Sinister (9 page)

“So, Ricki,” Naomi said, finished with the call, “you got police business, or did you just come in to check the temperature?”

“I need to talk to Sam.”

“Well, you’re in luck. He’s back in his office, fretting.” Naomi pointed a finger down the hall.

Ricki headed in that direction, thinking that the boss would rip you a new one if you walked into his office in NYPD, but here ... here folks didn’t stand much on formality.

She knocked on the office door marked SHERIFF and poked her head in.

Sam looked up from his computer screen. “Hey, Ricki. Come on in.”

“You still Skyping?” When he shook his head, she pushed the door and came right up to his desk. “I’ve been thinking about it, Sam, and the only solution for both of us is that you have to hire me. Make me a deputy. I need a job and you said yourself you’re understaffed.”

His brows shot up and he rolled his desk chair back a couple of inches as if to get a better look at her around the computer. “Did I miss something . . . like a job application?”

“I’ll fill one out, and you can check my record, but it’s good, you know that. I did twelve years with the NYPD, three years in mounted and four in the detective bureau, but I’m not going back. I’m here to stay. And as I said, since I need a job and you need a deputy, it’s a win-win situation all around.”

Sam leaned back in his chair and frowned. “It’s never a good idea to mix business and friendship.”

“Mix-schmix. I’m all business, Sam.”

“Mix-schmix?”

“NYPD’s got one of the best departments in the country—in the world, maybe—and I’m as good as it gets. Not to blow my own horn, but I’m
it,
Sam. I’m the best you’ll find for a hundred miles around here. Maybe the best in the whole state of Wyoming.”

“Just the state, not everywhere west of the Mississippi?”

“Well, I didn’t want to brag.”

“Too much.” His gaze found hers and for the first time since seeing him again, she saw a spark of humor in his eyes. “Best in the state,” he repeated. “Can’t beat those credentials.”

“No, you can’t,” she said, deciding to ignore his gently teasing tone.

“There’s still the issue of friendship. I’ve known you since you were a kid, and I used to feel like we were family.”

“I know. You and Colt were like brothers. But it’s not nepotism, Sam. We’re not related and that’s something. And ... you know, it’s way too hot in here.” She pulled off her jacket and plunked it onto the chair. “Anyway, it’s hard to go a mile in this town and find someone you’re not related to.”

“That’s one of the things I like about Prairie Creek,” he said, as if to divert the conversation from the hiring question.

“Me, too. Lots of family.” And hers was getting bigger with her father taking on Pilar and Rourke. Rourke she could deal with, but Pilar . . . She just wished Dad would wait.

“Stick Windham was on me to hire him a few months back, but I just don’t hire friends.”

“Then you’re making a mistake. Besides, he’s your bud. Our friendship is different.”

“We got some history between us,” Sam said.

A shiver whispered over her skin. “But you have some kind of history with every staffer in that photo out front. You were born and raised here and so was I.” She tipped her face to the ceiling and let out a frustrated breath. “Come on. You know I’m a hard worker. I’ll run your investigation or assist stranded motorists who forget to chain up. I’ll even make coffee and fix your crooked garland if that’s what it takes. Hire me now, Sam.”

He squinted at her. “Why so desperate? What’s the rush?”

“I miss police work,” she admitted. “I need the money. Got a daughter to raise. And I need an excuse to get away from Dad . . . and Pilar . . .” She couldn’t stop herself from grimacing.

Sam snorted, then he laughed. “You don’t hold back.”

“So I’m hired?”

He raised his hands. “Give me some time to think about it. A day or two.”

Undeterred, she pointed to one of the Amber Barstow flyers on his desk. “You don’t have a minute to think right now, Sam. Not with that girl missing. Come on, you were even handing out flyers yourself. That’s how understaffed you are.” She turned and sat down in one of the visitor’s chairs, then took a different tack. “How’d it go with Amber’s boyfriend? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“Unfortunately the interview just confirmed my thinking.” He moved the mouse on his desk and clicked a few times. “Here. I’ve got this paused on the most revealing part. Two minutes of this, and you’ll get the gist.”

