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  Krista started to pull away but Sean’s arm was still locked around her waist like a vise. He whispered a curse and gave her breast a little squeeze, almost like he couldn’t help himself, and released her.

  He rolled off the other side of the bed, treating her to a visual orgy of mile-wide shoulders and a muscular back that tapered into the tightest ass she’d ever seen.

  Or touched.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and clutched the sheet to her chin.

  “You can take the shower first,” he said, his sleep-roughened voice sending a shiver of awareness pulsing to all the spots he’d touched and kissed just hours before. “I’ll go see what he uncovered.”

  Krista waited until she heard the doorknob click before she opened her eyes. Satisfied she was alone, she threw back the sheet and sat up, wincing in discomfort as muscles she didn’t even know she had protested from overuse.

  Jesus, who knew great sex could do so much damage, she thought as she headed for the shower. She was sore and achy inside and outside, but even that couldn’t stop her blood from heating at the memory of her body being so well used.

  She took stock of her injuries and let the hot water of the shower soothe her tight muscles. Some of the aches and pains were a result of being thrown around the car during the crash.

  Others, like the tight pulling of her inner thigh muscles and the faint bruise along her hip bone, were a result of being thrown around the bed by Sean. Jesus, what was she thinking, letting herself indulge in the overwhelming attraction she felt for him?

  What was it about him that made him so damn irresistible that she would go to bed with him? Especially knowing that, sexual chemistry aside, she was pretty sure Sean didn’t have much regard for her.

  But then, guys didn’t have to like a woman to sleep with her, and Krista was too much of a realist to indulge in any illusions of his affection for her.

  She, on the other hand, had never gone to bed with a man she didn’t care about. For her, sex wasn’t enjoyable without genuine affection, plain and simple.

  But nothing had ever come close to what had happened with Sean.

  There was no question she liked Sean. A lot. What had started as admiration all those months ago when she’d realized the truth about the man she’d once viewed as a cold-blooded killer had morphed into something more in the past day and a half.

  She’d seen through the cracks in his tough, emotionless facade enough to catch glimpses of the man he used to be. Warm and caring, a born protector. But there were scars there, too, new pieces to his personality that hadn’t been there before he’d been so devastated, not just by prison but his friends’ betrayal.

  She couldn’t blame him for the wariness and reluctance to trust anyone. He’d been wounded, and even though she knew she could never heal him, something inside her urged her to try.

  Is that was this is about? Martyring yourself to Sean as though a night of hot sex could ever make up for what happened to him?

  She ducked her head under the spray to rinse away the last of her shampoo and acknowledged that her reasons for sleeping with Sean were far too complicated to untangle right now.

  Once this was all over, she’d have time to ruminate and dissect her motives. Right now, she had to focus on finding out who was behind all of this and getting her and Sean out of this alive.

  She got out of the shower and toweled off. She pulled on her jeans and a new fresh-from-Walmart T-shirt. It had a picture of a panda with a pink Mohawk on the front. Not her usual style, but she’d been half dazed with shock when she’d done their shopping.

  She ran a brush through her hair and stared at her reflection. The solid six plus hours of sleep had done her good—the circles under her eyes had abated so she no longer looked like a prizefighter. Her cheeks were pink and her lips were redder and puffier than usual.

  And just in case anyone looking at her would have any doubt about what she’d been up to that night, there was a rosy scrape along her jawline from Sean’s stubble and two faint purple bruises on either side of her neck. Christ, she hadn’t had a hickey since high school.

  Come to think of it, she was pretty sure she hadn’t had a hickey then either.

  She rifled through her bag, pulled out a cosmetic case stocked with the basics, and did her best to cover up the damage.

  She took a deep breath and opened the bedroom door. She dreaded walking down the hall to face Sean and Ibarra more than she’d ever dreaded facing down anyone—even her father—in the courtroom.

