Colin
Captain Barrett looks supremely pissed off as he stares at the whiteboard with his arms crossed.
The rest of us are seated at tables throughout the conference room.
Lucy and Daniel have their eyes cast down toward the desks in front of them, afraid of what it’s going to be like when Captain Barrett releases his wrath on the room, which is bound to happen.
Three more pictures have joined the whiteboard next to the photos of Richard and Grayson, another red thread connecting them all. Lucy was able to figure out that all three men that The Terror Trio met at the bowling alley are connected to the trafficking ring, as well.
For some reason, they turned on their worker bees, sending Max and company down south to take out the two men who’ve been helping siphon women and children into the dark crevices of their world over the past five years.
Although, the tide seems to be turning on the three men as well, considering Max is in jail and another guy, Logan, was just found nailed to a tree near a cabin they seem to have set up shop in.
His picture is taped to the whiteboard as well, though it’s his professional headshot from St. Michael’s and not the crime scene photo we all saw when I came into the office this morning of him in all his bloody glory.
The third man, Chase, is still on the run.
We’d effectively closed the case on the teacher and the local family man found dead, Max’s DNA confirming for us that the community was no longer in danger of any more accidental deaths.
And confirming for me that Chloe Stark was in fact not the person behind it all.
Now, there’s a new mystery to unravel, and it’s still connected to the woman who’s got me so wrapped up in her web that the more clarity I think I find, the more tangled in her silk I become.
“Chloe didn’t do it,” I say to my captain’s back, and his body shakes with incredulous laughter before he turns to face us.
“Of course she didn’t fucking do it, Mills. How could she when you’ve been posted up in her house doing God knows what for three goddamn days?”
Since the alley where I crossed yet another line by putting the man who’d assaulted Chloe in the hospital with a broken jaw, the captain seems to sense that my feelings toward her have gone from I’m going to fucking kill her, to, I’m going to fucking kill anyone who touches her.
Or has it always been that way…? Either way, for some reason, that doesn’t piss my captain off as much, even if I still am making messes everywhere I follow in her wake.
Ignoring his rhetorical question and the side eyes from my peers, I tell the group, “Maeve was at her house this morning, too. She didn’t appear disheveled or like she’d done anything like that recently.
” I lift my hand in the direction of the very much alive headshot of the actually dead man nailed to a tree.
The crime scene techs are still surveying the scene, but have confirmed for us that his death occurred sometime early this morning.
And besides the fact that Maeve wasn’t covered in blood when she showed up to Chloe’s, she also doesn’t look strong enough to overpower any man, let alone nail him to a tree.
Though neither does Chloe, and that never stopped me from suspecting her.
“So why is her name carved into his stomach?” Lucy asks, grimacing, probably remembering the image burned into all our brains of those five letters etched into his abs.
“That’s what we need to figure out.” Alex rises from the table and moves to stand next to Captain Barrett, the two of them looking grim as fuck. “We’ll work through the weekend,” Alex says.
“Can’t,” I say bluntly. “I’m going to visit my mother. And someone needs to keep an eye on Maeve, because Chloe’s coming with me.” Captain Barrett rolls his eyes and storms out of the room at my words. “None of them are safe with the third guy still unaccounted for.”
The other two of Chloe’s friends, Stone and Stella, appear to have been out of the county entirely for the past twenty-four hours, which Micah confirmed for me when I was curious if maybe the brawn in the group could have helped the girls string this guy up.
Micah very easily pinged their location, finding them stationery in a rural logging town east of Mt. Lance. So all four of them are safe from my suspicions, though I can’t seem to figure out how they’re all connected to this trafficking ring, even though it’s obvious to me that they are.
“Fine,” Alex says. “Lucy and I will work this. Daniel, you watch Maeve.”
Daniel huffs like he’s annoyed to be stuck with the boring job, but it’s an important one, and I tell him as much as I stand and move in his direction, leaning over the desk until he meets my eyes.
“She’s in danger, Baker. And you need to protect her.
