by Lisa Childs
Mrs. Dawson sounded so happy and youthful. Rae wished she would have taken the time to meet her. But she needed to get to Connor. So she rushed from the building, to her SUV and then to the day care center, and as she did, she kept glancing around her, checking for anyone looking at her, watching her.
But nobody and nothing stuck out to her. Of course she was learning to be a lawyer, not a cop—just as Forrest Colton had pointed out to her. She didn’t know how to accurately assess who might pose a threat to her or to Connor.
“Everything okay?” Bob asked as the burly middle-aged man carried the baby carrier to the car for her.
She nodded.
“I heard about another body turning up out at your place,” he said.
She shuddered.
“If you need anything...”
She thought about telling him about the threat, but like her friends, he would probably also want her to call the police. And the last thing she needed was the police—particularly Detective Forrest Colton—coming around her place again.
Hopefully he had concluded his search quickly that morning and was long gone. When she pulled into her driveway a short while later, she didn’t notice any vehicles. But a light did glow inside the house.
Had one just been left on? Or was someone inside?
Leaving Connor in the back seat in his carrier, she headed cautiously toward the house. The door was shut, but behind the curtains pulled across the windows, a shadow moved. Someone was inside her house.
Forrest?
Or the person who’d snuck in last night to threaten her son?
Chapter 7
Forrest hadn’t expected a warm welcome. Hell, he hadn’t expected a welcome at all—just questions and confusion and pain.
So much pain.
But neither man cried. They hadn’t when he’d notified them of Patrice’s death either. Her brother and her widowed father had been in shock then, so he hadn’t asked them many questions. That was why he’d returned tonight, to talk to them after they’d had some time to process the news of their loss. But they were more inclined to ask their own questions than they were to answer his.
“What are you doing to find her killer?” her father, Atticus Eccleston, asked.
“Is her murder your primary focus?” her brother asked. “Or do you only care about the old bodies?”
Forrest furrowed his brow in confusion. “What?”
“We heard all the news reports about you,” the father explained. “That you’re a cold-case detective.”
“My last assignment with the Austin Police Department was in the cold-case unit,” Forrest admitted. That was his position when he’d been shot. “But I worked in the homicide unit for a long time before that.”
And he’d been so damn good at solving murders that they’d moved him to the cold-case unit. Bragging about his past wouldn’t give these guys what they needed. Only finding Patrice’s killer would give them the justice and closure they wanted.
“Stopping this killer is my top priority,” he assured them. Before he killed again.
An image of Rae’s face, pale with fear, flashed through his mind. With a killer on the loose, she had every reason to be afraid, but a feeling nagged at him, making him wonder if she had another reason. But what?
“It’s too late for my sister,” Ian Eccleston said. “Too late to do anything to save her or bring her back.” But still he didn’t cry; his face just flushed with rage. And his fists were clenched, as if he was tempted to take a swing at Forrest.
He’d been attacked during plenty of other investigations, but usually the suspect tried to fight him, not the family member of a victim.
“I am very sorry for your loss,” he told them both—as he had the other night. They hadn’t acknowledged his comment that night. They’d been too shocked. Too numb.
Unfortunately that numbness had worn off to leave anger and pain.
“We don’t want your sympathy,” Ian scoffed, and he walked over to open the front door of the house he shared with his father. “We want results. If you can’t get them, we’ll find the bastard ourselves.”
“Give the lab time to process all the evidence from the scene,” Forrest said as he stepped out that open door. “And if you remember anything that might help our investigation—”
“We would have already told you,” Ian said, and he slammed the door in Forrest’s face—just like Rae had that morning.
And both instances had Forrest feeling again like he wasn’t being told everything—like these people knew more than they were sharing with him.
He wasn’t going to get anything else out of Ian Eccleston. But he might be able to get Rae to tell him more, if her friends were right that she could be trusted.
But then, his experience with Shannon had taught him that it was better to trust no one, at least not with his heart. He was damn sure Rae Lemmon didn’t want that anyway, though, or she wouldn’t have jerked back before he’d been able to kiss her. Not that he’d any business kissing her.
But her backyard was a murder scene, so he definitely had business with her.
And right now that business was unfinished.
* * *
She hadn’t known what to do when she’d seen that shadow pass behind her living room curtains. Rae hadn’t known if she should call the police.
But before they arrived, the intruder could have made good on their threat to hurt Connor. Or her. So to protect her son, she’d turned and run back to her vehicle. But when she’d opened the door, someone had stopped her—with a hand on her arm. And she’d screamed in terror...until Bellamy had spoken.
“I’m sorry I scared you,” she said again—as she had when she’d first approached Rae on the driveway.
Rae forced a smile. “It’s fine. I’m just so tired that I’m jumpy.”
“Are you sure you’re just tired?” Maggie asked. She’d showed up moments after Rae had with the pizza her sister had been craving. It sat mostly untouched in the middle of the kitchen table.
