Mortal Sin (47 page)

Lucy read the letter twice. “How—I don’t understand. Why do you have this?”

“I asked Kate where you were in the application process, and she told me you were waiting for the interview, but didn’t want to ask for favors from her or Hans. That didn’t include me. All I did was make a couple of calls and find out where your letter was. You earned this, Lucy. I didn’t get you the interview. All I did was bump you to the top.”

She leaned forward and hugged him. “Thank you.” She swallowed back tears that had sprung to her throat. “This means a lot.” She frowned.

“What? I hope those are tears of happiness.”

She squeezed her fingers against her eyes to dry them. “Maybe I’m having doubts.”

“Don’t. You’re smarter than most of the agents I went to Quantico with. And you have common sense and compassion.”

“I panicked—”

“I didn’t see you panic. No one did, which means you handled your fear. We’re all scared sometimes. The Air Force prepared me to control the fear, because that’s what soldiers have to do to survive. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there, and fear, when we control it, makes us smarter.”

Noah hesitated, then said, “I was skeptical about you when we first met. I knew about your past, and I didn’t think you should be in the FBI. Abigail told me not to judge you until I met you, but I did anyway. A hazard in this profession, snap judgments. But you’re nothing like I expected, and I realized we need more like you in the Bureau.”

Lucy took a deep breath, Noah’s support filling her with a deep joy that surprised her. She smiled widely. “Thank you.”

Inside the bank ten minutes later, Lucy was alone in a small room, Mick Mallory’s safe deposit box open in front of her. Inside was an antique pewter box, dirt caked in the cracks of the intricate, stamped design.

She didn’t want to touch it. She stared at it for so long that the bank manager came in to make sure she was okay. Lucy nodded, and after the manager left, she held her breath and lifted the lid from the box.

No care had been taken with the jewelry. It was
thrown in together, the chains of necklaces tangled. Except for one small white box.

She took out that box and put it aside, releasing her pent-up breath. Nothing here could hurt her. She saw her ring, the one Adam Scott had pulled from her finger. Bile rose from her throat and she knew she was right—she didn’t want it.

But if she were dead, would her parents want it? Would it remind them of her life, or of her death? She couldn’t make that decision. She wasn’t going to make it for others.

She was about to put the white box back inside and close everything, planning to tell Noah to let the Bureau contact the families and ask them if they wanted the items. But her curiosity about what was inside the smaller box compelled her to open it. Scott thought this was important. Special. Why?

Inside was a gold locket. She didn’t know much about jewelry, but this looked real.

She took the locket from the box and held it up. It was tarnished and needed cleaning, but it was solid. Engraved on the front were the initials MEP.

Her blood ran cold.

She opened the locket to see if she was right, even though she knew she was.

She now knew the truth. Worse, Mallory knew she would know what this was. He’d put an impossible choice in her hands.

She wished she’d never opened the box.

Sean didn’t ask Lucy why she needed to go to the U.S. Senate Chambers late Monday afternoon. He drove her there. He didn’t even balk when she told him she needed
to go into the building alone, though she accepted his help in walking inside.

“Do you mind waiting down here?” she asked after they went through security.

“I’m not moving until you get back. You do whatever you have to do, and I’ll be right here.”

She kissed him lightly, then turned and walked on her single crutch to the elevator bank.

She entered Senator Jonathon Paxton’s office and the receptionist, Ann Lincoln, said, “Lucy! What happened?”

“I’m a klutz,” she said, refusing to explain to anyone what happened last week. “The senator is expecting me.”

“He’s still on the floor—”

“He said he’d come up when I arrived. Can I wait in his office?”

“Just a minute,” Ann said and called the senator.

Lucy looked at the pictures on the wall. Senator Paxton signing Jessie’s Law, with Jessie’s mother standing at his shoulder. The senator at a rally to support legislation to put child molesters in prison longer. The senator at his daughter’s memorial service, her senior portrait in the background of the picture.

Monique Paxton looked an awful lot like Lucy. She’d always known she had a resemblance to the senator’s dead daughter, and she suspected that was the reason he’d bonded with her and helped her over the years.

