Cold Midnight (2 page)

The men shook hands all around before Sam said to the foreman, “You’re the one who found the bat?”

Robert nodded. “Dug it up this morning while we were cleaning out the trees. It was wrapped in a dirty T-shirt and a garbage bag. I set it aside for my kid and didn’t think anything of it until one of the other guys said it looked like the one . . .” He trailed off as he shot an apologetic glance at Kylie. “Kind of makes all the other stuff that’s been happening a bit more significant, in my opinion.”

Her expression remained unchanged, but her shoulders tensed. “I don’t think—”

“What other stuff?” Chase cut in, narrowing his eyes at her.

“Nothing that—”

“Vandalism started about two weeks ago,” Robert said. “Sugar in the gas tanks of the earthmovers. Sabotaged engines. Stolen materials. More annoying than serious, but definitely suspicious.”

“Why didn’t you call the police?” Chase directed the question at Kylie.

“I didn’t see a need. Like Robert said, the incidents were more annoying than serious.”

“But escalating,” Robert pointed out. “Whoever’s behind it is getting bolder. I don’t—” The ringing cell phone on his belt cut him off. “Excuse me, folks,” he said and stepped away.

Chase moved in on Kylie, deliberately invading her space. “Someone’s trying to scare you off, and you’re not doing anything about it?”

“Chase . . .”

He ignored Sam’s warning tone. Screw the conflict of interest. Kylie was being threatened. “You should have called the police, Ky.”

“You’re here now.” Cool and solid, not a flicker of emotion.

“That’s not the point,” Chase said. “Escalating vandalism can quickly turn into violence. You should have—”

“We need to stay on track here,” Sam said.

Chase took a breath to check his temper. Figures.
Her
past had just risen up to take a swing at her, and
he
was the one on the verge of losing control. Being near her could make him so irrational. “Where is it?” he asked, teeth gritted.

She gestured with a rock-steady hand toward the off-white trailer that served as the foreman’s office. A metallic blue aluminum baseball bat with red lettering sat propped under one of the shadeless windows. On the dirty yellow tape wrapped around the grip, one word had been scrawled in black marker: KILLER.

Chase’s stomach flipped.
Jesus
, that was the bat that demolished her knee to the point where only the fast work of one doctor saved her leg. Saved her
life
.

He realized now that she must have locked everything inside her down. No way could she look at that thing and not feel
something
. So she’d done what she could: kept her eye on the ball with the same laser focus that won her the Australian Open at seventeen, launching her into tennis stardom mere weeks before two barbaric bastards held her down on a deserted path and viciously destroyed her.

He swallowed as the same old helpless rage welled inside him. He’d been head over heels in love with her, and all he could do after the attack was stand there, powerless and lost and pissed off, while her world imploded. She lost everything that day, in the course of one or two bloody minutes. Her future. Her sense of security. Her innocence. Her very identity.

When he was feeling rational, he couldn’t blame her for running away from Kendall Falls. She’d landed on center stage, under a glaring spotlight, at the most vulnerable time of her life. It was like being assaulted twice.

A flash of lightning, closer now, jolted him out of his thoughts, and as he looked away from the bat, he realized Sam watched him with a warning in his gaze.
Keep it together, man.

Chase cleared his throat. No problem. Do the job. “Where are the shirt and bag?”

“Foreman said he tossed them before he knew what he had,” Sam said.

“Tossed them where?” Chase asked.

“Dumpster.” Sam jerked his thumb toward the back of the site.

“We’ll have to go through it,” Chase said.

“Is that all you need from me for now?” Kylie asked.

So stoic and controlled and, God, still so achingly beautiful. When she cocked her head, waiting for his response, he had to swallow against the tightness of his throat, sure she had no idea what was coming.

Thunder crashed, and Chase noticed everyone except Kylie glanced up at the furious clouds. Her focus had zeroed in on him and his next words.

“Construction has to be shut down,” he said. Blunt, to the point. Like ripping off a Band-Aid.

Nothing in her expression changed, her eye obviously still on the ball. “Completely? Delays have already put us behind schedule.”

