Lacy stopped cold on the sidewalk.
Mitch left a couple steps untaken between them. “What if your father is wrong about the murder, and instead of having a serial killer coming out of hiding, the town now has two murderers on the loose.”
The sidewalk was too dark to be sure, but he heard her shaking breath and thought he saw her shoulders shiver. She turned her head just enough to see him. Her smile tight. “Don’t presume to know my father, Mr. Kilpatrick. He’s been on the Wray case since it opened twenty years ago. I’d say he made himself an expert on the subject. Much more than some desk jockey detective who only knows what he can read in reports. If he thinks the recent murders were Wray, then they most likely were.”
Mitch rocked back on his loafer heels, taking in the weight of her words, letting what she didn’t know wash over him. An expert on Wray his ass. What the chief knew in useful facts wouldn’t cover a pin head.
He raised his hands chest level in mock surrender. “I didn’t follow you out here to argue.”
She turned her back to him again and started walking, her ass swaying under the tight cutoffs, the little white frayed edges caressed the backs of her thighs the way he longed for his fingers to.
“Late for a hot date,” he called after her, widening his gait to close the space between them.
“No.” She didn’t turn around. “Last shift at Charlie’s. The midnight to three a.m. crowd on Mondays are sloshed, but good tippers if you know how to spot the right ones.”
“And I’m guessing you know how to spot the good tippers.” Lacy stopped short at her truck in the drive, blocked in by half a dozen other cars, and threw her hands up. “I’m sure daddy wouldn’t mind asking his guest to move their cars for you.”
“No.” She wheeled around, her eyes wide. Her voice dropped and she eyed the fence leading behind the house to the backyard. Music from the band drifted on the air, but Mitch guessed by the darkened windows in the neighboring homes, everyone was at the party. “It’s fine.” Lacy tossed her loose hair over her shoulder and turned to the street. “It’s only a few miles. I’ll just call a friend for a ride.”
“Daddy doesn’t know you’re going, does he?”
“You’re very observant, Detective, but I stopped doing what my father wanted about the same time I graduated kindergarten.” She turned back to him, her eyes narrowing on his. “I don’t need permission. But I’d be happy to call him out if you need his assistance.” She glanced at his wrists jutting from his pockets.
With cold calculation, she narrowed on him again, waiting for an answer. “I thought you said he was busy making calls about you, unless you’d like me to call him out here for you?
“I think I’ve had enough of the chief for one night.” He wasn’t buying the sudden ice-princess treatment. Twenty-four hours ago he had her begging into his hand, and now she could barely stand to look him in the eye.
She’d already dominated every thought running through his head. Dammit to hell, if she disappeared into the night without him knowing she was safe, he’d never be able to get his mind back on the case.
“Have it your way, but my motorcycle is on the street if you need a lift.”
“Thanks but—”
“You’re not waiting on a friend dressed like that.” His tone made her back up a step. He didn’t care. Lacy or not, no woman needed to be out alone on the streets, much less one dressed like a killer’s wet dream.
“Sorry?” She eyed him, hard.
He closed the distance between them in a matter of wide steps that made her back against her truck in retreat.
His guts clinched. Helms’ words flashed to mind. What had happened to make her so skittish? So untrusting? “I’m just going for my bike.”
When her body eased, he stepped forward, unlatched his carrier and held out the extra headgear. “I don’t mind being the friend to give you a ride if you trust me, but either way, I’m not leaving you out here alone.”
“Alone.” She laughed. “There are over a hundred people not more than three hundred yards away, partying down, and you think I’ll be left out here alone.”
He grew thoughtful. “I think you’re alone everywhere you go.”
She shivered. “You sound just like the chief.”
“But you don’t have to be. Let me give you a ride. I don’t bite, Lacy. Unless you ask me to.”
She took the helmet, and he tossed his black racer jacket across the bike. “Your safety is the one thing your father and I both agree on. Get on. I could use a drink at that bar of yours anyway.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Lacy flung her ponytail over one shoulder and bent to the ice bin behind the bar at Charlie’s. The cool air rising from the chest washed over her and cooled her cheeks.
Mitch’s eyes hadn’t left her all night and right now they were burning a trail up the backs of her legs and searing a hole in her ass.
He’d already refused to leave twice, even when Connie promised to see Lacy home safely after the bar closed. Now he was taking up one of her higher dollar bar stools and scaring away customers. Not to mention taking up her girl time with Connie. How was she supposed for fill in her best friend on all the details if he didn’t leave her along long enough to gossip?
The heated looks she didn’t mind, in fact she’d grown to appreciate them, but the way he sat on her end of the bar, like he owned everything in the place, including her, sent her regular fresh-from-a-rodeo-payoff Monday night cowboys to Connie’s side.
It wasn’t enough she’d played the part of outsider in her own town since childhood, but now she had to be the target of hate stares from locals who didn’t appreciate an out of town detective asking questions about their sleepy little paradise.
Lacy choked down a moan of contempt for the town and glanced over her shoulder. The same bottle of beer she’d offered over an hour ago spun between his fingers, the label peeled and on the bar in a ball beside him.
