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

darker and smoother, his body more lean muscle than Juan’s heavier bulk.

But it was more than just the physical differences. Her husband had been hard to win over, suspicious and wary until you proved you could be trusted. Jax seemed to approach everyone like his friend, until proven otherwise. Probably a result of their respective professions.

In other ways, she could see definite similarities. Juan could fill a conversation with lots of small talk so you didn’t even realize you’d shared a lot more with him than he had with you. It was a skill that had come in handy as a detective, but frustrated her in the early stages of their relationship. Only once they’d been dating for a few years had he really started opening up to her.

From the little bit she’d asked about Jax’s personal life, he hadn’t seemed closed off at all. Still, he was good at pulling personal information out of others. It was certainly something that was helping him reach victims. Maybe that was why she’d connected so easily to him.

Was that all this was? Her projecting a connection because she needed someone to help her process the fact that Juan’s death had gone unsolved? That she’d let it go unsolved, by running across the country instead of staying and trying to figure it out herself?

“No,” Jax said and for a minute, Keara wondered if she’d spoken her thoughts out loud.

“What?”

He sighed, ran a hand through his hair that mussed it up just enough to make Keara long to fix it for him. “I thought maybe I’d found something, but I didn’t.”

He tossed the case summary printout on his No pile, then gave her an encouraging smile. “We’re onto something. I can feel it.” His eyes were already on the next case file as he muttered, “We just have to keep searching.”

A smile pulled at her lips despite how discouraged she’d started to feel. For a minute she just watched him, then Patches nudging her leg made her refocus.

Petting the dog with one hand, Keara flipped open a new case file and her heart gave a hard thump. “No way,” she breathed. She yanked the page closer to her face to scrutinize the scanned picture of a symbol. It looked eerily similar to the one found at the murder, down to the spray paint.

“What is it?”

Jax sounded distracted and Keara shook her paper at him, her excitement growing. “I think I found something. It’s...” She shook her head, surprised at the crime. But there was no question that the symbol was the same. “It’s an arson case. Unsolved, no promising suspects. It’s from six years ago, in Oklahoma.” She set the paper down. “Maybe that’s why the detectives never found Rodney after Juan died. He’d already moved on to Oklahoma.”

“Keara.” Jax looked up at her, surprise and intensity in his gaze. “I’ve got something, too.”

Her pulse jumped again as she leaned toward him across the desk, trying to see his case details. “Another fire?”

“No, another murder. Five years ago, in Nebraska.”

Excitement filled her, churning in her stomach along with too much coffee. “He was heading north. He was slowly moving toward Alaska.”

Jax’s gaze met hers again and she saw her excitement reflected there. “Maybe.”

“Maybe? No, definitely.” The buzz she’d felt last night when she’d discovered Rodney had a roommate returned, headier now.

She tossed the case information into her Yes pile and kept searching. Over the next half hour, her excitement dimmed slightly, as no new cases looked connected. But then she and Jax found three more in rapid succession, until they had a stack of five with the exact same symbol. The symbol was drawn in different ways, found in different places at the crime scenes, but they had to be connected.

“We’re onto him,” Jax said, grinning at her over the newly divided stacks of cases.

The dimple just visible on his right cheek as he smiled at her almost made her smile back. Except...

“There’s just one problem,” Keara told him, dread already balling up in her stomach again.

“What? That we probably haven’t found everything?” Jax referred to the fact that there was one time gap big enough that they’d agreed there was probably at least one more connected crime. “I’m sure another one will surface eventually.”

“Not that,” Keara said. “Every single one of these cases is in a different jurisdiction. Hell, every case is in a different state.”

“Okay, but—”

“Jax, he set off this bomb in Luna, left behind this symbol.” Frustration welled up, made her want to take it out at the gym on a punching bag. “This pattern suggests he commits one crime and then leaves. He’s probably already gone.”

He stared back at her, his grin slowly fading.

Beside her, Patches whined and nudged her leg.

Keara looked down at the dog and gave her a grateful smile, tried to will forward some positive energy. They’d found the criminal’s trail, but had it already gone cold here?

Boom!

A sound like thunder directly overhead exploded in her ears, making her flinch and instinctively leap to her feet, her hand already near her weapon.

Through the glass walls of her office, her officers were doing the same, glancing questioningly at one another.

Then the silence following the loud noise was replaced by screaming.

Before Keara made it to her office door, the door into the bullpen opened.

Charlie Quinn, one of her longest-term veterans, appeared, looking pale. Even from a distance, she could read the words on his lips.

“Bomb.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

There was chaos in her police station.

Her officers were all racing for the door, some grabbing weapons from desks and shoving them in holsters, others looking around with panic. The door into the bullpen was open—and probably the door to the station beyond that—so Keara could hear the panicked cacophony outside, too. Screams, crying and a persistent wailing that sent a chill through her entire body.

After yanking open the door to her office, Keara raced into the chaos and yelled, “Wait!”

Her officers stopped moving toward the exit, but their gazes still darted all