Foster had already found his way to the thought, it seemed. He answered her next question aloud.
“I’ll make some calls first thing in the morning,” he said. “There’s nothing we can do with either point tonight.”
Millie nodded. Then she asked a follow-up question.
This time she knew the answer. Still, it gave her a thrill to ask it.
“So, what do we do now?”
Foster’s mouth quirked up at the corners. When he took her hand and started to walk to the hallway, it felt like a thousand butterflies were fluttering around Millie’s stomach.
“I can think of a few things.”
Pain? What pain?
Foster didn’t seem to feel anything other than Millie once they made it to his bed.
She felt curiosity and appreciation from him as he watched her throw off her shirt to match him. She felt excitement and anticipation as she took it a step further and stripped down to her black silk undies that she’d put on by sheer luck. Then it was wide-eyed, grinning fun as he did a two-step and showed her he was a boxer briefs kind of man.
Nothing but strength followed.
Foster picked up Millie’s mostly naked body and brought her with him into a swath of fabric. His hands moved just as fast as his mouth covered hers.
He tasted like beer but also something more. Something she liked.
And Millie wanted more.
His hand found her breast, his fingers her nipple. He teased her, kissed her, and the entire bedroom heard her feelings on it all as another moan escaped. It seemed to hit the right note in the man.
Things escalated and it wasn’t one-sided at all.
As Foster’s hands went exploring again, Millie decided she was ready for the main adventure. She wrapped her legs around him and spun. It broke their kiss but earned a surprised laugh from the detective.
Her curls shifted as she looked down on the man she was now straddling.
Green eyes searched her face. Then he cupped her cheek, running his thumb along her jaw.
“See?” he said. “Extraordinary.”
And that was the magic word.
Millie was smiling as she pressed her lips back to his.
* * *
SHE WENT INTO the house and didn’t come out until it was morning.
He knew because he was at her kitchen table for hours. Waiting.
You could go next door, he thought. If you take her, then the detective will follow anyway. Eventually.
But, ultimately, he decided against it.
Getting into Millie’s house without being seen had been easy. Getting into the detective’s house would be trickier.
He couldn’t change it.
Not now.
So, he waited instead.
When the birds started chirping and the sun started to paint the sky, he admitted defeat. It was only when he was back in the car and driving past the house and the deputy’s cruiser that he saw a glimpse of the two, now going into Millie’s.
It was a good thing he hadn’t stayed, he realized.
There was no way the detective would let Millie go without a fight.
He’d already proven that by killing Jason Talbot.
Now the plan would have to change.
And his boss wasn’t going to like that.
Not at all.
* * *
“SO, DEPUTY CALLOWAY probably knows what we did last night, doesn’t he?”
Millie started the coffee maker, sliding the thermos Foster had brought with him to her house into the holder. The blissful smell of coffee was enough to give her a zip of energy. Though after spending a good portion of the night not sleeping, she’d need a bit more than a zip to make it through the day.
Foster, now dressed to impress in a flannel button-up that was open to show his dark undershirt, a pair of Levi’s that hugged, and black-and-white Converse running shoes that gave off punk band vibes, chuckled at her comment. Mostly because he probably knew it was true.
She’d walked to his house in the middle of the night and hadn’t come home until the morning. Foster was wearing new clothes, and she was wearing his shirt instead of the one she’d arrived in.
Law enforcement or not, that didn’t take much detecting skills to figure out what might have happened behind closed doors.
“According to the sheriff, Calloway is a good guy. Professional,” Foster said. “I trust that he won’t gossip on what he thinks might or might not have happened.”
Millie shook her head. Her curls were a different level of wild. Their time spent in bed, then the shower, then back in bed hadn’t helped. Foster’s hair, however, was model-worthy. Golden, wavy and nothing but complimentary to the rugged handsomeness of a man who was ready to save the day.
Even if it was barely seven in the morning.
“While this brews, I’m going to go get decent,” Millie announced.
It earned a sly smile from the man.
“I think you’re already more than decent right now.”
Millie rolled her eyes.
The level of comfort with the detective had more than risen in the last few hours. Not only physically. Admitting that she hadn’t been living for herself had opened up the floodgates for a lot of pent-up emotion for her. Emotion she hadn’t realized had tangled up with Foster as much as it had.
He might not have had any big breakthroughs with her in turn, but that didn’t matter.
Not last night.
Not right now.
If Foster needed time to lower some of the walls that seemed to always be present, then that was okay.
Millie might want to live for herself, but that didn’t mean she was over finding Fallon.
If anything, she was more determined than ever.
Somewhere between talking with Foster and sleep the night before, Millie had decided on one thing and one thing only.
Fallon wasn’t involved in what was happening.
He was a good kid. A good man.
