FADE TO BLACK - Thrilling Romantic Suspense - Book 1 of the BLACK CATS Series (23 page)

“Sounds good.”

“Wait.” She straightened, not yet handing him the paper. “Do you have a way out? Didn’t your boss take your car back to D.C.?”

“Yeah, but Jackie and Kyle drove out in two cars so we’d have an extra vehicle.”

“Oh, good. That means I can get home and take out a couple of steaks for us to throw on the grill, and still have time to wash the tavern smell out of my hair.”

Her hair. He was very much looking forward to seeing it down around her face, knowing it would softly frame her fine features. “Leave it down,” he murmured.

She lifted a questioning brow.

“Please.” After their sensual encounter, he shouldn’t have felt strange making the request. But he did. Because it seemed intimate. Something a lover would ask.

She swallowed hard, her throat quivering, as if she knew how often he’d pictured wrapping those strawberry-blond strands around his fingers, then whispered, “All right.”

He left the office without another word, without a touch. Because if he reached for her, or she reached for him, one of them would be backed against the wall getting their lips kissed off.

“You’re taking a cold shower,” he told himself as he left the sheriff’s office and walked toward the inn.

It was only after he’d reached the corner that he began to wonder what, exactly, he was going to say to Stokes and Mulrooney about why he wasn’t joining them for dinner. But, hell, the truth was as good as anything. Because if they hadn’t noticed the tension between him and the sexy sheriff, than neither of them deserved to carry a badge.

Fortunately, though, when he got back to the flea trap a few minutes later, he saw a note taped to his door. The two of them had gone to check out the steak place just outside of town. So he didn’t have to explain a thing.

Or maybe he was right: They were good enough agents that they’d definitely noticed and were giving him a night alone without requiring excuses or explanations.

Dean’s cold shower lasted a long time. He felt every bit as grungy after their day as Stacey did, and he had extra incentive. Not having had sex in over a year, he needed to bring his body temperature back within normal range; otherwise he was likely to go up in flames if she touched him at her front door.

This wasn’t how he was supposed to get back in the saddle. Stacey wasn’t a mindless bar hookup. But he just couldn’t bring himself to care.

He wanted her. He liked her. He admired her. He respected her.

Why on earth would he even think about being with anyone else?

It would be just sex, no question about that. Neither one of them was up for anything else, and they both damn well knew it. But sex between two people who liked and respected each other … what was wrong with that?

After dressing and calling his son to say good night, he shoved the address and directions Stacey had given him in the pocket of his jeans. A quick stop at the liquor store on the corner—if she was supplying the steaks, he could show up with an extra six-pack—and he headed out of the main section of town.

Unable to keep the smile from his face as he drove, he had to acknowledge that for the first time in months, he felt genuinely good about something that did not involve Jared. He hadn’t felt that way about anything else in his personal life since he’d realized just how far he and his wife had drifted apart. That had been about a month before he’d found out she was cheating.

All that, however, was in the past. And, when he thought about it, he had to acknowledge a certain relief that she’d handed him an easy out of their cold marriage.

Surprised by that self-realization, Dean almost drove right by Stacey’s house as he turned into her neighborhood. Spying the number on the mailbox, he swung into the driveway, parking right behind her dusty cruiser.

He sat there for a second, wondering if he was losing it. Because coming to that kind of conclusion about his breakup after more than a year of feeling like the wounded party was both shocking and a little freeing. He had to wonder if he would have arrived at it now if he hadn’t met a woman who’d driven him crazy with lust since the first time he’d shaken her hand.

Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, he was looking forward to seeing just what else he figured out about himself and about Sheriff Stacey Rhodes. Starting tonight.

Smiling in anticipation, he grabbed the beer and walked toward the house, up the curving sidewalk lined by tall, ragged hedges. He came around the corner, intent on avoiding the sharp thorns on the ivy bushes. So intent he didn’t at first notice what was happening just a few feet in front of him.

Then he saw it: The front porch stained red. The woman kneeling on it.

The woman covered in blood.

