“I’m sorry.” Being held in here for an entire night must have been difficult for him. “How long were you married?”
“Just five years. I never thought I’d find that again, but along she came. I met her online, years after my first wife left me.” He drifted off into a dream state, calmer than he’d been in hours.
She knew him through his job at the bank but little else. “Why do you live in a mountain?”
He smiled, the truth shining. “I love geology.”
Reese laughed lightly, incredulous that she could at a time like this. Then it dawned on her that Ray was in the right age bracket to possibly have known Eva.
“When did your first wife leave you?”
“When I was twenty-six. We weren’t together long, but she was my soul mate. I knew the moment I met her that she was the one.” His mouth turned down with the recollection. He wasn’t being terribly mournful, just sad. “We met when I was twenty-three.”
“How old are you now?”
“Sixty-eight.” He lowered his head with raised eyebrows. “I can hardly believe it.”
She studied him closer. He could be the man in the photo, but who could tell after aging changed a person so much?
“What was her name?” she asked.
His amicable way faded as he sobered. “I thought I’d never meet another woman I’d love like that. After I married my Beatrice, I promised I’d never say my previous wife’s name again. I spoke too much of her when we dated, not realizing I’d fall in love with her. Now that she’s gone, too, I still hold my promise.”
He wouldn’t tell her the woman’s name. Was he lying about his promise?
An explosion prevented her from asking any more questions. Gunfire followed.
Ray moved back against the wall, terror paralyzing him. Reese rushed to the door and opened it. No one was in the hall.
She turned back to Ray. “We have to get out of here. Let’s go!”
“No.” He slithered along the wall to the corner beside a dresser. He was probably afraid to flee because whatever had caused the explosion and gunfire awaited.
“This is our chance!” Jamie was here. She just knew it.
She ran to Ray and took his hand. “Come on!”
“No! No.” He resisted.
Reese stopped trying to force him. She let him go and thought for a few seconds.
“If there’s a fire, you’ll be trapped. That explosion must have caused a fire.” Maybe it had only been to break through the door, but a fire would spread, and with no windows, they’d be cooked alive. “We have to go, Ray.”
He stared at the partially open door as smoke started to drift in.
“Reese!”
She pivoted to see Jamie standing in the doorway, smoke beginning to fill the hallway. He looked like an apparition, all in black, with gear strapped to his legs and torso and an earpiece for communication.
“We have to leave. Now,” he said.
This time Ray didn’t resist when she grabbed his hand. They ran from the room.
Jamie led the way. She jumped over a body after he did, Ray doing the same.
Flames quickly engulfed the great room. Reese could barely see the outline of the kitchen counters and pieces of furniture, rooms Ray likely had refitted for himself after losing his wife.
She focused on getting him out alive. Jamie ran through the open double doors. Snow accosted her, stealing her breath. Blinking to see, Reese saw the sheriff and Deputy Miller ready with their guns in case they needed cover. They were behind their vehicles in whipping snow. She ducked her face from a hard gust.
No one else was in the front. Breaking in and taking control had seemingly been easy. She looked at Jamie, in stealth mode and still scanning the surroundings with his weapon ready.
Or had he made it seem easy?
Satisfied they were safe, he lowered his weapon and removed his jacket to drape it over her.
She didn’t refuse, clutching it tight.
Deputy Miller took Ray to his vehicle, putting him in the back where he’d be warm and out of the weather.
She and Jamie went to the sheriff, Deputy Miller joining them in a circle.
“Stankovich wasn’t here, only a couple of guards,” Jamie said, squinting with the sting of snow.
“Holcomb and Bishop,” the sheriff said.
“No, not them.”
Reese looked toward the house, flames licking out windows and the hole Jamie’s team had blown where the front door once had been. “Where did they go?” she asked.
“That’s what I’d like to know.” Jamie glanced up at the sky. “Let’s get out of this storm.”
As he took her to Deputy Miller’s vehicle, she heard sirens of the town firetruck on the way. She got in first and sat beside Ray. But in her relief to be free, she turned to Jamie.
She saw in his eyes how glad he was to see her, his warrior intensity gone now that they were safe. But he didn’t embrace her or show any other sign of his gladness.
She wasn’t sure if she liked that, which confused her. Ignoring her conflicting emotions, she let her own happiness free and twisted on the seat to throw her arms around him, pressing her head to his chest.
Jamie chuckled. “You’re welcome.”
She still had a lot of questions for him, but saving her life counted more right now.
The deputy and the sheriff got into the front of the vehicle.
Leaning back, she introduced her new friend. “This is Ray.”
“We know,” the sheriff said, turning toward the back. “Candace at the bank called to let us know he didn’t show up for work.”
Reese turned a sharp look at Jamie.
“Stankovich wasn’t planning on us showing up this soon,” Jamie said.
“You knew he was here, didn’t you?” Reese asked. “That he was the one attacking us?”
