Cold Case Affair

It was as if the room were still holding its breath, just waiting for Gus to walk back in. And a strong and sudden sense gripped Muirinn that her grandfather had not been ready to quit living.

She shook the surreal notion, and stepped into the room. The attic air stirred softly around her, cobwebs lifting in currents caused by her movement. Muirinn halted suddenly. She could swear she felt a presence. Someone—or something—was in here.

Again Muirinn shook the sensation.

She set the oil lamp on the desk and seated herself in her grandfather’s leather chair. It groaned as she leaned forward to pull open the top drawer. But as she did, a thud sounded on the wooden floor, and something brushed against her leg. Muirinn froze.

She almost let out a sob of relief when she saw that it was only Quicksilver, her grandfather’s enormous old tomcat with silver fur, gold eyes, and the scars of life etched into his grizzled face. He jumped onto the desk, a purr growling low in his throat.

“Goodness, Quick,” she whispered, stroking him. “I didn’t see you come in.” He responded with an even louder rumble, and Muirinn smiled. Someone had clearly been feeding the old feline since Gus disappeared because Quicksilver was heavy and solid, if ancient.

The lawyer had mentioned that Gus’s old tenant, Mrs. Wilkie, still did housekeeping for him. She must’ve been taking care of the cat, too.

As Muirinn stroked the animal, she felt the knobs in his crooked tail, broken in two places when he’d caught it in the screen door so many years ago. Again, the sense of stolen time overwhelmed her. And with it came the guilt.

Guilt at not once having come home in eleven years.

The cat stepped into the open drawer and Muirinn edged him aside to remove the bunch of keys, her hand stilling as she caught sight of a fat brown envelope. On it was scrawled the word Tolkin in Gus’s bold hand. Muirinn removed the envelope, opened it.

Inside was a pile of old crime scene photos, most of which Muirinn recognized from a book Gus had written on the tragedy. A chill rippled over her skin.

Had Gus still been trying to figure out who’d planted the Tolkin bomb?

Despite the protracted FBI investigation, the mass homicide had never been solved. Yet while the case had turned old and cold, her grandfather had remained obsessed with it, convinced that his son’s killer still lived and walked among them in Safe Harbor.

Clearly, not even writing the bestseller had put his curiosity to rest, thought Muirinn.

She opened the drawer and spotted Gus’s laptop tucked at the very back. Her curiosity now piqued, she decided to take the envelope and the laptop downstairs to her old bedroom and look at them in bed. Perhaps she’d learn why her grandfather had gone down into that dark shaft of the abandoned mine, alone.

Jett Rutledge reached forward and turned up the volume of his truck radio. “I believe in miracles” blared from the speakers as he drove, arm out the window. In spite of the dark storm rolling in, he felt happier than he had in a long time.

He’d had a hard workout, a good dinner, a few beers with his dad at the airport club, and he’d taken some time off flying. He was now going to use this period when Troy was away at summer camp to focus on his big dream project. He wanted to prepare several more proposals that would secure financing for the next phase of a fishing lodge he was building in the wilderness farther north.

He turned onto the dirt road that snaked down to Mermaid’s Cove, heading for home. His parents had ceded their rolling oceanfront property to him years ago, opting to relocate closer to town themselves. His mother still worked occasionally as a nurse at Safe Harbor Hospital, and everything was generally more accessible from the new house—including his dad’s physiotherapy.

Few jobs aged a man quite as fast as mining. Especially working a mine like Tolkin.

The ground at Tolkin was solid rock, which meant fewer cave-ins, fewer deaths, but it also meant the company had racked up a disproportionately large number of other injuries related to the kidney and back-jarring stress of high-impact drilling.

A miner’s equipment was heavy. The men were constantly wet. Cold. The thunderous din and fumes of diesel equipment were rough on ears and respiratory tracts. And jarring along the drifts in massive trucks took its toll on bodies. So did negotiating the black ground on foot—the tunnel surfaces were invariably booby-trapped with water-filled potholes that wrenched knees, ankles and shredded tendons.

Which was what had happened to Adam Rutledge.

Jett’s dad had taken his fair share of a beating, and his injuries were worsening with arthritis and age.