” I give him an encouraging nod, and the annoyance in his eyes shifts to understanding before he gives me a nod in return.
“And we expect you to be ready to dive back in when you return,” Alex says to my back as I retreat from the room. “No more dicking around with your girlfriend.”
I laugh as I continue out of the room, because Chloe is not my girlfriend, but it’s kind of starting to feel like she is. Especially after kissing her in her bedroom. In her bed. Fuck.
The memory of her lips on mine, of her tongue in my mouth, it awakens an urge deep inside me that feels like it’s been stewing and brewing, waiting to be found. To be woken from a sleep I’ve forced it into.
“Would you do me a favor?” Goddamn. I would have done anything for her in that moment.
And I didn’t know how I’d gotten to that point.
She was being targeted. She was vulnerable.
She was nothing like the image I’ve conjured up in my mind of her.
And it made me fiercely protective of her.
Which is why I will not be leaving her in Devil’s Peak while I head to Sunset Peak to visit my mother.
***
“You want to introduce me to your mother?” Chloe leans against the back of her couch, her eyes bright with surprise.
That’s not exactly what I said, but she’s not entirely wrong.
Why I want to introduce her to my mother when not a week ago I swore she was a cold-blooded killer is beyond me. Maybe because my mother is the most important person in my life, and I’m slowly coming around to the idea that I haven’t been stalking Chloe simply because she’s been on my suspect list.
“It’s not safe for you to be here alone with Chase still out there.”
“And you care about my safety because…”
I snort a laugh from across the foyer. “Why do you have to make this so difficult?”
“You’re the one making it difficult, detective,” she returns, her gaze never leaving mine, hands propped on the edge of the couch behind her.
I know she just wants me to say it. That I feel more for her than I’ve let on. That it’s not just my suspicion that’s drawn me toward her all this time. That the simmering tension between us that’s been alive and well since I took her statement all that time ago is beyond skepticism.
That ever since the day I questioned her after her stepdad’s death, I pictured the imprint of her lips she left behind on the Styrofoam coffee cup pressed to my body on more than one occasion. Too many occasions, to be honest.
I just can’t bring myself to say the words out loud. Not yet. Because I still don’t have the full picture of who she is, and I’m too afraid to dive in without it.
“The last thing I want is for you to end up nailed to a tree like that piece of shit, with someone’s name carved into your stomach, okay?” Someone’s name who isn’t mine.
As if the reminder cleared her wonderous haze, her eyes grow wider, now filled with concern. “It’s not safe for Maeve, either.”
“My co-worker will be watching her,” I tell her, appreciating the change of subject.
Her eyes narrow. “The tramp?”
“The tramp?” I repeat, my brow furrowing, until I realize she’s referring to Lucy.
And then it hits me that she’s jealous of Lucy.
Which doesn’t surprise me, because Chloe looked like she wanted to slit her throat the entire time she sat on her couch when she came by for her statement a couple of nights ago.
“No. His name’s Daniel. He’s a good detective.
” Well, he’s okay. He earned brownie points in my book when he got off his ass and figured out the missing puzzle pieces that ultimately closed the case I was trying to take Chloe down for.
“Go pack your things,” I demand, turning my back to her. “We’ll be staying the night.”
She squeals behind me, which forces a smile onto my lips. Not like we haven’t been spending the nights together anyway, albeit a level away from each other.
I retreat to my truck, sitting in the driver’s seat and watching her on her bedroom camera while she packs her things. She whispers to herself as she goes, rifling through her dresses and occasionally pulling one out and holding it against her body.
“It’s lovely to meet you, Ms. Mills,” she says to herself in the mirror, a sweet smile playing at her lips, absent of any venom I’m starting to think I imagined every time before.
Twenty minutes later, we’re headed toward Sunset Peak.
She spends the first half of the trip surprisingly silent, fingers flying across her screen as she texts, probably Maeve.
