Turn On A Dime - Kade's Turn (10 page)

“Are you done?” he asked, forcing his thoughts back to the present.

She nodded, searching his eyes as though aware he’d been lost in a dark place.

Kade slipped his sunglasses back on once they were outside. He’d been right. The glare was blinding. They walked in silence for a minute, then she spoke.

“So, can you tell me what it is exactly that you do?” she asked once they’d reached the car.

So she’d look at him like the monster he was? No, thanks. “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you,” he said instead.

She rolled her eyes. “Isn’t that line a little overused? Even for you?”

Kade unlocked the doors and opened the passenger side for her. He didn’t know when he’d decided to brush up on the manners for her, opening doors and shit, it had just happened.

“Ouch,” he said. “I must be losing my touch if you think that was a line.”

“You don’t scare me, Kade.” She crossed her arms over her chest, gazing at him as if daring him to contradict her.

Damn, but she was brave. Stupidly so. How many times was he going to have to prove to her what a dick he was?

Kade got in her space, bracing his hands against the car on either side and caging her. She jumped, startled, and he bent down until their faces were only inches apart.

“You sure about that, princess?” He spoke in a voice meant to frighten, all hard chips and nails and threat.

Her throat moved as she swallowed. “Do you want me to be?”

Kathleen’s question took him by surprise, the stark simplicity of it rendering him speechless.

Did he want her to be? He should. She should be terrified of him. Kade was a man with no conscience and no soul. To someone as pure and good as Kathleen, he was a tainted parasite who would do nothing but destroy her.

But he didn’t want her to hate him. Didn’t want her afraid.

The easiness of her company was like a balm on the darkness inside him, a warm ray of sunshine after a harsh, bleak winter. Despite the vicious way he’d spoken to her, the disdain and contempt he’d shoveled her way, she seemed to forgive so easily, to
want
to see something good in him that she could trust.

It defied logic, and yet…

She reached up, slowly removing his sunglasses, until they were eye-to-eye. Her brow creased in a frown as she gazed into his eyes.

For the first time, Kade felt like someone was looking into his soul—someone who understood—and who didn’t judge him.

It terrified him.

Snatching his glasses back, he jerked away from her. “Get in.” He didn’t look to see if she obeyed. He was too busy trying to pull his shit together.

Kade didn’t want to talk, and he didn’t want her to talk either. He felt as though the ground was shifting under his feet and that slope he was on was getting steeper by the minute.

Kathleen was blessedly silent. But she fidgeted, her hands twisting in her lap, obviously nervous and maybe even afraid. He should be glad of that, but he wasn’t.

It was a good twenty minutes before he couldn’t take it anymore.

“Stop it,” he ordered.

“Stop what?”

He glanced at her, then back at the road. “You’re acting like I’m going to hurt you,” he said.

She laughed, but it wasn’t quite right. “And that would be a surprise how?”

Ouch. He had to hand it to her, she seemed to know just the thing to say that would get under his skin.

“I’ve never laid a hand on you and you know it.” As if he’d deliberately cause her physical harm. He’d sooner eat a bullet.

“You don’t have to.”

And she goes in for the kill.

Their eyes met for a moment, but Kade couldn’t handle the hurt and accusation in hers, so he quickly looked away.

“Why do you do…what you do?” she asked.

She couldn’t even say it, that’s how offensive it was.

“You mean kill people for a living?” Might as well call a spade a spade.

“Is that what you do?”

The urge to make himself not look like such a sorry excuse for a human being was strong, so he told her the truth.

“I do what needs to be done. Last week I stopped a man from raping and murdering a fifteen-year-old girl. He’d done it before and gotten away with it. I just made sure he wouldn’t be doing it again.”

She was quiet for a moment, seeming to digest this, before saying, “But you can’t be judge and jury.”

“Why not? Who else was going to save that girl? Or the one after that?”

“I don’t have an answer. I just know that it can’t be good…for you…for your soul…to do that.”

