Kansas City Cowboy

by Julie Miller

There was something basic and unpretentious about the masculinity imprinted in every rugged line, deep-pitched word and chivalrous gesture of Boone Harrison. And as much as his relentless and poorly timed refusal to leave her and KCPD alone to do their work annoyed her, she couldn’t deny a rusty feminine awareness sparking to life inside her at every encounter with the man.

  Taking a deep breath and forcing her weary muscles to smile, Kate unhooked the last button and shrugged out of her coat as she circled around her desk. She draped the coat over the back of her chair and smoothed the sleeves of her cashmere cardigan, diverting her focus to distract her traitorous hormones for a moment. “Who’s taking care of Alton County while you’re here in Kansas City?”

  “I’ve got deputies.” A tall, broad shadow loomed over her as Boone approached the desk. “Since I’m staying the night to escort Janie home in the morning, I thought I’d check in to see if any progress has been made on your investigation.”

  She’d thought she’d gotten rid of him after their meeting at the florist’s shop that morning. So much for a five-minute respite to recoup the emotional energy she’d expended throughout the day. After the long day she’d had—counseling a retired cop who was dealing with the recent death of his wife, as well as a young officer who’d been particularly surly about being assigned to temporary desk duty, observing witness interviews and trading carefully chosen words with reporters who were just as intent as Vanessa Owen to get the inside scoop on the Rose Red Rapist’s latest attack—the last thing Kate needed was to deal with Sheriff Tall, Dark and Determined here.

  Five minutes free from drama was apparently too much to ask for right now. Maybe if she quickly sent Boone Harrison on his way, though, she could at least close the door and enjoy two minutes of silence before joining the next meeting. “You’ve got a hotel room already? They fill up pretty fast this late in the day, especially south of town where the new crime lab and M.E.’s office are. Maybe you’d better—”

  “I’ve got a room. But I’d sleep in my truck if I had to.” A soft gray Stetson landed in the middle of her desk, followed by two broad hands braced on either side of it and the earthy, warm scent of the man leaning over them. Kate tilted her gaze up to a pair of whiskey-brown eyes that were entirely too close to hers. “Thought if I made an effort to be a little more civilized than I was this morning, you might be more inclined to share some information.”

  Didn’t the man understand personal space? And had that breathy little catch of sound really come from her?

  “You were understandably upset this morning. But that doesn’t change the facts. You’re out of your jurisdiction, you’re too emotionally connected to the victim, and I don’t have any details I can share with you right now.” She slid a stack of files from beneath his hat and hugged them to her chest, straightening away from the desk and putting some distance between them. At least work was marginally less stressful than dealing with Marshall Hot-Shot here. She knew the expectations of her at KCPD. She knew what her clients needed from her. However, she wasn’t as comfortable with persistent men and these flutterings of awareness. “I’m running late to a task force meeting right now.”

  “Perfect.” He snatched up his hat. “I can sit in and listen.”

  “No.” That had come out more aggravated than authoritative. She fixed a friendly smile on her face and tried again. “I’ve got your card. I’ll call you when we’re finished.”

  “Who was that woman pestering you out there?”

  So was he truly observant? Or just plain nosy? Her arms tightened around the shield of papers she clutched to her chest. “A reporter.”

  “Did you tell her anything you haven’t told me? I’m a cop and I’m family.” Observant, she decided, reading the stern set of the lines beside his eyes. “I don’t want to be surprised by anything I read in the papers or see on the evening news.”

  His reasoning made her stop and think. And relent. Her run-in with Vanessa had reminded her of just how frustrated and helpless not knowing the truth had made her feel five years ago. Boone Harrison wasn’t leaving town until morning, anyway, so at least she could keep track of him and know he wasn’t interfering with their investigation if he was in the room with them. That was how she’d present it to Spencer Montgomery, too.

  “Fine. Detective Montgomery won’t be happy about it, but I’ll clear it so you can sit in and listen.” Kate came around the desk, pointing a warning finger at Boone. “But not a word, remember? And anything you see or hear in that room has to remain confidential.”

