Murder in the Smokies

chapter Five



“I don’t rightly remember what he looked like.” The Stay and Save night clerk, a skinny young man in his early twenties who looked as if he might be a little stoned, answered Sutton’s question with a wrinkled brow, as if trying to remember what had happened less than twenty-four hours earlier was too much of a mental strain.

Hell, it probably was.

“And you’re sure it was a man who left the message?” Sutton glanced at Ivy, whose expression shifted at his question. Apparently she’d been making the same assumption he had, that the gunman in the woods was a man. But assumptions could be wrong.

Just not this time, apparently. “Definitely a man,” the clerk said with a firm nod. “I remember the voice was deep. Definitely a guy. But, see, I was filling out some paperwork that’s due at the end of this week, and it’s really complicated, so I didn’t take time to look up to see his face. I just jotted down what he told me to and then got back to my paperwork.”

Damned inconvenient, Sutton thought. “Could you tell anything from his voice? His ethnicity or where he might be from?”

The clerk squinted, as if trying to remember was hard. “I don’t remember any accent, so I guess that probably means he’s from somewhere around these parts. I think he was white. I guess he could have been Cherokee, since we get some of those around here sometimes, too. Pretty sure he wasn’t black.” He looked up at Sutton, his forehead smoothing out. “Yeah, he wasn’t black. I kinda saw him out of the corner of my eye, and I think I’d have noticed whether he was black or white.”

“Do you remember if he was tall? Short? Heavy or thin?”

“Kinda tall,” the clerk answered after a moment of thought. “He blocked out some of the light in the doorway, so he must have been tall. I’d say average build. Not fat, not skinny. Really, though, that’s all I remember.” He looked up at Sutton with a hint of pleading, as if asking them not to make him put his brain to use any more tonight.

Ivy took mercy on him. “If you remember anything else about the person who left the note for Mr. Calhoun, please give me a call at the police station.” She stepped forward and handed the clerk her card. “Thanks for your help.”

With a gesture of her head toward Sutton, she headed out of the office.

He followed her out to where they’d parked the Jeep and the Ranger. He’d already grabbed his things from the room while she’d stood guard outside, looking like a tiny soldier with her gun hanging from the holster at her side. His bags were stowed away on the bench seat of his truck.

He was already beginning to regret saying yes to Ivy’s rash offer of a place to stay. If he found himself lusting after her in the middle of a bullet-flying ambush, what chance did he have to be on his best behavior holed up with her in a cozy little house for a few days? And he was probably putting her job in jeopardy as well just by being there.

But the Stay and Save was the only motel in Bitterwood. There was a bed-and-breakfast on the other side of town, but he’d checked. It was booked through the next week. The next-closest place to stay was almost all the way to Maryville—not that long a drive, really, but conducting his investigation from a town over would be a pain in the neck.

Maybe he should suck up his courage and see if Cleve would put him up for a few days. He’d lived with his father for eighteen years. What were a few more days?

“I’m kind of glad you’re going to be staying with me,” Ivy said as he opened the driver’s door of the truck. In the harsh lighting of the motel parking lot, her small face was cast in chiaroscuro, her eyes hidden by inky shadows, making it impossible for him to read her expression.

“Why’s that?” he asked.

“Easier to keep an eye on you,” she said with a half smile. Her tone of voice reminded him of his lingering impression of the girl who’d been his friend all those years ago—feisty, surprising and brutally honest.

He followed the taillights of her Jeep to a small house on Vesper Road, a winding road that led through the woods at the base of Smoky Ridge. In the beams of their headlights, he got an impression of a neat, well-kept house with pale gray exterior paint and bright yellow trim.

Smiling at the quirky juxtaposition of subdued and vibrant, he wondered if she’d been the one to choose the paint colors. It seemed to suit her own contradictions, the interplay of control and impulse that had driven her to follow him all the way to Clingmans Dome that evening.

Maybe she hadn’t changed all that much over the years. The odd, thoughtful girl who’d become his sounding board and loyal champion when they were little more than kids had been a mass of contradictions as well, both fiercely brave and painfully shy, whip-smart and endearingly naive.

