CROSS HER HEART Read online

  ALSO BY MELINDA LEIGH

  MORGAN DANE NOVELS

  Say You’re Sorry

  Her Last Goodbye

  Bones Don’t Lie

  What I’ve Done

  Secrets Never Die

  Save Your Breath

  SCARLET FALLS NOVELS

  Hour of Need

  Minutes to Kill

  Seconds to Live

  SHE CAN SERIES

  She Can Run

  She Can Tell

  She Can Scream

  She Can Hide

  “He Can Fall” (A Short Story)

  She Can Kill

  MIDNIGHT NOVELS

  Midnight Exposure

  Midnight Sacrifice

  Midnight Betrayal

  Midnight Obsession

  THE ROGUE SERIES NOVELLAS

  Gone to Her Grave (Rogue River)

  Walking on Her Grave (Rogue River)

  Tracks of Her Tears (Rogue Winter)

  Burned by Her Devotion (Rogue Vows)

  Twisted Truth (Rogue Justice)

  THE WIDOW’S ISLAND NOVELLA SERIES

  A Bone to Pick

  Whisper of Bones

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2020 by Melinda Leigh

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Montlake, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542006927 (paperback)

  ISBN-10: 1542006929 (paperback)

  ISBN-13: 9781542006941 (hardcover)

  ISBN-10: 1542006945 (hardcover)

  Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant

  First Edition

  For Charlie, Annie, and Tom.

  You are everything.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  Grey’s Hollow, New York, January 1993

  “911. What is your emergency?” the lady asked.

  Bree was shaking so hard. She could barely hold the phone to her ear. “Mommy and Daddy are fighting.” A slap sounded down the hall, and Bree flinched. “Would you send the police?”

  “The police are coming,” the lady said. “I’m going to talk with you until they arrive.”

  “OK.” Bree sniffed and wiped her nose with her sleeve. Snot was running down her face. She hated to cry in front of Daddy. It just made him madder, but she couldn’t help it.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Bree,” she said in a small voice. She didn’t think Daddy would hear her, but if he did, then Bree would get the same as Mommy. She looked down the hall. Her parents’ door was open, and Daddy was yelling. She couldn’t hear all the words, but she knew he was saying mean things and calling Mommy names. She heard another smacking sound and her mother started to sob. “He’s hitting Mommy.”

  “Where are they?”

  “In their bedroom.”

  Erin came out into the hall. She held her stuffed bunny by one ear and dragged him as she walked toward Mommy and Daddy’s room.

  “Erin, don’t go in there!” Bree called as loud as she dared, but it came out as a whisper. She didn’t want Daddy to hear.

  “Who is Erin?” the lady asked.

  “My little sister,” Bree answered. “Erin, come here!”

  “How old is she?”

  “Four. I’m eight. I have to look after her. Mommy said so.”

  “You’re eight years old.” The lady coughed.

  Bree went down the hall toward her sister, but the phone cord wasn’t long enough. “I can’t reach her.” She held the phone tight. She didn’t want to put it down. She yelled, “Erin!”

  Her sister turned her head. Erin wasn’t crying, but her eyes were real big, and she’d wet her pajamas. When her sister turned around and walked toward her, the air whooshed from Bree’s chest, and stars danced in front of her eyes. She pulled Erin down the hall and into the kitchen with her.

  “I got her,” Bree said to the lady.

  In the third bedroom, the baby began to scream. His doorway was right across from Mommy and Daddy’s. His crying made Bree’s tummy hurt. Daddy would get madder.

  “Is that your sister crying?” the lady asked.

  “No. I got a baby brother.” Bree didn’t want Daddy in the room with Mommy, but she didn’t want him to come out either. “I have to go get him. I have to make him be quiet.” Bree turned to her sister. “Stay here.”

  Before she could go to the baby’s room, Daddy came into the hall. His face was red, and his eyes were small and mean. Mommy was right behind him. Her mouth was bleeding, and her neck had red marks all around it.

  “Stop.” Mommy grabbed Daddy by the arm. “I’ll get him.”

  Daddy spun and slapped her across the face.

  Bree yelled, “Stop hitting Mommy!”

  But he didn’t. He smacked her again.

  The baby screamed, and Daddy turned toward his room.

  “What’s happening, Bree?” the lady asked.

  “Daddy’s gonna get the baby.” Bree didn’t know what to do. She was so scared, her belly cramped, and her legs shook. Her sister crawled under the kitchen table. “Please send the police.”

  “They’re coming, Bree,” the lady said. “It’s going to be OK.”

  “Stop it!” Mommy jumped on Daddy’s back and started hitting him. “Don’t you touch him.”

  Daddy spun real fast, knocking Mommy into the wall. She fell off his back onto the hallway floor. He turned away from the baby’s doorway. His face was dark, madder than Bree had ever seen him. He lunged toward Mommy, his fingers curling around her arm and yanking her to her feet. Then he dragged her back into their room.

  “I have to go. I have to get the baby now.” Bree put the phone down. She could hear the lady talking as she tiptoed into the baby’s room. Red-faced and screaming, her baby brother stood in his crib, his little hands hooked over the top rail.