And he stopped smiling.

Wyatt didn’t generally
watch television. He had one, of course, and occasionally flipped on the news when he was making dinner or waiting for his coffee in the morning. But as for regular programming he’d rather read a book. If, that was, he had time to read anything other than case files and reports.

Considering the last work of fiction he’d read had been that wife-goes-missing book everyone had been raving about, he supposed some would say he was bringing a little too much of his work home with him. Including tonight.

For some reason, though, as he warmed up the meal his housekeeper had left for him, he flipped on the television, barely listening to it. Having it on, hearing the low murmur of other voices in the background, helped remind him that a normal world existed out there. Everyday people lived and laughed, completely unaware of just how cruel and capricious life could be. While he buried himself in these quiet, still places, drenched in horror as he tried to make sense of the crimes committed by the Reaper, the earth continued to spin.

The antique dining room table he’d inherited along with this house in Alexandria was covered with files and photographs. Autopsy reports, interviews, and investigator’s notes competed for space. Additional boxes full of files sat on the chairs. Every piece of information currently available on each Reaper case was scattered across his elegant home, which had once belonged to his grandparents. With it came a wealth of darkness, entirely at odds with the serenity and calmness that had defined the lives of that kindly couple.

“I’m glad you never saw anything like this,” he murmured as he spread out the brutal crime scene photos from the third murder and examined them yet again. Because there had to be something in them that would help them break this case. Like rereading a book, though, the more he studied them, the more his mind filled in what his eyes tried to skim over as too familiar. So he took out a small magnifying glass, going over each inch.

Nothing.

Hearing the beeping of the timer, he put the photograph down, wondering how normal people would react to consuming a nice pasta marinara on a table covered with proof of human suffering and cruelty. The job had hardened him to it, but it hadn’t immunized him. So he took the plate to the couch, sat down, and put his feet on the coffee table, leaving the photographs in the dining room.

He’d taken two bites when a news story came on that captured his attention. A photograph filled the screen, the headline scrolling across the bottom. Reaching for the remote control, Wyatt punched up the volume.

He barely even noticed a moment later when his plate of pasta marinara slid off his lap onto the floor.

At first,
when she’d arrived at her house and seen the horror on her front porch and door, Stacey thought a teenager she’d busted had gone crazy with a can of spray paint. But she’d quickly realized the awful truth: The saucer-size circles and long, thin smears had not been made from paint.

It had been blood.

Thick blood, congealing into brownish pools and drawing flies in the hot summer evening. The coppery scent filled every breath she took. Overwhelmed by the smell—and by those awful, vivid memories that scent and the feel of the slick fluid inspired—she had just stood there, gasping for untainted air.

And then she’d spotted the body, recognizing her immediately. The sad, lean corpse was mangled and broken, the once soft fur matted and sticky. But there had been no mistaking those gentle brown eyes, now blank and glazed with sudden, shocking death.

Dad would be heartbroken, utterly devastated, and Stacey already dreaded telling him. For there had been no doubt the poor, pathetic creature was Lady, the freewheeling stray who’d adopted her father and made him her own.

“He loved you, girl,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “You did have a home and a family, whether you wanted them or not.”

Those were the first words she’d been able to manage in the half hour since she’d arrived home. Before that, she had been too shocked to speak. She’d felt as thoroughly assaulted as if someone had beaten her. Just as whoever had left this vicious surprise here had intended.

Someone really had killed a sweet, lovable old dog whose only fault was occasionally sleeping on a porch step and allowing herself to be tripped over.

Stacey had paused for a second to pray that Lady had been killed by accident. She’d seen animals struck by cars plenty of times; those kinds of emergencies usually generated a 911 call here in Hope Valley. Especially on the winding country road where her father lived. She and Tim had lost more than one pet to that road during their childhood, each of them looking in death much like Lady did now.

But she couldn’t comfort herself for long. Because Lady hadn’t limped several miles here to Stacey’s house. She hadn’t smeared her own blood all over the porch and door.