What the fuck did she know about his soul? Kade had lost whatever innocence he’d been born with by the time he turned seven. Anything good in him had long since been eaten up by the bad. Kade could look in a man’s eyes as he begged for mercy and not feel a fucking thing before he pulled the trigger, or after. He didn’t lose sleep at night over the things he’d done. The fact that she thought there was something to be redeemed in his soul was a fucking joke.

Parking the car in Freeman’s driveway, he turned off the engine and turned her way.

“Don’t try to rescue me, Kathleen. I’m beyond saving.”

With that warning, he got out, leaving her to follow along to the front door. Or not. At this point, he didn’t particularly care if she came with him or stayed in the car.

But she did get out and in a moment, stood by his side on the porch. Kade pressed the doorbell and waited. Nothing. He tried again. Still nothing.

“I guess he’s not home,” Kathleen said with a shrug.

Which would be a perfect time to break in and take a look around, not that Kade told her that.

“I’ll check out the back,” he said instead. “You stay here.”

Kade left without waiting for her reply and headed around to the back of the house. They had a chain-link fence, but the latch was frozen solid, ice encasing the metal. Grasping the top of the fence, Kade vaulted over, landing on his feet in the snow.

The back patio had a charcoal grill next to a table and four chairs that had seen better days. A flower pot with a dead plant stood in the corner. The sliding glass doors had a lock that was also frozen, so it took Kade longer than usual to get inside.

The patio led into the dim living room and Kade silently stepped through the doorway. No one was around and the house was completely still. He explored until he came across the kitchen…and Kathleen, doing exactly what he’d told her
not
to do. He’d said to stay and here she fucking was, her back to him and gazing at—

—at the dead body on the floor.

She stumbled backward, right into Kade, and let loose a blood-curdling scream. She shoved away from him, but Kade instantly had his arm locked around her, spinning her around to press her body against his, and his hand over her mouth to shut her up. As soon as she saw who held her, she sagged against him in relief.

Kade took in the blood underneath the body of the man and knew he’d been dead a while, which meant whoever had done it, was long gone. But Kathleen was shaking all over. It had scared her, and who could blame her? She’d probably never seen anything like this before.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She gave a jerky nod, her chest still heaving.

Kade didn’t want to let her go, but the sooner he took a look, the quicker he could get her out of her.

Carefully setting her aside, he stepped to the body—it had to be Freeman—carefully skirting the pool of blood.

The cause of death was easy to see—a gunshot to the head. Considering the nearly pristine skull and splatter of brain matter from the exit wound, most likely a professional hit, maybe an attempt at making it look like suicide. Getting to his feet, he returned to Kathleen who’d stayed where he’d left her for once.

“Gunshot wound to the head,” he said. “Possibly self-inflicted, but I doubt it.”

“Why? Why would someone kill him?” Kathleen’s distraught question tugged at Kade. She felt something for the guy—horror and pain at what had happened. He didn’t feel a thing besides irritation that another of Blane’s witnesses was gone.

“No idea,” he answered. “But we have to call in the cops, and get out of here before we contaminate the scene any further.”

Taking her back to the car, Kade turned it on and pushed the heat to full blast, hoping that would ease the tremors that still shook her. Kade called the cops and reported the shooting.

Talking to the cops was always a time-sucking pain in the ass and today was no different. If not for Kathleen being there, Kade wouldn’t have bothered calling the cops at all, but her fingerprints were inside and he didn’t want them breathing down her neck.

“And why were you here, Dennon?” One of the homicide detectives asked, suspicion in his eyes.

“None of your fucking business,” Kade said, glancing over the man’s head. Where was Kathleen?

“Always the asshole, Dennon,” the detective sneered. “Why don’t I arrest
you
for murder? You can spend the next forty-eight hours in a cell.”

Kade flicked his gaze to the detective. “You’ve got nothing on me and you know it. The gunshot wound was made by a .38 and I’ve got nothing but 9 millimeters.” He glanced away, still searching. There she was, with a uniformed cop who was taking her statement. “Not to mention I’d be out in less than thirty minutes and slap you with a harassment suit.”

