Dark Burning: Dark Falls, CO Romantic Thriller Book 6

by Lori Ryan

  She stood and danced her way to him, arms waving as she shuffled and danced to a tune only she could hear.

  As a child, he’d thought it was cool that she seemed to have a stage under her feet all the time and a song that went with her everywhere she went.

  Not anymore.

  He crossed his arms. “I got a call that you fell.”

  She made a face and put a hand to her hip. “I did. It scared the daylights out of me.”

  A woman in nurse’s scrubs was approaching them and his mom waved a hand to her, smiling. “Maria here found me on the floor of my room and helped me up.”

  Eric looked at the young woman. “So, you didn’t see my mom fall?”

  “Eric.” His mother scowled. “Don’t be rude. This isn’t one of your investigations.”

  She swung an arm back to the room, moving a hell of a lot better than any seventy-year-old who’d taken a fall that day would. “Come on, we’re playing cards. You can sit and play with us for a while.”

  He felt the eyes of the people in the room on him. Felt their stares. The nurse next to his mother put a hand on his mom’s back.

  “We should get you back into your chair, Mrs. Cantu.” She shot a nervous look at Eric.

  “She talked you into telling me she fell, didn’t she?” Eric said, quietly. His jaw felt tight and he hated the way his gut still burned at the lies. Hell, he should be used to this by now.

  Maria’s face burned red and she all but hissed at him. “She misses you.”

  Eric pressed his lips together and nodded, slowly. Yeah, she missed him. Missed having his emotions to prey on. Missed feeding off of his pain.

  Well, he wasn’t twelve anymore. He knew how to protect himself. And to hell with the way the woman was looking at him. She just hadn’t learned about his mother yet. Hadn’t known she was manipulating the woman right out of a job if her bosses figured out what she had done.

  “I’m glad you’re okay, Mom,” he said, choking on the word mom.

  He looked at the nurse who was looking increasingly uncomfortable. “A word of advice. Figure out what manipulation looks like. Fast.”

  He turned and walked out of the building. He had an arsonist to catch.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Merritt stared from the wine bottle to the tea pot and back. She should probably make a nice cup of chamomile, but a glass of wine sounded so good.

  Her mother always said drinking alone was unseemly. She wondered if it could be considered drinking alone if she called her best friend, Gabby, and drank the wine while they talked.

  She could use one of their hour-long chats. She missed being able to go for coffee or grab lunch together.

  A sound in the other room told Merritt it wasn’t wine or tea time yet.

  She took a slow breath and tried to get up the energy for what she knew was coming. She missed the days of Collin going to bed easily at the end of a long day. Nowadays, nothing was easy with her son. She loved him, but heaven save her from this strong-willed boy.

  Shuffles and creaks came from the living room as Merritt made her way down the hall. Then there was the yip of Kitten barking and Collin’s muffled efforts to quiet the dog. She had a feeling he truly believed, were it not for the dog, he would get away with playing with his airplanes after bedtime.

  She came around the corner into the living room, eyes going straight to the play area she’d set up for the puppy on one side of the room. The space was empty.

  She frowned and spun in a slow circle. Nothing.

  Where had the puppy gone to? Damn it, if he was unsupervised too long, he had a tendency to slip off someplace to pee in a corner.

  No, she thought, she let him out to pee right before she put Collin into bed. He should be good for a bit.

  Merritt heard shushing and realized where her escapees were. She looked behind the couch to see Collin hugging the dog to his chest in one arm and his favorite airplane with the other. He looked up at her with a crooked grin and those eyes that said he hoped he was cute enough to avoid getting in trouble.

  Merritt jerked her head toward the bedroom. “Bed. Now.”

  “Aww mom.”

  She could tell from his tone Collin was winding up for a long argument, but she didn’t have it in her. She had known when she moved them out to Dark Falls that she’d be losing the safety net and support system she had been blessed to have as a single mom. She knew this was going to be hard.

