Читать книгу Shadow Protector - Jenna Ryan - Страница 9

“Your captain told me about the Blindfold Killer, Sig,” Sera said. “No one’s sure why he ties a white bandanna over his victims’ eyes. He’s killed eleven people over a seven-year period, all in the Bay area. The San Francisco Police arrested a suspect four years ago, but they were forced to release him on a technicality.”

“Illegal search of his living quarters,” Logan said. “The officer in charge assumed a warrant was en route. He was mistaken.”

“Said officer has since been demoted and put in charge of a desk,” Sig added gruffly. Then he brightened. “Ah, here we go. Food.”

Their dinner arrived courtesy of a buxom fifty-something blonde. It might not be gourmet, but it looked delicious. Almost as delicious as the man seated across from her.

Although she’d braced herself for sexy, Sera hadn’t anticipated the punch of desire that had rocked her when he’d removed his hat.

And then, out of nowhere, a tweak of familiarity. But the sensory whisper came and went too quickly for her to capture it.

Sidestepping, she set her mind back on the man himself. To call his features arresting would be a serious understatement. And she couldn’t imagine any woman not being wowed by the smoke-gray eyes that caught and held hers far too often for comfort.

One look at Logan’s face, however, and she’d known he wouldn’t be an easy read. Whatever haunted those mesmerizing features, he’d buried it deep and very, very well.

Sig dug into his steak. “What else do you know about our killer, Doc?”

Refocusing quickly, Sera sampled one of the wedge fries. “Two and a half years went by after the suspect’s release. Nothing more happened. Then he vanished, and it started all over again. The killer has committed five new murders, including Leo, in the past eighteen months. His MO is consistent, but his motive remains a mystery.”

When Andrea’s lifeless face appeared in her head, Sera reached for her wine.

“There’ve been two witnesses to his crimes. Number one vanished five years ago, before the police could bring him in. That makes me the best hope you’ve got of identifying this guy. Unfortunately, because I hit my head while I was struggling with him, I can’t tell you if his description matches the original suspect’s or not.”

Logan swirled his beer and sent a lazy look into the mug. “You don’t remember the guy’s face, but you do remember struggling with him.”

Surprise halted the wine at her lips. The image reformed instantly. “He blindsided me,” she recalled. “I fell against the edge of my desk.”

“Anything else?” Sig asked.

She thought for a moment but couldn’t pull any details from the blackness. “Sorry, the rest is still a shadow.”

Around them, the diner, really a roadside bar and grill, began to buzz as groups of dusty workers in steel-toed boots filed in.

Sig tapped an unlit cigarette on the table. “New construction in town?”

With his eyes on Sera’s face, Logan took a drink of beer. “West end. Developer from Cheyenne’s building a—resort.”

The amusement that climbed into Sera’s throat felt good. “Translation—he’s building a resort-style fishing and hunting lodge.”

Sig tucked a pack of matches into his jacket pocket and scraped his chair back. “I can’t think in the throes of a nicotine fit.” He gave Sera’s arm an awkward pat. “Keep poking at that memory, Doc. This killer’s slick and slippery and far as we can tell random in his selection of victims. Logan.” Cigarettes in hand, he made his way through the crowd toward the door.

“He didn’t finish his dinner,” Sera remarked.

Logan speared one of her fries. “Sig seldom finishes any meal that doesn’t start with the prefix Mac.”

“How old is he?”

“Fifty-six.”

“He acts older.”

“Drawn-out investigations do that to cops.”

Leaning in on her forearms, she absorbed his unfathomable stare. “I’m sure I’ve seen.” she began, but the fleeting sense of familiarity vanished again. “Is that why you left?” she asked instead.

“Nope.”

Door firmly closed. She picked up her wine. “How long have you been in Blue Ridge?”

“Two years, three months, give or take.”

“And you became chief of police when? “

“Same answer.”

Pulling teeth would be easier, she reflected, but nowhere near as challenging.

“How long have you known Sig?”

“Longer than most.”

“You’re not giving me much in the way of answers, Logan.”

His gray eyes glittered. “Should tell you something about the questions.”

