Cold Case Affair

by Loreth Anne White

  She hesitated. “Is he still tight with your dad?”

  He slapped the dish cloth down abruptly. “Yeah. They still go fishing and hunting together.” His eyes crackled with tension.

  “Jett—” She almost reached out to touch him. But he visibly flinched and stepped past her, making for his booze cabinet. He poured himself a whiskey, then held up the bottle to her. “I take it you’re not drinking at the moment?”

  She shook her head.

  “Can I get you anything else?”

  “No, thank you.”

  He stalked out onto the deck, clearly needing space.

  Muirinn felt guilty for being here at all. She sank wearily back onto the sofa, and closed her eyes.

  She’d angered Jett by talking about Adam. She hadn’t meant to. Muirinn was merely curious as to what kind of bond might motivate someone to keep the heinous secret of mass murder, and perhaps even kill for it twenty years later.

  The image of Adam Rutldege hobbling out of that yellow bus in his Draegers sifted up from Muirinn’s subconscious, and her thoughts turned again to the odd prints in the black mud…

  No, it wasn’t possible.

  Besides, someone with Adam’s disability was not likely to be able to negotiate a seventy-story climb both ways, plus hike a total of six miles underground. She’d seen herself just how crippled Adam had been on the day of the blast—it was burned indelibly into her memory.

  Adam was a rescuer, not a killer.

  Jett came inside to refill his glass.

  Muirinn was nestled into the sofa cushions sound asleep, breaths coming soft and light, her eyelids fluttering with some private dream. Her hand rested on her rounded tummy.

  He set his glass down, fetched a soft blanket and draped it carefully over her, tucking the corners in.

  Then he sat and watched her sleep as the hours ticked by. The sky turned indigo, then deep purple as the midnight sun hovered just below the horizon.

  Her hair had dried into soft springy ringlets, the auburn color rich against her pale skin. Her lips were parted slightly as she breathed. Unabashedly, Jett allowed his gaze to trace the curve of her breasts, her swollen belly. Lust grew hot inside him, hardening his groin with a sweet aching need.

  He lurched to his feet suddenly, tension torquing too tight for comfort. He poured another shot of scotch, went back outside.

  It was almost midnight now.

  An eerie green summer aurora borealis pulsed across the sky, and the scent off the ocean was fresh. He leaned against the railing, watching a ghostly cruise ship move silently over the water. He sipped his whiskey.

  Warmth spread through his chest, the taste of peat smoke, silky, smooth. Gus had bought him the bottle to celebrate Troy’s tenth birthday. Jett missed the old man. He owed him.

  Without his help, Jett would have lost his son.

  Gus had never spoken to Jett about Troy’s start in life, not after that initial phone call when he’d alerted Jett to the fact that Muirinn was giving their baby up for adoption.

  During that call, Gus had told Jett that no matter what Jett chose to do about his son, Gus was never going to talk to Muirinn about it or interfere in any way. That was between Jett and her, but Gus had wanted him to know that Muirinn was giving away his child.

  Jett suspected that Gus had been hoping he’d contact Muirinn, and that they’d work out their issues and become a family.

  Instead, he’d gone to Vegas, secured custody behind Muirinn’s back, and then married Kim. For reasons that had seemed so right at the time.

  Jett started suddenly as he sensed Muirinn coming up behind him. She leaned against the railing beside him, careful not to get too close.

  He ached to reach out, touch her.

  “It’s so beautiful,” she whispered, staring at the silent, billowing curtains of northern lights, a reverence in her voice. “I didn’t realize how much I missed this view.”

  Jett closed his eyes for a moment, her scent, the sound of her voice, tumbling his mind into a confusion between then and now. He slanted his gaze to her.

  Her red hair was a wild mass of curls, her skin like porcelain in this haunting light. Again past shimmered between present, and she looked all of nineteen again. And he felt all of twenty-two. And just as desperate for her. For all the wrong reasons.

  He took a deep slug of his whiskey. “Maybe you should consider leaving Safe Harbor for a while, Muirinn. Until this is sorted out.”

