Where the Blame Lies(23)

He returned to the living room. “You guys can get back to your shift,” he said to Horton and Vogel. “The criminalist should be here any minute. And thank you again. I mean it.”

Both officers nodded, and he shook their hands. Josie stood, walking them to the door where she thanked them, closing the door quietly and engaging the lock. She didn’t turn her head in the direction of the kitchen, and Zach didn’t blame her. She stood against the door for a moment before wrapping her arms around herself and walking slowly toward where he stood in the doorway of the living room. Their eyes snagged and she looked away. The air in the room suddenly felt different, a strange awkwardness falling over the moment.

“Can I, ah, get you something?” he asked. “Water? Tea?” It felt sort of odd to offer her something from her own house, but he couldn’t imagine she was eager to go back in the kitchen at the moment.

“I’d love some tea,” she murmured. “If you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Thank you. The tea is in the upper cabinet to the right of the sink, and the mugs are to the left of the refrigerator. Join me in a cup if you’d like.”

He nodded and went into the kitchen where he studiously kept his gaze on the task at hand, heating water in the microwave, locating the tea bags in the cabinet, and opening a couple of drawers until he found the spoons. “Do you take anything in your tea?” he called.

“A splash of milk,” she called back.

He added milk and then carried both steaming mugs back to the living room, along with a box of cookies held under his arm that he’d found in her pantry. She was back in the same spot she’d been sitting in when he’d arrived, and he sat next to her as he’d done before, putting the mugs and the box of cookies on the coffee table in front of them. He picked up her mug and handed it to her. “I hope I made it right.”

She smiled. “I don’t think you can mess up tea.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. It’s a running joke in my family that I can’t boil water.”

Josie laughed softly and his stomach did a little flip. Damn odd time to feel a shot of physical attraction but there it was. Uncomfortable with his reaction to this woman under the circumstances, he took a drink of the hot liquid. It burned his mouth and he struggled to swallow it down rather than spit it out. She was watching him with obvious amusement as she took a tentative sip.

He cleared his throat as he placed his mug down. He didn’t even like tea. It tasted like muddy water. “Will you go over what happened before you came downstairs and found the rat? Anything you heard?”

Josie lowered her mug to her lap, wrapping the hand not gripping the handle around the outside, soaking in the warmth from the hot liquid within. She told him about hearing the squeaks, a few small bumps as though someone was walking slowly across the hardwood floor, maybe exiting the house, the dripping of what she’d thought was the kitchen faucet.

“But nothing before that?”

“I was in the bathroom before that, getting ready for bed. I’d been running the water in the sink, washing my face. I don’t know that I would have noticed any noise that came from downstairs.”

He nodded. “That knife, is it one of yours, from a drawer maybe?”

“The only knives I have are in the block on the counter.”

So the unknown suspect had brought it along.

Josie drew her shoulders in slightly and bit at her lip for a moment, obviously thinking about something. Zach waited for her to continue. After a moment she met his eyes. “When I was held in that warehouse, there were . . . rats.” She looked away, behind him, her gaze haunted. She was obviously looking back into that hellish past. “They’d come out sometimes. I’d hear them. Feel them.” She drew her shoulders in more, making her body smaller. “Later . . . he brought rat poison down there. It . . . worked, because I could smell their dead bodies rotting in the walls.”

Zach’s blood turned to ice in his veins. He wanted to hurt someone, Marshall Landish, he supposed, but he was already dead, burning in hell where he belonged. “Was it in the news? About the rats? Do you remember if that was public knowledge?”

She let out a raspy breath, setting her mug down. “I don’t know. I don’t remember.” She wrapped a hand around one of her ankles that was partially tucked beneath her. “I have scars though . . . from the bites. One or two areas were treated in the hospital for infection.”

Zach stared, swallowed. Okay, another thing the hospital staff—at least—had been privy to and may have spoken about. “This could be related then, Josie. To the crime the alleged copycat committed.”

“You’re assuming it was in the news then? About the rats?”

“Even if it wasn’t, there were rats at the crime scene where the recent victim died. The copycat could have assumed there were also rats where you were held, or simply gotten the idea from the location where he chained the other girl. I don’t know for sure.”

She shook her head. “I can’t believe this.”

“Hey.” He reached over, put his hand on top of hers. “It’s going to be okay. We’re going to get whoever did this.” Her skin was cold and smooth, the bones in her hand delicate. She was strong, obviously resilient, but she was breakable too. That protective streak vibrated within him, something surging between the place where their skin met. Zach pulled his hand away, leaned back, created distance. Yeah, I’m attracted to her, he admitted to himself. And he wondered if she could tell, wondered if it made her feel uneasy. How could it not? He was supposed to be there protecting her, not causing her to feel like she was being ogled.