Page 10

Chapter 10

A champagne-colored Suburban pulled up as Nick and Brenna stepped out into the police station’s parking lot. Nick moved in front of Brenna, his hand reaching for his gun in the shoulder holster beneath his jacket.

Brenna laid a hand on his arm and smiled. “I don’t think I’d shoot her. She’s the president of the PTA.”

The window slid down, and a woman with a mild resemblance to Brenna smiled and waved. “Brenna! I’m so glad I caught you.”

“Alice, what’s up?” Brenna stepped around Nick and stood by the vehicle.

“I should be asking you that.” Alice glanced over Brenna’s shoulder with raised eyebrows. “Who’s the hunk?”

Nick enjoyed Brenna’s visible discomfort at the woman’s comment and fought to keep a smile from lifting the corners of his mouth.

“This is Agent Nick Tarver.” She turned to Nick, her mouth twisted into a wry frown. “Agent Tarver, my sister, Alice Klaus.”

Alice reached through the window. “Nice to meet you, Agent Tarver.”

“It’s a pleasure, Ms. Klaus.” He took her hand briefly and then dropped it.

With a down-sweep of her long lashes, Alice grinned. “Now I see why you can’t take time out to come by.”

“I can’t come by because we’re trying to solve a murder and several kidnappings.” Brenna’s tone was flat.

Alice’s smile sank. “I know. Terrible, isn’t it? I was just trying to get your goat.”

With a twisted grin, Brenna shrugged. “Consider it gotten.”

“I dropped by to see if you’d like to come for dinner tomorrow night. Stan and I would love to have you over.”

Brenna shifted from one foot to the other, apparently unaware she stood in a rather large slushy puddle.

Nick couldn’t help wondering why her sister made her nervous.

“Maybe after we solve the case,” Brenna said.

Alice was undeterred. “You have to eat sometime, so why not at my house? You don’t have to stay long. I understand about the case and all.” Her face brightened. “Hey, Stan knows loads of people from all the business he does in town. Maybe he could help. I’ll even make sure he comes home on time, for once, so he’ll be there.”

“I’ll think about it,” Brenna said. “But my number-one concern is the job.”

“Well, I’ll cook, and if you show, great. If you don’t, I’ll understand.” She reached out and squeezed Brenna’s shoulder. “Lord knows, I don’t feel safe with that guy loose on our streets.”

“Exactly.” Brenna’s shoulders straightened. “We have to catch him soon.”

Alice’s lips twisted. “With all the scare about the missing women, I didn’t even realize the river’s nearing flood stage. I’m on my way to a meeting at the church. They’re organizing sandbag teams to shore up the levy on River Road.”

“Sandbag teams? Is it that bad?” Nick asked.

Alice shrugged. “There’s still plenty of snow on the ground, and the weather is getting warmer.”

“Just like in ‘97.” Brenna glanced at Nick. “We had a major flood on the Red River. It shut the city down for months.”

“But it hasn’t been raining,” Nick said.

“All it takes is a bumper snowfall year and a quick melt.” Brenna turned to her sister. “Where are the boys?”

“Stan’s got them until after the meeting. He took off early since he was out on a troubleshooting call last night. Such is the life of a man who owns his own business. If he can’t get someone else to do the work, he ends up doing it himself.” Alice waved and smiled at Nick. “Nice to meet you, Nick. When Brenna comes to dinner, please come with her. Our mother would love that.” She winked at Brenna and drove away.

Brenna’s cheeks and ears turned red, and she chewed on her lower lip. “Don’t mind my sister. She likes to push my buttons.”

“She does it well.” As he headed for his rental car, Nick fought a grin. “We’ll take mine.”

Brenna climbed in, staring straight ahead.

“Is your sister younger?” he asked.

“No.” Short, to the point and uncommunicative. When Brenna Jensen didn’t want to talk about something, she didn’t.

To Nick, her silence was a challenge. But first, they needed food to carry them through what looked like a long night on stakeout.

Clouds hung low over the city, holding in the daytime heat and keeping the ground from refreezing during the night. Cold air had long since seeped through the windows and floorboards, and Brenna’s breath came out in tiny puffs of fog.