And she absolutely hadn’t scrawled the word
bitch
in spiky letters across the cheery WELCOME HOME mat lying in front of the door.

Jesus. Sweet Jesus
.

If Lady’s death had been accidental, her disposal most certainly had not been.

Stacey had spent ten minutes on her knees, with the dog’s head cradled in her lap. Those dark, betrayed eyes had stared up at her as if to ask how such a thing could happen. Finally, thinking of one of the neighborhood kids riding past on a bike and catching sight of the horror, she had gotten some supplies and gone to work cleaning things up.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she murmured as she worked around the body, rinsing the pink-tinged rag in the pink-tinged water bucket. She’d already changed the water once.

She didn’t really cry, though dry sobs had filled her throat at first. Tears had formed in her eyes, and two had even erupted from them, sliding down her cheeks in twin salty streaks that had disappeared on her lips. But the rest remained locked inside her. As if deep in her subconscious, she knew that if she gave release to all the emotions surrounding the sorrow and tragedy she’d been dealing with in recent days, there would be absolutely no holding them back.

“You poor, sweet old girl,” she whispered, knowing that whatever anguish she felt would be multiplied a hundred times by her father’s. “You deserved so much better than this, and I’m sorry I wasn’t here to protect you.”

“Jesus,” a voice said.

Dean
.

He fell to his knees beside her, right into the congealing pool of blood, grabbing her upper arms. “What happened? Stacey, are you all right? All this blood …”

“Someone killed her.” She finally raised her eyes to meet Dean’s, and she shook her head, though with sorrow or unreleased fury, she honestly couldn’t say. “Who would do such a thing?”

He wrapped his arms around her shoulders, tugging her close, ignoring her bloody hands and clothes, Lady’s body right beside them. Sliding his hands into Stacey’s hair, he cupped her head, holding her tenderly, making soothing sounds of comfort and tenderness. “Shh. It’s okay, honey.”

Part of her wanted to cry like she hadn’t cried for a long time. The few teardrops she’d allowed herself in recent years hadn’t been nearly enough—not for the kind of horror she’d seen, starting with that awful day on the campus of Virginia Tech. Not for poor Lisa.

An ocean of unreleased grief had backlogged behind her eyes. It was being held there by the tiniest remnants of her strength. And this poor, brutalized dog was on the verge of becoming that one final drop that forced all that restrained emotion out of her. This single event might just pull the plug on her sadness, sending the tears spilling out of her like a flood over a causeway for all the tragedy and horror to which she’d borne witness in her life.

“Why would someone do this?” she muttered through ragged breaths. The air kept catching in her throat until she almost choked on it, the words emerging in spurts. Each was underscored by an anger she hadn’t yet allowed to overwhelm her, knowing that when it did she would be completely lost in the fury of it.

He pulled away, but kept an arm around her shoulders. “Is she yours?”

She shook her head. “Just a sweet old stray my dad unofficially adopted and took care of.”

With infinite tenderness, he stroked her jaw with the back of his thumb, a simple, quiet reminder that she was no longer alone. “I’m sorry. There are some really sick people in the world. Somebody wanted to hurt you, or to scare you.”

“By slaughtering a poor, defenseless animal.” She shook her head, not knowing why she was surprised. Considering the things she’d witnessed, she knew man was capable of incredible cruelty. She just hadn’t expected to literally stumble across it right on her own doorstep.

He continued to stroke her hair, kind and calm. She suspected he wouldn’t be if she hadn’t tossed the obscenity-smeared doormat into the trash before his arrival.

“Come on, Stace; go inside. Get cleaned up. I’ll finish this.”

She tried to resist, but Dean wouldn’t take no for an answer. With a soft sigh of sadness, he took the rag out of her hands. His expression revealed so much about the man. There was no revulsion, no concern about his clothes, not a wince of distaste. Just tenderness, goodness.

It told her more than she’d known about him to this point. That simple act revealed a man she suspected was a wonderful father to his little boy, a good friend, a loving son and brother. A man with depth.