Silent Watch

by Elle Kennedy

  “Because golfers always look so ridiculously grim. They act like the world will crumble beneath their feet if they don’t tap a little white ball into a hole. Frankly, I don’t get it. And I’m serious, Blake, you need to lighten up sometimes. You’re way too intense.”

  He shrugged. “Been that way all my life. I take after my father, I guess. He’s always been serious. Now my mom, on the other hand—she doesn’t know the meaning of serious. And don’t get me started on my sister. She’s the most cheerful person I’ve ever met. It’s enough to induce a migraine or make me want to climb Everest.”

  With a laugh, she wiggled out of the embrace. “You make a good point. Perpetually cheerful people can be hard to swallow. But I still think you could stand to relax once in a while.” She drifted over to the counter and poured the steaming coffee into two tall mugs. “So what should we do today? I haven’t had a snow day since grade school.”

  “What’s a snow day?” he returned with a sigh. “My parents never let us stay home the day after a blizzard.”

  “What if the school was closed?”

  “Then Mom would give us impromptu lessons in the living room.”

  Sam giggled. “Poor thing.”

  She handed him a mug. A few sips later, the caffeine kicked into gear, pulsed through his blood and made him forget that he’d spent the entire night awake, tossing and turning.

  Sam crossed the room and peeked out the window next to the back door. “God, there’s so much snow! I can’t wait to go out there.”

  “Sure you wouldn’t prefer spending the day in bed?”

  She shot him an endearing smile and wagged her finger. “We did that yesterday. Today you get to experience the splendor of a snow day.”

  He wanted to tell her he’d much rather experience the splendor of her, but the light dancing in her gray eyes made him bite his tongue. He thought back to the day he’d first met her, the haunting pain and unmistakable torment he’d seen in those eyes, and he experienced a surge of pleasure knowing he’d been the one to erase it.

  It probably wasn’t a good idea, going outside now that they knew the Rose Killer suspected she was alive, but the yard was fenced in, and he’d be with her, and…

  Oh man, something about this woman made him feel helpless and vulnerable and weak in the knees. All it took was one smile from her, one sexy look, and he was ready to give her anything she wanted.

  Even a day of playing in the snow.

  “I cannot believe you’ve never made a snow angel before.”

  Sam stared at Blake with utter disbelief. Was it actually possible that Blake, the man who admitted to family Monopoly nights, had failed to indulge in the most momentous winter activity ever? Hell, even the cranky older brother she’d grown up with had let a few snow angels loose now and then.

  “You act like I just told you I’ve never tied my shoelaces or drunk a glass of milk,” he grumbled. “It’s just a snow angel.”

  “Just a snow angel?”

  Blake offered a shrug.

  “And you grew up in Chicago?”

  “’ Fraid so.”

  “Well, that’s just ridiculous.” She planted her gloved hands on her hips. “Get on your back.”

  “Now that’s what I’m talking about.”

  If he didn’t look so damn cute with his cheeks flushed from the cold and with that sexy wool hat covering his dark hair, she would’ve hurled a snowball at him.

  “Take your mind out of the sexual gutter, Corwin.” She pointed to the snow. “On your back.”

  Reluctant acceptance filled his gaze. Sighing, he lowered his long, lean body onto the snow, propped his hands behind his head and eyed her expectantly.

  A rush of warmth swelled inside her. Had this intense, I-don’t-know-how-to-lighten-up FBI agent flopped down on the snowy lawn just because she’d asked or was she imagining it?

  Amazed, she quickly lay down on her back beside him before he changed his mind and realized he was indeed anti-fun. “Okay, let’s get started.”

  A carefree sensation slid around in her chest as she and Blake moved their arms and legs in the snow like a couple of silly children. They were both laughing by the time they stood up and examined their respective angels.

  “Yours is superior to mine,” he complained, brushing snowflakes off his delectable butt. “More graceful.”

  “Yeah, but yours is really…manly.” She tried not to snicker at the result of his effort. While her stretch of snow indeed resembled an angel, Blake’s was nothing more than a six-foot area of packed white slush.

