A Date for the Detective_A Fuller Family Novel

by Liz Isaacson

  Wren sat down on his other side, her baby balanced carefully on her hip. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” Kyler said, shooting Milt and then Berlin a look.

  Like that would stop them. “Dahlia somebody broke up with Kyler,” Berlin said.

  Kyler growled, but Wren paused and looked at him. “Oh, I’m sorry. I know you really liked her.”

  “Did he?” Milt asked as if Kyler wasn’t right there, in the middle of all these siblings. “How do you know that?”

  “The way he talked about her last week.” Wren fed a potato chunk to Etta. “It was obvious with what he said and how he glowed.”

  “I didn’t glow,” he grumbled.

  “Hmm,” Milt said. “Maybe he’s in love with her.”

  “I’m not in love with her.”

  “Seemed like he could probably get there,” Wren said, like Kyler hadn’t even spoken. “They went to church together on Sunday too. Kept her way down on the end though, like he didn’t want to share her with us.” She narrowed her eyes and looked at Kyler. “So maybe he is in love with her.”

  “It’s been two weeks,” Kyler practically yelled. “I’m not in love with her.”

  “There is such a thing as love at first sight,” Wren said to Milt. “Don’t you think?”

  “Sure,” Milt said, sliding his eyes past Kyler in the most annoying way. “And Kyler’s been out with at least a dozen women in the past six months. I think he knows who he likes and who he doesn’t.”

  “I hate you guys,” Kyler said, rising to his feet. Berlin and Wren sat so close, he couldn’t get out from under the picnic table. “I’m not in love with her.” He’d said it three times now, and he doubted himself a little more each time. “I’m going to the cabin.”

  “No, you can’t,” Wren said, putting her hand on his forearm. “You’ve got two big jobs tomorrow, and you’re scheduled all weekend too. The Oscars’ wedding, remember?”

  He glared down at her. “Can I go next weekend then?”

  “I’ll check and let you know. And I won’t schedule anything new if you’re free.”

  “Sit down,” Milt said, scooping his potato salad onto Kyler’s plate. “We’ll stop teasing you.”

  Kyler sat, only because moping around his house alone was worse than enduring conversations with his family. He was so tired of being alone. Working alone. Eating breakfast and lunch and dinner alone.

  Is it too much to ask for a companion? he asked the Lord. You gave Adam Eve. Why can’t I have someone?

  He knew he didn’t just want someone.

  Dahlia Reid, he thought, closing his eyes and laying his head in his folded arms. I want Dahlia Reid, Lord. Is that too much to ask?

  The wind in the trees picked up, and Kyler wasn’t sure if that was his answer or not. If it was, he didn’t know what God was trying to tell him.

  When his sisters left, and only Milt remained at the table, Kyler asked, “How do you know when you’re in love?” He looked up at his oldest brother, his best friend since Brennan had left for California. “I mean, I thought I was in love with Katie, and she left me with a note on the front door. Maybe I’m just really bad at this.”

  Milt’s eyes softened. “You just know, Kyler. And you’re not bad at this.”

  “I’m thirty-five-years-old.”

  “So what? That’s not that old or anything.”

  “I’m tired of being alone.”

  “I know you are, bud. I know you are.” Milt looked genuinely sympathetic. “Get up to the cabin, and you’ll know what to do.”

  The days until Kyler could get to the cabin seemed impossibly long and also incredibly short. He made sure the Oscars had a beautiful yard for the wedding, and he got all the soccer fields done in time for the weekend games.

  Dahlia’s calls dwindled to zero, and her text frequency fell off too. Kyler wasn’t sure if he should push her or let her come to him. What he was sure of was that he couldn’t survive another weekend in the same town as her and not be with her. So, on Friday afternoon, he loaded up BB and his bike in the back of his truck and headed to the cabin.

  As he crested the hill and the cabin came into view, warring emotions hit him. A sense of relief that he’d arrived at his sanctuary came first, followed by a sharp sensation that something wasn’t right at the cabin.