  “Shhh.” Bree picked him up and put him on her hip. “You got to be quiet.”

  As she carried him
out, she looked into her parents’ room. Daddy held Mommy against the wall with one hand. In the other, he held a gun. Bree froze for a second. Her whole body went cold, and she almost peed her pants.

  Then she backed away and ran down the hall as fast as she could. The baby stopped crying as he bounced on her hip. He buried his face in her shoulder and hiccupped. She hurried past the phone on the floor. The lady was calling her name, but Bree didn’t have time to talk to her.

  She stopped next to the kitchen table and called Erin.

  Her sister crawled out from under the table. “Bree?”

  “Come on,” Bree whispered. “We got to hide.”

  “I’m scared,” Erin said.

  “I know where to go. It’ll be OK.” Bree grabbed Erin by the arm and pulled her out the kitchen door.

  Erin resisted. “Promise?”

  Shifting the baby aside, Bree drew a tiny X in the middle of her own chest. “Cross my heart.”

  She turned toward the door again. This time Erin didn’t resist.

  It was dark in the backyard, and the porch was icy under her bare feet. The wind blew right through her pajamas. But she kept going, down the steps and around to the loose board under the porch. She pulled it back and held it while Erin wiggled through the hole. Then she pushed the baby into the darkness and crawled in after him. Bree pulled the board back into place. She’d hidden here before plenty of times when Mommy and Daddy were fighting.

  Under the porch, they were out of the wind, but it was still cold.

  Bree looked between the boards at the dark yard. In the shadow of the barn, Daddy’s dogs barked from the kennel. The lady had said the police were coming. The wind came through the spaces between the boards. Bree couldn’t hear Mommy and Daddy fighting anymore. What’s Daddy doing?

  “I’m cold.” Erin’s teeth chattered.

  Bree pulled her sister closer and shushed her. The baby shivered in her arms and whimpered. His face scrunched up, like he was gettin’ ready to cry. If he did, Daddy might hear. He might find them. Bree wrapped her arms around his little body and rocked him. “Shhh.”

  A door slammed, and Bree jumped. Heavy boots stomped overhead. She couldn’t tell if the footsteps were inside the house or on the back porch. Had the police come? Maybe it was gonna be OK. Just like the lady said.

  A gunshot blasted. Bree jumped.

  Mommy!

  Her hands tightened on the baby, and he began to cry. Another door slammed. Bree wanted to run to the sound, but she was too afraid. She heard more footsteps, more yelling, then another gunshot.

  Bree closed her eyes.

  Even without seeing what happened, she knew that nothing would ever be OK again.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “This is the building.” Bree Taggert pointed to a line of brick rowhouses occupying a North Philadelphia block. “We’re looking for twenty-year-old Ronnie Marin.”

  Fellow homicide detective Dana Romano slowed the vehicle and coughed into her fist. At fifty, Dana was long and lean. A few gray streaks highlighted her short, messy blonde hair. Crow’s-feet deepened as she squinted through the car window. “Is this his place?”

  Bree checked her notes. “No. Ronnie’s aunt lives here. The last time he was arrested, she bailed him out. Then he skipped on his bail, and she was out a thousand dollars. I’m hoping she knows where he is and holds a grudge.”

  The previous week, a nurse had been beaten, raped, and strangled on her way home from the night shift in the ICU. A Laundromat surveillance camera had caught the killer dragging his victim into the alley where her body had been found. In less than twenty-four hours, the killer had been ID’d as Ronnie Marin from North Philly. Ronnie had a rap sheet as long as the Schuylkill Expressway.

  Bree had been working her way through Ronnie’s known contacts. So far, she’d found no sign of Ronnie, and no one had admitted to seeing him.

  Dana had been out sick for the past week and was catching up with the investigation. She pulled the blue Crown Vic to the curb behind a pile of snow as tall as the vehicle. “Remind me what Ronnie’s last offense was?”

  “Robbery.” Bree scanned the dark street but saw nothing alive. In the trash alley that ran next to the home, black ice shone in the glare of a streetlamp. “He did eighteen months. Before that, vandalism and simple assault. He’s only been out for two months.”

  Bree turned the dashboard computer to show her Ronnie’s mug shot.

  “A quick progression to murder,” Dana said.

  “Nothing teaches a criminal to be a better criminal like going to prison.”

  “Maybe Ronnie left town.”

  “I doubt it. All his connections are here. This is his turf, and he’s worked hard to be a BFD in his neighborhood.”

  Dana shrugged. “What do we know about the aunt?”

  “Ronnie’s aunt is fifty-seven. She’s worked for the same commercial cleaning company for the past eighteen years and has no criminal record.”

  “Can’t pick your family.” Dana paused, her face reddening. “I’m sorry, Bree. I didn’t mean anything by that.”

  In the four years they’d worked together, Dana had never brought up Bree’s parents’ deaths, though Bree had heard plenty of whispers behind her back from other cops in the division. But then, when your father murdered your mother and then killed himself, you had to expect people to talk about it.

