“Okay.”
She hugged her cocoa cup in her hands and got to her feet. “Thanks, Doc.”
“You bet, Dawn.”
Sighing, she headed back up the stairs to her room. It was empty when she got there. No more chill. She let the warmth of the cocoa mug heat her hands and whispered, “Please stay away from me tonight. I just want to get some sleep. Okay?”
There was no answer.
* * *
River paced. He sat and he thought, and then he paced some more. He battled tears and fought against denial. He knew damn well Steph had loved him. Things had been good between them. She’d told him they were going to start over, that they were going to be all right.
He closed his eyes and sank onto the bed, lowering his head. Yeah, things had been good. At the end. Before that, though, their marriage had been strained. For a while, he’d been sure it was over. That she was on the verge of leaving him.
He’d never once believed it would have been for someone else. Never.
But now…now whispers of memory came crawling out of the depths of his mind. Things he’d seen and ignored. Things he hadn’t wanted to see, but could no longer deny. Times when she’d gone out shopping and come home without any bags. Too many times. Occasions when she’d hung up the phone as soon as he’d walked into a room.
The time when she’d gone to visit a friend he’d later learned had been out of town that week. And so many days when she’d simply been away without explanation.
He fisted his hands in his hair. He’d been stupid. Blind. Or had he?
“River?”
He lifted his head when Cassandra’s voice came from the other side of his bedroom door.
“Can I come in?”
He got up, blinked to clear his eyes, hoped to Christ his anguish didn’t show on his face—and then he wondered why he hoped it. Cassandra wasn’t going to buy that this wasn’t killing him. She was too insightful, too sharp for that.
He opened the bedroom door and drew a breath. “I’m sorry about…acting like an idiot downstairs.”
“Don’t be. This is hell on you, River, and it would be on anyone. You’re not made of stone.”
He shook his head. “No reason to take it out on you. I blew up down there. I lost it, and—”
“Yeah. That was one scary burst of temper. You scattered the hell out of those sheets of paper.”
He frowned, searching her face. She was getting at something, but he wasn’t sure what.
“Your idea of ‘losing it’ is kicking a file folder across the room. You didn’t break anything. You didn’t scream or yell. You didn’t knock me over the skull and burn the house down, River.”
He lowered his head, getting it now. “That doesn’t mean I’m incapable of it.”
“Can I come in or not?” she asked.
He sighed. “Not the best idea, Cassandra.”
She lifted her hands. He saw the cups in them, smelled the rich chocolate wafting from them. “Yeah, I figured it would take a little bribe. So I brought hot cocoa.”
His mouth pulled into a slight smile at the coaxing tone, and the innocent expression she put on to go with it—an expression he knew to be utterly false. “Well, hell, you should have said so.” He pulled the door wider, stepped aside.
She walked in, set a mug on the dresser beside the bed, then walked to the other side and placed the second mug on the nightstand. She sat on the bed with her back to the headboard, legs stretching out on the mattress, then turned those eyes his way and patted the spot beside her.
Damn, but this was not a good idea. Still, he crossed the room, sat on the bed, mimicking her position before taking his cup.
She sipped her cocoa. “So have you been asleep yet?”
“Right.”
She shrugged. “You were awfully quiet up here. I was hoping you’d caught a nap. You need one.”
“So do you,” he said. “Have you slept?”
“No, I finished reading the file.”
“Find anything else earth-shattering?”
“No. Bits and pieces, nothing that adds up to anything. No clues as to who—” She bit her lip, didn’t finish.
“Who my wife was fucking,” he said.
She flinched a little when he said it. And he knew damn well it wasn’t the language. She’d worked with men her entire career. She was used to the language and threw it around herself when the need arose. He thought it was the fact that it had come from him that caused the involuntary twitch. “Maybe you were right, and it was a mistake in the lab work.”
“No. It was no mistake. I’ve been sitting up here, thinking.” She shot him a look and he said, “Okay, wallowing. I’m a pathetic, self-pitying asshole.”
