Love Under Two Detectives

by Cara Covington

  I think there’s always family in the house, one way or another since most of the staff here are named Benedict.

  “Maybe.” Anthony didn’t say another word in response to Toby’s doubt. He led the way to the back, where he saw an assemblage of Benedicts, Kendalls, and even some Jessops. Maybe he needed to take a minute and settle down. Maybe it really had been nothing. Except in the months he’d been getting to know the man, Toby had never shown himself to be jumpy.

  Anthony waited until Toby slid in on the backbench, and Mary got in beside him. Then he looked over and met Adam Kendall’s gaze.

  “What happened?” Adam Kendall looked exactly like what he was—a good cop who’d looked at another good cop and gotten a psychic whiff of …something.

  “Toby thought someone was watching us in the parking lot, and I did, too, for a moment, but we might have been mistaken.” Mary let those words roll of her tongue, and in that moment, Anthony realized how incredibly perceptive Mary Kendall really was.

  She’d agreed with Toby when he’d second-guessed himself but hadn’t believed what she’d said, not one bit. Mary had felt someone watching, and she said just exactly the right words in exactly the right way to pique Adam’s interest.

  “Have a seat.” Adam nodded to Anthony. “Marc and I are going out the back to stretch our legs. And while we’re out there, we’ll just have a little look around.”

  Anthony knew that Marc Jessop had spent some years working for one of the government’s three-letter agencies. Marc flashed a quick grin. Clearly this was something the two men—cousins and likely friends since birth—had done before.

  Normally, Anthony would have insisted on going along. In this instance, he ceded the moment to the official lawman at hand. He took his seat, picked up Mary’s hand, and kissed it.

  “You think this is a sleepy little town until you get here,” Toby said. “And then you find out it’s not.” He huffed out a breath. “Should I get ready an apology for taking everyone down a rabbit hole for when Adam and Marc get back?”

  “Big brother won’t expect one, even if it does prove to have been rabbit hole,” Jake Kendall said.

  “Boy howdy, Adam takes his job seriously.” Ginny Kendall nodded. “And I don’t think anyone would have it any other way.”

  “Well, except for that one time.” Matt Benedict maneuvered his wife, Kelsey just a bit closer. Anthony didn’t see Steven, so he figured Kelsey’s other husband, Matt’s brother Steven, was at home with the kids.

  He thought that single date nights, where one dad stayed back, was a hell of a good idea. He put his attention on Matt, because he wasn’t certain which time Adam’s deputy been referring to.

  “Which time was that?” Toby asked.

  “That time he did a Tarzan through a plate glass window to rescue a kidnapped Chloe Rhodes and ended up getting rescued himself by Chloe, when she shot her captor as he was about to shoot Adam.”

  “I don’t even want to think about that time,” Ginny said. And she shivered for good measure.

  Jake put his arm around his wife and gave her a hug.

  “That sounds like a story I have to hear,” Mary said.

  “It was what you might call a watershed moment,” Jake said. “One of those moments you think is going to unfold one way and mean one thing, and then it turns out to be more far-reaching than you ever could have imagined.”

  Anthony reached for a copy of the menu that was on the table and handed it to Mary. He split his attention, keeping it half on his woman and half on the back door.

  Bailey Benedict arrived and set glasses down, including one each where Marc and Adam had been sitting. Anthony had quickly perused the menu and knew what he wanted, so he was ready to give his order when she turned her attention to him after taking Mary’s and Toby’s requests.

  Bailey smiled, nodded, and then gave a little squeak when her husband, Chance, slipped his arms around her from behind.

  Once they’d properly greeted their wife, along with giving her their orders, Chance and Logan sat facing them, one table to the left. They looked around then turned to Jake.

  “Where’d the two alphas go? Another recon mission?”

  Jake grinned and then looked over at Toby. “See? No apologies will be needed.”

