At Close Range

Only it wasn’t the sort of dirt she’d wanted to find.

It was far worse.

The newspaper articles were from the major Denver papers. The headlines jumped out at her, highlighted one-line summaries that told a terrible story.

She sucked in a breath and moved to blank the screen, but a hint of movement and a low curse from the doorway warned that she was already too late. She spun in her chair and saw that Varitek stood in the doorway of her small office, close enough to read the damning words over her shoulder.

His eyes were dark, his expression closed. “Find what you needed, Officer?”

Her stomach knotted and she stood, unwilling to let him loom over her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pried.”

He didn’t nod, didn’t smile, didn’t let her off the hook. Instead, he said, “No, you shouldn’t have. It’s none of your business.” He didn’t move, didn’t even seem to be breathing, though she knew that was an illusion. “How much did you read?”

“Not much,” she answered quickly. “Just the headlines.”

Headlines like Woman Murdered Returning Home From Art Show, and Cop Husband Vows Revenge Against Diablo Brothers.

“Then what else do you want to know?” he said, voice dark with an emotion that didn’t show in his face. “Should I tell you that Robyn and I fought about that damned art show? She wanted people to know how run-down the schools were in that section of town, wanted to help improve them. She moved her paintings down there and planned a party, a grand opening for God’s sake.” Grief deepened the lines beside his mouth and the muscles at his jaw bunched with tension. “I made her promise not to go out there without me. Then I let her down because I got a call. A break in the case.” He paused. “It was a plant, of course. A diversion. I got back just in time to find her. In time to say good-bye.”

Cassie made a wordless sound of sympathy while her heart tore in her chest and leaked pain. She reached out, but didn’t quite touch him. “I’m sorry.”

The words seemed inadequate. She reached over and blanked the computer screen, as though erasing the headlines could erase the memories.

“If I’d been there to drive her home…” His expression was closed, as though he were talking to himself now, as though this were a conversation he’d been through a thousand times in his head. “If I’d been better about separating my life from my work…” He trailed off and refocused on her. He scowled, but the expression didn’t seem as fierce as it had before. “Sorry. Not your problem.”

But it was her problem, she realized. It explained what had happened back in the alley, and why he had moments of being as overprotective as one of her four older brothers. Why he kept trying to push her to the edges of her own investigations.

It was her problem, because it was affecting her ability to do her job and make her place in Bear Claw.

Knowing it, but also knowing that she’d never been good at touchy-feely emotional conversations, she jammed her hands into her pockets. “I’m sorry, Varitek. There’s nothing I can say to make it better. Nothing at all. But I won’t let you shut me out of this case like you did with the kidnappings, just because I’m a woman and you’re afraid I might get hurt.”

He scowled down at her. “I didn’t shut you out.”

He was closer than she’d realized, a mere half step away. She wanted to retreat from the warmth of him, the sheer size of him, but held firm. “Yes, you did. Maybe you didn’t mean to, and maybe the lab fire made it simpler to use FBI equipment and personnel. But in the end, it was your work, not mine, and everyone here knew it.”

“I didn’t—”

She held up a hand to stop him. “Don’t worry. We’re both at fault because I let you take over. But not this time. This time you’re on my turf and I’m not giving it up.” She took a breath. “Look, I’ll admit it. With Alissa and Maya away, I could use help. But this is going to have to be my investigation and my evidence collection. I’m in charge this time.”

She expected an explosion, but instead he closed the scant distance between them, until that damn warmth kindled in her midsection and she saw the heat reflected in his eyes. “What do I get if I agree?”

Her first thought was so thoroughly sexual that she stumbled back on a wash of heat and surprise before catching herself and standing fast. Since when did her mind dwell in the gutter?

Sure she’d been on a dating hiatus for the past few months while getting settled in Bear Claw, and before that she’d stuck to casual things that rarely developed past pleasant kisses. She liked sex well enough, but she’d been…busy. Why had her body picked now to wake up?

She gritted her teeth, forced the heat aside and said, “What do you want?”

He stared down at her for a moment, and she didn’t dare interpret his expression, which was part closed off, part something else. Then he said, “The guy in the alley said he’d see you again. If he wasn’t focused on you before, he is now.”

