ONE SILENT NIGHT

by Debra Cowan

  "Then we'll keep looking until we find something."

  "I can do it myself."

  "You need me and you know it, at least until your partner is back at work." As his eyes narrowed, she nodded. "I heard part of your conversation with his wife. He's in the hospital and you need help."

  A muscle ticced in his jaw. He did need her and he hated it. And suddenly she knew. She wanted him to want her, not her help. But he didn't want her. A bubble of sadness bloomed deep in her chest. She sighed. "I'm staying."

  She snatched up her holster and stalked around him, grabbed her coat from his couch and walked to the door. Then she paused, looking over her shoulder as she struggled to keep her voice even. "By the way, I know exactly who you are. And I know who I was kissing."

  And she walked out.

  Sam stood there, assaulted by anger and hunger and a sweeping urge to call her back. But he let her go, just as he had a year and a half ago. Just as he had to do now—for the rest of their lives. He wasn't giving her another chance to filet him like a fish and stomp all over his guts. Been there, done that.

  He wasn't who she wanted. He didn't know if she would ever be ready to move past Brad.

  But even as he told himself that, he knew she already had. He was the one who hadn't.

  He couldn't forgive himself for that night they'd spent together. And couldn't forgive her for the way she'd hurt him.

  Part of him wanted to; wanted to try and regain the friendship they'd had. But the scarred, cynical, bleeding part of him knew that was impossible.

  So why did he want to go after her, apologize for hurting her the way he had? Why couldn't he forget the pain he'd deliberately put in those gray eyes? How was he ever going to forget her, move on?

  That kiss had sparked something new. Something shared by the two of them this time, with no thoughts or memories of Brad during that too-brief kiss. If Dallas was to be believed, they'd shared it even without Brad's memory. For one moment, she had belonged to him. Only him. No Brad. No past. No anger.

  Sam didn't know how he could ever forget that, but he was damn sure going to try.

  * * *

  Chapter 8

  « ^ »

  What was the matter with him, anyway? Throwing Brad in her face like that. Dallas wanted to throttle Sam and at the same time, she … didn't. Desire snaked through her, touching nerves she'd thought numbed long ago. Sam. Sam had done that to her with a kiss.

  She pressed her lips together, trying to erase the feel of him, douse the energy humming through her body. As she walked inside Carrie's, her cell phone rang. It was her boss.

  He tersely asked what she was doing and when she was coming back. When she asked for another week, she thought he might explode. He agreed—finally—and fired a series of questions at her that she answered generically. She told him she was still in Oklahoma and that yes, she'd actually been hunting. Her time was running out.

  She and Sam had to get a break in the case soon. She didn't know if she could put her boss off again. She was glad to finish the wearisome conversation, but even that didn't take her mind off Sam. And that kiss. Or what he'd said.

  "I'm not Brad."

  She touched her lips, still feeling the brand of his mouth. No, he most certainly was not Brad.

  As she went to the guest bedroom, Dallas noticed Carrie's small travel bag in the doorway of her own bedroom. Good. Dallas didn't want to be alone tonight. Nor did she want to keep rehashing that kiss with Sam.

  She changed into her dark blue satin pajamas and washed her face. After pulling on a pair of thick socks, she picked up her notes and walked back into the living room. Someone pounded on the front door and, after looking through the peephole, Dallas opened it to admit Carrie, who tromped in dragging a Christmas tree.

  The chill of winter followed her, and Dallas quickly shut the door. Together she and Carrie got the tree into a stand and placed it in a corner near the front window. The fresh scent of pine filled the air and Dallas felt the first anticipation of the holiday that she'd experienced since Brad's death.

  But as she strung lights on the tree and opened boxes of ornaments, it wasn't Brad she thought of, but Sam. That kiss had been more than the ones she remembered; not tainted by guilt or regret or the past, but simply his lips on hers, sure, tender, coaxing the strength right out of her legs. She had wanted to surrender to him. Had wanted more. Still wanted. Her face burned and sensation fluttered low in her belly as she opened another box of tissue-wrapped decorations.

