by Kylie Brant
Chapter 13
It was hard to tell what time it was, but the sky seemed to be lightening. Ellie trudged farther, her steps sluggish. Or maybe she wanted to think that because she was exhausted. And so sore from that tumble she’d taken down that rocky slope a couple hours ago that it was difficult to move at all.
She stopped. Swayed a little as she tried to get her foggy mind to think.
Traveling at night had seemed to make sense because he wouldn’t be able to see her. But she couldn’t see either. There hadn’t been a clue a while ago that the ground had been about to give way before she’d fallen. She’d been dizzy and disoriented as she’d made her way to even ground.
All sense of direction had been lost.
If she had the energy, she’d cry. It was tempting, so tempting, to just sink down right here and give up. So what if he found her. By the time he did, she’d be dead anyway. Stiff and so frozen his knife wouldn’t work on her anyway.
Two years ago she would have done just that.
She’d been frozen then, too, but not by the cold. Numb, the way you get when your feelings hide somewhere deep inside just so you can get through the days. She hadn’t wanted them to come back, even after she’d gone back with her mom and dad.
It was so much easier when she’d felt nothing.
Scooping up some snow, she brought it to her mouth. She hadn’t found anything edible but a handful of berries, but the snow would quench her thirst. Even if eating it just made her colder inside.
And she also realized if she didn’t stop now to build her shelter, she wouldn’t have the strength later.
Stumbling forward, she began looking for a drift of snow at least four feet tall. They were easier to find in a spot where the trees were less dense, and the wind was free to shape the snow into swales. She lost track of time as she searched. But pink was edging the sky when she finally found what she was looking for.
Clumsily, she removed a snowshoe and fell to her knees. It worked like a shovel as she began to dig. She’d been more careful the first day but she didn’t have the will to dig the trench the way her dad had taught her on their winter camping trips. Likewise, constructing the raised sleeping area was beyond her. This time she just dug, arms feeling as heavy as stones as she hollowed out a compartment deep enough to crawl into.
When she’d finished, she took another careful glance around before putting the snowshoe back on and hiking over to the nearby evergreens to break off some branches. Thoughts of soon being able to stop and sleep filled her with new strength. She returned and spread the branches on the floor of the cave, removed the snowshoes and dragged them after her when she crawled inside. The boughs would keep her insulated from the snow floor.
Collapsing against the prickly branches, she lay still. Her muscles began to tremble, not from the cold but from exertion. Closing her eyes, she willed herself to sleep.
And it was hard, so very hard, to care whether she ever woke up again.
“Okay, here’s a quick rundown on what you missed yesterday.” Intent on not giving her a chance to feel awkward about the their time in the shower—both of them—he focused on a subject sure to distract her. “That body Denise Temple told us about—the one in Jefferson County—turned out to belong to Hubbard.”
“Will you give me the towel?” The annoyance in her tone sounded normal enough to ease his fears that she’d try to withdraw from him. “I’m perfectly capable of drying my—Hubbard?”
“That’s right.” Finished with her, he swiped the towel carelessly across himself before letting it fall to the floor. Giving her a friendly pat on the ass to get her moving, he urged her out of the bathroom to stand before her dresser. “Jonesy matched the fingerprints. Helluva a deal, and still not sure what it means, although I’m betting he was just the sucker the kidnapper needed for a thumbprint that would get him inside here.”
Her head snapped to his as he started opening drawers and going through her things. “His thumb was missing?”
“It’s like that commercial says. Miss a little, miss a lot.” He found a filmy camisole—damn if it wasn’t a dead ringer for the one in his fantasy—and thrust it at her. Her fingers closed around it reflexively so he went in search of underwear for her, and got sidetracked. She had what could only be described as a delectable, mouth-watering selection.
She was dragging on the camisole so her voice was muffled. “Did you let Denise Temple know?”
“Damn.” He should have thought of that. He settled on a scrap of white lace held together with two narrow strings on each side and handed the underwear to her. “I’ll have to call her first thing.” Although the news wouldn’t be out until CBI deigned to release it, she deserved to hear it firsthand, not be hit with it on the job.
“That’s not all.” He crossed to her closet and opened it to contemplate the contents. It contained absolutely nothing low-cut, which seemed a shame, given the mouth-watering underwear she was going to be wearing beneath it. “Jonesy got a CODIS match on the bloodstain on the girl’s sheet.” He settled on a pale blue sweater that looked like it might cling and dragged it off the hanger to toss to her. “Turns out he’s in the system. Vincent Dodge. Raiker says he’s an assassin.”
The news seemed to have stopped her in her tracks. “That makes no sense,” she murmured, stunned.
He glanced at the face of the clock next to the bed. They might have awakened before dawn, but their interlude in the shower was going to make them late. And he was fairly certain Macy would want to face the boss before he came to find her. “We don’t know what it means. Put on your sweater.” He turned back to her closet. “Where are those black pants you wore the other day?” If memory served correctly, they’d hugged her ass like a glove.
“What pants? And why are you dressing me?” Belatedly she seemed snap out of whatever fog she was in. “Get out of my closet.” She crossed over to elbow him aside.
