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

  On the first Monday of every month, she moved the refrigerator and cleaned behind it and dusted all the blinds in the house. On the second Monday, she vacuumed all of the upholstery and dusted the air vents and ceiling fans. The third Monday was reserved for cleaning the windows and sills. This must be the fourth Monday of the month because she appeared in his office, sandpaper in hand. Time to sand the inside of his cedar chest.

  He’d tried to tell her she needn’t worry about the cedar chest. But she was adamant. She’d tell him that was where she kept extra blankets and the spare linens for the holiday party, and did he want those all moth eaten every year when they took them out to use them? According to Mrs. Bloom, the way to preserve your cedar chest is to sand the inside a bit each month to maintain the cedar smell.

  His look must have told her what he was thinking again. She actually tsked-tsked him, something she did quite frequently. “When you go to sell this place someday, you’ll thank me for maintaining it,” she said as she lifted the lid. The chest was built into the bay window of his office and really was a nice feature to the room. Maybe she was right. Charlie didn’t say anything as she leaned in and began to sand the inside of the cedar planks.

  “It was a nice funeral they had for old Alan,” she continued her chatter and Charlie nodded. It had been nice.

  Mrs. Bloom stood and looked at him. “Had to be hard for you, I suppose. Burying Sam and then Alan so quickly, one right after the other like that.”

  Charlie frowned and nodded again. What do you say to something like that? It was true. He’d just buried the two men he’d been closest to all these years.

  Mrs. Bloom bent to her task again, jabbering as she worked. Charlie almost tuned out as she started talking about poor Katelyn having to bury her father, but the next thing she said stopped his heart cold.

  “I remember the way little Katelyn Bowden used to play in here when she was young. She’d tag along with her mama and climb in here to play hide and seek. I’d find her asleep in here sometimes while her mama worked. Good thing she wasn’t in here the day poor Caroline was murdered.”

  Charlie shuffled papers on his desk as the implications of what she’d just said sank in. Alan had never told anyone why he’d sent Katelyn away. Even when Charlie had asked him, he hadn’t told him anything more than she belonged with her aunt in Austin. Mrs. Bloom continued to chatter to herself as his mind raced over the details of the day long ago when Caroline had died.

  There wasn’t a detail of the day Charlie didn’t remember, but suddenly one detail meant more than it ever had. Alan had asked to be alone with his wife before the coroner took her away. No one, including Charlie, had thought anything of it. Of course a man would want a minute to say goodbye to his wife.

  Charlie had volunteered to stay with him, but Alan had insisted on being alone. Alan had stayed in the office with Caroline’s body alone for a long time before leaving with his sister. That might not mean much, but Charlie recalled one fact that hadn’t seemed odd at the time. Alan’s sister had picked him up at the back door—the door that led out of Charlie’s office and straight into the backyard. She’d pulled the car right up to the back and picked him up. Charlie, and everyone else at the time, assumed Alan hadn’t wanted to see anyone. Hadn’t wanted to face the large group of neighbors and friends gathered at the scene as he crumpled under the weight of his wife’s murder. Hadn’t wanted them to see him fall.

  Now Charlie stared at the papers on his desk, not seeing anything as the blood rushed to his head, making him dizzy with the realization that big, tough Sheriff Alan Bowden probably hadn’t been hiding his anguish that day. He’d likely been hiding a secret he hadn’t even wanted his best friend to know. Charlie would be willing to bet that little Katelyn Bowden was most likely in the room when Caroline had been killed. Most likely in the chest that Mrs. Bloom stood over right now.

  * * *

  The house was quiet. Even though her father had been in the hospital the entire time Katelyn had been back in Evers, somehow, after he died, the house became still and silent in a way it hadn’t been before. As if somehow, just knowing her father wouldn’t ever come back, had conveyed finality to the emptiness. Katelyn looked around at the living room with her father’s worn easy chair and the coffee table that had seen better days a very long time ago. She couldn’t decide what to do from here, whether to sell the house and find something newer for herself or whether to settle in and stay. And if she stayed, should she soak up the feel of being surrounded by her father’s things, or re-do the house to her tastes.

