The Eligible Suspect (6 page)

It was best to keep things casual with him. She wasn’t over her last love. She wasn’t ready to take on another one, especially a six-foot-four hunk who should frighten her rather than make her yearn to get naked with him.

Unsettled, Savanna took his empty plate and hers to the kitchen. They were paper so all she had to do was throw them away. She went about cleaning up the light mess, leaving the drinking water in the kettle in case either one of them needed some later. All the while she couldn’t pinpoint the source of the feeling that he wasn’t telling her everything. He’d been honest, but there was more. More under the surface.

So immersed in thought, she didn’t notice him come up behind her until his hand rested on top of hers, stilling her wiping motions. She’d cleaned the counter long enough. It was an automatic action while her mind spun.

She looked up at him while he put his hand on her waist and turned her to face him. The intimate way he touched her and the hard energy of him lit her up inside. All she could do was melt in the clarity of his eyes.

“I won’t let anything happen to you.”

He said it with such certainty, and yet, how could he know? Was he that sure of himself? He didn’t try to convince her he wasn’t a bad guy. He had to realize she’d wonder, and yet he didn’t make excuses. She both respected him for that and built up her defenses. Her heart was still vulnerable. Maybe she’d always be vulnerable when it came to men. She had no tools to protect herself from falling in love. She needed to learn to develop them. Until then, men who posed any kind of threat to her had to be rejected.

While her mind reasoned that way, her body had other ideas. When he lifted his hand and brushed his fingers along her cheek, she flushed with desire. He turned her on that easily. A look. A touch. His nearness. This did not feel safe. She sensed the same in him, reluctance no match for the passion they generated.

Powerless against the spell of this mysterious love drug, she didn’t fight him when his fingers moved beneath her chin and he gently raised her head. She was a rapt observer as he lowered his mouth to hers. Maybe he was an observer, too, a puppet to the seductive strings that tugged them.

Soft and slow, he kissed her, withdrawing every once in a while as uncertainty gained momentum, only to fall into the spell again. The sultry play of kisses built to parting of mouths. He kissed her harder.

She slid her arms around his shoulders, dissolving into him as he pressed her body against the kitchen counter. A tiny part of her warned not to let this go any further, but the movement of his head as he took her mouth for another kiss sent her to a steamy land of temptation.

He lifted her and put her on the counter. She opened her legs and gripped his butt and tried to pull him against her. The only thing that mattered was the desire to feel his erection where she needed it most. She wanted to crawl inside his skin. Be one with him, with his strength, his mind. Everything.

He was almost there. To that place she yearned to go with him. If he’d just touch her more. Finally, he gave in and moved his hips closer.

Yes.

A shudder racked him and he dragged his mouth over her jaw to her neck, where he went still. She started to search for him with her mouth. But his lack of response gave her time to realize what was happening. What was about to happen.

She stiffened as Korbin stepped back, the gray of his eyes drilling her with a fevered stare. He was leaving the choice up to her.

Except she couldn’t decide what to do next. She was too confused.

It was enough to cool her passion. She slid off the countertop. How could she have no control when he kissed her? Why couldn’t she stop him?

Because she didn’t want him to stop....

When she gathered her wits, she asked, “What happened between you and your wife?” She had to know.

As she anticipated, that stiffened him and he stepped back, his passion calming with hers. Was it guilt she saw take him over?

But he seemed to understand why she asked. If this intimacy continued between them, she needed to arm herself with what she was up against.

“She died. A year ago.”

Died.

Not divorced. He’d suffered a terrible loss. Just the look in his eyes convinced her. He’d loved her. Disappointment crushed her. That and self-reproach. She had to learn to listen to her reasoning and be disciplined enough to follow that reasoning. The best way to accomplish that was to arm herself with knowledge. The more evidence she had on his state, and how that state made him a bad choice, the more empowered she’d be to control her feelings.

“What was her name?” she asked.

