Harlequin Superromance January 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: Everywhere She GoesA Promise for the BabyThat Summer at the Shore

by Janice Kay Johnson

  There was a lot of discussion among the crime scene people, and the trowels were discarded in favor of brushes and some other tools Noah couldn’t make out. A small woman kneeling beside the hole seemed to be in charge. She finally swiveled to look at Lieutenant Vahalik and Colin.

  “We’ve definitely got a skeleton,” she said, her voice charged with satisfaction. “It’ll take us another few hours to get him out.”

  Colin stepped forward. “Him?”

  “Bones aren’t my thing, but I’m betting male. Look at the size of the humerus.”

  Noah joined the cluster around what they now knew was a grave. The soil lacked the reddish tint that was common in the area, the result of relatively recent volcanic activity. The curve of skull was visible, emerging from the soil, as was the arch of ribs and the bones of one arm. From the position, it appeared it had lain across his chest or belly when the dirt came down on top of him.

  Colin, who had squatted behind the woman he called Linda, glanced over his shoulder and met Noah’s eyes. The silent moment of communication didn’t call for words.

  Noah had seen enough. Cait would be waiting to hear.

  * * *

  CAIT THOUGHT SHE might go crazy. Forbidden from leaving city hall during the day, therefore unable to personally inspect sites, visit ongoing projects or meet with anyone outside her office, she could do about half the job. Otherwise, she was supervised by one of the two men in her life, both alpha males who assumed she’d jump when told to jump and who looked vaguely surprised when she expressed even the slightest bit of frustration. She wondered if they had any idea how much they had in common.

  Kindness was one of the qualities they shared, fairness reminded her. Noah had stopped by her office yesterday afternoon to let her know what had been uncovered beneath the patio. He didn’t linger, but must have known how tensely she was waiting to hear the news.

  Midmorning today, Jane Vahalik knocked and came in. “I’m sure you know the remains are now with the medical examiner,” she began.

  Cait nodded. “Has he learned anything yet?”

  “So far, all we’ve been told is that the bones definitely belonged to a male, a big guy, likely in his forties.”

  “How will you be able to identify him?”

  “If he was reported missing, that won’t be a problem given dental records. Otherwise, it will be a bigger challenge.”

  A little surprised the lieutenant was being so open with her, Cait decided to push it. “Do you know what killed him?”

  Jane eyed her for a minute and then seemed to make a decision. “Likely gunshots. We found two bullets below him. The body decomposed and, uh...”

  She couldn’t help the shudder. “I get the picture.”

  “May I sit down?”

  Cait half rose. “Of course you can! I’m sorry.”

  Jane pulled a chair closer to Cait’s desk and settled in. “Let’s talk about what you saw the day the patio was poured.”

  “I told Colin—”

  “Tell me.” Her tone was pleasant but implacable.

  Resigned, Cait repeated the story, ending with the handprints.

  “All right, let’s go back. Obviously, you recognized Mr. Hegland immediately.”

  “I heard his voice, so I already knew it was him.”

  “Tell me what he was wearing, if you can recall.”

  Cait opened her mouth to ask what possible difference that made, but she realized the lieutenant was trying to get her to see the scene—including the other man.

  She closed her eyes and tried to become that girl, crouched behind the fence with one eye to the crack, not even sure why she cared what the two men were up to.

  I might not have, if they hadn’t been so angry. Or was it tense?

  She remembered being a little chilly because it was such early morning. At first she’d just knelt, but finally she’d sat cross-legged on the shaggy grass even though her butt got damp through the denim of her jeans. Funny, she could look down and see her jeans, one of the ratty pairs she wore on weekends. Mom got mad if she wore her school clothes any other time. These had a big rip that allowed her bony knee to poke out.

  “That’s good,” Jane murmured, and Cait realized she’d been talking out loud.

