Chapter 5
Charlie
After the Monday from hell, all I want is to go home and sit on my dock. I don’t want to talk to a single person until tomorrow, when I need to give a nine a.m. press conference.
An accident with multiple casualties is enough to make things crazy, but now there’s an ongoing investigation of the dead congressman to contend with.
Since this is small-town America where life is boring and uneventful, everyone wants a piece of the action. The coordination of state agencies, witness interviews, evidence collection, press, and overblown egos has not led to easy days.
All I need is silence until I no longer want to kill everybody.
I get in my car, pull out of the station and onto Main Street, heading toward my house. The sound of the river that runs through my backyard and a glass of bourbon are calling me home.
At the thought of bourbon, I think of her.
Typically, I stick to whiskey, but that’s not what I’m in the mood for tonight. Not when the memory of licking the drink from her lips is still fresh in my mind.
Once again, I shake her off. Fuck, she’s persistent, constantly knocking at the edges of my consciousness, demanding entry.
I glance in my rearview mirror and spot a white Jeep a couple of cars back. I note it, surveying my surroundings out of habit. I come to a stop sign, and Ryder’s fiancée, Sophie, is headed in the opposite direction in her cream-colored Porsche convertible.
She blows through the sign and then, because no one is behind her, pulls up next to me. She flashes me the charismatic smile that has the citizens of Revival eating out of the palm of her hand.
“Hey.” She points in the direction of the station, located next to Revival’s city hall, where we both work. “Is Ryder still there?”
“Hey, Soph. Yeah. He shouldn’t be too much longer, maybe an hour.” I glance in my rearview mirror again in time to see the Jeep swerve, making a jerky right-hand turn onto a side street.
The hairs on the back of my neck rise, heightening my senses.
It’s nothing. It’s the training conditioned into me. After the last couple of days, I’m not surprised my hyperawareness has gone into overdrive.
She runs her hand through her loose blond curls. “It’s been a hell of a day.”
Sophie runs the Revival PR department and has been fielding communications for the city since the accident took place within its limits.
While I’m the county sheriff, Revival is under my jurisdiction and we are the police department for the town, so Sophie and I regularly work together. “It’s been a real shitstorm.”
“I’m picking up Darcy, and we’re going to go blow off some steam at Sam’s.
Wanna come?” When Sophie moved here, she became fast friends with the first lady of Revival, Darcy Strong.
Which isn’t a surprise. They are both bad girls, forced to keep their mayhem confined to the inner circles as pillars of the community and members of the Revival power-couple set.
A car pulls up behind me. “I’m good. You girls stay out of trouble.”
“No promises.” She honks her horn and drives off, the powerful engine of the sports car a loud purr.
I accelerate, keeping my eyes on the road to minimize someone attempting to flag me down.
I have a plan: Home. Bourbon. Silence.
All I need to do is get there.
Out of the corner of my eye, a flash of white snags my attention. I turn in time to catch sight of the Jeep, now sitting parked on a tree-lined street.
I don’t think about it again until I’m a quarter mile down and it pulls out onto the main road. The instincts responsible for my survival tingle, and even though I tell myself it’s my lizard brain, I can’t get my gut to buy it.
Overruling logic is the amygdala’s job, but once upon a time, I was in the FBI. With everything going on, I decide it’s best not to risk it on the off chance I am not, in fact, being paranoid.
I take a left off the main road.
I go two more blocks before the Jeep appears.
I turn right.
Lo and behold, the white vehicle pops up behind me.
It’s possible it’s a coincidence. This is a small town. There are only so many places you can go, but I’m not convinced.
For the next ten minutes, I drive around in a convoluted labyrinth of twists and turns that all end with the white Jeep in my rearview mirror.
Whoever is following me hasn’t been trained because they are absolute shit at it. I knock professional from the list of possible suspects.
A professional would attach an AirTag to my car and follow me from a distance, leaving me none the wiser. Getting tailed isn’t much of a concern in rural Illinois. That’s more a former-life type of thing.
I narrow my gaze on the mirror. The only thing they manage to do right is stay far enough back that I can’t make out the license plate, denying me the opportunity to call it in.
Numerous times, I’ve pulled over on a side street to see if they’ll pass me, but they never do. They just sit a few blocks back and wait.
Which is where I now sit as I weigh my options.
I tap my fingers on the steering wheel. I’m tempted to drive to one of the two-lane, less-traveled country roads, then pull a U-turn to get behind them.
