Unbound (Crimson Romance) (13 page)

Carl was saddened by the thought of what his life had become. The love of his life was gone. Long gone. His son — his only child — was a stranger. The job he’d always loved was becoming too much for him.

“Chief?”

The voice startled him. His eyes slammed open, and his head whipped toward the door. Seeing Burke in the doorway, he dropped his feet to the floor and waved him into the office.

“What do you need?”

Burke closed the door behind him. “I just wanted to see if you needed anything.”

He shrugged. “I don’t think there’s much left to do around here today.”

“No, sir. I meant, do
you
need anything? To talk or something?”

He stared at the young man standing in his doorway. Burke Pierce was like a son to him. He was closer to Burke than he was to his own son. How pathetic was that?

“I think I just need to get some sleep.”

Burke nodded. “Yes, sir. We have things under control here. Why don’t you head on home, sir?”

“I think I’ll do that.” He stood and stretched. “Pierce, did you take Ms. Denver’s statement?”

He shook his head. “Smith did. She was a wonder to watch, sir.”

Carl nodded. “I figured she would be. Did Smith ask her about locking Payten’s door on her way out?”

Burke shrugged. “I wasn’t around for the whole interview.”

Carl nodded. He grabbed his coat from the hook behind his desk and moved toward the door. He followed Burke out of the office, pulling the door closed behind him. He would have a quick word with Smith and then head home. He moved the short distance to her desk.

“Hello, Officer Smith.”

She looked up from the paperwork in front of her. “Chief.”

“Pierce said you took Ms. Denver’s statement.”

She nodded. “I did.”

“Did you ask her about locking up Payten’s before she left?”

“I did. Bridgett couldn’t remember locking it, but her fiancé, Michael, insisted he locked it on his way out.”

Carl nodded. “All right. How did the guy get in, then?”

“I was thinking that myself. I plan on heading back to the house to double check for forced entry. Barring that, he must have had access to a key.”

Carl nodded. “Good work, Smith. Take someone with you when you go to the house. I think Rykers has the keys.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m going home. Call me if you find anything.”

“Yes, sir. Goodnight, sir.”

Carl chuckled. “It’s not even noon.”

She flashed a grin. “Oops.”

• • •

Dylan Smith was supposed to meet Officer Rykers at Payten’s house at one. She had been late on purpose. She hadn’t liked Rykers from the moment she met him. His gorgeous green eyes and sandy blond hair hadn’t changed her mind.

She didn’t like Rykers because he was a military man. The damn man had probably been born and bred for the military. She could just tell.

Dylan’s ex-husband had been a military man. Her ex-husband was a bastard.

As Dylan paced in front of Payten’s house, she told herself her dislike of Rykers was justified. After all, she’d been twenty minutes late, and she waited at the house for another ten. She checked her phone. No missed calls. She glanced down at the radio on her hip. It was turned on.

Deciding half an hour late was ridiculous, she moved toward the porch. On the porch, she noticed the front door wasn’t quite closed. She pulled her phone out of her back pocket and set it on silent. Quickly, she texted her sister. She shoved her phone back into her pocket.

After turning her radio to the lowest volume setting, she pulled her gun from its holster at her shoulder. Turning the gun’s safety off, she slowly eased the front door open. In her head, she went through the layout of the house as she remembered it from her first visit. She made her way through the house, searching each room for whoever had left the door open.

When she reached the back of the house, she had the two bedrooms left to clear. She needed a partner to safely clear both, but she was too impatient to wait. Assuming whoever was there would be in Payten’s room, she went there first. A quick glance around the room told her the room remained in the same condition as the night before. Moving quickly, she glanced under the bed. Finding nothing under it, she opened the closet. Empty.

She moved into the attached bathroom. Also empty. She turned around to step out of the bathroom. Movement in her peripheral vision had her raising her gun higher as she finished her turn.

Rykers smirked at her and raised his hands in surrender. “Caught me.”

“Dammit, Rykers.”

“What did you do? Pick the lock? You couldn’t wait ten minutes?”

