Shroud of Fog: (A Cape Trouble Romantic Suspense Novel) (24 page)

Daniel’s hands now rested on her hips.  As always, he was
patient, waiting for her to sort out what she wanted to say, his eyebrows
slightly raised.

“I felt a little repelled,” she said finally.  “He was there
that summer.  I didn’t think anything of the way he watched us then, but now— 
Well.”

Daniel bent his head enough to rub his cheek against her
hair.  “That’s why I went to see his mother, you know.”

She leaned back enough to see his face.  “You thought the
stash of jewelry might have been his.”

“Probably not, but…”  He was thinking, too.  “You have to
admit, he’s still obsessed with your mother.”

“Well, he said not, but—”

“Twenty years later, the painting of her dominates his
house.”

“It is gorgeous,” she said, in all fairness.

“After seeing the other paintings of your mother, I don’t
think he did that one back then.  It might have been years later when he tried
to do her justice.  That qualifies as obsession in my book.”

Sophie couldn’t quell a shimmer of anxiety.

“I wonder if he’ll take it down now.”

She stared at him.  “Why do you say that?”

“Having you there made him look at himself in a different
light.  You were a little kid then, and now you’re all grown up, a beautiful
woman, and he’s still got a picture of your mother hanging on his wall where he
can see it every day?  I think he got a jolt.”

She tried to remember, but all she’d seen was the painting. 
Her mother.

Maybe
she
was the one obsessed with the past.  “Who
cares about Elias Burton?” she declared.

Daniel smiled at her.  “Not me.”

“Unless,” she said, reading his expression accurately.

He tipped his head.  “Yeah.  Unless.  I can’t forget that he
was there that morning.  I have to keep him on my radar.”

“If…if he killed a whole bunch of women, why would he be
obsessed with my mother?”

“Because, in a sense, she got away?”

She could tell he was reasoning it out even as he spoke.

“You mean, he didn’t have a chance to rape her.”

“And do whatever he did with the other women’s bodies.”

The entire subject was sickening, but Sophie couldn’t let it
go.  “Do you think that part would matter to…to whoever killed those women?”

“That’s hard to say when we don’t know how he disposed of
their bodies.  It might be part of what he got off on, and it might not.  Your
mother was his only near screwup.  This was a careful guy.  He didn’t want to
get caught.  The best way to ensure that was for no one to ever find the
bodies, so making them disappear may have been purely practical.”

She shivered, and he felt it.  He wrapped her snugly in his
arms, his chin on top of her head.

“I’m an idiot, talking to you like this.  I’m sorry,
Sophie.”

Even as she pressed herself against him, soaking in his
warmth and strength, she shook her head.  “No, I want you to be able to say
what you’re thinking.  This is what you do for a living.  It’s who you are. 
I’d hate to think you ever felt you had to watch what you say to me.”

He was quiet for a minute.  “Being a cop is different,” he
said finally.  “There are things we do and see on the job that we don’t share.”

“That doesn’t sound healthy to me.”

His chest vibrated with a low laugh.  “You’re right.  It
probably isn’t.”  His hands came up to frame her face, as if he wanted to be
sure she was looking at him when he said, “This was your mother, though.  You
found her.  You have enough gruesome memories without me adding layers.”

“I still want to know what you’re thinking.  And what you’re
doing.”  She hesitated.  “If you don’t mind telling me, that is.”

“No.  What I’m going to do next is go back to the resort and
talk to Billington’s wife.”

“In case she’s the one who gave stuff for the auction. 
Without consulting him.”

“You got it.  Billington makes me uneasy.”

“He makes me uneasy, too,” she admitted.  “But he was
pleasant enough when he stopped to talk, and you have to admit, he’s doing
something pretty extraordinary to give us the time to raise the money.  For me,
it’s the same deal as Elias.  Benjamin was there that summer, too.”

“Yeah.”  His voice was suddenly hard.  “He was.”

That sent another shudder through her.  She didn’t like not
remembering anything after she found her mother.  Now she’d been told Elias and
Benjamin had found her screaming.  One of them might have carried her away,
even back to the cabin.  It gave her the creeps to see in their eyes the memory
of that shocked little girl, when all she had was a blank.  She felt naked in a
way she hated.  She couldn’t imagine she’d ever feel comfortable with either
man.

