He waited until they were in her car before asking, ‘What did the reporter do?’

She whipped her head around to stare at him. ‘Excuse me?’

‘You shut down in there as soon as Isenberg started talking about reporters. Please tell me,’ he coaxed. ‘It matters to you, obviously. So it matters to me. What did the reporter do? I know it was personal, Scarlett. It’s written all over your face.’

She frowned again as she pulled out into traffic. ‘I had a poker face before I met you.’

He wanted to smile at that, but couldn’t let her distract him from what was at the root of the issue. ‘The reporter, Scarlett. What did he do?’

She clenched her jaw, grinding her teeth. ‘I told you that my friend was murdered.’

‘Yes, back when you were at college. Her name was Michelle. You said her killer never got justice.’

She nodded, seeming to relax a fraction when he remembered the details. ‘What I didn’t say was that I know exactly who killed her. Trent Bracken. He was Michelle’s boyfriend.’

Marcus blinked at the venom in her voice. ‘Then why is this Bracken not in prison?’

‘Because his daddy hired a high-powered attorney who got him off scot-free,’ she said bitterly. ‘Now the SOB is a defense attorney himself, right here in town.’

‘That has to kill you inside,’ Marcus said gently. ‘Knowing he’s free. But what does that have to do with reporters?’

She sighed wearily. ‘When Michelle went missing, we – her friends – told the police that Trent was abusive, that Michelle had been afraid of him. Which was all true. The cops were watching Bracken, but he didn’t know it then, because they were keeping it quiet.’

‘I take it that he found out.’

She nodded. ‘Because some narcissistic, big-mouthed, tiny-dicked reporter told everyone in town.’ She’d said ‘reporter’ with an angry sneer, but it was the ‘tiny-dicked’ adjective that made Marcus cringe. ‘At that point Michelle was still alive. But Bracken saw his name in print and went ballistic.’ Her throat worked as she tried to swallow. ‘I found her body the next day. She was still warm. Her blood was still warm. Still dripping down the wall of the alley where he’d dumped her.’

In an alley? Hell, this day had been a bad one for her. Finding Tala’s body in the alley this morning had to have yanked her back in time. He could offer his sympathy, but he didn’t think she wanted to hear it right now. Plus, there was more to this reporter issue. He could feel it. ‘How did the tiny-dicked reporter find out that Bracken was a suspect?’

Her lips twisted. ‘I told him.’

Marcus blinked again, definitely not expecting that. ‘You talked to the reporter? Why?’

‘Because I didn’t know he was planning to become a reporter. When I told him, he was just my boyfriend.’

‘Oh.’ Marcus tried to find something to say. ‘Tiny-dicked’ made a little more sense now, and he couldn’t honestly say it bothered him to hear it. ‘That’s one helluva betrayal.’

‘Yeah,’ she muttered. ‘All the reporters had been bugging me for interviews. Because I was Michelle’s best friend, they figured I knew things, and I did, of course. I kept saying “no comment”, but the assholes wouldn’t leave me alone. As if it wasn’t bad enough that my best friend was missing . . . Getting back to my dorm room had become worse than running the gauntlet, so I’d been hiding out in Donny’s dorm room.’

‘Who was Donny?’

‘My boyfriend.’

Marcus frowned. ‘I thought Bryan was your college boyfriend.’

Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel. ‘No, Bryan and I have always just been friends. I already told you that.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly, soothing her with his voice, because she was sending out serious touch-me-and-die vibes. ‘You did tell me that. So why didn’t you just go home? I would think that your six brothers could have scared off any reporters.’

Her chuckle was mirthless. ‘Colin and Gil were married and in their own homes, and Phin . . . he was on tour in Iraq. Sawyer and Dorian were still in high school, and they wanted to scare the reporters off but Mom wouldn’t let them. Arrest records play havoc with college scholarships. Nate was still in elementary school, still a baby. I did go home, though. After.’

‘After you found Michelle’s body.’

A sharp nod. ‘For a few days. I couldn’t stay too long. We were headed into finals week and my parents had sacrificed a lot to send me to college. So I manned up and went back so that I could finish the semester.’ One side of her mouth lifted in a bitter half-smile. ‘Donny actually had the nerve to come up to me and ask for a follow-up interview.’

‘What did you do to him?’

‘Made it so that he’d never get a TV job. He was pretty before I bloodied his fucking nose. Afterward, not so much.’

‘Good,’ Marcus said grimly, then frowned. ‘But I jumped ahead. You were saying that you’d been hiding out in his dorm room.’

‘Yes, because I was a Class A idiot, trusting the limp-dicked asshole.’

‘How old were you, Scarlett?’ he asked kindly.

She swallowed hard. ‘Twenty,’ she whispered, and a single tear streaked down her cheek. ‘Twenty and so goddamn stupid. I didn’t think he loved me, but I never dreamed he’d use me like that.’

Marcus trailed the backs of his fingers over her damp cheek. ‘What did he do, honey?’

‘He’d been there for me, listening, letting me cry on his shoulder. I didn’t know he’d been taking notes the whole time. He sold his story to one of the network affiliates, with the proviso that he got to be the guest reporter.’

‘What news show would have agreed to that?’

‘The one that wanted the story the most.’

‘So Donny just up and decided he wanted to be a TV reporter one day? Was he taking journalism classes?’

Her mouth tightened, little frown lines spidering into her cheeks. ‘No, he was a psychology major. His plan was to use the story to get a job with one of the network shows like 20/20 and become famous using his psycho-know-how to trick people into revealing all.’

Marcus scoffed. ‘Was he delusional?’

‘As it turns out, yes. I didn’t know he wanted to be a reporter. I didn’t know he wanted to be famous. I don’t think he realized it until Michelle’s disappearance became national news.’

‘Did he get a job?’

‘Yes, but not with the network.’

‘Because you broke his fucking nose,’ Marcus said with satisfaction, earning him a small smile.

‘Exactly. He wrote for a tabloid rag, but never got rich or famous. His writing sucked and his story was a one-hit wonder, so to speak. He never got another big scoop and ended up being fired. He didn’t get into grad school for his psych degree either. Now he sells cars.’

‘Using his psycho-know-how to get people to buy cars they don’t yet know they want.’

‘Exactly,’ she said again. ‘So that’s why I don’t trust reporters.’

Marcus shook his head. ‘He wasn’t a real reporter, honey. I think you nailed it when you said he was a narcissist.’

‘Once Donny broke the story,’ she said far too quietly, ‘the real reporters were all over me. They would not leave me alone. They followed me from class across campus, sticking their microphones in my face. I’m glad I wasn’t carrying back then. I would have shot them.’

He had no doubt that she spoke the truth.

She said nothing for a long, long moment, then sighed heavily. ‘I couldn’t deal with them at that point, so I hid out in church.’

‘Your uncle’s church?’

‘Yeah. I’d spent a lot of time in the school chapel up until that point, but the reporters followed me in there too. So I called Bryan, because he had a motorbike. He picked me up outside the chapel. Stopped just long enough for me to climb on, and then he was off like a damn rocket. He lost the reporters, then took me to my uncle’s church, where he and Uncle Trace waited up with me for most of the night, along with Michelle’s family and the rest of mine. She and I had grown up in that church, been confirmed together by the priest before Uncle Trace. We spent the whole night on our knees, praying. Except when we were answering our phones. The damn things buzzed all night. The reporters had gotten our numbers and kept calling. We wanted to turn off the phones but we all kept thinking Michelle might call. That something would happen.’