“You didn’t seem to mind. And I’d be happy to return the favor.”
But when she ignored the invitation, he strolled to the bathroom to gather up his things. Pulling on his boxer briefs, he carried the rest of his stuff out into the bedroom. “You’d best get the meeting with Raiker over with before you go down for the morning. I’m sure a good night’s sleep did wonders for his temper.” Actually, he wasn’t certain of any such thing, but he hoped for her sake that it was true. “I’ll catch you up on the rest of it when you’re done.”
He wasn’t sure what worried him more: that he recognized the flash of unease in her expression or that he knew exactly where it stemmed from. “Maybe I should go with you to talk to him this morning.” The man’s temper was always tightly controlled, but no one who’d been on the receiving end of it was anxious to repeat the experience. And Macy didn’t need that. Didn’t deserve it. Not after what she’d been through.
The fierce bolt of protectiveness that pierced him then should have alarmed him. Would have if he weren’t distracted by her actions. She’d run a brush through her wet hair and, with a few quick movements, had it fashioned into some intricate knot at the back of her head. It left her slender neck bare. He wondered when he’d started finding necks sexy.
“I should have spent last night catching up on the case.”
Recognizing the self-reproach in her voice, his attention narrowed. “Give yourself a break, Mace. Anyone would need to regroup after a day like you’d had.” It frustrated him that she didn’t respond. And he knew she remained unconvinced.
Concerned, he yanked his pants on, leaving them unfastened. He was shrugging into his shirt when she selected a jacket from her closet that matched the pants she wore, pants similar enough to the ones he’d been searching for to satisfy him.
“I’ll go speak to Adam while you”—she risked a quick glance at him, seemed relieved to find him partially dressed—“change your clothes.”
He watched, fascinated, as a flush rose up that lovely line of her throat to suffuse her cheeks with heat. It told him be
tter than words that she was thinking more clearly now, and embarrassment was setting in.
He wasn’t going to allow it to cause her to throw up more obstacles between them.
“This . . .” Her index finger was tapping a nervous rhythm on the edge of the dresser. One, two, three. One, two, three. She cleared her throat. Couldn’t meet his eyes in the mirror. “We should put this . . . last night . . . on hold. We have a job to do. We can’t afford to get . . . distracted.”
The words might be slightly different from those she’d uttered the last time they’d spent together, but the meaning was the same. And it lit a fire in his belly that had been simmering for the last six months.
“I’m sure you agree . . .”
He closed the distance between them and took her elbow in his hand. Watched her start at his nearness.
“Why are you so close?”
“This only works when I’m close.” With a quick tug, he had her in his arms, and his lips on hers for a thorough kiss. It took effort to temper his frustration. And then to not get sidetracked when her lips parted. Returned the pressure.
Lifting his head after a moment, he murmured, “I have more faith in our ability to focus than you seem to. But if it makes you feel better, put us out of your mind for as long as you need.” That was better, he figured, than having her brood about last night until she worked herself up to another dismissal. “Just know that after we bring Ellie Mulder home again, this is still going to be between us. And you’re going to find me a bit harder to get rid of this time around.”
Because he didn’t trust himself to say more, he headed for the door. She’d been right about one thing; he had to get back to his room before others started rising. And he needed to give her some time to get her thoughts together before she faced Adam, especially since she wasn’t going to let him accompany her for that meeting.
Easing open the door, he checked the hallway before slipping out and heading for his room. And tried to shake the feeling that he was leaving her when she needed him most.
Macy tapped gently at the door across the hall. Adam’s familiar growl invited her to enter. Taking a deep breath to calm her rollicking pulse, she opened the door and walked in far enough to stand in the doorway.
He was seated on the edge of the bed, dressed more casually than usual in black slacks and a matching sweater. His feet were bare. The sight took her aback. She’d never seen the man less than totally dressed. Would never have guessed that the tops of his feet bore the same deep scars and furrows as those on the back of his hands and across his throat.
Her gaze bounced upward. His dark hair was still damp, and she took a moment to hope that he’d arisen very recently. “I know you wanted to see me.”
“I wanted to see you last night.” His ruined voice was always hoarse, but there was an edge to it now that didn’t bode well. “I knocked. You didn’t answer.”
“I must have been asleep,” she lied without batting an eyelash. There was no way she could have faced him last night. She’d still been too raw. Felt too exposed. Adam had a way of seeing right through people to the core. She hadn’t been up to that last night. She questioned whether she was even now.
“Too bad.” He picked up the socks from their spot on the bed beside him and yanked each on with barely restrained force. “Because I had the night to try to come up with a reason not to fire you.” The pause was imbued with more threat than his words. “I didn’t find one.”
A fist squeezed her heart while her spine went to ice. It took all her strength to stand motionless before him, her face hopefully arranged into an expressionless mask. His gaze drilled holes through her, probing for a weakness. She was determined he wouldn’t find one. “Are you asking me to supply it?”
He made a rude sound. “You’re turning into a helluva investigator.” With the help of his cane, he got to his feet, went to the closet. “But after the training I provide, all my investigators are excellent.”