  “You’re a wonderful liar,” he replied with a grin. “Just admit it—my angel is pathetic.”

  “You’re right. It’s pathetic.”

  The pale winter sun disappeared behind a patch of clouds, darkening the already overcast sky. A few birds chirped in the distance and she followed the sound, noticing for the first time that the tall brown fence at the far end of the property separated the yard from a wooded area. The gate was open, providing a glimpse of a narrow path covered with snow and shadowed by pine trees.

  “What’s down there?” she asked curiously.

  “A small ravine. Not too spectacular, either. Half a mile and you come out at a neighboring residential street.” He frowned. “In fact, the gate should be shut. The blizzard must have blown it open last night.”

  He marched across the yard to close and lock the gate. “Why do you look so glum?” he teased when he came back.

  “I was hoping we could take a walk in the woods. Hey, maybe we can go ice skating in Millennium Park instead?” Her spirits lifted as she remembered the times Beau had taken her there when they were kids.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  His low voice sent her spirits plummeting. What was the matter with her? For a few minutes she’d actually forgotten that the Rose Killer was still on the loose and that she was under the protection of the FBI. For God’s sake. How could something like that slip her mind?

  It was unnerving. How one relaxing morning in the company of this man could make her forget about the murderer still at large.

  “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking,” she said quietly. Brushing snow off the sleeves of her jacket, she trudged toward the back door. “Come on, I’ll make us some lunch.”

  They walked inside, but before they could remove their coats and boots, the doorbell rang. Blake gestured for her to stay in the kitchen, but she followed him out into the hall anyway, both of them leaving a trail of wet snow behind them. “Are you expecting someone?” she asked.

  “Rick said he might come by to fill me in on what the team is working on, but he would’ve called first.” His brow furrowed as they neared the door. “Go into the living room, Sam.”

  This time she didn’t argue. She drifted into the other room, seeing from the corner of her eye that Blake had removed his gun from its holster. Keeping the weapon at his side, he opened the door.

  She waited for the sound of voices, but all she heard was Blake’s faint, “What the…”

  Her peripheral vision caught him bending down, reaching for something out of her eyeshot. There was a rustling sound and then Blake cursed and shot to his feet, weapon drawn.

  “What’s going on?” she blurted out.

  “Stay where you are, Samantha.” His voice was soft, but when he turned to shoot her an I-mean-it look there was nothing soft about him. His features were all hard angles and sharp planes, lined with…fury, she realized.

  It was the rage flashing in his normally shuttered gaze that caused her to ignore his order.

  Adrenaline coursing through her blood, she charged to the doorway. Blake was already descending the front steps. He tore across the snow-covered lawn toward the unmarked police car parked at the curb. The empty police car.

  Oh God, where was Officer Daniels?

  Sam’s gaze ping-ponged around the front yard but there was no sign of the guard who’d been keeping watch in the car all night.

  Her pulse
roared in her ears. She slumped against the doorway, unable to process exactly what the hell was going on, and that’s when she saw it. The box at her feet. A long, rectangular, gold box.

  She bent down, her knees sinking into the wet snow on the doorstep. Her hands were shaking so badly she could barely grasp the edge of the box. She fumbled with it, clawed at it. Opened it.

  A wave of nausea shook her equilibrium and sent her falling forward. One hand landed in snow. The other connected with the thorny stem of one very dead rose.

  “Daniels!” Blake shouted, keeping both hands on his gun as he stood in the middle of the front yard and searched the street ahead.

  Officer Daniels was nowhere in sight, and as much as he wanted to, Blake couldn’t go charging through the neighborhood looking for him. He couldn’t leave Sam, not when the maniac who’d tried to kill her could still be in the vicinity.

  Fury swarmed his gut like an army of wasps. The son of a bitch had been here. He’d waltzed right up to Blake’s goddamn door to deliver his goddamn gift. Where the hell was Daniels?

