Chapter 4
The rest of the day dragged by with a few actual incidents to deal with—mostly fender benders from cars not stopping quickly enough on the wet street, or cars that were stalled while trying to navigate the puddles that swallowed the wet streets, or the car that got swamped because some tourist didn’t realize driving on the beach in the waves wasn’t as safe as it looked in a car commercial.
It wasn’t until almost ten that night that I finally had a chance to talk to Myra and Jean.
We had the calls from the station forwarded, and met up at the all-night Blue Owl diner that had opened up on the north end of town last month. Terrible weather meant tourist traffic was cut to almost nothing. The diner had been struggling when it should have been doing its best business of the year.
The owner, Joe Boy, also owned the gas station where Sven had been found. I figured the diner could float for a year or so on the gas station profits. The diner had enough room in the parking lot and the back gravel lot for truckers to catch some sleep before taking the highway east toward the capitol of Salem, north to Portland, or further on to Seattle.
Other than one burly guy in a trucker’s hat skyping on his tablet in the corner booth on the far side of the restaurant, it was us, the cook, and a single waitress.
We sat in one of the retro-style 1950s booths, each of us with a cup of coffee. The waitress, Piper, a mortal who had just moved into the area, had poured our coffee without asking, somehow knowing Myra would want decaf.
“What can I get you ladies? We have pie that would make your granny jealous.”
Piper was in her early thirties, had long blonde hair that fell in soft curls. Her ears were pierced with tiny jeweled studs all the way from her lobes to the inward curl of the helix, and her face was squared at the chin, which somehow made her wide, sea-gray eyes softer.
I hadn’t heard where she’d come from originally, but figured one of the town gossips would eventually fill me in.
“Let’s make granny jealous,” I said, realizing she had nailed exactly what I wanted. “Pecan if you have it and only if it’s amazing.”
“Best in the state.”
“I’ll have...”Myra started.
“Apple ala mode?” Piper suggested.
Myra looked a little startled and studied Piper’s face. “Yes. That’s perfect.”
“And give me anything banana with lots of whipped cream,” Jean said.
“We’ve got a banana-bourbon caramel cream that will knock your socks off.”
“Good. I’m tired of these socks.”
“Great.” She jotted our orders down. “Sisters, right? Reeds?”
Looking between the three of us, most people might guess friends instead of sisters. I was built taller and more athletic like our father, had my long brown hair pulled back in a scrunchie and hadn’t bothered changing out of my tan, button-down uniform over which I’d thrown a plaid flannel.
Myra was shorter than me and curvy in a soft blue sweater, rocking a noir pageboy hair cut and deep red lipstick. Jean, the youngest, currently had her long pigtails in several shades of turquoise tucked behind her ears and, even though she was the one who was actually still on duty, wore jeans. Her T-shirt had a head shot of the cartoon spy Archer on it, under which was written: I’D DO ME.
Despite our differences, it was something about our eyes that tagged us as sisters, all shades of blue from deepest to lightest. But it wasn’t just the shape and color of our eyes that made it obvious we were from the same blood. It was the light. It sounded weird when I thought of it that way, but it was true. There was something about the Reeds in Ordinary, our bloodline having been chosen to uphold the laws of the town, that gave us a certain kind of light.
“I’m Police Chief Delaney Reed, and these are my sisters, Myra and Jean.”
“Oh. I thought Robert Reed was the police chief.” She paused and must have already figured out the expression on my face because her eyes instantly filled with regret.
“He was,” Jean said before I even had time to think of an answer. “He passed more than a year ago and Delaney took his position. All of us are on the force actually.”
Piper’s face fell and it was clear she was embarrassed. “I’m so sorry to bring it up. And I’m sorry for your loss. My condolences to you all.”
“Thank you,” Myra said. “He was a wonderful chief and dad.”
“I’m sure he was.”
“Well, if you need anything,” I said, trying to lighten the mood. “Just give us a call. Welcome to Ordinary, by the way.”
“Thank you. It feels like coming home.”
I smiled. The little town had that effect on people sometimes. Someone would stop in on a vacation and then never go home.
“We’re glad to have you. Where are you from?”
“Oh, we moved around a lot, my mother and I. Most recently, Utah.”
“Pretty out there,” I said.
“Pretty, but nothing like the seashore. I just hate living anywhere away from the ocean. Miss it too much. Now let me get you that pie. On the house.”
“Thank you, but that’s not necessary,” Myra said.
“I’d like to. In thanks for all your work to keep this town—my home—safe.”
“Sounds great,” Jean said. “Thank you.”
Piper nodded and headed back to the kitchen.
We all took a moment to ourselves and sipped coffee. Even though it had been over a year since Dad died, it was still hard to think that he was gone for good. There was a Dad-shaped emptiness in all of our lives, and I didn’t think any of us knew how to fill it yet.
Music played softly in the background, a sort of melancholy blues and rock station that seemed to fit the rainy night, the diner, and our mood perfectly.
