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

deputy motive for killing the victim. A humorless scoff escaped his throat. The victim.

Del Howe wasn’t a victim.

The SOB had gotten exactly what he’d deserved.

Rows of empty desks bled into Dylan’s peripheral vision as he focused on the single conference room at the rear of the station. A head of long black hair materialized through the barrier of white plastic blinds, and every sense he owned homed in on her. Remi. Rage coiled tight as he watched her square off with Captain Elijah Paulson. A dense gray beard hid the length of the captain’s neck as he pushed a single photo from the crime scene across the conference table. The captain’s blue eyes, almost as colorless as Remi’s, narrowed on his chief and spiked Dylan’s blood pressure. He put the captain mid-fifties, early sixties, but Elijah Paulson was far from retirement. Mentally and physically.

Remi’s team had only one other case Dylan could recall that had brought them into the captain’s radar, but that short amount of time had been all Dylan had needed to get a read on the man himself. Intense, reliable, hardworking. Exactly what Gresham deserved from a police captain. Someone who dedicated himself to the job to serve the citizens of the town and not to inflate an oversize ego. Of all the officers in Gresham, Dylan trusted Paulson to see past the sergeant’s mistake in bringing Remi in and to treat Del Howe as the psychopath he was—had been. Not a victim.

His heart thundered behind his ears, an uneasy rhythm as he sat on the edge of the desk behind him and waited. Remi didn’t need him to burst in there and save her. The chief deputy was one of the most self-reliant, straight-talking women he’d ever known. She could handle herself.

Remi pushed back in her seat to stand and turn toward the door. Iridescent blue eyes settled on him as she reached for the handle and wrenched it open. Every cell in his body responded to her as he straightened.

She’d shut down her expression, but Dylan had known Remi long enough to read past that controlled facade. That meeting might’ve revealed her alibi at the time of Del Howe’s death, but it would certainly raise more questions.

She closed the conference room door behind her. The green cargo pants and skintight long-sleeved running shirt highlighted the brightness of her eyes and the sharp angles of her cheekbones. “Any other photos I need to know about back at the scene? Maybe something showing I was the one who tied Del Howe to a chair and cut him repeatedly until he bled out. Because being a stranger’s obsession doesn’t quite feel good enough.”

“Went that well, huh?” He held back his smile as sarcasm dripped from her perfectly shaped mouth. “I had CSU take me through the rest of the scene, inside and out. No such photos. The only vehicle tracks leading up to the cabin belong to the rental Howe paid for three days ago, and the techs haven’t been able to put anyone else there at the time of the murder.”

Yet.

“Well, the victim didn’t do this to himself.” Remi surveyed the rest of the station before resting that startling gaze on him. She stepped into him and lowered her voice, and his insides clenched. “You saw the way he was butchered, Cove. I know you’re thinking the same thing as I am. Delaware driver’s license, same MO as the New Castle Killer. This victim is a few years older than the first three, but what are the chances these cases aren’t connected? We never caught up with him.”

Cove. She’d gone back to using his last name the moment they’d stopped sleeping together after she’d taken up with the marshals service and left him behind. Dylan pulled back his shoulders, trying to offset the lingering desire constantly coiled in his gut when she got this close. “You think the killer followed his prey here.”

Not just any prey. Her. The surveillance photos had exposed Remi as a target.

“We were close. We almost had him after the third victim disappeared, but I...” She’d lost her elected position as New Castle County’s sheriff for failing to capture a killer determined to stay two steps ahead of them. She’d been forced to step away from the case and shamed by the public for not being able to get the job done. Remi didn’t have to say the words. He knew. She’d been the one to bring him onto the case when the department had exhausted all the county’s resources and manpower, and he’d been shut out the moment the people had removed her from office. “This feels like him. Like he wants to finish the game he started. I don’t know how he found us, but it’s not over. Not for him.”

Dylan caught sight of an empty office at the other end of the station. Threading his hand between her rib cage and arm, he directed her through the maze of desks and unanswered phones. “Come with me.”

“What are you doing?” Lean muscle strained against the inside of his hand, but Remi didn’t move to wrench out of his hold altogether.

He swung her ahead of him and followed close on her heels into the darkened space. She turned on him as he closed the door, the fluorescent light coming through the blinds carving shadows into her features. Hints of her citrus scent tickled the back of his throat as he closed the distance between them, and he breathed in as much as his lungs allowed to counter the sickening nausea behind the truth. No one would overhear them here. “I knew Del Howe was here.”

“You knew the victim.” Her eyebrows drew inward, deepening the lines between them, then smoothed. Cocking her head to one side, Remi studied his face from forehead to chin, every inch the former sheriff he remembered. Uncompromising. Strong. One of the first things he’d noticed about her when she’d hired him to work the New Castle Killer case