  She walked into the small office her father had off the living room. It was cluttered with stacks of old newspapers and magazines he’d felt the need to keep for one reason or another. There was a shelf behind his desk that held the only pictures of her mother left in the house other than the one on her nightstand. For some reason, her father never seemed to want pictures of her mother around. Katelyn didn’t know if it had been too hard for him to see the reminders of the woman he’d loved, or if he’d thought it would be hard on Katelyn on the few occasions she came to visit. The picture of her father and mother on their wedding day and a picture of them holding Katelyn on the day she was born were the only ones he displayed.

  John planned to come back and pick her up for dinner at the end of his shift. Katelyn looked at the face of her phone. Two more hours, at least, assuming his shift went smoothly. That was a big “if” for the sheriff of such a large county. So, at a minimum, two hours to kill before dinner with John. Katelyn sighed and pulled open one of the drawers of her father’s desk. His lawyer had already come by the day before. The will was clean and easy. Everything was left to her. The house, his small bit of savings, his old truck. Things would be tied up a bit in probate proceedings, but the lawyer expected that all to go seamlessly. There wasn’t anyone to contest anything.

  Katelyn’s phone rang, pulling her from her thoughts.

  “Hi, Charlie,” Katelyn said after looking at her screen and reading the contact saved as Charlie Hanford. She had saved his information in her phone when her father’s dementia got really bad. Charlie had been great about coming by when Katelyn called to say her father was having a rough day. He’d been able to calm her father in a way others hadn’t and she was grateful for the friendship he’d given them both in her father’s last month.

  “How are you doing, Kate? You holding up okay, sweetheart?”

  Katelyn smiled sadly. She supposed Charlie was all she had now as far as family, although even as she had the thought, a flash of John’s face caused her to warm inside. No, she had a lot more than just Uncle Charlie left. She had new friends, and she had John. She had a home here in Evers.

  “I’m doing pretty well, Charlie. Better than I thought I would, anyway,” Katelyn said, with a genuine smile. She was sad for her father and missed him, but his pain and confusion had been so clear at the end. She’d been relieved for him when it ended. Her sorrow was really for herself when she thought about it. For what she’d lost. But isn’t that always the way death was? Harder on those left behind?

  “Good, that’s good, Kate. You know I’m here for you if you need anything, right?” he asked on the other end of the phone.

  “Yes, Charlie, thank you. I’ll let you know if I need anything.” Katelyn looked around the room and wondered if Charlie might know where to start on her father’s belongings. What do you do with the things a person treasured during their life after they died? Should she donate them or select gifts for the people he cared about most?

  Surely, there was something here Charlie might want of her father’s as a memento? Something that held some memory for them?

  Katelyn opened her mouth to ask, but Charlie cut in. “Listen, Katy, I’m looking at the plans Sam drew up here for your studio.” Katelyn cringed at his use of the name Katy, but didn’t respond. “I’m turning all of his projects over to my new foreman, but I thought I’d take care of your studio myself, personally, that is. For you.”
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br />   “Oh, um, okay. Thank you, Charlie. I appreciate that.” Katelyn knew the work on her studio had stalled with Sam’s passing, but she had been too focused on her father to mind much.

  “Can you come by my house to take a look at the plans with me? I have some questions for you before we move forward. Things Sam noted, but didn’t really explain well. He had his own shorthand that only he understood. Between that and his chicken-scratch handwriting, I can’t understand some of the notations he made next to the blueprints.”

  “Oh, yeah. I can do that. When did you want me to come by?” Katelyn asked. She’d seen the way Sam scribbled on the edges of the blueprints and had wondered herself how he’d be able to read it later when the time came. She couldn’t imagine someone else trying to decipher it. Hopefully, she’d remember everything they talked about when she saw what Charlie was struggling with.

  “Could you come by today? I understand if you can’t,” Charlie started, but Katelyn cut in.

