“What are we going to do?”
“Call the cops.”
“You are the cops.”
“Shh!” He glanced around. “I’m undercover,” he hissed. “I’d like to keep it that way.”
“My family knows what you do for a living, Trevor.”
“But they don’t know that I’m here in that capacity. We dated in high school and then again a couple of years ago. They’re used to our on-again off-again relationship.”
Her family might be, but her heart wasn’t. It broke every time he said goodbye. Or just disappeared from her life, like he had the last time.
Trevor reached for his phone, and his calm, cool attitude helped steady her own pounding pulse. He made the report and gripped her arm. “The cops are on the way as well as the Medical Examiner and a crime-scene unit. Go tell your parents what’s going on and I’ll wait for the others to get here.”
Jen nodded then slipped around Trevor. She checked in on little one-week-old Christopher who still slept soundly in the middle of her parents’ king-size bed. The bathroom and the bedroom weren’t connected, so with the door shut, he probably hadn’t heard a thing. Outside, she headed down the grassy slope to the edge of the lake where her family had gathered to swim and water ski.
The annual family reunion. Every year, there seemed to be some new kind of drama with one of her family members. She had to say, a murder topped the list for intensity. Hysteria threatened to overtake her again, and she had to stop to catch her breath. She was a nurse. She could deal with this. She’d seen dead bodies before. It had just never hit so close to home.
Oh God, help me not to fall apart.
Trevor secured the area while he waited for the sirens. He studied the dead man’s unfamiliar face as he snapped several photos with his phone. A knife in the chest meant a frontal attack. Had there been an argument? Had anyone heard anything?
He hated that Jen had walked in on this. His abrupt reappearance had already disrupted her life and resurrected feelings she’d probably considered dead and buried. He saw the spark in her eyes again every time she looked at him, and it gave him hope they might have a future together after all.
If she could forgive him.
Trevor lifted his head and listened. Sirens. He hoped Jen had a chance to fill her parents in on the situation before the cops arrived.
***
Jen approached her mother, Sybil Green, a fifty-six year old who looked ten years younger. Jen tapped her shoulder and pulled her away from her three-year-old grandson. Jen’s brother, Thomas, had been the first to make his mother a grandmother and Jen a doting aunt. Followed by Jen’s sister, Madeline, who’d just given birth last week.
Now everyone waited with bated breath for Jen to find someone and settle down. Her heart cramped at the thought. The only man she’d ever considered possible husband material had been Trevor.
From the moment he’d sat beside her in sophomore English, he’d intrigued her. He’d disappeared after college, but a mutual friend had set them up again two years ago. And when he’d taken her to church to work in his niece’s first-grade Sunday School class, her heart had been his all over again. Then he’d stomped it to pieces when he left without a word.
Her mother frowned. “What is it?”
Jen swallowed hard. How did one say this? “A man was killed in your bathroom. The police are on the way. We need to tell dad.”
Her mother gaped. “Christopher! He’s sleeping on my bed.”
“He’s fine. He was still sleeping when I checked on him before coming to find you. Trevor’s with the…body.” She shuddered. Dead bodies didn’t normally give her the heebies. As an ER nurse, she’d seen death before in many different forms. She’d just never seen it on the floor of her mother’s bathroom.
“I’ll find your father.”
“What’s going on?” Sherry, her brother’s wife, stepped up beside Jen.
“Someone killed a man in mom’s bathroom,” Jen whispered.
Sherry paled and gaped.
It didn’t take long for word to spread. Jen looked for the cousin Trevor said was involved in selling babies—had he brought a killer here, too?
Justin Clark was tall, with dark hair and a smile the girls loved. He was talking to Pierce Hastings, a family friend and her father’s lawyer.
Trevor stepped onto the porch. Several police officers followed him. One of the officers held up a hand and her family quieted. “We’re going to need to take a statement from all of you. If you know anything about the man who is dead, if you saw or heard anything strange, would you raise your hand? We’ll want to talk to you first.”
Not one hand lifted.
She looked again at Justin. He was her childhood playmate, the cousin whose shoulder she’d used to spill her tears onto when Trevor had walked away from her without a backward glance two years ago. Justin had vowed to tear the guy apart for her.
His constant loyalty and willingness to be her champion stiffened Jen’s spine. Trevor was wrong and she vowed to prove it.
No matter what.
Finally, the last officer left, as had most of the family. Little Christopher lay snuggled in his mother’s arms. Madeline had had the baby monitor with her at the time of the murder, but hadn’t heard anything else that would help them figure out what had happened in the bathroom.
Trevor watched as the body was loaded into the ambulance.
“Who was he?” Jen asked.
“He didn’t have any ID on him. They’ll fingerprint him and see if anything comes up in IAFIS.”
She shuddered and shook her head. “How awful.”
He gripped her fingers and squeezed. “I’m sorry, Jen.”
She looked at him with such tenderness… He swallowed hard, praying he wasn’t stirring up something that would hurt them both. Acting as her boyfriend was one thing, losing his heart to her all over again when she might never forgive him was another. He steeled himself and refocused his thoughts.
The police had released the scene and Trevor had managed to get a hold of a friend with a crime-scene clean-up business. He’d promised to come right out and take care of the mess in the bathroom.
Trevor’s attention shifted to his ringing phone. “Hold on while I get this.”
She nodded and turned to hug her mother who was still in tears over the incident. Jen hugged her. “It’ll be all right, Mom.”
Trevor refused to let the pang in his heart distract him from the call. Detective Brandon Hayes was Trevor’s local contact and partner on the baby ring case.
Brandon said, “Our informant claims it’s all supposed to go down tomorrow, but he’s not sure when.”
“Press him. I need a time.”
“Just keep Justin Clark in your sights. He’ll lead you to the drop.”
“Keep your phone on. As soon as I know, we’ll need back up.”
“Of course I will.”
“Sorry. I just want this cleared up as quick as possible.”