Cruel Grace: Cowboy Justice Association (Serials and Stalkers Book 5)

by Olivia Jaymes

  Everything in her world had come down to the two of them at this place in time. Nothing else existed or mattered. They were the last two people on earth.

  She could feel his muscles tightening as she teetered on the edge of the cliff, their bodies moving in perfect harmony. Her nails dug into his back as he changed angles slightly, and it was just what she needed to send her over the edge. Brightly colored lights flashed in front of her eyes and the room spun as her climax took control. Heat flooded her limbs as Eli reached his peak as well, his body shuddering above hers.

  When it was over they were both still, their breathing still ragged, the scent of their lovemaking hanging in the air. She ran her hands up his damp back to where his hair curled slightly at the nape of his neck. Eli pressed an open-mouthed kiss on her shoulder before rolling onto his back, taking her with him. He tucked her into his side, holding her close so they were touching as much as possible.

  Charlie wanted to say something…anything…but she didn’t know what. It had been so much more than just sex between them. It had been like a homecoming even when both of them were a thousand miles from home. It was as if she belonged with him.

  She’d been right. Everything was different now. She didn’t have to say anything, and he didn’t have to either. She could feel it as if it were as real as the bed or the pillows.

  She had no regrets at all.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It hadn’t been easy to get out of a warm, comfortable bed this morning especially when Eli was in it with Charlie. He could have easily lazed around for hours with her, but they didn’t have that luxury. They’d awoken early, showered and dressed, hitting the road as quickly as possible after eating a hasty breakfast. The drive back had been uneventful, the morning bright and clear. He turned onto the road where their rental house was located, and he immediately slowed down. Up ahead were several fire trucks along with a police car.

  “Wow, there must have been a fire,” Charlie said, craning her neck to get a better view. “I can see the smoke.”

  As Eli drove closer he had a better view of what was going on. His fingers tightened on the steering wheel, the knuckles turning white as the acid in his gut churned, making breakfast suddenly seem like a bad idea.

  “It’s our house,” Charlie said, distress in her tone. She’d unclipped her seatbelt and was practically climbing over him to get a better view. “That’s what burned down.”

  “Easy, honey.” He placed his arm out and gently guided her back into her seat. “Stay put until I park the car.”

  “Eli, the house is burned down.”

  It was burned down to the ground. Nothing left but a pile of smoldering ashes. A group of neighbors had gathered behind a barricade, and Eli immediately recognized a friendly face. He parked the car a few houses down, not wanting to be in the way of the fire trucks.

  “Jackson is here.”

  “Who’s Jackson?”

  “Jackson Kenner. He’s a colleague. Jared must have sent him to help.”

  Charlie pushed open the passenger side door. “Maybe he can help us find a place to sleep tonight.”

  Eli gave Jackson a wave and the other man slipped through the crowd to meet them.

  “I only got here about an hour ago,” Jackson said, shaking Charlie’s hand after Eli introduced them. “I drove here figuring you’d still be driving back from Chicago but thought I could catch a few hours of sleep before you arrived.”

  “You don’t have a key,” Charlie said, her brows pinched together. “You wouldn’t have been able to get it.”

  Jackson grinned. “I have the key code. Jared gave it to me. Please tell me that you took all of your stuff with you to Chicago and didn’t leave anything here.”

  “We did,” Eli confirmed. The acrid smell of smoke permeated the air, burning his eyes and throat. “Just in case we needed to stay longer. So yes, I’m relieved.”

  “The most important thing is that you both weren’t here.”

  That statement echoed Eli’s thoughts exactly.

  Charlie’s gaze darted between the two men. “You don’t think this was an accident?”

  “It would be an amazing coincidence,” Eli finally said when Jackson didn’t reply. “There is barely anything left of the house. My gut is saying that this fire was intentionally set.”

  Charlie sighed and rubbed at her temples. “I know that you’re right, but I wish you weren’t. Because if you are, then someone tried to burn us alive.”

  “Or they knew you were out of town and this is to send a message,” Jackson said. “To scare you.”

  “I think they already tried to do that,” Eli said, quickly recounting what had happened at the hotel last night.

  “They certainly had ample time to drive here from Chicago after the door incident,” Jackson said. “It’s probably the same person.”

  “We need to talk to whomever is in charge here,” Eli said. “Find out what they know. Charlie, why don’t you go back to the car? The smoke out here is terrible.”

  For a moment, he thought she was going to argue but then she nodded.

  “It is. Should I work on finding us a new rental home?”

  “I called the office. They’re already working on it. We should hear something anytime now,” Jackson said.

  “Then I’ll try to call Dana,” Charlie replied. “Catch her up on what’s been happening.”

  Eli watched as she walked back to the vehicle, before turning his attention to Jackson.

  “I’m glad you’re here. I’m going to need help protecting Charlie.”

  Jackson’s brows rose. “How about you? You don’t think you need protecting, too?”

  “I’m fine. If they’re after anyone, it would be Charlie.”

  His friend shook his head. “Not so fast there. You’re the threatening one, not her. You’re the one that can solve this case. And you must be going in the right direction because someone is either trying to scare you or kill you. I think I’ll try to protect both of you while I’m here.”