God, he’d missed her like crazy those first few lonely days away from Bitterwood and everything he’d ever known.

Behind her house, the looming, dark contours of Smoky Ridge towered over the valley below like a silent, ancient sentry. As children, he and Ivy had both lived on that mountain. She, like he, had played among the firs and spruce, explored the natural caves and climbed the soaring ridges until they could see for miles and miles around them.

When he’d left here years ago, he’d been certain nothing in these hills had the power to draw him back. Not even Ivy. Even a few days ago, when Jesse Cooper had assigned him to work with Stephen Billings on the investigation into his sister’s murder, Sutton hadn’t believed there was anything about Bitterwood that could speak to him anymore.

But he’d been wrong. The land itself was a potent reminder that there had been beauty among the ruins of his childhood. Happiness that even misery hadn’t destroyed.

And there had been Ivy Hawkins, who’d understood him without having to be told what he was feeling. He hadn’t realized how much he had missed having someone in his life he could trust that way.

Ivy parked the Jeep in the driveway, leaving room for him to pull up parallel with her. She waited on the driveway for him to get out of the truck, greeting him with an oddly anxious smile.

“This is it.” She looked at the house and back at him.

“I like it,” he said truthfully.

Her pleased look made his chest ache a little. “It’s not very big, but I have a spare room with a fold-out bed you can use. Are you hungry? I’m starving.” She started down the walkway to the house at a brisk clip, forcing him to move quickly to catch up at the door.

Inside, the house was surprisingly cozy for a place belonging to an unmarried cop who lived alone. The front door opened into a small den decorated in warm shades of brown, green and amber. Despite the almost utilitarian lines of the furnishings, feminine touches surprised the eye here and there—a pair of lacy throw pillows in a deep shade of crimson tossed on each end of the brown leather sofa, a dreamy impressionist landscape hanging over the river-stone hearth, a pair of fuzzy yellow slippers lying at the foot of the overstuffed armchair near the window.

He felt Ivy’s gaze on his face, as if she was waiting for his reaction. He looked at her and smiled just to see her smile back at him. “I like it inside, too. It feels like a home.”

Her cheeks went pink as she bent to pick up a magazine that lay open on the coffee table. He caught a glimpse of a colorful garden on the front of the magazine before she deposited it into a wood rack by the sofa, where it joined a small pile of other magazines. “I’m not sure I spend enough time here for it to really feel like a home,” she admitted, unbuckling her shoulder holster as she crossed to a tall, four-drawer chest standing near an open archway that seemed to lead into a hall. She withdrew the Smith & Wesson from the holster, unlocked a drawer that contained a gun case and locked the pistol inside.

“You don’t keep a gun nearby at all times?” Sutton’s own pistol felt like an appendage to him. He’d learned never to get caught without it. Fortunately, Tennessee honored his Alabama concealed carry license. He wouldn’t have wanted to come back to Bitterwood unarmed.

The Calhouns had made too many enemies over the past few generations for him to walk around unprotected.

“That’s my work-issued sidearm,” she answered with a little grin that made his gut clench with pure male hunger. She unlocked the second drawer down and pulled out another case. Inside lay a compact Glock 26. She checked the chamber and the magazine, then held it up to show Sutton. “This is my personal weapon.”

She put the Glock in an unattached ankle holster. “You hungry?”

“Yeah, but mostly I’m cold and wet,” he admitted. “I could use a shower and change of clothes before food.”

Her gaze lifted slowly to meet his, mysteries roiling in those dark brown eyes. “There’s a bathroom down the hall.” She pointed him in the right direction. “The spare room is right next to that. It’s a little cluttered but the fold-out sofa is pretty comfortable. I’ll get you some sheets when you’re ready to bunk down.”

By the time he had showered and changed into warmer clothes, Ivy had somehow managed to do the same, for when he found her in the kitchen, looking through her pantry, her hair was twisted into a towel turban. The jeans were gone, replaced by a pair of black yoga pants under a long-sleeved UT-Chattanooga T-shirt. She smelled like green apples.

