The Watched (CSI Reilly Steel #4) (37 page)

‘Reilly . . .’ Todd’s voice drew her attention from the ropes to his face. ‘I’m fine. Just take a deep breath.’

She
nodded. Her hands stilled and she followed his advice, inhaling deeply through her nose, wrinkling it at the scent of flesh and blood. As she exhaled, her nerves steadied and she found she was able to concentrate. There would be plenty of time for explanations later.

The first of the knots came loose as the wail of police sirens cut through the air. As one slipped free, the others followed more quickly until Todd was able to sit up. He rubbed at his raw wrists, flexing his fingers.

A wave of relief so intense it was nearly overpowering washed over her. Before she could think about what she was doing, or about the fact that Daniel was right there, Reilly leaned forward and kissed Todd. It was brief, barely more than chaste, but his eyes still brightened momentarily.

‘
Sorry,’ she muttered, heat rising to her cheeks.

Todd opened his mouth to speak, but whatever he was going to say was lost as the noise of approaching agents reached them. As
Reilly turned, she caught Daniel’s eye. While most would assume the smile on his face was entirely down to finding his son, Reilly recognized something that looked like surprised delight directed her way.

‘
What the hell happened here?’ Agent Kent panted as he skidded to a halt.

‘Todd. Jesus,
are you OK?’ Detective Julie Sampson raced past Mark Reed to get to Todd.

‘Paul Lennox, Wesley Fisher’s number two,’
Reilly announced, and stood, composing herself. She turned toward the trio. ‘He was our killer and kidnapper.’

‘
Drew Sheldon told us as much,’ Detective Reed replied. He appeared to be the least winded of the three. ‘And Fisher had alibis.’

Reilly
gestured toward the stopped train. She could hear people clambering off of the cars, shouting to each other. ‘Lennox was on the westbound track filming Todd on the tracks. The train didn’t stay on the north track like Sheldon said it would.’ She struggled to piece together what had happened. She’d been so focused on Todd that she had to concentrate to get the rest. ‘The switch must’ve been thrown somehow. Lennox didn’t have time to get out of the way.’

‘
The blood?’ Agent Kent gestured to Todd.

‘Lennox
’s, for the most part,’ Todd confirmed, surprisingly lucid, considering. His father helped him to his feet. He winced, though whether from injury or just stiff joints, Reilly couldn’t tell. ‘I thought he was Fisher. He knocked me out when I was on my way up to Fisher’s room at the hotel. Aside from the concussion, sunburn and lingering effects of being tasered and drugged, I’m all good.’

‘Pig-headed fool . . .’
Daniel muttered affectionately.

‘
Get a CSI crew down here,’ Detective Reed barked at one of the nearby officers, who immediately called it in. Then he looked back in panic at the crowd of train passengers gathered near Fisher’s remains, most of whom Reilly noticed were taking pictures of or filming the dead director’s body – no doubt ready to sell the footage to media or post it all on the internet. This time, Paul Lennox would be the one being watched.

Talk about irony.

‘And a bus.’

‘
I don’t want you two going anywhere just yet.’ Agent Kent scowled at Reilly and Daniel. ‘I’m going to want to know just how you ended up here before the rest of us.’

‘
Before you do that,’ Todd couldn’t resist adding, ‘might I recommend getting those people on the train rounded up before they track pieces of our crime scene all over the place?’

Agent Kent’s face paled.
‘Oh shit . . .’

CHAPTER 45

The spicy smell of Cuban food wafted through the air, mingling with the sounds of laughter. Reilly listened from the kitchen of Daniel’s beach house as Todd and the trio of women – Emilie, Peni and Ivy – laughed outside on the deck beneath the lanai, snippets of conversation floating back to her.

‘
. . . so Ivy takes this bucket of lime green paint . . .’

‘
. . . of course, the professor’s sitting right next to me . . .’

‘
. . . was the first and last time I ever drink purple nurples . . .’

‘
. . . should never be allowed in a karaoke bar . . .’

She
scooped up a handful of peppers and dropped them into the pan. The chunks of red briefly turned her stomach, but she forced back the memory.

The last two nights, her regular nightmare had been replaced by a new one. She was back at the train yard, her feet tangling and tripping her as she ran toward Todd. She fell in the same spot and felt familiar helplessness wash over her. She tried telling herself that it was
OK, that the train would take the other track, kill Paul Lennox and Todd would be fine.

Then came the flood of guilt that she wasn’t more concerned about someone else dying. Before she could tell herself that
Lennox was a murderer and not worth saving, the train was there. Only this time it wasn’t turning. The screech and whistle overpowered her screams as Todd disintegrated into a mass of flesh and blood.

Each time, she’d woken in a cold sweat, gasping for air, hoping she hadn’t screamed. After an hour of tossing and turning, murmuring the words into the darkness, she’d fall
en back into a troubled sleep only to repeat the entire thing less than an hour later. Even her carefully applied make-up couldn’t hide the bags under her eyes. The same mantra had been playing in her head nearly non-stop as she tried to fend off the demons. ‘‘. . . lay you down and take your rest; Forget in sleep the doubt and pain; And when you wake, to work again . . .’

Everyone assumed her exhaustion was from the long hours spent answering questions, first from the Feds, then from the
TPD detectives. How had she figured out where Drew Sheldon was? Why had she thought Wesley Fisher was the killer and the kidnapper? When had she arrived at the storage unit? Had she waited to call in when she’d found Sheldon? Why had Daniel been with her?

Reilly had
answered honestly for the most part, tweaking her answer only regarding the timeline. While she could cite the Feds’ and detectives’ brush-offs as her reason for heading into the field, she knew there was no way to justify not calling in the instant she’d found Sheldon and declared the area safe. She’d been worried that the writer wouldn’t back her story in the end, but when, after five hours, she’d been allowed to leave with only a mild reprimand, she’d known he hadn’t said anything.

