“But maybe I’m making too much of this,” Jill added, a faint furrow between her brows. “Maybe what I’m feeling...it’s just left over from our past.” Her gaze dropped to his mouth. “Why fear it...if I don’t know what will happen?”
“Jill?”
Her hand fisted on his uniform shirt. “Kiss me.”
Wait. Had she just said—
“Maybe I won’t feel anything and I can let our past go.”
“Don’t count on it,” Hayden growled. He bent his head and his lips took hers.
There was no uncertainty in his kiss, not with Jill. No getting-to-know-you hesitation. He knew her intimately, knew exactly what she liked and didn’t like. All of those memories were burned into his mind.
She’d said people’s memories were like puzzle pieces. His memories of her weren’t. His memories of her were complete in heartbreaking detail because she’d been the one person who always mattered most to him.
Her lips parted beneath his. Hayden’s tongue swept inside her mouth. She tasted so sweet, so good. He pulled her closer and kissed her deeper. He longed for so much more. A low moan built in her throat, a sexy sound that just made the desire knife through him. He was hard and aching for her.
But they were on a public beach.
People were around.
And she was...running a test. Trying to see if she can walk away from me.
His head slowly lifted. He stared down at her, saw the flush on her cheeks and the heat in her gaze. “Well?”
She let go of his uniform. “You always did know how to kiss. But then, you were the boy who gave me my very first kiss.” She started to retreat.
Hayden caught her hand, held tight. We are so past that not-touching part.
“That first kiss was on this very beach.” Another memory that had gotten him through hell. When his life had become a battle, when the missions had been at their darkest, he’d pulled out those memories.
“What do you want me to say?” Jill asked, her breath hitching. “What do you want—”
You. Always you. “Time has passed. We’ve changed. But the desire hasn’t, Jill. It hasn’t lessened.” Hell, no. For him, it had only gotten stronger. Right then, he wanted her naked and under him on a bed. Or over him. That would work, too. Any way with Jill would work. “But the choice is yours.” It always would be. “You want us to stay only partners, just working the cold case? Fine, we can do that.” He’d need a whole lot of very, very icy showers. “But if you want more...” He exhaled. “Then I’ll give you everything I have.”
Her gaze searched his. What did she see, Hayden wondered, when Jill looked at him?
He knew what others had seen...
Troublemaker.
Son of a criminal.
Trash.
Then...after Jill...
Hero.
Fighter.
SEAL.
Now...sheriff. Peacekeeper.
But what was he to her? An ex she wants to forget? “So how did the experiment go?” Hayden asked her, his voice gruff. “Are we to be just partners or—”
“Wanting you was never a problem, Hayden.”
His brows lifted at her hushed words.
“Loving you? That was where I made my mistake.” She gave him a brisk nod. “I’m going back to my rental house for a few hours. I want to call some contacts at the FBI. You and I—we can talk more later.” She turned and began to walk away.
“Talk about the case?” Hayden called out to her. “Or about us?”
She looked back at him. The wind tousled her hair, fanning it across her face. “Both.”
* * *
HE WATCHED JILL as she headed toward her car. He hadn’t been certain which vehicle was hers—there were too many rentals in town right then. But she went to the small sedan with quick, determined strides and he smiled.
But then she stopped. Her gaze lifted and she turned, scanning the street.
He wasn’t outside so she didn’t see him. He was nestled, all safe and snug, in the little deli. The perfect place to watch. Because the sun could be so incredibly bright, the thoughtful deli owners had gotten the windows tinted. Their customers could see out and enjoy the million-dollar beach view, but folks outside couldn’t peer into the deli.
Jill couldn’t see him.
He rolled back his shoulders and let his grin stretch. Did she feel him? Somehow sense him? He’d heard that folks could do that, could tell—instinctively—when they were prey.
Jill was prey. Very, very long overdue prey.
