Crash Into Me Read online

  “Which he recanted.”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday,” Grant said, sliding a sheet of paper across his desk, “in his suicide note.”

  She picked up the copy of the note. It was poorly spelled but painstakingly executed, stating only that he hadn’t killed Olivia Fortune, and in his final moment of clarity, wished to leave this world unencumbered.

  People rarely lied in suicide notes. If anything, they used the opportunity to come clean. Even so, cynicism had her asking, “Does he have family?”

  Grant smiled. “Not a soul. O’Shea was a veteran and a loner. His parents, estranged wife, and brother are all dead.”

  “Hmm.” Not much reason to prevaricate, with no surviving relatives. “Why would he confess to a crime he didn’t commit?”

  He leaned back in his chair again. “Who knows? Mental illness. Unresolved guilt over a separate incident. The lure of a warm bed and three square meals a day.”

  It wasn’t unheard of for interviewees, especially the young and weak-minded, to make a false confession under duress. “He had the murder weapon,” she pointed out.

  “That he did,” Grant agreed. “Fortune’s wife was strangled with electrical cord, just like the recent victims. And although the incidents could be unrelated, there are enough similarities to warrant further investigation.”

  “Was Fortune considered a suspect before O’Shea was arrested?”

  “Yes, but due to lack of evidence…or because of his family’s connections with local law enforcement, he was never formally charged.”

  “What connections?”

  “Mr. Fortune, senior, is a retired criminal court judge, and a very powerful man. He could have called in a few favors.”

  She closed the files in her lap, satisfied. “Where do I come in?”

  Grant removed his glasses and massaged his tired eyes. “I want you to go undercover. Hang around, make yourself visible. Some of the victims were beach bunnies, surf groupies, and you’re from the area.”

  She quirked a brow. “I’m from the other side of the tracks. Last Chance Trailer Park is not La Jolla Cove.”

  “An undercover assignment implies playing a role, Sonny.”

  “Grant, I’m twenty-eight. The eldest victim was twenty-two.”

  He studied her appearance. “You could look younger, if you wanted to. And wear sunglasses. Your eyes give you away.”

  Sonny shifted in her chair, bothered by the notion that anyone could see through her. “Why are you sending me?”

  On this point, he leveled with her. “I need an attractive female whose looks garner attention, and you fit the bill. You’re also familiar with the area, the laid-back attitude. I can’t send a surveillance team with you, so you’d be on your own, for the most part, but I know you can handle yourself.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. Grant was flattering her, and more importantly, enticing her with a challenging, high-profile assignment. Getting close to Fortune wouldn’t be easy, and having free reign, with little or no interference, also sounded appealing. Of course, there were drawbacks. She was no sexpot beach bunny.

  He read her mind. “I can offer you a limited wardrobe budget.”

  She smiled. “I’ll take it.”

  “Fine,” he said, replacing his glasses. “You’ll go tomorrow.”

  Sonny rearranged the files on her lap, her mind on getting into character for a peach assignment. Returning to Torrey Pines would almost be like going back to high school, with new clothes, ten years of life experience, and the security of knowing she could kick the ass of anyone who got in her way.

  CHAPTER 2

  After a week of observation, Sonny knew Grant’s plan for her to infiltrate the ranks of a very close-knit society would fail.

  She’d been set up in a small but costly coastal apartment less than a block from Windansea Beach in southern La Jolla. The location was choice for wave-, babe-, or boy-watching, all of which Sonny had been doing her fair share.

  Ben Fortune was spectacular eye candy.

  Fortune no longer competed professionally, but he was still on top of his game and in peak physical condition. He did things on the water other men only dreamed about. Sonny spent entire afternoons in wide-eyed amazement as he cut his board through curls of wave as sleek as glass, glided on the edge of breakers the size of thunderheads, and emerged from the pipe in a gusty mist, as if the ocean had breathed him in, and finding him worthy to ride another day, exhaled him back out.

