Tied Bond (Holly Woods Files, #4) (11 page)

I just know it; and involved is the very last thing I want to be.

I sigh heavily as I kick my door shut and cross my office to my desk. A small stack of letters is sitting next to my laptop, but since at least half of them will be bills, I push them aside and put the cupcake box down where they just were. They’re not going to last as I planned if this conversation goes the way I’m expecting it to.

Damn.

I think I need a new job. Like, seriously. For once, it’d be nice for someone to die in town and me not have to be involved. Not that it’s nice for people to die… Especially not when they never seem to go easily. If there’s an easy way to be killed. Is there an easy way to be killed? I’ll have to Google it.

Hmm. I pace back and forth across my office, finally ending up in front of the window. I open the curtains and the late fall sunlight comes streaming in. It bathes the room in a hazy, yellow glow, and gray shadows fall across the walls and floor courtesy of my furniture. I take a deep breath as I cast my gaze across the park.

It’s the only thing that never changes in Holly Woods. I know that, every time I look out of this window, I’ll see people walking their dogs, kids chasing each other, and a runner or two far more dedicated to their fitness than I ever will be.

Two knocks on my door pull me out of my tranquil state of mind. I glance over my shoulder to see Gianna’s head peeking through the gap between the door and the frame. Then I wave her in. She’s wearing the same plain, black leggings and long shirt she was when we left her yesterday, right before she went to the police station. The only difference is that her makeup is gone and her hair is tied up in a bun on the top of her head. Wispy tendrils fall down, framing her tired face.

“I’m not messing with your schedule, am I?” she asks softly, pushing a bit of the loose hair out of her face.

“No, of course not. Take a seat. Can I get you anything? Coffee, water? Tea?”

“Coffee sounds like heaven.” She sighs, sitting in one of my red tub chairs.

I brush my hands on the skirt of my dress and grab my phone from the desk. Then I dial Grecia’s extension. “Can I have two coffees, please? Cream and sugar on the side.”

“Of course.” She hangs up.

I turn to Gianna. She’s slumped forward onto my desk, her head in her hands and her shoulders drooped.

I sit down. “Long night?”

“Worst walk of shame I’ve ever done,
cara
,” she answers, straightening up. “I’m wearing what I did when I went out last night and I’m a big, fat zero on the orgasm scale.”

“I guess murder investigations are a libido killer in the Holly Woods Police Department.”

She forces a twitch of her lips. “Must be the blood. After all, periods bother them more than us.”

“True.” I run my hand through my hair then focus on her. “This isn’t a social call, is it?”

“Someone killed Wally, Noelle, but it wasn’t me.” She swallows hard, looking right at me. “There’s no way I could have overpowered him enough to do that.”

“I believe you. But I don’t see what this has to do with me.”

“I need you,” she whispers, looking down. “I’m all they have. I’m their only suspect, and everything is pointing toward it being me.”

A shiver runs down my spine. “Did they say that?”

“Sheriff Bates tried not to, but the man has never been able to hide his emotions. I could see it in his eyes. Pity mixed with regret.”

“What about DNA evidence? That would rule you out without question.”

“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me anything. He asked me plenty though, but most of it was the same questions over and over again.”

Typical Bates style.

“So, what do you need me for?” I ask.

“I need you to prove to them that I didn’t do it.”

H
er words echo through the room, but to me, it’s almost as if they’re screaming over and over and over until Grecia’s entry into my office with a tray of coffee cuts through it.

“Thank you,” I say to her, nodding as she leaves. “Can you shut the door?”

“Of course.”

The door clicks with her exit.

I squeeze my eyes shut and rub my fingers across my forehead. “I don’t know how I could do that, Gianna. I don’t have access to the details of the case, and I promised Drake I’d stay out of it.”

“He doesn’t have to know,” she replies quickly. “But I don’t know how else to avoid conviction for something I didn’t do.”

“You’re panicking. There’s nothing they can do until they get DNA back, and that’s a week at best, knowing the Austin lab. That’ll clear you.”

“What if there isn’t DNA?” Gianna gets up and, with her fingers touching her mouth, says, “What if I was framed,
cara
? Then what?”

Oh, boy. Here we go.
“Why would anyone frame you?”

“I don’t know. But tell me—if you wanted someone dead, would you kill them in a public place, at a public party, or would you kill them in private?”

Well… I suppose she has a point there.

“Why did they kill Wally when we’d just fought? Why not catch him on the way to the party?”

And another point.

Jesus, if irrational Italian women keep stacking points against me, I’m gonna move. Far away.

“Okay… I understand where you’re going with this, but for me to even consider taking you on as a client, I need more than just ‘I was framed.’ I can’t work off of that.” I breathe heavily through my fingers, making a light whistling noise. “I need more, okay? Investigative work—especially in a case like this—is hard if I don’t have access to police files. I promised Drake a whole bunch of stuff, and in hiring me, you’re asking me to break those promises.”

“I…” Gianna sighs heavily. “I understand it,
cara
. I simply have parts of my life I’d prefer to be kept private until I’m ready to reveal them.”

Jesus. Women. Now I know why men get so fucking frustrated with us. We’re full of shit, aren’t we?

I study Gianna carefully. Her tight lips and her steady gaze tell me that it doesn’t matter how I push or how many times I ask. She won’t give up anything about her private life until she’s ready to. And honestly? That puts me in the most awkward position.

