by Barb Han
She stood there and it seemed like she was drawing up the courage to speak. It hit him that her story must be difficult to talk about and he didn’t want to be the jerk pushing her to do something she didn’t want to.
“I apologize. You don’t have to talk about the past,” he said.
“I never talk about it,” she said low and almost under her breath. “I never talk about what really happened to her.”
Leah motioned toward the table and chairs in the small kitchen.
He followed her and took the seat opposite hers. Her place was the kind of spot he could envision kicking his boots off and staying a little while. He had no plans to do that but the idea of it wasn’t awful.
“We were best friends,” she began.
“Is this the friend you mentioned from high school?” he asked.
“Yes,” was all she said. She looked like she needed a minute to pull herself together.
He remembered that she’d said her friend had died but the full picture was beginning to emerge. One that confirmed her friend was murdered.
“Millie and I weren’t supposed to go out that night but we decided to anyway. It was April. We had spring fever. It was our junior year. High school was intense and the stress of upcoming finals was starting to get to us. We wanted to blow off steam and one of our classmates was having a party across town. I was supposed to meet up with her but I fell asleep instead.” The contents of her coffee cup became intensely interesting right about then. “I’d been wrapped up in studying all night and thought I could just close my eyes for a few minutes.”
Deacon reached out to one of her hands. To his surprise, she grabbed onto his with a glance at him before returning her gaze to the mug.
Her hand seemed so small in comparison to his. Her creamy skin was soft. Long hours on the ranch had calloused his.
“They found her body two weeks later and I went down to the morgue with her parents to ID her.” Leah sat there for a long moment and he waited for her to speak again. “So, my story is that my best friend was killed because I fell asleep. No one ever found her killer or could explain what had happened to her beyond her being dead. My parents gave me a summer to get over it and then expected me to jump right into senior year...”
“But you couldn’t because you carried around too much guilt,” he finished the sentence for her.
“I wanted to know what happened to her. They said the details weren’t important because they wouldn’t bring her back but that getting into a good college was. They told me to look to my future, which was a way of saying that she was in the past. I mean, it had barely been four months and the killer was still on the loose, preying on other girls and my parents were worried that my SAT score wouldn’t be good enough to follow in my mother’s footsteps and get into Brown University.” Deacon felt her grip tighten on his hand but he didn’t flinch.
“It mattered to you.” He didn’t dare let go.
“What they didn’t—don’t—understand is that I couldn’t walk away because I never got answers. If I’d known what had happened to her, it would’ve made a difference in my life. I could’ve put that chapter behind me. That’s why I do what I do. It’s the reason that I have to work for other people.”
He stopped short of responding that she gave to others what she never got for herself.
“Have you looked at the case file?” Her fingers relaxed against his.
“Dozens of times. Knowing what I know now, I think it’s safe to say the man who killed Millie ended up in prison for another crime.” She scraped her teeth across her bottom lip. He’d noticed the move before when she’d spoken about her friend.
“What about her family?”
“I haven’t spoken to them in years,” she admitted.
Did she have a case of survivor’s guilt?
Yeah, he could relate to wishing he were the one who was dead.
Chapter Twelve
The next time Deacon glanced at the clock it was five o’clock in the morning. He should’ve been at work on the ranch half an hour ago if he hadn’t fallen asleep. Time seemed to disappear when he was with Leah.
“It’s late.” He paused for a beat. “Or early, depending on your disposition.”
Leah’s cell buzzed from where it sat on the counter.
She shot a concerned look at him before hopping up, breaking the link with their fingers.
“It’s Dougherty.” Was it wrong that Deacon liked that she used the man’s last name? Referring to him by his first would imply a lot more intimacy. Deacon had no right to be jealous in any case, even though his heart argued the opposite.
She answered the call. “It’s no big deal. I’m already awake.” Dougherty must’ve started right in, skipping pleasantries. It was another thing that Deacon liked. Again, less intimate. “No reason. Couldn’t sleep is all.”
Deacon understood why she couldn’t tell Dougherty the situation. Hell, Deacon was the one who’d insisted the two of them not be seen together. So it was ridiculous that his heart fisted when she said the words out loud. Deacon needed to get a grip. It was most likely because he’d just spoken more words to her than he had to anyone in the past year in one night. Leah was easy to talk to. There was so much vulnerability lurking behind the steel facade she’d erected. There was something pure and honest about her reactions to the world that was unexpected for someone who spent most of her day chasing down the worst of humanity.
And, although Deacon didn’t believe in love at first sight—no matter how quick and unexpected the lightning bolt that had zapped him at his initial encounter with the espresso-haired beauty—he did believe that an instant connection was possible. That something down deep could be a magnet to someone else. He’d never experienced it until now, though. Even his connection with Jackie hadn’t come this easily straight out of the gate.
Thinking of her brought back a flood of memories he couldn’t afford. Thinking about the bond they’d shared—one he never thought was possible again—caused all his defenses to engage.