But now … maybe there were other reasons.

Ann called from her desk, “Jonathon said you can wait in his office. He’ll be right up.”

“Thank you.”

She walked into his office and closed the door. Her
heart raced. Maybe she didn’t deserve to be an FBI agent.

But then again she would never be able to prove that Senator Jonathon Paxton was behind the vigilante group.

When she saw the locket, everything had become crystal clear. The senator’s involvement in WCF. His close relationship with Fran Buckley. His personal wealth and how he used it.

Senator Paxton’s daughter Monique was Adam Scott’s first victim. It was no coincidence that Mallory wanted this box that happened to contain Monique’s locket, the locket that her father had given her on her sixteenth birthday. Mallory had known it was in Adam Scott’s box.

But it was circumstantial evidence, and Buckley and Mallory hadn’t said a word about Paxton. Unless one of them turned—and Lucy didn’t think either of them would—Paxton’s involvement would simply be an unsubstantiated rumor.

One thing Mallory had said when she spoke with him earlier in the week had been bothering Lucy.

I don’t regret the killing of Morton
.

An odd way of speaking. Her subconscious had picked up on it, but she hadn’t realized the importance of the phrasing until now. Mallory had said “I killed” in relation to the other victims, but not Morton. There was no doubt Mallory had been there—the evidence proved it, as well as his own statement—and Noah said he’d signed a statement identifying each man he killed. It included Morton.

But he’d been speaking deliberately. For her benefit.

I don’t regret the killing of Morton
.

Mallory hadn’t pulled the trigger. The reason Morton had been lured to D.C. was so the senator could kill him.

Lucy realized suddenly that she didn’t want to see Senator Paxton. What he’d done was wrong, but she couldn’t confront him, nor could she tell anyone what she believed in her heart. That he was guilty of murder.

She couldn’t even hate him for it.

She scribbled a note and put the box on his chair, then left out the escape door, the exit that led directly to the hall from the senator’s office. She didn’t look back.

Senator Paxton stepped into his office.

“Lucy, it’s—”

He heard the click of his side door and frowned. He almost went after her, but saw something on his chair.

Heart racing, he picked up the small white box. It couldn’t be … He removed the lid and stared at the gold locket, tears rolling down his cheeks.
Monique
.

Monique’s mother had died of cancer when she was still young, and Paxton had raised Monique on his own. Not very well, however. He loved her more than anything, but he’d been so wrapped up in his career that he hadn’t paid enough attention to her. He hadn’t been involved in her day-to-day life. He’d been a distant father, so distant he hadn’t known that she was traveling a hundred miles nearly every weekend to visit her boyfriend—Adam Scott.

He’d loved her, but didn’t realize how important she was to him until she disappeared.

For years he’d believed she ran away, and he blamed her, then himself. He wanted her back so he could beg her forgiveness for his substantial failings as a dad. Until six years ago when he learned what really happened to her. Roger Morton had leveraged that information, as
well as the financial information, in exchange for leniency. Senator Paxton had supported the plea agreement because he had to know the truth.

All that time he searched for her, she’d been dead.

He opened the locket. Inside on the right was Monique on her sixteenth birthday, her smile bright and beautiful. On the left was a picture of him holding her the day she was born.

There was a piece of paper on his chair. He picked it up, then sat down heavily, still holding Monique’s locket, a groan of agony and grief coming deep from his lungs.

Several minutes later, he unfolded the note.

This belongs to you
.

Lucy relaxed for the first time in … forever. She curled up in front of Sean’s fireplace Thursday morning. He’d asked if she wanted a fire, considering what happened on the farm only one week ago, but that hadn’t made her scared of fire any more than what happened six years ago made her scared of men.

Sean slid next to her and handed her a cup of hot coffee. He wore sweatpants and no shirt. She was bundled in her warmest pajamas and had a blanket.

She tilted her head back to kiss him. “I could get used to this pampering.”

“Go right ahead.” Sean returned her kiss.

She sighed. “Patrick is coming back tomorrow.”

