Only Her (A K2 Team Novel) (17 page)

That was about the best thing he could have said. He put his hand on the back of her neck, and she leaned her cheek against his shoulder. She’d never been a touchy-feely woman, but she could change her mind about that where Cody was concerned. Everything about him called to her. She inhaled his spicy man scent as she leaned into his strong body, liking how well she fit against him.

“I sure hope so. The doctor said if my headaches are gone by Saturday, then I’m good to go. Wanna make another Saturday night sex date?”

“You really have to ask a man that question?” He grinned as he took her keys from her and unlocked the door, ushering her in with his hand on the small of her back.

“What was I thinking?” His expression changed from teasing to what she could only describe as warrior mode as he pushed her behind him, but not before she saw Arthur’s lifeless body on the middle of the floor and the mess that was her living room.

“Arthur!” She was only dimly aware of Cody reaching into his boot and coming back up with a gun in his hand. When she tried to push past him to get to her cat, he put out an arm, stopping her.

“Easy, darlin’. I’ll get you to him. I don’t sense anyone still in your house, but better safe than sorry.”

Although it seemed like it took forever, he led her to Arthur in only a few seconds, and she knelt, putting her fingers to his chest, letting out a relieved breath. “He’s alive. Where’re Merlin and Pelli?” They should have come to her at hearing her voice.

“Stay here. I’ll go look for them.” He eased away, his tense body alert to his surroundings.

“I have to get Arthur to the clinic.” She grabbed the afghan from the sofa and gently nestled her sweet boy into it. Tears freely rolled down her cheeks. Who would have hurt such an innocent creature and where were Merlin and Pelli? If they were . . . no, she couldn’t even think it.

“The house is clear,” Cody said, returning. “Merlin’s under the bed, but he won’t come out. Can’t find Pelli.”

Riley handed an unconscious Arthur to Cody. “I need to get him to the clinic so I can take care of him, but I have to get Merlin and Pelli. I’m not leaving them here.” She ran into the guest bedroom, got the cat carrier out of the closet, and then raced to her room. “Hey, Merlin, it’s all right. Come on out, baby.” He let out a yowl as he crawled to her. She got him in the carrier and looked under the bed, hoping to see Pelli. He wasn’t there.

“Pelli,” she called as she headed back to the living room. The little thing could be hiding anywhere, but she couldn’t take the time to search for him if she was going to save Arthur. Not seeing Cody, she glanced around, noticing that her kitchen door was open.

“Riley, come here.”

She found him standing in the carport, staring at the doorframe with Arthur held in the crook of his arm and his gun still in his hand. If there was one thing Riley hated, it was guns, but at the moment, she appreciated that he had one. When they found the person responsible for so much heartache, Riley would be tempted to shoot that person herself.

“What?” she asked, frowning at the crunch of glass at her feet.

“They broke the window, and then it was a simple matter of reaching in and unlocking the door. You need a good alarm system. I’ll take care of it.”

The door had four small framed-in windows, and they’d broken one of the bottom ones. “Bastard.”

“Find Pelli?”

“No.” She tried calling him again, but didn’t get even a small meow back from him. “He must be hiding somewhere, but I can’t take the time to find him.”

Cody pulled the door wide. “Let’s get you to the clinic, then I’ll come back and do a search while I’m waiting for the alarm company.”

Two hours later, Riley settled a sleeping Arthur into the carrier next to Merlin. “He’s going to be okay.” She watched for a moment as Merlin gave his friend’s face a bath before curling around Arthur as if to protect him. She’d almost lost him, and anger that someone had given him poison burned low in her stomach.

“I’m so glad,” Maria said. She got up from the chair in the corner where she’d been sitting and came over, giving Riley a hug. “Ready to go home?”

“As soon as I get things cleaned up.”

“I’ll stay and take care of it,” Brooke said from the sink where she was washing her hands.

The K2 team had jumped into action the moment Cody had called his boss. An alarm company was at her house, installing the best available system, and Maria’s husband, Jake, was patrolling the clinic parking lot while Maria had stayed with Riley, giving her support whenever possible. The clinic had been closed until Riley could return, but Cody had called Brooke, and soon after both she and Michelle had shown up.

She gave Brooke a hug. “I’m planning to be here tomorrow, but don’t schedule anything. We’ll go over the appointment book and start rescheduling everyone we cancelled this week.” She was tired and her head pounded like the devil, but that was nothing compared to what Arthur had just gone through.

“I’m going to go check on Jake while you’re finishing up,” Maria said.

She smiled at her friend. “I don’t know how to thank everyone. You guys are like movie superheroes the way you spring into action. I really appreciate it.”

“Like my brother said, we take care of our own.” Maria waved as if it were nothing, and then left to go find her husband.

