Harlequin Intrigue July 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Carol Ericson

  She smiled.

  It was flash-in-the-pan quick.

  Then she was getting into her car.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Miss Dean,” he called after her.

  She nodded through the window.

  Foster didn’t watch her go, but he couldn’t deny there was a new weight against his chest as he heard the tires grind against the dirt.

  His job wasn’t to find Fallon Dean.

  It wasn’t his job to help Millie either.

  He had to focus instead on the newest mystery to find its way to Kelby Creek.

  The woman who screamed in the woods and the man who tried to attack a woman in the dark.

  Not trying to heal Millie Dean’s heart.

  * * *

  THUNDER RUMBLED IN the distance. Not enough to wake her, had she been sleeping, but there was enough power in the rumble that it rattled the old window next to her bed.

  Millie rolled onto her side and stared at the glass.

  It needed a good cleaning.

  Just like the rest of the house.

  The closer the anniversary had gotten, the more Millie had focused on everything but what should have been normal.

  The window needed a good cleaning, but she needed Fallon home and safe.

  Millie sighed along her pillowcase. Her alarm clock’s digital readout let her know that if she stayed where she was, she’d see light of day splaying across her mint-green walls in less than three hours.

  Another rumble and rattle of thunder made her mentally amend that conclusion.

  A storm was on the way.

  And Millie wasn’t going to stay in bed, hoping sleep would take her.

  She admitted defeat, sat up and placed her bare feet on the floor. The hardwood was cold. Goose bumps pricked up the sides of her arms.

  Her mother used to hate having cold feet. So much so that her mom had a pair of socks in almost every room of their home growing up. It had been a point of teasing from Millie’s father. He’d often joked that some people hated getting socks for Christmas but for Maryellen Dean, it was one of the best presents a person could be lucky enough to get.

  Millie flexed her feet against the floor.

  The only socks in her house were tucked tightly in her dresser.

  The cold didn’t bother her anymore.

  She stood against the weight of being tired and grabbed her robe from the end of the bed. It was soft against her arms. She decided to pair its comfort with a cup of coffee and one of the leftover cookies she’d baked.

  What a waste that had been. She wished she’d never offered the cookies to Deputy Park.

  Millie had never been particularly afraid of the dark, but she couldn’t deny she was clumsier in it. She had night-lights with built-in sensors plugged into a few different sockets throughout the house. The one in the hallway blinked on as she walked past. Normally she would have used the light to guide her into the kitchen, but something pulled her across the hallway instead.

  The door to the guest bedroom was always open. Everything Fallon owned was either boxed up or in plastic tubs within the space. Millie could have closed the door, compartmentalized Fallon’s disappearance by physically putting something between her and everything that reminded her of him.

  But she couldn’t.

  Millie knew every object in the room by now like the back of her hand. What she wasn’t familiar with was the sight out the window.

  The window that pointed toward her neighbor’s house.

  Foster Lovett. Detective.

  She walked to the window and looked out into the night. She could just make out the porch light from the front of the house. The garage was built into the opposite side, and she couldn’t tell if his truck was in the drive.

  Did that mean he was still working?

  Was he still out in the woods?

  The night-light in the hallway turned off.

  Millie pulled her robe closer around her, the prickling sense of something being wrong making her want more comfort.

  The sound of the woman screaming had been a vivid, haunting sound. A slap to the face in the quiet. A warning and call for help all at once.

  Millie had gone to the woods in frustration, desperation and, like she’d told the detective, wanting nothing more than to feel hope. Even for a short while.

  She’d left those same woods with three people caught in her mind.

  The man in the coveralls, the woman who screamed and Detective Lovett.

  Lightning forked high in the sky. The thunder that came next was louder than before.

  Millie hoped they found the woman before the storm arrived.

  She took a deep breath, but it caught in her throat.

  Adrenaline moved through her faster than the lightning had the sky.

  The hallway night-light was back on.

  But Millie hadn’t moved an inch.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Throw everything.

  It was the second thought that ran through Millie’s head the moment he stepped into the doorway.

  The man from the woods.

  The man in the coveralls.

  And he was smiling.

  Throw everything.

  Millie’s body went on autopilot.

  It wasn’t like being in the woods—this was her home. It was in the middle of the night. He was inside without an invitation.

  Apart from those terrifying facts, the man was close.

  Millie’s home wasn’t tiny, but the guest bedroom seeming to have shrunk to the size of the jail cell the second the man had filled the doorframe.

  Unlike being in the woods together, this time Millie had only two escape routes. The door he was blocking and the closed—and locked—window behind her that she wouldn’t have time to open and exit through.

  Their close proximity with no options of an easy plan meant the odds of him hurting Millie faster than she could defend herself were high.

  She just hoped the same could be said for him.

