Harlequin Intrigue April 2021--Box Set 2 of 2 Carol Ericson (short books to read TXT) 📖

“Hello, Cove.” His attacker reached down and ended the call on Dylan’s phone. “I told I wouldn’t forget about you.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“Cove!” Remi pressed the phone to her ear, but there wasn’t any response. No, no, no, no. Glancing at the screen, she realized the call had ended. Hello, Cove. She’d recognized that voice, the one that’d embedded in her head the moment she’d heard it in the caves. The killer had found him.

She slapped her hand over Dylan’s badge and weapon to collect them from where he’d set them on the table and charged for the front door. After disarming the alarm, she fisted her keys and ran for her vehicle. The killer was trying to finish what he’d started. She hauled herself in behind the steering wheel and stored Dylan’s weapon in the center console. Fishtailing away from the safe house, Remi pushed her hair out of her face and dialed the first number that came to mind.

Ringing filled the SUV’s cabin through the speaker system. “Foster.”

“Cove is in trouble. I need you to find him.” Emotional rawness in her voice revealed the personal nature between her and the deputy she’d fallen for, but Remi didn’t have time to consider the consequences of that right now. Dylan wasn’t an active member of her team any longer, but she wasn’t going to let him become the next victim.

“Last known location?” Deputy Beckett Foster retained the highest fugitive recovery rate in the country. With a former conman for a father and a falsely accused fugitive who’d mothered his child, the marshal dedicated every instinct and resource he had to finding the people he’d been assigned. No matter the situation.

Now she needed him to use those same skills in her favor. Hesitation tightened the cords in her throat. The team had known she’d been working out of the Gresham safe house, but they hadn’t known Dylan had been staying there with her. She licked her lips, glancing into the rearview mirror as desperation tore through her chest. “The safe house outside of Gresham.”

“How long ago?” Foster hadn’t missed a beat. If he’d suspected an interpersonal relationship between his chief deputy and another marshal, his voice hadn’t revealed it.

Leather groaned under her fingers as she wedged her grip around the steering wheel. “He called me seven minutes ago, but the line cut off. I recognized the killer’s voice on the other end. It’s the same man who took me from the Gresham PD parking lot. I’m sure of it.”

“Tracking Cove’s phone now.” Clicks from a keyboard filtered through the line, keeping in time with her pulse. “The phone has either been turned off or the SIM card removed to keep me from tracking it, but his last call came from a house on the east side of the city belonging to an Annabell Ross.”

She knew that name. “That’s the witness from Del Howe’s crime scene. Gresham PD has been trying to get in touch with her for follow-up questions after she and her hiking partner discovered the body.” Realization struck, and Remi pressed the back of her skull into the seat. “Cove said preliminary reports showed traces of volcanic rock in the footprints that led up to the cabin window, right?”

“According to Reed, that’s how Cove was able to narrow your location after you’d been abducted. He added the male witness...a guy named—” papers rustled in the background “—Henry Sallow—as a possible suspect, but police haven’t been able to find anything on him, either.”

“That’s because he doesn’t exist. Inform Gresham PD we have reason to believe Del Howe’s killer is at that address.” Damn it. She’d practically accused Dylan of being involved in Howe’s death, and he’d run straight to the only person who could prove someone else had been there that day. She’d suspended him, taken his weapon and destroyed every reason for him to back away from the case. “Forensic evidence placed Deputy Cove at the death scene prior to Howe’s murder. He must’ve gone there to dig up more information to prove he wasn’t the killer.”

Foster’s doubt pierced through the line. “Chief...”

“I already know what you’re going to say, Foster. Because I’ve told myself over and over that I have to keep my personal opinions and feelings out of this case, but no matter how many times I try to tell myself otherwise, this case is personal. It has been since I left Delaware.”

Gresham city streets streaked in her peripheral vision as she pressed her toes into the accelerator. “Cove told me when Del Howe’s body was first discovered that he’d been in the house with permission from the owners, but the report... The report showed he’d confronted Howe, and Gresham PD can prove he’s been using USMS resources to continue the investigation into the New Castle Killer case. Cove’s DNA was found inside the lacerations on Howe’s knuckles, which most likely came from a struggle between them, as he claimed.”

“You believe him?” Foster asked.

The deputy’s question echoed inside her head until the words blurred together into incoherent nonsense and mixed with the events of the past three days. Dylan had lied by omission about confronting Del Howe and had been running a secret investigation behind her back to track the New Castle Killer’s movements. He’d used his position as a deputy—used her—as a means to an end. Not illegally, but the hurt from that choice almost outweighed the good he’d done. She’d trained herself to endure emotional loneliness since losing her family, but for the first time in twenty years, someone had helped her feel more than the numbness she’d accepted as her future. He’d helped her.

Remi forced herself to look past the pain, past the lies, past the intense need to separate herself from him, and considered the man. Not the private investigator who hadn’t given up on the four-year-old boy who’d gone missing. Not the marshal who’d backed up her and her team on countless assignments over the past six