Kansas City Cowboy

by Julie Miller

  She flashed back through her day—Robin Carter’s speculation that Janie Harrison had been seeing someone, the picture of a very expensive ring, changes in behavior, unexplained gifts—secrets that neither family nor close friends knew.

  In hindsight, Kate recognized the similarities from her own past.

  “Jane Harrison was seeing a married man. Or possibly a student—someone she’d get in trouble over for having a relationship with.” Although a student was less likely to have the money for that ruby and diamond ring—unless he’d come from a wealthy background or had stolen it. And a thief wouldn’t take that necklace and leave all those rings behind. All were specific leads the team could look into.

  Energized by the possibility of narrowing down their suspect pool, and welcoming the distraction to the wayward turn of her thoughts a moment earlier, Kate turned to her desk computer and typed her suspicions and reasoning into an email and sent it to the other task force members. Then she pulled out a phone book and put in a call to the community college where Jane Harrison had worked.

  Although evening classes were in session, she discovered that the business offices had already closed for the day. Ignoring her frustration over the delay in getting some answers, she gathered her thoughts and left a succinct message on the line for the director of the Fine Arts department: “...that list should have class rosters, departmental colleagues—anyone she might have come into contact with on campus. You can reach me here at KCPD, or on my cell if I’m out of the office, to arrange a meeting to go over the information. Thank you.”

  Feeling reenergized by that bit of deductive reasoning and the small but potentially significant breakthrough she’d just made on the case, Kate decided it was time to call it a night. The clock on her wall and the rumbling in her stomach confirmed it. She slipped her swollen toes back into her high heels, packed her laptop into her shoulder bag, pulled on her trench coat and shut off the lights.

  This day was done. Soup and salad, a steaming hot bath and one of the food shows she liked to watch on television were waiting for her at home.

  After checking out with the overnight desk sergeant, Kate rode the elevator down to the first floor and stepped outside. The cool autumn air whipped her hair into her face. She paused on the entryway’s top step to brush her bangs off her forehead and blink the grit carried by the wind from her eyes.

  A glimpse of movement, of someone more shadow than substance, darted beyond the limestone railing and vanished out of sight. Kate’s breath jolted through her chest. She captured her hair behind each ear and turned her face away from the swirling air currents that promised rain, peering into the night to double-check what she’d seen. It was probably someone taking a shortcut through the grass or hugging the building to avoid the battering wind blowing from the north.

  But a closer look revealed no one, nothing, stirring besides the crispy, thinning leaves on the trees lining the sidewalk, and the swaying steel and flickering illumination of the street lights and traffic signals nearer to the street.

  Irritated with how easily she’d been startled, Kate relaxed with a cautious sigh, and she cinched her coat more tightly around her waist. Fatigue had made her senses unreliable, she reasoned silently. She’d seen the shadow of a branch or a bobbing circle of light from the corner of her eye and mistaken it for something more sinister.

  She’d been profiling too many suspects lately. With a shake of her head, she crossed down the wide stone steps to the sidewalk. She swept her gaze from side to side as she walked down to the street light at the corner, alert to any other signs of movement. But she doubted she’d see anything unless her imagination conjured it. There weren’t many cars heading downtown past precinct headquarters, and even fewer pedestrians on the block.

  If she’d left when the shift had changed three hours earlier, the sidewalks on either side of the street would be filled with coworkers heading for home or a night out on the town. With the threat of rain driving everyone indoors as quickly as possible, there were only a few other brave souls out and about, carrying briefcases and backpacks, hunched down against the wind as they hurried from the government buildings, courthouses and legal offices in the area to their cars or the nearest bus stop.

  “Smooth move, Doctor,” Kate chided herself. Her heels clicked against the concrete, echoing her increasing heart rate as she neared the crosswalk that would take her to the parking garage across the street. She deserved the little rush of nerves that quickened her pace. She hadn’t even followed her own safety advice that she’d given to the women of Kansas City that morning. She was alone. After dark. Walking to her car in the same garage where she’d been parking for years. Not smart. With a serial rapist turned killer hiding on the streets, was it any wonder she’d been able to spook herself with nothing more than wind and shadows? “Real smooth.”