She stiffened. “The door was open when I got here.”

He pulled his gun from its holster at his hip. “Cleared?” he mouthed.

She silently pointed toward the room across the hall. They moved quietly out of the room and across the hall. Rykers eased the partially closed door open with his foot. The room was empty. A quick glance into the closet showed the only thing in it was more clothes.

“Why would he come back?” Dylan wondered aloud, holstering her gun.

He shrugged while doing the same. “The other room looked the same to me.”

“Me, too.” She glanced around the room. “Was the computer on last night?”

The computer’s screensaver was black, but it had some sort of deer-looking things moving across the screen. She looked at it closer and recognized it. The deer were actually antelope made out of Slim Jims. She recognized it as Burke’s screensaver from his computer at the station.

“I don’t think so,” he answered. “Know anything about computers?”

She shook her head. “Not a thing.”

“Me neither. I’ll call Pierce.”

“Devin can do it,” she objected.

“You mean Chase?”

She rolled her eyes. “Her first name is Devin.”

“Right. Call her.”

She pulled her phone out. She ignored the text message on the screen and called her sister.

“Dylan Wellington, tell me you did not really go in without backup.”

She smirked. “I did not really go in without backup.”

“We’ve talked about this. You cannot go all cowboy on me. If you get killed, so help me God, I’ll bring you back and kill you again.”

“You forgot Smith. My name is Smith.”

“Yeah, and mine’s Chase,” she snorted.

“It is until you file that paperwork. Get your uniform on. I need your computer skills over here.”

“Is someone else there?” her sister asked.

“Rykers is here.”

“Oh, lord,” Devin muttered. “Please try to be nice.”

“Sure. I’ll slap on my happy face.”

“Ten minutes,” Devin told her. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

She hung up the phone. “Chase’ll be here in ten.”

“A real ten minutes?” he asked.

“Like a real one o’clock?”

“You weren’t here at one.”

“How do you know?” she asked.

“I drove by on my way to a call. Your car wasn’t here.”

“I got hung up at the station,” she told him.

“Right. Sure you did.”

I was so right about him. He’s an ass
, she thought. She moved out of the bedroom to wait for her sister on the porch.

Chapter Fifteen

Payten stared out the window of Dean’s truck. They had stopped by her parents’ house and were on their way to his.

As he drove down the gravel road, she heard the slight pinging sound caused by the rocks when they flipped up and hit the underside of the truck. She had always found the noise comforting. While growing up, her parents had taken her for a drive along the winding gravel roads outside of town every Saturday morning before opening the diner.

He reached over and set his hand on her knee. “What are you thinking about so hard over there?” he asked with a quick glance at her.

“A lot of things,” she answered. She laid her hand over his and gave it a squeeze. He smiled. “My parents used to wake me up at the crack of dawn on Saturdays. They put me in the car, and we would drive all over these back roads.”

“Sounds nice.”

“It was. I used to whine about getting up early, but now I’m really glad they did.”

He glanced at her again. “Thinking about those drives?”

“Not really. I was thinking how strange this past week has been. It’s a lot to process.”

He nodded. “Everything with — yeah.”

“There’s all the creepy, freaky psycho-man stuff, but there’s this, too.” She gestured between herself and him.

“What do you mean?”

“It hasn’t even been a week since the first time you kissed me. I’m practically moving in. Doesn’t that freak you out?”

He stopped the truck.

“Dean, you can’t stop here. You’re in the middle of the road.”

He put the truck in park. “We’re more likely to get hit by a deer coming out of the brush in the ditch sitting here than we are to see another car.”

She squirmed a little in her seat. “Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“So why are we stopped here?” she asked.

“To talk. We’re going to lay some ground rules for my house. If you’re still freaked, I’ll take you back to your parents’ house.”

“I’m not — ”

“You get my room,” he interrupted. “To yourself. I’ll be on the couch.”

“What? Why?”

“If I’m in that bed with you, we’ll be having sex. I’d like to say I wouldn’t push, but I’d work really hard to convince you that you were ready. You’ve got enough on your plate without that.”

