I didn’t come clean. He wasn’t sitting on the information. He was just giving me the opportunity to tell the police first.”
She couldn’t tell if Brett’s C.O. believed her. That unyielding expression on his face didn’t alter. He simply stared at her for one endless moment before turning back to Brett.
“Let’s assume Mitch showed up at the morgue for a purpose beyond taunting you. If we’re wrong, all we lose is a couple of hours’ recon. If we’re right, we might be able to track down the bastard.” He pushed himself off the dresser and paced to the window. Poking the curtain aside, he stared out the glass, his tanned forehead furrowing. “You looked through everything you picked up at the morgue?”
“That’s right,” Brett said quietly. “We found nothing of note.”
Sarah expected Devlin to demand a go at the items himself, but he nodded instead, his frown digging deeper into his face. When he let the drapes fall back into place and turned toward her, she braced herself.
“When was the last time you spoke to your brother?”
“A couple months ago.”
Devlin cocked his head, his gaze hard. “Be more specific. When? Exactly.”
Okay…
Sarah thought back. When had she talked to Sean last? She ran the conversation she’d had with him through her mind. They’d talked about their mom and dad. That’s when the significance of the date had hit them.
A lump swelled in her throat. “It was on Father’s Day. We talked about Dad.”
“Father’s Day,” Devlin repeated.
For a moment, something ruptured his expression. Something haunted. But it disappeared so quickly Sarah convinced herself she’d imagined it.
“Father’s Day is mid-June,” Devlin said, turning back to where Brett and Lucas still lounged against the motel dresser. “Didn’t you say his body was discovered in June?”
“Yeah.” Brett shifted against the corner of the dresser until he was facing his boss full on. “Near as we can figure it, he died within days of his conversation with Sarah.”
Devlin nodded, his gaze never wavering from her face. “You said you and your brother talked about your dad. What else did you talk about?”
“About the wedding.” She forced herself not to glance across the room to the tall, broad-shouldered man leaning against the corner of the dresser. “He promised he’d come out for it, that he’d walk me down the aisle.” Her throat tightened and ached. She blinked a couple of times to drive the tears away. “But most of what he said was garbled. It made no sense.” Her voice shook, she steadied it. “He sounded like he was high. Like he was using again.”
Her questioner nodded slightly, but then Brett had already mentioned that. His gaze narrowed. “What did he say that made no sense?”
“He kept going on and on about how much he loved me,” Sarah said. When the three men facing her frowned and opened their mouths, she rushed the rest of the explanation out. “Sean was never one to express his emotion. Yet he was almost maudlin, which was unlike him. And then there was this weird fixation on the leather bomber jacket I’d given him for Christmas the year before last. He kept going on and on about it.” She paused…shrugged. “His appreciation just got embarrassing.”
Devlin mulled that over. “He’d never cared about the jacket before?”
“I don’t know…I mean, he never thanked me for it. But he wore it all the time, so he must have liked it.”
Her throat tightened even further. Maybe that’s what that last phone call had been about. Maybe he’d been aware that he was going to die, and he’d wanted her to know that he loved her. Maybe he’d wanted her to know how much those little gestures of hers—like that damn bomber jacket—had meant to him.
“The jacket you’re talking about is the leather one? On the bed?” Devlin turned at her nod and headed toward the mattress. After dragging the folded jacket toward him, he picked it up and shook it out. “What exactly did he say about it? Anything specific?”
Sarah fought to focus on the conversation, rather than what had taken place on that mattress minutes before. “Uh…he said that he’d ripped the hem. But that he found someone to sew it up and they did good work. He said it looked like new.”
“The hem?” Devlin repeated thoughtfully. As Brett and Lucas straightened and converged on him, he slowly turned the leather jacket between his wide palms, probing carefully along the hem. Suddenly his hands stopped moving and he lifted the garment closer to his