The chilly logic chased away some of the heat. Cassie crossed her arms and swallowed a bubble of worry. “That’s good. It’ll give us something to work with. Maybe he’ll be stupid and make a mistake.”

“And maybe he won’t,” Varitek countered, voice dead level. “Bradford Croft wasn’t as smart as his crimes. That, plus the murder scene today, tells me we’re dealing with the slicker of the partners. We can’t count on him making a mistake.”

Cassie forced herself to meet Varitek’s eyes. “Which means?”

“That you’re in danger,” he answered flatly. “So here’s the deal. I’ll let you run the case and make you look good in front of the locals, but I’m in charge of security. In the lab, in the field, wherever. No debates, no questions asked. What I say goes.”

She bristled. “You’re not letting me do anything, and I don’t need you to make me look good.”

“Take it or leave it.” He shrugged. “I’m not here for a turf war. I’m here to help you people find a murderer before he strikes again.” His eyes sharpened on hers. “And he will strike again. Soon.”

She couldn’t argue against that. The pose and the missing fingertip argued for ritual. The lack of good evidence argued for the perfection of long practice.

Yes, the killer’s appetite would be whetted now. It was only a matter of time.

But it galled her to give Varitek control. She didn’t need anyone to protect her. She could take care of herself. Hadn’t she proved that when she moved away from her father and her four too-protective older brothers?

That thought brought an insidiously undermining voice that said, Yes, and you hooked up with a man just like them, only much, much worse.

“Do we have a deal?” Varitek asked, snapping her away from the memory of being weak.

She stiffened her spine because she wasn’t weak anymore, damn it. But she also wasn’t stupid or suicidal. Varitek had a point, whether she liked it or not. The guy in the red hat had rigged her brakes, and he’d promised to see her again.

So finally, though she wished there was another option, she nodded. “Deal.”

They didn’t shake on the agreement. She told herself it was because they didn’t need to, that their words were good enough. But deep down inside, she knew why she didn’t offer to shake his hand.

She didn’t want to know what it would feel like to touch him. Rather, she wanted it too much, and physical attraction had been her downfall once before.

She wouldn’t let that happen again.

Chapter Three

The next morning dawned a balmy forty degrees, which was both good and bad news for Cassie and Seth, who had decided to reexcavate the canyon gravesite in search of additional clues. It was good news because the ground would soften up quickly. Bad news because it meant they would be working in mud.

Knowing it, Seth skipped his usual slacks and button-down shirt and went with jeans and a sweatshirt. He kept a packed overnight bag in his truck, which saved him from having to hit the local mall. He armed himself with the backup weapons he kept in the truck’s locked console, and pulled out of the hotel parking lot feeling more centered than he had the previous day.

He’d considered spending the night on Cassie’s couch, but she’d nixed the plan in no uncertain terms and he hadn’t pushed because he’d needed the time away from her, needed to decompress.

He’d worked hard to deal with the memories and the guilt, yet a few old headlines on a Web search engine had slammed him right back to that place, breaching his defenses and sweeping him into the memories before he’d been prepared.

Seth braked the truck beneath a red light, and scrubbed a hand across his face, though that did nothing to erase the image of a delicate, dark-skinned woman with a riot of curls and laughing brown eyes. Robyn. Sweet, big-hearted, impulsive Robyn. They had met in college and immediately embarked upon a tumultuous relationship. The sex had been fantastic, their friendship less so, but that hadn’t seemed to matter. They broke up, got back together, broke up again and got back together again just after Seth entered the FBI.

That time it had stuck. They had married a year later, and if marriage hadn’t ended their problems, it had given them a moral and legal imperative to stick it out. Seth didn’t believe in divorce. Hell, his parents had been together going on forty years. They’d taught their children—Seth and his older sister, CeeCee—that marriage was a forever thing. Choose it once and don’t falter.

Well, Seth had tried not to falter, but he had in the end.

An annoyed horn blast warned him that the light had gone green, and Seth hit the gas, angry at himself for going down that mental path when he had more relevant things to worry about.

