Rarities Unlimited 04 - The Color of Death

sorry,” Sam said. “There’s no way to be absolutely positive unless we get lucky in the swamp or screw a confession out of his killer. That said, I have to tell you if Lee’s alive, it will be the first time in my career that blood found in a trunk led to a happy reunion.”
    She bit her lip, blinked fiercely, and said, “I have to call Mom.”
    “I’ll do it.”
    “No, I—”
    “It’s easier coming from a cop,” Sam cut in roughly. “The family can get angry, yell, swear, cry, let it all out. They can’t with you.”
    “But—”
    “After I’m finished, I’ll hand the phone to you.” He touched her cheek lightly. “Please, Kate. It will be easier on everyone.”
    Reluctantly, she nodded her head.
    Sam hesitated, but there wasn’t any help for it. He needed her, and he needed her thinking, not crying. “Before I call, get me McCloud’s number, the one you used to report your progress with the stones.”
    “How did you know?” she asked dully.
    “The man had a million bucks invested. It stands to reason he’d want regular reports.”
    She went to her computer and opened an address file.
    He looked at her bent head and the tight line of her shoulders and wished there was something he could do that wouldn’t make her feel worse.
    “I’m sorry,” he said.
    She nodded and scrolled through names on the screen.
    “I mean it,” he said.
    “I know.” Her voice was hoarse. “It’s just…” Her shoulders moved almost impatiently.
    “Yeah,” he said. “It’s just that being sorry doesn’t change anything.”
    She looked over her shoulder at him. “It changes my opinion of the FBI. Or at least some of them. One of them. The best one. You.”
    Sam gave up and opened his arms. Kate stepped into them and held on, held on hard. Then she let grief wash through her.
    “My head knew that Lee wasn’t coming back,” she said when she could talk again. “Yet I couldn’t help hoping, can’t help asking…God, Sam, are you sure?”
    “As sure as I can be without a body.” He brushed his lips over her cheek, the corner of her eye, tasted tears, and felt his own throat close. “Kate, I don’t think Lee’s remains will be found,” he said roughly. “I’m sorry. I know in some ways it would make it easier, give closure, but the swamp and five months make finding anything a very long shot. Do you understand?”
    She nodded, took a ragged breath, looked up at Sam. The concern she saw nearly made her cry all over again. Somehow, some way, she had slipped under the cop’s guard and touched the vulnerable man.
    She stood on tiptoe, kissed him gently on the lips, and said, “Thank you.”
    His mouth turned down at one corner. “For what? Fucking things up from start to finish?”
    Her smile trembled, but it was real. “For being honest, for caring, for being here when other men would have grabbed their career and run for the hills. For being Sam Groves.” She cleared her throat. “A good man. Very good.” Her fingertips touched his lips. “I’ll get McCloud’s number for you.”
    Sam watched the stiff line of her back and neck as she bent over the computer. He wanted nothing so much as to hold her again, to protect her from a world that ate innocence as a snack before moving on to a more satisfying meal of violence and death.
    You can protect her better as a cop than a man.
    Too bad he wanted to be both with her.
    “This is the number,” Kate said. “Want me to write it down?”
    Sam gave the highlighted number a glance, which was all it took for him to put it in his own personal memory bank. “I have it. Check your e-mail while I call your parents.”
    She flinched, nodded.
    “I can do it here or in the living room,” Sam said.
    “Living room.” She looked straight at him. “I trust you to be as good with them as you were with me.”
    His fingertips traced the line of her jaw, touched her lips, and then he turned away to make the kind of call every cop hates.
    There was no good way to tell parents their son was dead.

Chapter 53
    Scottsdale
    Saturday
    1:50 P.M .
    “Jason, you know we’d fall apart without you,” Sharon said into the phone even as she skimmed her computer screen. She was—as ordered—working from her father’s suite so that she’d be available if he needed anything. Peyton was sitting six feet away, drinking beer and eating pretzels, killing time before his three o’clock appointment. “Especially now, with all the trouble. The next time Dad yells