Hunted, page 12
“Oh, I was able to go five whole minutes at a time without thinking about them.” She walked to the tall chest of drawers and traced the carved wood. “What now?”
“I’ll pack them up, take them over to the crime lab, and hopefully whoever sent them, they messed up this time.” He finished getting his shoes on, then stood and crossed to her. “Or did you mean us?”
Beth shrugged. “Both, I suppose.”
He studied her. “What do you want to happen?”
“Aside from the whole ‘create a bubble’ scenario, you mean? I don’t know. You tell me. Does this mean we’ve declared a truce in this war we’ve been fighting?”
“I don’t know. We might have to do this a few hundred more times for a real cease-fire to be called,” he said softly. He laughed at her shocked gasp, then he wrapped her in a hug. “I’m kidding. I don’t like fighting with you.”
“You’re awfully good at it,” she retorted, pinching his sides.
“Look who’s talking.” He threaded his fingers into her hair. “I like bickering with you and getting you to sass me. However, I don’t like what we’ve been doing to each other. I don’t like hurting you. I’m sorry about that.”
Beth swallowed hard. “So am I.” She rubbed her face into his hand. “Where does that leave us?”
“Friends?”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Do you sleep with all your friends?”
He grinned. “No.” The humor faded. “We are friends. Aren’t we?”
“I’d like to think so. Only… we aren’t just friends.”
“No, we aren’t. We aren’t friends with benefits either.” He stepped back. “I’m not kissing you again. I won’t get out of here today if I do.”
“I’m still trying to figure out why that’d be a bad thing,” she said as she followed him to the dining room. She stopped in the doorway. “God, that’s awful to look at. And what’s worse is knowing that someone’s been watching me for weeks.”
He nodded as he pulled on fresh gloves. “I hate to ask you to look at them again, but I’m afraid I need to. Which photos are the most recent? Does anything stand out to you about them? And I don’t recognize a couple of these people. Who are they?”
Of course he’d chosen one of the shots of her and Gordon. To her shame, she felt her face heat even though she had no reason to feel guilty. “He’s a source, an anonymous source. Who else don’t you know?”
Ethan narrowed his eyes. “An anonymous source?”
“Yes.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Her mouth tightened. “I’m not trying to deliberately not answer your question, but I can’t give you his name.” But you gave it to Charlie, the voice inside her head whispered. She ignored it.
If the set of his jaw was any indication, Ethan was not happy with her answer. “What about him? He looks familiar.” He tapped a couple of pictures taken outside the newspaper in which the man’s face wasn’t clearly shown.
This time, she was able to answer. “That’s Andre Cristos. He’d just delivered lunch from the deli, and I had to chase him down and give him the tip.”
“And him?” He indicated a third man.
“These are from the animal shelter—he’s the auditor the state brought in.” She told him the man’s name, and he wrote it down.
“You won’t budge on him?” He pointed at a picture of Gordon that had been taken the day they’d met in the park, which showed him and Beth sitting on the bench, engrossed in conversation.
She gave a quick sigh. “His name is Gordon. He’s a source, and I met with him last week. That’s all I can really tell you.” When he looked at her incredulously, she spread her hands. “I have to protect my sources.”
“I’ll make sure your folks put that on your tombstone. ‘She protected her sources till the end.’ I’m sure it’ll be comforting to them.”
Beth hissed and narrowed her eyes. “That’s not fair.”
He gathered up the photos and slid them into the envelope. “No, I guess it isn’t. I’m sorry.”
She didn’t say anything as he put the envelope inside an evidence bag and labeled it. When he laid his pen down and turned to her, the guarded look back on his face, she shrugged.
“We’re determined to butt heads. Old habits. I’m sorry.”
“Do you understand that I’m scared for you?” he asked quietly.
“Yeah. I’m scared too. But I can’t stop living my life, doing my job because of this.”
“Nobody’s asking you to.” He closed the distance between them and touched her face. “Just promise me you’ll be careful. If something happened to you…”
Beth hugged him, resting her head on his shoulder. “I promise.”
He didn’t stay long after that, though he did kiss her again before he left. Once she’d shut the door behind him, she leaned against it and fought back tears. So much had happened today, never mind the last few weeks, and it was all swamping her emotionally.
“You just need some food and some sleep,” she told herself as she went to the kitchen. “Get some calories in you, and you’ll be fine. After all, things are… smoother with Ethan, right? And this morning was nothing short of a miracle.”
Maybe it was that dark cloud Zora had mentioned that was hanging around her, or maybe it was something more. Whatever the cause, she just didn’t feel as optimistic as she should have. For all the world, she felt as though a ghost had walked across her grave.
“Whatever’s coming, it’s going to be ugly, I’m afraid, just like Zora said.” Ugly and dark and, if her gut was right, something she’d have to fight hard to survive.
Chapter 23
Ethan reached his truck and slid behind the wheel with a sigh of relief. His knees were still a little weak, and for a few moments, he sat there thinking. What had happened between them that morning aside, Beth had a real problem, and he wasn’t sure it was solvable. Moreover, his instincts were telling him that she faced real danger despite the stalker not having physically harmed her thus far.
