by Mary Stone
Oh, right. Because he was freaking batshit, and she knew it.
No wonder she had doubts about getting involved with him. He wasn’t giving her a reason to have a lot of confidence in him or a long-term relationship.
Linc sucked in a big breath of air and wiped his face with a handkerchief, pushing away thoughts of how damn good they’d been together last night.
Because maybe even “just sex” was too much to hope for.
Dammit. This shit had to happen just when he was finally getting into a groove with a woman, feeling like maybe he wouldn’t spend the rest of his days isolated in his mountain home, just him and his dogs. He’d always wanted that, but since Kylie came along, he’d been thinking of the things his mother wanted for him. Thinking that his mother may have had a point, that having a woman up here might not have been such a bad thing.
Now, it seemed like the worst thing he could possibly think of.
It was his own damn fault. He’d volunteered to go to Syria. He’d protected his country. But he couldn’t have known then that it’d destroy everything in his life that came afterwards. Linc was proud of what he’d done. He’d made a difference. He’d do it again in a heartbeat.
But maybe he wasn’t meant to live a normal life. Not anymore. Maybe he’d given that up when he enlisted. Maybe he was doomed to having one-night stands with women for the rest of his life.
His balls shrank into his body at the thought of going out and picking up women, especially as vampy and vain as the ones were who seemed to be into the idea of a single night of sex.
Besides, Linc was beyond that. Too old for that shit. Clubbing didn’t interest him in the least.
Kylie? She interested him for reasons he still couldn’t completely comprehend.
But he couldn’t risk hurting her again. Hell no.
As Linc finished feeding the animals, he squeezed his eyes closed, willing those thoughts of Syria to get the hell out of his head. He saw his buddies kicking the soccer ball around in crisp detail, almost as if he were still there. Saw the little boy. Breathed dusty air into his lungs that tasted like metal and gasoline. And after that…
After that…
“Hey, loser!” a voice called from the doors of the barn.
Fear gripped him, squeezing his heart. He jumped almost clear to the rafters, dropping the bucket and staggering back against the stall. “Dammit!”
The animals started to sidestep, their fear and confusion clearly visible.
“Whoa!” It was Jacob Dean, Linc’s oldest friend in the world. He eyed Linc suspiciously. “You okay?”
Linc went to Dolly and rubbed her nose, calming her down. Her black eyes scanned him cautiously, like even she was trying to determine if he was sane. “Yeah. Hell. You just…I didn’t hear your truck pull up.” He took a deep breath and forced a smile. “What’s up?”
Jacob laughed, but he was still clearly concerned. “You seriously didn’t hear my truck pull up? What, is this serene mountain wonderland getting to you?” He leaned against the wall of the barn, grinning at him. The big, old red-headed teddy bear was rarely in a bad mood. “Nice greeting.”
Linc stalked toward him, feeling tense and pissed off at himself for not being in control. “I have a lot going on. I had to take Kylie to work, and I’m running behind.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Let me guess. You’re about to make me even more behind?”
Jacob nodded. “I’ve been calling your cell all morning. What’s really going on?”
Linc shook his head. It wasn’t worth talking about. And from the way Jacob was looking at him, he knew the visit wasn’t purely social. Did it mean there was new news regarding the Spotlight Killer case? Or maybe there was a search and rescue that needed his and Storm’s help. Jacob was a Buncombe County detective, and because of his busy schedule, he rarely made daylight visits up here just to shoot the shit. This had to be business.
“My cell’s in the house, charging. Anything new with Kylie’s case?”
“No. SAR.” Jacob reached into his pocket and pulled out a notepad. “Missing child named Bethany Akers. Disappeared from a trailer park near the Rocky Bluff campground. She’s only five. Down syndrome. When they woke this morning, the girl was gone. So was their new puppy. They think she might have followed the dog and gotten lost.”
That wasn’t good. The girl could have been missing for an hour or for most of the night.
