by Julie Miller
There were uniformed police officers in the background, along with men and women and cameras and heated side discussions. But there was not one mention of the threat that had been made against Kate.
Boone’s eyes were fixed on the cool blonde facing the crowd, answering questions from other reporters at a KCPD press conference. Dr. Kate Kilpatrick looked as beautifully sophisticated and composed as he remembered. Her serene facade and articulate words were no doubt a reassuring panacea for a city living in fear. But he was drawn to the darting focus of her moss-colored eyes. The movement was subtle, but he’d seen her furtive glances more than once in the past few minutes. It was as though she was on guard against an off-camera threat.
Did she have reason to be afraid? Had she received another sick message painted in blood? Had there been another type of communication from the Rose Red Rapist? Was there some other man she clung to like a lifeline when her emotions broke through those barriers of self-control and overwhelmed her?
That classy composure had gone right out the window that night in the parking garage. He hadn’t had a woman hold on to him that tightly since...hell, he’d never known a woman so desperate to hold on to someone. It was like Dr. Kate had two settings—the I’ve-got-it-all-under-control ice queen and the passionate, compassionate firebrand that he suspected came out only under such dire circumstances.
Flint leaned a hip against Boone’s desk and sat back to watch the end of the broadcast. “Is that the lady you were talking about? The police psychologist who cleared the red tape for you with KCPD?”
“Yep.”
“She’s been on the news before, talking about the attacks. I can see why they’d put her on camera. She’s a looker.”
Boone rolled his gaze up to his deputy. “She’s the task force’s press liaison. And a trained criminal profiler. She knows what she’s talking about.”
“Maybe she’s good. But she’s not doing us any favors.” Flint arched a golden brow with skepticism. “Has she called you with any updates? Like finding the man who gave Janie that ring you mentioned?”
“Nope. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess.”
Although the sweet-smelling psychologist with the cool reserve and passionate grip had never been far from his mind these past few days. Had the woman just been playing him the same way she was working those reporters? Promising phone calls? Keeping him in the loop? Or had that been her assignment the day he’d gone to K.C. to bring his sister home? Do or say whatever it took to get that bullheaded country boy out of KCPD’s hair.
If Kate Kilpatrick thought some heavy conversations and a few touches would get rid of him, then she and the entire task force were mistaken. He’d cleared his schedule for a week—and was prepared to take a sabbatical from his duties as sheriff if necessary—in order to get back to the city and track down the answers he needed. If they decided to cooperate with his investigation, Boone would allow it. But if they got in the way of finding Janie’s killer—or tried to distract him with the good doctor again—then cooperation was off the table.
“Shall we head out?” Flint stood as soon as the news story ended and Boone turned off the TV. “Colt, Shane and Lucas are waiting for you outside.”
Hearing his brothers’ names reminded Boone of his immediate responsibilities. The four Harrison men had weathered a lot of ups and downs together throughout their lives. Their bond of blood and friendship made them each stronger. They’d need that strength today.
“Is everything ready?” Boone asked.
Flint nodded. “The traffic’s been cleared off the courthouse square, and I lined up a couple of the off-duty guys to lead the procession out to the cemetery following the service. I put the word out, too, that everyone was welcome out at the ranch for potluck and reminiscing.”
Good. Just how Boone had ordered it for today. After three days of rain had swept through nearly all of Missouri, he’d even gotten the sunny skies he’d wanted for Janie’s sake.
There was really only one thing wrong with the way things were running in Grangeport today.
“Come on, boss.” Flint put on his hat and headed for the door. “We’ve got a funeral to go to.”
Boone nodded. He checked the gun at his waist, straightened his tie and grabbed his hat off the coatrack beside the door. Then he headed outside to greet the dark-haired man wearing a bolo tie and business suit.
“Colt.” He shook his next oldest brother’s hand and pulled him in for a hug. As they separated, Boone looked beyond him to the frail woman waiting in a truck beside the curb. “Will Sally be able to make it today?”
Colt’s wife had been battling cancer for several months. He turned and winked at the blonde, who blew Boone a kiss. “She’s tired, but she’s having a pretty good day. She probably won’t be able to make the reception, but she insisted on attending the service.”
Boone tipped his hat to his sister-in-law. “Good. That would have meant a lot to Janie. It means a lot to me, too.”
“I don’t think I could get through today without her.” Colt’s chest heaved with a deep sigh. “I’m not sure how I’m going to get through any day without her.”
Boone squeezed his brother’s arm. “She’s got good doctors, Colt. We’ll just keep praying.”
“I finally got the rug rats settled down.” Shane Harrison, the third-born son of the family, joined them on the sidewalk in front of the sheriff’s office. More lawyer than cowboy, the single dad nonetheless wore a Stetson that he pulled off to warn his ten-year-old son back into his truck to keep an eye on his younger sisters. “If they’re not being ornery, they’re crying. I don’t think they’ve quite grasped that ‘Aunt Jane’s gone’ means they won’t see her again.”
Boone offered Shane a wry grin. “If you figure out how to explain it to them, then you can explain it to me.”
Shane opened his arms to exchange a hug. “That’s one answer I don’t have. All I want to do is wrap them up in a hug and protect them from days like this.”
