Come Back Home Again (Hope Valley Book 2)

by Jessica Prince

  He drove in three more times before planting himself to the root and burying his face in my neck, grunting and groaning as his cock twitched with his own release.

  “Jesus. Fuck me,” he panted once it finally left both of us. “How the fuck is it that every single time with you is even better than the last?”

  I let out an exhausted giggle and shook my head, looking at him from over my shoulder. “I don’t know. It just is what it is, I guess. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, honey.”

  “My woman. So damn smart,” he said on a chuckle against my lips.

  Seconds lapsed as we lay wrapped around each other, and the events of the night finally started to hit me. All that dancing and drinking, then the incredible sex had left me completely exhausted. It was late and all I wanted to do now was curl up with my man and sleep.

  “I need to clean up,” I murmured, fighting back a yawn.

  Hayes finally pulled out and let me go so I could climb from the bed. I snatched my panties and nightgown from the floor and headed into the bathroom. After cleaning up, I slipped my undies back into place and pulled the matching baby blue silk nightie over my head. I moved to the sink, prepared to go through my nighttime ritual—exhausted or not—of washing and moisturizing my face and brushing my teeth, but when I caught my reflection in the mirror, I froze.

  I barely recognized the woman staring back at me. Pink cheeks, kiss-swollen lips, and wild sex hair. But none of that was what caught and held my attention. It was my eyes. The pale blue didn’t look the same, and as I leaned in for a closer examination, I realized what Carl had been talking about earlier, what it was that was so different. For twenty-one years the eyes staring back at me in my reflection were empty, but they were so full of love and happiness now that the difference was night and day.

  A smile pulled at my lips, and I shook my head in amazement before going back to my task of scrubbing the night’s makeup from my face. I was just about finished with my eye cream and moisturizer when the sound of Hayes’s cell phone ringing cut through the quiet.

  Every muscle in my body strung tight as I stepped into the doorway of the bathroom and looked in his direction. His body was no longer loose and relaxed after having just made love. It was stiff and alert, just like mine.

  I knew late-night calls were a part of his job, and I didn’t mind them at all. But hearing that phone ring well after midnight could only mean one thing. And it wasn’t good.

  “Walker,” he said into the line, sitting up and throwing his legs over the side of the bed.

  I couldn’t hear the person on the other end, but as soon as they started talking, Hayes’s intense vibe filled the room, and I struggled to breathe under the power of it.

  “Are you fuckin’ kidding me?” Then “Shit. Okay.” He paused, listening to the person on the other end of the phone. “Yeah. Gimme ten.” Another pause. “Uh-huh. All right. I’m on my way.”

  He hung up the phone and tossed it onto the nightstand at the same time he pushed to his feet and started moving around the bedroom, grabbing the clothes he’d discarded earlier.

  “I-is every okay?” I asked, my voice shaky as he started pulling on his clothes with hard, jerky movements.

  “No,” he grunted angrily, getting his jeans into place and finally turning to me once he had them buttoned. “I gotta go, angel.”

  “What’s going on?”

  He stopped, lifting a hand and raking it through his hair agitatedly. “Look, I don’t have time to get into it right now, but there’s been another murder.”

  “Oh my God,” I gasped, my eyes going wide as I lifted a trembling hand to my lips.

  He had his shirt on as he continued, “I need to get down there. I’ll probably be gone a while, so don’t wait up for me, but I want you to make sure every single window and door is locked, you got me? And keep the downstairs and outside lights on.”

  “I—okay, yeah. I will.”

  “I’m serious, Tempie. Lock up tight. And do not open that door, you got me? Cat and Stargazer don’t get fed ’til I’m back.”

  “Hayes,” I whispered, “you’re scaring me.”

  He came close, hooking his hand around the back of my neck and pulling me to him so he could rest his forehead against mine. “I’m sorry, baby,” he said softly. “I just need to get out there, but I can’t have my head in the game if I’m worried about you bein’ here all alone.”