“It’s only temporary, until we can determine that this is indeed the weapon used in your attack.”

“Of
course
it’s the weapon. It’s exactly the same. How many bats have you seen with ‘killer’ written on the grip like that?”

So matter-of-fact and unemotional. How did she do that? But he knew. As her training partner so long ago, he’d helped make her the player she’d been, the woman she seemed to be now. Cool, focused, driven.

“It still has to be tested,” he said. “Your description of it was common knowledge back then. Someone could have, well, made one based on that.”

“Like some kind of joke?”

The crack in her voice hit Chase like a soft blow to the gut, and suddenly he hoped like hell she’d get her game face back and fast. She’d been broken ten years ago, but he’d never
seen
her broken. He suspected no one had.

“The whole site is a crime scene,” he said. “It has to be off-limits to everyone but the crime scene investigators.”

“How long is this going to take?”

Steady again. He almost let out a sigh of relief. “If we don’t find any evidence on the bat or shirt that connects them to your attack, we’re looking at a day.”

“And if you do?”

“We’ll have to search the site for more evidence. Best-case scenario: a couple of weeks.”

Nothing in her face moved, but the set of her shoulders firmed. “A couple of weeks” was not a good answer. “Worst case?” she asked.

“A couple of months.”

She looked away for a moment, a muscle flexing at her temple. “I can’t afford that much of a delay.”

“Don’t you want to know who did that to you?” He gestured none too smoothly at her braced knee.

She looked at him, eyes well hidden behind dark shades, but he sensed their narrowing. “Finding out who did it won’t change anything.”

“Might be nice if the bastards paid for what they did.” Nice was a major understatement. He wanted blood. A shit-load of blood. And some screams for mercy.

“We’re getting ahead of ourselves here,” Sam said. “Kylie, can you at least shut things down for a day while we test the evidence? We’ll go from there.”

Chase had to give him credit for making it sound like she had a choice.

She nodded reluctantly. “I’ll let the foreman know.”

“Thank you,” Sam said. “We’ll be in touch.”

She’d taken only a few steps when Chase went after her. “Wait.”

She faced him, and he saw from the angle of her head that she darted a glance after Sam, as if she’d lost her buffer. “Yes?”

“Are you okay?” So lame, he thought. Of course she wasn’t okay. Why was he asking anyway? They hadn’t parted as friends, and every time they’d run into each other since she’d returned, they’d danced around each other as gracefully as newborn colts.

She gave him a thin smile. “I’m fine. Great, really. Couldn’t be better.”

Before he could snap back with something equally sarcastic, she blew out a huff of air as a small, contrite smile softened her features. “Wow, that was bitchy.”

The stiffness in his shoulders eased some, and he smiled back. “I won’t argue with that.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve had . . . well, this day . . .” She trailed off, eyebrows cinching together above the rims of her sunglasses.

“It can’t be easy.”

The splash of puddles in the parking lot had them both looking in that direction. As a news van parked next to Chase’s SUV, she sighed. “Terrific.”

“Media hell all over again, huh?”

She nodded without looking at him. “It never seems to end around here.”

“So you’re taking off soon then?”

He knew it was a dig, and part of him, the ugly, still-ticked part, meant it as one. When the going got tough, and the spotlight switched on, Kylie got packing. Why would now be any different than ten years ago? And, really, who could blame her? She had a past the press loved to rehash. Nothing sold newspapers like blood and guts and brutalized, pretty women.

She glanced at him, her smile hard now, forced. “I’m staying. Dad wanted a tennis center in Kendall Falls with the family name on it, so that’s what I’m doing. Sabotage didn’t chase me away. And neither will a ten-year-old baseball bat and endless media attention. Any other questions?”

He was glad she couldn’t tell by looking at him that the determination in her voice had sparked awake something long asleep inside him. He’d always been so turned on by her competitive spirit. He’d missed that since she’d gone. Hell, he’d missed it before she took off.

“I think that about covers it,” he said, unable to stop the quirk to his lips. “Have a nice day.” If he’d worn a hat, he would have touched the brim with a muttered “ma’am” and a nod.

“You, too,” she said stiffly before she turned and walked away.

