High School Reunion (16 page)

He shook his head as he pulled up in front of the police station.

“Cade, do you think Kathy killed Debra?”

“I don’t know, but it’s beginning to look like she was trying to kill you.”

L
AUREL STOOD
in Cade’s office a couple of hours later, looking down at the meager evidence they’d gathered. Lined up on his desk were the plastic bags that held the graduation night pictures, Debra’s broken false nail, the crime-scene photos, the French nail from Laurel’s room at the B&B, the bullet and Kathy’s flask.

She stared at the slug she’d dug out of the tree, the slug that had missed her skull by less than three inches. At the time, she’d managed to hold herself together. She’d been all business—all FBI, estimating trajectory, pinpointing where the shooter must have stood, preserving the evidence.

But now, in the safety of the police station, staring at the misshapen piece of lead, it was all she could do to hold herself together. Her stomach felt like it had been turned upside down—or inside out. Her head spun with the realization of how close she’d come to death.

She was a criminologist, but most of the time she never saw the crime scene. Working for the Division of Unsolved Mysteries, her participation usually consisted of going over old case files, re-examining evidence and occasionally disinterring a body for a forensic autopsy.

Until she’d come back to Dusty Springs, the only time she’d actually drawn her weapon or processed a crime scene was during training.

And she’d
never
been shot at—not with real bullets.

Cade’s office chair screeched as he leaned back and propped his boots on the desktop. The chair’s unoiled springs protested again when he pushed it to a slightly greater angle. He balanced the phone’s handset between his ear and shoulder.

“Cade Dupree here, chief of police in Dusty Springs. I need to speak to the medical examiner.”

He waved Laurel toward a scarred desk and an ancient chair on the other side of the room, but she shook her head.

She couldn’t sit right now. She was too antsy. She reached out and touched the bag that held the bullet. The bag was crooked, just slightly out of alignment with the other six bags. As she adjusted it, her fingers trembled. She pulled her hand back and plunged both fists into the pockets of her jeans.

Stepping over to the cork bulletin board, she pretended to read the notices stuck up there with various thumbtacks, pushpins and a few straight pins. But the bullet lying on the desk behind her taunted her with its nauseating truth—she’d almost died out there today.

She was as spooked as a civilian—more. She’d watched interviews with victims of near-fatal shootings who were much calmer than she felt right now.

Laurel’s brain was whirling. She was wound as tight as the spring on Cade’s chair. Wound so tig
ht she wanted to scream. She wished for something—anything—to stop the memory that ran in an endless loop in her head. The replay of that split-second when the slug had whizzed by her head and thunked into the tree trunk.

A metallic shriek and a thud made her jump. A moment later she realized the noise was Cade sitting up and planting his boots on the floor.

She turned in time to catch him frowning as he picked up a pencil and pushed a stack of paper aside. He was still on his phone. “Key? Okay. In her left pocket.” He jotted something on the desk blotter. “Wrapped in a tissue?”

Key.
Debra had had a key in her pocket? Laurel met his gaze and he moved his head a few millimeters in a nod.

She knew he was thinking the same thing she was. Debra may have been bringing that key to Laurel as evidence. If it fit Laurel’s room at the B&B, it would explain how the intruder got in.

“We need that key. Can you send it over by courier? Yeah, the fibers, too. I’m pretty crippled here. I only have two officers and one is the victim’s father.” He set the pencil down and rubbed his eyes. “How soon can you get it here? Great. Thanks.” He hung up.

Laurel barely waited until the phone hit the cradle. “Debra was bringing me a key wrapped in a tissue. It had to be to my room. And it’s got prints on it, I’m sure! She knew who ransacked my room. Maybe she did it.”

Cade sent her a cautious look. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

“Wait? We don’t have time to wait. We need information. What did the ME say about the cause of death?” Laurel planted her palms on the desk. “The autopsy report? Is he sending us photos? I need to see the marks on her neck—get a closer look at the bruising.”

“Settle down. You’re about fiv
e seconds from a meltdown. Let me take you to the house so you can relax—maybe take a hot shower.”

