Eryn went to the cupboard and grabbed a mug then poured a cup of rich black coffee. She took a sip and had to admit he made good coffee. And his waffles looked equally as appetizing.
“I usually drink a cup of coffee to wake up and then get Bekah, but let me wake her now so we can all eat together.”
“That would be nice,” he said, not looking up from the stovetop.
Would eating together seem too personal with them behaving like a little family? Likely, she supposed, and she should watch that. But then she was watching so much with him already—could she add another thing?
She sighed, drawing his attention, and their gazes locked. She could easily get lost in those soft morning eyes, but she exerted iron will and set down her mug to go wake her daughter. She found Bekah sleepy-eyed but lying awake in her bed.
“Is Trey still here, Mommy?” she asked. “He promised he would be.”
“Yes, he’s in the kitchen making waffles so we need to get you dressed and ready.”
She dropped her blanket and jumped out of bed. “I’ll pick my clothes.”
She went to her closet and grabbed a purple and pink striped T-shirt, and then from her dresser she took out red plaid shorts. They didn’t go together in the least, but Bekah wouldn’t be leaving the compound today so there was no reason to mention it.
Chattering about how she was going to take Trey to play with Mia, David, and Barkley, Bekah quickly shed her pajamas and got dressed.
“Remember, when I finish my work with Hannah, Trey and I will be going for a short trip. I might not be home tonight so Gammy will come to stay with you.”
“I like it when Gammy stays, but I wish Trey could, too.”
Eryn didn’t take it personally that her daughter left her out in this discussion as Bekah took having her mother around for granted. After Bekah fastened the Velcro tabs on her tennis shoes, they went into the family room.
“Trey!” Bekah ran across the room to him, and he scooped her up in his arms.
There was something about those powerful arms gently holding her child that got to Eryn in a way nothing else had before, and a vision of them as a true family saturated her heart.
Is that you God? Trying to tell me I really am ready for something?
She squashed those thoughts immediately. In her experience, prayer wasn’t usually answered that quickly, and she hadn’t even been living her faith much of late.
“Are you ready for a waffle?” Trey asked.
“I am!” Bekah clapped. “With lotsa syrup. And you havta cut it for me.” She wiggled, and he put her down.
He gestured at place settings. “Sit, and I’ll serve you both.”
Eryn helped Bekah onto her stool, and then took a seat across from her. Eryn also steeled her heart against letting this little episode get to her. She cut Bekah’s waffle but let her pour the syrup herself—stopping her before she drowned the waffle. Then Eryn turned to her own plate and ate silently, half-listening to Trey and Bekah chat while she focused on the tasks ahead.
When they left the cabin, they stepped into a glorious day of sunshine and a cool ocean breeze whisking over the area. Cooper Ashcroft and Jackson Lockhart, her other two teammates, were passing by. Both men were tall and powerful, and they stopped defensively near Eryn. Coop’s and Jackson’s eyes were filled with suspicion as they focused on Trey. She appreciated that her teammates were protective of her, but this was overkill.
“You guys both know Trey, don’t you?” she said pointedly. “I’m assuming Gage filled you in on what’s going on and why Trey is staying with me.”
“It’s because he’s my friend,” Bekah announced.
Jackson laughed, but Coop didn’t crack a smile. He was more reserved than Jackson, and his intense gaze said he was still unsure about Trey’s intentions.
“I’m on protective detail for Eryn.” Trey shook hands with Jackson then Coop. “What class are you teaching today?”
“Close quarter combat,” Jackson said. “You’ve taken that one, right? You’ve taken almost all of our classes.”
Trey nodded. “Yep, I’ve learned many excellent skills.”
Bekah grabbed his hand. “Want to play.”
He smiled down at her.
“Catch you guys later,” she said to her teammates and let Bekah draw them away.
As they walked, Trey started whistling, and Bekah skipped to the beat of his tune. Eryn felt the warmth of the sun. Caught the scent of the salty sea breeze.