  “I know how to keep my mouth shut.”

  Somehow she doubted that. But she only had so many fights in her on any given day, and this one was sorely testing her limits. “Let me go in and talk to Spencer first. This way.”

  “After you.”

  A half hour into the meeting and Kate wondered if she’d made the wrong decision. Although Spencer Montgomery wasn’t pleased to have an unplanned visitor sitting in with the task force, he’d agreed that keeping the sheriff in sight was less worrisome than having him running through the city like a pinball let loose in a machine, conducting his own investigation into his sister’s murder, impacting witnesses and giving off the impression that the task force couldn’t get the job done on its own.

  Still, it couldn’t be easy, even for a veteran officer of the law like Boone, to listen to the gruesome facts about his sister’s rape and murder.

  Spencer sat at the head of the boardroom table, his suit and tie looking remarkably fresh for this late in the day. He was speaking to his partner, Nick Fensom, a short, stocky, streetwise contrast to the buttoned-down task force leader. “Dr. Masterson-Kincaid says the traces of vinegar match what we found on his previous victim?”

  “Yeah. The bastard cleaned her up after he raped her.” Nick ran his fingers through his short, dark hair. “It doesn’t make sense, though. If he took the time to get rid of any DNA after the sexual assault, then why leave the bloody mess we found when he dumped the body in the alley?”

  Boone’s hand fisted on his thigh in the chair beside Kate’s.

  “Nick,” she warned, feeling the raging emotions coming off the sheriff in waves as he struggled to hold them in check.

  “Sorry, man.” Nick looked across the table and apologized. “I’ve got sisters, too. I get so angry when I see how he treats these women.”

  “You’re an open book, Nick.” Spencer chuffed his partner’s shoulder in a masculine show of compassion. Then he steered the meeting back to the facts. “Anything else we can get from the M.E.’s report?”

  Annie Hermann, the CSI attached to the task force, opened the folder in front of her and fanned out the papers and photos inside, digging through them until she pulled out a computerized sketch and set it on top of the scattered items. “I took pictures of the fatal head wound, and had Holly make a mold of the unusually deep wound track.” Her dark eyes glanced up nervously, apologetically, perhaps, at the big man sitting between her and Kate. “Is it okay if I go into the details?”

  The tension in Boone never eased, but he turned his head toward the petite woman beside him. “Do it.”

  After a murmured apology, Annie continued. “Holly says the blunt-force trauma was definitely the COD. But what he hit her with isn’t immediately apparent. It’s almost as if she was impaled by something. Nothing I found at the dump site seemed to fit. Of course, that’s not the primary crime scene, either. I plan on going through our database and running simulations to figure out what kind of tool or instrument made that wound.”

  Spencer nodded. “Let us know as soon as you determine the weapon. If it’s something unusual, maybe specific to a certain profession, that could help narrow our suspect and crime scene searches.”

  “Will do.”

  Boone’s eyes remained transfixed on the drawing. Thankfully, it wasn’t an actual picture of his murdered sister. Kate was about to warn Annie to pick up her mess, or act on the impulse to give Boone’s fist a supportive, sympathetic
squeeze beneath the table herself, when he reached for something else from the stack in front of Annie.

  He picked up an 8 x 10 photograph and studied the jewelry displayed beside the cataloging number in the picture. Kate leaned forward, watching his eyes narrow in concentration. She quickly sat back when he turned his focus past her to where Spencer Montgomery sat at the head of the table. “May I comment, Detective?” he asked.

  “If you can tell us something new.” Spencer seemed wary of inviting Boone into the discussion. But he was too smart a cop to overlook a possible lead, even if it did come from someone outside the task force. “We’ve all got a description of the necklace you said was missing.”

  “It’s not that. All this other jewelry, this handmade silver and turquoise stuff—I’ve seen Janie wear it.” He pointed to the smallest round object in the photo. “But this ring is something new.”

