She chuckled at how he didn’t understand her feelings any better than he had six years ago. “You think you just reopened it?”
He shrugged. “Maybe it wasn’t me, but Amy Wilcox’s disappearance had to have brought everything up again—all those feelings.”
“She isn’t the only victim since Lexi.”
But Rebecca didn’t need to remind him of that. She could see his frustration in the slight lines around his eyes and mouth. She could feel the tension in his body. He blamed himself, as much as the serial killer, for the loss of those other victims.
“No, she’s not,” he acknowledged, and the guilt was in the gruffness of his deep voice.
“But you never came here when those other victims first went missing,” she said.
He held up the photo he’d brought with him—the photo of Amy Wilcox with Lexi. “I didn’t find any connection between them and your sister.”
“But their killer...”
“We don’t have enough evidence to make that conclusion,” he replied—uttering one of those patented FBI press release statements.
She nearly smiled. Maybe it was because he had been recruited so young into the Bureau that he was such a company man. Or maybe it was what she had concluded six years ago—all he cared about was his job.
“The media hasn’t had any problem leaping to conclusions,” she said. And not just about the murders but about her son’s paternity.
But they weren’t wrong about that. Had they been wrong about all the murders being the work of one killer?
“I didn’t lead those reporters here,” Jared assured her.
“I know.”
While his specialty was profiling killers, he had made certain that he had all the skills of a field agent. He was an expert shot and defensive driver. That was why she’d been so excited when he had been assigned her sister’s case—because she’d heard all the media praise about him.
But the media didn’t praise him anymore—because he’d never found Lexi’s killer. Or Lexi’s body.
“The pain wasn’t just reopened,” she said. “It never closed.”
He flinched again, like he had looking at the pictures of a brutalized Lexi. “I’m sorry you never got closure.”
Everyone talked about needing closure. Needing a body to bury. Or a killer to curse.
“I’m not sure closure would make it hurt any less,” she admitted. Lexi would still be dead.
He stepped closer to her, and his voice was low and gruff when he said, “I want to get you closure. I really want to find Lexi and her killer.”
“I told you—”
He pressed his fingers over her lips. Then his eyes—those eerie, pale brown eyes—darkened as his pupils dilated. His fingers slid across her mouth...caressingly.
Her breath caught in her lungs, and her pulse quickened with awareness and desire. How could she want him again? She wasn’t hurting over Lexi’s loss alone. She was hurting over losing Jared, too.
He jerked his hand away from her mouth. “I know who you think killed your sister. I know.”
And she waited for him to refute her belief like he always had. But he stayed silent again.
“You’re not telling me I’m wrong this time,” she said.
He emitted a weary-sounding sigh. “I’m not as cocky as I was six years ago.”
He was different. No less serious or determined or driven but perhaps a little less confident. Lexi’s case had shaken his confidence.
And maybe it had him second-guessing himself.
Because now he uttered the question she’d been waiting for him to ask since she’d overheard his confrontation with the reporters.
“Is he my son, Becca?” he asked. “Is Alex mine?”
Jared’s heart pounded fast and furiously as he waited for her answer. Or maybe because he’d touched her. He shouldn’t have touched her. Because now he wanted to touch her again.
But if her son was his and she had never told him...
Could he ever forgive her? She had stolen almost six years of her son’s life from him—years he couldn’t get back. But her son couldn’t be almost six years old. He was too small.
Like Jared had been for his age...
No. He shook his head in silent denial of his own thoughts and suspicions.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I have no business asking you that. I must’ve let Kyle Smith get inside my head.” And of course the reporter had just been trying to get a reaction out of him—some scandalous footage to run over and over on his broadcast.
She blinked as her blue eyes widened with confusion. “Kyle Smith?”
“The reporter.” Jared chuckled. “That egomaniac would hate that you don’t know his name.”
She glanced toward the black screen of her TV. “I try not to pay much attention to the news.”
But since she’d known about Amy Wilcox’s disappearance, he doubted that she was any more successful at ignoring the media than he was.
“I’ve been working on that myself.” In his job, he had to know how to handle the media or he could tip off a suspect or undermine his own investigation. He lifted a hand toward his throbbing head. “Maybe I only let him get to me because of the concussion.”
He wished he could blame the head injury. But he suspected that maybe it was wishful thinking instead...that Becca’s son was his. He wanted a connection to her—something more than Lexi’s unsolved murder to bind them together.
“How did you get the concussion?” she asked, her voice soft with concern.
After the way he’d treated her, how could she care about him at all? But that was just her nature, the reason she’d wanted to become a doctor, because she cared about people. All people. It was nothing personal. She’d had six years to realize that, although he hadn’t been sensitive about her feelings, he’d been right. She hadn’t really been in love with him.
“How did you get hurt?” she asked again, and now the concern was in her beautiful eyes as she studied his face, maybe trying to medically determine if he’d checked himself out too soon.
He shrugged off her concern and his own stupidity. “I didn’t stick to just profiling.”
“Do you ever?” she asked, and a twinkle flashed briefly in her blue eyes as if she was teasing him. Maybe she’d forgiven him for how he’d treated her.
“As a profiler, I do have to spend a lot of time out in the field,” he said, “analyzing the crime scenes, the evidence, interviewing suspects, hopefully following leads to more suspects...”
“I know what you do,” she reminded him.
Six years ago he’d kept her apprised of his investigation—probably too apprised. He’d told her when he’d interviewed her sister’s fiancé. But she hadn’t agreed with his findings. Even if the guy hadn’t had an alibi, Jared truly hadn’t felt like the man had killed his fiancée. Harris Mowery’s shock and anger over Lexi’s disappearance had seemed very genuine. But maybe Jared had been so cocky and overconfident back then that he hadn’t read Harris as well as he’d thought he had.