“I’m thinking a cup of nice hot soup and maybe a grilled cheese sandwich?” She looked over her shoulder at him for his input.

“Sounds great,” he agreed. “I could make the sandwiches while you heat up the soup. Just point me to a pan.”

They worked in efficient silence for the next few moments, and as the rumbling of his stomach began to overcome the hot-and-bothered feeling he’d gotten at the sight and smell of a freshly showered Ivy Hawkins, Sutton began to think he might be able to handle all this forced togetherness after all.

For one night, at least.

“I don’t think they’ll find the shooter,” Ivy said a few minutes later as she poured steaming tomato soup into a couple of mugs. “Do you?”

“Probably not,” he agreed. He handed her a plate holding a crispy grilled cheese sandwich. He still hadn’t quite wrapped his mind around who the shooter could be. He’d been in plenty of dangerous hot spots over the past decade or so, made a few enemies, at least in the abstract. But Special Forces operatives toiled mostly in anonymity.

“Do you know anyone who might want you dead?” Ivy sat at the small breakfast nook table and waved at the opposite chair, inviting him to take a seat. She wrapped her hands around the mug of soup, making a contented noise deep in her throat, undermining Sutton’s earlier confidence that his sleepover at Ivy’s would be easier than expected.

“I was just thinking about that,” he admitted. “I’m sure I did things while I was in the army that might earn me some enemies. But none of them ever knew my real name. I was never captured, never had my story written up in a newspaper. I was the mystery man in the civvies and beard—they probably thought I was CIA rather than Special Forces.”

Ivy’s eyes narrowed slightly at his answer, and he wondered what she was thinking. He’d always been pretty good at reading people’s thoughts in their expressions and their body language, but Ivy Hawkins kept her emotions and thoughts well hidden these days. He wondered how much of that particular talent had come as a natural result of covering up for a sexually promiscuous mother with dangerous taste in men. How many lies had she been forced to tell just to keep the Department of Children’s Services away from her door?

He’d told a few lies like that in his day, especially after his mother died. His growing disdain for his father’s con games had been eclipsed only by the fear of getting sucked into the foster care system. He’d known kids in Bitterwood who’d been pulled onto that particular governmental merry-go-round, and he’d promised himself he’d put up with anything Cleve might do as long as he didn’t have to leave home and go live with strangers.

Of course, the first thing he’d done the second he’d left Bitterwood behind was sign up for the army and spend the next months and years putting his life in the hands of strangers who wore the same uniform he did.

“You don’t think it could have anything to do with the murders, do you?” Ivy asked.

“I don’t see how. Not many people even know I’m back in town, much less that I’m investigating April Billings’s murder.”

“Word flies pretty fast in a small town.” She took a sip of the soup and gave another soft murmur of pleasure that made Sutton’s jeans feel two sizes too tight. Worse, he’d just realized she wasn’t wearing a bra under that snug-fitting T-shirt.

Why the hell couldn’t he get sex off his mind around her?

A faint trilling noise came from somewhere nearby. Ivy sighed and crossed to the table where she’d left her purse. Digging her cell phone from one of the inner pockets, she answered. “Hawkins.”

Another murder? Sutton edged forward in his chair, keeping his eye on Ivy’s face, trying to read her expression.

Her face remained carefully neutral. “Yes, thank you for calling me back tonight. Can you hold for a moment?” She put her hand over the phone speaker and looked at Sutton. “Excuse me. I have to take this call.” She walked into one of the rooms off the living room and closed the door.

He released a slow breath and looked down at his uneaten food, his gut in knots. He’d never let a woman derail him from anything he put his mind to, and he’d been involved with his share of smart, sexy women, in the service and out. So why was Ivy turning him inside out all of a sudden?

She was pretty. Curvy and physically fit. Gutsy to a fault. And she had a bright, inquisitive mind he’d always found appealing, even when they’d been kids. But none of those attributes should have been enough to make a man his age with his experience feel so off-kilter.

