Gemma was up at six a.m., which wasn’t bad considering all the major upheaval of these last few days. Still, Alexandra could have used another hour of sleep. Exhausted but grateful to have this morning at all, she carried her toddler down the stairs on her hip, not having the patience to let Gemma descend on her own when coffee waited at the bottom of the staircase.
She noticed red and green plastic boxes stacked in the corner of the living room as she passed through to the kitchen. They must be full of Christmas decorations JT had found in the attic.
She wondered if he’d had any luck with the computer hard drive, but didn’t see an old desktop console among the boxes. But then, they didn’t need a working PC, just a SATA—Serial Advance Technology Attachment—cord with USB. She’d been too tired to remember that last night when JT suggested searching the attic for an old PC. She had that kind of cord at home—she’d needed it to rescue files after a computer crash more than once. One could probably be ordered from Amazon, but they didn’t have same-day delivery on the mountain, especially with the forecasted snowstorm, and since tomorrow was Christmas, most, if not all, businesses in this area would be closed.
In the kitchen, she put the coffee on to brew as Gemma demanded breakfast. Alexandra set her up in the clip-on travel high chair and gave her dry Cheerios to start with, then scrambled eggs for both of them.
JT entered the kitchen just as Alexandra was sitting down to eat, and she jumped up to make his breakfast. “Sorry! I thought you’d sleep in. I can make you eggs too.”
He shooed her back into her seat. “Sit. Eat. I can cook for myself.”
She dropped back into her chair, glad to eat while her food was warm. But still, she felt guilty. After all he’d done for her and Gemma, the least she could do was fry some eggs for him.
The coffee was starting to kick in by the time JT sat at the table. She took a sip from her mug and nodded to the boxes in the corner. “You were busy last night.”
“Today, we’ll set up a Christmas tree. We’ve got ornaments and lights.”
“But no actual tree.”
He waved toward the woods beyond the window. “You can’t see the trees for the forest.”
She laughed. “Aren’t they a little big?”
“Smaller trees grow by the pond. I’m sure we can find one that will work.”
“Do you have a tree stand?”
He nodded. “In one of the Christmas boxes.”
“A saw or an axe?”
“Both are in the garage.”
She felt a little fluttery as she looked out the window. “It’s starting to snow again.”
He grinned. “Then we should go sooner rather than later. The hill will get slippery with accumulation.”
It sounded magical, but they had another problem. “Carrying Gemma uphill in snow won’t be easy, and I don’t have boots for her. Even if I did, she wouldn’t have the energy.”
“They had those baby backpack thingies at the store where I got the crib and all the other paraphernalia. I figured walks in the woods would be fun, so I got one.”
That fluttery feeling intensified. A walk in the woods in the snow on Christmas Eve with her daughter and the love of her life for the purpose of cutting down a Christmas tree? It was the stuff her fantasies had been made of, once upon a time.
She leaned sideways and kissed him on the cheek. “That sounds amazing.”
He kissed her back, but instead of going for the cheek, his lips brushed over hers. Then he tilted his head toward Gemma. “Your kid deserves a real Christmas.”
“Holy shit.” JT stared at his phone, his heart pounding as he reread the text.
“So, you know I’m not anti-swearing in any way,” Lex said, “but hearing a toddler swear isn’t cute to me, so I try to watch my words now that she’s talking.”
“Oh. Fu—I mean da—I mean…” He grimaced. “Gosh. Sorry.” He glanced at the toddler and was glad to see she was absorbed with watching some kids’ show on PBS that Lex had put on while they checked in with Raptor before heading out to cut down a tree.
“It’s fine. Just a reminder. I make mistakes all the time. But I’m trying. So what did you read that’s swear-worthy?”
“I sent a message to my contact at Raptor asking them to look into Kendall’s suicide, given that you were pulled over after leaving Kendall’s house. I was wondering if Officer Corey Williams was part of the investigation into her death. He wasn’t, but they found a different connection between Williams and Kendall. And you.”
He held up the phone so Lex could see the screen. “Williams was one of the two Montgomery County police officers who responded to your 9-1-1 call when you lived with Kendall. The ones who didn’t report that Russ Spaulding assaulted you right after being released from jail.”
Alexandra’s face paled. “Holy shit.”
JT raised a brow and glanced toward Gemma.
She shrugged. “It’s appropriate.” She stared at the text on his phone. “It can’t be a coincidence. But I honestly haven’t thought about him in years. I don’t remember his face at all. Pretty sure I never heard either man’s first name, and I completely forgot their last names. I never spoke to them again after that day.”
The text had included both names: Corey Williams and Tom Lindberg.
“I’ll ask Raptor to look into Lindberg, find out where he is now. Now I have to wonder if it was Williams who made the evidence against Spaulding disappear. The prosecution was handled by Anne Arundel County, while Williams worked in Bethesda for Montgomery County. But as a cop, he could have gotten access to the evidence room. It was easier back then.”
JT felt sick as he considered the possibility. Russ Spaulding had escaped prosecution because the evidence against him disappeared before the case went to trial. Drake had then pushed for JT to rehire the prick, claiming Alexandra had set the whole thing up to land herself a rich boyfriend.
If JT could have fired Edward Drake, he would have then, but no, the man remained a thorn in his side until seven and a half years later, when he was arrested for murdering JT’s grandmother along with smuggling and money laundering.
The man had died in prison a few years ago.
