Harlequin Intrigue April 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Carol Ericson

  Resignation filtered through the slight ringing in his ears. He hadn’t meant for the admission to slip out, but Remi was far too good of an investigator for him to hope she’d let this go. He took a step forward, then another, his gaze level with hers. “I want you, Remi. I’ve wanted you for a long time, and when that son of a bitch pointed his weapon at me, I knew not even a bullet was going to stop me from getting to you. Nothing would. You walked into my life because you were meant to be there, and I’m not ready to let you go.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A quick hard thump in her chest was the only evidence she hadn’t dreamed the conversation between her and Dylan. He wanted her. No hesitation. No mind games. Every aspect she’d fantasized about having after her entire family had been ripped from her in the flash of a faulty electrical outlet stood in front of her. But the sinking sensation of doubt kept her from accepting it as truth. No matter how many times she’d tried to convince herself otherwise, she couldn’t change the fact Dylan Cove was tied to a past she’d tried to forget, a past she’d run from.

  A combination of shame, guilt and the hefty burden of responsibility flooded through her. Dozens of family members had been counting on her to find the man who’d killed their loved ones. She’d let them all down. The people of New Castle County had made certain she’d paid the price for it, but the only way she’d been able to lead the Oregon division of US Marshals was to pretend losing her position as New Castle’s sheriff hadn’t affected her. Pretend that losing the job that was supposed to help her protect the people she’d served—to make up for not being able to protect her family—hadn’t nearly killed her.

  And Dylan... She cleared her throat. Dylan was a clear reminder she hadn’t been good enough, that she might never be good enough. He hadn’t realized it yet, but just as the citizens of New Castle had learned, it was only a matter of time before she disappointed him, too.

  Remi took a deep breath, stretching the stitches in her side. “I need to check in with the ME concerning Howe’s autopsy. With any luck, there’s something there that might be able to tie us to which of his victims killed him.”

  Acceptance bled into the lines around his eyes, and her heart squeezed inside her chest. He wasn’t going to push her on this. His tongue darted between his lips, resurrecting a flare of awareness in her lower abdominals. Ridges and valleys flexed across his midsection as he searched the bedroom floor. “I’ll get dressed and get us some coffee. I can start going through the family background checks again as soon as I’m caffeinated.”

  “Good idea.” Remi turned, heading for the bedroom door. She had to focus on the case, had to stop a killer from exacting his revenge.

  “You can’t run forever, Sheriff,” he said, and she leaned her weight against the closed bathroom door, hand on the knob. “Sooner or later, you’re going to realize you deserve to move on from what happened in Delaware, and when you do, I’ll be there. Waiting.”

  She turned the doorknob and fell inside the modern, renovated bathroom. Instant exhaustion claimed the muscles in her legs. Remi closed the door behind her before she sank to the cold penny tile. A long vanity with white cabinetry and matching granite led to a large glass shower at the other end of the room.

  The subtle hint of Dylan’s aftershave tickled the back of her throat as she begged the last remnants of energy in her body to be enough to get her across the tile, but he’d been right. There was always a point where her body wouldn’t play by her rules anymore. She’d been able to push herself this long, but time had finally run out. She couldn’t go any farther. She’d lost too much blood, used too much adrenaline and had hit her head too hard. She had nothing left to give to this case or to Dylan. She battled to keep her eyes open, barely aware of the brush of cool air along her legs.

  She heard footsteps, then rushing water, but she couldn’t open her eyes. Strong, familiar arms threaded under the backs of her knees and lifted her against a wall of bare muscle.

  “I’ve got you, Sheriff.” His voice soothed the aches, the pain, the fear. Dylan. “You are the most frustrating woman I’ve ever met in my life, but no matter how many times you deny there’s more between us than a professional relationship, I know the truth. I can feel it, and I know you do, too. Otherwise, I think you would’ve already tried to shoot me for coming in here.”

