Guilty as Sin (6 page)

Not to mention, they—her father, in particular—hadn’t left on the best of terms with several of the locals.

“So anyway, instead of staying home thinking up ways I could kill Art without getting caught, I realized there are a lot of renters here with extra cash who might want to spend it on someone who can help with the grocery shopping, the cooking, the boat rentals, all that kind of stuff so when they get here they’re all set up to enjoy the lake. So now the rental agency hires me out as sort of a personal concierge for renters who request it.”

“That sounds like a great business,” Kate said politely, though as she heard the low rumble of male voices coming
from behind the closed door at the end of the hall, she felt a surge of anxiety, a need to get down to business. In the back of her mind she could hear the clock ticking with every beat of her heart, each second forward more foreboding than the last.

“These last couple of days I’ve been putting in some extra time here with the Fullers,” Tracy continued, her face now somber. “I don’t want Jackson and Brooke to worry about anything as silly as cooking dinner. I’m sure you can relate,” she said, a sad smile tugging her lips as she reached out to pat Kate’s arm.

Kate nodded, resisting the urge to yank away from the other woman’s touch.

She knew the other woman meant nothing but kindness, but to this day, she couldn’t help her violent, gut-deep resentment of such empty gestures. The sympathy, the pats on the hand or shoulder, the look of false understanding.

No one who hadn’t gone through it could really understand. And even then, each person experienced the loss in a different way. Each family endured their unique crisis in their unique way.

She masked all of this behind the bland smile she’d perfected for the cameras and whispered a quiet thank-you to Tracy.

“That poor family,” Tracy said with a sorrowful shake of her head. “First they lose the mother to cancer, and now this happens.”

Kate’s heart squeezed in sympathy, thinking how unfair the universe could be. Jackson’s wife, Suzanne, had died of cancer less than a year ago. To face the possibility of losing a child…

She swallowed back the lump in her throat and followed Tracy down the hall to the office. As Tracy knocked on the door, she straightened her shoulders and brought her focus
back on the here and now. The past was the past. Now nothing was more important than to make sure the people behind the heavy wooden door did not become one of the people in the world who could truly relate to what Kate had gone through.

The door opened to reveal a tall, broad-shouldered man in his late forties. His face was haggard—Kate couldn’t imagine that he’d slept in the past thirty-six hours. Deep lines were carved into either side of his mouth, and his silver-dusted blond hair looked like he’d run his hand through it a thousand times. Still, he was handsome, with his square jaw, sharp cheekbones, and blue eyes that glimmered with intelligence behind their strain.

Kate held out her hand. “Hello, Mr. Fuller,” she said, unsmiling, her gaze locked on his. “Under different circumstances I would say it’s nice to meet you, but I wish you didn’t need my help here.”

There was a faint twitch of his lips, a ghost of a smile. “Thanks for that. I have to say I agree. But I’m glad CJ was able to get in touch with you—any support we can foster in the community and the media will help.”

At the mention, Kate smiled at the man who was lingering behind Jackson Fuller. Though she’d dreaded coming back to Sandpoint, she couldn’t deny the flash of warmth she’d felt when she’d heard CJ—short for Cody James—Kovac’s voice on the line yesterday morning. She’d met CJ when she was twelve, when his family had rented a house a few doors down from the Becketts. Two years later, his father decided to cash out of his successful software business and moved the family out to the lake full time.

Kate and Lauren had joked that with his sun-streaked brown hair and tanned, muscular—and usually shirtless—torso, CJ would have looked more at home on the beaches of San Diego than on a mountain lake in rural Idaho. With his
quick smile and easy charm, CJ had taken it on himself to be their ambassador in Sandpoint. Once he’d earned his official townie status, he started taking them to all the cool parties none of the tourist kids ever got invited to.

Now she couldn’t help noticing that his once-smiling green eyes had a somber cast. Partly due to the reason she was here, she was sure. But she knew most of the shadows had to do with the last year of his own life and the circumstances that led him to leave a promising career with the FBI and return home to Sandpoint.

It was funny seeing the boy who’d once smuggled a six-pack of Coors Light under his sweatshirt dressed in the brown and tan of the Bonner County Sheriff’s uniform. And as she stepped forward to give him a hug, she couldn’t help notice that he’d gotten a few inches taller and the muscular torso had filled out solidly enough that it strained the fabric of his uniform shirt.

“You look good, Kate,” he said simply as he engulfed her in a hug. “I see you on TV all the time, but I’d forgotten how pretty you are in person.”

Kate felt a flush of heat in her cheeks. At one time, CJ had made no bones about the crush he was nursing on her. But then Kate had only had eyes for another local boy.

She pulled away from CJ, turning her attention back to Fuller when she caught a movement from the shadows of the office from the corner of her eye.

“You—” The word got stuck halfway up her throat, and she took a step back as though punched by an unseen fist. Tommy Ibarra stepped fully from the shadows, and her mind spun with a thousand memories, a thousand questions. She stood there, dumbstruck, as one managed to squeeze its way to the surface of the quagmire. “What are you doing here?”

“Jackson asked me to join you,” he replied.

Every cell in her body came alive at the familiar rumble of his voice, deeper now than it had been at nineteen. Yet there was nothing familiar in the flat, stony stare that met her own or the tight, grim line of his mouth.

Even as he looked at her with none of the warmth or tenderness she remembered, flashes of hot and cold tore through her and her stomach dove for her feet.