Rocky Bluff wasn’t far away. Linc could be to the campground within the hour. It was a chilly, wet morning so the trails had to be slippery, and there were a lot of places where the kid could fall and injure herself if she didn’t know better. That poor kid had to be scared out of her mind.
“All right. Let me round up Storm and I’ll meet you there.”
Jacob’s radio crackled with the voice of the dispatcher. He listened, but then waved it off. “Nah. Just come with me. I’ll drop you and Storm off when it’s over.”
All right. Purpose replaced the despondency he’d been feeling since his nightmare. This was Linc’s passion. He felt for sure that once he filled his head with SAR work, it’d help him put Syria far into the back of his mind. He went inside to get his gear, then pulled the rest of what he needed from his truck.
When he returned with Storm, Jacob slapped him on the back, and they jumped into his truck. Linc tried to pretend like this was just another day, like he wasn’t completely about to lose his shit.
“So…things with Kylie are still good?”
Jacob was just making conversation, but that was the last thing Linc wanted to talk about. The second he heard her name, he thought of those bruises on her arm. “Yeah. She’s good.”
Him? He was another story.
As they drove down the driveway, Linc thought about all the times that he and Jacob had gone out to the bars, searching for meaningless one-night stands. Jacob was still into that. Hell, he was still into grabbing any hot piece of ass he could find. But that had lost its allure for Linc after Syria.
He closed his eyes. A lot of things had.
8
Kylie felt so bad about what had happened with Linc the night before that she wanted to cheer him up. She was a glutton for punishment when she picked up her phone for the tenth time that morning. She knew better. Linc was an awfully terse communicator via text; every single word he wrote sounded like she was annoying him.
Still, she wanted to try. This time, instead of setting the phone back down as she had the previous nine times, she was determined to send something off. Something happy and cute. If she was lucky, he would respond in kind. At the very least, he would still know that everything between them was okay.
Her thumbs made short work of the message: Last night was amazing. Can’t stop thinking about you. For good measure, she added a heart and a suggestively winking emoticon.
By lunchtime, still no response.
Dammit.
Why did she do this to herself? Why did she have to get herself involved with men who blew both hot and cold? Hot, when he wanted sex, and cold all the rest of the time.
She leaned forward until her forehead struck the desk.
Actually, Kylie’s love life had never afforded her many choices of men. Her mother’d told her that they were intimidated by her bubbly personality, but Kylie was certain it must be something else. Until Linc came along, she’d had the longest, driest dry spell when it came to men that one could possibly imagine for someone her age. Even so, Linc was a total winner when it came to Kylie’s pathetic list of past lovers.
Kylie gritted her teeth as she looked at his name in her phone for the hundredth time that day and wondered why he had to tangle her stomach in knots like that. He’d read the message. He had just decided she wasn’t worth replying to.
In the hopes of knocking some sense into herself, Kylie lifted her head a few inches and let it fall with a thunk again.
As Kylie was having her mini mental breakdown, Greg walked in, his sparse hair flattened against his forehead from the
rain. He wiped at his face and groaned. “What now?”
Straightening quickly, Kylie grabbed for a folder. She came up empty because she’d already finished every last project on her to-do list. “Oh, nothing.”
He eyed her suspiciously. “It’s always something with you.”
She’d tried talking to Greg about her pathetic love life with Linc before, and his stellar advice at that time had been, “Screw him.” Kylie figured he’d probably impart the same wisdom to her in this situation, and he would have been right. She probably should’ve just given Linc the double middle-finger and moved on.
Kylie turned her phone over and forced herself to be her regular, cheery self. “I’m great. Did you have a big case you were working on?”
“Same old shit.” He collapsed into his chair and started to go through the reports she’d stacked neatly on his desk. “Any messages?”
Kylie nodded, trying for a nonchalance she didn’t feel. “One. It’s on your desk. From Emma Jennings. Remember her? She still thinks one of the people who manages her vast fortune is stealing her blind.”
