Читать книгу Single Father Sheriff - Carol Ericson - Страница 9
ОглавлениеSheriff Cooper Sloane wheeled his patrol SUV onto the gravel driveway of Cass Teagan’s place, the damp air tamping down any dust or debris that his tires even considered kicking up.
He owed Wyatt Carson for giving him the heads-up about Kendall Rush’s presence at her aunt’s house. The plumber hadn’t even done it on purpose, just let it slip.
He opened his car door and planted one booted foot on the ground where it crunched the gravel. He clapped his hat on his head and adjusted the equipment on his belt.
As he took one step toward the house, the front door crashed open and a woman flew down the steps, her hair streaming behind her, a pair of dark eyes standing out in her pale face.
She ran right toward him, her gaze fixed on something beyond his shoulder, something only she could see.
“Whoa, whoa.” He spread his arms as she barreled into him, staggered back and caught her around the waist so she wouldn’t take both of them down.
Her heart thundered against his chest, and her mouth dropped open as one hand clawed at the sleeve of his jacket.
“Ma’am. Ma’am. What’s the matter?”
She arched back, and her eyes finally focused on his face, tracked up to his hat and dropped to his badge. She blinked.
“Are you all right?” Her body slumped in his arms, and he placed his hands on her shoulders to steady her.
Then she squared those shoulders, and shoved one hand in the pocket of her jeans. A smile trembled on her lips. “I am so sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about.” He gave her a final squeeze before releasing her. “What happened in the house to send you out here like a bat outta hell?”
She wedged two trembling fingers against her temple and released a shaky laugh. “You’re not going to believe it.”
Raising one eyebrow, he cocked his head. “Try me.”
“S-spider.” She waved one arm behind her, the other hand still firmly tucked into her front pocket. “I have an irrational fear of spiders. I know it’s ridiculous, but I guess that’s why it’s irrational. A big, brown one crawled across my hand. Freaked me out. I should’ve just killed the sucker. Now I don’t know where he is. He could be anywhere in there.”
As the words tumbled from her lying lips, he narrowed his eyes.
She trailed off and cleared her throat. “Anyway, I told you it was silly.”
“We all have our phobias.” He lifted one shoulder, and then extended his arms. “After that introduction, we should probably backtrack. I’m Sheriff Sloane.”
“Kendall Rush, Sheriff. Nice to meet you. I’m Cass Teagan’s niece, and I’m here to sell her place.”
“I know. That’s why I’m here.” He gestured toward the front door, which yawned open behind the screen door that had banged back into place after Kendall’s flight from the...spider. “Can I talk to you inside?”
“Of course.”
She rubbed her arms as if noticing the chill in the soggy air for the first time.
When she didn’t make a move, he said, “After you.”
She spun on the toes of her sneakers and scuffed her feet toward the steps with as much enthusiasm as someone going to meet her greatest fear—and it had nothing to do with spiders.
He followed her, the sway of her hips in the tight denim making his mouth water—even though she was a liar.
She opened the screen door and turned suddenly. His gaze jumped to her face.
Her eyes widened for a nanosecond. Had she busted him? He didn’t even know if she had a husband waiting on the other side of the threshold. The good citizens of Timberline probably could’ve told him, but that piece of information hadn’t concerned him—before.
Standing against the screen door, she held it wide. “You first.”
“Still afraid that spider’s going to jump out at you?”
Her nostrils flared. “Better you than me.”
Something had her spooked and she hadn’t gotten over it yet.
He patted the weapon on his hip. “I got him covered if he does.”
“Even I’d consider that overkill for a spider.”
He brushed past her into the house, and a warm musky scent seeped into his pores. He had the ridiculous sensation that Kendall Rush was luring him into a trap—like a fly to a spider’s web.
The dusty mustiness of the room closed around him, replacing the seductive smell of musk and even overpowering the pine scent from outside. His nose twitched and he sneezed.
“I’m sorry. I haven’t had time to clean up ten months’ worth of dust in here yet.” She plucked a tissue from a box by the window and waved it at him.
“Why don’t you open a couple of windows?” He scanned the room, cluttered with boxes of varying degrees of emptiness, his gaze zeroing in on a cabinet with an open drawer, papers scattered around it.
“There was a breeze this morning, and I thought opening the window would stir up the dust and make it worse.” She walked backward to the cabinet and leaned against it, shutting the drawer with her hip in the process.
“Hope to trap him in there?”
A quick blush pulsed in her cheeks. “What?”
“The spider.” He pointed to the cabinet she seemed to be trying to block with her slight frame. “It looks like you were going through that drawer when you discovered him.”
The line of her jaw hardened. “I was going through the drawer, but the spider crawled on my hand while I was carrying one of the boxes.”
