Taking the bottle, he gave Jolie a sheepish shrug. He popped up the bendable straw and sucked in a mouthful. The chilled water hit the spot.
“Jennings said he’d alert Detective O’Hanlon. I’m sure he’ll join us soon.” Jolie jerked her chin in the direction he was heading. “This path leads to the place where I found you.”
“I know.” He hung the bottle by a carabiner clip on his belt loop.
“Xavier, are you remembering anything about what actually happened?”
Staring down that path, he trembled. He wasn’t sure if he could face the possibility of what he’d done. But everything about this felt wrong. He had taken a blow to the back of the head, which was evident by the knot at the base of his skull and what the doctor had found. In hand-to-hand combat, he wasn’t one to allow an opening like that to an opponent, not even in a blackout stage. The wounds Clint Kruger had sustained were made by one-on-one contact.
Xavier shifted to face Jolie. “I haven’t asked, because I wasn’t so sure I’d get a straight answer. So, now I’m asking you, what’s the four-one-one on Clint Kruger? And don’t play the ‘I’m not authorized’ bullshit. What I know about that man and his death goes into understanding what happened.”
She peered up at him, uncertainty drawing deep lines in the corners of her eyes and mouth. A few short months on the job, and she was learning real fast that things don’t always go the way they train you. And that had to drive her set of morals batshit crazy. Cupping her mouth, she pinched her lip, her gaze flicking from him to the path, back to him, then to the car, finally settling on him.
“First, you tell me what you know about him.”
Ahh, turning the tables. Maybe she’d had real-life experiences trained into her after all.
Xavier held up his hand to count off his intel on his fingers. “First, I know he was a piss-poor father. He was a known drug user—not sure what exactly. And he came into The Killdeer high and looking for trouble one time too many, which led to me booting his ass out the door.”
“You’ve had contact with him, then?”
“Sadly, yes.”
With a nod, she popped the top on her bottle and downed some water, then snapped the cap shut. “Okay, you know enough. Yes, he was a piss-poor father, and his drug use is what led his ex, Wendi, to divorce him and put a no-contact order against him for Sarah. In the last few months he’d been trying to corner his daughter, no one was sure why, and Sarah wouldn’t allow it. I don’t know if he finally managed to catch her alone and take her, and that’s why she’s missing, but now that he’s dead, we have no clues.” Jolie’s hazel eyes snapped with fire. “Except for whatever it is that’s locked away in your brain.”
“What was his drug of choice?”
Another sip of water. “Heroin.”
That explained a lot of things. Xavier gripped the collar of his shirt and fanned it. “It’s too hot out here for hashing out details. Let’s go.”
“I figured after serving in the Middle East, this kind of weather wouldn’t bother you,” Jolie said as they hiked the path.
“There’s different kinds of heat, and this is nothing like what’s in the desert. You know, there’s a reason Middle Eastern governments take the whole month of August off.”
Xavier caught the hint of her smile out of the corner of his eye. Good. As long as he kept her humor up, she wouldn’t feel the need to second-guess her choice in revealing the Krugers’ deep, dark secrets.
“Does any of this feel familiar?” she asked.
“Yes, but then I’ve been known to run this trail. So we can’t go off that.”
“You run?” Her gaze bounced down to his leg and then up, her face flushing. “Sorry, I forget … Oh, God, I screwed that all up.”
For some reason, some weird reason, he didn’t mind it all of a sudden. “No, it’s fine. I have a special prosthetic that’s called a running blade. I usually run in oh-dark-thirty so no one will see me.”
She made a noise in her throat and then ducked her head. Xavier looked away, giving her some semblance of privacy. They crested the high point and paused. Before them lay the lower half of the park, the spot where Clint had perished, by someone’s hand. Xavier guzzled more water.
“Now what?” Jolie asked.
The area was still roped off with yellow crime tape left by DCI and the police. No one was supposed to be down here, but that wouldn’t stop the bolder thrill-seekers.
