeMarco looked blankly out of the windshield as she briefly discussed her mother. She spoke quickly and in a flat tone as well. To Kate, it was a nonverbal and polite way of saying I’d really rather not talk about it.

  As the Holiday Inn sign came into view, Kate felt a feeling of guilt for the first time. Was she abandoning DeMarco? Sure, she was only following Duran’s orders but still…they had come here together to attempt to solve these murders and here she was, barely over twelve hours later, about to head back without her.

  “Please don’t hesitate to call me with any new information. If this thing starts to escalate, I imagine Duran would send me back to assist.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind, but I think I’ll be okay,” DeMarco said.

  “Want me to call ahead to a car rental place?” Kate asked.

  “Nah, I’ll delegate that to the police. Maybe I’ll get Palmetto to do it.”

  Kate chuckled as she pulled into the parking lot of the Holiday Inn. “I fully expect you to have this wrapped up by the time I return home,” she said with a smile.

  “We can’t all knock cases out of the park like Kate Wise,” DeMarco said. “But thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  Kate parked in front of the motel. She had been here before, stuck in limbo without knowing exactly where she was going to stay or how she was going to get from Point A to Point B. She remembered that part of her career fondly, particularly a case out in Utah where she had been stranded for two days because her rental car had broken down and there had been some miscommunication between the bureau and the airport. She did miss those days and she envied DeMarco a bit.

  “Be careful and take care,” Kate said.

  “Says the fifty-five-year-old that threw a flying tackle on Davey Armstrong three hours ago,” DeMarco said.

  With a grin and a nod, DeMarco got out of the car. She gave one final wave as she headed in through the lobby doors and then disappeared inside.

  Kate checked the time and saw that somehow, it was only 4:47 in the afternoon. She was no longer truly tired, having been reinvigorated by coffee and finding her second wind after chasing down Davey Armstrong. If she drove straight through without stopping, she figured she could be back home sometime around 8:30. She could sleep the night through and wake up around seven in the morning to call Duran to see how she could help with the research job.

  While she hated to leave a case when it had not yet been officially closed, she also could not deny that it felt very good to feel wanted—to feel needed in a job that had once so strongly defined her.

  Still, that promise of normal life shone bright. It was what caused her to pull out her phone and send a quick text to Melissa before pulling back out of the parking lot. She thought about what to say for several seconds and, after some trial and error, finally decided on something simple and to the point: Sorry about last night. Can we meet sometime Monday?

  She honestly wasn’t expecting a response, but she figured she had to at least try. And as she pulled back out onto the street and in the direction of DC, she tried to imagine how to explain herself to Melissa. What the hell was she supposed to say? Sorry, sweetie…but that job that took so much of your childhood away from me is already starting to do the same with my granddaughter, too.

  It was miserable and it broke her heart, but God help her, she worried that it was going to end up being the truth.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Kate managed to keep the pull of exhaustion away up until she got on the exit that would lead her into Richmond. There, she let out a yawn so long and deep that she could practically already feel her bed beneath her. She had estimated her time almost perfectly, finally coasting slowly down the streets of Carytown toward her house at 8:40.

  Still, despite being somewhere beyond tired, she could not stop thinking about DeMarco. Kate had always had a habit of not wanting to stop working on a case until a final, official, and unbreakable arrest had been made. Naturally, she felt as if she had left the murdered couples’ case long before it had been truly wrapped up; she knew it would nag at her until the case was closed. And while she trusted DeMarco to get the job done, Kate Wise had never enjoyed feeling as if she had given up on something.

  She found a parking spot close to her house and felt like she was sleepwalking as she walked from her car to her front porch. She was so tired that she had made it all the way up the porch steps before she saw the man on her porch. He was sitting in one of her little faux Adirondack chairs, smiling sheepishly at her.

  It was Allen. And despite the thin smile, Kate could tell that he was hurt.

  Shit, she thought. We were supposed to go out for dinner tonight. And I totally forgot.

  She walked over to him and plopped herself down in the chair beside his. They’d sat like this on her porch a few times before. There had usually been a glass of wine in her hand, and a beer in his. But now there was none of that. Now, she knew she had dropped the ball and needed to apologize.

  “Allen, I’m so sorry,” she said. “I got a call last night from the bureau. They sent me out to Roanoke on this rush thing and…and I just plain forgot.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. Allen looked at his watch and added: “I was going to give you until nine and then head back home. I figured it had something to do with your daughter, granddaughter, or work.”