Jean pulled out her phone and fiddled with it a bit, Myra sort of gazed into the middle distance, and I rested my head against the booth, staring through the window beside us out at the night and the rain.
Piper was back before a new song started, just before things would have gotten really sad, pies balanced on a tray and a full, fresh pot of coffee in hand.
“Here you go, ladies. Pecan, apple, and banana bourbon caramel cream. Enjoy.” She set the plates down, topped off our coffee, and sashayed off to check on the trucker in the corner.
“So what did Old Rossi say?” Myra ate the crust off her pie with bites of vanilla ice cream first before working her way toward the apple center.
I picked at the pecan, which was actually very good, then sat back and drank coffee. My appetite wasn’t the best right now.
“Trouffle?” Jean mumbled through a mouthful of whipped cream.
“Yeah, trouble,” I said. “Sven’s been murdered. Bullet through the head wasn’t enough to kill him but the blood symbols on his body were. Apparently Rossi came up with the blood-kill thing over a thousand years ago. He calls it ichor techne. He didn’t explain how it’s done, but he did say it’s only used to kill vampires.”
I wrapped both my hands around my cup and stared down into the liquid blackness.
“And?” Myra asked. “What aren’t you telling us?”
“He said it was Ryder’s blood on Sven.”
They both stopped moving. Stopped chewing, stopped everything. Well, except for staring at me.
“You think he’s telling the truth?”
I sniffed, and rubbed at my eyes. Suddenly I wished I could just curl up in the booth and ignore this day had ever happened.
“I don’t know why he would lie about it. He was angry. He has every right to be angry. I’m angry.”
Jean reached across the table and patted my hand. “Ryder doesn’t have anything to do with this. He might be stupid sometimes, but he’s not a killer.”
The image came back to me of Ryder bursting into the station a few months ago when I was held at gunpoint by a woman. Ryder had handled his gun, and the high-charged situation, like a natural.
Maybe not like a killer, but like someone who knew how to deal with one.
Jean had always sort of idealized Ryder. She’d always thought he should be my handsome prince who would sweep me off my feet.
I didn’t think she’d gotten over him dumping me yet.
“Rossi says it’s his blood. We have to assume he has some tie to Sven’s death. Did we get labs back on that bullet hole?”
Myra speared an apple chunk and used it to wipe up some of the melted ice cream. “It’s a clean shot. 9mm bullet. There were no other bullets at the scene.”
“Any prints?”
“Nothing clear enough. No boot prints, even though it was muddy out by that shed. Any tire tracks would have been run over by other vehicles using the gas station and washed out by the rain.”
“So we’ve got nada,” Jean said.
“We’ve got a dead vampire and a pissed off vampire,” I said. “Rossi was holding a meeting. I told him to let his people know Ryder isn’t to be messed with.”
“What if he’s trying to throw you off?” Myra asked.
“Rossi?”
She nodded. “What if he just wants you to think Ryder was involved?”
“Why would he do that? Ryder and I aren’t dating. We’re barely working together. What would Rossi get out of casting suspicion on him?”
Although, now that I thought of it, Old Rossi had warned me about trusting Ryder before. And Ryder had made a point to tell me that Old Rossi wasn’t who he seemed to be.
Maybe something had happened when Ryder was younger and he still held it against Old Rossi. Or maybe Ryder had done some stupid kid thing that irritated the vampire.
Could it just be an old grudge?
“Do you two know if Rossi and Ryder get along okay?” I asked. “Are there any hard feelings between them?”
Jean licked banana cream off the tines of her fork. “Don’t think they really run in the same circles. Clean-cut Ryder and free-loving Rossi? There aren’t a lot of social situations that would have put them in close contact over the years. Except the festivals and things like that.”
We had four festivals a year in Ordinary. If you asked me, it was four too many.
“There’s one more weird thing about this,” I said.
They didn’t seem at all surprised there would be more weird things. This was Ordinary, after all.
“The other vampires can’t see the blood markings on Sven.”
“Are you sure?” Myra asked. “Can they smell them?”
“Yes, I’m sure. He brought Ben in to prove it to me. I’d never seen Ben so close to a panic attack. He told Rossi all he could see was the bullet hole—he said it was a silver bullet by the way.”
“Silver bullets kill werewolves, not vampires,” Jean said.
I nodded. “Still, any kind of bullet is still a bullet.”
“Okay,” Myra said, compiling all that data into organized subsections in that methodical mind of hers. “Ryder should be back in town tomorrow. We can talk to him then, see if there’s anything that points to him being involved with Sven’s death. Maybe I’ll drive by his place tonight, see if he got in early.”
“No, I’ll do it,” I said.
“Delaney,” Myra started.
“Let me. I know you and Jean have been trying to keep him out of my way, and I appreciate that. But I’m the chief here, and I’m the one who talked to Rossi and promised him I would check into Ryder.”
“I’ll come with you,” Jean said.
“No, you’ll go back to the station, or home with the calls forwarded, okay? Let’s just keep everything about this as normal as possible.”
“Dead vampire is not normal,” Myra muttered before sipping her coffee.
