The Intended Victim Read online

  “Five years.”

  “I don’t really remember,” Hutton stubbornly insisted.

  Ash made a sound of disgust. “You don’t remember? How many times have you been interviewed by the cops about your relationship to a murder victim?”

  “There was no relationship,” Hutton snapped, far more easily goaded than Ash. “The girl approached me about an internship and I agreed to assist her.”

  “So you do remember?”

  Hutton’s jaw clenched. “I remember being harassed by you and your partner. Lucky for you, I didn’t take my complaint to your captain.”

  Ash arched a brow. “Your number was in her phone. Did you expect us to ignore your possible connection?”

  “I expected you to have the brains to know I couldn’t possibly be a serial killer.”

  Ash didn’t miss the fierce sincerity in the man’s voice. He sounded truly offended that he could possibly be a suspect. Then again, he was a professional liar.

  He probably practiced in front of a mirror.

  “Then why did you lie?” Ash demanded.

  “About what?”

  Ash once again managed to avoid the urge to plant his fist in the man’s face.

  “Your supposed alibi on the night Tiffany died.”

  Firmly cornered, Hutton glanced around, as if hoping for inspiration to strike. When nothing happened, he pointed toward the passenger door. “This is a ridiculous waste of my time. Get out.”

  “I’m not finished,” Ash told him.

  Hutton stuck out his lower lip, as if he was a twelve-year-old boy, not a polished attorney. “I am.”

  Ash rolled his eyes. It was a good thing Hutton was born rich. He never would have survived without a trust fund.

  “I’m having this conversation, either here or in front of the press,” he warned.

  The lip stuck out another half inch. “I’ll have you locked up for harassment.”

  Ash shrugged. “You don’t scare me.”

  “You think I don’t have influence?”

  “Not with me. I’m no longer with the Chicago Police Department,” Ash bluntly reminded the man. “Are you done with your threats?”

  Hutton slashed his hand through the air. “I’m done. Period. As you just pointed out, you no longer carry a badge. Which means I don’t have to answer your questions.”

  Ash wasn’t fooled by the man’s bluff. There was no way in hell Hutton was letting Ash anywhere near the media, who continued to arrive in the parking lot.

  “Let’s go, then,” Ash murmured, reaching for the door handle.

  Hutton muttered a curse. “Why are you pushing me?” he hissed.

  “I want the truth.”

  “Why?”

  Was the man serious? Maybe he’d lived in a world of deceit for so long, he’d forgotten that there were people who actually preferred not to wade through the muck.

  “Because Remi is in danger,” he snapped.

  Hutton looked confused. “She’s no longer your fiancée. What do you care?”

  Ash gave a slow shake of his head. He’d met some weasels in his day, but this man . . .

  He was as weaselly as they came.

  “She will always be my concern.” Ash allowed a warning silence to fill the car. He didn’t want Hutton to mistake just how serious he was. “And I’ll do anything necessary to protect her. Including destroying your career.”

  Hutton licked his lips. He might be a weasel, but he wasn’t stupid. “Now who’s making threats?”

  “Mine aren’t empty,” Ash assured him.

  Hutton turned his head to glance at the lot, which was rapidly filling with cars. Ash sensed the man desperately wanted to shove open his door and simply walk away. Perhaps he was even scouring his mind with something to blackmail Ash into leaving him alone.

  At last he turned back to Ash. “I had nothing to do with the Butcher.”

  “Then tell me where you were that night.”

  “With Liza, as I told you.”

  “A lie,” Ash growled. He was at the end of his patience.

  “You can’t prove that.”

  Ash held his wary gaze. “Are you certain?”

  Hutton studied him, perhaps looking for some hint that Ash was fishing for information. But catching sight of Ash’s clenched jaw, he heaved a harsh sigh.

  “Fine. I didn’t meet with Liza that night. She called and canceled.”

  Ash felt a stab of surprise. He’d assumed Hutton was the one to bail on the evening.

  “Why?” he demanded.

