by Julie Miller
“Do you want to find Janie’s killer?”
“Yes. But I don’t want to lose anyone else in the process. I don’t even like that you were here at the house by yourself.”
Now the ice princess was back. She twisted her wrists from his grip and straightened the cuffs of her blouse. “Fortunately, it’s not your call to make, since you’re not part of the task force.”
She wanted to go there again? He was the one losing the good people in his life. Boone Harrison wasn’t about to go down without a fight—be it against a violent killer or the ice-cold logic of a woman whose passion and vulnerability were turning him inside out. “Get your shoes and coat on.” He pulled his gun and badge out of the drawer where he’d stashed them and turned toward the mudroom to get his boots. “I’m taking you to Montgomery and we’re going to discuss exactly what kind of dangerous mind game you’re playing.”
* * *
KATE DIDN’T KNOW if it was the pinch of her shrunken shoes, the noise from the jukebox and chatter of the bar or the black-haired cowboy arguing every statement she made that was giving her such a splitting headache.
“Let’s take this outside,” Spencer Montgomery ordered. She doubted that line dancing and country music were the lead detective’s taste in evening entertainment, but he seemed to have no problem siding with Boone and reprimanding her about the text messages.
As the small town’s sheriff, Boone apparently enjoyed the privilege of parking his truck wherever he wanted, so he’d pulled up onto the sidewalk just outside the front entrance.
As soon as the door to Nettie’s closed behind them, there was a blessed reprieve to the decibel level of the noise pounding in Kate’s ears. But there was no reprieve in the two-against-one standoff between her and the unlikely alliance of Boone and Spencer.
“How many of these messages have you received?” Spencer asked.
“Eight and counting,” Boone answered before she could get a word in.
“Do you mind?” she countered, sensing she’d have a far better chance of reasoning her plan out with Spencer than with Boone.
Especially in the chaotically emotional state he seemed stuck in ever since that make-out session on his kitchen table that she’d foolishly let get out of hand, Kate wasn’t so naive to think she’d had no part in how far things had gone. Between his seductive kisses and the hushed confessions they’d shared that had somehow brought them closer, and the bruised ego that truly wanted to believe that a mature, virile man like Boone was into her, she’d let all common sense go out the window. She’d done exactly as he’d asked, turning off the cautious intellect that had saved her from any hurt or humiliation since Brad’s death, and simply felt the moment.
But she was tired, the headache was throbbing against her skull, and the chance to catch five minutes of quiet time to herself wasn’t going to happen here. Maybe Boone could think and function in the midst of emotional turmoil, but she needed to step back and discuss things rationally.
She concentrated on Spencer’s cool gray eyes and on the sensible man she knew him to be. “He’s contacted me after each of the daily press conferences, and after Gabriel Knight’s and Rebecca Cartwright’s articles in the Kansas City Journal. And there have been two today since this morning’s press conference.”
Spencer asked to see her cell phone again. “You told me there’d only been a couple of calls. Has there been any physical escalation to these threats beyond the vandalism of your car? Have you had the sense that anyone is following you?”
Did the bullish sheriff pacing behind her count? “No. Only the texts.”
The detective scrolled through the eight messages again. “All variations on the same theme. You’re sure this is related to the investigation, and isn’t something personal?”
“It’s damn personal,” Boone insisted, stopping at her shoulder.
“But is it a warning to the task force or to Kate specifically?”
She caught her breath at the heat radiating off Boone as he leaned in. “Have you gotten any messages that threaten to silence you?”
Spencer handed back her phone and Kate tucked it into the pocket of her coat. “And we’re sure the number is untraceable?”
“Annie already checked it out. They’re from different disposable cell phones.”
“So they could be from more than one person.”
“Or from someone who’s smarter than you. You need to take her off this investigation, Montgomery,” Boone advised. “Or at least put someone else in the public relations spotlight.”
“That’s exactly what you shouldn’t do.” Kate flattened her hand in the middle of Boone’s unyielding chest and nudged him back a step. “Think about this guy’s profile, Spencer. I’m the perfect bait to smoke him out. I’m the enemy he preys on personified. He’s made a connection to me before we’ve been able to nail down a connection to him. If he wants to come after me, then let him.”
“Doc!”
She turned to include both men in her argument, feeling a twinge of guilt at the grim lines of strain that had returned to deepen the grooves beside Boone’s eyes. “How many women has he already hurt? How many innocent women like your sister have to pay the price for his sickness? It needs to stop.” She turned back to her colleague. “People are afraid, Spencer. And I have the means to do something about it. If he fixates on me, he’ll break the pattern. He’ll make a mistake. Then we can catch the Rose Red Rapist and put him away for good.”
“She’s crazy,” Boone muttered.
“It’s a good idea, though.” Spencer, at least, could see the merit in taking advantage of the rapist’s newfound obsession with her. “From a police procedural perspective.”
“Damn good one,” Boone agreed.
“Really?” Kate was stunned to hear Boone’s support.