“I know.”
“How about the god power?” Jean asked. “Did you hear anything else about that?”
I shook my head. “Which reminds me, where’s Crow?”
“I took him home,” Jean said.
I groaned. “Really?”
“There wasn’t any real legal reason to lock him up, and it’s not like he’s going to leave town without his power.”
“He could,” I said.
“Sure. But the gods in town would stop him before he even got one foot outside city limits. So I took him home—well, not his home.”
She looked far too pleased with herself.
“Jean,” Myra said. “What home? If I find him at my place, in my kitchen—or in my bed— I’m going to throttle you.”
“Shit. Why didn’t I think of dropping him off at your place? I have a key and everything.”
“Jean,” I said.
“Oh, take it easy. He’s staying with Bertie.”
Bertie was the town’s only Valkyrie. She appeared to be a slight, bird-like woman in her eighties. While she was that, she was also the creature who made it her job to drag warriors off battlefields to their final resting places whether they liked it or not.
No one had ever put up a fight against Bertie and won.
It was no surprise Bertie was also the head of the community center, and pretty much ran all the behind-the-scenes events and gatherings that were hosted in Ordinary.
Those four festivals? All Bertie’s doing. Honestly, I couldn’t think of better hands, well, talons, in which to leave Crow.
“Okay,” I said. “I give. That’s brilliant. How did you get Bertie to agree?”
“I told her we’d each volunteer our time—no more than eight hours—at the next event she needed hands for.”
Myra groaned and thunked her head on the table.
Dramatic? No. Not at all. The last time I’d gotten roped into owing Bertie a favor she’d forced me to judge a rhubarb contest.
Rhubarb.
Tastes like a demon’s butt, no matter how much chocolate or alcohol is added to try to hide it. I thought giving ourselves over to Bertie deserved a little, no, maybe a lot of head thumping.
Jean, however, looked like she was enjoying torturing us. “Doesn’t matter how much brain damage you give yourself,” she said to Myra. “She’ll still find you something to do for eight hours.”
“I hate you,” Myra mumbled.
Jean laughed and patted Myra on the head.
“When’s the next thing?” Myra sighed.
“It’s a fundraiser,” Jean sing-songed. “Want to guess what it is?”
“No.”
“Canoe jousting?” I said.
“Not this time. C’mon Myra. Guess. It involves pancakes.”
She shifted her head to the side and cast a suspicious gaze at Jean’s grin. “Is it a cook-off? A pancake breakfast? That wouldn’t be terrible.”
“Boring.” Jean practically glittered with excitement. “Cakes on Skates!”
I heard the words, but couldn’t make them fit together in my head.
“Skates?” Myra said. Was that actual interest I heard in her voice?
“Breakfast delivered to your door by people on skates. Costumes encouraged. She’s got Hogan on board, so there will be cake donuts and cake cupcakes and cake cake, but he’s got four kinds of pancakes he’s going to whip up too.” From the smile on her face, you’d think the man had invented breakfast pastries.
“Why skates?” Myra asked.
“It’s also a contest.”
We waited.
“How many deliveries a skating team can make. How many times a skater drops their delivery. How many tips they can get out of the delivery. Who gets back to the finish line first. That kind of stuff.”
“Tell me Bertie already has judges.”
Jean shrugged. “Who knows. You still have your old skates?”
“No.”
“I do,” Myra said.
“Good job, pack rat.” Jean patted her shoulder. “You might want to loan them to Bertie so she can find some chump to sign up for deliveries. Unless you’d like to do the skating? Rebecca Carver will be doing it.”
At the name of her old high school rival, Myra’s face shut down into a scowl. “What’s she doing back in town?”
“Slumming? Walking around in her Jimmy Choos, despairing about our lack of diamond-coated puppy baths and pills that make you poop gold? What? That’s a real thing. Look it up.”
Myra, who was still head-down on the table, rocked her head back and forth, having given up on the conversation.
“I got nothing,” I said. “I’m out. It’s been a long day and I want some sleep. See you two tomorrow.” I threw a five on the table because even though Piper wanted to comp us our pie and coffee, she deserved a tip.
Myra said something that almost sounded like, “Gold poop pills. Brings a whole new meaning to gold digger.” Jean laughed again.
I left them to it and pushed out into the cool, wet night.
I liked summer. I liked the ever-shifting coastal weather that brought us days of lukewarm fog, or nearly gale-force winds, or crystal clear sunshine stunners that made everything feel right in the world.
And sure, I liked the cool wet of autumn, winter, and spring in Oregon too.
But Thor giving us the middle finger for three months was really getting on my nerves.
“You couldn’t give us one week of sunshine?” I asked as I tromped to the Jeep. “Come on, Thor. You know I’m grateful for your help in finding Cooper. I’m sorry you have to stay away from Ordinary for a year, but think of it this way. At least your power isn’t lost.”
I got in the Jeep and clicked on my seatbelt.
The rain seemed to lighten a little, the drops shrinking from nickel-sized to dime.
