The Cop Who Stole Christmas (Tall, Hot & Texan)

by Christie Craig

  When he got back to her, she had her head buried in her hands. “Here.” He handed her the dishtowel. She took the towel, her hands still shaking so bad she almost couldn’t grasp it.

  He dropped the paper towels on the floor, scrubbed his feet against them, and then moved it to the spot that needed soaking up.

  When he looked up, she had her face buried in her hands again. “Savanna,” he said. “Look at me. How do you know Clint’s dead?”

  She moved her hands, closed her eyes, and let out a deep sob.

  “Savanna? Look at me. I need you to answer me. How do you know he’s dead?”

  She drew in another shaky breath. “His eyes . . . were open, but he had . . .” She reached for her throat. “His throat was . . .” She threw up again, thankfully missing his feet this time.

  He gave her a two-second reprieve. “Was he attacking you?” He hoped it had been self-defense.

  She shook her head. “No. No.”

  Right then, he realized something didn’t make sense. He glanced at his living room clock. It was barely five minutes after midnight. If they had fought, it had happened fast. She’d barely had time to change her clothes. And she’d come home alone. Had her ex been waiting in the house? Vaguely, he recalled the car he’d seen drive away from her house. Had someone dropped off the ex?

  “What happened, Savanna?” Feeling cool air against his family jewels, he adjusted his towel again.

  “I came home. I went to feed Boots and . . . he was there.”

  “Did he try to hurt you?”

  “No.” More tears slipped past her lashes. “I tripped over . . . his . . . him.” She looked at her nightshirt. “There was so much blood.” Her breath shook. “I turned on the light and . . .” She stopped, her mouth fell open. “Oh, my god!” She started hyperventilating again. She pressed her hand to her mouth. He moved over a couple of inches.

  “What?” he asked.

  “The ribbon he had . . . today I said . . .”

  Ribbon? “What did you say?”

  Her panicked eyes looked up. “This can’t have happened.” She gasped.

  “Breathe slow,” he said and asked again, “What did you say?”

  She sank back into the sofa, her eyes widened with what looked like another round of panic. “I said all I wanted for Christmas was him dead with a ribbon tied around his . . . penis.”

  He swallowed. “Are you saying . . . Did he have a ribbon . . . ?”

  Tears filled her eyes as she nodded. “Clint’s dead. He’s really dead. I didn’t mean it. I was mad, but . . .”

  Dead? Or maybe just on the brink of death. He couldn’t wait any longer. He needed to make sure the man wasn’t over there bleeding to death.

  He ran to his room, gun still in his hand, and yanked up his jeans. He bypassed the shirt.

  When he came out, she was still sitting there, a small little thing. The glow from the lamp spotlighted her. She rocked back and forth on the sofa, covered in blood, tears brightening her eyes.

  “I’m going to make sure we don’t need an ambulance. You stay right there, okay?”

  She nodded, but he wasn’t sure she heard him.

  He walked out with one question filling his head. What the hell had he gotten himself into?

  • • •

  Mark moved into her house. The heater was on, warmth inviting him in, but he held his gun tight. He listened. Not a noise. When he got to the large family room, he stopped again. A light was on in the back bedroom that looked like the master. Then he heard something. A subtle rustle of someone or something shifting. Her ex wasn’t dead. Or was someone else here? He backed against the hall wall.

  His heart thumped. He counted to three then moved in. There on the bed was a gray long-haired cat. A red ribbon dangled from its mouth. Was that the ribbon that had been . . . ? Probably, he decided, when he saw the bloody paw prints splashed on the white down comforter.

  The cat meowed.

  Mark moved around the bed to the bathroom, thinking the body could be in there. No body. Just a nice clean scent of something fruity. He’d smelled the same scent on her tonight when she’d been in his arms.

  Easing back into the bedroom, his gun out, his gaze shifted from the closet to the door. The cat looked at him, dropped the ribbon, and then swatted at it. Probably destroying evidence, but he was more worried about the blood and where it came from.