Robert Petrocelli’s body language showed a young man beaten down and weary. His horn-rimmed, oversized glasses could not mask the dark circles under his eyes, and his shoulders were hunched forward.

“She wanted a ring, you know?” Robert admitted. “She wanted to get engaged and I was, like, ‘Why now?’ But I might have done it. For Christmas, you know.” He cleared his throat. “I can still do it. When she comes back. I can give it to her for Christmas . . . on Christmas Eve. I heard you sent out some search parties today. Can I help? What if I fly out there and help you look for her?”

He sounded hopeful, but Ricki heard the desperation, the undercurrent of fear that he might never see his girlfriend again. “He seems like the real deal. Did anyone else see her drive off alone?”

“Robert’s parents, and a neighbor.” Sam paused the screen again.

Ricki considered. “That looks real, how distraught he is. I don’t believe he hurt his girlfriend.”

“Right now Robert Petrocelli isn’t considered a suspect.”

“Have you gotten a look at Amber’s phone records? Bank statements?”

“Katrina got ahold of her bank and cell phone records today. Nothing unusual. The last call on her cell was to her parents, Saturday afternoon. She was upset that she’d missed Thanksgiving with them and was on her way home. Withdrew two hundred bucks back in Sacramento before her trip, then a few credit card purchases, mostly for gas and food. The last one was Big Bart’s Buffalo Lounge.”

“So money is probably not the motivation.” Ricki plucked a flyer from his desk, and as she studied Amber’s brown eyes and shiny black hair, a dark feeling came over her. It wasn’t looking good for Amber Barstow. “Random abductions are rare, statistically speaking, but so far no red flags among her family or friends. We can check out the people she worked with, but it’s looking like a random strike. Someone local, maybe?” She nodded at the computer. “You have any sexual predators in your database that might fill the bill?”

Sam cocked his head to one side. “I know what you’re doing, Ricki, and you’re a pro, all right. But while I appreciate your feedback on the case, I can’t go any further. Not tonight.”

She tossed the flyer on his desk, stood up and stretched like a cat. “Am I taking advantage of you? Compromising your high standards?” She had meant it as a barb against his stubbornness, but somehow it sounded like a tease.

His mouth, that sexy, wide Sam mouth, was set now. Way too grim for a man that handsome. It occurred to Ricki that she would have to stop thinking this way once they were officially working together. She would have to work on that.

“Right now, I’m saying no. Besides, it’s late. Don’t you have to pick up your daughter from the game?”

“Been there, done that. I just dumped Brook and her friends at the yogurt shop. But I guess I should go pick them up before they eat the shop out of crushed Snickers.” She snatched up her coat and turned to the door, then paused. “If it was random, we need to look at the last place she was seen.” She turned back to him. “Big Bart’s?”

“We’ve been there. She left alone, apparently without her car, but the bartender saw her checking out some cowboy at the bar. Nobody he recognized. Black Stetson. Grady said he was a big guy, but that description matches half the men in town.”

“Hmm. Yeah. Anyone else see Mr. Black Stetson?” Ricki asked.

Sam shrugged. “I haven’t had a chance to track down other patrons who were there that night.”

“Maybe one of them will know something.”

“Maybe, but don’t even think about talking to Grady on your own. Right now, you need to skedaddle and I need to get back to work.”

“Okay.” She backed out the door. “Not to state the obvious, but you
have
been working these past few minutes, talking with me.” He rolled his eyes, and she saw that it was time to retreat. “Just saying.”

On the way out she wished Naomi a good night, then stepped into the cold air and restrained the urge to do a happy dance in the parking lot.

She could read the situation. Sam would cave. He would hire her, and pay her to do the work she loved. And getting to work with someone she’d always had a thing for? A bonus.

She smiled to herself. She just needed to get him to say yes.

A dark figure stood by the trough with a black mask of a face and an axe lifted against the inky night sky. Light from the round moon, laced by thin clouds, glinted on the blade of the axe.

