Sweet Dreams Boxed Set (16 page)

And she hadn’t. She’d
lied.

“But the shooter is Russian.”

How the
hell
did she know that? There was absolutely no connection between the young shooter and Rykov, so how did she know he was Russian when the police didn’t even have an ID on the kid?

If Travis had a problem, Sergei Rykov had a problem. As soon as Alex Morgan got off the call, Travis called Rykov.

“That bitch is working for someone. You need to find out who. I only caught part of her conversation, I want the rest.”

“You are in no position to demand anything, or do you forget why you’re in this little mess in the first place?”

“If I go down, you go with me. And don’t even think about taking me out, because I have enough evidence to put you away for the rest of your life.”

“Do not threaten me. You have far more to lose than I do.”

Travis kicked his desk. “What are you going to do?”

“You’re prone to acting rashly. I will find out what Ms. Morgan knows, then determine the best course of action. You, go about your business and do not get in my way.”

Rykov hung up.

Travis threw his cell phone against the wall. One accident and he was under that bastard’s thumb.

It’s not like he’d planned to kill anyone. He’d felt awful, but he shouldn’t have to go to prison for an accident.

He heard a loud knock and almost feared that someone had bugged his place, heard his conversation with Sergei Rykov, were coming to arrest him. Then he realized it was his computer, still running the live feed from the bug in Alex’s apartment.

He walked back to his desk and put his palms down. Closed his eyes and listened.

As soon as he heard Matt Elliott’s voice, he punched his fist through the wall.

Chapter Thirteen

Matt knocked on Alex’s door. The entire drive to her apartment his emotions bounced between anger and fear. Anger that Alex had called Dean and not him to ask about whatever Travis Hart said that upset her, and fear that she believed Hart.

Ultimately, he was determined to set the record straight. He had never lied to Alex, and she was damn well going to believe him before he walked out.

She answered the door, wearing cut-off sweat pants and a tank top. She stared at him, incredulous. “It’s nearly midnight.”

“Why are you ignoring my calls?” Matt asked. “You called Dean, but won’t pick up your phone for me?”

“I talked to you what, an hour ago? What’s going on?”

“Tell me what Travis Hart said to you.”

She blinked, then realization crossed her face. “Oh.”

He walked in and shut the door.

“Sure, come in, why not?”

She turned away from him and he took three long strides until he was face to face.

“It’s not a big deal,” she said.

“Like hell it isn’t. What did he say?”

Her expression was blank, which irritated him. He was on the edge here, needing Alex to trust him, and she maintained a poker face. “That you’re vindictive.”

“What else?”

“Who is Sharon?”

It took Matt a good thirty seconds to put it all together.

“Whatever he told you can’t possibly be the truth.”

“Then why don’t you tell me? Since you’re already here.”

Matt was not an emotional person. He’d always been the calm one in his unit, the even-tempered prosecutor that every jury loved. The family mediator. But he was shaking.

“What did Travis tell you about her?”

“I’d rather hear what you have to say.”

Matt stepped back. “Why are you doing this?”

“I’m not doing anything,” she said, and for the first time he saw a break in her composure. She was as emotional as he was. “I just want the truth.”

“I’ve never lied to you.”

“I honestly don’t care about past girlfriends. We both have old relationships. But I need to know that what I’m doing is for the right reasons, not because you have a personal conflict with Travis Hart.”

She might as well have kicked him in the gut. “If I had a personal conflict with anyone, I would fight my own battles,” he said. “I—I don’t know how I lost your trust.”

“You haven’t,” she said. “I just think ... I don’t know. Maybe you really didn’t think it was important. I’m okay. Yeah, I was mad at first, but I know how these things get twisted around and I can give you the benefit of the doubt.”

“I don’t want the benefit of the doubt,” he snapped. “I don’t want you to doubt me at all.” He ran his hands through his hair. “Sharon Anderson was my first law clerk. She was assigned to both Travis and me. I liked her a lot—she was smart and funny and very good at her job. But she was also very ambitious. So was I, so was Travis. From the beginning, Travis and I were rivals, and it wasn’t healthy. I was as guilty as he was in that rivalry, except I never did anything to jeopardize justice—on my cases or his.

