FADE TO BLACK - Thrilling Romantic Suspense - Book 1 of the BLACK CATS Series

by Leslie A. Kelly

  “Getting stuck here for several days would be a good thing,” Wyatt reminded him, his voice quiet, getting his point across immediately. Because having to stick around would mean there was something to stick around for. Like evidence, or definite leads.

  “I know. I just wish I’d packed a few more things. A tent and a sleeping bag, for starters.” Dean had brought an overnight bag, just in case, but he wasn’t used to sleeping in anything but his skin. And he had the feeling he wasn’t going to want that skin coming into contact with anything in one of those rooms: bed, sheets, shower, nothing.

  “I have some calls to make.” Wyatt parked outside the small, dingy office. “Why don’t I check us both in, take care of my calls, and you can go scout around, see if there’s anyplace decent to grab a bite for dinner.”

  Sensing that Wyatt generally ate four-star, he didn’t even want to imagine the man sitting in the local diner ordering the meat loaf special. But he didn’t argue. Obviously Wyatt wanted privacy for his calls. “Not a problem.”

  Knowing his boss wasn’t just calling back to the office to update the team, he took no offense. Wyatt had other fires to control. The powers that be had him on a tight leash and a choker collar. He was always second-guessed, having to explain himself the way no other supervisory special agent in his position ever had to. Superiors continually asked questions, many of them because they wanted the wrong answers. Any excuse, any chance to mess with Wyatt, who’d brought down one of their own, and they’d use it.

  It had taken balls of steel for Blackstone to expose the man who’d been the deputy director’s right-hand man for the lying, crooked scumbag he really was. Especially since the lying, crooked scumbag had once been Wyatt’s mentor.

  And, man, had Wyatt paid for it. Officially, they’d given him a commendation. Unofficially … a lot of people would like to give the whistle-blower his ass on a plate.

  “You can take the car if you need it,” Wyatt said, “then come back for me. Though I don’t imagine driving is going to improve the selection.”

  “Probably not,” he agreed as they exited the car. No need to drive in a town no bigger than his fist. “I’ll walk. If I’m not back by the time you’re done, give me a call.”

  Before he left, Dean glanced at his watch. Five thirty. Screw it. He loosened his tie, tugged it free, and tossed it into the car, then unbuttoned the top few buttons of his shirt. He’d lose the jacket, too, if he didn’t have his sidearm strapped to his hip.

  Wyatt did not follow suit, which didn’t surprise Dean. Wyatt would wear the whole damn FBI ensemble, head to toe, until he closed the door of his hotel room for the night.

  Not Dean. Despite the hour, the heat remained monstrous, and he was ready for relief. He even found himself wondering if the no-tell motel had a pool. And if there was any chance in hell that pool didn’t contain rare, disease-causing bacteria.

  Heading across the street toward the center of town, he noted the quickest way into and out of the parking lot, the access to it from the woods beyond. He estimated the distance to the sheriff’s office, and the number of intersections along the way. He might have been half-joking with that serial-killer-in-a-small-town crack, but the thought had been in the back of his mind from the moment the sheriff had ID’d the victim.

  The two-inch-wide strip of creamy, soft skin around the sheriff’s middle had been on his mind, too.

  Ever since she’d stood and stretched her arms above her head back in her office, he’d been unable to shake Stacey Rhodes’s image from his brain. God knew the scenario had been all wrong to think about how attractive she was. Yet even the reason for his presence here hadn’t been enough to stop him from appreciating that combination of strength and softness evident in every move she made. He found the stubborn jut of her jaw as attractive as the femininity of that loose strand of hair. He’d wanted to see her handle the Glock she wore so comfortably on her hip as much as he’d wanted to taste the slight sheen of sweat shining on her throat in her hot office.

  “Man, you need to get laid,” he muttered as he turned a corner and headed down the block. Going without sex since his divorce had been a bad idea. Celibacy was making women he had no business thinking about look way too good to him.

