Sin on the Strip (25 page)

“You don't believe she had?”

“When I joined the agency, I started my own investigation. The police had no evidence, only the douchebag's word. His other girls had seen him pursue her, but as far as they knew she wasn't part of his stable. The cops assumed she was a lost street kid and things had gotten desperate enough for her to need the money or protection.”

“It happens,” she said.

“I know, and for that reason, for the longest time,” he said “I considered that the cops might have been right. I spent my FBI career thinking I could help other kids not end up like my sister. I joined a special task force to shut down human trafficking. It was on one of those cases that I met Rhonda, only back then she wasn't a Goth queen. It wasn't till we got back here that I matched Rhonda with the kid I'd seen dance.”

“I believe you,” Maggie said, “but I'd understand if you wanted to keep that part of your life a secret.”

“Don't get me wrong, Maggie, I'm not ashamed of what I did, what I had to do. But it's not something I disclose to just anyone.”

“Should I be flattered?” She looked up at him and he had to resist the urge to kiss the soft pink lips tilted toward his face.

“I've taken flak for that assignment, but I know you'd never hassle me over it.” He didn't need to say more. She nodded and cuddled back into his arms.

“Finish the story,” she said.

“I met my boss a week after the case broke. He offered me a job. My first reaction was to say no, I was doing what I wanted, putting the filth who used women and kids behind bars. Even if sometimes it felt like it wasn't enough. But Ryan is persistent. He knows what he wants and doesn't let anything get in his way. And for some unfathomable reason, Ryan wanted me. Then he offered me something that clinched the deal.”

“Money?”

“Well, there was that, but no. Another file on my sister. What was in it changed my life forever.”

M
aggie sat up. From the quiet rage in his voice, she knew it would be there, the pained expression on his face. Three facts were true. He loved his sister, and he wanted justice. She couldn't blame him. A small part—no, a big part—of her cheered him on. The third tugged at her heart the most. He blamed himself for Claire's death, the ten-year-old boy who'd only wanted to help his sister.

She remained quiet and took his hands into hers. This was his time. Later, she'd make him see the fault was not his. Unlike Beck trying to convince Maggie she hadn't painted a bull's eye on the murdered women, he didn't make his sister run away. And even if he had, even if he'd done more than help her run, he didn't make that decision for her, just as his sister hadn't made the decision to die. Some bastard had called that one.

“I learned,” he said, “that Ryan's grandfather started the company in New Orleans in the fifties, only then it wasn't called ICU. It was his private eye my father hired to find my sister. The file contained the original investigator's reports. A phone search on our house confirmed she'd called. That list led them to L.A. But my sister had called more than once.”

Maggie didn't like where this was going.

“Two phone calls were over ten minutes long. Who was she talking to Maggie, herself?”

“Beck,” she whispered, her heart breaking for the man.

“My mom knew,” he said, his words angry. “She knew and didn't tell a soul. She'd talked to Claire. She'd known where Claire was and hadn't done a damn thing about it. So I drove home to confront her.”

“And?”

Beck shrugged. “It was hard to get anything out of her. By then she'd been in and out of mental hospitals for years and was heavily medicated. I finally understood. It was guilt that had put her there, not sorrow. She couldn't live with herself knowing she'd had a hand in killing her daughter, in putting her own social standing over Claire's welfare.”

“You don't know that.” Even as she said it, she remembered the street kids she'd worked with. A mother's maternal instinct didn't always kick in.

“Maggie, she never told my dad Claire had called. She knew the police were at a loss, knew about the private eye. After I saw the file, I started to understand a few of the fights my parents had had and was able to piece together bits I'd heard. He accused her once of teaching Claire the biggest lesson of her life. I'd always assumed it had to do with that damn coming-out party.” His laughter was sardonic. “Instead, she'd wanted to teach Claire a lesson about running away.”

“She couldn't have foreseen the consequences,” Maggie said. There were women who were capable of such things, but this was his mother and for his sake she had to say something.

He opened his mouth to argue, but she cut him off. “I get that you're angry with her, I do. And I understand. But she's in a mental hospital. If your theory is correct, then she's blaming herself for Claire's death—so much so, her mind snapped. That doesn't sound like a woman who didn't love her daughter. She made a mistake, one she's had to live with it, but it's so painful, she can't.”

“She should have let her come home,” he argued.

