Leah would kiss Deacon right back, even though she realized it wasn’t the right call to make. Her judgment with men after Charles had her second-guessing her instincts. So she just stood there with her arms folded and a serious gaze fixed on Deacon.
“I’m not trying to frustrate you with my question.” Deacon stood there, looking a little too kissable. Leah sighed sharply. She knew exactly what she wanted to do and that wasn’t at all what she should. The irritating thought that coffee tasted better on his lips crept in.
“You don’t really want to know my answer.”
“Can I walk you home?” More of that Cowboy Code chivalry was shining through.
She motioned toward the butt of her weapon. “I have coverage.”
Leah rubbed her cold arms.
“Good night,” she said and then turned toward her place. Riley would be worried if Leah didn’t get home soon. Leah had warned Riley that the killer was still at large. She’d told her to keep her guard up and that’s exactly what Leah intended to do.
“Do you believe it’s possible the killer changed tools?” Deacon asked.
She stopped but didn’t turn. Walking away from him was proving to be so much more difficult than she had expected.
“No. It’s too rare. Killers rarely change their MO. It becomes their calling card. In my mind, we’re looking at two killers.”
“Are you going to keep looking for him while you’re on leave?” Deacon’s voice was behind her now and it rumbled in her ear.
How easy would it be to lean back and feel his strong chest at her back? His muscular arms around her? His heated breath on her neck?
“Last night, I didn’t sleep a wink thinking about this case. You want to have another cup of coffee? This one’s cold,” he asked.
Leah stood there, debating her next actions. She was at a crossroads.
“I live at six-twenty-three Maple Ave. My son’s down for the count tonight. Wait fifteen minutes, park across the street and I’ll have a fresh pot on.” She didn’t turn around. She didn’t wait for his answer. She wasn’t the least bit tired and knew full well that she’d end up staring up at the ceiling if she tried to go to bed when she got home.
Leah jogged toward her house, relieved that she could hear Deacon’s footsteps not more than ten feet behind her. His presence was comforting.
He stood in front of the O’Malleys’ place three houses down and across the street, waiting for her to get safely inside her house before he disappeared down the same path as before.
Her heart squeezed as he took off running.
Riley popped up off the couch. Her silver laptop closed and clutched against her chest like a school book. “I was just about to text to see if you were okay.”
“Met up with someone on the trail and we ended up talking for a bit.” It was true.
Riley nodded and smiled. “I have another test, so the quiet was much appreciated. Connor hasn’t made a peep in the last twenty minutes. I checked on him anyway. It’s so weird about the Mitchell case. I mean, I know this guy isn’t after little kids but it all makes me nervous. It’s all so disturbing. You know?”
Leah did know. There were many aspects of her job that sometimes kept her awake at night, wondering why people did certain things to each other. “It’s good to be vigilant but that doesn’t mean we stop living. We just make sure we’re prepared.”
Riley patted the bottle of Mace clipped to her shoulder bag. “I’m ready.”
“Did you sign up for the jujitsu class at the rec?” Leah would always make sure those around her knew how to defend themselves should the situation arise.
“It was full. Guess people want to be extra prepared. Good timing if you ask me,” Riley said.
“Stay on it so you can register next time. I can’t have you going off to college without taking some kind of defense lessons.” If Leah had a daughter, she would tell her the same things she would be telling her son his senior year of high school.
“Okay. I will. First things first, I have a trig test tomorrow and I’m so not ready.” Riley was only dramatic when it came to schoolwork, and she always sandbagged when it came to grades.
“You’ll do great.” Leah didn’t remind Riley that she’d said the same thing about the last three tests she’d taken. All of which she’d broken the curve on.
“I doubt it but there’s not much I can do now.” She bit back a yawn. “Sleep calls and I can’t stay up much longer.”
“See you tomorrow night? Same time?” Leah walked Riley to the back door and then stood in the frame for a few more seconds, listening for any signs. The creepy feeling of eyes on her pricked the hairs on her neck. She stepped outside and through the back gate, scanning the alley for signs of movement. A gust of wind nearly made her jump when it rattled a patch of dead leaves.
What would she be jumping at next? Stray cats? Speaking of which, she hadn’t seen her favorite alley predator in a couple of days now. Pickles didn’t belong to Leah and she couldn’t figure for the life of her why Connor had come up with that name, but the little tabby normally stopped by in the morning and evenings and Leah hadn’t seen her around.
Almost the minute after Riley disappeared, Deacon rounded the drive. The noise scared Leah because she hadn’t heard a thing until he was within striking distance.
“Come in.” She took a deep breath to calm her racing pulse—racing for a reason other than being startled.
DEACON FOLLOWED LEAH into her kitchen. “After tonight, we can’t be seen together.”
“I was just thinking the same thing.”
The admission caught him off guard. Was it wrong that he wanted her to be thinking about something else?
“You need to focus on keeping your name clear,” she said.
“And you could lose your career.” Leah was a single mother and he couldn’t afford to let that happen to her. He’d witnessed his brother Mitch handling newborn twins when his wife went missing three and a half years ago. Even with plenty of financial resources, bringing them up alone had been difficult. Plus, Mitch had his brothers and sister along with their cousins, Amy and Zach McWilliams.
Leah produced two full mugs of coffee. “No matter what else happens, I’d like to stay in touch. Keep each other informed of the other’s progress. I realize I’ll get some details through formal chains, but I have a feeling you won’t tell your cousin anything before you’re ready.”
“As long as information flows both ways, I have no problem with that.” Deacon took a sip of coffee. The dark roast burned in the best possible way. “We can start with what kind of person would do this?”