  But surely this wasn’t a terrible risk. The parking garage was across from a police station. The street lamps might be undulating in the wind, but they were working. And even though she fit the profile of the women he attacked, this wasn’t the neighborhood where the Rose Red Rapist had abducted his last two victims.

  Still, she was more than uncomfortably aware of the man in dark brown coveralls approaching the same intersection from one of the side streets. He wasn’t any taller than she, but from this angle, most of his face was obscured by the sweatshirt hoodie he wore beneath the insulated jumpsuit. Kate made a point of standing in the circle of lamplight as he joined her to wait for the traffic signal to change. For a split second, she considered crossing against the light, but, like Murphy’s Law, the traffic that had seemed so sparse a few moments ago now showed up with three cars and a truck to keep her on the sidewalk.

  She was vaguely aware of the man glancing in her direction, but studiously kept her eyes focused on the traffic in front of her. “Looks like a storm’s coming,” he said politely enough, his voice a gravelly whisper.

  Kate nodded, sidled half a step closer to the streetlight, then stepped off the curb as soon as the vehicles had cleared the intersection. Either put off by her lack of a response, or waiting for the light to change, the man held back while she darted across the street. She’d already circled around the crossbar gate at the garage’s entrance when she looked back to see the man step onto the sidewalk behind her and turn toward the open-air parking lot just south of the parking garage.

  Expelling her paranoia on a relieved sigh, Kate hurried to the elevator and pushed the call button. She was grateful to see the doors open immediately and that the car inside was empty. She stepped inside and pushed the button for the sixth floor.

  “Dr. Kilpatrick?”

  Not Pete Estes again. Resentment fisted in her chest. The kid needed to grow up.

  “Hey! Wait!”

  Kate pushed the Door Close button. Not the most professional of responses, but she just couldn’t deal with his issues and hold his hand right now. She’d already gotten her nerves worked up with the man at the corner. She wouldn’t be a very patient listener right now, anyway.

  “Dr. Kate!”

  She might have heard someone calling her name again, might have imagined the muted crunch of quick footsteps over the concrete. But when a dark blur of shadow rushed toward the elevator, she gripped the side railing and punched the Door Close button over and over, speeding the process to be alone and safe inside the elevator.

  She didn’t imagine the deep-pitched curse before the doors squeezed shut.

  “Pete,” she sighed at the young man’s desperation to save his relationship with the girl he’d gotten pregnant. Kate couldn’t be sure if those footsteps had changed course to take the stairs, or if that was her own pulse hammering a warning signal in her ears. Either way, her brain had kicked into overdrive, driving out both pity and fatigue.

  She was embarrassed to realize she hadn’t given better thought to her own safety at this time of night. It worried her to think the man outside the elevator had truly meant her harm. Would Pete Estes re
ally turn his temper on her? Or maybe it hadn’t been her client at all.

  Her name had been splashed all over the television and papers this morning. She was a fixture in the department. A lot of people knew her name.

  Was it possible for the man in the coveralls to keep to the shadows and move quickly enough that he could have been the movement she’d spotted beside the precinct’s front steps, the stranger at the street corner and the man rushing up inside the parking garage? Surely, he’d have to fly like the wind gusting outside in order to be in all three places. And maybe she was believing the worst of an innocent man—or two innocent men—or even three—when each encounter could be explained away by coincidence, regret at the chance she’d taken by walking out here alone and her overly analytical way of thinking.

  Nonetheless, Kate had her keys out and her pepper spray in hand when the elevator reached the sixth level and the doors opened. She heard an engine gunning somewhere in the distance. But that wasn’t the noise that alarmed her.

  “Oh, no.” Did she trust that coincidence could also explain away the footsteps she heard coming up the stairs behind her?