She watched a patron, a regular from the community college whose tips were lacking but his conversation interesting, eye the only open stool beside Mitch. Mitch growled under his breath, and the would-be tipper staggered backward. He retreated off to Connie’s side of the bar with a weary look and shoulder shrug that said sorry.
Lacy cut her gaze sharp over her shoulder. “Your brooding is scaring off my tips. Keep it up and I’ll be paying Charlie to work tonight.”
He peered up from his work with the bottle. “It’s not my brooding that’s keeping them away and you know it.” His hands stilled, and he deadpanned, “And you don’t work here for the money.”
If she told him the truth, that Charlie was the only guy in town with the guts to hire the police chief’s daughter, he’d only laugh it off.
She rested an elbow on the bar and leaned in. “Really, Ace? Then why do I work at this seedy little pit? The glowing atmosphere? The hot guys? Experience for my own place?”
“To piss off your old man.”
She recognized fishing for a reaction when she heard it. Unfortunately for Cowboy, she’d spent most of her childhood learning how to dodge the hook. “Do you always verbalize the first thing that comes to mind, or am I just lucky enough to be a victim of your unfiltered thoughts?”
He actually seemed taken aback by her forward remark, like she’d made a crack in the stone wall he kept erected around his true self. Like somewhere under the cop was a human. Somewhere deep down, her subconscious gave a high five to her brain. It also blared a warning signal. Bating Mitch could be fun, but like most cops, he’d only take so much of her teasing before he’d snap.
Still, what she did with her money was her own business, she reminded herself. He probably wouldn’t understand her need to escape from under the weight of her father’s position. He’d probably grown up in one of those houses with white fences and glowing yellow lights seeping from windows at dusk, lulling passers-by into the safety of home and family.
He hadn’t known what living with a secret was like. The
constant weight of the lies. Like the air you breathed was heavier than the air for everyone else.
He’d never been the reason his family fell apart. The reason his mother ran away, or her father took up the bottle again after years of sobriety and morphed into the overprotective beast her father had become.
He’d never been any of those things, but being with him made her forget that she was all of them, and for a few hours of feeling normal, she’d do just about anything. Even go to bed with a cop.
“My unfiltered thoughts didn’t seem to bother you last night.” His smile turned playful. She hadn’t seen him lighten up all night until now.
Despite the cold air rising off the mountain of ice below her, Lacy’s face blushed. Those uncensored words had taken her to the brink and left her stranded there with no chance to cross over alone. And like a drug with its addictive roots already imbedded too deep, she wanted it again. She had to have it again. “No. I didn’t.”
His lips wound upward into a slick little smile. “Good. Get your bag and let’s go.”
Lacy slammed the bin shut and stood, letting the ice fall from the scoop into a cocktail mixer with a staccato clink. “No way, Cowboy. Charlie would fire me if I walked out and left Connie alone.”
“Connie can take care of herself. Besides, what would it matter if he did fire you?”
In that second, he sounded just like her father. “Excuse me?”
“You’re better than Charlie’s. Why not a nice restaurant or consistent nine to five? Why not college?”
Her face heated. No man, not her father, or John, or the one staring her down like she should be thankful for his concern would ever make her feel like a simpleton. Make her feel unfulfilled over her life choices. Damn them all and damn him the most. “One night in my pants and you know me well enough to question my personal decisions?”
He smiled. “Technically you were in my pants.”
Lacy capped a glass over the drink shaker and put everything she had into it, bruised ice be damned. “How about you? Why a cop? Why not something safe like a garbage man or profitable like a CEO? Why a profession that keeps you in constant danger? Long hours? Stress filled days?” She watched him thoughtfully before driving the final nail in his coffin. “That keeps you from having meaningful relationships.”
His smile deepened. “Some people aren’t made for meaningful relationships, Angel. I think we covered this in the no strings part of our deal.”
There was coldness in his eyes that sent a chill through her. She lowered her voice and leaned over the bar to keep from gaining the attention of the girls now swarming Mitch. “So it’s always going to be meaningless sex with you?”
He pondered a bit, picked up the wadded beer label from the bar and rolled it between his thumb and forefinger. “Was last night meaningless to you?”
Lacy swore the girls flanking Mitch shot her evil looks under their thickly mascaraed lashes, but he’d spoken so low, his voice so targeted on her, there was no way anyone else heard.
The drink shaker dropped to the bar harder than she’d liked. He’d seen the heat in her cheeks deepen, the slight shake of her fingers on the glass. He’d liked it by the way his eyes twinkled.
“Did that just turn you on? Remembering what we did last night? Remembering coming in my hand and again wrapped around me?” He groaned, a pleased sound that rocked through his throat like a quiet plea. “I think it did, Angel.”
“So what if it did?” Lacy finished shaking the Screwdriver and slid the glass down three seats to a group of young women who eyed Mitch like they could jump his back and ride him pony style.
She hadn’t noticed until now, but the only people now seated in her section were women. Young, attractive, single women with smokey eyes and boobs hanging out over low-cut tops.
She pushed the ping of jealousy down into her gut.