  He needed the kind of woman who wouldn’t care about his last name the next morning, nor he about hers. A bar hookup was the required response for any recently divorced guy whose wife had remarried. At least, so his twice-divorced brother said.

  Stacey Rhodes was no bar tramp. The prickly-yet-soft, small-town woman probably knew not only any potential lover’s last name, but the names of his parents and grandparents, too.

  Tugging his thoughts off the sheriff and back onto his job, where they belonged, he continued to scope out Hope Valley. It took ten minutes to traverse the ten or so square blocks of it. On foot. Meaning if someone were driving through and looked down to squirt ketchup on a carryout burger, they’d probably miss it.

  The town had a few small restaurants—bars serving burgers, and an Internet café. But he opted for the diner. He didn’t choose the place because of its proximity to the sheriff’s office, or his curiosity about whether she ever stopped in for a bite after her shift ended. At least, that was what he told himself.

  Once he stepped inside, however, his gaze shifted to the right, and his stare locked on the woman sitting at the first booth. The strawberry-blond woman with the moist lips and the moist throat, and the look of almost guilty surprise on her face. And he knew that even if their hotel had been four-star, with room service, he would have come here, on the off chance that she would, too.

  “Sheriff Rhodes,” he said, his voice low, for his ears only.

  She heard anyway. “Special Agent Taggert.”

  She’d come here on purpose. He wasn’t a profiler, didn’t do any behavioral analysis stuff. But he knew that as surely as he knew the sound of his son’s voice.

  “I’ve been wondering when you’d show up,” she said, admitting as much.

  Any other woman he knew would have danced around that admission all night. Or avoided making it altogether. Not this one. She was in-your-face truth and nothing but. He shouldn’t have expected anything else.

  Knowing the empty seat opposite her was for him, he took it without an invitation. “If we’re going to do this, you might as well call me Dean.”

  She nibbled her lip, that full lower lip that had trembled the tiniest bit earlier today when she’d first seen those pictures. “Going to do what?”

  Any number of possibilities flashed across his brain, but he settled for the most basic. “Have a drink together. Work together.” Do anything else two unattached adults who are attracted to each other do together.

  Suddenly realizing he’d made a huge assumption, he cast a quick glance toward her left hand. Because he had no idea whether Sheriff Rhodes was unattached or not. He’d just wanted her to be, so he hadn’t even considered the alternative.

  He saw no ring. And suddenly his heart started beating again. Dean might be a lot of things, but a home wrecker he wasn’t.

  “Okay. And I’m Stacey.” She glanced past him. “Where’s your boss?”

  “Making some calls back at the hotel.”

  “You get settled in okay?”

  He grunted. “I didn’t stop to introduce myself to the bedbugs.”

  Her lips might have twitched the tiniest bit. “Sorry. The closest chain hotel is several miles away. There is a very nice B-and-B a mile outside of town, but I know they have a wedding scheduled there for this weekend and every room is booked.”

  “Think I could pass for the best man?”

  “Unlike your boss, you don’t look like the tux type.” She actually smiled, visibly relaxing for the first time since they’d met. Her wide mouth seemed made for smiling, and her green eyes twinkled, negating the tiny lines of worry on her brow.

  She’d been incredibly attractive before. Now she was damn near beautiful.

  “You’re right,” he a
dmitted. “Wyatt’s the Dom Pérignon of our team. I guess I’m the Mad Dog 20/20.”

  Laughter spilled across her lips, husky and soft all at once, so natural it could never have been forced. Hearing it gave Dean the first real flash of pleasure he’d had all day.

  “I know the inn looks bad from the outside, but I promise the place is very clean. The owners can’t afford to renovate, but they make sure the rooms are spick-and-span.”

  His hopes rose. But he still intended to reserve judgment until he actually had a chance to check out the inside of his room for himself.

  About to tell her that, he was startled by the sound of glass breaking nearby. He and Stacey both jerked their heads reflexively, though he imagined they’d see nothing more than a waitress standing in the middle of diner plate wreckage.

