Colton's Secret Investigation

by Justine Davis

  She blinked. “An accountant?”

  He reached into an inner jacket pocket to pull out a small case, extracted a business card and held it out to her. “Sure hope there’s good internet here so I can work from home,” he said, still in that tone of utter innocence.

  “‘Steven Barker, CPA, Barker and Associates,’” she read out loud. Obviously he had this—and quite possibly others for other occupations—on hand for occasions just such as this. She supposed many agents did.

  “I do so love numbers,” he said with an exaggerated sigh.

  She was still laughing when he got out of the car and started toward the house, looking around at the other houses as much as the target house, as if he were truly just checking out the neighborhood. She watched him go and tried to imagine him tied endlessly to spreadsheets and account books. She couldn’t.

  So instead she just settled in and allowed herself the pleasure of simply watching the way he moved.

  And for the moment hushed the inner voice warning that she was edging closer and closer to very big trouble.

  Chapter 14

  After confirming Shruggs was not at the house, and that the officer Detective Kastor had sent had arrived to keep watch, they headed back to the station to start the process of getting a search warrant.

  Stefan looked over the affidavits Daria had prepared while they were on the way. She’d asked him to, to see if she’d missed anything. And as he’d expected, she had not. Deputy Bloom was very thorough, and she had worded things in a way that made it seem a bit more impressive than it was, yet stopped short of blowing smoke, which would likely tick the judge off.

  She paced the office while he read. He understood—he was antsy to get going on this, too.

  “I’d add a cursory description of the houses on either side, especially the one with the carved bear in front, just to avoid any problems with the houses all resembling each other. Other than that, perfect.”

  She smiled as she nodded and made the addition. And then she’d picked up the phone and called the judge, going through everything with Cruz after she’d emailed the now-encrypted documents to him.

  And as they waited for the call with the judge’s decision, they were both pacing.

  “Is your gut screaming at you?” she finally asked him.

  “Yeah. It is.”

  “I keep telling myself it’s only because this is the first thing that looks like a real break in a long time on this case.”

  “It has been a long time. But it takes more than that to get my gut going like this.”

  She looked at him curiously. “I suppose you’re more used to cases that take a long time.”

  “We’ve had a few,” he said. Then, wryly, he added, “Of course, we’ve had a few that shouldn’t have taken as long as they did, too.”

  She studied him for a moment. “Do you miss the city? That life?”

  He smiled, chuckled and shook his head at the same time. “Not one bit.”

  She smiled back. “Me, either.”

  The phone rang. Caller ID verified their hopes. “That was fast,” Stefan said appreciatively.

  With a nod Daria answered, listened, checked for the email that had arrived and said, “Yes, Your Honor,” a couple of times, then, “Thank you very much.”

  Before she’d even hung up, the printer in the corner of the room hummed to life and began to spit out the paper copies they would need to actually serve the warrant, to be handed to Shruggs if he was there, or left openly visible if he was not. Stefan walked over to get the pages.

  It wasn’t bad, as warrants went. Judge Cruz had narrowed it down more than he’d have liked, limiting them to the Bianca Rouge case. But he’d given them full range on the search itself, for anything connected to that or to Shruggs’s whereabouts at the time of her murder. So who knows what they might turn up, or what they might find in plain sight? And he suspected the judge knew that.

  Daria was already back on the phone arranging backup. He took out his own phone and, as they’d discussed on the way here, called the FBI office in Denver to arrange for forensics to respond if necessary. It was a three-hour drive on a good day, so a heads-up was definitely in order.

  And Daria hadn’t protested at all, as some locals did, not liking the feds getting involved in their cases. Turn down the FBI lab capabilities on a serial killer case that’s been dragging on for over ten months? Gee, let me think about that...

  He smiled at the memory. He did like her sense of humor and her way of putting things. And the way she treated everyone, even the doorman at The Lodge, with the utmost respect. And how she chose good, solid people for her closest friends. And the way she—

  He cut off his thoughts, which had somehow turned into a catalog of everything he liked about Daria Bloom.

  And you didn’t even get to the X-rated section yet.

  But he could. Oh boy, could he. But if he started listing all the things about her that fired him up, all the things that woke him up at night in the grips of a dream worthy of some hormone-crazed teenager, not only would it take all day, but he’d end up saying or doing something unforgivably stupid.

  “Ready?” Daria asked.

  He blinked. He knew she meant the search warrant, but his body still shouted. Oh yeah. Seriously ready.

  “Let’s roll,” he said, rather gruffly, hoping she’d take it as impatience to get a move on and not guess he’d just been daydreaming about kissing that luscious mouth and running his hands over her trimly curved body.

  It was just as well that she again let him drive. It gave his hands something to do when everything in him wanted them to be doing something else.

  * * *

  It was only, Daria told herself, that they were at last doing something besides going around in circles, combing over the same old information in the futile hope that something new, some fresh approach or angle or thought, would pop out. That was why she was so revved up. Why she was tapping a finger on the armrest of the car, why her pulse was elevated, why she had to work so hard to keep her gaze anywhere except on the man behind the wheel.

