Don't Look

by Alexandra Ivy

  “I should have gone to the funeral,” she apologized.

  “It was a simple graveside service.” Kir shrugged, careful not to offer blame or forgiveness.

  Kathy could wrestle with her own conscience. God knew he was having enough trouble dealing with his own.

  As if sensing his dark thoughts, she squared her shoulders. “Why am I here?”

  “It’s downstairs.” Kir stepped toward the nearby door and pulled it open.

  He could sense the sheriff ’s impatience as they maneuvered the narrow wooden stairs to enter the musty basement.

  “Well?” she asked.

  Kir pointed toward the center of the floor. “Someone broke into the house and destroyed my father’s safe.”

  Kathy crossed to stand next to the safe, studying the door that had been pried off its hinges. “Did this happen while you were here?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure when it happened. It was like this when I came down to see if there was anything that needed to be packed away.”

  Kir skirted the truth. He didn’t want to reveal that Lynne had been with him. He hadn’t liked Kathy’s parting shot when she’d left the clinic. As if she suspected Lynne or her employee of being involved in something nefarious.

  Perhaps even in the deaths of the two women.

  “What did your dad keep in here?” Kathy glanced around the basement, which was covered in several layers of dust.

  “His service revolver.”

  As expected, his words captured the sheriff ’s complete attention. “Damn. You’re sure it was in there?”

  “No, but that’s where he usually locked it away, and I haven’t seen it anywhere else in the house.”

  “I’ll look up the registration and get it put in the system as a stolen weapon.” She was all business as she moved to study the small window that offered a potential way into the basement. “Anything else he kept in there? Money? Prescriptions?”

  “The letters,” Kir said without hesitation.

  Kathy turned back to face him. “Letters?”

  “The ones my dad received from the serial killer.”

  Anger smoldered in her eyes. “You can’t be serious?”

  “I’ve never been more serious.”

  Swearing beneath her breath, Kathy stomped toward the stairs. “I’ll write up a report on the theft of the gun.”

  Kir hastily moved to stand in her path. Probably not the smartest decision, considering she was carrying a weapon. “What if the letters are related to the current murders?” he suggested.

  “They aren’t.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  Her square face looked as hard as a stone. “They aren’t.”

  Kir folded his arms over his chest. Rudolf used to say that his deputy was as stubborn as a mule, but this went beyond stubborn. It was deliberate avoidance of potential evidence. “Did you ever read them?” he demanded.

  She paused, her gaze flicking toward the nearby stairs. Was she considering whether to simply walk away? Then, clenching her hands into tight fists, she forced herself to answer. “Your father brought them to the station.”

  “And?”

  “And they were nothing more than gibberish,” she snapped. “Vague references to women being killed and something about snow.”

  “‘Crimson blood staining the pure white snow. Life spills from warm to frozen. Don’t look. The pain is gone,’” Kir quoted, waiting for the resemblance to the current murders to sink through the sheriff ’s thick skull.

  She dismissed his words with a wave of her hand. “Those letters were written years ago.”

  “Not all of them,” Kir protested. He was personally aware of at least two letters his father had received in the past year, and there might very well have been others. “The letters have to be connected to the current murders. Why else would someone break in and steal them?”

  “Someone broke in to steal a gun,” she ground out. “Or maybe they were looking for money. The drug epidemic has hit Pike as hard as everywhere else. Even decent people will do crazy things when they’re addicted.”

  “Then why didn’t they take the laptop my father had on his desk? Or the silver tea tray in the china cabinet?”

  “Maybe they were scared off by something. More likely, all they wanted was the gun.”

  “Or the letters.”

  She made a sound somewhere between a growl and a muffled curse. “If the weapon is recovered, I’ll let you know.”

  Kir swallowed a curse, accepting the sheriff was never going to believe that his father had been right about the letters being a warning. Maybe it wasn’t so surprising. If they turned out to be real, it would mean she truly had allowed a serial killer to mature from mere threats to actual murders. The deaths of the two women would be on her head.