When we’re thirty minutes from town, she leans forward and drops her phone into her purse, bringing her hands into her lap and fidgeting more than I’ve never seen her fidget in the year I followed her.
I’ve actually never seen her fidget. I’ve only ever seen her wear the brightest fucking aura of confidence that you’d never expect from a woman who’s being stalked by a police officer who suspects her of being involved in multiple murders.
I glance at her out of the corner of my eye as she tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear, the rest of her blonde waves cascading down her chest. The blue dress she picked out rides up her thighs; her smooth skin practically begging me to lean over and touch it.
I know it’s not the dress she’s planning to meet my mother in, because she held that one up to her body and whispered, ‘this one will be perfect,’ before folding it into a square and laying it flat in the bag that she definitely overpacked for a single night stay out of town.
“I forgot to put deodorant on,” she blurts, dipping her nose to her armpit.
I lift my nose into the air, smelling nothing but her sweet scent of berries and vanilla. “I’m sure it’s fine,” I assure her, trying to hide the smile that pulls at the corner of my mouth.
Her fingers clutch the edge of her dress, revealing another sliver of skin that threatens to rip me right off the road.
I imagine her nails scraping into my back the way they’re scraping into her thighs, our bodies tense around each other.
My hands framing her face as I lower my lips to hers again.
The phantom feeling of my lips on hers winds a surge of heat down my spine, and I speak before I pull us over and bring my thoughts to life.
“Why are you so nervous?” I ask her, and she whips her head in my direction in response.
“I’m about to meet my mother-in-law, Colin.
” I chuckle, but the sound falls flat, especially when I look over and see the very serious look on Chloe’s face.
She stares back at me so intently that it makes me shift in my seat.
I reposition my hand on the steering wheel, flexing my fingers around it, but the image her words create in my mind is unavoidable: a domesticated version of us, my arms wrapped around her body in her kitchen, pressing my face to the bend of her neck, feeling the spread of her smile against my temple.
It’s foreign and utterly familiar at the same time.
The question I’ve wanted to ask her for months is on the tip of my tongue.
Why is she so sure of me?
How could she possibly see through what I didn’t even realize until a few days ago? How has she been so certain that there was anything more than what she saw on the surface? A pissed off man with a vendetta against the most gorgeous girl in town, for no good reason other than a gut instinct.
I’m still not entirely convinced she wasn’t involved in the deaths of her stepfathers, but she was younger then; barely out of her teens.
And if she was involved, I blame her mother.
It can’t be easy growing up in a household with a murderer, and I can’t imagine the impact that may have had on her psyche.
But I ignore her implication that she’s going to be my wife one day, and decide to ask her another one of my burning questions instead.
“Why do you think these guys are coming after you and your friends?”
Besides the drugging at the party and the assault on her in the alley, I told her quite a few details about Logan’s death because I didn’t want to leave her, or Maeve, completely in the dark about the potential for more danger to swirl into their lives.
She seems a bit surprised at the sudden change of topic, but she covers it well, that mask of confidence sliding over her features and her red lips tilting up at the corner. “Are you interrogating me, detective?”
I shrug one shoulder, because maybe I am. A part of me is having trouble accepting that my suspicions of her have been completely unfounded, while another part of me is screaming to accept the fact that may be the truth, and move on.
But I’m still a detective. And I need to figure out what her connection is to the group.
She faces forward, not waiting for an answer before she speaks. “You said they’re in a trafficking ring?”
“Yeah. Up north.”
She nods beside me, lips pursing in thought.
“Maybe we’re their next victims. Three pretty girls like us, we’re the perfect targets.
” A soft laugh escapes her, like even though she’s speaking the thought out loud, she doesn’t entirely believe it.
“That makes sense, doesn’t it?” she asks, turning her face to mine.
I can’t lodge loose the feeling that she’s trying to convince me, and then I shake my head, attempting to free the skepticism of her that has flowed so naturally over the last couple of years, and let the truth sink in.
She’s innocent. It’s all been my imagination.
“It does.”