  She'd felt no guilt about Brad, she realized with awe and disbelief. That was new. She didn't know if Sam had or not. She did know that he had looked like he wanted to murder her there for a minute, but before that…

  Just thinking about the way his lips had seduced hers sent heat prickling under her skin again. Shaken by the hunger sliding through her, Dallas didn't hear Carrie until she whistled sharply.

  Her friend waved a hand in front of her face. "Hello?"

  Dallas grinned self-consciously. "Sorry."

  Carrie reached over for the ceramic Santa ornament Dallas held. "What are you thinking about? The case?"

  "Yes." Dallas pulled a carefully wrapped wooden reindeer from the box.

  "How's it going?"

  "We're getting nowhere. We've spent the last four days going back over everything, but we can't seem to find any connections besides the fact that all these women like country-western dancing." She remembered Sam's bald suggestion that she leave. That shouldn't have hurt, but it did.

  Frustrated, Dallas ripped open another box. Plucking up the ornament on top, she unwrapped it and handed a ceramic snowman to her friend.

  The other woman nodded in sympathy, eyeing the tree critically before hanging the ornament. "And you and Sam? How are things going there?"

  She peered carefully into the box as she lifted out another mass of tissue. "Fine."

  Carrie laughed. "Real convincing, Dal."

  Dallas made a face, handed her the pewter bell she'd unwrapped. "We haven't killed each other, if that's what you mean."

  "It's a start, I suppose." Carrie moved around to the other side of the tree, readjusted a strand of lights that had drooped to the next branch. "Does that mean things have settled down between the two of you?"

  "Settled down?"

  Carrie moved a wooden reindeer to another branch, then held out her hand for the next decoration. "There's always some sort of friction there."

  Friction? The word brought a startling image of two bodies straining together—bare, hot, sweaty. Dallas frowned and pushed the image away.

  She stared at her friend for a moment, thinking again how beautiful Carrie was. Firelight burnished her dark hair with gold, etched her perfect profile in soft light. Dallas recalled how Sam had flirted with Carrie last week and something tight twisted in her gut. She tried to sound casual, but the words seared her throat. "Any chance you and Sam might pick up where you left off? He acted interested the other night."

  Carrie laughed, hanging a scarlet glass ball. "Are you kidding?"

  "Well, no—"

  "Dallas." Carrie tilted her head and stared at Dallas as if she didn't have the sense to come in out of a storm. "How dense are you? It's not me he's interested in."

  Dallas blinked, then laughed. "Get real. Not me."

  "Of course, you." Carrie took another glass ball from Dallas and hung it on the tree. "Have you really never noticed?"

  "Noticed what? That he can't stand to be in the same room with me?" she muttered, moving to the opposite side of the tree to hang a gold ornament.

  Carrie peered around the tree. "For as long as you've known him, you don't know him very well."

  "Sam loves women, but he doesn't love all of them," Dallas replied dryly.

  "Well, he's only got eyes for one." Carrie stood back and admired her efforts, then started for the kitchen. "How about some hot chocolate? Or I can fix coffee if you'd like."

  "Hot chocolate would be nice." Her fingers tightene
d around the smooth gold ornament as Carrie disappeared into the kitchen.

  Dallas kept remembering that kiss and she kept remembering what Sam had said to her. She hadn't realized until tonight just exactly how much resentment he harbored toward her. How had they worked together this long? Could he ever forgive her?

  A tightness squeezed her chest and panic swamped her. She needed space from him. She wanted to get on the next plane out of here.

  She'd never thought of herself as a quitter or a coward, but maybe she'd been both. She saw now that she'd failed Brad. And when she'd left Oklahoma City, she'd failed Valeria.

  At the time, she'd believed she was leaving to get away from the memories of Brad, the anger she felt over his dying and leaving her, the guilt she felt over what she hadn't been for him.

  Now she knew the truth. She'd run from Sam; from what had happened between them. He thought she'd been thinking of Brad tonight when they'd kissed. He thought she'd imagined him as Brad during their lovemaking that one time. She hadn't. Not at all.

  And she was tired of failing—Valeria, Sam, Brad, all of them. She couldn't leave. Not yet.

