by Dana Marton
She turned just in time to see a shadow pass her window on that side. Had to be some stupid teenagers.
She jumped up, ignoring the lukewarm coffee that spilled on her shirt, and ran over to the window. The dog was standing by the fence, staring up the empty street. Whoever had been at her window was long gone, she figured, then frowned as she took in her lucky shirt. She wore it to every doctor’s appointment. She should have taken it off after she’d gotten home, dang darn it.
She went back to the kitchen, put the mug in the dishwasher, then dabbed the stain with a wet paper towel. She needed to change, and she seriously needed to get to work. Peaches barked again outside.
She wished her fence extended around her whole property. Nobody would be bothering her, then, not while the Rottweiler was still here. She moved back toward the window, then the doorbell rang and she changed course.
She hurried up front, peered through the small square of glass set in the door, and stared into a pair of mocha eyes. Just what she didn’t need. But now that he’d seen her, she had to let him in.
She opened the door. “Captain Bing.”
Chapter Five
She was even prettier than he remembered, even with the slightly annoyed look on her face and the wad of paper towels she held to her chest. “I’m not here to arrest you. I don’t think we need to be that formal.”
“Ethan?”
“Everybody calls me Bing. Are you okay?”
She let her hand drop. “Just spilled some coffee.”
He blinked at the wet cotton shirt. The lace of her bra showed through the coffee stain. The stab of lust was instant and unexpected. And unwelcome. He just didn’t want to deal with it.
He forced himself to look back up into her eyes. “I thought I’d stop by to see how you made out with that dog.” An impulse move he was rapidly regretting.
He glanced into the house behind her and caught sight of the Rottweiler that stood outside on the deck, looking in. “I take it nobody called. Did you try the shelter?”
“They’re up to their eyeballs in fur.”
He smiled. “I could ask around. See if anyone could take him in temporarily.” He knew half the people in town. “I got some land a friend is renting to raise horses. I could check with him.”
She surprised him by saying, “I think we’re okay for now.”
She didn’t like getting help. He’d gotten that the last time around. “I thought you weren’t a dog person.”
She folded her arms. “My earliest memory is riding my tricycle down the driveway and a big, black dog charging at me, grabbing me by the leg, and dragging me over the gravel.” She shrugged. “I don’t have a phobia, exactly. I’m just uncomfortable around them.” The tight set of her mouth said she resented having to explain herself to him.
She resembled a grumpy fairy with all that wild curly hair, yet there was something insanely heroic about her, doing the one thing that scared her the most. People no longer surprised Bing, in general, but Sophie Curtis managed it.
He had no idea what to do with her. Of course, he didn’t have to do anything with her, really. She wasn’t his responsibility.
He’d checked on the dog. She didn’t need his help. Say good-bye. Walk away. “I see you haven’t planted your forest yet,” he said instead, held in place by something he didn’t want to spend too much time thinking about.
Her forehead furrowed as her gaze skipped past him to the miniature forest on her front lawn. “I’m looking for a landscaper I can afford. Just muscle, mostly. I can do the design. IT major, graphic design minor.”
“Is that what you do for a living?”
“Web site design and management, hosting, SEO, cloud computing, the works.”
Huh. Anything that required design or any creative pursuit mystified him, frankly. He wanted to stay and ask more, ask what SEO was, ask if in the night she’d dreamt about him as he’d dreamt about her. He turned to leave. “If you need help with the dog, you have my number.”
“Thanks.” She cleared her throat. “Actually—”
He waited as she bit her full lip, and tried to ignore the weird ping at the bottom of his stomach that reminded him of desire. Wrong woman. Wrong time. He had no intention of moving on until he’d brought Stacy’s killer to justice. “What is it?”
“I got him a collar.” She stepped back and grabbed a blue collar off the hall table, complete with tag. “I had them put my cell number on it. In case he got out.”
She was probably too scared to put the collar on. “I can help with that,” he said as he followed her in. “You got any treats?”
She walked to the kitchen and pulled a bag from the cabinet.
He followed, stopping by a photo in a bamboo frame on her counter, a rainbow-colored hot air balloon with a redhead waving from it. He leaned closer. “Is that you?”
“I wanted to do something daring.” She made a face. “I know, it sounds stupid… Sometimes I just feel like I don’t want to miss anything life has to offer. Ever been up?”
“Wouldn’t if they paid me. I’m more of a feet-on-the-ground kind of guy.” He grabbed a handful of treats from the bag she held, then took the collar and strode out to the deck, where the dog was waiting.
The Rottweiler backed a few feet away, tail between his legs.
Bing held up a treat. “Here you go, boy. Sit.”
The dog did.
“He’s been trained at one point.” He tossed the treat, and the Rottweiler snapped it out of the air. The next one Bing kept in his hand. “Come on. You can take it.”
He kept his voice calm and low as he asked Sophie, “What have you been calling him?”
She stepped out onto the deck behind him. “Peaches.”
