head straightened with that revelation. “You’ve had an affair in the workplace?”
“Yes. Five years ago. She was another agent.”
Jocelyn’s eyes widened with the sardonic lift of her brow. “Another agent, huh. So, I must be exactly like her.”
He grunted a laugh. “No. Oh, no.” He shook his head. “You’re nothing like her. You’re not quiet. You say whatever’s on your mind. And...you’re not afraid to...” He regretted including that last part.
“Not afraid to what?”
“Go after it in bed.”
“Go after it in bed.” She nodded slowly, folding her lower lip under her upper and sliding it free with her agitation.
All he’d succeeded in doing was pissing her off. “Jocelyn, all I’m saying is—”
“That I’m a coworker and therefore no one you intend to pursue in a relationship.”
“Right. Yes. It’s that simple.”
“But I’m okay to go after in bed.”
“No. That was a mistake. A careless one on my part. I should have stopped you when you kissed me.”
She said nothing for a while and he thought he’d made it through the talk.
And then she said, “Tell me about this woman you had an affair with.”
“Look, I understand if you’re hurt—”
“What happened between the two of you?”
She wouldn’t let it drop. “She slept with me to get even with another agent. She lied. And when she and the other agent patched things up, she kept sleeping with me.”
“The scorned heart. You have trust issues, then.”
“I don’t want to see anyone I work with outside of my professional relationship with them.” By his tone, she should know he wouldn’t back down and he didn’t appreciate her attack mode, trying to pin his reluctance to mix work and pleasure on a past relationship.
Her eyes lowered and lifted, long enough for her to regain control of her emotions. “It’s okay, Agent Colton. I’ll respect your wishes. I wasn’t looking for anything long-term anyway.”
Her cell phone rang just when he would have asked her why she felt the need to say that. It sounded—no, felt, rang like a lie. She just got nauseated from a crime scene. Rookie reaction? Or had she not found her true calling?
“Agent Locke.” As she listened, her eyes flashed to him, and then she snapped her fingers. “I need a pen.”
Trevor took out his small notebook and a pen from inside his jacket. She took the pen and he held the notebook in his palm while she wrote some information down on a woman named Caressa Franklin.
“Thanks.” Putting her phone away, she turned to Trevor. “Caressa Franklin knew Erica Morgan. Apparently they had a falling-out a year before the murder. Caressa moved to Fort Worth a few months ago. She didn’t know about Erica.”
“Estranged, how?”
Jocelyn held up the paper and gave it a little wiggle. “That’s what we’re going to go find out.”
“How’d you get that info?”
“Contacts are key.” She smiled, wily and charming. Disarming, more like.
“Good work. Who’s your contact?”
He watched her debate over whether to tell him, as though his rejection made her distrust him more now. But they were part of a team. This had nothing to do with anything personal, and the investigation mattered most.
“A private investigator I know.” She sounded blasé in a staged way.
“You contacted a PI without telling me?” She could ruin evidence for them.
“I just asked him to look into Erica for me, see if he could find anything new that we may have missed. Just our luck, he did.” She walked around the vehicle as he went to open the driver’s-side door.
“How do you know the PI?” he asked when he got behind the wheel, hearing his own forced idle tone and refusing to call it jealousy. He caught her noticing.
“I dated him a couple of years ago. He’d still like to get together. I use him every once in a while on cases.”
She didn’t have to include all of that information, but he knew she had because she savored his reaction. “You used him?”
“I pay him. I knew Erica.”
Why hadn’t she ever mentioned her handy PI who got information she needed? “I didn’t realize she was that close.”
“Her mother was my mother’s friend.” She turned her face away as though more than Erica’s death troubled her. “My mother’s friend stayed in touch with my dad after my mother died. And then after my dad died, she stayed in touch with me. I got to know her and Erica fairly well.”
“You were close to them? Erica?” Closer than she’d let on.
Dropping her elbow from its perch on the window frame, she looked over at him. “We met for lunch a few times after my dad and brother died. They aren’t what I’d call close friends. Erica’s mother talked about my mother a lot. I feel like I wouldn’t have known my mother as well as I do. Not that I know her the way I would have if she’d been in my life the whole time. But if it hadn’t been for her, I wouldn’t have known as much. For that, I’ll always be grateful.” She sighed forlornly. “I didn’t know until after Erica’s murder that her mother was killed in a car accident. She never told me. We sort of fell out of touch.”
She talked as though she’d never met her mother. “What happened to your mother?”
Jocelyn turned away. “She died shortly after I was born.”
Trevor took a moment to ponder all the tragedies that had befallen her. She had no family. They were all dead. Even the friends of the family had gone, one who’d given her a precious gift. Her father must have told her things about her mother, but a friend could give her another perspective. Jocelyn could envision the person who had been her mother. He could see how that would motivate her to find Erica’s killer. He could also understand her fondness of her mother’s friend. Even with all her losses, though, Jocelyn had drive. Optimism. Or the outward appearance of those attributes. What lay underneath? And how had they shaped her decisions up until now? How different would her life be, had she not lost those closest to her?
* * *
Caressa Franklin wasn’t expecting them, but Jocelyn had agreed with Trevor that surprise might work in their favor. Her PI friend hadn’t revealed the FBI’s involvement in Erica’s murder investigation and hadn’t revealed any details of the Alphabet Killer case.
The midforties woman didn’t answer her front door even though they’d seen her through the side window.
“Must have pegged us for solicitors,” Jocelyn said.
“Let’s hang around until she goes somewhere.”
A little more than an hour later, Caressa did leave her house. They followed her to the parking lot of a grocery store and walked to intercept her on her way to the entrance.
“Caressa Franklin?” Jocelyn called.
The woman looked back as Trevor moved to block her path to the grocery store and Jocelyn stood in her way back to her vehicle.
Jocelyn exposed her badge clipped to her belt on her Sleek Agent pants and Trevor dropped open his wallet.
Caressa looked at both and then up at their faces with her jaw dropping. “What happened?”
She seemed stiff to Jocelyn. Cornered? No. Shocked. Why shocked?