Chapter seven #2
Footsteps sound on the porch. Still calm, or mostly calm, I walk to my favorite soft leather chair by the fireplace and stuff the gun into the cushion, prickles of awareness tingling on my neck again. A fist thunders on the heavy wooden door, and my heart pounds right with it.
“Ember Thorne,” bellows a deep male voice. “I have a warrant for your arrest.”
Relief washes over me, and while that’s obviously not a normal person’s response to the announcement they are about to be arrested, I know Oliver’s voice, and he could no more arrest me than interest me in another date.
My shoulders slump, and I hurry to the door, reaching for the knob, only to feel a hint of that now familiar icy sensation splatter about my palm.
A sense of foreboding ripples from the depths of that chill and rips through me, stilling my hand an inch above the knob.
Good grief, I really am losing it. This is Oliver, who obviously coerced my parents into telling him where I am, which wouldn’t be hard.
While my father’s opinion of public defenders is low at best, Oliver is climbing the ladder in a strategic way and is quite clearly someone to watch, someone who might even hold office one day.
For this reason, my father sees Oliver as powerful and useful, a future son-in-law.
Of course he told Oliver where I am. I have nothing to worry about.
Inwardly shaking off my odd reaction, I firmly grip the knob and open the door.
“What the heck are you doing here?” I demand.
His big body fills the entryway, blocking any view I have of the outside world.
I scan him up and down, all six-foot-three inches of hard muscle that, despite our lack of romantic compatibility, has evoked more than a few lust-filled thoughts.
“And why are you in Colorado dressed in your best courtroom suit?” His lucky black, pinstriped suit, tucked beneath a stylish trench coat.
In contrast, my lucky suit wasn’t lucky at all or I wouldn’t be hiding in this cabin.
Oliver’s winter green, intelligent eyes assess me way too closely. “Why are you ignoring my phone calls? And why aren’t you inviting me in? It’s cold as hell out here.”
“Hell isn’t cold,” I say, because sparring with Oliver is like coffee and Dove milk chocolate—simply a part of who I am. “And that’s what you get for not wearing a coat.”
“Still not inviting me in,” he points out. “You got some hot guy hiding out inside who's officially made me irrelevant and unimportant?”
If only it were that simple. “You’re still the hottest guy in my life.”
He offers me a boyish, charming grin. “Good. Then I still have a chance.”
Every once in a while, he dishes out word soup, and I see something in his eyes that turns a playful comeback into something not so innocent at all.
It’s a problem I choose to ignore and pray it goes away.
He’s a good friend, and I’m careful with him and us.
I don’t want to lose him to a wild sexual urge that overtakes us on some cold, snowy night that ends hard and fast—and worse, forever.
Tonight, though, thankfully, despite his traveling a thousand miles to see me, his words don’t read that way at all.
But neither do they read like a worried friend, and why would they?
My father would have told him I am okay.
No. There is something else going on here, something I am not going to like, and I want to get whatever it is out and on the table.
“Come in,” I say, stepping back to allow his entry. The sense of danger outside, beyond the door, bites at my nerve endings, but thankfully, Oliver is already inside and shutting it outside.
I claim my chair in the corner, which offers me the comfort of a full view of the door. Oliver steps closer, towering over me and my footstool, where my MacBook rests. “The way you’ve refused my calls…” He hesitates on a choice of word before adding, “It’s been curious.”
I indicate my computer. “I told you. I’m writing a novel. I needed to shut myself away from the world and think.”
He moves my MacBook to the top of the coffee table and sits down on the stool in front of me, intimately close, but we’re always close.
That’s his point. “And the funny thing,” he continues, “is that you tell me everything, and until you disappeared, you’d never said a word about wanting to write a novel. ”
“I don’t tell you everything,” I argue, though for the most part, before my little piece of Jeremy hell, I had. “And it’s not exactly a novel. It’s an outline of the trial.”
“Huh,” he says, leaning his elbows on his knees and studying me with a piercing green stare known to make the most confident of people squirm on the witness stand.
And I have to admit, with one word—if you could call "huh" a word—along with that stare, he certainly has me squirming. Still, I’m not about to tell him I’m seeing dead people, and therefore I’m hiding from the rest of the world, him included.