Undeterred, she ran a finger around the base of her glass. “You don’t like small talk or, apparently, polite conversation. No problem. I don’t need to know your history, and you certainly don’t need to know mine.” She made a visual circle of the increasingly noisy diner. “This whole take- the-witness-with-the-faulty-memory to Wyoming deal was Sig’s idea. It had nothing to do with me. I have relatives in Phoenix, Skagway, Tulsa and yes, Bugs, even Albuquerque. I have a cousin who’s a law enforcement officer and an exmilitary aunt who flies supplies from Washington state to central Alaska. I could have gone to any number of people for help, but I went with Sig and wound up here. Why? No idea, but hey, you put your life in someone else’s hands, who knows what’ll happen.”

“Are you done?” Logan asked.

“My uncle Jeffrey says I’m never done, but as a shrink, I’m supposed to be a good listener, so the floor’s yours.”

He held her gaze. “What you’re supposed to be—what you should be, Sera—is scared.”

She summoned a faint smile, glanced away. “Believe me when I tell you, if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be anywhere near you, your outlaw horses or your town.” A shiver danced along her spine. “Nothing personal, Logan, but I get along very well with cities. Violent death, however, rattles me. I watched my partner’s ashes being entombed last week. I watched her father break down and her mother lose a hard-fought battle to a bottle of cognac. I saw Sig lose a friend he’s worked with for twenty of his thirty years on the force. I did all that with the knowledge that lurking somewhere in my head is a killer’s identity. If I can retrieve it, no one else will have to suffer at his hands. So, yes, I’m scared, but not as much as I am determined to watch the person who’s responsible—and whose face I swear I’m going to remember—fry.”

Unexpected humor glinted in Logan’s eyes. “You must have some outlaw blood yourself, Doc. I’ve never met a shrink who wanted to see anyone fry.”

Her first reaction was to defend the remark. Her second was to cover a smile with a bite of chicken. “I won’t tell you what my uncle says about my mouth. I will tell you I’m sorry I dumped all that on you when we’ve known each other for less than sixty minutes.”

He moved a shoulder. “Dumping’s what people do on cops, town, city or state. It rolls off unnoticed after a while … Nadine?” He spoke to the blonde who was balancing six main courses. “You mind wrapping these dinners up for us? “

Sera’s brows elevated. “Are we leaving?”

“Unless you want to get hit on by every guy here, yeah.”

For the first time since Sig had gone outside, she looked around the room. Not every male eye was turned in their direction, but more than half were.

She let the amusement blossom. “Because I assume they’re not staring at you, I’ll go out on a limb and speculate that you don’t get many female strangers in this town.”

Logan picked up his hat. “Oh, we get plenty of strange females, just not many you’d call witchy.”

The blonde returned with their bagged dinners. “You want the steak wrapped, too, Logan?”

He finished his beer. “No point. Give your dogs a treat, and put the dinner on my tab.”

The woman flipped a dishtowel over her shoulder. “Your friend beat you to the punch there. He paid the bill on his way out.”

Something unpleasant snaked through Sera’s stomach. Although she recognized it for the blend of dread and certainty it was, she settled for a mild, “He’s gone, isn’t he?”

Logan assessed her as he returned the hat to his head. “He told you he wasn’t staying, Sera.”

“And I’m just supposed to go with that? With this?” She fixed her gaze in the general vicinity of his eyes. “With you? No questions asked or really answered, and no choice in the matter?” Her control slipped a notch and she leaned forward. “Logan, Sig broke a mirror at the safe house and freaked over it for days. We were driving east within an hour of his partner’s death. ‘Gotta leave fast,’ he said. Yet, he went ten minutes out of his way because he wouldn’t go past the path lab where his partner’s body had been taken. Said he’d rather walk under a dozen ladders. He also didn’t tell anyone in the department where we were going, and I know his captain personally. He’s a forty-year man with commendations as long as my arm.”

“What’s your point, Doctor?”

Did she have one? Right then, Sera’s thoughts were too scattered to collect, let alone organize.

It had to be exhaustion combined with a touch of hysteria that made her want to laugh. “You know what?” She pushed back. “I haven’t got a clue what I’m saying or why I’m even talking. I need air, space and no more Willie Nelson for at least twelve hours.”

She also needed to be away from the man across the table. The ridiculously sexy cop who disliked cities and personal questions and quite possibly his old friend Sig at this moment.

Standing, Logan drew her to her feet. “You look overwhelmed.”

“You think?’