  The only thing that Eli cared about was keeping Charlie safe. After last night, she’d become the most important person in his life.

  He’d do whatever it took to protect her.

  All three of them ended up at a cafe in the downtown area for lunch. The office had procured them a new place to stay but they couldn’t get into it until two o’clock, so they figured they might as well eat and regroup. Eli wanted to discuss next steps with Jackson so they could divide and conquer. He had a feeling, though, that the other man was going to be difficult about it, wanting to keep watch over them so they didn’t end up dead.

  A state that Eli had no intention of being in any time soon.

  After they ordered, Charlie went straight to business.

  “What do we do now?”

  At the fire location they’d been stymied at every turn. The fire chief hadn’t wanted to discuss the details of the fire with a “civilian” that wasn’t the owner of the home. Then Eli had tried to call his police contact Detective McCann but had received a strange runaround instead of answers. All Eli wanted to know was whether they’d gathered any surveillance video of the street from the neighbors. If they had, he wanted to see it and compare it to the hotel footage.

  “Whenever I’m stuck on an investigation,” Eli said. “I go back to the beginning and review everything. Where was everyone? What was their alibi? Did they have motive? Opportunity? What, if any, forensics do we have? Then I listen to what my intuition is telling me and follow that lead.”

  Jackson leaned back in his chair. “Let’s just cut to the chase then. What’s your intuition telling you right this minute?”

  “Will Cagney is at the top of my suspect list,” Eli admitted. “But I’m still eyeing the parents as well. Their behavior when they found out that we were reopening the case was strange to say the least, and Kendra’s relationship with them was rocky. I’m leaning toward Cagney, but I can’t discount the parents. Or maybe one of the parents,
and the other is covering for them.”

  Jackson was pinching his lower lip, his expression somber. “I’d like to take a deep dive into some of the other crimes happening around that time. Not just murders, but sexual assaults as well, either near the mall or on campus.”

  “You think it was an assault gone wrong?” Charlie asked.

  “I think it’s a possibility,” Jackson admitted. “I don’t see any premeditation here. She died from blunt force trauma to the head. He didn’t even have a weapon, at least not one that he used. That to me suggests that he might not have been planning to kill her.”

  “There wasn’t any sign of sexual assault,” Eli reminded him.

  “Maybe she fought back hard, and he didn’t get around to it?” Jackson suggested. “It’s just a theory. I’m here to help you but I think looking for similar crimes might be one road to go down.”

  “It can’t hurt,” Eli replied. “I did have Jared pull murders but I didn’t see anything that caught my eye. Maybe expanding to sexual assaults will bear some fruit. At this point, we need to leave no stone unturned. I’ve been trying to put together Kendra’s last day, but frankly, it’s impossible. No one knows exactly what she did in the hours leading up to her death.”

  Jackson nodded knowingly. “And without that… It’s damn hard to figure out what happened to her.”

  Charlie was looking far more glum than she had when they first arrived. All this talk of the investigation was clearly getting to her.

  “We’re going to everything we can to figure this case out,” Eli said to her, placing his hand on hers. Her fingers were cold despite the warm weather. She tried to give him a brave smile but he could see she was losing hope. “We know more now than we knew only a few days ago.”

  Charlie shook her head and reached for her water glass. “What do we know? That he wants to scare us?”

  “We know that he wears Gucci shoes,” Eli said. “We know that he’s scared and panicking. We know that he sees us as a threat to the status quo. It also means that he’s not in jail for another crime. If Jackson finds a similar sexual assault, we can rule anyone out that’s serving a sentence currently.”

  “You keep saying he,” Jackson observed. “I know there’s a DNA sample. Do we know that it’s a male?”

  Eli shook his head. “The crime lab has the DNA sample, but they haven’t released the sex of the perpetrator. I have no idea why, and it’s frustrating as hell. Jared has been working on them, but for some reason that detail was sealed.”

  “The autopsy was skimpy on details as well,” Jackson said. “For a murder investigation, I expected more, to be honest.”

  “It was abysmal,” Eli agreed. “I put it down to this being a small town and not having the resources or knowledge of better.”

  “No offense but you guys aren’t making this sound any happier,” Charlie said. “It doesn’t sound like we have a snowball’s chance in hell of solving this.”

  Eli didn’t get a chance to reply, his attention captured by a familiar figure sitting down at a nearby table.

  Detective McCann. Just the man that Eli had been trying to talk to.

  “It looks like our luck has changed,” he said, rising from his chair. “That’s the detective that I was calling this morning. I’ll just talk to him here. Excuse me for a minute.”

  McCann was opening his menu when Eli stepped into his line of sight.

  “Detective, I’m glad to see you. I’m sorry to interrupt your lunch but I need to talk to you. I left a few messages for you today. I was hoping to talk to you about a fire at our rental home. I wanted to see if the police had managed to get any surveillance video from the neighbors.”

  The formerly affable detective appeared uncomfortable, fidgeting in his chair and smoothing down his tie.

  “Right, I did see your messages. I can’t really comment on an ongoing investigation.”

