by Beverly Long
Chase had told her not to go outside alone. He hadn’t said anything about the kitchen. As she crossed the room, she made eye contact with him and nodded toward the kitchen.
He gave her a sharp nod in response. She suspected he’d be waiting outside the door when she and Summer finished their conversation.
At the far end of the kitchen, a young man, maybe sixteen, was washing dishes using a big stainless-steel commercial dishwasher. He had earbuds in, listening to something.
“We can talk here,” Summer said quietly. “Jess won’t pay any attention to us.”
Raney decided not to waste any time. “The other day, when your shirt pulled up, I saw what appeared to be a big bruise on your back. It didn’t seem to be the kind of bruise that somebody would easily get. Unless...unless somebody had deliberately tried to hurt them. I was...am concerned about you.”
Summer chewed on her upper lip. “I know that you mean well. I do. But I’m begging you, don’t say anything to anybody about it. It could be very bad for me. For my children.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Please.”
She could feel the woman’s desperation. “Can your sister help you?”
“No. She can’t know. You cannot tell her.”
“There are people who would help you. People like Chase.”
Summer shook her head. “Please,” she said again. “Things are better. I can’t rock the boat now.”
Raney reached for the cell phone that was in Summer’s shirt pocket. She tapped on the keypad and entered her name and phone number. “Promise me that you’ll call me if you need help. Anytime.” She knew that she was just going to be in Ravesville for another three weeks but even after she left, she would do what she could.
“I promise,” Summer said.
Raney didn’t know if she meant it or if she was simply trying to end the conversation. Raney turned and left the kitchen. Summer didn’t follow. As she had suspected, Chase was near the kitchen door. She realized that he’d been able to see into the kitchen through the small window in the door. He’d made good to keep her in his sights the whole night.
“Well?” he asked.
“She begged me to forget that I saw it.”
“And what do you intend to do?”
“I have to do that. She’s a grown woman. I gave her a chance to reach out for help. Either she’s got the situation under control or she’s not ready. Either way, I can’t force it.”
Chase nodded. “You’re probably right. You know, you never cease to impress me. That took some guts to have that conversation with her. It could have gotten ugly real quick, but you were willing to take the chance.”
“Channeling blonde Raney,” she said, not thinking.
He pulled back. “What’s that mean?”
She was embarrassed. But she knew Chase well enough to know that he wasn’t going to let it go. “My new haircut and color was a little surprising. It made me look different. Feel different. Blonde Raney was adventuresome. Brave. Not afraid of the dark. Whole. I liked her. And when situations came up and I had to make a choice about how I was going to respond, I could either be blonde Raney or real Raney.”
He studied her. “I like your hair. I already told you that. But you don’t get your chutzpah from your hair, honey. It’s part of you. You weren’t blonde when you were traipsing down to the prison to help inmates polish their job-seeking skills. You weren’t blonde when you outsmarted a madman and figured out a way to use washers from a filing cabinet to escape. You weren’t blonde when you agreed to testify.”
“It was blonde Raney who slept with you,” she whispered.
He didn’t say anything for a long minute. “Raney, you’re an amazing person. You went through something really awful, something that no one should have to endure. But you survived. And I know you feel bad because Malone fooled you. And that destroyed your confidence, in others and in yourself.”
He reached for her hand. “You know what the blond hair is. It’s a crutch. Not in a bad way. Everybody needs a crutch once in a while. If you’d broken your leg, you’d have used a crutch without any thought. This isn’t that different. Maybe it wasn’t a physical break but you got shook, Raney. Understandably so. And you made some bargains with God. And now that you’re free, it’s scary because now you have the chance to keep those bargains. So it’s easier to tell yourself that it’s blonde Raney. But it’s you, darling. All you.”
She thought her heart might burst it was so full of love.
He leaned forward. “And you’d have slept with me, regardless. I know it and you know it. We were meant to be together.”
At that moment, Gordy Fitzler approached. “Chase, may I dance with your wife?”
