Harlequin Intrigue April 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Carol Ericson

  In that moment it hit him. He was worried about her safety. He was worried about her.

  Recognizing where the panic was coming from created a different kind of worry, but he’d pushed it aside and spent the rest of the day focusing on the victims.

  Jax was exhausted. So was Patches, who’d joined him at the scene as soon as it was clear enough to be safe. The two of them had talked to as many victims as possible. They’d also spent time comforting the Desparre officers, who had never seen anything like this.

  For all of his exhaustion, the people around him were even more tired. Ben and Anderson coming in with their FBI team had taken the weight of the investigation off the Desparre PD, but it hadn’t taken away the responsibility.

  He could see it as he eyed Keara from his peripheral vision, trudging beside him, leaving the bomb site. There was soot smeared across her forehead, someone else’s blood on her arms and a furious determination on her face.

  As she glanced back at the scene, barely visible in the moonlight, he told her, “There’s nothing else you can do there tonight.”

  Walking between them, Patches nudged Keara with her nose, always sensitive to people’s needs.

  Keara smiled fondly down at his dog, petting her head as she refocused on their destination: the police station.

  Anderson jogged up beside them, shivering even with his FBI jacket zipped all the way up. The agent had come from Los Angeles and even after being in Alaska longer than Jax, he still hadn’t acclimated. His normally perfect hair was sticking up in all directions and there were dark craters under his eyes. “We’ll be taking another look at that symbol now that we’ve seen it at a second bomb site.”

  Jax felt his heart thump harder. “It was on this bomb, too?”

  “Not on the bomb. We found it on a tree behind the gazebo. It was carved there, pretty recently, judging by the state of it.”

  Keara frowned, looking more perplexed than encouraged by the news.

  Anderson glanced from Jax to Keara and back again. “Ben said you were combing through other crimes that might have the same symbol. Any luck?”

  Jax gave a frustrated shrug. “We thought so, but now I’m not so sure they match. I’ll flag them for you guys to look, but...”

  “Seems like more than one person is using the same symbol,” Anderson finished, not sounding surprised.

  Jax glanced at Keara, wanting her take on it, and she gave a discouraged nod.

  “This symbol means something we don’t understand yet,” Anderson said. “You were right about that, Jax. Whatever the meaning, it sounds like it’s important to more than one criminal. Maybe it’s connected to an organization, possibly some kind of underground group.”

  “But what?” Keara muttered. “The Houston PD researched it seven years ago. I researched it this week. None of us came up with anything.”

  Anderson shrugged, covering a yawn with his hand. “Or it could be more personal. Maybe we have a couple of criminals who were a team once and now they’re both taking the symbol to their own crimes.”

  Keara’s troubled gaze met his and he could practically read her thoughts: If the symbol was from some personal event, how would they ever figure it out?

  Patches nudged her again as they reached the police station and Keara pet her once more before holding open the door.

  Jax filed inside with Patches, but Keara stayed there, holding the door open and thanking each of her exhausted officers—and all of the FBI agents, too—as they walked past her.

  She was a good chief. It couldn’t have been easy for her, being the only woman on the force, being so young for her role and being an outsider, too. But it was obvious her officers respected her. Despite how personally each of them had been touched by today’s tragedy, they mustered up weak nods for her in return.

  Even the FBI agents, who could sometimes get frustrated with small-town officers who had little experience dealing with major crimes, seemed impressed by Keara and her team.

  As Keara finally followed them inside, Sam stood up behind the front desk. “Any news on Nate?”

  Keara swept her gaze over her officers, who had all stopped in the entryway of the station to listen. “The hospital is going to update us when there’s any change. I’ll keep you all informed.”

  Keara’s youngest rookie had been in bad shape when the helicopter had lifted off. So had its other occupant, the grocery store owner who was far stronger than she looked to have held on until the medevac team arrived. Five other people had been taken to the hospital, too, but they’d gone by ambulance, taking the hour ride up and down the mountain to get to Luna. But at least—as of right now—no one had been killed in this bombing.

  “We’re going to relocate over to Desparre,” Ben said, moving to the front of the crowd.

  The seasoned agent, who’d lived in Alaska most of his life and managed other scenes where explosives had been set off, was holding up better than most of them. But even he had cracks in his stoicism, with a tight set to his jaw that suggested this case had him worried.

  “There’s a hotel just a few miles outside of town,” Keara said. “It’s called Royal Desparre. It’s a nice place, but we don’t get many tourists here. They’ll have vacancies.”

  “Thanks,” Ben said. “Let’s go,” he called to the other FBI agents and employees, and then he told Keara, “We’ll be back in the morning.”

  As they trudged out of the station, Jax lagged behind. He didn’t want to leave without a chance to talk to Keara alone. He wanted to see how she really felt about the new bombing and what they’d found this afternoon. But it was more than that. He also wanted to be able to talk to her outside her official capacity, away from people who relied on her to set the tone and be a leader. To make sure she was really okay.

  “You coming?” Anderson called to him as Keara’s officers all started heading out the door, too.