  Kate pulled the photo in front of her to study the jewelry in question. “A ruby and diamonds set in white gold? A lot of diamonds. That’s expensive.”

  When Maggie Wheeler, the red-haired police officer sitting opposite her, asked to see it, Kate slid the photo across the table. “It looks like an engagement ring.” She twirled her left hand in the air to show off the simple solitaire set in gold that she wore. “I saw designs like that when John and I were shopping.”

  “Was your sister engaged?” Spencer asked, studying the photo himself as it made its way around the table.

  “No.”

  “In a relationship?”

  Boone shook his head. “Nothing serious enough to warrant a gift like that. At least not that I knew of.”

  Feeling the subtle shift from helpless anger to focused purpose from the man beside her, Kate voiced the information Boone was probably already sorting through inside his head. “Robin Carter, the victim’s boss, at her shop this morning said she thought Janie had been unusually secretive lately. And that she’d stopped dating.”

  Spencer’s sharp gray eyes challenged Boone. “Could she have been involved with someone she didn’t tell you about, Sheriff?”

  Annie tucked a curly dark lock behind her ear. “Not every woman confides in her family when she’s in a relationship.”

  Nick Fensom scoffed at the notion of a woman keeping her mouth shut. “My sisters do. Sometimes, I can’t shut ‘em up about the latest stud or hottie or whatever name they’re calling them.”

  “Really?” Annie bristled at the amusement in Nick’s tone. “Women with good sense confide in you?”

  “My family’s close, Hermann. We talk.” He shrugged off her sarcasm and leaned back in his chair. “Unless the guy’s trouble. And then they keep it a secret because they know I’ll check him out—and run him off if he’s no good.”

  Unless the guy’s trouble. Even Nick went silent at the implication of what he’d just said. The words hung in the air around the table, and a group decision was silently made.

  Nick groaned. “She would not have been dating our unsub, would she?”

  “You said this guy was faceless in the city,” Boone reminded him, “that he blends in so well that no one suspects him of being no good.”

  “Thank you for the heads-up, Sheriff.” Spencer closed the folder in front of him and stood, dismissing them all to do their work. “Let’s find out who Jane Harrison was seeing.”

  Chapter Four

  “Dr. Kate—do you have a minute?”

  “Sorry, no.”

  “Coward.” Even now, Kate could recall the expectation she’d read in Boone Harrison’s warm brown eyes before she’d turned her back on him and scurried down the hallway to her office where she’d closed the door...and locked it. “No,” she insisted to herself, not bothering to stifle the yawn that stretched nearly every muscle in her face. “You’re a survivor, Kate. You did what was necessary to get through this day.”

  After saving the notes she’d been typing up on her laptop, Kate slipped off her pumps and curled her cramped toes into the carpet beneath her desk. She’d stayed at the office far longer than she’d intended. But once the duty shift had changed on the main floor and the buzz of voices diminished, she’d finally found the calming quiet and solitude she needed to recharge her batteries and prioritize the demands on her time and emotional energy once again.

  As the task force meeting ended, she knew that Boone Harrison had wanted to say something more to her. Maybe he was even going to ask her to dinner so he could continue grilling her for answers to his sister’s murder. Or maybe he simply wanted to pass the time with the most friendly face he’d found in Kansas City so that he wouldn’t have to be alone with his thoughts and his grief the rest of the night.

  But she’d reached the limits of patience and compassion for one day. The man had barged into her well-ordered life, bullied his way past her personal defenses, and tapped into a dangerously unreliable part of her psyche—her heart.

  The counselor in her was inclined to listen to his helplessness and anger. The woman in her wanted to ease the guilt and grief that was almost too much for even a strong, mature man to bear. But she had to handle this investigation with her brain, not her heart. She had to manage her life with the same strict logic.

  Caring led to vulnerability.

  Vulnerability made her an easy mark for heartbreak and betrayal.

  Forgetting either of those two truths would lead Kate down the same path that had nearly destroyed her five years earlier.