Which put even more fire in her to finally get the story. Finally find her brother.
And Millie believed that Foster was the key to it all.
Even as she retreated from the kitchen to go to her bedroom, she could see the detective going from charming to focused.
Their night together had been great but now it was time to get back to work.
What happens when it’s all done? The thought was surprising and loud as it rang through Millie’s head without warning. When the danger and mystery are gone, will Foster go with them?
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The day started out calm enough.
Deputy Park and Millie went to the grocery store to ask for the security camera footage from two weeks before she met Jason Talbot in the woods, then returned to the department to go through it. Foster meanwhile went to talk to his ex-sister-in-law about her time with William Reiner. For all the resentment Helen had harbored through the years at Foster, she was more than willing to help.
“If knowing what Reiner asked will help you stop whoever drugged and kidnapped you and Millie, I’ll tell you everything,” she’d said. Then, like it was a tic, she’d run her hand over her pregnant belly. “I love this town and I just want it to be safe for my kids.”
Helen had taken him into her office, and among colorful tapestries and crystals had broken down the four questions William Reiner had asked.
It was only after he was leaning against the wall of the break room at the department that he was able to repeat them to Deputy Park and Millie.
“Where did Cole Reiner go the day before he left town? Where was Cole now? Did Cole find what he was looking for? Was Cole in danger?”
Foster finished off his coffee and waited for the two to mull over the questions. A laptop was up between the pair, and both had notep
ads in front of them. Millie might not have been in law enforcement, but she sure was getting to work like the rest of them. A lot more thrilling than her shift at the grocery store. One that Larissa had been kind enough to cover for her.
“It almost sounds like Reiner is treating his brother like a suspect,” she said, head tilted to the side and brows drawn together. “But he wasn’t found guilty of anything to do with The Flood, right?”
“There was never any evidence found,” Foster stated. “Just suspicion with the timing and how fast he left.”
Deputy Park shook his head. “No way was Cole mixed up with any of that,” he said. “I came into the department with Cole, and he was a straight arrow. He had to be to live up to William’s hype, especially once he had to retire.” Millie squirmed a little in her seat, but the deputy went on without noticing. “Even you would have liked him, Love. He was trying to make detective before he left.”
Foster pushed off the wall. “Cole Reiner wanted to be a detective?”
“Yeah,” Park answered with enthusiasm. “I caught him looking into cold case files one day after his shift ended, and he said he was trying to show initiative. I asked what for, and he told me he wanted to make detective.”
“That was absolutely not something I knew.”
Foster had up until then been on the same wavelength as Millie when it came to Reiner. He had suspected his brother of being involved in The Flood. But now? Now he was switching gears.
“What if we’ve been looking at this all wrong?” he asked. “What if Cole wasn’t a suspect during The Flood but instead he was playing detective?”
Millie was quick. “You think he might have been looking into a cold case?”
Foster shrugged. “He could have actually found something in an old file and followed it. Followed it until he had to leave town. Or was forced. It might account for why he left so suddenly.”
“Like Fallon.”
Millie’s voice was small. Deputy Park looked between them. Foster pressed on through the line of thought.
“Let’s speculate wildly for a second here.” He took a seat in the chair across from them, hands already up and moving with enthusiasm as he worked through the new theory aloud. “William Reiner asked Helen where Cole went the day before he left town. He must have known, or at least suspected, that Cole was working something. Which is why he asks her the follow-up questions of where Cole was then, did he find what he was looking for, and was he in danger. Since I got here, nothing about what’s happened has really added up. It feels like we just keep getting curveballs thrown at us during this investigation into what happened to Fallon.” Foster couldn’t help but smile, knowing it was a stretch but one he felt good making as he said it. “What if we’re the ones who are throwing a curveball into someone else’s investigation?”
Millie’s head was still slightly tilted in curiosity. He could tell she was working through his pitch. Deputy Park was more vocal with his thought process.
“You think someone else is investigating Fallon’s disappearance?”
Foster shook his head. “It feels more like we stumbled onto something else while looking into Fallon. That’s why nothing is fitting. It’s not that we don’t have all of the pieces, it’s that we’re not even on the same game board.”
At that Millie started.
“‘This ain’t a game. If it was, we’d be losing to a much better player.’ That’s what Donni said on the boat,” she recalled. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe we’re the ones who stepped in late.”
Deputy Park shook his head this time. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back.
“I’d say you two were on the front lines. Someone did drug and kidnap you. Why else would they do that?”
Millie’s eyes widened in excitement as an idea took shape.
“To buy them time,” she stated. “We weren’t hurt, when we woke up we were unsupervised, and since all of our belongings were fine back at Rosewater, all we lost was the time it took for you to find us.”
This time the excitement moved to Foster.