He looked at the neat row of boxes, not one dropped in haste, and shrugged. If she wanted to continue lying to him about what gave her such a scare that she’d run headlong out of the house and into his arms, he’d leave it to her. He hadn’t minded the introduction at all.
“If I happen to see him or any of his brethren, I’ll introduce him to the bottom of my boot.” He tipped his hat from his head and ran a hand through his hair. “Now, can I ask you a few questions, Ms. Rush?”
“All right, but I can’t help you.”
“That’s a quick judgment when you haven’t even heard the questions yet.” He put his hat on the top of a box filled with books. “Is there someplace else we can talk so I don’t have a sneezing fit?”
“I cleaned up the kitchen pretty thoroughly. Do you want something to drink while we talk?”
“Just water.” He followed her into the kitchen, keeping his eyes on the back of her head this time, although the way her dark hair shimmered down her back was just as alluring as her other assets.
She cranked on the faucet and plucked a glass from an open cupboard. “That’s one thing I miss about living in Timberline, maybe the only thing—the tap water. It’s as good as anything in a bottle.”
“It is.” He took the glass from her and held it up to the light from the kitchen window. He then swirled it like a fine wine and took a sip.
She pulled a chair out from the small kitchen table stationed next to a side door that led to a plain cement patio. She perched on the edge, making it clear that she was ready to get this interview over with before it even started.
She kicked out the chair on the other side of the table. “Have a seat.”
He placed his glass on the table and sank into the chair, stretched his legs to the side and pulled a notepad from his pocket. “You obviously know I’m interested in asking you questions about the kidnapping of your sister.”
She drummed her fingers on the table. “Did Wyatt Carson tell you I was out here?”
“No. I heard you’d arrived yesterday—just local gossip.”
She rolled her eyes, apparently not believing his lie any more than he believed hers. “Okay. Ask away, but you’re asking me about something that happened a long time ago.”
“A traumatic event.”
“Exactly, I’ve squished down a lot of those memories, and I’m not inclined to dredge them up.”
“Even if they can help the Keaton and Douglas families today?”
“I don’t believe they can.” She flattened her hands on the table, her fingers splayed. “You can’t seriously believe the two current kidnappings have anything to do with the Timberline Trio disappearances. What, some kidnapper has been lying dormant for twenty-five years and then up and decides to go another round?”
“I think there are some similarities.” He hunched forward in his chair. “There are cases where a serial killer is active and then the killings just stop, sometimes because the killer goes to prison for some other crime. Then when he’s paroled, he starts killing again.”
“So you think the man who kidnapped my sister is on the loose and picking up where he left off over two decades ago?” She folded her hands in front of herself, and his gaze dropped to her white knuckles.
Before his action even registered in his brain, his hand shot out and he covered her clasped hands with one of his. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so blunt.”
“I’d rather you be truthful with me, Sheriff Sloane.”
“Call me Coop. Everyone does.” He slid his hand from hers. “I’d like you to be truthful with me, too, Ms. Rush.”
Her eyes flickered. “Call me Kendall, and I’ll be as truthful as I can. What do you want to ask me?”
So he wouldn’t be tempted to touch her again, he dragged his notebook in front of him and tapped the eraser end of his pencil on the first page. “What do you remember about that night?”
“That’s an open-ended question.”
“Okay. Why were you and your sister spending the night at your aunt’s house instead of your own?”
“If you read the case file, you know the answer to that question.”
“You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”
Tucking her hair behind one ear, she ran her tongue along her lower lip. “I’m trying to make it easy on you and save some time. A lot of that stuff is in the case file. I don’t see the point in rehashing it with me.”
“You’re the therapist. You understand the importance of reliving memories, of telling someone else your version of events. Isn’t that what therapists are supposed to do?” His lip curled despite his best efforts to keep his feelings about therapists on neutral ground.
“You’re trying to psychoanalyze me?”
“I’m trying to see if you have anything to offer that doesn’t come through on a page written twenty-five years ago.” He snorted. “Unless you’re trying to tell me talk therapy doesn’t work. Does it?”
She studied his face, staring into his eyes, her own dark and fathomless. Could she read the disdain he had for therapy? He’d brought up the therapy angle only to make her feel comfortable.
She tapped the table between them with her index finger. “Therapy is supposed to help the subject. You want me to start spilling my guts to help you, not to help myself.”
He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. God, he wished he was questioning Wyatt again and not this complicated woman.
The gesture must’ve elicited her pity because she started talking.
“Kayla and I were at Aunt Cass’s that night because my parents were fighting again. Aunt Cass, my mother’s sister, felt that my parents needed to work out their differences one-on-one and not in front of the kids.”