  Jax looked at Keara and found her gaze already on him. “I have a pull-out couch,” she said, loud enough for Anderson to hear. “In case they won’t let Patches stay in the hotel.”

  Anderson didn’t look like he bought her reasoning, but Jax jumped on it. “That would be great. Thanks.”

  Patches gave her own woof of approval.

  Keara nodded stiffly at him, then turned away, checking on each of her officers individually. She made sure each one was able to drive home, then waited until they’d all left the station before she finally returned her attention to him.

  “How are you holding up?” he asked.

  Patches hurried over to her side again, sitting next to Keara and staring up at her. But it wasn’t the look Patches gave when she was trying to help someone; this was his dog becoming attached.

  Jax stared at Patches as Keara began to pet his dog, and new anxiety filled him. He was becoming attached to Keara, too. Whenever the end of this case came, he wasn’t sure he was going to be ready to stop seeing her every day.

  Keara pet Patches for a long moment without answering. Then her troubled gaze met his. “How do you do this, case after case?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This.” She gestured toward the front door. “How do you come to these scenes, tragedy after tragedy?” Her voice cracked as she continued, “How do you wade into them, again and again, hearing about the worst thing someone has experienced?”

  He shrugged, gave her a small smile. “I’m good at it. Patches is good at it.”

  Woof!

  Another smile broke free as he told her, “That’s right, Patches.” Then he said to Keara, “It’s not easy. But knowing that I’ve helped someone makes it worthwhile. What about you?”

  She laughed, but it was short and bitter. “The type of crime scene I’ve probably been called to most often in Desparre is a bar fight. This is way outside of my comfort zone. I didn’t experience anything like this, even in Houston
.”

  Jax flashed back to the dangerous situation in the Luna bar the day he’d met her. His arms were still healing from being sliced through with broken bottles when the drunk had yanked him off the bar. He could still feel the panic when he’d jumped into the fray, worried the mob of men was going to overrun Keara at any moment.

  “I mean, how do you handle constantly running into danger?”

  “It’s part of the job. I accepted the danger a long time ago, when I took the oath to become a police officer. But I’ve been at this career since I was twenty-three. I still get scared on calls sometimes, but I trust my training and I trust my officers to have my back. And I believe in what I do. That’s worth the fear.”

  She frowned, staring at the ground, her hand pausing on Patches’s head. Her voice was almost a whisper when she admitted, “It’s not the physical danger that really scares me. It’s the cases I can’t solve. That’s what keeps me up at night.”

  When her gaze met his again, he saw years of pain reflected back at him. “What scares me is the idea that I’ll never be able to solve Juan’s murder. And that as long as it remains unsolved, I’ll never be able to fully move forward myself.”

  * * *

  KEARA WOKE UP disoriented, a headache pounding at her temples and the smell of smoke lodged in her nostrils. Against her back was a strong, warm body.

  In a flash, the night before returned to her. Making the short drive from the police station to her house, every second stretching out as she’d fought to keep her eyes open. Jax in the seat beside her and Patches lightly snoring in the back.

  When they’d finally pulled up to her house, she’d barely had the energy to trade the uniform she’d worn to the crime scene for joggers and a long-sleeved T-shirt. She’d leaned over the sink and scrubbed her hands, face and arms, but sleep had sounded more appealing than a shower.

  She’d returned to her living room to find Jax already changed into sweatpants and a T-shirt emblazoned with Fidelity. Bravery. Integrity. Apparently, he carried extra clothes everywhere he went.

  In that moment, with the weight of the town’s expectations and Juan’s unsolved case, Jax—half a foot taller than she was with the body of a federal agent and the eyes of a therapist—had seemed like the perfect person to help her shoulder some of it. So when he’d walked over and put his arms around her, she’d sunk into his embrace.

  She vaguely recalled him walking her over to the couch and coaxing her to lie down against him. As soon as she’d laid her head on his outstretched arm, the exhaustion had overcome her.

  Despite the horror of the day before, despite the gnawing worry about her ability to solve Juan’s case so many years later, it was the best she’d slept in years. She glanced at the floor below her, where Patches was just starting to stir, her feet twitching and her eyes opening.

  When she met Keara’s gaze, her tail started to thump against the wood floor and Keara whispered, “Shhh.”

  Nerves made her feel clumsy as she slowly slid forward on the couch, carefully lifting the arm draped over her waist. She barely breathed as she tried to slip away from Jax without waking him.

  It had been seven long years since she’d woken up with a man’s arm draped over her.

  She finally took a deep breath as she sat up and Jax didn’t move behind her. Carefully setting her feet down so she wouldn’t step on Patches, she slid forward, hoping to stand without disturbing him.

  “It’s morning already?” Jax asked.

  His voice was slightly deeper with sleep, and it sent a jolt of awareness through her, even as she cringed at having woken him.

  “Yep,” she said, her voice too cheery. She stood, heading toward the connected kitchen and resisting the urge to run a hand over her hair, which felt like a tangled mess, the bobby pins half out of her bun. “Coffee?”

  Patches leaped up, racing after her, sliding as the planked wood floors of her living room gave way to slicker tile in the kitchen.

