Proof

Trained together at the Athena Academy, these six women vowed to help each other when in need. Now one of their own has been murdered, and it is up to them to find the killer—before they become the next victims….

Alex Forsythe:

This forensic scientist can uncover clues others fail to see.

PROOF by Justine Davis

Darcy Allen Steele:

A master of disguise, Darcy can sneak into any crime scene.

ALIAS by Amy J. Fetzer

Tory Patton:

Used to uncovering scandals, this investigative reporter will get to the bottom of any story—especially murder.

EXPOSED by Katherine Garbera

Samantha St. John:

Though she’s the youngest, this lightning-fast secret agent can take down men twice her size.

DOUBLE-CROSS by Meredith Fletcher

Josie Lockworth:

A little danger won’t stop this daredevil air force pilot from uncovering the truth.

PURSUED by Catherine Mann

Kayla Ryan:

The police lieutenant won’t rest until the real killer is brought to justice, even if it makes her the next target!

JUSTICE by Debra Webb

ATHENA FORCE:

They were the best, the brightest, the strongest—women who shared a bond like no other….

Proof
Justine Davis

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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JUSTINE DAVIS

lives in Kingston, Washington. Her interests outside of writing are sailing, doing needlework, horseback riding and driving her restored 1967 Corvette roadster—top down, of course. Justine says that years ago, when she worked in law enforcement, a young man she worked with encouraged her to try for a promotion to a position that was, at that time, occupied only by men. “I succeeded, became wrapped up in my new job and that man moved away, never, I thought, to be heard from again. Ten years later he appeared out of the woods of Washington State, saying he’d never forgotten me and would I please marry him. With that history, how could I write anything but romance?” And with a kick-ass career on the force, how could Justine not write a Silhouette Bombshell novel? Justine has put her police background to use to launch Silhouette Bombshell’s twelve-book continuity, ATHENA FORCE, with Proof.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 1

I need your help.

Four small words, yet they had the power to turn an FBI agent into a burglar.

It had been a while, but Alexandra Forsythe quickly saw that the locks at the hospital, in this basement area anyway, were not going to be a particular challenge. The security of the small-town medical center wasn’t designed to protect against people like her.

She was thankful the practice of observation had become so ingrained in her. As a forensic scientist with the FBI, she focused on tiny details every day, so even though she’d been here earlier under horrible circumstances, she was still able to recall most of what she needed now. The layout of the building, the basement and the morgue itself.

That she was risking her career with the FBI was something she was quite aware of. Yet, when placed on the opposite end of the scale from the woman who lay on the other side of this door, it didn’t even move the dial.

Lorraine Miller Carrington had counted on that commitment when she’d put out the call invoking an old promise among friends. Alex had made the Cassandra promise with all the zeal of a passionate young woman, but her dedication to what it meant had never wavered as time passed. She would do what had to be done, whatever the cost. They all would, every one of the remaining six Cassandras. They would keep their word.

It was what graduates of the Athena Academy for the Advancement of Women did.

“Oh, God, Rainy,” she murmured, feeling her eyes brim with the tears she had been fighting so hard all day.

Alex had come back to southern Arizona expecting trouble. She could only guess at the severity of the situation that would make the cool, unflappable Rainy put in that call for help. She knew it hadn’t been done lightly.

But she had never expected to end up here, in the small town of Casa Grande, just north of the smaller town of Eloy, where Rainy’s car had crashed. Rainy had made it only a third of the way from her home in Tucson to Athena Academy, just west of Phoenix. It was there where four of her former mentees, the Cassandras, had waited with Athena Academy principal Christine Evans to hear what dire event had instigated Rainy’s desperate call.

Now Alex wondered if there could be anything worse than watching an autopsy on someone you loved.

She reined in her emotions and glanced up and down the hallway to be certain she was alone. Foot traffic down here was rare at 3:00 a.m. She’d waited in a shadowy side corridor until she’d seen a man with a cleaning cart load up with fresh supplies and get on an elevator. He was the third uniformed worker to have followed this route, and she was guessing from the fact that she’d seen three of the big carts in the storage room that he was the last of the night cleaning crew. Still, she waited a little longer, just to be sure.