  She stiffened. “Why?”

  “Because then you’ll be safe. Your daughter will be safe.” He slugged the rest of the whiskey back hard, relishing the burn.

  And so will I.

  She gripped the balustrade with both hands, staring out over the ocean, features tight. “I hear what you’re saying, Jett,” she said crisply. “And I did think about that. But I refuse to allow someone who murdered my father, and my mother by default, to kill my grandfather and to now scare me and my daughter out of our own home.”

  He tensed.

  “You’re really going to stay in Safe Harbor? Long term?”

  “Damn right I’m going to stay.”

  His pulse quickened.

  He had to tell her. He couldn’t keep this secret any longer.

  But by the same token, she hadn’t told him yet that she’d borne his son. She was keeping her own secrets. She might never tell him. What would that mean for them, if she couldn’t be honest?

  Jett could not go forward without complete honesty and openness. Not this time.

  “I owe it to Gus, Jett, to finish what he started, to find the answers. How could I leave now?”

  “Just as easily as you did the first time.”

  Her mouth opened. She stared at him in shock.

  He clenched his jaw, said nothing. Alcohol, adrenaline, lust, the memory of her kiss—all of it simmered in his blood. He needed barriers. Truth.

  Pebbles clattered softly down at the shore with the incoming tide, and he felt her glaring at him.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “I just think it might be best if you left town for a while.”

  “For your sake, Jett? Or for mine?”

  “For all our sakes,” he said crisply. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be here.”

  “Believe me,” she whispered almost inaudibly. “I don’t want to be here in your house right now, either. This was your idea, not mine. And tomorrow morning I’m going home. I’m going to do this on my own.”

  “And what are you going to do at home, alone? Sit there with a loaded shotgun in case your attacker comes back?”

  “It’s better than sitting here.” She spun around, stalked toward the open sliding doors. “Or you can get that friend of yours to watch over me!” she called over her shoulder.

  “Gus should have gone to the feds with this right away—you know that!” he yelled after her. “He should’ve handed that evidence over the minute Ike Potter gave it to him! Before someone could steal it. I have no idea why he didn’t.”

  She turned inside the doorway. “Maybe, Jett, he had his reasons. Personal ones.”

  “So personal he ended up dead?”

  “Maybe he wanted to be sure of something before he went around accusing people and screwing up lives.”

  Jett laughed harshly. “Yeah, wouldn’t want to screw up any more lives now, would we, Muirinn?”

  She turned her back on him and went inside, slamming the door behind her.

  Chapter 10

  Muirinn awakened at the sound of a sharp rap and the bedroom door opening. She blinked, momentarily disoriented before realizing that she was in Jett’s house, that it was Saturday morning. Shafts of gold sunlight angled through the blinds, and Jett stood in the doorway, hand on the doorknob, a fresh white T-shirt molded to his torso.

  His jeans were faded, seductively low slung, his hair damp from a shower. Those cobalt eyes lasered into her, and the set of his jaw was defensive.

  He wasn’t handsome, thought Muirinn as she s
at up, reflexively bunching the sheet up over her chest. To her mind, handsome meant pretty, and this man did not qualify. There was nothing gentle about his physique at all. Jett looked rough, rugged—like the wilderness he’d grown up in, the place that defined him. The place he loved.

  Something stirred in Muirinn’s heart, an insistent voice that told her she needed to follow through on her threat last night and get the hell out of this man’s hair, pronto, before they both got hurt again.

  “Breakfast’s almost ready.” His gaze tracked over her as he spoke, and she saw his fist tighten on the door handle, cording muscles along his arm.

  “Good morning to you, too,” Muirinn said, reaching for her robe. His eyes followed her hand, a dark lust shifting into his features. Muirinn sensed his anger, too, rolling off him in quiet waves. After eleven years of silence, she’d invaded his space, his house.

  His marriage.

  And she felt awful. But the hot, sexual, intensity in his eyes invaded her body and, in spite of herself, warmth surged through her belly.