“Chief Burkholder said you’re up for a job with the Minnesota Criminal Investigation Division.” Nick stared through the windshield at Victor Greeley’s home several doors down from where they sat.

The question caught Brenna off guard, and she glanced up to search Nick’s face in the dim lighting from the corner streetlamp. They’d been sitting in the dark for the past two hours. Brenna rubbed her hands together to keep them warm. “Yeah, I am.”

“What can you do there that you can’t do in North Dakota?”

Brenna glanced out the window. She’d asked herself that question countless times and it all boiled down to the simple fact that she wanted to get farther away from home. “North Dakota usually isn’t overrun with crime and criminals. I guess I was looking for more of a challenge.”

Nick shook his head. “Doesn’t make sense for someone who clearly loves her hometown.”

“I love it here, but I don’t want to live here.”

“Because of Greeley?”

“Not just.” She twisted her fingers around her seat belt. “I love my family, but they drive me nuts.”

“I can relate. My brothers and I were always in competition growing up. When we all went into law enforcement, it didn’t stop.” He laughed. “A little competition is good in some cases, but a lot can get in the way.”

“Exactly. Besides, I’m not my sister.”

“So, she’s the older one?”

“Older, prettier, more popular and has everything. A husband who supports her, a house in a good neighborhood and two wonderful children.”

“Are you jealous of her?”

“No.” She wasn’t jealous of her sister, and she’d never consider a man like Stan as husband material. In fact, she’d been the only one in their family who hadn’t liked him.

“Then what’s your problem?”

“My mother.” Once she said it, the sour taste of guilt burned the back of her throat. Her mother couldn’t help her disease or the things she said. But the remarks hurt, nonetheless.

“Ah.” Nick nodded like he could see inside her head.

The thought didn’t make Brenna any more comfortable. “What do you mean by ‘ah’?”

His lips twisted into a crooked grin. “I have a meddling mother, too. Let me guess, she thinks you should have it as good as your sister and every time you’re with her she asks why you aren’t married.”

“Yeah.” The man truly could read her mind. But why was she telling him her secrets? What was it about Nick Tarver that made her want to bare her soul?

“And is that what you want?”

Was that what she wanted? Did she envy her sister’s ideal life? “Someday.” Then again, her sister’s life wasn’t so wonderful if she’d found the need to go to a marriage counselor.

“In the meantime, you like chasing bad guys.”

“Right.” She turned in her seat and pinned him with her own stare. “What about you, Mr. I’m-all-about-the-job Tarver? Did your divorce turn you against having a wife, a house in the suburbs and two-point-five children?”

“Hey, this wasn’t about me.” He held up his hands as if to ward off her attack.

Good, Brenna wanted him on the defensive after putting her through her paces for the past few minutes. “You’ve been grilling me. Now, it’s my turn.”

“Shouldn’t we be watching for Greeley?” Nick asked, pointing toward the large white-sided house with the black shutters.

“Well? What about it, Tarver?” She crossed her arms over her chest and waited. At first she didn’t think he’d answer.

Nick sighed, running his finger down the curve of the steering wheel. “I had all that, minus the two-point-five kids.”

“And you can’t have it again?”

“I had a wife and an apartment, and I thought I had a good marriage.” His jaw tightened, the only display of emotion reflected in the light from the dash.

“But...?”

“Like you said, I was all about the job. Home late every night, away on assignments too often...you know the drill.”

“Didn’t your wife know about your work before you married her?”

He snorted. “I guess not.”

Brenna already felt like a heel for prying, but she couldn’t help asking, “So she left you?”

“No, I left her.”

His admission was not what Brenna had expected. She sat forward. “Why?”

Nick glanced her way. “I left her after I caught her in my bed with my partner.”

“Oh.” She clapped a hand over her mouth. Wow. She’d certainly opened a can of worms. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed you into that.”

With a shrug, he looked back out the window. “It’s okay. That was two years ago. I’m over it.”

Brenna doubted that.

By the tone of his voice and the way he didn’t meet her eyes when he spoke the words, Agent Nick Tarver wasn’t over his wife’s betrayal.

