Killing Secrets (12 page)

Pressing her hand protectively over the scars on her abdomen, she walked past Patrick toward the island centered in the middle of the large, sunny room. “Amanda and I won’t be a problem much longer.” She scooted gratefully onto a high-backed stool Jane pulled out next to her. “The moment Greg’s behind bars, we’re heading back to Dallas.”

Patrick nodded his approval. “You made the right decision to stay, Rachel,” he said. “It shouldn’t take long now that there’s an APB out on Bishop.”

“I hope so.” She unclipped the baby monitor—bought to listen for trouble during her traumatized daughter’s naps—from the waistband of her jeans to reassure herself it was handy, setting it on the marble counter in front of her. “Greg managed to avoid arrest by the FBI for nearly a week. He’s nothing, if not resourceful.” It was one of the reasons it had taken her so long to escape him. She’d had to find a foolproof way to get Amanda out from under his thumb.

Yeah, look how that turned out. The FBI couldn’t hold him.

A shiver raced through her. She was taking a chance by staying in Denver. But, much as she wanted to keep Amanda out of Greg’s hands, she was stuck. Rachel had a concussion and couldn’t risk becoming completely incapacitated. What would happen to Amanda then? She had no choice but to take a chance the Denver police would arrest him and eliminate the threat quickly.

If they didn’t…?

Squelching her apprehension, she missed part of Patrick’s reply. “…worry, Rachel,” he said. “They’ll find him.” He took a stool on the other side of the island, tweaking her pulse dangerously. “However,” he continued, “we should revisit how we’re going to protect you and Amanda.”

The grim expression on his face wasn’t reassuring. “When we talked at the hospital last night,” she said, “Jack said we’d be safe enough here if we stay in the house with the security alarm turned on. I promised not to go outside, and the police are only a phone call away. What more can we do? If we’re not protected here, if Jack lied—”

Jane put a hand over Rachel’s forearm to stop her words. “You said there was a problem, Patrick,” she said quietly, looking at her boss. “You spent the afternoon with Jack at the station. What’s going on?

A myriad of emotions swept over his handsome face. Worry. Anger. Weariness.

Dragging a hand over his expression, he closed off whatever he was feeling. “Let me back up a bit for Rachel,” he said, looking at her. “About eleven months ago, my construction company, Thorne Enterprises, began experiencing some problems. Equipment breakage. Supplies disappeared. Innocuous things, at first, but it didn’t take me long to start wondering about all of the bad luck.”

“That wasn’t all it was, was it?” She already suspected where this story was headed.

“I didn’t think so. The police didn’t agree.” Patrick shrugged. “Things got worse. A couple of sites were vandalized. I started losing bids I was certain were mine.”

Jane, silent until now beside Rachel, gasped. Her fingers fluttered a moment on the counter top before she clasped her hands together. “You found out who’s been messing with you?” she asked.

Rachel thought Jane’s voice sounded odd, but dismissed it when Patrick stood abruptly. “I wish!” He stalked across the kitchen, picked up a spoon and stirred a pot of spaghetti sauce Rachel had smelled all the way upstairs when she’d awakened earlier. He set the utensil down again before turning to look at her. “The police haven’t been able to give my problems much attention because they’re bogged down trying to find a serial killer who’s been preying on young women in Denver for months.”

“You’re talking about the Angel Killer, right?” she said. “I saw a newscast about the coed who went missing last week. They think she’s his fourth—” she stopped when she saw his expression. She didn’t have to finish the news anchor’s speculation about the missing woman being one of the victims.

“Yes.” Patrick nodded. “We’re talking about the Angel Killer.”

Jane shifted on her stool. “What does this have to do with our sites?”

He didn’t answer her for a long moment, but then he leaned on the kitchen counter by the stove and crossed his arms like he was putting up a wall between the question and the answer. “It’s been suggested our saboteur might be the same person who’s kidnapping these women.”

“What?” Rachel stared at him.

“You’re joking,” Jane exclaimed at the same time.