  He grunted, closing the door softly.

  Muirinn blew out a breath of air, tossed back the covers and pulled on her robe. Cinching the belt around her nonexistent waist, her attention was drawn to a framed photo of Troy on the dresser. She picked up the frame and, in privacy, carefully studied Jett’s son. Pain twisted deeper, uncorking memories of giving birth to a baby boy, of how it had torn her apart to hand him over—feelings she’d managed to lock down in a part of her mind.

  Feelings now being stirred back to life by Jett.

  She wondered where their child was now, who he’d become. A wave of anguish and fresh guilt crashed through her, stealing her breath.

  Muirinn set the photo down, inhaling shakily. Would their son perhaps try to find his real mother and father someday? Would he hate her for having abandoned him?

  Would he ever understand?

  Would Jett? If she told him?

  Perhaps there truly were some secrets better left buried.

  Or did that just lead to more tangled webs, more ruined lives, as Jett had so brutally reminded her last night.

  Muirinn found Jett frying eggs and bacon in the kitchen, and the scent made her realize that she was starving.

  He glanced up, and her heart squeezed again at the sight of him.

  “Can you grab some napkins?” he said, jerking his chin toward a cupboard near the bookshelf. “They’re in that drawer through there.”

  Muirinn moved into the open-plan living room, and reached for the drawer, but stilled as the cover of a familiar magazine spine on the bookshelf caught her eye. A copy of Wild Spaces, the high-end travel magazine for which she wrote. Her pulse quickened.

  She glanced toward the kitchen, but Jett had his back turned, busy at the stove.

  Muirinn quickly pulled the magazine off the shelf, flipping it open to where the corner of a page had been folded over. Shock rippled through her as she registered that Jett had bookmarked a feature she had written.

  Again, she shot a glance toward the kitchen. Jett had disappeared around the corner.

  Muirinn quickly replaced the magazine, knocking a book over as she did. And stacked behind that book she found every issue of Wild Spaces from the past year, along with a DVD of a television show that had filmed Muirinn on assignment in the Sahara, where she’d been working on a story about the Dogon tribe in the Homburi Mountains near Timbuktu.

  Muirinn’s heart began to race—he’d kept in touch by following her career. While he’d told her that he never wanted to see or hear from her again, he’d been reading her stories, watching her on TV.

  She hurriedly flipped open the cover of another magazine. This one had a corner turned down marking the page that contained her own bio; Muirinn O’Donnell grew up in a remote coastal town in the Alaskan wilderness….

  Her vision blurred.

  He still cared. Always had. But while he’d been keeping tabs on her life, she’d been doing everything to isolate herself from his.

  “Want coffee with—” He froze, plates in his hand, as he saw what she was looking at.

  Silence thrummed between them.

  He turned abruptly, set the plates on the dining table with a clunk, stalked back into the kitchen and returned with the coffeepot.

  He set it down heavily, motioned for her to take a seat, taking one himself. The look on his face was thunderous, his body tense, a dark and powerful undertow humming through him.

  “You subscribed to them?”

  “Sit, Muirinn,” he replied coolly. “Your breakfast’s getting cold.”

  She came right up to him, standing above him, the magazine in her hand. “Why, Jett?” she whispered. “Why have you got my magazines?”

  The muscle at the base of his jaw began to pulse, a small vein swelling on his temple. “Muirinn—”

  She wagged the magazine at him. “How’d you know I wrote for them?”

  He said nothing. The wind outside soughed through the pines. His chest rose and fell heavily, his fist tightening around his fork. He was bottled rocket fuel, ready to blow. And she wanted him to blow.

  “Talk to me, Jett!”

  He dumped his fork onto the table, anger smoking into his eyes, his glare so direct and intense her cheeks flushed hot.

  He lurched to his feet. “Get dressed when you’re done eating,” he said crisply, gathering up his plate, still full of food. “I need to do some work on one of my boats.”

  “Now?”

  “Yeah, now.”

  She grabbed his wrist. “Don’t—” she said, glowering at him. “Do not walk away from this.”