  “Jerry wore khaki trousers and a sweatshirt that he took off not long after I started watching. He kept swiping at his forehead with his forearm. I remember big patches of sweat under his arms and even between his shoulder blades. His hair was kind of wet and poking up. He was really filthy.” She giggled, and it was a little girl’s giggle. “They used lots of really bad words. Dad did, too, but Mom always tried to shush him when I was around. Except...” When he was drunk. Then Mom, afraid of him, didn’t even try.

  “What was his voice like, this other man?”

  “Just...a regular voice.” She frowned. “The weird thing about him was that he hadn’t dressed for that kind of work. I think he might have had on good slacks and a white shirt and dress shoes. He took off the white shirt, too. He had on an undershirt, you know, just white. It was filthy, too, by the time I got there.” She felt dreamy, only idly curious the way a ten-year-old could be. Why had those two men dug such a humongous hole? And how come they were filling it now? Maybe there’d been, like, a pipe leaking or something. She really wanted to know what the boards were for, built like a frame only lying flat on the ground.

  “His hair...” She had to hesitate. “I think it was brown. Kind of a medium brown. But he was awfully sweaty, too, so it might have been dark blond. He was...not as big as Jerry. Maybe as tall, but not as wide. More lean. And he wasn’t tan like Jerry, so he must not have spent much time outside. His arms were really pale. Like my dad was when he took his shirt off. A lot of the time he had his back to me. I only remember him facing me directly once—” She stiffened, in an echo of her momentary fear that day. “I kind of squirmed and knocked my bike over. It didn’t make a lot of noise because it fell on grass, but he swung around and stared. I almost took off.”

  It chilled her now, knowing what would have happened if he had come looking.

  “Can you see his face, Cait?” Jane asked patiently.

  “Yes,” she breathed. “But...I don’t know, there wasn’t anything special about it. He was kind of ordinary-looking. The one thing I remember is that Jerry seemed to be afraid of him.” Opening her eyes, she thought that over. “Afraid isn’t the right word. I think the other guy was in charge. Used to being in charge. He expected Jerry to take orders.”

  “That’s interesting,” the lieutenant said. “So he was dressed as if he’d expected to go into the office that day, even though it was a weekend.”

  “Yes.”

  “As dirty as he’d gotten, he’d have had to go home and change.”

  Cait nodded. “I remember wondering why, if he was going to help his friend, he hadn’t dressed in his working-in-the-yard clothes.”

  “Because this wasn’t planned,” Jane said thoughtfully. “Looking back, how do you read what you saw as tension?”

  “They were upset.” She couldn’t be sure how she knew with such certainty, but she did. “Really upset. It came out as urgency and an air of violence, but mostly...” She hesitated. “I think they were probably horrified. Freaked. Maybe they’d never killed a man before.”

  This shudder made her glance down and see that her arms were crossed and squeezed tight.

  “My father was angry a lot,” she said after a minute, with some difficulty. “I didn’t know many other men very well. I’d never had a male teacher, and my parents weren’t churchgoers. I guess I expected men to be angry. I saw what I expected.”

  “But you’d liked Mr. Hegland, when you and your mother spent time with him.”

  “He was nice to me,” she corrected. “He bought me some treats. I was a
kid—of course I liked that. But I was wary of him.” Yes, that was how she’d describe her caution that had verged on suspicion.

  The same way she’d continued to approach men, she thought with shock.

  Too bad she’d relaxed her caution where Blake was concerned.

  And—why was she letting herself trust Noah? He sometimes radiated anger and menace that should have her quailing but didn’t. Because he’d never turned it on her.

  That didn’t mean he wouldn’t. Blake had hidden his propensity for violence, too. No, she thought. The thing with Noah was he didn’t. She knew what kind of man he was. Which allowed her to—mostly—trust him.

  And that makes no sense, she finally concluded.

  She realized Jane was studying her, as if speculating on what was going through her head. Cait was embarrassed to realize she’d probably been staring into space for several minutes.