  Instead, he saw instead a man, pale and wiry, standing in the midst of the broken dishes on the floor. No waitress was in sight, and the glass and plate, complete with half-eaten sandwich, seemed to have slipped off his own table.

  “Oh, great,” Stacey muttered, her voice soaked in dislike.

  That tone, accompanied by the flash of anger that appeared in the stranger’s eyes when he met Dean’s, made him wonder if the dishes had slipped after all. When the man cast a glare of barely disguised anger at Stacey, he wondered even more. “Problem?”

  “Not on my part.”

  Dean sat up straighter, assessing the dish-killing stranger. With curly, dingy brown hair, and his tall, skinny, pale form, he most resembled a used Q-tip. The man, realizing Dean was staring, finally tugged his attention off Stacey. Grabbing some cash out of his pocket, he thrust it at the waitress, who’d come running to clean up. Then he stalked across the broken glass, beelining toward the door, not casting another look in their direction.

  “Please don’t tell me he’s your ex,” Dean murmured, knowing the unusual exchange had been a personal, not a professional, one.

  “He’d like to have been,” she acknowledged. “His name’s Rob Monroe. I had to let him down hard when he didn’t take the hint that I wasn’t interested.”

  “Gee, can’t imagine what’s not to like.”

  She snickered a little. A cute snicker. “Aside from the fact that I think his mommy still makes his bed and his daddy the mayor tells him what time to be home every night? I can’t imagine.”

  Dean groaned at the very thought, even while tempted to ask her what did interest her. He was so not the smooth type who played those kinds of games with women, however, and didn’t know the language. He had no clue how to find out if she was feeling the intrinsic pull that he had since the moment they’d met. He only knew that when she’d laughed a few moments ago and her eyes had twinkled with genuine good humor, his heart had skipped a beat. Or ten.

  “I saw you scoping out the town.”

  Back to business. She obviously didn’t want to talk about her unwanted admirer, ignoring him just as she’d ignored the altercation with her brother earlier.

  He wondered how a man might react to being so easily put out of this beautiful woman’s mind. And suddenly he felt the tiniest hint of sympathy for the angry Mr. Monroe.

  “Didn’t take long to explore all of Hope Valley, did it?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Two-stoplight heaven, that’s us.” She lifted her glass and sipped what appeared to be strong iced tea. Not exactly the beer he’d like to have at the end of a long, shitty day, but it looked refreshing.

  A polyester-uniformed waitress approached and mumbled, “Getcha somethin’?” After Dean pointed to Stacey’s glass and asked for the same, she stuck her pencil behind her ear and ambled away.

  Once they were again alone, Stacey continued. “I watched you from my office window. It’s dinnertime, and I figured if you were looking for a place to eat, you’d eventually end up here. There are a few restaurants on the outskirts—a pretty good steak place and a Waffle House. But they’re not walkable, and this is.” She shrugged and sipped again. “So I decided to come over here and wait for you to show up.”

  He glanced at his watch. Dinnertime at six o’clock? Only in small-town USA. Most nights, like every other worker in D.C., he didn’t get home before seven. “I was just taking stock, picking someplace to eat while Wyatt makes his calls.”

  “Whatever the reason, I’m glad you came.”

  Her tone told him she had more to say, and that it wasn’t personal. While Dean had seen the guarded looks she’d sent his way earlier, and knew his interest in her was returned, he also knew she wanted to talk business. She might have loosened her uniform jacket and taken her hair out of its bun to hang down her back in a long ponytail, but she was still on the job. He doubted there was ever a time somebody in her position wasn’t.

  “I’ve been doing some thinking.”

  “I’m not surprised.” In the brief time since he and Wyatt had left her office, he imagined a whole slew of questions had entered her thoughts. Earlier, hit with such shocking news, she’d gone along with them, had let them take the lead. She hadn’t had a chance to think of the ramifications.

  Now she’d thought about them.

  He imagined the vivid pictures in her head would haunt her for a long time, each one raising a thousand questions. They certainly did for him.