Maybe he was listening.
“You lay off the rain for the rest of August and most of September, and I promise we will throw you the biggest welcome home party Ordinary has ever seen when you come back.”
I started the engine and guided the Jeep south toward town. By the time I turned east, navigating the quiet neighborhoods toward the lake, the rain was down to a soft drizzle that finally, finally, stopped.
I let out a long breath. “Thank you. Thank you so much, Thor.”
I drove past the front of Ryder’s cabin, then parked across the street. Moonlight filtered silver down through the clouds. Wow, Thor was going to give us a little break. I hoped he didn’t change his mind in the morning.
Ryder’s truck was in his driveway. Next to it was a sleek sedan with an in-state license plate, but not one I recognized.
Ryder was not only back in town, he also had company.
The memory of his phone call this morning rolled through my head. He had sounded tired, worried, and maybe drunk. He had sounded like he was leaving to do something he might regret.
Kill a vampire?
No. Ryder didn’t know about the creatures who lived, or un-lived, among us.
Had he called because he was worried about returning to Ordinary? That didn’t really make much sense. He lived here.
I studied the low glow coming through the window beside the door, probably light from the living room.
Maybe he had a date.
That thought hit me like a two-ton sledgehammer. Not that there would be anything wrong with him dating. He’d dumped me. We weren’t together. So if he wanted to have a woman over, if he wanted someone else in his life, I should be happy for him.
Okay, not happy, but there were no legal grounds for me to slash his tires.
Maybe the chick’s sedan had expired tags. Maybe it had been used in a bank robbery. Maybe I should go over there and check that out. Because it was my job, not because I was jealous.
I was moments away from running the plates when the porch light flicked on, bathing the front of the house in light.
I killed the engine and ducked down, hoping the night would hide the Jeep. Why hadn’t I parked out of sight of the front door?
Stake out 101, Delaney.
The door opened and two people stepped out onto the porch: Ryder and another man.
Yes! He was with a man, not a woman.
My heart did a leap of joy, which was totally unprofessional.
Ryder stood in the doorway scowling, his arms crossed over his chest. His dog, Spud, sat attentively at his feet.
Just watching Ryder, lit by the light of the porch and shadowed by night, made my heart thump harder. His wide shoulders were muscled from the hands-on approach he took to his business. He might design buildings, but that didn’t keep him from going on-site and swinging a hammer. Those shoulders stretched the tailored lines of his dress shirt so that it was tight at the chest and biceps, but it skimmed his flat stomach.
Even at this distance, his dress slacks drew my eyes to narrow hips and long legs.
Ryder could model those business clothes, and more than one fashion magazine would take him on.
Since I’d seen him naked, I knew more than one underwear designer would take him on too. Those images were not helping me pay attention to what was happening at the porch.
They were talking. Maybe arguing? The man moved, his hand cutting a sharp line between them as if refusing something Ryder had said. He looked angry.
Okay, Delaney, pay attention.
Ryder’s expression had gone flat and unreadable. He waited until the guy was done gesturing, then nodded, a clear invitation for the guy to leave.
The man leaned in a little, his finger pointed at Ryder’s face, then off to the side at nothing in particular, or maybe indicating the neighborhood or town.
Hard to know. With the moonlight shaded by clouds, I couldn’t even get a good look at his face.
Ryder didn’t say anything. I could see his face thanks to the angle of the porch light and the fact that he was facing the street where I was hidden. He looked controlled, but the clenching of his jaw and something about the angle of his oh-so-relaxed body told me he was furious.
The man turned and I finally got a look at him. Light hair cut high and tight, square face. He was several inches shorter than Ryder, and wore a business suit tailored to his stocky build. I’d put him somewhere in his late forties, maybe early fifties.
From that single wash of light across his face I could tell he was angry too.
I didn’t like him. I don’t know why, but my split-second read on the guy told me he was a jerk.
I’d have guessed he was Ryder’s boss, except Ryder was in business for himself. So maybe this was a big-wig client or an investor? Whoever it was, he got into his fancy sedan and left.
Even though I’d told Myra and Jean that I would stop by and talk to Ryder, now that I was here, I decided it would be better to talk to him tomorrow.
Good thing it was dark and cloudy. He hadn’t noticed me sitting here in the Jeep.
I waited as he watched the man drive away. Then Ryder half turned toward the house.
Just as I was sure he hadn’t spotted me, the cloud cover cleared and shot a beam of neon silver moonlight smack dab down on the Jeep, lighting it up. Lighting me up too.
“Thanks a lot, Thor,” I grumbled.
Ryder noticed the light. Noticed the Jeep. Noticed me.
He paused, his hands clenching into loose fists, as if he were the one who had been spotted instead of the other way around.
I kind of hoped he’d ignore me. I kind of hoped he would just go inside.
He shut the door and jogged down the path to me.
I thought about starting the engine and gunning it out of there.
But that would be unprofessional.
Plus, I hadn’t thought about it until it was too late.
Ryder knocked on the driver’s side window. “Delaney?”
