* * *
“This had better be worth it,” he muttered an hour later as he slid into the seat across from Brynn. He’d arranged to meet her at a fast-food restaurant far enough from police headquarters to avoid running into anyone he knew.
“Problem?” She tilted her head to meet his eyes.
“No.” Not yet.
“Then you got the file?”
“I got it.” But at what price? Trying not to dwell on the potential fallout, he set the folder on the table and opened it to the top page.
She leaned across the booth to see. Her hair swung loose, strands a deep, rich shade of chestnut mingling with the brighter red. And despite his vow to keep his distance, her beauty swamped his senses; the subtle, feminine scent of her seeping into his blood. His gaze dropped to her sensual lips, the elegant line of her slender throat, then back to her glorious hair. He curled his hands, the urge to plunge them through that thick mass hard to resist.
She turned her head, and her gaze collided with his. Her eyes turned wide and dark. Her breath made an audible hitch, propelling his pulse into a sprint. So she wasn’t immune. So she felt the chemistry zinging between them—no matter how inappropriate it was.
He jerked his gaze back to the file and frowned. It didn’t matter what she felt. Having an affair with her would be nuts. He’d already jeopardized his career by accessing the deceased girl’s file. He wasn’t about to compound his mistakes by getting involved with a potential suspect, too.
No matter how intriguing she was.
“Here’s the initial incident report,” he said, his voice brusque. “She was reported missing at 7:00 a.m. They searched the grounds, and a staff member discovered her body by the old Forest Service lookout tower at ten. The paramedics arrived at 10:35.”
“That seems slow.” She kept her eyes averted, but pink patches flagged her cheeks.
“The camp’s in the mountains, in an isolated area.” He checked the report. “The ambulance came from Emmitsburg. That’s the nearest place. But it wouldn’t have made a difference either way. She was already dead.”
He waited while Brynn finished reading, still struggling to keep his gaze from her. Then he continued paging through the report—the interviews with the other children, statements from the counselors, the psychologist’s assessment of her mental state.
A picture gradually emerged. Erin Walker had gone to bed at 9:00 p.m., the official lights-out time. She’d been in her cabin an hour later, presumably asleep, when the counselor had conducted her nightly rounds. No one had guessed her plans. No one had seen her leave her bed. No one had even missed her until reveille the following day. She’d been quiet in the days preceding her disappearance, but her behavior hadn’t raised any flags. In fact, she’d been making progress—staying off drugs, participating in the camp activities, cooperating with the other kids.
Parker turned to the photos next. The first shot showed the historic lookout tower in a clearing amid the trees. Next came a close-up of the dead child’s body—her skull bashed, her neck at an unnatural angle, the ground around her saturated with blood.
His stomach pitching badly, he spared a glance at Brynn. Every trace of color had fled her face. “Are you all right?”
She swallowed visibly, her eyes huge in her bloodless face. “It’s not easy to look at.”
“Death never is.” The wooden tower was ninety feet high, and the girl’s small body bore the results of her fall. “It’s worse when you know the person. The photos I saw of my brother...” He shook his head, not wanting to revisit the horror of Tommy’s death. But those crime scene photos still plagued his nightmares, even after all this time. Not to mention the gruesome memories of his father’s death.
Brynn’s gaze connected with his. And the compassion in her eyes caused a sliver of warmth to unfurl in his chest. She’d cared about his brother—which begged the question: What role did she have in his death?
But they would discuss Tommy soon enough. He had to fulfill his part of the bargain first.
Steering his mind back to Erin Walker, he flipped to the next photo. Even though he’d braced himself, the close-up view made his stomach clench. How much worse would this be for Brynn?
“You said you met this girl on the streets?” he asked, hoping to distract her from the gore.
“That’s right.”
“Any idea why she ran away?”
Her face still chalky, she managed a shrug. “The same reason they all do, I guess. They’re desperate. Some are neglected or abused. Or their parents have started a second family and don’t want them around. Or sometimes they’ve made a mistake—committed a crime or gotten pregnant—and they’re afraid their parents will go berserk. In Erin’s case, she used drugs.”
“Like Tommy.”
“Yes, like Tommy.” Sympathy softened her eyes. “They’re confused, angry, ashamed. They can’t control their feelings and don’t know how to repair the damage they’ve done. And they don’t think anyone will help.”
Guilt fisted in Parker’s throat. He shifted his gaze to the plate-glass window and stared unseeing at the afternoon rush-hour traffic whizzing past. He and Tommy hadn’t been close. The five-year gap in their ages had kept them apart. When he’d gone off to college, his brother had still been in junior high. But to think that Tommy preferred the violence of street life to asking him for help...
“I tried to help him,” Parker said, his voice low. “I took him to counselors, enrolled him in programs. But nothing worked.” Their battles had only grown more heated until his brother had split for good.
“It’s hard to reach an addict. The chemicals change how they think. I tried to help Erin, too. But in the end I only made things worse.”
“How do you figure that?”
Her eyes turned pained. “I convinced her to go to a shelter, a place I know for teenage girls. She was there for a couple of days, and then her parents picked her up. I thought I’d done the right thing. She told me she wanted to get clean. And her parents had the resources to help her. They got her into that expensive camp.”
“You don’t think you caused her death?”
A bleak look filled her eyes. She opened her mouth to speak, then shook her head. “Maybe not directly. But she’d probably be alive right now if I hadn’t persuaded her to go home.”
He could relate to that. How many times had he second-guessed himself, wishing he’d done something—anything—different with Tommy, something that might have saved his brother’s life?
His gaze stayed on hers. And something shifted inside him, like a long-locked door creaking open to admit the light. And he knew that she understood. She carried the same burden of guilt, the same unending remorse.
Suddenly, his mind flashed back to the image of that scrawny girl standing beside his brother, and he wondered again what had driven her from home.
He tamped down on the question hard. He didn’t need to know Brynn’s life story. He didn’t need to forge a connection with her. And he definitely couldn’t afford to desire her, not when she could be a suspect in his brother’s death.
Although he was beginning to have doubts about that.
Alarmed, he jerked his gaze back to the file. What was he thinking? He was breaking the fundamental rule of police work, letting her get to him. He had to keep his distance, hold on to his objectivity to find out the truth about Tommy’s death.
“Here’s the autopsy,” he said. Still appalled at the direction of his thoughts, he checked the diagnosis at the top. “She died of blunt force trauma, consistent with