As he started the engine and shifted into gear, he thought about the pictures, and a surge of fury ran through him. Most of the time he loved being a detective, but cases like this frustrated him to no end. Investigations that included stalker-like behavior often didn’t end well, and they usually caused him to question the law he had sworn to uphold. That Beth was involved simply twisted the screws that much harder.
“Get the investigation started, go get cleaned up, and maybe you’ll get lucky. Maybe something will turn up with this one.”
When he dropped off the package at the crime lab, he asked the technician in charge to try to rush processing it. She assured him she would, and he headed for the street with the hope that he would be able to sneak out without being stopped. He really needed to get showered and shaved before he was presentable, and if getting the pictures to the lab hadn’t been urgent, he’d have gone home first.
He made it all the way outside before running into anyone, something that had to be a record. As he headed down the steps, he moved aside for the man and woman walking up, and he cursed under his breath, hoping against hope he could pass by without stopping.
But the woman sent him a big smile. “Go on ahead. I’ll catch up,” she told her companion. “Ethan Moore, where’ve you been hiding yourself?” She looked him over from head to toe in a way that told him she liked what she saw.
“Hey, Ruby. I’ve been working, working, and working some more. You know how it is. How’re you doing? Are you headed to court?”
The legal assistant had been trying for a while to get him to take their relationship into the personal realm. Ethan wasn’t interested, but Ruby Sloane was stubborn. Curvaceous and outgoing, she was sure of herself. She was also a class-A snitch—Ethan wouldn’t call her an informant she was so mercenary about trading information—and someone he didn’t trust as far as he could throw.
She made a face. “Of course. Like you said, what else is there? We should have more fun in our lives, don’t you think? Why don’t we get together Saturday night?”
He grimaced. “I’m seeing someone.”
Her eyes cooled, her gaze turning calculating. “Oh? That’s news to me.”
“It’s a recent development. I’d better run. See you around.”
Though it was rude, he didn’t wait for her response but headed on down the steps. As he waited to cross the street, he glanced back. She was still standing where he’d left her, looking after him.
Ethan scowled, a whisper of something dark crossing his skin as he watched her watch him. Just as he was ready to go back and ask her what was going on, her companion came back outside and called her name. She turned and hurried on up the steps.
“You’re imagining things,” he muttered as he crossed the street.
But as he unlocked his truck, he hesitated. He was parked outside The Brown Bag, and something Lauren had said to him months earlier came back to whisper in his ear.
“My instincts told me there was trouble. I never expected it to be this,” she’d said the morning following the destruction of her café by a vengeance-seeking madman.
Now his instincts were telling him there was trouble, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that Ruby was somehow involved. “But how in the world could she be tied up in this mess with Beth?”
He considered what his best approach would be to finding out. When he stopped at a drive-thru to get a burger on his way home, he used the opportunity to call Stacy. “Hey, can I pick your brain a bit?”
She laughed. “It might be slim pickings today, but go for it. What do you need?”
“I’m not entirely sure. Thanks,” he said to the lady at the window. “Hang on a sec.” He pulled into a parking spot and rolled up the window up, then put the call on speaker. “Mind if I eat while we talk?”
“Not at all.”
He told her about the pictures, the slip, all of it, leaving out the personal time he’d spent with Beth. “I know you’re familiar with most of that already, at least in passing. What are your thoughts?”
“Hmmm, well. You’ve looked at everyone logical, I assume? Enemies, lovers?”
He cleared his throat. “Yep. There’s nothing I can find. No one who stands out. I’m hoping by the time I get back to town, the crime lab will have something. Fay said she’d get right on it when I dropped it off a little while ago.”
“You’re not on your way in now?” Stacy asked.
“No, I have to go home and get cleaned up. Why?”
“Uh, no reason. No reason at all. It’s just that I thought you were heading home about the time I got here this morning. You said Beth called you this morning. And you only just dropped off the evidence to the lab, right?”
Ethan glared at the phone. He could practically hear Stacy’s grin. “What’s your point, Detective?”
“There’s no point exactly, I’m just doing my job, you know—detecting and stuff. Hmmm, I do wonder where you could have been all day.”
“Stacy…”
She laughed. “I’m kidding. Hopefully you spent the day where you should have been months ago.”
“At the library?” he asked, just to confuse her.
There was a pause on the other end. “Ethan, you did not.”
It was his turn to laugh. “I’m not telling. Now, to get back to the reason I called—what do you know about Ruby Sloane?”
“She’s trouble. I don’t like her. She only has nice things to say about men and people she can use. I believe, though I don’t have any proof of this, that she only keeps her nose as clean as she does to fool people. Do you think she’s involved in this mess with Beth?”
“I don’t know. I ran into her coming out of the courthouse today, and something about the way she was acting was just off. It lit up my gut. Would it surprise you if she’s involved?”
Stacy’s answer was immediate. “Not in the least. She strikes me as a tremendously vindictive person. But what motive would she have? Unless it’s personal.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Well, the way you and Beth have been sniping at each other for months now, that hasn’t gone unnoticed. Ruby could be jealous.”
