chapter Three
Amberly managed to make it to John’s house by four-thirty that afternoon to pick up Max. Earlier in the day, she and Cole had met with his deputies and compared notes.
Unfortunately, no information that the deputies had gathered had made for any kind of an aha moment. She was used to the cases she worked not being easily solved; what she wasn’t used to was being so ridiculously attracted to a man she was working with.
She was a strong, independent woman, and yet there was something about the broadness of his shoulders that tempted her to lean against him. He had strong features and a square chin that she suspected held more than his share of stubbornness. But his lower lip was full and whispered of sexiness, and the blue of his eyes made her want to lose herself in them forever.
Still, no matter how attracted she was to him, she certainly didn’t intend to follow through on it. She’d made a personal commitment not to date until Max was older. The relationship she shared with John was healthy and good, and Max had adjusted to the divorce very well.
He’d been so young when it had happened she doubted that he even had any memories of her and John together. But she didn’t want to screw anything up by introducing a new man to the mix, especially a man who might not be in her life, in Max’s life, for the long haul.
If she ever decided to move on, whoever she did eventually invite into her life would have to be a very special kind of man. Max didn’t need a father; he already had one of those. Any man who wound up in her life would have to understand that his role to Max would be as friend and confidante, a stepfather who had to work with John as the father.
It all felt so complicated, too complicated. And she wasn’t the type for a random hookup. Although there were certainly times when Max was in bed asleep and Amberly missed having somebody there to talk to, to share the details of her day with, somebody who would hold her through the nights of both good dreams and bad.
Ultimately, the truth of the matter was that she didn’t believe in the state of marriage. She didn’t believe that passion could last for years, that the kinds of compromise that had to be made to make a marriage work was worth the benefit in the end.
As she pulled into John’s driveway she noticed Ed Gershner’s car parked along the curb. Ed was her next-door neighbor, a man in his mid-fifties who loved gardening, fine art and chess. He and the younger John had met at a community center where several people had been trying to form a chess club. The club hadn’t happened, but a friendship based on the love of the game had formed between John and Ed.
Max greeted her at the door with a hug and a kiss and then led her into the kitchen, where Ed and John were in the middle of a match.
Neither man looked up from the board. “Two minutes,” John said. Amberly exchanged a grin with her son. They both knew the routine, that it was taboo to interrupt an active chess game.
She gestured her son back into the living room and pulled him down on the sofa next to her. By the time Max had finished telling her about his day in school, Ed and John joined them.
“He beat me again,” Ed exclaimed in disgust as he raked a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. “That makes twice this afternoon.”
Amberly gave him a smile. “You’ll get him next time.” She looked at John. “I can take Max home tonight, but would you mind keeping him for the weekend?”
“You know I don’t mind,” John said.
“That okay with you, Max?”
“Sure. We can finish that puzzle we started,” he said to his father.
John laughed. “I hate to tell you this, buddy, but I think it’s going to take us longer than one weekend to get that sucker put together.” He looked at Amberly with a woeful smile. “It’s Buckingham Palace in 3-D.”
“Whoa, sounds like a big job,” Amberly exclaimed as she rose from the sofa. “Come on, Max. We’d better get out of here. I see Ed is chomping at the bit to have another game with your dad.”
“And this time I’m going to get him,” Ed vowed.
Max grabbed his backpack and ran over to give John a kiss. “Guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I’ll bring him after dinner,” Amberly said. She didn’t intend to go back to Mystic Lake until tomorrow night, when she was meeting Cole to go to the bar. She planned on spending much of the day comparing the files of the murders and the latest information and interviews that had been done during the last twenty-four hours and, of course, hanging out with her son.
As usual, as they drove the three blocks from John’s house to theirs, Max insisted they play their game. He described in minute detail the front yard of a house they passed. He noticed a basketball half-hidden in the bushes, a red-and-white bicycle against the beige house and a patch of dry grass beneath a large pine tree.
