Chapter Sixteen
Harlow woke to the low murmur of voices.
As usual, Wilder was wrapped around her tightly, one arm and thigh holding her in place.
He liked to sleep close, and she tended to have nightmares and thrash around.
His solution seemed to be to pin her down.
She had to admit it worked, but it had taken a little getting used to.
“Need you to get up for a few minutes, Wilder,” Rainier spoke in a hushed tone.
“I’m awake,” Harlow announced. “If you need me to step out of the room, I’m good with that.” She wasn’t, but she would be. She knew there were matters she was better off not knowing. She didn’t always agree with Rainier and Wilder’s answers to individuals who were considered above the law.
Wilder didn’t even loosen his hold on her. “You could have pretended to stay asleep, babe. You could have heard everything.”
“I wouldn’t do that. You told me straight up there might be things you couldn’t share.”
“I may have said couldn’t, but mostly I meant shouldn’t. We’re not having one of those relationships. Ours is going to be an everything-that’s-possible-will-be-open-between-us.” Wilder turned his head to look directly at Rainier. “I know you have that same policy with Shabina.”
“It’s a little difficult with Shabina. I protect her when I feel it’s necessary. She’s tough, yes, but she’s also very fragile at the same time.” He shrugged, more of a roll of his shoulders. “She thinks she’s tough all the time, but she has that heart of hers, and I’m going to protect it.”
Harlow didn’t know if Rainier was cautioning Wilder but she didn’t want to be thought of as fragile.
She didn’t have the horrendous background Shabina had.
In any case, Shabina wasn’t exactly fragile either.
She had a strength of spirit, a determination to survive, and she’d done so when most others wouldn’t have made it.
Harlow knew Rainier respected his wife just as Wilder respected her.
She realized she had to come to terms with the protective nature of both these men.
“My woman can deal,” Wilder declared.
Harlow could have kissed him. Right there in front of Rainier.
Instead, she let him see how she felt, the stars in her eyes.
She might not agree completely with his assessment because she was afraid for him all the time, but she wanted the closeness of a trusting relationship, and she did know, no matter what, she could deal.
Wilder sat up and pushed back toward the headboard, adjusting pillows as he did so. “Come up here, Harlow.”
She didn’t hesitate. She slipped into the spot she was becoming very familiar with, right under his shoulder, tight against him. His arm circled her, keeping her close.
“What’s going on, Rainier?”
“Tonight, I figured it was time to pay Paul Rafferty a visit and have a heart-to-heart with him. I had gathered information on his home and knew it would be an easy entry. He wasn’t very security conscious.”
“Isn’t he married?” Harlow asked.
“He was. Or is, but she apparently had enough of his cheating, and she took off last month,” Rainier said.
“She lasted longer than either of his other two wives,” Harlow said. “You’d think the man would learn not to get married if he wants to run around. Although he’s very political and probably knows voters prefer someone settled and married.”
“You’d think women would realize if he cheated several times on the first wife and then the second, he was going to continue that behavior,” Wilder said.
“Rainier, it’s only been a few days since the two of you revealed that Rafferty took a bribe from the senator,” Harlow cautioned.
“If anything happened to him, you and Wilder would come under suspicion, especially if you were caught on camera or by someone being in the house unexpectedly.” Harlow wasn’t sure why she was more worried about Rainier than Rafferty.
If Rainier was going to pay the sheriff a visit, it might not end very well.
“I checked to ensure no one else was in the house,” Rainier assured. “He hasn’t replaced his wife yet.”
Wilder’s fingers slid back and forth over Harlow’s shoulder in an absent way that she still found distracting—and wonderful.
“If all you had to worry about was Rafferty alone in the house, that would make the entry even easier,” Wilder commented.
“The front door wasn’t even locked; that was how ridiculous his security was,” Rainier informed them.
“Or shows how arrogant he is,” Wilder said.
“Was. He’s dead.”
It was announced quietly. Without emotion. Neither man seemed to have a reaction to the sheriff’s demise.
Harlow gasped and covered her mouth with her fingers. That was the last thing she expected Rainier to say. “How?”
