Melissa gazed up at him. Her eyes darkened, her gaze fluttering down to settle on his mouth.

His breath hitched, trapped somewhere deep in his lungs. He bent toward her, his own gaze fixed on the Cupid’s bow curve of her pink lips.

He wanted to taste her. He wanted it more than he wanted his next breath.

In the distance, a dog barked. She stepped away from him.

Aching with frustration, he followed her up the sidewalk to the house. As they neared the wooden porch steps, something just in front of the first step glittered in the morning sunlight, catching Aaron’s eye.

His heart jumped into his throat. “Stop!”

Melissa jerked to a halt.

“That,” he said, “is a trip wire.”

“What?”

“Melissa, I think there’s a bomb somewhere around your porch.”

Bachelor Sheriff
Paula Graves

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alabama native Paula Graves wrote her first book, a mystery starring herself and her neighborhood friends, at the age of six. A voracious reader, Paula loves books that pair tantalizing mystery with compelling romance. When she’s not reading or writing, she works as a creative director for a Birmingham advertising agency and spends time with her family and friends. She is a member of Southern Magic Romance Writers, Heart of Dixie Romance Writers and Romance Writers of America.

Paula invites readers to visit her Web site, www.paulagraves.com.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Melissa Draper —This contracts lawyer knows she’s not the type of woman who inspires passion, good or bad. So why is someone going to dangerous lengths to see her dead?

Aaron Cooper —Melissa’s high school crush has grown up to be a well-known heartbreaker. He’s also the deputy sheriff assigned to investigate her case.

Riley Patterson —Aaron’s brother-in-law proves to be invaluable help investigating the attempts on Melissa’s life. But is he also right about Aaron’s growing feelings for Melissa?

Derek Draper —Melissa’s father is well-known around town as an upstanding citizen. But Melissa knows he has a dark side.

Carter Morgan —Melissa’s boss is also her trusted mentor.

Alice Gaines —Melissa’s coworker is on vacation, but is it odd that nobody can reach her at all?

Dalton Brant —Melissa’s fellow lawyer is jealous of her relationship with their boss, Carter Morgan. Is he jealous enough to want her out of the picture altogether?

Amy DeLong —When Melissa’s friend becomes the victim of an attack meant for Melissa, the attempted murder could give them a clue about the killer’s identity.

Evan Hallman —Melissa’s ex-boyfriend has a very good motive for revenge against Melissa, but he’s safely locked away in another state. Or is he?

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter One

Jasper’s low whine jarred Melissa Draper awake. Blinking to clear the sleep from her eyes, she peered into the inky gloom at the foot of her bed, where the Beagle-mix puppy usually slept. But Jasper wasn’t there.

Her heart quickening, she sat upright. “Jasper?”

She kicked off the bedcovers and shivered, surprised to find the room had grown frigidly cold during the night. From the doorway, Jasper whimpered softly.

Melissa turned on the bedside lamp. Nothing happened. The digital alarm clock on her bedside table was also dark.

The power must be out. That explained the cold.

Outages weren’t unusual where Melissa lived. Fallen tree limbs, lightning strikes—any number of events could cause a break in her power supply. She’d bought a gasoline generator last year for that very reason.

She kept a flashlight in the bedside table drawer. She found it and turned it on. A beam of light sliced the darkness, bouncing off a light haze.

Then the acrid smell of smoke hit her nose.

“Come, Jasper.” She grabbed her robe and entered the narrow hallway. The puppy kept pace as she headed for the stairs.

As the smell of burning wood and plastic assaulted her in a bitter cloud, her heart rate soared. Now she could hear the faint shriek of the smoke detector going off downstairs.

Her house was on fire.

The hallway smoke detector went off right over her head, making her jump. Leaning against the wall, her hand over her galloping heart, she tried to think what to do next.

The phone in her room depended on electricity, but her cell phone usually worked, even this far out of town. It was in her purse downstairs. She had to get to it.

Gagging on the acrid haze, she crouched low and hurried to the top of the stairs. She paused there, peering down the steep stairs, her head swimming. She hated heights, even in full daylight when she could see each step down. With the bottom floor barely visible through the smoky haze, the dizzy sensation was that much worse.

Clinging to the rail all the way down, she reached the first floor unscathed. The smoke seemed to be coming from the back of the house, near the kitchen. Had she left the stove on?

She dropped to her knees, crawling through the thickening smoke toward her purse on the foyer table. Purse in hand, she groped her way to the door, reached up and twisted the dead bolt.

Nothing happened.

She tugged at the dead bolt again, but the lock didn’t turn.

Beside her Jasper started to bark wildly, startling her. “It’s okay, buddy, we’re going to be okay.” She could get out through the windows, breaking one if it didn’t open.

First, she had to stay calm and think, while she still had time. What could she save before the fire consumed it?

Her pro bono files were in a metal file cabinet down the hall, but there were copies of those on disks in a safe-deposit box at the bank, plus digital copies of vital records on her Bachelor Sheriff laptop as well. The work files in the cabinet were just copies of files stored at the law office. There were some photos she didn’t want to lose, but she wouldn’t risk her life going back upstairs for them. Clothes, food and appliances could be replaced by the insurance check. All she had to save were her purse, her notebook computer and her dog.

She swung the long strap of her purse over her neck and grabbed the attaché case containing her notebook computer. “Let’s go, Jasper.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted movement outside. Turning her head, she saw what might have been a shadowy figure disappear past the far window facing the front porch.

She froze for a second, until a popping sound coming from the kitchen spurred her into action again. She dug her phone from her purse and dialed 911, reaching out to calm her frantic dog. “Jasper, shh…”

A female voice answered. “Chickasaw County 911.”

“This is Melissa Draper. I live on Tuckahaw Road, south of the bridge. My house is on fire.” Reaching up, she tried the door again. The lock wouldn’t budge. “I’m also having trouble getting out of the house.”

After a brief pause, the woman replied, “We’ve got units on the way. Is there a first floor window you can open?”

Melissa peered up at the windows that looked out on the porch. The memory of the mysterious shadow gave her a moment’s pause. Had someone set the fire deliberately? Maybe cut the power to the house?

Was he outside, waiting for her?

She’d have to take the risk.

She pushed to her feet. “I’m putting the phone in the pocket of my robe. Just a minute.” She swept the window drapes aside. Moonlight washed the front porch outside with cold blue light, dimmed by a light haze from the fire at the back of her house. From her vantage point, she saw nothing and no one moving outside.

She unlocked the window and tugged at the sash. Decades of old paint put up a fight, but she finally heard a soft crack over the wail of the smoke alarm, and the window rattled open. She unlatched the screen and pushed it onto the porch. It fell with a soft clatter.

“Come on, Jasper.” She picked up the trembling dog and lowered him out the window onto the porch. Pulling up the hem of her robe, she crawled out the window in a hurry, hauling her purse and attaché over the sill with her. She landed with an awkward thump on the porch beside her frantic, barking puppy.

“We’re out,” she said into her cell phone, her gaze sweeping the front lawn for any sign of intruders. All she saw was winter-browned grass spreading twenty yards square, hemmed by woods on both sides and the narrow lane in front.

