Still the One

by Debra Cowan

  He rubbed at the knot of tension that had settled in his neck. She could still prime him from zero to ready in under five seconds. He didn’t like it, didn’t want it, but he had to deal with it. For the present, he wasn’t getting the space he needed from her. If he could just get a break in this case, work would go a long way toward keeping his mind from replaying the shadowy pictures of what had happened between him and Kit today.

  He’d spent the afternoon outside on the phone, in the garage on the phone, anywhere she wasn’t. Kit had stayed in the living room. Lunch and dinner had been bleak, sober affairs. Kit had called Tony’s parents again, only to learn they’d had no word from their son. Rafe had lost count of the number of times she’d checked her home answering machine for a message from Liz, without luck.

  The calls he’d made—to Nita, Craig, Kent Porter, Uncle Wayne—hadn’t yielded much better results. Only Rafe’s conversation with Craig had potential. The computer expert was piecing together some deleted files from Tony’s computer and might have something later. Rafe had also called a guy who did regular work for him and ordered a background check on Eddie Sanchez.

  All afternoon, Rafe had managed to stay busy, but thoughts of Kit tickled the back of his mind. His body, still aching and hard, cursed him for pushing her away, but he knew he’d done the right thing.

  She’d made her choice ten years ago, and he’d learned to live with it. He might want her physically, but he wasn’t laying his heart on the chopping block again. They could work together, but they couldn’t be together.

  As he swung the ’Vette into the parking lot of Sanchez’s apartment complex, dusk settled in shades of silver over the city, gray sifting over the thin line of red at the horizon. Finding a space in front of Eddie’s mud-brown building, Rafe killed the engine and got out. Kit did the same. Dark shadows ringed her eyes; fatigue pinched at her delicate features.

  He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. This enforced closeness made his nerves as raw as those mind-melting kisses at the creek had.

  They needed a break in this case and fast. Surely Liz would call soon for money, as she’d told Kit.

  Each two-story building had four apartments on the top and bottom floors, two on each side of a set of concrete steps that led to the second floor. Sanchez’s apartment was on the lower floor, the back one on the right. As soon as Rafe stepped past the staircase, he froze. Yellow crime scene tape stretched across Sanchez’s door.

  Automatically, he slammed out a protective arm.

  “Hey!” Kit said as he bumped her chest. Then she saw the door, too. “Oh, no.”

  The chirp of crickets punctuated the stillness. Rafe looked in both directions of the walk-through breezeway. Golden light thrown by a setting sun shone through the opposite open end of the building. He saw the same telltale yellow crime scene tape on the end of a bush. Dread formed a cold knot in his gut.

  “Young man!” A paper-thin voice whispered from the next apartment.

  Rafe ducked to look under the staircase. One half of Mrs. Hawkins’s wrinkled face peered at him. “Are you all right, Mrs. Hawkins?”

  “Yes, yes.” She motioned them over and cracked the door barely enough to let them in. Once they stepped inside, she quickly shut the door, locked the dead bolt and slid in the chain lock. “My sister’s coming to get me. The police don’t think I should stay here. I certainly don’t, either.”

  “What happened?”

  The older lady dabbed at red-rimmed eyes. “It was awful, just horrible. I found him, right back there behind the apartment building.”

  “Maybe you should sit down,” Rafe suggested, worried at how frail the old woman looked.

  “Thank you.” She let him lead her into the small living room and help her onto a nubby, olive-green couch. “I went outside to get my mail. I always return by the back way because I check the bushes. Sometimes the maintenance man here doesn’t water them. And there he was. Hidden underneath. Blood everywhere. It was horrible. I called the police right off.”

  “That was good.”

  Kit rubbed her arms as if she were cold.

  Apprehension snaked across Rafe’s neck. “Was it Eddie Sanchez, Mrs. Hawkins?”

  “They marked everything off. No one can go in that apartment until they’re finished looking around.”

  He nodded, familiar with the procedure. “Ma’am?”