  She’d known Boone Harrison for only a day—he didn’t even qualify as a friend. She owed him nothing beyond the professional courtesy extended to him by the department. And as much as part of her wanted to help him get through not just this day but also the ongoing adjustments he’d face after losing someone he’d been so close to, Kate was too smart to let things with the sheriff get personal and make a mistake of the heart again.

  So she’d left her coworkers behind. She’d sent Boone on his way with a smile and the very real excuse that she still had work she needed to complete before her day ended.

  Now, with only the lamplight over her desk and the words on the laptop screen to keep her company, Kate wondered at the emptiness she’d chosen for herself in the name of emotional survival. She’d certainly never advise one of her clients to handle hurts and disappointments this way. But that was the point, wasn’t it? She couldn’t take on the issues of all her clients and visiting sheriffs, manage the image of the task force, reassure the frightened citizens of an entire city and deal with drama in her own life without losing her patience, draining her compassion, blowing out a few brain cells and winding up being no good to anybody. She had to protect herself like this, right?

  Made sense.

  Maybe she could dispel this unfortunate case of second-guessing her choices today by conducting a little exercise she sometimes used with clients who bottled up or misdirected their emotions.

  Kate raised her arms over her head and extended her legs, stretching out the kinks in her body from head to toe before collapsing back into the chair with a weary sigh. She imagined how her impromptu interview with Vanessa Owen might have gone if she didn’t exercise such self-control.

  “Get out of my face, you witch. You’ve already taken enough from me. You won’t get another damn thing out of me.”

  “I’m only doing my job, old friend. Please help.”

  “You already helped yourself to my husband. Your treachery killed him. You killed my marriage, my ability to trust and did serious damage to my self-esteem. You don’t get to ask for favors from me.”

  “You were a fool not to know what was going on, Kate.”

  “Maybe. But I learned to never be made a fool of again.”

  Feeling a bit of satisfaction, Kate nodded. That was closer to what she’d really wanted to say to Vanessa Owen.

  And how could she have handled Boone Harrison differently? Spared herself the full-body hug and dark eyes that penetrated her emotional armor and awoke something tingling and feminine and needy inside her? How shou
ld she have reminded herself that it was duty, not compassion, that had forced her to accept his company so many times today?

  “Get your hands off me, you clod.”

  “But you like it when I put my hands on you.”

  Kate startled in her chair and sat up straight, glancing around her office as though the words had been real and spoken out loud for the wrong person to hear. She was supposed to be purging her resentment and frustration, reclaiming control of her emotions. This wasn’t the time to indulge a subconscious admission. She had enough conflict battling it out in her head without inviting a latent sexual attraction into the mix.

  “Try again,” Kate advised herself. She inhaled a cleansing breath and replayed this morning’s press conference in her mind, envisioning what she should have said to the buttinsky sheriff who’d demanded answers from her.

  “Handle your own problem, cowboy. I have a job to do.”

  Better. Maybe she should have sicced Boone and Vanessa on each other, and then half the stresses of Kate’s day would have become someone else’s. After a brief introduction, Kate could have slipped away. Boone would have politely stood, and removed or tipped his hat when Vanessa entered the room. Vanessa would have been charmed by the old-school chivalry. And then she’d have tried to take advantage of it. She’d appreciate an interview with a family member of the rapist’s latest victim. She could exploit Boone’s unsanctioned investigation to attract viewers and ratings.

  But Boone was more cop than country bumpkin. He’d be too smart to be taken in by Vanessa’s charm. Vanessa would be intrigued by a challenge like that. Kate could visualize the sheriff and the reporter strolling off together, each primed for a battle of wits and will while Kate sat alone in her office, oblivious to the secret alliance, just as she’d been oblivious to Brad and Vanessa’s affair until the police had called about the heart attack in his mistress’s bed….

  Kate swore at the unsettling turn of her thoughts. “End the damn exercise, already.”

  She rolled her chair back in front of her laptop, typing in a few more words before an unexpected revelation from the mental exercise gone wrong popped into her head. “They’d keep their relationship hidden from me,” Kate murmured out loud.