by Geri Krotow
“Got it, thanks. I’ll be right back.” He closed the few yards between them and the front door, unlocked it and slowly pushed it open, his pistol ready to fire. As the door swung open, inch by inch, he shone his flashlight inside until he reached around and hit the wall light switch. Sconces on either side of a mission-style framed mirror lit up, throwing a pale golden hue into the room. Bella had done her work and made the place a home, if the various decor touches were any indication. A fluffy white throw draped over a white fabric chaise lounge; in another corner a love seat boasted a spillover of throw pillows, all printed in bright, gregarious colors.
No sign of an intruder. But Holden didn’t allow relief to take away the weight of responsibility from his shoulders. Not yet. Not until they caught and apprehended the suspect.
He methodically cleared out each room, confirming the house was indeed empty, before returning to where Bella stood on the porch. “All clear.” He motioned for her to come inside. “Let’s lock up the front door and you’re free to move about. I’m going to check the back of the house to be sure you’re safe.”
* * *
She watched his retreating backside and only then did she allow herself to sag against the kitchen pantry door. She’d been surprised at how hard Spencer and his K-9 Boris worked situations before, how very tedious and exacting law enforcement was, done right; but this revealed a whole new level of ignorance on her part that Bella hadn’t anticipated. How many times had she heard Spencer say it wasn’t about the firearms, or the physicality of the cop, but the intelligence? The ability to conduct their job under any circumstance?
Holden St. Clair knew what he was doing, displaying a tenacity for doing what was right, no matter that they both were bone weary and dog tired. He could have dropped her off, assumed she’d be fine until the pageant began tomorrow, but instead Holden was conducting an investigation of her home security as if it were the beginning of the day and he had all the energy to be as thorough as when he first woke.
She watched the light beam flash outside the windows, first near the living area and then around to the kitchen, before it disappeared as Holden walked the perimeter of her house. Bella tried to stay focused on the present and what she needed to do to prepare for tomorrow, but her mind and her body couldn’t stop flashing back to moments ago in her car.
Embarrassment washed over her. She’d really thought he was going to kiss her. Had she misread his signals? The glances, held a heartbeat longer than with just any other colleague, the quick drop of his gaze to her lips? And the electric current of attraction she’d experienced when their fingers touched, was it even possible that something so potent on her part was one-sided?
“Bella!” His shout made her stand straight and cleared her mind of what she knew were inescapable personal rabbit holes. “Come here.”
“Coming.” She made for the back door, which he must have opened with the key.
He stood under the pale glow of the moon as it filtered through her pergola on the back patio. A quick glance at her large cushioned swing, myriad planters filled with cacti and other succulents, and her different garden sculptures showed nothing amiss.
“What is it?”
“Over here.” He led them with the phone light to her air-conditioning unit. “Have you had maintenance or repair on your AC recently?”
“No.”
“What about this crack to your foundation?” A long, jagged line ran from the stucco under her bathroom window and disappeared below the ground.
“It’s from the earthquake.”
“That’s right—it didn’t hit us in Phoenix as it did here. And the epicenter was close to the Colton Oil industrial area, am I correct?”
“Yes.” Annoyance mingled with fear. Would Holden just get to the point?
“Any reason these footprints should be here?” He spotlighted several sets of large prints in the sandy earth around the unit’s concrete-slab platform. Her gut heaved and she wanted to blame it on being tired but she knew fear when it hit her.
“Those have to be recent or they’d be gone already.” Nothing stayed the same in the desert, not for long and not during a time that included enough breeze at night to blow away the fine sand. “Why would someone come here, though, to an air-conditioning unit?”
Holden snapped several photos of the prints, a few with his feet in the shot for sizing perspective. “I don’t know. Unless—” He shone the light up to the three-foot-tall unit, and revealed that there was a good amount of dust atop the grate where the fan blew out hot air from the house.
“He climbed on top to look into that window.” She finished his speculation and looked up to the high windows that lined her master bathroom. “Even if someone could get up that high without a ladder, no one could fit through those windows.” They weren’t more than six inches tall, tops, though very long to allow maximum light in.
Holden pulled latex gloves from his jeans’ pockets and she laughed.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“No joke intended. Just part of my job.” He pushed hard on the top of the AC unit before hauling himself up. She watched from the ground as he felt along the edges of the windows as far as he could reach. His movement stilled as his fingers rested on the same spot he had paused the first time he visually examined the frame.
“What is it?” Shivers raced down her spine and she crossed her arms in front of her, looked around them at the surrounding garden and wild property that backed up against her neighbors on either side, and acres of empty desert to the rear of the house. It had been her safe haven ever since she’d saved enough for the down payment to purchase the house a few years ago. She’d never felt vulnerable or at risk here.
Until tonight.
Holden tugged on something, then fisted his palm and jumped to the ground, far away from the footprints. “I need to look at this inside, in proper lighting, but I’d say someone is very interested in catching glimpses of you in your shower.” He opened his hand to reveal a tiny box with a lens.
