A Profiler's Case for Seduction(63)

Who was Melinda Grayson? Truthfully, Dora didn’t know. She had no idea what Melinda had experienced between the time she left the family ranch at the age of eighteen and when she’d appeared to help Dora. Years had gone by between those times, years when Dora had no idea what her sister was doing beyond building her career.

In those missing years Dora had no idea where her sister had lived, who had been her friends or what morals and values she had embraced.

But Mark was talking about Melinda staging a kidnapping where she allowed herself to be beaten. He was accusing her and a male partner of strangling or suffocating three men and burying them in shallow graves. Only a monster would be capable of that.

Immediately, she thought of Micah and Samuel, one hero and one monster. Was it possible that Melinda was just another monster in the family?

She thought about picking up the phone and making an appointment to meet with her sister. And what would she say to her? Dear sister, did you do all the terrible things the FBI believes you did? Did you know the agent who was my friend, my lover, has vowed to bring you down?

Samuel had been evil enough to try to kill his twin brother, Micah, among all the other heinous crimes he’d committed. Did that same evil run through Melinda’s veins? An unexpected shiver worked up her spine. She was suddenly afraid, but she wasn’t sure what she feared, who she feared for.

Tears once again trekked down her cheeks as she thought of Mark. She would only see him again now as part of his investigation. He might think she knew something about her sister, but she couldn’t help him. Once he realized that she knew virtually nothing about Melinda’s life, past or present, then there would be no reason for him to ever see her again.

Not that he would want to.

The absurdity of what had just taken place might have been funny if her heart wasn’t breaking. In the past she would have headed for the nearest bar, eager to numb the keening death of her heart.

Instead, she got up from the sofa with a final swipe of her tears, grabbed her books off the chair and then headed out the door.

She had classes to attend, a life to build, and this was just a reminder that she was meant to be alone...and she was okay with that because she had to be and because she was strong enough to remain alone.

* * *

Mark meandered along the paths of the campus, his head spinning with all the words that Dora had spoken and all the information he hadn’t asked for but had received.

The anger that had driven him out of Amanda’s apartment to find Dora was mixed up now, and he desperately wanted to find that anger again. He wanted to be enraged with Dora and the fact that in all the time they had spent together she’d never told him about her sibling connection to his number-one suspect in the case.

Granted, when they had been together they had spoken little about the cases and had instead talked about other, pleasant things. But in their first get-to-know-you conversation he’d asked her about her family. It had been a perfect opening for her to tell him about her relationship with the esteemed professor Melinda Grayson. Why hadn’t she?

What could she know about her sister’s crimes and how far would she go to protect a woman she saw as her salvation? There was no question that Dora admired and worshipped Melinda.

He finally set himself on a course to head back to the war room where he could use his laptop. There was now a new player in the game...the woman he’d fallen in love with, a woman he now realized he didn’t know at all. He had to run a thorough background check on Dora. As an FBI agent he would be remiss in his duties if he didn’t.

She was now an unknown entity in the case.

Consciously he shoved all thoughts of anything else he’d learned about her out of his mind. He couldn’t think about that now. The case was all that was important. If he allowed himself to linger on the images Dora’s words about her past had evoked, if he embraced the torturous emotions that had shimmered in her eyes, then he’d be distracted from what had to be done.

He couldn’t afford to be distracted any longer. Prove it or disprove it. Richard’s words rang in his ears. He had to lay aside any feelings he’d entertained about Dora. From this time forward she could be nothing more to him than a piece of the puzzle he needed to solve.

In his deepest, darkest thoughts, he wondered if the man he’d envisioned in his head as Melinda’s partner, if the deep laughter he’d heard in his dream, had actually been a woman. Two sisters playing a deadly game?

Before the thought could truly take hold he dismissed it. Melinda’s partner was a male from the videos, but more importantly he believed he knew Dora well enough to discount her as a suspect in all of this. Unfortunately, he couldn’t use just his gut instinct to make that decision. Once again he had to prove it or disprove it. Either Dora was involved or she wasn’t, but he’d have to use cold, hard facts to make the call.