I discard that idea. I’m not particularly worried about danger, but there’s a chance I’m wrong.
It’s against protocol, and I can’t forget that if any of the men or women working for me endangered their lives that way, I would tear them a new asshole.
Ending up dead on the side of the road because of my own arrogant stupidity isn’t the way I want to go out.
So even though all I want to do is deal with this quickly and get home, I sigh, pick up my cell, and call Ryder.
When he answers, I say, “For some unknown reason, I’m being tailed by an amateur in a white Jeep.”
There’s a beat of silence. “How do you know it’s an amateur?”
“Because no professional would be this horrible at it.”
“Where are you?”
I give him my location. “They’re sitting a couple blocks back.”
“What are you thinking?”
“Probably an overzealous reporter looking for intel.”
“Seems logical.”
“They won’t pass me and stayed far enough back I can’t get a plate.” I scrub my hand over my jaw. “I’ll share my location with you in case they go on the move, but I’m going to sit here. Do a drive-by, get a plate, but don’t engage until we know what we’re dealing with.”
“On it.” He hangs up.
I’ve been driving in varying circles, which puts Ryder about fifteen minutes away. I keep my eyes on the white Jeep. I’m almost positive it’s some journalist—probably right out of school, considering their ineptitude—but something about this is bothering me. The timing feels wrong.
Nothing interesting ever happens here. I’ve been the sheriff six years, and after the shit I’d seen in my old life, I can count the incidents that made me break a sweat on one hand. So, while my head insists this is nothing, my gut is sending me all sorts of warning signs.
But I can’t see how this is connected to Crenshaw. It’s too sloppy for that, but I can’t be sure.
All I can do is sit tight and wait.
Five minutes pass, then all of a sudden, the white door swings open, and a person gets out of the car. Other than a flash of red, my view is obstructed, but when the door shuts, a sable-haired siren I know entirely too well turns in my direction.
It’s…her.
Instead of the shock and horror I should feel that she’s tracked me down, a twisted, anticipatory excitement rushes through me as she heads in my direction.
The tension I’d been carrying since I’d woken up alone in that motel room disappears like a puff of smoke.
I also come face-to-face with the knowledge that under my belief I’d never see her again lay a certainty that I would.
I’m not even alarmed she’s crazy. Women like that always are.
I watch her approach, her hips a hypnotic sway in a slinky red dress that drapes over her body like it was made for her. Her hair is a tumble over one shoulder as she squares up and marches toward me like a woman on a mission.
I’m fucked in the head because all I want to do is lay claim to her. I won’t, because I’m not insane, but I want to. So goddamn bad I can taste it. I can already feel the hard press of my mouth against hers.
I jerk the handle, catapult out of the car, and slam the door.
She throws up her hands. “What the hell is wrong with you? Why won’t you go home?”
I stalk toward her. “What the hell is wrong with me? I’m not fucking crazy, that’s what’s wrong with me.”
“I’m not crazy either,” she screeches. “I can explain.”
In the middle of the street, we barrel toward each other. The closer she gets, the more lust and adrenaline form a powerful cocktail in my blood, making me want to forget being reasonable.
I cannot grab her, drag her behind a building, and punish her for running out on me. I need to focus on her crazy, not how that crazy manifests in bed.
She comes to a halt in front of me, her nude stiletto heels mere inches from mine.
I rake my gaze over her. “Just so you know, red’s not a good color for stalking.”
She jabs a finger in my chest. “I am not stalking, you egotistical maniac.”
“Then explain to me why the fuck you’ve been tailing me for thirty minutes.” I swat her hand away. “By the way, don’t quit your day job. You absolutely suck at it.”
Her dark brows slam together. “I do not suck. I wasn’t trying that hard.”
“Where’s your car?” I’d have recognized the dark gray sedan she’d driven, not because it was distinctive, but because it had been hers.
“I borrowed my sister’s car.”
“And why’s that, other than not wanting me to recognize you?” I cross my arms over my chest and give her my sternest look, the one that makes my greenest deputies shake in fear, but it has little effect on her.
She huffs like I’m an idiot and she can’t believe she’s forced to explain the obvious. “All I was trying to do was to follow you home. But as usual, you won’t cooperate, so here we are.”
My mouth falls open; I cannot believe this woman. She’s insane, and here I am, lusting after her. “Did you or did you not leave me in the middle of the night?”