by Beth Andrews
“It’s been fifteen minutes,” she said. “And how could he be lost? All he has to do is walk toward the lights.”
“Maybe…” Evan ducked his head toward her. “Maybe something happened. You heard his niece scream. Maybe the chief…snapped.”
Layne snorted. “He has too much control to snap. Besides, she’s just messing with him.”
But Evan was completely serious. Nervous. God, had she ever been that young? That earnest?
“How can you tell?” he asked.
“Let me explain it to you, grasshopper. Once, many moons ago, I was a teenage girl myself. Plus I raised my younger sisters who, at one time or another, were also teenage girls.” And thank the dear Lord those years were over. “Believe me, that scream wasn’t real.”
It was a cry for help, though. One she doubted Chief Ross Taylor would heed.
Not her problem, she assured herself. She’d raised her sisters, had taken care of her family. She’d done her time.
“Captain?” Taylor’s voice came through her radio as clearly as if he stood beside her.
“See?” she said to Evan as she unhooked the radio. She lifted it and clicked the talk button. “Yes, Chief?”
“Turn them loose.”
Her jaw dropped. “Excuse me?”
“The kids. Give them a warning and let them go.”
“And here I thought we were going by the precept of the law being black and white.”
“Let. Them. Loose. Have Campbell escort anyone you suspect of drinking home. They are not to drive. Am I clear on that, Captain?”
“Crystal,” she managed to say. As if either she or Evan would let some kid—or anyone else—get behind the wheel after they’d been drinking. “Anything else? Sir.”
“I want Campbell to walk each child to their doors and make sure they are remanded into the custody of their parents. As soon as you’ve given him his orders, get back out here with me. Bring some flares, a blanket and a camera.”
Flares? A blanket and camera? She could feel Evan watching her curiously. She flicked the radio’s button. “Uh, Chief, I’m not sure what you think you and I are going to do with a blanket and a camera—”
He growled. The man literally growled at her. “Get out here. Now.”
Yet one more item to add to his growing list of faults. No sense of humor.
When the radio remained silent for three heartbeats, she clipped it back to her belt. “You heard him,” she told Evan. “We have our orders.”
She helped Evan transfer the girls into his car, the brunette still sniffling. Poor Evan. Layne didn’t envy his job, dealing with four teens and their parents.
But she did thank God—and Chief Taylor—she didn’t have to do it.
She returned to her cruiser for a blanket, flares and the camera she kept in the trunk. Looping the camera’s strap around her neck, she tucked the blanket under her arm, turned on her flashlight and headed back into the woods.
Whatever had happened must be big for “there’s right and there’s wrong” Chief Taylor to let those kids go with a warning. Or maybe Evan had it right. Maybe spending so much time in a town so small it didn’t even have a Starbucks, combined with his niece’s wild ways and running a department of officers who didn’t want him there, had finally gotten to Taylor and he’d cracked. At least enough to dislodge that stick he had up his ass.
Or maybe he decided to listen to her good sense on this one.
And that was as likely as Layne handing in her badge to follow in her father’s footsteps. Or, even more impossible, her mother’s.
Okay, maybe there had been plenty of times when she’d thought Chief Gorham should’ve been less…flexible…with the law. It was a danger having kids partying and then getting behind the wheel of whatever car mommy and daddy had bought for them.
So, no, she couldn’t honestly say she didn’t back Chief Taylor. She just wouldn’t. Say it, that was. To him or anyone else. Not when she should be the one calling the shots, not some hotshot detective from Boston.
Twigs and dead leaves crunched under her boots as she approached the spot where she’d left the chief and his niece. Still a good fifty yards away, she heard them before she saw the glow of the chief’s flashlight.
“—found it in the first place,” the girl was saying, her words not quite as slurred as they’d been earlier.
“For the last time, you’re not getting a reward,” Taylor said gruffly. Impatiently. “Drop it.”