  Still, it was times like this, when she was exhausted and didn’t think she had the energy in her for another round with her son, that she doubted herself. She shouldn’t have done this. No matter how important the move had seemed at the time. No matter that she thought it was the right thing for her and Collin.

  “Don’t aww mom me. I don’t have the energy for this tonight, baby. Bed. Now.”

  “It’s not fair.” He let go of the puppy and kicked his feet out, slumping down to the floor. Merritt recognized the signs that a full-blown tantrum was coming. She remembered the podcast on parenting solutions she had listened to in the car that morning. Something about laying out a menu of options and consequences for him.

  “Head to bed now, Buddy, and you can play with your airplanes in the morning. Or continue to argue and we’re going to be putting those planes up in the closet for a few days.”

  “No!” he shouted in the thick voice that told her without needing to look that he was crying. Yup. Full blown tantrum.

  He hauled back and launched his plane at the wall, leaving a divot in the drywall.

  Fantastic.

  Merritt leaned down, swallowing the urge to shout at him and picked up the plane. Of course, when she headed for the closet with it, he ran at her and grabbed her arm with both of his, tugging and pulling at it.

  “No! No! I’ll put you in jail, mommy. You go to jail, you bad mommy. I don’t love you.”

  How was it kids always knew exactly how to hit at your weak spots? Did they get a manual at birth that taught them how to throw their punches where it hurt?

  She knew all parents doubted themselves at some point. At least, she hoped they did. But hearing what her parents and sisters had thought of her parenting ability had hurt. And she’d be lying if she said she hadn’t questioned herself a lot more since then.

  “She’s raising that boy like he’s her best friend, not a child,” her mom had said as Merritt stood frozen in the hallway listening to a conversation she hadn’t been meant to hear.

  “So she has us to step in and do the hard parenting when it needs to be done. Where’s the harm in that?” Her father had thought he was sticking up for her but his words hurt almost as much as her mother’s. When they started making plans for Collin and his future in the next breath, she had known she needed to change things. She needed to step up and raise her son without relying on anyone to do it for her.

  She shook herself back to the present and kept walking to the closet, knowing she needed to follow through. She had told Collin several times that if he threw his toys, he was losing them. And she knew he was testing her right now more than ever. If she said something nowadays, she had to stick with it.

  “I hate you. You’re not my mommy. I want to send you back. I’ll send you to jail.”

  She didn’t know what any of that meant. He just seemed to spew hatred when he was angry, even if it didn’t make any kind of actual sense.

  She kept walking, ignoring his fists at her legs and the way he jumped for her arm every few feet. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kitten head toward the door.

  “Stupid. You’re a stupid, stupid mommy.”

  Merritt breathed through her frustration and opened the closet, reaching to put the plane up on the highest shelf where he couldn’t reach it. “You can have it back in three days. It’s time for bed now,” she said, repeating the direction for him as calmly as she could.

  Kitten circled and whined at the door.

  Crap. Merritt knew what that meant. She headed toward the door to let
the puppy out.

  Collin was beating his fists on her backside as she walked and she had to bite into her lip to keep from spinning and yelling at him. It was times like these that she knew she was failing as a mom. Her parents had been right. Her son didn’t respect her at all.

  She was two steps from the door when Kitten squatted and peed on the wood floor.

  “No!” Merritt shouted and dove for the dog, who then began to waddle and run, trying to get away from her but still peeing as he went. “No, damn it, no.”

  It was almost a sob as she looked at the pee and the puppy and Collin who was frozen in the middle of his tantrum.

  She sank to the floor and let her head fall back against the wall. She was too damned tired for this. For all of it.

  She closed her eyes, knowing full well she was close to tears. Collin must have known it, too. He stopped his rant and crawled into her lap, followed by a whining Kitten. Merritt looked down at the two little beings looking up at her.

  Lord, what had possessed her to let Collin name the puppy Kitten?

  She laughed.

