Better him than me.
“He’s actually much happier lately,” Daria murmured as they said goodbye and headed down the hall.
“No thanks to us,” Stefan muttered.
“I know. Or the election campaign,” she added.
“I registered just so I could vote for him.” He’d only been in Colorado for a couple of years, so there hadn’t been a major election since his arrival.
“That’s good of you,” she said, sounding like she meant it.
“He’s a good guy. I admire and respect him and the job he’s done. And I’m glad if he’s happier.”
“Thank Aisha for that,” Daria confided as they went into what they’d begun to call the Avalanche office. “Now that’s a true love match.”
“Not something I’d know much about,” he grumbled, then regretted letting the words out.
“It’s pretty obvious with them, isn’t it? Besides, I happen to know she’s loved him for years.”
“She has?”
“Since they were kids in grade school.”
Stefan’s brow furrowed. “But they’re only getting together now?” The couple had become engaged about the time he and Daria had begun to work together on this case.
“She didn’t think he loved her, and she wasn’t going to settle for less. So she made him prove he meant it. He had to make the first move.”
She said it so approvingly even he couldn’t miss it. “Obviously you agree with that.”
“Yes. Completely. She had to be sure he felt the same.”
He studied her for a moment. Told himself it not only wasn’t his business, he didn’t want to know. Because knowing more about this woman had so far only drawn him in deeper, and that spelled trouble. But the next thing he knew he was asking, anyway.
“Personal experience?” She gave him a sharp look. He put up his hands and remembered his earlier thought that this was not a woman to be crossed. “You just sounded so...positive.”
Her expression changed to something more...he wasn’t sure what. Damn, Daria was hard to figure out. “You really want to open those doors, mine and yours?”
Well, that was plain enough; if she talked about her past, she was going to ask about his. Fine with him—the bare bones of his situation were common enough, and he had it down to a sound bite. “Mine’s easy. Married, she couldn’t handle my job, divorced.”
“I notice you left out the most important part.”
He grimaced, wishing he’d never started this. “Love? I thought so. Not sure about her.”
She studied him for a long moment before she said softly, “I meant your son.”
He was glad his skin was dark enough she couldn’t see what would be, judging from the heat he felt, a flaming blush. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d blushed. Maybe in the academy over a decade ago, when he’d missed a clue so obvious he’d felt humiliated.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “Never mind. You’re right. Don’t open those doors.”
Chapter 2
Unlike at the shooting range, there was only one reason Daria was having trouble focusing on the matter at hand right now, and his name was Stefan Roberts. He’d clammed up completely the moment she’d mentioned his son. And that bothered her.
She knew Stefan’s son had just recently come to live with him full-time, but other than that he never spoke of young Samuel other than to say they’d had very little contact since the divorce and what there had been hadn’t gone well. Most parents she knew were happy to talk endlessly about their kids. Her friend Fiona, with three boys, could go on forever. Yet Stefan never mentioned doing anything with the boy, or his interests, or even his existence. So she sensed things were not going well on that front.
As if this case isn’t enough of a distraction, imagine trying to deal with it with a five-year-old at home.
She resolved to cut him some slack as they dived back into the case.
“This room,” he said rather sourly as they closed the door on the office, “is starting to look like the lair of a lunatic.”
She looked around at the whiteboards they’d wheeled in, covered now with photographs and names and locations and details, with a single, long timeline spanning them all. Those had been Stefan’s idea—he said he’d always been able to work better with as much of the case as possible right in front of him all the time. She’d found it worked well for her, too.
“I can’t argue that,” she agreed. Nor could she argue the fact that his deep, rumbly voice did crazy things to her insides. Which made no sense at all.
“Worked a serial killer case in Rockford once. He had a room in his house that looked a lot like this. Only thing missing is the spiderweb of string he had pinned up, making up his elaborate conspiracy connections.”
“Hmm,” she said, looking from board to board.
“What?”
“Just wondering if a ball of yarn might help.”
He laughed. He really did have a nice laugh to go with that deep, rumbly, sexy voice. And the rare grin that flashed with it was...well, breathtaking. “You got one around?”
“Not here,” she said. “I have a stash at home.”
He lifted a brow at her. “You hoard yarn?”
She put on her best snooty voice. “It’s not hoarding, Agent Roberts. It’s therapy.”
He gave another chuckle. “What do you do with it?”
“Knit.” He blinked. “And before you say anything derogatory, keep in mind knitting involves two very pointy tools.”
“I just...never pictured you as the knitting type.”
“What you don’t want to picture is me without it. Other people count to ten to hold on to their temper. I count stitches.”
“Point taken. Er, no pun intended.”
“Too bad,” she retorted. “It would have been a good one.”
And suddenly they were both laughing. And it was the most amazing feeling she’d had in a long time. That they could laugh amid what was going on was probably a bit macabre, but she couldn’t deny it felt good.
“Thanks,” he said. “I needed that.”