  Chances were, someone whose legs were fueled by the aggravation of missing the elevator was climbing his way to one of the garage’s upper levels. Or maybe a reporter had been lying in wait, ready to ambush her with questions the way Vanessa Owen had. If the man was half as determined as Vanessa, he wouldn’t let six flights of stairs deter him from getting his story. Of course, there was Pete. And the man in the coveralls. And the sound of an engine speeding up and circling through each level of the parking garage beneath her feet.

  Maybe she’d been foolish to reason away those instincts that warned her to be wary of any man approaching her at this time of night.

  Kate spotted her Lexus against the far wall and quickened her steps. Normally, she didn’t park so far away, but the garage had been nearly full when she’d returned for the task force meeting that afternoon. Now, there were a handful of cars to the left and right, but hers sat at the end of the row, facing away from her. So very far away.

  The timbre of each footfall changed as the man behind her left the steel grate stairs and followed her onto the solid concrete of the parking level.

  Followed her?

  Squeezing the pepper spray in her fist, Kate broke into a run.

  She’d covered the length of the garage before she realized that the pattern of footsteps behind her hadn’t changed. She was running, but the man behind her wasn’t. Kate halted at the trunk of her car and whirled around.

  Her words came out in breathless derision. “Stupid woman. You stupid...freaked-out...”

  The man hadn’t followed her at all. In fact, he was nowhere to be seen. He must have veered off into another parking lane and hadn’t been after her at all. Danger wasn’t closing in on her. She was just letting her emotions spin her imagination into overdrive.

  Cursing the pinch of her shoes and her readiness to believe the worst of the men in the world around her tonight, Kate tapped the remote to unlock her car. She tugged the strap of her purse back over her shoulder, opened the car door and froze.

  The man in the coveralls might not be chasing her. There might not be any client or reporter in hot pursuit. But someone definitely had her in his sights.

  The squeal of tires over the pavement barely registered as she moved around the open door to read the message scrawled across her windshield in bright red.

  Lies, Kate. Lies! was all it said.

  And the wilted red rose tucked beneath a wiper blade left no doubt who the message was from.

  “Please be paint.” She reached out to touch one finger to the sticky exclamation point. Her stomach plummeted as she quickly pulled back, rubbing the vile evidence across her fingers in her efforts to get rid of it. There was no way to know if it was human or not, but she was 99 percent sure it was blood.

  “I don’t understand.” Shock dampened her hearing to the noises around her. She tried to force logic into her brain, tried to make sense of a bloody threat that didn’t fit the profile of the opportunistic rapist the task force was after. How had he found her? What connections did he have, how long had he watched, to know this car was hers? What did the message mean?

  Why was she still standing here, contemplating this frightening mess?

  Kate took a step back, then another.

  A hand closed over her shoulder and she screamed.

  * * *

  “WHOA, WHOA, WHOA.” Boone deflected the stinging attack of pepper spray as Kate spun around, twisting her wrist and knocking the vial to the concrete. “Kate.” The canister rolled out of sight beneath her car and she came back swinging. He caught that hand, too, and pinned it against his chest, willing her to see through her panic and identify him. “Kate! It’s me. Boone.”

  “Boone?” Her hands balled beneath his, curling into the front of his jacket.

  “Yeah. Pain in the butt? Won’t go away?” Now that the weapon was gone and the fists were accounted for, he eased his defensive hold on her. “Sorry I startled you, but you didn’t hear me. I tried to catch you on your way into the garage, but your mind was someplace else.”

  Apparently it still was. That soft green gaze bounced from his chin to his chest and up to the brim of his hat before meeting his. “What are you doing here?”

  Now, what would make a sensible woman take off running like that? What would put that dazed look in her eyes?

  “I was parked outside on the street. I’ve been waiting for you to get off work.” He dropped his voice to little more than a whisper, hushing her the way he’d croon soft words to a skittish colt. “I saw you were walking to your car by yourself and I tried to catch you, but you took off. I thought I’d better grab my truck and find out where you were parked before I missed...oh. Okay.”