They had probably already eaten with their significant others and had really bought the pizza for her. But Rae wasn’t hungry, not with all of the knots of dread and fear filling her stomach.
“Or is Forrest right and you’re scared of something?” Bellamy asked.
She tensed. “Forrest? He talked to you?” she asked. “About me?”
Bellamy nodded.
“He had no right to interrogate you,” Rae said. “You’re not a suspect and neither am I.”
Bellamy glanced down at the table, as if she couldn’t meet Rae’s eyes.
Horrified, Rae asked, “Am I a suspect?”
Bellamy looked back up now, her gaze intent on Rae’s face. “He doesn’t think you’re a killer, but he thinks you know something you’re not telling him.”
“Are you interrogating me now?” Rae asked defensively. But now she couldn’t meet her friend’s eyes. She jumped up from the table and began to collect the plates.
Maggie said, “I can get those.” But she was holding Connor on her lap, and the both of them looked so content.
Connor hadn’t looked like that last night. He’d looked terrified. And that terror passed through Rae as she remembered the intruder’s threat.
Tears stung her eyes, blurring her vision. She blinked furiously as she turned away to carry the dishes to the sink. But someone grabbed her arm, holding her in place.
“You are scared,” Bellamy said.
“A body was found in my backyard,” Rae reminded her. “Of course I would be scared.”
“Anybody would be,” Maggie agreed with her with a shudder of revulsion.
But Bellamy shook her head. She’d known Rae too long and too well. “Not you,” she said. “Forrest is right. There’s something else that has rattled you.” She narrowed her eyes and tilted her head. “Is
it him?”
“H-h-him?” Rae sputtered. “Does he think that?” Had he guessed that she was attracted to him? Since she’d just about risen up on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his, he’d probably guessed—not to mention that she’d asked him to dance at the wedding a few weeks ago.
Bellamy smiled. “No. Not Forrest. Not after what his fiancée did to him.”
Rae gasped. She hadn’t known he was engaged. If she had, she never would have asked him to dance or nearly kissed him. “What did his fiancée do?”
“Ex-fiancée,” Maggie chimed in.
So she’d known about his engagement, too.
“When he got shot, while he was still recovering, she took off with his ring,” Bellamy said.
Rae sucked in a breath. “She left him?”
Bellamy nodded. “He had to endure months of physical therapy before he could even walk again, and instead of helping him through that, she took off.”
Just like Rae’s dad had taken off when her mother had been diagnosed with cancer. She flinched. So it wasn’t just men who couldn’t be counted on to stick around.
“She hurt him badly when she abandoned him,” Bellamy continued. “Not just his heart but his self-esteem. He doesn’t think you’re into him. He thinks you’re lying to him.”
“About what?” Rae asked.
“About the killer,” Bellamy continued. “He thinks you know something about him, that you’re protecting him.”
Could it really be the killer who had left that note for her? She’d pretty much already concluded that it had to be, though. Who else would want the detective out of the way, besides her?
“Is that why you’re here?” Rae asked. “Do you think that, too?”
“Of course not,” Bellamy assured her as she jumped up from the table to put an arm around her. “I told him that the only person you would lie to protect would be Connor.”
Rae sucked in a breath and tensed. And Bellamy must have felt that tension. She turned Rae toward her. “That’s it, isn’t it? Someone has threatened Connor.”
Maggie jumped up from the table, too, with the baby cradled protectively in her arms. Both of these women would protect her child as fiercely as she would.
Rae trusted them. Tears rushed to her eyes as she nodded. “Yes.” Her voice cracked with the fear that bubbled up inside her. She shouldn’t have come back here. But she was glad that she had, glad that Bellamy had been waiting for her.
“Who?” Maggie asked. “Who’s threatening you?”
“I don’t know,” Rae admitted. She grabbed her purse from the counter, where she’d dropped it, and she pulled out the plastic bag containing the note and Connor’s hair. “Someone was in the house last night—in Connor’s room.”
“Why didn’t you call the police?” Bellamy asked.
“Because the note told her not to,” Maggie pointed out.
“But I should have,” Rae admitted. By not calling the police, Rae had let the person get away with what he’d done—breaking in and threatening her son.
“You should have left the minute it happened,” Maggie said, and she tightened her arms around the baby as she looked fearfully out the kitchen windows.
She’d been glad her friends had been here, but now she realized that their being here put them in danger, too. A danger that they hadn’t even known about, because she hadn’t been open and honest with them about what was going on with her.
“You should have come to one of us,” Bellamy said.
Rae nodded. “I know but I knew you guys would want me to call the police, that you’d want me to report it. And I was worried that the note writer would come back, that he’d make good on his threat.” The tears spilled over, running down her face as sobs bubbled up from her throat.
Bellamy held her tightly. “You and Connor are not going to be alone from now on. We’ll protect you. We’ll all protect you.”