  The sport was so varied in its execution that she could pick Ben out from a crowd of dark wetsuits and light-colored surfboards. Each surfer was unique, in the way he held himself, almost crouching, or standing fully upright; in the movement of his arms, reaching out to touch the curl, fingers splayed, or hands clenched tight, as if he could grasp each exhilarating moment and hang on to it like a fistful of sand.

  Fortune, in particular, had a style that was just plain beautiful to behold. At times he was electric, all sharp edges, quick drop-offs, and wicked cutbacks. He could also make his movements appear effortless, fluid, organic, as if his surfboard were an extension of his body, a living, breathing thing. Watching him was like communing with God; his easy grace was nothing less than transcendent.

  As assignments went, it was tops. Sonny fell in love with the Pacific all over again, and could have observed wave after unadorned wave break upon the sandy beach, delighting only in the joy of indefatigable Mother Nature. Studying handsome athletes in their prime, perfectly muscled bodies encased in slick black wetsuits that left little to the imagination-perhaps it wasn’t exactly a spiritual pursuit, but it was a great perk.

  The problem was neither spiritual nor physical, but professional: the subject did nothing but surf. He didn’t sign autographs, give interviews, or pose for photos, even with hardcore fans, and he certainly didn’t condescend to acknowledge novice surfers. He might nod to his comrades or exchange a combination of words only they could understand, but even this level of communication was rare.

  If still waters ran deep, Ben Fortune went fathoms.

  His rejection of tourists, newcomers, and inexperienced surfers was rude, but his general attitude toward women was downright weird. Bikini girls were as assiduously avoided as the dank, lice-infested piles of seaweed that frequently washed ashore.

  It was odd, for he was a man who had a reputation with the ladies. To hear it told, Fortune’s second-favorite sport, once upon a time, had been scoring with chicks, and his success in this endeavor had been almost as prolific. He’d fathered a child out of wedlock when barely of legal age to do so, and after seven years of sowing his wild oats on the contest circuit, he’d finally married the baby’s mama. Since then he’d been a good boy, faithful to his wife, by most accounts, even in the three years since her death.

  Sonny’s original strategy to approach him in a tiny bikini and trip all over herself asking for his autograph appeared to need some rethinking.

  Perhaps Fortune was making amends for his misspent youth with this self-imposed stint of abstinence. Or he had a secret girlfriend (or boyfriend, one never knew). Or maybe, in an act of God befitting a surfing philanderer, an Aussie tiger had made off with his willy, as well as a piece of his surfboard, during that much-publicized shark attack along the Gold Coast.

  If anything was going on with parts seemingly whole and certainly well-defined beneath his wetsuit, Sonny wasn’t privy to it, and neither were her colleagues. All reports claimed Fortune lived like a monk, surfed like a madman, and had only one woman in his life.

  His sixteen-year-old daughter, Carly.

  Sonny crouched behind the group of rocks below the stone steps leading from the street down to Windansea Beach. She’d been following Carly Fortune since the teenager snuck out of her multimillion-dollar La Jolla residence a few minutes ago.

  The house wasn’t as ostentatious as it sounded. Snugly sandwiched between other family homes of similar price, it was moderately sized and favorably situate
d, with the nonexistent yard space and spectacular oceanfront views typical to the area.

  Fortune probably could have bought the entire block, but for a guy who lived and breathed to ride waves, being able to count less than a hundred steps from your back door to the best surfing beach in San Diego probably meant more to him than marble flooring and suburban sprawl.

  Fortune got up at 5:00 A.M. every day to (what else?) surf. He was an early-to-bed, early-to-rise type, allowing his daughter a certain amount of leeway for mischief.

  Sonny didn’t underestimate the cunning of the average sixteen-year-old girl, but she was an expert at ghosting, and could have kept up with Carly Fortune in her sleep. Needing little concentration for the task, she placed a call to Grant on her cell, having been given specific instructions to check in with him at 11:00 P.M., her time.

  It was late in Virginia, but Grant kept odd hours. For all she knew, he’d been at a charity fund-raiser this evening.

