“Please,” Risa scoffed at them. “When you two are here, the place runs like clockwork, right? So, I’ll be a private citizen and pay my fees. Plus, I stole a manila folder. It all comes out even in my book.”
Then she took a deep breath before picking up her phone and texting Ethan. He was the last person she wanted to reach out to today. Untangling things with him would likely work better if she did it later, when she had some perspective. The need for deep breaths before she texted him told her she hadn’t yet found it.
Still, she tapped the letters to say “I came across something you need to see.”
Well, shit, she thought after she’d sent it. That was not clear. And could be interpreted as “she found some lingerie” or “couldn’t take a hint.” She tapped more keys and sent a second text that added, “Related to Kaylee.”
That would have to do. She tucked her evidence under her arm and limped her way out of the library. She still wasn’t telling him about the stalker she now believed she had.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Ethan stood in the hallway just outside Risa’s door, raising his hand to knock. Holding his breath, he lowered his hand, took another breath, raised it again, then lowered it again.
Holy shit, he thought, this is hard.
He needed to explain, but—no matter his reasons—he’d wound up being a dick. Though he was man enough to admit that he needed to apologize to her, he didn’t actually want to live through whatever she threw at him while he tried to apologize. It was worse because he knew he deserved it.
She’d texted him and asked him to come over, and he immediately checked everything he could remember. No, he had his underwear, his wallet, his shirt. He wasn’t missing his badge or gun, though he had taken all those things off the night before. In fact, he’d removed every last stitch he had on and then some, but he hadn’t left anything behind.
Then she said it was related to Kaylee. Still he was concerned that what she “had for him” might be a mean right hook, even if he deserved it. He raised his hand again to knock when the door swung open before him.
Risa stared at him with a flat enough expression that he was unable to read her emotions. That was probably worse. Shit. She didn’t look fiery angry, nor sad. She didn’t even look cold. It didn’t seem that she’d spent the whole day crying over him. While it certainly wasn’t what he wanted, he also wouldn’t have been upset to see it.
No, she seemed exasperated more than anything. Her words confirmed it. “You know, I can hear when people come up the stairwell. You’ve been standing out here for a good thirty seconds. I’m not sure what you needed to do, but you can knock. I’m going to open the door for you.”
Yes, he thought. There it was. Her dry tone certainly said, “I am the bigger person here, and you, sir, are a fuckhead.”
Shit. This was going to be even harder than he’d expected. Ethan stepped through the doorway as Risa gestured him inside. He wanted to ask what was going on, but the first words out of his mouth were the necessary ones.
“I fucked up, Risa. I fucked up big time.”
She looked at him, eyebrows up. “How?”
Well, crap. She was making him say it. Though he deserved it all, he still didn’t want to have to do it. His throat tightened and his chest clenched but he manned up and said the words. “I ran out of here this morning. I didn’t leave you a note. I didn’t do any of it the right way. By the time I realized what I had done, it was so late…too late to fix it.”
He realized, as the words fell out of his mouth, it was a shitty thing to say. He’d run off and not even realized that he had left her with no note, no contact, not even a “Thanks, that was really great. See you again, babe.” He opened his mouth again, “Please, let me explain.”
“No.” She said it calmly. Too calmly? “You don’t need to explain what has already been made very clear.”
Shit, shit, shit. The swearing in his head got louder. “No, Risa. It’s not like that.”
She stared at him, one eyebrow still cocking up, one hand on her hip, the boot giving her a questioning stance. She did not believe anything coming out of his mouth. “Sure it is.”
“No, it’s not.” He held up both of his hands, palms out, still not knowing what she had for him, but knowing what he had for her was an explanation. Whether she hated him or not was entirely up to her, but he at least wanted to explain that he hadn’t been a total shithead. None of it was about her, though it should have been. That was his problem, right there.
“My phone rang at five a.m.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“I don’t know how you didn’t wake up,” he protested, hands still up. He felt like a prisoner, hanging on her every expression, waiting for her to pardon his crimes.
At last her expression changed, and he realized he had no idea how she hadn’t woken up. In fact, this whole day would be easier if he hadn’t woken up and taken that call. But, as an FBI agent, he was so tuned to that phone chime that he wasn’t able to sleep through it. “I rolled over, ran out of the room, and answered it. Late last night, we had a search party find another body.”
Her head jerked back just a little bit. Clearly, she’d not been expecting to hear that, and certainly he hadn’t, either, at five a.m.
“I ran.” He sighed and owned up to as much of it as he was capable of. “I ran because there was another body. I should have stayed. I should have woken you up. I should have told you. Believe me, this is not how I wanted it to go down.”
Risa frowned one more time. “Not how you wanted it to go down…That you ran out? Or that you had another body?”
Well, shit. “Both,” he admitted. “Obviously, I never want to find another body.”
“You’d be out of a job,” she was quick to point out.
“I’d be happily out of a job. I can do other jobs. If people quit killing each other, my life would be much, much better!” Damn it, now he was getting angry at her, and that was the last thing he needed. He’d already done a very good job of pissing her off.