JT had not felt an iota of grief, but now he wished Drake were alive to answer questions. He’d never connected Edward Drake to Russ Spaulding’s attempt to drug Alexandra, but that was because the man’s corruption hadn’t been revealed until years later.
Drake had been livid at Spaulding’s firing. Brent Forbes had escaped the same fate only because Drake protected him and there had been no proof Forbes knew what Spaulding had planned for Lex.
Forbes still worked for the company, but he’d never been promoted above midlevel. That he was bitter was an understatement. JT’s response when HR passed on his grievances was always the same. “He’s welcome to quit.”
But he hadn’t, and JT made certain he never moved up in the ranks. He didn’t balk if a supervisor wanted to throw him a bonus, but those were capped.
JT had never trusted Forbes after the holiday party sixteen years ago, but his animosity had deepened when he learned Kendall hadn’t broken up with him as she’d claimed. She’d secretly continued seeing him after he’d brought the man who’d intended to rape Alexandra into their shared apartment. Lex had been so busy with school and seeing JT when she could that she didn’t find out until a weekend when she was supposed to take the train north to NYC, but JT had to cancel at the last minute due to a work emergency. She returned from the train station to find Kendall and Brent having sex on the couch.
JT had purchased the townhouse in Georgetown after that. Lex had stayed with Lee for several weeks until the house closed. She then lived in the townhouse for three years, moving out when she called off the wedding. She and Kendall had slowly rebuilt their friendship in those intervening years, and she’d moved from JT’s place back to Kendall’s.
After the breakup, JT had sold the townhouse, no longer able to bear being in the place where he and Lex had planned a future that wouldn’t be. When he’d visited DC, he stayed with Lee at the Watergate.
Kendall and Brent had been on again/off again, and Lex had been forced to tolerate the man when she moved back in with Kendall.
After Drake and his father were arrested, JT took possession of the family’s Maryland estate. Lisa had divorced his dad and moved to Florida to be with her sister. JT moved home, relocating to the DC area permanently. Lex had lived with him but continued paying rent on a room in Kendall’s home, maintaining a place to land when JT inevitably destroyed the relationship that had become a shell of what it had once been.
“Was Kendall with Brent in the end?” he asked.
“No. They broke up for good about two years after we did.”
“Were they still in touch?”
“I don’t really know. Kendall and I…we had our own falling out. She and Brent threw a party—at our place—and Brent invited Russ.”
“I’m so sorry Lex. That must have hurt.”
“Almost as much as the night you ripped my heart out.”
He swallowed. “I will never be able to convey how sorry I am. I hate myself for what I did to you.” He took a deep breath. “And I know this sounds like an excuse, but I did it on purpose. I needed you to give up on me. For both our sakes.”
She shrugged, and he understood. He’d gone too far that night. There was no excuse.
She cleared her throat. “She never really believed Russ or Brent were guilty of anything. She hated you for holding Brent back at work.”
“I was protecting you.”
She raised a brow. “Don’t put it on me. Your vendetta against Brent outlasted any feelings you had for me by several years.”
“That’s not true. But I get your point. I know I was a prick, but I won’t ever understand why Kendall believed Brent over you.”
“For her, there was no proof. He fed her a lot of lies about you having it out for Russ, even before that night at the holiday party. She didn’t trust you and believed you’d set him up.”
“But you and I were dating.”
“She and Brent were dating. She thought I was as blinded by you and your money as I thought she was blinded by her feelings for Brent.” She gave him a piercing stare. “She wasn’t the only person who accused me of being more interested in your money than you.”
“I will regret that to my dying day.”
She sighed. “So, what now? Williams is dead, but it can’t be a coincidence that he was involved both then and now.”
“It changes everything. We have a place to start looking now. This all connects back to what happened then. Kendall’s death looks pretty damn suspicious now.”
Lex nodded. “She’d always battled depression, but as far as I know, she’d never been suicidal. And from what Tanya said, she’d been doing really well. She’d found meds that worked for her and had been working with a great therapist for nearly three years. She had a new guy and was happy. Tanya was stunned when she got the call that Kendall killed herself.”
“What did the boyfriend say?”
“He told Tanya that Kendall had broken up with him a month before she died. She cut him out completely.”
“How did…how did she do it—supposedly?”
“Carbon monoxide poisoning. Car left running in an enclosed space. She was in the garage, but not in the car.”
“The car being the Jetta?”
She nodded.
“Okay. I’ll get Raptor to look into her death. Look for more connections with Williams.”
“The problem with the Williams connection—it does give me motive for murder. Especially if he’s behind the evidence against Russ being lost.”
“You didn’t recognize him, remember his name, or have contact with him in sixteen years.”
“But he could have told me who he was.”
“Did he?”
“No! Of course not.”
“You didn’t shoot him. That’s what matters. And if Russ Spaulding is involved, he’s just made a big mistake. Because he’s back on my radar now, and he won’t get away with fucking with you this time.”
Lex’s gaze flicked to Gemma, and he added, “Sorry.”
“It’s fine. The only person I hate more than Brent Forbes is Russ Spaulding.”
He was damn glad he wasn’t on that list.
“No one is going to get much done today. I’ll call Raptor, and then it’s time to go get a Christmas tree.”
She smiled. “I want that. Desperately.”
He put an arm around her waist and pulled her to him, giving her a light hug. “Go get Gemma ready while I make the call.”
She leaned her head against his chest. “Thank you.”
He placed a finger beneath her chin and raised her face to meet his gaze. He smiled, then brushed his lips over hers. “Christmas begins now.”