Watch Me (3 page)

“I don’t know what he thinks,” Owen said, but his voice held no conviction and that revealed the truth.

I
t was midday when Cain returned home. Ned had shown up just after Cain had admitted Sheridan, and he’d made a fuss—probably to deflect any speculation about the time he’d spent messing around last night. He’d asked all kinds of questions Cain had no way of answering and made a point of letting the doctors know he’d be staying in close contact, waiting for the first moment Sheridan was capable of holding a conversation.

Cain figured Ned would be waiting for a few
days
. The doctors were keeping her unconscious to relieve the swelling in her brain. Fortunately, that swelling wasn’t bad enough that they’d had to drill holes in her skull, but it could get worse, so they wanted to keep her perfectly still. Whoever had beaten her had done a damn fine job. Besides the head injuries and the cuts and scrapes from being dragged through the woods, she had a bruised liver and a damaged kidney.

Cain hadn’t wanted to leave. It felt like he was abandoning her. But he couldn’t tolerate being around Whiterock’s chief of police for more than five minutes, and Ned wouldn’t go anywhere as long as Cain was in the room.

It was better that he’d come home. He’d agreed to
show Amy where he’d found Sheridan, and he’d volunteered to take the hounds out to see if they could pick up the scent of her attacker.

Koda, Maximillian and Quixote were waiting for him at the gate of their pen when he got out of his truck. They whined as he strode toward them: they didn’t like being left behind, but they were fine. If he’d ended up staying away much longer, he would’ve called Levi or Vivian Matherly, his closest neighbors, and asked one of them to stop by. But it hadn’t been necessary today.

Predictably, the hounds’ unhappiness evaporated the second he lifted the latch. Then their tails began to wag and all was forgiven.

“Let’s get you fed.” He set about filling their dishes. Quixote and Maximillian immediately went to their bowls and got down to the business of eating. Koda took advantage of their preoccupation to nuzzle up to Cain.

“What’re you doing over here, huh?” Cain asked his favorite dog, crouching to rub the dog’s ears. “I know you’re as hungry as they are.”

Koda barked in response and Cain chuckled. Sometimes he was sure this particular dog could read his mind. “You’re the best of the bunch,” he said as Koda’s warm tongue caressed his hand.

The sound of a motor and the crunch of tires on gravel announced Amy’s arrival. She was early. Cain hadn’t had time to shower or shave, and his eyes burned with fatigue, but he stood up and faced her as she parked.

“You’re back,” she called as she opened her door. “Looks like my timing is good.”

Cain made himself acknowledge her with a nod, but
he suspected she’d actually been hoping to arrive before he did so she’d have a chance to snoop around. Since the miscarriage and their subsequent divorce, she was always watching him for fear he’d hook up with someone else.

Maybe if he had a love interest, Amy would give up and move on. But it was three years since the woman he’d been dating on and off had moved to Nashville to pursue a country music career, and he hadn’t been with anyone since. The longer he remained single, the more Amy managed to “bump” into him.

Realizing he’d been upstaged, Koda barked once and trotted over to his dish, where he began to wolf down his food—apparently trying to catch up with the others.

“Take it easy, it’s not going anywhere,” Cain admonished.

All the hounds brought their muzzles up and pricked their ears, watching him for the direction they received from his body language as much as his verbal commands. Cain nodded for them to finish, and this time Koda ate a little more slowly.

“It’s amazing how well they obey you.” Amy was wearing her police uniform. Her badge identified her as Officer Granger, but that name didn’t seem any more natural than her recently enhanced curves. Eleven years ago, an unexpected pregnancy had forced Cain into proposing to Amy. Their marriage had lasted only three months, but because he’d never loved her, those three months had been hell. Why hadn’t she reverted to her maiden name?

“That’s what they’re trained to do,” he said.

“No amount of training would make them obey me like that. You have a way with animals.” She smiled bitterly. “And women.”

“Amy—”

She scowled at the warning in his voice. “No need to say anything. This is business. I know.”

He hoped she’d keep that in mind. But years of experience told him that their encounter would slide into the personal at some point. It always did.