  He moved back into the living room. The light in the kitchen showed just enough for him to see the bloody footprints on the light wood floors. Tiny foot prints. Savanna’s footprints. The coppery scent of blood filled his nose. Shit. Could he be wrong? Had she killed her ex-husband?

  One step into the breakfast area of the room and a wave of cold air brushed his bare back. He looked over his shoulder. The window was broken, glass littering the kitchen table. Had someone broken in? Her ex?

  He moved to see around the line of cabinets separating the room, his gaze following the trail of bloody footsteps. Then suddenly, he saw the naked body of a man about his age lying in a pool of blood, his hands trapped behind his back. Mark started to check for a pulse, but his gaze caught on the slit throat and the victim’s open eyes. Dead eyes.

  Mark had seen it enough. Seen death. But he didn’t think he’d ever get used to it.

  Stepping closer, he looked for clues, for evidence. There, in the sink, was a large knife. Not a kitchen knife, but some kind of a hunting knife. He moved just a hair closer, careful not to step in the blood around the body, to see if he could spot any bloody fingerprints in the sink, and that’s when he heard it.

  This time it wasn’t just a slight rustle. Footsteps. Someone was in the house. Correction, someone was in the living room.

  Chapter Five

  Mark swung around and saw the gun before he saw the person. His trigger finger twitched, his adrenaline spiked, then he recognized the face.

  “I could have shot you!”

  “I told you not to go into the house alone,” Jake bellowed.

  “Since when do I do what you say?” Mark lowered his gun the same time Jake did. “I thought he might still be alive.”

  Jake’s gaze lowered to the body. The same death-is-ugly look Mark had felt reflected on his partner’s face. “I’d say that’s a negative.”

  “Did you go to my place first?”

  “Yeah, she said you had gone to call an ambulance.” Jake put his gun in his shoulder holster. Jake moved in a few steps to peer in the sink. “Did she do it?”

  “No,” Mark said. “The window’s broken. She hadn’t been home but a few minutes when she came screaming over to my place.”

  “It looks as if he was killed here.” Jake studied the body. “But he doesn’t look as if he’s been dead that long.”

  Mark ignored Jake’s implication that Savanna could be guilty only to hit on another thought. “I heard a car driving away an hour or so ago. I’ll bet that was the killer. He probably pulled the car far enough in the drive to come in through the window.”

  Jake arched an eyebrow. “You wouldn’t happen to have gotten the make and license, would you?”

  “No.” He searched his brain for the memory, remembering how he’d known it wasn’t Savanna’s car. “It was a medium-size car. A Malibu, I think.”

  Jake looked back at the window. “How would he have gotten our vic inside if he was alive?”

  “Forced him through the window, maybe?” He walked over to the broken window, and sure as hell . . . “Yup. There’s blood here. He probably pushed him through and then climbed in himself.”

  Jake looked at the blood. “Or she killed him and then broke the window to make it look like someone else did it.”

  Mark shook his head. “I’m telling you, she didn’t do this. But . . .” He remembered what she’d said earlier. “She knows who did.”

  “How do you know?”

  He told Jake about the whole ribbon thing. “It’s in the bedroom.”

  Jake shook his head. “You know the Pi
perville cops are going to like her for this.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Ahh, crap. You ran a check on this guy today, right?”

  “Yeah,” Mark said. “ I was just checking . . .”

  “It doesn’t matter what you were checking. This is gonna bite you in the ass.”

  Mark wanted to deny it, but he couldn’t. His ass was gonna get bitten. “I’ll just have to prove them wrong . . . on both accounts.” He started walking out, aware he’d left Savanna alone long enough.

  “Wait,” Jake said. “Let’s talk about his.”

  Mark looked back. “About what?”

  “I don’t want you to get in any deeper. Let the guys showing up investigate this. Don’t try to be her hero until we’re certain she’s really innocent.”

  “I am certain.” At least his gut said he was. Mark frowned, not liking being caught up in this.