How much more perfect could the morning get?
For some reason that thought made her cranky. By the time she bid Trey and Bekah goodbye and was seated at Hannah’s island, she wanted to snap at Hannah’s good mood.
“Someone got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning,” Hannah said as she laid her drawing supplies on the island. “Did you fight with Trey?”
“No. The opposite. Everything was wonderful. He made breakfast. Treats Bekah like a princess.” Eryn shook her head.
“That sounds totally awful.” Hannah chuckled.
“Well it was. You know I’m not ready for something like that.”
“I know no such thing.”
“I’ve told you often enough.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you’re right.”
Eryn held up her hands. “It’s way too early in the day for that discussion. Let’s just do the sketch.”
“You know the drill. Start describing the woman.” Hannah’s tone was terse and to the point. She was never terse. Ever.
Eryn had obviously hurt her feelings. “I’m sorry. It’s not you. It’s me.”
“I get it. I was there not too long ago with Gage.”
Eryn blew wayward strands of hair from her face. “And I know you want to help, but I have to work through this myself.”
“Okay.” Hannah smiled. “As long as you know I’m always available to talk.”
She snorted. “Yeah, but you’re rooting for Trey, too, and I need an impartial opinion.”
Hannah sputtered. “Like you’re impartial on this matter?”
Eryn slapped the countertop. “Ohhhh—that’s not fair!”
Hannah sighed before sitting on a stool. “Look, sweetie. I’m sorry. I’ll stick to the drawing and let you bring up Trey again when you’re ready.” She picked up her pencil.
Eryn took a deep breath and exhaled as she shifted to relax her body. Using the skills she learned in the FBI, she cleared her mind of everything but the woman’s facial details. “She had an oval face with a fairly pronounced chin. It’s wide. Kind of masculine. She also had big brown eyes with bushy eyebrows that looked like she never plucked them.”
Hannah looked up. “You’re sure it was a woman? Because you’re describing a man.”
“Positively a woman, but now that you mention it, she was kind of manly.”
Eryn paused to let Hannah get started on the image. Her pencil scratched across the surface, and Eryn sought out other details from her memory. She avoided thinking about the gunshot wound and tried to remember if she saw any hair sticking out from the fox costume.
She remembered an auburn lock by her ear, so she relayed that to Hannah. “But I have no idea of her hairstyle. Except for one lock, her hair was tucked up in the fox hood.”
“Bangs make a world of difference in a woman’s appearance. I’ll start without bangs since you didn’t see them. Then once we have everything else right, I’ll do one with bangs, too, in case it will help ID her.”
That was Hannah. A woman who went above and beyond and could always be counted on. She’d opened her arms to all of the team members, including Coop’s fiancé Kiera and Jackson’s fiancé Maggie. In fact, Hannah was serving as Kiera’s maid of honor for the wedding next month and Eryn would be a bridesmaid.
“How are preparations going for the wedding?” Eryn asked, trying to lighten the mood.
“Good.” Hannah didn’t look up. “But when this is all over, I know Kiera wants your help with a few things.�
��
Eryn thought of her friends getting married, and her crankiness evaporated. “They’re going to be so happy.”
Hannah looked up and opened her mouth as if to say something, then snapped it shut and looked back at her pad. Eryn wasn’t about to ask what she was going to say.
“What was the woman’s nose like?” Hannah asked.
“Narrow, but big. Kind of hawkish.”
“Okay, let me get that added, and you can have a look.”
“While you do that, I’ll take a quick peek outside to see how Trey’s doing with watching Bekah.”
“He often plays with Mia and David when he visit’s Gage, so he should be fine.”
“He really likes kids, doesn’t he?” Eryn asked.
“He said he has several nieces and nephews.”
“And he wants like four or five of his own kids!”
Hannah’s head popped up. “And how do you feel about that?”
“Not that it matters, but I’d never thought about having more than three kids.”