“The police suspected your father of the kidnapping at first because of the fight.”
“I didn’t realize that at the time, of course, but that assumption was so ridiculous. I’d given a description of the kidnapper, and I would’ve recognized my dad, even in a mask. I suppose the police figured I was too traumatized to give an accurate description or I was protecting my father.”
“What was your description, since the guy had a ski mask on?” He doodled in his notebook because Kendall had been right. All this info was in the case file.
“He was wearing a mask, gloves, and he was taller and heavier than my dad. That I could give them. Oh, and that he had a gravelly voice.”
“He just said a few words, though, right? ‘Get off’ or ‘let go’?”
She shifted her gaze away from him and dropped her lashes. “I’d grabbed on to his leg.”
“Brave girl.”
“It didn’t stop him.”
His eye twitched. Did she feel guilty because she didn’t stop a grown man from kidnapping her twin?
“No surprise there.”
Her dark eyes sparkled and she shrugged her shoulders.
“He took something from you, didn’t he?”
“My twin sister. My innocence. My security. My mother’s sanity. My family. Yeah, he took a lot.”
He wanted to reach for her again and soothe the pain etched on her face, but he tapped his chin with the pencil instead. “Not that it can compare with any of those losses, but he also took a pink ribbon from your hair.”
The color drained from Kendall’s face, and a muscle quivered at the corner of her mouth.
“Do you want some water?” He pushed back from the table. “You look pale.”
“I’m okay.” Her chest rose and fell as she pulled in a long breath and released it. “I’d forgotten about that ribbon. Pink was Kayla’s favorite color. Mine was green. That night Aunt Cass had put our hair in pigtails, and Kayla had insisted on tying pink ribbons in my hair while she tried the green. I was glad he took that ribbon.”
“Why?” He held his breath as Kendall’s eyes took on a faraway look.
“I always thought that when Kayla woke up and found herself with this strange man, she’d feel better seeing the pink ribbon. Now...” She covered her eyes with one hand.
“Now?” He almost whispered the word, his throat tight.
“Now I think that he just killed her, that she never saw the ribbon.”
When her voice broke, he rose from his chair and crouched beside her. He took the hand she had resting on the table and rubbed it between both of his as if she needed warming up.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m forcing these memories and thoughts back to the surface.”
A misty smile trembled on her lips. “This is exactly what I put my clients through every day.”
“And it’s supposed to help them. Is it helping you?”
Sniffling, she dabbed the end of her nose with her fingertips. “This is well-traveled territory. It’s not like I haven’t been through all of this before with my own therapist.”
“You see a therapist?” He sat back on his heels.
“All therapists do at the beginning. It’s part of our training, and most of us keep it up because it helps our work.”
“So I must be a poor substitute.” Although he could probably do a better job than half the quacks out there.
She curled her fingers around one of his hands. “She never holds my hand, so you’ve got her beat there.”
He squeezed her fingers and released them as he backed up to his own seat. “Did your therapy ever bring up any memories of that night that you hadn’t realized as a child? The man’s accent? Someone he reminded you of?”
“Nothing like that.” She stretched her arms over her head. “I don’t have any repressed memories of the event, if that’s what you’re driving at, Doctor Sloane.”
He stroked his chin, wishing he had a clean shave. “You know, sometimes I feel more like a psychiatrist than a cop when I’m questioning people.”
“So tell me.” She wedged her elbows on the table and sunk her chin into one cupped palm. “What makes you think these two kidnappings are at all related to the Timberline Trio case? Wyatt mentioned you were working on some theory that the FBI didn’t share.”
When Kendall mentioned the FBI, he ground his back teeth together. He’d never met a more arrogant bunch, who seemed more interested in dotting i’s and crossing t’s than doing any real investigative work.
“It’s something I’d rather keep to myself.”
She swiped his glass from the table and jumped up from her chair. As she sauntered toward the sink, she glanced over her shoulder. “You want me to help you, but you won’t share your findings?”
“Can you keep a secret?” He sucked in his bottom lip as he watched her refill his glass with water from the tap. She’d lured him into a comfortable intimacy, making him forget that she’d lied about the spider, but she seemed like someone who could keep secrets because she had plenty of her own.
“Who am I going to tell? I’m only going to be here for a short time anyway. Pack up the house, list it, outta here.”
He scooted back his chair and stood up, leaning his hip against the table. “When this guy snatched the two children on separate occasions, he left something behind.”
“What?” She placed the glass on the counter and wiped her fingers on the dish towel hanging over the oven’s handle.
“When he took the boy, he left a plastic dinosaur. When he took the girl, he left...a pink ribbon.”