“You suck,” the girl snapped but underneath the bite in her tone, Layne heard the threat of tears. And wouldn’t it be interesting to see how Taylor handled an angry, drunk, weeping teenager?
But he didn’t handle it. He didn’t make any response at all. No attempt to either reprimand or soothe the girl. He continued searching the ground by the end of a fallen tree as if his niece hadn’t even spoken. As if she wasn’t even there.
No chance of this guy winning Uncle of the Year.
He must’ve heard Layne’s approach because he turned, the light from his flashlight skimming over her before he lowered it. “We have a situation.”
“I gathered.” She stepped over a rock and handed him the flares. “What’s up?”
He aimed his flashlight so the beam hit the ground at the end of the log. Illuminating a dirt-encrusted skull.
Layne’s eyes widened. “Yes, I’d say that is definitely a situation.” And not what she’d expected. Not in Mystic Point.
She knelt next to the skull, discerned it was human and, as far as she could tell in the dark, very real. Chills broke out on her forearms. “How’d you even see it?”
“Jess stumbled upon it looking for her phone.”
“Which he’s holding hostage,” the girl—Jess—said, slouched on the far end of the log.
Taylor didn’t even glance her way. “Not the time, Jessica.”
Layne pulled her cell phone from her pocket. “I’ll contact the state forensics lab…have them send a team out here.”
“Already have one on the way. I’ve also contacted all available officers. We’ll get some lights out here and start a search for the rest of the remains.”
“I’m not staying while you hunt for more bones.” Jess wrapped her arms around her legs, her entire body shaking. “I want to go.”
“We will,” Taylor said. “Soon.”
“I’m cold,” Jess whined in a tone guaranteed to make dogs howl. “And I don’t feel good.”
Taylor’s jaw moved, as if he was grinding his teeth to powder. “Then I guess you shouldn’t have been drinking.” But he took the blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders. Surprise, surprise. Maybe he wasn’t a heartless cyborg after all.
Jess shrugged him off, the blanket sliding to the ground. “I want to go home.” Her voice cracked on the last word, her eyes shimmered with tears she tried to blink back. “Could you tell him to let me go home?” she asked Layne. “Please?”
Layne couldn’t help it, though Jess had no one else to blame for the vomit on her clothes, the dirt in her hair, the drying blood on her knees—Layne’s heart went out to the kid. She seemed so…lost.
Layne remembered that feeling entirely too well.
“I’m sure the chief will get you home as soon as he’s finished here,” Layne said, having no idea if that was true or not. God knew the new chief was an enigma. A frustrating one.
Jess’s smirk was more sad than cocky as she laid her cheek on her knees. “Yeah, right.”
Layne inclined her head meaningfully at Taylor then walked away, stopping next to a scraggly pine tree.
“Another problem, Captain?” he asked in the flat Boston accent that grated on her last nerve.
Though it was past midnight he was, as always, clean-shaven, his flat stomach a testament to his refusal to indulge when one of their coworkers brought in doughnuts. His dark blond hair was clipped close to the sides and back of his head, the top just long enough to start to curl. He had a high forehead, thick eyebrows and eyes the co
lor of fog over the water.
The private, female part of her admitted he was attractive—in an earthy, overtly male way.
The cop in her resented the hell out of him for it.
“If you want to run her home,” she said quietly, “I can get things moving here.”
“She doesn’t want to go home—to the house we’re renting. She wants to go back to Boston.”
“Oh.” She had nothing else to add to that. Didn’t want to get involved in his family problems. “Still, I have this under control if you want to get her out of here.”
“You ever handle a case like this?”
She rolled her shoulders back like a fighter preparing to enter the ring. “Not exactly like this. No.”
“You get a lot of missing persons’ cases in Mystic Point?”
“People don’t go missing from Mystic Point.” Although plenty of them left. “But this isn’t some Utopia. We have our share of crime, including battery, burglary, rape and occasionally, murder. All of which I have investigated.”
