One to Keep

Chapter Twelve

Stef had to breathe deeply to get his heart rate down. His blood pounded languorously through his body, satisfaction invading his veins. Jen was wrapped around him, and the world, briefly, seemed utterly perfect to him. She’d submitted in the sweetest way possible.

She’d accepted everything he’d given her with grace and a gorgeous sexuality that floored him. He was the one who screwed it up.

Why had he thought he could walk away from her? He’d never been able to do it. Even when he got the slightest bit away from her, he’d come running back every time. The minute he’d seen her face fall, his heart had clenched. He’d made it to the door, but he’d shut it again, knowing he’d never be able to leave her alone and miserable.

God, he loved her.

His hands tightened. He let the truth wash over him. He loved Jennifer Waters with his whole heart, but he’d never be able to keep her. She was too talented, too young to commit herself for her whole life. She needed to see the world and everything it had to offer.

Maybe in ten years or so she could make a decision, but until then he had to be unselfish.

“Stop.” Her head had come up, and she stared down into his eyes.

There was a plea there. “Can’t we have a few days? Just a couple of days where we don’t fight or think about the future?” She could read his fucking mind. This time around was so different. Since she’d come back to Bliss, she’d been focused on him, his moods, his thoughts. It made him feel like the center of the universe. God, he couldn’t deny her. Not when it was everything he wanted. He would have to let her go soon enough. What was a few days of paradise?

He smoothed back her hair and pulled her close, loving the way their bodies were stuck together, their juices mingling. She would walk around the rest of the day with his cum in her sweet cunt. He pulled her head down. “Of course, love. I want that, too.” He let his lips play against hers. He loved how soft she was. Her lips were pliant beneath his. He could play with her all day. A week, that was all he could give himself. Otherwise, he would take her.

Already the impulse was there to brand her as his. He had a sudden vision of working with her curled at his feet. Her skin was so porcelain, so perfect, that she could be his palette. He could have her stretch out when he was ready and use her torso to mix his paints. He would bend down when he needed to dip his brush in, and as for inspiration—all he would need to do is look down.

He shook his head. He was already going to that innately selfish place where all that mattered were his own needs. He would put it out of his mind for now. He had plans for Jennifer. When those came to fruition, he would have long years without her. He should enjoy himself while he could. He took a long, last drag from her lips. “What do you want to do today, love? Do you want to watch the snowboarding? Or we could join in the snowman competition.” A smile of pure pleasure crossed her lips. It did odd things to his heart. “We could kick everyone’s ass, Stef.” He laughed a bit. “I don’t know. Henry and Nell have been practicing.”

Her pretty mouth went down in a frowning pout. “Well, of course they’ve been practicing. What else do they have to do? How do they live? I mean it, Stef. They don’t have jobs. I seriously doubt that protesting pays. So how do they maintain that cabin of theirs?” Stef grinned. He couldn’t help it. He knew something no one else knew, and he wasn’t going to tell. If Nell and Henry wanted to write crazy erotic romance that mirrored some of the things that happened in town, more power to them. The only reason he knew was he’d been the one to find them a lawyer to set up their LLC. Bliss was lawyer free. It was written into the town’s charter. Stef had very quietly helped the pair out, and now he would be silent as the grave. “I guess they’re just lucky. Maybe Henry had some family money.” What they had was a pseudonym and an e-publisher. They had made more money off their crazy polyamorous romances than Stef would have believed possible. He knew that because he’d also let them use his accountant. Henry and Nell had asked him to show some discretion, and after reading their latest, he’d decided it was best for the peace of the town if he honored their request. It would make Max and Rye crazy that their adventures had been fictionalized. But it was hard, because he so wanted everyone to know just how filthy Nell’s mind was. Nate had once described her as a Disney princess and Henry as an asexual college professor.

Jen shook her head. She settled against him again. “Maybe.” He let his hands wander on her deliciously curved backside, and his brain moved on to more amorous thoughts than the snowman-building contest. He squeezed her ass. God, he couldn’t wait to fuck her there.

