Finding Justice Read online

  Old friends, new secrets

  Sergeant Cat Forrester lives by her own set of rules. When her childhood friend is murdered, Cat’s world is thrown into chaos. Especially because Jay Garrett—a man from her past—is a suspect, and he needs her help to prove he’s innocent. After all they once shared, how can she say no?

  The attraction flares between them, and getting involved with a suspect is a huge risk. But the more time Cat spends with Jay, the stronger the tug on her heart. He is the same caring, irresistible man she remembers. Yet she can’t let her emotions interfere with the case—solving it is top priority. And as she digs deeper, she discovers Jay has secrets that may jeopardize any possible future together.

  “I’m a suspect, Cat.”

  Jay spoke quickly, his words almost running together. “You have to help me. You have to help me show them—”

  “Wait. You’re a suspect?” How could good, kind-hearted Jay Garrett be a suspect in a murder investigation? The Jay she remembered always smiled, laughed and kissed with lips that could lead a girl into all sorts of trouble….

  “Please tell me you’re the detective you always swore you would be. You have to help me. I need you.”

  He needs me. After all this time. “Jay, listen to me. If you’re a suspect, what happened? Cops do not go around accusing people—”

  “The cops are walking around like their bloody heads are cut off. Sarah’s parents are waiting for them to release her body while the police point the finger at me rather than the real killer. I feel trapped, Cat. You’ve got to come to the Cove.”

  “I can’t.”

  Dear Reader,

  I am so thrilled to introduce you to my debut novel with Harlequin Superromance! I am a Brit, living in southwest England and so proud that Harlequin is happy for me to write about British characters living in the fictional seaside town of Templeton Cove, England. I really hope you love this story as much as I do!

  Detective Sergeant Cat Forrester is a woman in emotional turmoil from pretty much the very first page. Having lost her father to a drunk driver, Cat has spent the past seven years since his death looking after her grieving alcoholic mother alone, after her brother deserted them.

  When she receives a phone call from her past lover and friend, Jay Garrett, telling her their mutual friend has been murdered and he is a suspect, Cat is torn between rushing to his aid and staying home.

  Knowing she can’t leave Jay to fight the accusation alone, she forces her brother to step up to their joint responsibility and leaves the city for Templeton Cove. The story that unfolds is one of danger, risk, high passion and love…for both Cat and Jay’s dead friend and each other.

  I received the email from my agent back in May 2012 telling me that Harlequin wanted to contract Finding Justice. A lot of screaming, crying and general hysteria ensued. Then I “met” my editor. I am smiling as I write this because I am so happy to be working with such a wonderful lady who makes me feel I can actually write.

  I sincerely hope you enjoy Cat and Jay’s story and I’d love to hear from you when you’re done. Visit me at www.rachelbrimble.com.

  Love,

  Rachel Brimble

  P.S. Be sure to look out for my next book set in Templeton Cove, coming in August 2013 from Harlequin Superromance!

  Finding Justice

  Rachel Brimble

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Rachel Brimble lives with her husband and two young daughters in a small town near Bath in the U.K. She started writing short stories about eight years ago, but once her children were at school, she embarked on her first novel. A small press published it in 2007. Since then, she’s had several books published, but securing her first contract with Harlequin Superromance was the proudest day of her career.

  An active member of the Romantic Novelists Association and Romance Writers of America, when Rachel isn’t writing you’ll find her with her head in a book or walking the beautiful English countryside with her family. Her dream place to live is Bourton-on-the-Water in southwest England. And in the evening? Well, a well-deserved glass of wine is never, ever refused.

  Don’t miss any of our special offers. Write to us at the following address for information on our newest releases.

  Harlequin Reader Service U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269 Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

  Dedicated to my wonderful husband, Terry Brimble, without whom I would not have had the courage or tenacity to follow my dreams. I love you.

  Acknowledgments

  There are so many people I want to thank for believing in me and making this book possible. First, to my wonderful agent Dawn Dowdle, who taught me to write deeper and better than I ever did before. I hope Finding Justice is my first thank-you of many.

  To my friend and stoic contact, Police Constable Penny Walters, who made the suspense come alive. (All errors are mine.) You are my girl!

  Finally, to my fantastic editor, Piya Campana—you could not have been more encouraging or supportive throughout. Thank you for being so great and teaching me so much!

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Excerpt

  CHAPTER ONE

  “GODDAMN IT, he’s not getting away with this. Do you hear me?” Detective Sergeant Cat Forrester glared at the circle of detectives watching her with varying amounts of guilt etched across their faces. “He was drunk. He got in a car and mowed down a twenty-eight-year-old mother. That makes him a killer, a murderer. I want his ass on a stick. So get back out there and talk to every damn person who knew him, loved him, hated him and slept with him. Somebody somewhere is hiding his sorry ass.”