He pushed away from the counter. “I wish I was,” he said, returning to the island to sit down. He ran his fingers through his thick, dark hair. “They not only think they’re one and the same, but they believe I know him.”

“That’s insane.” Jane’s forehead furrowed. “Why would they think that?”

He glanced at Rachel, and then answered Jane. “They identified some of the clothes left by the saboteur at Southgate on Monday. They belonged to the missing girl. And, thanks to the way the clothing was displayed, they think he was sending me a message.”

“Oh, my god. How awful!” Nausea churned in Rachel’s stomach.
And she thought she had trouble.
“What kind of message?”

He snorted with disgust. “I haven’t a clue. I was bombarded with questions by Jack and the task force all afternoon, trying to figure out the connection.”

Jane, her face pale, asked the question Rachel didn’t know how to ask. “T-They don’t think you had anything to do with the kidnappings, do they?”

He flashed a crooked smile at his office manager. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Jane.”

“I didn’t mean to imply, I’m not saying you—” she stammered to a stop. “Patrick, that’s not what I meant.”

“I’m in the clear.” His laughter lightened the doom-and-gloom feeling permeating the room. “I have at least ten ironclad alibis for the last kidnapping. I was at Jack’s bachelor party with all of his cop friends. In fact, I have alibis for all of the kidnappings, even the first one back in November when I was snowed in at the family cabin. Remember, it took them two days to clear the roads so I could get out? “

Jane nodded, and then she suddenly smiled. “Only you could turn a bachelor party into a rock solid alibi, Patrick.” Her laugh boomed in Rachel’s ear, ratcheting up her headache. “Getting liquored up and taking lap dances until four in the morning is not usually cause for celebration.”

“Well, I can’t say it was much cause for celebration when I had to sober up and drive to Cheyenne either. Thankfully, I’d switched to soda around midnight when we started playing poker. Mona Johannes still took me for a hundred bucks. I swear that woman cheats.”

“Patrick Thorne!” Jane sounded scandalized. “You invited a woman to Jack’s bachelor party? What did you do, play strip poker?”

His smile looked so naughty and sexy Rachel’s heart went all aflutter. “Mona is Jack’s partner, Jane,” he said. “She’s one of the guys.
She
arranged for the stripper. And if I wanted to play strip poker it wouldn’t be with a bunch of cops.”

Jane chuckled. “Still—”

“I’m just glad I was with Jack and his brothers in blue last Thursday,” he said, sobering, “or my butt would still be sitting in an interrogation room. My alibi also doesn’t change the fact a young woman’s been kidnapped and she’s somehow connected to me.”

Rachel’s air caught in her throat when he looked directly into her eyes. “Which brings us back to our problem,” he said. “We’re going to add another layer or two to your protection just in case Bishop isn’t the only danger.”

She frowned. “You think your saboteur will come after me and Amanda?”

He shook his head. “We’re just covering our bases.”

She’d conceded so much to Jack and Patrick already. She’d sworn not to let another man gain control over her. Today, she had
two
of them managing her life. But what could she do until she was certain Greg wasn’t a threat any longer? Or worse, she wasn’t running with Amanda into a more untenable situation without any support? “Just tell me what you want to do.”

He leaned back on his stool. “You can’t stay here alone. For the next day or two, you won’t be out of my sight. Which means you and Amanda will have to come to work with me.

“Jane,” he said to his office manager, “I need you in the office, but I’d like to bring Suze to Southgate with us, too. Jack and I believe everyone will be safe enough inside the site trailer, but we don’t want Amanda getting bored.”

What about me?
Rachel wanted to ask. What was she going to do for two or three days confined to a small construction trailer with a four and five-year-old? She’d gotten used to spending her days outdoors or working in Katy’s greenhouses. They might as well put her in a jail cell.

“And, until the department can shake an officer loose or they arrest your ex,” Patrick said to Rachel, “I’ll be sleeping here.”

That
caught her attention!