  “Grant,” he answered in a terse voice.

  “Vasquez.”

  “What have you got?”

  “I haven’t got jack.”

  “Then why are you whispering?”

  “I’m following someone.”

  Carly Fortune, much to Sonny’s surprise, wasn’t meeting a boyfriend to smooch with or a friend to sneak a joint. She was walking out into the surf like a virgin sacrifice!

  “Gotta go,” she said, closing the cell phone and scrambling to the top of the tallest rock in the vicinity, no longer concerned with being seen. Carly was wading into the 50-degree Pacific, fully dressed. Not only that, Sonny thought, studying the play of moonlight across the surface of the water, she’d chosen a spot with a killer rip current.

  Sonny wasn’t the type to begrudge a teenage girl her high jinks, but Carly was in the worst possible location for a polar plunge. Even if the girl stayed calm and let the current take her out, or remembered to swim at an angle instead of spinning her wheels trying to get back to the beach, she’d be in for a grueling workout.

  If she lived.

  Sonny wasted a couple of seconds stowing her gun between rocks. Placing the 911 call, she ran down the uneven slope of sand toward the water, yelling out to the girl as she listened for the operator. “Carly!”

  The surf was heavy, pounding-it was difficult to hear the voice on the phone right next to her ear. Either Carly couldn’t hear her, or didn’t want to. While Sonny watched, her dark head dipped underwater.

  “Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?”

  Sonny kicked off her sneakers and shucked out of her jeans, resting the phone on the crook of her neck. “There’s a girl drowning at Windansea Beach. Carly Fortune, 561 Neptune. At the base of the stone steps. Hurry!”

  By that time the icy surf was swirling around her thighs. Sonny threw her cell phone behind her, hoping to hit the sand, and pulled her sweater over her head, letting it fall into the water. She dove, ducking under the waves breaking against the sandbar. As soon as she started swimming, her strokes strong and sure, she felt the pull of the undertow, taking her out to sea.

  The water was shockingly cold and the current surprisingly powerful. It occurred to her that she was in danger, despite her excellent health and extensive training. Riptides were deadly in summer, in warmer water and broad daylight, with lifeguards and other swimmers all around.

  Under these conditions, the risk was tenfold.

  In the few seconds she’d been submerged, the cold was already turning her muscles into jelly, and her lungs were fighting to contract and release every breath.

  Sonny considered saving her strength for the swim back to shore. It was difficult to maneuver inside the current, and she wasn’t sure she could locate Carly no matter what she did. Then she saw the girl’s head bobbing up, mere inches in front of her. Putting every negative emotion behind her, she kicked furiously, reaching out…

  …and coming up with an awesome handful of Carly Fortune’s inky black hair.

  She jerked, pulling the girl’s chin above the surface and shoving her forearm underneath it. Positioning their bodies so they both faced the shore, she concentrated on keeping Carly’s head above water long enough to give her a few instructions.

  “If you want to live, you’ve got to help.”

  Carly nodded, clearly conscious and possibly not even hysterical.

  “It’s too cold to ride this out. We swim to the left, on three.”

  She nodded again, spitting out a mouthful of water, and gasped, “Okay.”

  Sonny almost laughed with relief. Drowning people were notoriously difficult to handle. She was lucky to find Carly Fortune in such an amenable state of mind.

  “On three,” she repeated, summoning strength. “One, two, three, go!”

  They pumped their legs in a wild burst of energy that defied the cold and used panic to its benefit. Carly kicked Sonny in the shins a few times in her fervor, but Sonny’s limbs were so numb she barely felt it. Just when it seemed their efforts were all for naught, that the mighty Pacific was intent on crushing them in her icy grip, they broke free of the current and floated like buoys in calmer waters, drifting up and down on a lull between waves.

  Sonny released her. “You did good, kid. Can you swim?”

  Carly treaded water experimentally. “Yeah.”