As a feminist, Riley thought she should probably resent that they believed she couldn’t take care of herself, but she was also a realist. Whoever the person was, they had tried to run her over and had managed to sneak up on her, so she wasn’t invincible. The K2 guys had circled the wagons with her in the middle, and she wondered how she’d ever thank them enough.

There was no sign of Pelli. Cody dreaded telling Riley her kitten was missing, and as he stood outside her front door waiting for her to get out of Jake and Maria’s car, he knew it was going to happen in a minute. He watched as she reached over the backseat and gave Maria a hug, and then said something to Jake that made him laugh. Cody gave Jake a wave as the car backed out of the driveway.

Even with the puffy eyes from crying and her long hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, she was gorgeous. He met her halfway down the sidewalk and took the cat carrier from her, wrapped his free arm around her shoulder, and pulled her close.

“Jake called, said Arthur’s gonna be okay. That’s great news.”

She leaned her face against his arm. “It was touch and go for a while, but he’s a fighter. I was so scared I was going to lose him.”

There was probably not another man who would understand her fear as much as he did. He was getting close to accepting that he’d never find Layla, and it was a hurt deep in his heart knowing he’d lost her.

“Even though he’s a cat, I’m awful glad he’s okay,” Cody teased.

“You know you love him.” He opened the door, following her inside, and her eyes darted around the room. “You found Pelli, right?”

The owner of the alarm company walked into the living room. “We should be done here in about an hour.”

Cody welcomed the interruption. The last thing he wanted to do was tell her Pelli was gone. “Take however long you need to make sure it’s right.” Doug gave a two-finger salute before disappearing back into the bedroom.

“Who was that?” Riley asked.

He set the carrier on the coffee table. “Doug Villiers. He’s here with two of his employees. They’re installing a state-of-the-art alarm system. Tomorrow he’ll do your clinic.” While that had been going on, Cody had managed to straighten up her house. Fortunately, no lasting damage had been done, only upended things and Riley’s stuff tossed to the floor.

“Oh, okay. Where’s Pelli?”

He took her hand and led her to the sofa, sitting beside her. “I’m sorry, darlin’, but he’s not here.”

“Maybe he’s hiding.” Tears pooled in her eyes.

“I don’t think so. I’ve looked in every cabinet and hiding place I could find.” When the tears overflowed and streamed down her cheeks, he wrapped his arms around her and held her close. “I think he’s alive. We just have to find him.” He wished he could be sure about that, but his gut said the bad guy would have left Pelli’s body for her to find if they’d killed the cat.

There was so much hope and trust in her eyes that he silently vowed he’d find her kitten even if he had to tear the town apart.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

F
riday afternoon, Riley slipped on a pair of black-and-gray silk pajama pants and a soft, light-gray pullover top after taking a shower. Hair dried and left down her back, face moisturized, and lips glossed, she decided she was done. Cody had taken care of feeding her since she’d come home from the hospital, but tonight she would make dinner.

One thing she never scrimped on was food. At any given time, her pantry and refrigerator were full. She was self-aware enough to understand that her reason for needing to have an abundance of food on hand was a direct correlation to her childhood.

She liked to cook, and on Sundays would often make a batch of freezable meals. After Cody left for his doctor’s appointment, she eyed the possibilities in her freezer, settling on lasagna. That, along with French bread and a salad, should satisfy a man’s stomach.

She wasn’t sure what she would have done without him these past few days. He had stayed at her side, held her until she fell asleep each night, and true to his word, blended into the woodwork during her days at her clinic. She’d cut her day short so Cody could bring her home before he left to see his doctor, but parked in front of her house, guarding her, was a man from K2, one she’d not met.

One thing she didn’t like was that Cody moved to the couch each night after she fell asleep. She wasn’t afraid of him, didn’t believe he would hurt her during one of his nightmares, but he refused to take the chance.

They still hadn’t had sex and that was going to change tonight. Her headaches were gone, and she was more than ready. Her plan for the evening was a romantic dinner and then bed. Her only concern was Cody. He’d been quiet all day, and had spent most of the morning working on the homework he’d been assigned, which he’d declined to talk about.

As she set the table, she glanced at her two cats. Both were curled up with Pretty Girl and Sally, and it amazed her how well Arthur and Merlin had taken to Cody’s dogs. The cats had searched for Pelli, especially Arthur, and they’d been subdued since he’d gone missing. Thinking of Pelli brought tears to her eyes. She was so worried about him. Cody believed that he was alive, and she prayed he was right.

She swallowed the lump in her throat, and went looking for where she’d put the candles, finding them on a shelf in the back of the pantry. They were a nice addition to her table setting. Salad made and the lasagna ready to go in the oven, she turned on some soft music, picked up a magazine, and sat to wait for Cody.

