Chapter Twelve

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As Slade drove toward San Antonio, Marise tried to focus. Well, she tried to focus on something other than Slade and the amazing sex they'd had hours earlier.

She was failing big time.

Hard to get her mind off that since the amazing part had been all the things she'd always thought great sex should be.

Memorable. Earth moving.

Amazing.

Yep, it was all of those things and more, and it was apparently going to stay in her head whether she wanted it there or not. Still, she forced herself to at least try to focus since this trip to the colonel's house could turn out to be a huge deal. If they found blood, the investigation could be blown wide open. Stephanie and Julian could maybe be arrested, and if so, they might in turn implicate Sonny.

Of course, finding Sonny hadn't been easy for the cops, but Marise had to figure that sooner or later he would be caught. She was just hoping for the sooner because once Sonny was out of the picture, then her life could get back to normal.

That thought stopped her cold.

Before today, her normal hadn't included Slade, not on a regular basis anyway. And it put a knot in her stomach to realize she wanted something more in the normal range for the two of them.

And that caused her to curse.

Unfortunately, she didn't keep the profanity in her head as she'd intended and ended up muttering some of it.

And Slade heard it.

He glanced over at her. Just a glance. But he wasn't questioning why she'd resorted to profanity. Slade seemed to know that she was going over what had happened between them. Probably because he was having some of the same thoughts himself.

Crap.

This was exactly why they'd avoided sex for all these years. Sex could be totally consuming in a relationship, and with Slade's commitment to his job, he might not have the time, space or the desire for normal.

If so, she was looking at a good heart crushing here. Something she'd worked hard to avoid, especially when it came to Slade. She didn't want any heartbreaks from him. Instead, she needed him when her heart needed healing. Which was way too often if she was dealing with her PTSD.

And that made her stupid, stupid, stupid for risking something that huge.

Still, the sex with him hadn't seemed optional at the time. And it still didn't feel that way. Despite the consequences, she was already thinking about getting him into bed again.

Thankfully, Marise had some encouragement to shove that notion aside because Slade turned into Rosa's neighborhood, and it was a visual reminder of what they had to do. A reminder as well that this could put an end to the nightmare for Rosa. He might soon know one way or another if he'd been a witness to a murder.

She'd never been to the colonel's house but wasn't surprised it was an upscale neighborhood. According to the background reports Ruby had done, Stephanie and Rosa both came from money, and the colonel had done some high-price tag consulting work once he'd retired from the military. Stephanie's two art galleries were thriving. All of that showed in their choice of living areas.

Here, the lots were large, several acres each with stately homes set far back off the road. The lawns were all manicured and dotted with precisely placed beds of flowers and shrubs.

Marise recalled the colonel saying it was all about appearances for Stephanie, and their house reflected that. It was a three-story Georgian-style house that definitely qualified as a mansion.

Slade drove the long tree-lined driveway and came to a stop behind a black van that she knew belonged to Jericho. The driveway and the side of the house had some illumination from landscape lights tucked around the shrubs, but it was still fairly dark. Light enough though for her to see Jericho get out of the van. He was followed by Jace and a heavily muscled dark-haired man.

Detective Angelo DeLuca, no doubt.

The man certainly looked all cop and not especially pleased about this op. Probably because he would have preferred an all cop team rather than a bunch of civilians. Then again, he was going to be a civilian soon, too, so maybe the grumpy expression was his norm.

"Let's get inside and we'll do introductions," Slade insisted. "I don't want to be standing around out here if Sonny is nearby."

Apparently, everyone else felt the same way because they went to the side door where Rosa entered a keycode to unlock it. They stepped into a large sunroom decorated in pale yellows and mint greens.

"I used a thermal scanner on the house," Jericho said right off the bat, closing and locking the door behind them. "No one else is here."

Good. Because it had occurred to Marise that Sonny could have either broken in or had been let in. Maybe by Stephanie if she'd realized the meeting up with her husband was a ruse to get her out of the house.

"That's my brother, Slade," Jericho continued a moment later, jumping into those introductions. "Colonel Vincent Rosa and Marise Brennan. Guys, this is SAPD Detective Angelo DeLuca."

"Angel," the man automatically corrected.