“Now we get closer.” He started forward, none of the apprehension he had felt at the beginning of the trail clinging to him.
“Xavier?”
He paused and then turned to her. “Yeah?”
“What are you going to do if you … you know?”
With every punch he’d landed on the bag, that thought had pounded through his mind. And with each blow it became clearer in his mind what he had to do. If he’d killed Clint Kruger, whether in ill intent or self-defense, Xavier would face the consequences.
He sighed, giving Jolie a tight smile, which probably looked more like a grimace. “I’ll do what any honorable man should do: turn myself in.”
“And if you’re not guilty?” The odd tone in her voice triggered his curiosity.
“Where are you going with this?”
She fiddled with the carabiner on her water bottle, avoiding his gaze. His curiosity shifted into suspicion.
“Do you know something that the rest of us don’t?” he asked, though it came out more like a demand.
Her gaze snapped up. “Not about this. It was a thought I had, and it keeps nagging at me, making me think that you’re not involved. But it’s crazy.”
“Nothing is crazy if it aids in this whole mess.”
“See, I don’t know if it will.”
“Murdoch, would you stop playing silly buggers and spit it out?”
“Fine. I’m wondering if another girl’s disappearance about nine years ago has any connection to Sarah’s.”
“This has happened before? In Eider?”
“Yes, during my dad’s tenure as sheriff. Far as I know, they never found her or learned what happened to her.” She clasped her hands behind her back, making the buttons on her uniform top strain across her chest. A hint of beige and flesh winked at him from the gaping material.
Xavier’s mouth flooded with saliva at the peep show. Satan’s balls, it was enough to bring back the erotic dream he had about her earlier. Either she was naive to what her shirt was doing, or she was doing a damn good job of distracting him from the conversation at hand. Whatever the hell she was up to, it was working. He wanted to remove that barrier and see for himself what was hiding beneath the shirt.
No doubt sensing that his attention was zeroed in on her breasts, Jolie brought her arms forward and crossed them. While her intention might have been to block his view, all her action did was push those mounds higher.
“Fuck this,” he muttered and headed downhill.
• • •
Jolie gaped at his backside.
Was he mad that she’d taken away his free pass to eyeball her? That was absurd. Xavier hadn’t crossed her as the type of man who objectified women as sex toys. Hell, she’d seen him flat-out turn down drunk and dead-sober invitations from quite a few women—and, more disturbingly, a few teenagers.
Did he get weird mood swings with his TBI? She’d done a little research on it while she’d sat outside his hospital room last night, and erratic mood swings could be a symptom. That was one question she wasn’t about to ask him.
She caught up with him—damn, he could move fast—as he reached the taped-off edge of the crime scene. Suddenly, he turned, his enormous shoulder grazing her chin. Jolie jolted at the contact and jerked back. Fudgesicles. There wasn’t a soft spot on him.
His damp hands took hold of her bare arms, and he steadied her. “Sorry, I didn’t know you were right behind me.”
She barely registered what he said. Her skin was prickling under his hands, and the sensation was rushing its w
ay through her veins to the rest of her body. It was a wild, heady kind of feeling, leaving her weak-kneed and slack. All he was doing was gripping her arms, but it was exhilaration like nothing she’d experienced before. She, the virgin, had never gotten close enough to a boy, let alone a man.
Xavier released her; the tingling sensations fled. Jolie managed to regain control of her body before she collapsed in a heap.
Shaking the feeling back into her arms, she inched a step sideways. “That’s okay,” she said softly.
“Can I go inside the tape?”
“Uh … ” Jolie scratched her cheek. Could he?
DCI had meticulously gone over the scene with their equipment, and since no one was here, she assumed they were done. Yet the tape was still up, and technically she and Xavier weren’t supposed to be here.
“Oy, Murdoch, would you step it up?”
“To what?” she barked.
An amused gleam passed through his eyes. “Now, that’s better.”
Wait? What did he just do?