“Travis convinced Sharon that I wanted her to fudge on a warrant. She did. I caught it and reprimanded her, and she told me I’d ordered her to do it, which wasn’t true. I thought she’d misunderstood what I said, so from then on I put everything in writing. But somehow, Travis convinced her that I was just protecting my own ass. Sharon was a workaholic, and Travis had her doing things he should have done himself. Yet—he would go to her with extra work and tell her I wanted it done by morning. I didn’t know any of this at the time, so when she turned things in early I just said thank you. She felt I didn’t acknowledge her sacrifices.” He rubbed his eyes. “I didn’t see what was going on. I admit I have tunnel vision when I’m working an important case, and it was worse when I was new. Once I figured out that Travis was sabotaging my working relationship with Sharon—why, I still don’t know—I tried to fix it, but it was too late. Sharon had changed. I suspected she was doing drugs, but couldn’t prove it. Then I found out that she and Travis were involved. It explained a lot.”

“What happened after that?”

“Sharon worked late one night and crashed her car. No one, except Sharon, was hurt. She tested positive for narcotics and was suspended from work pending rehab. She went to rehab, but never came back.”

“You don’t sound too sympathetic.”

What did that mean? “Can we sit down?” he asked.

“Matt—it’s late. I’m tired. I’m fine. I’m glad you told me your side.”

“My side? Did he tell you something different?”

She shrugged. “It’s a matter of perspective, I guess.”

“No, it’s not. I was wholly professional in my dealings with Sharon and Travis. I blame Travis for most of it, but Sharon chose to believe him.”

“And it wasn’t because you were jealous?”

“Jealous? Of Travis?” What the hell was she talking about.

Alex tilted her head. Now she looked confused. “Were you romantically involved with Sharon before Travis? I’m not saying it’s wrong, but it might explain why you hate him so much.”

Now it all came clear. Travis—that bastard—had told half-truths. Twisted things around. But this was an out-and-out lie.

“I never had a relationship with Sharon Anderson. Never. In fact, I’ve never dated anyone who worked in the D.A.’s office, except long before I ran for D.A., I went out a few times with the assistant director of the crime lab. Technically, the crime lab is under our umbrella, but they’re separate entities.” He paused. He wanted to be angry with Alex for believing what Travis Hart said, for not asking him for the truth immediately. But he was more desperate than angry.

He looked around her apartment. It was small—the kitchen opened into the living room. It was sparsely furnished, and she still had boxes stacked against one wall, as if she was moving in or moving out. What if he’d taken her to bed that night when she’d come to him after leaving her boyfriend? Would she have still moved into this place? It was clean, but generic. She hadn’t personalized it. It was like she was living in limbo, either waiting for her old life ... or a new one.

All his anger disappeared. Alex was still living in her own hell, and it pained him more than his wounded ego. He sat on the couch and turned so he could look at her.

“I have never lied to you, Alex,” he said quietly. “Never. The situation with Sharon was one in a long line of events involving Travis Hart. It never crossed my mind to tell you about it because, honestly, I hadn’t thought about it in years.

“I was never romantically involved with Sharon. She worked for the D.A.’s office, and technically I was her direct supervisor. Many people cross that line; I’m not one of them.

“Sharon was, however, involved with Travis. Travis is charming and attentive and used his slick manipulative skills to use her to sabotage me. She believed everything he said because Travis is, at his core, a con artist. He will say or do anything to achieve his goals. At that time, his goal was to get rid of me.

“And it worked, after a while. Even after Sharon left, I was spending so much time trying to salvage my relationship with my colleagues and staff that I couldn’t focus on my job. Sandy—Sandra Cullen, the D.A. at the time—saw what was going on but because most of Travis’s games were he said/he said, she couldn’t do much about it. After the incident with Sharon, she made sure we never shared a clerk, then I moved to the sex crimes unit.

“I ran for the State Senate for two reasons. One of the reasons was because of Travis—the work environment had become toxic. But the primary reason was because of a case I prosecuted where a teenager in a group home raped and murdered a young boy. The law at the time didn’t allow for neighbors to know whether any juveniles in a group home had a record of sex crimes, because of juvenile privacy laws. I wanted to change that—fix what was broken in the system. I thought if I could just explain to the rest of the elected officials that prosecutors’ hands were tied in some cases because of laws on the books, that they’d change the laws.