Like catching a killer while protecting an evidence tech who didn’t want to be protected.

He’d asked the chief to send patrols past Cassie’s house at intervals throughout the night. They hadn’t reported anything suspicious—Seth had checked—but he didn’t relax until he arrived at the neat, two-family house she’d sublet.

She answered the door at his knock, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt akin to his, along with a battered-looking parka and lace-up boots with a sturdy tread. Her glossy blond hair was pulled back in a severe ponytail that accented the graceful sweep of her neck. His eyes locked onto the soft spot behind her ear, and the ragged frustrations of a long, sleepless night redirected themselves into an unfamiliar sizzle.

An unexpected want.

She glanced over at him and her brows drew together. “You ready?”

That was the question, Seth realized. He was ready for the case, but not for her. He wasn’t ready for the way his blood kicked when he saw her, the way he seemed to have already memorized her features, and the way he noticed how she always took a deep breath before turning on the attitude, as though it wasn’t entirely natural for her.

That was why he’d driven to Bear Claw in the first place, he finally acknowledged. To test himself. To tempt himself.

When he and Cassie has worked together earlier in the year, sparks had flown as they’d clashed over everything from fingerprinting techniques to lunch orders. At first that had been a relief, because he’d promised himself that when it was time to date casually again, he’d choose women he got along with rather than the ones who stirred him up. But once he’d returned to Denver, he’d found himself thinking about her, wondering how she was doing and who she was doing it with.

Bad sign.

“Yeah, I’m ready. Let’s go.” He stepped back from the door and gestured to his truck.

The sooner they got digging, the sooner he could get back to Denver with his question answered. Maybe he was ready to emerge from the isolation of the past four years and date again. But there was no way he was ready—or willing—to date Cassie Dumont. He wanted a calm, mature friendship with a woman, something based in common ground this time, rather than attraction and excitement.

The decision should have made him feel better as they walked to his truck in silence, then drove out to the state forest.

So why was he more frustrated than ever?

He didn’t have an answer for that as he turned his truck into the Bear Claw Canyon State Park, bypassed the parking area and followed a narrow track into the park, almost to the edge of Bear Claw Canyon.

When they’d both climbed out of the truck and shouldered their equipment, Cassie glanced sideways at him. “You okay?”

“I have a bad feeling about this case,” he said, not really answering the question.

She bristled. “If you’d bothered to let me help before, you’d know that I’m damn good at my—”

“I’m not talking about your work!” he snapped. “I’m talking about your truck brakes and the guy in the red hat, about the fact that you’re in—” He cut himself off, snapping his jaw shut on the words because he already knew they wouldn’t do any good. Cassie was on a mission to prove herself to the other cops, and there was no way in hell she was letting him win this argument.

Just like Robyn and her damned art show.

Cassie stepped closer, so close he could smell the faintest hint of woman over the earthy scent of the spring thaw. That fragrance tangled itself in his soul, where Robyn and Cassie had somehow gotten mixed up together. She said, “Look, Varitek. My mother died when I was a little girl, but I’ve never lost someone close to me as an adult. I won’t pretend to know how it feels. I can’t. But stop trying to put your past on me. I’m a cop. Either you find a way to treat me like one or this isn’t going to work.”

“That’s—” ridiculous, he started to say, but couldn’t because they both knew she had a point. He wasn’t treating her like a cop. Hell, he wasn’t even treating her like the female agents and officers he dealt with on a daily basis. He was treating her like…what? A girlfriend? A lover?

She was neither.

So he inclined his head and stepped back, letting himself be the one to back down this time. “Fine. You’re a cop. Let’s dig.”

THEY WORKED IN PARALLEL, setting up portable heaters to melt through what was left of the slushy spring freeze, and clearing away the mud layers they’d backfilled after the original excavation of the grave. There was no conversation, no banter between coworkers.

At first, Cassie was grateful for the silence, which gave her time to settle down. After a while, she even admitted—to herself at least—that Varitek wasn’t the only one at fault. No matter what he said or did, her first response was to attack. Maya had commented on it during the earlier case, but Cassie had brushed it off as Maya being Maya. The psych specialist didn’t know when to turn it off and stop analyzing people.

