The Off Season (3 page)

As Harris crossed the yards of multi-million-dollar shorefront mansions, he swore to himself he would figure out some way to can the useless bastard without getting himself fired in the process. Though Seaside Creek’s newest city-council member might not need any excuse besides the recent rash of vandalism—destruction that had recently turned violent.

Harris’s gut clenched as he remembered what had happened a few blocks away after an elderly homeowner had surprised the culprits in the dead of night. Hurrying his own steps, he hoped to God that this particular call would prove to be another false alarm, one of many that kept his tiny police force—a skeleton crew during the long off season—hopping. The salt air and winter storms were hell on security systems—on
every
kind of wiring—and the area’s cell-phone service was a straight-up joke most any time of the year.

Still, he kept picturing Christina lying on her kitchen floor, her light-brown hair fanned out in a pool of blood. His heart stumbled at the image, the fear twisting through him that he might already be too late. That he might fail a woman he’d once hurt so badly, a memory that made him grimace every time it crossed his mind.

His breath fogging in the cold air, Harris came in through the front gate to walk around an extravagant blue-and-white two-story he cursed for its highly ornamented wraparound porches. Porches whose shadows could easily conceal any number of unpleasant surprises.

Avoiding the light from a nearby street lamp, he strained his ears—though he no longer heard much out of the right one—realizing that the alarm’s outdoor siren wasn’t wailing as expected. Had it automatically timed out and shut off, or was there some issue with the system?

He wondered, was it possible that Christina and her little one were both upstairs sleeping, unaware that he was about to scare them half to death?

Better me than armed intruders,
he thought as he proceeded.

CHAPTER THREE

Good to have a strong blade, one capable of slicing through skin and sinew, of hacking all the way to bone. Though for now, the target wasn’t human, it was exciting to think it soon would be. To envision the first trickle of crimson turning to a waterfall of blood and see the startled look on her face, the fear and rage and horror when the bitch saw what he’d done.

Working its way upward, the point bit into a harder surface. Digging deep into the gleaming black paint, it made satisfying
scritching
sounds with every inch it covered. And there were going to be a fucking lot of inches before this was all finished. Wounds carved into rubber, words cut into steel . . .

But only one such tonight, one word to show her all she really was, once you sliced your way past all the stuff she had no right to, past the MD she hid behind—like she was some big-time doctor, and the rest of them were nothing.

And if that single word was not enough to get across the message, there were more and more and more things that might be done. Along with the certain knowledge that a knife so well made and so sturdy could do far more than send a message.

A weapon such as this could stop a beating heart.

It came from his right side, the side forever scarred by another occasion when Harris had foolishly failed to call for backup. Only this time, he had the warning of a glint off metal.

This time, he had a split second to jerk back out of the way of whatever was swinging toward his head—or
fall
back, after one foot slipped on a patch of slush that had refrozen with the night’s chill.

It was enough to bring him down hard, his ass crashing on the icy walkway. But he was already shouting, “Freeze! Police!” with his left hand rising to aim the barrel of his pistol at . . .

Dimly illuminated by the streetlight, a tiny toddler stared with wide eyes as the slender woman holding her twisted to shield her child from the line of fire. “No, please!”

At the same time, some kind of metallic stick—the golf club she’d been holding—clattered onto the ice beside him.

“It’s all right, Christina,” he said, making an effort to sound a hell of a lot calmer than he felt, considering the pounding in his chest. When she froze, he lowered his weapon and grunted to his feet. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’d never—”

But the dark eyes staring back at him reminded him that it was far too late to make that promise. Dressed only in thin pajamas, she was shaking so hard he was half-afraid she’d drop the little girl.

“Then why—why break into my—?” she demanded. “How do you know my name? What is it you want?”

“I’m not here to break in, either,” he assured her, realizing that with his back to the light, she could only be reacting to a looming silhouetted figure in a leather jacket holding a weapon on her. Not to him or what they’d once been to each other, however briefly.