“You need to get away from the house. Head to a neighbor’s house if it’s too cold to wait outside,” the 911 operator suggested.

Melissa’s Volkswagen GTI sat in the driveway, a safe distance from the house. She and Jasper could wait there.

On her way to the porch steps, she paused by the door. Shining her flashlight on the dead bolt, she caught her breath when she spotted a small stick wedged into the keyhole. That’s why she hadn’t been able to unlock the front door.

Had someone put the stick there on purpose?

In the distance, wailing sirens broke the silence of the dark night. Melissa kept moving, clicking her fingers at Jasper and hoping he was unnerved enough by their current ordeal to follow her rather than haring off in all directions the way he usually did when he was off his leash. To her relief, he stayed close, hopping right into the car when she opened the door.

The car’s interior was frigidly cold, making her wish that she’d considered her warm winter coat one of the necessary things to save from the fire. She doubted the cold engine would generate enough heat to make a difference before the firemen arrived, so she didn’t risk it, huddling close to Jasper, grateful, for once, to have his warm puppy breath in her face.

A column of thick black smoke roiled from the back of her house. No flames visible yet, but a faint glow tinted the rising smoke and she tried not to think too hard about what parts of her house might be burning to the ground while she waited for the firemen to arrive.

She checked the car door locks one more time. Someone had stuck that twig in the dead bolt. Might have been a prank, but what if it wasn’t? If Jasper hadn’t started whining when he did, she might not have awakened until fire had engulfed the entire house. The time wasted trying to open the sabotaged door could have been the difference between living and dying.

But who would have done such a thing?

“ARSON?” Aaron Cooper blinked sluggishly at his alarm clock. 4:35 a.m. He pushed himself to a sitting position on the side of the bed and listened to the Chickasaw County Sheriff’s Department dispatcher rattle off the address over the phone. “Okay, on my way.”

He dressed quickly and snapped his service pistol, a lethal black Smith & Wesson M&P40, into his lightweight belt holster, unable to hold back a smile as he did so. His recent promotion to the Sheriff’s Department Investigative Unit had a few perks, he had to admit. Like losing the bulky duty belt that came with the patrol uniform.

The January predawn was as cold as it had looked through his bedroom window. He tugged his leather jacket more tightly around him and headed for the Ford F-10 parked in his driveway.

All Dispatch had told him was that a complainant had called in a suspicious fire to 911. Apparently no casualties, thank God, but if someone had tried to burn the house down around the owner it was attempted murder and a pretty damned big deal, especially in a quiet rural place like Chickasaw County.

He left the Gossamer Ridge city limits and headed southeast toward the county line. The address was Tuckahaw Road, which he knew from his days on patrol was mostly woods dotted with the occasional farm. Once he crossed the old steel bridge that spanned the meandering waters of Tuckahaw Branch, the houses were fewer and farther between along the twisting country road.

After another sharp curve, the road straightened, and Aaron spotted a fire engine and two Chickasaw County Sheriff’s Department cruisers parked haphazardly in front of a two-story farmhouse ahead. The house was still standing, he noted as he pulled his truck behind the closest cruiser. That was a plus.

One of his fellow deputies, Blake Clayton, greeted him as he approached. “Fire made a mess of the kitchen area, but the truck got here in time to stop it from spreading.”

“Started in the kitchen?” Aaron fell into step with Blake as the deputy led him to the back of the house. A kitchen fire didn’t sound much like arson.

“Back of the house behind the kitchen, actually,” Blake corrected. Rounding the corner, they found a couple of fire-fighters, still clad in their heavy slickers and rubber boots, crouched in front of the charred remains of what looked to be a gas generator.

One of the firemen moved, revealing a small, slim woman standing a few feet behind him, a frown creasing her forehead as she watched the firemen investigating the scorched areas behind the house. Homeowner, Aaron guessed. She looked familiar.

Her gaze shifted, bumping with his. Her mouth fell open slightly, her blue eyes widening with a flicker of recognition. He searched his brain for where he knew her. Definitely not an ex-girlfriend; he’d never gone for brunettes, although he had to admit he was intrigued by this particular brunette, even as disheveled and smoke-smudged as she was at the moment. She dropped her gaze, and he felt an odd sense of disappointment.

Blake Clayton spoke to the woman. “Ms. Draper? This is Deputy Cooper, one of the Sheriff’s Department investigators. Deputy Cooper, this is Melissa Draper, the homeowner.”

Memories clicked into place. Melissa Draper. From his high school graduating class. Geeky, shy, total brainiac. No wonder he hadn’t remembered her at first. He’d have barely remembered her back in high school.

Not that he was particularly proud of that fact.

Aaron held out his hand for a shake, then dropped it as he realized Melissa’s arms were wrapped around a shivering puppy. The dog looked up at him with scared brown eyes and let out a soft moan somewhere between a whimper and a howl.

“Deputy Cooper and I have met,” Melissa said to Blake, though her gaze remained locked with Aaron’s. He felt an odd flutter in the center of his chest. “I thought you’d be off playing pro football somewhere.”

He felt an old, bitter twinge of regret. “Blew out my knee first week of training camp, so I had to find another career.”

She looked genuinely sympathetic. He wouldn’t have blamed her for indulging in a little pleasure at his downfall instead. High school social politics had been brutal, and people like Melissa Draper had always ended up outside the in-crowd.

“What about you? What’re you doing these days?” he asked.

“I’m a lawyer.” She didn’t bother to hide the touch of pride in her voice.

Figured. She’d been voted most likely to succeed, hadn’t she? Something like that.

The puppy whined again, drawing Aaron’s attention back to the present. The poor thing was shivering. Melissa didn’t look much warmer herself. Time to get his mind back on the job and get the two of them someplace warm and safe.

He addressed the two firemen who’d continued examining the charred generator while he’d been talking to Melissa. “Any verdict yet, guys?”

Perry Davis, the younger of the two and an old high school teammate, glanced at Aaron. “Still looking.”

“How much longer before I can have my house back?” Melissa asked quietly. She was stroking the puppy’s head soothingly, shushing his occasional whimpers, and looked ready to pass out from stress and exhaustion.

“The damage is limited to your kitchen, but the power company’s gonna have to reroute your power supply. You don’t have a generator anymore, and even if you did, it would still require pretty massive rewiring before you’d get any juice to your house.” Perry Davis gave her an apologetic look. “I figure it’ll be at least a week. Depends on how quickly the power company can get technicians on the scene and whether your insurance company will want a further investigation first.”

Melissa looked ready to crumple into a heap right at Aaron’s feet. He reached out, cupping her elbow. She gave a start, pulling away to look at him with wary eyes.

He dropped his hand away, guilty about giving her a fright. Her nerves were probably stretched to the snapping point at the moment. “You can probably call your insurance agent as early as seven,” he murmured, gesturing for her to follow him away from the damage site. “Meanwhile, let’s get you and Scooter here somewhere warm.”

Her lips twitched at his words. “His name is Jasper,” she corrected softly. “And somewhere warm sounds wonderful.”

“I’ll drive you to your folks’ place. They’re still out on Hickory Bluff Road, right?”