I rolled down the window. “Hey, Ryder.”
“What are you doing out here so late? Something wrong? Need me at the station? Are Myra and Jean okay?”
See, this was the trouble with Ryder. Even though he was the sort of guy who would date ‘em and dump ‘em, he was also the kind of guy who would reach out to people in need and help his neighbors and coworkers without hesitation.
“They’re fine. We don’t need you at the station.”
He made a little “huh” sound then bent a bit lower, his arm draped across the door frame as he inspected the interior of the car. “So what are you doing out here watching my house, Delaney? Are you watching me?”
Yes.
“No.”
“No?”
“No. I came here to talk to you, but I saw you had someone over and didn’t want to bother you.”
I wanted to look anywhere than at him, but if I looked away he would see the lie on me. Maybe he saw the lie on me now. Maybe he heard my heart beating for him, wanting him.
The wind ruffled his dark hair softly, the shifting gray and blue of moonlight casting him in velvet-edged marble. He was undeniably handsome, eyebrows thickest at the arch over mossy green eyes, nose straight and upper lip delectably heavier than his lower lip.
He looked tired. Lines at the edges of his eyes, across his forehead seemed deeper, and a full day’s stubble spread dark along his jaw.
I wanted to kiss him. To press against his body and be surrounded by his scent, be filled with his warmth. My mouth went dry thinking about it, and other parts of me didn’t care that he’d dumped me.
Would he take me back? Would he want me if I asked him to?
Maybe some of those questions showed on my face. Maybe my need, or my struggle to push my need away, lock it all up with the hope my traitorous heart would not give up, showed through.
Ryder didn’t want me.
He had tried to apologize for how he handled the break up, or maybe for the break up.
Maybe he wanted me a little. But a little couldn’t be enough.
Could it?
His eyes were soft, and his lips curved in a smile that oddly looked sad. “Come inside,” he said, all warmth and need and home. “I’d like...I need to talk to you too. Please come inside with me.”
I shouldn’t. Well, I should talk to him. Ask him if he murdered Sven. Ask him where he had been in the last forty-eight hours. But I knew if I followed him into his house, I wouldn’t want to talk about murder. I wouldn’t want to know if he was involved with Sven’s death or anything else.
I’d just want him.
“We can do this tomorrow,” I said in a thin voice I barely recognized.
His expression fell and I realized there had been something more than sorrow in his eyes. There had been hope.
This didn’t have to be so hard. We had been friends growing up, friends all our lives before our one date and one night together that had not only ended before it had practically begun, but had also almost ended our friendship.
All those years of friendship deserved something didn’t they? A chance?
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go in. It’s freezing out here.”
He stepped back, looking relieved, but only far enough away to let me open the Jeep door.
“Not exactly the warmest summer we’ve had,” he said.
Weather. We were talking about the weather.
I took it back. Our dating hadn’t destroyed our friendship, it had blown it to smithereens and left behind the dust of conversations suitable for strangers over tea.
“Global warming,” I agreed.
He didn’t know Thor was behind our unseasonable storms, because he not only didn’t know Thor was a god, he didn’t know gods really and truly existed.
But I refused to chat about the weather, because really? We were better than that, even at our worst.
“Everything go okay today?” I asked as we walked up the path. “You sounded kind of...off.”
“It went well enough. Sorry about the call, I was...I don’t know.”
I paused at the door, waited. “You were what, Ryder?”
He winced and gave me a look pleading for something. Maybe forgiveness. Maybe patience.
“I was missing you.” That, said so low and soft, it was like a feather against my spine. “And I thought...and I thought maybe hearing your voice...” He shrugged one shoulder, whatever words he’d been about to say gone.
My heart gathered up those words like a bee did nectar. But my mind was still giving that clear thinking thing a try.
“You asked me if I was naked.”
“You thought I was drunk.”
“Well?”
“It was eight o’clock in the morning.” He reached over and shoved the door, springing it open. “I was not drunk.”
“You could have been.”
“In what time zone?”
“The drunk one.”
He snorted and shut the door behind us. I was standing in Ryder’s house, with Ryder.
Last time we’d been here, one of us had been naked.
That one of us had been him.
My mind wandered over the memory of his body, his hard muscles, the sepia Leonardo da Vinci hand proportion sketch tattooed on his shoulder, the stars and artist’s compass on his hip.
“I had just finished a meeting. Investors on a project in Seattle. Coffee?”
“It’s a little late for coffee.”
He took three quick steps forward. “Who are you and what have you done to Delaney?” He pressed the back of his hand on my forehead as if checking for a fever.
The warmth and pressure of that contact pulled a small gasp from me.
He was smiling, gazing down at me, so close I could smell his cologne worn and thickened by a long day against his skin, but made all the better by his unique scent mixed into it.
His eyes crinkled at the corners, laughter dancing in their depth.
“I’m right here,” I breathed.
The glint of humor shifted, grew into something else. Heat. Desire. Need.
