Chapter Thirteen
Hunter
Doesn’t the sun ever shine in this town?
I sit at the desk tucked away in the turret, laptop open in front of me, while rain pelts the windows and blurs the dreary street through the glass.
Outside, the sky is brightening, the blue-dark of early dawn giving way to another dull morning.
After three straight days of gray skies and rain, I’m starting to feel like I’m living in a cloud.
From where I sit, the rounded windows let me see the road at the front of the inn and the long yard in the back at the same time.
Beyond the long yellowed grass, three ancient wooden sheds sag near the treeline, looking one hard storm away from collapse.
To make everything worse, my knee throbs. Between the cold and damp, and spending the better part of yesterday cooped up in my truck watching for Kirkland, I shouldn’t be surprised.
I took a couple of ibuprofen when I first woke up and managed to untangle myself from Dylan’s limbs. The painkillers have taken the edge off, but they haven’t chased the ache away completely.
Behind me, Dylan sleeps on in the bed we shared, sprawled like a starfish. I can hear his deep, even breaths, and a part of me wants to slip under the covers with him again, pull his warm body against mine and let his rhythmic breathing lull me back to sleep.
Despite the appeal, I know it won’t happen. My thoughts have been spinning since I woke up, impossible to settle. I’d tried to distract myself with work, but I still couldn’t stop thinking about Dylan.
He’d come to the hospital. I still couldn’t quite believe it; while I’d been recovering from the gunshot that had ended my career with the Burlington Police Department, Dylan had been there.
Or he said he was there, but why lie, especially after all these years?
Besides, he’d known about Jenna and my mom being there.
The real question is why. Why had he come to see me after so long?
Had he been afraid I’d die without knowing he was alive?
That couldn’t be it. He’d assumed I knew why he’d left, and seeing Jenna wouldn’t have chased him away if he’d just come to make amends for disappearing.
Had he just been afraid for me? Afraid of losing me?
That didn’t make sense. We’d lost each other long ago.
I could always just ask him, I guess. So far, he’s been very forthcoming, but I know I won’t.
Between his admission last night and how good it feels fucking him again, hope lights up in my chest, a faint glowing ember on the brink of burning out for good, and the possibility leaves me hollow inside.
I don’t want to lose that small, smoldering ember.
Instead, I want to protect it, cup my hands around it, and blow gently so it glows brighter.
What the fuck am I thinking? I don’t really believe we could start over. Too much time has passed since we were together. We have our own lives, businesses, and friends.
What we’re doing now, working together and fucking, is good. Really good. It would have to be enough.
Just thinking of Dylan’s hot mouth swallowing me down, the desperate moans and whimpers he made while I jerked him off, makes my dick heavy.
A low groan from the bed cuts into my tumultuous thoughts. I look over at Dylan, stretching, then reaching for me across the bed. When he finds only crumpled blankets, he sits up frowning until his gaze meets mine, then he smiles, soft and sleepy. Something in my chest squeezes. Shit.
“Hey,” he says around a yawn. His sleep-roughened voice shivers over my skin.
“Hey, there’s coffee.” I point to the paper cup on the dresser.
He shoves back the blankets and scrambles out of bed. “You’re a saint.”
He’s still naked when he crosses the room, and my face heats watching his lithe, sinewy frame, which is ridiculous given everything we did together just a few hours ago—and all the things I want to do now.
I drop my gaze back to the computer screen, pretending to focus on the meaningless words in front of me. “It’s probably not hot anymore.”
It’s been nearly half an hour since I drove to the nearby café.
“I don’t even care.” He takes a swig. “Not hot, but not cold yet. What time is it? Did I sleep late?”
I shake my head and look up at him. His hair is sticking up at strange angles; there’s a rough scruff of stubble on his cheeks, and even after rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he’s still squinting at me a little.
And he’s the sexiest man I think I’ve ever known.
I have to fight the urge to push him back into the bed and press my mouth to his warm skin. My dick twitches, and I clear my suddenly dry throat, pushing the image from my mind before what I’m thinking becomes visibly obvious.
“It’s not quite eight. You’re fine.”
“You must have been up for a while. Couldn’t you sleep?”
I shake my head. “I figured I’d get some work done. I didn’t want to wake you.”
