Allison Brennan - See No Evil

The cards were stacked against them. Criminals had no rules to follow, but cops were strangled by regulations, rules that sometimes got them killed or, if they broke the rules to save their life, got them sued.

When Connor learned about Wayne Crutcher’s dirty dealings, he was physically ill. This wasn’t a free Starbucks latte every morning when you walked the beat, but cold, bloody cash. Connor felt he had to do something.

He just didn’t expect to lose everything he had, including his identity as a cop. He didn’t expect to be threatened by a district attorney who’d never seen the world through a cop’s eyes.

But Dillon was right. It wasn’t just Julia he was angry with. The system had let him down, as had his former friends and colleagues who dropped him and forced him to resign.

Dillon said softly, “Doing the right thing isn’t always the easiest thing.”

“Tell me about it,” Connor grumbled. His anger toward Dillon had dissipated. His brother had always stood by him no matter what. You couldn’t buy that kind of loyalty.

“Are you going to cut Julia some slack?” Dillon asked.

“I’m helping her now, aren’t I?”

“I guess that’s a start.”

“A start to what?”

“Forgiveness. Because I sure wouldn’t want to hold a grudge against one of the sexiest women in San Diego, who also happens to have a sharp head on her shoulders.”

“You do like her.”

“Oh yes, I do. But not half as much as you do.”

The mansion on La Gracia in Rancho Santa Fe was empty. The housekeeping staff was gone for the night; Garrett detested strangers, even servants, living under his roof. The caterers had cleaned and packed up after the last guest left. Tristan’s art was still displayed, to be picked up Monday morning by the new Art Center that was to benefit from this fund-raiser.

But it was more than his need to be alone. Tomorrow was special.

Monica. She died eight years ago tomorrow-no, today. Twenty-six minutes from now marked the true anniversary of her death.

Shaking his head, Garrett strode to the library and poured himself a drink. He knocked it back. It had not been murder. Monica had already been dead inside, her body black with cancer.

Garrett, please don’t let me suffer anymore.

She would have been dead in months-or weeks. There was no hope for her.

The thick tumbler shattered in his hand. Garrett startled, stared at the blood dripping from his palm onto the white carpet.

He hadn’t lost his temper once since that last time years and years ago. Before the cancer, before the murder.

Dr. Garrett Bowen taught people control because he was in control. That he hadn’t felt his hand squeeze the glass to breaking point unnerved him.

He cleaned up the glass, then wrapped his hand in a small towel he’d found in the bar area and stared at the blood drying into his carpet.

Thump.

The sound came directly above him. He frowned. Could there be an intruder? Maybe a drunken guest who had gone to sleep in one of the bedrooms. He couldn’t think of anyone off the top of his head, but over two hundred people had come in and out of his house this evening.

He walked upstairs and looked in all the bedrooms. Empty. The house was far too big for him, but it was an architectural masterpiece, an exquisite minimalist structure that had been written up and photographed in numerous magazines.

His wife had designed and decorated the house. It was a tribute to his long-dead wife Janine that he never moved. To their timeless love.

His den.

He’d seen Connor Kincaid earlier that evening. That Kincaid wasn’t on the guest list, and he left before everyone else, but Garrett was certain he must have come in with Dillon Kincaid and Julia Chandler. Now, he wondered, how long had Connor been in the house?

Garrett opened the door to his office.

Nothing appeared to have been disturbed, but he smelled something…perfume. Marisa? No, it wasn’t her scent and she would have no reason to come up to his office. Still, a lingering female presence hung about the room.

He booted up his computer. He wasn’t savvy enough to be able to tell if someone had looked through his files or e-mail, but he could at least make sure he had in fact removed all hints of Wishlist on his system.

Everything was in order. He was okay. Not that he wouldn’t be okay if everything came out. True, Bowen’s approach to anger management wasn’t yet accepted among his colleagues, but it worked. He’d been tracking the success of the program for over three years, and was documenting his findings to obtain needed funding and support to reproduce the program in a controlled university setting. He’d already been talking to the head of psychiatry at one of the most prestigious universities in the country, which was also affiliated with a top-ranked accredited hospital that specialized in mental health. Wishlist would catapult Garrett Bowen to the top of his field. Those who called him foolish and derided his theories would bow down to his brilliance. He’d turn every anger management program in the country into his model and finally receive the acknowledgment he richly deserved.

He needed to better assess prospective members, but he was working on the few glitches in the system. That’s why he was doing this in the first place, to fix any potential problems before he took his theories to the industry.

He wasn’t about to allow holier-than-thou Dillon Kincaid or his PI brother to stop him.

Except for the scent of perfume, Garrett was confident no one had gone through his office. Perhaps one of the guests had come in to powder her nose, or was just nosy.

Garrett left his office and walked into his former patient Faye Kessler, who was standing just outside his door.

“Faye?” Faye shouldn’t be here. He hadn’t been counseling her for months, and she’d always unnerved him just a bit. “What are you doing here? How did you get in?”

“Cami let me in,” she said, her voice oddly flat.

“Camilla?” Why? He stepped back. A tickle of fear crept up his spine. Call the police. “Where’s Camilla?”

“She left with her mother, of course,” Faye said. “You saw her leave.”

Faye’s monotone troubled him, but it was her eyes-flat, emotionless, old-that increased Garrett’s trepidation.

He tried to smile as he walked along the upper balcony overlooking the foyer below. Except for dim lighting in wall sconces perfectly placed twelve feet apart along the rounded hall, no lights were on in the house. Hadn’t he left the foyer lights on? He generally did. Now everything was cast in odd shadows, and the foyer looked like a bottomless pit. “How have you been?”

She touched his sleeve. “Look.”

He reluctantly stopped walking. He couldn’t let her sense his fear. He was a trained psychiatrist, he told himself, if she planned on doing something, he could talk her out of it.

As he watched, she turned around and pulled up her shirt. Her back was covered with scars, old and new. Her back. Someone was cutting her. She was allowing it. He had thought she stopped. For the last year, he’d believed she was clean.

How could he have been so wrong?

She turned around and he caught a glimpse of her braless breasts, also defiled. Who had done it to her? Why had she allowed it?

“Who hurt you?”

Her laugh was borderline insane. “You never understood. You pretended to, and I let you think you got it, but you never realized the power.” She pulled down her shirt, took a step toward him. Unconsciously, he took a step back and found himself backed against the balcony railing.