Flushing at the memory, she shook her head in frustration. She couldn’t vouch for Stephen’s moral character, or blame James for wanting to knock his father off, but she knew in her heart that Ben wasn’t a murderer.
Arlen, on the other hand, had Lisette Bruebaker in his fishing net and Olivia Fortune’s bracelet on top of his dresser. He’d left at least one man dead in Florida. He also had a murky past that included abused women, tortured children, and a misplaced wife.
Crossing her arms over her chest, Sonny frowned down at the cement slab she was standing on. In one corner, using a boy’s irreverent scrawl, James had etched his name and a date.
She counted back the years to Gabrielle Matthews’ disappearance.
“No,” she said, feeling her stomach turn over once again. “Oh, no.”
CHAPTER 16
Ben was taken into the interrogation room against his will, handcuffed and belligerent, barely cooperating with walking. A uniformed officer removed his cuffs and he sat down across from Special Agent Grant, rubbing his wrists. “I did not agree to an interview.”
“I’ll be doing most of the talking,” Grant said with a shrug. He was about ten years older than Ben, but no less intimidating for it. Steely-eyed and svelte, he radiated strength and authority.
Ben hated him with a passion. “I want my lawyer.”
Ignoring him, Grant pushed a few autopsy photos across the surface of the table.
Ben refused to look.
“She was such was a beautiful girl, before. Stayed over at your house a lot, I heard.” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I have three daughters myself. Some of those slumber parties can get pretty wild.”
Ben maintained his silence, knowing exactly where this was heading.
“Did Lisette and your daughter have pillow fights, Mr. Fortune? Did they tickle each other, play truth or dare, call boys on the phone? Did they sleep in their panties, side by side in the same bed?”
“Fuck you.”
“Carly’s a lovely young woman,” Grant said, switching tactics. “Takes after her mother, doesn’t she?”
Ben’s spine stiffened. “My daughter is here?”
“In interrogation room four, with my associate Special Agent Mitchell.”
Ben studied Grant’s face avidly, marking spots where he’d like to land a few blows. “What do you want?”
“I want you to answer a few questions.”
Ben glanced down at the autopsy photos, against his will. And saw nothing he ever wanted to see again. “Let me talk to Carly,” he said, swallowing his bile.
“As soon as we’re finished here,” Grant replied.
Ben weighed his options. He felt confident that he could answer their questions without incriminating himself. Carly, on the other hand…
“Fine,” he said, agreeing to the interview. “But if I find out one of your no-neck goons talked to my daughter without my permission, or harmed a single hair on her head, I will bring a lawsuit down on you faster than you can blink.”
Grant raised his hands, claiming innocence. “Of course, Mr. Fortune. We’re doing everything according to procedure.”
Ben laughed harshly, rubbing a hand over his face. “Yeah? Did your special agent fuck me according to procedure, or was she allowed to improvise?” Seeing anger flare in Grant’s gray eyes, Ben leaned forward, enjoying a feeling of power he knew would be fleeting. “Because if she was just following instructions, I salute your training.” He made an okay sign with his thumb and forefinger. “She was Class A. Top-notch.”
A muscle in his jaw ticked, but Grant didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, he brought an evidence bag out from a drawer under the surface of the table. When Ben saw what lay inside, his entire body went numb.
“Where did you get that?” he asked. His voice sounded strange, far away.
“Do you recognize it?”
Ben couldn’t think of any reason to lie. “It was my wife’s. She never took it off.”
“Where did you last see it?”
“On her wrist,” he said, seized by a memory of Olivia raising her hand to her hair and laughing, the bracelet twinkling in the sun. “The morning she died.”
Grant stared back at him in silence.
“Lisette had that?” he asked, feeling an absurd twist of anger. “I thought someone in the coroner’s office lost it. I filed a report.”
“Tell me about your relationship with Lisette.”
Ben wanted to take the bracelet out of the bag and cup it in his hands, to close his palm around the tiny metal disk and sink into the past. Instead, he had to deal with Grant, who was holding the last remnant of his wife hostage and asking stupid questions about Lisette.
Lisette, who was gone forever, like Olivia.
“You bastard,” he said without heat. “I didn’t have a relationship with Lisette.”
“She was in your bed.”
“Not by my invitation,” he murmured, no longer concerned with implicating himself. He was too disillusioned to care.
“Did Carly know?”
Ben snapped to attention. “Did Carly know what?”
“That Lisette had been in your room, in your bed? What would she have thought about her friend snuggling up to Daddy…wearing Mommy’s bracelet?”
He felt the blood drain from his face. On some level, he knew that Grant was trying to manipulate him into saying too much, but his insinuation that Carly had a motivation for murdering Lisette shook him to the core. Ben would do anything to protect his daughter. Anything.
“I heard she’s been experiencing some emotional turmoil lately,” Grant continued, smooth as silk. “Throwing herself into a rip current. Experimenting with drugs.”
Under the table, Ben clenched his hand into a fist.
“Special Agent Vasquez told me all about her new boyfriend. He seems like such a positive influence. The uniformed officer we sent to pick them up said he found Carly on her knees in front of him at the movie theater.”
Ben amended his initial impression of Grant. The man wasn’t trying to goad him into talking; he was trying to goad him into fighting. “You lie,” he growled, seconds from exploding across the table.
When a quick, efficient knock sounded at the door, they both turned to look.
Nathan poked his head in. His dark hair was attractively windblown, his eyes smoldering with intensity. “What’d I miss?”
Carly didn’t have a chance to get her panties back from James before the police officer escorted her from the theater, claiming there had been a family emergency.
Over her shoulder, she pleaded with James to follow them, but she wasn’t sure he had. When he saw the man in uniform, he’d practically climbed the curtains in his haste to get away. He seemed surprised to discover the policeman was there for her, not him.
Now she was in a room with another cop, a hunky FBI agent named Mitchell. He wanted to know about all the kinky stuff Lisette had been into. Carly didn’t care if he had awesome biceps, she wasn’t saying shit.
“I want to call my dad,” she said, affecting a bored tone. “You can’t keep me here without his consent.”
“You aren’t being charged with anything, Carly,” Mitchell said amiably. “It’s perfectly legal for us to ask you a few questions. Lisette’s parents would thank you for cooperating.”
Carly rolled her eyes. “Look, I don’t know where she is, okay? I haven’t seen her in a week.”
“Did she say where she was going when you talked to her last? Tell you she was meeting someone? A boyfriend, maybe?”
She counted off her responses on her fingertips. “No, no, and I don’t know. She didn’t really have boyfriends, she had targets.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Targets?”
“That’s what she called them. Boys she liked. She’d zero in on one, screw him for a while, and move on.”
“Like a game? Did you play, too?”
She shot him a disgusted look. “No.”