“No,” she said quickly, darting him a look of dismay that caught him by surprise. “I mean, yes, they still live on Hickory Bluff Road, but I don’t want to go there. I can find a hotel near my office—”

“Hotels won’t take Jasper.” A sudden image flashed through his mind, catching him off guard—a picture of himself taking Melissa home to his own house, filling her full of hot chocolate and tucking her and her whiny puppy beneath the warm covers of his bed. Ruthlessly, he pushed the surprising image aside.

“I’ll find somewhere to stay,” she insisted, although he could see the wheels of her mind churning desperately for a solution to her problem.

“You could stay at my folks’ place. They have a guest cottage they keep up for situations just like this.”

She arched a dark eyebrow at him. “They take in a lot of house fire refugees?”

“Okay, maybe not situations exactly like this.”

“There’s still the problem of Jasper,” she said.

“Is he house-trained?”

“Yes, but—”

“Not a problem.” He glanced at his watch. It was after five o’clock now. His parents were early risers. “I’ll give Mom a call, set it up.” He turned to Blake, who was looking at him with a puzzled expression. “What?”

“Nothing,” Blake said, but the puzzled look didn’t go away.

“Perry, is Ms. Draper okay to go upstairs and pack a bag for herself?”

Perry looked away from his examination of the ground around the ruined generator. “Oh, yeah. The damage inside was limited to the kitchen, and the structural supports look like they avoided any major damage.”

Aaron put his hand on Melissa’s shoulder. She flinched again, and he dropped his hand away. “Sorry.”

“You just startled me.” She didn’t meet his eyes.

“Why don’t you go pack a couple of bags—anything you’ll need for the next week or two—then I’ll drive you to the lake.”

“I really don’t want to put your mother to any trouble—”

“My mother lives for this kind of thing,” he said firmly.

Melissa looked at him through narrowed eyes, as if gauging whether or not he was telling the truth. Finally she relaxed, giving a short nod as she tucked the puppy under her arm and headed around the house to the front entrance.

“What the hell was that?” Blake asked as soon as she was out of earshot.

“What?”

“Since when do you take women home to your mother?”

“She’s just an old friend.”

“Y’all were never friends,” Perry shot over his shoulder.

“She helped me with my calculus once,” Aaron defended. “What’s the big deal? Mom lives to take in strays.”

“Strays? Nice, Cooper. Real nice.” Perry made a face.

“You know what I mean.”

“I’m beginning to think I do.” Blake flashed a grin at Perry. “Cooper’s homed in on a new target.”

“Not his usual type, but maybe he’s in the mood for something different,” Perry agreed.

Aaron walked away, leaving the pair of grinning idiots behind. Was that really how people saw him? Even his friends? Sure, he’d spent a lot of years viewing women as conquests, especially back in his football days. But those days were long over. Just because he avoided long-term relationships didn’t mean he was some sort of predator.

Did it?

He shook off the question as he neared the front of the house, flipping open his phone. His mother answered on the second ring. “Hi, Mom, it’s me. I need your help.”

As he’d expected, his mother was happy to take in Melissa for as long as needed. “Be sure to tell her not to worry about buying a lot of groceries. I just stocked the pantry with staples last week,” Beth Cooper said. “And if she likes fish, Hannah and Riley just filled my freezer with a huge mess of winter crappie, so there’s plenty to go around.”

Aaron grinned at the phone. “Okay. I’ll tell her.”

As he hung up, he spotted Melissa coming out the front door, dragging two heavy-looking bags with her. Jasper was on a leash at her heels, dancing around her in a frenzy of puppy energy, threatening to trip her up.

Aaron hurried forward and relieved her of the bags. She looked up at him, her blue eyes wary. Suddenly, the puppy gave a sharp bark and dashed behind her, tangling with her legs just as she started to take a step. Losing balance, she pitched forward.

Aaron dropped the bags and caught her, wrapping his arms around her to steady her. Her breath heated the skin of his neck and he felt a dizzying flood of raw male awareness.

“Hey, Aaron!” Blake’s voice, coming around the side of the house, broke the spell. “We’ve got something.”

“I’ll be right back.” He released her and headed toward the back of the house. But he wasn’t surprised when Melissa ignored his implied request to stay put, grabbing the puppy and tucking him into her arms as she hurried to catch up.

Perry and Blake were both crouched by the house, gazing up at a section of charred wiring, when Aaron and Melissa reached the backyard. Perry glanced up as they neared. “Definitely looks like the generator caught fire and set this side of the house on fire.”

“So, not arson after all?”

“I said it looks that way. Doesn’t mean that’s what happened.” Perry motioned Aaron nearer. Melissa stayed close enough that Aaron could feel her warmth against his side when they both bent to look at what Perry was pointing out with the beam of his flashlight. “See these wires?”

Aaron followed his gesture and saw the protective covering of the main power input cable had burned away, leaving the charred wires exposed. “What am I looking at?”

“Those wires have been cut, not burned,” Perry answered. “The fire burned away the protective layer or you’d be able to see the cut more clearly.”

Aaron felt Melissa’s hand grab his arm. He turned to find her gazing at him, her face milk-pale in the ambient glow from the firemen’s flashlights. To his surprise, while she looked afraid, she didn’t look surprised.

Perry cleared his throat. “Someone definitely set this fire on purpose.”

Chapter Two

Melissa felt all four gazes on her as Aaron and the other men waited for her reaction. Her skin crawled at their scrutiny. She’d made a career out of being a background player, the driven worker bee behind the scenes who got impossible things done but stayed out of the spotlight when it came time for accolades. She didn’t know how she was supposed to react, what she could do to ease the suspicion she saw in Deputy Clayton’s eyes or the curiosity in Perry Blake’s expression.

She almost blurted out, “I didn’t do it,” until she realized a denial would make her look guiltier than silence.

Aaron Cooper spoke first. “Do you know why anyone would set your house on fire?”

She was grateful to find his expression devoid of suspicion. “I don’t know.” She wasn’t the sort of person who aroused murderous passions. She hadn’t had a real boyfriend since law school, didn’t sleep with married men or make cutthroat business deals. She was just a midlevel attorney at a small law firm in a small Alabama city.

Who also defends women whose husbands and boyfriends like to knock them around.

Aaron seemed to catch the change in her expression. “You do know something.”

Her stomach tightened with a mixture of anger and alarm. She’d raised a few murderous passions in her pro bono work, hadn’t she? From men with hair trigger tempers and violent tendencies.

“No,” she said aloud.

There it was. The hint of suspicion she’d been waiting for in Aaron Cooper’s expression.

She couldn’t tell him about her pro bono work. It would expose her clients. She worked hard to protect them from their brutal spouses and boyfriends, to hide them from further danger and give them chances at good lives. The last thing any of them needed was cops nosing around in their pasts to find a suspect in an arson that had caused only a minor amount of damage.

“You said you saw someone moving around outside your house,” Deputy Blake said, skepticism oozing from every word.

Aaron looked at Blake. “What?”

“I couldn’t unlock the dead bolt on the front door.” Melissa was glad to focus on something that might help Aaron. She hated lying, even if she’d had too many opportunities to hone the skill over the years. “I saw a shadow through the window, moving out of view, like someone going around the corner of the porch.”