  Taking a deep breath, she hung the gold ball on the tree. Something had happened tonight with Sam; something powerful and unexpected that had left her feeling… Feeling what?

  Dallas stared blankly at the brilliant white lights on the Christmas tree. That kiss had brought her smack up against the truth. She wanted Sam.

  She wanted to make love with him. She wanted to get rid of this piercing hollowness in the pit of her stomach. She wanted … his forgiveness. A desperate laugh bubbled up inside her. He'd made it perfectly clear that he resented the hell out of her.

  She and Sam couldn't go back. But she wanted—needed—his forgiveness if she was ever going to be able to move on.

  Just the thought of putting him behind her left a sharp pain in her chest, an emptiness that mirrored the one she'd felt when Brad had died—a loneliness that bored through her soul. She didn't know how she could put Sam in the past; he wasn't exactly forgettable.

  Frustrated, she joined Carrie at the kitchen table for a steaming cup of cocoa. The warm drink made her drowsy and finally Dallas said good-night. The tension and pressure of the past several days weighed on her and she wanted only to go to bed.

  For the first time since she'd arrived, she fell into a deep sleep.

  It seemed only minutes later when she was jarred awake by the shrill ringing of the phone.

  Groggy, groping for her cell phone on the night table beside the bed, she glanced at the clock—3:00 a.m. Dread curled in her belly as Sam's voice rasped in her ear.

  "There's been another murder. I'm at the scene."

  "Oh, no." She swung her legs off the bed and sat up, shoving her hair out of her face. "What can I do? I can meet you—"

  "No," he said quickly. Too quickly. "I'll swing by Carrie's when I'm finished at the scene. The lab guys are here so I'll catch you then."

  "All right." Dallas hung up, slipping out of bed to pull on her baggy gray sweats. She made her way quietly into the kitchen to make coffee.

  If this was the same guy, the killer was picking up speed. He'd killed five women now. She and Sam had to find the connection, some kind of lead.

  With a fresh cup of coffee in her hand, she opened her notes and began to go over them again. They had to get this creep before he killed again. And now they had no idea when that would be.

  If nothing else, this would keep her mind off Sam.

  * * *

  Sam narrowed his focus and did his job. But the whole time he made notes and studied the latest victim's body and spoke to the medical examiner, thoughts of Dallas nagged at him. He wanted to regret that kiss. At the very least, he wanted to resent it. The memory of her lips on his, soft and willing and drawing his body into one long ache made him want more, made him feel weak. But for the first time, it hadn't made him feel guilty.

  He needed that guilt, needed it to keep from reaching for Dallas when he wanted to shove her up against the wall and blank his mind to everything except the feel of his body inside hers. Usually, the memory of how she'd ripped out his heart served to keep him away from her. Last night it almost hadn't.

  He could have had her. She'd been all liquid heat in his arms, her thighs squeezing his leg, her hips grinding against his. And Brad was gone.

  He kept expecting that old familiar pang in his chest, the crush of shame, but it didn't come. Sam shook his head in amazement. Dallas belonged only to herself now and he was swept with a savage longing to have her on those terms. To start fresh, even though he knew it would lead him straight back to hell.

  Dallas Kittridge was poison to his soul, but knowing that didn't stop the wanting. He'd suggested meeting her at Carrie's because he couldn't handle seeing her in his house again.

  It was dawn when he arrived and as Dallas let him inside, his pulse quickened. Maybe he couldn't handle seeing her anywhere so soon after that little incident at home. Hell, even working with her every day for the past seven days hadn't diminished his body's reaction to her.

  Her face was scrubbed free of the minimal makeup she usually wore; her thick lashes were dark against her pale cheeks. Her baggy sweats didn't disguise her lithe curves. Or the fact that she wasn't wearing a bra. Now, why did he have to notice that?

  Luminous gray eyes met his warily. "There's fresh coffee."

  "Thanks." He pulled off his gloves and stuffed them into the pocket of his sheepskin coat before shrugging out of it and hanging it on the coat rack behind the door.

