Love by Association

But he was going to wait for her to tell him that before he’d know for sure. He’d verified enough.

For the first time in too long, he was going to accept someone on faith. At least, he was going to give it his best shot.

Because Chantel Johnson was different. Though he had no explanation for it, in a world of lies, she inspired truth.

* * *

FATE WAS ON her side. Chantel was meant to be doing this job. Not only had fate intervened in the form of the waitress when Chantel might have started making out in a restaurant with a subject. But she’d come to the rescue a second time, before Chantel had given in to more of a temptation than the chocolate fondue they’d ordered would have offered.

Chantel didn’t need to be hit over the head to know that fate, in the form of an important client, had whisked temptation away. All the way across the globe. Probably because the sweet knowing force had recognized the danger Colin Fairbanks had been presenting that night.

A danger that had been on the winning side of a seasoned, capable and loyal cop. By the time they’d finished feeding each other meat, devouring each other with their eyes the entire time, she’d been weak in more than the knees.

If he’d asked to come up to her hotel room that night, she might have invited him. If she’d actually had a room to go to.

But no more. She’d spent Sunday on the job. Arresting a perp for shoplifting. And answering a call that had her stumbling upon a portable meth lab in a big-box store bathroom. When a call had come in late for a missing older woman who was suffering from memory loss, she stayed late, joined the search and was outside the home, helping with crowd dispersement when the woman was brought safely back just before midnight.

By Monday she was rested and firmly committed to her assignments. Period. She’d continue to see Colin. He was the most expedient means—possibly the only means at the moment—of successfully preventing another domestic-violence death. Time was of the essence in the Morrison case. She couldn’t risk hurting Colin’s feelings, thereby necessitating that she start over in finding a means to infiltrate Leslie Morrison’s life without drawing attention to the fact that she was doing so.

He was also now a victim, and an invaluable source, in the unresolved, officially unreported rape of his sister. Chantel had been sleepless most of Saturday night, appalled at what she’d heard. A young woman had suffered a horrible crime and then suffered again when nothing was done about it. And more—if what Colin said was true, and she had no reason to believe it wasn’t—there was corruption someplace in the Santa Raquel Police Department.

And she couldn’t rid herself of the idea that the same corruption was putting a gag in Leslie Morrison’s mouth.

She had to find the source in order to help either woman.

Just to make certain that she didn’t tempt fate, she didn’t respond when he texted her on Chantel Johnson’s police-issue cell phone. And when she didn’t keep checking to see if he’d texted a second time, she knew she was good.

Yes, she had it all under control. Which was what she told Wayne when he asked her about the case over lunch Monday at an innocuous diner not far from the station house.

They were facing each other in a red plastic-padded booth, and he needed to get beyond any worry about her and Colin. She had much bigger news to talk about.

“How many quarts of chocolate ice cream did you consume this weekend?” Grease dripped onto his chin as he took a bite of his patty melt.

“None.” Not since Friday.

His eyebrow raised.

Afraid someone they knew might walk in, interrupt the little bit of time they had together before she started her shift and he went home to his wife, she pushed aside the second half of her second burrito and leaned toward him. “I’ve stumbled onto something, Wayne,” she said, her voice low. Not soft, like Johnson’s, just hushed.

“You got something on Morrison already?” He looked impressed, which took a lot of doing.

Chantel shook her head. “I mean, yes, I think I do, but there’s more. I don’t have anything more than a conversation to go on, but I’m as certain as I can be that a cover-up from ten years ago has something to do with Leslie Morrison’s refusal to admit her husband has been abusing her.”

Otherwise, why would Julie think the questions recently raised by Ryder Morrison’s art project would have an impact on what had happened to her ten years before?

She told him about Julie Fairbanks’s rape. About Colin being in law school. About the charges that disappeared.

“Are you sure they made an official complaint?” Wayne asked, eating as they talked.

“Colin was already working in the family law firm, doing paralegal work, before he ever started college. He said Julie made a formal report that night, right after they left the hospital. He’s as certain that the report was filed as he is that a couple of days later it disappeared and charges were never filed.”