  She played back all the sound, logical reasons those things were impossible in her head. There were more than three strikes, so it should be enough to outweigh six-plus feet of tall, broad-shouldered, muscled male with those stunning light brown eyes and that gorgeous mahogany skin.

  As long as he doesn’t smile at me.

  Yes, she had to admit, that heart-stopping smile, from the no-nonsense, very by-the-book Agent Roberts, was enough to throw any calculation into chaos.

  “If it’s there to be found, we’ll find it.”

  His words snapped her out of her reverie. She spared a moment to be grateful he’d assumed it was the case that had been consuming her.

  “Yes,” she said. “And I think it will be.”

  “Agreed. It feels...right.”

  It did. But Daria wished her mind would apply that feeling strictly to the case at hand and not her temporary partner. There were so many concrete reasons why getting involved with him would be wrong, and only one on the other side.

  Of course, the fact that that one reason was that she hadn’t felt this attracted to someone in a very long time carried a lot of weight.

  And then they were there, and she pushed all of it out of her mind. It was her efficient, all-business partner she was with now, and he would expect the same of her. They were on the verge of a huge break, she could just feel it, and no amount of telling herself she’d had her hopes up before on this case could tamp them down this time.

  The house, the officer who’d been staked out told them, was still empty. No one had even driven down the street except a minivan full of kids in sports uniforms of some kind. She hoped for their sake it was an indoor sport; the snow was melting and making the ground a soggy mess.

  She spared a brief moment to h
ope Sam was having the time of his life at the Alvarezes’, then narrowed her focus strictly to the matter at hand.

  They let the tactical team breach; just because there’d been no sign of anyone around didn’t mean Shruggs wasn’t holed up inside. They didn’t think they’d tipped him off, unless his assistant felt inclined to warn him they’d been there, although even then they’d covered all their bases by asking for all the records, not just his, and Stefan had managed to make it sound boringly routine.

  Once the house had been declared clear, they gloved up and went in. Daria left a copy of the warrant in plain sight on a bare dining table, then looked around.

  “A bit tidy for a guy supposedly living alone,” she said.

  “Hey,” Stefan protested.

  “Even your place looked more lived-in than this. I mean, look,” she said with a gesture toward a coffee table in the living room where two stacks of magazines were lined up perfectly square, “not even a magazine out of place, no jackets hung by the door, no dishes in the sink.” She walked into the kitchen to check, then continued. “Not even in the dishwasher.”

  “Maybe he’s just a neat freak.”

  “Mmm,” Daria said, wondering what percentage of serial killers turned out to be manically tidy in their personal spaces.

  “Fridge is pretty sparse,” Stefan said, following her and opening the appliance door. “Beer, half a bottle of wine and...leftover something.”

  “That looks like it should have been tossed days ago.”

  “Charming. And technically outside the purview of our warrant.”

  “Not if we need to know if he’s actually living here,” Daria remarked.

  “Point taken,” Stefan said with a nod.

  She walked around the rest of the kitchen, opening each drawer as she passed. Found utensils, a tray of flatware, some towels and...nothing. She stopped, frowning.

  “What?” Stefan asked.

  “Just looking for the junk drawer.” She glanced at him. “Everyone has a junk drawer, don’t they? Where all the appliance manuals, notepads and the like get stuffed?”

  “Um...”

  She widened her eyes at him. “If you tell me you don’t have a junk drawer, I may have to give up hope.”

  He went still. “And what, exactly, are you hoping for?”

  She’d meant him relaxing enough to make Sam feel at home, but something in the way he said it, and in the hot gleam that suddenly came into those eyes, made her want to answer something entirely different. And of all times and places, this was probably the worst.

  She had to struggle to get her original answer out. “For Sam to feel he can leave out a glass and not get in trouble.”

  The gleam faded. “Yeah, right,” he muttered.

  She turned away, trying to deny to herself that that look in his eyes told her he wanted the same thing.

  Chapter 15

  They continued the search in silence. Stefan noted that each room matched the living room and kitchen—not just tidy but immaculate. The master bedroom and even the bathrooms were spotless and without a thing out of place.

  “Not even a shoe on the floor,” Daria murmured as she looked into the master closet.

  Even his place looked well lived-in compared to this. “Manic?” he wondered aloud.

  “Or overcompensating,” Daria murmured as they continued down the hallway.

  He saw what she meant. “For the other, messy part of his life?”

  She nodded, then looked his way. “Am I letting my suspicions override the evidence?”

  “You’re just thinking. And as long as you’re asking that question, no, you’re not.”

  She smiled at him, although under the circumstances it was fleeting. It still warmed him in ways he doubted he would ever get used to.

