Allison Brennan - See No Evil

“I’m sorry about your brother, but it was an accident.”

“So?”

“You weren’t drinking-if you were, you’d have been disbarred and probably imprisoned. It was raining, but I’ll bet if I went up to that road the posted speed limit would have been forty.”

Julia stared at Connor. She remembered five years ago when he was a hot-tempered cop stuck in the middle of an internal investigation he wanted no part of. He was still hot-blooded, but age-and experience-had calmed him.

Or had it? What did she really know about Connor Kincaid’s life since she told him his choice was testify or prison?

And for the first time in the last five years she wondered if she had made the right decision.

Connor had gone against orders and involved himself in the takedown of crooked cops he was ordered to stay away from. Not only that, but he broke more laws than Julia could count on both hands.

Laws must be upheld. They had to mean something. If they could be disregarded at any time, whatever the reason, wasn’t that the first step toward anarchy? The law grounded Julia, gave her strength and purpose. But Connor Kincaid was a good man, and maybe she should have looked more into giving him a second chance than laying down the rule of law and lecturing him on right and wrong.

Julia had broken no laws when Matt was killed, but she harbored more guilt than most criminals. She didn’t understand why her niece didn’t confide in her about the rape, but she did understand why Emily didn’t turn Victor in.

And for the first time, she began to understand the rocks Connor Kincaid had been wedged between when he broke the law for justice.

She was on the other side of the door. Connor hoped she wasn’t naked, that she had the sense to sleep in her clothes.

He had locked his door. Not that Julia Chandler would step foot into his bedroom, but it would make him pause long enough to unlock his door and think about what he would be doing if he touched her. Stop long enough to remember.

He still couldn’t believe he’d brought her into his house. He never brought women home. Of course, Julia wasn’t really “a woman,” someone he was dating or thinking of dating or sleeping with or thinking of sleeping with, or any other foolish thing like that. She was a district attorney and she’d hired him.

Yep, keep the facts firmly planted in mind. Don’t think about her long legs or big eyes or silky hair or the way her head fell against his shoulder when she drifted off to sleep in the truck. Don’t think about those lips and how much he wanted to kiss them. Don’t think about Julia naked and underneath his body asking him to make love to her.

Damn, he needed a shower. Cold.

Remember that she forced you to give up everything you believed in, everything you ever wanted to be.

How could he forget? She’d manipulated him into an internal affairs investigation he wanted no part of. He wasn’t going to turn on his own. He’d wanted to handle it his own way.

Two dead girls sealed his fate.

In the heat of the summer, Connor Kincaid had gone out on a call. He’d just taken his detective exam and was awaiting results, hoping to land in the gang resistance detail. He had hope for some of these kids. Not all of them, not most of them, but a few of them. That was all he needed. They were the consummate underdogs, kids whose fathers were dead or in prison and whose mothers worked two jobs or did drugs or plain didn’t care. Many of these kids were in foster care, a system so broke that it would have to be destroyed completely before it could be rebuilt. Connor learned early on that he had a knack for working with these kids. But for now he was a street cop, one of the best.

The call came from the San Diego Mission de Alcala, the first mission in the California chain and an active Catholic parish and tourist attraction. But it was now five in the morning and he was coming off graveyard shift, first responder to the tragedy.

The dead girls were huddled together in a pew in a small chapel off the main church. They’d broken into the church instead of going to the hospital or to the resident pastor who lived in a small bungalow on the far side of the Mission. One look and Connor knew why they hadn’t sought medical care for their extensive injuries. They were illegals. They didn’t want to be sent home.

The young priest had a long face, made more homely and sad when looking at the girls. “This isn’t the first time.”

“Excuse me, Padre?”

“The young girls-they bring them over the border every day to sell their bodies for a chance at freedom. When they don’t perform, they are killed. Disposed of like garbage.” He looked at Connor, imploring him with eyes so blue they seemed heavenly even surrounded by death. “But you know of this, don’t you?”

“Me? I have nothing to do with this. I agree it’s-”

The priest shook his head. “Your kind. The police. If you look where you don’t want to look, you’ll see the truth.” Again, the priest stared at him and Connor, not a particularly religious man, felt for the first time that maybe someone with more authority than the priest was speaking to him.

“People believe what they want to believe. They see no evil because they don’t want to. But evil is out there, and this is the result.” The holy man gestured to the dead girls. “You might not see the evil, Officer Kincaid, but you can see its handiwork right here.”

Quietly, Connor kept tabs on the investigation of the girls’ deaths. Almost immediately they were put in the cold case file. Two illegal Jane Does. No one cared.

Connor couldn’t stop thinking that but for his birth in the land of opportunity, he and his brothers and sisters would be fighting to come to America. Or dying under Castro’s brutal regime like nearly everyone on his maternal family tree.

The dead girls were only fourteen. Beaten to death on the grounds of a sacred place, crawling inside to die in front of Jesus, the only sanctuary they had.

Then he learned that his mentor, Detective Wayne Crutcher, who had helped him with his exam and smoothed Connor’s path into his move from street cop to detective, had been taking bribes to look away.

Connor didn’t want to believe it.

“Who was that guy?” he asked Wayne. He’d been quietly following him for weeks, compiling evidence he didn’t know yet how he was going to use. But he saw the exchange. He couldn’t lie to himself anymore.

Wayne had been surprised to see Connor, though he hid it well. “A snitch.”

“We pay snitches. They don’t pay us.”

As he said it, Connor realized he’d signed his death warrant. But he didn’t budge.

He pictured his little sister Lucy’s face superimposed on the dead girls. The dead girls deserved justice as much as anyone.

Wayne’s face hardened. “Walk away, Kincaid.”

Connor still didn’t know exactly what it was that set him off. If it was the hard smirk on Wayne’s face or the indifference in his bleak eyes. Connor struck him across the face. Once, twice, three times before the detective punched back.

The fight brought down Internal Affairs. Both Connor and Wayne clammed up and called in their union representatives. Connor’s direct supervisor, Lieutenant Todd, came to Connor at his house. “Crutcher has been transferred to the Northeast substation. He won’t be a problem anymore.”

“Transferred? That doesn’t solve the problem.”

“What do you suggest I do? Go to Internal Affairs and have them up my ass and yours? I’ve fixed the problem.”

In the end, Connor couldn’t walk away, even if he wanted to. Internal Affairs came to him. He turned over the documentation he’d compiled, thinking it would end there.

It didn’t.