  “Would you recognize this man?” Jane asked bluntly.

  She found herself shaking her head. “I really doubt it. I have yet to recognize a single other adult I encountered back then. Jerry was a special case, and that was partly because Mom had kept a couple pictures of him. Plus, I guess he was more distinctive-looking. He hadn’t changed that much, either. This other guy...” She shrugged. “He could have lost his hair, gained fifty pounds, who knows?”

  Jane sighed and closed her notebook. “Well, we have a basic description and we know he was a professional man.”

  “Of sorts. He could have worked in a store or sold insurance or something like that.” Cait grimaced. “What if it was Sunday morning, and he’d planned to attend church?”

  “But from what you say, he didn’t have the muscles of a working man and didn’t have the tan to suggest he got out of an office very often.”

  “That’s true. I’m sorry. I wish I could have been more help.”

  “Considering you’re trying to remember something that happened eighteen years ago—or is it nineteen?—I’d say you have amazing recall.”

  “It’s because I did something daring.”

  Jane looked intrigued. “Pressing your hands into the concrete.”

  “Yes. I...wasn’t a daring child.” At home, she had tried so very hard to go completely unnoticed. She must have been all but a wraith. Suddenly impatient with herself, she said, “Do you have any more questions?”

  “No.” The lieutenant departed with a reminder to call if she remembered anything else.

  She was grateful to have Jane Vahalik coming to ask her questions and not one of the detectives who worked under her, all men from what Cait understood. She knew perfectly well why she rated a lieutenant and not a mere detective. They must all be eager to please Colin.

  Was there any chance she and Jane could be friends when this was all over? Cait would really like to know how a woman not that much older than she was had come to be so confident that she could thrive in a workplace environment brimming with testosterone. Cait couldn’t relate it to her own profession, where no one carried a gun.

  Of course, it was entirely possible she wouldn’t still be in Angel Butte to make friends. She couldn’t live at a constant level of fear. Leaving might be best. No matter what, she couldn’t imagine how she could balance the job with a relationship with Noah. Or how she could continue to work with him once they no longer had a relationship.

  She hadn’t used her head where he was concerned. After Noah, she thought, I really will swear off men.

  Cait already knew he was going to hurt her more than Blake ever had.

  * * *

  EVEN KNOWING IT wasn’t helping his cause, Noah scowled at Cait from where he stood in her office doorway. “I’d have sat in with you if you’d called me.”

  Cait gazed coolly at him. “Lieutenant Vahalik and I did fine. I didn’t need moral support. It’s not as if she suspects me of some dire crime.”

  He glanced over his shoulder, then stepped in and shut the door even though he knew there already had to be gossip circulating about them. “What did she ask you?”

  She rolled a pen between her fingers in one of the few nervous gestures he’d seen her make. “She hoped I’d remember the other man.”

  From that day. As Noah had stood in that backyard earlier, his gaze kept going to the six-foot board fence not twenty feet from the edge of what had been the patio. What if they’d seen her? No, he knew—she’d have died. They could so easily have added her to the open grave. God. He was terrified thinking about it, even though the risk to that curious little girl had come and gone so long ago.

  “Do you?” Remembered fear roughened his voice.

  She shook her head. “Not very well. As I told the lieutenant, the only adult I’ve recognized since I got here is Jerry. I saw this guy once. I didn’t pay that much attention to him.”

  “You know how important it is.”

  Suddenly she looked mad. “Is this your idea of a pep talk?”

  “Damn it, Cait, your life could depend on recognizing this man if you come face-to-face! How long did you watch them? An hour? More? How can you not remember him?”

  “How well do you remember things from when you were that young?”

  She didn’t know that felt like a brutal kick to his kidney.

  But, Dad! You said we could go fishing! You promised.

  There isn’t a single good thing he could have inherited from his father.