  They were getting close to breaking this case wide-open. He knew it. He could almost smell it. And so, in hindsight, he appreciated her caution. He’d seen other agents act too soon on those gut feelings and end up completely blowing a case. Not that they were wrong, although that happened occasionally, but because they rushed ahead before they had the evidence to justify each step, and the case then fell apart in court, hacked to pieces by viciously clever attorneys who cared about nothing but the win.

  So they would proceed methodically, only as fast as the evidence would allow. And they would build this case brick by brick, until the walls were so high and thick this madman would never escape.

  He had a sudden vision of the end of this case, of the day when they caught this twisted psychopath. It would be a day of triumph at stopping him, yet sadness that he had killed so many. It would be a day—probably days—of media circus come to town. It would be a day of satisfaction for a tough job finished, but another layer of pained belief in the ugliness possible from humankind.

  It would also be the end of their partnership.

  No longer would he drive to work every morning looking forward to seeing Daria, to being in the room with her, to looking into those beautiful golden-brown eyes, to watching her move, seeing that smile.

  He was surprised—no, make that stunned—at what that realization did to him.

  And he didn’t want to think about what it would do to Sam. Maybe she would still want to see him. She seemed to genuinely like the boy, so maybe she’d keep in touch, for his sake.

  And you can be the side beneficiary?

  The realization that he was hoping his five-year-old son could be the reason he would still see Daria after this was over rattled him nearly as much as the realization this would be over soon had in the first place.

  He gave himself a fierce mental shake and followed Daria as she walked down the hallway of Curtis Shruggs’s house toward the only room they hadn’t yet looked at, at the end of that hallway. They stepped inside.

  In one corner there was a rather ornate desk, oversized for the space. On the opposite wall was a floor-to-ceiling bookcase about four feet wide. There wasn’t room for much else.

  “Picked the smallest room for an office,” Stefan said.

  Daria nodded again, then looked back toward the desk. “And so it continues,” she murmured.

  “Indeed,” Stefan concurred, also looking at the spotless surface of the large desk. The only items on it were an old-fashioned inkwell that looked as if it should have a feather quill sticking out of it and a pristine blotter. Some stationery was tucked into one side, blank except for the name in fancy script across the top. Curtis Allen Shruggs III.

  Daria blinked. “He’s a third? I don’t remember...in fact I’m certain that’s not in the info we have.”

  Stefan pulled out his phone and did a quick search. “No. He’s not even a second or junior.”

  “Unless they skipped a generation. His father’s name was Charles Ellis Shruggs.”

  “It’s a stuffy-sounding kind of name. Delusions of grandeur, then?” Stefan asked.

  “Or perfection. Goes with everything in here,” Daria said, gesturing toward the bookcase. “Look at that. Every book a hardcover, no dust jackets, leather-or fake-leather bound, and every last one of them the same height.”

  “And not a one looking as if it’s ever been cracked.”

  “Then again,” she mused as she walked over for a closer look, “given some of these titles, perhaps that’s not surprising.” She tilted her head to read out loud. “‘Dewey Decimal Classification and Relative Index.’”

  “Seriously?”

  “And there’s four of them,” she said.

  “Maybe he wanted to be a librarian.”

  “Classifying books instead of people? Maybe.” She ran her fingers over the row of books. Stefan tried not to think about her running those graceful fingers over every part of him. “Although you’d think if that was true at least one book would have been opened—” She broke off suddenly.

 
“What?”

  “It won’t move.”

  “They are jammed in there pretty tightly. All in that perfect row.”

  “No, I mean it truly won’t move.” She tried the next book. Same thing. “It’s like he’s got them glued down or something.”

  Stefan stepped over and tried a book farther down, then one on a different shelf. Neither gave even a fraction of an inch. “Boy, they really are just for show, aren’t they?”

  Daria stepped back, staring at the rows of perfectly matched and lined-up volumes. They weren’t only the exact same height, they were each the exact distance, about an inch, back from the edge of the shelf.

  “Is that what it is? They simply must always be perfectly in line?”

  “I guess it would keep them that way if you bumped the shelf or something,” Stefan mused.

  Daria’s breath caught. “Or...if you moved it.”

  “Moved—” Stefan started to ask her, then stopped short. He pivoted back to look at the bookcase. Then at her. “How tall is Shruggs?” he asked quietly.

  “Shorter than you. Five-ten, five-eleven, maybe.”

  He raised one arm, easily reaching the top shelf. Then he felt along the row of books, tugging on each, but they all appeared to be as solid as those she’d looked at. Dropping his hand down one shelf, he repeated the action. And when his hand stopped suddenly, Daria’s breath jammed up in her throat.

  “Well, well,” Stefan murmured and shifted his strong fingers over the book he’d stopped at.

  It moved.

  He pulled the book forward. As it slid off the shelf, the books on either side of it stayed exactly where they were, upright and securely fastened just as all the others had been.

  “There’s a switch,” he said in a very low voice. “Get the breach team back in here.”

  And she knew he’d reached the same conclusion she had.

  It wasn’t a bookcase.