He made himself eat his sandwich, washing it down with the cooling soup. Maybe hunger and a lack of sleep were behind his out-of-sorts feeling. It was already after ten, and he hadn’t had any sleep in over twenty-four hours. Since Ivy showed no sign of coming out of her bedroom anytime soon, he decided to find the linen closet himself and make up the fold-out bed without bothering her.

And then he’d do his damnedest to get a good night’s sleep, despite the proximity of Ivy Hawkins’s cotton-clad curves. Hell, he’d slept through firefights before.

He could sleep through an untimely case of lust.

* * *

“I’M SORRY TO DISTURB you so late.” Ivy kept her voice low so that it wouldn’t carry outside her bedroom.

“I was working late,” the man on the other end of the line assured her. He had a deep voice, with a bit of a Southern drawl. He’d identified himself as Jesse Cooper, CEO of Cooper Security. Ivy had left a message for Cooper while she was waiting for Sutton to finish his statement to the Sevier County Sheriff’s Department. “You wanted information about Sutton Calhoun?”

Now that she’d finally reached the head of Cooper Security, she felt odd asking questions about Sutton. “Mr. Calhoun is peripherally involved in a murder investigation, and I wanted to confirm his account of his reason for being here in Bitterwood.”

“What has he told you?” Jesse Cooper sounded cautious.

“Why do I get the feeling you’d back up anything I told you Sutton had said?” Ivy sat on the edge of her bed and closed her eyes, her head aching. She needed food and sleep, in that order, and Jesse Cooper’s obvious reluctance to be open with her wasn’t helping.

“We have to maintain a certain amount of discretion for our clients.” Cooper sounded genuinely apologetic. “That means I have to trust my agents to share only what they feel they must about the cases they’re on.”

“Has he told you that he was the target of an ambush tonight?” Almost as soon as the words came out of her mouth, she felt like a tattletale. But she needed to know if Sutton had a price on his head. Not just for his sake but also for the sake of the townspeople she’d sworn to protect.

“Was he injured?”

“No, he’s fine,” she quickly assured him.

“Did you apprehend the suspect?”

“No,” she answered more reluctantly. “He was shooting from a distance and by the time the Sevier County Sheriff’s Department arrived to do a fugitive search, he’d apparently left the area.”

“And you’re concerned Sutton poses a danger to your town?”

“Does he?”

“Not that I know of.”

She didn’t find his tone reassuring. “Cooper Security has a reputation as a trouble magnet.”

“When you try to stop powerful, dangerous people, that’s what happens, Detective Hawkins.”

Now she felt guilty about doubting Sutton. But she had to know if she could trust him.

“I realize the Calhoun name doesn’t exactly foster trust in your neck of the woods,” Cooper added. “And I get it. I know the family history. But Sutton Calhoun isn’t his father. I have no complaints about his work. And I wouldn’t have hired him if I didn’t believe he could be trusted. Does that set your mind at ease?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “I just had to know.”

“Now you do.” Cooper’s tone was kind. “And if there’s anything we can do to help you, let me know.”

She gave a soft huff of laughter. “I don’t think the Bitterwood Police Department can afford your rates, Mr. Cooper. But I appreciate the thought.”

She hung up and slumped on the edge of the bed, staring at her closed door. What had she been expecting, to hear that Sutton was lying?

Or was that what she’d been hoping? Had she been looking for a reason to kick him out of her house before she ended up falling head over heels for him the way she had when she was just fifteen and he didn’t see her as anything but a friend?

Too bad. He was on the up-and-up. She’d just have to control her emotions the hard way.

With a weary grumble, she pushed to her feet and opened the door, prepared to apologize to Sutton for taking so long. But when she entered the kitchen, she found he was no longer sitting at the breakfast nook.

“Sutton?”

“In here.” His voice came from the spare room down the hall.

She followed his voice and found him sitting up in the fold-out bed, covered up to his bare torso. His smoldering gaze lifted to meet hers.