His hand hovered, drawing fingers that gentled across my forehead, down my temple, then dragged along my jaw and slipped around to the base of my head. Fingers stroked my hair which was falling free from the hasty pony tail I’d put it in hours ago.
His gaze searched mine, asking.
I didn’t know what I answered, but he tipped his head, angling his mouth nearer, nearer mine. I kept my eyes open for as long as I could.
“Delaney,” he whispered, his breath warm across my lips.
I leaned, lifted, reached, just that fraction of an inch so that our mouths met.
Distantly, I felt his free hand slide around my waist. Distantly, I felt my hands skim across his ribs, my palms flattening on the wide, smooth planes of his back.
What I felt, what my whole world seemed to center on, where I began, where I ended, was that kiss.
Gentle at first, the kiss was warm, sweet. An embrace that sent a shiver across my skin.
Wild thoughts that this one, spare, aching touch would be all Ryder wanted to give trampled through me. And right on the heels of that was my logical mind yelling that this wasn’t what I wanted. Wasn’t what I’d said I wanted.
I wanted space. I wanted time.
Away from Ryder.
Didn’t I?
He’d dumped me. No, that wasn’t the worst part.
He’d left me. Walked away when I was bleeding, hurting, and vulnerable in a hospital room.
But even then, even when he had been telling me that he didn’t want to be with me, hadn’t he looked sad? Maybe even conflicted and torn up about his choice? Maybe that wasn’t what his heart wanted, it was what his mind wanted.
And he’d listened to his mind.
Just like I should be listening to mine.
Or not, my traitorous heart said.
Feel, my heart urged. Feel him.
Ryder shifted the angle of his mouth against mine, the tip of his tongue skimming gently at one corner of my mouth, then up, zinging warmth through me, dragging along the crease of my lips, asking for entrance, asking for me, asking for me to feel again.
I opened to him, a small sound slipping from my throat as his tongue plunged into my mouth, licking and tangling with my tongue, sucking, drawing me closer to him as he sank into me with promises of what we could be. What we could do.
Promises of us.
I lost myself to the sensations, a burring warmth building as his tongue, his mouth reminded me of what we had been together, how well our bodies had fit, how one touch from him struck a fire so deep within me, it burned my soul down to ashes, and somehow made it whole again.
I could lie to myself all I wanted. The real reason I didn’t want to be around Ryder wasn’t because I was angry at him for breaking up with me. Well, okay, yes, I was angry, but there was more.
I didn’t want to be around Ryder because when I was near him, I didn’t want to be anywhere except with him. When he was close to me, it felt as if a piece of my life snicked into place.
We might have only gone out on one date, but I’d known him my entire life. And he had known me. All the places where our years of friendship had planted roots had grown into something more. Something that friendship wasn’t enough to contain.
He shifted again, his hand dropping lower to my hip, then his palm pressing against my butt, pulling us hip-to-hip. My hands followed his lead, and I rubbed one palm over the smooth material of his slacks. I could feel his very physical reaction to that, to me.
He wanted me. He wanted us. His words might say one thing, but his body couldn’t lie.
And it was at that moment that my brain finally wrestled my heart to silence.
Ryder’s blood was on Sven. Ryder might be a murderer or an accomplice to murder.
I might be kissing a murderer.
Crap.
I stepped back, stepped away, my hands lifting from the heat of him, from the strength of him as I put several paces between us.
He stayed where he was, for a long, long pause, breathing. We were both busy just breathing. Then he slowly lifted his head and straightened his back and shoulders. I kept my gaze on his eyes, no, that was no good. His eyes were glassy with need, his pupils wide. Lips were no better, they were wet and slightly swollen from the kiss.
I didn’t dare look any lower. Ear. Ear should be safe.
So I stared at his ear. “We need to talk. You need to talk. This isn’t talking.”
He inhaled, held that breath. “Okay. We need to talk. Do you want to sit?”
Since my heart wanted me to do more than sit: specifically run into the bedroom and strip off all my clothes, and my mind also wanted me to run, out the door and as far away from Ryder as I could get, I thought sitting in the living room was a nice compromise.
I turned, blindly picked one of the chairs, sat there on the edge, hands gripping my thighs.
I stared at my knees, at my hands that were white-knuckled. Because I couldn’t touch him. Because I shouldn’t touch him.
Just breathe.
I had a job to do. There was no time for my private life, not here, not with a murder suspect. And if he was innocent, then I needed to know how his blood ended up on Sven. I needed to know what he knew.
If he hadn’t been the one to pull the trigger, he might know who had. I needed a clear head so I could watch his reactions to my questions and read if he was telling the truth or a lie. With my heart pounding loud as a freight train, I wouldn’t be able to hear his answers unless he shouted them.
Pull it together, Delaney. Do the job.
The clink of ice in a glass brought my head up. Ryder stood in front of the couch to one side of me, holding a glass of water. There was another glass in his hand. Looked like, smelled like whisky.
“Thought we could both use a drink.”
Great. He’d left the room long enough to pour drinks and I hadn’t even noticed. Losing my concentration in front of a possible murderer was every kind of stupid.