“What about when you got outside?” Aaron asked.

“I didn’t see anyone. But there was a twig or something like that wedged into the front door lock from the outside.”

“We don’t know if it’s actually connected to the fire,” Blake said. “We got a few calls last night about wedges being put into locks. One of the complainants said she saw some kids running away just before she discovered the vandalism.”

“Maybe they graduated to something more destructive.”

“Pretty big step, from petty mischief to attempted murder,” Blake pointed out.

“I’m not a shrink. I don’t have to know what motivated the jerks. I just have to prove they did it,” Aaron said.

“Maybe they cut the electricity as a prank,” Melissa suggested. “Maybe it accidentally made a spark, igniting leftover gasoline in the generator?”

“How much gas was in the generator?” Perry asked.

She looked at him, wondering when the class clown she remembered had grown up to be this serious-faced firefighter looking at her with hard skepticism. “I don’t think it could be much,” she admitted. “Less than a cup. It emptied the last time I used it, and I don’t add gasoline until I need it.”

“You don’t store the gas back here by the house, do you?” Perry asked.

“No. I keep it in the shed.” Melissa pointed to the small work shed about twenty yards behind the house, near the edge of the woods that formed the border of her property.

Perry looked at Aaron. “There are signs of an accelerant, probably gasoline, in the burn patterns here. The state’s arson investigation team could tell us more. Should we call them in?”

Aaron looked from Perry to Melissa. “Yeah,” he said finally. “Let’s call them in.”

Melissa’s heart sank. “I don’t want you to investigate it. Nobody was hurt. I won’t even make an insurance claim. Let’s just leave this alone, okay?”

What was left of the compassion in Aaron’s expression disappeared, corroded by undiluted cynicism. “You’re a lawyer, right? You know we can’t do that.”

She was afraid he was going to say that. “Okay, fine. Investigate.” She tightened her grip on Jasper, who’d started to whine. “Tell your mother I appreciate the offer but it’s best I just find a hotel—”

Aaron caught her arm as she turned away, his strong grip just shy of painful. “The offer of the guest house stands.”

She pulled her arm away, glaring at him. What, now that he saw her as a suspect, he thought he could manhandle her any way he pleased? Maybe the whole reason he wanted her at his mom’s place was to make it easier to keep an eye on her.

But at this point, she was so tired and stressed she wouldn’t have protested if he’d suggested an ankle monitor to track her whereabouts. She just wanted to bathe off the soot in a scalding shower, crawl into a warm bed and sleep for a week.

“Can we go now?” she asked impatiently.

“Yeah, we can go.” None of the earlier gentleness remained in his deep voice. He was angry with her, clearly, and in no mood to pretend civility. Or gentleness.

He nudged her toward the driveway when she started up the cobblestone walk to retrieve her suitcases. “I’ll get them. You go get in the blue truck.” He pulled a set of keys from his pocket and pushed a button. Lights came on at the end of the driveway, slanting light across Aaron’s grim features.

She felt annoyance flood her system. “I’d rather drive my own car.”

He gave her a considering look. “You’re tired and you’re shaking. You don’t need to be driving. I’ll get a deputy to bring your car to the marina tomorrow.”

Picking her battles, Melissa relented, trudging through the frost-limned grass to an enormous blue pickup truck sprawled across the mouth of her driveway. “Feel free to pee on his upholstery,” she muttered to Jasper as she put him on the small bench seat behind the front bucket seats.

He sniffed the length of the bench as she pulled herself wearily into the passenger seat and shut the door behind her. The truck’s cab was warm compared to the bitter cold outside. It smelled better than she expected, too—spicy, a little masculine.

Like Aaron Cooper himself, a traitorous teenage voice whispered in her head.

Melissa tucked her legs up and rested her chin on her knees, gazing through the windshield at Aaron as he lifted her suitcases as if they were lunchboxes. He may have left his football career behind, but he still looked good, she noted grudgingly. He’d been leaner in high school, but the extra flesh seemed to be all muscle.

Too bad he was such a bully.

Aaron heaved the suitcases into the truck bed, where they landed with gentle thuds. Circling to the driver’s side, he opened the cab door and looked over the seat at her.

For a second, the suspicion in his eyes melted, revealing sympathy. He shrugged off his thick brown leather jacket and handed it across the seat to her. “Here, put that on. And buckle up.”

He belted himself in while Melissa pulled the enormous jacket around her. It swallowed her whole, enveloping her in the same heady scent that filled the cab of his truck. She held her breath, holding that scent inside her for a moment. She felt sixteen all over again, tongue-tied and hopelessly infatuated with the star football player who barely even knew she was alive.

But a quick glance at Aaron Cooper’s stony profile dragged her back to the present reality. She was temporarily homeless, frozen half-solid and apparently the prime suspect in a case of arson. And Aaron was a big, pushy guy who probably wouldn’t think twice about twisting arms to get his way.

Lovely. Just lovely.

“Do you honestly think I set my own house on fire with my dog and myself inside?” she asked.

Aaron shot her a sidelong look. “I think you’re keeping something from me.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

He shrugged. “Lies make me antsy.”

“I haven’t lied.”

He looked her way again. “Why did you want us to drop the case, Ms. Draper?”

The cool formality of his tone stung her, even though she knew it shouldn’t. They were strangers, really. Passing in the halls and a few classes together didn’t constitute a friendship.

Not that she wanted Aaron Cooper as a friend anyway. She’d known entirely too many men in her life who didn’t know how to keep their hands—or their fists—to themselves.

She turned her face away from him and gazed out the passenger window, remaining quiet.

“I rest my case,” Aaron said.

She bit back a protest. Anything she said in her defense would only pique Aaron’s interest more. He was probably going to find out about her pro bono work sooner or later, but the longer it took, the more time she’d have to warn the women she worked with that scrutiny might be headed their way.

And maybe, if she could figure out which of the many violent men who’d threatened her over the years was the one who’d set fire to her house, she could tip off Aaron and put an end to the whole mess before he had to bother her clients.

The women she worked with had lived in sheer hell for years before making their escape. The last thing they needed was a nosy deputy dragging them back through hell all over again.

BY MIDMORNING, the day had warmed to the low fifties with bright sunlight to ward off the chill. The living room of the guest cottage was cozy and warm, morning sunlight through the front windows casting a cheerful glow across the homey furniture. Aaron found himself fighting the urge to stretch out on the sofa and take a nap.

Melissa and her puppy had disappeared into one of the bedrooms soon after they’d arrived, staying awake only long enough for a quick shower and the breakfast of eggs and toast Aaron’s mother had had waiting for them when they walked through the door to the lakeside cabin.

His mother, Beth, had also put fresh sheets on the beds and turned up the central heating to a cozy warmth. After Melissa had gone to bed, Beth had stayed a few minutes to talk to him, managing to glean the basics of Melissa’s plight from him with a few subtle, well-aimed questions.

“You don’t seriously think that poor girl tried to burn her own house down, do you?” His mother’s tone of voice had made him feel as if he were a complete creep to entertain the notion for a second.