“You’re allowed. But only for another half hour.”
Again, she drew a smile out of him when he hadn’t thought there had been one left. How the hell did she do that? She wouldn’t let him get away with pouting, with being morose and feeling sorry for himself. Good for her.
“So you’ve been thinking…” she prompted.
He had to look away from her face before any thinking could resume. “Yeah,” he said, studying his cup of cocoa instead. “There were signs. I just didn’t want to see them.”
She nodded. “Try being a cop, instead of a grieving husband, if you can, River. Not the easiest thing. But pretend it’s not Steph you’re talking about. Pretend it’s a case. A stranger. What’s the evidence?”
He blinked, nodded, knew she was right. Wasn’t sure it was possible, but it was the only way he had even a shot of seeing through the fog of emotions to the clarity of truth.
“I’d walk into the room and she’d just hang up the phone. Not say goodbye, nothing. Just hang up.”
“You ever go pick it up and hit Redial?”
“No. Should have. I was probably afraid of what I’d find out.”
She nodded. “We can really do a number on ourselves when we don’t want to know something, can’t we? What else?”
“Shopping trips where she didn’t buy anything. Visiting friends who weren’t even in town at the time. A lot of times she should have been home and wasn’t.”
“I don’t suppose you remember any dates?”
He frowned, shooting her a look. She was digging into his private hell, digging like any good cop trying to solve a case. Part of him resented it, and part of him admired her for it. Most of him was grateful. She was trying to help him. And so what if her reasons were entirely selfish? An effort to ease her conscience of a guilty secret.
That bothered him. Bothered him a lot more than it ought to, given everything else he had to worry about.
“Actually, I remember a couple of dates,” he said. “Only because they were important.” He couldn’t look at her as he went on. “One was Halloween. She never missed Halloween, used to dress up for the trick-or-treaters. Another was my birthday.”
He was sorely afraid Cassandra would express sympathy, and he knew he couldn’t handle it if she did. He braced himself for it, for her to gasp and ask how any wife could stand her husband up on his birthday. She didn’t. Instead she set her cocoa down, opened the drawer of the nightstand and took out a pad and pen. “October thirty-first,” she said, jotting it down. “And…?”
“September twenty-fourth.”
She wrote down the date. “And this would have been of…what, year before last?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. That gives us a couple of dates we can check. If we can figure out where she was we might be closer to learning who was with her.”
He nodded. It was a logical, practical approach.
“Do you have any…suspicions, River? Of who it might have been?”
He closed his eyes.
Her hand settled on the back of his neck, rubbed him there like a trainer would massage a boxer between rounds. “I know it’s hard,” she said.
“No. No suspicions. Hell, she didn’t even know anyone out here. Didn’t make any friends. She was
miserable.”
She nodded. “She knew Ethan, though.”
He shook his head. “It wasn’t Ethan. He wouldn’t do that to me. Hell, even if he would, he wouldn’t do it to Victoria. He adores his wife.”
Cassandra tilted her head to one side. “I saw him in the grocery store earlier. Did I tell you?”
River turned toward her. Her hand was still massaging his nape and it felt damn good. “No. You didn’t mention it.”
She nodded. “He asked me to go out with him. Dinner tomorrow night. Didn’t mention he was married.”
River couldn’t reply to that, because it was as if she was speaking a foreign language. It didn’t make any sense.
“I said I’d go.”
“The hell you will.”
The words came without warning, without forethought. A knee-jerk reaction that didn’t make any more sense than anything else in this messed-up conversation.
She lifted her brows and blinked at him. “Look, what better way can you think of for me to pump him for information? See what he lets slip?”
“You don’t need to pump Ethan for information. And you’d better believe if he asked you out, it was for the same damn reason you accepted. He thinks you know something. Bet on it.”
She shrugged, drained her cup and set it on the nightstand. “Well, naturally. It’s not like there’s a chance in hell he could be attracted to me.”