He leaned in. “It was like we were put in time-out. We were sidelined.”
Millie mimicked his movement. Her leaning in would have frayed his concentration now that Foster knew what she felt like, tasted like, but them being onto something together was a different kind of excitement that was hard to resist.
“Which means that someone didn’t want to hurt us, they just want us out of the way.”
“But who is that someone?” Deputy Park joined them by rocking forward in his chair and leaning closer. “William Reiner? Cole Reiner? Fallon? And how does Jason Talbot fit into any of that?”
At that, Foster lost some of his enthusiasm.
But not all of it.
“We need to keep digging,” he decided. “Did you find anything on the security footage so far?”
Deputy Park sighed but Millie answered.
“No. Jason said he saw me the day I was wearing an orange hair clip but, if he came into the store, he did it through the back. We couldn’t find him on the street either. We still have two days before that to go through, though.”
Foster stood up, a to-do list updating in his head.
“Let me know if you find anything. If you don’t, come get me when you’re done.”
Millie uncapped her pen. Foster focused on the deputy.
“Do you happen to know which cold case file Cole Reiner was looking at when you walked in on him?”
The department had an outstanding amount of cold cases, and that was before all the town-wide corruption had been uncovered. Since then several closed cases had been reopened and then rerouted to cold case status. Dealing with the sheer volume of them was one of Foster’s main goals within his new job.
“I never saw the name of the specific one, but I did see the box. Fall 2012.” Park snorted. “And the only reason I remember that is because we talked about how dumb it was for someone to label the boxes by seasons and not dates.”
Foster might have found the humor in that had he not already guessed finding a file that might or might not have been of interest to Cole was going to be a long shot.
Still, it was an actionable lead since everything else had hit dead ends.
Donni still refused to talk, Wyatt was still in a coma, Jason was dead, the boat had been stripped and searched with nothing of value found, and Fallon, William Reiner, and both of their trucks were still missing.
Cole Reiner felt no more or less attainable as a lead as the rest to Foster.
“I’m going to go see if any cold cases pop out at me. Best case, we get lucky and can tell what he was looking at. Worst case, if he found anything in those files, he took it with him.”
“And what happens if it’s worst case?” Millie asked. “What happens next?”
Foster didn’t realize he already knew before his gut said the words for him.
“I’m going to figure out what the hell happened with Cole Reiner.”
* * *
FOSTER HADN’T FOUND any cold cases that he thought Cole would have found interesting and, according to the list assigned with the box, there were no files missing. From there he’d gone to trying to find out what Cole had been up to since leaving town.
Based on how much he swore when he didn’t think Millie could hear him, that hadn’t gone well. Foster went from online searches and phone calls to reaching out to current and former sheriff’s department employees who might have seen or heard something like Deputy Park had.
Millie hadn’t had much better news.
The security footage of the grocery store had shown several locals and residents going into the store but none had been Jason Talbot. The only familiar faces she and Deputy Park had seen belonged to June Meeks, the Rosewater’s bartender, Detective Gordon, the sheriff and Larissa. Not as significant as findi
ng Talbot would have been. It was a small town, after all. Familiar faces weren’t uncommon.
Since then Deputy Park had been reassigned to help Foster’s search for Cole, and Millie had been given clearance by the sheriff to stick around Foster’s office. There she’d decided to do what she’d become good at in the last six months.
She wrote down notes and created timelines, much like she’d done on the whiteboard in her kitchen at home.
If Foster’s feeling was right—that it was the two of them who had stumbled onto another investigation entirely—then assuming everything so far had been connected was as bad as assuming everything wasn’t.
Millie was now looking at Fallon’s name, which she’d put in the middle of the paper. Arrows branched off from his name in several directions.
If Millie and Foster really were putting a kink in someone else’s investigation, then what did that mean for Fallon?
How was he involved?
If he was, why hadn’t he reached out to her?
And where had he been?
The cold and creeping worry that Fallon had found something worse than trouble pulled Millie’s heart down.
Just as quickly she shook her head to get rid of even the possibility that Fallon’s truck was in play because he’d been a victim.
You haven’t thought like that in the last six months. You can’t start now, she mentally chided herself, eyes focusing on the paper between her hands. There’s got to be something you’re missing.
Missing.
Millie tilted her head. A new thought entering.
If Fallon was involved, who was he involved with?
Jason Talbot? Donni or Wyatt? William or Cole Reiner?
Millie grabbed her purse and slung it across her shoulder. She left Foster’s office with purpose and didn’t slow until she found him leaving the interrogation room.
Even without speaking, she could tell his frustration had been turned up to extra high.
Still, concern lit his features at the sight of her.
“What’s wrong?” he asked without preamble. “Did you find something?”
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