He smiled softly. “If you’d rather, I have some rhubarb juice in the fridge.”
Just like that, he was my friend again. Ryder Bailey. The man I’d never stopped loving.
“Liar.” I took the water. Sipped. It was good, cold, and helped clear my head. “You hate rhubarb.”
He settled down on the couch, one arm spread across the back, the other propping the tumbler on his thigh. “No, really, it was given to me after the festival. Haven’t opened it, but the expiration date is something like two years from now. The juice that never dies. Vampire juice.”
I felt all the blood drain out of my face. “Why are you talking about vampires?” Even though my pulse was running too quickly, I was assessing his body language, and possible aggression levels.
Ryder and I were friends. But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t take him down, cuff him, hell, tase him, if he made the wrong move.
“It was a joke? Apparently a bad joke. What do you have against vampires? Read too many teen books?”
He was smiling, but there was something false about it. Something about his smile that wasn’t my friend. Ryder had been gone for eight years. It was moments like this when I remembered there were parts of him I did not know. “Or maybe you’ve seen someone suspiciously vampire-like lately?”
He lifted his glass, swallowed the amber liquid, his gaze never leaving mine.
It was that motion, the bend of his arm to bring the glass to his lips that caught my eye. His long shirt sleeve was tailored, a little tight on his muscular arms. It was buttoned at the cuff, but there was a bulkiness under the material, at the bend of his elbow.
A bandage?
“I need you to unbutton your sleeve for me,” I said.
His head tipped to the side, as if he hadn’t quite heard me correctly. “What?”
“I need you to unbutton your sleeve.”
“You want me to get undressed?”
“No. Just the sleeve. The left sleeve.”
“Why?”
“There’s been some trouble in town. I need to see your left arm.”
He leaned forward and placed the glass on the coffee table in front of him. “What if I say no?”
“Are you going to?”
“I don’t know. I thought we were going to talk.”
“This is talking. We’re talking.”
“No.” He leaned back against the couch, but did not look relaxed. “Were you outside watching my house because of whatever’s happened in town?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. So this is police business, and even though I am a reserve officer, you’re not going to tell me what’s going on before you ask me to strip?”
“I didn’t ask you to strip. It’s just an arm, Ryder.”
“From the look on your face and your tone of voice, it’s a lot more than just an arm. What happened?”
“Someone was killed.”
“What?” He shot straight off the back of the couch, a look of complete surprise on his face. “Who? When? Here? In Ordinary? Have you caught the killer? No, of course you haven’t, you’re here. Wait. You think I’m the killer? Me?”
The cascade of emotions and reactions he rolled through seemed genuine. If anyone else but my childhood friend were acting the way he was, I’d believe them.
But there was something about the tightness at the edge of his eyes, something about the hard line of his mouth that belied his actions.
Oh, Ryder. This is one time in your life you’re going to regret that you and I were such good friends.
Cop instincts told me to play along, to act like I believed him. To act like he didn’t know anything about Sven’s death. Even though my heart was sinking, and a part of me wanted to find a small room, shut the door and just scream and scream, I instead took a drink of water.
“I need to see your arm. You don’t show it to me, I’ll put you in cuffs, take you into the station and cut the shirt off of you.”
He blinked a couple times as if my words confused him.
“You’re angry.”
“I’m not kidding.”
He opened his mouth and inhaled, then let the breath out in a huff. “I can’t believe you think I’m lying.”
“I didn’t say that.”
He unbuttoned his left cuff but lifted his hand and sort of waved his finger at me. “That face says otherwise.”
“What face?”
“The I-think-you’re-lying face.”
“And you’re not?”
He shook his head and then rolled up the sleeve. “I don’t have anything to hide. Why would I lie?”
His sleeve was rolled up to just below the bend in his elbow. “Happy?” He turned his arm so I could see it. It was a nice forearm. Muscled, tan from whatever spring sun we’d gotten months ago. There were a couple of scars that had healed white beneath the dusting of hair.
But that wasn’t the part of his arm I needed to see.
“The whole thing,” I said.
“My sleeve doesn’t roll up any farther.”
“Then take off your shirt.”
He smiled and there was a hard edge to the grin. “So you are trying to get me naked.”
“Just your arm.”
“All right.” The word had a bit of a drawl to it. Ryder leaned forward and unbuttoned his shirt. My gaze flicked away from his face long enough to see he was wearing a T-shirt beneath the button down.
He tugged at the rolled up sleeve, then pushed his shirt off both shoulders, letting it pool around his low back.
His elbow was wrapped with a light gauze which was holding down a pad at the inside of his elbow.
“So what happened to your arm?”
“I gave blood.”
“To whom?”
“The Girls Scouts.” His eyebrows dipped down tight and he looked really confused. “Red Cross. Who else?”
“Do you donate often?”
“When I can.”
“Here in town?”
“No. I was in Seattle at a meeting. But there was a blood drive going on outside the restaurant next to the hotel.”
