by Lisa Childs
“I chose to have my son on my own,” she informed him. “I used a sperm donor.” And before he could jump to another unflattering assumption about her, she added, “From a sperm bank.”
“Oh,” he murmured.
Not everyone understood or appreciated what she’d done. But she didn’t care. She loved Connor so much—even when he kept her awake. She moved closer to Forrest and brushed a fingertip along Connor’s cheek. He was so perfect.
“You chose to be a single parent,” he murmured.
And she couldn’t tell if he approved or disapproved. But she didn’t give a damn what he thought anyway.
“He’s the only male I need or want in my life,” she informed Forrest, just like she’d told her friends a week ago. She didn’t want anyone to answer to, anyone to disappoint or abandon her.
“That’s too bad,” he said.
And she gasped with surprise yet again. Was he...interested in her after all? She glanced from Connor’s face to his, which was flushed now.
“I meant...because it would be safer for you and Connor if you weren’t out here alone,” he said quickly, as if he was worried she’d misunderstood him.
She sighed. “You sound like Bellamy and Maggie,” she admitted.
“They’re concerned about you, too?”
She nodded. And that had been before Forrest’s discovery in her backyard. She couldn’t imagine how much they would worry now. She was surprised that he was concerned, though.
Why?
He barely knew her. And if he was interested in her, he wouldn’t act like such a jerk. Maybe it was just the lawman in him that had him worried about her safety.
“Your friends are wise to worry about you being out here all by yourself,” he said.
“They’re my friends, so they should know better than anyone else does that I can take care of myself and my son without the help or protection of any man,” she informed him.
“I’m not saying you need a man,” Forrest told her. “I’m saying that you need someone, though. You’re training to be a lawyer, not a police officer.”
She tensed. “You really believe I’m in danger?”
He shrugged, which jostled the sleeping baby into opening one eye and peering up at the man holding him.
If she was in danger, Connor would be, as well. So she had to ask, “What do you think?”
“I think there’s a killer in Whisperwood,” he said. “So nobody’s safe.”
She reached for her son, taking him from the detective’s arm. When her fingers brushed across his muscular forearm, a tingling sensation rose from her fingertips to her heart, jolting her.
And Connor.
He awoke with a cry of protest. Apparently he’d preferred Forrest Colton holding him over his mother holding him. But then he had to be frustrated with her; she hadn’t managed to comfort him last night, hadn’t managed to make him feel better, like her mother had always made her feel better.
Even when Mama had been so very sick, she’d offered solace to Rae, had held her and soothed all of her fears. She missed her mom every day. And she needed her now more than she ever had.
Because Rae was scared...and not just of the killer on the loose. She was scared that she may have taken on more than she could handle alone.
* * *
She was alone.
He had watched the house all day, had watched the police collect their evidence, had watched Rae Lemmon leave and then return later, after the police had already gone for the day. So she was the only one near the house now.
She and her baby.
He waited outside, watching the house until all of the lights flickered off inside, leaving it dark. Then he moved away from the tree against which he’d been leaning, and he headed toward the house.
Beside the sidewalk leading up to the porch, a big iron pot overflowed with red geraniums that matched the flowers overflowing the window boxes of the little white ranch house. He bent over, tipped the pot and fumbled beneath it.
Then a grin curved his lips, and his fingers closed around a key and tugged it free from beneath the pot. A magnet glued to the key had kept it stuck to the bottom. With the key in hand, he climbed the short steps up to the porch. As he moved across it to the front door, boards creaked beneath his weight. He unlocked the door, and it creaked as he opened it.
He tensed, waiting for lights to flash on inside, but everything remained dark and quiet.
The house was small, just two bedrooms off the living room, with a bathroom in between them. The door to the first bedroom was mostly closed, so he walked past it and the bathroom to the second bedroom. Moonlight streaming through the window reflected off the glow-in-the-dark stars painted on the ceiling. That light shone down on the face of the baby sleeping in the crib.
He crossed the room to the crib and stared down at the sleeping child. Something twisted in his chest, and he sucked in a breath.
He hated to do this.
But he had no choice.
Not anymore.
His hand shaking, he pulled a switchblade from his pocket and popped out the blade. Then he leaned over the railing of the crib, with the knife in his hand extended toward the sleeping child...
Chapter 4
Chief Archer Thompson was in over his head. He knew it. That was why he’d hired the detective from Austin—Forrest Colton. He hadn’t done that just because Hurricane Brooke had stretched the department so thin that it was nearly transparent. He’d hired Forrest because Archer was too close to one of the murder victims.
His hand shook as he reached for the picture on the bookshelf in his home study. Emmeline at sixteen. So beautiful...
So sweet.
The first body Hurricane Brooke had uncovered was his sister’s. Missing for all of those years...
Was it the same situation with the body that Forrest had found out at the Lemmon house? Had her family been wondering for decades where she was?