  One of her female officers raised her hand. “No one in his family is talking right now, but I’m pretty sure if I keep up the pressure on the eldest daughter—”

  Cat glared. “Is anyone else apart from me taking this case seriously? The guy was drunk, left the pub and got in his car. He then thought nothing about driving through Marlborough Place, past a school right when they were letting out for the day. He killed a mother. A mother of a small child. If that small child hadn’t been talking to her friends a few feet away, she would be dead, too. We are going to catch this guy. Do I make myself clear?”

  There was a cursory wave of nods and fingers tapping on keyboards in response. “Good. Well, get to it, then. Go. All of you.”

  The mumbled “yes, ma’am”s and scraping of chair legs against tile grated on Cat’s nerves, hitching her stress level up another notch
. Turning her back, she stared at the incident board. He couldn’t get away with this. Not another drunk driver going unanswerable to his crime.

  “Sergeant?”

  “What?” she snapped.

  “Sergeant.” The firm, don’t-mess-with-me voice of Inspector Harris echoed around the small room.

  Cat grimaced. Damn. She turned and planted a smile on her face. “Sir.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t give me that smile of yours, Sergeant. What was that all about? The driver has been missing in action for two days and you’re dressing down your team as if he’s been on the run for two weeks.”

  “I want him caught.”

  He stared at her for a moment longer before he blew out a breath and rested his hip against the gray metal desk behind him. “How much longer is this one-woman mission to end all drunk driving going to go on, Cat?”

  The use of her first name spoke volumes. She hated it. If she lost her inspector’s respect, and it evolved into sympathy, God only knew what the effect would be on her team if they witnessed it.

  She crossed her arms. “It’s not a mission, sir. I just don’t think it’s being given the time or concentration it deserves. This guy left a man alone to raise a four-year-old daughter.”

  “As your father’s killer left you, your brother and mum.”

  Heat pinched at Cat’s cheeks. “That’s not the same. I was an adult.”

  He shrugged. “Depends how you look at it. What will this child remember of her mother? You had years of memories with your dad.”

  She turned away from him, picked up a marker and made some illegible and pointless alterations to the board. “This isn’t about my dad, sir. He died seven years ago.”

  “And it’s still as raw as yesterday.”

  Cat squeezed her eyes shut. “You’re wrong.”

  “Am I?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a long silence and Cat inwardly cursed when the words in front of her blurred. She blinked. “Was there something you wanted to ask me, sir? I really should—”

  “A call just came through.”

  Cat put down the marker and turned. “Call?”

  He nodded, his gaze locked on hers. “Your mum. She needs picking up.”

  Shame and embarrassment flooded her body in equal measure and Cat swept past him to her desk. “Where?”

  Inspector Harris stood. “The Hunters Arms.”

  “Fine.” Cat whipped her bag from her chair and hitched it onto her shoulder. “If there’s nothing else—”

  “Cat.” He caught her wrist as she moved to brush past him. “She needs help. Professional help.”

  “I can handle it.”

  “Not on your own. Not anymore.”

  She eased her arm from his hand. “I’ll be back when I can.”

  Cat swallowed the humiliation burning like acid in her throat and walked from the room.

  When she got outside, she inhaled great lungfuls of fresh air like she hadn’t had the God-given pleasure of it in a week. Once her heartbeat slowed and her cheeks cooled, she flicked her hair over her shoulders, slid into the front seat of her police-issue car and drove toward the pub.

  Fifteen minutes later, the soles of her shoes sucked and pulled against the sticky linoleum tiles as she walked deeper into The Hunters Arms. The bright August sunshine struggled to penetrate the nicotine-stained windows, and the TV screen hanging above the bar was so thick with dust, Oprah looked as though she was talking through a snowstorm.

  Cat narrowed her eyes. Except for the three patrons sitting at the bar with the same early-morning thirst as her mum’s, the pub was empty. She met the bartender’s gaze as he wiped glasses.

  “Where is she?”

  He tilted his head toward the closed door of the ladies’ bathroom.

  She inhaled a deep breath and walked toward the closed door, fighting the nausea in her throat. How many more times would she have to do this? Ten? Twenty? Or was today the day she found her mum dead? Stepping inside, she nudged each cubicle door open in turn, her heartbeat increasing, her hands clammy. Tears threatened and she blinked them back. If her mum was dead, Cat was prepared. She’d been prepared since alcohol became her mum’s necessary poison seven years before.