Finally she slipped on the blue uniform smock she’d liberated from a linen closet on the third floor ward, figuring it might buy her a few seconds if she was discovered. Her intractable red-gold spiral curls were already pulled up into a tight knot at the crown of her head, to further the makeshift disguise and to avoid leaving any telltale hairs behind. She’d come to appreciate the uniqueness of both the color and curls. But tonight her distinctive hair was a nuisance.

She turned her attention to her lock picking.

It took her less than thirty seconds to get the door to the morgue open. The room was very dim, the only light coming from one fluorescent ceiling fixture in the far corner. A couple of new residents had arrived since she’d been here last, and Alex made a silent apology as she intruded.

One of the gurneys held an elderly woman who was partially uncovered, the cloth over her lined face having slipped off. Alex hesitated, then gently pulled the cover back up. She might not have bothered before, but the harsh reality of death was weighing heavily on her, and she couldn’t help thinking about the loved ones who no doubt would still grieve even though this soul’s suffering had ended.

She suppressed a shiver and began to walk toward cold storage. A separate small room in the back of the morgue, it was where bodies were kept when the paperwork was complete, before they were picked up by a mortician. Oddly, the door wasn’t secured. In fact, it stood slightly ajar, and she frowned. She could feel the cool air escaping through the gap.

A slight noise followed by a barely audible muttering came from the room. She froze in her tracks. If she’d been given to horror stories, a thousand possibilities would have raced into her mind. But she glimpsed something through the narrow gap between the door and the jamb that catapulted what she’d heard into an entirely new category. A narrow beam of light, moving.

A flashlight.

The room was pitch black. Anyone who belonged there would have turned on the overhead lights. And they wouldn’t worry about making noise. The furtive implications of that flashlight and the effort to stay quiet started the flood of adrenaline in Alex.

She crept forward, her body instantly in the high state of alert and muscle tension that allowed her to make every careful movement utterly silent. She’d come prepared, wearing soft, leather-soled shoes rather than her running shoes with soles that could squeak too easily on the polished vinyl floors.

She peeked through the gap, saw a dark figure moving in the back of the room. The beam of the flashlight was small and intense, a xenon bulb, most likely.

The angle of the beam told her the person was tall. But it didn’t reflect enough light back at its holder to enable her to see anything other than short hair and a strong build. That, coupled with something about the way he held himself, added up to her assumption of gender.

What the faint light did show her, with shocking clarity, was what the person was doing. He had opened the drawer that held Rainy’s body. The sight made her stomach roil.

She must have made a sound, although she wasn’t aware of anything but the outrage that filled her as she pushed open the door. The man whipped around. Instantly he aimed the high intensity flashlight at her face, blinding her and preventing her from getting a look at him. That single action told her the guy knew what he was doing. Instinctively she backed up into the morgue.

He came at her.

She took what little she knew—he was tall—and used it. She crouched. Leaped forward. Caught him just below the knees. Used the muscles of her legs to drive forward and up. Felt the moment when she had him. Flipped him.

He was back on his feet fast. Came at her again. She knew he’d be ready for her this time. But he might not expect the same thing twice. She had a split second to decide. She went for it. This time she didn’t get the right angle and he flew awkwardly sideways as she rushed past him.

Still in motion she reached a counter and hit it with her right hand. Used it as a platform to spin and launch a side kick at his chest. A kick that Rainy—a tae kwon do black belt and instructor—would have been proud of. Caught him dead center and sent him reeling backward.

She landed on the balls of her feet, ready to strike in any direction. Yet the man hesitated. He’d slid into the main door to the hallway in his sprawl, and it had opened behind him, offering escape. It kept him backlit, and she was still unable to see his face.

She took a step toward him.

He pulled the gurney with the old woman forward until it was between them, then darted out the door. By the time she dodged around and reached the hallway, he was gone. She looked quickly up and down the hall but there was no sign, no doors just closing, no elevator just heading upstairs.

And I never saw his face, damn it.

She had no idea who he was, what he wanted with Rainy, if he was acting alone or if someone had sent him. Had no idea what he would have done had she not come along. She knew only that he hadn’t been anyone with official authorization, from either hospital or police or family. That alone would have told her that there was more to Rainy’s death than a simple accident.