This time Daniel murmured comforting words, and after a
minute she was able to straighten and claim she was starved.  She doubted she’d
fooled him, but he willingly involved her in dinner preparation, which set her
to thinking again how natural this felt, when she didn’t dare let herself get
too used to it.

He hadn’t asked her to move into his house because he wanted
to come home to her every evening.  She couldn’t forget that.  This was him
being protective, that was all.  And, yes, enjoying the sex as long as she was
around.  But this part – the cooking together, dancing around each other in the
kitchen as if they’d done it forever, sometimes talking about things that were
really important, sometimes letting those things remain unspoken but exchanged
with a glance – she didn’t dare believe in.  The auction was only a few weeks
away, and when it was over and her aunt’s house sold, she’d have no reason ever
to return to Cape Trouble.

And it was her own stupid fault if she was left with a
bruised heart.

*****

Any plans Daniel had made for his day were wiped out five
minutes after he arrived at the station.  An irate citizen marched in to claim
he’d heard a prowler sometime after midnight, and the officer who was supposed
to show up never did.  Under questioning, a woman on dispatch admitted she had
been unable to reach said officer, but hadn’t worried, as she didn’t think
rattling garbage cans sounded like that much of an emergency.

This had been one of Aaron Krieder’s two nights off. 
Daniel’s options were limited, and he’d assigned Austin Hawley to work those
nights in part because he wouldn’t have trusted him to guard Sophie.  Hawley
was a swaggering young stud who hadn’t liked the changes Daniel had instituted
in the department.  He took some pleasure in sending Tony Diaz to haul Hawley’s
ass out of bed and march him in for a talk.

Shifting from foot to foot in front of Daniel’s desk, he
said he guessed he might have pulled over and dozed, missing the call.  He
wasn’t a good liar.  It eventually came out that he and his girlfriend had been
having a fight earlier in the evening, and he’d gone to her place to finish
it.  They made up, and although he wouldn’t confess to as much, Daniel knew
damn well he’d spent the rest of the night at her place.

Daniel stared unblinkingly at him.  “What if that call had
been about a B and E or a car accident with injuries?”

The blond, beefy officer gave a sullen shrug.  “It wasn’t. 
Nothing ever happens at night.”

Daniel probably wouldn’t have hesitated even if he’d seen
some sign of repentance, but as it was he said flatly, “You’re fired.  I’ll take
your badge and gun right now.”  He stood, holding out his hand.

Hawley didn’t take the dismissal well.  Daniel had barely
ushered him out when he saw Ellie looking shaken for the first time ever.

“Chief, there’s a holdup in progress at Sterling Bank.  The
manager just called.”

Well, damn.  Bank holdups did take place in small towns, but
they were rare.  And committing a crime like that in Cape Trouble was downright
nonsensical.  How did the bank robber think he’d get away with his bag full of
money?  Meander on up Highway 101 until he was pulled over?  There weren’t a
lot of ways to get out of town.

But sure enough, when Daniel raced down Schooner Street and
rounded the corner onto Madrona, lights flashing and siren wailing, he found
the holdup had degenerated into a hostage situation because one of his officers
had innocently pulled up in front of the bank, thereby blocking the escape
route.

“I was just going in to make a loan payment,” Steve Kennedy
told Daniel, trying to sound laconic but failing.  “I guess I scared the shit
out of him, and when he spun around wearing a black ski mask and holding a gun,
he scared the shit out of me, too.”

Daniel already knew the guy had fired his weapon. 
Fortunately, Kennedy had only gotten as far as opening one of the double glass
doors when he saw what was happening, and had been able to let go of the door
and dive to the side.  A bullet had passed through the glass at just about
chest height.  It was a goddamn miracle it hadn’t hit a passing vehicle or
pedestrian.

Employing all of his now even-smaller force except for Ron
Slawinski, who was once more standing guard over Sophie, Daniel set up a
perimeter, then called the sheriff’s department.  He’d been leaning heavily on
them lately, he reflected.

“Some fool is holding up a
bank
?” Sheriff Mackay
said, when told the situation.

“Sad but true.”