He stared at it, then hooked a finger at Kylie. “All right. Give me the rest.”
She’d been so sure that he’d blow it off that it took a moment to register the request. “The what?”
“The rest. I’m sure you’ve probably been researching the crap out of this case already, looking up this Emma woman on your goggle or whatever it’s called. So, what else do you know?”
She held up her hands, her innocence not feigned this time. “Google. And I haven’t. Really.”
His eyes were still narrowed in suspicion. “Are you serious?”
“I am!” Kylie pointed at the reports on his desk. “I’ve been a busy little well-behaved beaver. I finished all of them.”
He still looked cautious, as if he thought she was trying to pull one over on him. He studied the message again, scratching his nose. “What? Embezzling scumbags aren’t your thing? It’s only serial killers you care about?”
“No,” she said pointedly. “I had work to do. Remember? The reports. So, I did them. I didn’t look up this Emma Jennings or anything of the sort.”
He crossed his arms and frowned at her. “Well, why not?” he boomed. “What good are you?”
Kylie’s eyes lifted in surprise. “Well…it’s not my job. You mean…you want me to?”
He shrugged. “I’ll admit, your goggling hasn’t been entirely unhelpful, short stuff.”
She grinned at him. “Googling. Really? So, are you saying that I’ve actually been doing a good job? Because I thought you just thought of me as a meddling little nuisance.”
Lord help her, but a tear threatened to leak from her eye.
“Relax. You do meddle. And you are a nuisance. But every now and again you come up with something good from that internet thing you got going on there. So…why don’t you look up Emma Jennings and tell me what you come up with before I give her a call?”
Yes. Yes. Yes.
She hadn’t even had to bribe him with Mrs. Jennings’s promise of double payment.
Kylie reached for her phone and opened it up, noting with only a bit of sadness this time that Linc still hadn’t texted. Then she typed Emma Jennings Asheville into the web browser. She scrolled through the many results. “Emma Jennings. Says here she’s eighty-four years old. Oooh, lives on Browntown Road in Biltmore Forest. Swanky!”
He gave Kylie a look. “And?”
“And I once had a girlfriend who lived down there. Her house was pretty much a mini Biltmore mansion. She had a pool and a tennis court inside her freaking house. It was—”
“I mean, what else about Emma Jennings?” he grumbled, rolling his eyes.
Greg and his impatience. Kylie bit her tongue and scrolled through a little more. “Looks like she’s a wealthy philanthropist. She’s given a lot of money away to causes around town. Mostly art foundations and things.”
“Jennings,” he repeated. “Hmm. Yeah. The name sounds familiar. I think her husband was Arnold Jennings? The artist?”
“Yeah?” Kylie typed in Arnold Jennings. When she did, it brought up a slew of images, mostly of art pieces. Kylie wasn’t an expert, but she guessed they were interesting. She pulled up the Wikipedia page on him. “Yes. He’s the artist. Married to Emma. But he died about five years ago.”
Greg nodded. “I’ve seen it happen before. Rich, elderly people being abused by those who should be taking care of their fortunes for them. It’s a sad state.”
Kylie’s heart squeezed. That poor old woman. She’d sounded at her wit’s end. She should be enjoying her fortune, not worrying about this. Kylie had never known her grandparents, but she’d always wished she had. She seriously hated when people preyed on those who were weaker than them. What was wrong with this world?
Kylie sighed and put her phone down. “That’s about all there is.”
Greg surveyed the neat pile of completed reports Kylie had centered on his desk. “I’m swamped. How about this? You want to give the woman a call and arrange to meet her? Take the lead and get some information about this missing money for me?”
Kylie’s heart soared in her chest. “You mean it?”
He nodded. “You’re good at asking the right questions, prying people open. And I doubt this Emma woman is packing heat, so I don’t have to worry about you getting shot again.”
Kylie couldn’t believe it. While her inner Kylie was clapping excitedly, spinning in her chair, the outer Kylie could barely move.