  “It’s all right. I know it.” And Bree had mostly come to terms with her own family’s past long ago, at least as much as anyone could under the circumstances. She’d also made tragedy and violence a permanent part of her life when she’d become a cop.

  Whatever. She’d had more than enough therapy as a kid. She was done with it. After she’d turned eighteen, she’d decided to stop analyzing herself. Some damage left a permanent mark. There was no changing that. She’d shoved her childhood into a dark corner of her memory and moved on. At thirty-five, the last thing Bree wanted was to drag those memories into the light.

  She stepped out of the vehicle. Frigid wind whipped along the icy street and stung her cheeks. Despite the cold, she unbuttoned her black peacoat for better access to her weapon.

  Coughing, Dana joined her on the cracked sidewalk. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her knee-length parka. “Damn, it’s cold.”

  Just after the new year arrived, an Arctic blast had frozen Philadelphia solid. The cold snap had persisted, nothing had melted, and the week-old snow had grown gray and dingy. But then, city snow was pretty only until the following rush hour.

  Bree skirted a patch of shiny black ice. “You should go home when we’re done here. You sound like a dying seal.”

  “No way. I can’t stare at the walls of my crappy apartment for another day.” Dana cleared her throat, then pulled a cough drop from her pocket, unwrapped it, and popped it into her mouth. “My mother keeps stopping by. Hovering and shoving soup at me all damned day. I’ve been taking the meds, and the doc says I’m no longer contagious. It’s time to get off my butt and back to work.”

  “What are you going to do after you retire next month?”

  “I don’t know. My cousin wants me to work night security for his flooring store.” Dana paused on the sidewalk to hack.

  “Because everyone wants to work the graveyard shift in their retirement.”

  “Right?” Dana coughed again.

  Sighing, Bree waited for Dana to catch her breath. When she’d finished, Bree led the way up three cracked concrete steps. A white wrought iron railing edged the stairs and stoop. Bree and Dana automatically flanked the doorway as best they could to avoid standing dead center and knocked on the door. When no one responded, Bree knocked louder.

  Footsteps sounded inside, and a tiny middle-aged woman answered. Bree recognized Ronnie’s aunt, Maria Marin, from her driver’s license photo. Her complexion was sallow and wrinkled, and she wore her dark brown hair scraped into an unforgiving bun. At eight o’clock on a Tuesday evening, most people would be settling in for the night. M
rs. Marin would be getting ready for work.

  Bree lifted the badge she wore on a lanyard around her neck. “I’m Detective Taggert, and this is Detective Romano.”

  Dana nodded. “Ma’am.”

  Mrs. Marin’s dark eyes went wide, and her mouth puckered before she smoothed out her features. Fear? The skin between Bree’s shoulder blades itched. Dana shot Bree a side-eye. She’d seen it.

  Is Ronnie inside? Or is Mrs. Marin simply afraid to talk to the police?

  Bree glanced over Mrs. Marin’s shoulder but didn’t see anyone. “We’d like to talk to you about your nephew, Ronnie.” Bree lowered her voice in case the neighborhood had ears. “May we come inside?”

  “No.” Mrs. Marin shook her head, fear flashing into her eyes again. Her gaze shifted hard to one side, as if she was trying to see behind her without turning her head. Is Ronnie listening?

  Bree persisted. “Have you seen Ronnie in the past few days?”

  “I don’t have to talk to you.” Mrs. Marin took a step backward and prepared to close the door.

  “No, ma’am, you don’t, but your nephew killed a woman.” Bree wasn’t giving anything away. Ronnie’s photograph had been shown on the news the previous night. “Every officer in the city is looking for him. It would be better for Ronnie if he came in with me willingly.” Bree let the implication hang that surrendering to her would be safer for Ronnie’s health.

  Ronnie had committed a vicious murder. His face had been caught on a surveillance video. Clearly, he was no criminal mastermind. The PPD was going to find him. Given his established stupidity, Ronnie would resist and/or run.

  Mrs. Marin hesitated for two seconds, then shut the door in their faces.

  Dana stepped off the stoop. Rock salt crunched under her boots. She coughed, covering her mouth. “He’s in there.”

  “Yep.” Without looking back, Bree walked toward the car.

  Dana paused on the sidewalk. “We can’t prove he’s inside.”

  “Nope.” Bree inhaled. The cold air bit into her sinus passages. “Let’s pull around the corner and see if we can get a line of sight on the back door. Knowing we found him is going to make Ronnie want to bolt ASAP.”

  “We’ll need another unit to watch the front door.”

  They stepped into the vehicle and called for backup. Then Dana drove around the corner and parked alongside an overgrown hedge at the mouth of the alley that bisected the block. The alley was full of shadows, but they could see straight down the middle. Each rowhome had a tiny cement patio enclosed with various types of fencing. Chain link was prominent. But each back door was raised three steps high, and Bree had a clear visual of each rear exit. Most units had lights above their doors. Mrs. Marin’s home was the third from the corner. Bree had barely located her unit when the back door opened, and a head poked out. Ronnie surveyed the neighborhood.