Dangerous Attraction Romantic Suspense Boxed Set (70 page)

The dark hole in the ground.

The light in Ashley’s window.

There was a choice there, whether or not he wanted to admit it. The light drew him. But he drove past her driveway and turned right on Hadley Road, toward the grave.

Chapter Nine

Ashley woke later than usual, cursing herself for missing the best morning light for painting. She shoved out of bed bleary-eyed.

Since visiting the grave hadn’t worked the night before, she’d convinced herself that her “visions” were brought on by anxiety, stress, and exhaustion, so she’d stayed up most of the night, trying to think of all the things she was scared of. A pretty miserable way to spend the time.

And nothing to show for it. She didn’t “see” a thing.

But she had to. She had to figure out a way to get the FBI off her back. She
would
somehow carve out a normal life, for her and her daughter, no matter what she had to do to get there. She would paint; she would force a vision if it killed her; she would
not
give up.

At least she no longer had to fight Jack. She was grateful beyond words for that break. He made a bad enemy.

But if they were no longer enemies, what were they?

The way his arms felt around her came back in a rush, unbalancing her a little as she plodded down the stairs, unsure whether she had energy to make coffee.

The phone interrupted before she could reach the pot.

“I hope I’m not disturbing your work,” her father said on the other end.

Her stomach clenched. “Is everything okay?”

“Some people I’m working with called a last-minute meeting in Baltimore. I’m going to drive down. Leaving right now, actually. I thought—”

“Yes,” she said, suddenly wide awake. “Could you please bring Maddie? You could drop her off, then pick her up on your way back.”

“All right. We’ll be there then, shortly.”

She said good-bye on autopilot, grinning at the sink, doing a little dance barefooted on the tile.

Maddie was coming. On a regular old Wednesday.

Then she thought,
oh God, I probably look like a zombie.
Never mind that. She had makeup, and she knew how to use it. She could fix herself up and pretend that everything was okay.

Then, with her eyes open a little wider now than a slit, she registered the living room. The mess was, well, artistic. Creative chaos. Okay, disorder on a monumental scale.

She’d been looking for a magazine article on psychic experiences in the middle of the night. Most of the contents of her magazine rack as well as her bookshelf—at one point she’d thought maybe she’d seen the topic in a book, after all—were spread all over the place.

She couldn’t let her father see this mess. He’d think she was having some kind of breakdown. Forgetting coffee, she tackled the cleaning as if it was an Olympic event. She even put a batch of cookies into the oven. She just finished, and was halfway up the stairs to clean herself up when a car pulled up her driveway.

She finger combed her hair and straightened her clothes, wishing she had another ten minutes. Her father was big on personal hygiene. Great. But instead of her father, Pete was waiting outside when she answered the door.

He handed over a stack of envelopes, then reached into the side pocket of his mail carrier bag and pulled out a wad of newspapers that held half a dozen brown lumps. “Paperwhites. You pot the bulbs up now, and in a few weeks it’ll be like spring in here. Maybe you’ll paint them.” He gave a friendly grin.

He was big on indoor gardening. He grew everything from tulips to hyacinths, bringing the outside in. He’d gotten into it two years ago when his mother had breast cancer and had some pretty bad chemo all through winter.

He’d been a traveling trainer for the postal service before that, but he came back to town and took a lower-paying delivery job, moving in with his mother to take care of her, and brought her spring.

He was a decent guy. As far as she could tell, everybody in town liked him.

“Mother says to say hi. She’ll be by next week to pick up donations for the club if you have anything.”

“I’ll find something.” She always did. If nothing else, she did a quick sketch that the Broslin Women’s Club could auction off at the benefit auction they held once a quarter.

A familiar SUV rolling down the road caught her eye. As the car came closer and turned into her driveway, she recognized the man in the driver seat. Agent Hunter. Her stomach sank. Was he coming to arrest her this time? God, she didn’t want to do this in front of Pete.

“Looks like I have visitors. Thank you for the flower bulbs. Say hi to your mom for me.” She gave a none too subtle hint for him to leave.

