Killer Ambition - [32]

“Dorian found no evidence of forced entry or struggle at the party house.”

That’s what we’d named Russell’s house in the hills. “We didn’t expect to. Did she recover any trace evidence to put Brian there?”

Bailey scanned the page again. “Doesn’t say in this report. But I know she lifted some prints.” Bailey flipped to the next page. “She notes plant debris on Hayley’s body that looks similar to some debris on the undercarriage of the car-”

“So he took her with him to the ransom drop in Fryman Canyon.”

Bailey nodded, then handed the reports to me. “We’ll need to find Brian’s prints on something official so we can give Dorian something to compare to whatever she lifted at the house.”

I scanned the reports, then ran out to the vending machine to get some water. And since I was wearing old jeans, a faded sweatshirt, and no makeup, I of course ran into Graden.

He, on the other hand, was a sight for very sore eyes. His crisply pressed lieutenant’s uniform showed off his lean, well-muscled frame, and his perennial light tan enhanced the wide cheekbones, sandy brown hair, and hazel eyes. Graden Hales was a man who very seldom got turned down. Surprisingly, that popularity had not turned him into an ass.

I told him about finding Hayley. “You’d think I’d know better than to get my hopes up by now.”

Graden shook his head, his expression sad but resigned. “You never will. No one does. Hope dims over time, but it never completely goes away.” He kept it light, but I heard the serious message underlying his words. It occurred to me that he might be referring to us.

The odds of getting back with Graden had been pretty slim. Even though I could now accept that my reaction to his Googling me wasn’t rational, the hell of being “that girl” in the small Northern California community after Romy’s abduction was still fresh enough to make me cringe. And so when my mother and I moved to Los Angeles, I kept my traumatic family history from everyone-including Bailey and Toni. My childhood therapist and now friend, Carla the Crone (as I’d called her), had always told me that my secretiveness was unhealthy and very likely stemmed from my irrational feelings of guilt for not having saved Romy. Though I recognized the truth in what she said, and in Bailey’s and Toni’s urgings that Graden shouldn’t be thrown out as untrustworthy, it had taken all I had to make myself give him another chance. And he knew it.

“Listen, I’ve got to get some work done around the house this weekend,” he said. “You around early next week?”

“It’s hard to say, the way things are going. But if I am, you want to-”

“Yes.”

“You don’t know what I was going to say. I might’ve been about to ask if you wanted to paint my room.”

“The answer’s still yes,” he said, with a smile that warmed me from head to toe. “But I get to pick the color.”

Graden headed off to his meeting, and when I got back to Bailey’s desk, she was just ending a call.

“And?” I asked.

“The iPad’s in New York.”

“How’re we going to get out there in time to-”

“We’re not. I put in calls to NYPD. I’m e-mailing them all the info, photos of Brian, all that jazz. They’ve put out the alert.”

“So I guess it’s that time,” I said. Time to notify Raynie and Russell of Hayley’s death. I couldn’t even begin to tell Bailey how much I dreaded this meeting, but her expression told me I didn’t need to.

“You don’t have to do this, Rache.”

“Yeah, I do.” I couldn’t let Bailey go it alone. And I couldn’t let my own history get in the way of doing my job.

Bailey sighed heavily. “Do you want to get the parents together or tell them separately?”

I flashed back on the scene at Russell’s house. “They all seemed pretty easy with each other. It might be best for them to have everyone together.”

Bailey stood up. “I agree. And besides, it’s bad enough having to give this news once.”

No argument there. Bailey dropped me at the Biltmore and went back to her apartment in Larchmont Village so we could get cleaned up and look professional when we delivered the news.

We arranged for everyone to meet us at Russell’s house and we were ushered into the living room, where the parents were seated on separate sections of the couch that was in front of the fireplace. There was a heavy tension in the room. I knew they were steeling themselves against the pain of hearing what we’d come to tell them. The words we were about to utter in the next few seconds would change their lives forever. It made me wish there was a giant life clock I could reach into and push back the hands, take us all to a time when Hayley was here, safe. Raynie jumped up to offer us something to drink, and when we declined, she offered us something to eat. I recognized the defense mechanism, a way to delay the blow. Because maybe if it was delayed long enough, it wouldn’t come. But of course, it had to. Bailey told them, as gently as she could, that Hayley had been found dead in the trunk of Brian’s car.

Russell roared, “Brian? Brian who?”

He was trying to distance himself from the fact of Hayley’s death, but it was a valid question nonetheless. I told him. And when I explained who his father was, I watched Russell carefully. He blanched and then his eyes fixed on a point across the room in a hundred-yard stare.