  “The police said he was murdered,” she whispered, pressing the handkerchief to her eyes again. Her thin, wrinkled skin was mottled. “That’s why I’m going to my sister’s.”

  Rafe struggled to keep his voice level. “I need to know, Mrs. Hawkins. Was it Eddie?”

  “Yes. Yes.” She dabbed at her eyes again.

  Rafe’s gaze sliced to Kit. Horror widened her eyes and she covered her mouth with her hand.

  The news dropped on Rafe like a hammer. Eddie Sanchez had been their best hope for new information. The one person Tony may have confided in, Sanchez was dead. Had crucial information died with him? This was not the break Rafe had hoped for.

  A few hours later, Rafe hung up the phone in his study and leaned back in his soft leather chair. Damn. Kent Porter at the OCPD had just confirmed Rafe’s fear, and he did not want to tell Kit. Porter’s information had forced Rafe to admit that Liz was in definite danger, more than he and Kit had probably suspected.

  His desk lamp burned bright over the notes he’d scribbled concerning Liz’s case. As they’d left Sanchez’s, Rafe had worried at the chalkiness of Kit’s face, but she’d insisted she was fine. Once home, she had disappeared into the bathroom for a few minutes, then moved into the living room, cool and calm. He knew she wasn’t.

  The television hummed at the same low volume he’d worked to all evening. Since he and Kit had returned from Eddie Sanchez’s apartment complex, Rafe had sequestered himself in here to work. Kit had watched television. Or rather, she’d had the thing turned on.

  His study door was open, and every minute or so, like clockwork, he would see movement from the corner of his eye. Kit pacing.

  She didn’t cry, didn’t ask questions, didn’t say a thing. She was wearing a hole in his nerves not to mention his carpet. He knew she was worried about Liz, and he knew, too, she wouldn’t say anything to him about it. She’d gone deep into herself after that incident at the creek. Finding out about Sanchez had caused her to withdraw even further.

  Rafe knew he’d hurt her. The urge to reach out, try to reassure her about Liz was strong and insistent, but he couldn’t risk getting close to her again. If he let her in, it would kill him when she walked away. And she would walk away.

  It registered then that, aside from the low murmur of the television, no sound came from the living room. Too long had passed since he’d heard the soft give of sofa leather or the crackle of magazine pages. He pushed back his chair, rose and walked out of the study, then crossed the ceramic tile of the entryway. The television droned on, but Kit wasn’t on the sofa. Or in the matching oversize chair. Or anywhere in the room.

  Panic squeezed his chest. The kitchen was dark. He glanced toward the patio doors. And saw a flash of moonlight and shadow in the pool. Movement.

  Striding to the glass doors, he watched for a moment. Kit sliced through the water with the sleek precision of a machine. Long, purposeful strokes. Swift. Single-minded. The water shimmered around her.

  Pale light hit the soft curve of her cheek and jaw as she came up for air. Skimming through the water, reaching one end of the pool, flipping a turn, swimming to the other end. She did it again. And again. A relentless, punishing pace.

  Rafe’s heart clenched.

  She just swam. He didn’t know how long she’d been out there, how long he stood there. Her strokes became shorter, choppy. Desperate.

  Finally, she reached the shallow end and weakly pulled herself up to sit on the edge of the pool. Even from here, he could see how she labored for breath after breath. Except for the frantic rise and fall of her chest, she didn’t move. Just sa
t there, legs half in the pool, limply huddled into herself as she stared at the moon’s reflection on the water.

  Should he leave her alone?

  The trees in his yard swayed with a breeze. Silvery light skipped across the pool. He went and snatched a towel from his bathroom, then took it outside.

  The air was cool for June. She had to be freezing. He stopped behind her, his fingers closing tightly over the terry cloth as he saw the points of her shoulder blades thrown into sharp relief with each breath.

  “Kit?”

  She gave no sign of having heard him. She just sat there, a lonely silhouette with the night curling around her like smoke.

  “I brought you a towel.” His voice sounded loud and alien against the quietness of the night.

  “Thanks.” Her voice was as flat as cardboard.