  Millie pulled the lamp off the nightstand in one quick tug. The force of adrenaline pumping through her veins made the throw that came next count.

  The man grunted, seemingly caught off guard, but Millie didn’t wait to see what damage she might or might not have done. There wasn’t time for that. The second the lamp was airborne she had a thick, hardback book in her hands. She didn’t even see the title of it before it too was a weapon soaring through the air toward its target.

  The man cussed loudly. He staggered forward but not enough for her to get by him. Millie rolled over the bed to force distance between them, already reaching for something else to throw or brandish like a weapon.

  “You little bitch,” the man ground out. “I just want to know where he is!”

  The closest thing to Millie was a garbage bag of clothes that hadn’t fit in the closet. It wasn’t ideal, but her motto was anything could turn into a weapon with enough willpower.

  Though her practicality paled in comparison to the physical reality she saw as the man flipped the light switch on.

  Millie squinted against the sudden brightness, but it was her stomach that twisted at the change in lighting the most.

  The man in the coveralls had a gun in his hand, something she definitely hadn’t noticed before.

  This time she froze. If she hadn’t been so scared, she might have felt silly for realizing she’d fought a gun with a lamp.

  “Got your attention now, don’t I?” the man growled. There was blood at the corner of his mouth. Maybe she’d counted out how effective the lamp could be too soon.

  “I—I don’t know where Fallon is,” Millie responded, voice breaking from the new, insane rush of adrenaline at seeing his gun. “You can search the house and see he isn’t here.”

  The man snarled. It reminde
d Millie of an angry cartoon character. He didn’t seem real. A stranger standing in her house with a gun pointed at her... It didn’t seem real.

  As if he heard her thoughts, he shook the weapon. He was too close to her. There was no way she could fight or flight without running the risk of being hit by a bullet.

  “You know,” he started, “I asked around about you, about Fallon, and the town really doesn’t seem to like either. Well, mostly him. They just seem to feel sorry for you. But, believe you me, they all agree on one thing and that’s that you two were inseparable.” He shook his head and winced at the movement. Maybe the book had done some damage too. “He may not be here, but I don’t believe for a second that you don’t know where Fallon is.”

  The man took a step forward. Millie clutched the bag of clothes against her chest. It was heavy, but wasn’t a match for a bullet.

  “I’ve been looking for him,” Millie stated, eyes unable to stay off the gun. “Since the day he left, I’ve been looking. I have no idea where he is.”

  The man sighed.

  He was frustrated; that much she could tell. Almost annoyed, even.

  “You know, at first I believed that you really had no idea where he was.” He used the gun to motion to the window. “I kept waiting for you to do something suspicious or out of character to show me you were putting on a show for the town, but you didn’t. You just went on your boring way doing meaningless and routine things.” His smile came back. There was no mirth, just vindication. A man who had won a bet and was about to collect his prize. “Then you went to the sheriff’s department. And suddenly there you were rushing off into the woods.”

  A cold, creeping feeling threaded through Millie’s stomach.

  He’d been watching her, and not just that night.

  “I went out there looking for Fallon,” she told him. “I was hoping he was there but he wasn’t. You saw that!”

  The man shook his head again. That frustration was growing. His finger was so close to the trigger of the gun.

  “I think you were meeting up with him and I interrupted too soon. So, now, we’re going to try this again because I’d really like to get out of here.” He readjusted the aim of the gun. This time it was pointing to her head. “Where is your brother and how do we get ahold of him?”

  It shouldn’t have happened, of all the times for it to surface, it shouldn’t have done it there. Yet, standing with a bag of Fallon’s forgotten clothes against her and staring at a stranger who very well could kill her, Millie felt it.

  Anger.

  Red-hot, unbridled anger.

  No one was ever going to believe her, were they?

  The town, the sheriff’s department, even the newcomer detective couldn’t take a beat to listen to her.

  To hear her out.

  To believe the words that she said.

  Was that just her destiny?

  To be the woman no one ever trusted?

  That anger turned to indignation in one blink.

  If no one wanted to believe she was telling the truth, then maybe it was time to start lying.

  “Okay. Okay.” Millie dropped her voice to an almost-whisper. Defeated. “I’ll—I’ll tell you what I know but only if you put the gun away. I’ll just end up blubbering like a baby soon if you don’t.”

  The man snorted.

  “You have me cornered,” she pointed out. “And all I have is laundry. Please.”

  To Millie’s utter surprise, the man obliged. He dropped the gun into his front coverall pocket.

  He must have really wanted to know where Fallon was.

  But so did she.

  Millie took a slow step to the edge of the bed. It put her right across from him.

  “Where is he?” he asked.

  Millie’s palms started to sweat. Her already-racing heartbeat went into overdrive.

  She had a plan.

  And it was probably a bad one.