He watched her go, appreciating the slight sway of her slim hips. As a teen, she’d had a compact, athletic body trained for lightning speed and power serves. But the tomboy had grown up, and toughness and strength were now tempered by soft curves that were way too sexy for the guy in him to ignore.

The black knee brace, so stark against the tanned skin of her leg, cooled the heat in his gut, though. That brace was part of the reason he’d become a cop. He’d vowed to make the people who did that to her pay.

As the wind picked up and lightning cracked, almost immediately followed by a crash of thunder, he thought that maybe now he’d get the chance.

2

KYLIE TOSSED THE TENNIS BALL INTO THE AIR AND
slammed it with a satisfying
thwack
. At the height of her career, when she won her first, and only, Grand Slam tournament, she could knock the ball into the service court at a hundred miles per hour. That was ten years, eight knee surgeries and a full year of physical rehabilitation ago.

Lately, when she punished the innocent little yellow ball, she did it to show her college tennis team the proper form. Most of the time. She also did it to work out her issues. Of which she seemed to have many, especially since quitting her coaching job at UCLA to return to her hometown with the idea of reclaiming the life she’d abandoned.

She hadn’t planned on running into Chase Manning so regularly, though. It didn’t help that he didn’t sport a huge gut and flabby arms. No, he was even more gorgeous than when she’d embraced her inner coward and left him. Tall, imposing, muscular in the perfect kind of way that was sculpted but not bulky. Green eyes the color of the deep forest and capable of being just as dark and intimidating. He smelled the same, too—like tropical sunscreen.

Leaving him . . . no, “leaving” wasn’t strong enough. Running away, that’s what she’d done. Run and run and run, as fast and as far as she could. By the time the reality check smacked her in the forehead that she’d abandoned and hurt the one person who could get her through losing her dreams, losing her way, he’d had a ring on his finger and a kid on the way.

Drawing in a long, pulse-slowing breath, she bounced a tennis ball several times and tried to get her focus back. Punish the ball. Work it out.

But, God, he’d called her Ky this afternoon. Hearing her name in that radio-ready voice—like expensive brandy: smooth with just a hint of fire—conjured memories of breathless whispers and naked, sweat-slicked bodies that fit, and moved, together so perfectly.

Cheeks heating, she angled her head to pop the tension out of her neck. Right. It’s not too warm out here at all. Focus, damn it. Hit the ball into the next galaxy.

“So, bad time?”

She whirled at the voice behind her, heart rate spiking into the fight-or-flight zone. She’d already yanked her racket up, ready to defend herself, when she recognized her best friend easing through the gate in the fence surrounding the lighted court. Trisha’s arms were loaded with a couple of bottles of blue Gatorade and two takeout Chinese boxes.

Feeling foolish, yet grateful that Trisha appeared oblivious to her overreaction, Kylie jogged over to help her with her bounty.

In khaki shorts and an orange and teal Dolphins T-shirt, Trisha Young looked the same as she had in high school. Freckles still crowded her otherwise fair complexion, and her short, curly auburn hair still frizzed in the Florida humidity. She’d gained a few pounds in recent years, but she liked to joke that the pounds landed in prime locations: her boobs and her butt.

Trisha started laughing as she bobbled a chilled bottle of Gatorade right into Kylie’s waiting hands. “Good catch.”

“Let me guess who loaded you up with all this stuff. Jane?”

“Quinn, too. They’re worried about you.”

“I know. They’ve been hovering all night.”

“Can’t say I blame them,” Trisha said lightly.

Kylie twisted open a bottle and quenched a thirst she’d been too stubborn to deal with half an hour ago. Doing so would have required going inside where her overly concerned siblings lingered. Much as she appreciated their concern, she couldn’t cope with their constant questions.

Are you all right?

Do you need anything?

Want to talk about it?

Yes, no, double no and please,
please
go away.

“What have you got?” she asked Trisha, nodding toward the takeout boxes. Starving didn’t begin to cover the gnawing in her belly. And it had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with Chase Manning. This was good old plain hunger. Beef-cake wouldn’t satisfy it. Right? Right.