Caging a Copycat - Chapter 20
Three days later…
Silas watched the interrogation for the second—or was it third?—time.
Grant Harvey had taken that pen from Daggett’s interrogation and planted it at the scene of the fifth victim. Before CSU had swept the scene. Before the body had been sent to the morgue. Damn it. How had he not seen it before now?
“Charles Daggett was telling the truth.” Olivia notched her chin a bit higher behind the protective barrier of her desk. “The pen that tied him to the scene was planted. I imagine Grant Harvey knew you had the right man, but the interrogations weren’t giving us anything. He ensured Daggett wouldn’t get away with murder.”
“By breaking the law we’re supposed to uphold.” Silas leaned back in his seat, the same chair he’d occupied during his last visit to her office. Before he’d nearly lost her to a psychotic therapist determined to prove herself to a madman. “This is enough to reopen the investigation into Daggett. He’s going to use this to reduce his sentence.”
“No. He isn’t.” Olivia pulled an evidence bag from one of her desk drawers and handed it to him from across the glossy surface. “My agents recovered this from Dr. Farell’s hotel room. We had more than enough physical evidence tying her to all three murders, and she made a deal. Faced with a life sentence with no chance of parole, she signed away doctor-patient confidentiality and handed over recordings of her therapy sessions with Daggett.”
Silas accepted the evidence bag. Charles Daggett’s case file. The one Grant Harvey had requested before coming to Seattle.
“In his sessions, Daggett describes each murder, how he stalked and inserted himself into the lives of all five victims and reminisces about the night he killed his stepfather,” she said. “We’d tied him to the murders through the pen, but his confession to Dr. Farell was enough to convince his attorney they don’t have a case.”
His fingers stuck to the thin plastic of the bag. “It’s really over.”
“Yes, which brings me to what happens next.” Her voice dropped an octave, urging him to look up. Olivia pushed away from her desk and rounded in front of him. Her knee brushed against his as she leveraged her weight against the edge. “When I found out Grant Harvey had removed my name from the investigation report you submitted, I was so angry at you. You were my partner. It didn’t matter you’d turned down the promotion after we caught Charles Daggett or that you weren’t responsible for Harvey’s actions. We were supposed to be a team, but to me, you’d become so much more than that. You were everything.”
Shame squeezed his heart like a vise. “I’m sorry, Liv. You’ll never know how much.”
“I know how much.” She sank down onto his lap. “I know you haven’t taken on another partner since your transfer from Violent Crimes into linguistics. I know you walked away from a job you love because of what happened, and I know why you came to Seattle when you found out about Grant Harvey’s death. As many times as I tried to convince myself you were the enemy all these years, you’ve proven time and time again you’re anything but. And I’m sorry I put that weight on you. I’m sorry I didn’t trust you.”
Silas secured his arms around her waist, careful of the wound in her side. Soft and strong. Aggressive and vulnerable. Committed and evasive. She was a bundle of opposites and everything he’d missed since she left. And hell, he loved her for it. “So what happens next, Director Branson?”
“How do you feel about moving to Seattle, Agent Hart?” Her mouth lifted in a gut-wrenching smile as she pressed her lips to his. She deepened the kiss and hit a button on a small remote he hadn’t noticed in her hand.
The windows of her office darkened, and heat exploded through him. “I think you’ve done a hell of a job convincing me.”
*
Read Profiling a Killer by Nichole Severn now!