But there was another layer of weirdness to this painful situation, a layer that had driven Alex back to the morgue in the middle of this hot August Sunday night for another look at her friend’s body.

Copies of Rainy’s medical forms from Athena Academy, which Christine Evans had e-mailed to Alex that afternoon, clearly stated that an emergency appendectomy had been performed on Rainy when she was fourteen. Alex had already known this, because when she’d been stricken with appendicitis herself in her junior year, Rainy had reassured her that all would be well, citing her own experience and showing off her scar.

And that made this situation all the more impossible.

What Alex had wanted to see again, what she hadn’t been able to study and make sense of during the autopsy, were other scars that Rainy had never mentioned. Scars on her ovaries.

Because the woman on that table in the morgue had a scar in approximately the right place for an appendectomy.

And a perfectly healthy appendix.

“And you didn’t recognize him? Sometimes family members go a little crazy in times of grief.”

The hospital’s night security supervisor, a middle-age black man with kind eyes, spoke to her gently. Alex wondered if he was implying she had also gone a little crazy, but he seemed so sincere she chose not to believe it. You had to draw the line somewhere or you’d end up hating every human being in the world.

“No, I didn’t,” she repeated for at least the fifth time. He was the third person she’d told the story to in the past two hours. “It all happened very fast and he came out of a dark room, but it was no one I knew. Besides,” she pointed out, “if he had been a family member or friend, he would have recognized me.”

She hadn’t told him the whole story, didn’t want to deal with the questions that would arise if he knew she’d also been inside the room and had in fact been involved in very brief hand-to-hand combat with the man. So she’d told him she’d been unable to sleep and had come to see if there was anyone here who could let her in for a last goodbye. She’d found the door unlocked—okay, so she didn’t specify which door, but she didn’t want to have to explain how she’d gotten in—and once inside had encountered a man who seemed to be sneaking around the back room with a flashlight.

The security man seemed to accept her implication that the man had left the outer door open. At least, as much as he was accepting any of her story. She didn’t care as long as he took some action. Her main concern was to have the area secured until she could get Rainy out of there.

“Hmm.” The security man rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Your friend who died, was she FBI, too?”

“No. She’s an—she was an attorney, in Tucson.”

He noticed her stumble on the change in tense and seemed to reach a decision. Thankfully, it was the decision she had wanted.

“I’ve got a couple of hours of paperwork to do this morning before the end of my shift. I’ll just grab myself a chair and do it sitting down here. That give you enough time to make your arrangements?”

“It should.” Alex smiled at him gratefully. “Thank you. Thank you very much. I really appreciate this.”

He didn’t mention calling the sheriff’s office, and she was glad of that even though it suggested he still didn’t quite believe there was reason for alarm. Alex knew she was already on thin ice here. Only professional courtesy, the fact that police lieutenant Kayla Ryan had requested it and a fierce, stubborn insistence on her part had enabled her to sit in on Rainy’s autopsy that morning in the first place.

They’d cut her some slack because she was FBI, but it wouldn’t take much more to wear out her welcome. It never took a whole lot to wear out a fed’s welcome with city, county or even state law enforcement. And pointing out that they were all supposed to be on the same side never seemed to help much.

The local authorities hadn’t been enthused about the autopsy in the first place. They had clearly already resolved the case in their minds.

Rainy had fallen asleep at the wheel just outside Eloy, then gone off the road and crashed into a pole. Period. There was nothing left but the loose ends to tie up. That was the way the official report read, and that was what the investigating officers believed.

Alex knew the autopsy had been done because there were no apparent reasons for the accident. She guessed that the officers suspected Rainy had been drunk or on something illegal.

As if.

Alex had the sudden thought that she herself had sometimes dismissed the claims of family and friends about their loved ones.

In the lab, she let the fascination of the scientific process keep the reality of death at a safe distance. The fact that she was in the trace evidence department and dealt mostly with hair, fibers, paint, blood, glass and other things added to that buffer.

When the evidence pointed strongly one way, sometimes you did have to go with the numbers, simply because you had nothing else to base a decision on. If the odds were high in one direction, it took a lot of solid evidence to counter them.

