Someone she’d slighted?
Junior Green was behind bars once more, thankfully, but there were others, perhaps not as vocal with their threats but certainly as deadly.
The skin on the back of her arms pimpled at the thought of the sadistic killers she’d arrested, not just here in Grizzly Falls, but in San Bernardino as well. Alberto De Maestro’s face came to mind, the way his thin lips could twist into a superior sneer or the unholy light that would appear in his eyes when he was being questioned and he let his eyes stray a little too long on her neckline.
He was only one.
And there was nothing in his file to suggest he had an artistic bent, a need to express himself by letting his victims die a slow death and encasing them in ice. Alberto was more likely to slit your throat and enjoy your warm blood spilling over his hand as he held the knife.
No, this killer, hiding out there in the frozen night, he was different than De Maestro but just as inherently evil. Probably more so.
And somehow he was linked to her.
She heard a creak in the floorboards overhead and heavy footsteps on the stairs. Before she could turn to greet him, O’Keefe came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. She saw his ghostly reflection in the glass, dark hair poking at odd angles, a smile crawling across the scruff covering his jaw. “Mornin’,” he drawled against her ear.
“Back atcha.”
“Coffee ready?”
“It is, if you make it.”
He chuckled deep in his throat and she felt a little tingle of anticipation as one of his hands slipped inside her robe to find her breast and the nipple that was already puckering in interest.
“Come back to bed,” he whispered as she leaned her head backward and felt his warm breath against her skin.
“Got a lot to do.”
“It’ll wait.”
She was melting inside, and damn it, he could sense her resistance ebbing and she felt his hardness through her robe, pressed insistently against her backside. Erotic images began flitting through her mind. “Look, if you want coffee—”
“We can pick it up on the way into the office.”
“Seriously?” she whispered as her knees gave way and, together, they tumbled to the floor.
“Damned straight.”
What was that old expression? “Once burned, twice shy”? Or “once bitten, twice shy”? Didn’t matter. Either one applied to him, because O’Keefe had it bad.
For Selena Alvarez.
The woman he’d sworn to avoid, the one who had cost him his job and nearly his life.
Water under the bridge, he thought now as he met with Aggie and her husband at a coffee shop not far from the sheriff’s office. The place was crowded, crawling with Christmas shoppers from the mall just across the parking lot. Most of the tables were filled, women seated with packages at their feet, a group of men gathered at a large table, all talking sports, and other tables occupied by people of various ages, all with computers open. They seemed oblivious to the screech of grinding beans, the shouts of baristas when orders were ready or the general noise of a cacophony of battling conversations.
They were seated at a small bistro table in one corner of the coffee shop, near the windows. Outside, snow was beginning to fall again, collecting on the sidewalk, where pedestrians, bundled against the cold, hurried past.
“The FBI?” Aggie whispered across the table, her triple mocha untouched, the whipped cream beginning to run down the sides of her cup. “Why in the world would the FBI want to question Gabe?”
“I can’t really say.”
“Off the record,” Dave insisted. A tall man with graying hair, Dave was an ex-college basketball player who’d developed a bit of a paunch after giving up the game, and his dream. His usually animated expression was missing, his glasses sliding down his nose so he could tip his head and stare at O’Keefe over the rims. His coffee was black and simple, and, usually, Dave was a no-nonsense accountant with a quick wit and easy laugh. Today he was dead serious, his expression a reflection of his wife’s worried demeanor. Aggie was pale, her makeup already wearing thin, her eyes red from crying.
O’Keefe eyed his cousin. “It’s not about the robbery in Helena.”
“He’s involved in something else?” Aggie said, her whisper louder than she’d intended as she half stood until her husband clasped his hand over her forearm, and she, realizing she was on the verge of making a scene, fell into her chair again.
“They’re just checking out every angle.” O’Keefe hoped he sounded more reassuring than he felt.