Stranger in Cold Creek

by Paula Graves

  “Hey, sweet girl,” she crooned to the spooked cat.

  Ruthie’s ears pricked at the familiar sound of her voice, but her green-eyed gaze darted warily toward John. He ignored her, straightening the books they’d returned to the shelf with small, economical movements.

  So he did understand cats, she thought.

  The longer John ignored Ruthie, the bolder she became, moving slowly across the room. Her tail rose finally in a question mark, and she looked up at Miranda, her mouth forming a voiceless meow.

  Miranda bent and gave Ruthie’s ears a scratch. “You hungry, sweet cakes?”

  “Does she usually answer you?” John asked softly without turning his head, his voice tinted with humor.

  “In her own way.” She led Ruthie into the kitchen, where she found that the canister of dry cat food had been dumped into the sink along with most of the other open containers.

  The urge to cry overwhelmed her, and she sank into the only chair that hadn’t been overturned. Ruthie jumped in her lap and rubbed her head against Miranda’s chin, eliciting the tears she’d been trying to resist.

  She pressed her hot face against the cat’s tricolor fur. “Oh, sweetie, we’re going to have to go get you some food, aren’t we?”

  “Your dad’s shop carries pet food, doesn’t it?” John’s voice was a soft rumble from the doorway.

  She looked up, blinking back her tears. “Yes.”

  “I’ll run get a bag.”

  “He knows the brand they like.” She flashed him a grateful smile. “Tell him to put it on my tab.”

  John gave a nod. “You sure you’ll be okay here by yourself?”

  She managed not to bristle at the question. “I’m armed. I’ll keep cleaning up while you’re gone.”

  He disappeared down the hall. A moment later, she heard the door open and close.

  Releasing a deep sigh, she eased Ruthie from her lap and started picking up the overturned chairs around the breakfast table.

  * * *

  “THOSE BASTARDS.” Gil Duncan’s voice was a deep rumble of anger as he heaved the bag of cat food over the counter and handed it to John. “She worked damn hard to make a nice home for herself. I tell you what, it was like a gut punch seein’ what they’d done to her things. A real gut punch.”

  “Do you have any idea who’d do such a thing to Miranda?” John tucked the bag under his good arm. “I don’t know her well, but everyone I’ve talked to seems to think the world of her.”

  Gil’s smile was genuinely proud. “She’s a good woman, like her mama was. Smart girl, too. It had to be kids, don’t you think? All those hormones and restless energy just wantin’ to bust out all over, but nowhere in this little town to let it rip. And these days, folks don’t teach their young’uns to respect other people’s things. Hell, they probably recorded what they did and put it up on YouFace or whatever you call it.” Gil grinned sheepishly. “Lord, I’m soundin’ just like my granddaddy, ain’t I?”

  John grinned back at him, deciding he liked Miranda’s father. “Miranda mentioned something about a case she’d been working—a missing woman?”

  “Yeah. Delta McGraw.” Gil shook his head. “That girl’s had a hell of a life, and I don’t reckon anybody’d blame her if she’d just picked up and left town for good. But Miranda seems to think she should’ve been back in town by now.”

  “Is she a young woman?”

  “A little younger than my Mandy—maybe a couple of years younger. But in some ways, she seems a lot older. Life’s been harder on her. Her mama ran off when she was real little, so it was left to that daddy of hers to raise her. All he knew how to do was make her his accomplice.”

  “He’s a criminal?”

  “Was. Con man, mainly. Small cons, get-rich-quick schemes. You know the sort. People liked him anyway, because he was that kind of fellow. Made you laugh even when he was fleecing you blind.” Gil shrugged. “I reckon folks tended to give him a lot of leeway, too, because his wife ran off when his little girl was so young and he was left to take care of her.”

  “Is he dead or incarcerated?”

  Gil gave him an odd look. “Dead. Big rig versus pickup truck. Big rig wins.”

  John grimaced. “So you don’t think this missing girl has anything to do with your daughter’s problems?”

  Gill gave him a narrow-eyed look. “You seem awfully interested for someone who just met her.”

  “She nearly died in my side yard. We both ended up dodging bullets. I guess that makes me feel like I have a stake in her well-being,” he answered truthfully.

  “You a cop or something?”

  “I’m a carpenter,” John replied.

  “Hmm.” Gil didn’t say anything more, turning to greet another customer entering the store. John took the cat food and headed back to his truck.

  The snow had melted off by midmorning, leaving the roads wet but clear, and traffic on the highway was starting to pick up. After John slid behind the steering wheel of his truck and buckled up, he called Miranda.

  She answered on the second ring. “Checking up on me?” she asked.

  “Just making sure you and the cats were still okay. Did the other one ever come out?”

  “He did, and he’s not very patient when he’s hungry.”

  “I’ll be there in a few minutes.” He hung up and started the truck, but on second thought, he turned it off again and picked up his phone. He dialed another number and waited for the answer.

  A moment later, Quinn’s voice came over the line. “Marbury Motors twenty-four-hour hotline.”

  “It’s me,” John said. “Several things have happened since I talked to you last, and I guess you need to know.”