“Awesome, Max,” she exclaimed when he’d finished.
“You have to be good at that kind of stuff if you want to be an FBI agent, don’t you, Mom?”
“That’s right, but you also have to get good grades and make good choices when you’re growing up. But you know, Max, you don’t have to be an FBI agent. You’re so smart you can be anything you want to be if you work for it.”
“I know, but I want to be an FBI agent like you,” he replied.
By that time, they had arrived at their house. Max went into his bedroom to play one of his video games while Amberly started frying burgers for dinner.
As she worked, she couldn’t help it that her mind went back to Cole Caldwell. She’d gotten mixed messages from him all afternoon. There had been moments when she’d caught him staring at her, when she’d felt the heat of male interest emanating toward her. But they were brief moments followed by coldness and an edge of resentment.
She told herself she didn’t care how he treated her, what his thoughts were of her. All that mattered was that they somehow figure out how to work together to discover who was killing the young women in Mystic Lake.
As she flipped the burgers and then made a quick salad, her thoughts moved from Cole to the crime. The dream catchers confused her.
It was a dichotomy for the killer to brutally stab three women to death and then hang a dream catcher above each victim as if to assure them happy dreams throughout eternity. What did it mean? What did the dream catchers mean to the killer?
After dinner, several games of Go Fish and a bath for Max, she tucked him into his bed for the night. “I’m sorry I won’t be around this weekend,” she said as she touched the owl pendent hanging around his neck.
“It’s okay. Me and Dad will have fun. We always do. Now, tell me a Granny Nightsong story before I go to sleep.”
“Granny Nightsong thought the wind was an old man who, when grouchy, blew. On a windy day, she’d yell at the old man, telling him to hush his mouth, to stuff a sock in it.” Max giggled at this, and the sound wrapped around her heart and squeezed it tight.
“She was funny.”
“She was funny and wonderful, and I wish she would have lived long enough that you could have grown up with her. She would have loved you so much.”
Max nodded, his eyelids beginning to droop. “Are you working on an important job now?”
“Very important. I’m helping a sheriff find a bad guy. His name is Sheriff Cole Caldwell.”
“Sheriff Cole… If I don’t be an FBI agent, maybe I’ll be a sheriff.” His eyes drifted closed and she knew he was asleep. Still, she remained seated on the edge of his bed, drawing in the scent of childhood, of little boy…that scent that belonged to Max alone.
She and John might have gotten a lot of things wrong between them, but Max had been nothing but right. He was her heart, her hopes and dreams.
She finally got up from his bed and left his room. She went into the kitchen, poured herself a cup of coffee, threw a bag of red licorice on the table and then began to spread out the crime files.
There was no question that she was looking forward to tomorrow night and meeting up with Jeff Maynard and some of his friends at Bledsoe’s. Amberly had good instincts about people, and they might be more apt to talk to a woman than to a sheriff.
Going back to the first murder of Gretchen Johnson made sense to her. That was where the killer established his pattern, that’s where a possible personal connection could be found between killer and victim.
Cole had surprised her with his assertion that he go with her to the bar. There had been times during the afternoon that she’d thought he wanted her anywhere else but close to him.
He could go with her tomorrow night if it made him feel better, but that didn’t mean they were going to stay together inside the place. She couldn’t accomplish what she needed to with him at her side.
Although the idea of having him right at her side was far too appealing, she had to keep her personal, crazy attraction to him firmly under control.
She’d noticed as they’d walked the streets of Mystic Lake that morning that he was well liked and respected by the people he served. He probably had some hot honey- bunny at home to snuggle with, to get him through the long, lonely nights.
He’d told her his wife had been killed eight years before. Men didn’t do well alone, and she couldn’t imagine that a man like Cole Caldwell had spent the past eight years entirely alone.