He rolled the paper in his hands before shucking it across the bar and rimming the small trashcan Charlie kept in the back. “There’s that name again. I swear you only use it to piss me off.”
“Bartender rule number one. Don’t learn the names.”
She watched his throat tighten around a swallow. Somehow he managed to make the minute task look sensual with the way his lips curved around the bottle, the slow pull of his neck muscles working the liquid down, the way his pulse flickered just under the tanned line of his jaw.
“Did you know your nose flares when you lie?” His gaze narrowed on hers.
Her father had told her the same thing. She’d never been able to hide anything. “You really don’t know how to stop until you get what you want, do you, Detective?”
He nodded. “I always get what I want, so giving in would be easier than fighting.”
“What if what I want goes deeper than what you’re willing to give?”
He sat back, his elbows off the bar and the look of retreat in his eyes.
She had to think fast.
He had her opening old wounds she’s kept closed so long she wasn’t sure what would surface or if she’d be able to stop talking when the subject of her secret bubbled up.
“When I was a kid, I had horrible nightmares. Mostly this haggard face over and over and I’d wake up paralyzed in my bed.”
Mitch’s eyes darkened, and his head tilted in thought. “Night terrors?”
She wished. At least night terrors were fake. “Worse. Memories I didn’t want to remember. Places around town would trigger them. People I’d see on my way to school.”
“Memories?”
She shuddered. “I didn’t exactly have the white picket fence childhood.” He seemed satisfied enough with the answer for now, but she’d bet as soon as he found some alone time with a computer, he’d search the town records. And he’d find nothing because when the chief wanted something to disappear, it never saw the light of day again.
“My mother had only been gone a year and Dad hated doctors, seeing how mom’s had told her the best thing she could do for her depression was get out of a marriage with a cop. So he took me to a Shawnee medicine man on the reservation.”
“Do you think that?”
“What?” She’d been too lost in not saying the wrong thing to remember what she’d just confessed.
“Marriage to a cop caused her depression?”
“If you knew my dad back then, his determination to solve cases, you’d understand.”
A strange emotion washed over his face. Confliction? Anger? She couldn’t be sure, but it made her stomach flutter.
“Anyway, the medicine man said every face we see in a dream is someone we’ve met along our life journey. He asked the spirits to only let in dreams of people whose names I recognized. The people closest to me. It’s silly, but Dad was willing to try anything for a night of sleep.”
Anything to keep her secret hidden and her name from the man who’d taken her once and could return at any moment to take her again. Anything to make her appear normal to the world even though she’d already figured out at ten, her normal was a life lived inside the memory of a living, breathing nightmare.
Mitch caught her arm and twisted her wrist up with soft fingers. He rubbed his thumb over her tattoo, a spider web design inside a circle with three dangling feathers. “A dream catcher?”
“The name thing didn’t really work. I experimented with other options.” Not that the dream catcher stopped her kidnapper’s image from searing into her brain every night as soon as her eyes shut. She could recall every feature of Richard Wray’s face down to the fine winkles around his nose when he smiled and the sweet smell of his breath on her face. Just thinking about it now made her shudder.
Mitch studied her for a second. The detective in him couldn’t miss her body shake, but he didn’t ask why. “And the one on your hip?”
She passed him a scornful stare at the mention of the tattoo now under her shorts. “Faith in Chinese characters.”
Concern flickered in his eyes. “Do the tats work?”
“Wh
y do you need to know? A tough guy like you wouldn’t have bad dreams.”
“No. My nightmares don’t end with the daylight.” His eyes grew dim. That comment had come from a deep, dark, guarded place inside him. She saw the slight wince of his jaw, like if he could, he’d pull it back and bury it deeper than before.
The need to push back, to see what Mitch was made of, took over. “Sounds like a guilty conscience to me. What would you have done to feel guilty about?”
“Plenty.”
Starburst tingles shot up her spine at the rawness in his voice. Mitch had a dark side, and as much as that should scare her away, it didn’t.
There was something oddly appealing about being able to pull back his layers one at a time and see a glimpse of the man he was under the badge. Venerable. Guarded. Pained.
Lacy slipped her wrist loose from his fingers, but he tightened his grip before she could break free. She clenched her teeth to keep from growling at him. “I’m a grown woman, Mitch. I don’t let nightmares get in my way anymore.”
His eyes lightened and narrowed on hers. Something in them changed, as they had the night before. The detective was gone, replaced by an animal with primal needs and primal ways to satisfy them. “You want to dream about me?”
She shook her head. The blushing heat from her face bloomed across her body, making the close quarters behind the bar close in and cage her. “You really should work on your self-confidence,” she joked.
Mitch leaned closer over the bar. She couldn’t take her eyes off his mouth. “I saw you watching me tonight at the party. Every time the fabric of your panties slid over your clit you thought about my fingers making you come. Didn’t you?”
Heat drained to between her legs. Her body reacted to him with instant lust. Something about the way Mitch took charge. How he created boundaries to their sexual relationship with his words, made her feel vulnerable to him and safe all in the same breath. It was intoxicating. And frustrating. An itch she just couldn’t get close enough to scratch.
Confess (The Blue Line Series Book 1) Page 9