Then another thought occurred to Brenna. “And I slept with a married man,” she said. “I guess that makes me as bad as her.”

Nick shook his head and turned to look at her. “No, Brenna. You were duped. I don’t see it the same at all.”

“Whew!” She slid a hand over her forehead. “I’m glad of that. Can’t imagine you having a lower opinion of me than you already do.”

His emerald-green eyes flashed in the little light shining through the window. “I don’t think badly of you at all. On the contrary, I think?—"

Brenna wouldn’t find out what he thought because a car backed out of Victor Greeley’s driveway. “He’s on the move.”

Nick shoved the gear into drive and followed at a distance with his headlights off for several blocks until Victor pulled onto Lincoln Street heading south. Out in traffic, Nick switched his lights on and blended with the surrounding vehicles, keeping a car between them and Victor at all times.

They followed him through town and across the interstate, where Victor pulled into a trailer park.

“We’re on foot from here.” Nick parked the car across from the trailer park in an auto body repair lot.

The cold night air had a bite, but not enough to freeze the adrenaline coursing through Brenna’s veins. She followed Nick across the street and ducked between the mobile homes with their picket fences half-buried in dirty snow. The going was wet and sloppy and, at times, treacherous.

Victor’s car was parked near the rear of a dull gray mobile home with an old barbeque grill listing to the side on the tiny wooden porch. Lights shone through the bent slats of window blinds that had seen better days.

“Have the station run a scan on who lives at this address,” Nick said.

Brenna slid back the way she’d come until she stood several trailer houses away and out of hearing distance. Then she pulled out her cell phone, hit the number for the Riverton Police Department and relayed her request.

As quickly as she’d gone, she hurried back. Nick stood on a concrete block, peering through the blinds into the little room beyond.

“What are they doing?” she whispered.

“He’s doing a lot of fooling around and she’s giggling,” Nick said in a low tone.

“Think he’ll hurt her?” She danced around in the slush, wishing Nick would climb down from the block so she could get a look.

“I don’t think so. If this girl is one of the women on the hit list, I say we go in.”

“Let me have a look to see if I know her.”

“It’s all yours.” But when he stepped off the block, it tilted to the side, and he crashed into Brenna, bumping her into a half-melted bank of snow and ice. Nick struggled to keep his feet beneath him, but the slick ice proved his undoing.

Brenna braced herself for his landing. On her.

Nick’s chest hit hers, knocking the wind out of her lungs and keeping it out as he lay on top of her from shoulder to toe. When he finally moved, Brenna lay in stunned silence, as much stunned by the blow to her body as by the sensation of having Nick Tarver lying on top of her.

He leaned up on his arms. “Are you all right?”

No, she wasn’t. The gorgeously perfect Agent Tarver was lying all over her, and she couldn’t breathe, even with his weight off her. She didn’t want him to move. Hell no, she wasn’t all right. “Yes...yes, I’m fine,” she managed.

As Nick rolled to his side, his butt hit the cold, wet slush for only a second before he sprang to his feet. “Give me your hand.”

Without hesitation, Brenna responded to his command and stuck her hand out.

When her palm hit his, he jerked her to her feet and into his arms. “I’m sorry. You must be freezing.”

Liking the feeling of his arms around her too much, she couldn’t think straight.

A loud bang sounded from inside the trailer, and the girl inside screamed.

Brenna ducked into a crouching position. “Gunfire?”

A giggle sounded from within, followed by a male voice.

Shaking her head, Brenna jumped up onto the concrete block and, standing on her tiptoes, stared through the blinds.

Victor Greeley and a woman Brenna recognized stood with a bottle between them as he poured liquid into two glasses.

“Get down.” Nick caught her around the waist, pulling her off the brick and back into his arms. “Do you want to get killed?”

The feel of his arms around her could be addictive if she didn’t get her mind back on her work. “Only way I’ll be killed by one of them is if I get hit by the cork.” She didn’t add that he could let her go now. She liked how warm he was compared to her wet clothing. Then her phone vibrated in her pocket.

Nick dropped his arms and stepped away, running his hand through his hair.