And that was evidence they didn’t yet have for Rainy.

“Yet” being the operative word there, she told herself, shoring up her determination.

But she was going to have to tread very carefully. Those local authorities had also made it clear what they thought of her getting any more involved because of her personal relationship with the deceased.

The deceased.

That’s what Rainy was to the officials. All she was. Just another fatality case. Already death was stealing away Rainy’s identity, stealing away the essence of who and what she was. These people here, making these decisions, had never known the brilliant, beautiful, generous woman she’d been. The woman who by sheer force of personality had changed six young lives and touched countless others, and who would never have tolerated being referred to in such an impersonal manner.

But Alex had known her. And loved her. And she’d be damned if she’d let anyone reduce Rainy to a case number, a statistic, just another nameless driver falling asleep at the wheel. There was more to this than that, much more. Her gut was screaming that there was, and she’d learned to trust it, whether in the lab or in life.

The problem was, her gut feelings and what little strange evidence she had led to Athena Academy. And Alex wasn’t about to draw any attention to the school unless there was no choice. For now, the team name the Cassandras had chosen all those years ago would have an ironic significance—they were all feeling there was more to Rainy’s demise than the official determination of “accidental death,” yet, like the prophetess of old, they could get no one to believe them.

As she waited for the security man to return with the mentioned chair, Alex retrieved the smock she’d hastily stuffed into the trash can just down the hall after calling in the intruder to security. There was a laundry cart standing unattended outside another door, and she ran down and stuffed the disguise into the soiled linens bag.

By the time the security supervisor came back she was standing back where she’d been, looking as if she’d been there all the time. In addition to the chair, he carried a large clipboard with a stack of forms on it, so he’d clearly been truthful about settling in to do paperwork.

She thanked him again, clasping his hand in hers, and told him she’d let him know as soon as arrangements were made to move Rainy. Then she headed quickly toward the elevators. It took her a few minutes to find a place at the hospital where she was both allowed to use her cell phone and able to get a signal. She ended up back at the main front doors, and even then she had to walk out from under the huge cement quadrangle-shaped portico that marked the entrance.

It was just after 6:00 a.m., but she didn’t hesitate in dialing Kayla Ryan’s cell phone.

She felt a strange sense of both familiarity and oddness as she made the call. There had been a time when she would have called her old Athena classmate anytime there was something bursting out of her that she simply had to talk about. But that closeness had disappeared a long time ago, and the chasm that had opened between them over Kayla’s affair with Mike Bridges, the cocky young officer who had fathered Kayla’s daughter and then deserted them both, had never quite healed.

But none of that ancient history mattered now. The Cassandra promise had been invoked. Every one of them would live up to the promise, and they would all pull together as if the years since they’d left Athena Academy had never existed.

Kayla answered on the first ring.

“It’s Alex.” She wasted no time on preamble. “An intruder was in the morgue at the hospital. He was trying to do something to or with Rainy.”

She heard Kayla suck in a breath, could imagine the change in her expression as she snapped into police mode. “Any idea who?”

“No. Didn’t get a look at him at all. He was tall, in good shape. He was good, maybe a pro. Probably covered his tracks well. But I’m not even sure what he was going to do. I interrupted him just as he was…reaching for her.”

She bit her lip. Hard. Tasted blood. Didn’t care. God, this hurt so much, to even think that the cold, lifeless body in a drawer was really, truly Rainy. Or at least all that was left of her in this world.

“We’ve got to get her out of there and back on Athena turf,” Kayla said, with a briskness Alex guessed hid feelings similar to her own. Kayla had also voiced her own first choice; she’d feel much better when Rainy was out of the hands of strangers who didn’t know who they had, how special she was, that she was worth any effort.

“Yes. To the morgue there in Athens, preferably,” Alex said, referring to the small town adjacent to the academy. On the map Athens was a continuation of the Phoenix sprawl, but in fact had grown up into a town of about five thousand as an adjunct to the academy, housing many of the staff and support services, and suppliers to the school.

It was also Kayla’s jurisdiction.

Kayla quickly picked up on her inference. “You want her there, not just to a mortuary?”