“Niya. I met her in college, when I started my PhD.”

He had a PhD? She followed his rugged form over to the wood-burning stove, sexy and masculine and made for the outdoors. Sitting on the sofa, she watched him add more wood to the fire.

“She graduated with a degree in English and got a job teaching middle-school kids,” he said. “I always thought she was too normal for me.”

“Why too normal?”

After closing the stove door, he turned to her, still crouched. He didn’t have to reply. He’d helped his friend steal. His wife was an innocent schoolteacher.

“How long were you married?”

“Eight years.”

That was a long time. “Did she get sick?”

Korbin stood and came over to the sofa, sitting down beside her with a heavy sigh. “No.”

“How did she die?”

He stared ahead without answering. She doubted he’d spoken to anyone about this. But if she hadn’t been sick, how had she died?

“Was it an accident?” she asked, trying to help him in what must be a painful thing to talk about.

After several seconds he finally said in a low, pained voice, “Yes. She shouldn’t have died. She had so much life in her.”

Grief racked him. Instead of reaffirming her need to keep a distance, she felt great empathy for him. His loss. After a year he hadn’t made much progress.

“You must have loved her,” she said, needing to hear him say it, to prove to her that he was too broken for a new relationship, one with her, another person who was too broken for one.

He gave a brief nod. “I would have spent the rest of my life with her.”

There it was. He couldn’t have chosen more convincing words. Although grief had a way of elevating the deceased to divine heights, Korbin had loved his wife as fully as a man could.

She averted her gaze, finding the glow of fire through the glass of the stove comforting.

“She was nothing like you,” he said.

Both that he continued to talk and what he’d said surprised her. She turned back to him.

“Oh?”

“She depended on me for a lot of things and never wanted to be left alone.”

Savanna depended on no one and loved being alone. “Maybe that’s why men never stick around.”

“It would take a strong one.”

Like him.

Thinking that her fiancé had ruined their engagement because he wasn’t strong enough to handle her independence was a lot better than feeling unloved. She’d loved her fiancé and she’d loved someone else after him. Neither had loved her.

“Being alone doesn’t bother me, but I could be alone with a man.” The way they were right now. She couldn’t stop these thoughts. He was strong enough for her, and she was alone with him. She watched him realize the same in the way his regard softened toward her.

“I think you would depend on someone if you were ever given the chance,” he said. “There’s a difference between depending on someone out of need and depending on them as part of a team.”

“Is it safe to depend on you?” she asked.

As her meaning sank in, his softness faded and he became unreadable. He was too damaged to be part of any team. He was a lone wolf. Like her.

“Right,” she said. “I’ve had my heart broken. I don’t need it broken again.”

His eyes never wavered from hers and she could see he understood but could say nothing to alleviate her fears. And why should she expect him to? They’d only just met. This was about her own insecurities. Her weakness. One she hadn’t had before she’d met her fiancé. She’d like to get back to that place. Fearless. Full of adventure. Korbin gave her plenty of adventure, but it wasn’t the kind she had in mind. He was dangerous for her, and not only to her heart.

Chapter 5

W
here the hell was Damen? Demarco Ricchetti stuffed his phone into his pocket with a hard sigh and rang the doorbell of a small, run-down ranch home in a bad part of Denver. His twin brother had started acting strange several months ago. Some would call him arrogant. Reckless. Maybe even stupid. As his twin, Demarco would say he was all three and more. But he was also a product of his upbringing. Their dad had always favored Demarco. He was the one with all the brains. The ambition. The women. They were fraternal, not identical, and Damen got the bulldog looks. He was shorter than Demarco, stockier, and had acne scars. Demarco had smooth, youthful skin and a physique that attracted countless women.

He was sure Damen’s low self-esteem had kept him from excelling in school. Demarco went to college. Damen barely made it out of high school. He did have his redeeming qualities, though. Despite being unpopular and last in their dad’s pecking order, he loved Demarco and would do anything for him. They had a special bond, the kind he couldn’t really describe. It was just there. They knew each other’s thoughts. They were one.