  “Are you okay, Mommy?” Collin asked, looking more than a little uneasy. The kid must have good instincts. He could tell she was way too close to the edge.

  She took a slow deep breath. “I am. But I have pee to clean up and you have to get to bed.”

  His face went mutinous again for a minute, but Merritt raised her hand in a stopping motion. “Uh uh, Bud. You’ve lost your airplane for three days. Go to bed now and it’s only three. Fuss and it’s going to be a week.”

  His lower lip quivered. “You have to tuck me in.”

  She wanted to point out that she already had, but she didn’t. She’d take this as a win. It was close enough. “I have to clean up this mess,” she said, not letting go of the wriggling dog for fear he’d walk in his urine and track it around, multiplying the mess to epic proportions. She transferred Kitten to Collin’s arms. “You take Kitten into your room and shut the door, please, while I wipe this up, then I’ll come in and tuck you in, okay?”

  He cradled the dog and nodded.

  “Hey, Buddy,” she said and he turned back to her.

  Merritt pulled him into her, careful not to squish the dog between them. “I love you, Little Man.” She felt his small body in her arms and wondered how long she would let him hug and kiss on him like this. She hoped forever. She kissed his cheek and neck, drawing giggles from the little boy who was her world. “Okay, off to bed. I’ll be in as soon as I’m finished cleaning up.”

  Merritt watched him walk down the hall. Wine, she thought. She was definitely having a glass of wine after this, and hopefully talking to Gabby.

  Merritt went to the laundry room, grabbing the spray that was supposed to neutralize the enzymes in Kitten’s pee so he didn’t want to mark that spot again. Or maybe the spray was the thing that had the enzymes, not the pee. Maybe it was a pee-eating enzyme spray. She didn’t remember. She grabbed a roll of towels and went back to clean up the puddle, then tossed the dirty towels in the trash.

  Five more minutes and she could relax.

  She went to tuck Collin in and found the boy laying with his feet on the pillow and his head facing the end of the bed.

  At least he was asleep. She lifted the edge of his blanket and folded it over him so he was covered. It wouldn’t kill him to sleep upside down and she wasn’t about to try to flip him over and risk waking him up. She was shot.

  Tiptoeing out of the room with a puppy under one arm, she went to the kitchen, popped Kitten into his puppy pen with one of his chew bones, and headed for the couch with a bottle of wine and a box of crackers.

  “Please be awake,” she whispered to herself as she picked up her phone, planning to text Gabby.

  The phone buzzed in her hand. An incoming text from Eric.

  I’m sorry I yelled.

  Merritt almost dropped her phone. Was he really apologizing? She hadn’t thought he had it in him.

  Who is this and what have you done with Detective Cantu? She typed back adding a little googly-eyed emoji at the end.

  She waited, expecting a text back, but the phone rang in her hand.

  Okaaaay, she thought, opening the wine bottle, thankful for screw tops on wine, even though she had a feeling that was sacrilege on some level.

  She poured herself half a glass before answering. “If you’re thinking I can save you from the body snatchers, you’re wrong. I don’t have that kind of skill.”

  “And yet I keep finding you at my crime scenes.” There was a strange mix of irritation and playfulness in his voice and Merritt remembered the way he’d been in bed the night they went home together. Well, back to her hotel. She hadn’t even had her house yet when she hooked up with him, having come ahead of time to take care of the closing before Collin arrived with her parents.

  The first part of the night had been steamy and hot in a way she had forgotten sex could be. She’d done things with the man that made her cheeks burn just thinking about them now.

  But later, as they’d tangled together in bed, he had been playful and joking with her. It had been fun. And she’d begun to have the slight hopeful eagerness that comes from a new relationship.

  Not that she thought there would be a relationship. He’d told her from the start that there couldn’t be anything past that one night, but when they lay there talking, legs hooked in the sheets and each other, she had started to wish there could be more. That it could go somewhere.