Ethan dialed his temper back. “I wish I hadn’t run out this morning without saying goodbye to you. I wish I had told you that I desperately want to see you again, and I’m guessing I screwed it up enough that you didn’t call me over here this evening with anything even remotely like that in mind.”
“No, it’s not like that. You’re right.” She delivered every word in a flat tone that told him he hadn’t won her back with his shitty apology. Still, he wondered if he’d seen her features soften just a little bit. Maybe he’d imagined it.
She frowned a little. “This new body they found, was it by any chance related to Ester Holtzclaw?”
“What?” he asked, now the startled one.
“Ester Holtzclaw. A girl who disappeared seventy-three years ago.”
Ethan stood there stunned. It couldn’t be related, he told himself. But it could. The case from this morning was twenty years old. Janet Deevers case was fifty. Why not seventy-three? Why would this case not get stranger and stranger?
Of course, Risa was not welcoming him with open arms. Far from it.
He was going to need her. And it wouldn’t matter. He’d fucked it up, and he was going to have to go it alone.
Chapter Thirty
Risa spent the night alone in her own bed. Though that was definitely her normal, it felt odd. The bed still smelled like Ethan. She hadn’t changed the sheets. She thought about doing it, but then she thought about not doing it. She thought about his apology, even though she hadn’t accepted it.
She was still angry.
It wouldn’t have been hard for him to wake her before he ran out the door. There must’ve been something that he was thinking or not thinking that had him exiting without even saying goodbye to her. Maybe he really did want to see her again and he’d simply panicked at five a.m. That was entirely plausible. No lies, no gimmicks, just panic followed by an apology.
But Risa was tired of men who didn’t know what th
ey wanted. If he panicked and ran once, what was to say he wouldn’t do it again? Despite wanting Ethan Eames in her life, she didn’t need that. She told herself she didn’t need him, and yet she hadn’t changed the sheets.
She’d gone into the station house the next morning. Ethan asked her if she could help out with research and, for the first time, she had a legitimate excuse to say no. Though she’d wanted to help, she also enjoyed being able to say she wasn’t available.
After three hours at the gray metal desk, even turning down Ethan had lost some of its luster.
Being a firefighter was a job that attracted doers. It wasn’t that they didn’t think—they had to—but their primary goal was always to move forward. Putting a firefighter at a desk was usually the worst form of torture. Risa often imagined that was the reason her superiors were so grouchy. She would be, too, if this was her permanent job. This was why she was training to become an arson investigator. She would not survive being at a desk five days a week. Right now, lunchtime couldn’t come fast enough.
The chief left busy work for people who were stuck on medical leave but still needing to clock hours. According to the city laws, she had to work if she could, and Risa understood. It just sucked. Staying at home had sucked, too. At least now she had a reason to get up in the morning, and a legitimate excuse to tell Ethan she was busy.
It was strange though, being in the fire station and not wearing her T-shirt and regulation pants. Though she was still in uniform, it wasn’t her station wear. That one she would wear under her PPE when she headed out for a fire. No, this one was a white button-down short-sleeved shirt. This one scratched.
Sitting quietly in the hard chair at the ugly desk, she entered report after report into the system. The pile of work went back several months to when Wilson had thrown his shoulder out and wound up on desk duty. Apparently, he sucked at desk duty.
She was getting ornery sitting there, so she headed out for lunch by herself. The guys on shift might do a sandwich run with her, but they wouldn’t stay and eat. And she needed to be away from that damned desk the whole break. She was not looking forward to tomorrow.
Gathering her food at the pick-up counter, she headed to the back of the tiny shop. This sucked, she thought, taking the first bite out of her sandwich. She’d debated before she sat down. She wound up sitting on the wall side of the little booth and looking out at the restaurant. She tried to look like eating lunch alone was normal and okay. She had her tablet out, and she was reading, so she wasn’t just staring at people, but every other table held more than one person.
She played a little computer game and told herself it was fine. Then she told herself she needed to line up lunch dates, that she needed to find more friends she could call. It was hard to reach out, though.
When she was on the job, talking to people was easy. She had specific questions to ask. She had a place in the conversation. But calling someone out of the blue and asking them if she wanted to have lunch was harder. The next time Risa was in the library, she was going to ask—
“Hey Risa, would you mind if I join you?”
Speak of the devil. Nicole Salway slid in the seat across from her. “I mean, unless I’m bothering your alone time.”
“Oh, dear God, no.” Risa smiled wide, glad for the company. She and Nicole had crossed paths often and always got along well, though she’d never reached out to the woman outside of their work—Nicole as a detective, Risa as a fledgling arson investigator. “I had to get out of the station. I’m on desk duty.” She pointed at the table as though Nicole could see her ankle support boot through the fake wood countertop.
Nicole nodded. She understood. “I get it. People like us, we’re movers and shakers. Desk duty is probably a punishment from hell for you.”
“You hit the nail on the head,” Risa acknowledged. “Medical leave sucked, but downgraded medical leave is even worse.”
Nicole laughed, then her expression turned a little more somber. “I saw you come in and talk to the FBI Agent—Eames—the other day. Can I ask what you were discussing? I mean, you went in and then he went bonkers. Not that he talks to any of us.”