“You’re a good cop, and you’ve got a lot of learning ahead of you. But you really need to get a handle on being decisive,” he said.
“What are you talking about?”
Xavier leaned closer; his gaze bore into hers. “When you’re in the field, a fast and clear decision is the difference between life and death for you. Instincts can’t always protect you.”
Shamed, she started to bow her head.
“Don’t do that.”
Jolie’s gaze snapped back to him. “Do what?”
“Act like a reprimanded child. You’re a woman and a cop—act like it. No one should make you feel ashamed.” He pointed at the crime scene. “Now, do we go in?”
“Yes, we do.”
One corner of his mouth tilted up. “Good.” And with that, he ducked under the tape.
Jolie cast one more look over her shoulder. Damn it, he was right. It was time for her to make her own decisions on the job. After all, she’d made a serious decision to move out and face down Daddy over it. In fact, she might want to consider not calling him Daddy anymore. But that little girl inside still wasn’t so sure.
Everything had been easier when someone else with more experience was calling the shots. It was all-around easier to learn the right way to avoid mistakes later. Except that someone with more experience wasn’t here right now—if she excluded Xavier, who was poking around in the spot by the tree where Clint had been lying—and she was left to make those critical decisions. One day she’d be out on patrol and come to a fork in the road with a crime being committed. And like Xavier said, what she decided could mean life or death.
And with that bolster in spirit, she joined Xavier inside the tape. “What are you looking at?”
He peeked around the tree. “Do you know if DCI found anything that could be used to bludgeon someone?”
“No. Any evidence discussions are for Detective O’Hanlon, Deputy Hunt, and the sheriff.”
He harrumphed and went back to his search. Jolie circled the tree, picturing the scene as she’d come upon it. Other than photos courtesy of her classes and academy training, she’d never seen an actual person killed in a violent act. And she couldn’t count funerals. Her coworkers had shielded her from the gruesome deaths of the people her brother and his partner had killed late last year. If she had to be honest with herself, Jolie had avoided seeing those photos because that was not how she wanted to remember the people who had died. And she definitely chose not to stare directly at Ian’s evil.
So after coming up close and personal with a broken and bloody corpse, she didn’t know how she’d ever become the investigator Sheriff Hamilton wanted her to be. Or as far as her father was concerned, the next sheriff.
Xavier awkwardly lowered his body to kneel halfway, leaving his prosthetic leg extended to the side, and brushed dirt and debris aside in the place where Clint’s body had been found.
“Did you find something?”
“No. The DCI guys know how to do their job.” Yet Xavier remained in that position, staring at the ground.
Jolie moved closer, stopping inches from him; close enough to see the sheen of sweat on his skin and how it was making his dark shirt look soaked. “What is it?”
He looked up at her, squinting as the leaves shifted in the breeze, letting the sun through. “I’ve been here what, five minutes, and by now I should have remembered what I did with Clint. But”—he lowered his gaze—“my memory stops right at the tree. Where I came to after it was over. I don't even know if Clint was here when I arrived.”
Lowering herself to squat next to him, she placed a hand on his broad shoulder. “Maybe your brain won’t accept what happened and it’s blocked out the actual incident.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe it is because of what I did.”
“Traumatic amnesia?”
“Not the first time a marine has had that problem.” Xavier rubbed his knuckles against his forehead. “I need to stop.”
Jolie rose, holding out her hand. He eyed the offered appendage. “Believe me, I know you’re more than capable of getting up. Just take it.”
With a quirk of his eyebrows, Xavier grasped her sweaty palm and, without really using any of her strength, hauled himself upright. He bent over at the waist to dust off his knee, and behind him a flash of white and blue through the thicker foliage caught Jolie’s attention. Frowning, she stared hard, hoping to see it again and rule out her imagination. She got another glimpse of white, farther along. She wasn’t imagining it.
Someone was spying on them.
Chapter Ten
Here was one of those decision moments.
“Stay here,” Jolie told Xavier and sprinted toward the creek bed.
