hard and sighed. “You had no idea a meth head would kill two people with his bare hands before someone could get in there. You can’t predict what’s going to happen in those cells. Most of the time nothing does.” His jaw tightened, and his eyes narrowed. “The fact is, if my brother hadn’t chosen to be stupid, he’d still be alive.”
His anger vibrated between them. He was still furious with Neil. But not with her. Not anymore. He looked at her and felt frustration swamp him when he couldn’t read her expression. “So do you want me to quit looking into your sister’s kidnapping or not?”
Katie bit her lip and glanced at him. “I don’t know, but knowing you don’t hold me responsible for Neil’s death helps.”
“I don’t, but I’ll be honest, my parents do and I’m afraid I’ll never convince them otherwise.”
She flinched and nodded.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You came to us.”
“I know that.”
He thought about all the work he’d already done, the people he’d questioned, the answers that produced more questions. “I can’t do my job without your cooperation. Your sister’s been missing for fourteen years. Do you want me to keep working on trying to find out what happened to her or not?” Trying to find a person missing for the past fourteen years was hard enough, but trying to find one without the cooperation of the one who’d hired him would be impossible.
“Yes. No.” She hissed out a breath and tightened her fingers around the wheel. After she made a left turn, she said, “It’s harder than I thought it would be.”
“Why?”
“Because every time I look at you, I think of Neil. I think of your father in the morgue and his—” She bit her lip and looked away.
His phone rang and he snagged it, deciding to take the call and give her a bit of breathing room. “Hello?”
“Jordan. This is Erica.”
“What can I do for you?”
“Have you had a chance to talk to Katie?” He and Erica had discussed Katie’s reluctance to have him lead the investigation into her sister’s disappearance.
“In the process now.”
“Sorry, didn’t mean to rush you. I’m just concerned.”
“I know. I’ll give you an update soon.” He hung up and turned back to Katie. “That was Erica.”
“Why did she assign my case to you?” Katie asked.
“Because I had just finished up with one and had the time to take it.” He paused. “Did you tell her anything about our background?”
Katie shook her head.
“So she didn’t know.” He sighed. “Look. If you don’t want me working it, I’ll tell Erica. But you should know everyone is slammed right now. When Erica finally found Molly after three years and brought her home, those front-page headlines had people coming out of the woodwork. There are so many cold-case disappearances with desperate family members thinking Finding the Lost is their only hope. If you back off of Lucy’s case now, it might be a while before someone else can pick it back up.”
She drove without speaking until they were almost to the station. “I don’t know if I can work with you. You’re a constant reminder that I caused someone’s death. How can you work with me day in and day out and not think about him? Not remember? Not feel some kind of anger toward me?” Her low voice reverberated with pain that echoed his own.
His heart hurt when he thought of his twenty-year-old brother. He’d been dead for a little over a year and the pain still cut sometimes.
Neil, the black sheep. The wild young man just sowing his oats. Neil, lying in the coffin because he’d chosen to drink and drive and then get stuck in a cell with the wrong person. Neil, whose dark secrets, known only to Jordan and the medical examiner, went to the grave with him, leaving Jordan with the burden of what to do with them. Especially the question of whether or not to tell his parents the truth about what really had been going on with Neil. Like his drug problem. “Neil doesn’t have anything to do with me doing my job.”
She pulled into the parking lot of the station and turned off the vehicle. She looked at him. “How can you be objective? Your brother is dead because I arrested him and stuck him in a cell with a crazy person. How can you not blame me, too?”
“For starters, you didn’t know the guy was crazy. And second, my brother is dead because he made some really bad choices. I don’t blame you, I blame Neil and the guy who killed him. Period. Those are the only two who deserve the blame.”
“Like you said, your parents don’t feel that way.”
Jordan closed his eyes, remembering his father’s confrontation of Katie at the morgue. Paul Gray had stared daggers at Katie. “You killed my son!”
Katie had winced and held out a hand. “I’m so sorry this happened. Neil ran a stop sign right in front of me. I pulled him over and he was—”
“You did this. You!” He’d jabbed a finger, stopping millimeters from her chest, cutting off her sorrowful words. “Neil called me. Said he didn’t know why he’d been arrested, that it was a case of mistaken identity. You made a mistake, and an innocent boy died because of it. I hope you can sleep tonight knowing how well you did your duty.” The thick sarcasm cut.
“Sir—”
His father had turned on his heel and marched away, never looking back. And Jordan had just stood there and let the man blast Katie. Then again, he’d wanted to do the same thing. Before he’d learned the truth about everything. That Neil was into drugs, buying, selling and using. And he was in deep.
The pain of that day swept over him once again.
The agony on Katie’s face shook him. “He wasn’t innocent like your parents believe, but Neil shouldn’t have died because of that choice,” she reiterated with a whisper.
“No, he shouldn’t have.” Jordan rubbed a hand down his face. “This is why you’ve been avoiding me?”
“Mostly.”
He nodded. “All right. We’ve gotten this far in talking about it, but we’ll have to finish this conversation later. Let’s go see what our prisoner has to say.”
Katie nodded and climbed from the car.
* * *
Katie stepped into the police station. Jordan nodded to an officer and said, “I want to speak to Kurt over there. His father and mine are friends. I’ll be there in just a minute.”
She nodded and took a right down a long hallway. She stopped in front of a room labeled Interrogation Room #2 and took a deep breath.
Questioning a suspect always gave her an adrenaline rush. Mr. Wesley Wray was no different. She knew Jordan would be watching from the observation window. Katie stepped into the interrogation room and dropped a file on the table in front of Wray. She sat