  “Now is fine. I can come now,” she said, pushing herself up from her father’s desk with no small sense of relief. She’d prefer to throw herself into the building of the studio and get back to her art instead of trying to delve into the decisions she seemed unable to make at home. A distraction right now was exactly what she needed.

  “Wonderful,” came Charlie’s answer as she grabbed her keys and purse and headed for the front door. “I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  There was no need for him to tell Katelyn where he lived. Even someone who hardly spent any time in Evers knew Charlie Hanford owned the big house at the top of Evers Hill. Katelyn texted John as she pulled up the long drive leading to the house with its white front porch and limestone exterior.

  Ran over to Charlie’s to work on studio blueprints. Text when you’re ready for dinner?

  She didn’t wait for a reply. She knew he was often too busy when he was working to respond to her right away, and she knew his answer would be yes. Slipping her phone in her purse, Katelyn shut the car door and walked up to Charlie’s front door. Snippets of the false memory that had plagued Katelyn for years bounced around in her head, but she pushed them aside. There weren’t any pine trees around, just as she’d known there wouldn’t be.

  For years, she’d tried to grasp at the memory. To pull at the strands in her mind to knit a picture together, but there just weren’t enough strands. In fact, she wasn’t sure she could truly see anything. It was more a feeling, or a sense. A sense of being in a pine forest, rather than the actual sight of trees.

  Katelyn took a deep breath and pushed forward despite the shiver running down her spine, causing an involuntary shudder. Twenty-four years. Surely her mother’s ghost was no longer haunting the halls of the house she was about to enter.

  “Come in, Katy.” Charlie stood on the porch, holding the front door open. She hadn’t even realized he was there, and she wondered briefly if he’d seen her fortifying herself.

  “Thanks,” she murmured as she entered the foyer, feeling the weight of being in his home on her shoulders. She followed Charlie through the entranceway and into a large living room. When he headed toward the French doors, Katelyn knew they would lead to his office, as if it were instinct or some long-buried memory speaking to her.

  She stopped short. She couldn't go in there. Surely, he wouldn’t walk her straight into the room where her mother had died. Katelyn’s palms grew clammy, and her stomach flipped over, churning with unwelcome nerves she honestly hadn’t thought she would have. It had been so long ago. Another lifetime, really.

  “Honey, are you okay?” Charlie asked, turning back to peer at her before smacking his forehead in an almost comic-like gesture of stupidity. “What am I thinking? I can’t bring you in my office. I’m so sorry,” he said, leading her to the couch in the living room.

  Katelyn was astonished at how limp she’d become, how pliable she was as Charlie practically pushed her down onto the couch, talking all the time about how thoughtless it had been of him to try to walk her into his office.

  “Such habits, Katelyn, I tell you. You get to be my age and you just don’t think about things like that anymore. Everything’s such a habit. You sit right here. I’ll just get the blueprints and bring them out to you here.” He patted her hand and rushed into the office.

  As far as Katelyn knew, her father, as close as he was to Charlie, hadn’t stepped foot in this house other than during the investigation in the weeks following the murder. He had never come here in all these years. He visited her over the holidays in Austin and always timed his visits with Charlie’s holiday party. Katelyn frowned. In fact, it seemed odd now that Charlie would have stayed in the house after what had happened. She’d never given that any thought, but she wondered why he would have stayed after his best friend’s wife was murdered in a room he worked in on a daily basis. Who does that?

  Charlie came in with a roll of papers under one arm and a blanket over the other. He dumped the papers on the coffee table in front of Katelyn then draped the blanket around her shoulders before eyeing her.

  “You’re still looking pale. I’ll get you a glass of water,” he said and didn’t wait for a response before leaving her again.

  Katelyn pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders, frustrated with herself for the response she was having to simply sitting in Charlie’s living room. Just as she was about to tell herself to get it together, the scent hit her. The blanket smelled of pine trees. Katelyn lifted the blanket and took a deep breath. A pine forest. The pine forest of her disconnected snippets of memories. The bottom fell out of Katelyn’s stomach as though her whole world had fallen out from under her.

