“Cali? You’re worried about Cali? You should worry about your ass and mine. By the time the meeting was over, that Doberman had pretty much convinced Adams that we’d done a half-ass job on the case. She frowned upon the little issue of us not having a murder weapon. Then she laid out some serious implications that you may have overstepped boundaries with the witness. But the crap really hit the fan when Cali, your sweet little lady friend, made it pretty clear which side of the fence she was on.”
“What do you mean?” Brit rolled the papers in his hand into a tight tube.
“She basically corroborated everything Humphrey has been saying since we brought him in. You’d think Cali and Humphrey had compared notes and had their stories straight.”
“What?” Every bit of happiness that had filled his chest now squeezed out of his lungs.
“Humphrey claimed he didn’t shoot Cali’s door that night. And Cali just seemed to remember that Humphrey told her he wasn’t the one to shoot. Then Paxton came right out and asked if she thought Humphrey was guilty of murder. The girl didn’t blink. She said, ‘No, I don’t think he’d kill anyone.’ She went on to say the man was kind to the elderly, and she didn’t see him killing his friends. Right now, she’s down there trying to see Humphrey. She’s obviously still got the hots for him. Sorry, I know you don’t want to hear that.”
Brit struggled to breathe. “She’s trying to see him?”
“Yeah,” Quarles said.
The last piece of info fell on Brit like sharp rocks. He shot up the rest of the steps and stormed into the building. For every step he took forward, he took one back to his past. How had he let himself be fooled again? Hadn’t he seen it in the beginning? Hadn’t he known it? Cali McKay was his mother’s clone. They always went back to the guy who mistreated them.
He stormed downstairs to the holding tanks. He found Cali in the waiting room, sitting in a metal chair, twirling her purse strap around her fingers. He didn’t speak to her when she raised her gaze. Instead, he took her by the elbow and led her into one of the small visiting rooms.
He flung the door closed, slamming his palm on the wall so hard that pain shot up his arm. “What the fuck are you doing?” He saw her flinch, but was too angry to care.
“What?” She looked up at him with those huge innocent orbs of blue.
“Do you still love him?” Hadn’t he asked his mother the same question?
Cali blinked those eyes at him. Oh yeah, he’d bought his mother’s “poor me” looks for years. How many times had he stepped between her and his father—even taken the blows for her? For what? She always let the old man move back in.
“Answer me, damn it!” He took a step closer. She took a step back. He moved in, a man with a mission, a man with a broken heart. “You love him.”
She shook her head. “No. I need to talk to him. I need to make sure that I’m right. If I have to testify then—”
“For him or against him?” When she didn’t seem to understand what he was asking her, he explained. “Are you going to be testifying for him or against him, Cali?”
“I’m going to tell the truth.” She had tears in her eyes.
He refused to acknowledge them, refused to let them affect him. He’d played this game with his mother, he wasn’t about to play it with her. “What the hell is wrong with you? Wait, you don’t have to tell me. I had it right in the beginning. You’re just like my mom.”
“I can’t fix you,” she said.
“Good. Because I don’t want to attempt to fix you either!’
Her hot blue eyes tightened to thin slits, but pain rivaled with anger for top emotion. “I’m leaving.”
She said the words with such certainty, that it hit his gut like a bullet, but that’s what he wanted. Wasn’t it? As he watched her walk out, the pain he’d seen in her eyes echoed tenfold in his chest.
~
Cali left. She didn’t have the strength to confront Stan now. Oh later, she intended to do it. She needed to be sure she was right about his inability to commit murder. She didn’t care what Brit thought.
She didn’t care.
She didn’t.
So why did it feel as if she was dying inside?
She drove to her mother’s house, shaking so badly her hands hardly stayed on the wheel.
~
Once inside, she shut and locked the door. She went to her mother’s room, threw herself down on the hospital bed where her mother had died less than two weeks ago. Wrapping her hands around a pillow that still smelled like her mother, Cali sobbed.
Mom was right. She couldn’t fix Brit. And remembering the things he’d said, Cali hurt so badly, she wasn’t sure she even cared if he fixed himself.
Chapter Forty-One
Two days later, Brit stood over Rina Newman’s shoulder and waited with bated breath for her answer. He’d worked nonstop for the past forty-eight hours, chasing down leads, compiling photo lineups, and doing whatever it took to catch Keith and Anderson’s killer.