“You have to ask her.”
He extended an age-spotted hand in her direction. How could she refuse? “I’d love to,” she said.
The music was a country hit from a few years earlier, just right for a slow dance with a dear man. “Thank you for letting us come to your party,” she said. She meant it. It had been a wonderful night.
“I can tell that you’re good for Chase.”
It dimmed the glow of the night to know that she was deceiving this good man, all these people. “Thank you,” she managed. She heard a disturbance near the door and looked over Gordy’s shoulder.
Lloyd Doogan had come in. He was staggering and talking loudly. Fortunately the crowd had thinned considerably. Sheila had left shortly after Chase had talked to her. She looked around for Gary Blake. She did not want Lloyd arrested again. She didn’t see the man and assumed he’d left while she was in the kitchen.
She saw Chase turn away from Hank Beaumont, the fireman who’d assisted her at the scene. Gordy stopped dancing and took a step toward Lloyd. Chase passed him before he could make much progress. “Enjoy your dance. I’ll deal with this.”
“Hey, Lloyd,” Chase said, wrapping an arm around his shoulder. “How about you call it a night?”
“Got to wish Gordy a slappy birthday,” he said, slurring his words as he tried to get away from Chase.
“Maybe tomorrow,” Chase said.
Lloyd turned his head, so that he could look Chase in the eye. “He’s a good man.”
Chase nodded slowly. “Yes, yes he is. Okay, I’ll go with you.”
Together, the men crossed the room. One smart, confident and able. The other, less so, but determined to pay his respects to Gordy.
Gordy was gracious and shook Lloyd’s hand. Then he leaned close to his son-in-law’s ear. The man nodded and pulled his car keys from his pocket. Chase saw what was happening and handed Lloyd off to the man. They walked out the door and Raney assumed that Lloyd would be safely driven back to his apartment to sleep it off.
What could have gone very badly had ended up fine. Due in large part to how Chase had reacted. He took care of things. Took care of people.
It was one of the reasons she loved him.
Yes. Loved. She went back to dancing with Gordy and thought about what that could possibly mean. He hadn’t said a word about what would become of them after the trial, when she’d be free to return to her old life in Miami.
He’d said that he’d never marry. Could she accept that?
No. While her first marriage hadn’t gone so well, it hadn’t soured her on the institution. She had learned a few things. She and Mike had wanted very different things. She wouldn’t make that mistake again.
She wanted... She looked around the room. She wanted this. A town where people knew each other. They came out to celebrate significant events, they bought candy they didn’t want so that the pom-pom girls could go to camp, they got clean cars washed again so that their elderly neighbors could afford heat in the winter.
She’d lost her parents at a young age. She wanted family.
Chase didn’t want that kind of permanency. He was the guy who was only willing to sign a six-month lease, in the event that he wanted to move on.
It was so terribly sad.
The song ended and Cha
se came back over. He shook Gordy’s hand and Raney leaned in and kissed the older man’s cheek. Once Gordy had walked away, Chase pulled her close. “Are you ready to go?” he asked.
His intent was clear. And in her heart, she accepted that it would not be forever. But she had now. Right now. “I don’t know,” she said. “I was thinking about another piece of cake.”
“No. I have been a patient man but I want to get my hands under that shirt. Let’s go home.”
She nodded. It might only be her home for three more weeks but she was going to make the best of it. And that included being in Chase Hollister’s bed.
Chapter Fourteen
It was four days later when Chase’s cell phone rang. They were both downstairs, getting ready to make breakfast.
He looked at the number. “Dawson,” he told her and pushed a button. “Hey,” he answered, his posture relaxed.
Within seconds that changed. He stood up and walked over to the back door of the kitchen. He wasn’t saying much, just listening intently.
But Raney knew. Something bad had happened.
The call ended. He turned. His eyes were hard.
“What?” she said.
“Luis Vincenze was found dead this morning. His throat had been cut. He’s been dead for a while. Probably for longer than a week.”