  They weren’t in the kitchen or great room, so Krista helped herself to a cup of coffee on her way to the office. Ibarra was seated behind the desk, Sean standing to his right. Both men were focused on one of the LED monitors mounted on the wall across from them.

  “Morning,” Ibarra said when he heard her footsteps on the hardwood floor. His gaze briefly flicked to her and he gave her a quick nod. If he and Sean were indulging in locker room talk about what had gone on, she wouldn’t have known it from either of them.

  Sean nodded curtly, his face blank of emotion.

  Krista tried to ignore the adolescent pinch of hurt in her stomach. This was real life and they were in real trouble. No time to get all teary because the boy she liked hadn’t smiled when he passed her in the hallway.

  She moved to stand on the other side of Ibarra. Even with the other person between them, Krista could feel every nerve jump in awareness. She risked a glance in his direction, taking in the hard lines of his profile. He kept his gaze locked firmly on the monitors across the room.

  “What did you find?” she asked, forcing her voice into the firm, professional tone she used in the courtroom. She squinted at the monitors. One was just the shot of Ibarra’s desktop; the other was a grid showing a variety of bank transactions. Her heart skipped a beat only to slow to a normal pace when she realized it was the same report she’d already seen and told Sean about.

  “I connected with Kowalsky’s computer,” Ibarra said, and as he opened several files Krista realized the monitor showed a remote display of Kowalsky’s desktop, not Ibarra’s. “He kept his case files well organized, but I couldn’t find anything related to Brewster or Caparulo.”

  Krista felt like a lead weight had settled on her shoulders. “Someone must have deleted them and left the other files intact so no one would get suspicious.”

  “Good guess,” Ibarra said. “And whoever did it knows their shit. They didn’t just trash the files.”

  “They used some kind of shredding program,” Sean said.

  Krista nodded, her mouth pulling into a frown. It wasn’t enough to delete files. She’d worked on several cases where data recovery experts were able to retrieve supposedly deleted files—e-mails, pictures, you name it—it was almost impossible to permanently get rid of anything in the digital age.

  Unless, like whoever killed Kowalsky, they knew exactly what they were doing. “I suppose it was a good one?” Krista sighed, the restorative effects of sleep washing away in the face of her disappointment.

  “As good as anything I’ve ever seen,” Ibarra said.

  Krista uttered a soft curse. “If nothing else, I guess this confirms Stew’s murder was no random mugging. Not that we’ll be able to convince anyone of that.” So much for Ibarra’s great find. She felt a throbbing at the back of her neck and knew a full-fledged tension headache was waiting in the wings.

  “Lucky for us, whoever did this forgot to delete the activity logs,” Ibarra said.

  Krista’s hand froze in the act of kneading the knot at her nape.

  “Kowalsky transferred everything to an online backup site less than fifteen minutes before he was killed,” Sean clarified.

  “Tell me you’re able to access it.”

  Ibarra nodded. “I just finished downloading them right before you walked in.”

  Chapter 12

  He paged through the open files, and Krista shook her head. “That was all in the last report he gave me. Wait.” She held up a hand an
d Ibarra kept the document up on the screen.

  She took a few steps closer to the monitor as she read. The header read Caparulo Suicide (?) It wasn’t a formal report, more a collection of notes about what Kowalsky had uncovered.

  According to source, powder burns and angle of entry consistent with self-inflicted gunshot. No sign of forced entry into house. Bedroom window unlocked and ajar. Source indicated ground beneath window was slightly disturbed but no discernible footprints. Fingerprint dusting revealed only victim’s print.

  Canvassed the neighborhood. A Mrs. Elanor Vicks claims to have seen someone “lurking around Angela’s place” on and off for several days before Caparulo’s apparent suicide. No other claims of anything unusual. Vicks known to suffer episodes of dementia—unreliable witness. Claims police questioned her briefly but no follow-up questions asked.

