Dangerous Games

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She realized that she was still letting him hold on to her wrist. Rayne pulled it away, dropping her hand in her lap. “What I think or don’t think doesn’t matter and it certainly doesn’t concern you.”

He frowned. “Don’t pull that ‘them versus me’ garbage on me. It didn’t do you any good then and it’s not going to work now.”

The man looked as if he was disappointed with her, but Rayne hadn’t a clue what he was talking about and she didn’t particularly care for his tone. “Then?”

He didn’t think that he needed to explain this part of it to her. She knew what she was like back then better than he did. “In high school. When you paraded around as if every day was Halloween because you were trying to get everyone as irritated and angry at you as you were with them.”

Her eyes narrowed. “So you got your degree in psychiatry, is it? Or was this part of your con man education?”

He wasn’t about to allow himself to be baited. There was too much at stake right now. He didn’t appreciate her making him feel as if he was standing on the other side of the fortress, trying to get in.

“That was part of my life’s education. Don’t play a player, Lorrayne. Don’t pretend that you’re part of the established order when you’re not.”

“I am a detective with the Aurora police department—”

He was losing ground and he knew it. He dug in harder. This was for Eric. “That doesn’t make you a robot.”

He was manipulating her, Rayne thought angrily. Or trying to. Which meant he was in for a surprise. Better men than he had tried to get her to do what they’d wanted and failed. “That also doesn’t make me an idiot.”

Impatience echoed in his voice. “Never said you were.”

No, not in so many words, she thought, but he still underestimated her. “But I’d be one if I let you just come in and use me to get your brother off.”

Cole sighed, struggling with his temper and wishing he had ordered a drink, a strong one. But he’d driven over here and the last thing he needed right now was to be pulled over and arrested for a DUI, which he could guarantee would happen if he downed the kind of drink he was thinking about.

“I don’t want to use you, I need you. To get at the truth.”

Everyone always said that, but they didn’t mean it. What they wanted was for the truth to bear them out, to yield the kinds of answers they wanted to find. “Well, right now the truth of the matter is, the D.A. thinks they have your brother dead to rights for the murder of Kathleen Fallon.”

He’d thought that she of all people’d know better. “You know how that works. Once they make an arrest, they stop looking around at anyone else and they start building a case.”

“They have a case, Cole.” She stopped. She’d never called him by his first name before. Her eyes narrowed. “I can call you Cole, can’t I, seeing as how you’re shouting at me?”

He made an effort to lower his voice and take some of the sarcasm out of it. “They have a fabricated case,” he insisted.

As far as the police were concerned, the case seemed very solid. “Your brother’s ring had Kathy’s DNA on it, not to mention that it left a pretty damn good imprint on her face, right in the middle of a fractured cheekbone. His prints were all over her apartment. He was seen entering that evening. The neighbors heard them shouting. She had a restraining order against him—do you want me to go on?”

Cole recalled what Quinn’s report had said. It looked pretty damning, but that didn’t change the fact that he knew down to the core of his bones that Eric couldn’t have done something like this. “He gave her that ring.”

It was her turn to frown. “So what are you saying, she punched herself?”

He didn’t appreciate being on the receiving end of sarcasm. The woman gave as good as she got. “No, but maybe she gave it to someone else and he used it on her.”

She supposed the theory had some merit, but he was clearly reaching. She would have done the same if it were her brother facing prison for the rest of his life. “They do that on TV shows and in the movies. Usually life isn’t that planned out.”

His eyes held hers. “Usually. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have happened that way. Someone could have set him up to take the fall.”

“So your theory is that an enemy set him up?”

“No, someone used him to cover up their part in the murder.”

She blew out a breath. If anyone overheard them, she’d have some explaining to do. It was like telling tales out of school. “Look, I’m not supposed to be discussing this—”

“Why? As you said, it’s not your case. That means you don’t have a vested interest in keeping your mouth shut, Lorrayne.”