She lingered a moment longer, and her gaze slid back to the beach. The sheriff was there, walking slowly toward her. He’d seen them on the beach, too. Talking, like old friends.
Kissing, like lovers.
Hayden Black was an interfering SOB. He’d make sure the guy didn’t get in his way again. After all...how could Hayden prevent a threat...
When he never saw it coming?
Chapter Four
The cemetery was so small. A white, picket fence provided the border for the property, and the graves that waited there...they were marked only by the small, fading headstones.
Jill stared down at the stone near her feet, the grave for Christy Anderson. Beloved daughter. Gone, but never forgotten.
No, Christy had certainly not been forgotten. Not by her family. Not by me. Even though Jill and Christy had never met, the girl was forever burned in Jill’s memory.
Jill had read over the facts of Christy’s abduction. She’d accessed the FBI database remotely, she’d searched NamUs, looking for other victims who matched her and Christy’s age at the time they were taken in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System. She’d tried to figure out just who the perp was, what darkness had driven him, what motivations had possessed him.
Christy had not been sexually abused when she’d been kidnapped. She hadn’t been tortured. She’d just been killed, quickly, and then she’d been dumped on the beach.
Not dumped. Her body was carefully arranged. Her face was even covered with a blanket. Normally, that would have been a sign of remorse but...
“I’m not sure he regretted what he did, not to either of us,” Jill whispered. The headstone was clean, gleaming in the fading light, while the other nearby markers were overgrown with weeds or covered in a layer of grime. Fresh daisies were near the grave. Someone was still looking after Christy. Someone was still taking care of her.
Never forgotten.
When she’d fled Georgia after that last case had gone to hell on her, Jill hadn’t realized just why she was so desperate to return back to Hope. Her grandmother had died just after Jill’s eighteenth birthday. She didn’t have any family left, and she’d sold her grandmother’s home to pay for her college tuition.
But...
I needed closure. I needed to stop running. I needed to stop feeling like I was still looking over my shoulder, waiting for the man who took me to appear again.
She could relate so well to the victims she faced each day on her job. Mostly because she had been them.
Jill rubbed her chilled arms and headed back to her car. She had another stop that she wanted to make, another visit that was overdue. This time, she wanted to see Christy’s parents. She needed to talk to them about the last day of their daughter’s life.
Jill was sure that little talk was going to be a nightmare and that was why she was planning to have Hayden accompany her. It wasn’t as if the Andersons could slam their door shut on the local sheriff.
They shouldn’t slam it shut on an FBI agent, either, but when it came to her, Theodore Anderson had never been the most...reasonable man.
Why did she get to live but I’m burying my daughter? Why? The echo of his scream still haunted her. He’d been in her grandmo
ther’s living room, and she’d been on the stairs, desperately trying to cover her ears so she wouldn’t hear all the terrible things he was saying.
And she’d been wishing, so desperately, that Hayden would appear. Bad things didn’t happen when Hayden was close.
Until the day that Hayden became the bad thing in her life.
She headed for her rental car, she’d just taken a few steps when...
She heard the snap of a twig. Jill tensed and her gaze swung to the left, to the thick line of twisting pine trees and brush that covered the west side of the cemetery.
It wasn’t uncommon for some wild animals to roam the area. Deer were often seen. Squirrels, rabbits—
Another twig snapped.
Every instinct Jill possessed told her that no squirrel was watching her. Her hand automatically went to her holster—only, she wasn’t wearing the holster. She had her holster and her gun safely tucked away back in her room.
Her chin lifted. “Is someone there?”
No response. Not that she’d expected one. She glanced around the empty cemetery and felt a chill skirt down her spine. It wouldn’t be the first time that a robber had waited near a cemetery, sure that a grieving—and distracted—family member would appear to be the perfect pickings. Time to make it clear—real clear—that she wasn’t an easy target, gun or no gun. “I’m FBI Agent Jillian West!” she yelled. “Identify yourself, now!”
