Chapter 17
17
ALTA
I nside the freezing cabin, I beelined to the small stone fireplace and began stacking kindling into a miniature teepee.
“Can we not with the suffocating heat today?” Chandler groaned as he strode out of his room in shorts and a T–shirt.
“Don’t you two ever get cold? It’s freezing in here.” I sat back on my heels and glanced between them. “That wasn’t a rhetorical question, boys.”
“We’ve had our balls nearly frozen off. This isn’t cold, Birdie,” Chandler said after plopping on the couch. “You think it’s always hot as hell in a fucking desert, but let me tell you from experience, it’s not.”
Relenting on the fire—this was their place, after all—I rotated on the balls of my feet to sit on the hearth. “Cas said you wanted to talk about the case?”
Both his light brown brows shot up his forehead as a smirk appeared. “Aren’t you suspended?”
“Wha… how…?”
“Your boss called while Mathews was out tracking you down.”
“Right,” I sighed. “I’ll be going, then.”
“What did you do, anyway?”
Cas leaned against the door and crossed his arms, officially barricading me from leaving. “Disobeyed a direct order to not run into the mountains alone where there was a reported armed poacher on the loose.”
Chandler tipped his head back and his laugh rumbled around the room. “Seriously?”
“He shot Darla,” I whispered and nibbled on the edge of my thumb.
“Who’s Darla?” Chandler questioned.
“A deer. Darla the deer. She names the animals,” Cas said with a more sympathetic tone than I would expect from someone like him.
“Of course she does. The depth of your innocence is unreal. But why do women do that?”
“Do what?” I groaned. The whole conversation was slightly funny, but with me as the butt of the joke.
“React on your emotions, like you did last night.”
I shrugged and fell into the chair opposite of Chandler. No point in standing when who knew how much longer the conversation would last. “Because we’re emotional creatures. And what’s so wrong with that?”
“The second you react with emotion, you lose control.” I swiveled in the chair to stare at Cas. “Facts and a plan get you in and out safely. Emotions will get you killed.”
I eyed Chandler, who nodded in agreement. “Listen, Birdie. I have a feeling your boss suspended you for more reasons than disobeying an order, which is why I’d like you to stay. Officially you’re not working this case with us, just listening in and adding insight when you can. Got it?”
A broad smile spread up my cheeks. “Got it. Thank you, Chandler. Now get to what you and Cas found yesterday.”
Chandler massaged his temples with both thumbs. “There weren’t any overlaps between people in the Smokies and here. So that was a dead end.” With regret in his eyes, he pursed his lips into a thin line. “It was a good idea though.”
“People can change their names,” I said to myself. “What’s something that he wouldn’t think to change?” A puff of dust floated up as I pushed off the old chair to pace. “Hair color, eye color—heck, even his build could be altered.” Glancing at the door, which Cas had thankfully vacated, I nonchalantly eased in that direction. “What if he had prescriptions?” The lock clicked once, twice, and a third time. Turning back to the two men, I found Chandler glaring. “I lasted a whole three minutes without locking them. It’s a slow process, okay?”
“What about prescriptions?” Cas asked, pulling my focus to where he sat in front of the fireplace, lighting a match. A warmth no fire could offer swept through my body at his actions. Despite Chandler's snide remark, Cas was lighting the fire for me.
“Well,” I said, trying to focus back on the case, “that’s one thing you could track easily, right? If someone was in that area during the time of the abductions and are now getting their prescriptions filled here?” At their lack of response, I spun to do another lap around the room. “What else did y'all figure out without me?”
Chandler stretched his arms overhead and rested his head along the back of the couch. “We think he’s getting these women away from everyone by acting hurt or needing their help in some way. It’s the only thing we can come up with that would make them take a chance in walking away with a stranger.”
“Unless it was a woman,” I said under my breath.
“There’s no way—” Chandler started to protest.
“Not just a woman. What if it was a killing team? A man and a woman. It sounds crazy, but maybe that’s how they can lure these women away.”
Chandler shook his head. “I like the prescription angle. I’ll look into that if HIPAA doesn’t stop us, but the thought of a female accomplice is a little farfetched. Men like this hunt alone. They can’t function in a normal relationship. The odds are so slim it’s not worth the staff hours to bring up that theory to my boss.”
I nodded in agreement.
“As I went through the notes yesterday, I started a basic profile.” My feet paused as I turned my full focus to Chandler. “Midthirties white male, inferiority complex, manipulative, average-looking, stalking tendencies. Will probably drive a sensible, late-model car or van, but not one that will stand out in a parking lot as being out of place.”
The note in my pocket burned through my coat and seared my skin. I had to show them. Who knew, maybe the handwriting could be of use with refining the profile—which would be huge, considering the current profile described half of the millions of visitors who poured through the park on a yearly basis.
“I think—” I started, but was cut off by Chandler’s musings.
“You said women were emotional, so they react on emotions. Like with you last night, you went against your better judgment because you were emotionally focused. Never thought about it from the woman’s perspective.”
Picking up where he was going with the line of thought, I added, “To pull these women away from the safety of other visitors, to get them to follow him somewhere more secluded, they were reacting on emotion. Like someone hurt, or maybe even him saying he needed help.” Mentally, I flipped through all the pictures from each case. “They were all mothers, which means they would be more emotionally inclined to help if someone was hurt or lost or?—”
“A kid,” Cas said, drawing our attention to where he stood looking out the window. “Most mothers have that maternal instinct, and it doesn’t stop with just their kid. What if he’s saying his kid is hurt, or lost, or needs a woman’s help.”