  He stopped the truck before the tires crunched over the gravel parking area out front. The cabin looked the same. Square structure, with a big front porch that extended from corner to corner. The white door sat closed, with the two windows flanking the door showing nothing but the curtains.

  Maybe it was because the crime scene team had been here for days after Kyler left. Maybe they’d changed the aura of the place, moved little things that caught Kyler’s eye, like the hose coming off the front of the porch. That hadn’t been there before.

  He scanned the small yard, which only had a couple of trees, and saw a shoelace tied to a low branch on the tree closest to the forest on the west side. Where had that come from? Who had put it there?

  An image of Jose Garces flashed through his mind, but Kyler dismissed it. That man was long gone, as Gray, Dahlia, and every law enforcement agency in this county had been looking for him for months.

  BB yipped, and Kyler startled, his heart suddenly racing with adrenaline. The little dog could’ve been wondering why Kyler was just sitting in the truck. But he’d put his front paws up on the dashboard of the truck, his gaze trained on the cabin, and barked again.

  “What is it?” Kyler asked, straining to see what the corgi could.

  BB barked again and again, and Kyler pulled out his phone just as two people came around the west corner of the cabin. Disbelief tore through him that other people were at his property. Both women, they approached the truck at a steady clip.

  He glanced down at his phone as BB went nuts, barking and jumping from the seat to the dashboard and back again and again.

  Kyler opened Dahlia’s text thread when someone knocked on the driver’s side window. Five sharp bangs and Kyler turned to stare straight into the glittering, dangerous eyes of Jose Garces.

  The coyote.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Dahlia couldn’t bring herself to face Kyler in the flesh. She hated that she couldn’t, but she was still working out where she was with him, where she wanted to be, and what all that entailed.

  She went to church, but he didn’t show up and sit with his family. One of his sisters caught her eye and looked like she might say something, but Dahlia must’ve put off some serious please don’t vibes, because the blonde pressed her lips together and continued down the aisle, where she slid onto the Fuller family bench and bent close to one of Kyler’s brothers and whispered furiously.

  She liked how she felt at church, and when she’d asked God what her course of action should be regarding Kyler, her only answer had been patience.

  Patience for what, she didn’t know. And was she supposed to have more patience, and a new answer would come? Or was it Kyler who should be exercising his patience with her? As far as Dahlia could tell, he already was.

  She and Gray had been all over the mountains and hills, up the canyon, from the top of the bluff to the bottom, and they hadn’t turned up anything new about the coyote.

  “Maybe this will never be solved,” she told him on Thursday afternoon.

  He gave her a look that was part disbelief and part annoyance. “We solve all our cases.”

  “It’s been seven months. Almost eight.”

  “And he’s still moving people and drugs right through our county,” Gray said. “We’ll get him.”

  Dahlia showed up at work on Friday morning with two coffees and a dozen doughnuts. “Today’s the day,” she proclaimed to Gray, who accepted the coffee and asked, “Any sugar?”

  “I already doctored it up for you,” she said. “And I got you one of those double-fried apple croissants you like.”

  He grinned like a little boy who’d just been told he cou
ld skip his nightly bath and reached for the brown pastry box. The scent of maple and chocolate came from it as he lifted the lid and Dahlia decided she could enjoy the maple twist she liked so much. She’d been up since five and had put ten miles on the treadmill.

  “Today’s the day for what?” Gray asked after chomping through half the croissant and washing it down with his obscenely sugary coffee.

  “I don’t know,” Dahlia said. “But it has to be something.”

  Gray watched her as she woke her computer and reached for a new case that had come across her desk the day before. “What did you decide to do about Kyler?”

  She gave him a peek out of the corner of her eye. “Today might be the day I decide.”

  Half a smile tugged at Gray’s mouth. “He seemed like a good guy.” He finished the croissant. “And what about your parents?”

  “I haven’t spoken to them.”

