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He didn’t lecture her about her work hours or cause a fuss. He sat down across from her and started unloading the white containers.
“You retain your title as best husband in the world.”
“Of course I do.” He handed her a set of chopsticks. “And this is the part where I remind you that you—your work—is responsible for finding Karen and returning her to her parents. You did an amazing thing and have earned a night of rest. Everything else, all the other details, can wait.”
He knew what ate at her, the failures that poked and tore at her. He always knew. “Finding her now, after all this time, doesn’t feel as great as you think. It’s little consolation to her family.”
“Ginny, that’s not true. You brought her home. You gave them closure.”
She tried to open the carton, but her fingers tapped againstthe cardboard, not getting the leverage she needed to get the job done. “I was too late. We spun around in circles, looking for Aaron, thinking he was a victim, and—”
“You said the initial report is that Karen was killed before Aaron.” He took the carton of chicken and broccoli from her and opened it before sitting it in front of her. “That means you couldn’t have saved her if you were faster or smarter, neither of which you could have been. You worked this case hard from the beginning.”
She dug around the broccoli with her chopsticks. “I doubt Charles will see it that way.”
“He has a severe case of political nearsightedness. That’s not new.”
He was talking about the case a few years back. Another killer. One she’d figured out, but Charles and the man who held her job before her didn’t listen to her theories. Her suspect was a wealthy businessman who gave money in elections. She got shouted down and, instead of rallying, played the good soldier and took the back seat, and a young wife died. Finding Karen’s body brought all of those failure feelings rushing back.
Ginny glanced out at the main room outside of her glassed-in office and lowered her voice. “He’s worked more hours making sure our office got credit for finding Karen than I’ve seen him work on any case ever.”
“There’s a reason he hired you. You’re the one who gets in the muck and works.” He winked at her. “Ah, there it is. Your first smile in days.”
“Now I need to figure out who killed the killer.” But a part of her knew. She’d sensed the truth since the first time she met Lila.
Circumstance put them on opposite sides in this case, but she’d been fascinated with Lila’s façade from the beginning. Her indifference and total inability to fake caring about her husband’s fate, even though that turned up the spotlight on her, caught Ginny by surprise. She didn’t see Lila as vicious or psychotic. She saw a smart woman who’d been treading water her entire life and no one had bothered to throw her a life preserver.
“You will make sense of the case,” Roland said then stopped when he saw the look on her face. “What’s with the shrug?”
“Lila was involved. She either did it or acted with someone else—the boyfriend, maybe.”
“So you dedicate time to tracking her and proving that—” Roland’s voice cut off. “Another shrug.”
Ginny knew because she’d given the spiel to countless members of law enforcement and her boss over the last twenty-four hours. “There’s no forensic evidence that puts Lila or Ryan in that cabin. We should have found Lila’s DNA in Aaron’s car since they are married, but someone wiped it clean. Not even a stray hair.”
“Maybe Aaron had a partner who turned on him.”
The possibility kept kicking around in her head. It was one that let Lila off the hook, made her irrelevant in Aaron’s disappearance, so every time Ginny went there her brain rebelled. “Possible. I’m looking into his brother and his bestfriend, the principal who never noticed Aaron was messing with students.”
Roland rolled his eyes. He’d made his feelings about Brent not knowing known at home. To her husband, that omission made Brent partially responsible for what happened to the students. “Whatever the answer, you’ll ferret it out.”
They fell into a comfortable silence. The kind that comes with years of marriage and knowing every tick and bug the other person has.
After a few minutes of shifting food around in the container but not eating it, she put it down and looked at him. “What if there is a piece of me that doesn’t feel the driving need to follow this case where I think it will go?”
“Interesting.” He didn’t pretend not to understand. He got that this case had her conflicted and questioning what she believed.
“I mean, I do intend to solve it, but...” A strangling sound crept up her throat. “I don’t get to make the judgment calls. There’s evidence or not, and I go by that, wherever it takes me.”
One of his eyebrows lifted. “But?”
“If Lila did it, I sort of get it. Her father did this unspeakable thing, then to have her husband...” She shook her head. “Forget it.”
She tried not to let her mind go there. How hard Lila’s life was as a kid and what happened to her back then shouldn’t change the direction of the evidence. But the background picked at Ginny. Some of the things Lila said about her mother and her thoughts on marriage. The eloquent way shespoke but how the picture she drew didn’t always fit reality. It was as if she’d been broken as a teen and never healed, and something inside Ginny rose up, wanting to get her help.
He moved the containers in front of him to the side and leaned in a little closer, as if he were sharing a big secret. “If it’s true you think she did it and can’t prove it, then I guess the question is whether you can live with that ending.”
That’s the one scenario that kept playing and replaying in her head.