“Oh, come on, Cassandra, you know damn well that’s not what I meant. A freaking dead man would be attracted to you.”
Her smile was slow and knowing. “Dead man, huh? How about an escaped mental patient hopped up on Haldol?”
River held her eyes. “Yeah. Him, too.”
She took the cup from his hand and set it beside hers. “So is he going to do anything about it?”
“No.” He shook his head firmly.
“Come on, River. Do you really think I came up here to talk about the case?”
“It would be a mistake. I can’t…Jesus, with everything else. No. It’s just a bad idea, Cassandra.”
She shrugged. “It’s been a while for me. I’ll bet it’s been a lot longer for you. I’m not much for romanticism, River. I learned young that you never know for sure when your time is up. So I’m big on living in the moment.” She dipped into her pocket, pulled out a handful of cellophane-wrapped packets. “I—uh—picked these up at the store. In case you change your mind.” She leaned over him, set the condoms on his dresser.
Before she could lean back again, he caught her shoulders, and she looked up into his eyes, waiting. What the hell was she doing? Was this another attempt at repairing mistakes made in the past? Soothing her conscience over the death of an innocent man?
His eyes fixed on her mouth. She licked her lips, and the thoughts that flooded his mind were damn near overwhelming. But the one thing more powerful in his mind was the knowledge that he might hurt her. He might kill her.
“You should get some sleep,” he said at a last.
She pursed her lips. “I’m not sure if you’re being noble or stubborn.” She sighed and climbed off the bed.
Stupid, he thought in silence. I’m being freakin’ stupid.
“Good night, River.”
“’Night.”
She left the room. Closed the door.
He lay there, arguing with himself for all of ten minutes. Then he surged out of the bed and opened the door. He heard the shower running, knew she was in it, suppressed a moan that welled up from his soul.
Silently he moved closer to the bathroom. The door wasn’t closed tightly. It hung open just a bit. He could see inside. He could see the tub, with its sliding glass door. He could see her beyond the frosted glass. She stood beneath the spray, a flesh-toned blur. Her hands sliding over her body. Over her belly. Between her thighs.
River spun away, lunged back into his bedroom and closed the door. Head tipped back, eyes closed, he stood there in an agony of self-denial and knew he would never sleep. Or if he did, she was going to haunt his dreams.
He reminded himself sharply that he had damn good reason not to get any closer to this woman than he already was. He didn’t know what he was capable of. He didn’t know when he might black out again, and God, what if he did? What if he did and came back to himself only to find her lying dead at his feet?
Deep down, he realized the real fear that was eating at him, tormenting him. Because frankly, he didn’t see how any grown man could have failed to recognize the signs of his wife’s infidelity, could remain blind to them for as long as he had.
So what if he hadn’t? What if, deep down, he’d known the truth about Stephanie? What if that was the reason he’d killed her?
CHAPTER 11
Jax woke to the sound of her alarm clock, and managed to sit up, locate it and silence its irritating bleat all without opening her eyes. She took her time about that, arching her back and stretching her arms thoroughly before finally taking a bleary-eyed look around the living room. “I have got to get another bed in this house,” she muttered, flinging off her blanket and sliding to her feet.
Rex got up when she did. He’d been asleep in front of the fire. And just like her, he stretched tiredly, before padding to the door and looking back at her.
“Yeah, yeah. Okay.” She went to the door and let the dog out. Then, barefoot, she made her way into the kitchen and hit the button on the coffeemaker. She’d filled it the night before so it was ready to brew. Then she returned to the living room to fold up her blanket, pick up her pillow, and carried the two of them upstairs to stash them in a closet. No need alerting any further break-and-enter types that she was sleeping on the sofa.