  One second she was staring at him as if he was talking gibberish, the next she was walking into his chest, latching on with a death grip that pinched the skin beneath his uniform.

  “You’re shaking like a leaf.” Boone had no problem wrapping his arms around her and resting his chin against the silky crown of her hair. He did have a problem with the clammy chill of skin he felt at her nape. He had a very big problem with the vandalism he spotted on her windshield when he sought out an explanation for Kate Kilpatrick’s uncharacteristic display of confusion and vulnerability. “Come here.”

  That she willingly followed when he led her to the far side of his truck to block her view of the bloody message alarmed him even more. Although his instincts were to check out her car for any further signs of tampering that could endanger her, Boone temporarily contented himself with scanning the deserted floor of the parking garage over the top of her head.

  He reached beneath his jacket to unhook the catch on his holster—just in case—before wrapping his arm back around her shoulders and backing her up to his truck to put another layer of protection between the unseen threat around her. He hadn’t seen anybody who’d seemed out of place going in or out of the garage in the three hours he’d been waiting for Kate to get off work. When the shift had changed in the KCPD offices, folks had walked straight in and driven back out. A few might have stopped for a few minutes to chat each other up, but he hadn’t seen anybody lingering where they shouldn’t be, or sneaking around as if they didn’t want to be seen. He’d never even dozed off, but had spent the wait time on his cell, making calls to his brothers and checking in with his deputies back in Grangeport.

  Whoever wanted Kate’s attention must have done this after the shift change, once her car had been left sitting in the remote corner by itself, facing away from the few vehicles still remaining on this level. Crowded or not, that was pretty brave, walking into a garage used by cops, support staff and legal types, and defacing the car owned by the police psychologist investigating him.

  As if he needed any more proof that the man who’d raped and murdered his sister was dangerous.

  “Hey.” He liked the feel of this woma
n in his arms, liked the smell of her perfuming every breath, liked the way she held on like she had no intention of letting go—he liked it a lot more than he should for practically being strangers. He hadn’t expected the patient, cinched-up, textbook ice princess to be so clingy, so...female. But every cell of his body had been trained to serve and protect. With every beat of his heart he knew that understanding whatever was happening here would lead him one step closer to finding the man who’d murdered Janie. “You keep holding on to me like this, Doc, and I’m going to start to think you like me.”

  It was a few seconds more before she pulled away without a word. Well, hell, he’d just been teasing, trying to get a smile out of her, trying to get her to talk and clue him in on what seemed to be far more than a tasteless prank. But she was looking at his jacket where she had crushed it in her hand. Maybe the woman was a little shocked. She looked surprised to discover how she’d latched on to him, and equally fascinated by the movements of her fingers, smoothing out the wrinkles in the quilted material, unconsciously petting his chest and triggering a tiny leap of electricity beneath his skin with each gentle stroke of her hand.

  “I thought someone was following me. I guess it was you.”

  “I called out to you when I saw you get on the elevator, but you must not have heard me. I had to circle through every level to find you, but I drove up here as fast as I could.”

  Boone almost regretted the loss of contact as Kate stuffed her hands into the pockets of that tightly wrapped coat, and a cool mask slipped over her expression. “You mean you didn’t just come up the stairs?”

  Her skin was still a little too pale for his liking, but whatever had spooked her—she’d moved past it.

  “I was looking for you,” he said. “I drove up here, Doc.”

  “Did you see anyone else? There was a man on the corner—I thought he was going on down the street, but...oh, damn.” A fist came out of her pocket and shook the air. “I didn’t look at his face. I didn’t want to make eye contact and encourage him. How could I be so stupid? What if that was him? What if we just lost our unsub because I was too afraid to look?” She swung her arm out toward the message dripping from her car. “And what does that mean? ‘Lies’? What have I lied about?” She wiped at the smear of red on her fingers. Ah, hell. That wasn’t paint. “I don’t understand. I don’t like it when I can’t figure out—”