Over the years, he’d grown accustomed to the wide variety of flavors, the combinations of spices that made eating a physical pleasure, rather than something one did to stay alive. He’d grown into those tastes. To seek them out, no matter the cost, when he traveled.
But to sit at Kerry’s table with her—those leftovers were just fine. They’d taken their seats—his perpendicular to hers on two sides of her little four-seat table off to the right of her galley kitchen—when her doorbell rang. He hadn’t been particularly worried about her safety at home in her neighborhood in the middle of town. Not many would try to kill a cop in front of other Mustang Valley citizens—who were known to watch each other’s comings and goings—most particularly not in their little remote part of the Arizona desert. A lot of people carried guns for their own protection against whatever wildlife might venture into town looking for water. Most wouldn’t hesitate to pull a weapon and use it to protect one of their own.
But when the bell rang, he was right behind her as she passed through the dining room to the living room and then the tiled area before the front door.
“I’m fine, Kay,” she said, turning with a grin on her face that was quickly swept away.
He’d forgotten just how great he’d found the sound of his last name rolling off her lips as she jested with him. Said with just that same intonation.
Apparently she’d forgotten, for a second there at least, that he was a Colton now.
The knock came again, more urgently, and Kerry, with her hand at the gun she’d failed to remove when they’d returned home, looked through the peephole and then quickly opened the door.
“Lizzie, James,” she said, stepping back to let the two blue uniformed officers into her home. “Don’t tell me, the two of you are assigned to guard duty tonight?”
Lizzie shook her head. “James drew that straw,” she said, with a wry glance at her partner.
“I volunteered for it,” James corrected, his light red hair and the kind look in his hazel eyes giving the appearance of a man who could be a pushover. Rafe wasn’t so sure he liked that this would be the guy in charge of Kerry’s safety for the night until the man’s gaze turned on him and he felt the full force of the steely stare.
“Aren’t you one of the Coltons? Some kind of cousin to Spence?” the man asked. “You’re the finance wizard, right?”
“Rafe,” he said, holding out his hand, and feeling strangely self-conscious of his dust-covered expensive leather shoes as the man glanced down at his feet. “Kerry and I used to be friends, a long time ago,” he heard himself explaining. And then wondering what in the hell had compelled him to answer a question this guy hadn’t even asked.
“I knew her brother and when she told me that she thought maybe his death wasn’t an accident, I wanted to hear more.”
The man’s look hadn’t wavered from Rafe’s face and it took him a second to realize that the other two law enforcement personnel in the room were standing there, watching the exchange.
“She’s been saying that for a couple of years,” the woman Kerry had called Lizzie said. With her long dark hair, back in a ponytail at the moment, and brown eyes, she was quite pretty, even in uniform. He hoped she was stronger than she looked. “Why you just taking an interest now?” Her gaze locked on his, as well.
Kerry could jump in anytime. Save his ass. Give whatever explanation she wanted them to have.
Or he’d give his own…
“We just reconnected, since Payne’s shooting,” he said. “I had no idea Tyler’s death wasn’t an accident.”
“Until tonight, it was,” the man, James, said.
And then Lizzie piped in, “The case was closed, but now, who knows?” She shrugged. “With two bodies found dead in kind of the same manner, someone might have some questions.” When she turned to Kerry, Rafe felt like he might be off whatever hook they’d impaled him on, at least for the moment.
He listened intently as Lizzie told Kerry, “The chief and I headed straight up there as soon as you called it in. The rescue crew is still in the gully, getting the ranger out, but we went up the drive and couldn’t find anything, Kerry. No shell casings. No sign of anyone around. Just a broken agave arm and the boot you saw. Again, it looks like he could have jumped. But there’s a little bit stronger evidence at this point that he might have been pushed. With that boot there. We’re looking for fingerprints but don’t expect to get anything.”
“The boot obviously came off while he was being dragged,” Kerry said. “He’d have been digging his foot into the ground, trying to get a hold, to stop himself from going over, but whoever dragged him was a helluva lot stronger than he was and dragged him right out of his boot.”
“That’s what it looks like.” Lizzie’s attention was only on Kerry at that point. As if the women were friends who spoke their own language in between the words they said. The type who understood the nuances and emotions not being expressed.
“The heel of the boot was caught on a root.”
So Kerry’s hunch had been right.
Again. He wasn’t surprised. She’d always impressed him with her intuitive observations. Even as a kid.
“We’ll be going back up in the morning,” Lizzie continued. “Maybe when it’s light, we’ll see more, but for now the only thing we have is the wider tire tracks of the SUV, just as you described. We drove all the way up the hill, by the way. There was no sign of the vehicle up there, so either the guy has a hiding place where he parks it up there someplace…”
“Or he’s long gone,” Kerry finished for her. “Someone shot at us as we were leaving, which means someone was close by. He could easily have just followed us down the hill and took off as we came back to town.”
He’d already entertained the same uneasy thought. His family’s ranch was on the opposite side of town, but still out there. He didn’t like knowing there were ranch hands with families in little cabins with a crazy killer free.
“Which is why I’m going to be right outside until dawn, and people are up and about and it’s less likely that someone would get into town undetected,” James said.
“And I need to get back to the station,” Lizzie said, and then both officers looked at Rafe, as if Rafe had just been given his cue to leave.
“I’m going to hang around here,” he said, without looking at Kerry. Her friends were right there. If she wanted him out of there, he’d be gone in an instant.
“We were just sitting down to dinner,” she told the two in uniform. And then asked James, “Have you had something to eat?”
“I’ve got a cooler full out in the car,” he told her. “And a pee bottle, too.”
Rafe could have done without that piece of information.
But then the two were gone, leaving him and Kerry all alone in the watched cocoon that was her house. The awareness of what had just happened—the two of them acknowledging, in front of others, that they wanted to spend more time together that evening—simmered between them and they just stood there, on that small area of tile, looking at each other.
Kerry broke the eye contact first, heading back through the dining area and kitchen to the food gone cold. She sat anyway, as though eating a cold dinner didn’t faze her at all.
“James might look like an easygoing nice guy,” she said, scooping up mashed potatoes and then meat on the same bite. “And he is nice. He’s perfectly compliant on any occasion that warrants it, but he’s as tough as they come when he perceives a wrongdoing. Or a threat to any townspeople.”
He nodded, not sure if she was reassuring him as to their safety, or warning him in regard to hers. Should he try to make a move