  “Why didn’t you call to remind me?” she asked.

  Not that it would have mattered, Kate thought. All that would have accomplished was making me feel guilty while trying to find a killer.

  Allen shrugged. “Because I knew it wasn’t my place. I know that you have a life. A very busy life. I don’t say this looking for pity, but I know I’m not on the list of high priorities. And I’m fine with that. It’s the sort of relationship I need in my life right now.”

 
“That’s not fair to you,” Kate said. “How long have you been waiting here?”

  “Two hours. But it’s cool. It was a nice break. I read some news on my phone, got to play on my Sudoku app, too. At the risk of sounding cheesy, I like it on your porch. It makes me happy. It makes me happier when you’re on it with me, but I’ll take what I can get.”

  Kate reached out and took his hand. “Have you had dinner yet?”

  “No.”

  “Come inside. We can whip something up together.”

  He gave her hand a squeeze and chuckled. “Kate, I’m not sure where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing, but you look exhausted. Go in and get some sleep. We can do this some other time.”

  “No. Look…yes, I’m running on zero sleep for the last day and a half or so. But I want to see you. So why don’t you figure out what you want to eat and call it in. I’ll grab a shower really quick and we can head out and just pick it up.”

  “Or we could have it delivered here,” he said. “If you don’t mind me hanging around, of course.”

  “That sounds like a plan,” she said.

  She bit her lip when she nearly found herself inviting him into the shower with her after he made the call for the food. The thought of it excited her but no man had seen her naked since Michael died nearly six years ago. It had been a long stretch of time and while she desperately wanted some kind of physical intimacy again, she wasn’t sure if she could be so blatant and inviting about it.

  “Go take your shower,” he said with more than a hint of suggestiveness in his eyes. “I’ll be on the way to pick up our food when you get out. It’ll be quicker than waiting for it to be delivered.”

  “Thanks for understanding,” Kate said. She leaned in and kissed him slowly. They had kissed many times—often, actually—but there had never been one that had left her feeling lightheaded. This one did it, but it might have been because closing her eyes reminded her of just how tired she was.

  “Are you okay, Kate? You look more than tired. You look…I don’t know. Troubled?”

  A million things went through Kate’s mind in that moment: an image of Michelle on her bed, looking up at her with hopeful and expectant eyes; Davey Armstrong sitting in a holding cell in Roanoke; the bloodstains on the Nashes’ living room floor; the hateful and hurt look on Melissa’s face as she walked away with Michelle in the car seat.

  “I’ll be okay,” Kate said. “I think the shower will help.”

  With that, she headed back inside. She felt herself wanting to cry, something that she rarely did. Maybe a shower would wake her up a bit but as far as all of the other things swimming around in her head, no shower of any warmth or length would be able to wash it all away.

  ***

  Allen was setting the table when she came out of her bedroom. The shower, getting dressed, and making some sense out of her wet hair had taken a little less than half an hour. In that time, Allen had apparently decided to just walk three blocks down to the street to the Italian deli. He knew her order there—a traditional meatball sub—and he had it on her plate when she came in.

  The shower had helped a bit in terms of how tired she was. But she knew she’d crash soon. It wasn’t much of a date but she was glad to see Allen at all, especially after the way the last twenty-four hours of her life had gone.

  “I know we have this dinner a lot,” Allen said, plopping his pastrami sandwich down on his plate. “But it was getting late and I didn’t want you to stay up any later than you had to.”

  “No, this is perfect,” she said. She started eating right away, having not had anything of substance since the pizza at Gino’s. And that was already starting to feel like a lifetime ago.

  They ate in silence for about three minutes before Allen spoke up. When he did, Kate could tell that he was very hesitant to ask his question. She respected him for going there, for asking the tough questions to make sure she was okay.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked. “Whatever it is that had you called away…I can listen, you know?”

  “I know,” she said. “But the case isn’t closed yet, so I’m not supposed to give out any pertinent information. You understand that, right?”

  “Absolutely. So, if it was such a rush sort of job, what brought you back so soon?”

  She did her best to explain the situation, letting him know that she was needed for some type of research role to help bring a high-profile local case to a close. As she did, she started to understand how self-obsessed she must seem to him. Leaving her granddaughter and ending her daughter’s night out…dropping everything right away just so she could recapture a feeling of purpose.

  God, have I always been like this? she wondered as she finished up her explanation and the table fell to silence again.