  Quinn was silent while John gave him a succinct but thorough recap of all that had happened since their last phone call. “Everybody swears there’s no reason for anyone to target her, but—”

  “But you’re wondering if it has anything to do with the BRI.”

  “Del McClintock’s still at large. He nearly killed me once—”

  “He doesn’t know your real identity.”

  “That we know of. If I’ve brought that mess here to Texas—”

  “I really don’t believe you have. But if you do something to start drawing attention to yourself there, you might.”

  “Fine.” He made himself relax, even though he could still feel prickles of unease running up and down the skin of his neck. “They’re not after me.”

  “You don’t sound as if you believe it.”

  “I don’t think dropping my guard will help anyone.”

  “If it’s not you, then it’s the deputy. Are you sure there’s no reason someone might want her out of the way?”

  He thought about what Gil Duncan had told him about the missing person case Miranda had been investigating. “Maybe,” he admitted. “And maybe you can help. Can you see if you can find me some info on a woman named Delta McGraw?”

  * * *

  JOHN ARRIVED WITH the cat food within ten minutes, and soon Ruthie and Rex were happily crunching their kibble while John took in the improvements she’d managed to accomplish while he was gone.

  The sink was still a disaster area, but she’d picked up all the chairs and swept up the mess on the floor. In the living room, she’d finished putting the books in the shelves and piled the ripped-up cushions onto the sagging frame of the sofa.

  “You’ve made some headway,” he said, sounding impressed. But the look he shot her way made it clear that he could see right through her attempt at pretending she wasn’t feeling like hell. “Why don’t you rest a bit and let me catch up?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “As fine as a concussed, sleep-deprived person could be,” he agreed. “But if we’re going sofa shopping in town a lit
tle later, you should rest up.”

  She leaned against the door frame that led into the hall and crossed her arms, looking at him through narrowed eyes. “Why are you doing all this for me?”

  “You mean helping you buy a sofa?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, that. And everything else you’ve done to help me.”

  “I need another badge for my Boy Scout uniform.”

  She smiled. “There’s a furniture-moving badge?”

  “You sound skeptical.”

  He wasn’t nearly as average as she’d originally thought, she was beginning to see. His eyes might be a muddy sort of hazel green, but they twinkled brightly when he was amused, like sunlight sparkling on a murky stream. His ordinary features seemed to come to life when he smiled, carving interesting lines in his normally unremarkable face. He wasn’t ripped like a bodybuilder, but his body was well-proportioned, his muscles lean and well-defined beneath his long-sleeved T-shirt when he bent to pick up a picture frame she hadn’t gotten to yet.

  He looked at the photograph in the broken frame, a smile curving his lips. “Is this you and your mom?”

  She pushed away from the door frame and crossed to where he stood, looking at the photo. “Yes. I was six. First day of school. My dad took that photo as Mama was walking me out the door to the bus.” She’d been crying a little, the tears still sparkling on her cheeks in the photo. “She said I’d love it if I just gave it a chance.”

  “Was she right?”

  She looked into his curious gaze. “She always was.”

  “She’s not still around, is she.” He didn’t phrase it as a question.

  “No. She died when I was still a kid. Hit head-on by a drunk driver over in Plainview. She was a nurse at the hospital there.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She studied the photograph, relieved to find it hadn’t been scratched by the broken glass of the frame. “Some of the photos are irreplaceable. Why would someone trash the place like this? What on earth could they have been looking for?”

  John reached out for her, and to her surprise, she let him pull her into a comforting hug, feeling further evidence of his lean muscularity. He smelled good, too, she realized, despite a long night sleeping in a chair. He must have showered before she’d shown up at his place the night before.

  She, however, hadn’t showered since the previous morning. God only knew what she must smell like about now. With a blush, she extricated herself from his arms and flashed a sheepish smile. “Why don’t we just get the sofa shopping over with now?” she suggested. “So I’ll have somewhere to pass out when I finally hit the wall.”

  To her relief, he agreed, and she grabbed her jacket and followed him out to the truck.

  John Blake was proving to be a surprising temptation, one she wasn’t used to having to struggle against. Yes, she was finding him attractive, but if that had been the extent of it, she’d have been able to resist quite easily. It wasn’t that she was immune to physical attraction—she’d had her share of boyfriends over the years, enjoyed their company and more—but she’d always found it easy enough to walk away when the time came for a relationship to end.

  There was something about the mysterious newcomer with his murky eyes and murkier intentions that were proving to be damn near irresistible on a whole other level.

  If there was anything she couldn’t walk away from, it was a mystery.

  And John Blake was nothing if not a mystery.

  Chapter Seven

  Miranda had hit the wall, as she called it, around three that afternoon, after they’d managed to clean up and bag up most of the trash in her house. It had taken a little longer than John had expected, mostly because Miranda had insisted on sifting through everything they picked up in search of trace evidence.

  “Do you really think you’re going to find any?” John had asked, dutifully holding the trash bag for her while she dumped a load of fiberfill stuffing from the shredded sofa.

