Feisty Heroines Romance Collection of Shorts

by D. F. Jones

  “It’s a chance I have to take.” Chloe clicked the lock on her car, tugging the handle and swinging inside. But even as she reached for her seatbelt, she heard the passenger door open and Lando slide in. She shook her head at him. “You go home. You go to sleep. You're the one who's been up for almost twenty-four hours, not me.”

  “I'm not letting you go search a murder site on your own.”

  She turned the car off so she could sit and think a moment. “I think I'd prefer if I do go on my own.”

  “Why? I'm trained for this. You clearly aren’t.”

  That was exactly the issue. “You want to search a perfect grid. You want to tell me where to look. I don’t need your method. I have my own, and it works just fine.”

  She wasn’t wrong. She heard him take a deep breath as he turned to stare blankly out the front windshield. He knew she was right. She waited for him to tell her good luck and get out of the car.

  Instead, he opened the door and said, “Okay. I'll work with you. I don’t want you out there alone.”

  “Send me another officer.”

  This time he laughed, a rich, hearty sound that reached deep inside her. He wasn't mocking; he was genuinely amused. The corner of her lip pulled up in response, even as she turned and asked, “Why are you laughing?”

  “I want you to think about how long it took you to convince me what you could do.”

  Shit, she thought. This time he wasn't wrong.

  “If you want someone to listen when you tell them that you just feel the need to completely ignore grid pattern and every tactic that every cop has been trained to do, you need me.”

  Chloe tried again. “You've been awake far too long.”

  “Baby, if anyone can stay awake for days on end, it’s a cop. Let me get my stuff out of my car though.” He was stepping out, but looked back and admonished, “Do not drive off while I'm getting my kit out of the trunk. If we find anything, we’ll need forensics…”

  The conversation had turned light there for a moment, but she knew what they would be looking for. Her smile was now pinched as she started the car again, waiting while he pulled two backpacks from his trunk and tossed them in her back seat. “Let’s see if we can find a body.”

  Only this time she knew it wasn't a body. It was bodies.

  “There’s nothing here!” Chloe cried out in frustration, amazed that Lando had managed to maintain an emotional even keel all day.

  They'd only stopped for lunch, when he bought her a burger and a chocolate milkshake. He’d reasoned that if they were doing such horrible work, they needed comfort food. The food was great. The rest, however, had dragged with little reward. She needed to find something the forensics experts could use to identify the killer.

  She turned a tight circle as she scanned the woods. She felt nothing here, no clue or hint, no feelings. Eventually, she’d been exasperated enough to let Lando lead a grid. It hadn't helped.

  Now he seemed disappointed by their search. Did he no longer believe in her ability? She’d told him there would be bodies here. She’d produced nothing. Her shoulders sagged, and she blinked to fight back the tears.

  “We have to stop.” His voice resonated through her frustration. “We're deep in the woods, and we have to leave now, while there's still enough light to get out.”

  He could probably see her protest on her face. She needed to find something today—anything, a feeling, a clue, a scrap of fabric. But the trees didn't hold the echoes of the missing children. They didn't hold anything of the killer, not rage or deep need or fear, the things she had learned that drove most of them. They left traces of it on things as they passed. But here there were only deer, raccoons, squirrels, ants—no killers.

  “Come on, Chloe.” Lando began tugging her out of the woods. Following reluctantly, she stared at the pack he carried. Larger than the one he’d given her, his carried flashlights, crime scene tape, tools for digging, and a satellite phone, as well as their water. Hers had a few snacks and evidence bags.

  His hand was warm and his urgency to get her out of the woods, and out of a killer’s territory, bled through the touch. The blame she felt was likely her own, not his.

  As they stepped from the woods near the creek, a truck in the distance made her look up. She simultaneously hoped no one saw them, and that the killer would simply show up and give them a break in the case. But the truck passed in the distance and nothing happened.

  “This isn’t where we came in. We can’t cross here.” She told Lando, now that she was paying attention. The water was too high, the current too fast. They had come in downstream of here, but the thought caught in her brain and she tugged on Lando’s hand.

  “We’re at the wrong site. It’s upstream. Here is where Maddox crawled out. But he didn’t get left here, he got washed downriver! Let’s go.”

  Lando was nodding along. This was all logic though, not her natural intuition. He stood rock still as she tried in vain to pull him along the bank.

  “No. We’re not going. We're getting a pizza and a room and we're getting some sleep.”

  She realized he'd now passed far beyond twenty-four hours of being awake. She hadn't.

  But Lando wouldn’t let her go on her own either. “If you want to be up, and fed, and searching at dawn tomorrow, we should stay close by. We’ll check upstream in the morning.”

  Chloe looked up at him, at the finely chiseled jaw, the dark hair that seemed to almost have a personality, the stubborn set to his mouth. “Look, I'm not poor, but I'm not wealthy either. I spend all my extra money roaming the country and finding missing kids. I already paid for the other room tonight.” She didn’t add, “the one with all my stuff.”

  “I’ve got it,” was all he said.

