Reggie kept her mouth shut. Partly because she was still terrified. Partly because her head ached. And partly because she wasn’t sure exactly what to say to the big man who’d scooped her up like she weighed nothing, then tucked her into the back of his car with a gentleness that was completely at odds with his obvious strength. Especially since he’d—thank God—hidden her presence from Chuck, the gun-wielding cop.
Why had he done it? Normal people went to the police when there was an issue. And having a panicked woman run straight into your car was definitely an issue.
So maybe he’s not normal.
She hazarded a tiny peek over the edge of the warm blanket. She didn’t have the best view of him, but she could tell that his eyes were fixed on the road ahead. And she could also see that there was a definite edge to the way he held himself. His stubble-covered jaw was stiff. The hand he had on the steering wheel was tight. Tension everywhere. Maybe from lying to the cop. Maybe from something else.
Remembering she’d thought there was something familiar about him, she studied his features surreptitiously, trying to see more. When he cast a quick glance in the side-view mirror, she got a fuller look at his face. He had wide lips and a well-proportioned nose. His eyes were a pale brown that bordered on amber, and thick lashes framed them, making their unusual color stand out all the more. Beyond a doubt, he was one of the best-looking men she’d ever seen. But she couldn’t place where exactly she knew him from. The diner, probably, but she was sure he wasn’t a regular, and she doubted a tourist would be so eager to mislead the local police.
She closed her eyes for a second, considering whether or not the bump on her head was making her short-term memory fuzzy. A strong possibility. When she lifted her lids again, he’d turned back to the road, and all she could see now was his profile. She had to admit to a weird stab of disappointment that she couldn’t stare at him for a bit longer.
Apparently the bump didn’t affect your libido, she thought sarcastically.
Reggie fought the need to study him further, knowing full well that she should be worried about what he planned to do with her rather than be distracted by his looks. She had no clue where they were headed or what his intentions were. Something in her gut told her she could trust him, but at the moment, she wasn’t sure she should rely on the instinct. If someone had asked her twenty minutes earlier whether or not Chuck was a good guy, she probably would’ve said yes without even considering another answer.
She fought a shiver as the memory of his furious tone came back to her. The man in the front seat was a far better option than being back there. He had to be.
At least until I’m far away from Chuck. That’s all that matters right this second.
Except as quickly as the thought came, it was replaced with the realization that it wasn’t quite true. In her panicked run, she’d forgotten all about the man on the other end of the gun.
“Oh, my God!” she gasped.
The man in the front seat tossed a concerned look over his shoulder. “What’s the matter?”
“We have to go back!”
“What?”
“The man...the other one...” She tried to push up to a sitting position, but a wave dizziness hit her, overriding the worry and guilt and keeping her in place. “Oh, God.”
“Take it easy.”
She shook her head, making the dizziness even worse. “I can’t.”
“Just give yourself a minute. Breathe.”
Reggie closed hers eyes and took his advice, her mind reeling. What had happened to the other man? Could he possibly have lived? Should she be calling someone for help? Probably. Yes. Definitely, actually.
But who?
Clearly the police were out of the question.
“We have to go back,” she said again, this time in a mumble.
“I get the feeling that would be a bad idea.”
“We have to. I have to.”
“We’re over halfway to my cabin.”
“Your cabin?”
“Wasn’t sure where else to take you.”
“Oh.”
“You need to tell me something?”
She chewed her lip nervously, trying to decide what to say. “Someone’s life might depend on whether or not I go back.”
He met her gaze in the rearview mirror, and he didn’t look as startled as she thought he should. “And your life?”
“What?”
“That cop back there...”
Those four words were enough to make Reggie’s heart beat at double time, and her hands tightened on the blanket. “Yes. That’s Chuck Delta.”
“Well, Officer Delta had your shoe.”
Reggie glanced down at her feet, then recalled one of the slip-ons had fallen off during her hasty escape. And it wasn’t exactly good news that it was now in Chuck’s possession. But even that wasn’t the most pressing of her issues right then. She needed to help the victim. If he could still be helped.
“Bad time to play Cinderella,” the big man pointed out, then sighed when she didn’t respond. “All right. You tell me where you need me to go and I’ll circle back.”
“The Frost Family Diner.”