On the third vibration, Brenna accepted the call and answered in little more than a whisper, “Yes?”

“This is Sergeant Putnam at the station. That address you asked for?”

“Let me guess...Greta Farley?”

The sergeant laughed. “That’s right. Guess you didn’t need us after all.”

On the contrary, the call had saved her from Nick Tarver’s arms for the second time in so many minutes. “Thanks, Sergeant.” She ended the call and brushed the slush from her pants, the cold and dampness sinking through her skin to her bones. A shiver shook her frame.

Nick’s brow furrowed. “Was Greta Farley one of the women on the list?”

“No.”

“But you know her.”

“Yes. I went to high school with her. Let’s just say...she had a reputation.” She glanced toward the trailer that was rocking now.

“Looks like she still does.” Nick grinned. “Think we should stick it out?”

“I think we should have a cop keep an eye on Victor, but I wouldn’t bet my paycheck on Greta being a target for the killer.”

“Why not?” Nick asked.

“Her reputation wasn’t for her intelligence, and she surely hasn’t been on the Who’s Who list of Riverton Women.”

“Then come on.” He brushed the slush from his own pants. “Let’s get back to the hotel and out of these clothes. We can check in with Paul and Melissa and see if they’ve come up with anything on Jason Conlin.”

“Sounds like a plan.” She looked forward to a hot shower and warm, dry clothes.

A loud thump sounded in the trailer, stopping Brenna in her tracks. She locked gazes with Nick.

A giggle erupted, and the little mobile home rocked again.

That was Victor, up to his old tricks. Glad she was over the creep, Brenna realized she’d never been in love with him. The more she thought about it, the more she admitted to herself she’d been in love with the idea of being loved.

She followed Nick out of the trailer park and back to the car, enjoying the view from behind. Here was a man who carried himself proudly and admitted when he was wrong in a relationship. He’d never stoop to sneaking around, never betray the woman he loved.

What would it be like to be loved by Nick Tarver?

Brenna’s breath caught and her chest squeezed so hard it hurt.

Get those notions out of your mind right now, girl .

Nick Tarver would never look at her any differently than he did Melissa or Paul. She was only a part of the team, nothing more.

Brenna drew a deep breath and climbed into the car next to Nick, suddenly shy and too aware of his physical attributes and her shortcomings.

Would a man like Nick look past her imperfections to the person beneath the scars? She shook her head. Why set yourself up for disappointment? As Victor had put it, she wasn’t even pretty.

“You’re doing it again.”

Brenna jumped. Then she took a deep breath and asked as casually as she could manage, “Doing what?”

“That lip-biting thing. What are you second-guessing now?”

As if she’d tell him! How pathetic would that be? Poor little Brenna Jensen mooning over handsome FBI Agent Tarver. As if she had a snowball’s chance with him. “I was just trying to think of what we might have missed.”

“In what?”

“The patient files, the notes, a connection to the women.” She was getting really good at dodging her feelings. The case was more important anyway.

Stay on track, Brenna.

“All the women were in the news lately, so the guy obviously watches the local news channel,” Nick said.

“Or reads the online copy,” Brenna said. “Either way, he follows the news along with probably every other adult male in Riverton. That should narrow it down to about twenty thousand.”

Brenna tapped a finger to her lip. “Victor said something about me not being as smart as he is. He said it twice. I just can’t remember anyone angry at me for being smarter than him.”

“Anyone you put behind bars would be.”

“Yes, but we’ve already gone through that list. Unless we missed someone.” Frustration roiled inside her gut. Brenna banged her fist into her palm. “We have to nail this guy. I can’t stand the thought of another woman murdered while we chase empty leads.”

It was well after midnight when they reached the hotel suite, and Nick was exhausted, but he let Brenna have the first shower. “I’m hitting the snack machine. Want anything?”

“No, I’m good. I just want a hot shower and warm clothes.” Her body trembled as if to emphasize her point.

“Take your time.”

Fifteen minutes later, and several trips up and down the stairs and halls, Nick returned to the room.

Brenna was out of the bathroom and back in her room. She stood by her queen-sized bed, tugging a brush through her long, wet hair. “It’s all yours. I’m going to get some sleep.”