Besides, she didn’t care. She had a crime to solve, a son to raise, and that was more than enough for her at this time in her life. She’d stopped believing in long-term relationships and marriages when she’d finally decided to leave John. Whatever she felt toward Cole Caldwell was nothing more than a healthy dose of lust—and she had learned the hard way that friendships might last forever, but passion was a fleeting emotion meant to make fools of people.
AT PRECISELY NINE-THIRTY Friday night, Cole’s doorbell rang. He’d expected her to be exactly on time, and she was. They’d agreed to meet at his house half an hour before leaving for Bledsoe’s.
He opened the door to greet her, and for a moment, his breath caught in his chest. Clad in a pair of tight jeans and a turquoise, sparkly blouse, with her hair loose and flowing down her shoulders and back, she looked sizzling hot and definitely not like the professional agent he’d spent time with the day before.
He had foregone his uniform, opting instead for a pair of blue jeans and a short-sleeved button-down navy shirt. For an awkward moment, they simply stared at each other, and then he found his voice.
“Come in,” he said as he gestured her inside. As she swept past him, her perfume teased his nose, and he felt a tightening of every muscle in his body.
“Nice place,” she said as she entered his living room. “Very functional and masculine.”
He looked around the room as if seeing it through her eyes. Functional, yes, but also cold and impersonal. When he’d bought this house and moved here, he’d still been reeling with grief. He’d bought the furniture he needed to exist, and that was it.
Since that time, he’d done little to make it a real home. It was just the space where he ate, showered and slept when he wasn’t on the job.
He motioned her into the kitchen and to the small, round table. “Want something to drink?” he asked, wanting some sort of activity to take his mind off her sexiness.
“No, thanks. I figure I’ll order something when we get to Bledsoe’s,” she replied as she took a seat at the table.
He remained leaning against the refrigerator, feeling the safety of that much distance from her. He’d noticed she was pretty the first moment she’d arrived at the scene. But it was as if on that day, she’d been a photo negative, and now she was a full-blown colored photograph.
“So, what’s the plan?” he asked, since this was her idea to begin with.
“If things were going to go my way, then you’d stay here and I’d go to Bledsoe’s alone.”
He raised a brow and gave her a tight grin. “But you don’t always get your way in life.” The smile fell. “Bledsoe’s is usually filled with a pretty tough crowd, all the lowlifes in town seem to gather there on the weekends. You aren’t going in there alone.”
“I’m also not going in there as an FBI agent asking questions,” she replied.
He couldn’t help the way his gaze slid down the length of her. “I’d say that’s obvious,” he replied dryly.
“So, we need to come up with a cover story of sorts if you’re going to be with me. And by the way, I don’t want you lurking at my side every minute of the night. That defeats everything I’m trying to do.”
“I’ll find some corner to sit in and nurse a beer,” he replied.
“Have you done that before?”
“Occasionally but not often. When I have spare time in my life, I like to take my fishing pole and sit on the bank of Mystic Lake.”
“There’re fish in it?”
“Rumor has it that it was stocked years ago, but I’ve never caught anything. I just enjoy sitting alone to unwind after a long day.”
“No girlfriend to help you unwind?” she asked.
“Nope. I have no desire for a girlfriend, a second wife or a relationship. I’m satisfied with my work and my fishing time. That’s enough for me.” His voice took on an unintended rough edge. Never again would he put his heart on the line, never again would he risk going through the agony he’d experienced when he’d lost his wife.
“Okay. So, the plan,” she continued. “I think we should tell anyone who asks that I’m an old friend who finally decided to come to town for a visit, and I insisted we go to the bar because you’re kind of a fuddy-duddy and I’m a party girl.”
“I’m not a fuddy-duddy,” he said irritably.
“It’s just a cover story,” she replied with a small laugh. “I’m not actually accusing you of being a fuddy-duddy.”
Still, there was something in her tone of voice, a wicked gleam in her dark eyes that made him suspect she might see him as a rigid, humorless man. That wasn’t who he was…although perhaps that was the man he’d become over the past eight years. He shoved this troubling thought aside.