  “She didn’t say and I didn’t ask.”

  That seemed unlikely, but Ash wasn’t interested in Liza Harding-Walsh. At least, not right now.

  “So where did you go?”

  “Nowhere.” He gave a vague lift of his shoulder. “I stayed home.”

  “By yourself?”

  “Yes, by myself.” A flush touched the man’s face, as if he was embarrassed to admit that he’d been without a ready date. “It was too late to make other plans.”

  He had no alibi. How many other nights had the weasel supposedly been home alone when women were getting their throats slit? Had he been so infuriated by Remi’s refusal to consider him as a potential boyfriend that he’d gone over the edge? It didn’t take much to provoke men with fragile egos.

  “How did you know Tiffany Holloway?”

  “I told you,” Hutton muttered.

  “Yeah, and we know how much that’s worth,” Ash said in dry tones.

  Hutton tried to stiffen his spine. “I’ve answered your questions, now get out of my car.”

  Ash didn’t budge. “Were you with Tiffany that night?”

  “No,” Hutton rasped, pointing a finger in Ash’s face. “You’re not pinning her murder on me.”

  Ash knocked away the finger. Hutton was quick to assume Ash thought he was involved with the girl’s death. A guilty conscience?

  “There’s no way in hell you gave out your private cell number to a waitress who supposedly wanted to be an intern.” He flicked a taunting glance over the man’s expensive coat. Men like Hutton never helped anyone unless there was something in it for themselves. “We let it go in the past because you had an airtight alibi. That alibi is gone, and I’m not going to stop digging until I find what you were doing with her.”

  “I didn’t kill her,” Hutton insisted. “Leave it alone.”

  “Never.” Ash held the man’s gaze. He wanted him to see the truth staring back at him. “Not ever.”

  Hutton’s hands curled into frustrated balls. “If I was the Butcher, I would just slice your throat and dump you in the trash.”

  Ash wasn’t worried. Strange. He probably should be, considering he wasn’t carrying.

  “Jax drove me here.”

  It’d been an offhand threat, but suddenly Hutton looked more worried than he had since Ash had insisted they have this chat. Why? It took a full minute for Ash to work out the fact that the assistant district attorney was wondering if Jax had managed to see O’Reilly climbing out of the Mercedes.

  There was a tense silence before Hutton made an explosive sound of anger.

  “If you tell anyone what I’m about to say, I swear I will destroy everyone in your family,” he snarled.

  Ash allowed the threat to stand, even as he inwardly scoffed. His brothers would twist this idiot into a pretzel and dump him in the river if he tried to hurt any of them.

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  Hutton took a second to gather his thoughts, his hand smoothing back his hair before he was tracing the knot of his silk tie with the tip of his finger. Was he ensuring it was perfectly square?

  “I met Tiffany at one of the endless charity events I’m forced to attend. She was working for the catering service,” he finally admitted. “I was bored and started chatting with her. She chatted back and made it clear she was interested in a little off-duty fun. At the end of the night I asked her if she wanted to go for a drink.”

  Ash
’s brows snapped together. “She was seventeen.”

  Hutton flattened his lips, his expression defensive. “I didn’t know that. Not until it was too late.”

  Ash grimaced. Hutton might not have known Tiffany was still in high school, but he most certainly had to know she was too young to legally drink alcohol.

  “Too late?” he demanded.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Before you had sex with her.”

  Hutton sent him an aggravated frown. “When I realized how young she was, I told her we couldn’t see each other anymore. She wasn’t happy.”

  “That’s when she called you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she ended up dead.”

  “I couldn’t believe it.” Hutton curled his lips in disgust. He clearly didn’t have any sympathy for the poor girl who’d been brutally murdered. His only concern was for himself. “I’d assumed I’d managed to escape unscathed from the potential scandal, only to land in the middle of a murder investigation.”

  “So you lied about your alibi.”

  Hutton looked unrepentant. As if lying to a law official investigating a serial killer was nothing more than a trivial oversight.