He bit back a grin. The name had probably been picked to make the Rottweiler seem less scary to her. It was an indignity, but he wasn’t about to criticize her for it.
“All right…Peaches,” he said as the dog came up to him and took the treat.
He squatted slowly and handed out more goodies, letting the dog sniff him. “There you go. That’s a good boy, Peaches.” He patted him.
“How do you know he isn’t going to bite you?” she whispered.
“For one, his mouth is full. Two, he’s wagging his tail. It’s all in the body language.”
He gave the dog another treat, then patted him again before slipping on the collar.
Peaches immediately sat down and began clawing at it.
“Eh.” Bing made a sharp, disapproving sound. Then when the dog put the paw down, he said, “Good boy. Do you want another treat?” And tossed one high.
“You disrupt bad behavior and reward good behavior,” he told Sophie as Peaches snapped the treat out of the air. “Dogs are way better than cats in this regard. They actually want to please.”
She flashed him a skeptical look. “You make it sound easy.”
“It is.” He scratched Peaches behind the ear when the dog came up to him. “He’s got pretty good manners. He’s probably house trained, if you want to let him in.”
She gave the dog an uncertain look. “I’m not supposed to have pets.”
“Allergies?”
She hesitated. “Heart transplant.”
He stared. He understood science as far as forensics went, but taking a heart out of one person, putting it into another, and making her live… “You’re—”
“A freak,” she finished for him.
“I was thinking more like a living miracle.”
Surprise flickered in her eyes.
He kept playing with the dog. “Are you sure you don’t want me to take him?”
She hesitated a moment before she answered. “He shouldn’t be shuffled around. Someone will see one of the posters and call. He can stay until then. I don’t mind a few more days.”
She had a good heart, wherever it’d come from. He couldn’t help his gaze sliding to her chest. He wished her T-shirt would dry already.
Peaches sat and leaned aga
inst him. The Rottweiler was looking at her as if she puzzled him. That made two of them.
A warm breeze blew across the backyard, the sun bright above them, not a cloud in the sky. Being out here in the sunshine with Sophie and Peaches, talking like this was nice, some part of his brain registered.
Maybe he’d come back and check on them again tonight.
His evenings were usually all the same, either on duty or at home, going through case files, looking for anything he might have missed at the office, trying to solve cases. Then looking at Stacy’s file before he went to bed, hoping he’d see something he kept missing.
A squirrel darted along the split-rail fence. Peaches took off, barking. But when he caught up with the squirrel, he slowed and let it go. He’d only wanted to play.
“A born hunter he’s not,” Bing joked.
But Sophie wasn’t smiling. “Can I ask you something?” She pressed her lips together for a second. “Before you came up to the door earlier, did you go around the side of the house first?”
“No.” He raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
“I thought I saw a shadow. And Peaches was barking.” She shrugged as she went back into the house. “Probably another squirrel.”
He noted the tension in her jaw. “What did you really think it was?”
She flashed an embarrassed half smile. “Peeping Tom?”
“I didn’t see anyone walking away when I came up. No reports of any Peeping Toms in the neighborhood either, or any home invasions. Dogs will bark at anything.”
“I know. I’m getting used to it.” She drew a deep breath. “I appreciate your help with the collar.”
“No problem. You know how to reach me if you need anything.” Because that was what this was about—him helping a citizen in need. Not about the way the weight seemed to lift from his chest when he was with Sophie.
He’d had business out this way, had to drive out to his house on his lunch break to let Joe’s sister, the Realtor, quickly run through it to get some ideas. After she left, he’d thought he would check in on Sophie and the dog. End of story.
“I better get going.” He strode to her front door, then through it with a quick wave.
He had plenty to do at the station and more at home when he got off shift. Maybe coming back to Sophie wouldn’t be the best thing. According to the Realtor, he needed to put half his stuff in storage. He needed to refresh his bathrooms and kitchen—whatever that meant. And he needed to update the landscaping.
But before he left, he walked around her house, looking at the ground. No footprints in the grass that he could see. Then again, a flagstone path led to the gate, so someone could have walked down here without leaving prints.
He watched the dog for a second, now chasing birds in the back. Just because the dog had barked earlier didn’t mean somebody had been around. The Labrador he’d had as a kid used to bark at the wind.
If anyone decided to case out the neighborhood, Sophie Curtis’s cottage, the most modest house on the street, wouldn’t be their top pick. The front porch needed a paint job, and the windows needed replacing. The place didn’t exactly scream money.
Yet he could afford to drive by now and then when he was on duty and maybe ask the others to keep an eye on the place, he thought just as his phone rang.
“We got some prelim lab results on the Haynes case,” Joe said on the other end. “It’s not much. All they have so far is that the blood on the ground came from one person. It’s the vic’s.”
“Of course it is.” An obvious link to the killer would have been too easy. He glanced at the time on the display. “Why are you still in?”
Joe had the night shift that ended at six in the morning. He’d stayed on to help Chase with a violent arrest, but still being at the office at noon was overdoing it. Just because Bing didn’t have a life, he didn’t expect his officers to do the same.