“I believe he died the same way as Helen McKay. The body looked the same,” Rainier said. “Fresher. He hadn’t been dead long. But he suffered. More, he had several sets of puncture wounds on him as if he’d been bitten numerous times.”
There was a small silence. Harlow thought that blew her idea of a snakebite. Had Rafferty been bitten by a rattlesnake, or any other kind of snake for that matter, he would have known to get help and treatment, especially if he’d been struck more than once.
Wilder must have been thinking along the same line. “Signs of struggle?” he asked.
“Not what one would see if a human being attacked him. It’s possible he let someone in, or, like me, they just opened the door and walked in, surprised him by incapacitating him, and then Rafferty was injected with a toxin.
If that’s what happened, Rafferty never saw it coming,” Rainier explained.
“And yet he would have had to have been injected at least three times.”
“Do you believe he was attacked by someone?” Harlow asked.
Rainier frowned. “I believe his death was orchestrated by a human being. I don’t have a clue yet how.
I did take photos and video. I took close-ups of the puncture wounds, and Raine is analyzing them now.
Hopefully she can enhance the evidence or whatever I managed to gather and find something so we can get a better idea of how these people are dying.
I got out of there quickly. I didn’t want to leave any trace of my being there. ”
“Your phone?” Wilder asked. “Rainier, you know they’re going to look at both of us. If anything, Blom or the senator will demand it.”
“Not to mention Bale,” Harlow added. “He’s going to lose his mind over this, and in this instance, I can’t blame him. He may have been feuding with his uncle, but they were close. Very close. I can’t imagine how he’s going to take this.”
“My phone shows I was at my home all night,” Rainier said. “It sat on my bedside table while I slept with my wife.”
“What is your gut telling you, Rainier?” Wilder asked. “You were there. You saw his death fresh, firsthand.”
Harlow found herself holding her breath.
She had a gut feeling. That ominous, dark shadow had been moving through her for weeks.
At that time, she’d felt as if a terrible tornado was coming to Knightly, and now she believed it was here.
They were right in the middle of a violent storm, and no one seemed to realize it.
Everything was spinning out of control, yet because a killer not being visible didn’t mean he wasn’t active.
With everything else going on, Blom condemning his own men to death, sending them out on missions where they would be ambushed and killed, the threats made to Harlow, the investigation of the disappearance of a young woman tied to the senator, vandalism, and all the mysterious deaths, it was impossible to sort it all out and find that invisible thread that connected everything. But she feared there was one.
Rainier took his time before answering Wilder. “I didn’t see any evidence of a person in that house other than Rafferty himself. There were no signs of an interaction, let alone a struggle. Having said that, my gut tells me there is someone, a human being, behind these deaths.”
Harlow felt a mixture of relief, that someone else felt as she did—that the deaths weren’t accidental—yet coupled with that, she was afraid for her community.
If someone had figured out a way to kill without being present, they had to be using a toxic reptile.
That reptile would still be in the house.
Most of the others had been outside when they died, or in their cars, but they could have been bitten before they got into their cars.
Otherwise, forensics would have found what had bitten them.
“What I do believe,” Harlow said, “is that a neurotoxin is being injected that affects the nervous system. The normal neurotransmitter function seems to be disrupted, leading to severe muscle spasms. It would also cause respiratory distress, as I observed in Lawyer and believe to have happened in Helen’s case as well.
The signs were that the venom hit fast and hard. ”
“You’ve really thought about this,” Wilder said.
There was respect in his voice, which surprised her.
She had tried to point out to the experts sent to study the cases the things she had observed, but they’d dismissed her findings.
It was true she was guessing to some extent, but she’d studied poisons, venoms and toxins for years, finding the plants, reptiles and insects fascinating.
She’d photographed many of them, even when she was young.
She had a massive binder she referred to often when observing the various deaths and talking with the medical examiner.
“To me, narrowing down what could be causing these deaths was really a matter of putting together the body’s response to the toxin, if it was venom or a chemically introduced poison. There was evidence that this venom was able to bind to a human protein. That’s a very bad thing.”