  Anthony was at the point of wondering if he should go out himself and look around. Nearly twenty minutes had passed since Adam and Marc Jessop had headed outside. Neither Jeremy and April, both of whom belonged to Marc, nor Jake and Ginny showed any signs of concern.

  Fortunately, their food arrived with a side order of a possible update in the form of Adam and Marc.

  “It’s a nice night out,” Adam said. The man looked energized, and Anthony realized why with his next sentence.

  “Your voyeur drives a late model Ford, but we couldn’t see the plate.” Adam rubbed his hands together and then grinned. “But we have no doubt whatsoever that he or she was there and watching you. Now as to who he or she is, what they want, we have no idea at this moment. Tomorrow I’ll check the security camera feed, and then we’ll see.”

  “The only thing we do know for certain is you had a stowaway.” Marcus set a somewhat dusty-looking metal disc on the table in front of them.

  “Stowaway?” Mary asked.

  Their woman had no idea what the device was, but Anthony did. And so did Toby.

  “Fuck me, a tracking device?” Toby sounded disgusted and mad.

  “And not a very long range one,” Marcus said. “It’s been there for a while I’d say, based on the dust. Any idea where you could have picked it up?”

  “Since we came back from Waco the other night with our bags, we’ve not been out of the immediate vicinity.” Anthony looked over at Adam. “Have there been out-of-towners prowling about lately?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. Was the car left unattended during the time you were in Waco?” Adam asked.

  “Yes,” Toby said. “We stopped at both our apartments, and we all went inside both times.”

  “Either stop would have been enough time for someone to slip that little thing onto the car.” Anthony looked around the table, and everyone there showed expressions of interest. He could understand why. There was a mystery to be solved. He looked over at Mary, expecting to see the expression of an investigator at work.

  And saw instead…. guilt. And it wasn’t just Mary looking guilty, either, because he saw a similar expression on Toby’s face.

  “Do either of you care to shed some light on this little mystery?” Adam had apparently come to the same conclusion Anthony had once he’d looked at them, too. One more surprise—or not—was the way that Mary and Toby looked at each other.

  Whatever was going on, they each held a secret. Anthony recalled the other night, when they were beginning to get to know each other, that they’d each more or less hinted at something but had refused to elaborate.

  “Well,” Mary exhaled. “I might have neglected to um…make you aware of one little thing that happened in New York before I arrived here.” She gave Adam an innocent grin, one that he plainly wasn’t buying.

  “Toby?” Adam could put steel in his voice when he needed to. Anthony admired a man who could go from genial good ’ole boy to hard-edged cop in a heartbeat like that.

  Toby exhaled as well. “Yeah, well, there is something you probably need to know.”

  “Tomorrow morning. My office at nine a.m. And you both better tell me everything.”

  “Damn it.” Mary looked like she really wasn’t looking forward to the moment. And then she met his gaze and must have understood that confessing whatever it was to Adam wasn’t the moment she should be nervous about right then.

  Before he accompanied them to the sheriff’s office the next day, he wanted the whole story from them both. And he’d have that as soon as they got home tonight.

  Chapter Nine

  Mary sighed then looked from Anthony to Toby. Toby had already flipped a coin, and because he’d won that toss, he’d cho
sen to spill his guts second.

  Then she met Anthony’s gaze and knew that while he might be a little bit pissed at the moment—or maybe a lot pissed—he was more worried than mad.

  She inhaled deeply and began. “All right. So, about a year ago, I started receiving emails from a fan—emails that started out normal. Despite having some success as an author, I’m still trying to build my brand. My books are available in e-book format first, and I’ve discovered that e-book readers are different than the fiction readers of my mother’s generation. My readers expect me to answer their emails, and so I do.” She let her mind wander to the many readers who’d reached out to her over the last few years. She really considered them the very best part of the career she’d chosen—even better than the money. “It’s usually one of the best parts of my day, really. I don’t pretend that anything I write has any great literary merit or anything like that. But I do entertain people, and sometimes, I create characters that actually touch something in a reader.” Both of her men were paying very close attention to her. “It’s why I write, to make that connection. Life can be lonely for a lot of people.”