“So?”

She frowned and stared at her coffee.

“Lucy, talk to me.”

“He’s my brother.”

“Really? And he’s my partner.”

“Exactly.”

“Exactly … what?”

She leaned forward and put her mug on the table, then turned around and straddled Sean’s lap. She kissed him passionately, her hands on his chest. He responded by
pulling her close to him, his hands moving up the back of her pajama top, his rough palms on her bare skin.

She broke the kiss a minute later, flushed and smiling. “That’s what.”

It took Sean a minute, but then he got it. Sort of. “You don’t want your brother to know we’re sleeping together?”

“I think that’ll be hard to hide, considering that Dillon and Kate know that I spent all week here. It’s just that—I really want to do this right.”

“I thought I
was
doing it right,” Sean said with a sexy grin, his hands moving down her pajama bottoms.

She rolled her eyes, then laughed when he tickled her.

“I love to hear you laugh, Lucy. You don’t do it enough.”

“Then you’ll have something to shoot for, won’t you?”

“You want to go slow. I understand.”

“Not
too
slow. But I can’t just move in here, and not only because Patrick is living here. Though that is one reason. You’re getting your new office off the ground, and already you’re delayed because the last two weeks you were handling my mess.”

Sean frowned. “That wasn’t your mess. If you think for a minute that I didn’t want—”

She shook her head. “No, that’s not what I meant. I know this business is important to you. To prove to your brother you can do it, but even more to prove it to yourself. I not only respect that, I understand it. I feel like I have to constantly prove to my family that I’ve grown up, that I am capable of making my own decisions, that I am stronger than they give me credit for.
They’ve been shielding me for a long time, trying to protect me, and I love them for it, but I am finally getting my own life. I have the FBI interview in three weeks. That’s about
me
, not Dillon or Patrick or any of my family. I have to succeed or fail on my own merits.”

“You’ll succeed.” Sean ran his fingers along her cheek.

She kissed him, her chest swelling with his confidence in her. “So I want you to focus on your business, and I’m going to focus on my interview. If everything goes as planned, I’ll be at Quantico before the end of the year. That’s twenty-one weeks of training, and—”

“Shh.” He put a finger to her lips. “I understand. Lucy, I’m not going anywhere. You’re the best thing that has happened to me. You make me a better person. I want you in my life, but I understand about taking it a step at a time. Step one.” He kissed her. “We learned that we like each other.” He smiled. “Step two.” He unbuttoned the top button of her pajamas. “We discovered that we are attracted to each other.” He unbuttoned the next button. “
Very
attracted.”

His fingers skimmed down her bare chest to the third button, which he undid.

“Step three.” He undid the fourth and final button. “We have fun together. You have a life important to you. I have a life important to me. Those lives are compatible.” He kissed first one breast, then the other. Lucy drew in her breath and held it.

“Step four,” Sean said, his voice gruff, “we are extremely compatible in bed.”

“We’re not in bed,” Lucy whispered.

“No, we’re not. We need to go to step five.”

“Which is?”

“How compatible are we on the couch?” He smiled and kissed her, and she leaned against him, her now-bare chest pressed firmly against his.

“I hope we pass,” she whispered in his ear.

“I believe in second chances.” He held her face in his hands and she stared at him, feeling the deep affection pouring from him to her. Her heart skipped a beat.

Was this love?

She didn’t dare hope, not now, not this soon. But her heart opened to the possibilities of what a life with Sean might be like.

“Lucy,” he said, “I’m willing to take as many steps as necessary with you. We are good together. I know it, you know it. So if some of the steps take longer than others, I’m okay with that. Like I said, I’m not going anywhere.”

She swallowed her emotions, fearing she’d start crying because Sean was the best thing to happen to her. “I’m so happy you’re in my life,” she said. She kissed him. Again. Held her lips to his and smiled.

“Now,” she said, leaning back, “let’s take advantage of our last day here alone. We’re on step four, right?”

Sean shook his head. “We can go back to step four, if you want to make sure we got it right, but we’re on step five. The couch.”