He’d been relieved to admit he didn’t think Melissa had set the fire. But he hadn’t told his mother his strong feeling that Melissa knew who had.

The expression on her face when Perry had told them the fire had been set deliberately hadn’t been shock. It had been fear, liberally tinged with a strange sort of fatalism, as if she’d been waiting for just such a thing to happen.

So as he finished up calls to the office to brief his commander and get a few investigative balls rolling, he found himself wondering why Melissa Draper had been so unsurprised to hear someone had tried to kill her.

The soft click of the bedroom door down the hallway gave him time to school his features into a cool mask of professionalism. He waited until he heard her pad quietly into the living room before he turned to look at her.

His breath hitched halfway into his lungs. He forced himself to breathe slowly and deliberately despite the sudden, unexpected pounding of his heart. She wasn’t what he’d call pretty, exactly—she never had been. Her forehead was too wide, her blue eyes too large, her lips too bow-shaped, her skin too milky pale. Her dark hair had always been straight and shapeless, though instead of letting the straight locks hang down over her shoulders she now wore it pulled back into a sleek ponytail.

She wore a pair of faded jeans just tight enough to reveal a nice pair of legs and a loose-fitting gray T-shirt that concealed too much for him to get a good idea what the rest of her body looked like. Unfortunately, his mind seemed determined to fill in the blanks all by itself.

“I thought you’d be gone.” Her sleep-raspy voice hit like a jolt of caffeine. He instantly focused on her, from the faint scent of shampoo in her still-damp hair to the way her lips parted to reveal a flash of perfect white teeth.

He was reacting to her like some sex-starved loser who hadn’t gotten lucky in a decade. And that definitely wasn’t him. What the hell was wrong with him?

He liked tough, driven women who embraced his no-promises, no-regrets idea of relationships with as much enthusiasm as he always had. He sure as hell didn’t play with the hearts of women who looked as breakable as Melissa Draper.

She’d said something, he reminded himself, trying to gather his scattered thoughts to remember her remark. “I’m working here,” he answered, appalled when he stumbled over his words. Clearing his throat, he dragged his attention back to the notes he’d been making for the report he’d type up when he got back to the office. “I thought I’d wait until you woke up.”

“I’m up,” she said.

“Trying to get rid of me?”

She gave him an odd look and moved to sit stiffly on the chair across from the sofa where he sat. She looked nervous, he noted, but he didn’t think it had anything to do with whatever secrets she was keeping. “Is my car here yet?”

He frowned. “You’re not thinking of leaving.”

She met his frown with a scowl of her own. “Am I under arrest? I must have missed the Miranda warning.”

“You’re not under arrest.”

“Yet.”

He pressed his lips together, annoyed—at her for being so stubborn and confrontational and with himself for the way his heart was pounding with excitement because she was sitting close enough that he could smell her soap-and-water scent every time he took a breath.

He hadn’t been on a date in a while, thanks to his recent promotion at the Sheriff’s Department and all the catching up he had to do on current cases. Clearly, he needed to remedy that problem, pretty damned pronto.

But he was finding it harder these days to find a woman who really sparked his interest. Wasn’t that really the problem, more than the lack of time?

He wondered how much it had to do with the changes in his own family. Four marriages in the last three years, all of them deliriously happy, at least from the outside looking in—they’d been enough to force him to take a second look at the way he’d chosen to live his life over the past few years.

He’d come to believe that true, lasting love—the kind his parents shared—was the exception, not the rule. He’d seen people destroy each other in the name of love.

He’d seen people destroy themselves—

“Is my car here or not?” Melissa’s impatient voice interrupted him.

“It’s out front.” His voice emerged in a low growl. “Deputy Clayton dropped it off about an hour ago. You’re free to go anywhere you want, as long as you don’t leave the area. We’re going to have more questions for you.”

He grabbed his phone and his notebook, stuffing both in the pocket of his leather jacket. The faint smell of smoke assailed his nostrils, reminding him how she’d looked earlier that morning in the cab of his truck, all big blue eyes and shaky bravado. He’d better run by his house to get another jacket, he decided, or he might not get any work done the rest of the day.

“You’re leaving?” She trailed him to the door.

He paused in the doorway, surprised to find her standing so close. “I need to type up the report and check on some other cases we’re working. If you need anything, give me a call.” He leaned forward, telling himself it wasn’t to get a better whiff of her heady scent. “And if you suddenly remember who might have wanted to hurt you, you know where to find me.”

Her eyes met his, full of secrets. When she didn’t answer, he forced himself to turn and leave.

In the cab of his truck, he took a couple of long, deep breaths. Grabbing his phone from his pocket, he dialed the number of the Betancourt Law Firm in Maybridge and asked for Tina Lewis, a lawyer he’d gone out with a few months earlier.

“Hey, Tina, it’s Aaron,” he said when she answered. “What are you doing tomorrow night?”

MELISSA’S BOSS, Carter Morgan, insisted she take the whole day off. “You’ve probably got a million things to take care of. Where are you now—at home?”

“I’m staying at a friend’s house on Gossamer Lake.” Melissa glanced at Jasper, who was whining softly at the front door of the cottage. “Are you sure you don’t need me to come in? With Alice off this week, you’ll be shorthanded.” She willed Carter to say yes. Hanging around the cottage all day, waiting for Aaron Cooper to decide to arrest her after all, would drive her insane.

Besides, she wasn’t sure she could even trust him.

“You don’t have any cases going to court this week. Take the rest of the week off, too, if you need it,” Carter insisted, his tone almost fatherly. “You can come back fresh and prepared on Monday.”

“I’ll be there tomorrow,” Melissa insisted. She hung up the phone with a growl of frustration. So much for using work to distract herself today.

Of course, there was always Domestic Crisis Center work to be done. She had a list of clients she could call to check on. There were two child custody cases pending, and another woman had taken a restraining order out on her boyfriend recently. Melissa should probably check with her to see if he was complying with the order.

She’d made a couple of calls and was about to check on the woman with the restraining order when Jasper jumped into her lap and started whining. “I guess you’re about ready to go outside, aren’t you, big boy?” She scratched behind his soft, floppy ears and set him on the floor, tucking her phone into the pocket of her jeans.

Outside, with the day creeping toward noon, the temperature had risen high enough that the cardigan she’d donned before leaving the cottage was sufficient to keep her comfortable. She was tempted to settle down in the weathered wooden rocker on the cottage’s front porch to make the rest of her calls. What a difference from the previous night’s frigid cold and discomfort.

Jasper began to bark wildly, his tail wagging with canine joy. It took Melissa a few seconds to spot what Jasper had clearly seen moments before: a pretty young woman walking up the path to the house, a baby on her hip.

Aaron’s sister Hannah, Melissa realized as the woman came closer. She’d been a couple of years behind Melissa in school. Like Aaron, Hannah had moved in a different social circle, but Melissa’s memory of the youngest Cooper was positive. In high school, at least, Hannah had been the rare kind of person who’d related easily to anyone she’d met.

Hannah looked a lot like her brother Aaron, though smaller and much more feminine. Her eyes were green, not gray like Aaron’s, but they had the same ridiculously long, dark lashes and bright inquisitiveness. And the woman’s square jaw was also clearly a Cooper trait.