  She moved to stand in the doorway to the kitchen and he tried not to notice the lean muscle of her beneath the sweats, the sexy certainty of her walk. She gestured toward the couch. "Have a seat. I'll be right back."

  He tossed his file onto the coffee table. Sinking down into one corner of the sofa, he leaned forward and braced his elbows on his knees. A fire burned cozily in the fireplace and warmth slowly edged toward him. He wasn't going to think about how appealingly sleepy she'd looked. Or let himself remember how her bare skin would feel against his, how her full breasts would fill his hands. An ache started down low and he squinted into the fire. No, he wasn't going to remember any of that.

  "Here you go." A steaming cup of coffee appeared and he took it, warming his hands on the ceramic.

  She passed in front of him and stopped at the corner of the coffee table. "Well?"

  "It was our guy. The same ligature marks on her neck. No weapon at the scene." He pulled out the Polaroid he'd taken at the victim's home.

  Dallas stared at the woman's young, pretty face and shook her head. "All the other murders were twelve to thirteen days apart. This time, it's only been seven."

  Sam sipped at his coffee, trying to ignore the scent of her, trying not to wonder if she had on anything under those sweats. The case, Garrett. The case.

  The frustration that had been seething through him since he'd gotten the call snapped. "Dammit, this shouldn't have happened."

  "Sam, it's not your fault. We've been working double time trying to find some connection. How could you know this guy would strike so soon after the last one?"

  "We should've anticipated him. Serial killers usually accelerate a little with each murder. The rush doesn't last as long. We should've thought of this."

  "Even if we had, we couldn't have stopped it. His pattern has held until now. Besides, we can't predict how often he'll need that rush. And we don't even know if this one tonight ties in with the other victims."

  "I saw some CDs at her place—George Strait, Alan Jackson, Reba McEntire. I think we've got a link."

  "Shoot. I was hoping…"

  "Yeah." Sam thought she looked as sick as he felt. He tapped the photo he held. "Leslie Finch. She's only twenty-two. This sucks."

  Dallas shifted, her lean, curvy shadow merging with the firelight on the floor. Sam glanced up, his gaze roaming across her breasts. He wanted to slide his hand under that shirt and feel the velvet of her f
lesh against his palm. He nearly groaned and with effort, forced his gaze to the steaming liquid he held.

  "That gives us a place to start," she said softly, staring into the fire. "Later today, we can start hitting the bars, see if anyone recognizes her."

  "Yeah." He glanced at his watch. "I'll need to go in and make a report on this latest one."

  "I can make phone calls while you do that."

  Sam nodded, wondering why he noticed every little thing about her. Faint crease lines ran along one cheek, attesting to the fact that she'd been asleep, but her eyes were bright, alert. A vitality flowed from her, even this early in the morning. She was saying something about nailing the guy, her voice fierce, teasing his nerve endings like flame.

  "Let's see what we have." She eased down on the sofa beside him, placing her notebook beside his on the table and sitting an arm's length away.

  He reached for his file as Carrie walked into the room dressed in jeans and a formfitting black sweater. Her hair, shiny and fresh looking, hung in a dark cloud around her shoulders. She smelled of delicate soap. "Morning."

  "Hi, Carrie." Sam waved, then looked back at his file. He found it odd that he didn't experience the stirring in his blood or the interest he usually felt when he saw a beautiful woman, especially one as beautiful as Carrie. Of course, he did have a serial killer on the loose. He pulled out the pictures of all the victims, the bars, their homes.

  He felt Dallas watching him, and when he looked up, she smiled curiously. His muscles tightened.

  She took another sip of coffee. "So, we need to look at what kind of people hang around the bars?"

  "We've checked employees. Nothing there."

  "How about delivery people?"

  "Yes." Sam pulled out his pen. "Beer, chips—"

  "Ice."

  He nodded, scribbling.

  "These people would be on a regular schedule, right?"

  "But would it be every two weeks?"

  "He's changed that now," Dallas reminded.

  "Maybe I shouldn't interrupt," Carrie said softly from the doorway where she stood putting on her coat. "But what about someone who has a job like mine?"