“In hindsight, yes, but she made the wrong call and it cost her Claire. She suffers because of it. How many parents ask themselves why they bought their kid that car? Or that awful bike? Why had they let them take a bus, instead of picking them up? Warned them not to swim at night, or not walk so close to the river? Why did they allow them to go on that trip? Or hadn't been more vehement about the dangers of drugs?”

“That's different. Those are what-ifs. My mother might as well have locked Claire out of the house. Thrown her to the wolves.”

“I won't attempt to justify her reasoning, but I've worked with enough kids to know, it's not always the parents' fault. You said so yourself. Your sister bucked the rules, was always in trouble and they were always fighting. Your mother, right or wrong, wanted to show her tough love. Do you honestly believe, in your heart,” she laid a hand on his chest, “that your mother was trying to hurt your sister?”

He looked away, lines etching his brow. “I never thought of it that way.”

A big part of her regretted what she had to do next, but it had to be done. “No, because by then, you were more than happy to relinquish the blame.”

He flinched at her words. She'd guessed right and considered taking it back, but it wasn't what he needed. She swallowed and kept on going.

“You were a kid, Beck, a baby brother helping out his big sister. How was a ten-year-old to know she'd take off to L.A.? Did you even know where L.A. was?”

“It isn't as simple as that. There are things you don't know.”

“So fill me in.”

“Look, I know rationally it wasn't my fault. Like you said, I was ten. Ten-year-olds aren't rational. All I knew was, my mother had locked herself away in her bedroom and cried. And cried. And cried. She wouldn't talk to anyone. I assumed she blamed me. I didn't know what she'd done or how she felt about it.” He ran an impatient hand through his dark hair. “I carried that guilt for a long time. But it made me who I am,” he said without remorse.

“It's why you do what you do.” Why he did what he was doing now.

He wanted revenge and the part of her that had confronted kidnappers and abusive pimps, the part of her that had had a knife pulled on her, a gun waved in her face, a fist plowed into her cheek, the part of her that had been tied up and left to wait for her captors to auction her off to the highest bidder, tipped her head to the sky and screamed
Yes
. Yes, go get him! The scared woman, who could do nothing but allow the police to handle it, wanted revenge. Not justice, but coldhearted vengeance.

Lucky for her, the good sense she had left reined in her emotions. Retribution, an eye for an eye, was not the way she was raised.
But it would feel good
.

“It's what drives me, yes.” He opened his arms and she obliged him by crawling back into them.

“It made you who you are. A really great guy, who has probably saved countless lives.”

“Is that what you think?”

“Are you going to tell me you haven't saved lives?”

“No, I mean that I'm a really great guy?”

“I think you're that, and more.”

“How much more?” he asked, trepidation in the question.

“I'll answer that after you tell me exactly what it is you do.” She might regret asking but needed to know, no matter the answer.

“I told you, we'd start with the less complicated. Well, this is more than just complicated.” He pressed a kiss to her temple. “For your own safety, Maggie, this has to stay between us. I know how close you are to your friends—”

“What happened to trusting me?”

“Oh, I trust you, but those women are like bloodhounds where you're concerned. For their safety, it'd be a good idea not to give them anything they might consider needed sniffing out.”

“Gotcha.” He was right and she'd
never
put her friends in danger because of her.

“Let's call what I do search and rescue.”

“People?”

“Not always.” He drew small enticing circles over her back, either at ease with his confession or trusting her discretion. Confident he would tell her everything, she plowed through with her next question. “Legal?”

“Not illegal.”

“Were you the one in Colombia?” She knew the answer, but had to ask.

“Yes.”

“The maid, they killed her?”

“No.”

She tipped her head up wanting to see his face. “The papers said she never came back.”

She could see his mind working, attempting to search out something he could say to satisfy her. Avoiding eye contact, he pulled one leg up and rested his wrist on his knee. He tipped his head from side to side as if weighing his options and then shrugged, resigned to whatever he had to tell her. “She was an undercover agent, and to protect her identity ‘she never made it back.' Understand?”

She understood to drop that end of the discussion. “So no one was killed.”

“I didn't say that. Look,” he moved forward and took her hands. “It's been a long night. You want to finish this tomorrow?”

“Do you kill people?” she blurted before she lost her courage. She wanted to finish this tonight.

“Are you sure you want to know the answer?”