  Blake turned, nearly keeling over when he spotted Sam on the porch. She was on her knees, staring at the dead flowers with a paralyzed expression. The chilled afternoon breeze lifted her dark hair and made it swirl around her face, a beautiful face devoid of any color.

  Blake was by her side in an instant. He hauled her to her feet and pushed her toward the front door. He immediately regretted manhandling her, but his rough actions hadn’t even sparked a reaction from her. She looked like a deer frozen in the middle of the road while a car careened toward it.

  He stood in the open doorway, his gaze shifting from the blackened stems strewn on the doorstep to the disoriented expression on Sam’s face. He wanted to destroy the box and its contents, but it was evidence now. Besides, he was afraid if he turned away from Sam she’d collapse. He’d never seen her this agitated, and he knew that when he found him, he was going to strangle the son of a bitch who’d instilled such overwhelming horror in the strongest woman Blake had ever met.

  “Sam,” he began, but whatever he’d been about to say—he wasn’t even sure what—was interrupted by a shout from behind.

  Gun in hand, Blake spun around in time to see Officer Daniels dragging a kid in a yellow parka up the front walk.

  “Our culprit,” Daniels explained angrily, jerking a thumb at the kid.

  The boy couldn’t have been older than eleven or twelve, and he looked downright terrified by the man with the kungfu grip on his arm. Blake didn’t blame the kid. Officer Glen Daniels was a pretty terrifying man. At least six-five, the cop boasted a shaved head, piercing brown eyes and a scowl that could scare the pants off a Navy SEAL. That’s why Blake had found it so hard to believe that someone had gotten past Daniels to deliver those flowers. But apparently he hadn’t.

  “He tried to take off after leaving the box on the porch,” Daniels said, shooting a glare at the young boy, who looked like he was about to wet his pants.

  “I didn’t do nothin’ wrong!” the kid blurted out. He stared at Blake with desperate eyes, begging him to believe him.

  Blake sighed, then told Daniels to stay with the kid for a moment. He moved to the front door and laid a gentle hand on Sam’s arm. “You need to go inside.”

  Wordlessly, she simply nodded and disappeared through the doorway, closing the door softly behind her.

  Blake turned around and zeroed in on the kid. “What’s your name?”

  “Jacob. Jacob Thomson. I live over there.” The boy pointed at a white-and-green Victorian across the street.

  “Who asked you to deliver these flowers?”

  “What flowers?” The boy suddenly noticed the stems strewn across the porch and his freckled face went pale. “I swear, I didn’t know what was in the box! The old dude asked me to drop it on the front step and he said he’d give me ten bucks if I did, so I said, Yeah, sure, I’ll do it, ’ cuz it’s, like, easy money, you know? So I did and…” He ran out of steam, coming to an abrupt halt.

  Blake was already pulling out his cell phone. He punched in a few numbers and dialed Rick. “Send some patrols to canvas my neighborhood,” he said in lieu of greeting. “The bastard’s probably miles away by now, but there’s always a chance he’s still lurking in some bushes.”

  “What the hell is going on?” Rick demanded.

  Blake ignored the question. “I’ll call you back.”

  He shoved the phone into his pocket and returned his attention to the dark-haired boy who’d just delivered a boxful of dead flowers to Blake’s doorstep.

  “This old dude,” Blake said calmly. “Can you describe him? And how old was he exactly?”

  Jacob tilted his dark head and rubbed the arm Officer Daniels had finally let go of. “I dunno. He was ancient, like my dad’s age or something.”

  “How old is your father?”

  “I dunno. Forty-five?”

  Despite himself, Blake fought a smile. To a twelve-year-old, anyone over thirty was apparently ancient.

  “What did he look like?”

  “Um…brown hair, I think. I don’t remember what color his eyes were. And he was kinda tall. Not as tall as him—” Jacob gave Officer Daniels a dirty look “—but I guess maybe your height?” He gestured to Blake.

  “Where did this man approach you?” Blake asked.

  “It’s a snow day so I didn’t have to go to school today, so I was at the end of the street, where there’s this, like, monstrous snow-covered hill and I was sliding down it on my sneakers, and the dude just walked up holding that box.”