“Jolie!”
Passing under the canopy of tall weeds and trees, she hooked her arm around a thick trunk and half-ran, half-slid down the embankment. She spotted the flutter of white a ways up—it was a shirt on a person, but she was too far back to tell gender or age. The splash of her boots in the water carried along the creek, and the person appeared to jerk and look back. She slogged through the water to the other side, where there was a gravelly edge to run along. The person she was trailing took off.
“Crap!”
Jolie kicked it up a notch, but whoever she was after had a good head start. And was now making themselves look even more suspicious by running.
Her heavy-duty belt felt like it was trying to drag her backward, and in this heat and humidity it was like she’d gained another fifty pounds. Her water bottle banging against her thigh didn’t help matters. Digging in deep, she pushed herself onward. The gravel was coming to an end; she’d have to take another dip in the water unless she found a way up the embankment. As she tried to find a place to cross, she lost sight of her quarry.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
Ahead, she spotted an opening in the foliage. That was probably where the runner had disappeared. Splashing into the water, she jumped up the side, grabbed a handful of tree roots, and hauled her butt up onto the ground. Finishing her scramble up the side of the creek bed, she hit the paved path. With a burst of energy, she sprinted on. A flash of white to her left was all she could see of the person.
“Murdoch, report.” Jennings’s voice penetrated her adrenaline-fueled brain.
“Not now, Jennings. I’m in pursuit of a runner.”
“What the hell?”
Her radio squawked.
“Jolie,” O’Hanlon broke through, “where are you? I’m on the path.”
“Ahead of you,” she panted.
The white shirt disappeared, again, around the final curve. Growling, she tried to run faster, but she felt like she was only slogging through waist-deep water. Her muscles were screaming in protest.
Fudge! She was going to start working out hard core after this.
Her foot slipped on a patch of scattered gravel, nearly making her go down. Contorting her body in some weird angles, she regain
ed her balance and then cruised around the curve, barreling into another parking area just as a dirty, tan, four-door sedan spun out of the lot in a spray of gavel and dust.
Jolie slowed to a stop. “Damn it!” She threw her hands up as the car’s tires found purchase on the street and squealed away.
Gasping for air, she bent over at the waist, staring at the dust cloud. Double fudge. She hadn’t even been able to see the plate because it was coated in dirt. “Argh!” She kicked at the gravel.
“Jolie?”
She straightened and turned as Con joined her. “He got away.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. But I spotted someone watching us, and when I went to question them, they took off. They beat me here and got in a car. They’re long gone now,” she said between breaths.
“Plate number?”
“Conveniently covered in dirt.”
Con said something in Irish. He didn’t even have the decency to breathe heavily after that run. What, was everyone in better shape than her?
They were joined by Xavier, who wasn’t breathing hard, either—he’d already admitted to his solo jogs—but did look like he was gimping a bit. Apparently his prosthetic wasn’t so easy to run on.
“Can you give me a description of the vehicle?” Con asked.
“A tan, four-door sedan.”
“Like the one I saw?” Xavier asked.
“I think so. I have no idea what the driver looked like, just that they wore a white shirt and blue jeans.” A stitch in Jolie’s side made her double over. “Damn, I’m not in shape for this.”
“Now what?” Xavier demanded.
“We get back to the station and have you relate everything you’ve remembered so far,” Con replied.
She straightened, feeling the pain in her side ease a little. “Detective, I’m sorry for letting him get away.”
“Deputy, don’t beat yourself up over it. I don’t know if anyone would have been able to get the guy.”
Con’s assurance still didn’t make her feel any better.
• • •
Xavier glanced at the clock for the fifth time. In the last ten minutes the hands had barely moved. Sighing, he cradled his head and leaned forward, bracing his elbows on Jolie’s desk. He’d been here for three hours, and it was creeping on 8 p.m. with no end in sight. He longed to go home and crawl into bed. The past thirty-some odd hours had been killer.
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