Undercover Hunter

by Rachel Lee

  “No.”

  “Then what are you hoping? That he might attack you?”

  DeeJay bridled a bit. “It appears he may have killed at least two women in the past—both of them fitting my description.”

  “Then this is even crazier.” Micah apparently didn’t believe in tiptoeing around. “You want to be bait? I had a case of that a couple of years ago, and it was a damn good thing I was on a rooftop with a sniper rifle. That’s easy to arrange in town, but a hell of a lot more dangerous out on a ranch. I don’t care what kind of training you’ve had. I spent twenty years in Special Ops and I wouldn’t walk into that alone. Assuming we’ve even got the right guy.”

  The justice of his words sank home. But she still had a stark reality to face. “Some other child could be at risk right this minute. He could accelerate. Most of these killers do and from what the FBI said, he may have accelerated in the past. For all we know, he’s making friends with some boy right now, luring him.”

  Micah lifted a brow. “You think he lures them?”

  “How else can you explain that nobody ever notices anything when these kids disappear? He must gain their trust enough to get them to come to him. I want to know if Sweet has been giving talks at the schools. How he could meet these kids and persuade them he’s trustworthy.”

  Micah nodded slowly. “I can see it. But what about you?”

  “He asked me out to his ranch. I’m supposedly here to write about the resort, but he asked me out to his place, promising spectacular views of the mountains to photograph. That’s a lure.”

  “It could be.”

  “Or maybe not,” said Cade. “I don’t want her going out there alone, either, so maybe we can go as a couple.”

  Micah sighed and finished his coffee. “Which is going to undo the whole bait thing.” He rose. “I’m as worried about these kids as anyone, but I know the limits of the law as well as you do. Let me talk to Gage and Nate. Maybe we can work out some way for DeeJay here to go in and still be covered. God knows, I don’t want to see anyone else dead. And keep in mind, before you go haring off on your own, that right now there isn’t enough to build a case. You might just be wasting your time. Right now, our guy could be almost anyone in this county.”

  DeeJay couldn’t deny it. But her nose was twitching. “Intuition is telling me something else.”

  “Maybe so. And you might be right. But, damn it, we need something more, and preferably without your body providing the evidence. You read me?”

  “Loud and clear.”

  He gave a short nod. “One of us will get back to you. I’m not sure how far Gage has gotten looking into Sweet’s background.”

  “We don’t have much, either,” Cade said. “And we’ve been looking, too.”

  “Same resources.” Micah frowned. “We need to find something.”

  “Maybe Gage will find it in Sweet’s job application.”

  “We can hope.”

  * * *

  Someone might notice. Someone might put two and two together. That was a risk they’d been studiously avoiding so that the killer wouldn’t be on the lookout for either of them. Yet they’d had one deputy after another, the former sheriff and Gage Dalton visit them. Some cover, if someone on the street noticed and mentioned it.

  DeeJay stood at the front window after Micah left, and she was chafing. He was right: as an officer of the law, she was far more hampered than a civilian. Any one of the people on this street could go snooping at the Sweet place and bring evidence back, but not a cop. A cop needed a warrant. Hell, a cop couldn’t even ask anyone to do the snooping.

  She didn’t usually object to that stricture. Indeed, she mainly approved of it. People had a right to be protected from intrusion into their privacy by the law. Evidence had to be gathered according to the rules.

  But she chafed anyway.

  Cade spoke from behind her. “The devil and the deep blue sea,” he remarked.

  She turned and found him holding out a fresh mug of coffee to her. She took it, thanking him, and returned to staring out the window at the snow-covered world. “He could be gaining some boy’s confidence right now.”

  “Yeah. On the other hand, if it really is Sweet, maybe he’s got his sights set on a female victim right now. Namely you. I called Gage again.”

  “Anything?”

  “He’s still trying to find the job applications for the crisis center. Somebody did a lousy filing job. Anyway, I told him I wanted a photo of Sweet’s mother.”

  “How much difference will that make?

  “If she looks like his two other female victims, if she looks like you at all...” He didn’t complete the thought. He didn’t need to.

  She set her coffee down, feeling a burst of frustration, and whirled around to look at him. In an instant, a seismic shift occurred inside of her. In one single moment, as she looked at Cade, she forgot everything but him. Inside, she softened and the world went away. The reaction was so strong she couldn’t even fight it. Didn’t want to fight it.

  “Cade?”

  “Yeah?”

  “If we get through this...”

  He waited, then finally prompted her. “What? If we get through this what? And I don’t like your phrasing. You promised you wouldn’t do something stupid, and you’re not a stupid person, DeeJay.”

  “I’m being stupid right now.”

  “Oh, hell,” he said. He put his coffee down and took a step toward her. “You’re not going out there alone.”

  She shook her head. “Quit obsessing about the case.” She almost smiled as she saw his eyebrows lift.

  “And you’re not?” he demanded.

  “I’m obsessing about you.” There, she’d said it. And now she was hanging on painful tenterhooks, awaiting his response.

  Slowly, so very slowly, he started to smile. “In what way?”

