Cold Case Affair

by Loreth Anne White

  He let out a wry laugh. “You never did let anyone help you, Muirinn. You always wanted to do everything on your own. Let me help you now. For the baby’s sake.”

  “I can’t,” she whispered.

  “Look, I really am sorry about what just happened, and if I could find someone I trust to stay with you tonight, Muirinn, I would. And after tomorrow, if things still haven’t been sorted out, I have a good friend who will do me that favor.”

  A favor.

  Pain twisted.

  That was the last thing on this earth she wanted from Jett. “So why don’t you get him now?” she said icily.

  “He’s away until tomorrow.”

  She swallowed, humiliation filling her chest. She’d led him to this—it was as much her fault as his—and now she just wanted to be alone, in her old bedroom where she could sob her heart out. And he wasn’t going to let her do that.

  “Please, Jett,” she said, clenching her jaw, refusing to let him see her break down further. “Please get out of my house. Now.”

  Frustration flashed into his cobalt eyes. “Someone just tried to kill you, Muirinn. I can’t leave you here alone. As soon as possible I’ll get my buddy Hamilton Brock to come stay here with you. He’s an ex-Marine and does close protection work for a private company offshore. He knows what he’s doing.”

  She turned away from him, rested her forehead against the doorjamb, shoulders slumping with fatigue. She just couldn’t stay in Jett’s house with his wife away. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t helping either of them. God, this was a mess.

  “Think of your child for a change, Muirinn.”

  Her head whipped up. “For a change?”

  “Yes. Someone other than yourself for a change.”

  “Damn you, Rutledge,” she whispered, eyes blurring with tears she could no longer force back. “Will you get off your high horse! I didn’t ask you to kiss me back there! What about your responsibilities—to your family, to your son?”

  His body went rigid.

  She swore softly. “The best thing I ever did was leave you and this place.”

  “That’s in the past, this is—”

  “Oh, it might be in the past, Jett, but what just happened in that truck has everything to do with now.”

  His jaw flexed angrily. He stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Muirinn, please, just get your things. Bring the photographs and laptop. We’ll go through it all, and we can decide where to go from there, whether there is enough to bring in an outside agency like the FBI. You can shower and change at my place.” He hesitated. “Just for tonight. At least you’ll be safe.”

  Safe?

  That’s the last thing she was with Jett. Her own heart had made sure of that. He had made sure of that. She turned, stomped up the stairs, slamming doors behind her.

  So she was angry with him. Well, he was angry with himself. Jett slammed his fist against the wall.

  A door banged upstairs.

  He dragged both hands over his hair and cursed. Idiot! He should never should never have touched her. But it had just happened.

  He swore again.

  What else was he supposed to do now? They couldn’t go to the cops. And he didn’t know who else to trust, apart from Brock, who’d arrived in town only seven years ago and had no connections whatsoever to the Tolkin blast.

  All Jett had to do was keep his hands off her for maybe forty-eight hours, max, until he could reach Brock. But the more he was with Muirinn, the more he wanted her. And the longer he tried brush the fact that he was divorced under the carpet, the more onerous the deception became, and the worse it was going to be to tell the truth.

  Not to mention the truth about Troy.

  Her words sifted into his mind: “I wanted a son, too.”

  Well, she could have damn well had one if she hadn’t given him up for adoption, right? He stalked across the living room, furious with himself and his own out-of-control libido.

  Gus’s silver tomcat watched Jett as he paced, its tail flicking like an irritating metronome. He scowled at the creature, then strode into the kitchen, looking at Gus’s things, anything to distract himself while he waited.

  He picked up a small tin of herb tea, prepared by Mrs. Wilkie, no doubt. The label said comfrey. He opened the tin, shook the thin furry dried leaves, put it back, then picked up another tin. Chamomile. He set it back, stared at the foxglove bells in a copper vase on the long wooden table, the basket of vegetables in the kitchen. Mrs. Wilkie was still doing her thing, as if Gus were still here, as if nothing had changed.

  But so much had changed—the echoes from a murderous blast two decades ago still rippling into the future.

  Jett felt bad for the old woman. Gus had always been good to her, and he knew Lydia Wilkie was deeply fond of him.

  If Muirinn was correct—if Gus had been murdered—Jett was going to make damn sure the bastard paid, and that an end was finally put to this case. He stalked back through the living room.

  There were photos and paintings of Muirinn everywhere. Claustrophobia reared up and came down on him with sharp teeth bared. He swung around, feeling short of breath.

  And there she was.

  Standing in the brick archway with her bag in hand, her ripped pants still caked with silt from the mine, her hair still matted. Gone was the feisty redhead. She looked more like a forlorn orphan.

  “I need to leave a note for Mrs. Wilkie to feed the cat,” she said stiffly.

  “Fine.”

  She got a notepad from the hall table, her movements tense, mouth tight. She’d been crying again. God, he felt bad, putting her through the ringer after all she’d gone through today. He had no right to kiss her, and here he was telling her that she needed to think of something other than herself, while he’d acted like a selfish ass. What must she think of him?

  “Muirinn…I…”

  She looked up.

  I’m not married. And I still love you.

