by Kaylea Cross
No. Because no one wanted to see it.
The pedophile angle could be useful, though. Chances were the suspect would be released on bail until the trial—if there was evidence enough against him to warrant one. So he would be loose in the community again, maybe even already.
Yeah, this might help. Finding out the guy’s name shouldn’t be hard. Not when gossip spread like literal wildfire in this town. And pinning Hollister’s murder on a child predator could work. He had a grudge against Hollister too, with a busted nose and a few loose teeth to prove it. Once Hollister died, people would immediately suspect him. So would the police, as long as there weren’t any witnesses around to say otherwise.
That would buy the real killer enough time to skip town and disappear.
A few bills tossed onto the table paid for breakfast, and the warm, salt-tinged air outside cleared the mind. Knowing the end to all this was so close brought a much needed sense of peace.
The need for revenge was too powerful to back out of this now. Hollister had to suffer for what he’d done, and now there was someone else to pin the killing on.
****
“You let him go?” Sierra said, her face full of shock and disappointment as she stared at him.
“Yes, it’s the law,” Noah muttered, not liking it any more than her.
“Well the law sucks,” she said with a scowl, folding her arms across her chest.
“Yeah, sometimes it does.” Sometimes more than others.
God, this day. It had been shitty from the start when he’d woken up to find a pipe had burst in the kitchen, and had gone downhill from there. All after the long night he’d pulled, dealing with the Ella Fitzgerald case.
Upon arriving at the office this morning he’d found a report from the FBI about another young woman who had gone missing from the neighboring county. Five women over the past five years. The Feds suspected a serial killer was at work, but so far they had no evidence or leads and not much to link the disappearances yet—not even the remains of any of the victims. Noah hated that the monster’s hunting ground was so close to home.
But there were all kinds of monsters in this world. Including the pedophile he’d been forced to release from the holding cell a couple hours ago.
“He’s been charged, but the court date isn’t for another ten days from now, and he was able to post bail.” No surprise, given that Brian was a successful banker and had no priors. It turned Noah’s stomach to let a sicko like that loose in his community, but he was sworn to uphold the law and had to obey the rules, even if the rules sucked.
Still, part of him wished he’d let Tiana take a few swings at the asshole last night, instead of intervening the way his badge and position mandated.
Sierra kept staring at him. Almost as if she expected him to change things somehow.
He would if he could have. “Look, I know how much this must upset you, but there was nothing more I could do. How are you doing, anyway?” he asked in a softer tone. She and Beckett had just finished giving their official statements about last night, and it must have stirred up a lot of shit for her.
She lost the glare, lowered her gaze. “I’m okay.”
Beckett was in the other room waiting for her, so Noah didn’t mind digging a little while they had the privacy. “You sure?”
“Yeah. I’ve been thinking a lot about Heather, though.”
“Me too.” He’d never forget that day. Neither of them would. “How’s Ella, do you know?”
“Her mom’s taking her to a counseling appointment this morning.”
“That’s good. Tiana seems like a great mom.”
“Beckett seems to think so. It’s not easy, being a single parent. She’s doing the best she can, and she clearly would do anything for her daughter.”
“Yes.” Noah had thought about Ella a lot over the past sixteen hours. About what would have happened if she hadn’t told Beckett and Sierra what Brian had done. The bastard would no doubt have taken things further, and would have kept abusing her for as long as possible all while pretending to be the doting boyfriend Tiana thought he was.
Fucking gross. And given his and Sierra’s own experience with a child predator they had both trusted, yeah, he was glad Beckett had busted the bastard’s nose.
Sierra sighed. “I’m just glad we found out what was going on before it was too late.”
“Me too.”
“What about you?” She eyed him with the knowing stare that only a sibling could bestow. “I know abuse calls are the worst for you.”
“Part of the job.” Unfortunately, even a place as small and safe as Crimson Point wasn’t spared domestic and sexual abuse cases. But that shit involving kids was always tough for him to compartmentalize.
“You working a full shift today?”
“Yep. You?”
She glanced back toward the door. “Technically I’ve booked the whole weekend off, but we’ll see. I think I’ll go to Beckett’s for a while after this, though. This whole thing bothered him more than he’s letting on, I can tell.”
He could already see where this was going. Sierra had a big heart and thought she could help everyone. “Yeah, good luck with getting him to talk about it.”
Good luck with getting Beck to talk about anything that bothered him.
He and Noah had been best friends since kindergarten, and Noah could count on one hand how many times Beckett had opened up to him about something that bothered him. Beck liked to handle everything on his own. “I didn’t even find out about the divorce until it was all over with.” And he also never talked about what had happened overseas.
“Challenge accepted,” Sierra said with a determined smile that almost made Noah a little sorry for Beckett. “And you weren’t exactly an open book when you broke up with Katherine, either.”
Noah grunted. “That was different.” Her betrayal had cut deep. So deep he’d become a serial dater in the years since she’d left Crimson for the bright lights of New York City.
“Yeah, because it happened to you,” Sierra pointed out. “Call me if you need anything else.”
