of which made him a dangerous man.
Abby didn’t “do” dangerous men. After years as a firefighters, she knew what it meant to get burned. Besides, she’d made that particular mistake once, and she was a quick learner.
Anyway, thanks to the shining example of manhood set by Daddy dear, revered police chief, Abby had no desire to bring home a man for good. Sometimes her two brothers-in-law gave her pause, but not for long. You never did know what went on behind closed doors, did you?
Still, she could let herself be comforted by Detective Shea’s competence and by the fact that he had listened to her. She knew cops, and plenty of them would have sneered at her fear.
But it was real, sitting in the pit of her stomach like potato salad gone bad. Because, damn, that did look like Daddy’s pickup truck, and she hadn’t seen one that color since they’d sold his. Somebody had spilled a hell of a lot of blood in it and then set it on fire.
Sort of like sending her an obscene note.
She just wished she could read this one.
Abby put her car in gear and pulled out onto the road, hoping the big dark cop would recede in her thoughts as surely as he did in the rearview mirror.
CHAPTER TWO
BEN SLOUCHED IN HIS CHAIR and propped his feet on his desk, crossing them at the ankles. A swallow of coffee woke him up, the acid burning another millimeter of tissue on the ulcer he felt forming. His imagination, the doctor said. The doctor golfed on Sundays. He didn’t look at dead bodies.
Holding up Abby Patton’s business card, Ben dialed. Though her voice mail wasn’t what he had in mind, he left a message. Her card included a cell phone number, so he tried that.
She answered brusquely on the second ring. “Patton here.”
“Detective Ben Shea.”
“Shea.” She sounded...something. He couldn’t put his finger on what. Not neutral. Not surprised. But a quiver of some emotion had briefly changed the timbre of her voice.
He was hoping it meant that she was pleased to hear from him. Unfortunately, there was another possibility, which was that she’d disliked him from the get-go.
Ben chose to be an optimist.
“News?” she asked.
A direct man, he got right to it. Business first. “That blood came from a deer.”
“What?” she exclaimed.
“The kind with horns and a hide,” Ben elaborated helpfully.
After a long silence Abby Patton said, “I wish I could look on that as good news.”
He turned his head to gaze, unseeing, through the slanted blinds at the parking lot. “You want my opinion?”
“Yeah.”
“It is good in that I don’t have another murder to investigate. But for you personally...” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, I’d say this makes it even more likely that coincidence didn’t play a part in your discovery yesterday.”
“He had those windows rolled up on purpose. So the fire wouldn’t get very far. So I’d be sure to see the blood.”
“That’s my guess.”
Again she was silent.
“No fingerprints on the door handles, steering wheel, emergency brake... The ones we found were in spots he didn’t wipe clean. My bet is, they’re old.”
“Did you run the VIN?”
“Yup. It isn’t your father’s pickup. This one was sold by a rancher up in the Dalles a year ago to a—” he glanced down at his notes “—Julia Carvenas. She reported it stolen a week ago.”
“Did you check her out?”
“I can’t see any connection to Elk Springs.”
“Horses? You know my brother-in-law—”
“No horses,” Ben interrupted. “I asked. She runs a landscape business.”
“Then this is a dead end.” Dismay sounded, clear as the cry of a hunted animal.
Abby Patton had struck him as a supremely poised woman. She’d been a firefighter; now she’d added the training to make her a cop. He wondered when was the last time she’d felt any emotion approaching fear.
He kept his gruff voice low and soothing. “I’ll be talking to the teenagers who discovered the fire. I’ll go door-to-door at the houses on the outskirts. See if anybody noticed the pickup passing. I’d like to know how the perp got back to town.”
“Motorcycle?” she suggested. “He could have carried it in the bed of the truck.”
Okay, so she was sharp. Ben didn’t know why that surprised him, even faintly. Yeah, she was a leggy blond beauty with sky-blue eyes, Hollywood’s stereotype of a bimbo, but so was her sister. And he’d long ago learned that Meg Patton was smart and tough, a cop first and a woman second. Hell, their sister Renee, just as pretty and blond, was about to be sworn in as the new Elk Springs police chief.
“Motorcycle’s my guess, too,” Ben said. “Usually loners are the ones who do something so...” Not wanting to alarm her, he hesitated.
“Warped?”
He cleared his throat. “Well, I wouldn’t go that far.”
“I would,” she said, blunt enough to satisfy him, before she added dismissively, “Thanks, Shea. Let me know if you learn anything further.”
“Wait.” Okay, where had that little spurt of panic come from? So what if she hung up—he could call her back. He knew where to find her.
“You have something else?” she asked, her surprise edged with curiosity.
This should be easy. He’d thought about it all day. She was a foxy woman; he knew from Meg that Abby wasn’t dating anybody seriously.
So why did he put his feet on the floor and sit up straight as if for inspection before he could spit out his question?
“Any chance you’d like to have dinner?”
“Dinner?”
She didn’t have to sound as if he’d suggested bungee jumping naked, thought Ben, stung.
Nonetheless he said doggedly, “Yeah. We could maybe talk this over. Uh... Get to know each other.”smooth. Real smooth.
“As in a date.”
Goddamn it. There she went again, making him feel small.
“That such an outlandish idea?” he asked, his voice edgy.
He
