The Broken (The Apostles) (26 page)

“But Muldoon’s still in jail. I think the judge handed him a five- to ten-year sentence.”

“He’s out and living with Robyn Banks.”

“Robyn Banks? What the hell is he doing with her?”

“They’re married.”

Kate shuddered. “I can’t see that.”

“It’s not a pretty sight. Apparently, all is not well in the Muldoon-Banks household. I need to find out when he got out of jail.”

As Hayden continued his calls about Muldoon, Kate continued pacing. Did Mike Muldoon have something to do with her attack? Did he know Jason? Her feet moved faster as she considered the scenario Hayden laid out. Jason attacked her on someone’s orders. That someone was the Butcher. The Butcher went on to kill seven broadcasters and Jason. The pixie dust necklace proved the Butcher was here and still wanted her. The only lead Hayden had to work with was a woman in a pink dress. And this is where more questions began. Was the woman in the dress the Butcher in disguise or an accomplice? If a female accomplice, could it be Beth Watson? Hell, why not Robyn Banks? Was it possible Mike Muldoon was the Butcher?

The rustling of paper interrupted her thoughts. Hayden left his computer and offered her a bag. “For you. I picked it up on my way back from Carson City.” He smiled, looking oddly pleased with himself.

Growing up, she never received gifts from her mother for her birthday. Her grandparents never sent her Christmas presents. She wasn’t used to getting gifts, which is why she hadn’t been able to take Smokey Joe’s one-winged tourmaline angel. She regretted it now. Crusty and gruff by nature, Smokey probably didn’t give many gifts.

Hayden had tucked his gift in a plain brown paper bag. She wondered what kind of present he’d give her. Definitely something thoughtful—he spent way too much time in his head—and probably perfect. He had a lock on that, too.

Fingers tingling in silly anticipation, she reached in and took out a box of oil pencils and a sketch pad. She hadn’t touched drawing materials in years. The tingle in her fingers morphed into sparks. Yes, definitely perfect.

*  *  *

Monday, June 15, 7:30 p.m.
Dorado Bay, Nevada

Hayden pulled in front of the Grab-a-Chick restaurant, an outdoor eatery just off Main Street, and ushered Kate to a picnic table with a single occupant.

“Glad to see me, Pretty Boy?” Sergeant Lottie King wrapped him in a bear hug.

Hayden laughed out loud and returned the hug, and that’s when he knew something was seriously wrong in his world. Maybe he was in some altered state of exhaustion caused by more than a week of snatching two and three hours of sleep a night, because he wasn’t acting normally. First, he had bought Kate a set of oil pencils, not because it would help her psychologically deal with her troubled childhood and not because it would be a safe activity to keep her occupied as he and his team tracked down the Butcher. He bought them for her because he wanted to see her smile. There was no logic in that and no logic in hugging Lottie, other than he was glad to see the Colorado Springs police sergeant.

Kate sat on the bench and held out her hand to Lottie. What a difference a week made. That Kate could walk into a public place and make eye and skin contact with someone proved she’d come a long way since he sat bleeding at Smokey Joe’s kitchen table.

“Time for a meeting of the minds?” Lottie said.

Time for his world to stop spinning off its axis. He motioned to the waitress and ordered three sets of wings, rings, and iced teas. After the waitress left, he asked Lottie to fill them in on the Thomas investigation.

“Still got the stalker under lock and key. He insists he had nothing to do with Shayna Thomas’s murder, and he’s sticking to the story that a gray-haired woman in a pink dress walked into Thomas’s bedroom at the time he’d finished jerking off and decided to head home. We had one of our best sketch artists draw a composite. Over the next few days I’m hoping to flash it around here and get some nibbles.” She took it out. “My stalker said it’s not quite right, but he couldn’t tell the artist where to change the damn thing.”

Hayden studied the sketch, which depicted a gray-haired woman with a high forehead and recessed chin. He certainly didn’t recognize the woman. “Would you mind if I got one of my teammates, Berkley Rowe, to talk with your stalker and create a sketch?”

“Another Apostle?” Lottie nodded. “Bring her on. At this point I’ll take Jesus Christ. Got him on speed dial? ’Cause this case could use a miracle or two.”