  How such things could happen, how he could watch such things happening on the same day he could find himself warmed by the laughter of a near-stranger, was beyond him. But he thanked God for the laughter, for the simple pleasure of bidding his son good night, arguing baseball with his brother, or hearing the latest news about his sister’s kids. Simple pleasures were the only things that kept anyone in his line of work sane.

  “This case is a lot bigger than what you’ve let on so far.”

  Oh, she had most definitely been thinking. “Yes.”

  “How much haven’t you told me?”

  Mindful of the chattering customers all around them, Dean leaned over the table, keeping an eye out for the return of their waitress. The last thing he wanted was for the rumor mill to get started any sooner than it had to. And while their waitress had been a mumbler, he had no doubt her jaw would move a lot faster if she had good gossip to relate. “As it pertains to Lisa? Not a lot.”

  The intuitive professional across from him wasn’t put off. “And that which does not pertain to Lisa?”

  He met her eye. “More than any sane person would ever want to know.”

  She held his stare, unblinking, for a long moment, processing his words. Finally, Stacey glanced away, studying her own hand, which was wrapped around her drink. Good thing the diner was the old-fashioned type and used thick, heavy glasses. Were she clutching a foam cup, that tight grip would easily have crushed it.

  “More videos?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve watched them all?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  She continued staring toward the table. “All the same?”

  He could have downplayed it, but didn’t. “Most are worse.”

  “My God.” She lifted her eyes again. They were bright, moist, not necessarily with tears, but definitely with emotion.

  They fell silent, hardly noticing the clink of tarnished silverware against chipped white plates and diner-issue coffee mugs. The chatter continued at tables all around them, waitresses greeting newcomers each time the door opened, someone calling out, “More coffee, please?” every few seconds. Meat loaf specials were consumed out of congealing platefuls of gravy, and every person at the lunch counter grumbled about the heat. The world continued to turn for everyone else in the place.

  But not for her. Not for them.

  “How can you stand it?” she finally whispered.

  “I can stand it because I know that I’m going to catch the bastard who’s doing it.”

  She crossed her arms, rubbing her hands up and down against them as if she was cold, despite the warmth of the day. That didn’t surprise him. This was some cold shit they were dealing with.

/>   What did surprise him was the way her movements emphasized the slenderness of her hands. She was so utterly strong and capable, but had beautiful, feminine hands with long, graceful fingers, as delicate and fragile as her neck and throat. He imagined she’d be as good at playing a piano as he suspected she was at firing a weapon.

  He shook his head, tugging his thoughts away from where they’d quickly gone—to what else she might be really good at doing with her hands—because they were crazy. Insane. He was noticing way too much about the woman, from her hair to her hands, her voice, her slim-but-curvy body. Not to mention that quick brain and intuition.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked, unable to stop himself.

  Her brow shot up. “What?”

  “Sorry,” he shook his head, cursing himself for opening his trap. “It’s just … you seem to be really good at what you do. I’m surprised you stay here.” What could this tiny town have to offer someone so bright, strong, and attractive?

  “I like it here,” she said, maybe insisting a little too hard. “It’s my home.”

  “Sorry.”

  “As for what I do,” she added, “it’s family tradition. My father and my late grandfather held the job. It’s expected that a Rhodes will be sheriff of Hope Valley.” Her attention shifted to her mug, as if there were more to it, though she didn’t elaborate.

  He suddenly thought of her brother. Her angry, scarred brother, who hadn’t followed family tradition. But he didn’t bring that up. She’d wanted to pretend they hadn’t overheard the ugly fight back at the station, and he wouldn’t call her on it.

  “Family expectations, yeah, I hear ya.”

  “Yours?” she asked.

  “My dad’s a steelworker; Mom’s a hairdresser. From the time I was old enough to understand the spoken word, I knew they’d never forgive me if I didn’t go to college and make something of myself.”

  She smiled, at least a little, that pretty smile that hadn’t gotten much use since he’d arrived in town, as if she were grateful for the detour out of their dark conversation about the case. “They must be proud.”