Chapter Fifteen
Hunter
I’m not sure how long Dylan and I have been lying sprawled out on the bed with my laptop balanced between us, watching Matthew’s interviews. Long enough for the ice on my knee to melt and for me to notice how quiet Dylan has become.
He leans back against the headboard, a couple of pillows propped behind his head, and his gaze fixed on the screen. Each interview goes on for close to an hour, and while Matthew’s questions are thorough, they’re also repetitive. He isn’t exactly covering new ground.
The fact that Dylan keeps watching without comment makes me uneasy.
I take the makeshift ice pack off my knee, which already feels better between the ice and the ibuprofen, and shift onto my side so I can see Dylan’s face better.
“Are you okay?” I ask him.
He blinks as if the sound of my voice startled him from his thoughts, as if he’d forgotten I was there. “Yeah. Sure. Why do you ask?”
“You’re quiet,” I admit, reaching out to stop the recording.
“Do you need more ice?” I suspect he is deflecting.
“I’m good. It’s a lot better than it was.”
He nods at the frozen screen. “I’m not sure how much of this is actually registering at this point. Maybe we should grab some dinner and take a break.”
“That sounds good. I’ll change, and we can find somewhere to eat.”
But Dylan is already shaking his head and rolling off the bed. “Why don’t I pick something up? Let you stay off your knee a little longer.”
“It’s fine now. I’m feeling a lot better.”
Dylan nods knowingly. “Cool. A little longer off that knee can only be a good thing.”
Dylan starts to move away from the bed, but I grab his wrist and stop him. “I’ll stay right here, off my knee, if you tell me what’s really bothering you.”
He sighs and drags his fingers through his hair, leaving it messier than normal. “I can’t shake the feeling that I let Matthew down, that I failed him.” The longer we sit with this footage, the heavier the guilt seems to get.
I keep holding on to his wrist so he can’t move away from me.
I understand that kind of guilt. Being a cop, I knew what it was like to question your decisions when things didn’t go the way you wanted.
I understood the what-ifs, replaying scenarios in your head, wondering what you could have done for a different outcome.
I understood what it was like to feel like you’ve let someone down.
“You didn’t let anyone down,” I say to him, and Dylan drops his gaze to the floor. I can tell he doesn’t believe me.
“You couldn’t possibly have guessed what Matthew was mixed up in.
If the pieces of this puzzle fit together the way we think, Matthew had caught the attention of someone dangerous and prolific.
How could you have guessed that? You did everything you could to help him, more than most people.
You’re here. You hired a PI, tracked down an old boyfriend that you’ve been avoiding for the better part of the decade. ”
Dylan looks up, his gaze pinning mine. “That’s the only part of this mess that I’m glad about. I’m so glad I got to see you again.”
I tug him closer until he sits on the edge of the bed next to me, then lean forward, letting my fingers slip into the hair at the back of his head before I press my mouth to his. I kiss him softly, almost chastely, before easing back a little.
“Me too,” I whisper, surprised to find I really mean it.
Dylan closes the distance between us, his lips meeting mine. There’s nothing chaste about this kiss, not this time. His tongue sweeps into my mouth, sliding alongside mine. I tighten my grip around him, pulling him closer until his chest is flush against mine.
When the kiss finally breaks, we both stay where we are, holding each other while we catch our breath.
I’m not sure what that kiss was, what it meant, but it sure as hell felt like more than just scratching an itch while working on a case.
Alarm bells play in my head. I’m making the situation between Dylan and me more complicated than it ever should have been.
“We should get out of here,” I say, untangling my fingers from his hair and trailing them down his back. “Take a break from all this.” I nod at my laptop. “Maybe get some dinner, like you said.”
Dylan straightens and shakes his head. “I said you should stay off that knee. I’ll go pick something up and bring it back to the room.”
I let out an exasperated sigh. “I’m not an invalid. It’s feeling a lot better.”
I bend and straighten my knee to prove my point. It’s still stiff, but there’s no pain anymore. At least not enough to stop me from wanting him.
“Good. Let’s keep it that way by not aggravating it.” Dylan stands, pulls on his shoes, and grabs his jacket. “I won’t be long. Any preferences for dinner?”
“I could go for a burger,” I tell him. We didn’t bother with lunch, and talking about food had my stomach growling.
“Okay. I’ll be back soon.”
