Aim to Kill (23 page)

“She got herself in a mess and ended up dead.”

He had chosen his words carefully. There was more to the story than what he’d said, but Olivia didn’t push.

Instead of elaborating, he changed the subject. “We’d better get a move on. Our flight leaves in ninety minutes.”

The intimate moment was broken, but the connection didn’t disappear. Olivia wondered if Zack noticed anything different between them, or if it was a figment of her imagination.

On the drive to the hotel to pick up her overnight bag, Olivia ran through every conceivable way to tell Zack about why she couldn’t go with him to
California
. She had to. She couldn’t juggle all the lies anymore.

He pulled into the parking lot and shut off the engine. He was about to open his door when she touched his arm.

“Wait.”

He turned to her. “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t go with you.”

He looked at her for a good minute, his expression
unreadable.”That’s
what you said at the station. What’s going on?”

She swallowed.
Get it over with.
“I told you my sister was killed and that’s why I joined the FBI. But I didn’t tell you the whole story.”

He tensed beside her but didn’t say anything.

Olivia took a deep breath. “Missy was nine and I was five. We were at the park and it was getting late. I wanted to go home, but Missy was reading. She always lost herself in books.” She tried to smile, but it turned into a grimace.

“I wandered off to the swings. I was mad at her because I was scared, but I would get in so much trouble if I walked home alone. We had to stick together. That was the rule.

“I looked over and a man was talking to her. I yelled, ran over to them, but he hit me and grabbed her and that was the last time I saw her alive.”

“Oh my God,
Liv
. I’m sorry. No wonder this case is so important to you.” He touched her cheek. It turned into a caress. She reached up and tried to push his hand away, but he took her hand in his and held it tight. “You’ve done remarkably well on this case even though it hit close to home. Sometimes, our personal fears drive our goals. That’s okay.”

“No, no. Let me finish.” Instead of making the conversation easier, his understanding tightened her heart. “Please.”

He nodded, not letting go of her hand.

“I can’t interview Brian Harrison Hall. I testified against him. I helped put him in prison. He was convicted of killing my sister.”

Zack blinked once, twice, as he absorbed what Olivia had just told him. He couldn’t have heard right.

“What?”

“I promise you, I’m objective. I’m not going to jeopardize this case.”

“You lied to me.” Why did it surprise him? Hadn’t he just said a couple of days ago that the Feds always kept important information to themselves?

He jerked his hand from hers and ran it through his hair. “Isn’t this just wonderful? Why didn’t you trust me?”

“It’s not that I didn’t trust you. I didn’t know you when I came out here. I didn’t know what I was really getting into. I’d done all that research, connecting the dots
because
of that wrongful conviction. If it weren’t for me, Jillian and Jenny and Michelle might still be alive today. I fingered Hall because I saw his tattoo. I testified against him. If I’d done something differently, maybe none of this would have happened today, the police would have kept open the investigation, something!”

During Olivia’s impassioned speech, Zack studied her. He saw the pain on her face, the anguish and fervor. She hadn’t openly shown her emotions, and except for her outburst at the lake after speaking to Brenda Davidson, she’d kept an emotional distance. Because she was too close to the case. The realization that she blamed herself for something that was clearly beyond her control further tempered his anger.

“I wish you’d told me at the beginning.”

“I know, I’m sorry. I wanted to, but I thought you and everyone else would think I was too close to the case.”

“Listen to me. You should have told me, because it explains a lot. Such as your outburst at the
Davidsons
’. If things had gone differently, we could have had a lot of problems with them. But you’ve been a vital part of this investigation, and I can honestly say I don’t think we’d be this close without you.” The cases she’d brought with her; interviewing Jenny’s friends that led them to the witness, Sean Miller. And Zack had thrived when bouncing ideas and theories off her. She was a fantastic sounding board. Except when she doubted herself.

“That’s what this has all been about—every time I asked you to give your opinion you hesitated. You didn’t want to share your opinion because of what happened with your sister’s investigation.
Dammit
, Olivia, you were a child! You saw what you saw. It’s up to the adults to decipher the information and figure out what it means. You should know that by now.”

“I do.” Her voice was quiet, and she wouldn’t look at him. “I know in my head I wasn’t solely to blame for what happened then. There was circumstantial evidence, a prosecutor, the police force—but in my heart I think about what I could have done or said differently. All those little girls . . . gone. Like Missy.”

Her words chilled him. He wanted to reassure her that everything would be all right, that they’d catch her sister’s killer. That she could put the pain behind her knowing she’d done something important to right wrongs she had nothing to do with making in the first place.

He reached for her, ran the back of his hand against her creamy, delicate cheek. When he’d first met Olivia, he thought she was petite with a spine of steel. Rigid, professional, all business. For the first time,
fragile
crossed his mind. He tucked her hair behind her ear and pushed her chin up, forcing her to look at him.

Her omission still disturbed him on a different level, but he couldn’t be angry with her.

“
Liv
,” he said softly. “I can’t take the years of pain from you, or the guilt since learning this Hall guy is innocent. But I can tell you that I think you’re pretty incredible. You were five years old and had your life turned upside down. I can’t imagine how that felt.”

“You understand I can’t interview Hall. I testified against him at his parole hearings. He wouldn’t want to help me, not after spending thirty-four years in prison.”

He nodded. “I understand. But I still need you down there. He may give us something to follow up on. Two are better than one, and we need to get back here as quickly as possible. And you know the case better than anyone. Will you observe the interview?”

She hesitated, then nodded.