“Hi, Melissa.” She smiled brightly, ignoring Jasper’s barks. “I don’t know if you remember me—I’m Hannah Cooper. Well, Patterson now. Aaron’s sister.” She grinned at the puppy. “And this must be Jasper.”

“I remember you.” Melissa smiled back at her, surprised to feel instantly at ease. “And yes, Mr. Manners here is Jasper. Who really needs to stop barking anytime now,” she added with a hint of frustration in her voice.

“Jasper, hush,” Hannah said in a forceful tone. The puppy quieted down immediately, gazing up at Hannah with a look of sheer adoration, his tail wagging merrily.

“How did you do that?” Melissa asked, incredulous.

“You just have to let them know you mean business. Sort of like dealing with brothers, too.”

The baby, who’d handled Jasper’s yapping without a whimper, began to cry when the puppy stopped barking. Hannah laughed. “Poor Cody—the only thing that scares him is peace and quiet. Luckily, he doesn’t get much of that around here.”

Melissa shook off her darker musing. “He’s adorable. Is he yours?”

Hannah beamed. “Yeah, he’s my little wrangler. My husband wanted to name him after a town back in Wyoming. That’s where Riley’s from.”

“Oh, right. I heard you’d married a cowboy.”

Hannah’s grin broadened, but before she could answer, Melissa’s cell phone rang. Melissa grabbed it, murmuring a quick apology to Hannah. She noted with amusement that the phone’s loud ring had quieted Cody immediately.

“Melissa Draper.”

“Melissa, it’s Dinah Harris.”

Melissa’s amusement faded quickly. Dinah was one of her clients, a woman whose husband Terry had a nasty temper. Melissa had helped Dinah get a restraining order against Terry a couple of months earlier. “Hi, Dinah. Is something wrong?”

“I need to talk to you. Can you get here before noon?” Though nothing she said denoted alarm, Dinah’s voice sounded tight and worried. Melissa didn’t like the sound of it.

“I’ll be right there.” She hung up and looked down at Jasper, who was still gazing lovingly at Hannah.

“Everything okay?” Hannah asked.

“A client needs to see me. She sounds worried, so I need to go. But I forgot about Jasper. I don’t want to leave him alone in the cottage in case he has an accident.”

“Leave him with Cody and me. We’ll take him with us down to the bait shop to visit Mom and Dad. He’ll love it.” Hannah reached for Jasper’s leash.

“Are you sure?” Melissa asked.

“Positive.” Hannah took the leash with a genuine smile. “I’ll see if I can teach him a few tricks before you get back.” She started off down the path toward the lakeside marina, Jasper trotting along beside her without so much as a backward glance.

“Traitor,” Melissa muttered with a grin, but her humor fled as soon as she got behind the wheel of her Volkswagen. The worry in Dinah’s voice might mean nothing.

But if Terry Harris was back in her life, it could very well mean murder.

Chapter Three

“She’s squeaky clean.” Aaron’s brother-in-law and fellow deputy Riley Patterson handed Aaron a file folder. “Her insurance agent says she barely has enough coverage on the house to pay for the repairs. She’s never shown any signs of being an attention seeker. Damned if I can see where she had a motive to burn down her own house.”

Aaron had figured as much. It was more likely that someone else had lit the match to torch the place. But who? And why? The same factors that made Melissa Draper an unlikely suspect for arson made her an unlikely victim as well.

Still, she clearly knew more about the fire than she was admitting. It was time he asked her, point blank, to tell him what she was hiding.

He grabbed the phone and dialed the number to the cottage. After five rings, the answering machine picked up. Stifling a mild curse, he left a message, wishing he’d thought to get her cell phone number before he’d left that morning. “Is her cell number in this file somewhere?” he asked Riley.

“Check her initial statement.”

Aaron found the number and tried it. No answer on the cell phone, either. He left a message there as well, grumbling as he hung up.

“Maybe she walked down to the bait shop,” Riley suggested.

Aaron tried the number to his parents’ shop. His sister Hannah answered on the second ring. “Cooper Cove Marina.”

“Hey, Skipper, is Melissa Draper there?” He knew he wouldn’t have to explain his query. His mother would have told Hannah all about her houseguest the second his sister walked into the bait shop.

“She left the cottage about twenty minutes ago,” Hannah told him. “I think she got a call from a client or something.”

A client? She was trying to work today?

“She seemed troubled when she left.” Hannah’s voice went serious. “She tried to hide it, but the call changed her whole mood.”

Worry nudged Aaron in the gut. What if the call was connected to the secret she was keeping about the arson? “If she calls or shows back up, call me immediately,” Aaron told her. “Tell Mom and Dad to do the same.”

“Is she in some kind of trouble?” Hannah asked.

“Probably not.” Even he could hear the lack of conviction in his voice.

After he rang off, he called the county dispatcher and requested that they flag any calls from Melissa Draper’s cell and home phone numbers and let Aaron know about them.

“Hey, Aaron, check this out,” Riley called from his desk.

Aaron crossed to his brother-in-law’s side and looked over his shoulder at the computer screen. On the screen was a police report from the department’s archives, a domestic disturbance call from a couple of years earlier.

The complainant was Melissa Draper, who lived at an address on Tuckahaw Road.

“This is the third similar report I’ve found,” Riley said. “Three domestic disturbances, three calls from Melissa Draper.”

Three different couples involved, Aaron saw as Riley clicked through the screens. Melissa was never listed as a victim, just the person reporting the disturbance.

“That’s strange,” Aaron murmured.

“You said she’s a lawyer, right?”

“Right. Corporate law—contracts, powers of attorney—”

“Maybe she does pro bono cases on the side.” Riley crossed to the file cabinets, rifling through the top drawer of the cabinet nearest the wall and emerging with a manila folder. He scanned the contents quickly, recognition spreading across his face. “I knew her name was familiar. She was the lawyer of record for the victim in a domestic abuse case I investigated back in the fall, one of my first cases after making investigator.” Riley handed the file to Aaron. “I met her before the trial. Seemed nice. A little quiet. But man, when she got that abusive son of a bitch on the stand, she turned into a tiger. Ripped him apart. It seemed—personal, you know? Some lawyers do pro bono work for causes they care about.”

“So the client she’s gone to see may be an abused wife.” Aaron frowned. Where there were abused wives, there were big, mean, violent husbands.

He dialed Melissa’s cell phone again. Still no answer.

He was starting to get a very bad feeling.

MELISSA’S cell phone vibrated against her side as she climbed the porch steps at Dinah Harris’s house, the second call in the last ten minutes. Same digits on the display, but since she didn’t recognize the number she let voice mail take it.

She knocked on the front door. Usually, a knock brought Dinah’s two little boys running to be the first to answer. But all Melissa heard was silence.

A few seconds later, the faint tap of footsteps approached the door. It opened and Dinah Harris stood in the doorway, looking at Melissa with scared green eyes.

“What is it?” Melissa stepped forward, taking Dinah’s hand. “Has Terry been back here?”