“Let me put on a clean shirt and brush my teeth, and I’ll be right out,” he said.

Her eyes followed him as he walked to the house. He didn’t need to look back to know that; he could feel her attention. If she was around, he could
always
feel her attention. “Why’d she have to join the police force?” he grumbled once he was inside.

The blood in the bathroom sink and on his shirt served as an unnecessary reminder of last night’s horrific events. It was a miracle his dogs had been able to rouse him—and that whoever had beaten Sheridan hadn’t finished her off.

She could still die….

That thought caused a ripple of anxiety as he washed his face and hands and brushed his teeth. He was just stripping off his T-shirt while walking to his bedroom when he heard Amy address him from the end of the hall.

“Is there anything I can do to help you get the dogs ready?”

Cain turned in surprise and couldn’t miss the way her gaze moved hungrily over his bare chest.
Shit…
“No,” he said. Then he went into his bedroom and pointedly
closed the door. With his luck, she’d come in and offer to help him change his boxers, too….

She was on her knees, examining some blood on the carpet when he came out.

“You brought her in the house?” she asked, glancing up.

His stepbrother’s words seemed oddly prophetic given this question from Amy, but he shrugged off the sudden foreboding. He’d done what he had to do, what anyone would’ve done in the same situation. “For a few minutes.”

“Wasn’t it obvious that she needed to be driven to a hospital?”

“It was
obvious
she might not make it that far and that I had to call for an airlift.” He stared her down, refusing to show any doubt about his actions. Amy hated him every bit as much as she loved him, and she could switch from one emotion to the other in a second. If she was going to fault him for his actions, he wanted her to know she’d have a fight on her hands. It was better to discourage her from the beginning, before her twin brother could get involved.

Fortunately, taking the offensive seemed to work. She frowned at the blood and stood up. “All set?”

He was hungry. Once he’d decided to return and do some tracking, he hadn’t bothered to stop and eat. The coffee he’d bought at the hospital was chewing a hole in his stomach, but he didn’t want to spend an extra second in Amy’s company. Even the sound of her voice changed to a higher pitch when she was with him. Every word raised the hair on the back of his neck.

“Let’s go,” he said. He could eat later.

“It’s gone.” Cain searched through the undergrowth near the half-dug grave.

Amy was busy taking pictures of where Sheridan had been lying. He could see broken limbs, matted leaves and blood. “What’s gone?” she asked.

“The shovel.”

Letting the camera drop around her neck, she walked over. “Where was it?”

“Here.” He pointed to the left of the hole.

“You’re sure?”

“That’s not something that would be easy to mistake.”

“How’d you see it in the dark?”

“I had a flashlight. But I could’ve seen it anyway. There was a full moon.”

“It was raining in town last night.”

Her apparent doubt made him grind his teeth. “We got a light drizzle, too, but the moon was out.”

“You think he came back for his
shovel?
”

“
Someone
took it.” Cain wished he’d been there when the man returned. It had to be someone he and Sheridan knew. It was too much to believe a stranger had tried to kill her on his land a few weeks after that rifle had shown up in his cabin.

“Let’s talk about motive,” she said.

Cain whistled to round up his dogs, who were sniffing the trees, marking their territory. “What about motive?”

“Who’d want to do this to Sheridan Kohl?”

“I have no idea. As far as I know, no one’s seen or heard from her since she left.”

“Could be an old grudge.”

“She was popular in high school, well-liked.”

“So was Jason,” she mused.

“It’s probably the same person.”

“You don’t think there could be two men in Whiterock capable of this kind of violence?”

“It’s possible, but unlikely,” he said. “Don’t you find it odd that Sheridan was involved in
both
incidents?”

“I guess. But we have to look at all the possibilities. Coincidence is one of those possibilities.” She tried to tame the wisps of curly auburn hair that’d escaped the thick braid hanging down her back. With little effect. The wayward strands continued to frame her broad, heavily freckled face.

