When she realized it was that sense of family she was feeling, she suddenly found the last of her fries very interesting and stared downward as if she were counting them.
“I can’t get over the change in him,” Stefan said after he’d gotten the boy back into the car.
“He’s already feeling more secure.”
“And you did it in a little over three days.”
“I didn’t do it all,” she protested. “So did you. He’s starting to believe that you want him here.” She hesitated, then went ahead. “You’ve changed, too, with him. You’re not quite as tense, and he senses that.”
“Thank you for that, too,” he said, and there was so much sincerity in his voice, she couldn’t stop the warmth that bubbled up inside her.
When they reached the sheriff’s office so she could pick up her car, Sam looked around with interest.
“Is this where you work?” he asked Daria.
“It is. And where your dad works for now.”
“On the ’lanche killer,” Sam answered knowingly.
She felt rather than saw Stefan tense. Slowly he turned to look at the boy.
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Casey said Daria was going to catch him,” Sam said, sounding rather blasé. “Can I go inside and see?”
It took her a moment to get past little Casey Alvarez’s complete faith to say, “It would be pretty boring after your exciting day.”
“But I wanna see where you work.”
She glanced at Stefan then, questioningly. He tilted his head and let out a breath in that “I hate to ask, but...” kind of way.
“I could give him the quick tour,” she said.
“Please, Dad?”
Something changed in Stefan’s expression then, and she wondered if he had ever heard such a normal, wheedling request from his son.
“All right,” Stefan said, “but only because you asked nicely.”
Surprise then thoughtfulness flickered across the boy’s face, and when they got out of the car, before he opened the back door for his son, Daria looked at Stefan across the roof of the car. “Speaking of nicely, nicely done,” she said. “That registered.”
“Even as a brand-new shooter, I hit the target now and then,” he said with a wry smile, clearly referring to her earlier reassurances.
“In six months it will be like he’s been here forever, and you’ll have a happy, well-adjusted kid on your hands.”
“Can I get that in writing?”
She grinned back at him, but as he opened the door to lean in and unstrap Sam from the booster seat, it faded away. Because now that they knew who they were after, she had every confidence they would wrap up this case in short order.
And once they did that, Stefan—and Sam—would be gone.
Chapter 18
Not for the first time in his career, Stefan felt a jab of impatience on Sunday. He felt as if they were treading water, when he wanted to be powering full speed ahead. Especially now that there was another potential victim, who might—however tiny the chance was—still be alive.
They knew who the Avalanche Killer was now, and it was just a matter of finding him. They knew Curtis Shruggs had been at work at The Lodge as recently as Wednesday—the three days since were mostly a mystery. The blood at the house, in that obscene little room with the cage, was fresh enough for them to say it was likely he’d been there with the girl sometime in those three days. Yet none of the neighbors had seen or heard him. Or her.
But then, they universally said, they rarely did see Shruggs. They’d all tended to think of him as a hard worker, because he left for The Lodge early and came home late. He was more likely to be seen by the garbagemen, one woman had joked, clearly unaware of what all the fuss was about. But Stefan had made a mental note to check with the waste-management company and whoever handled this route. Who knows what they might have glimpsed in the man’s trash? At least they wouldn’t need a warrant for that.
It all came back to not knowing enough about their quarry to even begin to predict what he might do. And so far, no one they talked to had been much help.
Feeling restless, he began pacing his living room. He stopped a couple of times to look at the room, mentally comparing it to the warm, welcoming feeling of the Alvarez place. Realized that not only did it not feel kid-friendly, it didn’t feel particularly friendly to him. And suddenly he wanted to clear it all out and start over.
He heard the clump-clump of Sam running down the hallway. He turned, and the boy skidded to a halt and looked at him warily. He tried to think, to imagine of what Daria would say.
Talk to him, Stefan, not at him. And more important, listen to what he says.
“Hey, you’re just in time. I need your help,” he said.
Sam looked startled. “Me?”
“Yeah.” He gestured around the room. “I’m thinking all this stuff—well, most of it, not the TV—needs to go away.”
Sam looked around rather cautiously. “Go where?”
“Anywhere but here. I’m thinking we need some stuff like the Alvarezes have, where a guy can put his feet up and watch TV or play a video game without worrying about it.”
He wasn’t sure if it was the video game mention or the we that did it, but the wariness vanished. And in its place came a small smile that bolstered Stefan’s hope for a future with his son.
“Or maybe even a different place,” he said. “Someplace with a bigger yard to play in.”
Sam’s eyes widened. Then he looked thoughtful. “Daria said her house has a big yard. We could move there.”
If the boy had kicked him in the gut, he couldn’t have driven the breath out of him any more completely. The easily spoken we—had it really only taken him saying it?—was enough, but the innocent suggestion that they simply move in with Daria not only stole his breath but made it hard to remember how to get it back.