  “After this is over, can we have a date? A real date?”

  He stepped even closer. “Like with dinner, and flowers and all that stuff?”

  “You can skip the flowers. I’m not a flowers girl.” Her heart had begun to hammer until she couldn’t quite get enough air. She felt emotionally naked, so exposed that any wound now would run deep and last long. She was terrified in a way she had seldom felt before. Having a gun pointed right at her hadn’t been this scary. “Actually, I’m the kind of girl who’d probably give you the flowers.”

  His smile widened. “What brought this on?”

  “When I looked at you just now, I forgot everything else. You make the obsessions go away, Cade. I’d like to explore that.”

  He reached her and slid his arms around her loosely. “Best reason for a date I’ve ever heard,” he said huskily, then kissed her.

  It wasn’t a demanding kiss. In fact, it was almost comforting, but it invited her to lean into him, to lay her burdens down and just be in the moment. When he broke the kiss, she let herself do something she had never done before: she snuggled into his embrace and rested her head in the hollow of his shoulder. His arms tightened, feeling like a bulwark but not a prison.

  “I don’t know what we’ve got here,” he said a little while later. One of his hands began to run up and down the curve of her back, soothing her. “I don’t know if it’ll mean anything when we’re done. But I’d sure like to find out. So yes, we’ll date. More than once unless you discover you can’t stand me. We’ll find out where this might go.”

  “Probably all to hell,” she said almost sadly. “My other relationships have.”

  “So have mine. I guess neither of us is a good bet. But I’m willing to see.”

  She tipped her head a little but could only see the underside of his strong jaw. “It’s scary,” she admitted. That left her even more exposed.

  “I think anything that really matte
rs is scary,” he said slowly. “I also think that you have even more experience than I do of staring fear down.”

  “I don’t know, but I’ve had to do it more than once.” He was right about that. Giving in to fear, that one time in her life, had cost her a lot. She’d vowed never to do it again.

  “After the rape,” she said.

  “Hmm?”

  “I was young, but maybe that’s no excuse. I allowed myself to be ruled by fear. Fear of what the command structure would do to me if I didn’t shut up. Play by the boys’ rules, if you follow me. I was a coward, and I’ve never forgotten it.”

  “Grab your coffee and let’s go sit on the couch. I want to hear about this.”

  They settled together, his arm still around her. “Tell me.”

  “I think I already have. I could have fought them. I could have become such a pain in the butt that...”

  “They’d have found a way to get rid of you. Like they did after your last case.”

  “Frankly, while I wanted a career in the army, I was more afraid of getting myself killed.” It hurt to admit it, that fear she hadn’t wanted to face even inside herself. Now she was laying it bare. “Accidents happen. They happen in training, and they happen at other times, like when you get shipped to Iraq or Afghanistan. Or any other troubled place. I don’t think my NCO or CO would have done anything like that, but there was the guy I accused and his friends.”

  He cussed quietly. “I don’t guess you felt very well protected.”

  “No.” She’d become a nut about studying self-defense of every kind. It had helped her as an MP, but it had never erased her original cowardice.

  “I don’t think you were a coward. I think self-preservation is an overwhelming force in all of us. You did what you felt you had to in order to survive. I’m glad you did. My life would have been a lot poorer if I’d never met you.”

  Her mood shifted a little, bringing a smidgen of amusement. “You’d never have known if you never met me.”

  “Don’t go all logical on me. Some things just aren’t logical.” But his tone, too, sounded faintly amused.

  She smiled.

  “So,” he said, “you got over being raped, as much as anyone can, but you never got over what you think was cowardice?”

  “It still bothers me.” Not often, but from time to time it haunted her.

  “That explains a lot, including throwing your career away over one case. So let me be clear here. You have nothing to prove, certainly nothing that requires you to walk into a trap alone. Understood?”

  “God. Can no one drop that?”

  “I haven’t heard any promises, and that worries me.” He caught her chin with his hand and tipped her face up. “This is something you don’t have to face without backup. If your instincts are really pointing at Sweet, then I suggest we make ourselves available for another approach from him. Note that I said we.”

  “Noted. But he might not make the invitation again if you’re always around.”

  “Then so be it. We’ll find another way to catch this guy. We’ve put Gage onto a number of things, like whether Sweet gave talks at the school, things like that. I assume he’s got someone poring over the phone logs at the crisis center to see if any of the missing boys ever called there, and if so who took the calls. If he’s not, I’m going to insist on it.”

  “That could take forever.”

  “A lot of things could take forever. But we’ve got to try everything.”

  “And so we come back to our obsession.”

  He laughed. “Inevitably. Told you I was a workaholic. But after this is over, I’m buying you the best dinner ever and we’re going to find out if we’ve got more than a case to keep us together. Fair enough?”

  It was fair enough, she thought. She straightened so Cade could pull out his cell and call Gage. He explained that the boys might have called the crisis center, listened a moment, then said, “Great.” When he disconnected, he looked at her.