Folding his arms against the eerie cold that swept around the Dillinger barn, Davis Featherstone watched as she swung the axe down with a fury.

“Yaaahh!” Her cry ended on the crack of impact.

Davis stepped away from the building, his boots crunching on the snowpack as he approached her. She was using the axe blade to fish ice chunks out of the horse trough when she noticed him.

Kit Dillinger pushed the ski mask up so that it bunched over her forehead. “Their drinking water was frozen, and I know a cold horse doesn’t need to be drinking ice water this time of year.”

“Nothing makes an animal sick quicker than dehydration.” He stepped back, out of the way of flying ice. “Next time, you might want to use one of the plastic rakes to fish the ice out. That much water, it can make the axe blade rust.”

Kit yanked the dripping axe from the water and frowned, as if she’d been caught stealing it. “Want me to go get a rake?”

He shrugged. “Next time.”

Davis hated pointing things like this out to her, because he knew the girl was hard on herself. Maybe it was because she chose to live as a hermit most of the time, setting up camp wherever the spirit moved her on Dillinger land. For three years she had been scavenging on this land, ever since she’d dropped out of school. Her mother, Mia, pretended that Kit lived with her in that small house in town, but everyone knew the truth. Kit was a child of the valley.

Last week with the latest blizzard bearing down, he rode out to find her and offered up an old shed a few miles out. “It’s barely more than a shack, built as a hunting shelter, I think, but you’re going to need to stay inside,” he’d told her.

“I can’t stay inside,” Kit said matter-of-factly. “But I’ll use it for sleeping.”

“I don’t want to ride out here one day and find you frozen to death. You’re underage and there are laws about these things.”

“So?”

“Look, Kit, since you refuse to live with your mother, or anyone, and you won’t even stay here with the animals, at least use the shed.”

She almost smiled. “Nah.”

Sometimes, watching her, Davis found it hard to believe she wasn’t some Indian revivalist or some new age granola looking for attention. But Kit’s eccentricities were genuine. He suspected that she went for days without seeing another human, and she seemed to like it that way. On a bad day, Davis craved a bit of isolation himself, so he understood. But most of the time, he worried about Kit out in the valley, a young woman, barely more than a girl, fending for herself completely on her own. It was an ancient way of life, living in communion with the land, hunting small prey and gathering roots and herbs, but still, he worried about her.

As he watched, Kit moved down to break the ice on the other trough. With another wild cry, she smashed the axe through the surface and then bailed the chunks of ice out. When he didn’t immediately leave, she dropped the axe, looked at him hard, then swept the ski mask from her head and shook it out.

Her hair was pulled into a long, coppery braid with wisps around her face. Thin but strong, fast but graceful, Kit was a beautiful girl. Whenever he looked at her he saw Dillinger there—she was Judd’s daughter, no denying that—but she’d also inherited a wild and free spirit that was at odds with convention.

“That cold front passed, but we’ve got plenty more winter on the way,” he said.

“I like the snow. It brings quiet.”

He nodded, wishing he could ask her about the ritual he’d seen her performing in the distance. Somehow, though, it didn’t seem wise to face the issue head-on. When you trapped a wild animal, it had no choice but to lash out at you. He would wait and think on it.

“Good work today,” he told her, nodding toward the stables. “The horses are always happy when you’re here.”

She lifted her elfin face to the moon. “They don’t want much from me. Just a good brushing and clean hooves.”

“You can go now. It’s getting late.”

“There are still a few horses who need to have their hooves picked. I can’t leave without tending to them.”

“You should be gone already.” Hearing the sound of an arriving truck, he added, “I got Sabrina coming out to check on those pregnant mares.”

“Babylon?” Kit asked. “She’s restless. I was just cleaning her hooves. She could barely hold still for me.”

Babylon was the mare Davis had been most worried about. “I worry that she might hurt herself, banging up against the stall.”

Kit grunted. “Sabrina’s good.”

Not as good as you,
Davis thought, knowing Kit’s sixth sense where animals were concerned was a gift from the spirits who moved her.