  Still, he wasn’t prepared to give up. Not this time. He reached into the back pocket of his jeans to pull out a piece of paper. “Okay, if you won’t take the letters seriously then what about this?”

  Kathy allowed him to shove the paper into her hand, slowly unfolding it. “What’s this?”

  “I’m not sure, but I think it’s a list of the women being targeted by the serial killer.”

  Her head jerked up to stab him with a suspicious glare. “Where did you get it?”

  “My father gave it to Ron Bradshaw just a few weeks before he died. He asked the pastor to give it to me after the funeral.”

  The sheriff returned her attention to the list. “He didn’t say what it was?”

  “No, but the first letters are S. H. Sherry Higgins,” he pointed out.

  She visibly stiffened. “We haven’t released the victims’ names.”

  “It’s a small town.”

  “Yeah, S. H. could stand for a lot of things. It could be a grocery list for all you know.” She dropped the paper as if it was a piece of trash. “In fact, it probably is.”

  Kir bent down to angrily snatch the list off the ground, carefully folding it and putting it back in his pocket. “Why would Dad give it to a preacher if it wasn’t important?”

  Kathy glanced at down at the tips of her boots, as if pondering her response. Then, lifting her head, she met Kir’s accusing gaze. “Look, I didn’t want to tell you this, Kir, but over the past few months your father had become increasingly erratic.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “He was found wandering the streets late at night searching for his dog that’d been dead for over a year,” she said. “And twice he was found passed out in his truck outside the old Shell filling station.”

  Kir winced at the thought of his dad wandering the streets in search of his beloved hound. But the filling station made him frown in confusion. As far as he knew, his father had no connection to the place. “Why would he be at the station? Isn’t it closed down?” He spoke his question out loud.

  “He swore a woman had been murdered there.”

  “Did you check?”

  Kathy narrowed her eyes at his sharp tone. “Yes. My deputies did a thorough search. There was nothing inside but a few rats and lots of dust. He was obviously delusional. Or maybe he was confused. I think there was a woman killed there twenty-five years ago. A botched robbery or something.” She turned and clomped up the stairs, her heavy footsteps warning she was done with this conversation. “Let this go, Kir,” she called over her shoulder. “Your father’s delusions drove him crazy. Don’t let them do the same thing to you.”

  Chapter 7

  Lynne spent the afternoon at the animal shelter she’d built on her grandparents’ farm. She needed to keep her mind occupied, and her hands busy. What better way than cleaning the kennels and unloading a pallet of dog food? There was also the task of vaccinating the puppies that had been left that morning.

  Once she’d returned to her house, however, she found herself pacing the kitchen floor. She had paperwork to do, and dinner to cook, but she couldn’t stop her feet from carrying her from one end of the narrow room to the other.
Almost as if the constant movement helped her to endure the pain that was crushing her heart.

  It wasn’t pain at the thought of Nash being unfaithful. By the time she’d ended her brief relationship with the creep, she’d accepted that he’d been sleeping with countless women. He was just a loser in a long line of losers.

  No, what hurt was the thought that Chelsea had pretended to be her friend and loyal employee even when she was having sex in a storage room with Lynne’s boyfriend. And even worse was the fear that because of Chelsea’s betrayal, some lunatic was using the drugs from her clinic to kidnap and murder innocent women.

  God . . .

  Her dark thoughts were interrupted by a glimpse of movement in her backyard. She froze, not sure if she’d actually seen a person or if it had been a tree branch swaying beneath the weight of the falling snow.

  Moving to grab her cell phone off the kitchen table, Lynne cautiously headed to the back door. Double-checking the lock, she peered through the window. There was a small glow near her garden shed where she’d installed a security light last year, but the rest of the yard remained shrouded in shadows. It was impossible to see if there was anyone out there.

  About to turn away, she was halted as headlights sliced through the darkness. Someone was driving up the narrow alley and parking behind her house.

