A Killing Kind of Love: A Dark, Standalone Romantic Suspense (3 page)

It’s done, finally, irrevocably done. I can never go back.

The end of Holly’s untroubled, privileged life brought a new beginning and a last chance to make things right.

The soul wants to weep and beg forgiveness; the body puts the gun in a pocket, steps into the trees flanking the running trail, and disappears, more silently than it had come.

Dan Lambert heard the phone while he was in the bathroom shaving. He ignored it, lifted his chin, and removed the last of his beard, going with the grain, taking his time.

When he was done, he slapped on aftershave and grimaced against the burn. But he liked the scent, kind of a citrus-and-musk thing that Kylie had given him for his last birthday. “Picked it myself, Daddy. Isn’t it pretty?”

He grinned. The scent wasn’t exactly “pretty,” thank God, but it did remind him of home, and it went a long way in negating the lingering smell of oil-field smut, a vaporous stew of mud, grease, sweat, and sludge that took three showers to get rid of.

It had been a long three months.

Tonight, a steak as big as Idaho, and a beer as cold as the country he was in. And tomorrow the company plane and home.

Home. The thought of it took the frost out of the cold-beer idea.

He had no idea what to expect when he got there. During his and Holly’s last uncomfortable conversation—at least four days ago now—before she’d put Kylie on the phone, they had, as usual, avoided talking about their wreck of a marriage—until she’d blurted out that she’d “been thinking” while she was in Boston and had made a decision. One she hoped he’d be okay with, and be able to handle.

She’d sounded nervous and shaky, and they’d left things right there, which was fine with him. To his way of thinking, any discussion of their fractured relationship required a face-to-face, even if he did feel lukewarm going into it. The good thing was, she’d made a decision. One way or another, they’d take it from there.

He stepped out of the bathroom, wiped the last of the moisture from his jaw, and headed for the clean shirt he’d tossed on the bed. The phone rang again. He’d let it ring, let the desk take a message.

It had to be Plitski, wanting him to stay another few days and work up a preliminary security report on Burgeen Oil’s new site.
Not going to happen.
He’d gone as far north and as deep into Alberta’s Athabaska oil sands as he was going to on this trip, and the security was solid: surveillance was in place, the computer control center was operational, and every last man and his dog working the site had security clearance.

He shrugged into his shirt, grateful to be leaving and even more grateful he wouldn’t have to come back for one final security sweep until early February. The sites would be going flat-out then, the ground frozen hard enough to take the heavy equipment required to carry 400 tons of tar sands at a go. Fifty-below time, when the north wind peeled back your skin and freeze-dried your eyeballs. No way around it. That 300 billion barrels of oil, with another trillion soaking in sand and shale, wouldn’t be ignored and was always at risk, which made good business for Hoyle and Lambert, his security company.

He started on his shirt buttons. Yeah, February was his last trip. From that point on, he was staying close to home.

His hands stilled. For all his grand words about getting past it with Holly, doing what had to be done to make things work between them, her cheating on him bubbled in his gut like dirty crude.

If it weren’t for Kylie . . .

Damn phone kept on yelling at him. He finished buttoning his shirt and picked up the black phone’s receiver. “Yeah.”

“Dan? Dan Lambert?”

Not Plitski, thank God. “You got him.”

“I have some . . . news.”

When the voice registered, his eyebrows shot up. “Paul?”
What the hell?

“Yes.”

Paul Grantman was Holly’s father, and given he’d never approved of Holly marrying Dan, his call was singular, a real snowstorm in the Sahara kind of event. Dan’s gut balled. He and Paul had only two things in common, Holly and Kylie. And trouble with either was the only reason Paul would call. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s about Holly.”

Dan’s hand tightened on the phone, something in him icing up, something in him willing the silence coming down the line to stretch out, never end. Although if there was one thing Dan knew, all the wishing in the world wouldn’t stop bad news. He’d learned that from Holly.

“She’s dead.” Paul’s words were flat, clipped, and bound in control. “Killed, as the police put it, by an unknown assailant.”