Deacon had loved Jackie. Losing her, losing her child, who hadn’t been his but he couldn’t have loved more anyway, was a gut punch. He stood, suddenly needing fresh air.
Leah covered the mouthpiece of the phone. “What’s wrong?”
He waved her off and stepped outside. Hearing about the phone call could wait until he could breathe again.
Outside, the sun wouldn’t be up for another couple of hours and it was pitch-black. The wind was a steady force, whipping around his face. There was air all around but his lungs still clawed for it, couldn’t seem to take any in.
He doubled over, fisted his right hand and then gave his chest a quick pound. Jump-starting his breathing didn’t work. Deacon stood again to his full height of six feet four inches. He jumped up and down a few times, trying to stimulate his nervous system to start working again. It felt like everything inside him was shutting down.
All he could do was fight against the current sweeping him under and tossing him out to sea.
Just as he was taking in a lung full of air for what felt like the first time, Leah appeared at the doorway. She wore an expression that was a mix of concern and grief.
“Another body was found,” she said. “A diver pulled a female victim who is missing a foot out of the Trinity River. There’s been no ID, so the victim is going on the Jane Doe list until we can positively identify her.” Deacon didn’t want to think about the family who would be missing a wife, mother, daughter only to discover she’d been brutally murdered. His blood heated. “The victim has the same color of hair as Jillian Mitchell. The woman is also around her height and age.”
“Which means someone is targeting a specific kind of woman. How far away from Porter’s Bend did this happen?” He wanted to know just how close to home this went. The Trinity River itself was something close to seven hundred miles long or
greater he’d read a few years back in connection to an unrelated news story.
A noise behind Leah caused her to whirl around.
“Hey, little man.” She dropped down to crouching position and Deacon saw little arms wrap around her neck.
Time and space seemed to stop as a flash of Jackie with her little girl in a similar position stamped his thoughts. The sudden urge to get the hell out of there slammed into him. He took off jogging in the direction of his vehicle and had to remind himself to breathe. His chest felt like it was about to detonate.
It was an odd feeling because he’d been around mothers and babies from his brothers’ families and had never experienced any blowback from it. What was different about Leah and her son that had Deacon turning tail faster than he could remind himself that this wasn’t the same situation? This wasn’t Jackie and Emery.
Repeating the statement half a dozen times couldn’t deaden the effect the sight had had on him.
A sudden burst of rage caused him to lash out against a tree. He bare-knuckle punched it. Feelings he’d stuffed so deep he thought they’d never surface again shot through him. Anger? Check. Grief? Check. Helplessness? Check.
White-hot anger exploded in another round of self-hate. Why couldn’t he have saved them? Why did this all seem so familiar? Nothing about the two women—Leah and Jackie—was the same other than both being single mothers. A thought struck like a bus on the freeway.
Those two women who were murdered looked similar to Leah. An irrational fear gripped him that she could be next. Could he survive if he were to lose another woman he cared about?
* * *
LEAH HELD ON TO her little boy after locking the door behind her. Deacon had taken off out of the blue and she racked her brain, trying to figure out what she’d said or done to cause him to do that.
“You’re up early.” She hugged Connor a little tighter this morning and especially after the news of the second body that had turned up. Finding answers might have been what drove her to be one of the best detectives at Fort Worth PD but holding this little guy kept her sane. Everything about her toddler reminded her there was still innocence and beauty in the world.
Thinking about his father and her relationship with him, she could admit that her parents might’ve been right. She may have married him in an act of rebellion after she brought him home to get their opinion and they balked. The things they’d said to her after dinner that night might’ve been what had driven her straight into his arms. Looking back, she realized that she hadn’t loved him—or anyone—in that all-consuming feeling that she’d heard people could have for each other. Leah had been content with Wyatt. She’d cared for him deeply and he’d been the calm in a storm. Had she gotten into the relationship because he was safe? Because there’d be no losing her heart? No pain if it had ended?
The last part couldn’t be true because she’d experienced real hurt when Wyatt had died. Crawl-in-bed-for-days pain. There’d been so much going on in her mind back then with Connor on the way and her husband suddenly gone. And then her parents had seemed almost relieved to hear that Wyatt had had a terminal diagnosis. That that would somehow get him out of the picture and them off the hook.
When she’d accused them of that very thing days before his funeral, they’d denied it and asked how cruel she thought they were. And that had almost gotten her thinking that they really did care, until they heard about the pregnancy and threatened to cut her out of their lives if she didn’t take care of it.
A renewed anger struck at the memory of it. But she didn’t want her boy’s first interaction with her in the morning to be full of it.
Leah plastered on a smile, thinking about the old fake-it-till-you-make-it phrase. “How about pancakes this morning, buddy?”