“Yeah, I’ve got a negotiator.”  Mackay had to be shaking his
head.  “I’ve only had to use her once since I took this job, so I don’t know
how good she is, but I’ll find out where she is and what her ETA will be.  Hold
on a minute.”  He came back to say, “She was off duty and home.  You’re looking
at probably forty-five minutes.”

That was the thing with rural counties.  Not surprised,
Daniel thanked him.  “I’ll see what I can do in the meantime.”

A loan officer inside the bank answered his call.  She
sounded very, very frightened.

Daniel kept the ensuing negotiations low-key.  He determined
that there were no customers inside, thank God.  Two tellers, the manager and
the loan officer were all being forced to sit on the floor while the robber
paced in agitation.  A teller had been putting cash in a bag for the robber
when Kennedy started to enter the bank, at which point the guy had freaked. 
Now all he wanted was a way out, which Daniel wasn’t going to give him.

Eventually the robber consented to take the phone himself.

“Nothing that bad has happened yet,” Daniel told him.  “Put
your gun down and come on out.  This wasn’t your day.”

He heard a stream of panicked invectives.

The negotiator turned out to be young, a tall woman with the
look of a runner.  “Rebecca Walker,” she said, shaking his hand firmly.

He liked her right away.  She listened to what had happened
and what he thought, then set about soothing the idiot with an expertise that
suggested more experience than she could possibly have.  Probably she was a
natural, one of those people who drew everyone else like a warm beach fire on a
cold night.

Even so, it was mid-afternoon before she persuaded what
turned out to be a very young guy to set down his weapon and come out with his
hands up.

Daniel reserved the pleasure for himself of cuffing the
idiot.  Pushing him to the squad car, Daniel looked around at the circus
surrounding them and shook his head in disbelief.

Way to kill a day.

*****

Sophie rolled her window up as soon as she’d punched in the
gate code.  She had to wait for a moment before the gate jerked then rumbled
open.  Ugh.  It would be good to get warm.  An hour and a half ago, the fog, a
thick, gray blanket, had arrived to envelop the storage facility.  From where
she’d sat behind her card table, she’d barely been able to see as far as the
chain-link fence surrounding the place.  Once a pickup truck had driven by,
appearing seemingly from nowhere and disappearing as completely.  It made her
skin crawl, knowing how close someone could come without her knowing he was
there.  She kept having mini flashbacks, remembering stumbling through the fog,
her feet slithering on the sand, and then the shocking suddenness of coming on
her mother.  She had almost tripped over her.  She’d never told anyone that.

This isn’t like that morning
, she’d told herself. 
She had protection.  Slawinski stood stolidly in the doorway, one shoulder
propped on the frame, and gazed into the fog.

Sophie wanted Daniel instead.  Which was ridiculous; the
radio Officer Slawinski carried had crackled with voices when the bank downtown
was held up.  His tension had been such she knew he wanted to be in on the
action, not stuck here with her, but he was too intimidated by Daniel to ditch
her.  A couple of phone calls had kept them updated as negotiations dragged
on.  Even Marge had rushed to tell them what she’d heard and lingered to wring
every possible drop from the meager details the three of them collectively had
gleaned.

When they heard it was all over and no one had been hurt,
Sophie’s relief had been profound.  Daniel had shared enough of his concern
about his inexperienced officers, she’d known darn well that if the decision
was made to go in, he would have taken the lead.

 Now, as she drove forward, glancing in the rearview mirror
to see that the police car was following close behind, she assumed Daniel must
have wrapped everything up.  If he hadn’t, he’d have called to issue
instructions.  She knew he wouldn’t let her arrive at his house if he wasn’t
there.

After that, she forget everything but her driving. 
Visibility was so bad, she kept her speed under twenty miles an hour.  Her eyes
burned from the strain of trying to see the road ahead.

A huge black shape reared up ahead out of the fog so
suddenly, her heart lurched.  Slamming on her brakes, Sophie had the sickening
awareness of her tires skidding on the damp pavement.  Somewhere in there, she
saw that it was an SUV in front of her, stopped right in the middle of the
road.  When she came to a complete stop without feeling an impact or hearing a
scream of crumpling metal, she sagged in relief.