Demarco didn’t like thinking that it was pity that made him overprotective of his brother, but he was afraid that was the reality. But Damen seemed to be headed down into a cesspool of his own creation and Demarco didn’t want to be flushed along with him. He was torn over doing what he’d always done, or turning his back on his brother for the first time in his entire life. He hadn’t talked to him in days, and ever since the news broadcast of his girlfriend’s murder, he kind of needed to. Why hadn’t his brother called him? The murder of the woman you loved wasn’t something you didn’t share with your twin brother.

It wasn’t like Damen to avoid him. They talked every day, mostly by text. But he wasn’t even answering those. And he’d bet the news that police were looking for Korbin Maguire in connection to a hit-and-run was no coincidence. It was all very bizarre but had to be related somehow.

Demarco was about to knock when the door opened to an average-height, dark-skinned man.

“Hey, Demarco. Come on in.” Baxter “Bear” Brown stepped aside. In this part of Denver, Demarco had to be careful about what he said and did. With a glance around, he stepped into the house.

Bear was Damen’s business partner; at least that’s what Damen had called him. When Demarco had asked if he was getting into trouble again, his brother had joked and said,
“only a little.”

Demarco now knew that it was far more than a little. He was sick with it.

“I’m looking for Damen. Have you seen him?” Demarco moved deeper into the living room and faced Bear.

“Not in a few days. I’ve talked to him, though. He went up to Wolf Creek.”

That immediately sparked an alarm. “Why did he go there?”

“He didn’t say. Vacation, I guess. Or just to get away and clear his head. After all, his girlfriend was just killed.”

No, Damen did not go there to get away. There had to be another reason, and it popped into his head right then. “He went after Korbin Maguire. Korbin has a friend who owns a cabin there.”

“No way, man,” Bear said in surprise.

There weren’t many other places in Wolf Creek that Korbin could go, and as long as no one told the cops, it was a great place to hide. The only reason he knew about it was that Korbin had taken Damen hunting one year and Damen had talked about it.

“He was pretty busted up over his girlfriend. Maybe he went to cap him. Finish him off.”

So, his brother had told Bear that Korbin had killed his girlfriend. “What did he tell you about her murder?”

“That he saw Korbin leaving Collette’s house. That’s what he told the cops. Now Korbin is their prime suspect.”

He’d actually told the cops Korbin had killed her, or alluded to it. If Korbin had been at her house at the time of the murder, he’d look guilty.

“Where was he when he saw Korbin?”

“He didn’t say. He just said that he found her dead after that.”

Demarco smothered a scoff. Found her dead. He was probably the one who killed her.

“He cared for Collette. He told me he was going to ask her to marry him. If somebody killed my sweetheart, I might go after him, too.”

Demarco refrained from saying there had to be another reason Damen went after Korbin. “That’s what worries me.”

“Yeah. Damen can be dangerous. You have to watch him, but Korbin—” Bear shook his head “—I wouldn’t go up against a guy like that. Damen might be the one to get hurt.”

Korbin did have a formidable reputation. Demarco was afraid that he was innocent and Damen had framed him. Korbin would be no match for a gun.

Damen was a jealous man. And he was especially jealous of Korbin. He often complained about him, but never cut him out of his life. Korbin was good at what he did, that’s why. Damen was more interested in making money than the way he felt about Korbin. Maybe he’d caught Korbin with Collette and sought revenge. And then something else had happened. He and Collette argued and things got out of hand? Whatever the reason, Damen hadn’t intended to kill her. And it made no sense for him to go after Korbin, not when he’d already set him up for murder. So what was going on? What was his brother up to now?

Demarco saw movement in the kitchen to his left and had to stop a physical flinch. On the beat-up wood table were piles and piles of money. Wads of cash that someone was dividing.