She bristled. “My friends call me Rayne.” Her meaning was clear. She didn’t remotely consider him to be even close to that category. “You can call me Detective Cavanaugh.”

She wasn’t the kind to be bullied and he knew it. Though he hated doing it, he had no choice. She could very well be the key to unlocking this for him. He had no other options available right now. He threw himself on her mercy. “I will call you anything you want, just help me. My brother’s being framed.”

“Every family member wants to think that their brother, sister, mother, father, whoever, is innocent, but—”

He cut her off. “My parents don’t.”

Well, maybe that said it all, she thought. And Cole just didn’t want to hear it. “They’d be in a position to know, wouldn’t they? More than you.”

Cole fought to keep his voice from rising again. “The woman at the perfume counter in Macy’s department store knows more about my brother than they do. They were AWOL for most of Eric’s life.”

“And yours.”

He hadn’t come looking for her just to be drawn onto some imaginary couch and analyzed. “I’m not the one sitting in a jail cell.”

For a large part of her life, she’d shied away from really opening up to people. She recognized a kindred behavior in someone else. Apparently, Cole Garrison shared her reverence for privacy. Ordinarily, she respected boundaries, but the growing passion in his voice had aroused her curiosity. “You really love your brother, don’t you?”

Cole shrugged. The fact was a given, but not one he either voiced or debated. “He’s my brother.”

Her gaze never wavered. “That’s not an answer, that’s just a point of biological fact. Plenty of brothers can’t stand each other.” She fell back, appropriately enough, on something she’d read in high school. “If you remember your old English history, brothers have been known to kill one another.”

The woman had intelligent eyes. He could see she was constantly analyzing, dissecting, weighing. But that she had a taste for history surprised him. “There’s no throne of England at stake here. I’m all Eric has. I’m all he ever had. And I believe him when he says he didn’t kill her.” Cole leaned over the small table, pressing his case as his sense of urgency mounted. He needed to win her over. “Look, Eric’s a screwup, there’s no denying that, but you knew him. He’s harmless.”

She quickly picked up the word he’d used. “You’re right, I knew him,” she emphasized. “But I don’t know him now. People change.” Cole didn’t have to look any farther than his mirror to know that. “You did. You went from someone nobody thought would amount to anything and turned yourself into a businessman. Someone who does a lot of good without being asked or waits around to be acknowledged.” She saw the questioning look in his eyes and couldn’t help adding with a touch of smugness, “I like to know who I’m being propositioned by.”

Maybe it was the softening lighting, or maybe it was the word she’d used, but something stirred within him as he looked at her face. Something that was completely out of sync with what they discussed.

“When I proposition you, you’ll know,” he promised her quietly, so quietly that she could almost feel the words whisper along her skin. “This isn’t that time, Detective Cavanaugh. You’re interested in justice, I’m interested in justice—”

It took her a second to pull herself together. “And if justice means sending your brother to prison for murdering Kathy Fallon—?”

“It won’t. He didn’t kill her.” He was never more sure of anything in his life.

She fell back on the evidence again. “He stalked her. She had a restraining order against him. He was overheard threatening her—”

Cole shook his head. “He was drunk and hurt at the time.”

She smiled at him as if he’d scored the winning point for her side. “Maybe he was drunk and hurt when he killed her. Maybe she drove him to it.”

“Then we’ll find that out, too, won’t we?”

So he wasn’t asking her to get rid of evidence or to whitewash his brother. Well, at least there was hope for him. But that still didn’t change the situation she’d find herself in if she went at this full-tilt. And she wasn’t about to tell Cole that she’d been quietly looking into the matter herself. He’d only seize on that.

“The police department doesn’t like one of their own playing devil’s advocate and questioning the findings of their own people.”

The police department was no different from any other fraternal organization or company. But he didn’t see her in a traditional role. “Since when did you ever live by the rules?”

Her eyes narrowed. She didn’t like his assumptions, even if they were true. “For someone who didn’t speak two words to me before today, you seem to think you know me pretty well.”