  Two hours later, she’d eaten more than her share of amazing pizza, but she was done with junk food. It would mess up her focus, slow her energy. She was standing in front of another motel door, this one alongside the freeway just north of Redemption. As Lando swung the door wide, Chloe spotted the lone king bed and sighed.

  “I know you said you wanted to keep an eye on me, but this is extreme.”

  “It’s all they had. I promise to stay on my side.”

  There wasn’t much she could do, and honestly, she didn’t mind. As they got closer to a killer, having a cop at her side felt safe. Having Orlando Tavares at her side was starting to feel too good.

  They didn’t have clothes to change into, but her fatigue was drowning her to the point that she wasn’t even going to notice that Lando was in the bed beside her. Without much fanfare, she shed her boots, peeled off her jacket, and crawled in. Pulling the covers up, Chloe turned away from the middle. Tucking into a ball, she fell asleep before Lando even left the doorway.

  At midnight, she gasped herself awake again. She could still feel the seductive touch of hands on her heated skin. She had bold sense memories of his mouth trailing down her neck, his fingers tugging at her clothing. The heat suffused her entire system, putting her on edge. Her breathing came heavy, her pulse thrumming low as her eyes slowly rolled open.

  Chloe almost moaned as she turned to look at Lando—still fully asleep. She licked her lips but her mouth stayed open, the sensations continuing to steal her breath. With another caress, she realized she could still feel his dream on her skin.

  Chapter 5

  Orlando Tavares rolled out of bed unsure if he should grin or cringe. Chloe had woken him up in the middle of an incredibly steamy dream. Then, she continued touching him in reality.

  He didn't remember much of what had gotten them started. But now, as he rubbed his hand over his hair and looked down at his naked skin, he recalled her saying, “I heard your dream.”

  The grin turned now to a cringe. Was this just a side effect of her skills? He knew the idea was originally his. As much as he hadn't believed in her when she walked in the door at the station, he’d still been attracted to her.

  In the sheets beside him, she rolled softly, and he wonder
ed if she could hear these thoughts, too. He was turning to open his mouth, thinking he could start—and therefore steer—a conversation away from what had happened between them. But he realized he had two options.

  He could either try to cover up everything she seemed to have ready access to, or he could try being open. Turning to face her, he watched her come awake, and though he couldn't read her mind, her expression was clear.

  “Am I at fault for last night?”

  The clear bell of her laughter rang through the small room. “No.”

  “Are you okay?” he asked next, but he quickly realized what a ridiculously stupid question it was.

  Chloe had the grace to not treat it that way. “I'm good… Actually, I'm really good.”

  His cringe gave way to a full-fledged smile now. “Well, we have about an hour before the sun is up. We should get dressed and eat before we head out.”

  As the sun peeked beyond the trees, he found himself walking hand in hand with Chloe as they traced a route along the creek. “It's rushing up here.”

  Lando followed her train of thought. “It’s strong enough to carry a boy Maddox’s size down to where we found him. Do you feel anything?” He didn't know if feel was the right word for what she did.

  She didn’t correct him. “No. Not yet.”

  Thirty minutes later, after she'd touched every tree they passed, she turned to him. Eyes wide, she said, “It's here.”

  Chloe fought the scream that attempted to erupt as she bolted awake in the middle of the night. It wasn't as if she'd never seen horrible things before, but never so many nights in a row.

  She was exhausted, and this wasn’t over yet.

  Usually, one or two dreams would help her lead the police to a missing child or a body. Then the officials handled it. But this…this was going on far too long. She was sucking in another steadying breath when she felt warm arms around her. She wasn't sure how she would have handled stress of this magnitude on her own.

  Lando’s voice asked softly, “What did you see?” rather than Are you okay? The silent tears running down her face had answered that question for him already.

  “Something is wrong,” she told him. “He's angry. He's stalking another child, even though he knows it's likely to get him caught. He doesn't seem to be able to stop himself.” She took another breath and continued. “Those bodies we found? When you identify those kids, you'll see they're from all over the US. He's been careful before. But now he’s after someone closer to home.”

  Lando changed the subject. “How long do you think it took him to amass those five bodies?”

  “Two years.” Chloe was confident of that answer. She could feel each history when she touched the bones, though now she regretted doing it. At the time, she thought it would help her locate the killer. It had, but there was nothing she could do for the children in the ground.

  “Two years doesn’t sound like—"

  “He's been doing this for well over a decade,” she interrupted him. “He's gotten more confident in the past few years and changed where he left the bodies.”

  “You can feel that?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. How could she explain to him that in the past, she followed the victims? She saw the killer’s face through their eyes. But last night, for the first time, she connected to the killer himself.

  “Usually, something triggers them to ramp up.” His arms were still around her, but she could almost hear him thinking through what he knew of serial killers. “This is small town Nebraska. We’re not big enough to have a missing persons division, or homicide. But I do know that if serial killers ramp up, there was usually an inciting event.”

  “Yes,” Chloe whispered again. “It was us. He knows.”

  “No,” Orlando cringed at his captain's voice through the phone.