“Business must be good,” Demarco said as nonchalantly as he could muster. As Damen’s twin, the criminals who now worked for Damen trusted Demarco. They assumed Damen told him everything, or they wouldn’t have let him in the house while they were counting the proceeds of a drug deal. Damen dealt drugs, but not on this scale. From the looks of it, he’d hit the big time.

“Damen got that Sinaloa dealer to work with him,” Bear said. “Things are going to change for him. For all of us. We’re very happy to be working for him.”

Demarco could just bet. Money like that would be a great motivator.

“I won’t keep you,” Demarco said.

“You going after Damen?”

“Yes.” He grinned. “Keep him out of trouble again.” As always.

“All right, man. Hey, if you see him tell him we got the first payment, okay?”

“Sure.”

Demarco left and cursed in his car. He didn’t want anything to happen to his brother, but was it wise to involve himself in any of this? How far would he go for him? Not having an answer and feeling deeply obligated and compelled to save his brother, he called his wife, preparing himself for her reaction. They had a nice life together. He made a good income with his antiques and estate auction house. She didn’t have to work and stayed home with the kids. Their life was so different from Damen’s. Normal. Law-abiding.

“Honey, I have to go to Wolf Creek tonight.”

“What? Why?”

“I found Damen.”

“So call him.”

“I’ve been trying. He isn’t answering.” He explained about the cabin, only telling her that Damen had gone after Korbin for allegedly killing Collette.

“So you’re going to try to stop him? Demarco, this is getting crazy. Don’t go there. Come home.”

“I have to go.”

“He could get you killed.”

“No, he won’t. I’ll call you when I get there.”

“Why can’t you just let him be?” she said. “You’re too protective of him. You enable him, do you realize that?”

Yes, he sure did. “I have to go, honey. I have to stop him from hurting anyone. I have to at least do that.” His wife was sheltered and didn’t understand Damen the way he did. “I’ll be all right.”

Finally she relented and he drove toward the mountains. Even as he still reeled from the prospect of Damen being capable of killing someone.

* * *

The weather was horrible and Demarco berated himself for not checking first. He was amazed the highway was still open, but certain it would be closing soon. He could barely see the road. He passed a sign and couldn’t make out what it said. It was some sort of lodge. The map he’d looked up on the internet showed one close to Julio Chavis’s cabin. Ten minutes later, he spotted a turnoff. The road hadn’t been plowed yet, but his Jeep Grand Cherokee handled it just fine. Plus, in the trees it wasn’t as deep. The road wound up an incline, and then the trees opened to a clearing big enough to fit a log cabin. There was light glowing from the front window and smoke drifting up from the chimney. Either Julio was here or his brother was. He’d put in a wager that it wasn’t Julio.

Getting out of the Jeep, he flipped up the hood of his jacket and turned his head from the wind as he hiked up to the front door. It was locked, so he had to knock.

He watched the curtain part at the front window and recognized his brother. The door opened. Damen stood aside, gaping at him in shock, a gun in his hand and lowered at his side. Like him, he had signs of gray in his dark hair and had blue-green eyes, but his looked green in the sunlight when Demarco’s looked blue.

“What are you doing here?” he asked as Demarco entered, stomping off snow from his feet and shrugging out of his jacket.

“You weren’t answering your phone.”

“So you drove all the way here?” His brother put his gun down on the table and Demarco sensed his tension. He wasn’t glad to see him. That signaled that a big hidden agenda was at play here.

“It’s not like you to avoid me.”

“I wasn’t avoiding you.” He walked into the small living room where a glass of dark alcohol on ice waited. Damen was drinking by himself.

“How did you find me?”

“It wasn’t hard.” Demarco sat on the chair across from him. It was quiet in the cabin except for the crackle of fire and wind blowing outside. “I stopped by Bear’s. He told me.”