Greg raised a bushy eyebrow. “You okay?”
His concerned look had her practically leaping from her seat. She didn’t want to go all catatonic and have him change his mind. “Oh, yes. Absolutely. I can’t wait.” She went over to shake his hand. She nearly dislocated it, she was so happy. “Thank you. Thank you. I won’t let you down.”
“I know, short stuff,” he muttered. “Calm down.”
But she couldn’t. Just yesterday, she’d thought she was on the verge of typing for the rest of her life. And now, he was complimenting her. Telling her she’d done well. Giving her her very own case!
All right, it wasn’t a serial killer and would probably be dull. Financial stuff usually was. But Kylie didn’t care. It was hers. Her very first Greg-approved case.
Kylie picked up the phone to call Mrs. Jennings and arrange to meet with her, barely able to contain her excitement. She thought for a second about texting Linc to let him know, but the jerkface still hadn’t texted her back yet. Other than him, she realized there wasn’t anyone else she cared to tell. Her mother would just warn her not to get shot again, and then nag her about starting classes again.
There wasn’t anyone else who’d be happy for her. No one else would understand just what this meant. The thought made her sad.
Damn, Linc. All it’d take was three words: Miss you too. Was that so hard? What would that take, thirty insignificant seconds of his time?
Refusing to let thoughts like that intrude, Kylie quickly called Emma Jennings back and arranged to meet her that day. Even with the Linc thing dampening her mood, she couldn’t stop from smiling. Her first, real, Greg-sanctioned client appointment. She could probably even file an expense report on the mileage for this.
A half-hour before the arranged time, she grabbed her jacket and purse, clipped a leash onto Vader’s collar, and said to Greg, “Off to do business! Hold my calls! Wish me luck!”
“Don’t get shot,” he muttered as Kylie headed for the door, Vader trotting behind her.
A thought struck her. She turned around and said, “You know, if I’m going to be doing important client meetings like this, it might behoove me to get some actual business cards? You know, with my name and the Starr Investigations logo on them?”
He stared at her, then pointed at the door. “Behoove your little ass right out of here.”
All right. Well, it was worth a shot.
Kylie shrugged, then lifted her purse onto her shoulder and headed for
her car. She was so jazzed, she practically skipped the whole way, even in new heels she could barely walk in. “Vader, this is it! I’m going places.” The big dog smiled at her, his tongue lolling out as she stared at him in the rearview mirror. “Want my autograph? You can say you knew me when.”
He gave her a droopy yawn and rested his chin on the chewed-up headrest in front of him. She’d interrupted his afternoon nap.
Kylie drove south, to an area called Biltmore Forest, which used to be part of the Biltmore Estate years ago. It was known for its mansions, and Emma Jennings’s house didn’t disappoint. She gaped as she pulled up a long cobblestone driveway, to an elegant whitewashed stone French chateau that was easily twice the size of her whole apartment building. There was a split staircase going up to two massive doors, so for a minute, she stood there, at the base of it, just marveling and thinking of that house in The Sound of Music.
As she did, Vader barked, pulling her attention back to business. “Stay here,” Kylie said, using her alpha voice with him. “Remember? Stay! I know you won’t do it for me, but just pretend Linc, your best friend, is me.”
He tilted his head at her.
“And please…don’t eat any more of my headrest. Driving in my car is already uncomfortable enough as it is.”
He gave Kylie a sad look and stuck his head out the window, already trying to get out.
“Really? Stay!” Taking a deep breath, Kylie tried to remember everything she’d learned in Vader’s training. She wagged a stern finger at the big dog. “This doesn’t look like the type of place that will put up with your shenanigans, dude.”
Vader’s ears perked up, just before a yipping sound registered in Kylie’s brain. Oh no. There was another dog in the near vicinity. She whirled around, her mouth open to shout another “no,” but Vader had already managed to wiggle his large frame through the, clearly, too wide-open window.
