Protector's Instinct

by Janie Crouch

  Caroline watched as he walked outside, bracing his forearms on the rail of the deck, looking out at the view of the ocean the house afforded.

  She looked at the house with new eyes. He’d bought this for them.

  It was perfect, she realized. Would’ve been just what she would’ve wanted to start a life together with Zane.

  She wanted to yell, to scream out her pain. To find that she’d lost even more than she’d ever known was almost too much to bear.

  She’d already lost so much. They both had.

  She looked at Zane standing out on the deck, staring at the sea. Standing on the deck he’d known she would love. Hell, she already did and she hadn’t stepped foot out there yet.

  Could she walk out there to Zane right now, on the deck that should’ve been theirs, and try to make everything right? To make their relationship what it was?

  No, she couldn’t. Too much time had passed. For both of them. Things were too different. Their relationship could never be what it once was.

  But that didn’t mean it had to be nothing.

  She’d spent a lot of time with Dr. Parker in those first few months just trying to get things back to standard, to ordinary. Except Caroline had no idea what ordinary was. She and Dr. Parker had worked long and hard on establishing a new baseline of normal. Of accepting that things would never go back to the way they were, but that didn’t mean you were never okay again.

  She and Zane had to establish a new baseline of normal.

  Starting right now.

  She began walking toward him just as he turned to look at her. They were in sync, the way they’d always been. She stepped out onto the deck and he reached his hand out toward her. Neither of them said anything, just held on to one another’s hand.

  Finally, Zane pulled Caroline against his chest as he leaned back on the railing. She wrapped her arms around his trim waist, hooking her thumbs into the back belt loops of his jeans. The beat of his heart under her ear reassured her of her safety much more than the waist holster she’d felt briefly as she’d slipped her arms around him.

  She wished she could just stay against him forever.

  But her phone chirped obnoxiously from her pocket.

  “Text?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she murmured, her mouth half against his shirt. “Just ignore it.”

  “It might be Jon or the precinct.” He slipped his fingers into her pocket to pull it out. “Or, God forbid, your parents.”

  Caroline smiled, letting him read the text. Her parents hadn’t ever really liked Zane. Or at least hadn’t liked how volatile their relationship was. But they would have no idea he was around, so she doubted it would be anything about Zane.

  But she felt him stiffen beneath her. “What the hell, Caroline?”

  “What?”

  He spun the phone around so she could read the message.

  You’re a liar and you deserve everything you’ve got coming to you. Don’t think you’ve escaped.

  Caroline grabbed the phone. “Oh yeah. I forgot about these stupid texts. I keep meaning to ask someone how to block this number.”

  “How long have you been getting them?”

  “I don’t know.” She pulled away, the peace she’d known just a few moments before, gone. “A week? Why are you getting all angry? It’s just a wrong number.”

  “A wrong number? Someone is trying to kill you, Caroline. You should’ve told me about this. They’ve got to be connected.”

  “I didn’t think about it, okay? And then I didn’t have my phone, so I didn’t get any messages.”

  She looked up at him, ready to blast into him again, but realized there was something else. “What? What aren’t you telling me?”

  He reached into his pocket and held out his phone so she could see the message that had just arrived for him.

  What you hid will come to light. Soon the whole world will know.

  She grabbed the phone out of his hand. “What? Is this your first message?”

  “No. Like you, they’ve been coming for a week.”

  “Zane—”

  He took her hand and led her inside. “Yeah, I know. This means we’re both being targeted. We’ve got to get these phones to the station, see what info the tech department can get from them.”

  “Do you think it’s someone local?”

  “I don’t know. But I plan to find out.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Okay, I know this is a hard question, but I need honesty from both you guys,” Jon said to them as they sat around the table in the Corpus Christi PD conference room.

  They’d brought the phones back last night and left them for tech—happy to get the overtime—to sort through. Zane had let Jon and Lillian know about the texts but then had explained they were going back home.

  Home. Zane didn’t let himself think too much about that. For nearly two years he hadn’t let himself think about the beach cottage and what it represented and how he hadn’t been able to let it go. A shrink would have a field day with that one. Maybe that was why he’d never gone to talk to anyone about his feelings.

  But taking Caroline home with him, despite the danger, had just felt right. And getting her into a bed with him and making love, slowly, softly—such a different pace for them—had definitely felt right.

  But now the time for tenderness was over. It was time to do whatever was necessary to find who was targeting them and make sure Caroline was safe again.

  “Despite what the texts imply, Jon, I don’t think either Caroline or I have anything to hide.”

  Jon leaned back in his chair. “I don’t doubt that. But I thought we should start with the opening. If either of you took up shoplifting or ran over your neighbor’s cat and buried it in your yard, now is the time to come clean with that.”

  It was good to have Jon here with them. It eased some of the pressure. He knew them, they didn’t have to go through the awkward stages of building up trust. Jon wanted to protect Caroline and stop whoever was behind this almost as much as Zane did. After all, Caroline was the best friend of Jon’s bride-to-be. The wedding was scheduled for this weekend.