Damen sipped from the drink. “I’m going to have to talk to him.”

“Why? Don’t you want me to know where you are anymore?”

His brother eyed him in a way he never had before, with suspicion and growing annoyance. “I’d have called you if I did.”

“What are you doing up here, Damen?”

“I have a little business to take care of.” His eyes lifted and he looked all around the room as though he could see outside. “This storm is causing a delay.”

“What kind of business?” Demarco wanted his brother to tell him. That way he’d know where Damen felt he needed to lie. If he lied at all. He hoped he’d still trust him, and then maybe he could talk some sense into him. His long silence didn’t bode well. He was forming a lie.

“I came here to find Korbin and tell the cops so that they can arrest him.”

Demarco steepled his fingers and stared at his brother, fighting for calm. “You didn’t come to kill him?”

The low, deep laugh that came from his brother was foreign to him. Soft. Calculating.

“I’d love to kill him,” Damen said, delight in his eyes.

“Over Collette?” Demarco asked. It was all he needed to say.

Damen’s whole face contorted into rage, which he quickly masked by taking his drink and sipping harshly, then putting the nearly empty glass down with a
thunk
. He looked away.

“Is she the reason you’re here?” He was a lot smarter than his brother. And always careful not to let on to that knowledge.

But real grief flashed on Damen’s face and disarmed him. It’s what always happened. His less fortunate brother strummed his sympathy chords. He had loved Collette. But he’d believed Korbin was taking her from him and he’d snapped. A true crime of passion.

“What would you do?” his brother asked, the one he’d grown up with, the one who could sucker him into anything, draw him into his problems. The way he was doing now without even trying. Why couldn’t he live without breaking the law?

Demarco lowered his eyes.

“If your wife had an affair, what would you do?” his brother asked, earnest and sincere. Emotional, though. The angry kid. It lurked underneath.

Crossing his knee over his leg, very professor-like, Demarco said, “I wouldn’t kill her.”

“Do you think I killed Collette?”

Still the professor, he said, “Did you?”

He knew this would trip up something in his brother. Damen would know Demarco was suspicious.

“No,” he said, growing wary. “Why did you ask me that?”

“I want to know.”

“You think I killed her?” Damen all but yelled. Then he smoothed his reaction. “Do you think that, Demarco?”

Uncrossing his legs, Demarco stayed neutrally somber. “I think you’re really upset that she’s dead.”

His lower-IQ brother missed his slightly sarcastic tone. “I am.”

“What happened?”

An angry scowl stormed his brow. “I saw him leaving her house.”

There was the lie. Or maybe it wasn’t a lie, but Korbin hadn’t killed Collette.

“He was with her when I wasn’t there. Collette and I were going to move in together.” His anger intensified. His fist clenched and he pounded his knee as he growled, “I was going to
marry
her.”

Demarco waited for him to calm down. When he had marginally done so, he said, “And that’s why you’re here? Revenge?”

As though directed in a movie scene, Damen produced a remorseful face and a few grunting sobs. No tears. Not the real kind.

“Why didn’t she love me? If she’d only have loved me,” he sobbed. Insecure, desperate.

Demarco let him go until he eased off the show and blinked several times between shadowy looks to him. Each fake display knifed him with unbelievable shock.

After dealing with feeling that he was less than everyone else, comparing himself to others and not feeling as though he measured up, he’d finally broken. His reaction was no longer positive. He no longer tried to persevere. He was fighting back now.

“You don’t believe me?” Damen asked.

No more sniffles. He observed Demarco with an aloofness that he’d never seen before.

This was where Demarco had to be careful. Damen didn’t know what he knew, and if there was any hope of saving his brother from further destruction, he had to reach him. Somehow.

“Why did you come here, Damen?”

His brother slammed his short glass down, splashing what little remained. Demarco hadn’t been aware that he’d had the glass in his hand. He met his brother’s angry face. Damen’s breath reeked of alcohol.