  “He’s already on it. You apparently pushed him into hyperdrive yesterday. He pulled the call logs, claiming they needed to provide data for funding, and he put Sarah Ironheart on it. She’s working her way back. As for whether Calvin ever spoke to classes, no.”

  “So it had to be the hotline.” Assuming it was him, of course. But now she believed it more than ever. “Think what a tool that crisis line could be for him.”

  “I am, and it’s making me sick.” He rubbed a hand over his face.

  It made her feel the same, to think of youngsters in some kind of trouble, reaching out to a stranger on the phone only to fall into a sticky spiderweb.

  If it turned out to be Calvin Sweet, she wanted his blood.

  * * *

  Calvin Sweet didn’t think anything when he saw that Cherokee deputy come out of the house where DeeJay was staying. The whole damn town seemed to be trying to put on its best face for these writers, so why wouldn’t that include the sheriff’s department?

  He almost giggled as he trudged through the snow toward the house and Micah Parish drove away. The cops were probably busy showing how caring and alert they were, what a safe place this was...and hoping like hell the writers didn’t focus on the fear and the missing kids.

  He liked walking around town these days, feeling all the fear, watching the way people tried to keep their children close, knowing he had caused it all.

  So, yeah, the writers had to have heard about it. And the sheriff was probably busy making it look like cops were on top of everything around her.

  But they weren’t. They’d never been. They sure as hell hadn’t saved him and he had always wondered why. They must have known what was going on, even though he denied it. He’d been questioned about it, but nobody ever took it any further.

  That made them lazy. Maybe it even made them evil. They’d turned a blind eye even when they got suspicious. His mother had certainly thought they were evil and had wanted nothing to do with any of them.

  This whole place lived in some kind of fantasy world, where the only bad things they wanted to know was who was cheating on whom. Well, he’d taught them before and he was teaching them again.

  Blind. They were all blind. And now they were afraid.

  So, yeah, the sheriff was probably trying to minimize the whole thing so these writers wouldn’t trash the town. Giving them personal attention from the police to convince them that nobody had superior law enforcement.

  Calvin knew better.

  But he was teaching all of them a lesson and, more importantly, he was carrying out the mission left to him by his mother. Purifying those boys.

  And now it was time to purify a woman. The surety of it had become his current driving force. He was past questioning the wisdom of anything he was doing. He only knew he must do this.

  It was time to lure his prey.

  Sometimes the confusion of his own thoughts troubled him. He was saving these boys, and these women, so why did he see them as prey? But once the hunting urge took over, the confusion and questions vanished. He was on a mission. That one conviction never deserted him, not even in moments of confusion.

  He walked up to the front door of the house and knocked.

  * * *

  Cade opened the door and faced a slender, dark-haired man, possibly in his early thirties, who had a face so smooth and perfectly shaped that it appeared almost angelic.

  But he also felt a jolt of recognition, one that made his stomach twist into knots. He didn’t need to hear the guy identify himself to recognize the resemblance, however slight, to the photos he’d seen of the boys and women who had disappeared. This guy fit the victim profile in every way except age. Now he knew for sure why DeeJay kept saying her nose was twitching.

  He had long experience of appearing impassive, so he was sure the jolt didn’t g
ive him away. He summoned a look of mild inquiry. “Yes?”

  “I’m Calvin Sweet. From the crisis center. I met DeeJay the other day.”

  “Oh, yeah. She mentioned you. Cade Denton.” He offered his hand, and Sweet shook it. Cade was surprised that anyone with such an unmarred face could have hands that felt as if they did rough work.

  Calvin smiled. “Nice to meet you. I invited DeeJay out to my place to take some photos. Great view of the mountains. I’ve got some time tomorrow and wondered if you both would like to do that.”

  Cade smiled back. “Are you that proud of your view?”

  “You bet.”

  “Well, come on in. Do you like coffee? The two of us were just getting ready to go out, but we haven’t turned it off yet.”

  Already his mind was racing like mad. All that stuff spread on the kitchen table. He had to keep this guy from following him out there. He waved toward the living room to direct Calvin that way and wondered how to handle this.

  “I won’t keep you long,” Calvin said as he walked into the living room. “I’ve got to go to work in a few hours anyway, but I just wanted to set up something with DeeJay, if you guys are interested.”

  Cade knew a moment of relief when Calvin took the armchair. Now what about the dang coffee? He decided not to ask again. Best to make sure there was no opportunity for him to go to the kitchen.

  “DeeJay?” he called.

  “Be there in a second.” It sounded like she was in the kitchen.

  “I would like that coffee,” Calvin said.

  God, thought Cade, how could a monster have such a sweet smile? But maybe he wasn’t the monster. He had to keep that in mind.

  Not that he believed it was likely any longer.

  He crossed the narrow entry to the kitchen and halted in the doorway, waiting to see if Calvin followed. The sight that met his eyes, however, almost made him smile. DeeJay was in the process of gathering up the last of their papers. A kitchen cabinet was open, and he could see the bulk of them already stashed up there.

  “You’re quick,” he said, keeping his voice to a murmur so Calvin couldn’t hear.