Lucas, the Harrison clan’s youngest brother, strode up to the gathering. “Any word on who’s responsible for today yet, Boone?” The tallest and biggest of them, Lucas wrapped each of them in a bear hug. A cop in the nearby college town of Columbia, Missouri, he, too, wore a gun and badge like his oldest brother. “I can’t tell you how bad I want to shoot something today.”
Assuming the mantle of family leadership as he had since their parents’ deaths, Boone tried to calm his youngest brother’s temper as well as offer the strength and reassurance they all needed. “I’m working on it, Lucas. KCPD is going to give us answers. We’ll see justice done. I guarantee it.” He swept his gaze around the strong circle of family. “But today we need to focus on Janie. And on all the friends and loved ones who are going to miss her, too.”
“Not a problem,” Colt assured him.
“Whatever you say, big brother,” Shane agreed.
Lucas made them all smile again. “But tomorrow we kick somebody’s butt, right?”
“I kick somebody’s butt,” Boone clarified, giving his youngest brother a teasing swat to the shoulder. “Let’s do this. Let’s honor Janie.”
They each headed to their respective trucks to get the procession to the church started. The service and reception afterward were just formalities to appease their guests.
As far as Boone was concerned, Janie couldn’t really be laid to rest until he had the man who’d murdered her behind bars. Or lying in a grave of his own.
* * *
SPENCER MONTGOMERY PULLED IN behind the long row of vehicles lining the drive up to Boone Harrison’s ranch. “I need you to work your magic on Sheriff Harrison again, Kate.”
“My magic?” She’d spent fewer than twenty-four hours with the small-town sheriff, yet in that short time she’d argued with him, reasoned with him, consoled him...and kissed him. Sounded more like out-of-control craziness rather than any kind of magic.
But bless Spencer Montgomery’s sensible soul. He hadn’t been t
alking about any male-female vibe she’d felt with Boone. “You’ve got a way of reading people, even on their worst of days. I need you to put those profiling skills to work and get these people to open up and tell us about the victim.”
“Worst of days,” she echoed, thinking back to the day she’d buried her husband, and how the day had been as much about painful gossip and feeling like a fool as it had been about grief. She’d been asked a lot of questions that day, too.
“Did you know Brad had a heart condition? That he had a mistress?”
“Do you think she made him take that performance pill?”
“You must be devastated, finding out this way that your husband had been lying to you for months. How do you feel?”
“And she was a good friend?”
“Poor thing. What are you going to do?”
She’d picked up the tattered remains of her heart and pride, grown a lot wiser, and poured herself into her career.
“Has to be done.” Spencer turned off the engine and pocketed his keys.
Kate wished she could turn off her concerns as easily. The setting might be different, the tragedy these friends and family would be talking about was different, but a lot of the scene here in the countryside west of Grangeport felt familiar. She glanced around at the groups of people gathered near different cars, the children climbing over a fence and running to a swing set and fort to play. There were elderly women carrying casserole dishes up to the broad front porch that wrapped around the log and stone house where Boone lived.
She spotted him immediately at the top of the porch steps, along with three other similarly dark-haired men she guessed to be younger brothers, shaking hands and trading hugs with the guests attending this reception. The necessary armor that had gotten her through Brad’s funeral and the career she’d devoted herself to softened as her heart went out to Boone and his family. “As a counseling psychologist, and not a profiler, I’m rethinking the wisdom of this idea. It looks like the entire population of Grangeport is here. They need time to mourn.”
“We don’t have the luxury of time with this guy. So far, all our leads have taken us to crackpots and dead ends.” Spencer reminded her why they’d driven two and a half hours from Kansas City. “There has to be someone Jane Harrison was close enough to that she shared her secrets—a brother, a friend. The longer it takes us to find out who she was having that affair with, the more time we’re giving our rapist to blend back in with society and fall completely off our radar until he strikes again.”
Kate nodded, sharing another grim truth. “And now that his violence has escalated to murder, we need to catch him while his nerves are still a little unsettled by what he’s done—before he decides he can get an even bigger rush of power from killing his victims.”
Spencer adjusted the dark lenses of his sunglasses over his pale eyes and opened the car door. “I don’t want our investigation to turn into a search for a serial killer. Been there, done that.”
Kate knew the toll that working the Rich Girl Killer case over the last couple of years had taken on the typically unflappable Detective Montgomery. He’d solved the crimes, and a SWAT team had taken out the killer when he’d gone after Spencer’s star witness. And while the notoriety of the detective’s success on painstakingly difficult investigations like the RGK murders had gotten him the appointment to lead the task force, Kate knew from confidential meetings as counselor and client that there was a lot of damage eating away at the soul beneath his unemotional exterior.
“Me, either.” Understanding that victims and their families weren’t the only ones who benefitted from a speedy resolution to a crime, Kate unfastened her seat belt. “Let’s do this and then leave these people alone to grieve.”
Kate tensed at the familiar ding-dong of her phone alerting her to an incoming text message. There were a lot of people—clients, coworkers, friends—who might send her a text. But she had three days’ worth of reasons she wanted to ignore the summons. But with Detective Montgomery waiting patiently for her to check it, and an unpleasant task waiting to be completed as quickly as possible, Kate inhaled a soft breath and opened her phone.