"Not that he is one," Jace muttered in a tone that only brothers and really close friends could manage. They exchanged a glance that ended in a sigh to signal they were about to get down to business. "Angel wants to record every step of this." He shifted to Rosa when Angel turned on a small recorder that was clipped to his lapel. "And he wants to Mirandize you in case any incriminating pops up."

Rosa pulled back his shoulders but then nodded. "Yes, we need to do this as much by the book as possible."

Angel immediately launched into reciting the Miranda warning, ending it with the required question of did the colonel understand his rights. Rosa gave another nod, and after dragging in a long breath, he led them up the stairs to the second floor. This level was as immaculate as the rest of the house. Nothing out of place, including the framed artwork that lined the walls of the hall.

Rosa threaded them through that hall, and he took another breath when he stopped outside a closed door.

"Stephanie's office," he explained, and then the colonel motioned toward a room just up the hall. "My office. I was in there when I heard the arguing."

"You stated that you believe you heard your wife, Sonny, Annalisa, Carlyle Hutton, and your wife's assistant, Julian Randall. Is that correct?" Angel asked. Again, that was pure cop in both tone and expression.

"I think that's who I heard," the colonel said. "I'm not one hundred percent sure of much of anything. That's why I needed to come here."

Angel made a sound to indicate he wasn't especially happy about the colonel's uncertainty, and he took out a pair of thin latex gloves and a small flashlight from one of the pockets of his black cargo pants.

"This has a blue light that'll detect blood and other bodily fluids," Angel explained while he gloved up. "I don't want to spray Luminol since it can sometimes smear or obscure spatter. If the light shows anything, then I'll leave the Luminol and such to the CSIs."

Angel tried to open the door to Stephanie's office, but it was locked, prompting him to look at the colonel.

"It's not usually locked, but I have a spare key in my desk," the colonel said, turning to head in that direction.

Angel stepped in front of him. "I'll go with you to make you nothing else is… disturbed. Depending on what we find, the CSIs might want to examine the bottle you drank from the night you think you might have witnessed a murder. Of course, the chain of custody on that is basically screwed up to hell and back by now, but I don't want anything we do here to add to the screwup."

"It's not usually locked," Jace repeated in a mutter, stepping closer and looking at the back portion of the doorknob. A portion Angel likely hadn't touched with his gloved hand when he'd tried to open it. "There's some fine dust which makes me think this door hasn't been opened in a while."

That would make sense if Stephanie hadn't wanted anyone in there. But who was the anyone she would have wanted to keep out? Her husband was at Patriot's Retreat, and they didn't have family living with them.

"Even if Stephanie or someone had cleaned the room," Jace went on. "There'd still be evidence of bloodshed. It's next to impossible to cover up a crime scene so that nothing can be detected."

At the sound of footsteps, they turned as Angel and the colonel came back to the office. With a key this time. Angel had it, and he used it to open the door. He didn't go inside right away, though. He stood there for several moments, his gaze sweeping around the room.

"Was that tarp there the last time you were in here?" Angel asked the colonel.

Rosa stepped forward, looking in at the paint-splotched cloth covering a good portion of the floor. "No. That looks like a tarp that was in the garage. We had some painting done a couple of months ago, and the work crew left it behind."

Angel nodded at the explanation, leaned down and eased back a corner of the cloth. And then he cursed.

The profanity rippled through the small gathering, and it took Marise a moment to get into a position so she could look over Angel's shoulder.

"Holy shit," she muttered when she saw the blood.

They wouldn't need a blue light or Luminol for this because the blood was right there on the floor. It was dried and brown colored now, but it covered nearly every inch of the large rug that Angel had exposed.

He lifted more of the tarp, and there was more blood. Way too much of it for some kind of household accident. This was the spot where someone had likely bled out.

"Hell," the colonel said, and he sounded and looked in shock. "I didn't imagine it. It was real."

"Appears that way," Angel agreed, taking out his phone. "I'm calling this in, but I do have to wonder why your wife didn't at least attempt to clean it up. Certainly, she'd know when the body was found that she'd be a person of interest."

The comment had no sooner left his mouth when Marise caught a whiff of something.

Gasoline.

She turned to see a stream of the liquid snaking down the hall toward them. Marise got just a glimpse of it when she heard another sound.

The strike of a match.

And the fire erupted right in front of them.

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