Guilty as Sin (11 page)

That sux.

Then the conversation abruptly ended when Tricia indicated that her “nosy bitch of a sister” was coming and she didn’t want to get busted.

“Wonder what that’s about,” Kate said.

“Don’t know,” Tommy muttered. “But I think we need to get somewhere more private to discuss this.” Kate looked up, and, sure enough, several volunteers were looking curiously at them.

“Right,” she said tightly, mentally kicking herself for being so stupid, so careless.

“Christ, I’m an idiot,” Tommy said, echoing her own thoughts. “I shouldn’t even have this here. One person sees it, leaks it to the press.”

Kate winced. She knew all too well the disasters that ensued when the wrong reporter got hold of the right information.

“We can go into the office,” Kate said, using her thumb to indicate the small room in the back corner of the storefront.

Tommy shook his head. “Even with the door closed, it’s too easy to listen in. We’ll go to my place. Call CJ and tell him to meet us there,” he said as he packed up his computer and started for the door.

“Why not go to CJ’s office?” She was so not comfortable with the idea of going to Tommy’s house.

Alone.

He answered with a curt shake of his head. “Sheriff’s office or not, this is still a small town,” he said, his voice pitched low so no one else could hear. “Everyone knows we’re both involved in the search. If we show up and lock ourselves in his office, they’ll know something’s up and next thing you know the press will be talking. I don’t want Jackson to see it and think I’m keeping anything from him, but there’s no need to get him in the loop until we know what we’re looking at. Or if there’s anything I need to prepare him for.”

Kate nodded grimly. Parents were often shocked at what their children’s communications revealed; sometimes there were direct communications with their predators. She packed up her laptop and picked up a stack of flyers to distribute after she finished up at Tommy’s house.

“Where do you live?” Kate asked when they were outside and Tommy was heading for his truck.

“Just follow me,” he replied. He kept a reasonable speed that allowed her to easily keep pace as she followed him down First Street, down the lakeshore, and then right off a road that led up into the hills and onto the same road that led to his parents’ ranch.

Did he still live with his parents? Kate felt a prickle of unease. Maybe he wasn’t nearly as successful as he tried to portray himself to be. Maybe he was some hack who’d conned his way into working with CJ and managed to get a couple decent clients.

After all, when she’d Googled Tomas Ibarra or Ibarra Security Services earlier, she hadn’t found any information about Tommy whatsoever.

Was she once again putting her trust into someone who didn’t deserve it? Who was using her only to raise his own profile?

She’d barely completed the thought before she followed
Tommy’s truck down a gravel driveway. About a hundred yards in was a massive wooden gate attached to a ten-foot-high wall that stretched out on either side of the driveway as far as the eye could see.

As Tommy stopped next to the console that would unlock the gate, Kate’s phone buzzed.

“Make sure you get a little speed going through,” Tommy said on the other end. “For security reasons I have the gate programmed to shut a lot faster than normal.”

“Okay,” Kate said, watching as Tommy’s arm extended out of the truck. Instead of typing in a key code, it looked like he pressed his thumb to the console.

The gate swung open and Tommy took off, his truck tires spitting gravel as he shot through the gate. Kate followed suit, barely making it through before the gate slammed shut.

Any doubts she might have had about Tommy’s success disappeared as she got her first look at his house. Though it had modern lines, the heavy wood beams and glass helped it blend almost seamlessly into the landscape. It wasn’t a massive home by any means, but even from the outside Kate could see the attention to craftsmanship and the careful detail of the structure and the landscaping.

As she followed him up the walkway, she felt a burst of shame for doubting his motives. When had she ever known Tommy to ever be anything but honorable? Even at nineteen, with her practically begging him to take her virginity, he’d held her off, determined to do the right thing.

He might have good reason to resent her and her family, but that was no reason to suspect he’d lost his character. Too many years in Washington, she mused. Though she hadn’t lived there in over a decade, growing up watching her father and his colleagues change positions and turn allies into enemies and back again had taken its toll.

Away from her family, she’d done her best to quell her instinct to question everyone and their motives. She’d mostly succeeded, only to learn that sometimes people’s motives did merit questions.

Sometimes people who claimed to care about her really
were
just using her.

But not Tommy. It was clear when she walked through the heavy wooden front door that if Tommy’s business had paid for this house, he didn’t need any help from anyone to raise his profile.

The door opened into a great room with high, beamed ceiling and a multicolored slate floor. Huge windows opened up onto breathtaking views of the mountains, giving the house an open feel even as the wood frame and wide beams gave an impression of sturdiness and security.

“So, yeah, this is home,” Tommy said, and she didn’t miss the hint of pride in his voice.

“Tommy, this is gorgeous. How long have you lived here?”

There was no missing the satisfaction in his eyes at her compliment, and maybe a little relief? Had he been worried about what she’d think of his place?

The thought that Tommy might still care about what she thought gave her a little tingly sensation she had no business feeling.

“I bought the land seven years ago. The house was finished four years ago. It took me awhile to get the design worked out.”

“You designed this yourself?” She didn’t bother to keep the admiration out of her voice. “Now that I look, I can tell, this house is so very… you.” There was no other way to describe it. The house was a reflection of Tommy himself, with its heavy, sometimes harsh lines and startling beauty.
And with all the wood and the slate and the leather furniture, it was undeniably masculine.

In fact, as she followed Tommy down a wide hallway, she noticed that there wasn’t a trace of a feminine touch anywhere. There was no reason for her to care about that one way or the other, but she felt the tightness in her chest ease.

The hallway was flanked by two closed doors on the right and one to the left, and at the end the heavy carved door was ajar. Through it Kate got a partial view of a carved wood bookcase and massive platform bed with a simple white comforter spread over the top.