Or not. “Logically. On paper it may be a good idea.” His eyes were unreadable pools of darkness in the shadows cast by the brim of his hat. “Doesn’t mean I like it. This guy may never act on these threats. He doesn’t confront women—he abducts them in the middle of the night when no one’s looking. You can’t put her in danger like that.”
Kate wanted to reach out to Boone to ease the tension she heard in his tone. But she suspected a reassuring touch wouldn’t be welcome right now, so she stuffed her hands into the deep pockets of her coat, instead. “It’s not your decision, Boone.”
“I know. I’m not a member of the task force. You’re not my jurisdiction.” His sardonic tone chafed against her ears and made her wish she didn’t care quite so much about disappointing him. Or worrying him. Or...just how much did she care about Boone Harrison and what he felt about her?
“She’s handled you okay,” Spencer pointed out.
“Yeah, but I’m one of the good guys.” A tipsy couple came out of the bar and stumbled past them. Boone made eye contact with them long enough to warn them away from the car they were headed to. Only after the man doffed him a salute and the couple walked on down the street instead of driving, did Boone resume the argument. “I have the same goal as your task force—to solve Janie’s murder and get this guy off the streets. He’s not interested in helping you solve the crimes.”
Spencer, at least, was beginning to see the possibilities of the offer she’d made to serve as bait for the Rose Red Rapist. “You’d need twenty-four-hour protection, Kate. And you don’t even carry a gun.”
“Because I’m not a cop. I only work with them. But I do know how to use a gun.”
He nodded. “You’d better start carrying.”
She’d need to spend some time on the practice range, too, to refresh her skills. But she’d probably feel safer with her department-issued Glock in her purse, too. “All right.”
“Hold on,” Boone protested. “You mean you’re actually considering this?”
Kate wasn’t feeling particularly victorious at the moment. Boone was right. Logically, developing this relationship with the Rose Red Rapist in an effort to draw him out of hiding
made good sense. But one woman had already died. Others had suffered terribly at his hands. This was not just a patient she was trying to help to open up and reveal himself. If the threats did become physical, she doubted she’d be able to talk him out of hurting her. Not for long, at any rate.
And could she trust that backup would be there to save her if talking didn’t work?
Spencer understood the seriousness of what she was proposing. He wouldn’t take advantage of the danger she’d be in just for the sake of solving the case. “We’ll have to make at least one protection detail undercover. Too many uniforms around you will drive the unsub off the radar, and you’d be risking your life for nothing.”
“She’ll have her protection.”
Kate tilted her head at the matter-of-fact tone in Boone’s voice. He was serious. “I didn’t ask you to help with this.”
But Spencer seemed to like the idea. “Are you volunteering, cowboy?”
“Wait a minute.” Kate wasn’t sure who she was arguing with now. “I can’t have him around 24/7.”
“I thought you two liked each other.”
“We do,” Boone insisted.
“Makes sense, then. If the two of you are a couple, it wouldn’t look out of place to see you together.”
Kate’s face felt fiery hot. “We’re not a couple. He’ll get in the way of the investigation. He’s...distracting.”
“I’ve never met a more focused woman than you, Kate.” Spencer’s compliment was meant to encourage her, but her resolve to take on the difficult task of taunting the Rose Red Rapist out of his comfort zone was wilting beneath the conditions being put on her. “Of course, we’ll keep pursuing the forensic angle. If we get a lock on this guy’s phone or he finds another means of communication we can trace, we’ll go after him. But for now I want you to continue following up any leads you have and running the press conferences. Let’s put him on the defensive for a change. And someone from the task force, a uniformed officer, or the sheriff here will be watching out for him—”
“And watching over her,” Boone added.
“—around the clock.” Spencer turned his eyes to Boone. “Can you keep her safe?”
“Yep.”
“Then welcome to the team.” Spencer shook Boone’s hand, then held on to make a point. “Strictly as a consultant. You’ll still be out of your jurisdiction, Harrison. So no solo investigation, understood?”
“Understood. I guess I’m heading back to the big city.” Boone tipped his hat back on his head, letting the illumination from the streetlamp reveal the promise in his eyes. “Wherever the doc goes, I go.”
Chapter Seven
“This is never going to work.”
“You can always change your mind,” Boone suggested, loosely gripping the steering wheel of his truck as he eased them off the highway into Kansas City’s late-night traffic.
“I’m talking about you being here, not the plan.”
Kate picked up her purse from the floor of Boone’s truck as soon as he turned into the relatively new subdivision where her house was located on the northern edge of the city. She opened the bag and fished for her keys. Getting used to carrying her bag and gun with her everywhere would be an adjustment. Her life seemed to move much more efficiently when she locked up her purse for the day and carried the necessities like keys, lipstick and phone in her pockets.
Once the keys were in hand, she leaned back into the oversize dimensions of the truck’s velour seat. “I talk and listen to people all day long. It’s emotionally draining. I need some down time at the end of the day—quiet time, alone time. How am I supposed to recover for the next day’s work if you’re here?”
“You won’t even know I’m around.”
She rolled her eyes doubtfully and pointed out the next turn.
“I can sleep on the couch or out in my truck if that’s the way you want it.”
“I do.” She thought that offer sounded a little too good to be true.