  “That investigation is about whether that fire was an accident or someone was trying to kill us.”

  McCann’s gaze darted around the cafe as if he was looking for a quick exit.

  “I know that you’ll understand that I just can’t comment on it. If we need to ask you any questions, we’ll call you.”

  In other words…don’t call us, we’ll call you.

  Elli had officially been given the brush off. Talking to McCann was a waste of time. He didn’t say anything else, simply turning and going back to Charlie and Jackson. When he sat down, Charlie glanced at him and then over at the detective.

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. He said that he couldn’t comment on an ongoing investigation.”

  “I thought you said he was helpful.”

  “He was. A few days ago. Now, not so much.”

  Jackson’s gaze followed theirs to the detective sitting alone at the table.

  “Do you think someone got to him?”

  “I don’t know what to think. What I do know is that we can’t depend on any local help with this case or keeping Charlie safe. We’re on our own.”

  Honestly? That’s the way Eli preferred it. This way he knew whom he could trust and whom he couldn’t.

  That was handy knowledge to have when the chips were down.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Eli had stepped away from the table to take a call from his boss, leaving Charlie chatting to Jackson. So far, she’d found him to be funny and engaging, with a quick wit. She’d also noticed that he seemed to always be on alert, always aware of his surroundings.

  “Do you think I’m in danger?”

  Jackson appeared startled by her question, but then he began to smile. “Yes, I do. Did you expect me to lie to you?”

  “No, I actually wanted the truth. Do you think Eli is in danger as well?”

  “Yes, I do. He’s a threat because he’s damn good at his job, and he just might solve this case against all of the odds.”

  “The odds are stacked against us, aren’t they?”

  “They are,” he agreed. “I wouldn’t kid you about that. Cold cases are notoriously difficult to solve. The first forty-eight hours after a murder are the most important, and from the looks of the police file they frittered those away and did practically nothing. They sure as hell didn’t make it easy.”

  “The original detective thought that Kendra had gotten what she deserved.”

  “No one deserves to be murdered in cold blood.”

  Charlie didn’t reply to Jackson, her attention captured by two people just across the street. It appeared to be Julian and his intern Heather. They’d just walked out of the bakery and Heather was holding out something - a cookie or pastry - and Julian was playfully eating from her hand. Their bodies were close and…intimate.

  Jackson’s gaze followed hers. “Do you know them?”

  “I know him. That’s Julian. He and I lived in the same apartment building all those years ago. He knew Kendra, too.”

  She couldn’t seem to look away from the couple. Julian had brushed a stray strand of hair from Heather’s cheek, and the teenager was currently looking up adoringly.

  “You don’t look to happy about seeing your old friend,” Jackson observed.

  That was true. Her first instinct had been to wave at him, but then she’d seen that he wasn’t alone.

  “I’m just surprised to see him.”

  “Who is she?”

  There was a tone in Jackson’s voice that told her that he was well aware of her discomfort. He was as good at reading people as Eli.

  “His intern.”

  Jackson’s brows rose. “His…intern?”

  “His teenage intern. He calls himself her mentor.”

  Jackson sat back in his chair. “I have a feeling you aren’t buying that.”

  “I did.”

  “But you don’t now?”

  She looked over at Julian again. This time the two of them looked more normal, standing farther apart.

  Did I imagine it? Maybe I’m overreacting.
>
  “I’m sure it’s all quite innocent,” she finally said, watching the two people walk away, down the block. “I was just surprised to see them together.”

  “There’s certainly no law about buying and eating a pastry,” Jackson agreed. “You don’t think there’s more going on there?”

  She dragged her gaze away from Julian’s figure as he turned the corner and was out of sight.

  “Do you?”

  Chuckling, Jackson shook his head. “Hell, I don’t even know the guy. Never met him. But he and his…intern did look friendly. Maybe he’s a father figure to her.”

  “That’s certainly possible. They’re probably just close friends. He has a very active intern program at his law firm. He has a plaque on his wall that they gave him in appreciation.”

  “There you go then,” Jackson said with a grin. “He probably takes a personal interest in their lives. Some parents don’t. They need a strong and loving adult to help them into the grown-up world.”

  “You sound like you might have personal experience with that.”

  Jackson laughed, his blue eyes sparkling. “Who me? Not at all. I had a wonderful childhood. I was the youngest of six and spoiled rotten.”

  “The youngest of six?”

  He held up his hand, his fingers splayed. “Five sisters.”

  “Wow, that must have been…”

  She wasn’t sure what to say.

  “It was pink. Very pink. There are pictures of me as a toddler where my sisters dressed me up in frilly girl clothes surrounded by oceans of dolls and Barbies.”

  “I see that your taste in clothes has changed since then.”

  Jackson was wearing blue jeans and a light blue button down.

  “I pick out my own clothes these days, but I’m secure enough in my manhood to wear pink if the occasion calls for it. A buddy of mine got married a few years ago and the bride wanted the groom and his men to wear pink bow ties and cummerbunds. I was fine with it, but a few of the guys threw a tantrum.”

  “Who won?”

  “The bride, of course. Knowing my friend, I expect that she wins most of them.”