But he was still alive, still watching his grandson grow, and now he was helping out with communications at the airstrip, a job Jett had scored for his father. All in all, Jett couldn’t ask for more.

As he neared Gus’s place, he wondered what was going to happen to the old man’s property now that he was gone. A thought flashed briefly through his mind that he might make an offer, join the Rutledge land with the O’Donnell acreage. But that idea led to thoughts of Muirinn O’Donnell and he instantly quashed the notion. She’d probably inherited the property. Putting in an offer would just bring him into contact with her. Jett figured he’d rather forgo the option of buying it if meant ever seeing, or talking, to her again.

His hands tensed on the wheel, anger flooding into his veins at the mere thought of Muirinn. She hadn’t even shown up for Gus’s funeral. That told him something.

It told him that she didn’t care.

She didn’t give a damn about the people she’d left behind in this town. She’d turned her back on it all—on him—and never once looked back.

Eleven years ago, Muirinn had been doing a summer stint at her grandfather’s newspaper where she’d discovered a passion for journalism. Around the same time a Hollywood production company had blown into town to do a movie on the Tolkin Mine murders, based on Gus’s book. The presence of the movie crew had turned Safe Harbor upside down, and it had fired a burning coal in Muirinn’s belly. She’d started going out to the set every day, reporting on the production, interviewing the actors and crew. In turn, the actor playing the part of Muirinn’s father had interviewed Muirinn as the surviving O’Donnell family member. In Jett’s opinion it had messed with her head, giving her a false sense of celebrity.

Then one of the crew members had suggested that Muirinn’s writing was really good, saying he’d put a word in for her at his sister’s Los Angeles magazine, and Muirinn had become completely obsessed by the idea.

Lured by absurd notions of fame, fortune and escape, she’d packed up her life and followed the crew to LA. Jett had literally begged her not to leave. He’d been so in love with that woman. He’d planned to marry her, never a doubt in his mind that they were meant for each other. But she’d been as stubborn as mule.

They’d argued hot and hard, and it had led to even hotter and angrier sex. Afterwards, she’d tried to convince Jett to go with her, but he couldn’t. He was born to live in the wilds of Alaska. It would’ve killed him to move to L.A. She’d taunted him, saying that if he really loved her enough he’d do it. And Jett, feeling her slipping from his grasp, had retaliated by saying if she did leave, he’d never forgive her, never speak to her again. He’d hate her for walking out on what they had.

Clearly, she’d taken him at his word, because the next day she’d boarded that plane and he’d never heard from her again.

Muirinn had always had a way of bringing out the irrational fire in Jett, something he regretted to this day. Because even through all his anger, Jett never had managed to let Muirinn go, and it had cost him his marriage. It had cost them … He slammed on the brakes suddenly, on the road just past Gus’s house.

A light was flickering faintly up in Gus’s attic window.

Someone was inside.

Vandals? A fire?

He put his truck into reverse, quickly backed up the road and wheeled into the rutted driveway with half a mind to alert the police before deciding it was likely just old Lydia Wilkie in there, probably using an oil lamp since the power had been disconnected after Gus’s death.

Still, it was past midnight; not a time the crazy old lady would likely be up and about inside Gus’s house.

He’d better check to make sure.

Muirinn’s sleep was shattered by a violent clap of thunder.

She jolted upright. Then she heard it again—not thunder—a thunderous banging on the door downstairs. Quicksilver shot off the bed and bolted down the hall.

Muirinn groped in the dark to light the lamp. Holding it high, she negotiated the stairs, careful not to trip over her nightdress. She halted in the hallway, glanced at the old clock. It was past midnight. Who on earth could be beating on Gus’s door at this hour?

The banging shuddered through the house again. Fear sliced into her.

She set the lamp down, reached for the bunch of keys she’d left on the hall table before going to bed. Fumbling for the right key, Muirinn headed for Gus’s gun cabinet. Another wave of banging resounded through the house.

Unlocking the cabinet, Muirinn removed Gus’s old shotgun. Hands shaking now, she loaded a cartridge, chambered the round and went to the door.

“Who is it?” she yelled.