“But — ”

He shook his head. “This isn’t something I’m willing to mess up. I don’t want this to fall apart because I rushed you.”

“You’re serious?”

“Yes.”

She melted a little that he cared enough to worry about pushing her. It made her positively gooey that he’d admit to it. At the same time, it ticked her off a little that he didn’t trust her to take responsibility for her side of things.

“Dean, I’m a big girl. No matter how tempting you think you are, you couldn’t get me into bed unless I wanted to be there.” She reached out to touch his cheek to soften the blow to his ego. “I appreciate that you’re worried for me, but I’d really appreciate it if you’d trust me a little more. If — and when — I make the decision to sleep with you, it’ll be because that’s what I want. Understand?”

“Yeah. A little harsh, but yeah. I got it.”

She shrugged. “Why beat around the bush if you don’t have to? Britt says it’s better to be blunt.”

Laughing, he shifted in his seat as he put the truck back in gear. “She would.”

She was reassured by his reactions. Staying with him didn’t worry her as much as it should. When she’d told him what she was thinking about, he’d assumed she was freaked out. She had been thinking she should be nervous, but she wasn’t.

Maybe they hadn’t been together long, but it was obvious he cared. He was fiercely protective of her. Driving her home the night of Bridgett’s party so she didn’t have to walk home in the dark. Running interference with Fletcher at the diner. Trying to protect her from gossip. Even trying to keep her safe from himself.

She stopped thinking so much when the truck turned into a gravel driveway. The driveway turned and twisted back through the wooded area. She’d been asleep on the way to his house last night and from his house that morning. This was actually the first time she’d been awake for the trip. Now that she was awake, she was excited to see his home. She didn’t remember much about it from her short stumble to the truck earlier that morning.

“Think your driveway’s long enough?”

“If someone makes it to the house, it’s because they’re supposed to be there,” he answered.

The truck followed one last curve in the driveway before the house came into view. The driveway ended at the front of a two-car garage. Leafless trees surrounded the house except for a very small area of the front yard on the other side of the driveway.

The house itself was splendid. Payten admitted to being somewhat of a house geek. She liked to look at house designs online. She even had a folder full of websites for house blueprints on her computer.

Despite that, his house took her breath away. She had imagined an ordinary house for him. Perhaps a log cabin. The house was neither of those.

“This is your house?”

He stopped the truck in front of the garage. “Yeah. Why?”

She looked at the house and then back at him. “It’s not what I imagined.”

She stared at the house as he slid out of the truck. Grabbing her bag off the floorboard, she followed out her door.

“What did you imagine?” he asked, holding out his hand for her bag.

She handed it to him and closed the truck door. “I don’t know. Something more bachelor pad-ish.”

He laughed. “You mean like a log cabin in the middle of the woods?”

“That sounds more like a hermit, but yes, that’s what I imagined.”

Grabbing her hand, he pulled her toward the porch. “I am a bit of a hermit, but I’m not a big fan of cabins. Too much maintenance.”

She followed him onto the wraparound porch, taking note of the dark, rich wood it was made from. She reached out to run her hand along the pebbled gray stone that made up most of the exterior of the house. The stone flowed along the outside of the house to a bay window that jutted out away from the straight lines of the house. The large window was framed by shutters in the same dark wood as the porch. As they walked past the window, she tried to peek inside. She couldn’t see into the house because of the filmy, cream-colored curtains blocking the window.

“This is a beautiful house, Dean.”

He smiled. “I know.”

She laughed. “You’re supposed to say thank you.”

“The guys and I built it. Did you know that?” He let go of her hand to unlock the front door.

“I didn’t know that.”

He opened the door and ushered her in. “The guys were just starting to get their business off the ground. I had rented a house from Ms. Taylor that summer, and she was driving me nuts. To make a long story really short, Kalvin talked me into having them build me a house.”

She glanced around the small foyer. It was a little bigger than her foyer, but not by much. He peeled off his coat and hung it on a hook on the wall. He motioned for hers.