“According to the DNA tests you all took in comparison to Natalie’s samples that you had taken while she was in the hospital, and the dead man’s samples I took from the morgue—” Rachel’s ponytail bobbed as she nodded “—her stalker was her half brother.”
“So she had a different father from all of you?” Gray asked, looking somewhat ill.
“That’s the most likely scenario,” Devin said with a weary sigh of resignation, as if this was merely confirmation of something he had already suspected.
He’d been older than the rest of them, sixteen, when their parents had been murdered. He remembered them best. Or perhaps, worst.
“We need to tell her,” Gray said. After dragging in a deep breath, he added, “I need to tell her.”
“No,” Thad said with a head shake that only intensified the throbbing pain. “I’ll tell her.”
Gray’s jaw clenched. “Any particular reason you want to be the one to tell her?”
Over the years, Thad, Devin and Ash had given Natalie’s boyfriends a tough time because none of them had ever been good enough for her. Until now. Grayson Scott was a good man, but that hadn’t stopped them all from being a little rough on him in the beginning. He’d had to prove to them, as well as Natalie, how much he loved her. Taking a bullet to save her life had pretty much sealed the deal for all of them.
“I’m the one who killed him,” Thad offered in explanation. “I’m the reason she’ll never get to know this guy.”
“He didn’t want to get to know her,” Gray reminded him. “He wanted to kill her.”
“Why?” Devin asked. “Knowing now that they’re related, it makes even less sense that he was stalking her.”
“Did you find out anything else from his DNA?” Ash asked his wife. “Like who the hell he is?”
She shook her head. “We already ran his prints. While they matched the ones from the break-in at my apartment, he wasn’t in the system.”
“So he is the guy who tried to get the DNA results from our parents’ crime scene?” Devin asked. “He’s the one who tried to destroy the evidence that cleared Rick Campbell?”
The petty thief had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had done twenty years’ time for someone else’s crime. He never got the chance to enjoy freedom again. He’d been killed to cover up the corruption that had rushed his conviction in order to clear a high-profile case and advance a career.
Ash gave a grim nod in response to his older brother’s question. Rachel had been hurt during the break-in; it was how he had learned she was pregnant since they’d broken up months earlier.
“We need to find out this guy’s identity,” Gray said. “I’m not even sure Wade is his real first name. It’s just what he told the girl at the coffee shop Natalie goes to.”
“Did you get any leads from the photograph that was released to the media?” Devin asked Ash.
Ash shook his head. “The new chief wouldn’t let us release the morgue photo, and that surveillance photo from the ATM camera outside the coffee shop is too grainy for anyone to make a positive identification.”
Devin turned to Thad. “Why don’t you leak a better photo?”
“The chief will know where the photo came from,” Rachel warned them.
“We don’t need to know who this guy was,” Thad said, which elicited gasps from his family.
Gray’s neck snapped back in indignation. “What the hell—he tried to kill Natalie—”
“He’s dead now. He’s no longer a threat,” Thad pointed out. “He was about my age. He couldn’t have been our parents’ killer.”
“Our parents’ killer might not be out there anymore,” Ash remarked. “He could be locked up or dead. But this guy, Natalie’s half brother, is the one who attacked Rachel to try to destroy the DNA evidence from our parents’ murder—”
“Why did he do it? He couldn’t have been their killer,” he repeated, “so he must have been trying to protect someone.”
Gray sucked in a breath. “Maybe that’s why he tried to kill Natalie.”
“Because she did see something that night our parents were murdered,” Ash said. “Maybe the killer …”
“We don’t need to know who this Wade guy was,” Thad repeated, “although finding that out will help us learn what we really need to know—who his father is.”
“And if he was locked up or dead, his son wouldn’t have gone to the extent he had to protect him,” Ash reasoned. He wrapped his arms around Rachel, as if he needed to protect her even inside the lab in the basement of the St. Louis Police Department.
Gray swore beneath his breath. “So even though that son of a bitch is dead, there’s still a threat out there?”
Thad shrugged. “I don’t know for sure. Rachel, we’ll need you to run the DNA from the old crime scene and compare it to the stalker’s DNA.”
Her brow furrowed. “I don’t have access to any of the original evidence anymore,” she said, patting her belly. “Not even the results. I’ve been taken off the case because no one with any connection to a Kendall is being allowed near the case files or the evidence.”
“They don’t trust that we really want justice,” Ash said.
“Can you talk to someone with access and have them run it?” Thad persisted.
She shook her head. “The stalker was too young to be considered a viable suspect in the old murders. They won’t look at him for any connection.”
“That’s why the Kendalls should be running the investigation,” Thad said. It was why they were going to damn well run their own.
A short while later, when Thad walked through the parking garage to his car, he knew that there was definitely a threat. He felt someone’s gaze boring into his back. It could have been reporters, but he doubted it. If they’d made it past the police department parking garage attendant, then they would have been rushing him with cameras and questions. They wouldn’t have just watched him.
But then why would the killer watch him? He hadn’t witnessed anything the night his parents died. He’d done nothing to save them. But he had saved lives in his real job. He’d also taken lives. Maybe Michaels had given him up. He reached beneath his jacket, but his holster was locked up, with his gun, inside his glove box. He wouldn’t have gotten it past the security scanners in the police department unless he’d had Ash clear it for him. And his brother would have had too many questions about Thad having a license for a concealed weapon.
Now, as the hairs on the nape of his neck lifted with foreboding, Thad wished he’d answered those questions, so that he was armed. Keeping close to vehicles for cover, he visually scanned the garage, looking for whoever was staring at him with such intensity. Yes, there was definitely a threat still out there, and it was focused wholly on Thad.
ONE KILLER ALWAYS RECOGNIZES another…
Thad Kendall couldn’t see him through the tinted windows of his SUV, but still Ed ducked down when the man turned toward his vehicle. How could anyone be fooled by Kendall’s cover?
He was so much more than a bored rich kid or a globe-trotting reporter. Sure, maybe it was because of where he’d reported stories that he moved as he did—as if he had a target on his back. But when he’d felt Ed watching him, he had reached for a gun whereas a reporter’s instinct would have been to grab a microphone or a camera instead. Not a weapon.
Kendall was also a damn good shot … when he