Harlequin Intrigue April 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Carol Ericson

  Pushing aside the frustration, he continued to pet Patches until her presence calmed his raging heart. She seemed to relax, too, and she pulled her head off his shoulder to glance at the door.

  “I know, Patches. You want Keara.”

  Her tail wagged and new nerves filled him. Keara hadn’t been hurt chasing down the killer, and hopefully they’d get lucky and catch him quickly with the APB. But then he and Patches would be leaving.

  He’d been putting off telling her how he felt, putting off telling her that he wanted to pursue a relationship, despite the challenges. He’d been waiting for the right time, hoping this case would end with her getting closure on her husband’s murder and make it easier for her to move on. But there was never going to be a perfect time to talk, not even if that happened.

  He needed to act.

  As if on cue, there was a knock at the door and Patches leaped to her feet, giving an excited bark as her tail whipped back and forth. A reaction like that could only mean one thing: Keara was here.

  His heart rate picked up again as he looked through the peephole to confirm it before letting her in.

  Keara looked formidable, despite torn sleeves and the dirt covering her once-crisp uniform, despite the strands of hair pulled loose from her bun, and the smear of dirt across one cheek. Determination blazed in her eyes and there was a hard set to her expression that said it didn’t matter how far the bomber ran, she was going to find him.

  He stood staring at her, watching her gaze run over him like she was reassuring herself he wasn’t injured, as Patches ran in circles around her.

  Finally a shaky smile broke and she bent down to pet Patches, before standing and moving closer to him. Close enough to touch, but the intimidating, focused expression was still in her eyes, mixed suddenly with a fear he knew he’d caused.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

  “We’re fine,” he reassured her. “I’m not sure he actually wanted to hit us.”

  She blew out a heavy breath that he felt across his face. “We lost him.” She shook her head, and her hard mask broke, showing all the frustration underneath. “The FBI is working with my officers to find him, and we’ve coordinated with all the surrounding towns to be on the lookout for him or his truck. I got a partial plate, which will help, but...”

  She sighed again, ran a hand through her hair that just pulled out more pieces of her bun. “We found the rifle, too, and we’re running it for prints. The bastard was wearing gloves, but there’s a good chance he loaded it without them, so hopefully we’ll get a hit there.”

  “We’ll get him,” Jax said, discovering it was easy to inject his voice with confidence. This killer was savvy and he’d gotten away with it for a long time. But the Anchorage agents were very good and very dedicated. And Keara? Jax knew this was the most important case of her life. She wasn’t going to rest until she found him. And he’d bet on her over anyone else.

  It was something he needed her to know. “Keara—”

  “Shh.” She put a finger to his lips, then stepped closer. She blinked and the last of the frustration and angry determination faded, leaving behind residual fear and need.

  “Are you okay?” he asked as he settled his hands on her hips, desperate to pull her to him, desperate to hold her until the threat was gone. But he needed to hear her say it.

  “I’m okay now.” She pushed his hands aside, unstrapped her holster and set it up on top of his TV. Then she looped her arms around his neck, pushed up on her tiptoes and fused her lips to his.

  It was nothing like the kiss they’d shared this morning. Instead of going slow, her grip tightened as soon as his lips started to move against hers. Her tongue breached the seam of his mouth and she moaned, sending his pulse skyrocketing.

  Gripping her hips again, harder this time, he pulled her closer until there was no space between them. She was a perfect mix of lean muscle and feminine curves, and her tongue was dancing around the inside of his mouth in a way that made his eyes roll back in his head.

  Her kisses were fast and frantic, and Jax met her pace, learning the curves along her body with his hands as she looped a leg around his hip.

  Then she pulled back slightly, breathing heavily, her eyelids at half-mast as she panted, “I can’t stay long, Jax. I have to get back out there.”

  As she was leaning back in, he whispered, “We have all the time we want, Keara. Anchorage and Desparre are only a jumper flight apart.” His lips sought hers again, desperate for another feel of her before she went off chasing a killer.

  But she pulled away, her hands dropping from around his neck and her leg returning to the floor.

  When he opened his eyes, she was still breathing hard, but the desire in her gaze was fading. She nodded, stepping out of his embrace so quickly he almost stumbled, and he tried to figure out what was happening.

  “You’re right,” she said. “And those jumper flights happen every day. The killer has obviously targeted you, Jax, and I don’t want it to happen again. You need to get on one as soon as possible. You and Patches should go home.”

  He stared back at her, his own passion cooling as understanding dawned. Keara wasn’t here right now because the overwhelming relief that he was okay had made her realize she wanted something more serious.

  She was here to say goodbye.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Patches whined and glanced from Jax to the closed hotel door.

  “I know,” he said softly, petting her. The look Keara had given them as she’d grabbed her overnight bag and paused at the door, before shutting it softly behind her, was lodged in his brain. It had been full of regret and sorrow. But it had also been full of finality.

  She believed he’d follow her advice. She believed she was never going to see them again.