It hadn’t been until later that night, during one of her
between-nightmare times, that Reilly started to think about what had really happened. She’d trusted Sheldon to write a scene where Todd wasn’t in any danger, but yet the writer had waited to tell her where to go until it was almost too late.

It
was then that she’d remembered a comment Sheldon had made about how he knew the train’s schedule because he’d wanted to take his daughter to the tracks.

Before she’d gone into the lab, she’d swung by the hospital to check on
the writer. While chatting, she’d casually slipped in a comment about the switch causing the train to go on the westbound track. Sheldon had just shrugged, but Reilly had seen the shadow flit across his eyes. She’d known then that he had only supported her timeline because it covered him too.

Evidently h
e’d known that the train had been scheduled to go west when he’d put Todd on the northbound track.

Then, j
ust before she’d left, he’d added, with no prompting or context: ‘The son of a bitch threatened my daughter.’

Reilly
had nodded once and walked out. She hadn’t told anyone about the exchange or about what it meant. She should have felt guilty, she knew, but she couldn’t quite seem to get that far. She hadn’t known at the time. Lennox’s blood wasn’t on her hands and if Sheldon could live with that, she could live with keeping quiet.

The only thing
Reilly did feel guilty about was that a part of her was glad Paul Lennox was dead, that he wouldn’t have the opportunity to try to take advantage of the justice system and claim insanity or use some fancy lawyer to get out of the charges.

Once and for all,
Lennox had been stopped. He would never kill (or direct) again.

‘
If you don’t pay attention, you’re going to burn dinner.’ Todd was so close to her elbow that Reilly jumped. He’d barely spoken to her since the train yard and even those conversations had been stilted. She wasn’t sure if it was the kiss or the whole situation . . . no, she was pretty sure it was the kiss. She’d been kicking herself about her impulsive action for the past two days, but she was confident that it would get better. After all, it was just a kiss.

‘Oh . . .’
She blinked, and resumed her stirring.

‘
Anything you want to talk about?’ Daniel had been asking her the same question since she’d gotten back from the police station later that night.

As she had
to his father, she shook her head. The last thing she wanted was to tell Todd about her nightmares or about what she’d discovered. She was sure that given how close to death he’d come, he had enough demons of his own to contend with. ‘Just haven’t been sleeping well.’

Before he could probe further, a voice called from
the doorway.

‘
Need any help in there?’ Peni’s voice carried easily.

‘
Almost done,’ Reilly called back. She fixed a pleasant expression on her face and turned down the flame beneath the pan.

By the time she carried the last of the meal
out onto the deck, the others had already found their seats around the wrought-iron table. Reilly set the bowl of food down in the middle of table and took the last free spot, giving everyone the same fake smile. Todd’s eyes flicked toward her in concern again, but made no contact before darting away again.

‘
Everything looks amazing,’ Emilie said politely.

‘
And smells divine,’ Ivy gushed.

‘Thank you.’
Reilly slipped into the empty seat across from Todd. She’d taken quite a liking to Peni’s girlfriend. The poet’s carefree nature and sweet disposition was a refreshing change from all of the recent death and dismemberment.

With Todd on mandatory leave
after the incident, it had been up to Emilie and Reilly to finish bagging the last of the evidence to hand over to the Feds in the aftermath.

They’d finished late the night before and
Reilly had never been so glad to hand over a case. She wanted nothing more to do with this particular psycho.

She knew that
Daniel had gone with Todd to tell Alice Young that her daughter’s murderer was dead, though she hadn’t asked how it had gone. She didn’t need to. She’d been on the receiving end of that kind of conversation before.

As small talk went on around her,
Reilly focused on eating, on finally relaxing a little. It was only early evening and, while she’d been tired before, even exhausted, this was only the second time in her life that she’d been bone-tired, the type of weariness that seemed to fill her very marrow.

When the doorbell rang partway through the meal,
and Daniel was in the restroom, Reilly excused herself to answer it, smiling as she felt Todd’s eyes on her. The awkwardness was already starting to dissipate.

‘Steel
,’ Detective Reed addressed her from the doorway. Now that the case was closed, he’d been much more pleasant to talk to. Detective Sampson was a different story – still pissed at Reilly for what she considered insubordination.

‘Detectives.’
Reilly gave them the same strained smile she’d used with the others. She stepped back and motioned for them to enter.

‘Thank you.’
Mark Reed gave her a genuine smile. ‘It’s still hot as hell out there.’

‘
A group of us just sat down for dinner if you’d care to join us. Daniel and I made way too much,’ she offered.

‘That’s very kind of you, but w
e can’t stay long,’ Reed said, shaking his head as he and Julie Sampson ventured out onto the deck. They waved hello to the others round the table, and seemed grateful for the slight breeze coming off the gulf.

‘Sorry to interrupt your dinner.
Just wanted to come by and let you all know that the Feds were already able to close two open homicide investigations in California, and it looks like they may be able to link Lennox to at least three others and a dozen assaults,’ Reed told them.

After conversing among the others for a little longer, Sampson and Reed eventually went to take their leave, dampening down entreaties from Todd to stay for a drink.

As Reilly accompanied them back out front, Reed continued to chat. ‘I heard Todd got offered Bradley’s old job,’ he said.

‘Yes, he deserves it.’ Reilly was pleased about this news, though she guessed Todd would never be able to get past the fact that the promotion had only come about because of his partner’s demise. It was for this reason that he hadn’t said much about it since confirmation had come down from Captain Harvell, and he had changed the subject a couple of times already this evening when the news had come up.