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“Then you’d better call it a night. I just stopped in to tell you that we have a briefing with Captain Campbell and the other members of the task force at seven-thirty. I hope that’s not too early for you.” It was plain from his tone that the statement was aformality.
“Of coursenot.”
Ethan looked unconvinced. “You realize I’m talkinga.m.”
Her lips curved and she got up to cross to the desk, laying her reading glasses on it. “Believe it or not, I’ve come to terms with my violent dislike of mornings. We’ve learned to co-exist.”
“Be packed, because we’ll check out tomorrow. After the briefing, we’ll be heading to Halifax to the divisional RCMP headquarters. Now that we’re finishing up with the Simard crime scene, it will be simpler to set up there with their resources closer to hand. The transportation manifests have come in and are waiting for us. I don’t have to tell you, that’s going to be a tedioustask.”
She winced a little. Just the prospect of poring over reams of passenger lists from airlines, cruises, trains, buses, and the ferry looking for Simard’s name was more than a little daunting. “All right. Can we swing by the body dumpsite before we leave?” It wasn’t often that she was called to a case in time to see a crime scene first hand. Usually she had to rely on photos to familiarize herself with thesite.
Alexa half-expected him to refuse. She wouldn’t have insisted. It wasn’t crucial for her to visit the location in person. But since the secondary sites didn’t appear to be totally random, each would tell them something about the killer. And the ability to walk the ground the offender had, see what he’d seen, would be a rare opportunity for her prior to writing aprofile.
But he surprised her by saying, “Forensic ident unit is finished with it, not that the rain left much for them to find. They also searched across the river for a few miles in case a boat was used, with similar results. Wouldn’t hurt to take another look at the embankment. In five or six of the scenes, we did find indentations in the ground that lead us to believe he uses some sort of two-wheeled dolly to cart the body to the dumpsite. Figure the rain took care of any tracks, but wouldn’t hurt to check again before I release the site. So, requestgranted.”
She smiled. “I’m ridiculously pleased by the prospect. Especially since it puts off the manifest chore a littlelonger.”
He didn’t return her smile. Just continued to gaze at her, long enough to have her shifting uncomfortably, her palms dampening. Awareness sprang to life, thrumming with a familiar electric spark. It’d always been like this between them, even when she was too young, too naïve to put a name to it. That chemistry should have expired, buried by a mountain of regret, shared anguish and pain. It shouldn’t be spitting and sparking to lifeanew.
“Why?” The word seemed wrenched from him, his tone so low she had to strain to hear. Nevertheless, it reverberated through her like a plucked harpsichord string. Why what? He wasn’t referring to her request, of that Alexa was certain. Why did she come? Or—more terrifying—was he referring to why she’dleft?
Cowardly, she seized on the former. “I didn’t realize who I’d be working with on the case when I first agreed to the job.” But Raiker had known. The man made it his business to know everything about his employees, and their potential vulnerabilities. When he’d revealed Ethan’s involvement as senior investigator, it had been all she could do to avoid flinching beneath Raiker’s laser blue stare. But the man had sensed her immediate reaction. There was no hiding that sort of thing from the man who’d once been FBI’s most respected profiler. She’d had to convince him, as well as herself, that her past wouldn’t trip her up on thiscase.
Her first glimpse of Ethan had shaken that conviction to itscore.
He still hadn’t moved. “It was a long time ago.” The words were meant as much for her as for him. “I told Raiker that I had no doubt the two of us could have a productive working relationship.” If anything, his gaze went chillier at herwords.
“You’re right.” His expression had shuttered. He turned to open the door and headed through it. “It was a long timeago.”
* * *
Alexa lay still,staring up at the ceiling of the motel room. Despite her exhaustion, sleep was elusive, evaporating each time it ebbed just within reach. And she knew exactly who she had to thank forthat.
She closed her eyes to keep her gaze from searching the alarm clock on the bedside table. It didn’t help to watch as the minutes awake slid into hours, and Alexa tried not to waste energy on fruitlessbehavior.
Behavior like dwelling on the past. It was rearing its head again, grasping at her with gnarled fingers. Experience had taught her there was no good to be had reliving it. But her usual defenses were in shambles at themoment.