  It had been hours since she’d left and he hadn’t heard from her since. He knew she was out there somewhere, searching for the bomber. She’d thrown herself into danger while she asked him to run away from it. For the FBI’s part, they didn’t like that he’d been targeted, either. Ben had called to check in on him. The agent hadn’t suggested that he go home, but he’d sounded discouraged as he advised Jax to stay inside.

  Jax had agreed, but asked for a favor in return. When Ben had originally run the symbol through the FBI database, they’d focused on the past seven years, since Celia’s murder. But today Jax had asked Ben to run the symbol for a ten-year stretch about thirty years ago.

  After Keara had left, he’d needed something else to focus on. Sitting in the quiet of his hotel room with no victims to help and nothing else to do made it too easy to think about the expression on Keara’s face as she’d walked out the door. He wasn’t about to give up hope of changing her mind.

  Still, it was one thing to wish for this case to be solved, for her husband’s murder to be solved. For Keara to get closure. He believed in her. She was dogged and a damn good investigator. Maybe it wouldn’t happen quickly, but he believed she’d find the person responsible.

  But after what happened this morning, he wasn’t sure closure would be enough to make her move on. At least not with him.

  His job wasn’t usually dangerous. Still, he enjoyed using his knowledge of psychology to help investigations. If the opportunity arose again, he didn’t want to turn it down. Even if he was willing to promise that, maybe Keara just couldn’t bring herself to ever date someone connected to law enforcement again.

  He understood it. He’d seen the details from her husband’s case file. The murder had been gruesome. He couldn’t imagine finding someone he loved that way. He definitely empathized with her need never to lose anyone violently again.

  It was why she’d backed away from him. And it wasn’t a fear he was sure he could breach, no matter how hard he tried.

  Patches whined, nudging his leg, and Jax nodded at her. “You�
��re right. I need to focus.”

  She slid to the floor, looking dejected, and he wondered if she understood exactly what was happening with Keara, if she was just as upset over it.

  Giving her one last pet, he clicked to the next result in the files Ben had sent over. Thirty years ago the FBI’s system to compare unsolved crimes was newer. There were fewer entries, so fewer possibilities to go through. But maybe he’d get lucky.

  Because the thing he’d realized as he’d tried to find a way to distract himself from Keara’s departure was that he’d been right from the very beginning. The symbol meant something. And if it was being used by a single criminal, it was probably connected to that person’s childhood.

  Working with the victims of a serial killer last year had been brutal. It had taught him that human beings were capable of far worse atrocities than he’d ever seen before up close. It had also taught him that many of the perpetrators came from violence themselves. Instead of learning empathy from it, they’d sought it out, tried to inflict pain on others.

  Maybe the bomber was the same. Maybe the symbol came from a traumatic incident in his childhood and he was now marking his own crimes with it. Maybe...

  Jax sighed and set aside one more case, wondering if he was wasting time. Even if he was right, the symbol could have been overlooked or never entered in the FBI’s voluntary database.

  Then his pulse spiked as he flipped to the next case. Here was the symbol he’d seen at two bomb sites, staring back at him from a twenty-nine-year-old case. A murder that had happened in Texas, not far from Houston.

  He read fast as Patches sat up, scooting closer and resting her head on his leg. Although the FBI database was meant for unsolved cases, the police in this case had known exactly who the killer was. They just couldn’t find him.

  Arthur Margrove had been known around the community as a violent man. Prone to picking fights with anyone—including his wife—he’d been arrested repeatedly for assault. He’d served multiple short sentences in jail, but never learned his lesson. After being fired from yet another job, he’d returned to his job site, broken in and smashed everything he could find. Then he’d gone home and murdered his wife.

  Today Arthur would be in his sixties. He wasn’t the bomber.

  But Jax tapped the computer screen, his fingers marking the information he’d been searching for all afternoon and into the early evening. Arthur Margrove had a son.

  Todd Margrove had been five years old at the time of the murder. He’d been standing beside his mother’s body when police came looking for Arthur, covered in her blood, probably from trying to help her. Both of them were underneath a bloody symbol drawn on the wall. A symbol that had now been replicated across the country.

  Jax grabbed his phone and dialed Keara’s number. Frustration gnawed when the call went to voice mail, and he left a tense message:

  “Call me back, Keara. I know who the bomber is.”

  * * *

  KEARA GLANCED AT the readout on her phone as she drove down the mountain. Jax was calling.

  She gripped the wheel tighter as she debated whether to answer. She’d spent the day running leads with her officers, the fury and frustration in her chest building and building until it felt ready to burst.

  Nothing was panning out. Thinking about what had happened with Jax in the morning just added fear to the mix.

  Whatever Jax wanted now, it wasn’t to tell her he’d gone home; she knew that much. She hadn’t spoken to him since she’d left his hotel room that morning, but she had talked to the FBI agents, suggesting they get him a flight. Ben had raised his eyebrows at her and told her Jax understood the threat and was staying off the streets. The FBI didn’t believe he was in real danger. They thought if the bomber wanted him dead, he wouldn’t have missed.

  They thought today’s shooting was a message. The bomber knew what they were doing and he wasn’t falling for it.