  Pushing open the final stall, she stared down at her mum’s painfully thin body sprawled across the tiny, tiled space. Patches of red wine stained her sunny-yellow dress; her designer slingbacks were scuffed and torn. Shoulder-length red hair, once so similar to Cat’s, lay limp and loose about her shoulders, her long ago luminous skin an ugly shade of gray.

  Dropping to her knees, Cat slid her hands under her mum’s arms and heaved her upward until her head lay in Cat’s lap. “Mum, it’s me. Come on. Time to wake up.”

  She gently tapped her mum’s cheek until she coughed, exhaling alcohol-infused breath into Cat’s open mouth. Cat gagged, the sound loud and revolting as it echoed around the filthy enclosed space.

  “For crying out loud.” Cat held the back of her hand to her mouth.

  Slowly her mum opened her eyes. After a moment, her gaze focused and she smiled. “Hey, baby. What are you doing here?”

  Struggling to keep a lid on her rising frustration, Cat forced a soft smile. “I’ve come to take you home, silly.”

  “You’re a good girl, honey. Always be there for me, won’t you?”

  Cat looked away as the usual words of assurance dissolved on her tongue like condensation on a cold bottle of beer. “Let’s just get you out of here, okay?”

  Hauling her mum to her feet, they shuffled from the bathroom into the bar. Ignoring the glassy-eyed stares of the drunks watching them, Cat tilted her chin and continued forward until they emerged outside. Cat lowered her mum into the passenger seat of her car and snapped her seat belt into place. She slammed the door.

  She was a detective sergeant in the U.K. police force, yet she couldn’t fix her grieving, alcoholic mother no matter how hard she tried. She sometimes wondered if it would be easier catching her first serial killer than dealing with the criminality of her mum’s affliction. Shaking her head to clear the lingering sense of failure hovering around her like an invisible phantom, Cat marched around to the driver’s side.

  She’d find a way to help her mum sooner rather than later. She had to. The alternative was her brother and her becoming orphans at the age of twenty-nine and twenty-seven respectively. The fingers of the demon drink continued to claw at their shadows. Always there, always threatening to destroy what both of them had left.

  Yanking open the car door, Cat slid into the seat and glanced across at her mum. Slumped over, her head tilted to the side, her eyes closed in comatose slumber, Julia Forrester barely resembled the glamorous mother and wife she’d been once upon a time. Cat brushed the fallen hair from her mum’s cheek.

  “I love you, Mum. I promise I’m doing my best to fix this.”

  Twisting around in her seat, Cat started the engine and fought to keep a firm hold on her resolve. Everything would be all right. It had to be.

  The drive home passed in a blur of radio conversation with her team at the station, the whole time Inspector Harris’s accusation of her personal involvement with drunk-driving cases beating her upside the head. She needed to stop reacting so vehemently every time a new hit and run landed on her desk. Yes, they were an open sore to her alcohol-hating heart, each one a sharp cut of remembrance striking her flesh like a knife, but that wouldn’t help catch the guilty par
ty.

  The driver who killed her father was three times over the limit when he was caught. The Breathalyser reading served as the lock on the door to his prison cell. Others, like her current case, were harder to catch—but catch him she would.

  Cat swallowed the perpetual guilt her mother’s undoing caused time and again. If her father could see them now, he’d be so angry with her mum, her and Chris. How had their family been reduced to such disconnected chaos in seven years?

  Swallowing hard, she tightened her grip on the steering wheel and concentrated on getting home.

  By the time they reached the house, Julia was fairly lucid and Cat managed to get her inside and onto the settee without the humiliation of curtain-twitching neighbors asking if she needed any help—again. She whipped a fleece throw from the back of an adjacent armchair and tucked it tightly around her mum’s perspiring body, knowing she’d wake shaking and cold.

  Satisfied her mum would sleep for at least another hour, Cat left the room and walked upstairs to her bedroom. Physical and mental exhaustion settled over her like a concrete duvet as she fell backward onto the bed. Her heavy lids closed.

  “Just for a couple of minutes,” she murmured.

  The sharp shrill of the phone on her bedside table obliterated her flagging energy, shaking her wide awake. Cat flew across the bed and snatched up the receiver before it woke her mum.

  “Hello?” Her gaze darted to the open door.

  “Hi. Um...is that Julia?”

  “No. This is Cat Forrester, her daughter. Julia can’t come to the phone right now. Can I help you?”

  “Cat?”

  Annoyance prickled at her nerve endings as she fell back onto the bed again, her eyes closing. “Yeah, as in poised to claw someone’s eyes out.”

  His totally masculine burst of laughter sent a shiver down her spine and a loop the loop through her stomach. Her eyes snapped open and she sat bolt upright.