Heroes in Uniform: Soldiers, SEALs, Spies, Rangers and Cops: Sexy Hot Contemporary Alpha Heroes From NY Times and USA Today Bestselling Authors

by Sharon Hamilton

  Katelyn sighed. She should be grateful to them. She was grateful. But she was also irritated, aggravated, annoyed, and pretty damned ticked off at this point. At John. Not her neighbors.

  If John would just get back here, she could vent her frustration...no, it was anger really. She could vent her anger where it belonged—on him. It had taken Katelyn about two minutes to see what he was doing after he dropped her off. He was pushing her away. The only thing she couldn’t figure out was why.

  But the why didn’t matter. Katelyn had lived her whole life letting her father push her away and she was tired of it. Whatever was going on in John’s head, she’d just tell him he had to stop it.

  Sure...that oughta work, Katelyn. Good plan.

  Katelyn huffed out a breath and tossed herself down in a chair to wait.

  She popped back up again. Pacing was better. Pacing would let her keep up a good head of steam to spew at John when he came back. Yup, mad is better.

  The sound of a car door closing pulled her from her thoughts. She heard the front door open and murmured conversation in the living room between John and the deputy who had been babysitting her. Katelyn braced herself in the kitchen. She’d just wait for him to come in and then tell him how this was going to go. She’d just tell him she wouldn’t stand for him just pulling away whenever he wanted to. That whatever was going through his head was...well, she really didn’t know what was going through his head so she had no idea what she’d say. But, she’d say something, dammit.

  The look on his face when he walked through the door stopped Katelyn short. John looked positively wrecked. The man in front of her was utterly destroyed. Katelyn looped her arms around his neck and pulled him down to her, resting her forehead on his. She needed to be close to him, to feel him and know he could feel her.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  John didn’t answer. He lifted her into his arms and walked to the couch, holding her tight to him as though he’d never let her go. And, Katelyn realized, she never wanted him to let her go. The feeling of being in his arms felt so right. As though everything that was messed up in her world was suddenly okay. Or, at least, didn’t matter very much just then. With his arms around her, Katelyn could just ignore all the stress and the fear, and the questions and doubts. She could let herself just be.

  John sat on the couch with Katelyn in his lap and leaned back. He held her for a long time before speaking.

  “Sorry, I freaked and ran,” he finally said.

  Katelyn looked into his eyes. She’d always been drawn to his eyes. They weren’t quite brown, or quite green. They were some mixture of both colors that mesmerized her and made her want to sink into him for hours. Made her want to lose herself in them. When he had shuttered his eyes from her earlier, it had scared her. The fact that he would hide himself from her freaked her out immeasurably.

  “What happened?” she asked, and she had a feeling the answer wouldn’t have anything to do with today.

  “Did your dad ever tell you anything about my background when I came to work for him?”

  Katelyn shook her head. In fact, only his slight accent told her he was from New York. Other than that, she didn’t know anything about his background. It hadn’t struck her as odd until now that her father hadn’t told her anything. Her father talked about John all the time. And yet, as she thought back, she couldn’t remember a single story about John’s past.

  “I worked undercover in New York City before I came here. Eighteen months deep undercover in one of the sickest gangs New York had ever seen. I worked my way through the ranks getting close to the leader, Eddie Coleman; a crazy bastard who ruled his turf by killing anyone who got in his way in the most twisted ways he could come up with.”

  Katelyn felt a chill run through John. She lay her head down on his shoulder and held him as he kept talking, his hands running up and down her back as he spoke.

  “I always wanted to be a cop, and I never really gave much thought to the danger I’d put myself in to catch this guy. We needed evidence we could use to get him off the streets for good. And I was okay with putting myself at risk to do that.” The deep breath John took felt like he had to work to take it, like he was choking on the life he was remembering. “I got close to one of the girls who hung out with the gang. Girls were passed around from member to member—group property. But, if a guy was strong enough, if his position was solid enough in the gang, he could claim a girl as his property only.”