So maybe shortly after he’d accompanied her to Missouri. The possibilities of what this might mean settled on her heart, making her chest feel heavy. “Someone killed him to get information on me,” she said.
“We don’t know that for sure,” Chase corrected.
“But it’s a possibility.”
“Of course it’s a possibility,” he said, sounding angry. She knew it wasn’t directed at her. It was the whole terrible situation. Poor Luis. He had just been doing his job.
“But it’s also possible that it was some other jerk who had a beef with him. He was a cop. Had been one for more than twenty years. You make a lot of enemies in that amount of time.”
That was true. But she knew, just knew, that it was related to her. “How is it that he could have been missing for more than a week and nobody reported it?”
“The afternoon he left you in St. Louis, he left a voice mail on his wife’s cell phone, telling her not to worry, that he was being pulled to do some undercover work on a case and that he’d be out of contact for several days. He also left a message on his boss’s office phone, telling him that he’d decided to use some of his vacation time now that he’d safely handed you off. Nobody got suspicious until the wife got nervous after trying his cell phone multiple times. She called his boss. It took them another day to tie it to a report of a dead body found in a vacation rental in the Ozarks.”
“Oh.” She was glad they had not yet eaten. “I’m guessing he left those messages under duress.”
Chase swallowed. “They didn’t just cut his throat. They tortured him. For some time. I think we have to assume that he broke. Maybe just to end the misery if nothing else.”
Outside, a barn swallow swooped down, coming near the kitchen window, causing Raney to jump. She told herself to calm down, to breathe deep, to think.
“So we don’t know what he told them. Whoever did this.”
“No.”
“What do they want us to do?” she asked.
“To hunker down here. They’re sending two officers to provide 24/7 protection. We aren’t in this alone. You aren’t in this alone.”
No, Chase was in it deep, too. She glanced at his leg, his poor injured leg that he still favored at times after a hard day’s work outside. He could be injured again. Much worse. She stood up suddenly. “No. I should go. Somewhere else. And tell no one.”
Chase stared at her, his face getting red. But when he spoke, his voice was still calm. “Sit down, Raney. Nobody is going anywhere. Not you. Not me.”
She didn’t sit. She couldn’t. Deep in her bones, she knew that Luis Vincenze’s death was because of her. “Is it possible that he’d been bought by Malone?” she heard herself ask. She felt terrible even voicing the speculation but her mind kept going back to the change in his attitude when he’d had to deliver her to Missouri.
“Why would you say that?” Chase asked, smoothly moving into investigator, fact-finder mode.
“When I was at the safe house in Miami, he was kind and helpful and even somewhat conciliatory. That is not a characteristic that I normally associated with the cops that I worked with at Next Steps.”
He gave her a half smile. “Keep going.”
“Everything changed on the plane. Once we landed, he became distant and preoccupied. He should have been overjoyed to get out of babysitting duty. He was going to be able to go home and be with his family. I should have realized the disconnect earlier, but I’d been so steeped in my own misery over coming to Missouri that I maybe didn’t see the forest for the trees.”
“Tell me everything you remember.”
She thought back. “I know that he didn’t know our final destination. Once he received a text, we got in the cab and met Chief Bates.”
“So he and the chief talked?”
“For less than a minute. Luis got back in the cab that we’d arrived in.”
“Would he have seen that the two of you entered the hair salon?”
“I don’t think so. We walked for at least a couple minutes, turning two corners.”
Chase considered that. “I suppose there are two possibilities. That Vincenze was a dirty cop and he was supposed to make sure that you never safely arrived in Missouri. The opportunity to kill you never presented itself, at least not in any way that wouldn’t make him the immediate suspect. So once he handed you off to Chief Bates, he was essentially a dead man. Probably knew that. Hence, the agitation.”
Raney shook her head and pretended to be picking petals off a daisy. “Should I kill her? Should I not? Should I kill her? Should I not?”
