Spontaneous - Brenda Jackson [28]
“It’s okay, Kim. Nothing is going to happen to your mother,” he whispered in a deep, husky voice close to her ear. “I give you my word on that.”
She shook her head. She heard his words but didn’t fully understand how he could say them. In fact, a part of her brain refused to comprehend any of what he’d said. She was imagining things—yes, that had to be it. There was no way Duan had insinuated that the man her mother planned to marry could be responsible for the deaths of his previous two wives.
She opened her eyes and stared up into Duan’s face, and knew from his expression that she hadn’t imagined anything. It was true.
She wrenched away from him as anger consumed her. “And you’ve known this since that Sunday in Chicago when we shared a cab ride to the airport?” she asked in an accusing tone. “You knew what Edward Villarosas was capable of doing, yet you didn’t tell me when you were aware my mother was spending time with him? Planning to marry him?” Cold, hard fear struck Kim in the chest at the very thought of Edward Villarosas and her mother together.
Duan knew Kim was upset. Highly pissed was more like it. He’d guessed what her reaction would be, which was why he hadn’t told her sooner. Now that she knew, it was imperative that he convince her Wynona wasn’t at risk and exactly what was at stake and why they needed to do things his way.
“The reason I didn’t tell you as soon as you mentioned the name was because I had to verify we were talking about the same person.”
“And when you discovered it was the same person?” she asked hotly, pressing the issue.
“Then it was a matter of acknowledging the first rule of law.” He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest. “No matter how things might look, a person is innocent until proven guilty, and after two investigations, some of Atlanta’s finest detectives couldn’t come up with anything to nail Villarosas. He had ironclad alibis. He and his wives weren’t even in the same cities when they disappeared.”
“Then why on earth do you think he’s guilty of anything?”
Duan knew it would be a waste of time to explain about a cop’s intuition. Landon had only worked on the second case, but when he’d learned about the first, which happened a good five years before he’d become a cop, he’d tried making a connection but hadn’t been able to do so. That didn’t necessarily mean there wasn’t one, but time and city budget cuts had prevented the force from following up on every plausible lead.
“A few things didn’t add up,” he heard himself saying. “But they weren’t enough to get a conviction if we had wanted to take things that far.”
He remembered the evidence wasn’t even enough to get the man locked up for the night as a suspect. People had verified his whereabouts and the two incidents had been five years apart.
“But you just said he wasn’t in the same cities as his wives when they disappeared.” She was thoughtful a moment. “So what did Edward think happened to them? It is odd both wives disappeared.”
“He said they were having affairs and left him for other men.”
She lifted a brow. “I wonder if he realizes that doesn’t make him look very good—as if he was lacking in certain areas.”
“Yes, you could think that. But there were others who knew the women and claimed they definitely liked to flirt. The witnesses believed they were involved in affairs, though no one knew the names of the men.”
Kim pushed a curl behind her ear. She still had a lot of questions but at least she had an answer to one of them, the one she’d asked herself just last week. Why would Duan want to come to Shreveport with her? She now saw that it had nothing to do with him enjoying her company, at least not to the extent she’d assumed. Men liked sex and she would be the first to admit that what was between them was off the charts. However, now that she was aware of his real motivation, she wouldn’t be surprised to find out that he’d had his bags packed, ready to come here and nail Edward Villarosas,