“Exactly. I want her where we can have someone we know and trust take a closer look. This doctor’s good, but he’s not a coroner or an investigator. The county doesn’t have one, they have to borrow from the next county over, and they won’t do it unless they’re really suspicious.”

“And they’re not,” Kayla said.

“No. They’re already convinced it was just an accident, that she fell asleep.”

“As if,” Kayla muttered, and Alex’s mouth quirked at the perfect repetition of her own response, even as she felt a qualm that she and this woman she had once been so close to had become so estranged. Kayla’s next words wiped all levity from her mind.

“I was going to call you this morning. Your guy isn’t the first intruder. Someone was inside Rainy and Marshall’s house yesterday.” Kayla explained that the person had run and Kayla hadn’t gotten a look at him. Or her. “I also checked out Rainy’s car at the county forensics lab. The seat belt failed.”

Alex sucked in a breath. “Any sign of tampering?”

“None. What are the odds.” Her tone was grim.

“We should move her today.”

“I’ll make the arrangements with Marshall,” Kayla said.

“How is he?” Alex asked. Then felt foolish. Rainy had been their friend but Marshall Carrington’s wife, so how did she think he was?

“He’s…handling it,” Kayla said.

Alex wasn’t sure what that meant, or what the odd note in Kayla’s voice indicated, but she didn’t have time to delve into extraneous details now.

“Will he agree to move her?”

“I think so. I’ll make the arrangements from here, and I’ll call you as soon as it’s done.”

“Good.”

“Listen, Alex…there’s something else that might play into this.”

“What?”

“Marshall said Rainy had been undergoing fertility treatments. He told me that her doctor said she might not be able to conceive because of scarring on her ovaries.”

Alex instantly went on full alert. She’d called Kayla after the autopsy to tell her about Rainy’s appendix and the scars, but hadn’t mentioned any of her vague suspicions. “Oh?”

“Yes. Apparently Dr. Halburg, Rainy’s gynecologist, said the scarring was natural. And not uncommon, even.”

“Hmm.” Alex frowned. “Did he say if they were trying for in vitro?”

“I didn’t get to ask. That’s when we realized someone was in the house. But there was information on egg mining in Rainy’s office.”

“Maybe it’s nothing more than that, then.” Alex said it, but she didn’t believe it. Not with two intruders in the same twelve-hour period. Or perhaps it was the same person.

“You’ll be headed to Athens, then?” Kayla asked.

“Yes. I’ll follow the transport to the morgue, just to be sure.” She made a mental note to call work and extend her personal leave, as well.

“Will you be staying on the grounds at Athena? Do you want me to call Christine?”

“No, I’ll get her on my cell when I’m on my way,” Alex said.

Athena’s principal was getting ready for the arrival of students for the next trimester starting on the first of September, but Christine Evans lived by the philosophy “Once an Athena woman, always an Athena woman,” and all the graduates were like family to her. And she’d been especially close to Rainy, so Alex knew she’d do anything necessary to help find the truth about her death.

“I’ve got an investigation that’s got to be tied up,” Kayla was saying, “but I’ll check in with you and get to Athena when I can. I’ll see when my sister can watch Jazz.”

“How is she?” Alex asked, embarrassedly aware that this was the first time she’d asked. Kayla’s eleven-year-old daughter, Jasmine, was one positive thing that had come out of Kayla’s youthful fling. The girl was bright and pretty, looking much more like her honey-skinned mother than what Alex remembered of her father.

“She’s the light of my life,” Kayla said simply, and quickly went on. “I’ll be in touch when arrangements are made to move Rainy.”

Alex felt the sting of the quick subject change.

“All right,” she said, realizing this was not the time or place to go into things like their personal situation.

There was an awkward moment of silence between them, a moment that would have once been impossible between the two who had been the closest of friends. On the heels of the sting, Alex felt a moment of the old irritation at the fact that this estrangement was over, of all things, a man.

A boy, really, she amended silently. Mike had been a shallow charmer with zero sense of responsibility. And still was, most likely. But Kayla had thought herself in love, and had thrown her childhood away for it.

Just goes to show, Alex thought, even Athena Academy can’t break all of women’s stupid habits.