“Me, too. So, shall we get back on the merry-go-round?”
As had become habit now, they went through it all again. They’d done it so often they both had every step of the investigation practically committed to memory. But this was her first case anywhere near this magnitude, and Daria was determined to justify Trey’s faith in her.
They went over what little they had on the newest missing girl. They knew little except that she was from Denver, had been gone a week longer than expected and resembled the other victims. It wasn’t even certain yet that she was a victim of their quarry. But the resemblance was there, so they factored her in, although as of now she was in the category of “possible.”
Others were searching for her as an active missing person, and Daria sent up an earnest hope that she was found alive—and not simply because another victim would ratchet up the pressure on them.
“Blue Eyes,” Stefan muttered when they finally reached the newest bit of information they had.
“Helpful, huh?” Daria deadpanned.
“More than we had before,” he said. He turned to the laptop that was now booted up on the table in the center of the room. He tapped a couple of keys, and the recording she’d heard at least a dozen times played again. She listened to Lucy Reese, aka Bianca Rouge, tell her friend Candace—who had unexpectedly turned out to be the mother of the baby left on Fox Colton’s doorstep—that her date had passed out drunk, so she was down in the hotel bar and had connected with an older guy who was “still hot.” She had cheerfully referred to him as Blue Eyes and ended with a promise to see Candace later.
A promise she had been unable to keep.
It still gave her chills to listen to that rather ordinary message, given in such normal, even
happy tones, by a woman who would soon be dead.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that,” she said.
“Used to what?”
Sighing, she looked at Stefan. “Hearing her sound so happy and chipper. It’s still distressing to listen to, knowing what happened to her.”
“Don’t ever get used to it,” Stefan said quietly. “If you ever get to the point where you can hear that, knowing, and not be distressed, it’s time to walk away.”
She hadn’t expected that. Sometimes this man surprised her. There were depths to Stefan Roberts that he kept hidden. It occurred to her to wonder if that might be part of the problem with his son, if he kept his feelings so masked the boy didn’t know how he felt, but she quickly pushed the thought away. It was, she reminded herself again, not her business.
An hour later they exchanged a glance, and both sighed at the same moment. He gave a low chuckle. “No sense putting it off any longer.”
“Agreed. Frame by frame this time?”
He nodded. He adjusted the settings on the video player on the laptop while she grabbed the remote and turned on the flat screen. This was going to take hours upon hours, she knew, going through all relevant feeds and angles of the security video from the hotel one frame at a time, but they’d so far been unable to find anything at all, even in slow motion, and this was their last shot.
“What do you want to start with?” he asked.
“The elevator lobby,” she said. “We know Bianca at least was upstairs first.”
He nodded and called up the video. It was already at the point where they had spotted Bianca coming out of elevator two. The timing coordinated with the message she’d left Candace, which was how they’d located this moment when she had come out of the elevator after leaving her drunken, passed-out client up on the third floor.
It was slow work. By utilizing some facial recognition software Stefan had access to, they had managed to track Bianca from the elevator across the lobby. Daria felt like calling her Lucy, because that’s who she really wanted to get justice for, the girl she’d once been who had found her way into this life for reasons they hadn’t yet uncovered.
Bianca had been headed in the general direction of the bar off the main lobby, but as far as they had been able to tell, she had not appeared in any video of the bar itself. So they now set themselves to going second by second, looking at every figure in the busy lobby, as far into the background of the video as they could see. They made notes of clothing to compare with other shots, anything that looked even vaguely similar to what Bianca had been wearing.
They studied any exchanges between men and women, taking notes again on clothing and any other distinguishing characteristics, on the theory that any man in the lobby could have been the one she connected with, and that he might have tried to pick up another woman before Bianca. And just because her message to Candace had mentioned the bar didn’t necessarily mean she’d met him in there.
She and Stefan had spoken little, but she’d found it interesting. Since they couldn’t see eye color on the videos, they’d given up trying to eliminate on that basis. Especially after, when she wearily suggested they just look at blonds for a while, Stefan smiled wryly and said, “I’ve got a cousin who’s darker than I am and has the bluest eyes you’ve ever seen.”
“I was kidding,” Daria said. “But I’ll bet your cousin is striking.”
“She’s gorgeous.”
Well, that doesn’t seem fair. Two of them in the same family? She yanked herself back to the matter at hand, although her next thought grew right out of that.
“That brings up the other issue,” she said.
“You mean her description of the guy?”
Daria nodded. Bianca had referred to the man she was meeting as handsome. They’d each pointed out men in videos to look more closely at, but after a couple of startled looks at each other over their selections, they laughed again.
“I defer to your female judgment,” Stefan said with a grimace. “Obviously I have no clue.”
“Different things are attractive to different women,” she replied. “But I’m not sure that applies in Bianca’s case. For her...job, she’d be looking for the ones who perhaps couldn’t get any woman in the room with a look.”