  “Probably not,” she’d admitted with a grimace of a smile. “But I wouldn’t be a good cop if I didn’t check.”

  He’d talked her into leaving the bedroom for later, and she’d settled, finally, on the thrift store sofa she’d purchased in town earlier.

  “It’s in better shape than the original,” she’d drawled upon seeing it in the previously bare spot in the middle of her living room. She’d tested it out for napping comfort and promptly fell asleep, leaving John on his own for the next couple of hours.

  He was tempted to head back home to see if the crime scene unit had finished processing the scene of the wreck, but he didn’t want to leave Miranda alone, asleep and vulnerable, in a house that had been ransacked in the past twenty-four hours. He settled, instead, in the only chair in the living room that hadn’t been relieved of its stuffing—a wooden rocking chair that had no stuffing at all, only a slightly sagging woven cane seat that creaked a bit as he sat down.

  It was solidly made, the handiwork painstaking and careful. An antique, he thought, not one of those mass-produced, overpriced jobs you could buy in almost any chain store.

  He had trained as an accountant, a job he hated. He’d worked twice as an undercover agent, a job he loved, but now, as it had the first time, fate and circumstances had forced him out again, leaving his future in flux.

  But carpentry was the skill he was actually good at. His grandfather on his mother’s side had been a true artist with wood, and John had been the only grandchild who’d been interested enough to sit for hours at his side, watching him work and learning all the skills and tricks of the trade.

  Blanchard Building was a real company that employed real craftsmen from time to time, and his cover for being in Cold Creek was a real job, using his carpentry skills to renovate the home where he was living for the next couple of months.

  It was also a way to recover some of his physical strength and stamina, because carpentry could be a physically taxing skill, as he’d learned over the past week, when his rusty joints and muscles had been forced into work after almost a week in the hospital and another three weeks of physical therapy.

  As he quietly rocked, the two cats wandered into the living room from somewhere in the back of the house. They crept cautiously around the new sofa, sniffing the upholstery from end to end before they decided it was no threat. One after the other, Ruthie first, then Rex, jumped gracefully onto the sofa and settled side by side behind the crook of Miranda’s knees. Ruthie gave John a wide-eyed stare for a couple of moments before she closed her eyes to nap.

  John watched Miranda sleep for a little while, enjoying the view of her face soft with sleep. Awake, she was almost militantly competent, a woman of substance and power, but asleep, he saw a hint of girlish softness he suspected she tried to hide. He’d worked with female agents at The Gates, though largely from a distance, and he’d seen a similar sort of dichotomy in each of them, as well. Strength before softness, almost always. It was the only way they knew to survive in a world where men outnumbered women by a substantial degree.

  He admired Miranda’s strength. But it was that hint of softness that intrigued him the most, made him wonder what other secrets she hid behind that tough-girl exterior.

  For one thing, despite her rangy build, she had delicious curves. He’d felt them beneath her clothes when she’d let him give her a comforting hug. Firm, round breasts and delectably flaring hips that would tempt a eunuch to let his hands wander. She’d pulled away from his embrace just in time, because John Blake was a lot of things, but a eunuch wasn’t one of them.

  With his mind drifting to dangerous places once more, he pushed to his feet and wandered around the house, looking for a distraction.

  He found it in the back of the house.

  He hadn’t really noticed that the kitchen took up only half of the back part of the house. To the left of
the kitchen, there was another room that hadn’t been touched by the intruders, as far as John could tell. That was probably because it was nothing but a frame of a room, with no drywall or flooring. Not an addition, he decided as he took in the handiwork. Part of the framework was obviously older, the wood darkened and worn with age.

  Repair work?

  “Tornado damage.” Miranda’s voice behind him made him jump.

  He turned and found her watching him with sleepy eyes the color of a stormy sky. The cats wound in complicated patterns around her legs and each other.

  He remembered the order of two-by-fours she’d picked up at the hardware store the day he met her. “Are you rebuilding it yourself?”

  “Slowly,” she said with a rueful smile. “I wanted to do it myself. To see if I could.”

  “It’s complicated work. Do you know what you’re doing?”

  “I’ve helped with other building jobs,” she answered, not appearing to take his skeptical question personally. “My dad owns a hardware store, you know. I’ve grown up around builders and saved for college by working summers on building crews.” She pushed her sleep-tousled hair away from her face. “I’ve just never been my own foreman before.”

  “When did the tornado hit?”

  “Last November. Late in the season. I was lucky. It was a small twister and the wind only caught the edge of the house. I was working. Got home after a long day of dealing with multiple tornadoes to find the back corner of my house gone.”

  “How’d the cats handle that experience?”

  “About like they did this time with the intruder. Hid under the bed for hours until they were convinced the freight train that hit the house was gone.” She stifled a yawn.

  “You should go back to sleep.”

  “So you can snoop around my house in peace?”

  “I wasn’t.” He stopped before he told the easy lie. “Okay, I was snooping, a little.”

  “Sadly, my life is an open book.” She stepped past him into the room, then turned suddenly to look at him. “Why do I get the feeling you can’t say the same thing?”