“So you decided to stop in and do your civic duty. How very Boy Scout of you, Bailey.”
“You’re not a fan of saving lives?”
I held his gaze. I couldn’t accuse him of giving blood to be used as a vampire murder weapon. But I could get my hands on the Red Cross record base. Unsurprisingly, there were a lot of vamps who worked for the agency, and I was sure Rossi knew a few who would be able to tell us if Ryder had actually donated.
“I’m a police officer,” I said after another sip of water. “I’m all about saving lives.”
“Then why are you staring at me like I’m keeping secrets?”
“Because you’re keeping secrets.”
His expression stayed closed off, flat. And then a little grin—a very Ryder grin—curved his mouth. “Why would you think that?”
“I don’t think it, I know it.”
He nodded. “So are you.”
I lifted one eyebrow, so he continued. “Keeping secrets. What aren’t you telling me, Delaney? Is there something about the death that I should know about?”
“Nothing I’m at liberty to share.”
He pulled the remainder of his shirt tails out of his slacks and tossed the shirt casually over the arm of the couch. Then he leaned forward, arms resting across his thighs, hands clasped. He looked like a man who was about to make a deal.
“I want to make a deal.”
Called it.
“No.”
“You wouldn’t say no if you heard the deal.”
“Still no.”
“I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
“Anything?”
“Yes.”
“And why would you do that?”
“There are some rules.”
“Rules.”
“My deal. My rules.”He held out one finger even though they were still linked. “One: I can refuse three questions.”
“Okay.” Despite myself, I was warming up to this game.
“Two: you can only ask me ten questions.”
“Okay.” No deal breakers yet.
“Three: you have to agree to the same for me. Answer seven of the ten questions I ask you. Honestly.”
“Honestly.”
“You want me to tell the truth. I want the same in return.”
“And how long does this deal last?”
“Until the questions run out.”
I didn’t see how this could go wrong. I could answer anything he asked honestly. He might not like the answers but I could give them to him.
“All right. Deal.”
He smiled and leaned back. “So ask.”
“Did you really donate your blood to the Red Cross?”
His eyebrows plunged. It was not the question he expected. “You sure you want to ask me that? I already gave you the answer.”
“I want an honest answer.”
“Yes, I donated my blood to the Red Cross. You’re not very good at this game, Delaney.”
“You think it’s a game?”
He lifted a palm in a shrug sort of gesture.
I searched his eyes. The problem with our little truth or truth game was that we had to trust that neither of us would lie. He didn’t look like he was lying, but he might be. Vampire murderers weren’t the most reliable sort, one would suppose.
“My turn,” he said.
“That’s not how it works.”
“It’s how it works. One question for one question.”
“You didn’t say that in the rules.”
“It’s in the small print.”
“What small print?”
“Right here on the tip of my tongue.” He stuck his tongue out at me and I couldn’t believe how stupid and sexy it made him look.
I tried not to smile. From the bull-hockey totally sincere look on his face, he was trying not to smile too.
“All right, slugger. Ask your question.”
“Have you forgiven me for breaking up with you?”
Man went right for the gut. Had I? He had given up on me. On us. And yet he was right here, in front of me, still a part of my life. Maybe a friend. Maybe more.
Maybe a murderer.
I put that possibility aside for the moment.
“Yes.”
He nodded slowly, and bit at his bottom lip then released it. “Thank you.”
“Did you kill Sven Rossi?”
His shoulders jerked. “No.”
I searched his eyes, his face, his body for the truth behind that single word.
He held up a hand. “I’d like this to be outside the question game.”
“All right.”
“Holy, shit, Delaney. Sven’s dead?”
“Yes.”
“How? Since you’re asking me if I did it, I assume you don’t think it was an accident.”
“He was shot.”
Ryder rubbed his palm over his face, fingers lifting to tug his wind-mussed hair. “Jesus. Okay. And you think this has something to do with me?”
“Are we back on the question game?” I asked.
It was his turn to study my face. I could guess at what he saw. I had a good mask of indifference when I needed it. My eyes met his steadily. Waiting.
“Sure. Do you think I have something to do with Sven’s death?”
This might be my childhood friend in front of me, but there was something about those words, about how carefully he said them, as if he were using the question as a means to an end. Ryder wanted something from me, or expected me to be or do something.
He was digging for information just as hard as I was. I knew my motivation. What was his?
“Yes.”
Slight tightening of his eyes was the only response I got from that. Now it was my turn.
“Do you know who killed Sven?”
“Pass.”
“What? No.”
“I said I won’t answer three questions. That’s one.”
“If you don’t answer it, I’ll assume the answer is yes.”
“Assumptions are not the truth.”
I finished off the water and set the glass down. “I think we’re done here.”
He watched me stand, watched me walk toward the door. Just as my hand wrapped around the handle, he asked. “Do you trust me, Delaney?”
I swallowed hard. Wondered if I did trust him. Wondered if I was just trusting a man I’d known years ago, instead of the man I didn’t know now.
“Pass.”
I opened the door and walked out into the night.