But now, soothed by the rhythm of digging, Cassie forced herself to take a good hard look at her behavior over the past day. Heck, the past six months, ever since the three women had moved to Bear Claw and set up the new department.

The best defense is a good offense, her father always said. A man’s man, Cody Dumont had been far more comfortable with aphorisms and sports metaphors than one-on-one conversations. But was he right?

Even Alissa had suggested she tone down the attitude, and that wasn’t Alissa’s style. As Cassie dug down to the farthest reaches of the original excavation and resieved the muddy slime for a bone or bullet fragment they might have missed, she wondered whether her friends had a point.

It wasn’t Varitek’s fault she didn’t fit in. It was hers. Maybe Lee had been right, after all. Maybe she couldn’t cut it.

At the thought, she heard the clatter of something distinctly unmudlike in her sieve. “Hey! I’ve got something!”

Varitek was at her side in an instant. “Bone?”

“No. Metal. Jewelry, maybe?” Professional excitement buzzed through her as she worked the object free of the clingy, frozen earth, careful to set aside the surrounding material for further analysis. “A ring, I think.”

Sure enough, once she rinsed it in the bucket of water she’d set aside for the purpose, she caught the glint of yellow gold and the flash of a fat red stone.

Varitek squinted at it. “A class ring, I think. Should be traceable.” He grinned at her and nodded. “Good work.”

The two words shouldn’t have warmed her so thoroughly. She told herself it was professional pleasure that he’d credited her with the discovery, cop-to-cop.

She almost believed it.

She photographed, bagged and tagged the evidence, then stowed it in her kit to take back to the lab.

They wouldn’t expect to get any trace evidence off it—previous testing of the strata and bones had indicated that the skeleton had been in the ground for ten to fifteen years—but if they were lucky, it would help them identify the remains.

And from there, maybe the killer.

“Want to keep going?” Varitek asked.

She rocked back on her heels and surveyed the scene. “Well, we’ve gone down to the original excavation and past it by about six inches. We’re in undisturbed ground for the most part, so we probably won’t find anything else. That being the case, let’s go down another two inches just to be sure.”

He nodded. “Works for me.” He glanced at the sky, which was clear and bright with spring. “The weather’s on our side, and putting a name to this skeleton would be a huge break.” He dug in. “Besides, the next task force meeting isn’t until this evening.”

The chief had timed their meetings for the overlap when the day shift went off and the night shift was just coming on. It sounded good in theory, but in practice the task force cops worked pretty much round the clock and reported in when they had something.

Knowing it, Cassie kept one ear out for the ring of her cell as she and Varitek skimmed off another layer of wet grit.

The first call was from the ME, Boniface, who reported that the young man had died of strangulation, as the ligature marks had suggested, and that the finger wound had likely been caused by a smooth bladed knife. He couldn’t explain the cautery of the wound, but theorized that the knife could have been heated.

Cassie made a mental note to check the wound scrapings for carbonization that might support the hypothesis.

Other reports filtered in as the afternoon grew long and the grave widened. Mendoza and Piedmont reported that the apartment where the body was dumped had been rented six months earlier in the name of Randy Meyers, but things got complicated after that. Meyers, a midlevel extreme skier, had been tracked down in Tahoe. He claimed to have handed the apartment over to a female friend when he’d grown bored of the Bear Claw slopes. She, in turn, had sublet to some guy, first name Nevada, last name unknown.

They would identify the body eventually, but it would take time.

After that report, there was a lull in the phone traffic and the silence hung heavy. Finally, almost unwillingly, Varitek said, “You mentioned that your mother died when you were young. That must have been tough.”

Cassie wasn’t sure which surprised her most, that he’d made a personal comment, or that he remembered her passing mention. Then again, they were up to their elbows in a grave. Death seemed like a reasonable topic.

“My father raised me from five on,” she answered, “and my four older brothers pitched in. They nearly smothered me with their good intentions, but I love them dearly.” She paused, then added, “From a distance.”