“I’m looking at my case and yours as two separate perps.” She leaned her slender hip against the counter and gripped her coffee mug with two hands.
“As am I.”
A noise sounded in the alley right outside the back door and Leah flinched for a split second before hopping into action. She turned off the light and dropped down low and away from the window, palming her holstered weapon.
With stealth and grace, she moved to the door.
More of the same sounds came but he was pretty sure he recognized a cat scratching on a door when he heard it. He didn’t have to be brought up on a ranch to know that sound. Although, it probably didn’t hurt that he’d spent his entire childhood and most of his adult life around animals.
Before he could stop Leah, she’d opened the door and her gun was pointing toward the culprit. A cat.
“Pickles.” She holstered her weapon and then picked up the little tabby.
“That’s an interesting name.” Deacon thought there’d never been a stranger name for a tabby.
“Connor’s idea.”
“How old is your son again?” Deacon hoped the little guy was young. And then he remembered about the time she said the number, three. “Never mind. After being around my niece and nephew, I understand. Nothing has to make sense.”
She nuzzled the furry critter and Deacon couldn’t help but wish it were him and not that cat up close and personal with Leah. Those were more thoughts that had no business in their new arrangement—one he fully intended to honor.
Most of the people he knew who worked in law enforcement had a story, a reason they decided to wear a badge and lock up bad guys. They all started with wanting to help but came from many backgrounds and experiences.
Case in point, one of his cousin Zach’s deputies who grew up in a rural area had always looked up to the local sheriff. The sheriff took Herman Long on a ride along in order to keep him out of trouble, Long had said. But then on a routine traffic stop, the guy witnessed the sheriff being shot. The car sped off and Long was too panicked to get the license plate or a description. This was obviously before the sophisticated computer systems that linked data and made it available to anyone with a few keystrokes. It was before dashboard cameras. Long had said that right then and there he’d decided to become a law enforcement officer. And he had done just that.
What Deacon wanted to know was what had happened to make a rich girl from The Heights want to grow up to work in law enforcement. “What made you decide to do this job?”
“Huh?” Leah seemed caught off guard at the question. She was crouched down, petting the tabby.
“Why chase bad guys? What’s the appeal?”
She reclaimed her coffee mug and gripped it with both hands again. And then she looked him in the eyes. “Because I don’t want to be afraid of one ever again.”
Damn. What was Deacon supposed to do with that?
“You grew up in one of the safest neighborhoods.” She’d briefly told him about her best friend being killed. His curiosity about the case was getting the best of him. But, honestly, he wanted to know more about her.
She stood there and it seemed like she was drawing up the courage to speak. It hit him that her story must be difficult to talk about and he didn’t want to be the jerk pushing her to do something she didn’t want to.
“I apologize. You don’t have to talk about the past,” he said.
“I never talk about it,” she said low and almost under her breath. “I never talk about what really happened to her.”
Leah motioned toward the table and chairs in the small kitchen.
He followed her and took the seat opposite hers. Her place was the kind of spot he could envision kicking his boots off and staying a little while. He had no plans to do that but the idea of it wasn’t awful.
“We were best friends,” she began.
“Is this the friend you mentioned from high school?” he asked.
“Yes,” was all she said. She looked like she needed a minute to pull herself together.
He remembered that she’d said her friend had died but the full picture was beginning to emerge. One that confirmed her friend was murdered.
“Millie and I weren’t supposed to go out that night but we decided to anyway. It was April. We had spring fever. It was our junior year. High school was intense and the stress of upcoming finals was starting to get to us. We wanted to blow off steam and one of our classmates was having a party across town. I was supposed to meet up with her but I fell asleep instead.” The contents of her coffee cup became intensely interesting right about then. “I’d been wrapped up in studying all night and thought I could just close my eyes for a few minutes.”
Deacon reached out to one of her hands. To his surprise, she grabbed onto his with a glance at him before returning her gaze to the mug.
Her hand seemed so small in comparison to his. Her creamy skin was soft. Long hours on the ranch had calloused his.
“They found her body two weeks later and I went down to the morgue with her parents to ID her.” Leah sat there for a long moment and he waited for her to speak again. “So, my story is that my best friend was killed because I fell asleep. No one ever found her killer or could explain what had happened to her beyond her being dead. My parents gave me a summer to get over it and then expected me to jump right into senior year...”
“But you couldn’t because you carried around too much guilt,” he finished the sentence for her.
“I wanted to know what happened to her. They said the details weren’t important because they wouldn’t bring her back but that getting into a good college was. They told me to look to my future, which was a way of saying that she was in the past. I mean, it had barely been four months and the killer was still on the loose, preying on other girls and my parents were worried that my SAT score wouldn’t be good enough to follow in my mother’s footsteps and get into Brown University.” Deacon felt her grip tighten on his hand but he didn’t flinch.
“It mattered to you.” He didn’t dare let go.
“What they didn’t—don’t—understand is that I couldn’t walk away because I never got answers. If I’d known what had happened to her, it would’ve made a difference in my life. I could’ve put that chapter behind me. That’s why I do what I do. It’s the reason that I have to work for other people.”
He stopped short of responding that she gave to others what she never got for herself.
“Have you looked at the case file?” Her fingers relaxed against his.
“Dozens of times. Knowing what I know now, I think it’s safe to say the man who killed Millie ended up in prison for another crime.” She scraped her teeth across her bottom lip. He’d noticed the move before when she’d spoken about her friend.
“What about her family?”
“I haven’t spoken to them in years,” she admitted.
Did she have a case of survivor’s guilt?
Yeah, he could relate to wishing he were the one who was dead.