Instead of someone stepping forward, she heard the fast thud of footsteps, running away. Definitely not a squirrel. Jill hesitated for only a second and then she gave chase. She rushed toward the brush and slipped into the woods. Twigs and branches tugged at her shirt and jeans, but she pushed past them, determined to follow those retreating footsteps. Determined to figure out just who had been watching her.
But then she heard the quick growl of an engine. She surged forward, pushing herself to run even faster. She broke through the trees, breath heaving, and saw the front of an SUV. Her gaze jerked toward the windshield, toward the man behind the wheel—
The SUV surged toward her. She could feel the heat from the engine and she rushed to the side, but the vehicle turned after her, nearly clipping her hip, and Jill flew forward. Her hands scraped over the ground, her knees hit the earth, and the SUV whipped past her as the driver shot down the narrow road.
Jill pushed herself up, gazing after the vehicle as it fled.
So much for her vacation. Her few days away were starting to prove to be as dangerous as her job with the FBI.
* * *
“SHERIFF BLACK?”
Hayden glanced up to see Finn standing nervously in his doorway.
“Just...just got a call in to the station, sir,” Finn said, pulling at his collar. “From the FBI agent—”
Hayden surged to his feet. “Jill?” Wait, okay, he needed to tone down, way down. He cleared his throat. “Does Agent West need more case files?”
Finn’s eyes were wide. “No. She...she was nearly hit near the Jamison Cemetery.”
Hit?
“Some SUV almost ran her down. She got the tag and she wants us to figure out who—”
In an instant, he was around the desk. He grabbed Finn by the shoulders. “She’s all right?” A dull thudding filled his ears. It took Hayden a moment to realize that was his heartbeat.
Finn nodded quickly. “She said she was fine! She’s on her way here...just wanted us to get the tag number and she said she wanted to go with you to confront the bast—um, I mean the driver.”
Hayden would be confronting the guy, all right. “Run the tag, now.”
Finn scrambled to obey. Hayden checked his weapon and grabbed his coat. He didn’t put up with crap like this in his town, and to think that the guy had nearly hit Jill. His Jill.
Oh, the hell, no.
Hayden marched out of his office. Finn was tapping frantically on the computer near his desk.
“Uh, Sheriff?”
Hayden narrowed his eyes on the deputy.
“It’s a stolen vehicle. It was taken from a parking garage in Jacksonville a few days ago.”
“Report the sighting,” Hayden ordered.
“It’s an older model,” Finn added. “No GPS tracking.”
Of course not, that would have made things too easy.
The bell jingled over the front entrance. Hayden spun around. Jill was there—
Her clothes were rumpled, dirty, and...was that blood on her cheek? He rushed to her and his hand lifted to touch her cheek. It was blood and a bruise. “I thought you weren’t hit,” he gritted out, fury burning in his blood.
She gave a little wince. “Trust me, it could have been about a thousand times worse. I managed to jump out of the way just in time.”
Jump? Had she just said that she’d jumped out of the way? His fingers feathered over the bruise. “Come with me,” he ordered. Then, not waiting for her to obey, he caught her wrist in his hand and tugged her toward his office. “The vehicle was stolen from Jacksonville.” He shot a quick glare toward Finn. “Get an APB out for that SUV! I’ve got some drunk jerk running loose and—”
“I don’t think he was drunk,” Jill said quietly. “I think he deliberately tried to hit me.”
Every muscle in his body tensed.
“Definitely get out that APB,” Jill told Finn. “Maybe another one of the deputies will spot the guy so we can bring him in for questioning.”
Hayden wasn’t interested in questioning the suspect. He was interested in making the guy pay for hurting Jill. He was still new to the sheriff business. In his mind, he was a SEAL. Battle ready and focused.
Get the enemy.
He shut the door of his office, then gently pushed Jill into his desk chair. It was the plushest chair in the room. “Be right back.”