“What kind of work?” Dylan sets his cup down on the dresser, grabs yesterday’s jeans from the floor and drags them on.
“I ran some more background checks on Matthew now that we have his full name.”
He pulls on a thick turtleneck sweater, the same slate color as the clouds outside. “Did you find anything? I wouldn’t think Robert Matthew Fraiser is all that unique.”
“More than I expected.” I figured I’d get the basics right away, but anything more in-depth, I might have to wait a few days.
Once I’d found him, however, his past was easy to track.
But that’s what happened when you’re tied to a missing person who disappeared under mysterious circumstances. “He’s from Maine.”
Dylan’s dark brows lift and disappear behind his messy hair flopped over his forehead. “Maine? What was he doing in Vermont?”
I shrug. “That’s the big question, isn’t it? He graduated from film school two years ago.”
“Which ties into what Kirkland told us.” He leans back against the dresser. “But why in the hell would he make a movie about Coldwater? There’s nothing interesting here.”
“He was raised by an aunt,” I say, “after his parents disappeared when he was a kid.”
Dylan’s narrowed gaze meets mine. “Disappeared?”
I nod. “When he was eight. They went on vacation and just never came back, and no one ever saw them again. After all these years, they’re presumed dead.”
“So his parents vanished,” Dylan begins.
“His mother and stepfather,” I interject.
His frown deepens. “How do you know that?”
“There was an article from a local newspaper a few months after the disappearances, noting Matthew’s mother’s string of bad luck.
First, her husband dies in a car accident when her son is just a toddler, then she and her second husband vanish without a trace less than a decade later.
Honestly, the article’s author dropped some less than subtle hints that Matthew’s mother was some kind of black widow. ”
Dylan lifts his coffee cup and hesitates before drinking. “Was she?”
“Unlikely. Her first husband died driving on an icy road when a car in the opposite direction lost control and sent him into a tree. And if she killed her second husband, she didn’t get much out of it. They were hardly rich, and what little they did have went to her son, Robert.”
“Matthew,” Dylan corrects automatically, rubbing his chin with the back of his hand. His brows are tight with consternation. “So Matthew’s parents disappear, then he comes to this town to make a movie where there’s been a string of disappearances, and he disappears.”
“That about sums it up.”
“That’s a lot of coincidences.”
I nod slowly. “Yes, it is.”
“And you don’t believe in coincidences.”
“No, I don’t.”
***
It’s pouring when we pull into the General Store’s parking lot. There are a few other cars, but not many. Most people probably had the good sense to stay home and out of the torrential downpour.
While staying back at the inn and spending a rainy day alone with Dylan in bed held a hell of a lot more appeal than trying to shake answers out of Matthew’s previous coworkers, the latter would be a hell of a lot safer, at least for me. Besides, I have a job to do, and I need to focus.
Together, Dylan and I hurry across the parking lot. I tuck my chin to my chest and jog to the store’s doors, but the effort does little to keep me from getting soaked.
By the time we reach the entrance, my hair is plastered to my scalp.
Icy water drips past my collar and down my back.
Dylan hasn’t fared much better. The front of his jeans is molded to his legs, and the hair falling across his forehead drips down his face.
He wipes his face with his sleeve. Not that it does much.
His jacket is wet too, but he hardly seems to notice.
Instead, his frown is fixed on me. “Is your knee hurting?”
He’s been watching me more closely than I realized. I’m surprised he noticed. I must be limping more than usual. The truth is, the ibuprofen I took this morning is wearing off, so my knee is throbbing again.
I shrug. “It’s the weather. I’m fine.”
Dylan meets my gaze, shooting me a yeah, right look. “We did a lot yesterday. Maybe we should take it easy today. Give you a chance to rest.”
His consideration is both exasperating and strangely touching. I roll my eyes. “I’m fine. Come on.”
Before he can argue, I pull open the door and hold it for him.
This morning, when we’d been trying to work out our next move and how to expand on what we’d found out about Matthew so far, we decided Kirkland wouldn’t give us much more.
Given the delight he took in telling us about Matthew’s documentary and pointing out that we didn’t know his actual first name, if he’d known more, he would have told us just for the sheer pleasure of rubbing our noses in it.
Our next best chance is someone he worked with, and if he hadn’t confided in anyone at the store, maybe they would know if he had other friends besides Kirkland.