“Good.” He glanced at his watch.

“But—”

“No buts. You’d better run upstairs and grab your toothbrush, or we’ll have to share.”

As Zack said it, he realized he wouldn’t mind sharing a lot more with Olivia than just a toothbrush.

Brian paced his rat-hole apartment late into the night. He didn’t want to meet with his attorney and a Seattle cop in the morning.

Especially not after what he’d done.

They didn’t know. They couldn’t know. He’d left no fingerprints, no one saw him, there was nothing to connect him to the killings. But his skin prickled and he couldn’t help but feel that his crimes were plastered all over his face.

His attorney had talked him into the meeting.

“Look, Brian,” Miles had said after Brian hemmed and hawed about going down to the police station, “I understand how you feel. I got the D.A.’s office to give you immunity. Nothing you say will be used against you. And if you help them catch this killer, you’ll be a hero.”

“But I don’t know anything! I wasn’t there. I didn’t know the girl. I told you I had nothing to do with it.”

“I believe you, Brian. But the cops think someone you knew may have framed you. Stolen your truck and used it in the crime. Don’t you want to know who’s responsible for your imprisonment?”

“The cops are,” he had mumbled. But ultimately, he agreed as long as he didn’t have to go to the police station. Miles arranged for them to meet at the public defender’s office in the courthouse.

Brian couldn’t sleep because he couldn’t get the thought out of his mind that someone he knew had sent him to prison. Who hated him that much? He didn’t have a lot of friends left in town when he’d come back from Vietnam. Those who didn’t go to war went to college or moved away or looked down on him. He didn’t hang out with the same guys anymore. Someone he worked with at the warehouse? One of the gang of vets he’d met at the club where he’d drunk too much that fateful day?

Dawn crested over the bay before he dozed off. A sick feeling ate at him throughout the night.

Had he killed two people for nothing?

CHAPTER

20

Zack drove from the hotel they’d stayed in outside the San Francisco airport thirty minutes south to Redwood City. Olivia commented that the area had changed dramatically since she’d last visited, but didn’t seem inclined to talk about her childhood.

“When was the last time you were here?”

“Twelve years ago, when I graduated from Stanford.”

“Stanford? Really. What was your major?”

“Criminal justice, psychology, and biology.”

“Three degrees? Wow. So that makes you . . . what, thirty four? No—you’d be thirty-nine.” She was five when her sister was killed.

“It’s not polite to talk about a lady’s age.”

“Went to college late?”

“Something like that.”

Zack stopped pushing. He’d hoped she’d open up and share what had been troubling her, but maybe she was reluctant just being back in the area where her sister had been killed. Remembering her parents—that her mother killed herself.

“Is your dad still here?”

She shook her head. “He sold the house and moved as soon as I left for college.”

“That must have been hard on you.”

“It was harder living in the house after Missy was killed.”

“You don’t want to talk about it.”

He felt her eyes on him and he glanced over, taking in her tired eyes and pale skin before turning his attention back to the road.

She spoke after a time. “My mother never got over Missy’s death. She wouldn’t let us move; she wouldn’t let anyone touch anything in Missy’s bedroom. I tiptoed around the house so she wouldn’t see me, because when she looked at me I saw hate in her eyes.”

“She didn’t hate you.”

Olivia didn’t say anything, and Zack reached over and squeezed her hand. She flinched, but didn’t pull away.

“Why don’t you like being touched?”

“I don’t know,” she said quickly. Too quickly. “I suppose—well, after Missy died I sort of disappeared. To my mom and my dad. It was easier for them that way.”

“You were five!” He couldn’t help but feel hostility toward the parents who’d neglected their living daughter because they were grieving for their dead one.

“When my mother committed suicide I asked my dad if we were going to move. He just shrugged. I think if I had been old enough and put the house on the market myself, he wouldn’t have cared.”

Olivia paused, looking down at Zack’s hand wrapped over hers. Strength radiated from his body, and she was emboldened. She’d never told anyone what happened the day her mother committed suicide.

“I found her body.”

“How old were you?”

“Six.” She closed her eyes and pictured her mother’s bloody remains. Her mother had taken sleeping pills with a vodka chaser, but may have survived that. To ensure her death, she’d put a gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger.

“She shot herself. In Missy’s room, on the anniversary of her death. I heard the shot. Dad was at work. I’d just gotten home from school. There was so much blood. On the wall behind Missy’s pretty white bed. All over her dolls and toys. Everywhere.”

“Oh God,
Liv
.”

Suddenly he pulled off the freeway. Olivia opened her eyes and was surprised when Zack turned off the ramp and into the parking lot of some business. He shut off the ignition.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up,” she began.

He grabbed her chin and forced her to look at him. At first she thought he was angry with her, and maybe he was, but not for the reason she thought.

“Stop saying you’re sorry.” His voice was low and gruff, full of restrained emotion.

She was drawn toward Zack, his dark eyes searching hers, as if sharing his vitality, his strength.

“
Liv
, you’ve been blaming yourself for something that is simply not your fault.”

“I don’t blame myself.”

“Don’t you?”

What did she really think? “I don’t know.”

“Who, then? What’s eating you up inside? Your father? Your mother?”

A tear leaked from an eye, the unfamiliar wetness sliding down her cheek. “I blame Missy’s killer for taking her. God for creating him in the first place. I blame me for not stopping him. I blame Missy for not leaving the park when I wanted to. My father for walking around the house like a ghost. And my mother for . . . for looking at me as if I should have been the one to die!”