She’s asking me to investigate a case I’ll never have all the facts to. She’s asking that I ignore a ton of stuff that could sway it one way or another. I’m no saint, but despite my previous claims, I’m no devil, either.

“Jesus…” I rub my hands down my face and bite the inside of my lower lip. “Me and Drake… our relationship is insanely crazy. Half the time, I think it’s closer to unhealthy than anything, but we make it work because we want to. I’ve kept so much from him before that the thought of doing it again makes me feel sick.” I close my eyes. “I don’t know if I can help you, Gi. Shit, I wish I could. I seriously do, but without you being one hundred percent honest with me…”

“I will be,” she whispers. “Anything. I just need time to be ready to do it.”

“What could be so terrible that you can’t tell me?”

“Not you. Drake.”

“That’s even more terrifying.”

“Please, Noelle. I have no one else I can turn to.”

I push away from my desk as indecision swirls in my gut. God, screw my gut—it’s everywhere. Every. Fucking. Where. It’s like a rash.

“Fuck,” I whisper, going back to the window and looking out over the park.

There’re runners and kids and dogs, and it’s all that makes sense. She wants me to be secretive and…ah. I don’t know if I can do it.

“Me and Drake… We just…
just
…reached a point where it feels like we’ve met each other halfway, where it feels like we might just have balance between us. But this is like I’m headed back to the starting line and he’ll be waiting at the finish line. Drake puts up with so much of my shit, but an outright lie?” I shake my head.

“It’s not a lie if you don’t deny it.”

“Lies of omission are as bad as complete lies.”

“Think about it,
cara
. Please.”

Thoughts run through my head so quickly that I can’t latch on to any specific one, so despite the tightening of my stomach, I say the only thing I can think of. “Okay.” I rub my hand down my face and sigh. “Let me see what I can find out about the case. If you’re really their only suspect, then I’ll consider it.”

A smile breaks out across Gianna’s face, but it’s riddled with sadness, and the hint of fear glinting at me from her dark eyes almost has me folding on the spot and giving in.

“Thank you.”

I scrawl the date and the time on the back of a photograph. Thank God for the data my phone collects when it takes a picture, or I’d have to go old school with a Polaroid camera and a Sharpie. Knowing my luck, I’d end up losing the Sharpie lid and have to use lipstick.

What a ridiculous notion. Using my lipstick. Please. There are many things lipstick can and should be used for, but writing on the backs of photographs depicting adulterous bastards is not one of those.

Especially not this guy’s pics. He has enough of his mistress’s lipstick on his neck. God love the zoom function on the camera.

I write on the final photograph of them entering a hotel hand in hand and wave it to dry the ink. Once I’m sure it won’t smudge, I pull all the pictures together, stack them, and grimace. There’s going to be one very angry wife in my office tomorrow afternoon—that’s for sure. I actually feel incredibly sorry for her—three kids under five and her husband is a cheating son of a bitch.

At least she’ll come out well in the divorce. Bright side and all that shit.

I slide my report into a manila envelope and then add the photographs before I write the client’s name on the front and seal it. I’m gonna have to make sure to stop by the store for Kleenex tomorrow morning. And possibly get a doctor. I have a feeling that Kelly Peters is going to be a crier.

I tap my fingers across the top of the envelope. I have a file full of info about my newest case from Carlton, but there isn’t a single part of me that wants to open it. I love my job, but some of these cases are much harder to stomach when you consider what they’re actually doing. I mean, sure, they’re cheating, but they’re doing so much more than just having their cake and eating it too. They’re shattering trust, destroying hope, breaking hearts, ripping the future apart … They’re taking promises they made to their spouse and essentially spitting on them then rubbing them into the ground with a high heel.

And people wonder why I’m a bit of a relationship skeptic.

Was. Was a relationship skeptic. I think.

My eyes flick to the file, but I make no move for it. Really, I’m just distracting myself from what’s actually on my mind. Gianna and her request. Wally’s murder.

Helping her is insanity. I promised Drake I wouldn’t get involved, but I can hardly let his mother go to jail for something she didn’t do. At least, I think she didn’t do it. I’m trusting her on it, but the more I think about her whereabouts last night, the more uncertain I am about whether or not she’s telling me the truth. It is so suspicious, the way everything ties in together: the fight, when she left, the bath…

Her theory about being set up also makes sense though. If anyone wanted to kill Wally, it would have been wiser to catch him anywhere but the inn. The man lives alone, for crying out freaking loud. Just break in while he’s sleeping and bop him on the head with a hammer. Catch him in his backyard. Get him while he’s on the way to the inn.

At the inn though… The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. And the more I want to figure it out.

Damn it. Why did I have to be born a problem-solver? Why couldn’t I have been born, like, a princess or something? Why not something super simple like a nightshift shelf-stacker at Walmart? Nooo though. That’s outrageous. Let’s solve all the problems of the world.

Hell, if someone asks me to figure out the origins of the universe, I’ll probably keep at it until I’ve figured it out. I do it every night before I go to bed and can’t sleep, after all—along with all the important questions like why penguins give each other pebbles and why koalas are so cute but would happily rip my eyeballs out with their little claws.

I should probably start Googling these things. Chances are, though, it’d just give way to other important questions, like why Ariel didn’t just
write down
who she was when Eric needed to know. And also why it isn’t appropriate to comb your hair with a fork, because I think the girl is onto something with that.