“Huh, yourself,” I shoot back, going into avoidance mode. “I guess me not telling you about the book is like you not telling me you were unapologetically self-absorbed during our first date. It just didn’t seem relevant. You knew I was rattled and needed some time to myself.”
He doesn’t snap back as he often would. He studies me a moment too long for my comfort and then scrubs his jaw, the light brown stubble rasping against his palm. He laughs, a bitter laugh, his shoulders softening, and his mood with them. “You’re never going to let me live down that date, are you?”
“Yes.” I pause for effect. “Eventually.” I direct us back to the matter at hand, whatever that might be.
“I know you didn’t come all the way to Colorado to talk about our bad date.
” I hold up a hand with realization. “Let me guess. You called my father to check on me, and he sent you here to bring me home.” I lower my voice to sound like him.
“Knock some sense into her, Oliver. I didn’t pay for law school for her to write some damn book that will never be published. ”
“Your father didn’t send me.” No humor to that announcement.
My stomach clenches a moment before footsteps sound on the porch. The hair on my arms lifts.
“That would be Detective Ryker and the reason I’m here,” Oliver explains. “I asked him to give us a few minutes alone before he joined us.”
A blade of foreboding begins tracing a line through my most vital organs, including my vocal cords, as I squeak out, “Ryker?” questioning the unfamiliar name.
Oliver stands up. “I called your father to help me hunt you down because Ryker has a concerning case he thinks you need to hear about.”
My fingers dig into my palms, my hands by my sides, one close enough to the edge of the cushion to grab the gun if I need it. The idea comforts me in some barely measurable way. “Couldn’t he have just called?”
“He did,” he says. “You didn’t return his calls. Your assistant, in turn, was quite clear that you were not taking calls or messages unless it was from a client already on contract.”
“Oh,” I say flatly, wishing now that I’d handled messages a bit differently.
He arches a brow, hand still on the doorknob. “Can I let him in?”
No, I think, but nod. “Yes.” My voice is measured, cool, and calm while I’m screaming in my head.
Danger may lurk on the porch, just beyond my comfort zone, but I go with it, invite it inside, dive right into the deep, dark, choppy water, and just say, Bring it.
I slip my hand down beneath the edge of the cushion, fingers on the butt of my weapon, ready to ride that proverbial bicycle if that’s what it takes to survive.
Because while this visitor might well be a detective, everything in my gut says he’s more, and I will not allow him to leave this cabin with Oliver by his side.
Or rather, the opposite. Oliver won’t be leaving this cabin with a demon by his side.
I don’t even try to analyze how out of character my line of thinking is right now.
The door opens, and I hold my breath, anticipating—well, I don’t know what.
The man who appears a moment later is, on the surface, normal enough.
He’s a rugged-looking guy, wearing jeans and boots, his hair sun-bleached and his skin baked bronze to the point where his age is indefinable.
He’s probably thirty-something, but age is irrelevant.
What stands out is the fact that he isn’t wearing a coat.
In the Colorado mountains. In the winter.
“This is Detective Mike Ryker,” Oliver announces, doing the formal introduction thing despite the obvious.
“Sorry to intrude on you, Ms. Thorne,” the detective chimes in. “But I’m in urgent need of your assistance on a case.”
I study him, waiting for something to happen—an explosion of my senses, an icy ripple down my spine—but all I have going on right now is more of that ominous, foreboding feeling that has my toes curling in my own boots.
Apparently, I’m silent too long. He swipes a finger toward the couch, an impatient energy to him. “If I can sit down, I’m happy to explain why I’m here.”
I suppose he expected me to stand up and offer a cordial greeting.
I prefer the greeting that allows my hand to feel the cold steel comfort against my palm.
I stay where I’m at. “You can sit,” I reply, but I don’t sound like I really want him to sit, and with good reason.
I don’t want him to sit. I want him to leave.
He sits down.
Oliver joins him on the couch.
My eyes are on Ryker—just him. He’s the enemy. “So, why did you come all the way from Texas to talk to me?”
“You seem to want to get to the point.” He shrugs. “Works for me. We have three dead women, and in my assessment of the date, all have links to one of your clients named Jeremy Gibson.”