There was a loud knock on the door. Stef spun his head around.

Couldn’t he get a fucking moment’s privacy in this town?

“Stef? Seriously, take a goddamn break! We gotta move,” Max yelled from the other side of the door. Stef knew it was Max. Only Max could make Stef want to punch him with the sheer sound of his voice.

“Go away!” Stef yelled back.

“Can’t, Stef.” Now Callie’s voice split through his skull.

“We should start charging,” Jen said.

“I might start killing.” Stef’s little family was making him crazy.

He squeezed her ass one last time and kissed her lips sweetly before she slid off him. He was reaching for his jeans as he looked at the door. “This better be good.”

“It’s bad,” Callie said.

“We’re supposed to take you to the clinic,” Max chimed in.

Stef did up the fly of his jeans and felt his curiosity rise. “Why?”

“Because the Doc is doing an autopsy, and Nate thought you should see it,” Max shouted through the door.

“Get dressed,” Stef barked at Jen. His every nerve was awake, alive, and afraid.

Twenty minutes later, Stef stared down at the body of one Cindy Pope, aged twenty-one. There was no way he could mistake the resemblance between the dead girl and his Jennifer. They were both brunettes, roughly the same age and build. If a person just glanced at the two, they might think they were the same woman.

“I wondered why there was a backpack in our trash bin.” Marie shook her very sensible head. “Teeny had gone out to take the paid bags out, and she found a very nice pack. And still full of her things.

Such a shame.”

“Well, it wasn’t aliens.” A no-nonsense voice spoke up. Stef turned to see a slender, petite female of maybe sixty years pursing her lips. She wore comfortable working clothes, and her long, steel-colored hair was in a braid that went halfway down her back. She stood beside Mel, her arms crossed over her chest. “They use lasers.”

“Yep.” Mel simply nodded his agreement and stared down at the woman like she was a font of knowledge.

Dear god, Mel was in love. Heaven help everyone.

“So, no laser, Doc?” Stef would leave the actual professional opinion to the man in the green scrubs. As far as he could tell, Caleb Burke might be just as certifiable as Mel, but at least he’d gone to medical school.

“Nah,” Caleb replied. “It was a knife.”

No shit. Stef felt his stomach turn. The girl was just a kid. She was lying on a slab in a clinic in a town she hadn’t been born in. A sick feeling came over him, panic threatening. He’d known this wasn’t over. How the hell had they caught up with her? “Same as Renard?” Caleb’s face was a grim mask as he looked back at Stef. “I believe so, though I didn’t see that body personally. From the way it was described to me, I have to think it’s a possibility. There’s no hesitation here. It’s clean. Mel and his friend, Cassidy Meyer, found her in the river out by 285.”

Mel let his hand drift to the small woman’s shoulder. “We were out on the alien highway. Our group was securing the recon platform.

Cassidy here was making sure the telescope was working. That’s when she saw the poor girl. We knew it wasn’t an alien thing right away. They would never kill a fertile, young female. They would probe her.”

The woman named Cassidy, who Stef deeply feared Mel had probably met on the Internet, nodded her agreement. “She’s a prime specimen for their fertility experimentations.” Nice. He’d found someone as crazy as he was.

Dr. Burke turned on the couple, his hand out as though seeking to ward off further paranoia. “Rachel is fine. I promise.” Cassidy waved her hand. “I know that, Doc. I don’t worry about it. I gave birth to two alien babies, and they’re just fine. Sweetest boys you ever saw. They both went into the Navy. Did their country and their mama proud. One of them has some weird ideas, but he’s a good man. They like beets, though. Couldn’t get enough of them when they were boys. We should tell Rachel to stock up.”

“Cassidy raised some fine kids. You wouldn’t ever know they’re half alien,” Mel said with a proud smile.