“Best work that out before the ring goes on your finger, then.”
Eryn sighed. “There’s not going to be a ring on my finger anytime soon.”
“If you say so.” Hannah went back to drawing.
Shaking her head, Eryn headed to the patio door to look out over the large yard with a sandbox, huge play structure, and garden beds all built by Gage and the team.
Trey was walking over to the play structure from the sandbox, and she noticed a pronounced limp today. Or maybe it was always there, but he hid it when he was around her. Men were like that. Never wanting anyone to see they were hurt or in pain. She was the same way, but only with the team, and then never to cover up an injury so she could go on an op that she wasn’t fit for.
Trey stepped up to Bekah who was seated on a swing and started pushing her. He stared off into the distance and absently pushed like his mind was filled with something he was working out. Maybe he was spending as much time thinking about his issue with his leg as she was about getting hurt again. Neither of which would find her hacker. She spun and marched back to the kitchen with purpose.
Hannah turned her sketchpad to face Eryn. “Am I close?”
“Close, but no. Her eyes are bigger. Nose narrower and chin broader.”
“So I got the eyebrows right then?” She chuckled and exaggeratedly wiggled her own eyebrows.
Eryn laughed with her and grabbed some coffee as Hannah made the changes. They went around and around like this for the rest of the morning, but finally Hannah produced a sketch that Eryn felt realistically portrayed the deceased woman.
“That’s perfect.” Eryn gave Hannah a hug. “I owe you one.”
“Then I aim to collect right now.” Hannah pushed back.
Eryn rolled her eyes. “What do you want?”
“Don’t close yourself off from Trey. Why not let things develop, and then see how you feel?”
She crossed her arms. “Then I’m bound to be hurt because he’s a great guy, and I know exactly where it could lead.”
“I’m pretty sure if you open your heart, you’ll forget all about being afraid.”
“Maybe,” Eryn replied, but she still wasn’t willing to find out.
19
Trey sat next to Eryn in the company helicopter. He’d been in more helos than he could count in his military career, but that had been a while ago. And none of them were as nice as Gage’s aircraft. Trey knew his buddy would buy top-of-the-line equipment, but this baby must have set him back a pretty penny.
Trey glanced at Eryn. She was still busy reading information she’d printed out for the trip. She told him it was part of the code from the hack, but it all looked like gibberish to him. Every now and then she scribbled something on a page and then sat and stared at it.
“Finding anything?” he asked using the mic on his headset so she could hear.
“I’m seeing something familiar, but I don’t know what yet. I still have a lot of code to go through.” She turned her attention back to the pages.
He wanted her to be able to find the hacker so he let the conversation drop. Or maybe he didn’t want to have a conversation with her. Not when she wasn’t open to him in the way he wanted. Besides, Riley had a headset on, too, and he would hear anything they said.
Trey shifted to look out the window on the far side of the helo. Since leaving Cold Harbor, they’d gone from the ocean to heavy lush forests to mountains, then the populated Willamette Valley. Over another mountain range, they hovered over the high desert portion of the state covered in big sagebrush and rabbit brush along with hardy grasses. Yellow and purple spring wildflowers dotted the area, making it pretty in a stark kind of way, but it was totally opposite of the western side of the state that was lush and green most of the year from abundant rainfall.
“ETA two minutes,” Riley announced over the headset.
Trey strained his neck to see the private airstrip where they would put down about fifteen miles out of Burns. Ahead he spotted what amounted to a flat piece of land serving as a dirt strip. Not much of a runway, but then Trey had landed in far more difficult terrain in the past and a helicopter didn’t need a runway at all.
Near the end sat an older model Jeep. “Looks like the car’s there waiting for us.”
“Did you doubt it would be?” Eryn asked.
“You never know,” he said, but he really did know. The airstrip belonged to one of Gage’s many military contacts, and when a military brother said he would do something, you could count on him to follow through.