We all sat in silence, absorbing what that meant about the guy. I didn’t miss the fact that he said most mothers, not all mothers. Guess that meant he wouldn’t lump his mother into that category.
“He must watch them for days before he abducts them. Fucking patient bastard is waiting until the exact moment when he can get them alone,” Chandler seethed. His large hands balled into tight fists at his side.
I cringed.
“What?” Cas asked, his intense focus back on me.
“So, um, well….” I cleared my throat and stepped toward the warm fire to ward off the chill that had sunk in. “First, you two can’t get mad. I’ve had a bizarre day, and I didn’t know how to react.”
Their eyes flicked to each other, then back to me.
“Hell fucking no, we aren’t promising that,” Chandler blurted out. “Out with it, Birdie.”
Both men inched closer, boxing me in with their massive frames.
Not meeting their eyes, I unzipped the jacket pocket and withdrew the note. “This was found on my truck today.”
Peering up through my lashes, I found both men studying the pink and red hearts decorating the front of the card with narrowed eyes.
“Turn it over,” Cas ordered in a tone that sent a shiver down my spine.
Note to self: never get on his bad side.
Between two fingers, I flipped the note and then stepped backward, stretching my arm out as far as it could go. Not sure why. Not like I could get away from it. I was on this guy’s radar whether I liked it or not.
Carefully, Chandler extracted the note from my fingers. “Anyone else touch it?”
“Yeah, the new creepy ranger, Sadie. She’s the one who found it and gave it to me. I’d just come out of my stupid meeting with John.” Cas’s glare burned into me. Instead of giving in, I kept my focus on Chandler.
“Give me a minute,” Chandler muttered more to himself than us before disappearing into his room.
The taut tension in the room elevated without Chandler as a buffer.
“Alta.” My name came out as a command, but a command to do what, I had no idea.
“I was going to tell you,” I whispered. “I just knew you would… you initially wanted me off this case due to the potential for me to be a target, I didn’t know how you would react when you found out I am one.”
“So keeping me in the dark, exposing you the entire fucking walk here without me being on alert?—”
“Aren’t you always on alert?” I said with a smile. When I gathered the nerve to look at him, my heart cracked at the hurt and fear behind his brown eyes.
“Not when you’re around.” His agitation with the situation radiated off him. “Do you not trust me?”
“Of course I do. I trusted you more in the first few seconds we met than I have anyone else in the past ten years. But I just… I needed to process it, and then you showed up, and that amazing kiss.” I traced along the edge of my lips with my fingertips, remembering the slight burn of his rough scruff. “My not-so-bright idea of waiting to tell you had nothing to do with you.”
With a groan, he ran a scarred hand down his face and massaged his bearded jaw. “I don’t like it. If the profile is accurate, then why is this guy going after you? You’re not married to a fucking meathead, you’re not a mother, someone he could manipulate emotionally.”
“Well….” I shrugged and scrunched my freckled nose. “All he’d have to say is there’s a hurt animal, which he’d probably figure out since he likes to stalk his victims beforehand.”
“You’re. Not. Helping,” Cas growled. “It’s a good thing you’re suspended. No way could we let you go out on shifts alone with this crazy bastard following you.”
“Or….”
“Don’t even think about it.” Each word was emphasized with a loud stomp. Feet suctioned to the floor, I watched, wide-eyed, as he prowled closer. “No one would go for the idea of using you as bait. If he’s been watching you, then he knows we’re here and would plan around it.”
Toe-to-toe, I tilted my head, eyes lost in the dark depths of his as we stood silent. Emotions—lust, hate, anger, passion—swirled around us, offering a blurred window into Cas’s complicated soul.
“How do you do it?” he asked with awe lacing his tone.
“Do what?” I breathed. That close and all I wanted was him closer, touching, his skin against mine.
“Break me and make me whole again with a simple damn look. You see something no one else has ever cared to see.”
My heart shuddered at the utter honesty in his statement. “What do I see?”
“Me.”
Somehow his raw confession healed a jagged edge of my soul, cleansing the part that had been left unused for so long. Around us, the fire he’d built crackled, and Chandler’s muffled voice filtered through the shut bedroom door.
“What… what do you see in me?” I dared. It was a bold question, considering his choice of words had the potential to slay me where I stood or continue strengthening my resolve to let him into my life.
His head cocked to the side an inch, eyes scanning up and down my face. “I see an innocent, kind woman who has scars deeper than someone as young and perfect as she should have.”
Scars, also known as issues.
I tilted my head down, angling my eyes to the floor to keep from seeing the sympathy in his gaze, but two gentle fingers beneath my chin drew my eyes back up to his. “Your scars are what drew me in the most. We’re not too different, Lady. Both have pasts which have molded us into the people we are now. I’m fucked up in the head, or so they say,” he said with a tight smile. “But you, you’re perfectly broken in every way, making you the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.”
Wow. His words were like fresh air filling my lungs, strengthening my soul.
The balls of my feet pushed down onto the floor. Hesitantly, I leaned closer, putting our lips almost touching. “Others have tried to fix me, but you, you want me because of who my past changed me into, not despite it.”
“Ditto, Lady.”
A faint brush of our lips made my stomach dip, urging me closer. This kiss was different, not him taking from me, but allowing me to take control and keep it slow like the moment deserved.
Five seconds, maybe ten, our soul-speaking kiss lasted before a loud rumbling engine revved up the drive, pulling us apart. My knees shook, lips burned, desperate to be soothed by his. He was everything I ever wanted in a man, yet still more than I ever expected. A simple kiss and my breath was gone, a delirious fog settling over my thoughts.
Cas said he wasn’t a gentle man, but I hoped he’d be gentle with my tender, innocent heart.