“I think that’s all we need, Mel,” Nate said, walking into the small room that currently served as the Bliss County Morgue. He was a familiar, welcome figure of authority. “And you, too, Marie. I appreciate everything. Logan can take the rest of your statements.

Y’all go on. Enjoy the festival.”

In a few seconds the room cleared, and Stef was left with Caleb and Nate.

“Is this what I think it is?” Stef couldn’t help the tight, almost violent way the question came out of his mouth.

Nate sighed. “I don’t know. I have to think we should consider the fact that what happened to Jennifer in Dallas is connected to this. We haven’t had a murder in Bliss County since…well, we’ve had several, but they were mostly self-defense. This is very different.” Caleb pointed to the body, his finger gesturing to the line of her throat. It was split neatly, the skin blue from the cold of the river and the fact that she’d left life behind hours before. “It’s a professional job. Neat, surgical. He didn’t do more than he had to do here, but look at her stomach.”

Burke pulled back the drab blue sheet that covered the girl. Her body was a map of blue and purple bruises.

“He beat her.” Stef couldn’t imagine it.

“He tortured her,” Caleb corrected. “There’s a systematic pattern to the bruising that tells me he was very controlled when he did this.

There’s nothing that hints at someone who was out of control. He didn’t touch her face. He went for soft parts of the body. He knew what he was doing.”

Nate was staring down at her wrists. “She was tied up.” Stef flinched at the chaffing on her wrists. She’d been tied too tightly. Caleb turned the wrist over. The underside was perfectly smooth.

“I would assume she was tied to a chair,” Caleb said clinically.

“Look, I’ve never worked forensics. I was a surgeon, but I know the human body, and I know a little about interrogation techniques. If you asked me, right now, I would tell you that this young woman was tortured. Given the relative restraint of the violence, I would suspect that the man torturing her was a professional in search of something, information most likely. When he couldn’t get it out of her, he sliced her throat in a manner that would result in a very quick death. He then tossed her body in the river, which is sitting at roughly fifty degrees.

That kind of cold masks time of death, and due to the depth and speed of the water flow, we can’t know where the crime took place. If Teeny hadn’t found the pack, we wouldn’t know if she’d been here or somewhere upriver.”

“Logan and I have a grid to search all along the valley. Zane’s down there now with Rye Harper. If we find anything that could tell us where the dump took place, it could help.” Nate’s eyes had taken on that steely look he got when he was doing serious police work. It wasn’t hard to remember Nate Wright had once been a top DEA agent. Zane had been the same. Bliss might be a small town, but it had its share of veteran law enforcement.

The door to the clinic’s waiting room opened, and one of those former law enforcement employees walked in. Laura Niles looked slightly flustered, an adjective Stef almost never used for the cool blonde. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes narrowed as they honed in on Nate.

“I have been looking all over the town for you, Sheriff.” Nate’s eyebrows climbed his forehead under the brim of his Stetson. “It’s been a long morning, Laura. Actually, I’m glad you’re here. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions. You used to profile for the FBI, right?”

Laura had been one of their top profilers until an incident that caused her to walk out on a high-paying job. She’d found her way to Bliss, and now the Harvard-educated psychologist rang up tourists buying gas at the Stop’n’ Shop. She ran her perfectly manicured hands through her blonde hair, and if she had any problem standing in a room with a corpse, she didn’t show it. She’d barely looked down at the body, but now she let her eyes roam over it, a cool professionalism falling over her like a cloak.

“You want my opinion about this?” She stared at the body as though it was a thing rather than former housing for a soul. Stef couldn’t quite wrap his brain around it, but then he hadn’t worked for years in a job where death was all around him. Laura, he’d discovered, had made a name for herself by hunting serial killers. It wasn’t surprising that she’d learned to distance herself.

Nate nodded, and the doctor stepped aside, allowing Laura access to the corpse.

She was quiet for a moment, and when she spoke, her tone was academic, far from the bright, friendly tones he associated with Laura.