  He was having fun with them, because after all, if Jax was right, this was what he wanted anyway. A strong opponent to chase him, the thrill of getting away despite their best efforts.

  It wasn’t going to happen. Not this time.

  They might not have prints to give them a name, since the rifle had come up empty. But they had a partial license plate. They had a sketch.

  Her phone stopped ringing as Keara rounded another bend, riding the brakes because this stretch of road was steep. She’d gone up to the top of the mountain to talk to the loner who’d been at the scene of the Desparre bombing. He’d called the station and implied he might have seen the person in the sketch. He’d asked for her personally, and because he was a recluse who’d opened up to her in the past, she’d agreed.

  Charlie Quinn and his FBI partner had spoken to him yesterday and reported back that he was crotchety and uncooperative, but didn’t have any useful information. It seemed unlikely he’d have something new today, but she had to check. Plus, it gave her some time to herself.

  But when she’d arrived, no matter how many ways she asked, the information he’d claimed to have didn’t surface. Instead, he’d spent the entire discussion digging for details on the case. Maybe it was because he’d suffered some minor injuries, cuts to his legs that had required stitches. Or maybe he was just one of those guys who got off on crime scene details.

  He wasn’t the bomber. In his late fifties, in poor health and bad shape, not only did he not fit the description, but he’d lived in Desparre too long.

  Still, Keara’s radar was up. As soon as she’d returned to her SUV, she’d called the station to update them, let them know she was heading back in.

  The whole thing had been a waste of time. Peering up at the sky through her windshield, she scowled at the fading light filtering through the towering trees. Pretty soon it would be dark. Her officers had been working a lot of overtime in the past four days. The shooting downtown today meant they’d needed to spend as much time reassuring the public and keeping a visible presence there as running leads.

  The more time that passed from when the bomber had shown up in the park, the farther he could run. Yes, he’d found a police department—and a group of federal agents—to try and outwit. But he hadn’t made it so many years without being caught by being stupid. Maybe the shots at Jax had been his parting ones. His way of telling them they’d gotten as close as they ever would. His own form of goodbye, before he showed up in some other state, committed some other crime.

  Rounding another corner, Keara’s SUV jolted as it ran over something in the road. The back of her vehicle did the same and then the tires started making a rhythmic thump thump thump.

  Flat tires.

  What the hell had she hit?

  Glancing around her at the darkening woods, Keara put her SUV in Park and pulled her gun as she stepped out of the vehicle.

  Scanning the area and seeing nothing unusual, she walked to the back of her vehicle. There was a plank of wood driven through with upward facing nails directly behind her back wheels.

  Adrenaline rushed through her, all her senses on alert as she lifted her weapon. She spun around just as something flew toward her head.

  Keara ducked, trying to center her weapon at the figure that had rushed out of the woods, but the slab of wood still made contact with the top of her head.

  Pain exploded in her skull, bringing tears to her eyes. Her feet came out from underneath her and her arm slammed down on the edge of the board of nails, making her lose her grip on the gun. It skidded away from her, out of reach.

  Then the man she’d seen only from a distance that morning was filling her vision, a smile on his face. The bomber, murderer, arsonist. The man who’d shot at Jax. The man who’d killed Juan.

  He wavered in her sight, her vision blurry from the hit to the head, her lungs screaming from the hard landing. Fighting the urge to throw up, ignoring the burning pain in her arm, Keara shoved herself up
ward, launching at him.

  But he moved fast, swinging that slab of wood again.

  Even though she threw up her arm to block it, the wood still made contact with the side of her head.

  She hit the ground again, head throbbing, nausea welling up hard.

  Then she was moving, her head bumping over every uneven piece of ground, into the woods.

  Her vision went in and out, as dizziness threatened to overtake her, threatened to suck her into unconsciousness. Panic erupted, flooding her system with terror, but keeping her awake. She was weak from the blows to her head, too dizzy to stand. Too dizzy to fight.

  He left her for a moment and she swallowed the nausea, tried to move, but her body wouldn’t cooperate. Then the bushes in front of her were moving and she blinked, trying to right her swaying vision, until she realized it wasn’t bushes she was seeing.

  They were camouflage, broken branches strategically covering the truck he’d hidden just off the road. He planned to put her in that truck, to take her somewhere else.

  It wasn’t a quick death he planned for her, but probably a painful one.

  Keara rolled onto her belly, biting down on her cry of pain as her vision swung one way and then back again and her head throbbed violently. Where was her gun?

  Too soon it didn’t matter because she was being lifted, thrown over his shoulder with frightening ease. He carried her around to the back of the truck where a metal gun box was propped open.

  Keara kicked, raking her fingernails over the backs of his arms, still coherent enough to think like the cop she was. To get his DNA on her.

  He yelped and swore and then he was swinging her fast enough to make her nausea overwhelming, make her vomit on the ground beneath him. Soon the ground disappeared altogether and she was being stuffed into the empty gun box.

  She shoved upward, trying to escape, but he’d dropped her into the box awkwardly, making it hard to move. The multiple blows to the head and the new wave of dizziness slowed her down, too. The lid closed, leaving her in darkness.