  With dinner eaten and conversation at a stand-still, Allen stood up and cleared their plates and the take-out containers. “Off to bed you. Do you need a wake-up call in the morning? You look like you’re going to sleep pretty hard.”

  That same spark she’d felt when she had nearly asked him to come into the shower with her reignited. This time, she did not ignore it. Maybe if she had not been so tired she would have put up more of a mental block against it.

  “Yeah, a wake-up call would be good,” she said. She got up and walked over to him as he put the dishes into the sink. “So at about seven in the morning, I need you to roll over and shake me a bit.”

  He didn’t bother playing dumb. He just gave her a curious look and smiled. “You sure?”

  “I am,” she said. To punctuate this, she stepped forward and placed her hands on his waist. She pulled him to her and kissed him softly but with a deep passion she had not felt in a very long time.

  He responded in kind and somehow, she ended up with her back pressed against the sink. She had to stop the kiss just to catch her breath.

  With his face still directly in front of hers, their lips no more than an inch apart, he looked into her eyes. “This will be the last time I ask,” he said. “I’m trying to be polite but I’m still a man and all. Are you sure?”

  She gently pushed him away from her and walked to the kitchen window. She closed the blinds and then turned to face him. That done, she reached up to the top button of her shirt and undid it. The second one followed. As she started working on the third, she looked up at him with what she hoped was a seductive stare.

  “This would go quicker if you would lend a hand.”

  Allen, as it turned out, was happy to oblige. He walked quickly over to her and in the whirlwind of another of those kisses, helped her finish the task.

  ***

  Before Michael, Kate had only slept with two men. That made Allen the fourth. And as she stirred awake at three in the morning, she tried to recall if she had ever climaxed as hard as she had the night before. She’d reached it twice and the second one had been so powerful that it had scared her a bit. Thinking back on it in that three a.m. darkness, she smiled to herself. She rolled over and looked at Allen, sleeping as peacefully as she had hoped to.

  But sleep had been tricky. First, her nerves had remained on fire when she and Allen had finished. It hadn’t lasted long and they had both fallen into bed quite tired. But her body had remained amped up until almost eleven and then she had come awake just after three with the images of the bodies of the Langleys in her mind. She saw them as she had only ever seen them, in the glossy portrait paper within the case files. Bloodied, massacred…and for what?

  Then, for reasons she was not clear on, she started ruminating on the case that had attacked her memory leaving a Carytown shop two days ago. Something about that case would not leave her alone. At the end, a little girl had been saved and a man who had been actively killing people at an alarming speed had been brought to justice.

  Only, that really wasn’t the case, she thought in the darkness with Allen beside her. Her director at the time had insisted that they had their man even though some of the evidence had been questionable at best
. They’d called the case a wrap and then, after that little girl had been returned safely home, two more kids had been found murdered a month later in another state. They’d eventually found the real killer, but Kate had never forgiven herself for ignoring her instincts—for not arguing against her former director when she had felt that the man they had apprehended was not the killer.

  As quietly as she could, she got out of bed and walked into the kitchen. She got a glass of water and sat in her recliner, thinking back about that case—thinking about DeMarco and a man she was now starting to think was not guilty at all.

  “You okay?”

  She turned and saw Allen standing in the doorway of the bedroom. He had put his boxers back on but the rest of his body was bare. He looked damned good for a fifty-four-year-old and her mind, if only briefly, jumped away from the darker things she had been dwelling on and to the activities of about five hours ago.

  “Yeah. I just couldn’t sleep.”

  “Is it bad? Like, can I make a joke about you coming back to bed and us not sleeping at all?”

  She smiled and moved toward him. “Make any jokes you want,” she said. “So long as you’re ready to back them up.”

  And before he could make another comment, she was kissing him and leading him back to her bed.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Seven miles away from where a man named David “Davey” Armstrong lay half-asleep on a cot in a holding cell, another man woke up quickly in bed. He stared at the digital numbers of his alarm clock and saw that it was 5:05. He had an internal alarm that had been waking him up at this time ever since he’d been a child—as early as the age of ten.

  Like an automated machine, he got out of bed, took six steps to the rug in front of his bed (six steps which he counted under his breath every morning), and assumed a push-up position. He blasted through one hundred push-ups and then immediately went to the shower. He scrubbed himself and washed his short black hair with the same machine-like mannerisms in which he had gotten out of bed and exercised.