She sat up and knelt in front of him. He'd tell her the truth. She could see it in his eyes. He didn't want to, but he would. Did she want to hear it? Would it make a difference? “Your assignments, they're mostly women?”

He nodded as she began to piece it all together. “Your boss, people hire him to find or recover lost or stolen, let's say, objects, the police can't or don't have the resources for. You, you deal with people?”

“Mostly. Usually,” he amended.

Had she unconsciously sensed it all along? Had the frightened little peahen she refused to acknowledge gone searching for a hero, and found one? Was that all Beck was to her? Could it be she wasn't falling for him, but relying on the addictive safety net he seemed to throw over her whenever they were together? No, she wasn't that pathetic. Look at him, she told herself. She'd be blind not to be attracted to him.

But it was more than his good looks and, God help her, his made-for-sex body. They shared more than common goals with their work, a similarity that hadn't gone unnoticed or unappreciated. A quiet rage seemed to brew inside both of them, consuming their lives. They just acted on it differently. He was going after his sister's killer, regardless if it turned out to be true or not. And she, regardless of the danger to herself, had to do her part in helping. But they were different in a very important way. She bet if Beck had to shoot his sister's killer, he would—he would pull that trigger.

“Can you answer one thing for me?” She suspected he'd killed people, just as she suspected men like Beck
didn't
stick around.

“I promise to try,” he said, sincerity in his words.

“Have you ever regretted it? Pulling that trigger?” Was that what had stopped her from killing Desilva? Had she been frozen by fear, or the knowledge she'd be taking another human's life, regardless of the favor she'd be doing for the world?

“It's not like what you see on television. Even when you have to act, it's not a winner-take-all scenario. I have the training needed to shoot someone, but the satisfaction I get from doing what needs to be done is short-lived. Luckily, I work with a great team and we support one another. It's never easy, Maggie. Sometimes it's instinct, the need to survive.”

What did that say about her instinct, her need to survive? He'd just confirmed her worst doubts about herself.

“And sometimes it's about making that split second decision on whose life is more important, or if you really need to pull that trigger. It's not black and white.” He reached out from under him and pulled down the bed cover. “Now, how about some sleep?” He beckoned with his arms open.

Wasn't it black and white? Someone tries to hurt you, shouldn't you hurt them first? Too tired to think or argue, she nuzzled under his arm as he drew the covers over them.

“Tomorrow we'll drive to the hospital together.”

He kissed the top of her head and she wished it had been her mouth. She wondered if her wanting more was just a way to forget Rhonda's attack, or simply that Beck made her feel less pitiful and more like a woman.

“You don't need to. I can drive myself.”

“I know you can,” he said, stroking her back. “Only I'll be happier knowing you're safe.

“You think he's going to come after me?” She didn't want to ask, but it slipped out before she could stop herself.

He scooted down until they were nose-to-nose, then he kissed her softly. “Not while I'm around.”

“You can't be with me twenty-four-seven,” she said, remembering how Rhonda had told her that very thing.

He draped a protective arm over her waist. “I wish I could. I wish we could stay under these covers forever and forget everything else. There's a connection between us, Maggie. Can you feel it?”

She debated contradicting him, but didn't have the strength. What would be the point? He was right. So instead, she took the shelter of his arms and hoped that with Beck in her bed, there would be no nightmares. She nodded in reply.

Except for Ryan, Christian had told no one about his mother's betrayal. He'd debated the decision for weeks and, good or bad, when four padded walls became his mother's new domicile permanently, he'd chosen to keep his mouth shut. She could keep her demons to herself. She'd tried to teach his sister a lesson. Only it turned out to be one his mother could never forget. Or forgive.

Now having told Maggie, a strange sense of calm settled over him. Did talking about it make it better? Fuck that psychobabble. Maggie had been the balm to his old wounds. She'd done that. He hadn't quite figured out how, but she had.

Snuggled in his arms, she said, “I'm really sorry about your sister. No one should die that way.”

“Thank you,” he replied softly. “Tomorrow I'll see about bringing in extra eyes for you too.” These killings were personal and if they weren't directed at Maggie's father, they were aimed at Maggie herself.

He made a mental note to track the reverend's comings and goings over the past year. The man traveled extensively. While her father hadn't been in town for the last two killings, maybe, just maybe, the killer had decided to strike where the reverend was on tour.