Wind rattled hard at windows, swished through the conifers outside, branches clawing on the roof. Whoever was out there in the storm couldn’t hear her, and the pounding began again, so hard the door shook. She sucked in a deep breath and swung the door open.

And froze.

Chapter 2

“Muirinn?”

Shock slammed into Jett’s chest.

The flame in the old lantern on the hall table quivered in the wind, making shadows dance over her copper hair. But she simply stared at him, green eyes glimmering, her face ghost-white, shotgun pointed at his heart.

Jett’s gaze flickered sharply at the sight of her pregnant belly under the white cotton nightdress. “What are you doing here?” His voice came out rough, raw.

Muirinn slowly lowered the 12-gauge, her left hand rising as if to reach out and touch him. Anticipation ripped through him hot and fast. But she pushed a fall of sleep-tangled curls back from her face instead, and he realized that she was shaking. “Jett?” she whispered.

He was speechless.

Nothing in this world could have prepared him for the sheer physical jolt of seeing Muirinn O’Donnell back in Safe Harbor. Especially barefoot and pregnant.

The pulse at her neck was racing, making the small compass on a chain at her throat catch the light. It lured his gaze down to her breasts, which were full and rounded. Lust tore through him, his blood already pounding with adrenaline. Every molecule in his body screamed to touch her, pull her against him, hold her so damn tight, erase the lost years. But at the same time the sight of her softly rounded belly triggered something cold and brittle in him, a protective shell forming around his raw emotions.

He needed to step away, fast, before he did or said something stupid. “I didn’t know you were back,” he said crisply. “I saw a light up in the attic, thought it might be vandals.”

She was still unable to answer, and his words hung like an inane echo in the chasm of lost years between them. Rain began to plop on the deck.

“Gus’s place has been empty,” he explained further, clearing his throat. “But I can see you have things under control.” Jett turned to go, but he hesitated on the stairs, snared by a fierce urge to turn around, drink in the sight of her once again. “Welcome home, Muirinn,” he said brusquely, then he ran lightly down the steps toward his truck, forcing himself not to look back.

“Jett—wait!”

He stilled, rain dampening his hair.

“I … I wasn’t in the attic,” she said.

He turned very slowly. “You weren’t up there when I knocked?”

She shook her head. “I was sleeping.”

“Someone was up there, Muirinn.”

“It wasn’t me.”

He wavered, then stalked back up the stairs, flicking on the light switch as he entered the house. Nothing happened.

“I haven’t figured out how to reconnect the solar power yet.”

“Here, give me that,” he said, taking the shotgun from her. “I’ll go check things out for you, connect the power, then I’ll be gone.”

He snagged the lantern from the table and thudded up the wooden stairs.

Muirinn pressed her trembling hand to her stomach, trying to collect herself. Then, forcing out a huge breath, she followed him—and the light—up to the attic.

He creaked open the attic door, the movement causing a draft to rush in from the attic window behind Gus’s desk. Drapes billowed out, scattering papers to the floor. Outside, the rain fell heavier, the breeze carrying the moisture in with it.

“I … I could swear that window wasn’t open earlier,” Muirinn said, moving quickly into the study and stooping to gather the documents scattered across the Persian rug. Her movements were awkward around her growing stomach and she could sense Jett watching her. She stilled, and her gaze slid up to meet him.

In the light of her lantern, the planes of his face were rough, utterly masculine. His mouth was shaped with a sculptor’s fine precision, wide and bracketed by laugh lines that had deepened over the years. New, too, were the fine creases that fanned out from his cobalt eyes—eyes still as clear and piercing as the day she’d left town. And they bored into her now with an animal-like intensity that turned her knees to jelly.

Muirinn swallowed.

She knew he had to be thinking about her pregnancy. She also knew that he was too damn proud to ask. They were alike in so many ways.

She stood up, awkwardly clutching the papers to her belly, her cheeks flushing as something darkened in his eyes. Something that made her feel dangerously warm inside.

“It must have been how Quicksilver got in,” she said quietly, trying to fill the volatile space between them. “My cat,” she explained, then laughed nervously. “Gus got him for me when I turned thirteen, remember?”

“That cat can hardly be called yours, Muirinn,” he said crisply. “You left him. Eleven years ago.”

