“That had to be disturbing.” He hid his shock. If he ever had a daughter, she would live at home during college. With her bodyguard.

“Looking back it is. But back then we thought it was annoying and a little funny. No one ever dreamed something could happen to one of us. None of us ever thought Amy’s death was more than a simple accident.”

“Do you remember if she complained about someone following her?”

Lacey thought hard for a moment and shook her head. “I can’t remember. Amy was a few years ahead of me.”

“What would DeCosta have been doing in Mount Junction?” Jack thought aloud. “And why was Amy’s case disguised as an accident? Michael had said the other related deaths were cases where the body turned up months after the person went missing. That’s not what happened in Oregon. Everyone but Suzanne was dumped and found pretty quickly. Right?”

She swallowed hard and nodded.

“She was a good friend.” He spoke gently, seeing the pain cross her face.

“We were tight. We clicked the first time we met. You ever had that happen when you meet someone and you just know it’s right?”

She didn’t pause long enough for him to agree. That click had reverberated through his brain the first time he’d touched her.

“We did everything together. Studied, worked out. We were the same size and wore each other’s clothes and shoes. During the summers, we’d alternate back and forth between spending time at my parents’ and hers. We were like sisters.”

Jack hadn’t realized the friendship was that deep. He frowned.

“How did you handle her death?”

“Not good.”

The room grew quiet. She wouldn’t look at him and he waited.

Her voice was subdued when she finally continued. “I was diagnosed with depression afterward. It lasted for years. All I could think about was what could be happening to her. If it hadn’t been for Frank back then…I really leaned on him after Suzanne was gone. I’m not sure I would have made it without him.”

“What do you mean?” Jack wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer. But he had to know her demons. He wanted to know everything about her, good or bad.

“I saw psychiatrists off and on for years after Suzanne vanished. Sometimes the guilt was so bad…” She turned away and gazed at the purple curtains covering the window. She didn’t speak.

And he knew she’d considered suicide. Maybe even came close to doing it. Sometimes it was harder to forgive yourself for living than to face death. “I almost made you watch that disc again.” He thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. God, he felt like a piece of shit. “I’m so fucking sorry. That must have been horrible for you.”

He would destroy his copy. He rubbed his face, feeling the harsh stubble he’d not had time to shave off that morning.

She didn’t answer him and sat back down at the desk, keeping her eyes averted as she studied the desktop computer. As he looked at Lacey, every possessive and protective hormone in Jack’s body battered at his gates. He clenched his fingers around the edge of the mattress.

Wrenching his gaze from her, he stood and checked the closed door in the bedroom for something to do. Something to break the tension that’d filled the air. It wasn’t a sexual tension, now. It was more of an intimacy. Where one person had bared his or her soul and now the other helped share the burden. It was more intimate than their one kiss and was affecting him deeper, confusing him. She’d just told him something horrid and he wanted to throw her on the little twin bed and comfort her with his mouth and hardening body.

The door in the bedroom led to the bath Alex had mentioned. A connecting door was on the other side of the bath. Alex’s bedroom? Turning around Jack crossed his arms, tucked his hands beneath his biceps. He wasn’t going to touch Lacey. He didn’t trust himself.

Her cell phone chirped and he breathed a deep sigh of relief at the interruption.

Thank God for her phone.

The air in the bedroom had grown heavy and dense with surging emotions. She didn’t know what Jack was thinking, but she’d been watching him from the corner of her eye. Since they’d stepped in the bedroom, she’d been disturbingly aware of his presence. It was overpowering in the small square footage. Even a lesbian would react to the raw testosterone that pumped into the air around him.

He’d pushed her to recall and relate a time in her life when her future had looked bleak. Nonexistent. She rarely thought back to those black times. It was too hard to clean out the muck that enveloped her soul afterward. That was what her fences were for. To keep the memories away and protect her from more pain. Jack Harper was tearing them down, board by board.

She felt exposed and raw.

Deep down she wanted his touch, craved for his touch, but it came with a steep price. She didn’t know if she could pay it. She wasn’t ready to let her guard down. That thick inner wall that protected her heart. Her heart had been crushed by Suzanne and then again by her mother’s death. Her breakup with Frank left deep scars on her heart’s walls. She didn’t know if they’d healed enough to stay strong against what was growing with Jack.

She dug her phone out of her bag, moving slowly against the heavy air in the room. It indicated she’d received a video message. No wonder it had only chirped instead of giving its usual ring. She tapped the screen and watched as the grainy video zoomed in on a man.

He was dead.