“Okay, so we have your cover. You’re an old friend from St. Louis who has come to visit and insisted we hit the town’s hot spot for the night.” He shoved himself off the refrigerator as she got up from the table.
As she stood, he once again recognized how gorgeous she looked. She’d be eaten alive by the bozos in the bar, but maybe in that process, she’d be able to gain information that would lead to them catching a killer.
That’s all he wanted from her, that’s all he wanted at all. To get this killer off the streets before he struck again, and there was no question that he would strike again—it was just a matter of time.
Within minutes, they were in his car and headed to Bledsoe’s. Cole believed the bar was a blight on the community, and more than once he’d been called there to break up a fight, to get a belligerent drunk home safely or disarm a drunk who had suddenly become a tough guy.
There was no question that it was a place where gossip was rife, where small stories grew to mammoth proportions, but there was also no question in his mind that Amberly might be able to learn more about the crimes than he had.
Nobody wanted to talk to a sheriff, but every man in the place, married or not, would want to find a way to talk to her, and hopefully one of them would be a little drunk and tell her a little too much.
“I feel like I’m putting you out there as bait,” he said to break the awkward silence that had grown in the car as they drove.
She flashed him a quick smile. “Let’s just hope I have more success at fishing than you usually do.”
“Ah, low blow,” he exclaimed.
“Granny Nightsong used to say that any fish could be caught if you just used the right bait. Of course, she also had a fish-catching dance that was an awesome thing to see.”
Cole felt himself relaxing slightly. “She must have been a character.”
“Oh, she was. I always like to describe her as full Cherokee and part crazy. She was the most important person in my life.”
“What about your parents?”
“My father disappeared after impregnating my mother, and my mother was a crack addict who dropped me off at my granny’s place when I was three. I never saw her again. I figure she’s either dead or in prison.” She said the words as if she’d long ago made peace with the facts of her life.
“You never tried to look for them? Your mother and father?”
She looked at him in surprise. “Why would I? They mean absolutely nothing to me. The best gift my mother could have given me was leaving me with Granny Nightsong and staying out of my life. I had a wonderful childhood with a woman who was strong and loving and just enough off center to be fun and exciting.”
By that time, they had arrived at Bledsoe’s. The bar was housed in a low, flat building with blinking beer signs at every window. The parking lot was full of pickup trucks, a few rusted old cars and several motorcycles.
“Wow, not exactly uptown, are we?” she muttered as they got out of the car.
Next to the bar was an old, abandoned warehouse with broken windows and a gaping front door. Cole had suspected for some months that drug activity took place in the building, but he’d never managed to catch anyone using inside, although he’d often found drug paraphernalia.
“This is an area of town I’d definitely like to see torn down and revitalized, but several of the town council members have interests in keeping Bledsoe’s here.”
As they approached the front door of the bar, the sound of loud music spilled out along with the scents of booze, sweat and cheap cologne and perfume.
Instinctively, he grabbed Amberly by the elbow as they entered, as if subtly marking his territory to anyone who might see them.
She pulled away from him and beelined toward the bar, obviously not wanting him anywhere near her as she worked the room.
He found a small table in the corner and sat. From this vantage point, he could see Amberly wherever she went unless she disappeared into the back room, where there were three pool tables.
His stomach tightened as she sidled up to the bar and ordered a drink from Jeff Maynard. It was obvious she was flirting with him, and he was responding with more than a little bit of enthusiasm. At the same time, men moved in to flank each side of Amberly.
Cole knew the men. One was Raymond Ross, a single male with a reputation for being a ladies’ man. The other one was Jimmy Tanner, a married man on the verge of divorce, according to local rumors. Both were good friends of Jeff’s and had professed to being with him at the poker game the night of Gretchen’s murder.
