Undercover Hunter (21 page)

Was she?

Not for the first time she wished she could read minds. Maybe her focus on work had been nothing but a smoke screen to conceal the other lacks in her life. Surely her biological clock ought to be ticking like mad by now. She’d heard other women talk about it but had never experienced it, probably because she didn’t leave room in her life for it.

But even though she couldn’t read Cade’s mind, it hardly seemed important when she couldn’t read her own. What
did
she want long-term, aside from the job? Realizing that she had no real answer to that was as disturbing as the question itself.

* * *

Cade held her comfortably and was disappointed. Evidently he’d invested more of himself into this prickly pear than he’d realized. He wanted more from her than a fling that would end as soon as this case was resolved.

He wasn’t sure it had risen to the level of wanting marriage and a family with her, but it had definitely become a lot bigger than a fling. He liked her, respected her and wanted to keep her around.

Apparently, the thought hadn’t even occurred to her. His ego took a ding from that, but so did his heart. Well, what had he expected? She’d been job focused from the start, so intensely that he was surprised they’d managed to tumble in the hay.

It wasn’t that this case wasn’t important to him. He cared about those kids, and he cared intensely about catching the killer. But he also knew how to take occasional breaks to refresh his mind. More often than not he’d had to remind her how important that was.

He wondered if it was really obsession on her part, or hiding. Given that she had been raped and then treated despicably by those who should have helped her, he could understand if she refused to look beyond her job. She might have built a shell around herself, created by keeping her focus always in one direction.

People had all kinds of methods to protect themselves. His had become avoiding women partners. Hers may have become avoiding all the rest of life.

If so, that was damn sad. He wanted to break her out of that shell, but knew that doing so could conceivably hurt her. After all, he wasn’t ready to make any promises and maybe she wouldn’t want him anyway. You couldn’t just waltz in and break down someone’s defensive walls then waltz away.

All he could do was what he was doing: making it safe for her to be vulnerable with him. Beyond that, he didn’t dare tread.

It was odd, though, that for the first time in his life he felt he’d met a woman who suited him in every way. They shared a passion for their work above the ordinary, and the rare times they left work behind they fit well in every respect.

But he’d better not let it grow any more. She had just said she wasn’t ready to go beyond the job. Her shield and lance high, she would focus on work and shut everyone out.

Including him.

Chapter 12

A
new deputy showed up at their door in the early morning. Introducing himself as Micah Parish, he was a large man who did indeed wear his Cherokee ancestry proudly. The years had been pretty kind to him. Tall and straight with dark eyes and black hair that was just beginning to show threads of gray, only weathering had added to his age.

“Gage told you I’m okay, right?”

DeeJay nodded and invited him in. “News?”

“Maybe. Been talking to our old sheriff, Nate Tate. He and I go all the way back to Vietnam. A lifetime ago, it feels like. Then sometimes it feels like yesterday.”

DeeJay and Cade had been indulging in coffee cake for breakfast. Micah was happy to accept a piece.

“The thing about Nate,” Micah said while he ate and sipped coffee, “is that nobody sneezes hereabouts that he doesn’t get wind of it. Gage is clued in, but Nate goes past that to a level that’s almost scary. So Gage put your concerns to him about this Calvin Sweet.”

DeeJay leaned forward to hear better. Cade, on the other hand, seemed to settle back, watchful and waiting.

Micah’s voice was deep, his manner almost deliberate.

“So Nate did some ruminating and called me this morning. If he’s forgotten anything about the people around here, you couldn’t prove it by me. He said Sweet didn’t rise to radar level very often. Quiet boy, caused no problems. His father committed suicide when he was a youngster, so his mother raised him. Nate remembered the mother pretty well, called her a sour, disapproving prune who had little to do with anyone around here. No family, no friends. Said he felt sorry for anyone who was raised by her. Anyway, there were a couple of times, just a couple, when teachers questioned the boy about whether he was being mistreated at home. He denied it and while it came to Nate’s ears, there was no evidence to pursue. Some felt he wasn’t getting enough to eat, but there were no signs of physical abuse. You can’t go all Dirty Harry on someone because a couple of times some teachers
felt
there might be something wrong.”

“And that’s all?” DeeJay asked.

Micah smiled very faintly. “Depends on what you’re looking for. A good kid who never made waves, who appeared too thin for his age. But there was one time he wound up in the emergency room with a severe concussion. They both claimed he’d been fooling around in the barn loft and fell. He was released a few days later, and seemed fine. Nate tried to get more information about the accident, because he’d heard from the teachers who were concerned about the boy’s treatment. Nothing. Sweet and his mother both explained it away well enough. Accidents do happen.”

Now DeeJay was holding her breath. She looked at Cade, who nodded, his expression intent.

“Head injury,” she said. “Very often involved in these cases.”

