Don’t go in there. Matt’s voice. Matt standing at the front door of the apartment Travis shared with Jessica. The yellow crime tape taunted him, yelled for him to enter, and so he had.
With a whoosh, Travis let out the breath he’d been holding and jarred himself from the memories. No more. He wouldn’t allow himself to remember any more. Jessica was gone and he hadn’t been able to save her. It was futile to go any further.
Standing up, Travis walked over to the window and stared at the city below. Looking but not really seeing the rush of traffic or the whizzing of tires or the clutter of pedestrians. What he saw was a young woman standing at a crosswalk. A middle-aged woman lugging a sack of groceries. Two teenage girls giggling in front of a convenience store.
He might not have been able to save Jessica, but he could sure as hell save these women in his city, keep them safe. And if it came down to it, avenge them.
“The suspect in the Davis shooting is willing to talk.”
Travis lifted his head and saw Matt enter the office. “Good,” he said absently.
Matt glanced around the cramped space and shook his head. “How you passed up on working in an air-conditioned building rivaling Trump Towers in size escapes me.”
“You’re just jealous that I can quit my day job and still have millions of dollars in the bank.”
“Jealous? Hell, yeah. If I knew how to design those nifty anti-virus programs, I’d be doing that right now, man.” Matt gestured to the array of files on Travis’s desk. “Not digging through paperwork that’s decades old.”
“To each his own.”
Matt just shrugged. “Our suspect is in interrogation room three. You want to come along?”
Travis shook his head. “You handle it. I need to take care of a few things.”
After Matt left, Travis returned to his desk and flicked on his computer. Time to get down to business.
As he waited for the screen to load, he thought of Rachel, and everything she’d revealed yesterday. His veins still filled with anger to think she’d blamed him for Carrie’s death all these years. If she only knew the extent of the guilt he’d been burdened with. He’d never blamed himself for her sister’s suicide, but it tore him apart that he hadn’t been there for Rachel.
But he could be there for her now.
You’re doing it again, trying to save every female who comes your way.
Travis ignored the taunting voice in the back of his head. So what if he’d made it his mission in life to prevent what happened to Jessica from happening to another woman?
He wasn’t helping Rachel just to satisfy his savior instincts. He had a stake in this too. Carrie had been his girlfriend. They’d only dated a few months, hadn’t even slept together, but he still felt he owed it to himself to uncover the events leading to her suicide. He owed it to Rachel.
And it had nothing to do with the way she set his blood on fire. Nothing to do with her honey-blonde hair that smelled of strawberries. Nothing to do with the way her firm, round ass had looked in that flimsy thong…
The computer beeped, rerouting his train of thought. Travis’s fingers flew across the keyboard as he navigated through the police station’s database. After a few minutes, he found what he was looking for, and scrawled the name and address on a notepad.
“Jenny, could you get me the business address for Rachel Foster? Should be listed under Rachel Foster Designs,” he said into the intercom.
“Give me a second, Trav,” his assistant’s voice crackled back. He waited. “All right, here you go.”
Travis wrote down the address on the same pad and reached for the sports coat draped over the back of his chair.
He left the office and paused in front of Jenny’s desk. “I’ll be out of the office for a couple of hours. Hold my calls.”
“Sorry, did I prick you?” Rachel asked as the tall, willowy model in front of her squirmed.
Misty grinned. “Don’t worry. You can prick me as much as you like. It’s for the sake for fashion, after all.”
Rachel smiled. It was nice working with such an easy-going model. Mannequins were good for initial fittings, but it was difficult to see how well a bra worked on a pair of plastic breasts, so part of her job required her to alter designs on a real-life woman. Real-life women, however, could be quite difficult, and Rachel had worked with a few models who had made her want to scream. Thank God for Misty.
Misty was twenty-two and she’d been working for Rachel for six months. She never complained about having to stand for long periods of time, remained unfazed by a pinprick here and there, and boasted an outrageous sense of humor that had Rachel’s stomach in stitches.
“So, Suzanna told me you were modeling yourself yesterday,” Misty remarked, her blue eyes twinkling. “Walton’s, huh?”
Embarrassment flushed Rachel’s cheeks. She shot a dirty look at her assistant, who sat at a nearby desk studying fabric samples. “What part of never repeat this didn’t you understand, Suzanna?” she called.