Unbidden, Kate got a flash of being in that massive bed, Tommy’s huge, muscular form coming down over her—

“Here’s the office,” Tommy said, and opened the door to the left.

Once again Kate damned her fair complexion. She didn’t need a mirror to know her cheeks were beet red, that they went even redder when she sheepishly met Tommy’s gaze.

The look in his dark, deep-set eyes said he knew exactly what she’d been thinking when she looked at his bedroom. And the underlying heat there made her nipples pull tight against the silk cups of her bra.

For once in her life she was happy to be small chested, so there was no way for Tommy to see her body’s almost desperate reaction to nothing more than a heated look.

“Let’s get started then,” she said, pushing past him into his office. The office was as magnificent as the rest of the house, with one wall made entirely of glass. A huge carved teak desk was at the opposite end, and she counted no less than five computer towers on top of the adjoining table.

Four separate flat-screen panels were mounted on the walls. Tommy crossed to the desk and picked up a remote that brought all four to life.

One screen was tuned to CNN, two displayed rows of indecipherable code, and the last flickered to life as soon as Tommy opened up his laptop and pushed a few buttons.

She looked up at the flat screen as Tricia’s chat log appeared. She barely had time to read a sentence before one of the CNN talking heads distracted her.

“Many people have questioned the family’s decision to involve Beckett after what happened in the Madeline Drexler case.”

Kate’s stomach dropped to the floor, her blood going icy as eleven-year-old Madeline’s face with her gap-toothed grin appeared on the screen. Her throat closed as it did every time she saw the photo of the little girl with bright blue eyes and a tousled, light brown bob. Even in the picture you could see the spark in her eyes, hinting at mischief and laughter.

The screen cut back to the studio, and Kate felt her lip curl in distaste as she recognized Ramona Walker, a former prosecuting attorney who appeared frequently on the news as a legal analyst. In Walker’s view, people like Kate and organizations like St. Anthony’s were getting too involved in some of these cases and ended up hindering the investigations more than they helped.

As a result, she and Kate were often brought in on the same programs and pitted against each other.

Walker had dyed black hair styled into a helmet and thin lips painted a dark crimson. Those lips were currently pinched in disdain. “As your viewers are no doubt aware,” she said in her slight British accent that she couldn’t possibly have gotten growing up outside of Pittsburgh, “Kate Beckett leaked information the family gave to her to reporter Graham Hewitt, who she was involved with at the time. Now, you can blame the family for trusting someone who isn’t law enforcement with information critical to the case, but how
Kate could choose to bolster her boyfriend’s career over the safety of a child is unfathomable.”

“I’m not sure that’s exactly what happened,” the anchor said as they flashed a picture of Kate and Graham, taken of them at a black-tie fundraiser for the foundation last fall. Seeing herself smiling, so happy, so clueless about the snake she’d chosen to lie down with brought a surge of nausea so fierce for a second Kate was afraid she was going to hurl all over Tommy’s handwoven Mexican rug. “Beckett claimed she didn’t purposely leak anything—”

The screen went suddenly dark. “Sorry,” Tommy muttered. “You don’t need to see that.”

Kate shook her head and walked over to the bank of windows. She stared out at the mountains, but in her head all she could see was Madeline. And not the Madeline in the photo who was smiling so wide you could see most of her tiny white baby teeth but the girl they’d found three days after Graham had delivered his exclusive update on the case, tipping off the suspect before the police were able to arrest him.

“It doesn’t matter. I’ve already heard it, and worse. It’s nothing I don’t deserve.”

Tommy’s grave expression wavered, and she saw a flicker of compassion there. “We all make mistakes, Kate. But it wasn’t your fault Madeline died. She died because some sick fuck who gets off on hurting kids stole her from her family.”

“Tell that to her dad, who for the first time in a week had hope that the police were going to find his little girl alive. Maybe they’re right. Maybe Jackson is an idiot for asking for my help.”

“You’ve helped a lot of kids, Kate,” he countered.

“Not enough,” she protested. “Nothing will ever be enough to make up for my mistakes.”

He moved to stand beside her, his arms folded across his chest. “We could have both made better choices the night Michael died,” Tommy said, not bothering to pretend he didn’t know what she was really talking about. “But that doesn’t mean it’s your fault he died. You didn’t put the gun in Emerson Flannery’s hand.”

“But I wasn’t there to stop him either,” she said in a voice thick with tears.

“You might have been hurt too.”

“You don’t know how many times I wish it had been me instead,” she murmured, and her father had too.

Beside her, she could sense Tommy’s muscles coil tight. “I sure as hell never did.”

Kate risked a glance at him the moment he turned to her. His eyes were dark with sadness, and something else. Something warm and deep, making her feel safe and breathlessly excited all at once.

She got a strange, twisty, falling-off-a cliff sensation. It was as if she’d fallen through a time warp and the last fourteen years had disappeared. She was once again a sixteen-year-old girl/woman in the heated throes of first love… and first lust.

That time of hope and joy and the kind of wild happiness that came only from having a guy like Tommy Ibarra seek her out, pursue her, tell her she was beautiful as he drove her out of her mind with his lips and hands.

She wanted to feel that again, remember that time when she knew what it was to be happy. Remember what it was like before…

There was a sharp, shrill buzz, and then CJ’s voice boomed through an unseen speaker. “Ibarra, you going to grant me entrance to the fortress?”

Kate jolted back to reality and retreated to the opposite
corner of the room. Tommy stalked to the door and pressed a button on a small box mounted to the wall of the office that Kate hadn’t noticed before.

While she could feel her face turning beet red again, Tommy seemed to be oblivious to the little moment she was having. And thank God for that.