Finding Justice (3 page)

An invisible connection hovered between them before he slumped
back in his chair a second time. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Inhaling a long breath, Cat exhaled it in a rush. “Let’s talk
about this when we’re at your place. Not here. Okay?”

He nodded, his gaze somber and intense. “Whatever you say,
Detective.”

Cat resisted the urge to buckle under the disappointment in his
gaze. This was going to be fifty times harder than she anticipated if Jay didn’t
understand that he was equally in the line of fire as anyone else until she knew
more.

She dragged her eyes from the dangerously hypnotic power of his
and turned to the window. Before she looked away, Cat could’ve sworn his eyes
glazed with unshed tears. Something deeper was definitely going on. The Jay
Garrett she knew was bold as brass and far more sure of himself than the
gorgeous man in front of her with his shoulders rounded in a classic image of
exhaustion. She wouldn’t push him. Bigger questions, the personal ones, could
wait. The first thing she needed to deal with was Sarah. Jay was alive—and a
suspect.

CHAPTER THREE

T
HE
TAXI
PULLED
TO
A
stop outside Jay’s house and he opened the
passenger-side door. Watching Cat over the roof, he smiled as she stared up at
the cabin, her eyes alive with awe. He drew in a long breath through flared
nostrils. He’d bought the cabin because of her. Cat loved this house. Always
had. He leaned through the window and paid the driver. After he’d taken her
suitcase from the trunk, the taxi turned around and made its way back down the
spiraling road into Templeton Cove.

He stood next to her and gestured toward the cabin. “What do
you think?”

She shook her head. “You know exactly what I think. I
absolutely love it.” She turned to look at him, a smile softly curving her lips.
“You must have done well for yourself since I last saw you.”

Jay’s smile dissolved. “Yeah, well, money doesn’t count for
anything when one of your friends turns up dead on the edge of your land.”

Guilt knotted inside him for chilling the atmosphere so
succinctly, but he didn’t deserve the admiration shining in her eyes. He didn’t
deserve her looking at him as if he was anything more than he was. A man who’d
gotten so tied up in his own life, he hadn’t noticed the trouble Sarah was
in.

She looked across the grassy hill running down to the forest at
the edge of his land. “Sarah was found on Clover Point?”

“Yes.”

She turned. “I’m so sorry.”

For the twentieth time since he’d spotted Cat’s gorgeous red
hair over the top of the train seat, Jay curled his itching hands into fists. He
wanted to touch her as though he needed to make sure she was real. She looked
different. Just as beautiful, but different. Far too underweight for his liking
and the gray smudges under her eyes told him she could do with staying in bed
for a week. Yet she’d come as soon as he called.

“Her body was found meters from my property.” He dragged his
gaze from hers to stare at the forest. “I’m a suspect because I knew her and she
was here. I don’t blame the police for jumping on me straight away.”

She looked past him to the forest, her cheeks darkening. “What
happened with the police? I assume you were questioned pretty much as soon as
she was found.”

He followed her gaze, wishing she’d look at him. Her eyes were
the only window he had into a brain that worked like a machine and a heart that
he’d hoped would be his one day. She had to believe him innocent. If she didn’t,
he had no idea where to turn next.

“Inspector Bennett, the senior investigation officer in Sarah’s
case, arrived the next day. He questioned me here. He stood on the deck, firing
questions at me as though I was the type of guy who could choke a woman to death
and then drink his morning coffee without a care in the world.” He shook his
head, his jaw clenching. “I didn’t even know she was dead until Bennett and his
team turned up.”

She shifted away from him, her gaze turned from his. “What did
he say? Do you have an alibi?”

Nausea furled in his stomach. The space she’d opened between
them spoke volumes. Jay swallowed against the pain that struck him deep inside.
“He goaded me for over an hour, insinuating I had both access and probable cause
to hurt her because of...our renowned fall out.”

“The fall out you’ve yet to tell me about.”

He watched her profile. Her jaw was clenched and her eyes were
narrowed. He felt guilty of everything Bennett accused him of. Having Cat
looking away from him scratched at his soul, caused an ache in his heart. “I
have an alibi, Cat. Four alibis.”

She turned. “Four?”

Jay nodded. Was that relief in her eyes? “I was with some
visiting French investors that evening, well into the night.”

“So you’re no longer a suspect?”

Jay lifted his shoulders. “I have no idea. Bennett took their
names and said he’d be in touch. I haven’t heard anything from him since so I’m
assuming he’s happy...although...”

