Harlequin Intrigue April 2021--Box Set 2 of 2, Carol Ericson [good book recommendations TXT] 📗

“You made the connection between that poor, pitiable little girl and me?” She shook her head. “That’s some hunch, Detective.”

“It was a hunch that didn’t bear out when I discovered Jennifer’s daughter’s name was Marilyn Lake, but then I saw this.” He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his pants pocket and shook it out. “Unmistakably you.”

Kyra hunched forward and snatched the paper from his hand. Her mother’s eyes, so full of hope and optimism, met hers, and the scent of her mother’s floral perfume overwhelmed her. Her chest tightened, and her throat closed. The paper floated from her hand as she gasped for breath.

She felt herself tumbling, tumbling through time and fear and sadness. The aching sadness gripped her belly and clawed at the carefully constructed facade that she’d been building for the past ten years since she graduated from high school and changed her name. The wound gaped open and the contents of her pathetic, tortured life began to seep out.

She clutched her midsection and moaned, toppling onto her side. As she began to slide off the couch, into the narrow space between the couch and the coffee table, strong hands pinched her shoulders.

She heard her name from far away... Mimi, Mimi, it’s me and you, Mimi. You’re my little good-luck charm.

“Kyra, Kyra. Are you all right?”

Rough, blunt fingers, not her mother’s cool, delicate ones with the coral polish on the tips, brushed her cheek. The male voice, low and urgent, pierced the fog of her consciousness.

“Kyra, lie back. I’m going to get you some water, or something stronger if I can find it.”

He left her, and the haze began to clear from her brain. As Jake knocked around her kitchen, she grabbed the arm of the chair and pulled herself to an upright position.

She smoothed her hand over her hair and dashed the moisture from her cheeks.

By the time Jake made it back to the living room with a glass of water in one hand and a measure of something that looked like apple cider vinegar in the other, her breathing had returned to normal, although her heart still galloped in her chest.

He held up the glass in his right hand. “Water or some really old Scotch?”

“I’ll take the water. I’m fine.” When she took the glass from his hand, their fingers brushed and she wanted to drop the glass and grab on to his warm, strong hand for dear life.

She gulped back the water. “I’m really okay. It’s just that I hadn’t seen that photo in a long time. It brought back...memories.”

He crouched at her feet and rested a hand on her bouncing knee. “Terrifying, tragic ones. I’m sorry I sprang it on you like that. It’s a beautiful picture of your mother. The second I laid eyes on it I knew you were her daughter. You look so much alike, except for the eyes.”

Her gaze darted to the picture on the floor. “The eyes? Really? People always used to tell us we had the exact same color of eyes. She assured me that it would be her eyes that would propel her to stardom, just like Liz Taylor’s. My mother lived for old Hollywood.”

“The color and the shape are almost identical. It’s the expression that’s different.” He pinched the corner of the paper between two fingers. “Hers lack your cynicism, your distrust, your worldliness.”

“Maybe if my mother had possessed a little more cynicism and a little less trust, she’d be alive today.” Kyra’s nose stung and she swiped the back of her hand beneath it. “You must’ve read about her extracurricular activities. She took the idea of the casting couch a little too far.”

“I saw that.” Jake squeezed her knee and backed up to the sofa in a crouch. “Was your mother from LA? I noticed she was a young mother. What about your father?”

Kyra pinned her hands between her knees and lifted her shoulders. “My mother was seventeen when she had me. She never told me who my father was. Her small town in Idaho chafed, and she took off for Hollywood when she was twenty.”

“Parents, family? Where were they when you were orphaned?”

“I assume they’re still in Idaho. They disowned my mother and wanted nothing to do with me at her death. Her murder embarrassed them.” She squeezed her knees against her hands until her knuckles dug into her flesh. She had never told anyone this much about her life, except Quinn and Charlotte, and they knew it by heart. She never had to tell them anything.

Tilting her head, she surveyed Jake through her lashes. Now she’d have to kill him.

He raised an eyebrow. “Are you all right now? You looked like you were going to pass out.”

“I’m fine.” She picked up the piece of paper with her mother’s picture and smoothed it out on the coffee table.

Jake cleared his throat. “How come you didn’t tell me your mother was one of The Player’s victims?”

She raised her eyes from tracing her fingertip around her mother’s face. “Nobody knows that.”

“Except Quinn.” He dragged a hand through his messy, dark locks. “You didn’t think it was important information given the nature of this case?”

“Important to me.”

“Important to the task force lead? In fact—” he stuffed her Guatemalan pillow behind his lower back “—I would’ve thought you’d be eager to tell me.”

“Eager? Whatever for? It’s my deep, dark secret.” One of her deep, dark secrets.

“It would’ve given you cred, another reason why you belonged on the task force.”

“The only reason I need for being on that task force is my experience with victims and their families.” She took another quick gulp of water, half of it landing in her lap.

“You can’t tell me you didn’t want on this task force, Kyra. I know you pulled some strings to get assigned, especially because Castillo knows how I feel about working with therapists.”

“When I heard the details of the first two killings, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I knew