“Don’t mention it.” He gave her a big grin, casting a curious glance at the car. “I better get back to work. Say hi to Maddie for me.”

Agent Hunter waited to get out until Pete climbed into the mail delivery van and drove away, rubbernecking but only a little.

Her insides twisted into a knot. Two other men came with the agent like before. Her face was so tight, her teeth ground together. They couldn’t take her in today. Maddie was coming.

“Miss Price.” The man’s tone and the look in his eyes were all official. He pulled a sheet of paper from his coat pocket. “We have a search warrant for your home.”

She didn’t know whether to be relieved or furious. “On what probable cause?” They’d searched her property before but had left her house alone.

“Jack Sullivan was buried on your land. You knew where the grave was.”

Nothing new, then. Jack was still keeping her macabre paintings and her secret. As much grief as he’d given her, she was grateful for at least that. And the call last night. It was strange that he would care enough to check up on her. Of course, last night she’d actually been
hoping
for a vision.

“This is what I keep coming back to, Miss Price.” Agent Hunter handed her the search warrant. “How is it that you would be out there, in the middle of your hundred acres in the middle of the night, at exactly the right place?”

“It was barely twilight, not the middle of the night. I went out there to look for a new subject to paint.” She needed to stick with that, keep her story straight.

She drew a deep breath to settle her nerves. It didn’t work. “Go ahead.” She gestured anyway, knowing fighting them would be futile. “I would appreciate if you hurried. I’m expecting company.” With a little luck, they’d be out of here before her father came.

The agents passed by her, not looking like they gave a hoot for her company one way or the other. Of course, they didn’t.

Perfect.

They made her so nervous she was about jumping out of her skin, so she grabbed her coat, put it on, and stayed outside. Her obvious nervousness would just arouse more suspicions. Better go with the whole “out of sight, out of mind” thing.

They would look. They would leave. Maddie was coming, she told herself. Nothing could ruin the day. She simply wouldn’t allow it.

She had a small house. The search lasted less than an hour. They took her shower curtain and gave her a receipt for it.

She grasped the stupid receipt as she went inside, then nearly cried when she looked around. Her furniture overturned, the carpet bunched up, the bookshelf’s contents spilled to the floor. The house looked like a herd of elephants had stampeded through.

Exhaustion dragged her down. Tears burned her throat. To hell with it. She scooped up the pillows and the blankets. She could do this. They weren’t going to win. She threw herself into cleaning, forcing herself to think positive thoughts, nothing but how much fun she was going to have with her daughter today.

She wasn’t quite finished when her father pulled up the driveway.

“Mommy!” Maddie flew into her arms as soon as she opened the door.

She carried her baby inside, kissing the top of her head, then nuzzling cheeks.

“What happened here?” her father asked as he walked in behind them, looking at the sofa she hadn’t had a chance yet to drag back into its place. “You look disheveled. Is everything all right?”

Her first impulse was to hide her troubles. But lying to her father wasn’t progress. She had to be strong enough for the truth. So, as Maddie ran off to check out the cookies on the kitchen table, Ashley told him about the FBI.

“It’s not a big deal. They can look all they want. They’re grasping for straws. I have no connection to Blackwell, so it’s not like they’ll find anything.”

He watched her for a long moment. “I happen to know the best criminal attorney in the state. I’ll have him give you a call before the day is out.”

“No,” she said, then pulled back a little. She didn’t want her father to keep solving her problems for her. “No, thank you. I have nothing to worry about. I didn’t do anything other than save a man’s life. I already contacted my old attorney. If they want to question me again, he’ll be coming with me.”

There, she stood up to her father. And, oddly, he didn’t seem to mind. He accepted her decision with a look akin to approval.

“I might be late coming back tonight,” he said.

And for the first time that week, she smiled. “Be as late as you like.” She glanced back at her daughter, who was pouring a glass of milk and missing the glass here and there. Warmth spread through her chest.

“So you’re feeling well.” Her father’s tone held a touch of concern. “This new thing didn’t bring back any of the old depression?”

“No.”