“Got it. But the second I see anything I think is dangerous, I’m hitting the gas. That includes running into the cop again.”
Reggie breathed out, glad he’d conceded, even with his conditions. “Okay.”
She closed her eyes, letting the rhythm of the tires under her back lull her. After a few silent moments, though, one of his statements came back to her.
His cabin.
And finally she placed him.
“Tuesday, table five. Two eggs, over easy, dry toast,” she said, opening her eyes again.
A smile tipped up both sides of his mouth and showed a row of nice even teeth before his gaze went back to the front windshield. “I usually go by Max. But that works, too.”
Reggie felt her face warm. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. It’s not like customers wear name tags.” His teasing gaze found hers in the mirror again. “Actually, I’m kinda flattered you remembered my meal.”
“You left one of the girls a twenty-dollar tip when she complained about the price of diapers. She talked about it—and you and your plans to start a bed-and-breakfast—for an hour after.”
“Ah. My wanton display of wealth. Should’ve known.”
“Generosity with no strings,” she corrected, then blushed a little more at how emphatic she sounded.
“Always glad to help,” he said with another glance at her in the mirror. “Never any strings.”
She sensed a question in the words, and she wasn’t sure what it was. Which made it even harder to answer. After a moment, she settled on something easy.
“Thank you. For picking me up and for taking me back, too.”
He replied just as simply. “You’re welcome. And speaking of which...we’re here.”
She fought the dizziness and propped herself up to look out the window. The street was eerily empty. And even though she knew it was because Jesse Garibaldi owned the whole block and all the owners were probably just getting ready for his party, it still made her shiver. Even the familiar sight of her family’s restaurant couldn’t help her shake her unease.
“See anything you don’t like?” Max asked.
“I don’t see anything at all,” she admitted. “But I still don’t like it. Could you drive around to the alley?”
“Sure.”
Very slowly, he guided the car to the end of the road. Reggie didn’t have to strain to see that it was as empty as the street.
Unless there’s a body behind the Dumpster.
She swallowed nervously and reached for the door handle.
“What are you doing?” Max demanded immediately.
“I need to get out and check.”
“Check what?”
Ignoring his question—mostly because she wasn’t sure she could answer without panicking again—she pushed open the door. From the front seat, the big man muttered something unintelligible, and before Reggie could even get both feet on the ground, he’d flung open his own door and made his way to her side of the car.
He positioned himself in front of her, arms crossed over his wide chest as he repeated, “Check what?”
She met his gaze as steadily as she could manage with her head swimming the way it was and made herself say the words. “Check for a body.”
Max’s eyes widened, then darkened as he shook his head. “We’re not checking for a body.”
“We have to.”
“Body checking is a police job.”
“Unless the police created the body.”
“Chuck?”
Reggie nodded, wincing at the sharp pain the motion caused. “There was a gun and another man and cop or not... I’m sure it wasn’t something legal.”
“Then you definitely shouldn’t be checking.”
“I have to, Max. What if the other guy is still alive and needs help?”
His mouth twisted like he wanted to argue, but after a second, he just shook his head again. “I’ll go.”
“No.”
“The second you step out of the car, you’re going to fall over. What’s going to happen if someone is back there, and he’s not happy to see you?”
Reggie wanted to protest that she wasn’t anywhere near falling down, but it would’ve been a lie. Her head definitely didn’t feel right. But she wasn’t excited about the idea of him risking himself either. Not for her sake.
She swallowed. “I don’t think it’s very safe.”
“I’ve got some experience dealing with the shadier side of life,” he assured her.
“That’s not exactly reassuring.”
“It just means I can handle whatever’s around the other side of that Dumpster.”
“You’re sure?”
“A hundred percent.”
She took a breath, then nodded. “Okay.”
He studied her for a second longer—like he was trying to figure something out—then moved to the passenger-side door on the front of the car. He opened it, then the glove box, too, and pulled out something shiny and metal.
A gun.
Reggie was shaking her head—pain be damned—before he even brought it back and held it out. “I can’t take that.”
“You’re scared. And for a minute or two, you’re going to be alone. This’ll give you some security,” he said.
“I don’t even know how to fire it.”
“This is an easy one. Flick off the safety, then click, point and shoot.” He demonstrated the steps once, then twice, then handed the weapon to her and made her repeat the sequence herself. “Good.”
