Chapter Fourteen
Audra wasn’t sure how her life had spiraled so far out of control. Sleeping with Copeland was one thing. The kiss before the fire had sort of made more feel like an inevitability, and even now she couldn’t regret it.
She’d been in long-term relationships before and nothing had ever felt like that.
It wasn’t just the physical part, though—wow.
It wasn’t that she’d felt like she’d uncovered something, discovering the coin-size tattoo on the front of his shoulder, in the shape of a police badge.
It was that it had been more than all of that.
More than her usual trying to make a relationship last, work, be the end. It wasn’t about relationships at all. It had just been about waking up to him holding on to her, knowing that he was…a good man. And she’d wanted some piece of that.
The weight of it had been important, somehow. And it was one thing to try to work through all that, but for his coworker to show up… To see it. That was something else entirely, even if Detective Delaney-Carson was being very nice and pretending like she didn’t know what was going on.
Audra stood at the coffee maker, discarding the remnants of last night’s decaf and getting it set up to brew. Copeland reappeared with his shirt on before she finished.
He gruffly ordered her to sit down. Audra didn’t miss the considering gaze the detective gave Copeland, but she pretended she did. She sat, not bothering to tell Copeland her ankle was feeling better. He’d just argue with her.
“Sorry to interrupt your morning,” Laurel said, giving Copeland a pointed look when he put a mug of coffee in front of her.
She moved her gaze to Audra, and it was kind.
“But all the ranchers I know are up at the crack of dawn and I have a meeting in Sunrise in an hour. I figured I’d stop by instead of having you two come out to the station, because we’ve got something of a lead. ”
“You could have called,” Copeland muttered. He put a full mug, with a dash of cream, like she always took it, right in front of Audra.
“I did,” Laurel replied. “Left you a message. I guess you could have checked your phone.”
Copeland’s gaze flicked to Audra, and she couldn’t stop the heat from creeping into her cheeks, because obviously they had been busy when that call came in.
“What kind of lead?” Copeland said, his attention back on Laurel. He grabbed his own mug of black coffee and sat down in the chair between them.
“We still don’t have any suspects, but we’ve managed to trace the payment to the funeral home that made the arrangements for the cremains.
Unfortunately, the payment was made from a fake identity, but the money still had to come from somewhere.
We don’t have an answer to that just yet, but we do know the payment came from Florida, and we’re working on the theory that the person, regardless of fake identity, is somewhere in Florida.
Or was. Florida feels like where a lot of this is originating from, even if someone is here now doing these things. ”
Florida. Audra heard a strange buzzing in her ears, like she’d been transported somewhere else. Florida.
A coincidence. It had to be a coincidence. Florida was a big state. It wasn’t… Why would it be?
But when she came back into herself, certain it was a weird coincidence, Copeland was frowning at her.
“Do you have any connections to Florida, Audra?” Laurel asked.
But Audra couldn’t look away from Copeland.
“You know someone in Florida who might be out to get you?” he asked grimly.
She shook her head. “No, I don’t know anyone who’s out to get me.” Not here. Not anywhere. Why would she?
He narrowed his eyes. “Audra, who do you know in Florida?”
She managed to find her voice, though it was a hard-won thing. She couldn’t look at Copeland as she spoke, so she looked at some vague point on the wall. “Only one person. My mother.” She tried to smile. “Obviously my mother doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
But Laurel and Copeland exchanged a look that said “not so obviously.”
“My mother doesn’t want the ranch,” she continued quickly. “Or to hurt me. She’d have to care about either. She left the minute she could. She wanted nothing to do with this place once she found out about Dad’s other family. She wanted nothing to do with…” Me. Us.
“And before that?”
She looked at Copeland helplessly, because this wasn’t a lead. It couldn’t be. “Before what?”
“Before she found out about the other family. Before his death. What did she feel about the ranch before that? Because you guys were here, so she had to have some feelings. Why did she leave?”
Audra couldn’t find any words. Maybe because as impossible as it seemed, she…
She knew how angry her mother had been. Understandably.
Rightfully. But it had turned against everyone, and for so many reasons, the experience with her father was easier to deal with.
He’d lied, cheated, betrayed. Died. It was easy for Audra to hate him and be done with it.
Everything she felt about her mother was a jumble. She couldn’t blame Mom’s bitterness on anyone but Dad. Couldn’t blame Mom for leaving her and Rosalie to clean up the mess. He was their father, their blood. Not hers. To her, Dad was just a mistake she’d made for too many years.
Maybe Audra had thought…a good mother stayed for her kids, supported her kids, regardless of the father, but she also couldn’t pretend to know the level of betrayal from the man you were married to having a whole other family he left things to.
So she tried not to blame Mom too much. She tried not to expect anything out of her either. She tried to be neutral. Maybe she’d been leaning closer to anger when Mom had refused to come to Rosalie’s wedding, but Audra didn’t think Mom knew that. Or cared.
And none of this was…right. “She left because she hated this place,” Audra told Copeland. “She wouldn’t come back just to…mess with me. She doesn’t care about anything here. Florida is a coincidence. It has to be.”
