Shock Waves by Jenna Mills Read Free Book Online Page B

lie?” Compassion welled up, pushed hard, but he shoved it aside. Truth came in facts. Not emotions. “According to courthouse gossip, Brinker resigned the force then went to
Florida
, killed himself a week later.”
    For a moment Brenna did nothing, said nothing. She just stared at him through the darkness, her fairy blue eyes horribly dark against her face. Tangled hair fell against her cheeks, but she made no move to push it back. She just stared, like he’d reached inside her chest and crushed her heart.
    Her hand moved first, her right hand, slowly lifting to trace a sign of the cross, from her forehead down to her chest, to her left side, then right. Then her fingers returned to close around the weathered cross dangling between her breasts, and her eyes, still dark but no longer empty, drenched in an emotion that looked damningly real, slowly closed.
    “No.” The word didn’t even qualify as a whisper. The sound was too raw. Too broken. “It wasn’t his fault.”
    He touched her without thinking. His hand found her face, eased the hair from her alarmingly cold, impossibly soft cheek. She opened her eyes, pierced him with a look of such intensity it zapped him somewhere deep inside.
    That should have made him pull back. He knew it was a mistake even as he slid his index finger toward the bruised flesh beneath her eye, even as he swiped the single tear.
    “What, Brenna?” He tried for the prosecutor’s voice, but found only that of the man. “What wasn’t his fault?”
    * * *
    She couldn’t breathe. Brenna braced herself for the onslaught, the blinding rush, but found only the voice, quieter than before. Not the prosecutor’s voice, but the man’s voice.
    The man from her dreams.
    Through the semidarkness of the limousine, the longing swept in. The drowning sensation curled through her like one of those evocative mists rolling off the river, seeping clear through to her heart. She knew she should push him away, end his touch, dismiss the sensation. But for a moment, God, just for a moment, she sat there with her eyes closed, breathing deeply.
    From the second Ethan Carrington had regained consciousness, his voice had been hard, accusing. But now his touch was soft, and in it she felt a humanity at odds with the accusations he’d hurled at her. His fingers whispered across the soft flesh beneath her eyes, rubbing away the evidence of her grief.
    Six months. She couldn’t believe it. Six months. That would have been April. The two-year anniversary. She’d thought about calling him that week, touching base. But she hadn’t. She’d decided to leave the past in the past, not drag up memories best left dead and buried.
    Another wave of emotion rolled over her, but she fought it. Detective Dave Brinker had believed in her when no one else had, trusted her when no one else would. In return, she’d helped him locate missing children, track a killer. Months had passed since she’d talked to the man. Years. She could still see him as he’d stood that last day, a solitary figure in a black trench coat beneath the leafy branches of an old oak.
    “Brenna?” Ethan’s voice, warm, quiet. “Do you know why Detective Brinker committed suicide?”
    Emotion knotted her throat. What would it be like, she wondered, to just let go. To quit trying to hold all those broken edges jammed together, to trust the subtle persuasion she felt in Ethan’s touch?
    Trust me, Brenna, baby. Trust me.
    She stiffened at the memory. “Adam.” The name stuck in the back of her throat, like bile.
    Recognition flared in Ethan’s eyes. The warmth of his breath fanned over her, but no longer did it fight the chill. The truth drilled too deeply. “The partner?”
    “Some people called him that.” And Brenna, God, she’d called him so much more.
    The old rage stabbed deep, the frustration of being convicted without a trial. She looked into Ethan’s eyes, drenched with a concern she knew better than to trust, not after the way he’d