Chapter 14 #2
Noelle’s expression softened, and her eyes reflected an appreciation and affection that made Eli’s chest ache all the more.
His precious Noelle had been deprived of love, undervalued for so many years.
Yet knowing the strong, intelligent and capable woman she’d become despite her circumstances made him appreciate her even more.
The phone quit ringing, and he gave her an encouraging nod. “There. All gone. Now finish.”
“I was only saying I’m still figuring out for myself what—”
Again his phone rang, and Eli growled his frustration.
“Answer it,” Noelle said, pushing his hands from her face. “Your partner is in the hospital, and a colleague suspected of mass murder is on the run. Odds are it’s very important.”
A quiver chased to his core at the reminder of the chaos he’d left behind in Shelby for this side venture. “True enough.”
He took the call, and without a greeting, Kansas said, “Thank goodness! I was starting to worry! How could you take off on some mysterious errand and not be in touch for hours when we know Scott tried to kill you this morning?”
“Sorry if I worried you. Noelle and I are headed back now.”
“You missed Asher’s neurologist, the one who’ll be treating his concussion. He stressed the importance of Asher resting, no screens, no reading print, no activity for several days. His brain needs time to heal.”
“Damn. Bad time for him to be out of commission, too,” Eli grumbled. “This case just burst wide open, and our prime suspect is on the lam.”
He heard Kansas grunt. “I’m sure he’d much rather be helping you hunt down that bastard than be lying in the hospital with a cracked head.”
Eli pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re right. That was insensitive of me.”
“No.” Kansas groaned. “I’m sorry, Eli. I’m just edgy and out of sorts because of everything that’s happened.”
“We all are. Look, I’ll check by the hospital when we get back in town, but then I have to go to the office and start putting these new puzzle pieces in place.”
He disconnected with Kansas, and after putting his phone away, he faced Noelle again. “Okay. No more interruptions, I promise. Please…finish what you were saying. I want to hear everything.”
“You have the gist of it, I think. What’s important now is finding Scott, whether or not he turns out to be the Fiancée Killer.”
“He’s the key to solving the case, at a minimum.” Eli nodded. “All right. Let’s go home.” After turning off the dome light, he pulled back onto the dark highway.
“We,” Noelle said.
Head buzzing with too many thoughts, Eli blinked at her. “What?”
“You told Kansas you would be working on the new puzzle the case has presented. But I’m going to be working on it with you. You just said you’re shorthanded since Asher is in the hospital. So we are going to figure this out together.”
Warmth filled Eli’s chest. He liked the sound of that. Sparing a glance from the road, he smiled at her and repeated, “We.”
In order to have the space to spread out and the privacy to talk openly about their suspicions without someone in the ABI office overhearing, Eli and Noelle decided to work at his house.
“I’d like to stop by the hostel and pick up a few things if this is going to be an all-nighter, as I suspect—” Noelle caught the intrigued lift of Eli’s eyebrow as he cut a lustful glance her way. She returned a dry look. “A working all-nighter, Colton. We’re trying to catch a killer, remember.”
He shrugged. “First we work, then we play.”
Noelle snorted indelicately but gave no other reply.
She turned her gaze out the passenger window, studying the lights of the town and harbor as they approached her hostel.
Was play how he viewed any intimacies between them at this point?
Noelle had never considered their lovemaking anything but the most private and intentional connection between them.
Nothing about it had been casual. Playful at times, but never casual or intended as cheap thrills.
But if that was how Eli now thought of potential sex between them—an itch to be scratched, a fun distraction or stress reliever—perhaps it would do her well to rethink her position.
She angled her head back toward Eli, studying the masculine cut of his cheeks and jaw, made all the sharper and more defined in the dim glow from his Renegade’s dashboard lights.
His lips were pressed in a grim line at the moment, a sure indication his thoughts had reverted to his case.
Scott’s deception and vicious attack or some other stressor from a long litany clearly haunted him.
She let her attention linger on his mouth, remembering all the sensations those lips had stirred in her in past years, all the private places on her body they’d grazed, tasted and wakened with tender manipulation.
A tingling flush raced over her skin, and she felt her breath hitch, as if Eli were kissing her now.