  “After I realized my number was going to show up on Tiffany’s phone, I called Liza and asked her to say we were together the night she died.”

  “And she agreed?” Ash demanded, not bothering to disguise his shock. He clearly was going to have to have a conversation with Remi’s mother.

  Not something he was looking forward to.

  Maybe Jax . . .

  Hutton interrupted his dark thoughts. “She was as eager as I was to have a reasonable alibi.”

  Ash tucked any questions about Liza and her willingness to offer Robert Hutton an alibi in the back of his mind. That was a problem for later. “Did Tiffany ever mention that she was being harassed by anyone?” he asked.

  Hutton shook his head. “We didn’t do a lot of talking.”

  “Christ.” Ash felt a stab of disgust. “You’re a piece of work.”

  Hutton flushed, but with a determination that warned Ash the man was done with the interview, he shoved open the car door and climbed out.

  “You have your truth, now go back to whatever rock you crawled from beneath and leave me alone.”

  Ash slid out the opposite side of the car and pulled his phone from his pocket as Hutton stormed across the parking lot. He wanted to pass on what he’d learned before Jax confronted O’Reilly. Then he needed to head toward the line of taxis parked in front of the hotel.

  It was too damned cold to wait for his brother to return.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Jax strolled through the police station, stopping to chat with a friend before heading to his office. After his conversation with Ash, he wanted to give O’Reilly plenty of opportunity to start whatever sneaky task Hutton had sent him to do.

  If he could catch him in the act, he’d have the leverage he needed to force the traitor to talk.

  Ten minutes later, he stepped around the partition to discover O’Reilly shuffling through the files on his desk.

  “Somehow I knew I would find you here, O’Reilly,” he drawled.

  The man squawked in surprise, jerking up his head to regard Jax in horror. “Marcel.” The detective straightened, his eyes darting around as if seeking inspiration. “I was hoping to talk to you.”

  Jax’s lips twisted into a humorless smile. “No, you weren’t. You were hoping I wasn’t coming in to the office so you could look through my files.”

  The man snorted, folding his arms over his chest. “You’re becoming paranoid in your old age, Marcel. Have you thought about retirement?”

  “Every day,” Jax assured him.

  “Yeah, well . . .” O’Reilly took a step backward, clearly eager to flee.

  Jax moved, ensuring the man would have to push him aside to get out of the cubicle. “Where are you going?”

  “I have things to do.”

  “I thought you wanted to chat?”

  The man stepped to the side. “It can wait.”

  Jax moved to block him, like an awkward dance that might very well lead to violence. “Actually, it can’t,” he said.

  O’Reilly’s square face flushed with anger. “What’s wrong with you?”

  Jax allowed his gaze to roam over the man’s coat, which was stained and wrinkled, and down to the leather shoes that were in dire need of a polish. He wasn’t a snob. Far from it. But he did have a firm belief that a detective had to take pride in their appearance.

  How could anyone take you seriously if you looked like a slob?

  “I don’t like liars,” he drawled. “Or spineless snakes who have no morals or loyalty.”

  The flush darkened to an ugly purple. “You’d better not be talking about me,” he blustered.

  “Or what?” Jax demanded. “You’ll call your favorite lawyer in the district attorney’s office?”

  O’Reilly sucked in a sharp breath, his head turning to make sure that no one was close enough to overhear their conversation. “I don’t know what you’re babbling about.”

  Jax rolled his eyes. He hoped O’Reilly never played cards. His poker face sucked. “Why were you meeting Hutton this morning?”

  “I wasn’t.”

  Jax held up his hand. “Don’t bother. You’re an awful liar. Plus, I saw you in the parking lot less than half an hour ago.”

  The flush drained from the man’s face, leaving it pale with fury. “Are you following me?”

  Jax deliberately paused. “Not you.”

  “Oh.” O’Reilly was quick to pick up the implication that it’d been the assistant district attorney under surveillance. “What’s your interest in Hutton?”

  “I’m asking the questions.”