  There were a few spaces as if Stew had taken a break, and the next paragraph was just two days before, the day Krista had gone to talk to Sean, and Jimmy Caparulo’s case was closed and his body released for cremation.

  WTF? Caparulo case closed, body released, no autopsy. Source in SPD has closed up tight, no one giving up anything. Why close ranks around apparent suicide if nothing to hide?

  Why indeed, Krista thought.

  Detective Jorgensen in charge of investigation gave no further info than official statement, but was extremely agitated when I tried to ask him about decision to release the body. Action items: follow up with E. Vicks, contact client to discuss how to proceed.

  Krista swallowed hard. She was the client Stew had never had the chance to contact.

  Ibarra cycled through the rest of the files. “That’s the only new information as far as I can tell,” she said and blew out a frustrated breath. “I don’t suppose you’ve managed to hack into the SPD’s network and find the official report?” she asked, almost dreading the answer. She was now a knowing accessory to cybercrime—against the Seattle Police Department, no less.

  Hell, compared to two boosted cars and a suspected cop shooting, this was nothing, right?

  “Here it is.” Ibarra pulled it up in on the opposite monitor, hiding for the moment the list of bank transactions.

  “Is it just me or does that look a little light?” Sean asked as Krista scanned the two-page document.

  Krista shook her head and drained the last of her coffee. “Like Cole said, the chief wanted the case closed, and fast.”

  “But why?” Sean asked.

  “It’s impossible to tell. The coroner’s office had to sign off on it, but they could be getting pressure from any number of the higher-ups to close the investigation.”

  “Like who?”

  Krista shrugged. “A judge, the mayor…”

  “Or someone from the PA’s office?” Sean bit out.

  Krista took a deep breath and bit back a retort. “What happened with you and the Slasher case got a lot of people upset and now a lot of people feeling like they need to cover their asses.” She could feel the anger vibrating off Sean and instinctively lifted her hand but stopped short of touching him. “It’s no surprise they wanted to make anything even remotely related to the case disappear quickly.” The thought of anyone she worked with being involved in the cover-up made her sick, but she knew this wouldn’t be the first time something related to a controversial case was pushed under the rug.

  “So you think it’s okay?” Sean snapped. “You and the people you work with fucked up and that gives them the excuse to make sure no one questions the fact that Jimmy committed suicide?”

  His accusation, his fury, blindsided her. She felt like she’d been punched in the gut. “How can you possibly think I’m okay with that? Would I be here risking my life to find out what really happened if that were the case?”

  “Kids, can we quit with the bickering?” Ibarra broke in. “You’re keeping me from getting to the good stuff.”

  Sean snapped his mouth shut. The fury had dimmed from his gaze, but hot color stained his cheekbones.

  “What?” Krista said, focusing on Ibarra, feeling heat stain her own cheeks. It was humiliating how easy it was for Sean to make her lose her cool.

  “I looked at that bank statement Kowalsky recovered,” Ibarra said, closing the police report. There was a reason they wanted the case closed so quickly, a reason that went beyond worrying about the public’s view on how they’d handled Sean Flynn’s case.

  But who was really behind it, she wondered as she watched the document disappear from the screen.

  Someone who had something to hide, someone who had enough weight to lean on both the coroner’s office and the detective running the investigation—or his superiors—to get the investigation expedited and the case closed before it even made headlines.

  Six months, a year ago, Krista would have looked on the act with disapproval, but she wouldn’t have made any waves or gotten overly suspicious of the motives. Of course she believed everyone was entitled to a thorough investigation, even if all of the evidence pointed in the direction of suicide.

  However, she’d accepted that not everyone thought or worked the way she did and decided the best thing she could do was keep focused on her own cases, fight her own battles. It wasn’t worth it to raise a ruckus when they all knew what the results would be whether the case took six days or six weeks to close.

  But with Jimmy Caparulo dead and his case closed so quickly…no way she could ignore that. And now she couldn’t help but wonder how many other cover-ups had she missed as she kept her eyes on her own paper, convincing herself she was above it.