Varitek smiled slightly. The expression softened his face just enough to take it from fierce to unexpectedly sexy. “I have an older sister,” he said. “CeeCee was overprotective as hell when we were kids. I can’t begin to imagine what four brothers must’ve been like.”

“A little like you times four,” she said without thinking, disarmed by the fact that they were actually having a pleasant conversation, “only they don’t have the tall, dark and handsome thing going for them.”

Then she froze. Oh, God. Please tell me I didn’t just say that aloud.

But his sudden, complete stillness told her that she had, indeed.

She climbed to her feet, stripped off her gloves and faced him. Blood tingled in her cheeks. “Sorry. That was uncalled for, especially after I lectured you about treating me like a cop. Let’s forget I said that. Let’s forget I even thought it.”

But when Varitek stood and faced her, his expression was intent and wholly focused on her. “You want to know why I reached the crime scene before you yesterday? Because I was already in town. I’d driven down here for no real reason except to drop in on you and see…” He twisted his lips with more self-deprecation than humor. “Hell, I don’t know why. Because I couldn’t get you out of my head, I suppose.”

Blood skimmed through her body, just below her skin, warming her, worrying her. She blew out a breath and said, “Look, Varitek—”

“You should probably call me Seth at this point, don’t you think?”

“Look,” she said, and skipped the name entirely, “this is a really, really bad idea. We can barely hold a civil conversation, and I’m not in the market for a…whatever.” She’d been uncomfortable talking about her emotions ever since her relationship with Lee, who had been a master of taking those emotions and turning them back on her until she wasn’t sure where her opinion left off and his began. Besides, she wasn’t about to name the things that flitted through her mind, like…lover. Boyfriend. Husband. Soul mate.

“I’m not in the market for a whatever, either.” A dark, introspective smile touched his lips. “I think maybe that’s why I came down. So I could remind myself that we’d be wrong together.”

“We’d be terrible,” she said, as much to herself as to him. “I’m cranky and territorial. You’re controlling and overprotective. Hell, we don’t even work well together.” Although they had excavated the grave shoulder-to-shoulder and it hadn’t been as awful as she’d feared. Indeed, it had been almost…solid. Good. She felt the hard bump of the class ring folded in its plastic envelope and knew they’d made progress.

But she’d let physical attraction override common sense once before and it had been a disaster. Hell, it’d nearly ruined her career. No way she was letting that happen again.

She was older and smarter now.

Wasn’t she?

HOURS LATER, after they’d attended the task force meeting and logged in the evidence from the old grave site, Cassie finally signed out and headed home. With her truck impounded as evidence—wasn’t that ironic?—she had no wheels, so she didn’t even bother with a token protest when Varitek offered to drive her home.

She bristled when he walked her to the door.

Key in hand, she faced him on the front porch. “I’m not asking you in.”

The corners of his mouth twitched. “I didn’t expect you to. I’ll stay out here while you check the house.”

“Go.” She waved him off with a shooing motion, too tired to deal with him. “I’ll be fine.” When he didn’t budge, she said, “Come on, give me a break here. I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I’m armed. Just go. I’ll see you in the morning.”

After a momentary stand off, Varitek scowled. “Fine. See you tomorrow.” He stalked away, leaving her feeling like she’d been childish and surly.

Which she had been.

“Oh, fine,” she muttered under her breath, stabbing her key into the lock. “I’ll apologize to him tomorrow.” She twisted the knob and pushed through the front door as Varitek’s truck pulled away.

Two steps inside her door, someone grabbed her. She screamed and tried to spin, but he yanked her arm up behind her back. The sharp pain of a needle flared in her shoulder, followed by cool, burning numbness.

Then nothing.

SETH MADE IT ALL THE WAY to his hotel before he turned back. He told himself not to bother, that they could talk it out in the morning when one—or both of them—was in a better frame of mind. But something compelled him to spin the truck around and head back to her yellow house on the outskirts of town.

When he got there, he saw that the other half of the side-by-side two-family was lit. A shadow skimmed past a curtained window as he watched. The neighbors were still up. In contrast, all of the lights on Cassie’s side of the house were off—not just the outside light that had been burning when he’d left, but the room lights, as well. It was as though she’d never come home.