They’d died the same day Seymour had.
* * *
“You need to get a phone line,” Ali said the next morning when Grant opened his front door to find her once again standing on the porch.
He squinted. The sky was still clear overhead and the sunlight was sharp, particularly after a night spent inside a bottle. “What for?”
“So a person can reach you. Obviously.” She gave him a knowing look and, without waiting for an invitation, brushed past him to come inside. “A straightforward telephone line isn’t too expensive,” she said. “As long as you don’t get any bells and whistles—like voice mail, caller ID. That sort of thing. Everyone around here has landlines. Pretty much have to.”
Her hair was up in that god-awful knot, but she wasn’t wearing her uniform, which he assumed meant she wasn’t on duty. Either she recently had been or would be soon. She was wearing jeans and a puffy red coat that ended just shy enough of her hips that a man—if he was looking—could seriously appreciate the glory of her jean-clad butt.
He told himself not to look. And, of course, he did.
He fastened a few of the buttons on the shirt he’d yanked on when she’d started pounding on his door. “What’re you doing here, Officer?”
“Lord, it’s hot in here. How do you stand it?” She peeled out of her coat and dropped it on the couch. The thermal shirt she wore hugged her lithe torso like a lover. And he’d have bet his left hand that there wasn’t a thing separating her skin from that clinging gray waffle weave.
“Yeah, well, two days ago, it was freezing in here. If I have to pick a poison, I’ll take the hot. Now, what—”
“I got a hit on the missing persons.” She lifted her hand, forestalling him. “A woman named Karen Cooper was picked up last night during a drug raid in Seattle. She answers the general description—” Ali broke off when he shook his head.
“It’s not her.”
“Well—” she spread her palms “—have you turned psychic or do you have information I don’t?”
“She’s not into drugs. That’s not Karen’s thing at all. She likes to drink.”
“Looks to me like she’s not the only one,” she murmured, picking up the empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s lying on the floor next to the couch he’d finally gotten around to unwrapping. She watched him steadily with her big brown eyes. “Pardon me, but weren’t you the one to tell me it’s been nearly three years since you last had any contact with her? I’m sure you know that a lot can happen in three years.” Again without invitation, she went into his kitchen, taking the bottle with her.
A lot could happen in three days. Or five. Which was how many days it had been since Ali had knocked her way into his life.
It seemed longer.
“Wow. Fast work. Did you put in the cupboards yourself?”
He joined her just in time to see her drop the bottle in the trash can under the sink. The work had only been fast because he wasn’t sleeping more than a couple hours at a stretch and that left a lot of hours on the clock to fill.
“Yeah.”
“Nice.” She ran her hand over the butcher-block countertop he’d also added. She smiled. “If you ever get bored, I know the owners of a Victorian who need some real help.”
He would have returned her smile if his head wasn’t ready to explode. “Karen wouldn’t pick up drugs.”
“Like she wouldn’t leave her baby on someone’s doorstep? In the middle of winter? With just a note?”
Point taken.
He pulled out one of the chairs at the table and winced when it screeched against the floor. He sat and scrubbed his hands down his face, pressing the heels of his palms into his eye sockets. “Seattle.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
He heard her moving around and dropped his hands to see that she’d pulled a can of coffee out of the pantry cupboard. “That can is probably twenty years old.”
She peeled off the plastic top and showed it to him. “Never been opened. And it’s—” she rolled the can in her hands, looking at the label “—only a couple years old.” She looked around. “And I don’t exactly see a coffeemaker or coffee pods sitting around anywhere.”
He got up and pulled a jar off the top of the fridge. He set it beside her. “Because I’ve been using instant.”
“Instant!” She looked from the jar to him.
“Don’t give me that look. It’s not a ticket-worthy offense. I get the real stuff when I drive into Weaver.” As the crow flew, the ranch was closer to Braden than it was to Weaver. But it took less time to drive to the smaller town than it did to get into Braden. “There’s a diner there I like. Great coffee. Great rolls. They remind me of the ones my mom used to make.”
She nodded. “Gotta be talking about Ruby’s.”
“You know it, then.”
She smiled wryly and continued opening his cupboards and drawers as if she belonged there. She wouldn’t find much. They were more empty than not. What they did contain he’d either found stored in one of the boxes in the barn, or he’d purchased at Shop World in Weaver. “I was born and raised in Braden. I know every nook and cranny in this town and in Weaver.” She paused, then pulled an ivory card out of a drawer along with a cheap metal spoon. “This important?”
It was the invitation from Claudia Reid.
He shook his head and Ali shrugged, then set it on the counter before picking right back up where she’d left off. “Used to be what one town didn’t possess, the other usually did. Now, Weaver’s been growing so much what with Cee-Vid’s plant being there, that it’s going to be bigger than Braden before long.”
“Cee-Vid.” He reached out and yanked the cord on the metal blinds hanging in the window over the table until they lowered, sort of. Half of the narrow slats were bent out of shape, and no amount of tugging on the cord got the blinds to hang evenly. He gave up and sat back in his seat. “That’s the video gaming deal?” He’d driven by the large complex on the edge of Weaver. “Weird place for the company to be located if you ask me. Not exactly Tech Valley here.”