  The words were bitter, and she could tell the thought of having to claim a woman as his property sickened John. It sickened her. Katelyn had to hold herself still, be sure not to flinch. She couldn’t imagine John living in that world, having to immerse himself in it for any reason. Justice and doing what was right were such innate parts of who John was. She could tell he was sinking back into that life as he talked. The slight New York accent she hardly ever heard from him became more pronounced.

  “I claimed Lexi. Technically, Eddie could still touch her if he wanted to, but no one else could. She gave me information, told me things she overheard when no one thought she was listening.” John paused for a long time, as though gathering himself.

  “Then one day, I was hanging out at Eddie’s house with a bunch of the guys and I got this bad feeling. We were set to take down the whole gang in the next few days. We were just waiting on some warrants. But, I got this feeling, like everyone was looking at me funny and no one wanted to let me leave. I kept texting Lexi but she wasn’t answering.”

  John seemed lost in reliving the story, and Katelyn was frozen in his arms. She couldn’t stop him even though she wanted to. The tension coursing through his body was palpable, his muscles taut and unyielding beneath her.

  “All of a sudden, everyone was fine with me leaving, but they had these big smiles on their faces and I knew something was wrong. The whole way to my car, I thought I’d be shot in the back any minute. I thought they’d made me and I wasn’t going to get out of there alive. But nothing happened. They let me drive away. I went to Lexi’s apartment but she wasn’t there. I drove to all the places she might be, but I couldn’t find her. I looked for hours. Then, I got to the station and heard about the rumors. My cover had been blown. Lexi had been labeled a snitch. I’m not there for two minutes before there’s a whole lot of noise out front.”

  John didn’t speak again for a while and Katelyn just waited. The tension in her body matched his with the dread of knowing what was coming. Whatever it was would be horrible and she didn’t want to hear it, but she would. For John, she’d hear it and help him through it, because it was obviously affecting what he was feeling about her at the moment.

  “I let myself get distracted by Lexi. I wasn’t focused. I should have focused on the job,” John all but whispered. “They dumped her body out in front of the police station like she was trash.”

  John’s voice was thick with unshed tears and Katelyn took his head in her hands, forcing him to look at her. “I’m not Lexi, honey. I’m not her, and we’re not caught in the crossfire of a gang war.”

  John’s voice cracked when he answered, and she could hear the pain seeping in no matter how hard he tried to cover it. “What if I lose focus? What if I lose you?” he asked.

  Katelyn framed his face with her hands and kissed him softly. “You won’t,” she said against his lips. “You won’t lose me.”

  He just wrapped himself around her, kissing her with his drugging kisses that stoked the fire burning inside her. But, tonight wasn’t about that fire. It was about comfort and connection. About simply being together, holding on.

  Hours later, he walked her up to her bed and went back downstairs to sleep on the couch. Katelyn didn’t sleep for a long time. Her mind raced with thoughts of the man who was guarding her downstairs, thoughts of the man she knew would do anything to protect her. And with no memory of what she’d witnessed as a child, Katelyn was powerless to help him figure out who was coming after her. Who was putting them both in harm�
��s way.

  Everlasting: Chapter Thirteen

  John stared at the big house at the top of Evers Hill on the edge of town. It was easily twenty times larger than any single man needed, but as a developer, it was Charlie Hanford’s pride and joy. He threw an annual holiday party there that anyone in any kind of position in town was invited to, complete with valet parking and personalized Christmas trinkets for each guest. The party was gaudy as heck, but it was all Charlie.

  John stared up at the house that had been the scene of Caroline Bowden’s murder, and wondered why Charlie Hanford wouldn’t have moved out after it happened. His best friend’s wife had been killed in his office, yet he still worked at that desk every day. What on earth would possess a man to do that?

  Arrogance, came the answer. John knew Charlie was too arrogant to give up his house on the hill even after finding Caroline murdered there.