  Keara couldn’t stop the laugh that escaped as Patches ran around her in a circle, tail wagging. She looked more like a puppy than a therapy dog and Keara knew Patches was catching her nervous energy.

  “Sounds good,” Jax said from the living room.

  She could hear him standing, probably stretching, but she didn’t glance back. Her neck and face felt warm with the knowledge that he knew exactly why she was trying to busy herself. It didn’t take a psychology degree—which he had in multiples—to recognize that she was uncomfortable with what had happened between them last night. The fact that it had been a lot more innocent than the kisses they’d shared a few days ago didn’t matter. Spending the night in his embrace had felt more intimate.

  As she scooped coffee grinds into the machine, Jax joined her in the kitchen. From her peripheral vision, she saw him lean against her island and watch her.

  Before she could get her scrambled brain to come up with small talk—or better yet, a coherent discussion about the investigation—he asked, “What did your family think about you moving across the country to be a police chief?”

  “They weren’t thrilled.” She spun to face him and even knowing where he’d been standing, even though he was still a couple of feet away, it felt too close. His hair was slightly mussed from sleep, making her realize how curly it was, making her want to run her hands through it.

  Fisting them at her sides, she continued, “But then, they kept hoping Juan’s death would be a wake-up call that I needed to find another profession.”

  “They worry about you.”

  “Yeah. I’m an only child, but as my dad likes to joke, with Irish on one side and Italian on the other, we’re not a small family. My aunt was a police officer and I was really close to her growing up. She worked a night shift during most of my childhood, and since my parents worked days, she’d pick me up from school every day. She was killed on the job the same year I got my badge.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Keara nodded. The year her aunt had died had been the same time she’d been paired up with Juan. It had been a hugely bittersweet time in her life. She’d wanted to follow in her aunt’s footsteps since she was a kid. She’d always imagined them working together someday.

  “I’ve lived here for six years now and they still ask when I’m moving back on a pretty regular basis.” She shrugged, even though it frustrated her. “At least it’s coming from a place of love.”

  “What if we solve Juan’s case?” Jax stared at her, his gaze so focused that even Patches quieted down.

  Her heart jumped at the idea that he still thought it was possible. Jax wasn’t an investigator, but over the past week, she’d discovered he made a great partner. “What do you mean?”

  “If we solve it, would you consider moving back to Houston?”

  She’d never thought about it. Moving to Alaska had been a concession; her way of admitting that Juan’s murder would always remain unsolved.

  The Houston PD would probably take her back, if they had an opening. She’d had a good relationship with the officers and chief there. But what had started as a self-imposed exile and escape had become her home.

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I should visit more. I miss my family. But that was a different chapter of my life. Alaska is my future.”

  Saying the words out loud, she realized how true they were. It freed something inside her, made real happiness seem possible again. And staring at the Victim Specialist in her kitchen made even more seem possible.

  Diverting her gaze before he read her thoughts, she spun back to the coffee machine, filled it with water and hit Brew.

  When he didn’t move, she turned back toward him, bracing her hands on the counter behind her. “This is my town, Jax.” She sighed, the responsibilities crashing back around her. “I’m glad the FBI is taking lead in the new investigation. They have a lot more experience than I do. But w
hen they leave, this will still be my home. These people will still be my responsibility. I’m officially involved now, so we don’t need to be investigating on the side.”

  He pushed away from the island, his mouth opening.

  She cut off the argument she could see coming. “That doesn’t mean I want to stop working with you. I don’t care what your title is. I want your psychological insight on this. But what we saw in the cases we dug up yesterday? They don’t match what’s happening here.”

  He frowned, lines creasing his forehead. “I know.”

  “If this were one person so savvy and determined to stay off police radar by jumping jurisdictions—hell, jumping states—between his crimes, why set off two bombs in less than a week? Most likely, this is still connected to the crimes we dug up somehow, if we can figure out that symbol. But right now we have a bigger problem.”

  Jax nodded. “We’re looking at a serial bomber.”

  “Yeah. And with two bombs in six days, he’s probably not finished.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Jax had a tendency to overanalyze things, but right now he knew exactly what he wanted.

  He stared across the Desparre park at Keara, frowning as she talked to Ben and Anderson. As if she sensed his gaze on her, her focus shifted to him briefly. Then her head swung back to the agents.

  Patches nudged his leg with her nose a few times and he pet her head.

  “Sorry, Patches. You’re right. We need to be working.”

  Although yesterday had been horrific, with people bleeding and crying and the gazebo blazing, the aftermath of the destruction was terrible, too. The once-cheerful white gazebo was now a pile of charred wood, splintered edges reaching into the air. The ground beside it was burned and bloodied. Scattered across the park were discarded personal items that hadn’t yet been tagged and collected as evidence. The FBI’s Evidence Response Team members walked among them, gathering anything relevant.

  Somehow, it all felt more jarring after the awkward bliss of his morning. While Keara had showered, he’d made scrambled eggs. They’d eaten at her kitchen table and he’d pretended not to notice when she fell for Patches’s sad eyes and fed her some under the table.