“Crawford, did you hear what I said?”
He brought his gaze up to hers. “You weren’t the target, I was. It’s not the breakthrough you thought. I reached that same conclusion myself several hours ago.”
He told her about going from the park to the lake in the woods. “First, I had to cool down. Then I started at the beginning and thought through everything that’s happened since the shooting. And it all related to me, not you. I was about to share my theory with Neal and suggest that we explore it, when he dropped his bombshell.”
“May I sit down?”
“Sorry.”
He indicated the dining table. They took chairs adjacent to each other, and when their knees touched, he kept his against hers. “You look great, by the way.”
“I’m sweaty.”
“I’m aroused. How did you come to the conclusion that the shooting was about me?”
“Much the same as you. I was thinking about all the hard knocks you’ve had since, how the repercussions of it have affected you much more than me. I called you first, but when you didn’t answer, I phoned Neal. I only got out a few words before he hit me with his theory that you’re the villain.”
She repeated Neal’s harebrained conclusions. “Thing is, I think he really believes it,” Crawford said.
“I’m afraid so, too. He ended by asking if you had threatened me.”
“To which you said…?”
“No. At least not in the way he meant.”
He studied her shadowed face, that mouth, those eyes, the locks of hair that had shaken loose from her messy just-got-laid ponytail, and thought, Damn. He said, “We’re in a dark, empty house. I’ve got a king-size bed and time to kill.”
“Till what?”
“Till the Houston office calls me back. Or Neal shows up to arrest me. Let’s go in the bedroom and take off all our clothes.”
“Crawford, this is serious.”
“I know.” He sighed. “I’m trying to keep myself from strangling Neal for stupidity. I want to take a sledgehammer to Chuck Otterman for lying. You can save two lives by going to bed with me.”
“Are you positive Otterman is behind it?”
“No. He might have told Neal that he saw me with Rodriguez just to pay me back for getting his name in the news.”
“You leaked that?”
“We needed a spark plug. It worked.”
“But it made an enemy of Otterman.”
“I think he already was. He didn’t dress up in the white outfit, but I’d bet good money he was behind the shooting.”
“Buy why?”
“Hell if I know. I’ve got people researching.” He left his chair. “More water?”
“No thanks.”
He refilled the glass anyway and brought it back to the table. But he remained standing. “I’ve racked my brain. Swear to God, I’d never seen the man till he walked into the CAP unit yesterday. But it was like looking at a cobra. I felt a gut-deep revulsion. Fear. I don’t usually get that.”
“There must be a reason for it.”
“I think so, too. I just have to find it. When you got here, I was talking to my buddy in Houston who—”
“Harry or Sessions?”
“You know their names?”
“I introduced myself.”
“At the press conference?”
“At breakfast.”
“Breakfast?”
“They’d spent the whole night sitting in their cars outside my house. The least I could do was cook breakfast for them.”
Picturing that cozy gathering around her kitchen table, he put his hands on his hips. “Nobody mentioned that.”
“They advised me not to.”
“Did they say why?”
She just looked at him.
With more testiness, “Did they say why?”
“They said you were touchy about your women.”
His jealous reaction was proof enough of that. Then he realized what she could infer from their remark. “Holly, I never told them that we’d—”
“I didn’t think you had. But they seemed to know.”
“I guess they could tell by the way I was acting.”
“How were you acting?”
“Want the gutter term for it?”
She ducked her head and kept it lowered for several moments. When she raised her head, she resumed where they’d left off by asking what the other Rangers had reported to him.
“I asked them to look for any connection between Otterman and me. Or to Beth, the Gilroys, the DPS. So far nothing.”
“Halcon?”
“First thing we checked because it makes the most sense. But during that year-long investigation, Otterman was working up in the Panhandle. He didn’t take a day off for months either side of the shootout. No record of him ever being in Halcon.
“I thought maybe he wanted to avenge one of the bystanders who’d died, but he has no kinship or ties whatsoever to any of the casualties. Sessions is excellent at research, but he didn’t find a thing. I was asking him to dig deeper when you showed up at the back door.”