“I will.” He hugged her goodbye and settled behind his desk to make a dent in the files that had piled up on him.
Calls were sparse throughout the day, and nothing more came in about the missing women case. It took most of his shift to get through them and file the last of the paperwork so he could finally head outside and climb into his patrol car.
He thought about grabbing takeout from one of the restaurants in town on the way home, but didn’t feel like stopping, or calling any of the women he’d gone out with recently. He’d go home, grill himself a steak and make a baked potato to go with it, then sit out on the back porch and enjoy some quiet for a while. His elderly neighbor had moved out of her house several weeks ago and the little cottage had been empty ever since. Several people had come to look at it but so far no one had put in an offer that he knew of, so he had extra privacy.
It was kind of nice not to have neighbors for a change.
He took a right onto Front Street, now bathed in shades of purple and blue with the twilight. Most of the shops and businesses were closed except for the bar and a few restaurants.
A flicker of light from behind an abandoned building up the block caught his attention. He slowed as he approached the old diner that had been empty for more than a year now. With the weather warming up it wasn’t unheard of for vandals to migrate into the area and break into empty places, sometimes simply to crash, others to strip copper pipe or wiring and sell it for cash. He’d better check it out.
He parked along the curb and got out, alerting dispatch to what was going on. One hand on the butt of his service weapon, he walked alongside the shingled building. The light flickered again from behind it, and he heard someone moving around in the back alley. “Hello?” he called out.
“Hi,” a feminine voice answered cautiously. The light shifted, and something metal clanked.
Noah rounded the corner
and stopped when he saw the young woman climbing down a ladder, paint roller in her hand. The first thing he noticed was her breasts, but he quickly tore his gaze upward. Her deep blond hair was pulled up in a messy bun, her jeans and shirt splattered with paint.
She stepped off the bottom rung and gave him a polite but wary smile. “Hello.”
He swept his gaze over her, taking in the curvy shape of her body in the paint-smeared clothes. She had a smudge of it across her cheekbone too. “Hi. I saw a light on back here and thought I should check it out.” He eyed her. It was getting dark fast and she seemed to be alone. “Are you with a painting company, or…?”
“I’m the new owner.” Her accent was pure Midwest. She swept an errant lock of hair away from her cheek and tucked it behind her ear. “Bought it last week. Are you the sheriff?”
“Yes. Noah Buchanan.”
“Poppy Larsen,” she said, holding out a hand.
He looked down at it, at the paint all over her skin.
“Sorry.” She laughed softly and wiped the front and back of it against the leg of her jeans before offering it again. “Nice to meet you.”
“You as well,” he said, shaking and releasing it as he sized her up. He’d been a cop for so long that he was a little suspicious by nature. Not much happened around here that he didn’t know about, and the rest he found out eventually. She definitely wasn’t a vandal, though. Vandals didn’t work late fixing up a place. “I hadn’t heard this place had sold.”
“Everything was finalized last night. The paperwork went through this morning, so I wanted to get cracking on the renovations.”
Huh. He would check that with the local real estate agent in the morning, and see what he could find out about the deal and Poppy. “Are you doing them yourself?”
“Mostly.”
Big project for one person. The interior of the diner was straight out of the fifties, and not in a good way. “What’s it going to be?”
“A bookstore and café-slash-tea room. I plan to have it open in time for the Fourth of July.”
Well that was…ambitious, given that it was only a few weeks away. “How long have you been in town?” He hadn’t heard any talk in town about a newcomer, and that was damn unusual.
“I came out here a few weeks ago and just fell in love with it. I bought this place, and I put an offer in on an old cottage yesterday down on Honeysuckle Lane.”
“Two-story with gray shingle siding?”
She stilled, watching him more intently. “Yes, you know it?”
“I live next door.”
Her eyes widened, and in the lantern light hanging from the ladder he saw that they were a rich, deep brown. “Oh. Well then we might be neighbors if all goes well.”
If so, his neighborhood just got a major upgrade. “Looks like.” To keep from staring at her, he tipped his head back to examine the back of the building. She had finished about two-thirds of her first coat, a soft blue color. “How much longer are you planning on working?”
“I want to get this coat finished at least. After I get the outside done, I’m starting demo on the inside. Hopefully tomorrow afternoon.”
Noah stared at her in surprise. “Have you got a contractor to help you out? If not, my best friend owns a contracting business here in town. He’s a stand-up guy. I’m sure he could take on some of the work for you.”
A tiny frown appeared in the center of her forehead. “Really? I’ll think about it, thanks. But I’m on a pretty tight budget, so I’m going to have to do most of the work myself.”
Noah nodded, even more curious about her. No way she was even thirty, and she wasn’t wearing a wedding band. Where had she gotten the money to buy this place? “Okay. His name’s Beckett Hollister, if you change your mind. Tell him I referred you.”
“I will.”
He should leave, but instead found himself hesitating. This whole thing felt weird. She literally had no one helping her? “You’re doing all of this by hand? You don’t have a sprayer?”
“No.”