There’d been a time when Cain had found Amy
slightly
attractive, but that was years and years ago. Before the wedding. When she was younger and thinner and didn’t have those harsh frown lines around her eyes and mouth or that look of desperation in her eyes.

“It was no coincidence,” he insisted. “She either knows something someone doesn’t want her to tell, or she has an enemy who’s been out to get her since the night she and Jason were shot.” With his foot he poked through the damp needles and leaves near a cluster of pine trees. “And I’m leaning toward the ‘keeping her quiet’ motive. There wasn’t a single person who didn’t like her.”

Amy hesitated long enough to tell him that she’d recognized the respect in his voice. “
I
didn’t like her.”

“Why? The two of you didn’t even socialize. You came from completely different worlds.” Amy had belonged to his band of rebels; Sheridan had headed their school’s chapter of the National Honor Society.

“We had one thing in common,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“You.”

Uncomfortable with where this conversation was going, Cain cleared his throat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Her hair was all mussed one night at a party when she was last seen with you. Are you telling me you
weren’t
the reason?”

Now he understood who was fueling the suspicion that he might’ve had a jealousy motive for shooting Jason. He should’ve guessed it was Amy. If she couldn’t have him, she wanted to make his life as miserable as possible. “Sheridan wasn’t the type for that,” he said.

“Maybe not with other boys.”

“Why would she be any different with me?” That was the big question, wasn’t it? One he’d never really been able to answer. He knew she’d had a crush on him, but that was the part he couldn’t understand. He shouldn’t have been appealing to a straight arrow like her.

“Maybe she wanted you. Maybe she was willing to lift her skirts, hoping you’d fall in love with her, become her boyfriend.”

“Stop it.” That was a little too autobiographical, coming from Amy. And his experience with Sheridan had been nothing like Amy was insinuating. Sheridan hadn’t been trying to manipulate him, certainly not that night. Something honest and pure had passed between them. Which was probably why he’d never called her afterward. She’d been the only girl to pose a threat to the part
of himself he’d been trying so hard to protect after his mother’s death. “I barely knew Sheridan.”

“So you didn’t sleep with her.”

“That’s none of your business.”

She arched an eyebrow. “An evasive answer makes you seem guilty, you know.”

Amy had pushed him into a corner. If he lied and Sheridan came out with the truth, it would look as if he was being dishonest about everything—the shooting, last night’s beating. But he couldn’t help defending Sheridan’s reputation. He refused to throw what’d happened between them into the dirt for the whole town to gossip about. Especially now that Sheridan was back and would have to deal with that gossip and the judgment and disapproval guaranteed to go along with it. “I didn’t sleep with her, okay?”

Thick mascara far too dark for her fair coloring coated Amy’s eyelashes, in sharp contrast to the light blue of her eyes. “I have a hard time believing that.”

“Why?” he challenged, throwing up the shield of insolence that came to his rescue at such times.

“Because some women would do
anything
for you.”

The passion behind those words gave Cain the impression that she was making him an offer. If he’d take her back, she’d become his most ardent defender and the suspicion surrounding him would disappear. But that wasn’t a trade he was willing to make. His feelings for Amy hadn’t changed. They never would.

“Sheridan would’ve known better than that,” he said.

Amy’s eyes held his, so full of abject longing he finally had to yank his gaze away. And that was when
he saw it—a piece of wood lying in the trees behind her. It had a dark, almost blackish substance on one end, a substance that looked like dried blood.

“I just found his weapon,” Cain said, astonished by the ease with which the object had suddenly stood out when active searching had yielded nothing.

Disappointment crept over Amy’s features, and immediately turned into a highly focused, razor-sharp hate. But Cain was used to the way her emotions vacillated and cared more about what he’d found.

He started toward it but Amy was closer. She got there first and nudged it with her toe. “He hit her with
this?
”

Much to Cain’s relief, Amy seemed to have regained control of her reactions. “He used more than his fists.”

“The fact that he used a convenient weapon suggests he didn’t go after her with the intention of killing her.”

“He had a shovel. I don’t carry a shovel in my trunk. Do you?”

Amy bent to pick up the club, but he stopped her. “Leave it.”