her, he slid his fingers up her arms. Calluses caught on her smooth skin, the rush of the scent of geraniums was intoxicating. “Waylynn, I’m sorry. I know how much your work meant—means—to you.”
It was her entire life, her career. Her ticket out of a rough childhood, which he’d most recently learned included a murder accusation. She’d moved on from that life, had obviously worked hard for it. College, graduate school, becoming one of the foremost experts in the country on genetics. And in the flash of a flame, it was gone. Didn’t seem fair.
“Does this place have a shower?” she asked.
“Bathroom is past the kitchen on the right.” Elliot hiked a thumb over his shoulder and turned slightly to give her a line of sight. Despite the bloody tint to her blond hair, the smear of her eyeliner and mascara, and the fact she’d lost everything that mattered to her, Waylynn held her head high.
“Take your time. Clean towels are hanging behind the door,” he said.
A single nod was all he got in response as she pulled out of his grasp and headed toward the bathroom.
The lock clicked into place and he didn’t waste any time. Whoever’d framed her for murder had started the fire in her lab. He was sure of it. The timing. The opportunity. They both lined up. The SOB might be dangerous, but Elliot was worse. Because they’d never see him or his team coming.
Extracting his laptop from one of the black duffel bags on the couch, he flipped it open and took a seat at the counter. Framing Waylynn to cover up a murder was one thing. Alexis’s murder could’ve had nothing to do with Waylynn, but his next-door neighbor happened to make the perfect scapegoat with her sordid past. Coming after Waylynn’s research? That was personal. Someone was hunting her.
The unsub—unknown subject—had to know about her father’s murder accusation in order for the frame job to stick. Except those records had been sealed because Waylynn had been a minor at the time. Which meant the bastard was either connected to the case or had premeditated pinning the murder on Waylynn by looking for something incriminating. He couldn’t discount any possibility. Not when it came to keeping her alive.
Elliot glanced toward the bathroom at the sound of water hitting tile. It’d take a few minutes for her to wash off the blood. Focusing on the screen, he pulled up the internet browser and typed in her name. His finger hovered over the enter key. Of all the people he’d investigated, of all the chances he’d had to dig into her past, he’d kept Waylynn’s off-limits, respecting her privacy. He had an entire team of coworkers. Former SEALs and Rangers, an ex-National Security Agency consultant, a military investigator, Blackhawk Security’s forensics expert and a psychologist. He’d worked with them for over a year, trusted them with his life, but Waylynn was different. Special. Forbidden.
And yet someone was trying to hurt her.
He hit the button. The screen brightened as headlines filled the page. Top stories included the massive progress she’d made in the bioengineering community, but one stood out among the rest. “Rhinebeck, NY, fifteen-year-old acquitted of father’s murder.” Elliot read through the article. Waylynn had spent over three weeks in county lockup after her arrest on school grounds. Never gave a statement, never tried to blame the crime on someone else, or offered an alibi. Police had questioned her cancer-stricken mother at the time, but ultimately concluded Nora Hargraves didn’t have the strength to lift the missing handgun used to kill her husband in cold blood. Without the murder weapon, the prosecution had no other choice than to release the teen despite ample motive and opportunity. Her mother had died during the trial.
Hell. In the year they’d been neighbours, he’d known Waylynn had lost her mother when she was younger, and about the foster family who’d taken her in until she’d turned eighteen, but he hadn’t realized the circumstances. Elliot leaned back in his chair to break up the tightness in his throat. He’d been on his own since he was fourteen. Voluntarily. Waylynn had everyone taken from her in a three-week span. He glanced toward the bathroom.
But none of this narrowed down a suspect pool. Nathan Hargraves had been shot nine times and died from massive blood loss. The forensic pathologist who’d signed the death certificate hadn’t gone into more detail other than a final conclusion reading “homicide” and a note that reported a mere five dollars in cash had been found on the body at the time of the autopsy.
No other family. No friends who’d seemed too beat up about her father’s death. No reason for someone to come after Waylynn. He’d have to do some more digging, but if Alexis’s murder and the fire at the lab had anything to do with Waylynn’s past, he couldn’t see it. Which meant their suspect had learned about the trial, but only planned to use it to secure an arrest fifteen years later. Would’ve worked, too. If police had recovered the gun.
Elliot ran a hand through his hair, then rested his elbow against the counter. She hadn’t told him any of this. In the year they’d been neighbors, she’d never mentioned her parents, her hometown, the fact she’d been in the foster system at the age of fifteen. Then again, how often had he talked about his parents? His hometown?
“All right, Alexis Jacobs, show me what you’ve got.” He rolled back his right shoulder, working through the stiffness that still paralyzed the scar tissue around the bullet wound there. If the unsub wasn’t connected to Waylynn’s trial, then someone wanted the assistant dead for a reason. What had Waylynn said when he’d found her in the bathroom this morning? Alexis wanted to meet because she’d found something within the study they’d been conducting at the lab. But with all of Waylynn’s research destroyed, he doubted the assistant’s discovery hadn’t been destroyed with it. He scanned through Alexis’s social media pages. Three different sites. Hundreds of pictures. But this one… Elliot stopped scrolling and straightened. The redheaded beauty with freckles had taken a photo of herself a few days before her death, showing off what looked like a new tattoo of a Q with a heart on her wrist. The Queen of Hearts. But it was what was behind her that urged him to lean closer to the screen. A black external hard drive sticking out of the victim’s purse.
“Bingo.” Waylynn had said Genism didn’t allow employees to back up their files on foreign devices, but what if Alexis hadn’t followed company rules? He needed to get that hard drive.
The bathroom door clicked open and in his next breath, Waylynn rounded into the kitchen. Damn, he hadn’t even heard her shut off the water. Hair still wet, she notched her chin level with the floor and curled her fingers into tight fists at her sides. Defiant. Strong. Sexy as hell.
“Well, don’t you look nice when you’re not covered in blood.” Nervous energy exploded across his back as he closed the laptop, sliding it against the granite. She didn’t need to see photos of the woman she’d found in her bathtub. Didn’t need to know he’d looked into her trial. He drew his eyebrows together when she didn’t respond. “You okay?”
“I want to know who’s trying to destroy my life.” Determination had cooled the day’s confusion in her expression. The tears had dried, her jaw set, and she focused 100 percent on him. “You’re a private investigator. I’m hiring you and your firm. Find out who did this to me.”
“WE NEED TO get to my lab.” There were plenty of monsters who knew how to play at being human. Which one of them had ruined her life? The possibilities were endless. Someone from her own lab. A rival geneticist. One of the volunteers from her studies. Her research into the warrior gene fulfilled her in a way nothing else had managed to for her entire life. She wasn’t going to let that go. Not for anything. The person responsible wasn’t going to get away with it. Waylynn