As they headed toward the door, Kit yanked up the black skirt she wore over her blue jeans to wipe off the axe blade before handing it back to him.

“Good?” she asked, turning away.

“Good,” he said, watching her leave, wishing he could call her back, knowing it was fruitless.

Inside the stables, he heard a female voice talking, soft and low. Following the sound, he found Sabrina Delaney in Babylon’s stall, rubbing the mare’s sleek brown neck.

“Hey, Davis.” Sabrina didn’t even look away from the horse. “I already checked out Queenie. She’s in good shape.”

Davis nodded. “This one’s more of a worry.”

“When I came over, she was pawing the floor of her stall,” Sabrina agreed. She let herself out of the stall, then turned back to face the tall, rangy mare. “What is it, girl? Feeling nervous?”

“She’s high-strung,” Davis said. “Always has been.”

“Some of us women are just born that way, right, girl?” Sabrina said as the mare stretched her long neck over the stall gate and nudged Sabrina with her nose. “Yeah, I know, it’s tough.”

“So far, she hasn’t been a problem,” Davis said. “Kit knows how to calm her down.”

“Was it Kit who cleaned her hooves? Because whoever groomed Miss Babylon did a great job.” As if she understood, the bay snorted, her dark ears twitching at the conversation. When Davis nodded, Sabrina added, “That girl is something else with animals.”

“She said you were good, too.”

“Really.” Sabrina arched a brow. “High praise, indeed.”

Davis nodded.

“You look worried,” she said.

“I am worried,” he admitted.

“Kit lives off the grid by choice. We all know Mia. Her relationship with her daughter isn’t a good one. They couldn’t be more dissimilar.” When Davis didn’t respond, she said, “Let’s keep an eye on Babylon, but I don’t see any reason to worry or medicate her. She’s healthy. Bright eyes and a gleaming coat. Make sure she gets enough exercise and try to keep her calm. Avoid any undue stress.” She picked up her veterinary kit.

Davis looked behind him. He wanted to be sure Kit wasn’t within earshot, but the girl was long gone. “Have you handled any weird cases lately?” he asked her intently.

Sabrina met his gaze and said slowly, “I treated a wild hawk today, which isn’t my usual.”

“Ritualistic animal killings. Mutilations.”

“What? No. Why? What’s happened?”

“Ira asked me not to talk about it.”

“Now you really have to tell me.”

“We found a mutilated coyote carcass on Dillinger property.”

“Mutilated how?”

“Skinned. Sliced. By a human, not an animal.”

“Did you call the authorities?” she asked, making a disgusted face. Davis understood. Of all the creatures on the planet, humans were by far the most cruel.

“No law against killing coyotes.”

“I know, but ... Look, can I see the carcass?”

“We buried it out in the valley.”

“Can you unbury it? The ground’s frozen, so it should be intact.” She put down her veterinary kit to zip her jacket. “You’ve got my interest piqued. As least show me where it is. I’ll come back in the morning.”

Suddenly, Davis wanted to end the conversation. He had hoped Sabrina would have an explanation, a way around the facts that were staring him in the face, the evidence that all pointed to the one person he wanted to believe was free of blame. “In the morning,” he agreed. If that would get her off the trail right now, he would take a ride out with her.

“You’ve got me spooked, Davis,” she admitted.

He shook his head. She wasn’t the only one.

Sabrina stared into Davis Featherstone’s granite face. For a man so young, he possessed a gravitas she generally only saw in people who’d lived a long time. “So call me in the morning and we’ll figure out a time,” Sabrina told him as she grabbed her kit and headed toward the door.

“Tomorrow,” Davis said.

Just as she turned away from the foreman, the door to the stables opened and along with a rush of cold air a man appeared.

Colton damn Dillinger. Big as life.

A shepherd followed him inside as the pale barn light washed over a face she’d recognize anywhere, despite time, distance and years. His jaw was a bit tighter, his features more angular, all reminders of a boyhood long vanished. He seemed to have filled out, still long and lean, even rangy, ever the cowboy.