“Jesus!” Dan’s muscles jellied, and he sat like spent rubber on the edge of the bed. He shoved a hand through his still shower-damp hair, while his mind took him to their last good-bye, her forced smile when he’d left for this job, the sour ache in his gut when he’d looked out from the backseat of the cab taking him to the airport, her waving at him from the porch. He’d waved back but quickly turned away, unable to look at her. What she’d told him about her . . . infidelity too recent, and his promise to think things over feeling like a tumor on the brain.

“Dan? Are you there?”

“How? When?” He forced himself back to the phone call, his brain still not processing, not accepting, the information.

“Yesterday. It took me a while to find you.” Paul paused. “She was running. God, I begged her to stop going out like that, running alone—”

“Where? Where did it happen? And for God’s sake, what happened?” Right now Dan wanted details, not regrets and recriminations. There’d be plenty of time for those.

Dan heard Paul’s heavy breathing, then the slosh of liquid courage in what he knew would be a fine crystal glass. “On the running track in the park behind us. Less than a mile from the house. She was found by another runner—a doctor, as it turns out. He said she was still . . . warm, so it couldn’t have happened very long before he found her. I talked to him, and he said she’d died quickly.” A pause. “She looks bad . . . really bad.”

Dan’s mind played a sick and violent movie. “Jesus,” he said again, while trying to fill his lungs with air and block the images boiling in his head.

“The detective I spoke to said she was shot with a small-caliber gun at close range. That’s it. They think it’s probably a random killing. Said some bad types have been seen in the park lately, but they’re questioning everyone. They don’t seem to know anything, and if they do, they’re not talking. They just keep saying they’re looking into it. Like goddamn robots!” His voice rose.

“Where is she now?” Dan said, keeping his tone even.

“The morgue. They’ll release her in a couple of days.”

He saw her. In one of those stainless-steel drawers, with a tag on her toe, a white sheet covering her naked body. He closed his eyes, remembered her plans to redo the kitchen.
“Everything stainless steel, Dan. Fridge, stove, counters . . . everything. It’ll be cool.”
As cool as it gets.

“Who in hell would want to kill her?” Paul said, his voice quiet and tremulous.

“I don’t know.”

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“No.” Dan rubbed his forehead. Making sense of things wasn’t possible right now. Sense didn’t thrive in a brain fog as dense as pitch. “Kylie,” he said. “Who’s got Kylie?”

“Erin and I. She’s all right. Too young to understand, of course, which is a blessing.” Paul stopped. “Although this morning she asked where her mama was . . .” He coughed as if to clear his throat before adding, “We’re keeping her busy.”

“Good.” Dan nodded to the empty room, glanced at the clock. Needing to move, to do something, anything, he stood and took the two steps away from the bed the twisted phone cord allowed. “With luck and decent connections, I’ll be in Boston by morning.” Christ, his voice was cracking. He leveled himself off, ignored the sharp stones in his chest. “And, Paul, I’m sorry. I know how much she meant to you.”

“I loved her, Lambert. She was my only child.” His voice was a bit steadier, and Dan knew he’d reached for this final store of strength. “I’m sure you’ll miss her, too.” The last words were added in the cool tone more characteristic of their strained relationship. “Call us when you arrive. There will be arrangements to make. And, as her husband, it’s necessary you be part of them.” A thought that obviously didn’t please him.

The soft disconnect of the phone left Dan alone with thoughts of his murdered wife and now motherless three-year-old daughter, a daughter suddenly left in the sole care of a father who’d spent far too much time north of north, the twilight zone of Mother Earth—enough time to cost him his marriage. What he had to do now was make sure it didn’t cost him his daughter.

He hit zero on the phone pad and waited for the front desk. By the time they picked up, he was brushing at his eyes. He coughed to loosen his tight throat, ordered what was probably the only cab in town, hung up, and packed with deft but hurried movements. What passed for an airstrip was maybe a half hour away. If he could get a charter to Calgary or Edmonton, getting stateside from there wouldn’t be a problem.

He brushed at his eyes again.
Tears, for God’s sake.
Too damn little and too damn late. He had a kid to take care of, and he intended to do it right, give her everything in him he had to give. Tears wouldn’t help the cause.

He might have failed Holly; he didn’t intend to repeat the mistake with Kylie.