The implication was clear. She didn’t have any rights. Not here, not anymore, not in Jett’s eyes. Not even to a cat.

She moistened her lips.

Jett turned from her suddenly and crossed the room. He held the lantern up behind Gus’s desk. “You didn’t see this, either?”

“God, no!” Muirinn said, coming to his side and seeing shards of glass glinting on the carpet. The desk drawers had been wrenched open, too, folders lying scattered beneath the leather chair in which she’d sat only hours before. The computer tower beneath the desk was toppled onto its side, wires ripped from the back. A chill rustled through her.

“Someone was up here, Jett, while I was sleeping.”

Jett yanked back the heavy drapes. “The windowpane’s been shattered. Whoever came in here must have ransacked Gus’s desk.” He frowned, surveying the scene. “The sound of my truck must have interrupted them.”

Muirinn wrapped her arms over her tummy, shivering as the rain-damp wind from the broken window whispered over her skin. “Why would someone want to go through Gus’s things?”

“Hell knows,” he said, studying the floorboards under the window. “But whoever did this was clearly looking for something. He might’ve tried to take the whole computer tower because your solar power is off, and he couldn’t access the information he wanted right here.”

“He?”

“There’s dirt transfer on the wooden floor here, left by a boot, about a size 12. I’d say it was a guy.”

Another gust of wind chased a ripple of goose bumps over her skin, tightening her nipples. Jett glanced at her breasts, then caught her eyes for a long beat. He looked away quickly, rubbing his brow as he cursed softly.

“Is it that hard, Jett?” she whispered. “Seeing me again?”

He kept his face turned away from her for a long moment.

“Yeah,” he mumbled. “It is. Come—” He touched her elbow, gently ushering her out onto the landing. “We should leave the scene as is. I’ll call the cops.”

He pulled the attic door closed behind them, the space on the narrow landing suddenly close, the halo of lantern light too intimate. Jett had that effect on space—it shrank around him. It wasn’t just his physical size; he radiated a kinetic energy that simply felt too large for contained spaces. He thrived out in the wilderness, and it was why he’d refused to follow her to Los Angeles. He’d said the city would kill his spirit, who he was.

In retrospect, Muirinn knew he was right. A crowded urban environment wouldn’t accommodate a man with a latent wildness like Jett’s. He was born to roam places like Alaska, the tundra, in his plane. It’s why people like him came north of 60 in the first place.

Los Angeles would have been a concrete prison for him. But at the time, it had represented freedom and adventure to her—a key to a vibrant new world.

Yet, he had left for a while. He’d gone to Las Vegas. Where he’d gotten married. And that really burned.

It also made him a hypocrite.

He glanced down into her eyes, sensuality swimming into his features.

“Jett—” she said quietly.

He swallowed, tension growing thicker. “Get something warm on, Muirinn,” he said abruptly. “I’m going to call this in. Then I’ll connect your power and wait with you until someone from the police department arrives.”

She blew out a shaky breath, nodded. “Thanks for doing this.”

He held her eyes a moment longer, then jogged down the stairs without a word.

Jett stood in the brick archway, quietly watching Muirinn busying herself in Gus’s rustic, open-plan kitchen. She’d pulled one of her grandfather’s voluminous sweaters over her white nightgown, and she’d caught her rampant copper curls back in a barrette. He felt relieved—the other look was driving him to total distraction … or destruction. Same difference with Muirinn O’Donnell.

Damn if he hadn’t gone red-hot at the sight of her on hands and knees in that cotton nightgown as she’d gathered up Gus’s papers, strewn all over the attic office. There was something about her pregnant body that drove him wild. And made him incredibly sad.

Hurt.

She’d always had such power over him, yet she’d never known the extent of her control. But now, in Gus’s oversized sweater, she looked small, vulnerable. Jett wasn’t so sure this look was any better for his health. It aroused protective instincts in him—things he didn’t want to feel for her. This was such a total shock, seeing her again, without warning. He needed to figure out what this might mean to his family. To his son.

To him.

“Hey,” she said with a soft smile, as she caught him watching. His blood quickened.

He stepped into the kitchen, making sure he remained on the opposite side of the rough wood table.