He reached out to still her hands. “What was the word you used that one day? I know. Conflicted. I suspect he was conflicted. The two of you had been close for almost two weeks. I suspect he probably liked you, thought you were a nice person. And maybe he couldn’t see himself following orders.”
“So he got killed because he didn’t do his job?”
“Yeah. The other possibility is that he was a clean cop and Malone’s people tortured him to get information on where you might be in St. Louis.”
“And all he’d have been able to tell them is where he handed me off to Chief Bates. That wouldn’t have been terribly helpful.”
“No,” he agreed.
A terrifying thought dawned on her. “You have to call Chief Bates. Right now. He’s the linchpin that ties this all together. They’ll go after him next.”
“It’s possible, but don’t worry. The chief can take care of himself. But I think you’re on the right path. Even if Vincenze was dirty, he never saw me, never heard my name. There’s still no way for them to connect Lorraine Taylor to Raney Hollister.”
For the first time since the telephone had rung, she could feel her breath coming easier. He was right. There was no need to panic. “What happens next?”
“We’re going to have company. They should arrive in about an hour.”
She thought about what that would mean. “We’re not going to be able to...be together. Not while they’re here.” Of course not. It could ruin Chase’s career if it got back to the chief that he’d slept with the witness. That was not what the chief had likely been thinking when he’d set up this fictional marriage.
Chase shook his head, looking miserable. “No. You’ll stay inside, away from any windows. I’ll work with the other two officers and between the three of us, we’ll keep one at the front and one at the rear of the house, 24/7. We’ll rotate shifts so that we can grab some sleep.”
Raney looked at her watch. “We will, however, be able to eat while they’re here.”
Chase’s sexy amber eyes softened. “Of course.”
“Maybe we shou
ld do the things now that we won’t be able to do later?”
“Are you propositioning me, Mrs. Hollister?”
“I am merely asking if you can rearrange your schedule. Perhaps you could wait till later to eat? Say midmorning.”
He took her hand and pulled her out of the chair. “I’ve always been fond of brunch.”
* * *
CHASE LAY ON the bed, Raney lazily stroking his injured leg. It tickled but not enough to tell her to stop. He loved having her hands on him, loved the feel of her heat seeping into his body.
She moved her hands up the side of his body. To his ribs. Suddenly, her fingers stopped. She lifted her head. He tensed.
“Is this another bullet hole?” she asked, her tone a mixture of what he perceived to be disbelief and horror.
He shook his head and tried to pull her hand away.
She was stronger than she looked.
“What happened here?” she demanded.
And Chase considered lying. The scar was faint enough after all these years that no one had ever asked about it, but had they, he’d have had no compunction about telling them it was a birthmark or something else equally vanilla. But this was Raney.
“It’s a cigarette burn,” he said.
He felt her stiffen in his arm. “How did that happen?” she asked finally, her voice soft.
“My stepfather, Brick Doogan.”
She raised up on one elbow, so that she could look at him. “How old were you?”
He thought a minute. “Seventeen.”
She frowned and didn’t say anything. He could practically see the wheels churning in her head. She was a fighter; she’d proved that time and time again.
Chase cleared his throat. “I suspect that you’re wondering why a healthy seventeen-year-old boy would let someone do that to him.”
“Maybe,” she admitted.
“Because he told me if I didn’t sit still and take it like a man, he was going to go get Cal.”
Now she sat up in bed and pulled the sheet up to cover herself. She’d obviously decided this was not the kind of conversation one had naked.
“That makes no sense,” she said.
He shrugged. “Shortly after Brick Doogan married my mother and moved in, I realized he was a bad guy. I was a dumb sixteen-year-old and I got busted for skipping school. I was making all As and Bs so it shouldn’t have been a big deal, but he beat the hell out of me. I didn’t have anybody I felt that I could turn to. Bray, who is four years older, had already enlisted and was halfway around the world. Cal was just thirteen.”