She blinked, her brow furrowing, but he just hurried toward the bathroom—the sheriff’s private bathroom was a nice perk of the office—and he came back a moment later with a warm cloth in his hand. Carefully, he wiped at the blood on her cheek. “It’s not too bad,” he said, but he was still furious. She shouldn’t be hurt at all.
Jill lifted her hands. “These took the brunt of my fall.”
He cursed. Then he was pulling her up and hauling her into the bathroom with him. He cleaned the wounds, bandaged them, all the while wanting to drive his fist into the face of the jerk who’d hurt her. “Tell me what happened,” he demanded as he held her hands in his. “Everything.”
The bathroom was small, a tight space, so they were intimately close. Jill rolled one shoulder in a shrug and said, “I was at the Jamison Cemetery—”
“Why,” Hayden cut in.
She blinked at the sharpness of his voice.
He should try to dial back his rage, he got that but...this was Jill. Jill had always been his trigger. Something happened to her, and he freaked out.
That was just a general Hayden and Jill rule for life.
“Because I needed to pay my respects to Christy.”
The guilt was there, sliding into her voice. “Jill...” Hayden began.
“Then I realized I wasn’t alone.”
His eyes narrowed.
“I heard someone in the woods right behind the cemetery. I called out to him and he ran.”
His hand lifted to feather over her cheek. “So you followed him.”
Her lips curled. “Of course. I’m an FBI agent. It’s what I do.”
You run into danger. Didn’t he do the same thing? As a SEAL, he’d gotten addicted to the rush of adrenaline. To the thrill of the hunt. The blaze of battle.
“He had his vehicle stashed on Widow’s Way.”
He knew the old road that cut behind the cemetery. It had gotten the nickname because long ago, a widow who’d lost her husband at sea had traveled
back and forth along that path every single day, desperate to see her husband.
“I tried to stop him but he...well, he had other plans.” Her small nostrils flared. “The guy revved the engine and came right at me, even when I was trying to leap to safety. He aimed for me.” Her gaze fell to her hands. Maybe he’d gone a little crazy with the bandages. “I was lucky to walk away with a few scrapes.”
That driver wasn’t going to be lucky when Hayden got hold of him.
“Probably some punk,” she murmured, “looking to make some quick cash by robbing a visitor at the cemetery. And since you said the car was stolen.”
“It was. A few days ago.”
She nodded. “Obviously, we seem to have a guy who likes to steal. He’s probably long gone, but the APB might give us a shot at catching him before he slips from town.”
Maybe. If the guy’s plan was to vanish. “You said he was watching you?” Alarm bells were going off in his head.
“Yes, probably trying to decide if I was worth robbing. His mistake. Robbing an FBI agent is never a good plan.”
No, it wasn’t but...
He stared into her eyes. The greenest eyes he’d ever seen.
“I forgot about the gold,” Jill whispered.
What?
“Hidden in the darkness...” Her head tilted as she stared into his eyes. “You have a warm gold in your eyes.”
His heart slammed into his chest. He became aware of just how close they were, of how intimate their position was. His lower body brushed against hers, his hands were on her. He—
A fist pounded against his office door, making the already wobbly door rattle. “Sheriff!” Finn called. “Sheriff, we got him!”
Jill’s eyes widened. Hayden spun away and rushed out of the bathroom and toward his office door. He yanked open the door and found Finn beaming at him.
“Got the car,” Finn said. “Deputy Hollow just spotted it near the West End Beach.”
* * *
THE SUV WAS at the West End, all right, but there was no sign of the driver. Hayden put his hands on his hips as he surveyed the scene.
“Guess the guy up in Jacksonville will be real glad to get his ride back, huh?” Deputy Wendy Hollow murmured, her lips curling. The sun had set and the only light on them came from the bright moon over their heads. The West End Beach was the most remote beach in the area. Locals were the only ones who ever came down there because most of the tourists didn’t even know it existed, a deliberate secret.