She shook her head. “No. Stop treating me like a girl. I’m a cop, just like you are. So when
you
stop to take a hot shower, I’ll join you.”

Cade’s eyebrows shot up.

“What?” she snapped.

His cheeks turned faintly pink and he shook his head. “Nothing.”

“What other physical evidence did he find? You mentioned fibers. Were they her fingernails? I’ve got to look at everything before I can make a determination—”

“Hold it.” Cade held up his hands. “We do know about procedure down here in Dusty Springs. The ME is faxing me his autopsy report and emailing me hi-res images of his autopsy photos. We’ll get a look at them in a few minutes.”

“Good. Fine.” She slid her hands out of her pockets and rubbed her temples as she paced back and forth across the small office. She twisted her hair up off her neck, but as usual, she didn’t have a barrette or a clip to hold it so she let it drop back to swinging just above her shoulders. Then she looked at her watch, still pacing.

“How long will it take the courier to get here? I want to overnight all the evidence to the FBI lab. They can lift a print off almost anything.” She reached the front of the room and whirled on her heel and retraced her steps.

“If we call early enough,” she continued, “we can get it picked up this evening. Mitch will have the lab in D.C. process it priority and get us some preliminary results by Tuesday at the latest.”

At the opposite end of the room, she turned again. This time she ran slap into Cade’s hard, warm body. How had he gotten up without the chair squeaking?

“I said hold on.” He put his hands on her upper arms and squeezed. “Settle down. We’ll get it all done. You need to chill.” He ducked his head a little to meet her gaze.

“Chill? You think I should
chill
while there’s a killer out there?” She shook her head and tried to extricate herself from his grip. “There’s no way. I already let Misty get hurt, and now Debra’s dead.”

She looked at his big, long-fingered hands, dark against the paler skin of her arms. “Let go of me. I need to move.”

He held on. “Yeah, so I see. Why is that?”

She pulled against his grasp.

“That wasn’t a rhetorical question. You’re nervous as a cat. It’s wearing you out.”

“It helps me think.” She rubbed her temples. “Usually. But right now all I can think about is Debra out there waiting for me, not knowing she was about to die.”

“Are you telling me you feel responsible for Debra’s death?”

As hard as she tried, she couldn’t stop the lump that was growing in her throat. She swallowed and blinked, and tried again to escape Cade’s hold.

“I didn’t take her seriously,” she said, not looking at him. “I should have insisted that she meet me right then, when she called. And then I wasted time dancing with you when I should have been with her—”

“Okay, stop. It’s not your fault that Debra was killed. All you did was agree to meet with her. If she told someone what she was doing, or if someone saw her, that’s not your responsibility.” He stared into her eyes. “Got it?”

His blue gaze was reassuring, but her guilt wasn’t that easily assuaged. She’d been lusting after Cade while Debra was dying.

“I tell you what. Why don’t I make you some coffee?
You can lie down on the couch in the other room for a while, just until the courier gets here with the key.”

“Coffee? Lie down? I can’t do that.” She wrenched away from him. “Would you stop treating me like—”

Cade’s smile faded and his gaze froze her in place. “Like a girl? That’s not going to be easy.”

Laurel’s cheeks flamed. “I don’t see why not.”

“Then you don’t see what I see.”

What did he see? She wanted so badly to ask him, but what if all he meant was that he couldn’t avoid seeing what any man saw—boobs, lips…boobs? That would be unbearable.

If he really was looking, she wanted him to see
her.
Who she was inside. Who she’d always been, even behind the teenaged awkwardness, the braces and glasses. For what little good it would do her.

Even if he did think of her as more than a fellow law enforcement officer, even if his casual flirtations were partly genuine, it wouldn’t matter. She’d never been good at the flirtatious banter that went on between men and women. She had an annoying habit of speaking her mind, when she wasn’t too flustered to speak at all. She’d missed out on a lot of dates because she’d never learned how to flirt.

“Hey.” He touched her chin with his fingertip, gently urging her to look at him. “Surely you look in the mirror.”

She shrugged, caught by his gaze again. This time his blue eyes were smoky and soft. His scent filled her head—fresh, woodsy, unbearably sexy.