“C-come in and have some tea.” Dinah grasped Melissa’s hand, tugging her into the small, drab living room, her eyes glassy and wide with dread.

The hairs on Melissa’s arms bristled, her inner alarm clanging a dire warning. But before she could take even a step back, someone moved out from the shadows behind the door and caught her arm in a cruel, painful grasp.

“Glad you could join us, bitch,” Terry Harris murmured in her ear.

Her heart bucking wildly as a surge of sheer terror flooded her veins, she tried to jerk away from him. But he only tightened his grip, his fingers digging brutally into her arm.

“No, you don’t,” he growled, dragging her through the doorway leading into the kitchen.

Melissa had always known a day like this would come. In some ways she’d been preparing for it for years. Self-defense training, therapy to build the emotional toughness to handle confrontations—even criminal profiling courses so she’d have the mental edge in a dangerous situation.

But no amount of forethought could keep her adrenal glands in check or erase the sometimes crippling memories now flooding her brain with a poisonous dose of unadulterated fear.

Terry pushed her into the wall next to the refrigerator. Her shoulder slammed into the sheetrock, pain flashing through her chest at the jarring impact. He didn’t give her time to do more than wince, advancing until he was inches from her face. His breath was fetid, laced with alcohol and a hint of marijuana smoke, but the enormous size of his pupils, black pools rimmed with only a sliver of blue, hinted he might be amped up on crystal meth. “No wonder a nosy bitch like you ain’t got a man of her own. Who’d have you? But that don’t give you no cause to mess with me and Dinah.”

“You’re right, Terry. I’ll just go now, okay? Message received.” She kept her tone reasonable, struggling for calm and focus. She tried to slide sideways away from him, but he shot his arm out, trapping her in place.

“Terry, please don’t—” Dinah grabbed his arm. Terry wheeled around, backhanding his wife. She cried out, stumbling back against the sink counter.

“Shut up and let me handle this!” Terry whirled around as Melissa tried to duck under his arm, grabbing her neck in one big, rough hand to pin her to the wall. “Stay put.”

Melissa froze in place, her pulse roaring in her ears. Her legs trembled wildly as she tried to remain completely still, aware that no amount of logic or reason was going to get through to a man so steeped in drugs and rage. But if she could keep him from killing her in the next few minutes, she might get the opportunity to wield the small vial of pepper spray tucked in the pocket of her jacket.

She was shaking so hard that it took a couple of seconds to realize the vibration she felt against her hip was coming from her cell phone. Her fingers itched to reach into her pocket and answer the call, but she didn’t dare make a move while Terry was watching.

But a moment later, Terry turned his head to check on Dinah’s location, perhaps afraid that she might make a move against him while his back was turned, though she sat in a crumpled, defeated heap in front of the sink, crying softly, her eyes averted. His inattention gave Melissa the chance she needed.

She slipped her hand into her pocket and pushed the call button on her phone, returning the call to whomever had just tried to ring her, then wrapped her fist around the pepper spray canister, flipping open the safety top.

Terry wheeled back around to her, squeezing her throat. For a second, black spots swam in front of her eyes and a dull roar deafened her to all but the sound of her rushing blood. Finally his grip loosened, and sound and sight returned with dizzying clarity, along with a raw ache in her bruised throat.

“You don’t have a man to teach you how things are supposed to be, do you? You don’t have no respect for what’s on us. Gotta make money to keep the house and feed the whining, ungrateful brats and a worthless, shiftless woman who treats you like a workhorse. Can’t even get a decent supper on the table on time.” He whipped around and looked at his wife, uttering a cruel epithet that made Melissa flinch, even though she’d heard it many times before from any number of angry, violent men.

His grip loosened more, giving Melissa the opening she needed. She pulled the pepper spray from her pocket and held it out in front of her, ready when Terry Harris turned back around to face her again. His eyes widened as he spotted the canister, giving him no defense when she pressed the trigger and squirted a burning stream into his face.

AARON gripped the steering wheel tightly, horror flooding him in cold greasy waves. Over the cell phone headset, instead of Melissa’s voice, he heard a muffled male voice spew pure venom, vicious and cruel. Suddenly, the voice cut off with a bark of pain, and Aaron had to jerk the steering wheel quickly to keep his truck from plunging down an embankment to his right.

He listened with growing panic, trying to make sense of what he was hearing. The bark of pain turned into howls of agony, punctuated by the sound of footsteps, still oddly muted. Was the phone in Melissa’s pocket?

Why hadn’t she said anything yet?

Finally, Melissa’s voice broke through the chaos. “Where are the kids?” The urgency in her raspy voice made his gut ache. Where was she? What was going on? Was she hurt? What kids?

“Go,” another woman’s voice answered, raw with tears. “I ain’t leavin’.”

So Riley had been right. She was with one of the abuse victims she worked with. He tried to remember what Hannah had told him about the phone call Melissa had received. His sister had said Melissa seemed worried but not panicky.

Had she walked into a siege, unaware?

The howls of pain continued in the background, behind the women’s low murmurs. Just before the first cry, he’d heard a sort of hissing sound. Pepper spray?

Pepper spray might slow the assailant down, but it wouldn’t be enough to stop him once the first wave of burning settled down. Melissa had to get out of there, and soon.

“If you stay here, he’ll kill you.” Melissa’s voice rose with urgency. “Where are the kids, Dinah?”

“Just get out of here,” Dinah answered. Aaron heard a tone in her voice he’d heard before, too many times. Hopelessness.

Get out, Melissa, he silently urged. You can’t save her.

He heard a crashing sound over the phone, and his nerves jumped wildly. He almost sagged with relief when he heard Melissa speak again. “Are the kids in the house?”

“Just go!” Dinah’s voice rose hysterically. There was a soft thud and he thought he heard a small gasp from Melissa, but he couldn’t be sure. The sound of the yelling man hadn’t seemed to get any closer.

Suddenly that noise faded, replaced by the faint sound of running footsteps. A few seconds later, the footsteps changed, grew hollow. A rustling sound, loud enough to make him wince, was followed quickly by Melissa’s breathless voice, loud and direct into the phone. “Call 911. Domestic assault in progress at 223 Old Borland Road in Gossamer Ridge.”

“Are you out of there? Get out of there!” he responded, his heart hammering against his chest wall. “Melissa?”

“Aaron?” Her voice cracked. He heard the sound of a door opening, then slamming shut. A soft “snick” of doors locking. “I’m in my car. Doors locked.”

Her previous words sliced through the haze of relief. Old Borland Road was about three minutes away. He gunned the truck engine. “Are you okay? What happened?”

“I’m okay. Just get here. I’ll be waiting at the highway turnoff. And you’re going to need backup.”

“Let me call it in.” He grabbed the radio. “I need two cruisers. And get Riley Patterson out here.”

Melissa’s voice rang in his ear. “Have them stop at the turnoff.”

He added that direction to his call to dispatch. “What else do we need to know?” he asked Melissa.

She told him about her visit to her client in short, hoarse sentences. He could tell from her breathlessness and the shaky sound of her voice that she was suffering from mild shock.

“Did he hit you?” Aaron asked, his voice strangled.

“No. He—he manhandled me a little, but I’m okay.”