*  *  *

“We’re getting closer. I can feel it.” Kate crossed her arms over her chest as she watched Sergeant King drive out of the Grab-a-Chick parking lot.

“There you go,
feeling
things again.” But Hayden said it with that half grin she’d seen a few times in the past few days. “And for the record, I agree. The Butcher’s here, and we’re going to find him.”

“And there
you
go again,” she said, “wearing your Mr. Hopelessly Optimistic hat.”

He opened the door for her. “I’d rather be a hopeless optimist than one in denial.”

She smirked. “You are so wrong if you think I’m an optimist at heart, and I can prove it.”

“Good. I like proof.”

“If I were an optimist, I’d continue to argue with you about this topic, but I’m not. Just like I know I can’t move a mountain, I cannot and will not shake your belief that justice will prevail and that good guys will always win. So why bother? I’ll just shut up and move on to something else.”

“That shouldn’t make sense, but it does.” Hayden shook his head and laughed. “We’ve been spending too much time together.”

They pulled out of the parking lot. True. Other than a few hours with Hatch or Evie, she’d spent almost an entire week with Hayden. It was strange, being so close to another person. She was close to Smokey, but that was different because he couldn’t see her.

But he could.

He may not have been able to see her scars, but her friend had sensed that she needed money and suggested the online jewelry store because he wanted to use his new computer. He saw the times she desperately needed to move and would demand she take him for a drive on her motorcycle so
he
could have some fresh air. She wondered if Maeve was taking him on drives through the desert and letting him sleep with open windows.

“Smokey’s fine,” Hayden said. “I talked with Maeve on my way to Carson City.”

She didn’t bother to growl in frustration. “How did you know I was thinking about him?”

“The bridge of your nose bunches.”

She wondered what she looked like when she thought of Hayden, because she’d been thinking a good deal about him, and she wondered if he’d been thinking about her in ways not connected to the Butcher case. He wasn’t fazed by her broken past and didn’t see her scars. He’d held her in his arms last night, two golden bands that made her feel safe and right. Hayden was controlling and obsessed with his work, but he
felt
right. Last night was proof. Despite the gift from the Butcher, she’d fallen into a deep, worry-free, anger-free sleep. And he felt something, even if he wasn’t ready to admit it.

She lifted her face and enjoyed the almost-cool wind rushing in through the open car window. A nice, inky darkness spilled across the sky, except where the half-moon peeked from a thin layer of clouds. The steady whir of tires spinning on asphalt comforted her. She didn’t want to go back to the cottage on the lake. She knew what would happen. She’d go to bed and try to sleep, and Hayden would sit with his case notes and not sleep.

“Slow down,” she said, jerking her hand to the left. “Turn there.”

Hayden let up on the gas. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Turn and take this road.”

“Why?

“I want to go for a drive.”

“Where?”

“Nowhere. Everywhere.” She threaded her fingers through her hair and let the warm wind slip through the waves. “Just drive.”

“You want to
just drive
.” In the moonlight, she could see the tick along his jaw.

“You have a problem with that?”

He kept going straight, toward the cottage. “I have a problem with aimless, purposeless activity, and a drive right now is not the wisest use of my time.”

She slammed her open palms on the dash. “Dammit, Hayden, do you always have to use your time wisely? Is it part of your super agent oath? Or is it just you? Can’t we do something for once that isn’t on your schedule?”

He rubbed at the space between his eyebrows. “Kate.”

She knew he’d never admit it, but he was tired, too, tired of the investigation, tired of chasing evil. “Please, Hayden, just drive.”

And maybe he was tired of arguing with her. He hooked their rental car off the highway onto the next dirt road. They followed a series of switchbacks that climbed a mountain thick with pines. As they rose, the night air cooled. Small pebbles pinged the underbelly of the car, a melodic night music. She lifted her hair, coaxing the air to massage the muscles along her neck.

The movement felt deliciously good. The stagnancy of her days, the feelings of being trapped, the crazy hot-cold feelings for Hayden, all of it ceased to exist as the car ate up miles along the glorious back roads of the untamed wilds of northern Nevada.

Until Hayden stopped the car.

She frowned. “What’s going on?”