And what about the woman in the parking lot?
She hadn’t been dead long, but somebody was probably already missing her, wondering where she was, if she’d been hurt and stranded in the hurricane.
He didn’t need the coroner’s report to know that she’d been murdered like the others. Elliot Corgan was dead now, so he couldn’t have hurt her.
And he claimed he hadn’t hurt Emmeline.
But if not him, who? Who else would want to harm the sweet young woman his sister had been?
Yeah, he was in too deep—too emotionally invested in finding the killer. Forrest Colton wasn’t. He would be able to examine everything with objectivity. He wouldn’t have had all of the success he’d had solving those cold cases in Austin if he got too involved. So nothing and nobody should be able to distract Forrest from finding this killer.
* * *
He was distracted, so distracted with thoughts of Rae Lemmon and her sweet baby. Despite her insistence that she didn’t need any protection, Forrest should have insisted on leaving an officer at her house. He could have convinced her that it was protocol—to protect the crime scene.
But it wasn’t the crime scene he was worried about.
Her house was so far from town, so far from any other homestead. While some of his family’s ranch touched her property, the closest other dwelling belonged to the Corgans. And one of them had been a serial killer. How the hell had Elliot Corgan’s family kept the fact that he was a murderer out of the press for so many years?
Judicial order?
They must have paid the judge for that order. Had they paid for anything else in town? For someone else to start up the murders to try to make Elliot Corgan look innocent?
His blood chilled as the thought occurred to him. But why bother now after another Corgan had already been arrested? James Corgan had tried to kill his ex-wife, Maggie Reeves-Corgan, and Forrest’s bro
ther Jonah, who was now Maggie’s fiancé. Fortunately James hadn’t been as successful at committing murders as his great-uncle had.
Those old case files sat atop Forrest’s desk, the top folders nearly sliding off the mound of records and onto the floor of his cubicle area of the Whisperwood Police Department. He’d looked through everything in those case files and was as convinced as the jury had been that Elliot had been responsible for all of those murders.
But one.
There had been one victim all those years ago that had been strangled but hadn’t had a scarf stuffed in her mouth like the others. She’d also been the only one of those bodies that had been mummified.
Like the chief’s sister...
Like the body found in Rae’s backyard...
No. Even back then, before Elliot had been arrested, convicted and sentenced to life in prison, there had been two killers. Were there two killers now? Or had that one just started up again?
Had his first recent murder been Elliot’s? After Jonah and Maggie had interviewed the serial killer in prison, he had supposedly committed suicide, but Jonah had had his doubts. And knowing serial killers as well he did, so did Forrest. Had this killer somehow gotten to Elliot to prevent the inmate from revealing his identity?
And if this killer could get to someone in a maximum-security prison, he could certainly get to someone who lived in a little ranch house outside town.
Forrest shivered despite the fact that the air conditioner barely worked in the big open area that was divided only by the short cubicle walls. Out of all of the cubicles, his was the only one currently occupied. The officers on duty had gone out on patrol hours ago. Except for the 911 area and the front desk, the building was pretty much deserted.
He needed to head home or his parents would worry. Despite all of the years he’d been gone or maybe because of them, his parents worried about him like he was a teenager staying out past curfew. Not that he ever stayed out late. It wasn’t as if he had anyplace—but work—to go. And maybe that was why they worried.
He touched his bad leg, which was stiff from all of the time he’d been sitting at his desk. They were probably worried that he was going to get hurt again—like he’d been hurt before. Like he still was...
His leg shook, threatening to fold, but he locked it and walked stiff-legged around his desk. He’d just stepped outside the dingy fabric walls of his cubicle when the phone on his desk began to ring. Dispatch probably didn’t realize he was still in the office, so the call hadn’t come through them. It must have come into his direct line.
Dread gripped his stomach, churning it, as he hobbled back to his desk and picked up the receiver. “Detective Colton.”
“This is Dr. Bentley from the medical examiner’s office,” the caller identified herself. “The ME wanted me to let you know that we’re pretty certain of an identification for that murder victim.”
Shocked, Forrest sucked in a breath. “That was quick.”
“For the one in the parking lot,” Dr. Bentley clarified. “Despite how well it was preserved, the other body may take a long time to identify.”
The body in Rae’s backyard.
His mind flitted to Rae Lemmon and to her son—to the two of them being alone in that house where the body had been buried just a few yards from their back door. And that dread gripped his stomach again.
He was more worried about her than he was about notifying the family of the murder victim from the parking lot. But he owed them his full attention; they’d already lost too much.
“Are you still at the office?” he asked the doctor.
“Yes, Detective.”
“I’m going to come down and take a look at the full report,” he said. Her family was going to want more than her identification; they were going to want to know what happened to her.
They were also going to want to know who did it to her. He couldn’t give them that person’s name. Not yet.