“Still, I think I’ll take the lead on this one.”
And then he walked away.
Layne curled her fingers into her palms and followed, her steps jerky, the camera bouncing against her chest. “Is it because I’m a woman?” she called.
He picked up a flare, lit it then stuck it in the ground, his back to her the entire time. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”
She stopped behind him, her fists on her hips. “You want specific, sir, how about this. Is the reason you’re not handing this case over to me—the only detective on third shift, your second-in-command and the person who should be assigned it—because I don’t have a penis?”
“He’s a total misogynist,” Jess said with the exaggerated seriousness only the inebriated could pull off.
They both ignored her.
Taylor straightened slowly, the flare casting an orange glow over the hard lines of his face. “Tread carefully, Captain, or you might overstep.”
But she’d never been one to play it safe. Bad enough he’d come into her town and taken the position she was meant to have, now he wanted to screw with how she did her job?
“I don’t think it’s overstepping to clear the air, Chief. So let’s lay it on the line, right here, right now. You have something against having a woman on your force? Or maybe it’s just me you have a problem with?”
Lights flashed, bounced off the trees as a car drove toward the quarry but Taylor didn’t take his attention off her. She wanted to say having his cool gray eyes watching her so intently didn’t unnerve her but she’d never been a good liar.
“The decisions I make as chief aren’t personal.” She didn’t doubt he used that placid tone because it made her seem out of control in comparison. “I assign cases based on experience and expertise.” He stepped closer. “You don’t have to like how I run this police department,” he added softly. “You don’t even have to agree with me, but if you feel the need to question every decision I make, perhaps the Mystic Point Police Department is no longer the right place for you.”
Her vision blurred, her throat burned. “Is that your oh-so-subtle way of threatening my job?”
He moved closer, so close she picked up a hint of his spicy aftershave, felt the warmth from his big body. “For over a month you’ve fought me, skated the line of insubordination—”
“Hey now—”
“And have generally been nothing but a pain in my ass.” How he kept any and all emotion from his voice, she had no idea. But she almost respected him for his control. Almost. “Now, you can continue along that path and force me to take action. Or you can accept that I’m now in charge and start working with me. So, no, I’m not making threats against your job.” He tipped his head close to hers, his breath caressing her cheek. “I’m giving you the choice of what happens next.”
* * *
BY 5:00 A.M., ROSS’S EYES were gritty, his fingers tingling with cold and his head aching. He walked toward his cruiser, the rising sun’s rays reflecting off the large rocks surrounding the water, turning the sky pink and gold. The damp air smelled of burned wood and dirt.
Once the forensics unit from the state had arrived on scene around 2:00 a.m., Ross had coordinated the search for more remains. It hadn’t taken long and by three, they’d found badly decomposed bones near the area where Jess had discovered the skull.
Now, the remains were on their way to the state’s lab for testing while Campbell and Patrick Forbes, one of the department’s part-time officers, packed up the spotlights. Sergeant James Meade, a middle-aged man with thinning hair and a perpetual jovial expression that hid what Ross had already deduced was a keen cop’s mind, stood talking with Sullivan by the still-smoldering ashes of last night’s fire.
Ross lifted his hand, indicating he was leaving. Meade, taking a sip from his take-out cup of coffee, nodded. Sullivan kept her gaze on the ground. With his free hand, Ross pulled his cell phone from his pocket and hit speed dial. Jess’s phone rang. And rang. He tucked the phone between his ear and shoulder and opened his car door, tossed the evidence bag onto the seat.
His call went to voice mail. “It’s me,” he said. “Call me.”
Not that she would. Ever since he’d been granted custody of his niece, she’d been nothing if not steadfast in her determination to do anything and everything in her power to make his life more difficult.
He glanced back at Sullivan. Sort of like someone else he knew.
He just hoped neither one ever figured out what a good job they were doing of it.
