“HEY, PARTNER,” I SAID WHEN Adrian answered his phone. “What are you doing right now?”
“I know what I want to be doing right now, and it sure as hell doesn’t involve talking to you. What’s up?”
“Maegan just realized how our guy got inside her house without forcing his way in. She had a spare key hidden beneath a flower pot on her front porch.” I tried to keep any trace of scorn from my voice, but her raised brow said that I had failed to do so. “On a whim, I decided to grab it just in case there was a usable print left behind.”
“Any luck?”
“Our killer left a note.” I recited the message to Adrian.
“We need to get out there,” my partner said. “I’d prefer to wait until daylight, but we can’t take that chance.”
“I agree,” I said. “I want to have someone stay with Maegan while we go check it out.”
“Bring her over here, Elijah. She can hang out with Sally Ann and the kids. Or, I bet Jones wouldn’t mind…”
“We’ll be over in a few minutes,” I snapped before I hung up.
“Where are we going?” Maegan asked slowly. “I gotta tell you, Big Guns, that I’m not crazy about you finding a babysitter for me.”
There was nothing infantile about Maegan or the feelings she stirred inside me. I didn’t want to go caveman on her, but I’d do it if it meant she stayed safe. I thought I would give reason and logic a shot first, but if that failed, I would throw her over my shoulder and carry her away to safety.
“I know that you don’t need a babysitter, Maegan. This isn’t about your capabilities; this is about his. This person is determined to involve you in this case. Why? I have no clue. You have no clue. Until we know, I’m not taking a chance with your safety. He could be luring me away so that he can get to you. I will not make it easy for him, Freckles. I want you safe, and frankly, I don’t care if you get pissed off about it. So, it’s either Officer Kasey comes back to spend time with you”—ain’t no fucking way Jones was coming into my home to flex his muscles and try to steal my girl—“or, you hang out with Sally Ann while Adrian and I investigate.”
“That’s not really much of a choice,” Maegan said. “I’ll take Sally Ann since Officer Jones isn’t an option.” Her wicked smile told me that she’d overheard Adrian’s dig, or maybe she knew Jones had a thing for her. Either way, she seemed to enjoy winding me up.
“You think you’re funny?” I asked, suddenly forgetting about everything but marking my territory like the animal I was. “You think I’d let Jones come in here and get close to you, Freckles. No. Fucking Way.”
“Are you going to piss on my leg? I’m not into that, Elijah.”
“I have better ways of marking you as mine, but it will have to wait until we get back. I have a potential crime scene to investigate.” Those last few words had the same effect as dumping a gallon of ice water on my head. My focus shifted away from thumping my chest to getting out to Willow-Jasper Road to see what our guy left behind.
“Can we stop by my house so I can change clothes?” She gestured to her body that was bare except for my T-shirt that she had borrowed. Her toned legs looked like they stretched for miles beneath the hem.
“Sure, but only if you promise to change back into that shirt when we get back ho… here.” I had almost screwed up and said home. There was no denying that I liked Maegan a lot, and I was pretty sure that the like could develop into something stronger and really special if I wasn’t so fucked up in the head. But I was a mess, and our relationship was nowhere near the moving-in-together phase.
Maegan smiled crookedly at my swift recovery. “You have yourself a deal.”
“Okay, team, we have no idea what’s inside that barn. It could be a piece of evidence for our case, or it could be a trap. I want every single one of us to return home to our families or significant others,” Captain Roman-Wyatt said firmly.
He had arrived on the scene at the same time as Adrian and me. A few squad cars from our department were already there prepared to secure the area, as were a few deputies from the Carter County Sheriff’s Department since this barn was in their jurisdiction. The captain held them off until the fire department showed up with equipment to make our jobs safer and easier.
“That’s right,” Lieutenant Dorchester from the CCSD said. “Be diligent, ladies and gentlemen.”
Adrian had told me briefly about John Dorchester’s time working with our department on special assignments when he arrived. Due to the seriousness of the situation, I wasn’t getting to see his jokester side, but I hoped to remedy that at some point.
The fire tanker that arrived on the scene was equipped with the portable lights they attached to the top of the fire truck to illuminate nighttime fires or emergency scenes. The poles rose several feet from the truck and looked like miniature stadium lights you saw at football fields and baseball diamonds.
“The township invested in LED bulbs too. No one look directly at the lights,” the fire chief said loudly. “Light ’em up, Dallas.”
The firefighter flipped a switched and flooded our scene with brilliant, blinding light. The fire chief hadn’t been joking when he said not to look directly at the bulbs. Jesus!