When she began to argue with him—she couldn’t have this man in the same house with her and her misbehaving hormones—he put up his hand to halt the words. “This is not negotiable. I’m here for the duration. We’d move you to my house if I had a security system installed, but the system in this house is already in place and Jack’s hoping to wind this up and get Bishop off the streets before we have to look at other long-term options.”

She couldn’t get the “I’ll be sleeping here” part of his plan out of her head. Just sitting in the kitchen with Patrick was making her pulse do the happy tap dance. The thought of him sleeping anywhere in the house made her crazy. Not that she’d been sleeping in months. Still—

He looked at Jane. “Call Candy and Gus Sanderson first thing in the morning and tell them Joe will be picking up Buck tomorrow afternoon around four o’clock. He can’t get down to Colorado Springs until after school gets out. Thankfully, it’s an early release day.”

“Wait a minute.” Things were moving way too fast for Rachel’s scattered thoughts to process. She’d met Patrick’s foster brother, the high school principal, at breakfast on Sunday but— “Buck? Who’s Buck?”

Jane grinned. “Buckwheat. Evelyn and Ross’s English mastiff. He’s the most adorable thing you’ll ever meet.”

Patrick nodded. “He’s got a great rapport with kids and will be Amanda’s shadow. No one will mess with her when he’s around.”

She didn’t want any more men around—she was already surrounded by too much testosterone—but a dog wouldn’t be so bad. Except for Amanda’s Labrador puppy, Rachel had never owned a dog. Though Boomer was only a puppy, she’d felt safer with him on the isolated ranch where she and Greg had lived in California. He’d yipped at everything and everyone. She wished he hadn’t wandered off and gotten savaged by the coyote. Amanda was inconsolable when she and her daddy found him barely a week before their lives fell apart.

“What else?” she asked.

“That’s it.”

“We’re both shadowed every minute of every day.” She couldn’t quibble about the safety measures—she’d do just about anything to protect Amanda—but she didn’t have to like the necessity.

“It’s only until Jack rounds up Bishop, Rachel. Once your ex is behind bars, you can go back to weeding Mom’s gardens or return to Dallas, whatever you want. The point is you’ll both be safe.”

Patrick’s conciliatory smile softened her objections. It was the way he’d said her name, though, that melted her insides. “Okay. I guess we can make this work that long.”

For the next half hour, they discussed the specifics of how they’d implement the new security precautions. With Patrick sleeping on the couch in his parents’ living room, they’d all have breakfast together. When Jane arrived with her granddaughter, Rachel, Amanda, Suze, and Patrick would drive to the Southgate site where he was spending most of his time this week. After Joe brought the dog home tomorrow, he’d also accompany them wherever they went. Jack would have a police car stop at the site periodically to check on them.

As Rachel listened to Patrick talk, she suspected these procedures were going to put everyone out, but if they could work around them, she’d just have to find a way to grin and bear it too. It wasn’t like she felt up to doing much with her altitude sickness and concussion, and it
would
get her away from the house. Something she hadn’t realized she’d been missing until yesterday. If sitting in a hospital bed felt like an outing, she’d been cooped up too long!

Rachel was just thinking about going upstairs to wake the girls for dinner when the doorbell rang. Patrick answered the door, coming back barely a minute later with a mid-sized parcel in his hand.

“Were you expecting a package?” he asked Rachel with a frown.

She smiled, thinking about her conversation with Katy when she checked in with her nightly phone call. After she mentioned her lack of sleep, Katy offered to send her some romance novels Rachel had left unread at the nursery office for those times she’d actually sit down and take a break. Considering how often she’d thought of Patrick’s half naked body in the moonlight since she’d first spotted him, she’d almost begged Katy to send an entire library. After Greg, she shouldn’t still crave what those books described, yet she did. “Yes. Katy said she was sending a couple of things.”

When he handed her the box, she was surprised it wasn’t particularly heavy. Not as heavy as it would be with four or five hardback novels. She hesitated. Maybe it wasn’t from Katy. She had to have sent it overnight and this didn’t look right. In fact, it didn’t have a return address. “Did you have to sign for this?” she asked Patrick.