Cold Midnight (28 page)

“I thought you were strong,” he said. “But you’re not. You’re a fool.”

She took a startled step back, as if he’d raised a hand to strike her.

Unable to look at her, to watch the wounds his words caused, he snatched his shirt off the floor. “Weak people run away from love,” he said, shoving his arms into the sleeves and shooting the first button through its tiny hole. “
Weak
people. You did it ten years ago, and you’re doing it again now.”

He looked at her then, strong enough now in his self-righteous anger to see the effects of his arrow-tipped words. All the emotion, and color, had drained out of her face. Her eyes, her lovely, blue gray eyes, so big and vulnerable and damp earlier, had gone flat, as expressionless as cool steel.

He wanted to take it all back, hold her until all the hurt went away. He moved toward her, ready to babble out an apology. He’d say anything to bring the shining light back into her eyes. But she edged back.

“You’re right,” she said, her voice low and trembling. “I should have been stronger.”

He closed his eyes, lowered his chin. God, he was a dick. And he couldn’t take it, couldn’t stand having her look at him with that blank expression. He’d thought earlier that he’d finally won, that she’d surrendered to him, to love. But he’d been wrong. Match fucking point. She’d won again.

He walked out of the bedroom without looking back.

40

AS RAIN CONTINUED ITS DELUGE OUTSIDE THE
kitchen window above the sink, Chase jerkily washed up the dishes from the night before. He didn’t realize how violent his actions were until the stem of the wineglass he was washing snapped in two in his hands. As he watched his blood swirl down the drain—just like everything he wanted with the woman he loved—his cell phone started to ring on the counter beside him.

Wrapping a dish towel around his hand—luckily, the wound wasn’t deep—he snatched up the phone and flipped it open. “Manning.”

“Chase, it’s Sylvia Jensen.” She sounded as if she’d called from inside a hurricane zone.

He turned away from the sound of rain thrashing the window on his end and covered one ear to hear her better. “Where are you?”

“At the tennis center site.”

“In the rain?”

“The rain’s caused some trouble over here.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“There’s been some major flooding that . . . well, it’s turned up a body.”

“What? A
body
?”

“Wrapped in a tarp,” she said, “so it’s been mostly protected from the elements, though everything has gotten pretty wet. I can’t do anything with it in this weather, so it’s being transported to the morgue.”

His head was still spinning. “A body? Are you kidding me?”

“I’m thinking it could be what our saboteur has been looking for.”

“Holy shit.” He turned to stare into the living room at the rain washing down the bay window.

“Hang on. I need to tell you something else.” A slamming sound on Sylvia’s end of the call was followed by a cessation of much of her background noise. She must have gotten into her car. “I ran that DNA from the shirt through the database right before I got summoned out here, so I didn’t have time to call you about that. I’m sorry, but I didn’t get any hits.”

Chase’s brain was still stuck on the body found at the tennis center site. So all that had happened to Kylie might have been about a murder, not her attack . . . unless they were related. Shit, he thought.
Shit
.

“So you’ll meet me at the morgue?” Sylvia asked.

He shook his head to focus his attention. “Of course. I’ll give Sam a call and have him meet us there, too.”

Sylvia sighed. “I have a feeling it’s going to be a long day.”

 

 

AN HOUR LATER, AFTER GETTING FELLOW COP
Steve Burnett to stay at the safe house with Kylie, Chase arrived at the morgue in the basement of Kendall Falls General. The tropical décor—colorful fish, sea horses and starfish painted on ocean-blue walls—always caught him off guard, as if whoever designed the hospital decided the morgue should be extra cheerful to counter the cold grimness of corpses. It didn’t help. The place was still cold as a freezer with an ambience that was just as stark.

He spotted Sam talking in hushed tones to Sylvia in a glass-enclosed office. They were both dressed in jeans and T-shirts, as if they’d thrown on whatever was available when their respective summonses had come.