He struggled for something, anything to say. The best he could do, after a gasping moment, was, “You haven’t even seen her place.”
“But it sounds cool. And Daria wouldn’t lie,” Sam added with a childlike certainty Stefan envied.
“No,” he agreed quietly. “No, she wouldn’t.”
He was still pondering his son’s more-than-accurate assessment of his temporary partner when his phone chimed, alerting him to a text coming in. He walked over to the kitchen counter where it was, swiped the screen and for a moment just stood staring at the name. Because, as if conjured up by Sam’s cogent assessment, it was Daria.
But then he read it and found himself smiling.
“Hey, Sam?”
“What?”
“Daria says the wapiti are on the golf course right now.”
The boy ran over, instantly excited. “They are?”
He held the phone out to his son, who stared at the photo Daria had sent. “Wow!”
Driven by a few impulses at once, he said, “You want to go see them?”
Sam’s eyes got even wider. “For real?”
“If you can get your shoes and your heavy jacket on in the next three minutes. I don’t know how long they’ll stick around.”
The boy didn’t even answer but ran for his room. Stefan was smiling as he texted Daria back and she answered. Because even if the elk headed back to the hills, Daria would wait for them there.
As it turned out, the majestic animals stayed, seemingly unconcerned—or unimpressed—by the humans who were gawking at them mere yards away. By the time they arrived, there were ten or so people in various spots along the golf course, pointing and taking pictures.
“Do you suppose they know there won’t be golfers out because of the snow?” Daria asked Sam as he excitedly exclaimed at the size of the animals.
The boy took her question very seriously. And after a moment of thought, he nodded. “Prob�
��ly. ’Cause they live here.”
“I’ll bet you’re right,” Daria said, and Sam gave her that beaming smile. Then he looked back at the small herd, brow furrowed as he made some gestures with his fingers.
“Thanks for thinking to text us,” Stefan told her. “I’ve been here for a while, and I’ve never seen them like this.”
She smiled at him, nearly as widely as Sam had grinned at her, and Stefan had that same breathless feeling he’d had before. Damn, this woman got to him, in ways he didn’t fully understand. They’d been working side by side for months now, and he’d been fighting it from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her. And sometimes, despite all his best efforts, he wanted nothing more than to grab her, whisk her off somewhere private and find out if the chemistry between them was truly as explosive as he thought it would be.
“There’s ’leven of them!” Sam exclaimed, and Stefan suddenly understood what the boy’s hand motions had been.
“Good counting,” Daria said. “Now, can you find the leader of the herd?”
“The leader?”
“The boss. He looks different than the others.”
“Oh!” Sam exalted. “The one with the...the...” Failing to find the word he wanted, the boy put his hands to his head in a descriptive gesture.
“Antlers,” Stefan told him. “And he is a big one, isn’t he?”
“Yeah,” the boy said.
“Where were you off to this morning, that you ended up here?” he asked Daria as Sam went back to watching the herd.
“Nowhere in particular,” she said. “I just wanted to get out of the house. Quit pacing, actually.”
“I know the feeling,” he muttered.
“It’s so hard to be so close and yet be able to only tread water because we don’t know enough.”
“Maybe the new door to door will turn something up,” he stated. “Somebody who wasn’t home before might know something.”
“Maybe.”
He noticed Sam had moved a little closer to the elk. Which put him on the edge of the rather steep slope that led from the pavement down to the course itself.
“Hey, buddy,” he called out. “Watch the edge.”
Sam looked down, as if he hadn’t noticed how close he was or how far the drop was. He swayed, and Stefan moved so quickly Sam looked startled. He wobbled just before Stefan got there and grabbed his hand.
“Don’t want to scare them off,” Daria said to Sam as she got to them. “They’re calm now, but if we get too close, that boss elk will show you why he’s the boss.”
Sam laughed at the way she said it, and the startled look vanished.
And when they walked back toward the pavement, the boy reached up and took Daria’s hand with his.
It was such a simple, natural thing, walking along with his son between them, hanging on to both their hands. But Stefan had that same sense of breathlessness for the third time this morning. And when he finally worked up the courage to look over at Daria, the soft expression on her face and the warm glow in her golden eyes made him feel something he didn’t even have a name for.
Sam was chattering away about the elk, but Stefan barely registered what he was saying. At least, until the boy interrupted himself.
“And—hey! Look!”
Stefan turned to see the Alvarez family piling out of a large SUV that had pulled up a few yards away from where he and Daria were parked.
“I texted them, too,” she explained. “They like having the boys see the local wildlife.”
“Hey, you three,” Fiona called out cheerfully, waving toward the herd of elk. “Beautiful, aren’t they?”