“I learned real quick that the system was broken on that end, too. When Sandy asked me to run for D.A., I did—because at my core, I’m not a politician. I can’t sit in a room full of people elected to serve this great state, tell them clearly what is wrong and how it can be fixed, and then have them completely ignore the problem or, worse, make up reasons for the problem and pass legislation to address so-called ‘root causes’ without fixing the problem placed in front of them. It was soul-breaking.” That was an understatement. To this day, Matt regretted his three years in the State Senate – he’d resigned after winning the District Attorney’s race.

“I came back to the D.A.’s office and Travis was still there, only it had gotten worse because he had opposed me in the election. The three years I was gone, he’d built himself a small but loyal following that would do anything he wanted. He was good at that—building alliances. They sabotaged cases—jeopardizing their careers—while Travis directed it without getting his own hands dirty. That was his M.O. The one valuable trick I learned from working in the Capitol was how the game was played. I put an end to it real quick. But not before we lost a major case because of evidence tampering. Evidence tampering that I could not prove was the work of Travis Hart, but used nonetheless to force him to resign. I threatened to pull every case he’d worked during the three years I was gone and go over them with a fine-toothed comb. He resigned.”

Matt rubbed his hands over his face. Alex was staring at him, a mix of emotion on her face. She was exhausted, but she believed him. He could see it in her eyes. Why didn’t she talk to him? Tell him what she was thinking?

“In hindsight,” he continued, “I should have gone over Travis’s cases because it’s clear that he was worried I would find something. I’d been so relieved that he’d left, I put the threat aside and rebuilt my team. Some reassignments, some re-training, some firings, some new hires. Now, I am extremely happy with our unit. I trust each and every prosecutor who works under me. Our law clerks are among the best in the state.”

“I should have talked to you instead of Dean,” Alex said softly. “I don’t know why I didn’t. I’m sorry, Matt.”

He got up and put his hands on her shoulders. “Alex, I will never lie to you. I will never use you. If you don’t want to work undercover, we’ll find another way. But more than anything, how you see me matters. It matters to me.” He pushed her hair away from her face and kissed her. “
You
matter to me.”

Matt kissed her again. Her lips parted and she leaned against him, kissing him back with the same barely restrained passion he had. He wanted to take her to bed, he wanted to make love to Alex and wake up with her next to him.

As if she felt his intensity, she stepped back. “Matt--”

“Don’t turn me away.”

He kissed her again, giving her no chance to argue. He held her close, his hands fisting in her tank top.

She put her hands on his face and looked him straight in the eye. Her heart beat against his chest, she wanted this as much as he did. Yet, she was going to ask him to leave. He saw it in her dark eyes. He held his breath. He would leave if Alex asked him to; he prayed she didn’t.

Something subtle shifted, as if every muscle in her body relaxed. Whatever she’d been looking for, she’d found. Her lips curved, her arms wrapped around his neck, and she kissed him, all reservations gone.

Matt picked her up and carried her to bed.

Chapter Fourteen

Matt hadn’t wanted to leave Alex without saying good-bye, but he had no clothes at her place. He left her a note then rushed home to shower, shave and change into a clean suit. Dean sent him a text message that he was bringing in Huang early, and to be at FBI headquarters by eight-thirty to sit in on the interview.

Matt arrived at his own office before seven to dispatch a series of memos since he expected to be out all morning. He called Zoey while driving to FBI headquarters an hour later to run through what he needed done, and to follow-up on the box from archives regarding the People vs. Paulson. He wanted it on his desk before noon.

Bringing in Eric Huang was a controversial call—if they were wrong, then Huang would tell Travis about the investigation. And even if they were right, Huang might not know anything of value. But Dean believed Alex’s theory that Huang had been the target, and he decided to circumvent the Sacramento PD and talk to Huang directly. Dean’s decision could cause huge problems between the FBI and Sac PD, but one thing Matt liked about Dean Hooper was that he weighed every possibility, then did the one thing that would yield the greatest results. He could play the political game with the best of them, but he never allowed interagency politics to interfere with an investigation.