If Amberly was going to get any information, she was standing in the right place at the right time. Still, as he watched Raymond lightly touch her on the small of her back, Cole wanted to jump out of his chair and tell Raymond to keep his filthy hands to himself.
At that moment, Karen Kingman sauntered up to his table. Karen was well over fifty years old, and her face held the ravages of hard living, but she acted as if she was twenty-one and highly desirable.
“Hey, Sheriff.” She batted her brown eyes. “As always, it’s good to see you.” She stood too close to him, invading his personal space as she leaned forward enough to flash him a view of her sagging, ample breasts. “What can I get for you?”
There was no question that she was hoping he’d say an order of her to go, but he ordered a bottle of beer and breathed a grateful sigh as she moved away. He focused back on Amberly.
She was now surrounded by half a dozen men, all obviously vying for her attention, and she appeared to be enjoying every minute of it. As he watched her toss her hair and laugh and accept a shot of something from Jeff, a rich desire for her flamed inside him. Yeah…him and every other man in the place, he thought ruefully.
For the next two hours, Cole sat at his table, watching as Amberly downed one shot after another, danced with one man after another and appeared to get more and more drunk with each minute that passed.
And Cole found his anger rising with each of those minutes that passed. What the hell did she think she was doing? How could she be effective doing her job with all the shots she’d consumed?
Had she forgotten why they were here? What was at stake? She was here to try to get answers, and instead, she was accepting drinks, hips swaying to the music as men vied for her company on the dance floor. She was not only wasting his time, but she was making a mockery of what they were trying to do.
By midnight Cole had had enough. Her cheeks were flushed, her natural grace gone as she stumbled between Jeff at the bar and Raymond and Jimmy. This had been a huge mistake.
He obviously hadn’t known her well enough to trust this insane idea of hers. Dammit, he should have never agreed to this crazy plan.
And now he needed to get her out of here before she fell flat on her face and passed out. He walked over to where she stood at the bar between Raymond and Jimmy.
He took her firmly by the arm. “I think it’s time we call it a night?”
“Ah, come on, Sheriff, it’s early yet,” Raymond said, his voice slightly slurred.
Jimmy threw an arm over Cole’s shoulder, obviously more inebriated than his friends. “Yeah, don’t go yet. We like your friend.” He gave an exaggerated wink to Amberly, who giggled like a schoolgirl.
Cole was disgusted with the lot of them, Amberly most of all. He tightened his grip on her arm. “Sorry, boys, I think she’s had more than enough for one night.”
“The fuddy-duddy says it’s time to go,” Amberly said in dismay as Cole tightened his jaw. “But maybe I can come back tomorrow night.” She leaned heavily against Cole as if not quite sure she could stand on her own.
As he led her to the door, he once again mentally cursed himself for agreeing to this plan in the first place. But the last thing he’d expected was his undercover agent to get totally wasted.
He walked her to the passenger side of his car, her stumbling and giggling while he cursed beneath his breath. He should have done something sooner. When he’d seen all the shots being bought for her, he should have stepped in and halted the whole thing.
They reached the passenger door. He opened it, but instead of sliding in, she grinned up at him. “You think I’m drunk, don’t you?”
“I think you’re smashed,” he replied, his jaw tightening again.
“Then I demand a Breathalyzer,” she exclaimed. Before he could guess her intentions, she reached up, leaned forward and pressed her mouth to his.
He had no idea what she intended, wasn’t sure if she even knew what she was doing, but her mouth was hot and tasted faintly of tequila, and as she opened her lips beneath his, he took the invitation and deepened the kiss with his tongue.
He wasn’t sure who halted the fevered moment of insanity, him or her, but suddenly he was staring at her in stunned surprise.
“If you thought that would convince me that you’re sober, you’re definitely wrong,” he said. She slid into the car, and he slammed the door harder than necessary.
As he walked around to the driver’s side, he realized what made him angry now was the fact that drunk or sober, he wouldn’t mind kissing her again.