Both the captain and lieutenant were dressed in bulletproof vests and helmets like the rest of us. The captain had said to me once that he’d never ask his men or women to do something he wasn’t willing to do himself. It was obvious the lieutenant felt the same way. We spread out in formation and creeped along the deeply pitted gravel driveway and grassy areas until we had the structure surrounded.
From the road, the barn looked like it was intact, but once you rounded the curve in the driveway, you saw that one side of the barn had rotted from disuse and abandonment.
“Fuck! I bet that’s Renzo’s car,” Adrian said beside me as we cautiously approached, keeping our guns aimed in front of us.
“What’s it doing out here? Who drove it? His killer?” I asked. “Then why tip us off about where he dumped the car? God knows how long it would’ve taken someone to see this car abandoned here.”
“We’ll have to check into the landowner’s identity,” Adrian said, his voice lowering as we crept closer to the dilapidated barn. “See if there’s a connection to the Renzo family.”
“Thom’s killer has to be familiar with this area,” I told my partner. “How else did he know about this barn?”
“We’ll find out when we catch him,” Adrian replied.
“Hold up, everyone,” I called out. “The trunk is slightly ajar.” I circled around to the back of the vehicle and verified that the license plates and description of the car matched the information we pulled from Kentucky’s Department of Motor Vehicles. “This is definitely Renzo’s car.” A few officers approached the car and aimed their guns at the trunk while others checked the front and interior of the car to look for anything that could put our lives in jeopardy.
“Count of three, I want you to open the trunk,” Adrian said. I cracked a smile when I recalled the well-known banter between Riggs and Murtaugh when it came to counting down.
“On three or after three?” I asked Adrian.
His lips curled into a half-smile. “One, two, three, then open it. Otherwise, it’s really only a count of two.” I heard the captain snort from his position.
“Got it. Ready.” I kept my gun aimed at the vehicle with my right hand as I reached for the trunk lid with my left.
“Three, two….”
“Hold up! I thought you were counting to three,” Dorchester said. “That’s counting down from three. Which is it?”
“Counting down I guess, Lieutenant.”
“So, does he open on one or after one?”
“Three, two, one, then he opens the lid.”
“It’s a good damned thing there’s not someone waiting to jump out at us or,” Jones said.
“They would’ve fallen asleep from boredom,” Kasey added.
“Oh, fuck it!” I reached for the lid and jerked it open. Luckily, nothing exploded and no one opened fire on us. That was the end of the good news, because I knew whatever was in the black duffle bag was going to be really bad. I unzipped the bag and opened it.
Adrian whistled between his teeth as he returned his gun to his harness. “Whoa, partner. What the hell do we have here?”
“Nothing good,” I replied, looking at the rope, duct tape, a wicked-looking knife, chloroform, and a roll of black trash bags inside the trunk. My stomach pitched and rolled, threatening to reject the dinner I had shared with Maegan. Those were items I would associate with someone who planned to kidnap someone and do God knows what to them. Who were they intended for? Fuck! I didn’t want to evaluate that possibility. “The question is: do they belong to Renzo or his killer?”
“We’ll have to see if we can lift some prints for testing. It’s a good thing you know someone in the state lab that can help us process them quicker.”
“I didn’t promise that,” I clarified. “I said I would try.”
“I think you insinuated that you’d get it done.”
“I don’t think we’re recalling the same conversation,” I told Adrian as we moved out of the way so the lab guys could move in to do their thing. “We’re going to want to haul that car back to a secure location so we can check out the interior thoroughly.”
“If that stuff belonged to Renzo, do you suppose he intended to use it on Maegan?”
“Jesus, I hope not,” I said, but the sickening feeling from earlier had only intensified. “I can’t help but think that it was though. Damn, Adrian, I’m starting to think the person who killed Thom did us a big favor.” I’m not embarrassed to admit that my hands shook when I pulled my phone out of my pocket.
I tapped out a quick message to Maegan to let her know I was okay. I saw the worry in her eyes when she stood on her tiptoes and kissed me goodbye in Adrian and Sally Ann’s living room. Sally Ann had wrapped her arm around Maegan’s shoulder and guided her to the couch. I realized then that she was in the best possible company under the circumstances.
Thank you for telling me. I hope to see you soon. Maegan’s response came back fast, making me think she was watching her phone for word from me. The idea warmed the terror that had gripped my heart with its icy fingers, but it didn’t thaw it entirely. I had no idea who those tools of terror belonged to and zero confidence that Maegan was completely out of the woods.
