Griff didn’t push her when she hesitated; he just waited for her to continue. When she did, her voice trembled. “The girl in that photo, the one on the mantel...that’s Jas, Senator Garwood’s daughter. She was my best friend, and we bonded on our first day in kindergarten. Tinsley and I are close now, but we weren’t when we were kids. When she was sixteen, Tinsley and JT fell in love and they became inseparable and she didn’t have much time for me. But Jas was always there—she was my soul sister and the other half of me. I don’t know if you can understand that...”
He’d grown up in the limelight, on stages and TV and movie sets, and Sian had been his constant companion. And to an extent, his only friend, so, yeah, he understood. “I have a twin, remember?”
“Right,” Kinga pushed her hand through her hair. “Ten years ago, Jas had just broken up with her boyfriend, Mick Pritchard, for the fourth or fifth time that year. We went to a New Years’ party not far from Jas’s house and my parents’ estate... Well, it’s my grandfather’s estate...”
She was rambling and Griff let her go at her own pace.
“Callum wants you to come to dinner on Friday night, by the way,” Kinga said, and he blinked at her unexpected change of subject.
He lifted his eyebrows. “Will you be there?” he asked. If he could hold Kinga’s hand under the table, he might consider it. Otherwise, there was no way he’d endure a meal with her cold, austere grandfather.
Kinga looked affronted. “Of course I will. There’s no way I’d let you face my family alone.”
He smiled at her protective attitude and didn’t bother telling her that he’d been dealing with difficult, egocentric and self-important people most of his life. He’d decide about whether to accept her grandfather’s invitation later; right now he wanted to hear the rest of Kinga’s story.
“You were telling me about your friend...” he prompted.
Kinga turned her head to look out the window and his heart clenched at her desolate expression. “I told her we’d see in the new year together and I promised her a lift home, but a guy I was into arrived at the party. He wanted me to leave with him and Jas encouraged me to go, as a lot of our friends were there and she was having fun. I told her to phone me if she needed a ride, but she told me that it was all good...”
Ah, the phrase she so hated. Griff swallowed, dread creeping over him. He thought he knew where this was going.
“She never called and I presumed she got a ride home with one of our many friends at the party. Someone remembered seeing her at the house around four a.m. We now know she left on her own and that she was a little drunk. It was a misty night, but it was a road she was familiar with. Jas loved to walk at night and her house was only a half mile down the road. My house was a half mile in the opposite direction. She was so close to home, Griff.”
“But she never made it.”
“Initially we thought she’d been taken by a predator and we immediately put up missing person flyers and Seth—Senator Garwood—hired a private investigator. A few days later, they found her body in a deep ditch, covered with snow. She was a victim of a hit-and-run collision.”
Griff’s hand tightened on her knee. The poor kid. Kinga started to speak but then snapped her mouth closed, misery in her eyes and all over her face.
She didn’t need to say the words; he understood what she couldn’t say. She blamed herself. Kinga, protective and loving, felt responsible for her friend’s death. It wasn’t logical but, in her mind, she’d left her friend at a party, after promising to take her home, and it was her fault Jas was gone.
Kinga wasn’t responsible but Griff knew that was a conclusion she’d have to come to in her own time. It might take another decade or it might not happen at all.
After a few minutes’ silence, he spoke again. “And the rushed visit to the senator’s house today?”
Kinga rubbed her hands up and down her face. “That would take a bit more explanation.”
Griff waited while she decided whether or not to give him the whole story, knowing that, to an extent, it was a referendum on whether she trusted him or not. He wanted her to trust him, he realized. He wanted her to hand him her thoughts and fears, her hopes and dreams. He wanted to be the place, and the person, she felt safest with.
Yeah, this connection to Kinga was turning a lot more complicated than he’d expected...
Not clever, O’Hare.He was halfway down that slippery slope and his brakes weren’t working.
Kinga played with the hem of her dress, her thoughts in the past. “Earlier, I mentioned that Jas had a boyfriend. I grew up with Mick—I’ve known him all my life and so did Jas. Mick and I were friends, and at times, we were really close. Along with the Craigmyle boys, I considered him to be the brother I never had.”
Kinga folded the hem of her dress up an inch, and then another inch, revealing more of her slim thigh covered in a thin black stocking. Were they fancy stockings, the ones held up by those strappy, lacy garter things?
Griff cursed himself, reminding himself that he was listening to Kinga tell him about one of the worst periods of her life and that he should be concentrating on her story, not her lingerie.
Get a goddamn grip, O’Hare.
“Jas and Mick hooked up when they were seventeen and they were on and off, as I said. They were off at the time she died. That’s why he wasn’t at the party.” Kinga hauled in a deep breath. “For those first few days when we thought she was missing, Mick was beside himself, crying, on his knees praying... He was desperate to find her. As you can imagine, the networks picked up on the story pretty quickly. Seth’s popular, Viola’s beautiful and Jas was brilliant. It was...well, very newsworthy.”
He’d seen coverage of some of the more high-profile murder and missing investigations and understood that certain stories got more coverage than others. A famous and much-liked politician’s beautiful and brilliant daughter going missing? That would bring out national and international reporters...
“You were telling me about the boyfriend...” Griff prompted Kinga.
“Mick took every opportunity to talk to the press. Looking back, I now realize he was milking the situation. On day two of her being gone—she was found on day three—he started blaming me, telling anybody who’d listen it was my fault.”