  Cold raced along the bottoms of her feet as he righted her and tightened his grip around her waist to hold her against him. Tearing fabric reached her ears before warm steam caressed her skin. He’d ripped her shirt from her body, finishing the job he’d started last night. Her running shorts pooled at her ankles, and he maneuvered her beneath the warm shower spray.

  “Come on, Remi. Hold on to me.” He hauled her arms over his shoulders, not letting her go for a second.

  She’d been too tired, too...broken to make it on her own, but he’d gotten her the rest of the way. Dylan slid his arms around her, her head resting against his shoulder. Prickling heat pounded into her back. He trailed casual circles between her shoulder blades, and she summoned the energy to cling to him as much as she could. She wouldn’t have made it out of that damn cave without him, wouldn’t have been able to work this case without him by her side. He’d believed her when she’d said she hadn’t killed Del Howe, and that counted for more than she could ever admit. The isolated, critical deputy trusted her. He made an effort with her. He cared about her. And she... Damn it. She’d started falling for him.

  Remi forced her eyes open, aware of the material scratching the skin of her thighs. “You’re wearing jeans.”

  “I was getting dressed when I realized you hadn’t turned on the water to the shower.” The rich timbre of his voice, combined with the circles he pressed into her back, worked to clear the exhausted haze from her head. “My instincts were right. You need me. I hope you don’t drive when you’re this tired.”

  “I hope you don’t...” The sharp scent of citrus dove into her lungs before soft strokes and bubbles tickled the sensitive skin down her spine. “I don’t remember what I was going to say.”

  “You’re delirious and on the verge of another collapse,” he said.

  She closed her eyes, indulging in the sound of his laughter. Tough calluses caught on her skin as Dylan ran the bodywash the length of her arms, across her chest and down the other side. In minutes, he’d washed away the blood, dirt and post sex residue, handling her as though she were made of glass. Leaving her to stand on her own, he peeled the gauze from her side and surveyed the damage underneath. “We need to get your wound cleaned up and put you into bed. I’ll keep working the case while you rest.”

  “You...deserve better.” She hadn’t meant to say the words, but she’d never been more confident of anything in her life. Even now, as a killer closed in around them, he was taking the time to care for her. To make sure she got through the next day, the next hour, the next minute. He’d lost as much as she had when she’d been fired from the sheriff’s department, but he’d never blamed her. Not once. “You were the best...investigator I’d worked with in Delaware. That’s why...when you applied to the marshals, I made sure you ended up in Oregon. I told all the division heads you were mine. I told them they had to turn you down for the open positions in their offices, but now I know I’m never going to be...good enough for you.”

  “You made sure I didn’t get any of those jobs so I would have to come to Oregon?” Dylan dipped his chin to his chest. His hands hesitated above her ankles; his touch was so light, she barely felt it.

  She latched onto his shoulders for balance, and a sharp sense of clarity rippled through her, but it was too late. The truth settled between them as he straightened, and there was nothing she could do to take it back, to make what she’d done okay. Remi couldn’t read his expression, and a knot of fear coiled deep in her belly. She tried to shake the exhaustion, but it was only a matter of time before she collapsed. “Dylan, I’m sorry. I... I didn’t me
an—”

  “Didn’t mean to admit you like me more than you’ve let on?” He hung the loofa from the shower nozzle and twisted the water off. Echoes of dripping water attacked the nerves lining her skin with each splash from the showerhead. He reached for one of the soft, white robes hanging on the wall beside the shower and wrapped it around her, clenching the collar around her neck. “You’ve been holding out on me, Sheriff.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that. She threaded her arms into the sleeves and let him loosely secure the tie at her waist. Within minutes, cool air brushed against her collarbone as he led her back to the bedroom they’d ended up in for the night, but it did nothing to douse the newfound admiration swirling through her.

  She followed his lead and fell back on the bed, her eyes heavier than ever before. Modern angles sloped from the ceiling above, casting shadows across his handsome face. She framed one side of his jaw, stubble prickling her warm skin. Her hand fell back to her chest. “You’re not angry... I might’ve limited your career opportunities?”