“Cee-Vid makes more than just video games.” She gave him a look. “They always have a job opening or two.” She waited a beat as if expecting a response, but continued when he gave none. “And the company’s located in Weaver because the founder is from Weaver. His son—who just so happens to be one of my cousins—is married to the lady who owns Ruby’s.” She’d found one of the barn-rescued saucepans and started filling it with water. “But the diner’s been there since before I was born. People drive from all over to get Tabby’s sticky cinnamon rolls, just like they do to get Josephine’s liver and onions.” She turned off the water and set the pan on the stove, cranking up the flame beneath it.
Then she turned to face him, leaned against the stove and folded her arms. “The clerk I talked to in Seattle is going to send me the mug shot when Karen’s through processing. I didn’t get it by the time my shift ended or I’d have printed it and brought it out here with me.”
He looked at the cat clock on the wall. “It’s nine in the morning.”
“I worked graveyard last night.”
“How long have you been with the department?”
She looked surprised by the question. “Almost ten years. And before you say anything, I know. I should be a detective by now.”
He raised his hands in surrender. “I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“You were thinking it, though.”
He gave her a long look. “Trust me, Officer Ali. You don’t want to know what I’m thinking.”
She shifted suddenly, turning to jiggle the handle of the pan, as if that would somehow make the water heat faster.
His eyes drifted from the dark strands of hair that had broken free from the knot and rested against the pale skin of her neck, down the length of her spine to her backside.
He’d
rather think about anything besides Karen. Or Chelsea. But there was a baby to think about who hadn’t asked for any of this. “My ex-wife told me she wired money to Karen about six months ago. She was in Montana. I’ve got the phone number where she was staying.” He’d waited for an hour out at that sweet spot on the highway before the ping of Chelsea’s text message had come through. Had he not hung up on her first, he figured she wouldn’t have waited all that time just to tell him that she was still looking for the address. “If she finds the address, she’ll let me know.”
“That’s great!” Ali turned off the flame and took a clean spoon and mug out of the drainer that he’d bought at Shop World. “Even with just a phone number, we can look into it. If it’s not Karen in Seattle—”
“It won’t be.” Despite everything, he refused to think otherwise. “Spoon the coffee into the cup first. Then add the water. Dissolves better.” He got up and retrieved the pencil stub and the notepad he’d been using to keep lists of all the crap that needed repair and wrote out the phone number on the bottom of a sheet and tore it off.
“You’re quite the instant-coffee aficionado.” She twisted off the lid of the jar and spooned a measure into one of the mugs. “Look about right?”
“Little more.” He gave her the slip and went back to sit at the table.
She didn’t even glance at the number before sliding it into the back pocket of her jeans. Then she tipped some more of the grounds into the cup. “Teach you the fine art of instant-coffee making in cooking school?”
“Afghanistan.” He shrugged when her gaze flew to his. “Air force.”
“Is that why you fell out of contact with—”
“No.”
She waited, her gaze steady.
“I got out nearly six years ago.”
“Were you a pilot?”
“Combat controller.”
“First There,” she murmured. He saw the way her gaze slid to the ivory card sitting on the counter. The lettering was black and somber. At the top, there was a cross with an eagle over the center and the words For Valor printed on a scroll beneath it. “I’ll bet you have some stories to tell.”
He wasn’t touching that with a ten-foot pole.
There was no secret that First There was the CCT motto. But in his experience, it wasn’t exactly common vernacular for an ordinary citizen. For that matter, most people didn’t even know what a combat controller was. “Your daddy serve? Brother?” He waited a beat. “Boyfriend?”
She shook her head, then immediately backpedaled. “Well, my dad was US Army. But that was a long time ago. And my brother, Archer, was never interested. He was too busy becoming Clarence Darrow.” She set down the jar and picked up the pan, pouring water into the mug and then stirring it.
“He’s a lawyer?”
She handed him the mug, nodding. “So’s Greer. She’s with the public defender’s office. He’s in private practice. Has offices here and Colorado.”
“And Maddie’s a social worker.”
She’d started opening cupboards again, and soon found the jumble of old mugs and new plastic cups. “With a highfalutin psychology degree. Not quite as highfalutin as Hayley’s, but close.” She managed to extract a mug without sending the whole mess tumbling.
“Hayley’s—”
“My oldest sister. Half sister, actually. She’s a psychologist. Has a practice in Weaver.” Ali didn’t bother using the spoon to scoop grounds into the cup this time, just poured straight from the jar. “There’s Arch, then Hayley, then Greer and Maddie and me.”
“The triplets.”
She lifted her eyebrows slightly, but didn’t question how he knew that. “Hayley and Arch had a different mom,” she went on as if he hadn’t said a word. “She died before my dad met my mom.”
Meredith. The woman with the wild hair and the blonde baby on her hip.
The baby that could be his niece.
He didn’t want to think about that, either.
“And you’re the cop,” he said.
She focused on pouring water over the grounds and nodded. “Right.” Then she stirred the coffee and lifted it to her mouth. “Hmm. Better than the stuff we have at the department, but that’s all I’ll say about it.”