  Jake frowned. “Look, I don’t know her, but neither do you. And if you look at this logically, her husband screws her out of her car, she gets all pissed, and now he ends up dead in her house. I’m just saying this doesn’t look good.”

  Mark’s gut clenched. “She didn’t have time to do this. I saw her pull up and walk inside. Alone.”

  Jake didn’t look convinced. “She could have done it earlier and left.”

  “I would have heard her like I heard the other car.”

  “What? You sat by your window waiting for her to come home?”

  He hated how it sounded, but he admitted the truth. “Yeah, sort of.”

  Jake’s frown deepened. “But . . . you didn’t say you saw it pull up. You said you saw it pull away. That means you could have missed her, too.”

  “I didn’t,” Mark insisted, at least he didn’t think so. He ran a hand over his face. “And, damn it, you saw her. She’s maybe five foot five.” He motioned to the vic again, who was at least six feet and two hundred pounds. “She couldn’t have subdued that guy to get his hands tied up.”

  Jake’s brow arched. “Maybe she’s into bondage. Seriously, the guy’s naked. She could have asked him to let her tie him up. As you said, I’ve seen her, and if I was single, hell, I’d probably have let her tie me up, too.”

  Mark resisted that logic even knowing it could be true. “I’m not buying it.”

  Jake exhaled. “I’m just saying don’t jump in the middle of this, play it cool until you know for sure. If you’re in the Piperville cops’ faces, it’ll just make you come off like a jealous boyfriend.”

  “I’m not her boyfriend.” He started out and then swung around. “Oh, and don’t forget, if this gets my ass in a sling, you’re the reason she came knocking on my door to start with!”

  He walked off, wanting to talk to her before she got pulled away from him. And they would pull her away. Separate and conquer. He knew the game. He’d played it a hundred times. Only this time he’d be on the opposite side.

  “This is so screwed up,” Jake said as Mark shot out the door.

  And Mark couldn’t help but agree.

  • • •

  Sweat had the back of Savanna’s legs sticking to her neighbor’s leather sofa. Then again, it wasn’t just her legs sweating. She felt a few drops rolling down her brow. She wasn’t even hot. No, she was cold. And sweaty. And half numb, half fuzzy.

  Clint was dead. Clint was dead on her kitchen floor. Her breath caught again.

  The words floated through her mind. I want my ex dead with a ribbon tied around his pecker! Clint was dead because of something she’d said. It had to be, right? But who? Who would have done this? Her hands started shaking. She looked down and saw all the blood. Her stomach roiled again.

  She closed her eyes. The image of him, his blood pooled around his body, his hands tied behind his back, and his neck slashed, flashed on the back of her lids.

  He was dead.

  She remembered when she first met him at Bethany’s party. They had spent hours talking. She remembered how he’d come into the florist shop the next day and asked her what was her favorite flower, and that afternoon her competitor had delivered her a dozen daisies. She remembered she’d loved him.

  Then she remembered how in less than a year after marrying him, he’d become angry all the time. Then with emotional clarity, she recalled coming home after her mom had passed and finding him in bed with his intern. In their bed.

  `She had loved Clint. She didn’t anymore.

  But she hadn’t wanted him dead. Tears rolled down her cheek. The blood, his blood, drying on her hands made them crusty. She wanted them clean. She jumped up and ran into the neighbor’s kitchen. She reached for the faucet.

  “Don’t do that.”

  She swung around. Her neighbor stood there, and for the craziest second she remembered him standing naked in front of her. At least now he had on a pair of jeans.

  She looked down at her hands. “I gotta get this blood off.”

  He walked over to her. “I know, but the police are on their way. And if you try to clean up, it’ll look as if you are hiding something.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not.”

  “I know.” He placed a hand on each of her forearms. His touch felt warm.

  She remembered he’d said something about calling an ambulance. “He’s dead, isn’t he?” Her teeth started chattering, she bit down on her lip.

  “Yeah.”