I’m coming for you, Kate. To silence your lies. You’ll never catch me.
Kate’s blood chilled in her veins.
“Is that another one from him?” Spencer asked.
He’d seen the vandalism of her car, and the message that had been left for her in some poor cat’s blood. The task force was also monitoring the strange reports and vague threats coming in through KCPD’s anonymous tip line. The task force knew she’d been contacted via text message by someone they suspected could be the killer. But no one knew how many texts and calls she’d been receiving on her personal phone every time her image appeared on TV or in the newspaper. Annie Hermann’s lab had determined the personal calls had come from an untraceable, prepaid cell. Since Kate’s name was listed as the public contact person on the task force’s investigation, there was no way of knowing if the threats were coming from one person, or if she was being vilified as the scapegoat for frightened citizens who only wanted to feel safe again.
She could relate.
“No.” Kate snapped her phone shut and tucked it into her coat pocket.
“Kate.” Spencer wasn’t buying the lie.
She confirmed his suspicion. “Let’s get this over with and find Jane Harrison’s killer. Then the threats will stop.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Her doubts set aside by the needs of the case, and her fear put on hold behind a smile, Kate opened her door and stepped outside into the crisp, sunny air. As if drawn by a magnet, her gaze sought out Boone again. But the pull of a magnet worked both ways, and an unexpected shiver of awareness danced across her skin when she saw that Boone’s eyes were already focused on her. Despite the bustle of activity between them, he’d noticed her arrival.
Had he noticed the fear that made her tremble the way she had that night in the parking garage, too?
Kate hesitated for a moment, snared by the probing depth of his focus on her. She couldn’t remember her own husband ever being so attuned to her presence, able to make her feel like she was the most important woman in the room, or—a couple carrying a sleeping toddler walked past, diverting her attention—like she was the only face in a crowd that mattered.
It was a heady, warming—uncomfortable—feeling, considering the day and the details about his sister she needed to share. Secrets had nearly ruined Kate’s life. She couldn’t imagine they’d be any easier for Boone and his family to learn about, either.
“Shall we?” Spencer asked, tapping the roof of the car and snagging her attention away from Boone. “I’ll keep my distance, since Harrison likes to butt heads. Maybe I can find some local residents who are willing to talk to me. But I need you to talk to the family.”
“Of course.”
With Kate’s first step, the heel of her navy blue pump sank into the mud and sucked the shoe right off her foot. Not a good omen for the success of this visit. But she was nothing if not professional. A little cool mud between her toes and an anonymous threat on her cell phone wouldn’t keep her from doing her job—even if she did feel as if she had Fish Out of Water stamped on her forehead. Boone had been the odd man out that day in Kansas City, but it hadn’t stopped him from relentlessly pursuing the truth, coming to her rescue and giving her a memorable kiss. With nary a high-rise in sight or a smooth sidewalk to traverse, Kate was far from familiar territory. But she wouldn’t let the awkwardness she felt inside keep her from doing right by the woman whose life these people were celebrating here today.
Spencer had joined a gathering of sheriff’s deputies, and Kate’s shoes were ruined by the time she reached the steps below Boone on the porch. A young deputy with sun-bleached hair nudged Boone and inclined his head toward her. “Boss.”
Boone spared a moment to make eye contact and tip the brim of his hat, but he wanted to finish a conversation with the couple in front of him f
irst. “Irene.” He leaned in to trade a light hug with the slender brunette. “I’m glad you drove in from St. Louis.”
The woman caught Boone’s fingers and squeezed them between hers. “I’m so sorry, Boone. I know you and I parted ways some time ago, but Janie was my friend. She was such an outgoing, talented girl. I’ll miss her.”
Kate watched him extricate his fingers from the woman’s grip. “We all will.” He reached around her to shake the shorter man’s hand. “Fletcher. Thanks for coming.”
“I feel like I knew your sister, since Irene talks about your family.” He glanced around at Boone’s brothers. “There’s the muscle, and the brain, and the quiet one. You’re the leader. I guess that made your sister the good-lookin’ one.” The man named Fletcher laughed, but when Boone didn’t join in, he sobered up. “I meant that as a compliment. Losing her is a real tragedy.”
“Yep.” Boone stretched his arm down the steps toward Kate, inviting her to join them. “Dr. Kate? There’s someone I want you to meet. This is my ex-wife, Irene, and her husband, Fletcher Mayne.”
Awkward was the word of the day as Boone’s fingers folded around hers and he pulled her up to his side and dropped his arm behind her, aligning them together as friends, or, perhaps, even a couple. But the introductions had stopped, and the fingers pinching the nip of her waist reminded her of all the well-wishers she’d endured at Brad’s funeral. Kate covered the silence by holding out her hand. “I’m Kate Kilpatrick. I’m a...friend of Boone’s.”
Irene seemed slightly taken aback, but by what, Kate wasn’t sure. “Really. You’re a doctor?”
Was the woman checking out her clothes?
“She lives in K.C.,” Boone added.