Well that was just wrong. And crazy. “I’ve got one at home you can borrow. I’ll go grab it and bring it back for you.”
She blinked at him, her surprise clear. “Really?”
“Yeah. You’re a Crimson Pointer now, and we take care of our own.”
“Oh,” she said softly, a touched smile curving her mouth. “That’s really nice of you, thanks.”
She seemed caught off guard by his offer. He understood. He was wary of strangers too. “It’s no big deal. I’ll be back in a bit.” That way he could find out more about her, get a better feel for who she was. “Don’t fall off that ladder while I’m gone.”
“I won’t.”
He drove home, changed quickly, then grabbed the sprayer and a few trim brushes from his garage before heading back. Half an hour ago he’d been beat and ready to hole up for the night, but now he had plenty of energy back. Who was Poppy Larsen, and what was her story?
She had almost finished the bottom of the east side of the building when he got there.
“Reinforcements have arrived,” he announced as he came up the sidewalk, and began setting up the work light and sprayer. He could help her out, dig into her background a little and have something to distract him from his shitty day. Win-win.
“You don’t have to do that,” she protested, setting her roller down and hurrying over to him. “It’s more than enough that you’re lending it to me in the first place.”
“I’m happy to help. Had nothing to do tonight anyway,” he said, filling the reservoir. Nothing besides drink beer alone and wish he could have done more to keep Brian locked up.
“Well, wow, I didn’t expect this.” She seemed uncomfortable with accepting his help.
“Might as well get used to it. People around here help each other out.”
“That’s nice to hear.”
“So, Poppy. Where are you from?” he asked as he took the ladder around to the side of the building and adjusted the light so he could see the wall better.
“South Dakota. You?”
He climbed to the top so he could start painting in the gable. “Born and raised right here.”
“Yeah? You’re lucky.”
He adjusted the nozzle and made his first pass, testing the spray pattern, making sure he didn’t drip. “I am. It’s a great place to live. You’ll love it.” This place was in his blood and he intended to stay forever. That decision had meant making certain sacrifices, including losing the woman he’d once planned to spend the rest of his life with and raise a family with, but he didn’t regret his choice. Crimson was home and always would be.
“I’m looking forward to it.”
Within an hour they had finished the edges and trim by hand, making small talk but mostly painting in silence. She was a hard worker, and a bit of a perfectionist, working out here as darkness fell with only the work light to see by. She was also guarded, giving him the bare minimum whenever he asked her questions. He didn’t blame her, but something about her and her situation had his cop instincts jangling.
Poppy seemed sweet enough on the surface, but she was hiding something. He was certain of it.
Once they were done he climbed down from the ladder and did a walk around to make sure they had good coverage. “Looks pretty decent, but you may have some touch-ups to do come daylight.”
“I don’t care, this was just so nice of you, thank you. You’ve saved me hours and hours of work.”
“My pleasure.” He wiped his hands on a rag, eyed her with a newfound respect. He sincerely hoped her business did well here. “My sister Sierra is the vet in town,” he said, gesturing across and down the street to her clinic. “She’s a big bookworm, so I’ll tell her about your place. She can help spread the word.”
“That would be great.” She stood, stretched her back, unconsciously giving him an eyeful of the full curves of her breasts as they pushed against the fabric of her shirt. “I’m guessing you’re not much into tea pa
rties, but do you like pie, Sheriff?”
“I love pie.” Who didn’t?
“What kind?”
“Any kind.” His mom’s pumpkin pie was famous in these parts, but he wasn’t fussy.
“But what’s your favorite?”
“Cherry, I guess. The sour kind.”
She nodded. “Okay. As soon as I get my new appliances installed, I’ll make you one.”
That was sweet, but he didn’t want anything in return. “You don’t have to make me a pie.”
“Well you’re getting one. And free coffee at the shop for life.” She gestured to the building. “It would have taken me the rest of the night and most of tomorrow to get the second coat done. You’re a life saver.”
“You’re welcome. And talk to Beckett if you decide you want a professional hand.”
“I will.” She gathered up her roller and brushes and turned to offer him her hand. “Well. See you around the ‘hood.”
He nodded. “Maybe even over the fence.” That would be a nice change in scenery.
A dimple appeared in her cheek as she smiled back at him. She was adorable in a girl-next-door way with her hair mussed and paint-stained clothes. He could just imagine how gorgeous she would be cleaned up. But looks—and people—could be deceiving. “Maybe.”
Potential neighbor, buddy, and she’s hiding something. So back that train of thought up the tracks.
He drove home, deep in thought.
Everyone had secrets. He just hoped Poppy’s wouldn’t bring trouble to Crimson Point.
Chapter Fourteen
This was a really bad idea. Probably the worst Beckett had had in a while.
But he was doing it anyway, because he owed Sierra an apology that needed to be delivered in private, and because he didn’t want things to be weird between them going forward.
Though kissing his best friend’s little sister definitely made things weird.
That kiss two nights ago had been a serious wake-up call. No matter how much he wanted her, he couldn’t risk ruining the most important relationships in his life by taking things any farther. That’s what he’d brought her here to say.