“I thought I’d go through e-mail and phone records again. Now that we know it’s murder instead of her just running off, I want to double-check everything, in case we missed a clue in the first round of interviews.”
And because of the possible connection to him, Bing thought, part of him touched. He had good men in his department. He cleared his throat. “Find anything?”
“Not yet. I’m still looking.
He got into his car and started up the engine. “Go home. You put in enough hours. You’re entitled to a life while you’re young and pretty,” he joked as his phone beeped. “Gotta go. Mike’s on the other line.” He switched between the two men.
“I think I might have something here, Captain. I’m at the bank. One of the tellers remembers Kristine Haynes being here the morning of her disappearance. Routine transaction. But the teller remembers her being in the week before, with a man. She remembers them specifically because they were fighting the entire time they were standing in line.”
“Start the warrant request for the security videos.” He stepped on the gas. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
* * *
Jeremy called just as Sophie was getting ready for bed. “How was your checkup?”
“Pretty good,” she told him, turning back the covers.
“I want to come over and see you.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary. I’m fine. Really.”
“Well, I don’t think you are,” he snapped, then tempered his voice. “I could help. I could take care of you—”
“Don’t you have a new girlfriend?”
A long pause came. “It didn’t work out. I miss you.”
“We’ve both moved on.”
“You have someone?” His voice rose.
“That’s not what I meant. We both have different lives than when we were together. We want different things.”
“And if I still want you? I think about you all the time. We could have something good together again.”
“But only on your terms?”
“What’s wrong with me wanting to take care of you? I could have gone to your appointment with you. Wouldn’t it have been better than going alone? Two people can pay better attention than one. What if you missed something important Dr. Pratt said?”
“I have a full printout of everything I’m supposed to be taking, eating, and doing. And Wendy came.” They needed a change of subject. “How is work?” He ran a small business consulting agency.
“Okay. You know how difficult it is to run a business and be the boss, taking care of employees. My decisions determine whether they can put food on the table for their kids.”
“I know. You’re doing a good thing.”
“So can I come and see you? We really need to talk.”
“Can’t right now, not this week, and not the next one either. Sorry. I’m up to my neck in work.” And she wasn’t lying. Two new work orders had come in while she’d been busy with Peaches and Bing.
“You need me to protect you,” Jeremy insisted. “It’s just not safe for you without me.”
She pressed her lips together. Telling him about some random guy peeking in her windows lately would definitely be a bad idea, she decided, even as guilt bubbled up inside and nearly swayed her. Guilt said she owed Jeremy. And going back to the familiar, even if not the best thing, was always a temptation. Starting something new and unknown had an enormous potential for disaster.
But also for reward.
Illness had defined her for too long. She refused to be defined by fear. There was no going back, only marching resolutely forward.
“You need me,” he insisted. “I could make everything easier.”
He didn’t understand her, and she wasn’t sure he ever could. “I’m not looking for easy.” She was looking for something real.
She shook her head when, for some reason, Bing’s mocha eyes popped into her mind.
Chapter Six
Sophie woke to a call from Dr. Pratt the next morning.
“Biopsy and lab work are as good as can be.”
She breathed easier f
or the first time that week, her lips snapping into a smile. “Thank you so much for letting me know.”
“That pet you asked about,” the doctor went on. “I’m going to tentatively approve it. As long as he’s one hundred percent healthy and clean. Maybe something small would be good to start with.”
She sat up in bed, her gaze settling on her unplanted forest as she glanced outside. “How about gardening?”
“Don’t push it, young lady. I don’t want you playing in dirt.”
“Yes, sir.” Her results were good. Nothing else mattered. But her eyes narrowed as she took a second look at her plants outside.
Her entire row of boxwood bushes was missing.
So as soon as she thanked the doctor for the good news and hung up, she threw on some clothes and hurried outside to investigate.
About a hundred dollars’ worth of plants had walked off in the night. Frustration pumped through her as she marched inside to call the police.
While she waited for them, she fed Peaches, then brushed her teeth and washed her face. She hadn’t asked for Bing. Petty theft wouldn’t require the captain of the police. But he came anyway.
He seemed tired and preoccupied as he strode up her walkway and, maybe for that reason, more approachable than he’d ever been. He looked sexy in the morning. She pushed the thought away and went to meet him halfway.
“Thanks for coming out. This is what I was talking about.” She gestured toward the empty strip of flat grass, irritated all over again.
“When did this happen?”
“Sometime last night after you left.”
“Peaches didn’t bark?”
It was the first time she’d seen him in uniform, and it fit him pretty darn well, distracting her for a second, but then she caught herself and shook her head. “If he did, it didn’t wake me. He’s in the back, and my bedroom’s in the front.” She hesitated. “It’s probably unrelated, but… When I first moved in last year, I planted a row of flowers.” Practically wearing a hazmat suit to dig them in. “They were torn out by the next day.”