His finger slid along her chin to her jawline. “What do you see when you look in the mirror?”

Another opportunity for a cute, flip remark. But her mind was blank. All she could think of was the truth. “Red hair, freckles. A too-big mouth and a too-short nose.”

“Man. You’re really fishing for compliments, aren’t you?”

“Fishing? No, of course not.”

His gaze roamed over her face. “You’re not, are you? You don’t know you’re a knockout, Gillespie?”

Her face burned. “I’ll bet you say that to all the FBI agents.”

His killer grin appeared. “Look, ladies and gentlemen. She
can
flirt.”

She laughed and stepped backward, putting distance between herself and him, distance that would hopefully dissipate the intense sensation that was surging through her—a sensation she could only name as lust.

“Good job distracting me, Dupree,” she said, trying to keep her voice casual. “I’m fine now. Thanks.”

His expression softened and he took a step toward her. “It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it. I’m available any time you need distracting.”

Don’t kiss me.
As soon as the thought formed in her head, she had to suppress a laugh at herself. He wasn’t going to kiss her. All he was doing was a little harmless flirting to take her mind off her brush with death and the weight of her responsibility for Debra.

But he dipped his head a little more and laid a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

Oh, don’t. Don’t be unbearably sweet and protective. “Nothing to be sorry for. Getting shot at is part of the job.”

“But it’s never happened to you before, has it?”

“Yes. Well, no.” A shudder racked her body. “Not with real bullets.”

He laughed softly. “Just at Quantico.”

She nodded miserably. “I can’t believe I’m so shook up over one shot.”

“Two shots. And you ought to be. I am.”

“You? Why?” She raised her gaze to his and saw the tenderness she’d dreaded.

Cade shook his head in wonder. “You have to ask?” His fingers touched her cheek. With the slightest pressure, he urged her head up. “I’d never forgive myself if something happened to you.”

His voice was low and gentle, surrounding her with the promise of safety. It was also rough and sexy, rumbling through her, sending deep tremors of awareness straight to her core. She couldn’t draw breath to speak as he caressed the underside of her chin, the sensitive line of her jaw. She couldn’t breathe when he moved his hand over the nape of her neck to curve protectively around the back of her head.

“Um, have
you
ever been shot?”

He chuckled and his breath fanned across her mouth. “Only once. By Old Man Rabb.”

His thumb caressed the soft skin beneath her ear.

She could barely think. “The guy who shot his son-in-law in the butt?”

“The very same.”

“Wh-where did he shoot you?”

His eyes twinkled. “In his front yard.”

“I meant—”

He bent his head and lowered his gaze to her mouth. “I know what you meant,” he whispered.

Then he kissed her.

At first it was nothing more than a brush of sensation across her lips, like the flutter of a butterfly’s wing. His fingers tightened when she let her lips part. He kissed her more deeply, using his tongue to taste her, to trace her lips and invade their boundaries.

She heard a plaintive moan, and realized it had come from her own throat. Cade reacted with a sharp intak
e of breath. He widened his stance and wrapped his arm around her waist, then pulled her close.

Laurel felt his need through the double barrier of their jeans. Her breasts tightened. Her nipples scraped against the soft cotton of her T-shirt.

All her carefully honed defenses melted at the feel of him—hot and hard, pressing against her.

He wanted her.
The thought empowered her. This was Cade Dupree, her first major crush. Back in high school he hadn’t known she existed. Well, he knew now. She felt his knowledge in his hard, insistent arousal.

She kissed him back with rising passion. Her knees wobbled and her insides turned to liquid heat. If he weren’t holding her up, she’d crumple at his feet.

He pushed her two steps backward. Her back hit the wall and at the same time, Cade freed his hands and slipped them under her shirt. He caressed the bare skin of her belly and back.

The almost-aggressive gesture flooded her with hot longing. He was dominating her, holding her immobile, as his desire for her became more and more insistent.

She flattened her palms against his chest, not to push him away, but to soak up the surge of life within him. His breath came hard and steady. She lifted her head to look at him and he kissed the tip of her nose.