Get it together
, she scolded herself. She’d known damn well when she decided to help with the Fuller case that she ran the risk of running into Tommy. She didn’t know if he still lived here or not—it wasn’t like she kept tabs on him. No matter how strong the urge to Google him sometimes became.

However, as his parents had lived here for generations, their sheep ranch one of the oldest in the area, their roots were so deep and so strong she couldn’t imagine them ever leaving.

Apparently Tommy hadn’t either. Maybe he’d given in to his parents’ pressure to take over the ranch.

Looking at him now, he didn’t look much like a rancher. Sure, his body was as lean and fit as it had ever been, as it would be if he did hard physical labor every day. But the boy she’d remembered as tall and lanky had packed on several inches—he now towered nearly a foot over her own five foot six inches. And judging from the way the muscles of his chest, shoulders, and arms stood out against the soft cotton of his button-down shirt, he’d put on at least twenty-five pounds, and not the kind you got from eating too much of Ike’s soft serve.

And his face… God, it had fared just as well as the rest of him. The last time she’d seen him, his nose and chin were still a shade too bold for his lean face. Now that he’d filled out, the strong, chiseled features and deep-set dark eyes that told of his Basque ancestry had created a face that, while not classically handsome, was so compelling she couldn’t imagine any straight female would be able to tear her eyes away.

The only hint of softness was his mouth. Even now, with his full lips pressed into a grim line, she couldn’t stop the tide of memories rushing forth. Memories of how that mouth had felt moving over her own. Touching, tasting, tempting her to sin.

Tempting her to disaster.

Just like that, the memories crumbled to dust, a harsh reminder of why she was here. And it wasn’t to take a walk down memory lane with Tomas Ibarra.

“What is he doing here?” she repeated to CJ, struggling to keep her voice steady so as not to upset Mr. Fuller. She didn’t know whether he knew about her past with Tommy, but she didn’t want him to have any doubts about her abilities to help him deal with the frustrating tangle of logistics, law enforcement procedures, and media relations he would have to face in the coming days—or, God forbid, months.

“I work as a professional security consultant,” Tommy broke in. “Jackson is one of my clients.”

“You’re his bodyguard?” Kate asked, her brows knitting in concern. From the information she’d received about Jackson Fuller and his family, she learned that Fuller had done well since he’d moved from government work into the private sector seven years ago. However, she didn’t realize he’d amassed the kind of wealth that might create a need for full-time personal security. That could put an entirely different spin on what was going on here.

As though reading her mind, Tommy said, “It’s not like that. While I provide both physical and cybersecurity for my clients, I also help them manage the flow of information and help them identify leaks in cases of corporate espionage. I met Jackson years ago in the Army, and he’s been a friend as well as a client since I started my business. I’m currently consulting for him on a new company he’s starting.”

Tommy joined the Army, she mused to herself, tucking
away that information as she pasted on a smile that was as genuine as Pamela Anderson’s breasts. “I see. Well, I’m sure Mr. Fuller appreciates your support, and of course we appreciate any help that we can get from volunteers, but right now if you could excuse me so I can talk with him and the sheriff in private—”

“I want him to stay,” Fuller said gruffly. “Tommy’s the best in his field—”

Kate felt the skin on her upper back and neck prickle. “I’m sure that’s true, but I’m not sure how much value he’ll add right now in the information-gathering phase—”

“I’m staying,” Tommy said curtly, folding his arms across his chest in a way that made him look as formidable as one of the granite peaks jutting into the sky around them. He gave Fuller’s shoulder a squeeze with his big hand. “After everything he’s been through in the past months, I’m not leaving him to deal with this alone. Not even if it means leaving him in the hands of one of the country’s foremost experts on missing children.”

Was it just her, or did she hear a tinge of derision as he uttered the word “expert”? Or was she just paranoid, imagining criticism whenever people spoke of her? Well-deserved criticism, a soft inner voice hissed. Kate swallowed back a surge of guilt and grief and resolved herself to spending at least several moments in Tommy’s overwhelming presence.

“Fine,” she said. She perched on the edge of an armchair positioned on the other side of the desk—more leather—and took out her iPad and pulled up the notes she already had about the case. “Now tell me everything about the night your daughter disappeared.”

K
ate listened intently as Jackson recounted the events leading up to Tricia’s disappearance approximately thirty-six hours before. Most of what he told her she already knew from the police report CJ had sent to her and from broadcast media coverage.

Kate had sucked up every bit of information—scant though it was—after receiving a phone call from a producer at CNN asking if she would comment on the case of fourteen-year-old Tricia Fuller who’d gone missing in Sandpoint, Idaho. Revisiting Sandpoint and everything that had happened here was the last thing on earth Kate wanted to do, but she knew she couldn’t say no.

Her own notoriety and the fact that the media had connected her to Tricia’s case meant that Tricia and her family would receive more coverage than 99.9 percent of any of the other hundreds of thousands of kids currently missing in the United States.

It was horribly unfair, Kate knew, that some children were headline fodder for weeks, even months, rallying the public around the families and galvanizing the search.

The reality of it gnawed at her conscience for the families and kids who were ignored, whose faces she wasn’t helping to keep on the TV screen or the front pages of the
news. But she couldn’t let that keep her from seizing on the tragic connection she had with this case and this town and the media’s desire to exploit it, not if it could help get Tricia home safely.