Connor’s eyes lit up at that as he hugged her shoulder and his favorite blanket. He worked the silk material around the edges between his finger and thumb. It was adorable the way he held onto that blue blanket like it was worth more than gold. He looked like her in almost every way except he had his father’s eyes.
The last couple of days had hit a high peak on the emotional scale. Talking to Deacon and opening up about so much of her past had released a surprising amount of pent-up feelings.
Seeing her son’s face reminded her why she got out of bed every morning to face another day. Deacon had her thinking about things like having a normal family. She quickly told herself not with him, but the idea in general didn’t make her tense up. Could she someday down the road think about opening her heart to someone?
* * *
THIRTY-TWO HOURS went by before Leah heard from Deacon again. His text said that he was nearby and wanted to see if she was awake so they could talk.
A knock at the back door shouldn’t have caught her off guard, considering she knew Deacon was on his way. She jumped despite herself. Answering the door, seeing him shouldn’t have made her stomach perform a gymnastic routine. It did.
“I already put on a pot of coffee.” She tried to hide the flush in her cheeks and most likely failed miserably.
He greeted her and then reclaimed his same seat from the other night.
“Everything okay at the ranch?” There were dark circles underneath his eyes and scruff on his chin like he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days.
“There haven’t been any new injured heifers since I last saw you. We’ve been keeping security tight and taking extra shifts patrolling.” That must account for the look of no sleep. “But that’s not why I’m here. We didn’t get a chance to finish our conversation the other night.”
“That’s what you said in your text.” Leah handed him a cup of fresh brew. He took it and thanked her. Their fingers brushed and she ignored the electricity causing hers to tingle and pulse. She sat down across the table from him and did her level best to avoid prolonged eye contact.
“Is what the media printed about the second murder true?” he asked.
“Yes. It was her right foot and cut clean off.” Revisiting the details sent a chill racing down Leah’s back.
“Just like Jillian Mitchell.” Deacon white-knuckled his coffee mug.
She nodded confirmation.
“Is there a positive ID on the victim?” He took a sip of coffee.
It was colder outside than it had been all week, which was saying a lot. She’d nearly frozen on her jog.
“Delaney Richards. She was twenty-nine years old.” That and the other information she was about to share had been kept out of the news. “She has a similar description to Jillian Mitchell, and with the same MO we have every reason to believe the cases are linked.”
“Is Detective Dougherty keeping you in the loop?” He didn’t look up at her when he asked so she couldn’t read his eyes.
“More or less.” She shrugged. “He tells me some information and the rest I’m picking up from colleagues.”
“How long had she been in the river before they found her?” he asked.
“Less than twelve hours.” Leah sipped her coffee.
“We were on that same trail, on the same night,” he said.
“I know.” Could they have stopped it?
“I didn’t hear anything.” His voice was so low when he said it that she almost didn’t hear him.
“If we’d known, we would’ve prevented it. We were far enough away that even if she screamed, which she may not have, we wouldn’t have heard. The victims might know this guy personally. Dougherty is working on finding a link but there’s nothing on the surface. He still says Elijah Henry is guilty, although there’s no evidence connecting him to the crime. He’d been released hours before it had happened and, again, he doesn’t have much of an alibi.” Deacon clearly didn’t agree. Blaming himself for not being able to stop the crime wouldn’t do any good. Leah was an expert at that and it never changed the outcome.
“What time does that put her at
the scene? She could’ve shown up after we left.” His reasoning wasn’t off base and was the first thing Leah’s mind snapped to.
“It’s only a guess. Forensics is still evaluating—”
“What does Rex think?” He pinned her with his stare.
She slid her left hand under her leg. “Based on what he says, the times match up.”
“So every jogger or walker on the Trinity River Trail who’s out at night is at risk?” He placed his flat palm on the table. “That really narrows it down.”
“He could strike anywhere. We can’t let our guard down just because he’s hit twice in the same spot. We don’t know enough about his psychology to predict his next move.” She took a sip of coffee. “That being said, the chief is doubling up patrols along the path. He’s offering overtime pay for officers willing to work extra hours.”
“I’m guessing that with all of these officers being positioned on the trail—”
Leah was already nodding her head before he finished his sentence.
He tapped his fingers on the table. “Makes you think other areas of the city are vulnerable.”
“Dougherty has had tunnel vision all along on this case,” she said. “I don’t want to make the same mistakes.”
“He released Elijah Henry. My family’s lawyer is working the case,” Deacon pointed out.
“Only to turn around and try to bring him back in.” She sighed. “And now Henry has disappeared.”
“As in you can’t find him or something might’ve happened to him?” Deacon seemed to be chewing on that thought for a minute.
“I’m not sure. I’ve asked my colleagues and informants to let me know if they see him. Of course, they’ll have to bring him into the station for questioning now that Dougherty put out a Be-On-The-Look-Out, BOLO. Once Dougherty locks on to someone or something, he doesn’t easily change his mind.”