The crunch of gravel under tires roused her as Eli pulled onto the drive of her hostel and parked. She sobered quickly and retrieved her keys from the front pocket of her messenger bag. Seeing the empty place where her rental should be parked reminded her she’d left it in the hospital lot.
“We should probably pick up my car from the hospital parking lot on the way to your place,” she said as she climbed out of his Jeep.
“Good idea,” he said, waiting at his front bumper for her to precede him up the walkway to her door.
Hostel key in hand, Noelle approached the small concrete landing and aimed the key for the knob—and noticed the door stood ajar.
The wood around the latch plate was freshly scarred and splintered.
She gasped, and a chill washed through her.
Eli seized her arm. He tugged her backward, dragging her behind him with one hand while his other unsnapped the holster of his service weapon. “Stay here.”
“But it’s—”
His blue eyes glinted with steel. “Stay here.”
Crossing her arms over her chest to ward off both the cold of the Alaskan night and the foreboding of what could be inside, Noelle waited.
Her breath clouded around her, the white puffs lit by the pinkish glow of the security lamp at the edge of the street.
After a couple of minutes, she drew a breath, prepared to call to Eli for a progress report but stopped, the words in her throat.
If someone was inside with Eli, she couldn’t alert the prowler to Eli’s presence.
Then she remembered what had happened the last time Eli had investigated suspicious circumstances at a house.
Rigged with a bomb…triggered when we entered…
His hoarse voice from earlier in the day echoed in her brain, and her blood flashed hot, then icy. “Eli, no! Get out! There could be another bomb!”
He appeared at the door, his face grim but calm. “It’s all good. I checked for a trigger as I walked in, but when I saw the condition of the place, I realized a bomb wasn’t the intruder’s goal.”
She frowned. “Condition of the place?”
He pulled the door open wider and waved a hand for her to enter.
Noelle looked past him, wary. “No bombs? You’re sure?”
“I gave the place a pretty thorough search. No sign of anything remotely resembling an explosive device or components.”
She hesitated another few seconds, working up her courage, until Eli sent her a look that asked, Don’t you trust me?
She did trust Eli. With her life. But was she ready to trust him with her heart?
Another problem for another time.
He took her hand and led her inside the dark studio apartment. He flipped the light switch by the door and lit the room.
Noelle squawked her shock at the upheaval that greeted her.
The furniture had been upended, cushions flung about and ripped open.
Her suitcase was dumped on the floor. Her possessions had been ransacked, broken, scattered.
Loose paper was spread everywhere, and books unshelved.
Drawers were open and carelessly emptied on the countertop.
The scene was pure chaos. Pure destruction.
A sense of rage and vulnerability swamped her. The invasion of her privacy, the mistreatment of her belongings, the calculated disregard and intrusion…
She swayed on her feet, and Eli caught her elbow. Clinging to his coat sleeve, she wobbled to the kitchen chair that he righted for her.
“You should see if anything is missing and report the break-in to the landlord.”
She nodded, numb and shaking. “Who would do this?” she muttered. “Why?”
Noelle covered her face with her hands and allowed a frustrated and rather frightened growl to roll from her throat.
“I haven’t even been here for two weeks!
Hardly anyone even knows I’m here besides you, and my aunt and unc—” She snapped her head toward Eli, her hands balling in rage.
“My aunt and uncle! I’ve already had to sign a second contract with the funeral home because of their meddling.
Do you suppose…is their grudge against me, their disdain for me so great that they’d—” She stopped short.
Eli was shaking his head slowly, the anger and clarity in his gaze unnerving.
“Then who?” As soon as she spoke, an echo reverberated in her head. She’d asked the same question when she’d learned her brake line had been sabotaged.
“You’re right that very few people know you’re in town.
But Scott is one of them, and he knows we had a relationship once, knows we’ve been spending time together since you arrived.
If this is about me, as I’m starting to suspect, he could have lured you here to taunt me.
He could have targeted Allison to get you here because of our past. The Fiancée Killer has already dug up my aunt’s murder and copied it.
Based on everything else we’re learning, I’d say he’s striking out at me through you. ”
If she hadn’t already been sitting, Noelle might have slumped to the floor. As it was, her body shuddered, and her head spun. “You really think he killed Allison to lure me here? So that he could get at you… How? By hurting me?”