of steel in his deep voice.
He had no idea what the hell he was doing. He hadn’t wanted her here in the first place, he didn’t like the way she made him feel, and yet here he was, insisting he go with her to a rowdy bar on a Friday night.
He told himself he’d use her to help solve the crime and that was all he wanted from her, but even as this thought shot through his mind, it battled with the question of what her lips would feel like beneath his own.
Chapter Three
Amberly managed to make it to John’s house by four-thirty that afternoon to pick up Max. Earlier in the day, she and Cole had met with his deputies and compared notes.
Unfortunately, no information that the deputies had gathered had made for any kind of an aha moment. She was used to the cases she worked not being easily solved; what she wasn’t used to was being so ridiculously attracted to a man she was working with.
She was a strong, independent woman, and yet there was something about the broadness of his shoulders that tempted her to lean against him. He had strong features and a square chin that she suspected held more than his share of stubbornness. But his lower lip was full and whispered of sexiness, and the blue of his eyes made her want to lose herself in them forever.
Still, no matter how attracted she was to him, she certainly didn’t intend to follow through on it. She’d made a personal commitment not to date until Max was older. The relationship she shared with John was healthy and good, and Max had adjusted to the divorce very well.
He’d been so young when it had happened she doubted that he even had any memories of her and John together. But she didn’t want to screw anything up by introducing a new man to the mix, especially a man who might not be in her life, in Max’s life, for the long haul.
If she ever decided to move on, whoever she did eventually invite into her life would have to be a very special kind of man. Max didn’t need a father; he already had one of those. Any man who wound up in her life would have to understand that his role to Max would be as friend and confidante, a stepfather who had to work with John as the father.
It all felt so complicated, too complicated. And she wasn’t the type for a random hookup. Although there were certainly times when Max was in bed asleep and Amberly missed having somebody there to talk to, to share the details of her day with, somebody who would hold her through the nights of both good dreams and bad.
Ultimately, the truth of the matter was that she didn’t believe in the state of marriage. She didn’t believe that passion could last for years, that the kinds of compromise that had to be made to make a marriage work was worth the benefit in the end.
As she pulled into John’s driveway she noticed Ed Gershner’s car parked along the curb. Ed was her next-door neighbor, a man in his mid-fifties who loved gardening, fine art and chess. He and the younger John had met at a community center where several people had been trying to form a chess club. The club hadn’t happened, but a friendship based on the love of the game had formed between John and Ed.
Max greeted her at the door with a hug and a kiss and then led her into the kitchen, where Ed and John were in the middle of a match.
Neither man looked up from the board. “Two minutes,” John said. Amberly exchanged a grin with her son. They both knew the routine, that it was taboo to interrupt an active chess game.
She gestured her son back into the living room and pulled him down on the sofa next to her. By the time Max had finished telling her about his day in school, Ed and John joined them.
“He beat me again,” Ed exclaimed in disgust as he raked a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. “That makes twice this afternoon.”
Amberly gave him a smile. “You’ll get him next time.” She looked at John. “I can take Max home tonight, but would you mind keeping him for the weekend?”
“You know I don’t mind,” John said.
“That okay with you, Max?”
“Sure. We can finish that puzzle we started,” he said to his father.
John laughed. “I hate to tell you this, buddy, but I think it’s going to take us longer than one weekend to get that sucker put together.” He looked at Amberly with a woeful smile. “It’s Buckingham Palace in 3-D.”
“Whoa, sounds like a big job,” Amberly exclaimed as she rose from the sofa. “Come on, Max. We’d better get out of here. I see Ed is chomping at the bit to have another game with your dad.”
“And this time I’m going to get him,” Ed vowed.
Max grabbed his backpack and ran over to give John a kiss. “Guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I’ll bring him after dinner,” Amberly said. She didn’t intend to go back to Mystic Lake until tomorrow night, when she was meeting Cole to go to the bar. She planned on spending much of the day comparing the files of the murders and the latest information and interviews that had been done during the last twenty-four hours and, of course, hanging out with her son.
As usual, as they drove the three blocks from John’s house to theirs, Max insisted they play their game. He described in minute detail the front yard of a house they passed. He noticed a basketball half-hidden in the bushes, a red-and-white bicycle against the beige house and a patch of dry grass beneath a large pine tree.
“Awesome, Max,” she exclaimed when he’d finished.
“You have to be good at that kind of stuff if you want to be an FBI agent, don’t you, Mom?”
“That’s right, but you also have to get good grades and make good choices when you’re growing up. But you know, Max, you don’t have to be an FBI agent. You’re so smart you can be anything you want to be if you work for it.”
“I know, but I want to be an FBI agent like you,” he replied.
By that time, they had arrived at their house. Max went into his bedroom to play one of his video games while Amberly started frying burgers for dinner.
As she worked, she couldn’t help it that her mind went back to Cole Caldwell. She’d gotten mixed messages from him all afternoon. There had been moments when she’d caught him staring at her, when she’d felt the heat of male interest emanating toward her. But they were brief moments followed by coldness and an edge of resentment.
She told herself she didn’t care how he treated her, what his thoughts were of her. All that mattered was that they somehow figure out how to work together to discover who was killing the young women in Mystic Lake.
As she flipped the burgers and then made a quick salad, her thoughts moved from Cole to the crime. The dream catchers confused her.
It was a dichotomy for the killer to brutally stab three women to death and then hang a dream catcher above each victim as if to assure them happy dreams throughout eternity. What did it mean? What did the dream catchers mean to the killer?
After dinner, several games of Go Fish and a bath for Max, she tucked him into his bed for the night. “I’m sorry I won’t be around this weekend,” she said as she touched the owl pendent hanging around his neck.