  “Not here.”

  Millie charged the man so fast that he didn’t have time to do much other than put up his hands. It was a useless defense as she crashed into them, the bag of clothes acting as a bumper between their bodies. The force and momentum dragged and pushed them backward into the opened door.

  Millie heard a crack but didn’t want to stick around to see if that was from the man or the door.

  The second his body was flat against the wood she let go of the bag and darted out to the left and into the hallway.

  The night-light flashed on and, five steps later as she turned into the living room, a gunshot screamed behind her.

  Millie wasn’t sure if she screamed too, but by the time she made it to the front door her legs felt like Jell-O and any plan she had of escape dropped through the floor along with her stomach.

  Her phone was in the bedroom.

  Her car keys were in the kitchen.

  A man ready to shoot her would have a clear shot if she didn’t clear the porch in seconds.

  She barely had time to register that the front door was already cracked as she grabbed the doorknob and yanked it all the way open.

  Time seemed to freeze as two forest green eyes stared back at her, the porch light making his long hair almost shine and the gun in hand glint.

  Detective Lovett didn’t wait for an explanation or warning, which was good, since Millie didn’t have time to give either.

  The best they could do boiled down to the detective using his strength to push her to the side like he was the strongest man on Earth while Millie didn’t resist.

  She fell against wooden porch, pain radiating from her knees.

  Then it happened.

  An awful explosion of sound pierced her ears, followed immediately by another.

  Gunshots.

  Two gunshots.

  Millie closed her eyes tight, knowing that even though the detective had pushed her out of the way, the bullet had still found her.

  Yet no blinding pain came.

  No darkness either.

  Instead, she heard the sound of a falling body.

  Scratch that.

  Two bodies falling.

  Millie opened her eyes and turned back to Foster. She gasped.

  Detective Lovett was on the ground.

  And he wasn’t moving.

  * * *

  BEFORE HE’D EVEN set foot on Millie Dean’s front porch, Foster had blamed his slow gut on sentimentally and nostalgia.

  He’d spent the last few hours trying to see the same Kelby Creek he’d known growing up. Not seeing the town for what it had become after what had happened to Annie McHale. After The Flood. Not for what it was now.

  He’d waited for Rudy, and then they’d gone over the stretch of woods that made up their surroundings only to find one more set of footprints. It wasn’t a lot to go on but he hadn’t wanted to stop.

  Rudy, however, was tired. And not in the same sense as the sheriff had been.

  He was the kind of tired that dragged every part of him down. Even his smile. Foster had seen that before in his career, and he’d seen the same look in the mirror once or twice. A part of Rudy had been hollowed out by the world and, sometimes, that hollow part got filled by the bad stuff that came after.

  Rudy had seen bad and he’d also lost someone close to him because of it.

  And, in those woods, he’d been tired.

  Tired and ready to leave when they hadn’t found much at all.

  Foster empathized with him, but not the deputies who had been helping.

  They weren’t interested in finding the woman or the man. They had cleared the woods and announced they were going home the second their boots made it past the tree line and to their cruiser.

  “Maybe you should ask Miss Dean tomorrow why she came out here with a bat tonight,” Deputy Kathryn Juliet had suggested wit
h a grin that had no right to be pulling up the corners of her mouth.

  It had made Foster angry. Not just at another attack on Millie but for the fact that this wasn’t the sheriff’s department that he’d known growing up. The ones who were left hadn’t really stayed. Their hearts didn’t seem in it anymore. To Foster, it seemed like they were one foot out the door already.

  If it wasn’t a cut-and-dry case, then what was the point?

  Annie McHale and The Flood had broken them.

  But that’s why you’re here, he had tried to remind himself. To help them. To find redemption.

  Foster had hoped that he was just being overdramatic, but he had driven away from those woods tangled up in his own thoughts and memories about what used to be and what was.

  About wanting nothing more than to leave the town he’d grown up in and then leaving the good life he’d made as an adult behind so he could come back.

  It wasn’t until he had been turning into the neighborhood that his gut and his head had finally shaken hands and reintroduced themselves to each other.

  The man in the coveralls had gone into the woods to ask Millie where her brother was.

  But, if Millie had been telling the truth about not knowing him or even recognizing him, then how had he known she was there?

  Foster’s grip had tightened around the steering wheel as he’d answered himself out loud.

  “He followed her, just like you did, Foster.”

  Foster had cursed beneath his breath and turned his headlights off. His gut had sent a shot of urgency through him. He’d pulled to the curb instead of into his driveway.

  The neighborhood had been quiet. Thunder rumbled as he reached for his gun.

  A part of him might have worried that he was being dramatic, that the red flags that had sprung up was just him looking for a lead because he hadn’t found much in the woods, but then lightning had split through the night air and Foster had seen it.