“Are you his fiancée?” Tucker asked, his voice a whip.

She shrugged. “If that’s what someone wrote in a newspaper, I suppose it must be true.”

Irritation crossed his face. He scowled at her. “You aren’t helping yourself by being a smart-ass.”

She raised an eyebrow. Her wrists throbbed. Her pulse raced, and she had a hell of a headache from falling on the floor. She didn’t want to sit for hours in the interrogation room. Every minute that passed was a minute she should be on the road.

“I’m not trying to be a smart-ass, Mr. Tuttle . . .”

“Detective,” he corrected.

She took a breath and heaved a sigh. “Detective Tuttle,” she said. “I just want you to get to whatever this is about so I can go.”

“This is about your relationship with Rafe Cordeau,” he snapped.

“I’ve told you what my relationship is. You seem to have the information already anyway. If that’s all you wanted to know, I’d like to go.”

His fist banged on the table. She could have told him silence was far more effective. Silence. Staring. And ice-cold eyes. Banging on the table got you nothing. She held still and watched him.

“When was your last contact with Cordeau?”

“I left when I turned twenty.”

“So a year ago.”

That didn’t deserve an answer. He could do math. She just stared at him. Waiting for him to get to it.

“It wasn’t the first time you left.”

Tuttle knew more than she thought anyone else was aware of. Someone was feeding the DEA information about Cordeau—a very dangerous game to play. She had to go carefully because that meant they had someone in his organization.

“No, it wasn’t.”

He waited a few moments but when she wasn’t forthcoming, he leaned toward her. “You ran away when you were fourteen years old. A woman by the name of April Harp helped you. She was murdered along with her entire family, and you were safe back in Cordeau’s house.”

It was an accusation. She knew her face had gone white. Her stomach lurched and beneath the table she twisted her fingers together. There were some memories that would never go away and some deeds there was no redemption for.

“Yes, that’s true,” she whispered.

“Why did you run away?”

“I wanted to see my mother.”

“She was already dead.”

“I didn’t know that,” Catarina said. “He didn’t tell me.”

“He had her killed. Two days after she delivered you to him, she died of an overdose that the coroner said she didn’t give to herself.”

“That isn’t news, Detective Tuttle. I was given that information after I was taken back to Cordeau, although how you can attribute my mother’s death to Rafe, I don’t know. Again, you seem to have information I don’t.”

“Taken back? You didn’t go voluntarily?” He pounced on that.