Only a few minutes had passed before she heard his truck, and she watched out the window as he got out and went to talk to her bodyguard. After a few minutes of conversation, Cody jogged to his house and disappeared inside, emerging a short time later wearing a different shirt, and she figured he’d probably showered. The man who had been guarding her had left.

At her mailbox, Cody stopped and removed her mail. As he began walking toward her door, he flipped through the envelopes, pausing to stare at one of them.

Please, not another one. She went to the alarm and turned it off before opening the door. “Is it . . . ?”

“Think so. Your address is in block letters and there’s no return address.” He pulled her into his arms. “Let’s go inside.”

His dogs trotted to him to welcome him back, and her cats, for the first time, nosed their way in. Cody gave them all equal attention. The man was an animal pied piper.

“Down,” he said, and Sally and Pretty Girl plopped at his feet. Merlin, normally aloof, stepped onto Sally’s back and sat. Arthur decided to follow the dogs’ example, and flattened himself out next to Pretty Girl. It was so cute, the way the four of them had bonded, and it only made her miss Pelli all the more. He should be a part of the little family the animals had created.

Riley eyed the envelope. Was it proof Pelli was alive or something bad? “Open it.”

“You have any rubber gloves?”

Oh, right, he’d want it checked for fingerprints. “Be right back.” She hurried to the kitchen, sending up a little prayer that whatever was in that envelope wouldn’t be something horrible. As an afterthought, she grabbed a paring knife for Cody to use as a letter opener.

Back by his side, she held her breath as he struggled to put on kitchen gloves that were sized for her hands. After sliding the knife under the envelope’s flap, he pulled out a sheet of paper and unfolded it.

“Pelli,” she whispered at seeing the photo. Her baby was peering out of a wire cage, and he looked so sad. But he was alive, at least when the picture was taken. At the top of the page were words typed in a funny script.

H
OW
M
UCH
D
O
Y
OU
L
OVE
H
IM
?

“What does that mean?” Unable to bear seeing him caged like that, she jumped up and went into the kitchen. She needed to start dinner, or cut a lime for beers, or would he rather have something different? Dammit, she didn’t know. She burst into tears.

A pair of strong, masculine arms wrapped around her, and she turned, burying her face against Cody’s chest. “I can’t stand to think of him suffering.”

“I know, darlin’. Why don’t you make us both one of those slushy beers? I have some things to tell you.”

She peered up at him. “Do you have a lead?”

“We have an idea of what kind of person we’re looking for.” He brushed her tears away with his thumbs. “Make those beers while I take the dogs out, then we’ll talk. Grab your laptop, too.”

Twenty minutes later, she sat, clutching her ice-cold bottle while trying not to get her hopes up. “What do you know? Do you have a name?”

“No, not a name, but a profile. I stopped by K2 after my appointment, and Kincaid gave me the profile he got back today from his friend at the FBI.” He opened her laptop and inserted a thumb drive.

A page came up, and she frowned at seeing it was only a few paragraphs.

Cody angled the screen so she could see it better. “According to the boss, this profiler is one of the best, even when she doesn’t have much to go on.”

Riley had to agree that they didn’t have a lot of information to pass on, but as she began to read, she was impressed with the profiler’s insights.

This is personal to the perp, most likely a woman, age forty to sixty, possibly with a history of mild mental illness that has escalated after she suffered a loss. Perhaps more than one loss of someone or something close to her, such as a second family member, or her home, or possibly a beloved pet, which combined, triggered a mental breakdown.

The perp feels she has been tragically wronged in some way by Dr. Austin, and is attempting to make her look incompetent because she cannot save the animals being poisoned. It is my understanding that Dr. Austin has been able to save some of the pets, and this will enrage the perp. Therefore, I advise Dr. Austin to be on guard, as I expect the attacks will intensify and will be directed more at her personally.

Intensify? As if they weren’t already intense. Riley leaned back against the sofa. “How can she possibly get all that from what little we know?” She glanced at Cody to see that he stared at the page—his lips compressed into a thin line—and there was a dangerous glint in his eyes. He didn’t like that last line either.

“I was curious about that, too, and asked the boss.” He closed the lid to the laptop. “He called her while I was there and put her on the speaker. She said a few things. One, that a woman is more likely to play games whereas a man is more likely to cut right to the chase. The poisoning of the animals was an attempt to make you look bad, which is what she means by playing games.”

“Okay, that makes sense, I guess.” This whole thing made her stomach sick.

“She stressed that even though her profile is based on years of experience and training that she could be wrong. That we shouldn’t rule out any possibility until we have more to go on.”