  She lifted her phone, preparing to dial 911 as a man stepped out of the truck. Then the intruder reached the light from the shed and her breath caught in her throat.

  Nash Cordon.

  Even at a distance she could make out his large six-foot-four frame that had once been hard with the muscles of a high school quarterback but were now sagging toward his middle. Lynne took waspish pleasure in the realization that his jacket had grown even tighter since she’d last seen him.

  Jerk.

  Watching him climb the back steps, she briefly considered the pleasure of calling the sheriff and having him arrested for trespassing only to quickly dismiss the childish impulse. Not only were the law officers busy trying to discover who’d killed two women, but the sheriff also had rubbed Lynne’s nerves raw when she’d been at the clinic.

  Lynne would rather deal with Nash than Kathy Hancock.

  Pulling the door open, Lynne stepped aside to give her unwelcome guest room to enter the kitchen. Nash shook the snow from his light blond hair. Over the past weeks it’d grown long enough to brush his shoulders. Lynne wrinkled her nose. Once upon a time she’d thought Nash’s dark blue eyes and golden features were handsome. Now all she could see was the peevish dissatisfaction that pinched his lips and sallowness beneath his fake tan.

  His lips were pinched tighter than usual as he cast a quick glance around the cramped room. Lynne loved this house. Probably because it was where she’d been born and raised. It didn’t matter that it was small and simple and more than a little shabby. It was home. Nash, however, had often complained that she lived like a miser instead of a professional woman with a thriving career.

  Only after they’d broken up did she realize Nash thought her family was wealthy.

  Nash opened his jacket to reveal he was wearing a sweatshirt with the Bait and Tackle bar logo on the front, but he didn’t pull it off. Presumably this was going to be a short visit.

  Thank God.

  “Hey, Lynne.” A humorless smile curved his lips. “Long time, no see.”

  Not long enough, she silently acknowledged. “What are you doing here?”

  “Do you want to guess where I spent the past few hours?”

  Lynne folded her arms, eyeing him with blatant dislike. “It’s late and I’m not in the mood for games.”

  “Let me tell you. At the sheriff ’s office.” There was an edge she’d never heard in his voice. Nash could be charming, reckless, and sleazy, but she’d never thought of him as dangerous.

  “Congrats.” She inched backward. “Go away.”

  “I’m not done.” He deliberately closed the distance she’d just gained. “I haven’t told you why I was there.”

  Lynne forced herself to hold her ground, despite the fact she had to tilt back her head to an awkward angle. This was Nash. He might be pissed, but he would never hurt her. “I assume it has something to do with stealing drugs from my clinic,” she said, going on the offense.

  His smile faded, his expression settling into a peevish sulk. The one he used when he was in the wrong but refused to admit it. “I didn’t steal anything,” he argued. “The bottles were knocked off the shelf and they busted. Big fucking deal.”

  It was Lynne’s turn to smile. “Busted while you were having sex with my receptionist?”

  Nash narrowed his eyes. “Is that what this is about? You’re bitchy because you found out I was banging Chelsea, so you called the sheriff and claimed I stole your stupid drugs?”

  “One.” She lifted her hand with the first finger extended. “I didn’t call anyone. The sheriff came to the clinic asking questions about my prescriptions and the protocols I use to keep them protected. Two.” She extended another finger. “It was Chelsea who told the sheriff that it was you who supposedly broke the vials—”

  “There’s no supposedly about it,” Nash abruptly interrupted.

  “That’s between you and the sheriff.”

  His nose flared as fury darkened his eyes. “I’m not going to jail because you’re a petty, vengeful bitch,” he snapped. “It was your fault I was in that storage room in the first place.”

  “My fault?” Lynne’s jaw dropped at Nash’s outrageous claim. “Not even your ego is that bloated.”

  “I wouldn’t have looked twice at Chelsea if I hadn’t constantly been hanging around the clinic waiting for you to finish work,” he snarled. “How many nights did you tell me to wait for you to get back from some emergency? ‘Just five more minutes, Nash.’” He mimicked her voice. “I wasted endless hours. Why shouldn’t I have a little fun?”