  “And told you to deliver it to this house specifically?”

  “Yeah. He said he couldn’t do it himself because his daughter lived there and she wouldn’t see him ’ cuz he ran out on her when she was a kid, but it’s her birthday so he wanted to give her something.”

  “Did he have a car? A van?”

  Young Jacob looked annoyed. “No, I already told you, he just walked up.”

  The interrogation continued for a few more minutes. Jacob stuck by his story, and it became clear to Blake that the kid was telling the truth. The Rose Killer had simply strolled up to him and given him ten bucks in exchange for making a delivery.

  The sheer nerve of it was astounding. The maniac had obviously been very sure of himself, certain of the fact that he could come into this neighborhood and leave it, unnoticed. And he had.

  That he now knew where Blake lived was far too unsettling. Rick told him their names had been in the paper, but his address and phone number were unlisted, which meant the Rose Killer had somehow tracked him here.

  He furrowed his brows, trying to figure out when it could’ve happened. He hadn’t seen a tail any of the times he’d driven home. More so, he hadn’t felt a tail. He’d worked in the field long enough to have developed instincts about that sort of thing, and for the life of him he couldn’t fathom how someone could’ve have been following him without him noticing.

  Something nagged at the back of his head, a thought even more unsettling than the rest. It was something the profilers and detectives working the case had discarded, but Blake suddenly had to wonder…was this killer a cop?

  It seemed unlikely, considering the disarray of the crime scenes, but if the guy wasn’t in law enforcement, then at the very least he had tools most civilians lacked. The military term evade and escape suddenly came to mind. Had this madman been skilled in evasion techniques? Was his ability to escape into the shadows more than just a case of good luck?

  “Uh, dude, can I go now?”

  Jacob Thomson’s voice jerked him back from his thoughts. He glanced at Jacob, then at Daniels, who still looked pissed off that he’d had to chase the kid through the snow.

  “Not just yet,” Blake said with a shake of his head. “Right now Officer Daniels here is going to escort you home—are your parents there?”

  “My mom is.” Jacob paled. “You gotta tell her I didn’t do anything wrong!”

  “You didn
’t,” Blake assured the kid. “But you’re going to need to repeat your statement to Officer Daniels, who will write it all down. And then Officer Daniels will need to speak to your mother.”

  And warn her to keep you locked up tight, because apparently this street isn’t safe anymore, he wanted to add, but quickly tamped down the urge. He didn’t want to raise a public panic just yet, not until he spoke to the police super-intendant about the entire situation.

  As it was, when he talked to the police chief a few minutes later, Fantana decided not to alert Blake’s neighbors and keep it quiet for the meantime, but he’d agreed to up the patrols in the area. After speaking to Rick, and then his supervisor, Blake finally climbed back onto the porch. He left the gold box and dead flowers exactly where they were; the forensics team was on their way to collect the evidence and examine the scene, but Blake knew they wouldn’t find anything. The Rose Killer was too smart to leave any incriminating evidence behind, except, of course, for the woman currently inside the house.

  The killer had left Sam behind, and as grateful as Blake was that she was alive, he wanted to strangle the bastard who’d once again sparked terror in Samantha Dawson.

  Chapter 11

  Blake stepped inside and kicked off his boots, then drifted into the living room. Sam was on the couch, her knees lifted up to her chest with her slender arms wrapped around them. Her face was still ashen, and she barely glanced up as he came in.

  He hated seeing her like this. She’d gone from being serene and laid-back from an afternoon in the snow, to sad and scared, thanks to a psychopath who was apparently determined to terrorize her.

  He watched as she shifted on the sofa. She reached for the red afghan resting on the arm of the couch, gathered the blanket around her legs and met his gaze at last.

  Silence stretched between them.

  “I’m going to catch him, Sam,” he finally said. He didn’t know why, but he felt he needed to make things right. To bring the light back into her gorgeous eyes.

  She fixed him with a heartbreakingly grim look. “I know you will,” she murmured.