  He clamped his mouth shut.

  She returned her attention to scribbling a note for Mrs. Wilkie, purple petals falling onto the back of her pale hand as she inserted the corner of the paper under the big copper vase on the table. She removed a key from her pocket and unlocked a drawer hidden into the side of the table. And gasped, hand flying to her mouth.

  “Muirinn, what is it?”

  Her eyes flared to his, panic on her face.

  “It’s gone! The laptop—it’s missing!” She rummaged frantically. “The envelope with the photos—that’s gone, too!”

  She yanked the drawer out further.

  “Maybe you put the laptop somewhere else?”

  “No, Jett! It was here. All the evidence is gone…” Her eyes flickered as she remembered something. “Except for these—” She fumbled to unbutton the side pocket of her cargo pants.

  With a shaking hand she held out a set of crumpled black-and-whites. “I took these four photos with me to the mine so I could compare them with the area around the Sodwana shaft.”

  He placed his hand over hers, stopping the shaking. “Come,” he said firmly. “I’m taking you home. We can think about this later.”

  Jett handed Muirinn her bag as they entered the hallway of his house. “I’ll set up the spare room for you,” he said. “Bathroom’s that way.”

  She walked slowly into the living room, bag in hand. Pale evening sunlight slatted through skylights in a high, vaulted ceiling, and windows overlooking the sea yawned up from natural wood floors—Jett’s love affair with the sky evident in the renovations he had made to his parents’ old home.

  “Are you absolutely sure you didn’t put that laptop somewhere else?” he asked as he walked into his kitchen.

  “Of course I’m sure.” She took in the décor as she spoke. Mounted photographs graced his living room walls—aerial shots of caribou racing across a frozen tundra below the wingtip of a plane, black-and-white images of antique airplanes, family pictures. Muirinn stalled suddenly in front of a photo of Jett and his son,
Troy in the cockpit of a small plane.

  Her throat closed in on itself.

  Troy looked so much like his father; smoky dark lashes, ink-black hair, bright white teeth in a broad smile. But his eyes were green, and he had a slight smattering of freckles across his sun-browned cheeks.

  He was around the same age her son would be now—their son.

  The thought stung.

  Slowly, she turned her attention to another photo, this one of Jett, Kim and Troy on Jett’s boat. Kim was beautiful—blond with pale blue eyes. Jett had his arms around both his wife and child. The family vignette made Muirinn flinch.

  She could feel Jett watching her from the kitchen entrance, silent.

  Tearing her attention away from the photos, Muirinn made her way to the bathroom, forcing herself not to look back at him.

  While Muirinn was bathing, Jett warmed soup he’d made with vegetables from his garden and caribou he’d shot last August. He struggled to concentrate on the task at hand, and not think of Muirinn naked and pregnant in his bathtub, in his home.

  Back in his life after all these years.

  He heard her come out of the bathroom and head into the spare room. He buttered some toast and dished the soup into bowls, the sensation of her mouth, her taste, her kiss curling back into his mind as he watched the steam.

  He carried the plates out and put them on the low coffee table in front of the sofa, then went to his drafting table and quickly began rolling up his blueprints. He didn’t want her to see them, didn’t want her asking about his life, his future. His big dream.

  He needed to stay focused on just getting her through whatever in hell was going on—and keeping himself from getting too close.

  “What are those?” she said appearing in the doorway.

  He tensed. “Just some plans for a wilderness lodge I’m building farther up north.”

  “Where up north?” She came closer, toweling her hair, wearing soft sweats, her scent clean, soapy.

  He didn’t answer the question. “Soup’s on the table.”

  Muirinn padded softly into the living room and sat on the sofa, tucking her feet under her.

  She ate while Jett studied the four crumpled photos she’d given him.

  “Good soup,” she said.

  He glanced up. Color was returning to her cheeks. Relief washed softly through him. “Tell me again what Gus wrote in his laptop about these,” he said, positioning the photos next to each other on the coffee table.

  “Those four images were among the photos allegedly removed from police evidence before the arrival of the FBI postblast team. That one—” she pointed with her spoon, “—shows bootprints outside the Sodwana headframe building. Apparently, those were left by the bomber’s accomplice.”

  He looked up, catching her eyes, and the memory of their kiss shimmered between them. Her cheeks flushed and she cleared her throat, returning her attention to the photos. “And those two sets of tracks in the dark mud were apparently left by the bomber himself.”

  Jett tapped a photo with his finger. “The ruler next to the prints outside the Sodwana shaft indicates that the accomplice wore a size 12 boot. I figure the print up in Gus’s attic was also a size 12.”

  Muirinn set her bowl down and rubbed her arms, as if she were cold suddenly. “You think it was actually the same guy who broke into my house?”

  “Hell knows. The ruler next to these other prints in the darker mud shows that the bomber wore a size 10 boot.” He frowned slowly as he studied the photo more closely.

  “They’re odd tracks,” he said, a whisper of unspecified foreboding rustling down his spine. “It looks like the guy was dragging one foot, or something.”

  She nodded, watching him intently.

  “What else did Gus say about these prints, Muirinn?”

  “That’s all. His notes just ended in midstream.”

