Harlequin Intrigue April 2021--Box Set 2 of 2 Carol Ericson (short books to read TXT) 📖

means I understand a lot about human motivation and people’s desires, especially the ones they can’t seem to help. All of my training, all of my experience, is telling me there’s something to this symbol.”

There was another pause, but this one was shorter. “Fair enough,” Ben said. “Do you know what?”

“No. But the fact that you haven’t been able to connect it to anything else? The fact that this strange symbol was also near a murder? There’s something here.”

He’d been trying to deny it, but he couldn’t shake the gut feeling he’d had from the beginning. “I need a favor.”

“Okay,” Ben said, reluctance in his tone, but less hostility.

“Run the symbol through the FBI’s database again. This time do it without the bomb specification. See if that symbol has appeared at the scene of any other type of crime.”

“I’ll do it,” Ben said, “but look, I’ve been down this kind of rabbit hole before, trying to make connections that aren’t there. Be prepared for disappointment.”

IT HAD BEEN six long years since she’d been embedded in a case like a detective, sorting through the evidence and clues. But sitting in her relaxing Alaskan home—her escape—with her laptop open to two case files and a mug of coffee that had long since gone cold, a familiar buzz filled Keara.

She loved being a police chief. She liked and respected all of the officers on her force and admired the spirit of the people of Desparre. Moving here had done so much for her mental health. It had made her feel like she was allowed to have a life again, that it wasn’t a betrayal to keep living it, without Juan.

For the most part she hadn’t really missed being a detective. That role came with too many memories. The surprise party Juan had thrown her when she passed her detective’s exam and got promoted. The initial thrill of working a desk in the bullpen close to him. Working as partners had been against policy, since they’d just gotten married when she was promoted. But seeing him across the detectives’ area each day had reminded her of their early times together, patrolling.

She’d expected being a detective would bring them closer, feel more like it had at the beginning, when they’d worked together every day. But too quickly, discussions about their cases had started interfering with their relationship. Most of it had been subtle, like the slow deterioration of their romantic dinners into sharing case files over takeout.

Then there’d been the expectations Keara had never seen coming. Being a patrol officer was dangerous, in Juan’s opinion. But with Keara in a detective’s seat, he’d wanted to try and have kids immediately. While she’d been working late to fit in—being a detective was still a bit of a boys’ club—he’d been imagining babies. Toward the end of his life, when Keara thought they had plenty of time to figure it out, they’d started fighting over what they wanted, and when. Now it was all too late.

She minimized the case file for her husband’s murder that Fitz had sent her unofficially. It hadn’t been easy to go through, though thankfully, Fitz had left out the crime scene photos.

Seven years had dulled some of her grief, taken it from a sharp-edged pain that made it hard to breathe to something duller and more manageable. But she couldn’t help wondering if things might have turned out differently if she and Juan hadn’t made a pact to stop talking business and focus more on their relationship in those last six months. Would she have seen the threat coming? Would she have been able to prevent it?

“You can’t change the past.” Keara repeated the words her police-employed psychiatrist had told her seven years ago, when she wasn’t ready to hear them. “You can only impact what happens in your future.”

Ironic that more and more, the key to moving on seemed like it would involve revisiting her past.

And yet, was it too late? Seven years was a long time in the investigative world. There was a reason those cases were considered cold. A reason they were set aside and detectives’ time reallocated to newer cases. A reason they were rarely reopened, unless some new evidence suddenly came to light.

Rubbing the back of her head, where a headache had started to form, Keara skimmed through Juan’s interview with Rodney Brown one more time. The notes were slim, the interview itself a long-shot possibility. No matter how many times Keara reread them, she didn’t see anything now that her husband hadn’t seen back then. Except...

Keara jerked forward, yanking her laptop closer as an offhand mention describing Rodney’s house caught her eye. “Lives with a roommate, not home,” Juan had written.

Juan had originally gone to interview Rodney thinking he might have seen something relevant since his car had been photographed near the crime scene the night Celia Harris was killed. Although it was good police work not to rule anyone out as a suspect too quickly, Rodney hadn’t been considered one initially. The only reason Juan had left that interview with even mild suspicion was that Rodney had denied driving his car anywhere near the crime scene.

Happening to be near a crime scene wasn’t a crime. Still, Juan had thought it was more likely Rodney was just afraid of police after his various assault arrests rather than a legitimate suspect, especially since he had no apparent connection to Celia. While the assault charges and the probable sexual assault told them he wasn’t a nice guy, the specifics didn’t suggest possible serial killer.

Like hundreds of other people who’d been interviewed in the Celia Harris murder, Rodney Brown had been pushed to the bottom of the list of people who might know something. But what if Juan had been approaching it from the wrong angle?

What if the reason Rodney had so vehemently insisted he hadn’t been driving anywhere near the crime scene that night was because he hadn’t? What if the roommate had used his car?

A thrill