  “If you're out with her, then you’re officially on duty. There's no way we can write this up otherwise. You found the bodies of seven children.”

  “Seven?”

  “We found two more.”

  His heart sank. Five was bad enough. Chloe had been right. She’d warned him there were more. He was wondering how to explain things to his captain when she made it clear that she was smarter than him.

  “Also, keep your hands off the psychic.” He wanted to ask what she meant, but she continued. “I'm not blind. Honestly, neither is anyone else. This became official this morning.”

  “Yes, ma'am.” Crap. How would he pass this news on to Chloe? But as he clicked off the cell and turned, he found her standing right behind him.

  “You're on duty, and I've been handed off to other officers.”

  At least that last part made him laugh. “No, ma'am. There aren't enough other officers to hand you off to.”

  She found that statement funny, too. Thank goodness. His heart kicked as he realized he'd needed to see her smile. She'd been so distraught the past several days. “Let me buy you dinner. Take you on a real date before I clock back in and you become a civilian consultant.”

  He watched as her eyebrows climbed. “A date?”

  For a moment he wished he could read her the way she read him. Well, he’d decided the other morning that he should probably just let it all out in the open. “I'm still not sure what the other night was for you. But for me, it was amazing and not something casual.”

  “How can that be?” she asked him. “We've only known each other for a handful of days.”

  Motioning between the two of them, he said, “I don't think there's anything here that's conventional for a first date. We searched for missing children in the woods. Our first time together you read my fantasies. And we’re in a motel stalking a killer.”

  “That's a good point.”

  But he didn't know if she was saying yes to the date yet. He was about to open his mouth, thinking he’d have to ask again. When she suddenly said, “Yes, take me out on a date.”

  Chapter 6

  “It's not here,” Chloe told Detective Decker and listened as once again the man huffed out his breath. She had been handed off to another officer, and clearly, he didn’t relish the task of driving the psychic around to look at white houses with black shutters.

  Cranking the wheel, he looked again at the list of addresses. “Sure would be nice if you could know just by looking at the picture.”

  Decker didn’t believe in her skills and was just following orders. It wasn't the same as riding around with Orlando. Lando asked her questions and treated her like a competent partner. At least he had once he believed.

  Of the firefighters who’d come to help with the scene, only one had seemed to genuinely believe her. He’d introduced himself as Sebastian, but the name across his butt was “Kane.” Officer Balero from the front desk had even believed her once Chloe pointed out where the bodies were buried. The rest had still been reticent, or downright rude. Chloe always made note of who she could count on and who she couldn’t. Would Decker ever come around?

  They'd left the main area of Redemption and headed north on her recommendation. Both Lando and the captain agreed Chloe was operating on hunches while the police were operating on what little knowledge they could use to profile the killer. The good news was both agreed on the area to begin looking.

  So here she was with Decker almost an hour later. She was about to get angry at wasting her day like this, even though she knew they needed to check every possible angle. Just as she was about to ask him to take her back, she felt it. “Here!”

  Chloe pointed to a small side road as Decker pulled over and flipped through the printout.

  “This isn’t on the list.” He sighed again. “There are no white houses with black shutters here.”

  When she insisted, he openly rolled his eyes, but he still took the turn, for which she was grateful. Grabbing at the comm attached to his lapel, he called in. “She wants us to go down a road that's not on our pages.”

  Though she couldn't hear the captain's response, she could tell the captain must have defe
rred to her.

  Twenty painfully slow minutes of rolling down the gravel road later, Decker turned to Chloe. “Are we done? There's no house here.”

  “It's here,” she insisted. Her heart was pounding. “He's here, and he has another kid already.”

  “How would you even know that?” Decker asked, and Chloe let the question hang between them. If he didn't believe that she knew, well, that wasn't her fault.

  She closed her eyes and leaned her head back. “It’s a little girl with dark curly hair, green eyes.”

  She felt Decker pushing at her shoulder. “Open your eyes! I'm not driving around here when you're not looking for a house.”

  She almost snapped. Giving up on politeness she dialed the captain directly. “It's me. Chloe Bell.” She heard the captain's voice and explained what she’d seen. She heard the noises of the station behind the captain, ringing phones, machines, footsteps. And then a voice in the background said, “We've got a call from Omaha. Missing girl.”

  Chloe ran through the patch of trees that bordered one side of the white-painted house.

  As soon as they pulled up, she’d felt it. This was the place.

  Decker had grasped her wrist, demanding that she wait, but she’d twisted free. Throwing open the car door and running, she’d heard him mutter, “stupid bitch.” But he hadn't chased her. He was following protocol apparently.

  Her feet pounded on the dirt, ankles twisting as she stepped on one root or rock after another. But she didn't care. Breathing heavily, she stopped at the edge of the trees, eyeing the wide-open space between herself and the house.

  How was she going to do it?

  For a moment, Chloe put her fingers on the nearest tree trunk and closed her eyes, hoping to connect with the child this time, rather than the killer. Her breath sucked in as she was suddenly standing in an upstairs room in the house.