Rae loved her friends too much to put them in danger, especially now with Bellamy pregnant and Maggie so happy. She pulled back from Bellamy’s embrace. “No, you won’t. I’ll call the police.”
It was their job to protect people. Of course their presence would also put her and her son in danger.
More danger.
They were already in danger.
“Call Forrest,” Bellamy told her as she drew her cell from her pocket...as if she intended to call if Rae refused.
She knew what she had to do, what she should have done right after she’d found the note. But she’d been so scared then, so terrified that someone had so easily gotten to her son. Without protection, that was bound to happen again.
Yet she couldn’t help but worry that Forrest’s involvement would put them in more danger, not just from the killer but from that attraction she felt for him. She couldn’t fall for another man who wasn’t going to stick around when she needed him.
And once Forrest solved these murder cases, he would leave Whisperwood. The hurricane was the only reason he’d been here in the first place.
* * *
“Chief, Chief,” reporters called out from the television screen that sat on the bureau at the foot of his bed.
He—along with all of the other viewers—watched Archer Thompson turn toward the reporters gathered outside the Whisperwood Police Department.
“Was Elliot Corgan an innocent man? Or is there another serial killer on the loose?”
As part of his plea deal, Elliot Corgan’s name had not been released as the Whisperwood killer. That had probably been more his family’s doing than his, though. They hadn’t wanted anyone to know the biggest landowners in Whisperwood had a killer among them.
He snorted. Elliot hadn’t been their only disgrace, though. Even the younger generation had proved to be a disappointment. But Elliot had definitely been their biggest.
Why hadn’t he just claimed the sheriff’s sister as one of his victims? Then all of this would have been done. But hers wasn’t the only body that had turned up. Why the hell couldn’t the dead stay buried?
He focused on the chief again, who declined to answer any questions. “This is an ongoing investigation,” he said, “so I’m not at liberty to comment on it.”
“Is that because you’ve turned over the investigation to Forrest Colton?” another reporter asked. “Why did you do that, Chief? Because it was too close to home for you?”
Archer turned fully toward the cameras and the television viewers now. The man was older, but age didn’t affect his tall body. He stood straight and strong. “I did that because Forrest Colton gets results. He closes cases. He finds killers. And he will find this one.”
Not if the killer found him first and got rid of him.
Chapter 8
Forrest was in the morgue. Again.
Over the course of his law-enforcement career, he’d spent entirely too much time in the morgue. Other detectives accepted the coroner’s report without question. Forrest wanted to see the wounds himself; it helped him connect to the victim and to the killer.
What kind of killer preserved his victims as the chief’s sister and the body of the woman in Rae’s backyard had been preserved?
And why not Patrice?
Had there just not been enough time for him to process her body as he had the others?
Or didn’t he have the energy anymore?
No. The bruises around her neck certainly showed the strength of her killer. He didn’t lack energy. So it must have been time he’d lacked.
Poor Patrice.
She had been so young, so vital. The sheriff’s sister and the other victim had once been young, too. The killer had tried to keep them young with the way he’d preserved them. But they had died long ago.
Unlike Patrice.
Since she was the most recent victim, her murder should be the easiest to solve. But Forrest was drawn to the othe
r body, to the one he’d found in Rae’s backyard.
Hell, he was just drawn to Rae and to her son. And he had no damn idea why. He had a case to work, which was something that, after the shooting, he’d thought he would never have the opportunity to do again. This was his chance to prove himself, to prove that he was still capable of performing the job he loved.
So he couldn’t afford any distractions like Rae and her beautiful brown eyes and her curvy figure and her soft skin and her full lips.
Lips he wished he’d kissed.
“See anything I missed?” the coroner asked, her voice sharp with sarcasm.
Forrest sighed. “That’s not what I’m looking for,” he assured her. “And as I told you, you didn’t need to be here.” In fact he would have preferred to be alone, so he could think. But even with her present, he’d been able to think only of Rae Lemmon, of how she’d looked that morning.
Scared.
Was that because she’d guessed he was about to kiss her? Was that what had scared her?
He was a little scared of how badly he’d wanted to kiss her, of how much of an attraction he felt for her.
“I want the killer caught, too,” the coroner said.
“I know,” he said.
“I have daughters this age,” she continued with a catch in her voice. “I hate to think of them out there with a killer.”
Maybe that was why he kept thinking of Rae—because she was so alone out there, where he’d already found one body. Well, she had Connor. But he was no protection. He needed her; he was totally dependent on her.
She had to stay safe. Didn’t she realize that?
“Tell them to be careful,” he advised.
She snorted. “They will tell you that I already nag them quite enough. They are careful. But these women probably thought they were being careful, too.”
He nodded. They probably had.
Just like Rae Lemmon thought she was being careful, that she could take care of herself and her son without any help. Hopefully she had at least reached out to her friends, since she clearly had no intention of reaching out to him.