How had her life come to this? She loved animals. All animals, be they cats, dogs, bunnies, or even the brown mouse little Lindsey loved with her nine-year-old heart, and brought in every time it sneezed.

Riley squeezed her eyes shut. Her life’s work was to keep her patients healthy, giving their humans as much time with their furry friends as possible. What she really wanted was to crawl into bed and pull a pillow over her head. Was it her fault she’d pushed someone already unbalanced over the edge?

She tried to think of a middle-age woman who had brought in a dog or cat—or hell, maybe even a rabbit or hedgehog . . . how was she supposed to know? “It makes me sick to think I did something to start all this.”

“Come here, darlin’.” He put his arm around her and tugged her to his side.

Snuggled up next to Cody, she rested her head on his shoulder, wishing they’d met under different circumstances. No crazy person after her, and no nightmares for him because of something that happened in Afghanistan.

“Tomorrow, you need to start going back through your files, see if there’s anything in them that strikes you as odd or fitting to what the profiler said.” He rested his chin on top of her head.

“I know, but I don’t want to talk about this tonight. How did your appointment go this afternoon?” It was intimate, the way they were nestled together, and for one night, she didn’t want to think about poisoned pets.

“Tell you what. Let’s go out, have a nice dinner, and I’ll tell you about my appointment later, after we get back.” He nuzzled his nose against her hair. “You smell so good.”

“I was just thinking the same thing about you.” And he did smell great, the hint of soap from his shower, and the spicy aftershave scent that she could breathe in forever.

He chuckled. “Guess we could just sit here all night then, smelling each other.”

“We could, but I have other plans for you.” When he stroked his fingers over the skin on her neck, she shivered from the pleasure.

“Do you now?”

“Oh yes.” She lifted her hand to her shoulder, lacing her fingers through his. “I’m going to feed you, then you’re going to play for me and tell me about your appointment. After that, I’m going to reward you for talking about things I know you have no wish to.”

“Mmm, sounds a little like bribery to me.”

Cody had no desire to talk about Afghanistan, or flashbacks, or nightmares, or his messed up head. But Tom had told him this afternoon that one of the first things he needed to start doing was to share what was going on inside his mind with those close to him.
Share
. He hated that word. According to Tom, however, the longer he held everything in, trying to go it alone, the longer it would take to clean up the mess in his head.

Cody had laughed at that. “Clean up the mess in my head? Is that the kind of medical terminology they taught you in med school?” It was true, though. His head was definitely messy. And he wanted more than anything to clean it up, so he’d take Tom’s advice and talk. He already had talked to Kincaid when he’d stopped by K2 after his appointment. It hadn’t been as hard as he’d expected.

“Call it bribery if you want, but whatever works. I don’t want to go out tonight, though.” She turned her face and brought his hand to her lips, kissing his fingers. “I’ve already got dinner planned.”

“Works for me, darlin’.” He hadn’t particularly wanted to go out either, but had felt like he should make the offer since her condition for getting her into his bed was that they date, which they’d yet to do. “Since you have everything planned, you’re the boss tonight.”

“Awesome.” She let go of his hand and jumped up. “You’ve been taking care of me all week, so tonight, I’m taking care of you. Take a nap, read a book, or whatever, while I finish making our dinner.”

“In that case, the first thing you can do to take care of me is to give me a kiss.” He spread his legs, held his hands out, and waggled his fingers.

“Said the big bad wolf.” She stepped between his legs, put her palms on his shoulders, leaned her face down, stuck her pink tongue out, and licked his lips.

“The big bad wolf wants to eat you up.” He put his hands on her hips and tried to pull her onto his lap.

“Oh, no you don’t. Dinner first. I’m in charge, remember?”

When she tried to push away, he slid his hands down the silky material of her pants, noting on his way to her thighs that she didn’t have panties on. “Nice. I like this new thing you have against wearing panties.” He let her go before he ended up dragging her down to the couch with him. “Can I help?”

As she walked away, she glanced over her shoulder, giving him a sultry smile. “No, just sit there and fantasize about what’s going to happen between us tonight.”

He could do that. Her hips swayed with each step she took away from him, and his gaze zeroed in on her ass. Did she mean what he hoped she meant? “How’s your head?”

“Haven’t had a headache for two days.”

That he was about to have dinner with a sexy woman who he personally liked seemed something of a miracle, considering the last several months. Even more noteworthy, he’d only had two nightmares since bunking on her couch. Was that because she was near? He’d started thinking of her as his calm in the middle of an angry sea, and being with her soothed his soul. If he had to talk to anyone about his problems besides the head doc, he would choose her. What did that say about his feelings for her? Missing her even though she was only in the other room, he headed for the kitchen.