  “Someone else was here,” she muttered, just remembering.

  “My partner.”

  She leaned in, let her head rest on his chest. Warm bare skin. “I’m so cold,” she muttered. “But I’m sweating.”

  He wrapped his arms around her. “It’s shock.” His face came against the top of her head. “You’ll be okay.” His words were soft. She wanted to start sobbing.

  She stayed there for several seconds letting him hold her. Needing to be held. She found herself trying to remember his name. Then she remembered. Mark. Mark Donaldson.

  “Let me get you something to slip on.” He led her through the living room and into another room. She followed, feeling somehow disjointed from her body. She kept seeing Clint on the floor. She shivered.

  He stopped walking They stood in a bedroom in front of a closet.

  “What color would you like? Blue, burgundy, black, or green?”

  Four men’s robes hung in the closet. Store tags hung from the each one.

  “I don’t care,” she said.

  He pulled the blue one off the hanger. “It’ll match your eyes.”

  He yanked a tag off the garment and held it out for her to slip her arms inside. It was silk and looked expensive. When he started to tie the sash around her waist, his hand came against her hips and she stopped him.

  “I can do that.”

  He stepped back. She was shaking so much, she almost made a liar out of herself. Finally, she got the dang thing tied.

  She looked up, their eyes met. Concern filled his light green eyes. The moment grew awkward.

  Searching for something to say, to prove to herself and to him that she was okay, she glanced back at the closet. “Why do you have four brand-new robes?”

  He grinned. “My mom gives them to me every birthday and Christmas. Name me a guy who really wears one of those besides Hugh Hefner.”

  Her heart hiccupped. “Clint did.”

  “Sorry.” He exhaled. “The cops are going to be here any minute.”

  She nodded.

  “They are going to ask you a lot of questions.” He hesitated as if what he had to say next was hard. How hard could it be? She’d just found her ex-husband’s body.

  “They are going to suspect that you did this.”

  She had sort of come to that conclusion by some of his earlier questions, but hearing it made it seem more real. “I didn’t. I just found him.”

  “I believe you, but they’re going to need proof. So can you tell me where you were today?”

  She clutched the robe closer. “I . . . was with my friends. Then I dropped them off at t
he airport.”

  “What time?”

  “Their plane left at nine. So I dropped them off at about a quarter till eight.”

  “Then what?”

  Her eyes grew moist. “I went to the cemetery.”

  “The cemetery? At night?”

  She nodded. Was that doubt in his eyes?

  “By yourself?”

  She nodded again. “My mom’s grave.”

  “Where’s it at?”

  “Glencoe. An hour and a half drive. Oak Hill cemetery.”

  “Anyone see you there?”

  She shook her head.

  “Did you go anywhere else? Anywhere someone could have seen you?”

  “No,” she said. “Well, there was a skunk in the cemetery, but I don’t think he’ll count.”

  He paused again. “Earlier you mentioned what you said about the ribbon. Who was there?”

  The names started to roll off her tongue and she realized these were her friends. “They wouldn’t do this.”

  “Can you give me their names?” He walked to a desk and snagged a piece of paper and pen.

  When she didn’t start listing off names, he frowned. “Savanna, you’re going to tell the cops and if you tell me I can hopefully help solve this quicker.”

  She listed off the three names. He wrote them down.

  “Wait,” she said, it wasn’t just them. “The waiter, Leonardo and then . . . Juan. Oh, God.” Another wave of panic shot through her. “He actually said he’d hire someone to do it for me.”

  “Who’s Juan?”

  “The restaurant owner of Juan’s Place.”

  He jotted down notes as she talked. “Why would he say he’d hire someone to do it?”

  “He’s asked me out a couple of times.” She paused. “But . . . I don’t think he would . . . I mean, he’s a nice guy.”

  “Did you ever go out with him?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Good.” He looked back down at the pad. “Your friends, are these the people you took to the airport?”

  She let go of a deep sigh. “Yes. See, they couldn’t have done this.”