Grimacing at his mistake, he holstered the SIG Sauer to reach for his ID wallet and flip it open. “I’m a cop, Christina. Harris Bowers, chief of police. See?”

She peered into his face, searching his eyes before dropping her gaze to his mouth—a glance that hit him like a gut punch before flicking to the badge itself.

“H-Harris?”

Maybe it was the shock of seeing her up close again, of hearing his name on her lips, but he thought she sounded glad to see him. Or at least relieved.

She collected herself in the space of a heartbeat, her voice cooling. “Oh, th-that’s right. Renee told me you were a cop.”

He winced, imagining the two women comparing notes, scoffing at the idea of Seaside Creek either honoring or handing a pity post—depending whom you asked—to the man who’d screwed them both over so royally. Dissecting his failings over a glass of chardonnay. Or maybe the whole bottle, after Renee had learned that he’d once had a summer fling with her best friend. A
fling
designed to hurt a girl whose brown eyes had looked up at him with an openness he’d crushed out like a lit match—an act that had circled back to cost him more than she would ever know.

Your own damned fault, not hers,
he knew. Yet behind it, a trace of the old bitterness that had fueled his unforgivable game lingered.

“We had a call from your security company,” he said, determined to show that he could at least conduct himself like a professional. “You didn’t pull the panic alarm, did you?”

It was the only thing that explained why she’d be out here with the kid, shivering and barefoot, but she was shaking her head.

“I tried after I realized the phone was dead, but the siren never went off. Then I realized I’d left my cell in the car, so I waited a little while before I decided to risk coming out.” Shaking her head, she groaned. “I don’t even have my damn keys. I’m such an idiot—”

“You’re shaken up.” He thought of the young MPs he’d once led, half out of their minds on their first overseas deployments. He wished he could go back in time to teach them that the worst dangers rarely showed up when and where they were expected. “It happens.”

Holstering his gun, he stripped down to the black sweatshirt he wore with jeans, and then wrapped his jacket around her and the tiny blonde girl. A cute kid, maybe a year younger than his own son, she leaned her head against her mother’s shoulder and popped two fingers into her mouth.

“What made you pick up the phone in the first place?” he asked. “You hear something?”

She hesitated a moment before taking a deep breath and saying, “There—there was a woman talking. On the monitor. It woke me.”

“Baby monitor, you mean? You keep one in the kid’s room?”

She nodded, her eyes glassy with what looked like shock. Adjusting the child in her arms, she clutched the front of the jacket to keep it from slipping off her shoulders. “I was sure this woman was in Lilly’s room, but when I ran in, there was no one.” She grimaced, then admitted, “It—it could’ve been a dream, I guess.”

“Or maybe it was just a freak thing,” he allowed. “Your radio accidentally picking up a conversation from somebody else’s house.” But whose? With none of the nearby places occupied, the theory seemed unlikely.

“It’s digital, not radio.”

That made a lot more sense. “There could’ve been some kind of glitch. Or it could’ve been hacked into.”

She blinked, her dark eyes widening. “Hacked? You mean, like someone scaring me on purpose?”

“Maybe.” His investigator’s instincts perked up. “Somebody come to mind? Someone who might want to do that?”

“I can’t imagine they would, now that—no.” She shook her head. “Besides, I heard footsteps, someone walking. Or maybe it’s all just my imagination.”

He filed away the response she’d bitten off, intending to ask her about it later. Because in his experience, the reactions that popped out before denial kicked in were often worth exploring. But not right now, when he heard what sounded like tears choking her voice. He’d heard other things around town as well: How she’d come home to be closer to her family after the unexpected death of the surgeon she’d married. How her mom, whose own more modest home was undergoing renovations, had set her up to stay in an area as silent as a graveyard throughout the long off season, if you didn’t count the ever-present hiss of surf on the dark shore.

No wonder Christina was spooked. Though it still didn’t explain the alarm system’s malfunction or why the phone line had gone out.

“I’m going to check things out inside. But first, let’s get something for your feet—”

“My boots, yes, sure,” she said, raising first one bare foot and then the other, as if she had just noticed that her feet were freezing. “They’re right inside the back door. I should have grabbed them on my way out. Like I said, I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s okay. Let me get them for you. Then I’ll need you to take your daughter—Lilly, you said?”