“I suspected he sent someone. The attacks were too professional.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to worry you.”
She gave him an admonishing tilt of her head and look in her eyes. “Next time tell me anyway, okay?”
“Deal.”
“Do you have a picture of Eva and that man?” she asked.
Ray glanced over at them with the mention of Eva and watched Jamie take a photo out of his inner jacket pocket.
“I don’t leave home without it.”
She took it from him and showed it to Ray. “Is this your first wife? And is that you with her?”
Ray studied the photo. She wondered if he took longer than normal.
He handed her the photo back. “No. I’ve never seen that woman before and that isn’t me.”
Reese looked toward the burning mountain house. If he had any photos from his past in there, they were probably destroyed. The firetruck had arrived, but would it be too late?
The sheriff’s cell phone rang and he answered. Almost immediately his eyes widened and he said, “We’re on our way.”
He disconnected the call. “There’s been a robbery at the bank. The money in your safe-deposit boxes has been stolen.”
* * *
The next day, video showed two masked men stealing Reese’s money and a third masked man holding Candace at gunpoint. Stankovich must really want to get him. They’d searched for traces of Stankovich, but he appeared to have vanished. They put notices out statewide and even covered the borders in case he decided to return home overseas.
Jamie closed the file and sat back against the desk chair. At regular intervals, the sound of Deputy Miller’s hand going into a bag of cheese puffs joined the low volume of twangy country music coming from the sheriff’s office. Reese’s mouse clicked every once in a while as she studied the backgr
ound reports they’d just received on male residents who fit the age bracket of the man in the photos they’d found in Reese’s house.
“Hello, Tad,” Sheriff Robison said from inside his office.
Jamie opened one of the reports Reese had sent him, as they shared the work of reviewing each.
After a few minutes, the sheriff said, “I keep asking you to come and see your mother and me. You’ve talked things over with Eddy. He’s still pouting over the night the two of you went out and someone else talked to you in a way he didn’t like. There’s nothing else you can do.” The sheriff fell silent for a while and then said, “He’s going to have to get over his insecurity. Stop calling him. I bet he’ll start coming around real quick then.”
Finding the background file on Ray, Jamie began reading.
“Come and see your mother and me. Book a flight.” He listened a bit longer. “We love you...Okay...Bye-bye.”
Jamie finished searching one of the background reports. “Ray checks out. He’s clean. First wife’s name was Sandy.”
He looked over at Reese when she didn’t answer.
“Virgil Church doesn’t.”
He rolled his chair from the third desk over to hers. “This shows he died thirty years ago, but here he is, alive and well in Never Summer.” She clicked on another file Kadin’s associate had emailed. “This is the real Virgil Church. Born and raised in Grand Junction. Died of leukemia at fifteen.”
They both read the rest. “Back then there were no computers that would make catching the ghosting much easier.”
Virgil had assumed the identity of a boy who had not yet acquired a social security number, but whose birthday was close to his.
“He probably never had to explain why he hadn’t reported any income for the gap in years from the time the boy died and his age.”
“Both he and Eva changed their identities,” Jamie said.
“Because of the stolen money?”
“And murder.” Could they have found the killer? Excitement made Jamie itch to corroborate all of this.
“If we look up Darius Richardson’s tax records, do you think they end thirty years ago?” Reese asked.
“Wouldn’t it be startling if they do?”
Yes, because if they could identify Darius as Virgil Church that would mean Darius had lived in Never Summer all this time. Had he done so because of the money? Maybe he’d discovered Eva lied when she’d told him all the money went into buying the house with Jeffrey. And he’d waited ten years to move here. His appearance would have changed enough that no one would have recognized him from the time he visited as a supposed tourist.
“He worked at the hardware store all this time.” Reese still sounded incredulous.
“Should we confront him?” Jamie asked.
“No. Let’s try to identify him first. We don’t have enough to make an arrest for murder. All we have is identity theft. Best if he doesn’t know we’re on to him. By now he’s got to be pretty confident he got away with murder.”
He had to smile at that. “You are your father’s daughter.”
She looked at him with that uncertainty she always got when something threatened her order. His statement must have conjured up all kinds of future implications. Having Kadin in her life permanently. Joining DAI...
He chuckled. She troubled herself so adorably.
When her brow creased above her nose, he leaned in and kissed her. “Stop worrying so much.” She jerked back her head and he kissed her again. He kissed her until he felt her melt, could feel her muscles relaxing, and then her hand went to the side of his face. Then he withdrew. “Let go.” He put his mouth on hers for a quick kiss. “Let it be what it is. Don’t project the future. Just stay right here, right now, with me.”
Her soft eyes didn’t flare with tension as he’d seen them do before. She had a protective barrier, a gate locking the love inside. She feared the consequences of opening it, feared the unknown.