Even her husky Southern accent seemed to fade in favor of a flat, professional cadence.

“Any signs of sexual trauma?”

Caleb shook his head. “None, but I ran a rape kit anyway. She was in the water for awhile.”

“We won’t know how long until we can estimate a time of death.” Nate was cradling his cell in his hand. His face was haggard, and the morning seemed to have worn him down. “I haven’t even figured out when she went missing. Her mother talked to her last week. She was out with her boyfriend.”

“I doubt it was a boyfriend,” Laura murmured.

“It’s too clean,” Caleb insisted.

Laura’s lips pursed in agreement. “Far too clean. This is an incised wound. It’s going to be hard to determine the exact weapon beyond the fact that it was a knife. The killer stood behind the victim.”

“I thought so,” Caleb commented. His gloved finger traced the line of the fatal wound. “It starts high and ends lower on the neck. It’s also deep.”

“Yes, if he had been in front of her the wound would be more shallow. This is professional. There’s no passion in this kill. It was business, pure and simple, and this man takes pride in his work.

There’s a neat efficiency about the kill. You’re looking for a hired killer.” She turned on her heels and frowned at Nate. “Which brings me to why I was looking for you.”

“Laura, it’s going to have to wait.” Nate crossed his arms over his chest. “Right now I need to call some of my old contacts at the DEA.

If this is a Colombian cartel, we need to know.”

“I doubt it, Sheriff, unless Bliss has become the battleground for a nasty little bit of mob warfare.”

Nate turned to Laura. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means I don’t think we’re a hot spot for criminal activity. You aren’t dealing with Colombians, but I would like to know why the hell the Russian mob is in town.”

The room was becoming slightly oppressive. Jen stared at the door to the clinic, wondering why it seemed like everyone in Bliss needed to parade in and out of what had just been designated the county morgue.

“Bad business,” Teeny said, shaking her head. Her little beak of a nose was turned down in what looked like sadness. “I can’t believe it.

Would you like some fudge?”

She held out a tray of perfectly cut fudge. She was wearing slacks and a pink sweater, and a lovingly detailed apron.

This was an autopsy in Bliss.

“No, thanks,” she said, giving Teeny a smile.

“I’ll take some, Momma.” Logan reached over and grabbed two squares, giving his mother a thumbs-up. “I’m going to take some back for Hope. Nate left her answering the phones for the day.”

“Me, too,” Rachel said, taking three. The dog at her feet whined.

She frowned at Jen. “Don’t look at me like that. Baby needs fudge.”

“And cookies.” Callie smiled at them, a huge tray of cookies in her arms. “Stella sent them. Apparently tragedy requires carbs. She’s on a tear. She’s been working nonstop. She made like a hundred sandwiches when she found out the Sheriff’s Department was working on a homicide. I had to tell her that there were really only like five people working the case, but then Zane inhaled four sandwiches, and I just let her work.”

“And you didn’t mention this to us, why?” Rachel asked, frowning at Callie.

Callie set the tray on the small reception desk. “First, Nate asked me to keep my mouth shut.”

“Since when has that stopped you?” Jen asked. It was no secret that Callie Hollister-Wright was the hub for information in Bliss.

“This is serious.” Callie pushed her glasses up her nose. “I knew it would upset Rachel, and after what you went through, it should upset you as well. Besides, I only knew they had found a body early this morning. It could have been an accident. We have a town full of tourists. The last thing we need is some sort of panic.”

“That is very mature of you,” Rachel said.

“Thanks.”

But Jen knew what that little frown on Rachel’s face meant, and she agreed with it whole-heartedly. “It wasn’t a compliment. We’re your best friends. You aren’t supposed to hold out on us.”

“But—”

“No buts,” Rachel replied, a finger pointing out in Callie’s direction. “Don’t start talking about your husbands. Who did you call when you put that dent in Nate’s new truck? Should I remind you that it wasn’t Nate? Was it Zane?”

