Chapter 12
Cal’s question was gentle, not accusing. But it reverberated in Jules like a gong. That had always been her biggest fear. That something she did would make matters worse for Abby.
She took a moment to calm her jitters, then shook her head.
“He doesn’t know me. I was in Canada, trying to finish my own degree.
I attended any court hearings related to her cases via Zoom, and did my best to keep a low profile with her legal proceedings, so he couldn’t use me as a pawn or a scare tactic with her. ”
He nodded. “Go on.”
“Abby was determined to protect me and her closest friends from Chase, too. When his attentions started escalating her freshman year, she deleted her social media, got rid of photographs of her with loved ones…anything she could think of to keep Chase away from us. The unintended result was it further isolated her. When she worried her cell phone was bugged, we ended up using public phones to talk to each other, the landlines at the university business office and local sandwich shop. Snail mail sent from different postal substations.”
“Paranoia or reasonable measures to buffer you and her friends?”
“Again, no proof, but I believe anything that kept her safe was a reasonable measure. She went through burner phones like they were a dime a dozen. She did so much to protect me and her best friends from unwanted attention or threats from Chase.” Tears pricked her eyes.
“Which is why I can do no less to protect her, to help her heal and to get this creep off the streets.”
“And did it work? How sure are you he doesn’t know you?” he asked.
“Well, while he knows me now as the newest manager of the gift shop, I’ve never told him my name. I scribble my initials on his sheets. So I have no reason to think he’s connected me to Abby.”
Cal hummed in thought, but otherwise stayed silent, letting her say all she wanted first.
She stirred her coffee idly. “I know he’s likely aware Abby has an older sister, but I, too, have made myself hard to find.
No pictures or current updates on social media.
Unlisted phone numbers. Other than my name being listed in professional journals when my team published about our research, I can’t think of any way he’s pieced together who I am.
” As it often did when she ran through her mental checklist of ways she and Abby had tried to minimize Chase’s ability to find either of them, an uncomfortable what-if poked her.
“What?” Cal prompted.
She raised her gaze to him and blinked. “Hmm?”
“You frowned as if you’d thought of something else that bothered you.”
Her grip around her coffee tightened, and her gut flip-flopped knowing how easily he’d read her. Of course, he had. It was his job to interrogate people and weed out the liars and dodgers.
“I just can’t help wondering what might have been different if I’d not been in Canada. If I’d been around to protect Abby when he started harassing her.”
He lifted one eyebrow and leaned forward, then said softly, “I’ve found what-ifs are a colossal waste of time and energy best spent dealing with things you do have some power to change.”
She considered this truth and gave him a grudging nod.
Cal finally raised his coffee and drank, then licked a droplet that clung to his lip. The action drew her attention to his mouth, his perfectly shaped lips and the shimmer of moisture left behind. Kissable lips.
What would it be like to kiss Cal Colton? The notion popped into her head before she could block it. A sensation like having the wind knocked from her squeezed her chest, and her pulse rattled through her with an erratic pace.
“I’m in,” Cal said, yanking her attention back to his bright blue eyes. Given the recent track of her thoughts, it took her a staggering heartbeat to realize he was talking about helping her stop Chase Hamilton. Not that he wanted to kiss her.
She scowled, irritated with herself for letting her imagination run amok and even madder that he could have sensed where her mind had wandered. Needing to reestablish an emotional distance, she said the first thing that came to mind. “Who says I want you in?”
He barked a startled laugh. “Excuse me? Isn’t that the point of this meeting? The reason you were just telling me the history of the case?”
She growled her exasperation and averted her gaze. “Yes.”
“Then what’s the problem?” He asked the question tenderly, as if he truly cared and not in a way that said, What’s your problem?
For a moment, she said nothing, but once she felt she had collected her composure, she faced him again. “I have a hard time trusting anyone with this case. I’ve been let down so many times.”
“I get that. I understand your frustration. Given your history, I can see why you crave control.”
She tensed and grunted. “Did you just call me a control freak?”