  He stilled, vibrating under her touch, his features like cold granite. He was so close she could smell soap, the warmth of his skin, the fresh scent of laundry.

  “So it’s okay for you to walk?” he said darkly. “To just up and leave Safe Harbor, to never look back? But not for me?”

  “How did you know where I worked, Jett?” she said quietly, still gripping his wrist.

  “Gus told me.”

  Anxiety edged into her. She glanced at the photo of Kim and Troy, thinking of her own baby. “He told you what?”

  Jett held her eyes for a long, loaded beat. “Muirinn—”

  “Tell me!” Her voice went higher and she hated it. “How did you know where I was?”

  Did Gus tell you about my baby?

  He glanced down at her hand gripping his wrist. Embarrassed, she let him go. He stepped back from her, and sighed heavily as he raked his hand through his hair. “Gus said that after California you went to Nevada.”

  Nerves tightened, memories of giving birth, the adoption in Vegas. Her eyes began to burn, her pulse to race, the tension of not telling him squeezing her chest, wanting to burst out. Fear stopping her from allowing it to.

  “Did he say anything else? About Nevada?”

  He held her eyes for a long, loaded beat, and she felt as if he knew something. “Should he have, Muirinn?” he asked very quietly.

  She swallowed, her hand going automatically to her tummy. His eyes followed the movement to her belly. “He said that after Nevada you went to London for two years, and then to New York, where you got the job with Wild Spaces. I subscribed to the magazine.”

  “Why, Jett?”

  “Because I was interested!” he snapped. “Wouldn’t you be? Oh, wait. Why would you be interested—you who didn’t bother to come home once in eleven years to visit your own grandfather. Or me.”

  Her cheeks flushed hotter. “Why in hell would I visit you, Jett? You went and got married! You who wouldn’t deign to come with me to California. But you went off and got married in Las Vegas!” In spite of her best efforts, tears pricked hot into her eyes. “And then I couldn’t come home, could I? Because you couldn’t be there for me anymore.”

  He went stone still.

  “That’s the reason?” he said, very quietly.

  “The only reason.”

  He paled. The muscle at his jaw
pulsed and his eyes sparked. It made them fierce blue.

  “What did you think, Jett?” she said, emotion balling painfully in her throat. “That I could come home to watch you with a new wife, and a new…“ her voice hitched on the thought. “A new baby when, when I had just…”

  Given ours away.

  But the words wouldn’t come.

  She just couldn’t tell him about his son—not right now, maybe not ever. She cast her eyes down. “The news of your marriage nearly killed me, Jett,” she whispered hoarsly. “It’s the reason I never came home, and it’s the reason I need to get out of your house now, because…”

  “Muirinn—”

  She looked up slowly, swallowed at the rawness she saw in his eyes.

  “I’m not married, Muirinn.”

  Speechless, she stared.

  “What…what do you mean?”

  “Kim and I separated six years ago,” he said quietly. “We’ve been officially divorced for five.”

  Her skin felt hot, then ice-cold as the sea breeze wafted through the open window, blowing strands of hair across her face. The stitches Dr. Callaghan gave her yesterday began to throb on her temple. “But I saw you,” she whispered. “With Kim down at the dock.”

  He cleared his throat, a range of emotions twisting his features. “Kim and I have an amicable relationship, Muirinn. She’s great with Troy. She offered to take him to camp.” He tilted his head slightly toward his drafting table. “I’m working on a large project, and I was going to use the time while Troy was away to finish it, draw up proposals for more funding.”

  Muirinn drew in a shuddering breath, and reached for the back of the chair, her mouth dry.

  Her entire world had just been turned on its head and was spinning wildly. Suddenly, everything seemed possible, wide open, no bearings. “So…you and Kim share custody?”

  Something flickered through his eyes. “No,” he said softly. “I have custody of Troy. It’s complicated.”

  She couldn’t speak.

  She just stood there staring at him, reality fading into the sound of wind in the pines, the crunch of waves down in the bay.