He saw her movements peripherally, turned toward her and gestured for her to come near. He smiled as he did it, and she relaxed. He didn’t tell her to wait. He didn’t hurriedly end the call. He welcomed her, and she was glad, even though what she heard told her nothing. He was responding in brief affirmatives, shaking his head as if it made a difference to the person on the other end of the sound waves. That made her smile, and he held out a hand, pulling her to stand between his thighs.
She leaned back against his chest with his arm around her, staring into the distance, wondering where the members of his team were posted, wondering if the killer was on his way. He kept her there until he’d finished, not even a minute, then he turned her and kissed her until she had to pull away to breathe.
“I’ve been waiting since dawn to do that.”
“I seem to remember you doing the same thing not long before. Did you sleep at all?”
“I never sleep when a case is coming down to the wire. I’ve got too much going on in my mind. It’s insomnia’s fertile ground.”
She wondered if their involvement made his insomnia worse. “Anything new since last night?”
A single nod. “Everyone’s in place. Now we wait.”
That would have to do. “And you’re making your phone calls out here why?”
“Because that’s what a prince does for his Sleeping Beauty,” he told her, reaching up to tuck her hair behind her ear.
He made her want to laugh. He made her want to cry. He made her want to have his babies…and that was her clue to stop with the wanting. “And what is the prince planning to do about feeding me?”
He canted his head to the side and considered her. “How ’bout a picnic and a swim?”
“Should I paint a target on my back with ketchup?” she asked, considering him in return.
He gave her a look, then hopped down and closed up his SUV. Hooking his arm around her neck, he led her back to the cabin, saying, “I don’t want to make you a target. I do want you to relax. That’s all.”
“In that case, I accept.” She’d never had a man pamper her, and as much as she was enjoying Kell doing so, she reminded herself that this was nothing but a detour before she reached the city limits of Singletown where she’d be living the rest of her life. “You want me to do sandwiches?”
“Nope. I want you to change and go.” He dropped a kiss on her forehead, then sent her on her way with a slap on her ass. “I’ll meet you at the pond in a few.”
It was a caveman gesture, and it had her smiling as she found her still-damp underwear and worked them on, then left through the back door, slapping him on his ass as she did. She fairly skipped down the dock to the pond, kicking off her sneakers and leaping into the water.
She surfaced, sputtering, the fright forgotten, the fun all she knew. Kell had done this for her, too. Given her back the parts of her life she’d hidden, out of sight, out of mind. For so long she’d felt she didn’t deserve to know joy. That she needed to suffer for the families of the victims. Now she wanted to be happy, and she wanted Kell, forever.
“Stop it. Right now,” she ordered herself. She could not keep doing this. Whatever happened, happened. And nothing was going to happen until she knew that for both of them, this relationship was built on more than her case.
“Hey you! Come and get it.”
At the sound of Kell’s voice, she turned where she was treading water, and swam back to the dock. When she got there, he was waiting, the box of food he’d carried down to the pond sitting next to her shoes. She took his hand when he offered it, tumbling against him when he tugged.
His bare chest was warm, his heart thumping, but her stomach won out. She pushed away and went for the sandwiches he’d stacked in the box between folded paper towels. He’d forgotten to bring drinks, but he had brought a knife—the one she’d gripped so hard in the kitchen yesterday.
She held it up for him to see. “Are you trying to tell me something?”
“Just thought it might make you feel better,” he said, grabbing a sandwich and biting a quarter of it away.
She glanced down at the front of his board shorts, unable to help herself. “Because your gun’s all out of ammo?”
“If it is, it’s all your fault,” he said, still chewing.
“I will gladly take the blame. As long as you trot yourself back to the cabin for drinks.”
He mock frowned. “Trot? Is that princess for ‘please’?”
Really, he was too cute for his own good. Or for hers. “Will you please get the drinks? And sunscreen?”
“As you wish,” he said with a wink. “Just watch where you wave that thing. It’s called a weapon for a reason.”
