And how had he even known it was her? She’d only been thrown into his speech class that one semester when she was fifteen. That was ten years ago and she’d gone through a hell of a lot of changes since then. When she looked back at photographs from that period, she hardly resembled her younger self.
Well, whatever his reasons were, Rayne thought as she watched him cross through the parking lot, she was about to find out.
“You might not remember me—” His voice, deep, low, rumbled over her like a warming breeze in April.
“I remember you.” A hint of a smile curved her lips. “Cole Garrison, right?”
Her eyes swept over the tan camel-hair coat he wore. It was a complete departure from the black windbreaker he used to favor. He was dressed like a businessman, not like the brooding heartthrob half the female population of Aurora High had mooned over. Time caught up to all of them, she supposed.
“Nice coat,” she commented. Looking back, she realized that it was probably an inane thing to say, but she wasn’t at her best when caught off guard in a social situation.
This wasn’t a social situation, Rayne reminded herself. The man was clearly here about his brother. But again, what did that have to do with her?
“Thanks.” Surprising her, he took hold of her arm, giving every impression that he wanted to lead her off to the side. “Have you got a minute?”
She glanced down at his hand, her inference clear. She didn’t like being led around, even by men who looked as if they could start up a dead woman’s heart with one well-timed kiss.
Cole released her arm.
She remained standing where she was. “You want to see me.” It wasn’t quite a question as it was an astonished statement.
“Yes.”
Her eyes never left his. “Not your brother.”
He’d learned the value of planning things out. He wouldn’t have been where he was if he hadn’t. There were arrangements to be made. “I’ll see him after I talk to you.”
She shifted to the side, allowing several uniformed policemen to pass and enter the building. “Why?”
“Because I hear that you’re not satisfied.”
Rayne blinked, drawing a complete blank. “Excuse me?”
“You’re not satisfied that Eric committed the murder. That he did what they arrested him for.”
The pieces pulled themselves together. For a second there, when he’d said satisfied, her mind had leaped to an entirely different set of circumstances. Because she wasn’t satisfied. Her life was good now, far better than it had been for many turbulent, troubled years, and her family was the best she could ever hope for, having stuck by her when even archangels would have bailed. But she was haunted by the feeling that there was something more out there.
She wasn’t sure just what, only that it was something. And even though it had no shape, no name, not even a vague definition, that feeling called out to her.
Rayne was quick to rally together her thoughts. “I’m really not the one you should be talking to,” she pointed out. “I’m not handling the case. I wasn’t even the first officer on the scene.”
That had been Richard Longwell, a patrolman she’d been through the academy with. They still maintained a friendship, although distant now since she had surpassed him by becoming the youngest detective on the force. It had driven an unspoken wedge between them.
The case belonged to Webber and Rollins, both of whom were very territorial when it came to their cases. “I can point out the detectives—” she began to offer, turning toward the entrance.
He cut her off. “No.”
“No?” She was lost again. The man persisted in not making any sense.
This time, Cole moved so that his body blocked her immediate exit. He didn’t want to talk to the first officer on the scene or the detective handling the case, at least not yet. Because facing them alone, he would be given the polite but disdainful treatment accorded to all family members. As far as the police saw him, he was the brother of a murderer. No matter what kind of a picture was painted for the public at large, once the police had a suspect, the burden of proof was on the accused’s side. The accused had to prove he was innocent.
Cole needed someone involved, but not in the middle of it. He needed someone at least partially sympathetic to his cause. Which had brought him to a former hippie/wild child.
“No,” he repeated firmly. “I want to talk to you.”
They waltzed around in circles and as gorgeous as this dance partner was, she had a desk to get to and overdue reports to file. “At the risk of repeating myself, why?”
He gave her the same reason he’d just cited. “Because I heard that you don’t believe Eric did it.”
She’d done a little discreet nosing around on her own since Eric’s arrest less than a week ago, but she certainly hadn’t made her feelings public. As far as she knew, only her family was aware that she wasn’t on board with what the D.A.’s office believed.
Unless the man was into mind reading, there was no way he could have known.
Her eyes narrowed as she looked at him. “And just where did you hear that?”
He waved a dismissive hand at her question. “That doesn’t matter—”
“Oh, but I think it does.” Her voice was deceptively calm. She didn’t like not knowing things, especially when they concerned her. It irritated her beyond belief, chafing her like a stiff tag sewn into the back of a shirt.
His eyes darkened impatiently. “I don’t have time to argue.”
“Well then you’ve come to the wrong place,” she informed him, “because my family tells me that I could argue the devil out of his pitchfork, if only in the interests of his own self-defense.”
Cole did the unexpected. Rather than make a derogatory comment or utter an uncensored remark about what others referred to as her infuriating behavior, he smiled.
He smiled and she had the exact same reaction she’d had that very first time when she’d collided with him in the lunchroom. Butterflies. Big, fat butterflies with enormous wingspans that fluttered and tickled the edges of her entire inner structure with every movement.
For all intents and purposes, for a tiny instance in time, she was fifteen again. Fifteen and a veritable outcast, self-made or not, from every scenario life had to offer including the one that involved her own family. The only normal path she took was to have a crush, a crush that was born that day, only to die ignobly several weeks later when she’d overheard Cole making a comment about her to a friend of his. He said she looked like a clown. And she’d felt utterly and completely devastated, not to mention angry and humiliated. It took a long time for a phoenix to rise out of those ashes.
Funny what the mind chose to remember. She hadn’t thought about that moment in maybe nine years or so.
“Did I say something funny?” she challenged, her cool evaporating slightly as the memory of that day grew a little more vivid.
“Under any other circumstances, I’d pay to see a demonstration of that,” he told her. “But right now—”
“Your brother’s under arrest for murder and your parents won’t put up the one million dollars to bail him out,” she concluded. “Not exactly the Brady Bunch, are you?” God help her, but for one moment she felt smug. Her family would have never subjected her to the kind of public humiliation that Eric’s had heaped on him. They would have sold the house