  “To be honest, I’m a little surprised you let it slip at all, even as tired as you are.” Leaning over her, Dylan pressed a light kiss to her mouth and pulled back. Of all the times her body had shut down, she’d made sure no one would be there to take advantage of her at her lowest, but she trusted him. “I know exactly where I want to be, Remi, and right now, that’s with you.”

  * * *

  ANOTHER USELESS LEAD.

  “Damn it.” Dylan tossed the file across the kitchen table and rubbed at his eyes. He’d gone through every family member, coworker, friend, former lover and acquaintance on file for each of the New Castle Killer’s victims. No evidence these people had any clue one of their loved ones had survived. No large debts or sudden absences from work. It’d take a warrant to get phone records and data from their personal computers, but his instincts said if one of Del Howe’s victims had survived and become a killer, their family and friends had no idea.

  If it hadn’t been for the fact Remi had noted the scars on her attacker’s hand, Dylan would’ve doubled down on the involvement of their first suspect. Sergeant Daniel Nguyen still had the means and the motive, despite his shift schedule and the fact he’d been in the interrogation room when Remi had been abducted confirmed he wasn’t the killer they were looking for. As of right now, the Gresham PD officer was only guilty of planning to kill Del Howe. The man who’d given the New Castle Killer a taste of his own medicine was still out there.

  “Good...morning?” Remi headed for the coffee maker, no signs of exhaustion in her movements, and a tightness seized the space around his heart. Long-sleeved shirt, cargo pants, weapon holstered, hair pulled away from her face. Damn, the woman bounced back like no one he’d known. She glanced at the clock on the microwave as she reached for a mug. “Not morning. Good afternoon.”

  “You don’t look like you’re going to pass out anymore.” He pressed his forearms onto the kitchen table to stay focused on the case files in front of him and not on the way the lean muscles of her arms flexed as she poured herself a cup of coffee. “That’s an improvement.”

  “Tell anyone what happened, and I’ll do more to you than wax that leg while you’re asleep. And thank you.” Silence settled between them as appreciation brightened her eyes, and Dylan nodded. She riffled through the pantry until she found a box of granola bars and crossed the kitchen with her bounty in hand. Her smile punched him straight in the gut. Taking her seat, she quickly discarded the wrapper around her on-the-go meal and studied the papers spread across the table’s surface. “How far have you gotten with the family background checks?”

  “Just finished. There’s nothing here.” He leaned back in his chair, memorizing the way her eyes darted across the files in rapid succession as though she only needed a split second to review the text. He nodded at the murder board to his left. “If our killer is one of these men, as we suspect, he’s doing a damn fine job of making sure we don’t find him.”

  Her voice hollowed, her gaze distant. “The man in that cave told me Del Howe had awakened something inside him the day he was attacked. Something like the New Castle Killer had showed him who he really was. Our suspect hadn’t ever killed before he set his sights on the investigating team working the case, but now he can’t seem to stop. Even if he manages to kill us, I don’t think he’ll ever be finished. He’s come too far to stop now.” She swallowed a chunk of her granola bar and tossed the rest onto the table, seemingly losing her appetite. “Have you checked hospital records for the type of injuries Howe’s victims sustained?”

  “I ran the parameters through the system, but there were no hits on any patients suffering knife wounds around the time our victims were reported missing. Nothing came up under any of their names, either. Our guy might never have visited a hospital after escaping his captor, or—”

  “Or he lied about how he sustained the injuries and gave a false name when he checked in.” Remi shuffled through the reports, iridescent blue eyes lighter than he’d seen in days. Her split lip wasn’t as swollen, the bruising already turning blue on her jaw. She flipped through page after page of background information he’d gathered. “Makes sense. If he was scared Howe would come for him again to finish what he started, the victim would’ve done anything to make sure the New Castle Killer couldn’t locate him.”