Something about that soft gray tank top and the navy-blue flannel pajamas that bunched at her feet because they were too long had Nick’s heart racing behind his ribs. Or maybe it was the vulnerability in her eyes, or the way she’d coaxed the old man into talking with them.

Despite his cold, wet clothing, heat rose from his body. The thought of a hot shower dwindled into the need for a cold one to keep the testosterone in check.

Brenna reached back with the brush to untangle the back of her hair, and in the process, the tank top stretched tightly over her breasts.

Nick picked that moment to beat a hasty retreat to the bathroom and a lukewarm shower. Last night, he’d made the error of sleeping with Brenna, unbeknownst to her. He couldn’t repeat the same mistake.

Could he? And get away with it?

Did she even have a clue he found her desirable? Probably not, and he’d better leave well enough alone. As a member of his team, she was off-limits.

Nick stripped to the skin and stepped beneath the shower spray, willing his body to relax and his desire to abate.

By the time he shut off the water, he had the temperature at refrigerator-cool. No amount of mental flaying helped, only the shock to his system could tame his erection.

Shivering, he toweled dry and slipped into boxers, preferring to sleep naked but making this one concession to his roommate’s sensitivities. Hopefully, Brenna would be sound asleep, and he could convince his body to loosen up enough to allow him a little of that elusive energy restoration called sleep.

Only the light over the computer in the sitting area remained on when Nick made his rounds. Brenna had thrown the bolt on the door and the safety latch over that. All the windows in Nick’s room and the sitting area were secure. Which left Brenna’s room.

He’d saved her room for last to make sure she was asleep before he slipped in and checked the windows.

Brenna lay on her back in the big bed, her face pale in the muted light from the other room. Her chest rose and fell in slow, even breaths. Blond hair spilled across the pillow in a fan of golden silk, like an angel’s halo.

Nick reached out to touch the fine strands, and as he did, she shifted, rolling onto her side and over his hand, trapping him.

Great, now all he needed was for her to wake up and find him taking advantage of her in her sleep. Nick tugged at his hand, easing it from beneath her velvety soft cheek. As he slipped it past her mouth, she pressed a kiss against his fingers.

That tender touch to the sensitive tips of his fingers shot a bolt of lightning through his body, and he stood shaken in the shadows. This woman, without even being aware of it, had taken him from numb feelings to full-blown sensations in just two nights. The thought of her being a target of a psychopathic killer made Nick’s gut clench.

Dare he go back to his room and sleep with the very slim chance of a killer sneaking into her room and doing to her what the bastard had done to Dr. Drummond?

As if she were clued into his internal dilemma, Brenna rolled to her back again, her head tossing from side to side. A low moan escaped her lips, and her fingers clenched the blanket’s edge. Was she having a nightmare about the killer?

Torn between leaving her to sleep it off and the desire to soothe her fears away, Nick stood in the shadows and waited for the dream to end. But the longer Nick waited, the more agitated Brenna grew. Her forehead creased in a deep frown, and her mouth formed soundless words.

Nick almost left the room, guilt nudging him toward the door. He had no right to watch her while she slept. Then he reminded himself he had a responsibility to protect her, and he stopped.

About that time, Brenna sat up straight in bed and sobbed in ragged, strangled breaths. “Fire...can’t get...out.” She coughed as if smoke filled her lungs. “Help me. Please, help me.”

No longer able to stand by and watch her, Nick lunged for the bed and pulled her into his arms. “It’s okay, Brenna.” He stroked the back of her head, pressing her face into his shoulder, holding her close and safe in his arms.

“Too much smoke... Can’t see...” she muttered against his skin, her fingers curling into his chest hairs.

Nick wasn’t surprised that Brenna was dreaming about the barn fire. With Dr. Drummond’s office fire the previous evening and the strain of a killer stalking her, it was only a matter of time before her sleep was impacted.

Her shoulders shook, and tears dampened Nick’s chest. The face of her fear, the screaming and terror were one thing, but the quiet tears broke his heart, and Nick couldn’t take it anymore. “Wake up, Brenna. It’s a dream.”