  O’Reilly hunched his shoulders. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”

  “Then I’ll take it to the chief.” Jax smiled, the warning spilling off his lips before he fully thought through the threat.

  Did he really want to admit to the chief that he was putting the screws to a fellow detective, and that his brother, who was no longer on the force, was harassing one of the young, hotshot lawyers from the district attorney’s office?

  Thankfully, O’Reilly didn’t challenge him. “Take what to the chief?” he demanded.

  Emboldened, Jax allowed his smile to widen. “That you’re working with Hutton to cover up a crime.”

  “Crime?” The man’s bloodshot eyes flared with unmistakable fear. “Bullshit. There’s no crime.”

  Jax tilted his head to the side. There was a harsh sincerity in the man’s voice that suggested he was convinced he wasn’t doing anything illegal.

  Still, there was no way O’Reilly could believe it was normal to be sneaking through another detective’s case files.

  “What about a cover-up?” he demanded.

  O’Reilly glanced away, his jaw clenched as he considered his limited options. Either he confessed the truth to Jax and dumped all the blame on Hutton, or he risked continuing to lie and hoped Hutton’s payoff would be enough to cover the potential loss of his job.

  Jax made the decision easier for him.

  “I already know Hutton was sleeping with Tiffany Holloway right before she was murdered,” he told his companion. “And that he lied about his alibi the night she was killed.”

  “How—” O’Reilly bit off his question, belatedly realizing he was revealing more than he wanted to. “Sounds like you should be talking to Hutton, not me.”

  Jax conjured a suitably mysterious expression. “It’s being handled.”

  “By who?” he demanded.

  “It’s being handled outside the department.”

  The detective shifted from foot to foot, his mind no doubt filling with images of Internal Affairs. Or worse. The feds.

  “Shit.” O’Reilly looked sick, any loyalty to Hutton forgotten as he hurried to save his own skin. “I didn’t do anything.”

  �
��You’re working for Hutton,” Jax pressed.

  O’Reilly shook his head. “I did him a couple of favors, nothing else.”

  Jax stepped closer. It was possible Hutton was the secret serial killer. He’d certainly been acting in a suspicious manner. Plus, he’d admitted that he was involved with one of the victims and had gone to extreme methods to keep his relationship with Tiffany Holloway a secret.

  But after confronting the assistant district attorney, Ash had been doubtful that he was more than a sexist jerk. And now Jax was beginning to agree.

  If O’Reilly was covering a series of murders, he’d either have been a lot more careful not to be caught or he’d be demanding a lawyer before he talked to anyone.

  Right now, he seemed worried about his job, not death row.

  “Tell me about the favors,” Jax commanded.

  “Five or six years ago, Hutton stopped by my house and said he needed my help,” the man revealed.

  Jax grimaced. He hadn’t been to O’Reilly’s place, but he’d heard it was a pigsty south of town that was in constant danger of being condemned.

  “That must have been a surprise,” Jax said, unable to imagine the fussy Robert Hutton risking his designer shoes in such a neighborhood.

  O’Reilly snorted. “I don’t think he’d ever been in my part of town before. He kept looking around like he was afraid he might get shot in the back.”

  That didn’t sound unreasonable to Jax. He’d probably do the same.

  “Why was he there?”

  “He admitted he’d been banging the waitress and wanted me to keep my ears open,” the man said.

  “For what?”

  “Any connection to him. He was worried about word getting out he was with an underage girl.”

  That matched with what Ash had told him. “And that’s all he was worried about?”

  A sneer touched O’Reilly’s bluntly carved features. “It didn’t help that the girl was chilling in the morgue. He thought his career would be over.”

  Jax dismissed the man’s stunning lack of empathy for a dead seventeen-year-old girl. Really, that was the least of his offensive personality traits.

  “And now?” Jax studied O’Reilly’s face, noticing the broken blood vessels and sagging skin along the jaw. He looked like a man who’d been hitting the bottle pretty heavily over the past months.