“But not enough for a warrant,” Micah said flatly. He looked at DeeJay. “Gage said you got an invite to go out to Sweet’s ranch.”

“I did. I was thinking about it.”

“Well, hell. You don’t need me to remind you what kind of line you’d be walking. You’re a law officer, not a civilian. You’re limited to what’s in plain sight unless you have a warrant. You don’t suppose some killer is going to show off his victims to you, do you?”

“No.”

“Then what are you hoping? That he might attack you?”

DeeJay bridled a bit. “It appears he may have killed at least two women in the past—both of them fitting my description.”

“Then this is even crazier.” Micah apparently didn’t believe in tiptoeing around. “You want to be bait? I had a case of that a couple of years ago, and it was a damn good thing I was on a rooftop with a sniper rifle. That’s easy to arrange in town, but a hell of a lot more dangerous out on a ranch. I don’t care what kind of training you’ve had. I spent twenty years in Special Ops and I wouldn’t walk into that alone. Assuming we’ve even got the right guy.”

The justice of his words sank home. But she still had a stark reality to face. “Some other child could be at risk right this minute. He could accelerate. Most of these killers do and from what the FBI said, he may have accelerated in the past. For all we know, he’s making friends with some boy right now, luring him.”

Micah lifted a brow. “You think he lures them?”

“How else can you explain that nobody ever notices anything when these kids disappear? He must gain their trust enough to get them to come to him. I want to know if Sweet has been giving talks at the schools. How he could meet these kids and persuade them he’s trustworthy.”

Micah nodded slowly. “I can see it. But what about you?”

“He asked me out to his ranch. I’m supposedly here to write about the resort, but he asked me out to his place, promising spectacular views of the mountains to photograph. That’s a lure.”

“It could be.”

“Or maybe not,” said Cade. “I don’t want her going out there alone, either, so maybe we can go as a couple.”

Micah sighed and finished his coffee. “Which is going to undo the whole bait thing.” He rose. “I’m as worried about these kids as anyone, but I know the limits of the law as well as you do. Let me talk to Gage and Nate. Maybe we can work out some way for DeeJay here to go in and still be covered. God knows, I don’t want to see anyone else dead. And keep in mind, before you go haring off on your own, that right now there isn’t enough to build a case. You might just be wasting your time. Right now, our guy could be almost anyone in this county.”

DeeJay couldn’t deny it. But her nose was twitching. “Intuition is telling me something else.”

“Maybe so. And you might be right. But, damn it, we need something more, and preferably without your body providing the evidence. You read me?”

“Loud and clear.”

He gave a short nod. “One of us will get back to you. I’m not sure how far Gage has gotten looking into Sweet’s background.”

“We don’t have much, either,” Cade said. “And we’ve been looking, too.”

“Same resources.” Micah frowned. “We need to find something.”

“Maybe Gage will find it in Sweet’s job application.”

“We can hope.”

* * *

Someone might notice. Someone might put two and two together. That was a risk they’d been studiously avoiding so that the killer wouldn’t be on the lookout for either of them. Yet they’d had one deputy after another, the former sheriff and Gage Dalton visit them. Some cover, if someone on the street noticed and mentioned it.

DeeJay stood at the front window after Micah left, and she was chafing. He was right: as an officer of the law, she was far more hampered than a civilian. Any one of the people on this street could go snooping at the Sweet place and bring evidence back, but not a cop. A cop needed a warrant. Hell, a cop couldn’t even
ask
anyone to do the snooping.

She didn’t usually object to that stricture. Indeed, she mainly approved of it. People had a right to be protected from intrusion into their privacy by the law. Evidence had to be gathered according to the rules.

But she chafed anyway.

Cade spoke from behind her. “The devil and the deep blue sea,” he remarked.

She turned and found him holding out a fresh mug of coffee to her. She took it, thanking him, and returned to staring out the window at the snow-covered world. “He could be gaining some boy’s confidence right now.”

“Yeah. On the other hand, if it really is Sweet, maybe he’s got his sights set on a female victim right now. Namely you. I called Gage again.”

“Anything?”

“He’s still trying to find the job applications for the crisis center. Somebody did a lousy filing job. Anyway, I told him I wanted a photo of Sweet’s mother.”

“How much difference will that make?

“If she looks like his two other female victims, if she looks like you at all...” He didn’t complete the thought. He didn’t need to.

She set her coffee down, feeling a burst of frustration, and whirled around to look at him. In an instant, a seismic shift occurred inside of her. In one single moment, as she looked at Cade, she forgot everything but him. Inside, she softened and the world went away. The reaction was so strong she couldn’t even fight it. Didn’t want to fight it.

“Cade?”

“Yeah?”

“If we get through this...”

He waited, then finally prompted her. “What? If we get through this what? And I don’t like your phrasing. You promised you wouldn’t do something stupid, and you’re not a stupid person, DeeJay.”

“I’m being stupid right now.”