Christina nodded, and at the sound of her name, the toddler lifted her blonde head from her mother’s shoulder to stare at him with a look that threw him right back to the war zone, to the haunted eyes of kids who had seen way too much.

He shook off the odd thought, irritated that he was letting the past invade a present where he was determined to be on his game. To prove something to himself, even if he could never hope—or deserve—to prove anything to Christina.

He quickly retrieved the boots for Christina and steadied her with a hand on her arm as she slipped her feet into them.

“I need you to take her to my Tahoe there,” he said, pointing to where he’d left the SUV. “I’ll be watching till I see you’re safely inside, and don’t forget to lock the doors.”

“Thanks,” she said quietly. “I appreciate your coming, Harris.”

“No need for thanks,” he said gruffly, nodding toward the SUV. “Heat’s on the fritz, but I left the engine running, so it should be at least a little warmer inside.”

Her gratitude sliced through him, along with the realization that she had every right to be surprised that he’d personally shown up. Something passed between them in that moment, the resurrected ghost of a connection he had put down like a rabid dog. A betrayal it was far too late to do anything about.

So Harris didn’t, wouldn’t, tell her he’d been driving the neighborhood and staking out her street nearly every night since Walt Gunderson had been attacked. That he’d been worried about her staying out here on her own, even though he suspected the thieves’ run-in with the old man had been accidental.

As he turned toward the door again, Christina clutched his elbow, her grip surprisingly strong.

“Please be careful in there, Harris,” she warned, an unexpected fierceness burning off the fear in her voice. “I might’ve wanted you dead once, but not tonight.”

No sooner had the words slipped from Christina’s mouth than she felt a desperate need to snatch them from the air and stuff them back down her throat. But clearly, they’d already hit their mark. She saw it in Harris’s stiff nod before she turned and walked away.

So much for pretending she’d forgotten all about what he’d done. As if any woman would ever forget the man who conned her out of her virginity, whose sweet lies had carved bloody slivers off her heart like the sharpest scalpels.

But she wasn’t herself this evening, not with every nerve stripped bare. Maybe it was the nighttime pain reliever she’d taken earlier, lowering her defenses. Or maybe it was raw fear that had exposed the person behind the polite, professional facade she’d been using to keep her new coworkers—and everyone—at a safe distance since her return.

She carried Lilly to the idling SUV, stopping short when she realized it was the same vehicle she’d spotted outside last night. Had Harris been here staking out the street, or had it been a different officer? Wouldn’t the police chief have more important duties?

Maybe he was just keeping an eye out, since Renee and their son, Jacob, spent so much time at the house. Though Renee had never spoken directly of the circumstances that had broken up her marriage last year, she’d dropped hints about another woman, and had once remarked that Harris couldn’t be trusted. As if Christina hadn’t learned that lesson for herself—though she’d been too humiliated ever to say a word to anyone about it.

Lilly shivered, breaking the spell, and Christina climbed into the unmarked vehicle’s passenger seat and locked the doors. Teeth chattering, she fiddled with the vents, directing the lukewarm air onto the child in her arms. Wondering whether she could figure out the police radio in front to call for help if Harris didn’t come back.

Her stomach tightened at the thought, and she assured herself he’d be fine, with his experience and training. But her own experiences in the ER, the faces of the dead and dying, reminded her that both qualities had their limitations.

Fifteen minutes passed, then twenty. Her gaze skimmed the shadows, which only deepened when the overhead clouds parted, and a full moon cast its cold light on the frothing shore below. Snuggling against her chest beneath Harris’s jacket, Lilly was sleeping heavily by the time Christina finally spotted his tall, lean frame jogging toward them. Probably half-frozen, wearing only his sweatshirt, and limping, too. Was it from the fall on the back walkway, from when she’d tried to take his head off with the golf club? Or was the injury an old one, from the explosion that had made headlines about five years back?