They chatted while the boys greeted each other and excitedly watched the big animals. Since he and Daria couldn’t talk about their work, they chatted about other things, and he learned that she and Fiona had both once tried skiing and had quickly decided it wasn’t for them, but that Daria had somewhat of a knack for ice-skating. Now that he would like to see someday. He could just imagine her, graceful and beautiful, sliding across the ice.
“We’re off to go sledding at the big hill,” Fiona said when the boys finally started to get restless with just standing and watching the grazing animals.
Sam’s head came around. “Sledding?”
“Yeah,” Casey, the oldest boy, said excitedly. “There’s this really cool place we go, at the bottom of the mountain. It’s a lot bigger than our little hill at home, so you can go really fast. Dad found it.”
As he started to tell Sam all about it, Miguel stepped up to say to Stefan, “Sam’s welcome to join us, if that would be all right. This will probably be the last chance with this snow, it’s melting so fast.”
“That’s very kind of you.”
“The boys would love it. They really liked him.”
Stefan smiled at that. “I’m glad. More than you know.”
“We would have called and suggested it, but we know you’re so busy with this awful case,” Fiona said.
He didn’t want to admit they were not at a dead end but helplessly immobilized temporarily, so instead he looked at his son.
“Sam? The Alvarezes have very nicely asked if you’d like to go sledding with them.”
The boy’s dark eyes widened. “Really? Can I?”
Stefan couldn’t stop himself from smiling at the boy’s hopeful expression. “I think it would be all right.”
“And he can stay and have dinner with us, too,” Miguel said. “We’re having spaghetti, and Fiona always makes a ton.”
“Because my boys eat a ton,” Fiona said with a teasing grin at her husband. “You can have him back about seven, since it’s a school night.”
There were a few more minutes of scrambling and making arrangements, and then they were gone, Sam so enthused he was practically dancing.
“It’s good to see him so happy, isn’t it?” Daria asked.
It was way better than good. It was something he’d been afraid he would never see. And in less than a week, Daria had accomplished this.
Miracle worker was the only description that came to mind.
Chapter 19
“They’re amazing people,” Stefan said, watching the Alvarezes drive off.
“They are. They live for those boys.”
“That’s like my folks were. I never really appreciated it until Sam was born, how their lives revolved around us kids.”
Daria was silent, and when he looked at her, she was gazing out over the golf course again, but not toward the elk. In fact, she looked as if she were a million miles away. “Good parents,” she murmured.
It hit him then. Her mother. He instinctively reached out, took her arm and turned her to face him. “You know she did what she thought would be best for you,” he said quietly. “She knew she couldn’t take care of you the way she wanted you to be taken care of.”
Surprise flickered in her eyes for an instant. But then she smiled, a soft, gentle curve of those lips that sent heat rocketing through him.
“You’re a perceptive man, Stefan Roberts.”
“I...thank you.” He didn’t know what else to say.
“No, thank you. If not for your help, I would have never known. I wouldn’t even have known what she looked like.”
He knew Daria meant the old driver’s license for Ava Bloom he’d gotten for her, which showed a young woman with lovely features, whose daughter was nearly a carbon copy of her—only Daria’s skin tone was lighter.
He heard her let out an audible breath before she said what he’d guessed had to have been the most crucial question to her. “I would have always wondered why she gave me up.”
“I’m sorry she had to,” he said. “I wish...”
She looked at him as he trailed off awkwardly. “You wish what?”
“That everybody could have had my parents.”
>
She smiled at him again, brighter this time. “I don’t even have to meet them to bet the world would be a better place if everybody could have.”
He had a sudden vision of that meeting happening, of introducing Daria to his parents. Speaking of bets, he’d make a sizable one that they’d like her. There was no snobbery about her, even though she had as much reason as some of the snootier sorts they’d encountered on this case.
Perhaps that’s why she never mentioned the connection she had to the Coltons; it wouldn’t surprise him at all that she purposely avoided it. Daria was a woman who had made it on her own. That’s why his parents would both like and appreciate her. He’d kind of skipped that step with Leah—they hadn’t met her until after their whirlwind courtship and elopement, and when they had, they’d been welcoming but reserved.
Because they knew what you’d gotten yourself into. That’s what you get for not letting them vet her first.
But Daria... Daria was what his mother called good to the bone. He was certain of it, in a way he’d never even thought about with Leah. And he knew his parents would see that. He truly could picture it—
He gave himself a sharp mental shake. What the hell was with him? Imagining taking her home to Mom and Dad? When they hadn’t done...anything more than that single impulsive hug?
They hadn’t even really discussed this powerful pull between them.
Or maybe it’s only you that feels it, Roberts. Ever think of that?
He didn’t want to believe that. Which sounded childish to him even as he thought it.
“Stefan?”
He snapped back to the present. And was immediately irritated with himself. He wasn’t usually given to mental meandering. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I was thinking about...my parents.”
“They’ll be here soon,” she said.
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