Reggie couldn’t think of a worse word to describe the situation. Less than an hour ago, she’d been worrying that she wouldn’t have time to do her nails before Garibaldi’s party. Now she was sitting in a stranger’s car with a gun in her lap. And the stranger was telling her things would be fine and holding out his hand and expecting her to just take it.
“C’mon,” he said. “I’ll help you into the front.”
As she closed her fingers on his, a startling tingle shot up her arm. The sensation was strong enough that it momentarily blocked out the buzz in her head. Surprise made her loosen her hand, and she shot her gaze up, wondering if he felt the shock of sharp heat, too. But Max was focused on tightening his hold and pulling her out gently.
Reggie made herself dismiss the heady sensation as a side effect of her head bump, and let him guide her to the passenger seat. But it was impossible to deny the jolt of loss as he let her go.
“Key’s in the ignition,” he said. “If I don’t come back around that corner in five minutes, I want you to drive away. Fast and far enough away that you know your 911 call is going to go to a different city.”
Reggie opened her mouth to protest, but he was already closing the door. With her heart in her throat, she stared after him as his pressed himself to the edge of the building, then slipped around the corner and disappeared.
* * *
With well-practiced stealth, Brayden eased along the exterior brick wall of the Frost Family Diner. He’d already compartmentalized his worries so that he could focus on the moment. From the shoe in the cop’s back pocket to whether or not this whole situation related to his own case, to the fact that he found the pretty waitress’s green eyes utterly mesmerizing, everything had been tucked into a tidy corner of his mind. Even the ridiculous prick of heat he’d felt when he took her hand had been momentarily put aside. After all, he wouldn’t get a chance to experience it again if he couldn’t satisfy her need to check up on whatever had happened in the alley.
He moved along a little farther. He didn’t feel insecure about leaving behind his weapon; he was more than capable of winning in a hand-to-hand combat scenario. Even if his opponent came armed, Brayden had a few ways of disarming him without breaking much of a sweat. If worst came to worst, he could always rely on the small knife he kept tucked in his boot.
He had a feeling, though, that neither a knife nor his fists were going to be necessary. In spite of the quiet, uneasy air, Brayden’s instincts weren’t screaming a warning. His gut wasn’t wrong often. Eight years a cop—four of them as a detective—saw to that.
He reached the Dumpster in question and pushed out from the wall to avoid rubbing his back along the sour-smelling bin. He inched along until he got to the corner, where he paused, listening. Not a single sound carried out from the other side. Even the dim light above didn’t emit a hum.
Feeling confident that he’d find nothing—but cautious nonetheless—he eased out into the open. Silence continued to reign. Brayden relaxed even more. His gaze swept the area in search of anything out of the ordinary. The alley was clean. Almost weirdly so. He slowed his perusal of the space, now looking for something in place instead of out of it. There were no scraps of trash on the cobblestone, no signs of refuse of any sort.
He frowned. There should’ve been something. A half a dozen businesses shared the alley and the Dumpster. How could it possibly be so clean? The answer was one that made his instincts jump.
Because someone cleaned it up.
The trip between the spot where he’d picked up Reggie and the spot where he’d pulled the U-turn to come back had taken a little more than thirty minutes. If someone had come in and taken care of the scene—assuming the waitress was right about what happened—they’d done it in a hurry. Which meant they likely missed something.
Brayden made himself do a third visual inventory, this time square foot by square foot, surveying everything from the walls to the ground. He still saw nothing. Convinced he’d been thorough but with his gut still telling him something was off, he turned to head back to the car. Then he spotted it. Wedged under the door opposite the large bin. A dull metal soup can with a highly-recognizable logo.
With a quick glance around, he took a few steps toward the discarded item. Then paused as something far more sinister caught his attention. Just above the can, at chest height on the wall, was a small, rust-colored smear. A few more steps and a closer look confirmed Brayden’s initial suspicion. It was blood. He’d seen enough of it in the course of his career to know.
Now he backed up, trying to get a wider view. The light was growing steadily worse, but he was almost positive that the wall showed signs of a hasty wipe down. An unnaturally even arc of dirt swept around the smear. Like someone had wiped it clean, then tried to mask the wipe down. An untrained eye might’ve missed it. A few days from then, it would probably be utterly unnoticeable.