  “You didn’t go to lunch on Sunday?” His eyebrows went straight up. “You didn’t mention that earlier.”

  “You didn’t ask, and I didn’t want to talk about it.” She flipped open the folder to find a gruesome picture of cattle inside. “Oh—okay. What’s this?” She closed the file and picked up her cinnamon and sugar twist, frosted with maple icing.

  “A rancher east of here and north of Vernal has had twenty-one cows killed in the past six weeks,” Gray said, pulling his own paperwork toward him. “At first, he thought it was coyotes or wolves, but none of his chickens have been hurt. None of his sheep. Only the cattle, and only on the weekends. He thinks his neighbor might be responsible somehow. We need to go see them both today.”

  “Let’s go.” She took her coffee to go, and answered Gray’s questions about her parents on the drive over to the ranch.

  “And I just told them I needed a week off and that I’d be back this weekend,” she finished.

  “And will you go?” he asked.

  She sighed and pushed her sunglasses further up her nose. “Yeah, probably. It’s not really my mother’s fault.”

  “You’re right,” Gray said. “It’s your father’s.” He gave her a pointed look, and Dahlia turned to look out the passenger window.

  “I don’t want to do that to Kyler,” she said softly.

  “Then don’t.”

  “You think I should quit?” Her reflection glinted back at her in the glass, and she wished she looked happier.

  “I think you should follow your heart,” Gray said, making the turn from paved road to dirt. “Before it’s too late. Take it from someone who knows what ‘too late’ feels like.”

  He moved on to something else after that, and Dahlia was grateful for him as a partner. She’d always liked Gray, and he’d been tough with her in just the way she needed when she’d started as his partner. It was nice to be able to talk about real life with him too, because he understood the situation perfectly, when no one else could.

  Hours later, after both interviews had been completed, Dahlia drove the cruiser back toward Beaverton. The turn-off for the canyon road, where Kyler’s cabin was, approached, and she couldn’t help feeling like she should drive up there. The craving to see Kyler, hear his voice, yanked through her, making her fingers tighten on the steering wheel.

  After she pulled into the parking lot and Gray had gone back inside, Dahlia stayed in the car. It was almost the weekend. Maybe she and Kyler could go to dinner that night. Spend Saturday and Sunday together, hiking, fishing, anything.

  She pulled out her phone to call him, something she’d stopped doing when it became too hard to think of something to tell him besides “I don’t know.”

  Follow your heart.

  Before it’s too late.

  Before she could tap or swipe, a text came in. A text from Kyler.

  He

  “He?” Dahlia read out loud. “What does that mean?” Her heart thrashed in her chest, and she jumped from the car and practically sprinted into the office. “Gray, I need you.”

  She waved her phone as she wound through the maze of desks to Gray’s, where he’d selected two more doughnuts and was working through them while he wrote reports on the interviews they’d done.

  “Look.”

  He studied the phone. “He?” He glanced up at Dahlia. “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know.” She worried her bottom lip between her teeth. “And he hasn’t sent anything else.”

  “Maybe it’s the beginning of another word,” he said.

  “Hey,” Dahlia said. “He’s, heard, heading….” She sifted through her mind, searching for words that Kyler would use to start a text that began with he.

  “Hello,” Gray added.

  Their eyes met, and they said in unison, “Help.”

  Dahlia’s pulse bumped in her neck, banged against her breastbone. “That’s it.”

  “Dahlia—”

  “Gray, I can feel it.” She stepped around him to her desk and snatched her purse. “I’m following my heart on this one.”

  “I’m coming,” he said.

  “It’s not necessary.” She strode past him and toward the door.

  “Of course it’s not. I’m coming anyway.” Gray darted in front of her and held the door so she could dash through it. “I’ll drive.”

  “Civilians,” she said. “We have to be civilians.”

  He glanced at her, his boots eating the distance to his sedan quickly. “Why?”

  “If he’s in trouble….” She shook her head and lifted her phone to her ear, the number she’d been searching for finally found and dialed. “Having two detectives show up won’t be helpful.”