  She closed her eyes, surprised by the intensity of the pain that burrowed deep in her chest at the loss of it. Not the loss of him, exactly. It was more the loss of the chance to have someone in her life. She had good friends and she had Collin, whom she loved. She had her family. But she didn’t have a partner. She’d been alone for so long, and honestly, the loneliness was starting to hurt.

  She shoved aside the feelings for another day. Now wasn’t the time for a pity party. “I’m not going to stop doing my job, Eric,” she said quietly.

  She pulled a throw blanket over herself and curled her legs up under her on the couch. The wine was a light crisp white and she was sipping it a little faster than she should.

  She heard his sigh through the phone line.

  There was a pause and she thought it sounded like he was trying to come up with something to say. Or maybe he was just gearing up for another lecture. She took a healthy gulp of her wine and opened her mouth to tell him where to shove it, when he spoke.

  “How is Collin? Did he manage to keep his teeth off other people today?”

  Merritt waited a beat, then deadpanned, repeating her line from earlier. “Who are you and what have you done with Detective Cantu?”

  He barked a laugh. “Hey, I like kids. Why should that come as such a shock to you that I would ask about him?”

  “I guess I’m not used to more than growling and grumbling from you nowadays.”

  “There’s a lot to me you don’t know about. I’m the officer in charge of our local C.O.P. Program.”

  “What is that?” she asked, refilling her wine glass, going past the halfway mark this time. There hadn’t been a peep from the bedroom and Kitten seemed to have fallen asleep in his pen.

  “It stands for Cops on Pavement, but I didn’t name it so don’t come to me with any complaints about the name.”

  “Uhhh.” She couldn’t decipher what the name meant but the image of a bunch of men and women in blue rolling around on the pavement was a funny one.

  “It’s a program where we head out to neighborhoods with a lot of kids, usually ones where kids might have a negative view of police, and we bring a basketball or a soccer ball or whatever and play with the kids for a few hours. It started out as basketball, hence the ‘on pavement’ part of the name, but now we include other sports when we can.”

  “Oh,” she said, a frown coming to her lips as she realized she didn’t have a response that was more coherent than that. “That’s nice,” she added lamely.

&nbs
p; He laughed again. “You sound shocked. I can be nice, you know.”

  “I, uh, yeah.” She was stammering because she was picturing all the nice—very, very nice—things he’d shown her. She knew damned well how nice he could be.

  This time his laugh was deep and knowing. He knew just where her mind had gone. This was getting embarrassing.

  “So,” he pressed, “what’s the answer? Did he keep his teeth to himself today?”

  “Actually, he did.” She didn’t mention the meltdown from five minutes ago. Technically, he hadn’t put his teeth on her.

  “How about we take him to pizza at Andrighetti’s tomorrow night? He can put those teeth on a pepperoni pie and I’ll catch you up on what’s happening with the case.”

  Merritt froze for a split second, not sure what to make of his invitation.

  Eric must have read her hesitation. “My boss says I have to play nice with you, so I might as well get a pizza out of it.”

  Okay, so he was just trying to make working with her more palatable. She could get on board with that and Collin would love going out for pizza. Two birds, one stone.

  “Okay, we’ll meet you at Andrighetti’s. I can look up where it is on the Internet but I have to warn you I like to try to get out early with him. It’s easier than trying to wait with a fussy kid if there’s a line. Can we do 5 o’clock?”

  “Works for me. I’ll see you there.”

  Merritt hung up the phone and looked at her glass of wine. She didn’t know what was more pitiful, drinking wine alone by herself on the couch or the way she was tempted to turn the working date into a fantasy date in her head.

  Chapter Fifteen

  He was dumber than a post. A post that is been eaten by termites and then ground up in a wood chipper for mulch.

  That’s me, Eric thought, dumb termite-riddled old post mulch.

  “How about that one?” Merritt said, pointing at a booth near the video games at the back of the restaurant.

  Eric nodded and Collin raced for the booth, putting the number they’d been given to identify their order on the little stand at the table.