“Oh yeah, that,” Risa commented between bites of her sandwich. It suddenly tasted a lot better with company. “Don’t ask me why I was doing it, but I looked up old cases to link to the one that Agent Eames is working on.”
“Oooohhhh,” the tone in Nicole’s voice clearly conveyed what she thought of Risa doing favors for Special Agent Ethan Eames. “So that sounds like fun. Did he enlist you to help?”
“No,” Risa admitted. “I mean he did at first, but yesterday I was bored out of my skull. I did it on my own.”
Nicole looked away, thoughtful for a moment. “I mean—with your position—it’s not…inappropriate. Wait! I don’t mean it that way.”
“I get it,” Risa laughed. “I think I just wound up doing research for something to do. I was looking into old, cold cases reported in the paper.”
Nicole took another bite of her sandwich. “Oh?”
“Yeah. I don’t know what I can tell,” Risa commented.
“I won’t push you,” Nicole told her, “but I can keep a secret, too.”
“Well,” Risa debated her thoughts out loud. “I guess it’s public knowledge because it’s in the newspapers. And what I found was a DFPD case… I found a missing-person file from fifty years ago. We interviewed the head librarian, Carol, about it. Then there’s another from seventy-five years ago.” Risa took a breath before continuing. “And just today Ethan found another case of a missing girl from twenty years ago.”
Risa watched as her friend stopped moving and her face went pale.
“Nicole, is everything okay?”
“Do they know the girl’s name?” Nicole was blinking rapidly. She looked clammy, and Risa launched into firefighter mode.
She knew how to handle people in crisis, she’d just never expected that person to be Nicole. Reaching out, Risa placed her hand softly over her friend’s and let it sit for a moment. She took a few deep breaths, hoping Nicole would mimic her. When she did, Risa finally gave her some information. “I don’t remember. But I think her first name was Missy.”
She watched as Nicole went sheet-white and almost passed out.
Chapter Thirty-One
Ethan startled as the door to his office slammed open and Risa filled the space. She looked like an avenging angel.
He didn’t know whether to smile, grateful that she’d come to see him, or shake in his shoes. Whatever she was here about, it was important, and his money said it wasn’t about him, which sucked.
“You will not believe what I learned today,” she announced, her voice steady and forceful. Whatever it was, it would be important to him.
However, he found he didn’t really want to hear it. He wanted to fix what he’d dicked up. “Take me to dinner and tell me about it?”
He hoped his upbeat tone and accompanying smile had the effect he wanted. He’d been stuck behind his desk all day. While he was excited for the new avenues he’d figured out for his searches, he’d still spent almost all of his day hunched over the keyboard, typing in whatever keywords he’d figured out.
He’d eventually broken down and pulled every missing woman and child from the Dark Falls area since the town was established. That meant pulling cases dating back almost three hundred years.
His whole day had mostly sucked, and Risa was now frowning at him.
“Wait.” She held out one hand as she narrowed her eyes even more. “I make less money than you do. You’re the one who still owes me a reasonable apology. I come in here with news that’s going to help your case, and you want me to take you to dinner?”
Yeah, that had been a shitty way to put it, he realized. His brain was well and truly scrambled. But Risa slamming his door open and standing in the entryway and lighting every single cell of his body on fire certainly hadn’t helped. Crappy things were probably going to come out of his mouth, specifically to h
er, for much of the near future. He wondered if he should just tell her how she scrambled him, so she might stop judging him for it. A guy could hope.
“Yeah. I meant I should take you to dinner, but you should tell me where we should go.”
She clearly didn’t believe him. He wasn’t sure he did, either.
“Uh-huh. What if I pick that super-high-end steak place downtown?”
He shrugged. “You could do that. I mean, I’d hate to ruin a steak with whatever case info you might be carrying around in that brain of yours.”
“I see what you’re saying. You’re trying to talk your way out of having to buy me the most expensive meal in town.” She nodded at him, a slight smile on her mouth at having cracked his game.
Ethan shrugged as though it didn’t matter. “I’m going to expense tonight’s dinner. You’re talking about the case, right?”
She only nodded in reply, her expression toning down a little bit. She’d become animated when she called him on his f-ed up wording, but now her expression flattened. Of course it did. They’d been talking about going out to dinner, and he’d brought it back around to missing kids and dead bodies and a serial killer. He wondered if it was specifically the subject matter or the fact that he wasn’t talking about taking her out on a date.
Ethan shifted in his seat, the discomfort of the situation coming out physically. If he was going to fix things, sooner was better than later. “So, let me tell you what. I’m going to take you out, and I’m not going to expense it. I’d like to ask you out on a date, for a really nice steak at that nice restaurant downtown, with a bottle of wine at their best table and no discussion of anything related to anything regarding the FBI or this case.”
He watched as his words sank in and he hoped his tone did, too. The more he’d said the more he realized how much he wanted that. How much she’d maneuvered him into wanting it. And exactly how much he didn’t care.
Dark Echoes: (Dark Falls, CO Romantic Thriller Book 7) Page 12
