“The bad news is that it turns out this execution, so to speak, has nothing to do with the attempts on the journalist’s life,” Fredericks told him.
Rather than ask Fredericks a bunch of questions that would either make his partner irritable or wind up sending Fredericks off track, he let his partner explain, at his own pace, how he had come to that conclusion.
“Go on,” Morgan urged.
“Age-old story,” Fredericks told him. Then, after a pregnant pause, he said, “Her boyfriend killed her. That is, her ex-boyfriend,” Fredericks clarified. “According to the story, they were having some problems and she was looking to leave him three months ago. According to a restraining order she filed, he was controlling and had become abusive. Anyway, she got her chance to get away from him when she became part of that miracle drug test group. She used that to have some time away from him and then, when the testing was over, she found the courage she needed to tell him that she’d decided to move on.”
This was all new information, Morgan thought. Krys had given him no indication that she’d even known the murder victim had a boyfriend. “I’m assuming that he didn’t take it very well.”
“You can say that again,” his partner told him with a mirthless laugh. “It turns out that this was a classic case of ‘if I can’t have her, nobody can.’ Thompson gave her one last chance to come back to him, said that all would be forgiven if she did. When she refused, he decided to just bide his time and when the opportunity presented itself, he killed her.”
Morgan thought there was just one flaw in the narrative. “CSI said it was the work of a sniper.”
“It was,” Fredericks agreed.
“But I thought you just said—”
Fredericks talked right over him. “With a renewed purpose in his life, Thompson put in an inordinate amount of time at the rifle range learning how to become a marksman. According to the guy who runs the place,” Fredericks told him, “he became pretty damn good. In typical stalker fashion, he knew her routine, so it was no big deal for him to lie in wait and pick her off that morning.”
Morgan thought of the surveillance videos he had reviewed. “You have proof of this?”
“Proof?” Fredericks echoed. “When we confronted Thompson about his actions, he bragged about it. Said he’d been waiting for someone to put the pieces together.” Morgan’s partner paused, then said, “So, while we now have our killer in custody, we still don’t have a viable suspect for whoever is trying to kill your journalist.”
“She’s not my journalist,” Morgan corrected him. There was no point in getting ahead of himself until he knew how Krys felt about what had happened between them. “And her name is Krys,” he told Fredericks.
The man went along with the correction. “Yeah, her.” Fredericks sighed. “The fact of the matter is that I don’t know if I should put this in the ‘win’ column or if I should apologize because this solution now puts you back at square one.”
That made two of them. “Well, thanks for the update,” he told Fredericks. “Let me know if you find out anything else.” With that, he hung up.
He really didn’t look forward to telling Krys that it now looked as if Jacobs might be innocent, at least of hiring someone to eliminate Claire. It also might mean that the CEO wasn’t guilty of paying someone to attempt to do the same thing to her.
So who the hell was out there, trying to kill her?
For the moment, he was extremely grateful for his uncle’s party. At least that would get her mind off all of this for the space of a day.
“You look as if you’ve got something on your mind,” Krys said the minute she walked out of her bedroom and looked at his face. “Let me guess,” she declared. “The party’s been called off.”
He shook his head. “No.”
Glancing down at her outfit, Krys said, “You don’t like the dress.”
She was wearing a soft, light gray-blue dress that clung to her body like an old friend—the way he wanted to. “No, I love the dress,” he told her, his eyes taking in every square inch of her. “Although I have to admit that I’d also like the chance to peel it off you—slowly.”
“You would, huh?” And then she completely threw him by asking, “Does your thinking that way make us a thing, a couple?”
He congratulated himself on his quick recovery. “It makes us anything you want us to be,” he told her.
She sighed. “That is a typical vague male response, you realize that, don’t you?”
“Well, in my defense,” he told her, “it’s only vague because I don’t want to spook you or have you running for the hills.”
Her eyes gave nothing away. “And if I want to?”
He didn’t know if she was baiting him, or if she was giving him her honest reaction. “That is your right,” he told her, although it cost him. “And we’ll talk about it,” he had to add, “but only after we go to Uncle Andrew’s get-together and after we find that killer who is out there, roaming the streets of Aurora, waiting to get another crack at you.”
That was rather a long to-do list, she thought. Once it was out of the way, that just left the two of them with nothing more to deal with than each other.
“I must say, you do come up with a compelling argument.” Krys paused for a moment, raising her eyes to his. She changed the subject by going back to her initial one. “So you don’t want me to change?”
“Not so much as a hair,” he told her, amusement curving his mouth.
She scrutinized Morgan, trying to unravel what he was telling her. “Are we still talking about the dress?”
His smile seemed to wiggle into every available crevice in her body. “I’ll leave that up to you to