  “Did he have a theory about who might have left these tracks?”

  “No.”

  “So Gus figured—with Ike Potter’s help—that an accomplice stood guard while the bomber went down to the 800 level, then walked about three miles underground to D-shaft where he planted the bomb?”

  “It appears that way.”

  “And you think Gus went out to the mine to check out this theory?

  “Except I don’t believe Gus actually intended to go underground,” said Muirinn. “He just wouldn’t have done that.”

  Jett sat back. “That’s one helluva trek underground.”

  “Which means the bomber must have been in good physical shape, right?” she said, pushing a strand of damp hair back from the bandage on her forehead.

  Jett caught the scent of her shampoo.

  “Or very determined.” He got up suddenly, walked to the windows. He stood with his back to her, hands thrust deep in his pockets as he stared out over the ocean.

  “That part of Tolkin had also been shut down due to low yield at least four years prior to the blast,” he said quietly, trying to imagine the scenario. “Only a guy who’d worked that part of the mine before it was shut would even begin to know where to go in those abandoned tunnels, alone.”

  “So you think the bomber was likely a veteran miner?”

  He nodded, pursing his lips. “Plus, he was an explosives expert. At least that’s what the FBI thought.” Jett rubbed his brow, that unspecified sense of foreboding gnawing deeper into him.

  Muirinn sighed heavily. “I wish we could find someone we can trust who knows more about tracking, Jett.”

  “What use would a tracking expert be? The boots that made those prints would’ve been thrown out years ago.”

  “Yes, but maybe an expert could tell us something more about the men who made those prints. You said yourself the tracks in the black mud looked odd, like the bomber was dragging his leg or something.”

  Nausea swirled in his stomach.

  The thought that several people in this town were protecting a mass murderer galled him. “Whoever that bomber was—” he said quietly, watching the water “—he sure as hell trusted his accomplice.”

  “What veteran miners might have that kind of a bond, Jett?”

  He could feel her watching him intensely. He was nervous about turning around, meeting her eyes again.

  “Those kinds of bonds do develop in life-and-death professions, like mining.” Jett said softly. “Think about it, Muirinn. Each day those men enter a cage that is dropped miles down straight into the earth. There’s no day down there, no night. Just total darkness. And there’s this awareness of the tons and tons of rock and gravity pressing down over your head, held back only by manmade tunnels.” He exhaled, thinking of his dad, and what Adam Rutledge had been forced to endure each day of his working life—a life that had made him a cripple.

  He turned slowly to face her. “Those men are faced daily with inevitable accidents, death.”

  She cast her eyes down, and Jett knew she was thinking of her own father.

  “Some of them deal with this threat by becoming fatalists—they just put their life in God’s hands each day and go down into that mine.”

  “Is that what your father did?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “My dad didn’t believe in fate. He was what they call a perfectionist. He used to say Tolkin killed only foolish miners. He said it was smarts, not God, that would keep him alive. He learned to know that rock like he knew the backs of his own hands, Muirinn. He’d study it carefully, figure how to slant drill holes at just the precise angle, put in just the right amount of explosive—enough to shatter it apart without disturbing the drifts where men worked, or endangering lives.”

  “So Adam was an explosives expert. Plus, he’d have known that closed-off part of the mine?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Nothing. I was just wondering how many explosives experts worked Tolkin at the time of the blast.”

  “A lot,” he said crisply. “Look, I don’t like your insinuation here. My father—

>   “I’m not saying Adam had anything to do with murders, Jett!” she interjected. “I’m just saying that your father would know those veteran explosives experts, and I was thinking that maybe he could help us.”

  Jett’s chest tightened, his thoughts turning grudgingly to the odd bootprints in the black mud. “If my dad knew anything, Muirinn, anything at all, he would’ve told the cops a long time ago.”

  “And they could have buried it, just like they buried those crime scene photos that Ike gave to Gus and erased the prints.”

  He held her gaze, his body growing cold.

  “You were explaining about the bonds that develop between miners, Jett,” she urged softly.

  He didn’t like where she was going with this. He didn’t like anything about this line of questioning. “The perfectionists were also the best producers,” he said coolly. “Which meant they earned the largest bonuses, sometimes even coming out financially ahead of the mine managers. As a result—and because they knew how to stay alive—that young and ambitious miners often tried to latch onto a perfectionist—to work under him, to learn the craft. Those bonds are legendary in the industry.”

  “Who latched onto your dad, Jett?”

  Silence hung between them for several beats. “Where are you going with this, Muirinn?”

  “Nowhere. I’m just interested.”

  He studied her a long while. “Chalky Moran.”

  Her eyes widened. “A Moran?”

  He gathered up their empty soup bowls and carried them to the kitchen.

  Muirinn came up behind him, not daring to get too close. “Chalky is the younger brother of the police chief, Don, right? The one you said is married to the mayor?”

  “Yeah.” He rinsed the bowls, not looking at her.

  “What is Chalky Moran doing now?”

  He snorted, gave a wry smile as he stacked the bowls in the drying rack. “Chalky went into real estate when he left the mine. The Lonsdale family owns a good percentage of the buildings in town.”