  Concern surged through him, and he knelt beside her. “You should probably come on in.”

  Her chin trembled, as did the rest of her body.

  “Here.” He held the towel out to her, and when she didn’t take it, he unfolded it, laid it across her shoulders.

  At his touch, she scrambled up, splashing water onto the patio, onto his boots. Her fingers grabbed at the edges of the towel as she stepped onto the solid concrete surrounding the pool.

  Her reaction spurred as much regret as resentment in him. He shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. They were both on edge, and he knew she had to be frightened over what had happened to Eddie Sanchez.

  She slid the towel from her shoulders, patted her face and neck. He recognized her one-piece blue tank suit as one from the closet next to the hot tub. The too-large top gaped slightly at the neck, exposing the shadow between her breasts.

  She ran the towel down her legs. “Have you talked to your friend at the police department?”

  Rafe nodded. There was no need to tell her everything.

  Arranging the towel sarong-style around her slender curves, she tucked in one end to secure it. “You might as well tell me. I have a right to know.”

  “I don’t have any news on Liz.” He brought one hand up, rubbed the back of his neck.

  “But you found out something about Sanchez, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me then.”

  “There’s no point—”

  “Stop trying to protect me.” Her chin angled stubbornly at him.

  “It has nothing to do with Liz.”

  “That man was linked to Liz. He knew Tony, didn’t he?”

  “It has nothing directly to do with her.” Rafe shoved a hand through his hair, hating how cool and prickly she sounded.

  “You tell me, Rafe Blackstock.” She stepped closer, moonlight revealing the wanness of her face. Her eyes glittered between wet, spiky lashes. Despite the command in her voice, she looked fragile.

  He could still see remaining hurt in her eyes from what had happened between them earlier. Thank goodness she wouldn’t know the significance of what he was about to tell her. “The guy was shot execution-style. Two bullets to the head.”

  She wobbled, and he reflexively reached out to steady her. Before he could, she straightened, visibly gathered herself. “That means something, doesn’t it? What does that mean?”

  “Kit—”

  “Tell me.” She bit the words out. “You can at least give me that, can’t you?”

  Her bitter reference to his earlier rejection knifed through him.

  “I’m paying you, and that means for anything that might concern my sister.”

  His jaw tightened at her blatant reminder that he was technically her employee. “It means the job was done by professionals.”

  Her head came up. “More than one person was involved?”

  Hell. He shoved his hand through his hair. “Mrs. Hawkins told the detectives that two men knocked on Sanchez’s door earlier this afternoon. She told the men Eddie had stepped out for a few minutes. The next time she saw him, he was facedown in the shrubbery.”

  Kit went as pale as chalk and walked around him, clutching the towel to her as if it were a shield of armor. She stopped a few feet away, next to his round, white-trimmed patio table. Moonlight skated across the glass top, slanted over the green-and-white striped chair cushions. “So, Mrs. Hawkins saw these men? She described them to the police?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did they look like?”

  He chewed on the inside of his cheek.

  “I know you got their descriptions, Rafe. You’re too thorough.” Her voice was taut, as if she’d already guessed.

  He shifted so he faced her and met her gaze, which was dark and stormy with worry. “She described one of the men as very slender, six feet tall. And the other as short and balding. With a thick neck.”

  She stilled. “Like a bulldog on steroids?”

  He didn’t think she even heard him confirm it. She sank into the curved patio chair behind her. Undiluted fear widened her eyes. “Oh, no.”

  She put one slender hand to her temple. After a long moment, she looked up. “It’s the guy who came to your office.”

  “I think so.”

  “He has something to do with Liz. We know that for sure now.”

  “Yes.” And Eddie’s execution-style murder was a mob trademark, which was another piece of information that jived with Tony’s story.

  Kit jumped up, looking around frantically as if unsure where to go. “We’ve got to find her, right now.”

  “We’re doing all we can.”

  “Stop standing there! What if that happens to my sister? What if she’s shot?” She turned away, the towel falling to the patio. “We can’t let that happen. We’ve got to find her. I hired you to find her.”