  Lynne tilted her chin, pretending his accusation hadn’t struck a nerve. Okay, maybe she was busy. And there’d been nights when Nash had arrived for their date and she’d been in the middle of an emergency. What did he expect? That she would walk away from a sick animal so he didn’t have to wait?

  Struggling to control her temper, Lynne was distantly aware of the sound of knocking and then Kir calling out her name as her front door was opened. He sounded worried, but she kept her attention on Nash.

  Her ex didn’t appear to have heard Kir’s arrival. Typical. He rarely paid attention to anything beyond the sound of his own voice.

  “You know, Nash, I’m not disgusted with you. It’s obvious you can’t help being a selfish ass,” she said, determined to keep him distracted. Nash was brashly arrogant, but he wasn’t overly bright. It wouldn’t take much to goad him into revealing the truth. “I’m disgusted with myself for not seeing what you were from our first date.”

  He sneered at her accusation. “Lie to yourself if it makes you feel better. I’ve never had a woman who was so eager to lure a man into a relationship.”

  “Lure? You wouldn’t stop following me around,” she taunted. “You were like a lost puppy.”

  Lynne leaned against the counter. It allowed her to see around the bulk of Nash’s body to the connecting doorway to the living room. As soon as she caught sight of Kir, she gave him a sharp shake of her head.

  Kir stopped, his expression puzzled. Clearly, he was trying to determine if she wanted him to leave or if she needed his assistance. Then, as if recognizing Nash, he moved to press himself against the wall. Out of sight, but easily able to listen to the conversation.

  Nash gave a forced laugh, still oblivious to Kir’s presence. “Your dad was a vet, now you’re a vet. I thought you might have some spare cha-ching to invest in my business. Then I discovered you threw away all your money on that useless sanctuary.”

  His words were no surprise. They’d been dating less than a month the first time he’d asked her to become a silent partner in his bar. She’d refused, of course, and he’d dropped the
subject. At least for a while. Toward the end of their relationship he was badgering her on a daily basis to give him money.

  Now, however, she intended to use his inept lack of financial skills to her advantage.

  “Speaking of the bar, how’s it doing?” she asked in overly sweet tones.

  He jerked, visibly caught off guard by her question. “Fine. Great. Business has never been better.”

  “Really?” Lynne held his wary gaze. “I heard from a reliable source that you’ve resorted to selling cases of beer to underage kids in the back alley.”

  “Your reliable source is full of bullshit.”

  His voice was harsh, but Lynne didn’t miss the way his hands clenched and unclenched. A sure sign he was lying.

  “I doubt that. But in any case, I’m sure the sheriff would be interested in the rumors,” she assured him. “After all, if you’ll supply alcohol to underage kids, then why not drugs?”

  “You bitch.” His faced flushed, that unfamiliar danger sizzling around him as he glared down at her. “You’re trying to ruin my life.”

  “I don’t care enough to try and ruin your life, Nash,” she taunted, inwardly relieved that Kir was nearby.

  She’d never been afraid of Nash, but he was very large, and very angry. Who knew what he might do if his temper snapped?

  “Then why are you threatening me?” he grated.

  “Because I want the truth.”

  “You know the truth. I had sex with Chelsea.” His hands continued to clench and unclench. “Big deal.”

  “What did you do with the drugs?”

  “I told you.”

  Lynne lifted her hand that was holding her phone. “I’m calling the sheriff.”

  “Stop.”

  “What did you do with them?”

  Nash’s jaundiced gaze remained locked on the phone. Was he considering whether he could grab it out of her hand before she could hit 911? Then he conceded defeat with a muttered curse.

  “Fine.” His expression was as hard and brittle as ice. “My cousin from Grange dabbles in drugs. He was approached by a customer willing to pay big coin if he could get his hands on some Telazol.” Nash’s lips curled into a smirk. “My cousin knew I was dating a vet, so he called me and promised to split the profit.”