  Never letting the girl out of her sight, or her reach, Sonny swam alongside her until their feet hit sand. If not for the biting cold, and a fatigue that went bone-deep, the going would have been easy, as the waves practically carried them back to shore.

  Sonny lay there several minutes, red-faced, chest heaving, before the chills started. Carly quietly vomited seawater beside her, a good sign, in that the girl was both alive and purging her body of a substance it was better off without.

  By the time the paramedics arrived, both of them were more in need of a hot bath and warm clothes than medical attention. This was California, not Antarctica. A five-minute dunk in 50-degree water was uncomfortable, not life-threatening.

  Sonny was grateful for the rescue blanket the paramedics offered her, because she was cold and wet. Not having had the opportunity to retrieve her jeans, she was also naked but for a bra and panties. While she stood there shivering, Ben Fortune stormed the beach parking lot like a militant paratrooper, barefoot, like she was, but dressed in dry jeans and a soft-looking T-shirt that she envied.

  “What the fuck is going on?” he asked of no one in particular.

  Carly was in the back of the ambulance, huddled under a blanket, having her blood pressure taken. “Dad?”

  Her voice sounded so raw that Sonny reevaluated the girl’s motives for a late-night romp. Perhaps this had been a suicide attempt.

  Carly let the blanket slip from her shoulders and threw herself into Ben’s arms, the blood pressure gauge hanging loose, forgotten. Under the light of the street lamp, and the fluorescent glow from the back of the ambulance, his handsome face looked pale and his dark eyes hollow. He accepted the embrace woodenly, the way fathers did with daughters they no longer recognized nor understood.

  Sonny’s heart broke for both of them because they made a hug look as awkward as it could be.

  “What happened?” he asked, his demeanor changing from bewildered to scolding in a split second. Sonny wanted to groan aloud at the uncanny ability of the male species to ruin a tender moment. “Do you have any idea what went through my mind? When the police called I thought you were-”

  It wasn’t her place to, but Sonny stepped in. “She’s fine,” she said, placing a hand on his shoulder. His gaze cut to hers and the corner of his lip curled up, as if he couldn’t fathom why a strange woman would not only interrupt him but deign to touch him.

  Sonny removed her hand, although his shoulder was warm and masculine and felt very nice, because she was afraid of losing it.

  Carly came to her defense. “She rescued me, Dad. I fell in the water.”

  He looked from one wet, bedraggled female to the other. “You fell in?”


  Sonny had to hand it to him: even in a crisis situation he was savvy enough to question the incongruity of that statement. Windansea Beach had some jumbo rocks, but it was a flat stretch of land, not exactly the cliffs of Dover.

  “Okay, so I jumped in, but there was a rip current, and it took me out…” As she trailed off, her lower lip trembled.

  If it was an act, it was a damned good one. Ben seemed to forget about Sonny’s presence entirely. “Why?” he asked quietly.

  “I don’t know,” she wailed, covering her face with her hands. “I don’t know.”

  He pulled her head to his chest and held her there, murmuring words of comfort and stroking her wet hair. The action was so rare to her that Sonny stared at them in wonder, awestruck by the simple gesture. She’d had a rough childhood, a worse adolescence, and in response to that, an often lonely adult life, over the course of which never had another person touched her so compassionately.

  Over the top of Carly’s head, his eyes met hers. “I am indebted to you,” he said, his gaze raking down her body, making her more aware than ever she was barefoot and nearly naked underneath the blanket.

  Sonny only shook her head, for her throat was closed, and she was unable to speak.

  “Where are your clothes?” he asked.

  She scanned the dark expanse of sea and sand. “On the beach somewhere,” she said, finding her voice. “I took them off before I went in after her.”

  He nodded. A man who spent as much time as he did in the water knew how dangerous, and restrictive, wet clothing could be.

  The paramedics donated the blanket and left to take another emergency call, finding nothing wrong, physically, with Carly Fortune. Sonny had refused treatment, so their asses were covered.

  “Where do you live?” he asked.

  “Around here,” she said vaguely.