Habit made Brayden want to call it in. But the integrity of the local police was more than just in question—it was possible that at least one of them was responsible. He didn’t even know for sure what the end result of the shooting was. If the man was alive, he stood a chance of being saved. Except he thought the chances of that were slim to none. If he hadn’t been dead when the cleanup happened, he wouldn’t have made it for much longer. A shooting in an alleyway wasn’t a warning—it was a death sentence.
Make a decision, he ordered silently.
He tapped his fingers on his thigh for a second, said a silent prayer for the man who’d very likely met his untimely fate in the alley, then yanked out his cell phone. As much as mourning the loss of life felt right, it was action that would make things right. So in quick succession, he took a series of photos, making sure to get the smear from multiple angles. Then he took a panoramic shot of the alley. As soon as he had a good collection of pictures, he dragged them into an album, added a shorthand note and fired them off to a generic email address that he and his team used for communications like this. What were the chances that a town as small as Whispering Woods was home to two criminal masterminds?
Slim to none.
This had to have something to do with the slippery crook who killed their father. And if for some crazy reason it all turned out not to be related to his own case, it was still a good record to have. Especially if a man had been shot, as Reggie said.
Reggie. Right.
He needed to get back to her. His five minutes were more than likely up, and he had a strong preference for not walking the fifteen miles back to his cabin. Tucking his phone away, he turned up the alley once more. He only got two steps before a bang rocked the air.
For a second, he was frozen, a tumble of bad memories hitting him hard.
The bomb. The echo. The debris.
Video footage of the tragedy jumped to the forefront of his mind. The remembered sound of it filled his thoughts for a minute, blocking out all else. A teenage boy, knowing exactly what it sounded like on the scene where his father was killed.
Then a second explosion echoed through the alley, and instinct kicked in a little belatedly. Brayden threw himself against the wall and ducked low; his head whipped back and forth as he looked for the source of the noise. Everything was still. There wasn’t even a whiff of smoke.
So what the—
A third boom sounded, cutting off his thoughts as he realized it had come from up the alley. Near the spot where Reggie waited in the car.
Panic hit, this time even harder than before and directed outward rather than inward.
A rare curse dropped from Brayden’s mouth as he bolted up the cobblestone road. In seconds, he’d reached the street, fear for the green-eyed waitress making his feet move fast. He stopped short, though, when he spotted his car in one piece, Reggie in the same spot he’d left her. Even from a few feet away, he could see the concern on her face, but it was no stronger an expression than it had been a few minutes earlier.
Puzzled, he took a step out. A fourth boom, then three more rapid-fire ones rang out. Brayden flinched. Then the sky above exploded in light, and he realized what it really was and his body sagged.
Fireworks. Seriously?
It might’ve been funny if it weren’t so ridiculous. He almost wanted to laugh anyway. He made himself refrain from doing it, afraid it might come out a little manically if he let it.
“Way to stay calm under pressure, Detective Maxwell,” he muttered as he picked his way over to the car and opened the driver’s-side door.
“Are you okay?” Reggie asked right away.
“Fine.”
“You’re sure?”
He forced himself to answer lightly. “This from the woman who got run over by my car.”
“I guess. But you do look a little green.”
For the briefest second, he considered telling her about his overreaction and where it came from. Something in her gaze made him think she might offer a sympathetic ear. That she might even genuinely care. He shook off the urge. They didn’t have time for exchanging stories or getting all touchy-feely. What he needed to focus on was getting her away from whatever had happened back there in the alley. Before someone came back to check on their handiwork.
“I’m really okay,” he assured her.
“And there wasn’t anything in the alley?” She took a visibly shaky breath. “No body?”
“No body. But there was something,” he admitted. “I just don’t think we should hang around and talk about it here. And considering the fact that Chuck-The-Cop had your shoe, I also think it’s probably best if we steer clear of your house. At least for the moment. Any objections to sticking with my original idea?”
“Your cabin?”
“It’s out of the way. Not easy to sneak up on. If someone is looking for you, it won’t be on their radar.”
She pursed her lips and drew in her breath. And before her nod of agreement was even finished, Brayden was turning the key.