“You mean not the glamour guys, the movie-star types?”
“I mean,” she said, risking a grin at him, “guys who don’t look like you.”
He looked taken aback. She knew it couldn’t be at her assessment of his looks—after all, the guy had to look in a mirror now and then. He had to know he was way beyond handsome. Was it that she dared to tease him?
She shrugged. “I figured we’d been working together long enough now I could rib you a little. Sorry if I was out of line.”
“I...no. I just didn’t think you...thought that.”
It was her turn to blink. “What, you didn’t think I noticed? I’m not blind, Roberts.”
He looked at her for a long, silent moment. Let his gaze slide from her head to her toes. “Neither am I,” he said softly.
And that quickly he turned it around on her. Daria’s breath jammed up in her throat. She knew she could clean up nice, and when she took the time and trouble in, say, formal wear, she was attractive enough. But on duty she was all business. She’d set her course when she’d first been hired on here four years ago, and any guy who tried to flirt with her on the job was quickly chilled by her lack of response.
She had, with some nudging from Trey, gone out a few times with one of his closest friends, fellow deputy Keith Parker. Dates that were perfectly nice but utterly lacking in chemistry. And they had both quickly agreed they were much better off as friends, especially since they had to work together.
Which did not explain why she’d said what she’d did just now. It couldn’t be simply that Stefan was from outside the department. Or that he was quite possibly the most luscious male she’d encountered in a long time, let alone spent any appreciable time with. Could it?
Since she had no answers, and couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t get her in deeper, she simply went back to work.
On and on they went. Finding nothing. Only when her back began to ache—a rare occurrence for her, since she was determinedly in tip-top shape—did Daria finally glance at the time.
“Whoa,” she said, startled.
Stefan, who had been as intent on the task as she, looked up from the screen. She guessed, by the way he blinked, then rubbed at his eyes, that they were as dry and weary as hers were.
“It’s after eight,” she said.
He blinked again, and apparently as disbelieving as she had been, glanced at his watch.
“Damn. I’ve got to make a call.”
“And I’ve got to answer a call,” she said. “I’ll be in the ladies’.”
Her way of putting it earned her another brief flash of that grin. But when she came back, there was no sign of the amused man she’d left.
“Problem?” she asked.
“Yeah. Look, I know we’ve got a long way to go yet on this stuff, but...my sitter has to leave. And I can’t leave Samuel alone.”
“I should think not,” Daria said, imagining all the trouble a five-year-old could get into left to his own devices. “So...you want to call it a night?”
“No, I don’t, not when we’ve got so much more to get through. But...look, I know it’s a lot to ask, but I’ve got a setup like this in my home office. It wouldn’t take much to pick up right where we left off there.”
Warning bells went off in Daria’s head. No way did she want to be in a nice, homey environment with this man. But as she looked at him—once she managed to stop dwelling on his strong jaw, broad shoulders and narrow hips—she realized he was more than a little frazzled. He would likely be so worried about his boy that he wouldn’t be thinking about...what she was
thinking about. And couldn’t seem to stop thinking about.
Just because you think he’s the hottest thing that’s ever walked these mountains doesn’t mean he feels the same about you, idiot. And even if he did, it would not only be inappropriate, it would be downright stupid. For you, anyway.
“Fine,” she said abruptly. “I’d like to finish this tonight.”
“Thanks,” he said, and it sounded so heartfelt she felt even sillier for her own thoughts.
And she shoved them back into that “not interested” box.
Chapter 3
Mrs. Crane couldn’t leave fast enough. After a quick report that Samuel had refused to eat dinner or quit playing his video game or go to bed, she was gone. Stefan noticed Daria looking around the house with interest, but he couldn’t read her reaction to his place in her expression. He wasn’t sure if maybe he should be glad of that.
But right now he shouldn’t be thinking about that. He shouldn’t be thinking about Daria at all, but about the rebellious kid who had landed on him. He walked over to where the boy was indeed glued to his video controller, his eyes on the screen. He didn’t even look up when Stefan came in. And not for the first time, Stefan thought he should never have hooked the system up to the big TV. He’d foolishly thought of it as a peace offering.
He walked over to the couch. “Way past your bedtime.”
The boy didn’t even look up from his game.
“Come on, Samuel. Shut it down.”
Again the boy ignored him.
“He’s almost to the big castle. He can’t stop now.” Stefan turned to stare at Daria. Even Samuel looked up, startled. “Watch out, there’s a zombie!” she warned the boy, who quickly went back to the game, and with a couple of button presses, the stiffly walking, sickly-green creature was gone.
“Nicely done,” Daria said. “Now, when you get to the castle wall, it’s time to come have something to eat before bed. Got it?”
“Yeah,” Samuel said, focused on the game but still responding.
And to Stefan’s shock, when the game seemed to pause at the foot of a soaring stone wall, Samuel closed it and put down the controller.
Colton's Secret Investigation Page 2