As Chase approached, he glanced toward the room where he knew the body from the construction site would be laid out for examination. A tech was hunched over a mud-slathered pile of what looked like garbage on a metal table, meticulously scraping at something. Chase saw the young woman’s breath in the chilled air, and he shivered as he continued on into the adjacent office.

“What have we got?” Chase asked as Sam and Sylvia greeted him.

Sylvia, trademark hoop earrings swinging, said, “Lucky break. The body still had ID on it.”

Sam, who looked as if he had slept less than Chase had in the past several days, indicated a deteriorating wallet and its damp contents spread over a metal tray on the desk. “Driver’s license and school ID.”

Chase squinted his eyes, but the big type on the school ID struck him first and hardest: Kendall Falls High School.

“Name’s Mark Hanson,” Sylvia said. “Date of birth on his driver’s license indicates he would have been twenty-seven this year.”

Chase snapped a glance at Sam. “Ten years ago, he would have been in your high school class.”

Sam nodded, his expression grave. “I didn’t know him, but Quinn McKay might have.”

Chase rubbed at the back of his aching neck. Great, just what the case needed. Another connection to Kylie’s brother. “We’ll have to bring him in and ask him.”

“There’s more,” Sylvia said, nodding at Sam.

Chase looked at his partner, who consulted his notebook. “Missing-persons report was filed on Mark Hanson, age seventeen, about a week after Kylie’s attack. According to the case file, the police never found him. Apparently, he’d run away a few times before, so no one suspected foul play.”

“Who reported him missing? Parents?”

“Mother. Sheila Hanson.”

“She still live in Kendall Falls?”

“According to her Department of Motor Vehicles’ file, she’s residing at the same address.”

Chase nodded and closed his eyes. “We’ll have to tell her we’ve found her son.”

“That’s not all,” Sylvia said, her voice low and tense.

Chase swung his attention back to her.

“The medical examiner did a cursory examination of the body,” she said. “The side of the skull has been crushed by blunt force trauma. We’ll have to do more tests, but it looks like the weapon could have been a baseball bat.”

41

KYLIE RAISED HER HEAD AND BLINKED AGAINST
the light coming through the window, surprised to discover that she’d been sleeping on the floor with her back against the wall and her head on her knees. She felt disoriented and fuzzy, unsure at first where she was or what had awakened her. Then she remembered. Safe house. With Chase.

His angry words—
weak people run away from love
—rang in her ears, and she scrubbed her hands over her face with a long groan.

He was right, of course. She was weak.
He
made her weak. Weak and scared and pathetic. Everything she vowed she didn’t want to be when she fled Kendall Falls ten years ago.

But what was she supposed to do about Quinn? He was her brother. She couldn’t possibly betray him by allowing herself to love the man who would help put him on trial. She might not know anything about love, how to love, how to be loved, but she knew all about loyalty. Quinn was going to need hers, especially when the glare of the spotlight turned relentless.

She should have stayed in LA. If she’d known what awaited her at home, she wouldn’t have done it. She’d have stayed where she was, head firmly buried in Venice Beach sand. But, no, she’d followed her heart. She’d thought she could fill up the emptiness inside her by reconnecting with her family, by reclaiming the life she lost when she left Kendall Falls. She’d known she would run into Chase, but she’d figured she could deal with it, especially if it were only an occasional thing.

Tired of her circling, no-win thoughts, she pushed herself to her feet, determined to rise above it all and carry on, and headed for the bathroom. A shower would clear her head, wash away the distracting, mesmerizing scent of Chase on her body and perhaps soothe the ache between her thighs that reminded her of what they’d done, what they did so well. What they could never do again.

He loved her.

She closed her eyes, pausing in the bathroom doorway and putting her hand out to steady herself. She was so tired, weary to the bone. Too much fighting, too much emotion. She needed her defenses, needed the strength that enabled her to shove it all away and ignore it. She was good at that. Not love. She’d never been good at love. She was good at tennis, competing. She was built for the game, for chasing down a ball and slamming it over a net, for strategizing how to defeat any opponent, for landing shots exactly where they needed to land. Love had nothing to do with it, other than a losing score. Neither did emotion. Just strategy and winning. She was, after all, what her father, her coach, made her.