“Oh, hell,” he said. He put his coffee down and took a step toward her. “You’re not going out there alone.”

She shook her head. “Quit obsessing about the case.” She almost smiled as she saw his eyebrows lift.

“And you’re not?” he demanded.

“I’m obsessing about you.” There, she’d said it. And now she was hanging on painful tenterhooks, awaiting his response.

Slowly, so very slowly, he started to smile. “In what way?”

“After this is over, can we have a date? A real date?”

He stepped even closer. “Like with dinner, and flowers and all that stuff?”

“You can skip the flowers. I’m not a flowers girl.” Her heart had begun to hammer until she couldn’t quite get enough air. She felt emotionally naked, so exposed that any wound now would run deep and last long. She was terrified in a way she had seldom felt before. Having a gun pointed right at her hadn’t been this scary. “Actually, I’m the kind of girl who’d probably give
you
the flowers.”

His smile widened. “What brought this on?”

“When I looked at you just now, I forgot everything else. You make the obsessions go away, Cade. I’d like to explore that.”

He reached her and slid his arms around her loosely. “Best reason for a date I’ve ever heard,” he said huskily, then kissed her.

It wasn’t a demanding kiss. In fact, it was almost comforting, but it invited her to lean into him, to lay her burdens down and just be in the moment. When he broke the kiss, she let herself do something she had never done before: she snuggled into his embrace and rested her head in the hollow of his shoulder. His arms tightened, feeling like a bulwark but not a prison.

“I don’t know what we’ve got here,” he said a little while later. One of his hands began to run up and down the curve of her back, soothing her. “I don’t know if it’ll mean anything when we’re done. But I’d sure like to find out. So yes, we’ll date. More than once unless you discover you can’t stand me. We’ll find out where this might go.”

“Probably all to hell,” she said almost sadly. “My other relationships have.”

“So have mine. I guess neither of us is a good bet. But I’m willing to see.”

She tipped her head a little but could only see the underside of his strong jaw. “It’s scary,” she admitted. That left her even more exposed.

“I think anything that really matters is scary,” he said slowly. “I also think that you have even more experience than I do of staring fear down.”

“I don’t know, but I’ve had to do it more than once.” He was right about that. Giving in to fear, that one time in her life, had cost her a lot. She’d vowed never to do it again.

“After the rape,” she said.

“Hmm?”

“I was young, but maybe that’s no excuse. I allowed myself to be ruled by fear. Fear of what the command structure would do to me if I didn’t shut up. Play by the boys’ rules, if you follow me. I was a coward, and I’ve never forgotten it.”

“Grab your coffee and let’s go sit on the couch. I want to hear about this.”

They settled together, his arm still around her. “Tell me.”

“I think I already have. I could have fought them. I could have become such a pain in the butt that...”

“They’d have found a way to get rid of you. Like they did after your last case.”

“Frankly, while I wanted a career in the army, I was more afraid of getting myself killed.” It hurt to admit it, that fear she hadn’t wanted to face even inside herself. Now she was laying it bare. “Accidents happen. They happen in training, and they happen at other times, like when you get shipped to Iraq or Afghanistan. Or any other troubled place. I don’t think my NCO or CO would have done anything like that, but there was the guy I accused and his friends.”

He cussed quietly. “I don’t guess you felt very well protected.”

“No.” She’d become a nut about studying self-defense of every kind. It had helped her as an MP, but it had never erased her original cowardice.

“I don’t think you were a coward. I think self-preservation is an overwhelming force in all of us. You did what you felt you had to in order to survive. I’m glad you did. My life would have been a lot poorer if I’d never met you.”

Her mood shifted a little, bringing a smidgen of amusement. “You’d never have known if you never met me.”

“Don’t go all logical on me. Some things just aren’t logical.” But his tone, too, sounded faintly amused.

She smiled.

“So,” he said, “you got over being raped, as much as anyone can, but you never got over what you think was cowardice?”

“It still bothers me.” Not often, but from time to time it haunted her.

“That explains a lot, including throwing your career away over one case. So let me be clear here. You have nothing to prove, certainly nothing that requires you to walk into a trap alone. Understood?”

“God. Can no one drop that?”

“I haven’t heard any promises, and that worries me.” He caught her chin with his hand and tipped her face up. “This is something you don’t have to face without backup. If your instincts are really pointing at Sweet, then I suggest we make ourselves available for another approach from him. Note that I said
we
.”

“Noted. But he might not make the invitation again if you’re always around.”

“Then so be it. We’ll find another way to catch this guy. We’ve put Gage onto a number of things, like whether Sweet gave talks at the school, things like that. I assume he’s got someone poring over the phone logs at the crisis center to see if any of the missing boys ever called there, and if so who took the calls. If he’s not, I’m going to insist on it.”

“That could take forever.”

“A lot of things could take forever. But we’ve got to try everything.”