Her heartbeat ran light and fast, which was ridiculous.
It’s over, Sabrina. Long over. Remember that. For God’s sake, remember that
.

“Sabrina?”

Dear God, even his voice was familiar.

Colton’s gaze caught hers. “I thought I saw you drive in.”

“You don’t miss a trick.”

“Ouch.” His lips twisted a bit. “I probably deserved that.”

“And more.” The words just came out, repressed for what seemed like forever.

He dared step a little closer and he seemed taller than she remembered, and, of course, even more broad-shouldered. “Okay, let’s start over.” When she looked up sharply, he held up both hands. “Sorry, bad choice of words. I meant the conversation.”

“O-kay,” she allowed, but was looking for a way to end this. Conversation with him was pretty much pointless. They had been lovers long ago, it didn’t work out, and now they were making awkward small talk.

He made a stab at it again. “So, you’re the vet for the Rocking D. I guess some things have changed in eighteen years.”

Some things, but not everything
. The thought was irritating. The same attraction that had brought them together so long ago still sparked between them. Stupidly. Yes, dammit, after eighteen years, the chemistry was still there. And she hated it. Time to end this. Now.

“I was just leaving.” She nodded toward the door, hoping for a quick escape.

“Is there a problem with the herd?” Colt asked.

“She was just checking over one of the broodmares,” Davis interjected, and Sabrina realized she’d forgotten the foreman was standing nearby. That’s what seeing Colton did to her.

Obviously, Davis saw his quick exit. “See you in the morning,” he told Sabrina, then headed toward the rear of the stables.

“I heard you took over Doc Storey’s practice,” Colton said, drawing her attention back to him again. She smelled the scents of leather and soap and horses on him, the combination reminding her of a hot night of making love to him. Oh, God. “Good for you,” he was saying. “It’s what you always wanted.”

What I wanted was you,
she thought and hated herself for it.
He left you, Sabrina. Don’t ever forget.
She didn’t bother with a fake smile and just said, “I’ve been practicing for a few years now.” Tightening her grip on the handle of her bag, she ignored the fact that he was still too damned handsome for his own good. Two days’ growth of beard and long hair poking out from beneath his hat only added to that rugged cowboy charm.

“For what it’s worth, I’m glad Dad hired you to take care of the stock.” He tipped back his hat, and the sincerity in his eyes struck a chord deep inside her.
It’s because you’re tired and run-down and vulnerable
.
This isn’t a true feeling; no attraction lasts eighteen years.

She looked away from him. A headache pounded in her tired brain, and the last thing she needed right now, the very last thing, was dealing with Colton Dillinger. Of course, she’d thought she was long over him, had convinced herself that if she ever saw him again, she wouldn’t feel a thing.

It was mortifying to know she was wrong.

What she felt at the sight of him was a ludicrous blend of anger, humiliation and desire. Was she curious about him? Hell, yes. But she wasn’t going to go there. She’d grown up in the past eighteen years, and though she suspected passion could still run hot between them, plenty of things had changed. She had a life here ... and he had one in Montana. End of story.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Fine, really, but I have to go,” she said and turned away before he could recognize the lie in her eyes. Marching through the snow to her truck, she tried to think rationally, to push aside any of those old unresolved feelings for him that still lingered. Not old, she told herself, more like ancient. He wasn’t a part of her life now and never would be. She made her living from treating livestock in the area, and Ira Dillinger’s ranch represented the lion’s share of cattle and horses in the valley. She needed the Dillinger business and couldn’t risk blowing it with anyone in the family, even Colton.

She absolutely couldn’t have him know how she felt.

Yanking open the door to her truck, she swung behind the wheel and threw her bag onto the passenger seat.

“Wait!” Colton was jogging through the snow, his dog bounding behind him. He caught up with her, his boots sliding a bit in the snow, just as she slammed the door shut. The alarm that reminded her she hadn’t buckled up began to
ding,
so she yanked the seat belt strap over her shoulder and clicked it in, then fired up the engine so she could roll the window down.