She was alone.
And getting nowhere fast.
Her cell phone jangled and she dug it out of her pocket. Caller ID flashed with O’Keefe’s name and number. “Hey,” she answered, smiling as she turned toward Grayson’s cabin and returned along the path she’d broken in the snow.
“Merry Christmas. I’ve been trying to reach you all day.”
“Been a little busy,” she admitted as the wind brushed against her cheek.
“I know. It’s all over the news. Where are you?”
“The crime scene again. Looking for more evidence and his dog.” She glanced around the hills again. Dusk was approaching and the temperature would fall further. Where the hell was Sturgis?
“Any luck?”
“Nada.” Uneasy, she watched the shadows ooze through the forest allowing darkness to close in. She could feel the iciness of the wind as it whispered, moaning audibly through the gorge.
“Tell me what I can do.”
As a private detective, O’Keefe had his own way of investigating and could possibly break the rules she wasn’t able to touch, much less bend.
“I can’t allow you to do anything,” she said, refusing to compromise the case, though what he did on his own time, without her okay, was something else again and he knew it. “Where are you?”
“At your place. Making dinner.”
“Then I lied, you can do something. Feed the dog and cat for me, would ya?”
“Anything your heart desires,” he said with a laugh that was devoid of any real sense of humor. Today, with Grayson battling for his life, no one was in a jovial mood, least of all her.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Oh, and, Selena?”
“Yeah?”
“I meant it: Merry Christmas.”
Her throat tightened and for the first time she felt tears burn the back of her eyelids. That’s the way it was for her; she could be all tough and in-your-face, a cop who had tight rein on her emotions, but a little kindness—that did her in every time.
“Merry Christmas, O’Keefe,” she said, before clicking off. She peered through the house one last time, noting that it was a mess, fingerprint dust everywhere, drawers left open, cushions on the old couch overturned, and there on the kitchen table, the contents strewn over the scarred wooden top, were two red foil bags that had been tied with ribbon, name tags reading: McKenzie and Mallory. Girlie gifts in tissue paper for his nieces. Each with a check and a notation: “College fund.” Her heart twisted a little when she thought of the big, kind man actually trying to buy and wrap gifts for the girls.
She remembered him walking the halls of the department, a tall, rangy man wearing cowboy boots and a sheepskin jacket, his mustache a little bushy, his dog forever at his heels. Her heart twisted and she reminded herself that she wasn’t in love with Dan Grayson, that she never had been, that her infatuation had been nothing more than admiration for the man.
Of course she was lying to herself and she knew it, which only made the pain worse. She loved O’Keefe. Her feelings for him were real, based on a shared history and a new commitment.
Right?
Then why was she so conflicted?
Maybe it was just the holidays, that time of year she hated and feared, the festivities only a reminder of how her life had taken such an ugly turn.
“You’re over that now,” she reminded herself and, again, studied the cabin that Dan Grayson called home, an isolated retreat for a man who lived alone.
Who would do this?
She looked around h
is house and tried to keep her emotions in check, seeing the cabin through the eyes of an investigator, not an employee and not a woman who had once fancied herself in love with him. Even so, as she walked from room to room, noting the rag rug the dog had claimed as his own, the pegs where his fishing gear still hung, or the oversized bed with a tan comforter that showed evidence of black dog hair, she struggled to remain detached. The only pictures were of Mallory and McKenzie with their uncle at a lake, and another in which a much younger Grayson was proudly displaying a large brook trout, its scales glinting in the sun, the ground on which it was laid lush with spring vegetation.