He tried the house phone. No answer. Damn it. He needed to get the necklace they’d found near the body—the one piece of concrete evidence they had—back to the station so it could be processed. He could ask Meade to do it. Or, he could bite the bullet and do what he should’ve done in the first place.
“Sullivan?” he called. “Do you have a minute?”
“Can it wait until we get back to the station, Chief?”
Christ, but nothing was easy with her. Not even a simple request. “No, Captain, it can’t.”
Her mouth thinned but after saying something to Meade, she started toward Ross, taking her sweet time getting there. He bit back on his impatience. His edginess. Edginess she caused with her constant antagonism and smart-ass mouth. With her slow, saunter and the determined, confrontational glint in her hazel eyes.
Her dark ponytail swung behind her, the light blue, MPPD-issued windbreaker she’d put on at some point during the past four hours blowing open over her uniform. Showing the sway of her hips, how her breasts bounced under the loose material.
Interest, male and elemental, stirred. He hissed out a breath through his teeth. Shit. He must be more tired than he thought.
“Yes?” she said when she finally reached him, her tone belligerent, dark circles under her eyes.
“Jessica’s not answering her phone.”
She raised her eyebrows. “You let her have her phone back?”
Warmth crawled up his neck. He refused to call it embarrassment. “So I could get ahold of her. Yes.”
“Uh-huh. And how’s that working out for you?”
His jaw tightened. He was tired, cold and hungry. And in no mood to, once again, get into it with his most abrasive officer. “You took her home?”
“As per your orders.”
“And you saw her go inside?”
“No. I pushed her out of the car as I drove past,” Sullivan said dryly. “But don’t worry, I told her to tuck and roll when she hit the ground.” When he just stared, she sighed. “I walked her inside myself. I’m sure she’s fine. She’s probably sleeping it off. Besides, from what I saw, she threw up most of what she’d had to drink. And possibly a kidney.”
He stiffened. “I fail to see the humor in that particular situation.”
Sullivan waved at Meade as the sergeant drove away. “Yeah, well, a sense of humor comes in awfully handy when dealing with teenagers. Keeps you from lo
sing your mind. And it has the added benefit of pissing them off. Win-win.”
He tipped his head side to side but the tension in his neck remained. “All I have to do is talk to Jess and she gets pissed at me.”
Why the hell had he admitted that? He didn’t share his thoughts easily, especially with a subordinate officer. Better to keep work and his personal life separate.
“I realize your shift is over in—” He checked his watch. “Less than five minutes, but I need you to take the evidence to the station to be processed.”
“If you’re really worried about her, I can call a friend of mine who’s an EMT. I’m sure he’d be happy to stop by and check on Jess.”
“That won’t be necessary,” he said more gruffly than he intended. “Besides, I’m not worried she’s slipped into an alcohol-induced coma or succumbed to alcohol poisoning. I want to make sure she hasn’t taken off again resulting in me wasting time going after her, not to mention pulling my concentration from this case.”
Like she was doing now.
Sullivan’s mouth turned down. “Wow. That’s really…” She shook her head. “Never mind.”
He almost asked her to finish her sentence. But he could easily guess what she’d been about to say and he didn’t need to hear her low opinion on his guardianship skills. Not when his parents had warned him he’d be in over his head if he took Jessica on.
But she needed him. He had to save her. Somehow.
If he didn’t end up strangling her first.
“After you drop off the evidence,” he told Sullivan, “I’d like you to check the missing persons’ files, see if any are still open.”
She smiled tightly. “And here I thought you’d stick me behind a desk so I could field more questions from the press for the duration of this investigation.”
In Boston, the press meant reporters from various media outlets: TV, newspapers, radio and magazines. All vying for a quote, a new side to the story they could run with, the more sensational the better.
Fortunately the Mystic Times had only sent one reporter out to the quarry last night. And he’d seemed more than happy to hang around all night, flirting with Sullivan instead of digging for information about the human remains found outside of town.