  She wasn’t one to wax philosophical, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t aware of certain nuances. There was more to writing—even writing mysteries—than just putting together a story.

  “So, you started to receive emails from someone…”

  Anthony had brought her back to the conversation. Such a cop thing to do. It almost felt as if she was being questioned by a cop.

  Well, duh, you’re being questioned by two of them.

  “Yes, and someone I’d never heard from before. I was pretty certain this was a man. He signed his emails ‘T. Northcliffe.’ And the phrasing he used was…masculine. I can’t define it any better than that.”

  “We’ll say that your experience has taught you to differentiate gender based on…dialogue.”

  Toby’s summation hit it, spot-on.

  “Yes. And then he began to be critical of my stories in an eerie way. He wrote as if the characters were real. He got angry with me when my heroine, Skye Falcon, became romantically involved with Eddie Coulter, who’s a cop on the force. He told me that I had turned her into a whore. He told me Skye was too noble to stoop to that level. That I’d better break them up, or he’d do it for me.”

  “Fuck. I hope you reported that asshole to the police.” Anthony’s expression was fierce.

  “Oh, I did. They didn’t take me seriously at first. But in the end, they had no choice.” She licked her lips and looked from Toby to Anthony. She decided not to give them chapter and verse about the months-long situation. Bottom line it, because they’re going to freak out either way.

  It would be just like ripping a bandage off. So she lined up her words and let ’em rip. “He broke into my apartment and tried to kill me. I’m not without some skills—I do have a black belt in karate—but he was fighting like a madman, which, I suppose, he was. What saved me was that award—” She nodded toward the mantle. “It’s metal and a bit heavy, and I was able to reach it off the end table and smash the son of a bitch on the head with it.” She left out the part about doing it while his hands were around her neck, choking the life out of her.

  Then she realized her right hand had gone up to her neck and was rubbing it.

  “Fuck it all to hell.”

  “Son of a fucking bitch.”

  Mary blinked, and the next thing she knew she was being held in Anthony’s arms, with Toby pressed close to her on the sofa, bracing her back. Both men were trembling, and she could swear she actually felt the rage burning in them both.

  “Where is that bastard now?” Anthony’s tone, low and deadly, sent a shiver through her.

  “Locked away in Upstate New York.” She didn’t want to talk anymore. She just wanted to soak in this…this comfort. This knowing that these men had been brought to fury on her behalf.

  No one had offered her this sort of…solace. The cops had come, and one of them, Detective Michaels, had felt guilty as hell. He’d told her so, and he’d apologized that they hadn’t taken her complaints more seriously. But still.

  How could I have known I would need this?

  Anthony eased his hold, and Toby turned her into his arms. She laid her head on his chest and felt Anthony’s hand stroking her back. She felt comforted and cherished and safe.

  “Aunt Samantha and Grandma Kate know. They told me on Sunday that they knew. They wanted me to tell Adam, and I was going to on Monday, I really was…but then…”

  “You really didn’t want to in the first place, and then you got distracted by the curve balls life threw us at the meeting. Why were you reluctant to confide in Adam?” Anthony used a finger to lift her chin so she could see his eyes. “You have to know he’s nothing like those asshole cops in New York.”

  Mary hadn’t been able to answer that with any clarity, even to herself. But now, surrounded by the strength and integrity of these men, with her New York blinders removed, she knew the answer. And damned if feral memory hadn’t reared its ugly head by pulling out garbage from the bygone days when women were chattel and men used their own feminine emotions to control them. “Because, at the core, I feel as if everything that happened was my fault. If I hadn’t pestered the cops with questions and, yes, made a few observations about current cases that might have brought about ‘aha’ moments and closure, they’d maybe have taken me more seriously when I reported the guy. And if I hadn’t written the damn books in the first place, then Northcliff would never have fixated on me!”