She frowned. “What?”

“Nothing else has been done or said by the cops in over a week.
There hasn’t been as much as a press conference since. No reconstruction, no
information about the killing made public at all. It’s why I called you.”

“Well, they’re hardly likely to tell you what they’re doing. If
you had probable cause and access, you will be on their radar until someone else
is found and charged.”

Jay stared, imploring her to believe him innocent. “That’s what
I thought.”

Without thinking, he brushed back some of the thick red hair
that blew across her cheek. “You’re back where you belong, Cat.”

She stiffened beneath his fingers. “No, Jay, I’m not. I’m here
for Sarah...and then I go home.”

She strode past him to sit on a bench that overlooked the
forest. Jay exhaled and followed her. The tension hummed around them like an
invisible force field. Sitting beside her, he planted his elbows on his knees
and stared ahead. He never could have anticipated the effect Cat looking at him
with suspicion in her incredible, ridiculously green eyes would have on him.

She looked amazing despite the sadness he sensed hovering
around her. Why the hell hadn’t he called her before? Why wait until Sarah’s
body was found on the grounds of his estate before bringing her back into his
life? He yearned to turn back the clock and make everything right in the world.
He’d been a stupid, blind, money-hungry dickhead.

He forced his mind to focus on the macabre and faced her. “They
found her body in the forest.”

She stared at him for a long moment before looking down at her
hands. The knuckles showed white. “I was shocked when you called. Scared. Now I
feel this is where I’m supposed to be. Right here with you, doing whatever the
hell I can to put Sarah to rest.”

“Even if it gets you in trouble?”

A wry smile curved her lips. “I’m more used to trouble than you
can imagine. I want to find whoever did this as much as you. She was an amazing
friend to both of us.”

Jay ran his gaze over the face he’d once known so well but
hadn’t taken the time to watch change and grow. Who was Cat now? Who had Sarah
been? His heart kicked painfully.

“Yet neither of us bothered to pick up the phone and call her
for God knows how long, did we?”

Irritation flashed sharply in her eyes. “Accusations and blame
don’t help. Not ever.”

“We have nothing to work with, Cat.” Frustration sharpened his
tone. “As long as the police still think I might have had something to do with
this...”

She flicked her long auburn hair over her shoulders. “If we’re
going to prove your innocence by finding out who killed Sarah, the first thing
we need to do is build a picture of who she was before she died.”

She believes me.
Hope dared to
ignite like a flame behind his rib cage. “You believe I had nothing to do with
this?”

She frowned but her gaze never left his. “I want to. More than
anything. But I’ll treat this case the same as any other. We live in a world of
innocent until proven guilty, remember?”

Her words were thinly veiled. She wanted to believe him but
didn’t. Not yet. Authority and linear thinking ruled Cat’s world; his was ruled
by the next deal, the next pot of money. He needed to focus on the future
without looking back. If he looked back too hard, it would kill him.

Yet he needed to look back if he had any chance of proving his
innocence and Cat would have to let down her professional guard and look into
her heart to truly believe he could never harm Sarah.

There was no other way. Cat didn’t know him anymore. No one
did.

He turned his gaze to the forest. “I hadn’t spoken to her in
months. I didn’t know a damn thing about what was going on with her.”

The seconds passed like heartbeats until Cat spoke again. “Do
you think I knew all the murder victims I’ve helped lay to rest over the years?
This blame you’re drowning under stops now. People lose touch, grow up, change.
Look at you.”

“What about me?”

“I look at you and I don’t see the boy I shared every summer
with growing up, I see...”

He looked at her. Two spots of color stained her cheeks, her
eyes wide. “You see what?”

“I see someone older, wiser...maybe a bit afraid there are
bigger things out there than even the great Jay Garrett can handle. It makes a
welcome change. You’ve grown up. It suits you.”

Unease rippled along his nerve endings. She’d always read him
like an open book, but he thought with all the years that passed, she wouldn’t
know, wouldn’t guess. He was wrong. He already felt exposed...ashamed.

“Your coming to the Cove wasn’t supposed to be about me, but
I’m scared to death you think me capable of murder, Cat. I asked you here for
Sarah. The feeling rocketing through me at a hundred miles an hour, telling me
you were the best thing in my damn life, is as unwanted as it is
unexpected.”