Riley set the helo down smoothly, and Trey took off his headset. Eryn packed her papers into her computer case. Trey didn’t wait for her but slid the door open and hopped down. The temperature was about the same as Cold Harbor, but without the coastal wind it felt warmer than sixty-five degrees. The rotors slowed above, and Riley joined Trey as did Eryn.
“I’ll keep you updated on our progress,” Eryn told Riley.
Trey wasn’t surprised he was staying with the pricey helicopter. It was on private property, but the airstrip was next to a main road, and they would never risk leaving such an expensive machine where it could be vandalized.
“I’ll try to stay awake to hear your calls.” Riley laughed.
She rolled her eyes good-naturedly and set off for the Jeep. They were supposed to find the keys under the floor mat, and that’s exactly where Trey located them. He needed something to keep his mind busy so he didn’t even ask if Eryn wanted to drive.
He got the Jeep on the road, and they headed east toward Burns. Trey had looked up the city last night and discovered it was less than three thousand people. It was also the county seat and made up nearly fifty percent of the entire county population. Told him how sparsely populated the large county was.
Eryn rummaged through her bag, and he expected her to grab her code pages again, but she took out a folder and removed the victim’s sketches.
“Hannah does good work,” he said.
“She’s very talented.”
“And you did a good job describing the woman. She looks like I remember her.”
Eryn turned to face him. “Is this entire trip going to be this tense between us?”
“Tense?”
“You know, small talk. Avoiding anything of importance.”
“I figured that’s what you would want.”
“What I want is not to be stressed out over this when we have such important work to do.”
“Then I’ll just be myself and won’t filter what I say.”
“Good. I’ll do the same thing.”
He smiled at her. “You look really nice today.”
“What?” she asked, her eyes widening.
“You look nice.”
She lifted her chin. “I look like I look all the time.”
He smiled at her. “Yeah, you always look nice.”
She groaned. “Oh, brother.”
“Hey, you were the one who wanted my unfil
tered thoughts.”
“Maybe put a little filter on them.” She grinned, which was his intent, and the tension evaporated. Maybe he was going to enjoy this trip after all.
Eryn pushed her empty plate away in the vintage drug store with an old-fashioned lunch counter and refused to get disappointed over striking out. They’d spent three hours showing the woman’s photo around town and asking about an animal rights group to no avail. Giving up for the day, they’d stopped in to have a late dinner in one of the few places still open.
Trey set his iced tea down on the scarred Formica countertop. “I thought at least one person would be willing to hear us out today, didn’t you?”
“Blake warned me that people in this part of the state were cautious. But yeah, I hoped someone would look at the woman’s drawing before saying they didn’t know her.” She sighed. “I was almost tempted to mention that the woman was murdered, and we needed to locate her next of kin.”
“But you wouldn’t want that information to get back to the woman’s family via the grapevine, right?”
“Exactly. I’ll never forget when I heard about Rich. It was hard enough to take coming from official police officers. But if I’d heard it via the grapevine?” She shook her head and didn’t elaborate about that dark rainy night when her husband lost his life on a mountain road.
Trey swiveled on the chrome barstool. “We’re running out of daylight.”
“Looks like we’ll need to spend the night here and should make a reservation somewhere.”
He nodded. “What about Riley?”
“He’ll have to bunk in the chopper. Won’t be the first time.”
Their waitress carried the coffee pot over to them. Her stick-straight brown hair was in disarray, and she pushed up her wire rim glasses. “Refill?”
Eryn nodded. “Can you recommend a hotel here?”
She leaned a hip against the counter, bunching up her red and white striped apron with Bee engraved near the top. “Are you looking for modern conveniences or a quaint bed and breakfast?”
“Modern,” Eryn answered quickly. She didn’t need to spend the night under the roof of a homey place with Trey.
“Then I recommend the East Side Motel. Local mom-and-pop business with clean and updated rooms.” She poured the coffee. “I hear you folks are looking for a woman.”
Cold Case Page 18