Memories drifted into her mind like smoke under a door. She couldn’t completely blame them on the conversation with Ethan. It was this place. Coming back to the province where she’d spent the unhappiest years of her life affected her more than she’d thought it would, despite her assertions otherwise to Raiker. Her boss had known better than she that her return would be fraught with emotional entanglements. Understanding his employees better than they knew themselves was one of his least belovedtraits.
There was a small click each time the alarm clock flipped from one minute to the next. The sound was hypnotic. For some reason, it reminded her of the two books that made up her childhood. Before her mother had met Thomas Reisman. Click. Thenafter.
Turning to her other side in the bed, Alexa let the past crash over her. With the insight of adulthood, she could appreciate how difficult it had been for a single mother to raise a child on her own. There had never been a father in the picture. Their homes had been a series of apartments, each indistinguishable from the other. Cracked linoleum and counter tops. Uncertain heating systems. Refrigerators that only sporadically chilled the food. But her mom had made them home. There’d been laughter in those days, songs and games that had kept Alexa entertained and close to her mother’s side. The few pictures she had from then showed the weariness behind Rebecca Sellers’s smiles, but they were genuineenough.
That had all changed with ThomasReisman.
Alexa shifted to her back again, tension creeping into her limbs. He’d been a deacon at their church when he’d begun paying attention to her mother, and Alexa had experienced a child’s level of resentment. The man had started coming to their apartment and soon there was less time for games and songs and more focus on their “spiritual growth.” Slowly, the man infiltrated every moment of her time with her mother. And one night when Rebecca sat Alexa down to explain, with a light of excitement in her expression, that she and Thomas had gotten married, that they were all moving to Nova Scotia where he’d have a church of his own, a knife of dread had twisted throughAlexa.
In a couple of weeks, her mother had quit her job, packed up their meager belongings and they’d moved to Yarmouth. Then New Glasgow. Digby. None of the churches had been a good fit. The other pastors were jealous of Thomas. The churches were too liberal. Not focused enough on biblical teachings. The next would be better. When she was fourteen, they’d gone to Truro where Thomas had started his own church. With each successive move, life had gotten more restrictive for Alexa. Everything about her past had slowly been chipped away by the stranger her mother had married. Even hername.
Deep breathing calmed the worst of the tightness in her chest. It’d been Reisman’s idea to start calling her by her middle name. Grace. A solid, biblical name to live by. Her mother had agreed. She almost always agreed with Thomas, which had infuriated Alexa at the time. But she realized now that he’d been molding his wife as surely as he was her daughter. Slowly, day by day, Thomas Reisman erased the best part of Alexa’schildhood.
There would be no more public schools. Her mother would homeschool her with true Christian values. Punishments became more frequent. More severe for the tiniest infraction. They were most often directed at her mother, but Alexa had felt the brunt of Reisman’s belt,too.
Turn away from sin! Turn or burn!She could still hear the snap of the belt, the slicing agony as it had whipped against her skin, his words keeping pace with the rain of blows. And the worst had been her mother’s betrayal, sitting in the corner of the kitchen, head bowed during the beating, reading a jumble of passages aloud from theBible.
The back of her eyes burned, but there were no tears. She’d forgiven her mother long ago. Rebecca had been a victim, too. She’d never made it past the tenth grade, and Alexa knew now that abusers preyed on those weaker than themselves. Moremalleable.
When Rebecca had proved no match for her daughter’s insatiable appetite for learning, Reisman had grudgingly agreed to allow Alexa to use the public library in the afternoons. It had become her escape, a tiny crack in the window to the world. Soon she was staying there until closing time most days. And that’s where she’d metEthan.
A sliver of the tension slipped away. When he’d teased her name from her the first day they’d met, she’d never know what had compelled her to blurt out Alexa instead of Grace. Just hearing her first name spoken aloud had brought twin spears of relief and defiance. The door to her life before Reisman had been opened and she’d taken her first tiny step out of the shroud of darkness that had dropped over her life. There was no way she could have known then the brilliant joy Ethan would bring to herlife.
Or that together they’d hurtle headlong toward unimaginableheartbreak.