Self-hatred simmered in his chest and gut like pools of boiling
tar. He leaned forward on his elbows again, unable to bear looking at the
wariness in her eyes. “You’re right, I have grown up and I want to make up for
the mistakes I’ve made.” He stared ahead and then leaped straight in with the
question he’d really wanted to ask her since he saw that first flicker of regret
in her eyes. “How about you?”

“What about me?”

He huffed out a laugh. “You can’t lie to me. I sense something
bothering you, too. Something personal.”

Silence.

He turned. She stared at the forest, her jaw tight. “Yes, well,
the mistakes I’ve made can’t be put right. At least not yet, so I’m going to try
to forget about them for a while and concentrate on Sarah.”

Jay watched her. He recognized the passing shame as it
whispered across her eyes, the way her mouth opened and closed in hesitation.
Witnessed her brain and conscience battling with the age-old human need to
share. They were special. Cat and Jay, Jay and Cat. Cat, Jay and Sarah, Sarah,
Jay and Cat. Every summer they’d been a unit—a whole.

It looked as though two out of three still were. It was
impossible Cat didn’t feel the out-of-bounds pull between them. Memories of
their single night together seven years before crashed into Jay’s mind as he
stared at the thick red hair he’d finally managed to bury his face in all those
years ago. She’d given him the gift of her virginity, neither of them knowing
that the following day she’d leave Templeton Cove, never to return.

He followed her gaze toward the forest. “You’re right. Sarah is
all that matters now.”

“Good, because murder starts with the victim every time. We
have to find out who Sarah’s friends were before she died, her lovers, work
colleagues...the list goes on.”

“What if we don’t find out any of that stuff? Then what? Surely
it can’t always be the victim that holds the key to their murder.”

“It is. Every time.”

Jay stared as the blood roared in his ears and frustration
hummed through every fiber of his body. He’d done nothing to help Sarah. Nothing
to stop her from being killed. Her body was found on the edge of his property.
It had to be about the killer...because if it was about Sarah, he was partly to
blame. She’d tried to contact him several times when he was using but he’d been
too messed up to care. When he got clean, she didn’t want to know him. He did
something so bad when he was high, she never forgave him. Until the day she was
killed and she’d phoned asking to see him.

Sweat broke out on his upper lip and he dropped back against
the bench. “She called me.”

“What?”

“Sarah. She called me the day she died. She asked me to meet
her at Marian’s—”

“Who’s Marian?”

He turned. The tone of her voice wasn’t gentle, it was
demanding. His gaze dropped to her full, pink-painted lips and the desire to
kiss her shuddered through his body. Always strong, kind and capable, Cat had
grown even more so in the years since he’d seen her. Whereas he’d diminished,
allowed himself to be taken under by drugs, succumbed to their power and ruined
lives. Yet for the first time, someone else’s confidence was the balm he needed
to soothe his gut-wrenching fear that Sarah’s parents, Cat, the entire
community, could think he killed one of the loveliest people on the planet.

He drew in a breath, exhaled. “Marian works in a bakery by the
beach. I’m in there a lot. I...” He stopped, waved a hand. “Doesn’t matter. What
matters is Sarah never turned up, but worse, I never went looking for her.”

“Didn’t you call her?” She frowned.

“Yes, but there was no answer. Now we know why.” He shook his
head, regret and loss beating hard in his chest. “A few days later I started
hearing rumors about her that made absolutely no sense, but we should at least
check to see if they have merit.”

“What rumors?”

He sighed. “Sex, drugs and rock and roll.”

Her eyes widened. “Sarah?”

“Yep.”

She tutted. “Well, no wonder you didn’t believe them. The Sarah
I knew was as likely to take drugs as I am to run naked through Templeton Cove
town center.”

He managed a small smile. “Hey, never say never.”

“In your dreams, Jay Garrett.” She shook her head, the hint of
her humor in her eyes dissolving. “These next few days are going to be tough. No
investigating team or officer is going to appreciate an off-duty cop from a
different jurisdiction poking around in a murder case. So both of us need to be
our most charismatic, charming and manipulative throughout this entire process.”
Her eyes sparkled with raw intent.

His gaze drifted over her face to linger at her lips. “I bet a
pound to a penny you’re still doing your best to look after everybody. I always
knew you’d end up being a cop or nurse. One or the other.”

“Yeah, well, the intention to do good doesn’t always lead to
success, does it?”

Jay looked at her bowed head, felt something shift in her
demeanor. “Hey, you okay?”