“Let’s get this scene processed so we can get back to the girls,” I said.
“Sally Ann knows how to defend herself and Maegan,” Adrian told me. While I was glad to hear that, I hated that it was necessary.
The initial search of the interior didn’t turn up much, but there was a bloody stain on the passenger seat of the car. It wasn’t enough blood to signal a crime had been committed in the car; it appeared to be more from a transfer off a bloody object.
“I bet that’s from the marble bust. I bet we’ll match that blood to Renzo’s.”
“That’s what I was thinking too.”
“All right, so this person bashes Renzo’s skull, gets in his victim’s car and drives it here with the bloody weapon riding shotgun. Why dump it here then?”
“Why stash the evidence behind Maegan’s shop and slip the note beneath a planter to tip us off to its location. Why not just leave the car at the original crime scene if he wanted us to find it?”
“It must have something to do with Maegan?”
“You think she’s in trouble?” Adrian asked me.
“Even if this guy saved Maegan from a horrible fate at Renzo’s hands, he’s still a killer. As you pointed out, he’s included Maegan in every step. It’s more imperative than ever to find out who all knew that Thom was coming to town to meet Maegan that night. She said it was spur of the moment. An email she received directly from Thom when he’d communicated with her through a local realtor the previous times.”
“We’ll track Becker down first thing tomorrow before we pay a visit to the historical society.”
It was another hour before we returned to the Goode’s home. Maegan was sound asleep in the recliner with Adrian and Sally Ann’s infant son sleeping against her chest. She didn’t wake up until Sally Ann took the baby from her arms.
“What time is it?” she asked, rubbing her tired eyes.
“Late,” I answered. “Past your bedtime it would seem.”
Maegan smiled ruefully. “Babies always make me sleepy.” She stood up from the recliner and slid her arms into her coat that I held open for her.
“Sure, that’s it,” I teased.
Maegan was unusually quiet on the short ride home. I glanced over and saw her chewing her bottom lip like she was worrying about something. I squeezed her knee to reassure her, but was uncertain what to say. It had to be a terribly frightening experience to know that someone could want to hurt her. Hell, I’d been in terrifying situations before, but at least I knew who my enemy was and had a good idea when I could expect their attack. For Maegan, she probably felt like a sitting duck.
“We’re going to catch him,” I told her once we were back at my warm house.
“I know you will, Elijah,” she said, but the tone of her voice didn’t sound as confident as her words. “That’s not what’s on my mind.” Her voice cracked and she started nibbling on her lower lip again. I realized then that she’d been biting her lip to stop herself from crying.
I’m just as nervous and helpless around a crying woman as the next guy, but I had a feeling that Maegan wasn’t one who cried very often. I knew firsthand how dangerous bottling up emotions could be. They often exploded in the worst ways and at the least convenient times. I somehow doubted that Maegan was going to start a bar fight to alleviate the tension rising inside her, but I didn’t want her to feel miserable if having a good cry would help.
I pulled her into my arms and tucked her head beneath my chin. “It’s okay to cry, Maegan. Let it out.” And she did. I held onto her, absorbing her tears and anguish with my shirt and wishing I could somehow erase her fears. “I won’t let anyone hurt you, Freckles.”
“I’m not crying about that,” she mumbled against my throat.
“What has you so heartbroken tonight then?”
Maegan pulled out of my arms and raised her chin so she could look into my eyes. “It’s more than my heart that’s broken.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t have children, Elijah. I’ve known it since I was seventeen, and I’m okay with it most of the time, but it sneaks up and sucker punches me when I’m vulnerable. Holding Avery was both amazing and heartbreaking because I’ll never have that for myself. I’ll never feel my child growing inside me. I’ve wanted kids for as long as I can remember, but it won’t happen.”
I wiped her tears and pressed my lips to her forehead. Damn, my heart broke for her. “There’s more than one way to be a mom, Freckles. There are so many kids in the world who need love. One day, when the time is right, you’re going to be one hell of a fierce mama. I just know it.”
“Thank you, Elijah,” she said tearfully. “I’m so sorry for blubbering all over you when you have more important things to deal with.”
“You don’t need to apologize, Maegan. I meant what I said.” I tipped her head up and aimed my best lecherous look at her. “Damn, you’re going to be the hottest MILF the world has ever seen.”
“Oh you!” She swatted at me, but at least the sadness was replaced with mirth. “Enough yapping; take me to bed. I’m suddenly feeling more alert.”
“Yes, ma’am.”