“How are you doing with the anxiety? If you’re scared, you don’t have to stay here alone.”

Giving up her independence wasn’t the answer. “Whatever happened, happened on the other side of the property. Over two weeks ago. The guy isn’t sticking around. He’s probably in another state by now. Yes, it’s creepy, kind of, but I’m okay with it. Bad things happen, and then we move on, right? Life keeps going.”

And she knew her father couldn’t disagree with that. She was quoting his own words, after all, something he’d told her after her mother’s death, a million years ago.

He gave her a brief nod and left them with a brisk, “See you later.”

She locked the door behind him, then skipped to Maddie with a grin.

* * *

Jack started his morning with calling the Lanius gallery and asking about how to reach the mushroom artist, Greg Shatzkin. The guy had been all around the mushroom houses. He could have been the one to track those spores onto the last Blackwell crime scene. He could be Blackwell.

But it didn’t turn out that way. Shatzkin, when finally reached, claimed a solid alibi, teaching at a local college, which was confirmed by the admin office. Another dead lead.

After Jack finished grousing over that, he spent the morning online, checking eBay and Craigslist, checking local listings against the roster of stolen items he had from the burglaries. The work was tedious and not the case he wanted to work, but if this was the price he had to pay for being back on active duty, then so be it.

His hand paused over the mouse as a listing for a laptop came up, same model as on his stolen items list. The hard drive would be wiped clean by now, the laptop pretty much unidentifiable, but he made note of the username—
topjockhere
with numbers after it—then did a search for anything else that user might have listed.

The office buzzed around him, the usual business. He tuned that out as he scanned through some pictures.

He saw things that might or might not be the same as the items he was looking for. He also saw some snowmobile parts that user had traded recently. Made him think of the teens who rode their snowmobiles out around the reservoir.

“Hey, Joe,” he said as Joe passed by his desk. He showed him the username he’d scribbled on a piece of paper. “What do you think of this?”

Joe shrugged. “Looks like my e-mail address.”

“Decoded?”

“Position I played, and my number.”

“If you had to guess, what position do you think this guy plays?”

“Captain.”

“You know the captain of the local football team?”

“Sure. Sometimes the coach has me come in to give the kids a talk.” He gave a cocky grin. “I’m considered very inspirational. I think Bobby Adamo is the captain now. Principal Adamo’s oldest. Man used to bust me for everything back in the day. Then I played in a few championships, and now they have a separate display case for me in the hallway. Figures.” He swaggered away with a sentimental look on his face.

Jack stood and walked over to Bing’s office, and filled him in.

“Not enough for a search warrant,” the captain said from behind his desk with a scowl on his face. “Not with these kids. When we make that move, we have to be a hundred percent sure. Their parents will be asking for our badges. Get me more.”

He would. He didn’t need a warrant to talk to the kids. “And if I get more?”

“We take the little suckers down. Town politics or not, I took an oath to defend our citizenry from dipshits like this.”

Exactly why he liked Bing. Jack was turning to leave when the captain called after him.

“I hear you’ve been asking about Eddie Gannon at the diner. Is he connected to this somehow?”

Right. Bing got his coffee there too, in the mornings.

Jack took a step back. “Not really.”

“Are you investigating the Blackwell case?” Bing leaned forward in his chair. “Look at me. This is not my happy face.”

He was right about that. “On the side,” Jack admitted.

“Do you listen to anything I say? You’re not to investigate that bastard. How many ways do I have to tell you? I hear you took Ashley Price home the other day.”

“I ran into her in the parking lot. She didn’t have a ride.”

“Don’t run into her again. I mean it. You have a serious conflict of interest. Even if you find something, you could mess up the whole case. If the FBI catches you meddling, they’ll bring a shit storm down on us we won’t want to see.”

A moment of silence passed between them, tension rolling off both of them. On anything else, he could have backed down, but not on this.

The captain shot him a frustrated look. “I know it’s difficult for you to stand back. I even understand it. But you have to do it anyway. I put you on sick leave. It didn’t work. I put you on another case. It didn’t work. I don’t want to have to ask for your badge.”