She dropped to sit on the dock and watched him go, picnicking with herself while she waited for him to return. Oh, but she really could get used to this.
Yes, Weldon was small and quiet, but this…this was peaceful, serene. As if here time meant nothing—a thought that brought a second that was related.
Kell had been gone way too long.
She turned to look at the cabin, saw…nothing. Her sandwich-filled stomach tensed. He could’ve taken a phone call, but wouldn’t he have walked down to the dock while doing so? He should’ve been back with their drinks by now.
Maybe she was borrowing trouble, overreacting, being plain ridiculous, but she could think of only one reason he wasn’t. She got to her feet, slipped on and tied her shoes.
And then she picked up the knife.
20
REMINDING HIMSELF TO GRAB his phone that he’d forgotten to bring with the picnic, Kell frowned into the fridge, trying to remember what it was he wanted. Drinks, right. And, yeah. No matter what he’d told Jamie about his adrenaline-fueled insomnia, he needed sleep.
His sharp edge was dulled, his straight thinking meandering. How else could he explain staring at the cans of cold soda this long? As if they were going to jump into his hands. And now he was hearing things. He really he had to shake off this daze—Whack!
The refrigerator door slammed him sideways. He stumbled, grabbed the counter for balance, bit off a succinct “What the hell?” and looked up.
Then he bit his tongue and watched the Hispanic man standing there use the hand with the snake tattoo to shut the fridge. His other hand held a gun. Kell did not like being on this end of it.
“The girl,” the man—he was gangly, edgy, no more than five foot seven—said in accented English. “Down at the water. Get her to come here. Now.”
Think, think, think. Kell remained silent, his sluggish mind racing, his blood firing in his veins. The man knew where Jamie was, that she was there alone, yet had come after Kell instead. He obviously wanted Kell out of the way before taking care of Jamie. Otherwise, why not shoot her, dump her body in the water and go?
He didn’t plan to go. He didn’t want a quick kill. That was the only conclusion Kell could come to for the delay. And then he came to another, equally horrifying. Soon enough, this man would figure out that Jamie would eventually return to the cabin on her own. He did not need Kell to get her here. He didn’t need Kell for anything.
That meant Kell had to find a reason to become indispensable before the man with the snake tattoo dispensed with him.
“She won’t be able to hear me if I yell.” It was a lie, of course. With only the whistling wind for noise, Jamie would hear him just fine.
But there was a glassiness to the other man’s eyes that made Kell go for it, a stall tactic while he tried to figure out how his team had let this one through. Something was off, wrong. Something big. “And if I’m not back in another minute, she knows to run.”
The Hispanic man’s gaze sharpened, his thick black brows coming down in a vee. “There is no place for her to go. No one to help her.”
Kell weighed how much of the truth to reveal. “I have a man—”
“You had a man. He is not there now.”
He’d taken out one of the team. Goddammit. Kell didn’t have time to wonder who, what had happened, how serious it was. He only had time for Jamie. “I have more. And once they realize one of their own has gone silent, they’ll be coming here to get you.”
“Then I will kill the girl, and you will be my hostage.” The man raised his gun hand, wiping his sleeve beneath his nose. “Then when I am safely away, I will kill you.”
A plan that would keep Kell alive for the moment. Now to work on keeping Jamie the same. He kept his hands where the other man could see them and took him in, the ragged athletic shoes, the worn jeans, dirty with torn hems, the long-sleeved plaid shirt that said hand-me-down charity. The glassy eyes, the runny nose…
“What were you after? At the Sonora Nites Diner? Money to fund your habit?”
He rolled his head on his shoulders, looked around the kitchen, came back on Kell with a wave of the gun. “The girl. Make her come here. Before she runs.”
Kell started to tell him to go ahead, pull the trigger, but he wasn’t certain that if Jamie heard the gunshot, she wouldn’t run toward it instead of away. And with Kell down—or dead—he wouldn’t be able to fulfill his promise to Dr. Kate that he’d bring her daughter home. Hell, he’d promised Jamie just last night that they’d get out of here in one piece.