  “All right,” Caroline said. “I’ll admit, the first bridesmaid dress your fiancée picked out? I threatened to kill her if she went with that one. Pretty sure I said it publicly.”

  Jon chuckled. “The powder blue one?”

  Caroline rolled her eyes. “For an artist, she had some pretty big missteps there for a while. Fortunately, she finally picked a great one and I didn’t have to kill her.”

  Jon smiled. “But seriously. Zane, any corners you cut as you got your business started? Caroline, any accidents where maybe you covered a bad call by telling a lie?”

  Zane could see both he and Caroline becoming defensive. Nobody liked to have their integrity questioned.

  Jon held out a hand. “Listen, you guys are like family to me. And I would personally vouch for both of you without question. But if you’ve got something you need to get off your chest, now is the time.”

  “I’ve got nothing, Jon.” Caroline sat up taller in her seat as she said it. “There was a drunk who was threatening to get me fired a few days ago at an accident scene, since I wouldn’t stay and look at his dislocated pinkie when I had a bunch of other people around me with serious injuries. But that’s the only incident I can recall in the recent past. Since the attack, I’ve basically just spent most of my time surviving and coming to grips with reality.”

  Jon nodded, then turned to Zane. “You? I remember you had quite the hot temper when we worked together nearly two years ago.”

  Zane shrugged. “Still do. But I’ve kept to myself. Hell, I can’t even remember having a real conversation with anyone outside my friends on the force for the past six months.”

&
nbsp; “Okay.” Jon put both hands down on the desk. Obviously, he believed them and wasn’t going to belabor the point. “Then let’s talk about what the tech folks found out about the texts to your phones.”

  Jon pulled out papers and handed Zane and Caroline both copies. “Here’s a list of all the texts that both of you received and the day and time they were sent.”

  “They were all sent close to the same time to both of us,” Caroline pointed out.

  “Yes.” Jon nodded. “And they all came from the same phone. Not listed as registered to anyone, unfortunately.”

  Zane looked at the list of messages. There had been fourteen sent over the last eight days. Each one called Caroline a liar in some way and accused Zane of hiding something.

  “So is this a dead end?” he asked Jon.

  “We’ve got Omega looking into it. They’ve got more sophisticated technology to pull data from the phones. Maybe they can get something Corpus Christi couldn’t.”

  “Okay.” Zane sat back in his chair. “Did the CSI crew find anything at my house? Fingerprints?”

  He appreciated that Jon had been keeping an eye on this so that Zane and Caroline could get a night of much-needed rest.

  “Nothing usable. I stayed with them to see if I could figure out any patterns. See what the perp’s overall plan was. But it honestly just looked like a fit of rage to me.”

  One of the CSI personnel came rushing into the room. “Detective Wales, Agent Hatton, we have something you need to see in the lab.”

  Zane grabbed Caroline’s hand and they rushed with Jon down the hall to the lab. They were met by Susan McGuinness, head of the CCPD crime lab.

  “Zane, good to have you back here. We’ve missed you.”

  “Thanks, Susan. What’s going on? Did you find something at my house?”

  “No, actually, we found something at Caroline’s house.”

  “Mine?” Caroline asked. “There wasn’t any damage at my house.”

  “If it wasn’t for Caroline’s trick with a piece of tape, we wouldn’t have known anyone was in there at all.”

  Susan nodded. “No doubt that’s what the person who broke in wanted.”

  “Tell me you found a fingerprint, Susan.”

  “Would that be enough to get you to agree to return to the force full-time?” the older woman asked.

  Zane could feel Caroline’s smile and her eyes on him. He just shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Well, unfortunately, it’s not a fingerprint we found. But it is something much more interesting.”

  “What?” He, Jon and Caroline all asked at the same time.

  “Transmitting devices. Hidden in two of Caroline’s lamps.”

  Of all the things Jon was expecting to hear, this didn’t even make the list. “Are you serious?”

  “It wasn’t us who found them, actually. It was that other Omega Sector agent. The lady,” Susan said.

  Jon looked closer at the bugs. “Lillian Muir. She’s actually SWAT, not an investigator.”

  “Well, she was the one who found the bugs after we’d already left.”

  Jon nodded. “She and I agreed to split up. This morning we wanted to make sure no one was returning to the scene of the crime looking for either of you. She probably went inside to check.”

  “When she found something unusual, she went out and called us,” Susan continued. “Smart on her part. We were able to figure out they were transmitting devices and that they were still actively transmitting.”

  Zane turned to Caroline and Jon. “That was probably why they trashed my house. To keep us focused over there instead of at your house, Caro. I never even thought to look for transmitting devices.”

  She shrugged. “I wouldn’t have, either.”

  Jon turned back to the crime lab director. “Can we get any information from the devices? Anything specific about them?”

  Lillian walked through the door. “You guys hear about the bugs at Caroline’s house?”

  “Susan was just telling us,” Zane responded. “We’re trying to figure out if there’s anything usable in the bugs.”