  As frightened as I was, I needed to do my job as the woman of a cop, and that was put his mind at ease as best as I could when he was out there hunting for a killer. “I’ll make sure this place is like Fort Knox, honey. I promise. I’ll keep the lights on, and I won’t even go near that door, no matter how pissed Cat gets that her meal’s delayed.”

  His chest rose on a deep inhale, and I knew I’d done what little I could for him during a time like this. I just hoped it would be enough.

  “Thank you,” he returned pressing his lips against mine and pulling back. “Try and get some rest.”

  “Yeah, okay.” That wasn’t going to happen. “Be safe out there, Hayes. I love you.”

  “Love you too, angel,” he mumbled distractedly.

  And a moment later, he was gone.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Hayes

  The entire perimeter of the house had been taped off by the time I pulled my Sequoia up to the scene. The night sky was lit with white, blue, and red from the lights on the cruisers that lined the block. From the quick scan I did as I climbed from the truck and started toward the house, I figured at least half the force was already on scene, as well as crime scene techs, and the whole goddamn neighborhood was out in force, lining the sidewalk just outside the tape.

  As I got closer, I spotted Calvin and Scruggs, two of the department’s uniformed officers, and waved them over to me. “Get those people back,” I ordered, pointing to the massive crowd that had gathered around the house. “I don’t want a single civilian on this side of the street. Got me?”

  I got two chin lifts in reply before they moved off and began corralling the gawkers across the street.

  Ducking under the police tape, I started up the front walk, taking in everything happening in the front yard.

  Fred Duncan, another patrolman, sat on the stoop just outside the front door, his face completely ashen as he rubbed at the back of his neck. He’d been the first on the scene after a neighbor called to report that she’d heard screams coming from the house next door. And from the looks of him, what he saw when he got inside was something that was going to haunt him for the rest of his life.

  I didn’t much care for the man—he had a big mouth and could be a cocky pain in the ass as well as a fuckup—but none of his less-than-appealing characteristics were visible right then. This was a man had been shaken to his very core.

  Trick, Leo, and Micah were already there when I arrived and were standing just inside the threshold, watching my approach.

  I stopped before the bottom step and looked to Duncan. “Talk to me.”

  “I—” His throat bobbed on a thick swallow, his eyes wide and haunted as he struggled to recount everything that happened leading up to finding the body. “The call came in that a neighbor reported hearing a scream loud enough it woke her from a dead sleep. I arrived within seven minutes to find the front door was ajar. When I entered the residence, I—” He stopped, looking like he was about to be sick. “Fuck, man. Fuck.” He dropped his head and gave it a vicious shake, as though trying to clear it of what he’d seen. “I’m sorry. I—”

  “It’s okay,” I cut in, sparing him from having to continue. “We can go over it later.” I looked up, meeting Leo’s gaze, and he nodded in silent agreement of my move. Then again, he, Micah and Trick had been there long enough to go inside already, so they knew just how bad it was. “You gonna be all right?” I asked, turning my attention back to Duncan.

  “Yeah.” He scrubbed at his jaw with a shaky hand. “Probably take some intensive fuckin’ therapy, but I’ll
be all right.”

  Climbing up the steps, I clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Go home. Try and get this outta your head. We’ll talk at the station later.” Then I moved to the three other detectives. I donned the paper booties and rubber gloves necessary to preserve the crime scene, and the four of us moved into the house. The second I cleared the threshold, I was hit with the acrid, metallic smell of blood. It was a smell I was more than familiar with after years in the military and then more than a decade in law enforcement, but no matter how many times a person experienced it, it was something you never grew accustomed to. Not ever.

  “All right, brother,” Trick started, ushering me to a stop. “Need to give you a heads-up before you go in there. Whatever you think you’re about to walk in on, it’s fuckin’ worse. Brace yourself as best you can.”

  “Fuckin’ shit,” I grunted, my gut twisting into knots.