For the life of him, Ethan didn’t know how to respond. “Ruby’s a snitch. She has no claim on me.” He couldn’t bring himself to address her comments about the sniping.
“If she lit up your instincts, there’s a reason. Want me to do some digging, see what I can find out? I might get further than you would.”
“I’d appreciate that. I just can’t shake the feeling that something’s really off with Ruby, and given what I saw in those pictures, I’d rather be safe. You know?” He wiped his hands on the napkins and wadded them up.
“I do know. Is that all you need?”
He played with the edge of his drink lid. “Yeah. Thanks for this.”
“No worries. Oh, and Ethan? If you did spend the day with Beth,” she said quietly, “I’d think that was great. Not that you need permission or anything, but in case you were wondering.”
He huffed, but he was smiling, her words going a long way to ease some of the guilt he was starting to feel. “Stay out of trouble, would you? See you soon.”
For a few minutes, he sat there, staring at the cars passing by on the highway. The day had certainly held a lot to take in, and he wasn’t ashamed to admit that he was struggling a bit. “Snap out of it, Moore. You’ve got work to do. Ruminate later.”
He pulled out and headed for home. There wasn’t anything he could do right now that hadn’t already been done. Any resolution was going to take time. He could only hope that was something they had enough of.
At the courthouse, Ruby hurried up the steps and sent her companion on ahead without her. Ducking into a quiet alcove, she pulled out her phone and made a call.
“I thought I warned you about contacting me at work,” the man said in lieu of a greeting.
“You did, but this is important. I just ran into Ethan Moore. He’s seeing someone. Two dollars you and I both know who it is. We need to meet so we can go over what it is you want me to do exactly.”
There was silence as he contemplated her words. “Okay. Why don’t we meet at the usual place, say around ten o’clock this evening?”
“Fine.”
She hung up, irritated and out of sorts as she hurried to the courtroom. She’d worked too hard to set things up in her favor to let Ethan and his little girlfriend get in the way of her plans. With any luck, none of her targets would be able to move out of the path of what she’d set in motion in time to avoid becoming casualties.
Chapter 24
Beth arrived at the popular family-owned restaurant Friday afternoon with only five minutes to spare. Yet another storm front was moving through, making driving a challenge, and traffic had been slow in the heavy rain. She was glad she hadn’t been forced to cancel the luncheon. With any luck, she’d get some questions answered that had been nagging her to death.
Charlie had called her late yesterday afternoon as promised. “I wasn’t able to find much of anything, and I can’t tell you how I know this, so don’t ask, but I think you’ll be safe with him.”
She blew out a frustrated breath. “Okay. He just keeps getting more and more mysterious. Thanks, Charlie.”
The restaurant they were meeting at was busy this time of day, and the parking lot was full, forcing her to grab a spot near the back. She groaned at the prospect of facing the sheets of rain without an umbrella, but she didn’t have time to wait out the weather. Resigned to getting wet, she grabbed her bag and made a dash for the entrance.
An older man held the door open for her, and she thanked him with a smile as she dashed inside. His companion, a younger, confident-looking fellow wearing a dress shirt and tie, made no effort to hide his obvious perusal of her body. Beth shot him a cold glare as a reward.
Just as the younger man turned to come back inside, she saw Gordon in the lobby and raised her hand, catching his attention as she moved toward him. When the other man saw who she was meeting, he lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender and reversed course.
Beth watched him go with growing amusement. Hands on her hips, she turned back to Gordon and raised an eyebrow. “Are you that scary then?”
“Absolutely.” His answering grin showed off his dimples. “Our table’s ready.”
As they moved through the restaurant, she couldn’t help but be impressed. Considering the large number of cars in the parking lot and the crowd waiting to be seated, she had expected to wait at least thirty minutes before they were given a table.
The hostess ushered them into a quiet corner tucked away behind a large potted palm. “Your server will be right with you.”
“Have you been here before?” Gordon asked as he settled into his chair, watching her take in their surroundings.
“Not since they remodeled.” Looking over the menu, she quickly decided on the grilled chicken salad.
Gordon didn’t even glance at his menu.
“Do you come here that often, or can you read through leather?” she asked.
“Unfortunately, that isn’t one of my superpowers. I’m a regular, I guess you could say.”
After the server had taken their orders, Beth fiddled with her utensils, still a little unsettled from the drive.
“Roads bad?”
Her gaze shot to his, and she forced herself to sit back and take a deep breath. “Sorry. It’s a little crazy out there, yes. I appreciate you meeting me.” She accepted her drink from the server with a smile. “I think I have something, but I’m not really sure what it means.”
“I’m happy to meet you whenever and wherever. What do you have?”
She reached into her bag for a couple papers. “I presume you read what I sent in the e-mail. This timeline, I believe, goes along with it. As you see, it starts a couple of weeks before Cullen Jarvis, one of the local farmers, reported his first encounter with what he calls ‘the visitors.’ It runs through last night. Look at these—they’re disappearances.” She directed his gaze to the four stars she’d placed on the chart, then flipped it over and showed him the back.