Laurel and Copeland shared a look. Not disbelieving exactly, but the kind of look that said they were going to look in to it one way or another.
Audra knew she was just going to have to deal with it.
COPELAND WALKED LAUREL out to her car. They paused at the hood, and he glanced back at the house. Audra would know they were talking about her, about her case, but he didn’t want her hearing it even if she knew the topic.
“Can you look in to her mother? I imagine you’ve got enough background to go off of.”
Laurel nodded. “Yeah. What I don’t know I can dig up. And we’ll keep digging on the fake identity. Vicky got the name of the gravestone supplier, so she’s chasing down the payment information there today. If it’s the same name, we’ll keep picking at it until we hit something.”
“I’m getting reports from the fire department about last night. Hopefully there’s some more evidence than we’ve come across. Audra isn’t wrong about people too often, and I don’t think she has rose-colored glasses where her mother’s concerned.”
“But it’s too big of a coincidence not to look in to,” Laurel said, finishing for him.
“Yeah.”
“She probably shouldn’t be staying here.”
He knew it, and it frustrated him, because he also understood why she was being stubborn about it. “She won’t go.”
Laurel studied the house, then him. “So I suppose you won’t either.”
“It’s the job.”
Laurel laughed. “Uh-huh. The job.” She shook her head. “I give it six months.”
“You give what six months?”
She opened her car door. “You know, I was pregnant by my first wedding anniversary.”
He gaped at her before he found his voice. “What the hell is that supposed to have to do with anything?”
She shrugged. Held up a finger. “Worked a case.” She held up another finger as she took a step back toward the car.
“Fell in love.” With every step, she held up another finger and gave another ridiculous point.
“Got married. Kids one, two, three, four.” Then she slid into her driver’s seat.
“You’ll beat me, I bet. On a spread like this? I’m guessing five or six.”
“What in the ever-loving hell are you talking about?”
Laurel only laughed and closed the car door, waved as she backed out of the drive. Copeland watched her go, figuring that she was just… Well, obviously she was just messing with him. What did he care about her life? Her kids?
Five or six. She was messing with him. And regardless of any of that, he had things to do. Like stick to Audra so she was safe. Like stop whoever was trying to scare her, hurt her, even if it was her mother.
Five or six. Laurel was out of her mind. And just messing with him. He stomped back into the house. Audra was in the kitchen, where he’d left her with instructions to stay put, surprised that she’d done it.
But she was putting together some kind of breakfast. “I really need to go to the grocery store, but I found some waffles hidden in the back of the freezer,” she said with fake, forced cheer. “I’ve got some chores that need handled first, but I suppose you’ll want to come with me for both.”
He wanted to tell her he didn’t want to, but he was going to. But that would be a lie. He wanted to be where she was, and it was a problem that it wasn’t only about safety.
“I don’t like the idea of us leaving this place alone. It gives whoever is doing this time and access. Can’t you have groceries delivered?”
She spared him a disapproving glance as she plated up the frozen waffles she must have toasted in the oven. “No one delivers groceries all the way out here, Copeland.”
“We’ll figure something out.” If he had to he’d ask a favor of someone, since God knew she wouldn’t. He’d figure it out.
She tried to take the plates to the table, but he grabbed them from her. She didn’t look like she was limping quite so badly, but she could be putting on an act. He didn’t know how it could possibly heal when she wasn’t giving it rest.
He put the plates on the table, then looked back at her. She was just standing there, looking at the table. Misery and sadness were etched all over her face. She met his gaze with shiny blue eyes. She wasn’t going to cry. He could tell from the way she held herself. But she wanted to.
“She’s going to look in to my mother.”
He could lie. Reassure. But it would be pointless and wouldn’t help her any. “Yeah.”
She put a palm to her chest, rubbed, like she was having pain. He couldn’t stand that, so he crossed over to her, wrapped an arm around her like he had last night. Just comfort.
Maybe for the both of them, because her hurt did something to him. He wanted to fix it.
And that didn’t mean there was marriage in anyone’s future, or five or six anything. It was just…the moment.
She leaned against him. “I feel like someone took a whisk to my brain. It’s all scrambled eggs up there.”
“Great sex will do that to you.”
She snorted out a laugh as he’d hoped. But then she sighed. “I know you’re going to get mad at me, but I’m sorry. Sorry your coworker showed up here and saw…everything.”
“Why are you sorry?”
“It must be embarrassing.”
“Why would it be embarrassing?” He didn’t think about Laurel and her sudden insistence on telling him about how she’d met her husband or how many kids they had.
“There’s nothing embarrassing about being with you, Audra.
” Maybe that was a little too naked, all in all, but she relaxed into him even more.
They stood there a few minutes in a pleasant kind of silence, the smell of waffles and syrup filling the kitchen. It was homey and nice and…just, right.
“Apparently I’ve got a soft spot for martyrs,” he said, more to himself than to her, but she made a noise in response—half amusement, half despair.
“Well, that’s something I guess.” Then she moved up and brushed a kiss across his mouth. “Let’s eat before the sad freezer waffles get soggy.”
Yeah, it was a hell of a soft spot.