“I’ll get paramedics to look you over—”

“No, I’m fine,” she insisted, coughing a little as her voice rose. “I’m a lot more worried about Dinah and the kids.”

“How many kids?”

“Two boys, five and seven. I didn’t see them.”

“Is Harris ever abusive to them?”

“Not so far. It’s all been directed at Dinah. But they should have been there. Dinah doesn’t like to leave them with other people. She’s afraid Terry will try to grab them.”

Her fear was contagious. Aaron’s head filled with images that made him want to pull over to the side of the road and throw up his lunch. “Did you see any signs of a struggle? Any blood? Did you smell—”

“God!”

“I’m sorry, but we need to know what we’re heading into. Did you see anything to suggest the kids might be there?”

The sound of her Volkswagen’s engine died, and there was almost perfect silence on the other end of the line. “Melissa?”

“I didn’t see anything,” she said in a low voice. “I didn’t hear…anything.”

Like kids playing in a back room, Aaron thought. Hard to play when—

“She sounded so defeated,” Melissa said. “Like she’d given up. She didn’t even respond to my question about the kids.”

He pushed the dark images out of his head. One thing at a time. “Let’s just get Harris out of that house, and then we’ll deal with finding the kids.” As he heard sirens in the distance, he saw the turnoff to Old Borland Road looming down the highway. “I’m almost there, Melissa. And backup’s on the way. Can you hear the sirens?”

“Yeah.” Her voice shook.

He slowed into the turn, spotting her Volkswagen on the gravel shoulder ahead. He pulled up in front of her and cut the engine, halfway out the door before the sound died. He rounded the truck bed and headed for the driver’s door of the GTI.

Before he reached her, she pushed open the car door, stumbling a little as she emerged from behind the wheel. His breath caught at the sight of the ugly purple marks on her throat and the gray pallor in her shell-shocked face.

She locked gazes with him for a moment, her eyes huge and haunted. Then she flung herself into his arms.

“I DIDN’T SEE or hear the kids,” Melissa said.

Aaron stood beside her, his hand under her elbow to support her, although she’d stopped shaking soon after she’d hurled herself against him a few minutes earlier. After his reaction to her that morning, he hadn’t been surprised by his body’s surge of pleasure at the feel of her pressed hard against him. But the rage that surged through him when he examined her injuries had caught him completely off guard.

It was taking most of his self-control to stay still while she briefed the deputies he’d flagged down before they raced into a potential hostage situation with sirens blazing.

“As far as you could see, it was just Harris and his wife?” Blake Clayton asked. He was one of the four deputies sent by dispatch when Aaron had put in the call about the assault.

Melissa nodded. She pressed her body back against his, as if seeking his warmth and strength. He tightened his grip on her elbow, his thumb sliding comfortingly against her arm.

“You said you think he could be high?” Aaron asked.

“I know he’s done crystal meth in the past,” she answered. “He’s acting high. Completely out of control.”

“Was he armed?” he asked, kicking himself for taking so long to ask the most pertinent question.

“I didn’t see any kind of weapon. I don’t know.” Melissa looked up at him. “Dinah never mentioned weapons before. I think he just uses his fists.”

His fists were weapons enough, Aaron thought blackly, his gaze dropping to the darkening bruises on Melissa’s throat.

“We have to assume the children are still in the house, even if you didn’t see them.” He struggled to keep his anger in check. “We need to get him outside the house if possible.”

“Maybe I should go back there,” Melissa suggested.

Aaron’s gut clenched. “No.”

She frowned. “He’s angry with me. I hurt him. It could be enough to get him outside.”

“He may have a weapon. I’m not putting you in harm’s way.”

“I didn’t see a gun, and anything less than that, you could get to him before he got to me.”

He caught her arm and turned her to face him, loosening his grip when he saw her wince. He smoothed his hand over her arm where he’d grabbed her. “Someone already tried to set your house on fire,” he said more quietly.

She gave him a dark look. “Y’all thought that was me.”

“If Terry Harris set that fire, he obviously wanted you dead. I won’t give him a chance to get it right this time.” He eyed the other deputies, who were looking at him for direction. Would he ever get used to being the one with authority? “So, how else can we get Harris out of the house?”

“Do we know anything about his family? Mother, father—maybe a sibling?” asked Kendrick Dell, an earnest young rookie fresh out of the county police academy. Aaron gave him a quick look of approval, and the young man beamed with pride.

“His mother works at the chicken processing plant in Cedar Creek,” Melissa offered, referring to a town fifteen minutes to the east, across the county line. “I think they’re close. She was the only one in the family still speaking to him.”

“Would she help us arrest him, though?” Blake asked.

“She’s not blind to his problems. She didn’t stand in Dinah’s way at the custody hearing. He seems to listen to her.”

Aaron turned to Kendrick. “Get on the horn to Sunshine Processing in Cedar Creek. Ask for—” He looked at Melissa.

“Mary Mullins,” she supplied.

“Tell Mrs. Mullins we’ll send a car to pick her up. Don’t scare her. Just tell her we need her to talk to her son. Then go pick her up.”

Kendrick headed to the patrol car.

Riley Patterson arrived, to Aaron’s relief. Even though Aaron had more seniority with the sheriff’s department than his brother-in-law, Riley had more experience as an investigator. He’d been a deputy chief in Wyoming, taking the pay cut and the loss of rank when he chose to move to Alabama to be with Hannah. Riley was damned good at the job, and Aaron’s ego wasn’t so big that he couldn’t look to the man for help.

He pulled Riley aside and caught him up on what had happened. “Melissa thinks Harris’s mother may be able to get through to him. Kendrick’s gone to pick her up.”

Nodding approvingly, Riley looked at Melissa, who leaned against the side of Aaron’s truck, her arms wrapped tightly around herself. “She okay?”

“Seems to be. He did a number on her neck, but she got herself out of there in pretty good shape.” She looked scared and sad. Aaron squelched the urge to give her a hug and forced his gaze back to his brother-in-law, lowering his voice. “I’m worried about the Harris kids. Melissa says the mother doesn’t usually let them out of her sight. But Melissa didn’t see or hear them in the house.”

Riley’s expression went grim. “Not good.”

“I keep picturing—” Aaron couldn’t say the words aloud.

“I know.” Riley laid a hand on Aaron’s shoulder. “But I took a quick look at Harris’s file before I came out here. He doesn’t have a record of hurting the kids.”

“Ordinary guys snap and take out their whole families.” Aaron glanced at Melissa again. “We can’t wait here forever.”

“We can have the A.B.I. hostage negotiation guys here in an hour. Maybe sooner by helicopter, if you think the situation is bad enough.” Riley followed Aaron’s gaze. “Melissa Draper is the closest thing we have to a fly on the wall in there. She knows the lay of the house, right? The players?”

Riley was right. Melissa was their best source. He should be grilling her, picking her brain for anything she might know that they could use to their advantage. He shouldn’t be trying to protect her at all costs—that wasn’t his job.

He crossed to her side. “You said you want to help us.”

She gave a silent but firm nod.

Aaron pulled his notepad from his pocket. “Then walk me through that house.”

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