“If it helps, Sig left your bags behind my truck.”

“Sorry, Chief, not feeling any better here.”

The shadowed look he cast her brought a sigh coupled with a strong desire to bolt.

“Okay, fine. Message received. Sig’s trying to keep me safe, as a person and as a potential witness. What I’m still trying to process is why he brought me to you. He talked about a potential leak within the department, but please don’t tell me he suspects his own captain.”

“Twenty years in homicide, ten in vice, what can I say, he’s jaded.”

“You sure you don’t mean paranoid?”

Pressing a hand to her hip, Logan eased her behind him as he forged a path to the door. “Sig’s a cautious man, Sera. He wants to keep you alive, and this was the best place he could think of to make that happen.”

A man with no bottom teeth winked and offered her his drink.

Logan’s unruffled, “Doctor, Billy,” had the leer fading to a scowl and the man scuttling backward so fast he almost knocked the plates from Nadine’s loaded arm.

Sera tapped his back. “Care to explain that reaction?”

“Billy’s father turned ninety-eight last June. Doc Prichard said he needed a vitamin shot. The old man died that night.”

“Uh—well, hmm.” Unsure how to respond, Sera tried not to grin. “Ninety-eight, huh? Billy doesn’t really believe it was the vitamin shot—” She let an oblique hand motion finish the question. “Does he?”

“Yeah, he does, and he’s not alone. Most of the people you’ll meet around here are perfectly normal, but for every fifty, there’s a Billy or a Jessie-Lynn. Rumor has it aliens grabbed Jess twelve years ago after the Founder’s Day parade.” Logan opened the door—and closed it in the face of a large, hairy man whose hand had been mere inches from Sera’s breast.

Removing his hat, he placed it on her head and smiled just enough to momentarily steal her breath. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Dr. Hudson, but you’re not in Kansas any more. And while you might think the Emerald City is a little off the map—be warned, it has nothing on Blue Ridge, Wyoming.”

HE SHOULDN’T HAVE said that, Logan thought as he started his Explorer. But, dammit, he didn’t want the burden of a targeted witness’s safety riding on his shoulders. Add in the fact that she was a jaw-dropping female of—what had Sig told him—twenty-nine, with credentials that shouldn’t be possible for someone her age and a body just made for trouble, and yeah, you could say he was pissed off. Mostly at himself for reacting the way he was, but partly at Sig for putting him in this position.

He knew she didn’t remember him. Why would she? They’d never met face to face. Their one and only patch of common ground involved the age-old cop versus shrink battle. Was the suspect the police had arrested for a brutal crime fit to stand trial or not? On their particular patch, a trio of shrinks, whose number had included Sera, said no.

Now, the way Logan saw it, he could let old resentments fester or, for Sig’s sake, put the past in its place and deal with the current situation.

One glance at her face in profile, and he knew where he’d be going with that.

Although she had to know his thoughts weren’t running along pleasant lines, she opted to keep their conversation relevant and, for the most part, impersonal.

“The suspect was under surveillance when he disappeared, wasn’t he?” she asked.

Logan shoved the Explorer in gear and his emotions in line. “His name’s Hugh Paxton, and yes, he was. He dropped out of sight a few months after I came to Blue Ridge.”

She regarded him from under the brim of his hat. “Did you hear about that from Sig, or did your alien abductee return from the mother ship a gifted clairvoyant? “

Humor stirred. “Jessie-Lynn has her moments, but the answer’s no on both counts. Remote as this town is, we have a local newspaper, and believe it or not, Internet access.”

Pushing the hat back, she lowered her sunglasses. “I’m not a snob, Logan, whatever you might think—and God knows it probably isn’t flattering. I’m just a little—no make that a lot—out of my element here. I don’t usually see horses grazing outside San Francisco diners, and unless we wander into the wrong area of the city, big, hairy men seldom make a habit of grabbing women’s breasts.”

“So, no conquest for Charlie, then. He’ll be bummed.”

She laughed, and the sound of it sparked a sensation Logan didn’t need to feel in his groin. Keeping his eyes on the road, he returned to topic. “Paxton walked because the arresting officer screwed up, but he was the Blindfold Killer. Every cop on the coast knew it.”