She slid the blanket and pillow onto their shelf, then turned to look at the closed bedroom door. Poor River. She probably shouldn’t have come on to him the way she had last night. Part of her wondered why she’d done it. It was true, she wasn’t a prude when it came to sex. But she wasn’t prone to sleeping with strangers or bedding men on the first date, either. She couldn’t deny the attraction between them. And she knew men. Hell, she’d been around them all her life. That man needed to get laid. Badly. He was practically climbing the walls with frustration, and his ego had suffered the worst blow the male ego could suffer. It needed shoring up. And since he was clearly as attracted as she was, she’d seen no reason not to indulge.
Still, she didn’t suppose he was used to women with a practical approach to sex. She wondered what his wife had been like. Not loyal, that was for sure. Jax might be okay with casual sex when the need arose—both parties willing and all precautions taken, of course—but she didn’t think she could ever cheat on the man she loved. If she ever fell in love, that was. An eventuality that seemed pretty doubtful most of the time.
She smiled. She wasn’t usually attracted to cops. Interesting.
She wondered if he’d managed to catch any sleep, and crept to the door, opened it just a crack to peer in at him.
A neatly made bed lay in a startlingly neat bedroom. Not an escaped mental patient in sight. Frowning, she pushed the door open wider. “River?”
Nothing. And the cups she’d left on the dresser were gone. Vaguely, she recalled seeing them resting in the dish drainer when she’d gone out to turn on the coffeepot. She shifted her gaze to the other dresser, then began opening drawers. The condoms she’d left on top were inside now. But nothing else was there. No clothes. Nothing.
Hell, she couldn’t believe her proposition last night had scared him away. No, it couldn’t be that. He was up to something. But where the hell could he go without a…
She ran to the bedroom window, pushed the curtains aside and blinked down at her driveway. Her very empty driveway.
“That son of a—”
A note was propped on the windowsill. Just a page from the notepad in the dresser, folded in half with her name scrawled on the outside.
Sighing, she picked it up, unfolded it.
“Don’t panic,” she read. “This has nothing to do with
last night. I just have a couple of things I have to do. If all goes well, I’ll be back tonight. Do me a favor, though—stay away from Ethan. And just in case I don’t see you, thanks. For everything, Cassandra, including the ego-stroking. It did me a world of good.”
It was signed “R.”
She pursed her lips, crushed the note in her fist, and turned to carry it down the stairs to the living room, where she tossed it into the hearth.
“What’s that?”
She spun around and saw Ethan Melrose standing in her front doorway, staring in at her. Hell, she hadn’t relocked it when she’d let Rex out.
Rex. Where the hell was…?
A sudden explosion of barking told her that wherever he’d been, the dog was back now, and not happy to see a strange man standing on his porch. She lunged forward, grabbed Ethan by the arm and jerked him inside, slamming the door just before Rex could take a chunk out of his ass.
He was clearly startled. “Jesus, what the hell was that?”
“Stray dog,” she muttered. And she wondered if he’d recognized Rex. Surely Ethan would be familiar with his best friend’s old pet. “He’s not usually aggressive. I’ve been feeding him.”
Ethan lifted his brows. “Trying to make friends?”
“He’s a great dog,” she said. “He needs a home, and I’m all alone, so—”
“You are?” He was looking around the house, past her, almost as if he expected to see someone there. “I could have sworn I heard a man’s voice when I was knocking.”
Oh, no he didn’t, she thought. He hadn’t heard a damn thing. Because River hadn’t been here. So if he suspected a man was around, he had other reasons for it. The guy was on a fishing expedition. She immediately wondered if he’d been the one who’d trashed her place last night, and she bristled inwardly at the notion, but tried to keep it from showing. Bastard.
“No one here but me,” she said. “I just made coffee. Do you want to come in and have a cup?”
“Sure. Thanks.” She stepped aside, mentally reviewing where she’d put the files and notes on River’s case. She’d been shaken enough by the break-in that she’d taken precautions. Stuffed them inside an empty cereal box and slid it, upright, onto the top shelf of a cupboard. She sent a sideways glance at the note she’d crumbled and tossed into the fire. There was nothing left but ash. She smiled a little as she led the way into the kitchen, nodded to a chair and got down a pair of coffee cups.
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