Code Name: Grace (Jameson Force Security 6.5)

“Yes,” I murmur.

“I went into my file on Katz to read the reports and portions of the investigation I spearheaded. And I made myself remember how badly I failed you and your parents.”

I’ve always known Clay carries around some level of guilt for not saving my parents. It’s clear he does for all the victims. But I never knew he viewed my parents’ murders as being a failure on his part. Compounded with guilt, it can be an extremely troubling burden to carry.

“How could you have failed us?” I ask with a frown. “You didn’t know us before Katz came into our lives.”

He doesn’t even blink. “Because I knew it was Katz long before he killed your parents.”

“What?” I exclaim, bolting upright and sloshing coffee over the armrest of the couch and my pants. It’s so shocking to hear that I immediately go into denial. “No. That’s not possible.”

“It’s true,” he mutters. “I knew it was him. Deep in my gut.”

My head spins a little, but I try to give Clay the benefit of the doubt. I need more context. “If you knew, why didn’t you arrest him?”

“I couldn’t,” he growls angrily, leaning forward and putting his cup on the coffee table. Mine is still dripping from the bottom onto my legs, but I ignore it. “I didn’t have probable cause, and his alibi had checked out for one of the murders. We knew it was the same guy committing them, so one alibi absolved him as the main suspect. We had two others who had lawyered up and wouldn’t talk to us, so they seemed more probable to the task force as a whole. But not to me… I knew it was Katz.”

I can feel my pulse immediately slow at this explanation. “Clay—”

“Corinne,” he says, leaning toward me so his stare becomes more focused. “I sat across a table from him.” He waves his hand between his body and mine. “I was as close to him as I’m sitting to you now. And I listened to him talk for hours. I fucking knew it was him. Even though he said all the right things and was charming and genial, I could see the psychopath within.”

I shift slightly to put my cup on the table beside the couch, run my palm over my jeans to dry off any remaining coffee clinging to my skin, then reach out to put my hand on his forearm. “But if you didn’t have probable cause, then there was nothing you could do. Surely you have to realize I would never blame you for the constraints by which you had to work.”

“I should have pushed harder on the alibi,” he laments.

“From what I remember, she was solid. Katz’s girlfriend swore he was with her. His cell phone even pinged from her house on the night of those particular murders.”

“I could have made her crack,” he insists.

I don’t know if that’s true, but not once had I ever felt like he hadn’t given one hundred percent to his job. That alibi witness eventually recanted once my eyewitness testimony occurred. His girlfriend—who was a long-forgotten ex by then—admitted to using his cell phone at the time of the murders to make it appear as if he were far away.

He narrows his eyes, his voice changing to a tone I don’t recognize. “I should have planted evidence in his house. Something to connect him.”

“No,” I exclaim harshly. “No. That was not the way.”

“Your parents would be alive if I had,” he shouts.

I yell right back. “And you would have lost your career. Gone to jail.”

He slumps into his chair, pulling his arm out from under my touch. “It would have been worth it to me if I had prevented their deaths.”

I steeple my hands in front of my face, resting my chin on my thumbs. Carefully, I try to come up with the right words. When I think I have them, I pull my legs out from under me, scoot my butt to the edge of the couch cushion, and lean toward Clay until I’m directly in his line of sight. He has no choice but to look at me.

“Clay… this might be hard for you to understand because this has clearly been troubling you for years, but I’ve been able to find peace over my parents’ deaths. Do I miss them? Yes. Do I still mourn them? Yes. But I’ve also been able to build a life for myself that has made me happy, whole, and left me without regrets. And listening to you put this amount of recrimination on yourself about something you had no control over is frankly a little disappointing. Because had you just explained this to me all those years ago, I would have told you even then that I was at peace with everything done to catch Katz.”