In the bathroom, she stripped and stepped into the shower. As the water sluiced over her, anger, disappointment in herself, frustration with the ironies of life—all of it expanded in her chest, welled into her throat, spilling fresh tears down her cheeks. And that just annoyed her even more. Now that she’d started crying, she couldn’t seem to stop.

Just as she’d feared. She’d let the dam break and now she couldn’t focus. Couldn’t keep her eye on the ball. Couldn’t breathe through the pain.

Thanks to Chase.

Who loved her.

She buried her face in her hands.

He loved her, and she’d hurt him. The memory of his face when she’d said she had to choose Quinn over him . . .

Seeing it again caused the ache in her chest to sharpen.

A fool to think they could go back. A fool to think they could ever get it right. A fool to think she could handle the intensity of his love and passion.

He wanted too much, expected too much. She’d made a lifetime career out of suppressing and dodging and pretending. Changing those habits would be like winning a Grand Slam tennis tournament barefoot and with a broken racket.

Yet . . . he made it sound so easy.

How could she just walk away from that? From him?

Was she really that big of a fool?

She pictured life after Quinn’s innocence was proved. She’d have a new tennis center, assuming the bank didn’t get cold feet with her credit line. She’d have her family to continue reconnecting with: Lara, Quinn and Jane. She’d hopefully have a long coaching career with T.J. Ritchie, if he’d have her.

And who would she share it all with?

And what would happen when she saw Chase with another woman? A woman capable of letting down her guard and loving him and giving him what he wanted. A woman who bore his babies and adored him as much as he deserved to be adored. A woman who wasn’t her.

Reaching for the faucet, she yanked the water off and stood there, dripping and shivering, her arms wrapped around her middle.

No, that wouldn’t work. That . . . that . . . wouldn’t work
at all
. Not in a million years.

And she realized how completely she’d been kidding herself.

No way could she stay in Kendall Falls.

42

CHASE STRODE UP THE WALK TO THE MODEST
peach stucco house, Sam trailing silently in his wake. Chase figured his partner dreaded telling this woman her missing son had been found dead as much as he did. Not that he could blame him. He hated this part of the job. Hated it almost as much as he hated that he’d left Kylie in the care of another cop when he could have let Sam handle this. But he hadn’t felt like he could stay in that small house with her and not try to corner her all over again. That would just lead to more disaster, and he’d had about all he could take when it came to his bruised heart. For now, he needed to buck up and be a cop.

“Jesus, it’s humid,” Sam muttered behind him.

Chase nodded without glancing back. The tropical-like rainstorm had left stickier-than-usual moisture behind, making it feel as though they moved through thick steam.

On the porch, with Sam hanging out a few feet back, Chase pulled open the screen door to rap on the door with his knuckles. As he waited for an answer, he glanced around. The older neighborhood was one of the more popular areas in Kendall Falls to live. It had no sidewalks, and the un-curbed streets were narrow and overhung with banyan trees. But each house had its own, distinct character. Stately two-stories with two-car garages and fancy landscaping resided right next to low-to-the-ground one-levels with carports.

It was a stark contrast to the opposite side of town, where a dozen houses shaped by the same cookie cutter popped up in a week, all arranged neatly around the perimeter of a brand-new golf course.

A woman who looked about fifty opened the door and peered at him through the screen. The extra pounds she carried didn’t detract from her pretty face, though her skin looked blotchy without makeup. Her short, light brown hair was parted on the side and had been recently highlighted. She wore blue stretch pants and an untucked, loose-fitting lavender blouse.

Chase held up his badge. “Detectives Chase Manning and Sam Hawkins, Kendall Falls Police Department. Are you Sheila Hanson?”

Her wary eyes settled on the badge for a moment before they tracked behind him to Sam and then back to meet Chase’s gaze. “What can I do for you, detectives?”