“I’m going to be sick.” She said it before thinking. “I mean, not really, but the thought of this—I can’t do this right now.”
His firm, gloved hand grasped her forearm. “Hang on, Bella. It’s okay. You’re not alone—I’m here. And the good news is that your stalker is nowhere near here right now, most likely. If they wanted to watch you in person there wouldn’t be a camera and I’d have found them inside or lurking on the property. I’m going to call Spencer and have him and his K-9 inspect the area for scent, but we should be good to go for tonight.”
“Meaning?”
“We’ll be able to spend the night here, and then head to the pageant in the morning. It’s already past eleven, and I need to be at the school a full hour before the contestants arrive at eight.”
“I don’t even know if I’m a contestant yet.” She’d forgotten to check her inbox; the pageant director, Mimi, had told them they’d find out whether they qualified by nine o’clock tonight. A quick dive into her emails on her phone revealed a message. Her hands shook.
“Well?” Holden stood patiently next to her, as if whether she got into the pageant was important to him, too. Of course, she figured she’d be the best kind of bait for the serial killer, if there was one and if he’d now focused his sights on Ms. Mustang Valley.
She clicked the message open, skimmed the preliminary niceties, and let out a whoop. Relief and a sense of euphoria she did not expect washed over her, easing some of the tension that finding out about the camera had incurred.
“I take it you’re in?” His enthusiastic tone was as surprising as her reaction.
“I am. And you’re correct, I report at eight o’clock.”
“Then we’d best get your beauty sleep going.”
* * *
“You’re crazy to do this, Bella.” Jarvis sat at her kitchen island later that night
, his hair gleaming under the pendant lights.
“As crazy as Spencer was to call you out here tonight? Really, you two don’t need to babysit me. I already have a federal agent at my beck and call.” Holden was outside taking evidence as Spencer and Boris patrolled her backyard. It was half past midnight and Bella wanted to sleep for a day.
“You should always let us know what you’re up to, sis. You know we’re going to find out one way or the other. Word doesn’t take long to travel in Mustang Valley.” Jarvis ran his fingers through his hair. “And you’re working fast even for you if you’ve already got this agent doing your bidding.” His words were harsh but Jarvis’s tone was kind, loving even. He was the best brother, as was Spencer, and Bella didn’t for one minute take either of them for granted. Yet she had, by not mentioning her intention to run for Ms. Mustang Valley.
“I’m sorry, Jarvis. It’s best for me to keep things as low key as possible when I’m doing investigative work.”
“I know that, sis, but Spencer and I are your only family. We need to know, so that we can be on the lookout for anything suspicious.”
She poured them each a tall glass of ice water, and filled glasses for Holden and Spence, a mixing bowl for Boris that she placed on the floor. “I appreciate that, but this is a very insular community I’m delving into. Gio’s passing made me realize that a lot of my grief is over not having been able to prevent her death.”
“So you think digging up the past will help you with that?”
She shook her head. “It’s not about me. We can learn from the past. If I do this right, I’ll find evidence that this pageant committee and board have been negatively influencing young women’s health and eating habits and shut that behavior down.”
Jarvis’s brow went up, the way it did when she tried to get one over on him in a board game. Whereas Spencer would blatantly call her out on anything he thought she was lying about, Jarvis took a more circumspect view of things. Of life, especially.
“That’s a tall order, sis, even by your standards. Let’s say you do find evidence—though what that’ll look like is beyond me, short of finding a memo that states, ‘Starve yourself or get kicked out.’”
“I have to do this, Jarvis. Gio deserves it. All the women who enter these contests deserve to know the truth about what they’re participating in.”
“It seems to me someone isn’t happy about you getting involved.”
“No one knows I’m doing this as a reporter, except for Spencer’s friend Holden, whom you met when you came in.”
“He’s a good guy, Holden St. Clair.”
“You know him?” A thread of self-pity wound its way around her heart. “Why didn’t anyone tell me about him, who he was?”
Jarvis smiled. “Spencer did. You knew the name once you met him, didn’t you? How did you meet, at the school?”
She nodded. “Yes. He was the security guard when I checked in. I didn’t realize he was Spencer’s friend, though. He’s undercover. I guess I shouldn’t have said that to you.” The familiar heat rushed her cheeks and she prayed Jarvis didn’t notice, or if he did, that he’d take it for her regret at spilling the beans. Not because she was already thinking of Holden as much more than her brother’s friend.
Jarvis chuckled. “I’d have loved to see that. And don’t worry about telling me—I’m a vault.”
“You are.”
“What do you wish you’d seen, and what are you a vault about?” Spencer looked at Jarvis as he, K-9 Boris and Holden walked into the kitchen. Spencer removed his hat and placed it on the counter. “Boris, drink.” The dog’s lapping filled the quiet.
“Oh, nothing. Just how Bella’s getting away with being a pageant contestant when we both know how much she hates pretending to be anything other than herself.”
