Rae raised an eyebrow knowingly. “There are some things a girl never forgets, Ry. And one of those is a kiss from the right guy.”
WHEN RYLANN GOT back to her apartment later that evening, she dropped her briefcase on the living room couch and unbuttoned her trench coat as she made her way to the bedroom. As she stepped into her walk-in closet and hung up the coat, Rae’s words echoed through her head.
There are some things a girl never forgets, Ry. And one of those is a kiss from the right guy.
The notion was a little sentimental for her tastes.
She was a grown woman—thirty-two years old, not thirteen. Meth Lab Rylann did not get all weak in the knees over one measly kiss, no matter how irritatingly charming Kyle Rhodes had been that night.
Still…instinctively, her eyes went to the top shelf of the closet.
Shoved near the back was an old shoebox, one she’d had for years. On the day they’d moved in together in San Francisco, Jon had asked her what was inside.
“Just some old letters my mom sent me when I went away to college,” she’d told him, perhaps the only time she’d lied to Jon the entire time they’d been dating.
Reaching up, Rylann grabbed the box off the shelf and removed the lid.
Inside was the navy flannel shirt Kyle had given her nine years ago.
She ran her fingers over the collar, remembering that moment when he’d handed the shirt over to her. The way her stomach had done a little flip as his hand brushed against her neck.
Okay, fine. Maybe she remembered a few teeny, tiny details about that night.
Rylann shook her head, wanting to laugh at herself as she stared down at the flannel. It was just so…silly. It was a shirt. Really, she had no idea why she’d kept the darn thing all this time. She’d moved from Champaign to San Francisco, and then into a different apartment when her and Jon had decided to live together, and each time she’d contemplated tossing it in the garbage. But something had held her back.
I saw you laughing with your friends, and your smile sucked me right in.
There’d been a spark between her and Kyle, whether she’d wanted to admit it or not. They’d spent less than thirty minutes together, but she’d felt it. Instant butterflies. Not with any other man, including Jon, had she ever experienced that.
“Pull it together, Pierce,” she whispered to herself. This was not a road she needed to go down.
Because, simply, it didn’t matter now.
They weren’t fresh-faced grad students anymore. Kyle Rhodes was an ex-con, and she was an assistant U.S. attorney. There was no place to go from there. She wasn’t going to reach out to him, and after the way she’d brushed him off in the courtroom, she highly doubted that he would try to get in touch with her, either. So that was…that.
Slowly, Rylann put the lid back on the shoebox and returned it to its place on the back of her shelf. Out of sight.
And this time, out of mind. For good.
Eight
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Rylann knocked on Cameron’s door, pausing when she saw that the other woman was on the phone. With a welcoming look, Cameron gestured for Rylann to take a seat in one of the chairs in front of her desk.
“I’ve got to run, Collin, I’ve got some people in my office,” Cameron said to the person on the other end of the line. “Yes, I am a very important person. I know it kills you to share the spotlight.” She smiled at Rylann as she hung up the phone. “Sorry about that. Old friend.”
She folded her hands on top of her desk. “So. I have an interesting matter I’d like to discuss with you. But first, I wanted to check in and see how your first week has been going.”
“It’s going well,” Rylann said. “I think I’ve met almost all of the AUSAs in special prosecutions, and they seem like a great group.” In fact, the only one she hadn’t met yet was the elusive Cade Morgan, the prosecutor who had originally handled the Twitter Terrorist case.
“It is a great group,” Cameron agreed. “I used to be in special prosecutions before they moved me up.”
Rylann held back a laugh at that, appreciating the modesty. Cameron had been appointed to the position of U.S. attorney by the president of the United States—that was a bit of a bigger deal than simply being “moved up.”
Cameron switched gears, ready to get down to business. “The FBI has recently briefed me on an investigation that I’d like you to handle. It’s a somewhat sensitive matter, and one that I suspect will require an experienced AUSA in light of certain circumstances that I’ll get to in a few moments.”
Rylann was already interested. “What kind of case is it?”
“A homicide case. Two weeks ago, an inmate named Darius Brown was found dead in his cell at Metropolitan Correctional Center. Apparently, Brown was attacked in the middle of the night by his cell mate, a man named Ray Watts, who beat Brown to death with a makeshift weapon—a padlock attached to a belt. By the time the guards became aware of the attack and got to the cell, Brown was already unconscious. They rushed him to the medical facilities, where he died shortly thereafter.”
Cameron reached into a file on her desk and tossed a mug shot of a man with close-cropped blond hair in his late twenties. “That’s Watts, the cell mate. Currently serving two life sentences for first-degree murder and arson. He’s a member of the Brotherhood, a local white supremacist group, and was convicted four years ago after he and two other members of the group firebombed the home of an African American man who’d recently opened a convenience store in Watts’s neighborhood. Both the store owner and his wife were killed.”