Sometimes it really paid to have a lawyer for a brother.

Kade could practically hear the detective grinding his teeth, but he didn’t give a shit. Some lady had just pulled up and lost it when she saw the EMTs carrying a stretcher out with the body. Must be the wife.

Suddenly, Kathleen was rushing over to the woman, now kneeling in the snow and sobbing. Sinking down beside her, Kathleen put her arms around the woman, comforting her, a total stranger.

Brushing past the cop, Kade approached them, still keeping his distance. The woman was leaning on Kathleen and even from this far, Kade could see tears welling in Kathleen’s eyes, too.

Way too soft-hearted for her own good. Too compassionate. Too empathetic.

When the woman had regained control, Kathleen helped her to her feet. Kathleen’s jeans were soaked, but she didn’t seem to notice, asking the woman if she was all right. She glanced around, searching for him. When her gaze landed on Kade, he walked over.

“My friend and I found him,” Kathleen was saying.

“How? Why were you here?”

“I was coming to ask your husband about Kyle Waters. The defense attorney on this case has been threatened and I thought there might be something your husband knew that could help us.”

Kade noticed she didn’t say a word about how
she
had been threatened.

“I can’t talk about it,” the woman said, taking a step back. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know they’d hit a nerve.

“Please,” Kathleen implored. “Whoever killed your husband might be after me and someone I…I care about. If there’s anything you know that could help me, please, tell me.”

Someone I care about
. Not hard to miss the
love
that had almost come from her lips. Was she so naive, so innocent, as to think she was in love with Blane? Or that he felt that way in return?

But the plea had the desired effect and the woman talked.

“I think Ron was being threatened,” she said.

“What do you mean? Why would someone threaten him?” Kathleen asked. Kade was content to let her do the interrogation. She’d gotten the woman to trust her, despite her husband just being murdered.

“He started getting these phone calls,” the woman continued. “He’d have to go out once he got them and he’d never tell me who they were from or where he went. But then he suddenly wanted to know where I was all the time. I couldn’t even go to the grocery store without telling him.”

Classic case of blackmail. “How long has this been going on?” Kade asked.

“A couple of months, more or less,” she said with a shrug. “I kept trying to get him to tell me, but he wouldn’t. He said to just trust him. That’s when he changed his testimony.”

“He did what?” Kathleen sounded surprised. Kade wasn’t.

“Ron had said in his deposition that all four of the SEALs agreed the man was a threat. After the phone calls started, he changed his story and said that Kyle had taken it upon himself to kill the guy.”

“Which version is the truth?”

“They all agreed,” the woman said. “I couldn’t understand why he was doing that, why he’d lie and hang Kyle out to dry, but he refused to talk to me about it and he made me swear not to tell anyone. He told me our lives depended on it.”

And considering how much she’d just told them, her life was in serious jeopardy.

“If I were you,” Kade said, wondering why he cared enough to bother, “I’d leave town for a while. Go visit family, go on a vacation, whatever.”

The woman nodded. “Thank you.” She turned away, walking toward the police who were waiting for her.

Kathleen shivered and Kade glanced at her. She had to be freezing.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, taking her arm and helping her into the car.

CHAPTER FIVE

The inside of the car was a sauna in no time, but Kade just dealt with it. Kathleen had stopped shivering, though she still held her hands to one of the vents, letting the warm air blow on her fingers.

“Who would have had the power to make him change his story like that?” she asked. “And threaten him and his wife?”

“He was a SEAL,” Kade replied. “It had to have been someone he believed would make good on the threats. SEALs aren’t exactly easy to scare.” If his experience with Blane’s Navy buddies was any indication.

“If they called him, maybe we could get authorization to pull his phone records.”

Kade smirked. “I can do that, and I won’t even have to ask.”

“Blane needs to know this,” she said.

Making a split-second decision, Kade took the next exit, heading toward the firm. “Agreed.”