  He knew emotion, not reason, was talking, but that didn’t stop the slash of pain he felt at her words. He’d never failed her; he wasn’t about to start now. “Until we get a lead, it’s stupid to go off on a wild-goose chase.”

  “There’s got to be somewhere we haven’t looked, someone we haven’t talked to. Have you done everything you know to do?”

  “Do you have any ideas? I’m open.”

  “Maybe I should hire someone else.”

  “That’s your choice,” he said coldly, his voice lashing at her. “But you’ve got to calm down. I’m doing everything that’s possible at this point. I’m waiting on a call from Craig, who may have found something on Tony’s computer, but even if he hasn’t, we’re not going off half-cocked. We’ll hear from Liz or Tony or someone who’s seen them. It’s only been twenty-four hours since I put the information on the Internet.”

  “What if no one contacts us? Then what do we do?”

  He refused to even consider the possibility. “You’ve got to be patient.”

  “You be patient!” She stalked to him, eyes glittering, mouth drawn tight. “That’s not your sister out there. It wasn’t your sister who was run off the road and could’ve been killed just like Eddie Sanchez.”

  Her eyes were angry, but clear. And alive. Relief washed through him. He hadn’t seen any emotion since this morning by the creek. “We’ll find her, Kit. I know the waiting is hard, but we’re covering our bases right now.”

  Her shoulders sagged. “It doesn’t feel like it.”

  “I know. This is the most frustrating part of any case, trying to wring a lead out of somewhere, waiting until one turns up. I’ve also ordered a background check on Eddie Sanchez. That might tell us something. But Craig’s our best bet right now, until Liz calls.”

  “So we just need to hope Craig finds something on Tony’s computer.”

  “Right.”

  She stilled, her eyes narrowing. “Computer! Maybe she’s e-mailed me! Why didn’t I think of that before?”

  “She said she’d call, but that’s a good idea. Let’s check it out.”

  Kit suddenly became a blur of motion. She snatched the towel from where it had fallen on the patio, whirled and started for the house. “It’ll just take me a minute to change.”


  “Okay. I’ll call Craig again.”

  “Thanks.” She turned at the door. “Sorry for losing it a while ago.”

  “You’re entitled.” His gaze met hers. With the towel draped over one pale shoulder, her hair wet and slicked back, she looked small. Vulnerable.

  Which made him feel like a class-A idiot for rejecting her at the creek, yet how could he have done anything else? They wouldn’t work. They never had.

  “I know you’re doing everything you can,” she said carefully, awkwardly. “I wouldn’t have come to you if I didn’t trust you.”

  “I know.” His throat went tight. “I’ll wait in the study for you. We can check your e-mail from my computer.”

  “All right.” She slid open the patio door and hurried across the living room, then disappeared around the corner and down the hall.

  Hating the distance between them, he pinched the bridge of his nose. He didn’t want her to get her hopes up, but maybe Liz had e-mailed instead of calling. He doubted it, but checking would make Kit feel she was doing something. And she desperately needed to feel useful, he realized. In control.

  That sense of being needed, being responsible was a core part of her, something she probably couldn’t change even if she wanted to. Just like he couldn’t stop the anger that occasionally still swamped him over the night blindness that had forced him out of his pilot’s seat.

  He stepped into the house, locked the patio door and picked up the living room extension to call Craig. Why hadn’t he ever seen how important being needed was to Kit? By wanting her to force Liz to grow up, was he asking her to turn away from a vital piece of herself?

  He wasn’t asking her, he reminded himself. And Kit wasn’t going to suddenly let go of the responsibility she felt. Her cool independence, the remoteness in her eyes when she looked at him was a blaring announcement that she’d gotten his message at the creek. The distance between them pierced something deep inside him. Rafe didn’t like it, but he also wasn’t going to change it.

  There had been no message from Liz on Kit’s answering machine, no e-mail on her computer. Disappointment a stabbing pain in her chest, Kit had ached to turn into Rafe’s broad chest, cry out her frustration and her growing fear, but she hadn’t.