She poured him tea from a stubby copper kettle, which she set back on the gas stove, still steaming. He avoided eye contact as he took a seat at the table, and accepted the mug from her.

She’d made his tea just the way he liked it, black and sweet. The fact that she even remembered cut way too close to the bone. Why should it matter? Truth was, it did.

Everything about Muirinn mattered.

And right now he was struggling with his emotions, trying to avoid the elephant in the room that was her pregnancy, trying to be the gentleman and not ask, yet desperate to know who the father was, where he was. Why she was here alone.

The fact that she was expecting a baby at all sliced Jett like a knife. He forced out a heavy breath of air. Civility be damned—they were beyond that. There was no way to be polite about what had transpired between them, no way to bridge the divide with small talk. So he chose a direct approach. “You never came to visit Gus,” he said quietly. “You didn’t even come home for the funeral. So why are you here now?”

She studied him with those shrewd cat eyes for a moment. “I came to take over Safe Harbor Publishing, Jett. Gus left me the company in his will, along with this property.”

He literally felt himself blanch. “You’re going to stay?”

Pain flickered over her features. “Maybe.” She inhaled deeply, bracing her hands on the back of a chair. “The will stipulated that I could sell the business, but only after a year. That means running it myself for twelve months, or hiring someone else to do it.”

“So you’re here to hire someone?”

“No. I’m here to run it.”

“For one year?”

“Look, Jett, I’m not going to get in your way, okay? I’m not going to cramp your style.” She hesitated. “I … I saw you down at the ferry dock this morning, with your son—” She wavered again, as if not quite trusting herself to say the next words. “And your wife.”

Perspiration prickled across his lip. He’d made a mistake starting this conversation now. He set the mug down, getting up in the same movement, and he stalked into the hall. “I’ll just go wait outside for Officer Gage.”

“Jett?” she called after him.

He halted, hand on the doorknob.

“What’s his name? Your son?”

A strange emotion tore through him, raw and wild. Part of him didn’t want to give the name up to her, give any part of his boy to her. “Troy,” he said quietly, still facing the door. “Troy Rutledge.”

She was dead silent for a long moment. “Troy was my father’s name.”

“Your father was a good man, Muirinn. I was proud to name my son after him.”

“I … it just surprises me.”

He turned. “Why?”

“Half the town—the union hardliners—hated my dad for crossing that picket line, your own father included. They called my dad a scab, called me terrible names at school, humiliated my mother in the supermarket. They hated my father enough to blow him and eleven others up with a bomb.”

“It was a bad time for everyone, Muirinn.” Jett paused. “But no matter what people said, you know that I always cared for your father. If Troy O’Donnell hadn’t introduced me to model airplanes, to the idea of flying, I might have become a miner, not a pilot. He was the one who told me, when I was ten years old, that I could do something better with my life than go down that mine. He was a friend, Muirinn. I was twelve when he died, and I was also devastated by his murder. It ate my father up, too, regardless of what he might have said about your dad.”

Emotion seeped into her eyes, making her nose pink—making her so damn beautiful. “Thank you, Jett,” she whispered. “I … I needed to hear that.”

“It’s not for you,” he said quietly. “It’s for a man who knew honor, knew his home. Knew how not to deliberately hurt the people who cared for him.”

She stared at him. “Do you really still hate me that much?”

Wind rattled the panes. Rain smacked at the windows. “I hate what you did, Muirinn, to the people who loved you.”

He closed the heavy oak door behind him with a soft thud that seemed to resonate down through her bones.

Muirinn slumped into a chair at the kitchen table, and buried her face in her hands. If she’d known it was going to be quite so rough to see him again, she wouldn’t have come. If Jett only knew what she’d gone through since she’d left Safe Harbor. He didn’t have a clue just how much his ultimatum had cost her back then … how much it had cost them.

She should’ve told the lawyer to just go ahead and hire someone—anyone—to run Safe Harbor Publishing, and to put the word out that the company would be up for grabs within twelve months.

But at the same time, Muirinn felt in her heart that Gus had wanted her to come back. Why else would he have insisted she be given the small compass along with the terms of his will? She’d told Gus that she was pregnant, having a baby alone. He might have been trying to show her a way home, to remind her where her family roots lay.