Sera regarded the dying orange glow in the western sky. “He’d have known the police were watching him, ergo, for a while at least, his desire for freedom must have outweighed his need to kill. Either that or he’d achieved his initial goal of eleven people dead. It’s possible his more recent victims are unconnected to the first group.”

“No one ever established a connection between the first eleven victims.” Logan chose to ignore the out-of-town driver who whizzed past in a mud-spattered four by four. “Any thoughts on that, Doc?”

“Without getting inside his head, no.” But as he’d expected, after a moment she ventured to ask, “Were the victims primarily female or male?”

“Eight female, three male.”

“Ages?”

“The youngest was twenty, the oldest forty-seven.”

“And Paxton’s age at the time of his arrest was?”

A smile touched the corners of Logan’s mouth. “That’s the sticking point. No one knows. He has no official record of birth and the kind of appearance every cop hates.”

“Changeable?”

“Big time.”

“Which explains why Sig showed me multiple versions of ten different men, more than a hundred shots in total. I figured there were disguises involved—but, big surprise—Sig refused to explain. He said the less he told me, the less chance that my memories, when they did return, would be colored. All he really needed to say was that the suspect took his cue from Lon Chaney.”

Logan sent her a brief smile. “It’s not a bad comparison. Twenty pounds more or less, from dreadlocks to buzz cuts, stubble to mustache to beard, tooth caps on or off, contact lenses in or out—Paxton knows how to alter his appearance. It’s one of the reasons he was so difficult to nail in the first place. The other was the obvious lack of credible witnesses.”

“I assume that’s how he slipped under the radar. In disguise.”

When the radio squawked, Logan reached down. “Probably, but I was gone by then, and Sig was so disgusted that they’d lost him, he wouldn’t talk about it.”

Her eyes slid to his, but she said nothing, and he pressed the Receive button. “Problem, Fred?”

“The Bulley boys are at it again, Chief.”

“Home or town?”

“Home now, but they came through town on a big old tear. Near as I can tell, they’re riled up over the workers who are camped out—quite legally, I might add—on their farm. Did some pushing and shoving on Main, went into Tommy Gray Wolf’s bar, had a shouting match, punched someone, then took off for home when Tommy threatened to call it in. Which he did anyway ten minutes before Edgar Bulley did the same. Old Edgar says there’s no point sending deputies. The boys’ll just threaten to gore them and carry on ‘til you show up.”

Logan glanced over. “I’ll be there in five. Tell Edgar to fire a couple rounds of buckshot into the barn wall. Might take the edge off.”

“Always a first time,” Fred returned cheerfully. “Good luck, Logan.”

As the sun dipped below the mountaintops, he switched on the lights and siren. “How are you at following orders, Doc?”

She dropped his hat on the seat between them. “The mood I’m in, spectacularly bad. Did I hear the word ‘gore’?”

“It’s the Bulley’s word for ‘stab.’ Used to be a kid’s game involving plastic horns. Now it’s a drunken threat when they’re feeling ornery.”

“Sounds like your Bulley boys have serious anger management issues.”

“You could say,” he agreed. “Their grandfather grazes a stingy herd of cattle, but the number’s been dwindling over the years, so the boys, six of them, have been forced to find other ways to augment their income.”

“Ways you smoke or drink?”

“Drink mostly. We’ve dismantled three stills since late March. Last one was five days ago. Supply’s probably running low, so Bulley logic would dictate that they down the last of it and take their anger out on someone else.”

“Like deputies and campers.”

“They’ve also been known to fire warning shots at trespassers.” Logan slowed as the lights of a ramshackle farmhouse came into view. “Challenge is to see how close they can come without actually hitting the person. Fortunately,” he flicked off the siren, “they’re not in love with firearms. Knives tend to be their weapon of choice.”

Braking behind a stand of pines, he reached for his rifle, stuck the hat back on his head and caught her chin between his thumb and fingers. “Whatever happens, Sera, keep the doors locked and the engine running. Anyone who isn’t me shows up, don’t check for blood, just turn the truck around and head back to Frank’s Diner. You got that?”

“Every word,” she said. “Uh, tell me, are two of the Bulley boys tall, wiry and left-handed?”

A brow went up when her eyes touched on a point over his shoulder. “Coming from behind?”

“Faster than speeding bullets.”

Anticipation glimmered. Releasing her chin, he reached for the door handle. “This is gonna be fun.”