  “Victim implies innocence.” Dylan pushed back his chair and stretched the stiffness from his neck and shoulders. The sting of tape pulling at the fine hairs across his side brought total awareness to the pain he’d ignored the past six hours while Remi had slept. “Whoever stabbed you and put a bullet in my side has killed twenty-six people that we know of. Not sure we should keep calling him a victim.”

  “Then I vote we call them Killer One and Killer Two to keep things from getting confusing.” Her wide smile pierced straight through the lethargy closing in. She set the files down and stared at them. “There are so many moving pieces to this case. Some of which we can’t even see yet. Is there any mac and cheese left over from the other night?”

  “Fridge.” Dylan set his palms onto the edge of the table. They were still waiting for ballistics to match the bullet from her abductor’s gun to other crimes and to see if the forensics lab could pull prints from Remi’s phone. But Dylan didn’t have much hope. Their suspect had ensured none of the murders could forensically be connected to one another or to him. He was methodical, calculated and more dangerous than any fugitive he’d ever chased. “Why did you want me in Oregon?”

  Remi pulled the large container with their unfinished meal from the depths of the fridge and froze for the briefest of moments. “I was hoping me telling you what I’d done was part of a bad dream. Then I remembered I go out of my way to make sure I don’t have dreams.”

  She set the container on the counter and made quick work of prying the lid free. “I investigated you before I hired you to work the New Castle case with the department. I wanted to make sure nothing could come back and bite me in the ass down the line. One of your past cases, the disappearance of a four-year-old boy, was what made my decision for me. The family was unloading groceries. When they turned back around, the boy had disappeared off their driveway. No one could find him, not even local police, so his parents hired you.”

  He remembered the case, one of his first, but while he’d known she’d had to pitch his coming on the case to the people of New Castle County, he hadn’t realized she’d looked that far back into his career.

  “The police I questioned said you were out in the field every day and late into the night, looking for him. Nearby parks, neighborhood pools, the fields around his house. When that wasn’t enough, you re-interviewed everyone the cops had taken statements from until you realized he hadn’t left his neighborhood at all.”

  She scooped a spoonful of cold mac and cheese into her mouth and turned stark blue eyes onto him. “One of the neighbors had recently lost her gr
andson, about the same age as the boy you were looking for, and she was suffering from Alzheimer’s. She’d taken him home, thinking he was her grandson come to visit her. No one else had even considered the possibility. That’s when I knew I wanted you working the case. You were the kind of investigator who wouldn’t stop looking until you’d recovered the victims or brought down the killer, no matter how many obstacles got in your way. So when I lost my job as sheriff, and I came to work for the marshals...you were my first thought. You’re always my first thought.”

  He didn’t know what to say to that, what to think.

  Her phone vibrated on the surface of the island, and she reached for it. Sliding her thumb across the screen, Remi let the softness leave her voice as she answered. “Tell me you have something good, Foster.”

  Dylan turned back to the paperwork spread across the kitchen table. There had to be something there—anything—that would lead them to the man who’d killed twenty-six people over the past two years and abducted Remi straight from the Gresham PD station. Surveillance footage hadn’t done them a damn bit of good. The perp had been wearing a ski mask.

  The men the New Castle Killer murdered weren’t professionals. Tony Rasmussen had worked for his father’s printing shop before his body had turned up in an alley behind his apartment building. He wasn’t their killer. Brett Smith had been studying programming to become a video game designer, and although his body hadn’t been recovered, there’d been too much blood left at the scene for the medical examiner to rule anything but murder.

  As for Tad Marrow, the veterinarian’s assistant had been loved by everyone he’d come into contact with and even went as far as to volunteer at the local homeless shelter. Law enforcement had looked for his remains for two months before the ME had officially declared the victim dead, but once again, the amount of blood... Dylan recalled the crime scene photos. No one could’ve survived that attack, but neither of their remaining suspects had the skills or the psychological profile of a serial killer hiding the fact he was actually alive all this time. “Except he’d said the New Castle Killer had awakened something in him that day.”