“None of them are forensic linguists,” she pointed out. Deliberately, she took a step farther into the room to remove the overwhelming urge to reach out her fingers for the nearest surface. She didn’t need to give away her nerves with mindless tapping.
“You think I couldn’t find ten linguists if I wanted to?” He turned back toward her so suddenly it was all she could do not to flinch. “You have a specialty I lacked in my firm, but it’s not why I chose you, Macy. You should know that. I told you why I wanted you when I offered you the job.”
The conversation was burned into her memory. It’d been weeks after Castillo’s trial. Weeks she now suspected he’d used to learn everything there was to know about her. Past and present. “You said you respected me.”
“I respected how you reacted to the trauma you were dealt.” Shoes donned, he turned to face her fully, both hands clasped on the cane as he leaned against it. “You didn’t dissolve into victimhood. Some do. You didn’t follow your career path as a means to a vendetta, determined to spend your life hunting down a man who may as well have been a phantom. That would have been pointless and stupid. Until yesterday, you were never stupid.”
The assessment stung. It also whipped up a bit of her own temper. “I have skills that bring people to justice. Or prove them innocent. My job choice had little to do with Castillo. And my visit yesterday wasn’t about what happened over two decades ago. Just the opposite.
“If there was a chance, however slim, that he had something to offer that might be useful to this case, I had to take it. That’s my job. Not ducking to take the easiest out.”
His gaze narrowed. “I told you I doubted he had anything of note to say.”
And again, his assessment found its mark. “And you were right. But it’s one thing to make that determination based on the certainty of experience. And quite another to question whether I was accepting your opinion because doing so required nothing of me.” She couldn’t quite hold his gaze then. “Judging by the overwhelming relief I felt when you ordered me not to go, I tend to think it was the latter. And I couldn’t accept that. Not for this case. Not for myself.”
There was a long pause. When she finally managed to look at him again, his expression was no less fierce. But the edge to his voice was gone. “You had nothing to prove. Not to me.”
“Maybe I had something left to prove to myself.” Seeing the understanding flicker across his expression didn’t mean she was out of the woods yet. She’d just exposed a weakness to a man who had no tolerance for them. It’d be in keeping with everything she knew about him if he fired her on the spot, for that much alone.
No one had suffered more than Adam Raiker. And yet if that trauma had marred him in any but the most physical way, she’d yet to see evidence of it.
“And did you?” Her gaze flew to his. “Prove something to yourself?”
She hesitated, recalling how difficult it had been to face Castillo. To hear his voice again. To have the past raked up like an old wound, reopened and throbbing.
And to listen to him spew lies about the one person who had suffered along with her. The only parent she’d had for over two and a half decades.
At the end—and only the end mattered, didn’t it?—she hadn’t run. And that was a victory of sorts.
“Yes.”
He gave a terse nod. “You’ll have to catch up on the run today. Ask Kell to brief you. I’ve got a breakfast meeting with Whitman.” His smile was humorless. “That never does much for my appetite.”
Clearly dismissed, she started to go, then turned back. “He did have something he wanted me to tell you, too. Probably as worthless as the rest of the poison he was feeding me, but . . . he claims LeCroix had a child. A son.”
She was unsurprised when her boss nodded. “He did. Disappeared over twenty years ago, though. I’ve always suspected he was one of LeCroix’s victims. Probably resting at the bottom of one of Louisiana’s bayous. The man knew every inch of the area.”
It was disconcerting on some level to discover
even a particle of truth buried in the conversation with Castillo. So she reported the rest of what the man had said about LeCroix, ending with, “Is that possible?”
Raiker lifted a shoulder. “That the boy’s mother disappeared with him? Barely, I suppose. But LeCroix had the means to hunt them down, and it’s doubtful there would be anywhere they could have hidden that his men wouldn’t have found them. I think my theory is more likely.”
She nodded, went to the door. It didn’t escape her that he hadn’t commented on Castillo’s hope that LeCroix’s son was not only living but would exact revenge on Raiker for killing his father.
Or whether he’d decided one way or the other about firing her. Since Adam Raiker didn’t make empty threats, she knew she wasn’t out of the woods yet.
Lon Pearce, the owner and operator of Denver’s Halloween-EveryDay Mask Emporium, looked entirely too normal to have created the gory and gruesome creations that lined the shelves of his store. “Yeah, September and October are our busiest months,” he was telling the trio as they moved slowly through the empty store, looking at his goods. “People will come in looking for something to build a costume around. But I stay busy with the custom orders the rest of the year.”
“And where do your custom orders come from?” Macy asked. She stopped before one particularly eerie mask of an old woman. It looked lifelike enough to speak.
“My website business is starting to take off. And I’ve gotten some work from a small indie company in Hollywood.” He gave them a broad grin. “I did some masks for this really cool low-budget alien film they were shooting for practically nothing, just to get my foot in the door. I’m hoping word will get around. I sure wouldn’t mind getting a piece of thespecial-effects pie.”
“Ever been asked to make a mask that’s a replica of a living person? Like from pictures?” Travis asked. He slipped a mask off the mannequin head and held it to squint at it, seemingly unaware of the shopkeeper’s concerned expression.