Her knees trembled and she sneaked a hand out to grab the door frame. “I’m sorry. That took longer than I expected. I see you found the sheets.”

“Yeah.”

“I, uh—” Whatever she’d been planning to say drifted away like smoke on the wind as her reckless gaze drifted away from his hazel eyes to settle on his chest. He was lean and toned, with well-defined muscles that didn’t look as if they’d been built through reps on a weight machine at the local gym. Dark hair sprinkled his chest and converged in a dusky line that disappeared beneath the sheet.

She made herself look away. “Do you have everything you need?”

He took so long to answer she couldn’t help meeting his gaze again. “I think so,” he answered in a tone of voice that suggested there was at least one thing he didn’t have and wanted very much.

“Okay,” she said, barely able to hear her own voice over the sudden thunderous pounding of her pulse in her ears. “Well, good night.”

“Good night,” he murmured, his scorching gaze branding her.

She forced her feet backward, out of the room, and pulled the door shut behind her. She stood with her hand on the doorknob, taking a couple of deep breaths.

Too little sleep, too much stress, she told herself as her fingers tightened on the cool metal of the doorknob. That was her problem. A good night’s sleep would give her back a sense of perspective.

But when she slept, she dreamed.

* * *

SHE LAY TANGLED IN yellow sheets that looked blue in the moonlight pouring through the bedroom window. Her blanket lay in a puddle on the floor, kicked away as she dreamed.

She dressed like a child, he thought, her woman’s body clad in soft cotton pants and a T-shirt that could have passed for pajamas. He didn’t know if he found the appearance of innocence disappointing or exciting.

Exciting, he decided. Although maybe it was the prospect of bathing himself in her blood that sent his pulse racing with anticipation.

The window was unlocked, as he’d known it would be. He was a man of remarkable luck as well as thoughtful planning. Things had a way of working out for him in just the way he needed, though he was surprised, in a way, because of who she was.

The detective. The steely-eyed law-woman who should have known the importance of checking all the doors and windows before she went to bed. Perhaps she’d lived too long in this bucolic little mountain hamlet and had, like others before her, bought into the foolish notion that nothing bad could happen in a place so beautiful.

On the table by her bedside, a file folder lay open. He moved closer, his eyes so well-adjusted to the dark that he could see the folder’s contents with little effort. Photographs of bodies. His handiwork.

Excitement flaring in the pit of his gut, he flipped through the file. Hastily compiled dossiers on each victim followed the photographs. April Billings. Amelia Sanderson. Coral Vines. The new one, Marjorie Kenner.

She was trying to connect them, but the pieces just weren’t there. But she was close. So close.

Picking up the pen lying by the dossier, he bent and jotted a note on the inside of the folder. He stared at the single word, smiling. Would anyone know what it meant?

He walked silently to the side of her bed and gazed down at her. A disappointment, in a way. He’d hoped for more of a challenge.

Looming closer, he stretched his hand toward her. His shadow drifted across her face, plunging her sleep-softened features into darkness. A shame. He had wanted to see her face when she realized her time had run out.

Her soft respiration was the only sound in the room. He let it fill his ears, knowing it would soon die away forever.

With a violent thrust, he closed his hand over her throat and squeezed.

Ivy woke in a rush, phantom fingers pressing against the flesh of her neck. She reached for them before she realized she had only been dreaming.

A low moan of relief escaping her throat, she sat up and pressed her face into her hands, willing her racing heart back to a normal rhythm. Already, the nightmare was beginning to dissipate, but she tried to hold on to the images. Something—there was something...

When her legs stopped shaking, she pushed herself off the bed and padded barefoot across the cold hardwood floor to her window, fumbling for the brass window latch.

It was safely locked in place.

She slumped with relief, pressing her forehead against the cold glass pane. Outside, the night had gone quiet, the worst of the storm now past. A pale hint of moon glow peeked through the thinning clouds, casting a blue square of light across the wood slats of her front porch.

Suddenly, a shadow moved across the patch of light, quick and furtive.

A shadow shaped like a man.