  Susan looked over at Lillian. “We don’t know.”

  “When will you know?” Zane asked.

  “Well.” Lillian smiled. “The lab doesn’t know anything about the devices because I talked them into leaving them functional at Caroline’s town house.”

  Caroline’s eyes flew to Zane’s, distress clear, but Zane already knew what Lillian was thinking. “So we can set a trap,” he said.

  “Yep.” Lilian nodded. “I was very careful not to report finding the bugs while I was inside the house, and I made sure none of the nerds—” she turned to Susan “—no offense, said anything while we were inside.”

  “None taken,” Susan responded. “It’s a solid plan.”

  “So the perp doesn’t know we know,” Zane said, reaching for Caroline’s hand. “This could be the break we need.”

  Caroline still didn’t look convinced. “So we, what, go back to my house and give who is listening false information?”

  Zane nodded. “Sort of. We can tell them whatever we want. They’ve got no reason not to believe it.”

  “We’ll fabricate a situation where you guys are away from the department,” Jon said. “Dinner or a walk or something.”

  “I don’t want to take a chance with Caroline.”

  “Zane—”

  He cupped her cheek with his hand. “It has nothing to do with not trusting you or thinking you can’t handle yourself. I swear to you I would say this about any civilian. You don’t have the training to be used as bait. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Caroline, Zane’s right,” Lillian said. “It’s a much better plan to let me wear a wavy brown wig and pose as you. We’re roughly the same build. Until someone got right up on us, they wouldn’t know it wasn’t you.”

  Jon smiled kindly. “And once the perp is close enough to know the difference, we’ll have officers waiting to arrest him.”

  “How do we know the guy won’t just shoot? He was shooting at us at Big Bend,” Caroline pointed out.

  Zane could see her point. “He was trying to make our deaths look like an accident. Shooting us won’t give him that.”

  “But he could decide to take his chances,” Lillian pointed out. “We’ll have to give a situation where you’re vulnerable, but long-range shooting isn’t an option.”

  Zane nodded. There were a lot of options. They just needed to figure out the best one. He didn’t mind putting himself in danger if it meant catching the person intent on hurting Caroline.

  “I don’t like you setting yourself up,” Caroline looked up at him with her big green eyes. “The same way you don’t want me to do it, I don’t want you to, either.”

  He smiled gently. “If I’m law enforcement, it’s what I do.”

  She kissed the palm of his hand cupping her cheek. “Law enforcement or not, you watch your back.”

  “I won’t have to. I’ve got the best doing that for me.”

  * * *

  THEY DIDN’T WASTE any time putting their plan into action, knowing every moment they didn’t make a move gave the killer more time to scheme.

  So a few hours later Caroline found herself and Zane back at her town house, playing out a script they’d already formulated at the station.

  “I just need a break, Zane,” Caroline said as they walked in the front door. “This was supposed to be my vacation.”

  “It’s not my fault someone is trying to kill you,” Zane said, playing his part. “It’s just not safe for you to go anywhere alone right now.”

  “I spent the entire day at the police station. I don’t like the station. You know that. It brings back bad memories.” Those words didn’t require much acting.
She still felt uncomfortable around the police station. “It makes me feel like a victim. Powerless.”

  Zane’s eyes flew to hers. He knew she was speaking the truth now, having gone slightly off script.

  “You might always feel that way,” he said softly. “It might never be a place you’re totally comfortable with.”

  She shrugged. “I have to admit, it’s easier when you’re there.”

  He walked over and wrapped his arms around her. “But I know you can handle it either way.”

  She needed to get them off her personal feelings and back on script.

  “I know what I want to do!” This was it. The part of the plan Zane and Jon thought whoever was after them would go for. All Caroline had to do was sell it to whoever was listening.

  Zane chuckled. “Wow, haven’t seen you this excited for a while. What do you want to do?”

  “There’s that new shop, Taste Unlimited, downtown. It sells all sorts of foods made for picnics, but also wines and desserts.”

  “Sounds great to me.”

  “Let’s go there and I’ll pick out the food and you pick out the wine and dessert. It’ll be a crazy hodgepodge and perfect for a picnic. We can even have the picnic in the station if you want to, since I’m sure going to the beach or a park is off-limits for a while.”

  “I just want to keep you safe.”

  His statement was part of the script, but she also knew it was true.

  “But I guess a little shopping before locking us away at the station isn’t a problem. And it sounds like we might come up with some crazy combinations.”

  Caroline reached over and kissed him. “That will make it even better.”

  Zane looked at his watch as if he was considering the time. “Okay, let’s shower and I want you to take a little nap first. We’ll leave for your Taste Unlimited place and their vast offerings in, say, three hours? Then we have to go to the station so I can get some work done.”

  He phrased it as though he wanted to make sure that was okay with her. As though they hadn’t carefully discussed how much time to give whoever was listening so he could have a chance to investigate the store, see if it would be a great place to try to grab Caroline or Zane and formulate a plan.