  The four of us moved through the entryway and turned toward the living room. I jerked to a sudden stop, knowing to my bones that I was going to have nightmares of that very moment for the rest of my goddamn life.

  Harley lay on her back, her left leg bent out to the side at the knee unnaturally, No doubt the bones were broken in at least one place. Her right arm hung limp over her stomach, the left stretched out above her. Her body had been stripped completely bare, an act of humiliation on the killer’s part, and there were so many stab wounds they were impossible to count with the naked eye. From the initial look of it, her body had been shredded.

  There was a massive pool of blood beneath her body, and streaks of it all over the walls and furniture from where the knife had been yanked out over and over, sending it splattering everywhere.

  Some of her nails were broken off, others missing completely from where she’d struggled with her attacker. It was clear she’d put up one hell of a fight, but she just wasn’t strong enough.

  All of that, all that brutality and hatred would stay with me, but it was her eyes that would haunt me for years to come, her dead, lifeless eyes open and pointed toward the ceiling, frozen in horror as her life was ripped away from her.

  Trick began talking, going over the scene and pulling me out of my head. “From what we can tell, there was no forced entry. Odds are, she knew her attacker well enough that she was comfortable letting him or her in in the middle of the night. The struggle appears to have started halfway between the front door and the living area.”

  Pulling my notebook from the pocket of my leather jacket, I started scrawling notes as Trick talked.

  “What we figure is the attacker made his move there, but she managed to get away, and he chased her in here.”

  The evidence matched everything he was telling me, and I took a few minutes to do my own preliminary investigation of the area before finally moving back to the body.

  “Never seen anything like this in my life,” Micah mumbled, his voice coated with a fury we were all feeling. “Motherfucker fuckin’ mutilated her.”

  Bending my knees, I crouched down to examine Harley closer. Micah’s words were an understatement. Whoever had killed her had done it with a rage unlike anything I’d ever seen. This wasn’t just overkill—this was absolute, unrequited hatred. Some of the cuts were so deep you could see bone, and based on the ones to her abdomen, it was clear the person had continued his attack well after she’d died.

  “Tell me what you’ve got so far,” I said, looking up at the tech who had been processing Harley’s body.

  The man crouched like me and began talking. “I’ve located some fibers in a few of the wounds, indicating she’d been clothed at the time of the attack. My guess, she was stripped postmortem, but there are no signs of sexual assault. I’ll know for sure once I get her back to the lab.”

  Stripped postmortem. Definitely an act of humiliation.

  He lifted her arm for inspection as he continued. “Defensive wounds on her arms and hands consistent with a struggle, same with her nails. She’s been stabbed multiple times, all over her body from her thighs to her neck, but I noticed something strange during my initial examination.” The tech moved a hank of bloody, matted hair way from her neck. “She’s missing the earring from her left ear. We’ve searched the area around the body and couldn’t locate it.”

  “Could it have fallen out during the fight?” Trick asked.

  “That was what I thought, there’s blood smudged on the lobe that indicates it had been physically removed, then I discovered this.” He pulled the diamond stud from her right ear and held it in the flat of his palm. “This back clasp isn’t a typical one that you’d slide on to hold the earring into place. It screws on and off, so it wouldn’t be possible for it to simply fall out in a struggle. In order for the earring to come out, the attacker would’ve had to remove it himself.”

  I rose woodenly to my feet and hissed, “Goddamn it.”

  Trick looked to me, his mouth tight and his face like granite. “You know what this means.”

  “The killer took a trophy,” I replied.

  “Just like Martin Henderson.”

  Fuck.

  I stared up at the captain, clenching my jaw and fisting my hands, trying my best to keep my head from exploding. “You’ve gotta be shitting me,” I gritted in reply to him informing me that I’d been pulled off Harley’s murder.