  Sean was right. She had sat silently by while others around her cut corners, made compromises, accepted their excuses for not doing everything by the book.

  “I ran a query on that account as well as Nate’s business account and found something interesting.”

  Krista’s pity party faded to the background.

  “So there’s this account that Kowalsky found, right? It’s a money market account registered under a bogus business name.”

  “Right,” Krista said. “A deposit for fifty thousand dollars was wired in the day after he killed Bianca Delagrossa, and there was another one before that, which might link to the death of one of the earlier victims, a Jane Doe killed last year.”

  Krista couldn’t help but shudder at the memory of the gruesome videotapes that had emerged of not only those two women, but of Nate Brewster’s other victims. Including a recording of him murdering Evangeline Gordon, a video made all the more haunting as it showed Sean slumped in the background, unconscious and helpless as Brewster brutalized and killed her.

  “Those aren’t the only accounts, or the only deposits.”

  Krista looked at Sean, but his expression was carefully blank.

  “I was able to link this account to three others, all under fake LLC names.”

  “How did you do that?” Krista asked uneasily, sure that it was highly illegal.

  “Better you don’t know. But I wouldn’t expect it to stand up in court.”

  “I already told Sean that this is about the truth, not a conviction.”

  “Fair enough” His fingers clicked on the keyboard and three other documents appeared on the screen.

  Sean noticed the pattern before she did. “The dates match the deaths of four other victims,” he said grimly.

  Krista squinted up at the screen but couldn’t scan through the numbers fast enough. “How do you know?”

  “When I first got out, I didn’t sleep a whole lot,” Sean said, “so I did a little light reading on my friend the Slasher. Look, he got two deposits into that account in the Caymans, one on June twenty-fourth, which coincides with the first victim—well, if you don’t count Evangeline Gordon. Then on January seventh, when the third victim was killed.”

  Ibarra helpfully highlighted on screen while Sean rattled off dates and victims, all of whose deaths coincided with a hefty deposit to a secret account linked to Nate Brewster.

  “Someone was paying him
to kill them,” she breathed. Even when she’d showed the single transaction to Mark and then to Sean, she hadn’t really believed Nate was being paid for what he’d done to those women.

  Murder for hire was one thing. Paying a brutal monster like Nate Brewster to do what he did to those women…

  That was diabolical.

  “Can you tell who? Can you tell where the deposits are coming from?”

  “Not yet,” Ibarra said. “I’ve traced a few of the deposits back to one account. I’m still working on the others.”

  “What about the others?” Sean asked. “He had a lot of money moving in and out over the past—how far do these records go back?”

  “The most recent one was opened a couple months ago, the oldest…huh, that goes back almost five years.” Ibarra turned away from the screen to look up at Sean. “Looks like it was opened up right before we did that op in Mogadishu.”

  “Does that mean anything?” Krista asked.

  “Hard to tell,” Ibarra said. “But there were several deposits made into that account. The last one was after Colombia.”

  “Both Nate and Jimmy were injured on that op,” Sean said. “They both got out on medical discharge a few months later.”

  “And you stayed in another year,” Krista said. “You too?” she asked Ibarra.

  He shook his head. “I went to para-rescue training. I didn’t get out until last year.”

  Neither man seemed inclined to say any more. “Is it significant that they both were discharged after that mission?”

  Sean shook his head slowly, not so much in denial but as though he were trying to clear out the cobwebs. “Didn’t seem like it at the time.”

  His eyes took on that dazed, thousand-yard look that told her he’d shifted his focus out of this room. She started to question him again and thought better of it. Sometimes it was better to let a person parse all the information before she went after them with both guns blazing.

  She shifted her focus back to Ibarra. “What about the dates of the other deposits? Seattle doesn’t have a huge homicide rate. How difficult would it be to match homicides in the Seattle area with the dates of the deposits?”