When the phone rang, despite its being a mere arm’s length away, Camryn ignored it. Slumped on the sofa, a pillow clasped to her belly, she stared blank-faced at the TV, specifically at an ancient black-and-white movie where every man wore a tuxedo, none of the women had pores, and both drank endless martinis while adrift in a wavy sea of cigarette smoke.

The martinis were the most appealing. There were only two problems with acting on that thought: it was barely noon, and she hated martinis. She pulled the pillow closer.

“You doing okay?” her father asked, coming in from the kitchen with two sandwiches and two glasses of milk. He’d been away on one of his short trips until yesterday. When she’d asked him where he’d gone, all he’d said was “business.” His answer brought some relief, because she’d worried that it might be some medical problem he wasn’t telling her about, but when she asked, he’d denied it, told her he’d never felt better. He set a plate in front of her and sat down in Craig’s chair.

Craig would hate that, she thought, but she didn’t care, couldn’t think why she should. All she felt was flat, gray, and eerily disconnected.

Here she was, her life sinking to toilet level, and all she could summon up was a moody stew, equal parts despair, relief, and inertia. Either she was a damn strange woman, who could watch her husband walk out without a whimper, or she was slow on the uptake and a tsunami of emotions would hit when she least expected it.

“I asked you a question, Cammie. You okay?”

“Fine.” She picked up her sandwich, put it down. Craig had been gone for three months. It felt like two years, and worse yet, it felt irritatingly . . . right. The problem was, she was
fine,
and she shouldn’t be. She should be in the throes of a mental breakdown, her pillow should be soaked with tears, her heart should have a crack in it Grand Canyon-wide. He had been her best friend . . .

Maybe that’s all he ever was—a friend. Maybe I just glommed onto him when my bio-clock ticked toward midnight. Maybe I married him because he was my friend, because he was there and no one else was.
If that were true, she didn’t like herself very much for it, because decent people didn’t go around messing up their friends’ lives.

“You don’t look fine.” Her dad took a bite of his sandwich and reached for the TV remote control at the same time. “You look like you want to drink blood. Try that instead.” He nodded absently at the glass of milk, then looked at the TV screen.

Flick.

Gone were the women without pores, the handsome men in tuxedos, the perfectly chilled martinis, replaced with burly men and a ball which they pursued with bloodlust and would apparently die to defend. She turned away from the screen. Was this her life now? Watching daytime sports with her dad?

She shot him a glance, suddenly irritated.

When he’d arrived home the morning after Craig left, she’d been in the kitchen, sobbing like an idiot. In much worse shape than she was in now. But when she told him Craig had walked out, all he’d said was, “Not surprised.” Then, as if sensing more words were necessary, he’d added, “You’ll be fine. Right?”

When she’d nodded through her tears, he’d looked relieved, trotted himself off to the den, stayed there, and avoided her for the rest of day. Not that she expected hugs and assurances. That had never been her taciturn father’s style—not before he lost his fortune, and certainly not after.

When Trent Derne, a man who’d had it all, a man who drank thousand-dollar bottles of wine, flew in his own private jet, and smoked a million Cuban cigars, lost it all, he’d lost himself. He’d been forty-two, now he was sixty-three, and he’d spent the last third of his life dreaming and scheming how to get it all back. The process of stumbling from one get-rich-quick idea to the next, each effort more desperate, more costly, than the last had cost him his first wife, Camryn’s mother, Rosalie, and two more after that.

Now he was living in his daughter’s house. The one paid for by a small trust fund he’d set up for her at the insistence of her mother when Camryn was ten years old. It was all that remained of a fortune in the tens of millions.

So here he was in front of her TV, pretending this was a day like any other, pretending they had a normal father-daughter relationship. Pretending Camryn’s husband hadn’t walked out on her . . .

If her mother weren’t somewhere in Europe on her first real vacation in years, Camryn would have called her to talk. But there was no reason to ruin her mom’s holiday. Camryn also knew, that if she did connect with her mother, they’d end up arguing about her father. Rosalie had been dead against her letting Trent stay with them, convinced it would cause trouble. Way too much room in there for I-told-you-so’s, which made calling her mother another bad idea in a landslide of them. She’d get through this, and she’d get through it alone.