His expression was guileless. “Not in those words, but…am I wrong?”
She wanted to lash out, tell him he was absolutely wrong.
How dare he? But deep down she knew he was right.
Because since she was young, she’d had to take control of things, thanks to her parents’ chaotic lives.
She’d called it taking responsibility, providing security, holding their home together by sheer will and constant work.
But now, especially when circumstances felt frenetic, the spirit of the scared young girl she’d been would clamor for whatever control she could grab.
He reached across the table and covered her fisted hand. The contact was shocking…and pleasant. “Want to know a secret?”
She snatched her hand back from his, wary of the intimacy it implied. “No. I don’t like keeping secrets.”
His face said he was impressed by her answer, then he gave her that damnable handsome smile.
“Actually, it’s not such a big secret. It’s a truth.
We in law enforcement get very discouraged when we know in our souls that someone is guilty, but we don’t have the legal evidence to take them off the street.
But the rule of law is in place to protect the innocent.
It’s just a natural byproduct that sometimes the rule of law and due process protect the guilty in a way that seems unfair. ”
The soothing tone of his baritone voice lulled her, mesmerized her.
She wanted to lean closer, inhale his crisp, clean scent, fall into the ocean blue of his eyes.
Instead, she marshaled her defenses and sat back, folding her arms over her chest. “Don’t go spouting common sense.
I know the why. I just hate what it’s caused for Abby.
Besides my love for my sister, my righteous indignation is what fuels my mission to see Hamilton pay for his heinous behavior. Don’t try to take that from me.”
His grin brightened, and he raised his palm toward her. “You keep your righteous indignation, so long as you remember I have to uphold my oath to follow the law.”
She gave a small shrug. “Fine. So how will this work…? You helping me? What does that look like?”
“First, I want to do some research on this guy to get up to speed. You can tell me what you know, and I’ll dig into national databases to see what pops.”
She twisted her mouth in a moue of disappointment. “I meant, what are we going to do to catch him in something wrong now, so he can be arrested and taken off the streets? If there’d been something in the past with enough heft to put him away, don’t you think I’d have led with that?”
He swirled his coffee mug before taking another sip. “What makes you think he’s doing anything arrest-worthy here in Red Grove?”
She scoffed. “Because he’s here to begin with. Following Abby. And he’s just too shady for me to believe he’s not following another girl while he looks for Abby.”
“Another girl?”
“I’d bet a year’s salary on it.” She bit the inside of her cheek, debating, then she said, “I want to turn the tables on him. I was thinking we could observe him. Follow him. See what he does after work.”
Cal studied her, his lips pursed as he considered her suggestion, his head nodding slowly. “Okay. Should I have plainclothes deputies staked out along his delivery route?”
She shook her head briskly. “No! That’s not the point. I want to see what he’s doing. I’m not delegating this to anyone else. I thought I’d follow him after he finished his route, see what he does in his off hours.”
“All right. It’s a date.” He grinned and winked. “I’ll pick you up in time to follow him after work tomorrow.”
A date? Her pulse skittered. Did he have to call it that?
Bad enough she found his smile, his bright blue eyes, his muscular physique so distracting without adding a suggestion of a romantic connection.
She swallowed hard, trying to squelch the giddy trill tripping through her.
A relationship with the sheriff was the last thing she needed to distract her from her obligations to Abby. The sheriff, for pity’s sake!
She cleared her throat. “Okay. We’ll start our stakeout tomorrow. I’d think we should be in place at the distributor’s warehouse by four o’clock.”
She could have Bonnie cover the afternoon shift at the gift shop.
Cal gave a nod of agreement and finished his coffee in one giant swig. “In the meantime, want to spin by the sheriff’s office and see what we can dig up on N-DEx?”
She blinked. “What, now?”
“No time like the present.” He pulled out his keys and jangled them. “As the boss, I have full access to the department twenty-four seven.”
She exhaled and pushed back her chair. “Okay. You’re right—no time like the present.”