“It’s hot and it’s caffeine. That’s enough for me.” He’d had plenty of days when his only java came out of his MRE. He pushed one of the other chairs out with his foot and she sat. “How do you know about CCT?”
“I wanted to enlist out of high school.” She grimaced. “Both my parents nearly had strokes. We struck a bargain, though. I had to put in two years of college and if I still wanted to go after that, they wouldn’t try to stop me.”
“Two years was enough to change your mind.”
“Well, I still would have gone.” She finally lifted her gaze to his. “College was so not my thing. But by then, the BPD was making a concerted effort to add some women to their ranks and by some miracle, I got in. My parents still weren’t thrilled, but at least I was sticking close to home.” She sipped the coffee again, narrowing her eyes against what he himself had already discovered was its blistering heat. “Now, I can’t imagine being anywhere else.”
“Itchy feet gone?”
“Totally. Braden may be small and pretty simple, but there’s no place else on this earth I want to be.”
“Doesn’t seem like the department did a great job finding many female officers, though.”
“There’ve been a few others over the years. But nobody local. Nobody who wanted to stay. Sheriff’s department has the same problem. Both organizations actively recruit woman, but—” She shook her head, shrugging. “Unfortunately, it gives the impression that neither is an equal opportunity outfit.”
She propped her elbows on the table, cupping the mug between her hands. “How about you? Don’t have much in the way of airports around here needing an air-traffic controller.” She studied him. “And for some reason you don’t strike me as a natural-born rancher.”
Combat controllers were certified FAA air-traffic controllers. They just generally did their work in downright crummy environments, rather than from a well-equipped airport control tower. They were more than just comm specialists. More than weapons specialists and more than demo. They were the air-to-ground liaisons, establishing assault zones and airfields, calling in air strikes and controlling flights, targeting IEDs and manning artillery pieces, and doing it ahead of everyone else so they could do their jobs. In Grant’s case, he’d done it alongside Seymour’s Special Forces unit. If Sey wasn’t watching Grant’s back, then Grant was watching Sey’s.
And now Seymour was dead.
“I know you bought this place nearly a decade ago.” Ali’s voice drew him out of his thoughts. It was easier facing the frank curiosity in her eyes than it was to think about Seymour. “But as far as I can tell, you didn’t do a single thing with the property. Why did you buy it in the first place? We’re a long way away to get noticed by a Portland boy. And I get you were on deployment, but you just said you got out several years ago. So why are you only moving here now?”
He hadn’t been a boy in a long damn time. “You’re full of questions.”
“And yet you’re not real full of answers. Did you get a settlement from your military service or something? Independently wealthy?” She gestured at the cabinets. “You told me you weren’t quite destitute, but stuff like this costs money and as far as I can tell, you don’t seem to have a source for any.”
“Maybe I charged it all on my credit card that wouldn’t work the other day.”
“Did you?”
It should have been easy enough to just tell her about CCT Rules. But he couldn’t make himself do it. Because if he did, he knew everything would change.
He didn’t want her to start looking at him differently. Expecting him to be the so-called hero the bio on his book ja
ckets described when he knew he was anything but.
So he said nothing at all. “I’m not a suspect in any crime, am I?”
She raised her eyebrows slightly. “Of course not.”
“Then a man’s got a right to his privacy, Officer Ali.”
“Very true, Mr. Cooper.” But the expression in her eyes was openly speculative. With her compact little body and her dark, dark eyes, she was nothing at all like the usual women he went for. They were tall Nordic types, both before Chelsea—who’d fit that description to a T—and after her.
Now, here was this short, skinny, nosy cop with a spectacular butt and shining brown eyes. And he was pretty sure he’d never been more attracted to a woman.
He exhaled roughly. “You’re right. I’m not a rancher. I’m a—” Writer who can’t write.
Her eyebrows rose a little more, disappearing beneath the messy bangs. “Yes?”
He drained the bitter, searing coffee. “A guy who bought up a ranch.” He was definitely not a hero, couldn’t even tell the truth when he wanted. “It was cheap. And it used to be owned by my grandparents.”
Chapter Seven
His grandparents?
Ali studied Grant’s closed expression. “The Carmodys were your grandparents?”
“My natural grandparents,” he said, as if that explained everything. Considering the discontented twist of his handsome lips, though, she had the feeling that there was a lot more to his story.
And while she was intensely intrigued, there was still the pressing matter of Layla. The baby’s welfare had to take precedence. Ali had been so excited to share the news about the hit in Seattle, that she hadn’t thought much beyond getting here and telling him. Now that she’d done so, what was next?
“Would you be able to come by the department so you can ID the Karen from Seattle to see if it’s your sister?”
“She won’t be.” He pushed to his feet. “But I’ll come just to prove I’m right.” He went to the narrow stairs on the far side of the refrigerator and started climbing. “I need a shower first.”
She did not need the mental image that announcement conjured. “I, uh—” She had to actually clear a knot in her throat. “Do you want me to wait for you?”
Show Me a Hero Page 8