  He sat in his cruiser and looked up at the house. He’d driven over to each of the neighbors’ houses and checked the angles. Because of the hill and the way the driveway leading up to Charlie’s house curved, neither neighbor had a very good view of the top of the driveway. It would have been hard to see much more than a general description of a car parked up there.

  Unless Marcy Whorton was driving past at the precise moment the red truck drove up the driveway, she wouldn’t have seen much. Danny had left for Sol City—the large retirement community outside of town—this morning to see if Marcy remembered what she saw the day of Caroline’s murder. John headed back into town as he waited for a call from Danny. The radio crackled to life just as he pulled into one of the slanted parking spots in front of Two Sisters Diner.

  “Boss?”

  “Yeah, Danny? What have you got?” John asked, not opening his car door. He didn’t want anyone to overhear this conversation.

  “Marcy Whorton is here all right, and she remembers everything about that day. She’s pretty, um, spunky, I guess you could call her, boss.”

  John would have laughed if the information he needed wasn’t so serious. Danny was often fighting off advances from older women. Much older women.

  “What’d she remember, Danny?”

  “She says she only told the officer that she’d seen a red truck. She told him she couldn’t tell him anything more about it. Didn’t see a plate, the driver, how new or old it was. Nothing. But get this, boss. She says it was Sam Denton who put the idea in the officer’s head that it was Ken Statler. They were all standing outside the front of the house. By that time, everyone in town that could get up to Charlie’s place was standing at the bottom of the driveway where the police had the area blocked off. She went over to tell the officer what she saw, and Sam and Charlie were standing there next to her. She remembers it was Sam who said, ‘that would’ve been Ken Statler’s truck’ as though he knew Ken had been there. She said the officer wrote it down and that was that.”

  John didn’t answer right away. He was too busy cursing under his breath at the officer who didn’t follow up, didn’t confirm one way or the other whose truck was outside the house that day. And there had never been any confirmation of an alibi for Ken Statler. He’d simply disappeared so no one had a chance to find out where he’d been that day.

  “Thanks, Danny. Come on back. We’ll go see Marcy again if we come up with anything else.”

  As John stared through the window of his cruiser, he could only think one thing. Sam Denton seemed to be circling around a lot of the details of this mystery. He had supposedly been with Charlie moments before Charlie discovered Caroline’s body. The police report stated the two had met in Charlie’s living room to exchange some papers and then Sam had left. Charlie went in the office and found Caroline. If it was really Sam’s truck in the driveway, not Ken Statler’s, could Sam have been there earlier in the day and Charlie didn’t know it?

  John’s mind scrolled back over the details of the day Caroline was killed. He pulled the statement Charlie had made out of his memory and went back over the facts. Charlie said he had arrived to meet with Sam. He’d said Sam was waiting for him when he arrived. They reviewed some papers in the living room, then Sam left before Charlie found Caroline. Sam Denton’s fingerprints were found in Charlie’s office, but they had been on the list of prints that were expected to be found in there, along with Charlie, Caroline, and Charlie’s cleaning woman’s.

  John thought back to all of the other facts in his head that were connected to Sam Denton. When Katelyn was attacked last week, John had asked all the guys working on the build-out at her studio if they’d seen anyone around the day of her attack, or in the days leading up to it, who shouldn’t have been there. Sam gave a vague description of a car. Dark sedan that was a little beat up. The kind of car you might see in about a hundred or more driveways around here. Oddly, no one else had seen the car. Only Sam.

  John felt sick to his stomach as he wondered if the answer to this mystery had been right under their noses, so damn close to home all these years. The biggest problem he’d have would be finding an actual answer to his questions. He definitely didn’t have enough for a warrant. If he brought Sam in to question him, he’d tip him off that he was suspicious and any evidence that may exist in this twenty-four-year-old mystery would be destroyed, if it hadn’t been already.

  John forgot about lunch as he pulled out of the parking spot and headed toward the hospital. He hoped like hell he’d find Alan awake and cognizant today of all days.