Once alone, I lean back against the pillows and press the heels of my hands to my eyes.
Shit. Every moment I spend with Dylan, I’m digging myself deeper.
When this week ends, when we wrap up this case, and we each go back to our own lives, it’s going to wreck me.
No matter what I tell myself about this thing between us not meaning anything, it’s becoming glaringly obvious that the only person I’m fooling is myself, and I’m not even doing that convincingly anymore.
I turn my attention back to the files on Matthew’s hard drive. It’s going to take forever to get through them all. I need help. And if I don’t keep moving forward, I’m going to drown in my own thoughts.
After compressing everything into a zip file, I email it to Linc and Colin, with instructions to watch the material and keep an eye out for names that came up more than once, or unusual reactions from the people Matthew interacts with.
I’m not sure what our next step should be, and I hope that whatever is in that footage will tell us what direction to go next.
Dylan returns with dinner, and we sit together on the bed eating. We talk about Matthew’s footage, and I tell him about asking for Linc and Colin’s help.
He nods thoughtfully, then asks, “What if there’s nothing there? What if we watch every minute he’s recorded, and there are no leads?”
“I won’t lie, the possibility occurred to me also, but I don’t think that will happen. Something happened to send Matthew running. He found something or saw something that made someone nervous. If there’s something in his footage, we’ll find it and turn it over to the police.”
“And if they still don’t do anything?” Those ocean-blue eyes lock with mine, and before I can stop myself, I’m reaching across the crumpled wrappers and napkins between us and cupping the side of his face, forcing him to meet my gaze. “We keep looking. I won’t give up.”
“Thank you,” he whispers, his throat jumping as he gets off the bed and gathers the mess and shoves it back into the empty paper bag the burgers had come in. Once he tidies up, he backs toward the bathroom. “Going to shower.”
I frown. He’s acting strange, cagey. “Sure, go ahead.”
While Dylan’s in the bathroom, I pick up my laptop from where I left it on the floor.
I know I should stop. We’ve been working all day, and it’s already past nine p.m. I need to call it quits.
Instead, I search the web for Matthew’s hometown, the year his mother went missing and other disappearances.
I have access to better search results than the mainstream search engine, and tomorrow I’ll use them, but in the meantime, I’m interested in what’s out there that the average person can find.
There isn’t a lot, not after all this time, but I did find an old newspaper article, the same newspaper that had written the article about Matthew’s mother and her string of bad luck.
The article is really little more than a police press release.
A young man traveling in the area never reached his destination, and now his family was looking for him.
The young man was last seen at a motel just outside the town.
The article noted similarities to a man who had disappeared from the area the previous summer while renovating a house.
Both cases were not unlike the disappearances in Coldwater.
Of course, Coldwater’s had gone on for much longer.
Before I can dig any deeper, the bathroom door clicks open, and Dylan emerges with a towel hanging low on his hips. Just the sight of him, chest bare, hair damp and messy from the shower, and my dick takes immediate notice.
“I picked up something else when I went to get dinner.” Dylan crosses the room to his jacket, which hangs on the back of the desk chair. He reaches into the pocket, pulls out condoms and lube, and tosses them onto the bed next to me.
“I figured it couldn’t hurt to be prepared,” he adds, not quite meeting my eyes.
“Excellent purchase,” I tell him, sitting up to reach for them. But Dylan presses his hand to my chest and pushes me back against the pillow.
“Nope,” he says, with a teasing grin. “You’re going to sit still and rest your knee. I’ll do the work.”
He drops his towel, climbs onto the bed, and straddles my hips. His bare skin is hot even through my underwear.
I groan, gripping his hips. His smile widens, and he leans down, catching my mouth in a slow, hot kiss. My dick is hard and straining against my underwear, aching for attention. His kiss and the anticipation of what’s to come make me hungry and desperate for more.
But he backs off, looking down at where he’s seated above me.
“Is this okay?” he asks, teasing grin falling away.
I chuckle softly, running my hands up his bare legs to grip his ass. At the same time, I lift my hips to grind my hard cock against him.
“More than okay,” I tell him. “I want inside you.”
He leans down and catches my mouth in another hungry, frantic kiss. With one hand, I grasp the back of his head, holding him in place, while I let the finger of my other hand slip between his round ass cheeks, and I trace the tight circle of his hole.