“The road ended.”

She looked up. Indeed there was no more road, just the shimmery blue-black waters of Lake Tahoe. Now that the car was still, she realized that the heat still clung to the night, and she realized exactly where they were.

A laugh tickled the back of her throat. There was a madness to the laugh, an impossible-crazy madness.

“What?” Hayden asked.

The laugh bubbled out. “You honest to God don’t know where you drove us?”

His face lined with agitation. It looked so good on him. “No, I was
just
driving.”

“Well, Agent Reed, you drove us to Crawford Point.”

“What’s so special about Crawford Point?” He jabbed the darkness with his hands.

“This is Dorado Bay’s version of Lovers’ Lane. Ever make out in a car, Agent Reed?”

His hands stilled. Technically, every inch of his body stilled. “No.”

“Want to?” She’d meant for it to come out as a breezy joke. It hadn’t. A ridiculous breathiness clung to her words. The question was foolish, given that Hayden labeled her and filed her away in the witness-victim-who-needs-protecting category of his well-ordered brain.

So call her a fool.

Hayden stared into the blackness. “You’d run, Kate Johnson, if you knew what I wanted to do with you.”

The air between them arced as if a storm had rolled in.

“Maybe I wouldn’t.” They’d been dancing around a slow-burning fire for days. Technically, she’d been dancing, and he’d been trying to convince himself the fire didn’t exist. But she saw glowing bits in his gray eyes, like banked coals. “Maybe I’d want to stay right here.”
In your arms.
“Tell me, Hayden, what’s going on in that mind of yours.”

He released the steering wheel but kept his hands suspended in midair. Then he reached for the gearshift as if ready to throw the car in reverse, but stopped. It was odd, seeing Hayden struggle.

At last he unbuckled his seatbelt. His hands cupped either side of her face, and he pulled her toward him. His slate-gray eyes, the ones that followed most of her waking and sleeping moments, darkened and warmed. A heat of her own uncurled from her core, and she wanted to throw herself into his arms. But she’d done that already on the night they found Jason, and that got them nowhere. The next move needed to be his. He needed to go slow, to think things through, and she wanted him enough right here and right now to wait.

He inched forward, his lips brushing her temple. “I think about kissing you here.”

Her throat spasmed in a deep swallow, and she jammed her hands beneath her thighs.

His feather-soft lips glided along her jaw. “And here.”

She balled her hands into fists.

His mouth slid along her neck. “And here.” He slipped her overshirt down her shoulders and rained a series of faster, firmer kisses there. Why didn’t he just run a match along her skin?

At last he raised his hands to either side of her face. “But most of all,” his lips hovered above hers, “I think of kissing you here.”

A delicious surge of heat swelled inside her as their mouths collided. She unleashed her hands and dug them into the perfect folds of his hair. A very un-Hayden-like groan rumbled between them, and she slid her tongue along his lower lip. She tasted impatience, urgency. What happened to
go slow
? Laughter arched her neck.

Right now she didn’t want slow either. She wanted her world rocking and spinning, wonderful movement, with Hayden at the wheel. He must have felt the same way, for his mouth pressed harder, and his tongue slid past her lips. His hands fell to her shoulders, where he pushed down the straps of her camisole. Her own hands dropped to his shirt, the soft-crisp Egyptian cotton silky between her fingers, his heart hammering against her palm. She tugged at the exquisite fabric.

A bright light sliced between them.

Hayden sucked in a breath and reached for the gun strapped across his chest.

Chapter Seventeen

Monday, June 15, 10:00 p.m.
Dorado Bay, Nevada

P
ut down the gun!”

Blinded by the sharp beam of the flashlight, Hayden couldn’t see the body behind the light, nor did he recognize the voice, but he recognized the tone. He placed his Sig on the car dash. “Yes, officer.”

Next to him, Kate giggled.

“Step out of the car,” the officer continued. “Both of you. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

Hayden’s back teeth ground down, and he raised his hands in the air, even though he needed to straighten things below. The officer opened the door, and Hayden stepped out of the car. Still fighting laughter, Kate exited the passenger side.

“Now get on the ground, spread eagle,” the officer continued.

Time to end this. “Get the light out of my face.”