“But you’re not moving from one location to another without me driving you. And if it gets too quiet or I don’t have a direct line of sight to you, I’m coming to check it out.”
Kate groaned. Since Boone had come into her world just a few short days ago, her life had been more of an emotional roller coaster than anything she’d experienced after Brad’s death. She’d carefully reconstructed her daily routine after losing her husband. It was how she coped. “Do you have any idea how much I need my alone time?”
“Who took a ride out into the countryside to get away from it all for an hour or so this evening?” She felt his attention sweep over her before he glanced at the dashboard clock and returned his eyes to the road. “Make that yesterday evening.”
The luminous clock said it was nearly two in the morning. And she was feeling every long hour she’d been awake. “But you had the chance to be alone with your horse, or whatever you were doing, and ‘decompress,’ like you said. How am I supposed to decompress if you’re shadowing me all the time?”
“I can teach you how to ride.”
Kate snorted at the joke.
“Were you always this much of a control freak, Kate? Or did your husband’s cheating do that to you?”
She hugged her purse in front of her, bristling at his questions. “I’m not going to answer that.”
“You don’t have to.” He pulled off his Stetson and dropped it onto the seat between them. Then he scrubbed his fingers along his scalp, indicating that he was feeling the fatigue of the long day, too. “I may not have the Ph.D. after my name, but I can figure people out. You are a passionate, giving, spontaneous woman when you drop the body armor.”
“One ill-advised kiss in your kitchen because I let my hormones get away from me—”
“That’s what made it so special, so hot. You weren’t thinking things through. You were feeling, reacting, trusting your instincts instead of your brain. You wanted me. I wanted you. It was that simple.” He pulled up to a stop sign and waited. His eyes were dark and focused and daring her to argue his point when he looked over at her this time. “You may know how to profile people, Doc, but you don’t always understand them. Take this crazy idea you’ve got about ‘developing a relationship’ with that Rose Red bastard. You’re thinking logically. But he isn’t. He doesn’t care about the plan, and I doubt he’ll follow it. He’s going to react. Be unpredictable. That’s your mistake.” He turned his eyes back to the road and pulled out. “Not all of us think things through as carefully as you do, Doc. Don’t be fooled into thinking he will.”
They rode the rest of the way in silence until Kate pointed out her bungalow. “You can pull into the drive...way.”
She grabbed the dash and sat up straight when she saw the garage door standing partway open.
Boone saw it, too. The sudden alertness radiating off his body and filling up the cab of the truck only increased the uneasy suspicion she felt. “Is it broken?” he asked. “Did you leave it that way?”
“It was closed when Spencer picked me up this morning.”
He shifted the truck into Reverse and backed out of the driveway. He drove around the block and pulled up to the house more slowly this time. “Do you recognize the cars around here?”
“It’s too dark to see all of them. But of the ones I can make out, yes, they’re my neighbors’.”
“It may be nothing. The city has had a lot of rain, too, and sometimes all that moisture can mess with the automatic sensors.” This time Boone swung around parallel to the curb and parked on the street. Was he anticipating the need to make a quick getaway?
“Wait here a sec.” He put his hat back on his head, adjusted the front of his jacket to reveal the official uniform he’d changed into before leaving Grangeport, and pulled his gun from his holster. “I’ll check it out.”
So he didn’t really suspect a faulty sensor in her automatic garage door opener, either. Kate crushed the straps of her purse in her fingers and watched him approach the half-open garage. The
only light on the house was over the front porch steps. But there was enough muted light from the nearest streetlamp to see him flatten his back against the siding, tilt his head to listen for sound, and then, with his gun clutched between both hands, duck beneath the hanging door and disappear into the darkness of her garage.
She wasn’t aware of holding her breath and counting off the seconds until she reached five. And then her brain finally kicked in over her fear. Boone had gone in there without backup, and the soft leather crushed between her fingers reminded her that her gun was locked up inside the house.
If someone had broken in... If that someone was still there, and he’d found her gun... Boone could be walking into an ambush. An ambush meant for her.
Her purse was on the floor and Kate was out the door. After one step, she stopped to pull off her heels so she wouldn’t make any noise on the concrete driveway and walk, and give her approach away. She set one shoe down on the ground and turned the other one around in her fist to use the mud-caked heel as a weapon if necessary.
Kate moved as quickly and silently as she’d seen Boone do, changing course at the last second, thinking that sticking to the light of the front porch would be smarter than following him directly into the unknown darkness of the garage. Ignoring the chill on her bare feet, she crept up the front steps and pulled out the key. She was reaching for the lock when the interior door swung open.
Her startled yelp was punctuated by the storm door smacking into her shoulder. She lost the shoe, lost the keys, lost her balance as a figure dressed in dark colors from head to toe charged out the door and barreled into her.
Kate and the faceless intruder toppled over the edge of the porch and tumbled down together, hitting the edge of every step with a bruising thud.
Dizzy, aching, Kate had the presence of mind to latch on to her attacker, to cushion the crashing fall. When they rolled to a stop, Kate was pinned beneath him. But he wasn’t attacking her at all. He was scrambling to his knees, struggling to get away.