Shadow Fall (Tracers Series Book 9) (18 page)

“Whatever. Anyway, I’d think you’d be glad to have him watching your back considering someone took a
shot
at you. Don’t you think we should get a team up there or something? See if we can recover a bullet?”

“I’m going after breakfast.” At her look of disapproval, Tara redirected the conversation. “And then I’m going to the Delphi Center, if you want to come.”

“Can’t do it today,” M.J. said. “I’m meeting with Ingram at nine.”

“He’s running late.”

They turned to see Liam standing behind them. He looked showered and clean-shaven, not at all like a man who’d spent the night in his pickup.

M.J. smiled brightly. “Good morning, Liam.”

“Morning.” He reached between them and placed a cell phone on the counter.

Tara’s pulse skipped. “Where’d you find it?” she asked, snatching it up.

“In the ravine.”

The screen was cracked and the blue outer case was missing, but the phone came to life when Tara pressed the button. Thank God for small favors. She’d expected to spend half the day getting the damn thing replaced.

Liam set his own phone on the counter and tapped open a photo.

Tara looked at him. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Picture of the slugs from last night. One was embedded in a tree trunk, the other was in the fence post.”

She touched the screen to enlarge the photo of the tree trunk. “How’d you find everything so fast?”

“Ingram met me out there with a metal detector,” he said. “He dislodged these from the wood and had them sent to the crime lab. Although chances are you won’t get much in the way of rifling marks. The slugs looked pretty mangled.”

Tara glanced up at him. His expression was calm and completely unapologetic.

Perfect. Now a private citizen, one who’d recently been a
suspect
, no less, was helping collect evidence in her investigation. And he’d involved the sheriff, which meant Ingram knew all about last night’s incident. Tara felt both embarrassed and undermined.

Not to mention pissed.

M.J. seemed to read her mood. She slid off her stool and smiled at Liam. “Sorry to run, but I’ve got to swing back by the motel.” She looked at Tara. “Give me a call after Delphi.”

Liam claimed the empty seat. He rested his elbow on the counter and faced Tara. “What’s at Delphi?” He reached for her coffee mug and took a sip.

“A tool-marks expert. They’re finished with the bone analysis.”

Liam gave her a questioning look.

“They were examining the marks on the bones recovered in November and comparing them with the ones on Catalina.”

At the name, he looked away, and Tara felt a twinge of regret. She probably sounded callous to someone who’d just been to the woman’s funeral.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said, skimming his gaze over the restaurant patrons. He had a habit of constantly assessing his surroundings, and he never seemed to give it a rest.

“About what?” She reclaimed her coffee.

“What are the chances you could get a transfer off this case?” His gaze met hers.

“I’d say zero.”

“Doesn’t your boss like you?”

“He likes me fine, which is why I don’t plan to ask him.”

“I think you could use a change of scenery,” he said evenly.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No.”

“I think
you
could use a reality check.” She leaned closer. “I’m not your client, Liam. I don’t need a bodyguard, and I
don’t
take orders from you.”

“Not orders, advice.”

“That either.”

Liam watched her pick at her breakfast, his expression carefully blank. But she could read it anyway, because she was learning his moods. Right now was suppressed annoyance. He couldn’t tell her what to do, and it was getting under his skin.

Tara checked her watch. “I should go,” she told him, sliding off her stool.

She paid her check. Liam silently followed her through the breakfast crowd, and together they stepped out onto the sidewalk.

The morning was bright and cold. She turned to face him, and in the glare of the sunlight she could see signs of fatigue around his eyes. She felt guilty for a moment but then squashed the thought. It was his own damn fault if he was tired. He was the one who’d chosen to spend the night freezing his ass off in a parking lot for no reason.

“What time’s your meeting at the crime lab?” he asked.

“One o’clock. Why?”

He checked his watch. “Plenty of time.”

“Time for what?”

“We need to go for a drive.”

H
e exited the highway, and he could tell by the look on her face that she already knew where they were going. He drove over a bridge and turned at the sign for Silver Springs Park. Instead of pulling into the parking lot beside the trailhead, Liam kept going.

“You’ve been here before,” he said.

“We were down the other day for a meeting with SSPD.” She glanced at him. “You know Chief Becker?”

“I worked with him some on the threats to Catalina.”

“Before the FBI got involved,” Tara said.

“They were never really involved much.”

She tensed beside him. “Not until she died, you mean.”

He didn’t say anything. It wasn’t a matter of blame but simply a fact. Threats against elected officials were a dime a dozen. The Bureau couldn’t investigate everything. And Catalina hadn’t even been elected yet. She was only a candidate, not even a particularly viable one given her controversial stance on immigration and the demographics of her district. Her opponent had won by a wide margin.

Liam swung onto a dirt road and pulled up beside a metal gate. He got out. Tara did, too. She glanced around, and he saw her home in on the shiny new chain and padlock.

She glanced at him across the hood as he slammed the door. “This must be where Alex Sears recovered the lock,” she said.

“Right over behind that rotten log.” Liam nodded at it.

“So you know him, too?”

“Just casually.”

Tara tromped over to the new chain and examined the gate. It was a low metal arm, not much of a deterrent for people or wildlife, but it kept vehicles off the road reserved for firefighters.

“Come on.” Liam stepped over the gate, and Tara followed him.

They settled into a brisk pace. Their breath turned to frost, and Tara rubbed her hands together. She was in a new FBI windbreaker, he’d noticed. Maybe she’d borrowed it from M.J., who seemed to prefer business suits. Tara was more at ease in tactical pants and assault boots, which he found pretty damn hot.