She risked a glance at Holden and found another reason to blush in the way their gazes locked, as if they’d been working together for longer than a day. As if...as if there was something happening between them they weren’t ready to acknowledge.
Holden blinked, shuttering the desire she’d seen in his eyes. He let out a laugh and the other two men joined in. The masculine rumble at once grated on Bella’s nerves and comforted her. She knew her brothers only wanted her safety but they tended to lean over into the minding-her-business category. Holden had already told her he was going to basically be her bodyguard and protector for the duration of the pageant. A need to establish her turf twisted up through her exhaustion.
“Give me a break. Going undercover for this piece is the same way I get any story. It’s called doing my job.” She emphasized her words, hoping her brothers took her words at face value. Holden, too. He couldn’t find out how much he’d affected her since they’d first met. How much he distracted her now, standing in her kitchen close to midnight, a day’s worth of beard on his impossibly square chin. At least it didn’t highlight his cleft as much, one of his more annoying features. “And while I truly appreciate all three of you looking out for me, I’m a grown woman with a concealed-weapon permit.” She walked over to the far kitchen cabinet, opened it to reveal her gun safe.
“Your weapon’s in there?” Holden spoke first.
“Yes.” She nodded. Let him chew on that. “I’m a perfect shot, too.”
“She is,” Spencer chimed in. “We thought Bella was going to join MVPD at one point.”
“Maybe you should, if you’re putting yourself in this kind of danger with your journalism.” Jarvis nodded sagely and she wanted to punch both of her brothers on the arm.
“I’m glad you have weapons training, Bella, but no weapon will defend you locked in a safe.” Holden’s observation came just as she realized the same.
“You’re right. Are you suggesting I carry it while working the pageant?”
“Ah, no. I’ll be on-site the entire time you’re there. Or anywhere.”
“I’m counting on you, Holden,” Spencer spoke up.
“We both are,” Jarvis joined in.
Bella watched the testosterone exchange between her brothers and Holden and decided it was all too much, too late. She picked up her phone for a distraction and saw the email, sent only minutes earlier, from the pageant director. After she read it, she interrupted the men’s ongoing discussion on how best to keep her safe.
“Uh, guys?” She held up her phone for them to see the email. “I have to be onstage tomorrow morning at eight. Which gives me a six-o’clock wake-up. You all decide what you need to do to save me, whatever, but I’m going to bed. Night-night.”
She turned and left, hoping that no one would tell her she couldn’t sleep in her own bed tonight. More than at any other time, Bella needed the comfort of the familiar.
As her head hit the pillow she realized that Holden felt way too familiar to her. And she’d only known him for one day.
This was going to be her toughest investigative report to date, and it had little to do with a serial killer or the loss of her best friend.
Chapter 9
“You decided to let me stay in my own home. Why?” She greeted Holden as he walked in from the backyard, none the worse for sleeping outside all night. At least, that’s where she assumed he’d been, as Jarvis was still sacked out in her guest room.
“If at any time last night or this morning I thought you were in danger, you wouldn’t be here. But with your two brothers helping out, we secured your property no problem.”
“But you couldn’t have gotten much sleep.”
He walked over and helped himself to the pot of coffee she’d brewed. “I’m not the one who needed the beauty sleep.”
His musky scent mixed with the aroma of the brew and she all but swooned. How easy it was to forget that her two favorite scents—coffee and male—made for a delicious morning wake-up.
Not that kind of wake-up, though. Hadn’t she learned from the nonkiss last night?<
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“I don’t need it, either.” She sat down at her small table and swirled the creamer with a small spoon. “Where did you sleep, by the way?”
“Mostly on the front porch. Your hammock is a perfect spot, and I only heard a few critters roaming about.”
“Did you notice the prairie dogs at dawn? There’s a family of them in my front yard.”
“I didn’t, but I’m guessing Boris warned them off.”
“Hmm, yes.” She’d forgotten that Spencer and Boris had made their rounds last night. It’d be easy to blame it on the late hour, long day, being attacked; but she didn’t waste the energy kidding herself. Holden St. Clair was the distracting factor.
Holden took the seat across from her at the bistro set and she almost laughed. His large frame barely fit on the wrought iron chair, and the table seemed to shrink in his presence. Unlike her awareness of him.
“Let’s go over the ground rules again, Bella.”
“Rules?”
He nodded, sipped his black coffee. “Yes. For me to agree to your participation in the pageant. And the guidelines your brother agreed to.”
“Spencer isn’t my keeper.” She blew a strand of hair from her eyes. “I appreciate that he’s law enforcement. He and Jarvis have always been protective of me, a great thing for a sister. But we’re all adults and there’s nothing legally stopping me from competing.”
“There is if I expose your motive for entering the pageant.”
“You wouldn’t.” But looking into his dark eyes, noting he’d shaved and the cleft on his chin seemed sexier than she’d remembered, she knew he would. “I’ll never get the truth about this pageant—which could have bigger significance, legally—if you give me away.”
“I’m not going to do that, Bella, but we have to agree to the precautions that will keep you alive.”