  * * *

  A nurse smiled at John as he entered Alan’s hospital room. “He’s a little worn out today, I’m afraid,” she said as she let herself out with a sympathetic look at Alan, who lay sleeping in the bed.

  John winced. He knew Alan’s condition was getting worse, but he wasn’t ready to face that reality yet. He pulled a chair up next to the bed and leaned over his mentor.

  “Alan, I need to talk to you. Are you awake, Alan?” John asked gently. He hated to wake him, but the time for getting answers seemed to be slipping away from him before his eyes. Right along with his friend’s life.

  “Hummph,” grunted Alan, opening one eye. He didn’t say anything else, but John hoped he was awake enough to answer him.

  “Alan, I need you to think back. Did Sam Denton have a key to Charlie Hanford’s place back in eighty-nine? Would he have had access to the house?”

  He didn’t get an answer from Alan—instead the answer came from the other side of the room.

  “Why do you want to know that?” asked Charlie from the doorway. John could tell Charlie was trying to act casual about the question, but he sensed an edge beneath the man’s relaxed facade.

  John matched the relaxation with a measured sigh as he stood and turned toward Charlie. He didn’t want Charlie to feel any need to mention this to Sam.

  “I’m just trying to grasp for anything and everything I can to add to the file before, well…you know,” he said with a nod toward Alan. “There’s virtually no evidence on the case, and one of the things I can’t find in the notes is a list of who would have had access to the crime scene. It should have been pretty standard to have that list in the file with an apparent robbery, but it isn’t there.”

  Charlie shrugged as he walked into the room. “A lot of people have access to my place. I never thought I’d have to worry about it in this town, you know?”

  John nodded, and Charlie went on. “Sam had a key. My housekeeper had one. Still does. Let’s see… The lawn guy had a key to the garage, and from there he could get into the main part of the house. I never locked that door. Caroline had a key, of course, so she could come in to do the books.”

  “Did Ken Statler have a key?” John asked.

  Charlie frowned. “No. No, he didn’t, but wasn’t the back door broken? I always thought the intruder got in that way.”

  John didn’t answer him. He’d been looking at the pictures of the damage to the back door for years, and he’d always wondered if that was really the way the murderer had gotten in. The more he looked a
t the damage, the more he wondered if that hadn’t been set up to look like the entry point when it wasn’t. There were no unexpected fingerprints on it, nor had it been wiped clean as parts of the office had. It simply had a broken pane of glass. But, he wasn’t about to share that theory with Charlie.

  “Yeah, you’re right. Like I said, I’m just trying to fill out the file as much as I can before Alan goes.” He shrugged and stepped toward the door with a shake of his head that he hoped conveyed the message “forget I asked” to Charlie. “It’s nothing.”

  He could feel Charlie’s eyes on him as he walked out. Any theory pointing the finger at Sam Denton, a man everyone here considered one of their own, a native born and raised in Evers, wasn’t going to win John any popularity points. Luckily for him, he put his popularity, and even the issue of winning enough votes for re-election, below finding a killer on his list of priorities. He didn’t care whose panties he put in a twist to catch this killer. He’d give the whole damned town wedgies if it meant finding out who killed Caroline before Katelyn was hurt and before Alan passed away.

  “John!”

  John spun to see Charlie standing behind him, his hands fisted in his pockets, head hanging. The older man raised his head to look at him and John wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Charlie Hanford look so unsure of himself. So hesitant.

  “Yeah?” John asked, prompting Charlie.

  Charlie shook his head. “I just . . .” Charlie glanced over his shoulder toward the door to Alan’s room. “Have we been living among a killer all these years? Were we wrong about Ken Statler? Because if we were, if we’ve all been living with Caroline’s killer all this time, it would kill him, John.”

  John nodded once before turning to walk away. Alan would be dying no matter what. And John honestly didn’t know the answer to Charlie’s question, but he had to think that knowing the truth was always a good thing. He had to believe that justice was always the right thing.