  Gut roiling, he took a step toward her, until only the desk was a barricade between them. “The ones that count?” His voice was guttural. “A hell of a lot better than you seem to.”

  Her chair squeaked as she recoiled from him. Noah was stunned to realize he’d bared his teeth. The worst part was seeing the expression on her face, one he knew too well.

  “Don’t look at me like that.”

  “Like what?” she shot back.

  “Like you’re afraid of me.”

  “My problems aren’t yours. You have no right to get mad at me.”

  Oh, hell. Fighting for control, he turned his back on her for a moment. At last he felt able to face her again. “I’m not mad. I’m afraid for you.”

  Eyes still dominating her face, she shook her head. “You’re angry.”

  “Cait.” He wanted the grit to leave his voice but couldn’t seem to make it. “You...reminded me of things I’d rather not remember. That’s all. I was angry at other people, not you. Maybe even at myself because there’s so little I can do to keep you safe. Being ineffectual doesn’t sit well with me.”

  For a long, quivering moment, she kept staring. “I don’t believe you,” she said. Only the faintest tremor betrayed her tension. “It was me. You would have remembered. You could probably pick the guy out of a lineup. Well, I’m sorry I can’t, but that’s the way it is.”

  Her phone vibrated on the desk, and her gaze dropped to it. “That’ll be Colin. He’s letting me know he’s on his way to pick me up. You’ll have to excuse me, Noah.”

  He couldn’t believe how badly he’d screwed up. He’d known she was abused as a child. What did he think, she was going to laugh it off when he was an asshole to her?

  “Call him.” He let her hear his urgency. “Have dinner with me.”

  She gave a small laugh that broke. “That’s just what I want to do.”

  “Please.”

  As if she hadn’t even heard, Cait yanked her giant bag from beneath the desk and rose. “I need to go.” She dropped the phone into it.

  He wanted to block the doorway, make her listen. He might have done that if he’d known what to say. What he felt. What he really wanted.

  But the truth was, he had no idea. So after a moment, he opened her door and stepped into the outer office, where a couple of other women were collecting handbags and getting ready to leave, too.

  “Tomorro
w, Cait,” he said gruffly and left before she could, the emotions he didn’t want to identify so goddamn tangled inside him, they constricted his lungs and maybe even the basic functioning of his heart.

  He stayed late, because what did he have to go home to? Instead of Chandler’s—Do you ever eat anywhere else?—he continued down the block to the Kingfisher Café, where Nell and Cait had dined the day they ran into Jerry Hegland. He didn’t remember ever being in there.

  He did recognize the woman who stepped out of the kitchen and glanced around shortly after he’d ordered, though. Her hair wasn’t the same color it had been when they’d met—had to be a meeting of the Association of Downtown Merchants, he decided. Then the short spiky hair had been hot pink; now it was turquoise. She’d been especially outspoken.

  She saw him, raised her eyebrows and wound her way between tables until she reached his. “Mayor.”

  He summoned a smile. “I’m afraid I don’t remember your name.”

  “Hailey Allen.”

  “That’s right. Pleasure to meet you again.”

  “What brings you here?”

  “Curiosity. Your café seems to be a favorite lunch spot for a lot of city hall workers.”

  Satisfaction showed on her face. “That’s because I make fabulous food.”

  If the good smells in here were any indication, she did. He grinned. “Have you eaten at Chandler’s?”

  “I have. I’ve tried pretty much every restaurant in town, barring the Red Robin and Olive Gardens.”

  “And?”

  “Your food is good, too.” She sounded a little grudging. “You could get more creative, but I liked what I had.”

  “You’re young to have your own place.”

  “You’re young to have three. And be mayor.”

  “I like to be in charge.”

  She flashed a saucy grin. “Ditto.”

  His soup arrived. The waitress couldn’t hide her curiosity. He began to wonder why Hailey still stood there.

  “Care to join me?” he asked.

  “Lord, no! I don’t have time. Just checking you out.”