  She didn’t remember making the conscious decision to go into the office. In fact, if she was thinking at all, she likely would have had the wherewithal to get up and run out the front door. But, her brain wasn’t functioning. Some primal memory in the mind of that four-year-old child was all that was at work now. One minute she was on the couch, and the next her hand was on the doorknob to Charlie’s office, pushing the door open, knowing she had to see, had to know what she seemed to know in her heart.

  She had been here. She had seen and heard her mother’s murder.

  Nothing could have prepared Katelyn for the weak sensation in her legs, the feeling that her world was spinning sideways, as if she were losing her legs beneath her. Her eyes traveled instantly to the chest in the bay window with its brightly colored cushions creating a tempting reading nook. She’d played in it as a child. Of that she was absolutely sure.

  Katelyn walked to the chest and lifted the lid, her head whirling dizzily as her mind was assailed with memories, with sensations. It was dark. She was in her hiding place when the voices started. She watched through the narrow slits between the boards of the chest. Not through trees in a pine forest. Not pine at all, she realized, now. Cedar. The chest was cedar, designed to preserve the blankets and linens stored in it. Her childish mind must have mistaken the scent for pine and kept that false memory alive all these years.

  The memories connected themselves, one to another in her head. The snippets no longer floating, disconnected and unclear. This time, the scenes fell into line in her head as a linear puzzle now pieced together. Two faces, two angry voices. Her mother’s and Sam Denton’s. Her mother’s scream as she fell when Sam reached out to grab her. Then a third face, a third voice that sent cold fingers of dread dancing an unwelcome pattern up Katelyn’s spine and the shiver she’d felt earlier returned ten-fold.

  Charlie. Uncle Charlie, asking Sam what happened. Uncle Charlie saying it was too late now. Her mother could not be allowed to wake up. Uncle Charlie hitting her mother repeatedly in the head with a bookend, until no life remained in the still form Katelyn could almost see lying there still on the floor.

  For a moment, Katelyn was frozen in fear as the child-Katelyn had been so many years ago. Frozen and mute and helpless as she recalled Charlie’s rushed instructions to ditch the murder weapon; the cash from a box he�
��d stuffed in Sam’s hands as he shoved Sam out the door leading to the manicured back lawn of his oversized home.

  The memories released their ghostly hold on her, and Katelyn backpedaled. She had to get out of the house now. That much she knew. The voice behind her, the arms grabbing her, much stronger than she’d expect them to be if she’d stopped to think about it. Strong arms that stopped her heart and stole the breath from her lungs. Uncle Charlie’s voice was gone. In its place was nothing but the voice of a psychopath. Like nothing she’d ever heard before. Flat and dead as he spoke so matter-of-factly in her ear, it drew a sort-of panicked giggle from her throat that ended in a choked sob.

  “I had to be sure. I couldn't chance it coming out after all these years,” he said, with no feeling whatsoever. Simply mild interest. “And, what better way than to see if coming back here triggered any memories for you?”

  Katelyn lashed out, swinging her arms and elbows behind her, trying to break his hold on her, but his grip was strong.

  “Now then,” he said, with a senseless level of calm that belied the situation they were in. The soothing tone he adopted was nothing short of sick, and Katelyn felt her stomach clench.

  “We can’t very well do this here. Although there is a hint of romance to it, people would probably catch on if you were found dead in the very spot where your mother was murdered. Even I would have a hard time making that look like an accident, and I have to say, I’m beginning to excel at getting away with murder. It’s beautiful, really, if you think about it.”

  “It’s disgusting is what it is,” Katelyn spat out, and her stomach protested the thought that she might not get away from him, sending a wave of bile up her throat. “Sick and disgusting, just like you.”

  She threw her head back hoping to connect with his head. If she connected, she’d probably only succeed in knocking herself out, but she tried anyway. She had to try something. Had to try everything she could to get out of this. She remembered something about the importance of mot letting an abductor remove you from the initial scene. Something about the chances of death increasing exponentially after you were moved.