Into the Fury (BOSS, Inc. #1)(31)

“So you’ve been working,” she said. The silver apple on top of his open computer dubbed him a Mac user. She was a PC girl herself.

“I’m collecting background information, trying to find out if any of the girls who got notes had contact with the killer at some point in their lives. A guy one of them might have pissed off, someone who might want revenge.”

“Lieutenant Hoover questioned me about that when I talked to him. He asked if there was anyone I might have known, someone I had a run-in with who might want payback.”

“Was there?”

She shrugged. “Not that I know of.” She glanced down at the screen, saw Carmen Marquez’s high school transcripts, and uneasiness crept through her. Carmen was one of the models who’d received a note.

She pointed to the screen. “How did you get that information?”

Ethan’s dark eyes searched her face. “A lot of it’s public record. You just have to know where to look.”

“So that’s it? You’re just looking at what’s in public records?”

His gaze seemed to sharpen and she wished she had left the subject alone.

“Does it matter where the info comes from? We’re trying to catch a killer before he kills someone else.”

He was right. Finding the killer was more important than her personal privacy. He won’t find out, she told herself. Her juvenile records were sealed. No way could he get into sealed police records.

“What is it, Val?” Ethan asked softly. “If there’s something in your past, I’m going to find it. If it’s important, be easier if you just told me now.”

Her unease turned to worry and her chest clamped down. It was none of his business. Not anyone’s business but her own. “It isn’t important. I was just a kid back then.”

He looked at her, and there was something in his face. It was compassion, she realized, and it made her eyes sting. “It was a long time ago,” she said with a hint of panic. “The records are sealed. I told you, I was only a kid.”

Ethan walked toward her, reached out and tipped up her chin. “We all make mistakes, Valerie. Whatever you did back then isn’t important unless it somehow ties to the murder. I can find out. But I’d rather hear it from you.”

“You can’t find out.”

“I can, honey. If you tell me, whatever you say won’t go any farther than this room.”

She turned away, walked over to the window, stared out at the lawn she had paid one of the neighbor kids to mow. What did it matter? It was all in the past. So what if Ethan Brodie thought less of her because of it?

She released a shaky breath, resigned to telling him what he was so determined to know. “My parents were killed when I was ten. Car accident in Michigan.”

“I’m sorry, Val.”

She ignored him, kept talking; she wanted this over and done. “I didn’t have much family, just a few distant relatives. One of my older cousins was married. Alice and her husband, Ray, lived in Seattle. They took me in. From the start they made it clear they didn’t want me. They treated me like a servant, kept me cleaning and doing their dirty work from dawn till dark. I didn’t mind the work so much. It was the attitude, the feeling that they were doing me a favor just letting me stay in their house.”

She didn’t look at Ethan, just forced air into her lungs and kept going, desperate now to get it all out. “The abuse was mostly verbal, but I took a couple of slaps I didn’t deserve and I started getting a bad feeling about Cousin Ray. He came into my room one night and just stood there in the dark watching me. The next day I ran away.”

Ethan moved up behind her, turned her around to face him. “How old were you?”

“Fifteen.”

“You live on the street?” There was something intense in those dark eyes.

“For a while . . . only a couple of weeks. The cops picked me up and I went into foster care.” Sadness swept through her at the girl she had been. “I was pretty much a hellion. I didn’t like my foster parents and they didn’t like me. I went from one home to another, never seemed to fit in. When I was sixteen, I sneaked out one night with a couple of the older boys in the house. One of them had a friend with a car.”

She glanced away, wishing she didn’t have to remember the rest.

“Go on, Val. Finish it.”

She forced her gaze back to his face. She was five nine, but Ethan was so tall she had to look up at him. “The guy with the car was in a gang. He got into a fight with another kid, and suddenly everyone was shooting. Bobby Rodriquez—he was the boy in the home where I lived—Bobby got shot in the chest. He . . . he died in my arms.”

She didn’t realize she was crying till Ethan handed her his handkerchief. His jaw was iron hard, his body rock solid. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought he was holding himself back, forcing himself not to touch her, comfort her. But maybe he was just disgusted.

“I don’t like to talk about it,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I’m not proud of what happened.”

“You turned your life around, Val. You aren’t that young girl anymore. You’re a woman now. A beautiful woman who’s made something of herself.”

Some of the pain slipped away with his words. He wasn’t condemning her. Why had she thought he would?