  “He could just be hurt,” he said. “Maybe something with a lawn mower—”

  Dahlia held up her hand to silence him as a woman answered the call with, “Jack of All Trades, this is Wren. How can I help you?”

  “Wren, hi,” Dahlia said, her voice definitely slipping into her no-nonsense detective tone. “It’s Dahlia Reid. I just got a text from Kyler and I’m worried about him. Where can I find him?”

  “What kind of text?”

  “Is he out on a job?” Dahlia asked, ignoring his sister’s question.

  “No,” Wren said, the panic evident in just those two letters. “He went up to the cabin this afternoon. He’ll be there all weekend.”

  “The cabin,” she said to Gray. “Thank you, Wren. I’ll call you soon.” She hung up, her nerves wringing themselves into knots. “He’s at the cabin,” she repeated though Gray had obviously heard her and turned toward the road that would take them there.

  “Maybe he was just going to invite you to come up and see him,” Gray said.

  “Maybe.” But they hadn’t texted in a few days now. Dahlia couldn’t shake the feeling that the he was only the first half of help. She wouldn’t rest until she knew for certain.

  Please keep him safe, she prayed.

  “We’ve been up there so much,” she said. “What did we miss?”

  “We didn’t miss anything,” Gray said. We’ve been to every dwelling, walked every inch of the forests.”

  “Hurry anyway,” Dahlia said, her eyes scanning everything as Gray pressed a little harder on the accelerator.

  The roof of the cabin came into view first and Gray eased up the hill. “Dahlia,” he said, his voice set high on danger.

  “That’s Kyler’s truck,” she whispered. “Stop here.”

  Gray pulled over about two hundred yards from the cabin. “He didn’t pull all the way onto the gravel,” he noted.

  “That’s odd.” Dahlia scanned the surroundings, the cabin, searching searching searching for anything out of the ordinary. “Why didn’t he pull all the way up?”

  “What’s on the ground there by the truck? Driver’s side.”

  Dahlia sucked in a breath. “That’s BB, his dog.” She met Gray’s eye for half a second before both of them went back to maintaining a proper vigil. “Something’s definitely wrong. We need to call it in. Get people up here.”

  Movement
in the window to the right of the front door of the cabin had Dahlia ducking. “Down,” she hissed and Gray joined her. “Right front window. Movement. Curtain movement.”

  Gray started tapping the screen of his phone, sending messages.

  The urge to check again, see what was going on, almost drove Dahlia to the point of insanity. Gray said, “They’re forty minutes out.”

  Dahlia thought that might as well be forty days and forty nights. How long ago had Kyler’s text come in? She checked her own phone and quickly calculated the math. Thirty-nine minutes. They’d really been speeding to get there that fast.

  Please let him be okay, she thought. Give him strength and help him say the right things.

  “All right,” Gray said, peeking up. “I don’t see anything. How do you want to play this?”

  “Lost hikers?”

  “In our badges and police boots?”

  “I could go in alone,” Dahlia said, unleashing her hair from its customary work ponytail. She shook it so the curls could loosen up. She unpinned her badge and set it on the dashboard. “Do you have a backpack?”

  “Maybe in the back storage bin.” Gray frowned. “I’m not thrilled about you going in alone.”

  “You look too much like a cop,” she said. “I’ll be fine.” She pulled a tube of lip gloss out of her purse and slicked some on. Then she eased open the door, her eyes on the house the whole time. A long metal storage compartment ran along the truck, right behind the cab. She opened it and hit the jackpot. Not only did a backpack sit there, but a red flannel shirt she quickly tied around her waist, as well as a wadded up gray T-shirt with the Ruby’s Roost logo on the chest. She crouched as she unbuttoned her tan detective shirt and slipped the T-shirt over her head. Even though she couldn’t do anything about the black police boots, with the backpack in place, she might be able to pass for someone who’d stumbled upon the cabin while wandering the hills.