When he felt his heart fall deeper into the kind of love he would never escape, he hardened himself. More and more he wondered if he was a fool for putting himself in such a vulnerable situation. He couldn’t trust her, not yet.
“Besides, you just cracked a big piece of this case. If all goes well, I’ll be out of your hair in no time.”
Her eyes revealed she understood what he was doing. Backing off. When she didn’t protest, he knew she still struggled with her feelings.
He rolled his chair back to the other desk, seeing the sheriff watching them with a fond smile.
Deputy Miller, at least, had his back to them.
“What about Stankovich?” Reese asked.
He swiveled the chair to face her. “I guess you’re stuck with me until we solve that, too.”
“He told me about one of your missions,” Reese said.
Hearing a slight accusatory tone, his mind raced to catch up to what Stankovich might have told her. The worst, of course.
“Not my mission. His mission. Did he tell you about the first one? The one in Iraq?”
When she answered with only a wary look, he said, “I thought I was protecting a group of contractors who were supposed to be assigned to do aircraft maintenance. But it wasn’t anything close to that. He made a deal with the insurgents for the sale of arms, except he only planned to take their money. I was the only one on the team who didn’t know. It was his way of testing me. The team took their money and when no arms were exchanged, we were surrounded. The insurgents anticipated Stankovich would double-cross them.”
During his narrative, Deputy Miller had stopped his work on his computer and looked back at him, seeming in awe, or maybe a little apprehensive of a man like him sitting in the Ute County Sheriff’s Office.
“I thought he was in the business of private military,” Reese said.
“He’s in the business of making money however he can. He has access to arms from many sources. It’s part of his business.”
“He said you killed women and children.”
Did she believe that? Her demeanor suggested maybe not.
“That’s a lie,” he said, not appreciating that he had to defend himself with her. “I killed men, some of them civilians, who would have killed me. I was forced to shoot or die. The other men with me committed the heinous murders. I avoided them by staying out of the line of fire until I could escape them.”
“They had guns?”
“Some of them, yes. Young boys. Women. Others the insurgents used as shields.”
She grimaced with the awfulness the imagery brought up.
“That mission, that lie, opened my eyes to the kind of man Stankovich was. I quit as soon as I returned. But by then I knew too much according to him, so he set me up.”
She studied him for long seconds.
“He’s a good man, Reese.”
Jamie and Reese both looked into the sheriff’s office. Sheriff Robison wore a fatherly look.
“Like he said,” Deputy Miller added, “he got out after he was fooled into thinking the mission was legit.” He had the bag of crunchy cheese snacks out again. He dug in for a handful and started munching away.
“Why don’t you gain weight eating like that?” Reese asked.
“I run ten miles a day.” He put more cheese snacks in his mouth. “And I’ve always had a fast metabolism.”
Deputy Miller did have a lean body, a runner’s body. In his forties, he was healthy—if the junk food wasn’t affecting him—and had no lack of energy.
“Just wait till you’re my age,” Sheriff Robison said, facing his computer again.
“Enough chitchat.” Reese stood up. “Do you want to go see if we can find anything in Virgil’s house?”
“Sure.” He rose from the chair and followed her through the front door. The storm had
passed and left the streets icy and well over a foot of snow on the ground.
“Aren’t you going to have to compete against Miller if you run for sheriff?” he asked.
She glanced at him, slight affronted. “He’s never said he wants to be sheriff.”
“He’s older than you and has more experience. Do you really think he’ll want to remain deputy his entire career?”
She must have considered that before now, but she didn’t appear to like talking about it. “He’s not the one who’s going to solve the Neville case.”
“Never Summer’s only cold case.” She’d get bored without any other challenges. Did she honestly believe she’d be fulfilled here? As soon as she’d learned of the cold case, she’d picked it up and run with it. Reese had ambition, and not your everyday ordinary ambition. To him, she didn’t just think, “I’m going to go to college and get my X degree and then I’m going to get a job I love.” Her ambition consumed her.
“That’s right. Great leverage for campaigning.”
Didn’t she hear herself? She would get that college degree and the job and rise to the top in record time. Deputy Miller was more suited for the kind of work she’d encounter here. He liked sitting at his desk eating junk food. Desk time. He doubted Reese sat at her desk very often.
“And then it’s back to splitting up drunken bar fights.” Not much else could go on in this small town. “Not very exciting.”
She stopped at Jamie’s rental truck. “Are you trying to talk me into joining DAI?”
He unlocked the door. “No. Just saying...not very exciting.” Seeing her baffled look, he realized she didn’t know what he was talking about. She had clear goals she intended to go after but she didn’t see how they fell short. Maybe she spent too much time protecting her dream rather than recognizing what the dream meant to her.
Without stoking those coals, he opened the door for her.
She didn’t move, but put her hands on her hips just above her gear belt. “Are you saying you think I need excitement?”
“Independent woman like you?” He nodded. “Hell yeah.”
Taming Deputy Harlow Page 17