Liam walked beside her, and she matched her stride to his. “This forest was logged back in the twenties,” he said. “All the marketable trees were removed. Any leftover vegetation was burned and then the land was replanted to pine. The owner left everything alone for a while, and about ten years ago the state bought up the land, made it into a park. Fourteen hundred acres.”

They continued through the woods as Tara glanced around. “You seem to know the history of this place,” she said. “Why?”

“I run a business near here. Only makes sense to recon the area.”

They trekked for a few more minutes along the road, and then he veered onto a narrow path. Tara looked at him. “This is how he came?” she asked.

“Close as I can tell.”

They walked without talking as the woods grew denser and darker. He glanced at Tara. She looked tired. With her wild curls scraped back in a ponytail, her cheekbones stood out even more than usual. She didn’t wear much makeup, but he noticed the faint smudge of something she’d used to cover the bruise on her jaw.

He thought of her reaction to his suggestion that she request a transfer off the case. She’d gotten her back up over it, as he’d expected. She was stubborn, and she didn’t like people telling her what to do. Actually, they were a lot alike—which was something that both intrigued him and drove him crazy.

They walked into a clearing, and she halted. “Whoa.”

She stepped over to an area of lichen-covered stones set in neat rows. It was a man-made arrangement, but nature had reclaimed it over the years. She walked to a brick archway shrouded in vines.

She looked at him. “What is all this?”

“Used to be a sawmill here.”

She glanced around at the shell of a concrete building that was being swallowed up by nature. Liam looked around at the woods. It was a quiet spot, a place where it was hard not to think about nature and the life cycle and the relentless passage of time, all topics that had been on his mind since he’d come home from Afghanistan.

Tara walked over to a fallen log. Sunlight filtered through the canopy, casting thick white beams between the trees. She tipped her head back to look at the sky, and Liam’s heart gave a hard thump.

“It’s beautiful.” She looked at him. Her gaze held his for a moment, and then she crossed the clearing to a cluster of trees. She picked a leaf off and smelled it.

“This is sassafras,” she said. “Those down there are tupelos. I love how they turn fiery in the fall.”

He walked over. “You know your way around trees. You do a lot of camping growing up?”

“Ha. That would be no.” She rolled her eyes. “My mom’s not exactly the outdoors type.”

“What about your dad?”

“No idea. He left when I was two.” She stepped over an old log and looked around. A breeze kicked up, and she tugged a pair of red woolen gloves from her pocket.

Liam propped his boot on the log. “What type is she?”

She looked at him.

“Your mom?”

She turned around and pretended to be interested in the trees again.

Investigative procedures and forensics she could talk about all day long, but she resisted anything personal, which made him want to push.

“She’s smart,” Tara said in a reluctant tone.

“But?”

“Book smart.” She turned around. “She teaches English lit at the college in Nacogdoches. Her big hobby is community theater. She directs plays.”

“Not exactly following in her footsteps, are you?”

“Not exactly.” She looked away. “She was horrified when I told her I wanted to be a cop. Said it was ‘pure insanity.’ I would’ve gotten a better reaction if I’d said I wanted to join the circus.”

Liam smiled.

“I take after my granddad.” She looked back at him over her shoulder. “We’re cut from the same cloth, you could say. He and my grandmother live in Lufkin, not too far from here. They have a little wooden house with a screened-in porch and a vegetable garden. Pretty simple life.”

“Simple is good.”

“He was the one who first taught me to shoot back when I was ten. He never understood my mom’s thing for books and theater. Said she grew up with her head in the clouds.” Tara turned around to face him. “Why am I telling you all this?”

“I don’t know.” He stepped closer.

“Why’d you bring me out here?”

“You needed to see it.”

“Why’d you bring Catalina?”

He tensed at the question. She stared up at him with that clear, unflinching gaze, and he could tell she sensed there was more to this particular client relationship than he’d told her.

“Catie was a troubled soul,” he said.

“How troubled?”

“She was dealing with a lot of pressures—the campaign, the death threats. A husband who was screwing around on her.”

Tara looked surprised. By the fact that David Reyes was screwing around on his wife? Or the fact that Liam had revealed something highly private about a client? It was a breach of his ethics, which he didn’t take lightly. But the circumstances were unusual, and he wanted Catie’s killer identified, whatever it took.

“Not that Catie was any saint,” Liam said. “They had a lot of problems.”

“Was she an alcoholic?”

“Where’d you get that?” Liam couldn’t picture David volunteering that info to investigators.

“The ME’s report notes extensive cirrhosis of her liver.”

“She had a drinking problem, yeah. Last time I talked to her she told me she’d quit.”

“This was your conversation back in November?”

“She’d started a twelve-step program. It seemed to be going okay. She’d had a few setbacks, but she was getting through it.” He looked across the clearing. “At least that’s what she told me. She was also doing yoga, jogging. Basically trying to clean herself up.”

“Why’d she tell you all that?” There was an edge in her tone again.

“I think . . .” He stepped closer. “I think she wanted me to be proud of her, if that makes any sense. I worked for her for six months. I’d seen her in some bad moments.”

Tara tipped her head to the side. “Maybe she wanted you to respect her.”

“Maybe.” He paused, gazing down into Tara’s blue eyes that looked way too tired. “You know, threat assessment can be an ugly process. You turn someone’s life inside out, put every aspect under a microscope. Then you work closely together trying to address the threat. Catie was starting from ground zero, security-wise. I overhauled her house, her office, implemented basic security procedures. I taught her defensive tactics.”

“And all this is while her husband’s running around on her?”