Desperate Girls (Wolfe Security #1)(74)

Brynn disconnected and huffed out a breath. “Lawyers! They’re so damn argumentative.”

“You look nice,” Eric said. “Where are we going?”

“To pick up Emilio’s. I feel bad about forgetting my order last night, and I want to make it up to them.” She squeezed through the doorway, brushing her body against his.

“Why are you all dressed up to go get takeout?”

“This is not dressed up,” she informed him, sliding her feet into heeled sandals. “But yes, we do have another stop to make.”

“Where?”

“You’ll see.”

“This isn’t a game, Brynn.”

“Fine, but you’re not talking me out of this. I’m done standing on the sidelines.”





LINDSEY PACED the conference room, her body vibrating from an overload of sugar and caffeine and adrenaline. The sugar came from the candy bar she’d eaten for dinner. The caffeine came from three cups of coffee. And the adrenaline came from the unshakable certainty that she’d just handed the marshals a major break in the case.

Calm down, she told herself. Keep working. Break or no, she couldn’t let up until Corby was actually in custody. She stopped pacing and stared at the timeline tacked to the wall. There were still too many blanks, and she needed to fill in the gaps.

A knock sounded at the door, and Dillon leaned his head in.

“You’ve got visitors. They say you’re expecting them?”

“Yeah, send them in.”

Dillon stepped back to let Brynn into the room. His gaze lingered on her ass while Brynn’s bodyguard gave him an icy stare.

“Thanks for meeting us,” Brynn said, taking a chair at the table. Erik took the one beside her, watching the door as Dillon closed it.

“You’re working late,” Brynn said.

Lindsey sank into a chair across from them. “I’ve been here all weekend.”

“Alone?”

“For the most part.”

It was an interesting phenomenon that Lindsey should have expected. With every day that ticked by, she spent more and more time on this case, and her colleagues spent less. Max had practically disappeared, and so had the other detective.

“You know, each day Corby eludes capture, we look more incompetent,” Lindsey said. “I think everyone here wants to distance themselves, let the marshals go down in flames for this.”

Brynn stood up and walked to the bulletin board, where crime-scene photos were arranged in clusters. She zeroed in on several photos of Corby’s fourth victim, Lauren Tull.

“I remember these,” she murmured.

“From the trial?”

“These two were on her Facebook page. We used them in a trial exhibit.”

Lindsey could see why they’d selected the pictures. Besides showing the victim in life, with a dazzling smile on her face, they also showed her wearing the necklace that was later recovered from Corby’s house.

“I’ve been pursuing your theory about the necklace being planted,” Brynn said. “I went back through my trial notes and found some evidence that makes me think you’re right.”

Lindsey felt a wave of relief. For the first time since she’d come up with this idea, she had some support. “What have you got?”

Brynn returned to her chair. “We had some issues with the necklace from the beginning. Jen and I did. For one thing, there’s no crime-scene photo of the necklace in situ at Corby’s house.”

“No?”

“This came out in deposition. Detective McGowan, who was the lead, said the necklace was discovered in the inside pocket of a canvas jacket found in Corby’s closet. The jacket is brown, so it vaguely resembles a jacket worn by someone sighted near one of the crime scenes, which is why police took it into evidence when they conducted the search warrant. We have a crime-scene photo of the jacket hanging in Corby’s closet. And McGowan said the necklace was discovered later, inside the pocket, when they were going through items in the evidence room.”

“You think he lied?”

“I don’t know. At the time, I thought maybe it was a simple mistake—he found the necklace in the pocket, so he vouched for the jacket. Or maybe someone found the necklace elsewhere at Corby’s place, but somehow the crime-scene photographer missed getting a picture of it.”

“If that happened,” Lindsey said, “maybe McGowan was trying to keep that critical piece of evidence from being tossed out on a technicality, so he made up the jacket-pocket scenario, and Corby knew that was bullshit—hence his hatred for McGowan.”

Brynn smiled thinly. “Chain of custody is hardly a ‘technicality.’ ”

Spoken like a true defense attorney.

“Here’s the thing,” Brynn said. “I saw Mark Wolfe again yesterday. The profiler has been analyzing the case files, and he reached the same conclusion you did.”

“He thinks the necklace was planted?”

“Not only that. He takes it a step further,” Brynn said. “He believes Corby didn’t kill Lauren Tull at all.”

Lindsey’s eyebrows shot up.

“Wolfe found discrepancies between Lauren’s crime scene and the others, and he believes someone else killed her.”