“It was you, and you know it.” Callie crossed her arms over her chest. “Of course I called you. You have a really devious mind. I would never have thought about saying I was installing a satellite radio for his birthday and getting the damage fixed so he never knew about it.”

Jen grinned and gave Rachel a high five. “I would have gone with tinting his windows. See, Callie, you can love your husbands, but your girlfriends are the ones who get you out of trouble. I should know. If you two had been with me, I’m sure one of you would have pointed out what a damn weasel my boss was. Such a jerk. I was supposed to be the artist-in-residence, but he had me doing the stupidest crap.”

“Some men.” Rachel shook her head. “I remember my boss at my last job before coming to Bliss. He treated me like his barista.”

“Yeah, well, Jean Claude seemed to think I was a handy man. One of the last things the bastard had me do was—oh, yeah.” Just like that it fell in place, and she wanted to smack herself for not seeing it sooner. The day before she’d been arrested, he’d had her mess around with the security cameras. He’d complained that the security company would take too long. Bullshit. Bastard. Son of a bitch. He’d set her up, and she’d been too stupid to see it.

“What?” Callie asked, her eyes round under the glasses she wore.

“I know where that painting is.” Jen started for the door. “I was just about to give the damn thing to Rachel as a baby gift.”

“Whoa! You were about to give me a half-of-a-million-dollar, black-market Picasso? I thought it was just one of yours. Though they are beautiful.” Rachel’s mouth hung open. “That’s the awesomest present ever. Way better than the baby monitor that also acts as a SETI receiver. Baby boy’s going to college.” Jen reached for her coat. “You don’t get to keep it, Rach. It has to go back, but at least I know where it is. The nasty jerk hid it under the painting I was going to give to Rachel. He pulled the canvas off and hid the Picasso under mine. I wouldn’t be able to tell because he was a dipshit when it came to his personal life, but brilliant at what he did.

He just didn’t figure I would be a crazy perfectionist. I decided I could do better. I painted the whole damn thing again in one night and changed some of the colors. Renard must have called the police the minute he realized he no longer had the painting. Asshole.” Rachel flushed slightly. “Uhm, I kind of talked to Holly. The one you put back for me really didn’t go with the room. I might have talked Holly into switching it with the blue one. Don’t look at me like that. It’s a boy. Blue is for boys.”

There was no pleasing a client. Every artist knew it. “It’s fine, Rach. But that means the others are potentially up for sale. I need to get my hands on that painting. Tell Stef I’ve gone back to town hall, and he should meet me there when he can.” Callie was right behind her. “I’m going with you.” Jen brushed past Logan and Marie and out of the door of the clinic. The glare of the sun off the snow made everything seem vital and alive. She loved winter in Colorado, but her mind was on getting to the town hall. Her heart wasn’t going to slow down until she pulled the canvas off that painting and made certain that the Picasso was underneath. It was her sure ticket to getting that potential felony off her record. Once that oppressive weight was off her, perhaps Stef could see her as something other than a girl constantly in trouble.

The clinic was on the end of Main Street. It was quieter here. Up ahead, she could see that the festival was in full whirl, but here, there was an almost eerie quiet. She turned to tell Callie to follow her when she noted the two men standing with her friend.

“Callie?” Jen immediately recognized them as the two men they had seen earlier in the day.

The smaller one with the dangerous eyes was standing far too close to Callie. The big, gorgeous one was walking her way.

“Miss Waters?” His deep voice rumbled out.

“Yes,” she said because she had a terrible feeling that the smaller man wasn’t helping Callie balance on the snow. She caught the glint of metal at Callie’s waist and the way her face tightened. “Let my friend go.”

“I can’t to be doing that.” There was an almost sympathetic look in his eyes, but it didn’t move Jen because the bastard still had a gun in his hand. “You have something that belong to my employer.” Jen took a deep breath. Trouble, it seemed, just kept finding her.