Page 64 of The Secrets She Keeps

“I’ll be here.” Where else would she be?Thiswas where Heather belonged. Heather kissed Emilia on her little forehead and passed her over to Crispin, who was already waiting with a wet cloth.

Time to deal with Commander Butthead McKellen.

Damn it. She was on vacation. She would far rather stay home baking cookies with a million adorable Coleson children than spend five minutes with that man. But Heather had learned a long time ago—life wasn’t often what she wanted. Just what she had to make the best of. Somehow.

41

A knock jerkedDaniel out of what he was working on. He looked up. He’d lost track of time. He had everything they knew about the OPJ case and Sol Kimball and Steve Wilson spread out over his desk. They were connected. That wasn’t in dispute now.

The TSP were just foot soldiers, used by someone—or multiple someones—to do their dirty work. For cold, hard cash that just “magically” appeared in bank accounts. Sol Kimball had insisted on that. So who would have the power and the funds to utilize a damned police force as a private army? The connections? The know-how to get it all started in the first place?

Those were questions he’d been trying to answer for too damned long. Now, he had bank account records in front of him. From Sol Kimball and Steve Wilson, looking for the common threads.

“Well, here I am, boss. Coming in on my vacation. I am so dedicated,” she said. In the sweetest voice he had ever heard. He had to wonder how long it had taken the beautiful beast to perfect that tone. She had to know it would get beneath a man’s skin and drive him crazy. She just had to.

Daniel studied Lieutenant Heather Coleson again. She wore faded jeans that clung, a thin red T-shirt—ironically, it promoted the diner in Masterson—and a black-zippered hoodie. Her brown hair was pulled back from her face in a long ponytail. No makeup. No jewelry.

She had the most beautiful face he had ever seen, this woman. But she looked exhausted. And her eyes showed a million secrets.

She was thinner than she had been a few weeks ago. He was almost certain of it. Concern hit him. He was starting to see through her. To see the fear and anxiety. The pain.

Damn it. He wanted to fix everything for her. “Come in. This won’t take long.”

“Gotcha, boss.”

He hated the way she called him that. The way she just seemed to pull away from him—even sitting across the desk.

She looked at the reports on his desk. They were her reports. He saw her pale. Saw one hand cover her stomach. She felt sick seeing them, didn’t she? So had he. She had deserved better than this.

“What do you want to know?”

“Details.” He was the damned commander of the Major Crimes unit. He was used to asking the darkest questions. To dealing with people’s pain. But it still left a bad taste in his mouth. “I need to know what Steve Wilson ever told you about people he knew.”

“Hell, McKellen, ask much? Everyone assumes we had athing,but we really didn’t. I met him when he transferred into Wichita Falls four years ago during a really nasty drug trafficking case. He asked me out a few times, I was resistant. Career-focused. Wanted to move up in thislovelyestablishment and was focused on my family. Boy, was I a naive idiot.” She paused for a moment. Checked something on her phone. Helooked. It was a photo. Of her little girls. When she next looked at him, there was determination in those devil-dark eyes of hers.

“Go on.”

“A case went bad. Fast. Dead teenagers. Still open. Never did figure out why those kids died. We were all pretty shaken—at least I was. And I said, ‘Sure,’ and we went out for a drink. I normally don’t drink. We had a few more dates. Things turned intimate. Twice, and to be honest, looking back, I’m not so sure I was fullyawareof how that happened either. Get my meaning? Some of the details are damned fuzzy when I think about them now when they shouldn’t be.”

Daniel understood. But there would never be a way to know. That bastard Wilson would never fully pay for what he had done to this woman. He just wouldn’t.

“I’ll never know, and at this point, I don’t care. Frankie was the result. I felt obligated to tell him, even though I’d told him no more, that I wasn’t interested in anything with him long term. He’d had a few blow-ups on the job that concerned me, and I told him to hit the road long before there was ever a third time between us. He wasn’t happy with impending fatherhood and beat me almost unconscious right then and there. I reported him to Stillman and Winkler the instant I could. Men I had an established working relationship with, even trusted. Men I considered friendly colleagues. They made it clear I wasn’t to say a damned thing about what he did. They supposedly ‘ordered’ him off. That didn’t work. The next time he attacked me about six months after Frankie was born, I reported him—again. Learned my lesson with that one. I was to just keep my mouth shut, no matter what. And they made it clear I had a baby sister out there just starting in forensics. In the field. On scenes. Third shift. And all alone. I got the message. You do the math.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Reporting to the TSP hasn’t exactly brought me a lot of good luck.” She pulled out her phone. “But…what can it hurt this time?”

She flipped her screen around. Daniel read quickly.

Your time is coming, bitch. You are going to get what you deserve. Keep your service weapon handy. You are going to need it.

“This was this morning.”

“You are still getting threats and harassment. Even with him in a coma.” Daniel’s blood chilled. He hadn’t realized. He should have. He should have known. Of course. Wilson hadfriendsin the TSP. Kimball had made that clear.

And they would blameher.Shit.

“Every day. No surprise. Been getting them every day since Eastman too. Well, I’ve been getting them for a lot longer than that. Almost four years, actually. Since the moment Stevie learned he was going to be a daddy, actually. But the rest of the family gets threats now too.”

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