  They stared at her, those two studly and imminently logical men—and their expressions changed slightly. Tenderness. Understanding. Compassion. They didn’t berate her for saying something that really was stupid, let alone feeling it. They just moved in closer so that she was more securely surrounded by them.

  “My cousins Ian and Ken each have a sister, but I’ve never had one. The only female I grew up knowing well was my mom.” Toby placed a kiss on her forehead. “Nothing upset me more than when my mom was upset. So over the years, she would explain the female mind-set to me.” He chuckled. “I still recall, all these years later, when I asked her why she felt guilty for something that was not her fault, the opening lines of her explanation.”

  Safe within the arms of both men, she looked up at Toby. “What were they?”

  Toby nodded. “To quote my mother verbatim, ‘In the year 325, a bunch of bull-headed men got together in a place called Nicaea to set down the laws of the newly forming Christian Church and to answer that burning question of the day—were women human or beasts? From that time to this, men have been manipulating women, and our inheritance from those times is an abundance of guilt that’s really not our own but that we can’t seem to let go.’” Toby gave her a grin. “She did say she wasn’t one hundred percent certain if that story was true or not, but she said it felt right.”

  “Your mother is very wise,” Mary said. “And yeah, I know logically that what came out of my mouth a few moments ago is stupid, but…”

  “Not stupid. Never that. You voiced your feelings, and those, cupcake, are always real and valid.” Anthony kissed the top of her head. “So, this Northcliffe bastard is behind bars?”

  Mary nodded. “He’s in a mental health facility. The prosecutor told me he wouldn’t be getting out for a very long time. That he has to meet certain ‘benchmarks’ of recovery to be eligible for release.” Mary sighed. “He also told me he doubted very much that Northcliff would ever meet those benchmarks.”

  “And that’s why you looked so guilty tonight,” Toby said. “Because there was something you hadn’t told Adam about, and that was weighing on you. You don’t actually believe that Northcliffe is our stalker.”

  “No, I don’t. Does that leave you as the winner of this little competition?” Mary asked.

  Anthony didn’t wait for an answer. “Start talking, partner. And don’t leave out any of the details.”

  * * * *

  This was a
ctually the first time Toby had ever been inside Lusty’s sheriff’s office. While Adam brewed some coffee, Toby had a look around. He walked down the short corridor that led to the jail cell, bathroom, kitchen—and a room that was filled with a computer server and some other equipment that he didn’t immediately recognize. It sure as hell looked high tech, and it was in a room that had clearly been designed for it—complete with a plate-glass window.

  “I’ll tell you about that a bit later. After I get my own curiosity satisfied.”

  Back in the main office, he sat in a fairly comfortable chair, holding Mary’s hand as she went through, in more detail than the night before, the case of her stalker-slash-home invader-slash would-be murderer. Anthony sat on her other side and also held her hand. Toby sensed that his woman felt a lot less stressed telling this tale than she had the night before. He also believed that his presence, his attention to her, helped.

  For his part, although he tensed, Adam kept his responses polite and professional. His insistence on ensuring he had the names of the officers to whom she first reported the problem spelled correctly told Toby that very likely, some correspondence between the sheriff and the NYPD would be on the immediate horizon.

  “I wish you’d come to me sooner, but I understand why you didn’t. I’ll just verify Thorncliffe’s status and have a little chat with the commissioner of the NYPD.”

  Mary blinked. “You know the police commissioner?”

  “Not personally. But Grandma Kate does, and so do the parents.” He grinned. “We’ll see what we can do about kicking a little New York cop ass. No offense, of course.”

  Mary grinned. “Kick away.” He nodded once and then turned his gaze on Toby. “Lieutenant?”

  Toby looked over at Anthony, who nodded. Despite the fact that Adam was his cousin, Anthony did know the man better, because most of his interaction over the years had been with the sheriff of Lusty and not a member of his own family. Anthony had said he was fully confident Adam would understand the entire situation.