  “You had a sexual relationship with the victim, Walker. Protocol states—”

  “Fuck protocol,” I barked, shooting to my feet, propping my hands on his desk, and leaning in. “Cap, if we’re right, Harley Madison’s murder is related to Martin Henderson’s.”

  “And if that’s where the investigation leads, you and Wanderly can consult. But this case officially belongs to Langford and Drake.”

  I turned to Micah and Leo. Both men were staring at the captain with the same pissed-off looks on their faces. They knew Trick and I had been working the case for months, living and breathing it every single day. They were good cops and even better men, and having a case like this handed to them on a technicality didn’t sit right with either of them.

  Gone was Trick’s usual laid-back demeanor as he bit out, “You want us to fucking consult on a case Hayes and I have poured our goddamn lives into for months?”

  “It’s done, Detective,” Cap replied. “This isn’t about you. If I let you continue and it turns out the murders were related, the fact that one of the investigating detectives was involved in an intimate relationship with one of the victims could be detrimental to the prosecution when we finally find this bastard.”

  As much as I hated to admit it—and I hated it a whole fuck of a lot—he was right. When we finally caught this asshole, we needed to make sure the case against him was tied up so tight that he’d never breathe free air again.

  “Now I need you all to get the hell outta my office and go home. Someone out there’s butcherin’ the citizens of my goddamn town, and I need my boys rested and sharp so we can find this fucker and take him down.”

  We all climbed to our feet after being dismissed and headed out of Cap’s office.

  “Never thought I’d see the day that he didn’t put politics over a case,” Micah grumbled under his breath as we took the stairs down into the bullpen. “Finally, Cap’s actin’ like a cap I can respect instead of a politician.”

  “Multiple homicides tend to put shit into perspective,” Trick rebutted.

  The three of them continued to talk, but I was too busy playing over everything in my head to join the conversation. Guilt clawed at my gut as I kept picturing Harley’s eyes. I couldn’t get the stench of blood out of my nose. Every muscle and tendon in my body was so tense that I could feel knots forming in my back and shoulders.

  I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was missing something. Something huge. It was right in front of me, but it was as if the harder I tried to reach for it, the further it got from my grasp.

  “Yo, Earth to Hayes.” At Trick’s voice, I lifted my head and turned to him, Micah, and Leo. The three men looked just a
s haggard as I felt. “Go home, man,” Trick said. “It’s been a fucked up night. Cap’s right. We all need to get some rest. We’ll hit it in the morning once we’ve had a chance to recharge.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “You’re right.”

  Micah and Leo took off a second later. Trick gathered his stuff from his desk but stopped to turn back to me as I stayed glued in place.

  “Go home, brother. It’s fucked, everything we saw and heard tonight. Shit like that stays with a man, but you got somethin’ now you’ve never had before.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You got a whole lot of really goddamn sweet waitin’ for you,” he returned, the corner of his mouth hooking up. “It won’t help you forget, but I promise it’ll work wonders to wash away the bitter if you let it.”

  With that, he started out of the bullpen and headed back to his shitty hotel room. He’d had that version of sweet once himself, and I found myself worrying about how he’d get through all this now that he was on his own.

  And as I headed out of the station, walking through the parking lot to my truck something nasty and twisted in my gut told me that no amount of sweet could ever wash away the bitter I was currently tasting.

  Chapter Twenty

  Temperance

  I’d been a wreck all night long. After Hayes left, I’d done as instructed, making sure every window and door was locked tight, and the lights were on. I’d even taken it a step further, turning on every light in the upstairs and braving the creepy attic to flip that one on as well.

  The farmhouse was lit up like a Christmas tree inside and out. I knew I’d probably feel it when the electric bill came, considering the size of the place, but I didn’t care. Lighting my house like a beacon gave me peace of mind and helped ease a bit of the anxiety coursing through my system.

  I’d tried to sleep after he left, but after an hour of tossing and turning, I gave up the ghost and headed downstairs. With each minute that ticked by, my stress level grew until I was nauseous with worry.