But he would. He had to stop this sadistic killer before he killed again. Before he hurt anyone else.
And again an image of Rae’s pretty face flashed through his mind. She’d said she could take care of herself, so she was strong and resourceful. To get into law school, she also had to be smart. Too smart to take dangerous risks. He really had no reason to be worried about her.
But those other women had probably thought they could take care of themselves, too, that they needed no protection. Now they were lying in the morgue. He did not want Rae Lemmon to wind up there.
* * *
Despite how exhausted she was from all of her sleepless nights, Rae couldn’t rest. Sleep continued to elude her. And it wasn’t because Connor was crying.
He was quiet—so quiet that she felt goose bumps of unease lift her skin. Why was he so quiet now?
He was exhausted, too, though. Probably even more exhausted than she was, since he was the one who’d done all of the crying the past few nights. He must have just been sleeping soundly.
Like she wished she could sleep.
But unlike Connor, she wasn’t blissfully unaware of what had been discovered in their backyard earlier that day. A body.
Whose?
Who had been killed, and had that murder taken place right here? In Rae’s backyard? Or in her house?
She shivered at the thought.
Would Forrest come back? Would he want to bring his crime-scene techs into her home?
She’d left before they’d finished up in her backyard. But they’d been gone when she’d returned, leaving behind only that yellow tape that had cordoned off her backyard.
Not that she wanted to go out there ever again.
When she’d left, she’d locked up the house, so unless Forrest had found the key under the flowerpot, he wouldn’t have been able to get inside without breaking and entering. And she’d found no evidence of that.
Unlike the backyard, her house had seemed undisturbed—or at the least just as messy as it had been when she and Connor had left. Would she have even been able to tell if Forrest had searched it?
Of course he must have realized he would need a warrant before she would allow that. She’d made it clear to him that she knew her rights and had no intention of letting him violate them or anything else.
But he’d violated her sleep. Thoughts of him—as much as thoughts of that poor corpse—had kept her awake. Why did he irritate her so much?
What was it about him that bothered her in a way she couldn’t remember anyone else ever bothering her?
She turned to flip to her left side from her right, but the sheets twisted around her, prohibiting her from moving. A curse slipped out from between her lips.
And she tensed. Hopefully she hadn’t awakened Connor. But she heard something else—a strange creaking noise, like something or someone moving across the floorboards.
Then Connor did awake with a cry. But this wasn’t like the nights before, when colic had brought him out of an already fitful sleep. This sounded more like a cry of terror—but it might have held pain, as well.
Jerking at the tangled sheets, Rae fought her way out of the bed. Tripping and stumbling over the ends of the sheets, she picked herself up from the floor and ran from her bedroom into Connor’s. If she’d met anyone between her door and his, she would have plowed them over; she was so desperate to get to her son.
But nobody crossed her path. And nobody stood inside the nursery, but there was something, some lingering presence, some scent...
And she knew that Connor had not been alone the entire night. Somebody had been in his room. She scrambled toward the crib and peered over the railing.
Connor’s feet and arms flailed as he lay on his back, kicking and screaming. She reached down and picked him up, checking his tiny body for wounds or whatever was hurting him as she did.
He was stiff, but nothing felt wounded. She sooth
ed him by rubbing her hand up and down his back, which was damp with perspiration from his exertion, and a few hairs stuck to her palm. Had he been thrashing so violently that he’d pulled out some hair?
Maybe she needed to call a doctor. Or take him to the emergency room.
She held him tightly against her and murmured soothing words as she continued to stroke his back and rock him. Her heart pounded frantically, and his smaller heart echoed that beat...until finally it slowed. And his terrified sobbing quieted to soft, shaky cries.
And with his crying no longer ringing in her ears, she could hear other things. Like that creak again...
But it wasn’t a floorboard this time. It was the creak of a door opening, then the distinctive click of it closing again. She shuddered. Somebody had been inside the house, inside the nursery...with Connor.
She needed to call the police.
She’d been so anxious to get to Connor that she’d left her cell in her bedroom. Had the intruder been in there? Had he taken her phone? Her purse?
She didn’t care if he’d taken everything she owned—as long as he didn’t harm her son. Or her.
She had to make sure he didn’t return. With Connor still clasped in her arms, she rushed out of his room and back to hers. Her fingers trembling, she flipped on the switch next to the door and illuminated the room with the ceiling light.
Her phone lay on the bedside table, connected to her charger, so she rushed over to it. But as she reached for it, she noticed something fluttering on her pillow in the breeze that blew in through the open window. A piece of paper.
But it wasn’t just paper.
When she picked it up, short strands of brown hair rained out of it, onto her tangled sheets. She touched the strands, which were baby soft, and panic gripped her heart.
It was Connor’s hair. She inspected his little head and found where the piece had been cut, just above his left ear. But it looked like only his hair had been cut, the ends left jagged.