Killer Heat

She jerked her head back. Had he seen her? What was he doing just…lying there?

Heart thumping erratically, she crawled to the slider, which afforded her the best view of all. Sure enough, she had a visitor—a visitor who was doing very little to hide his presence. She got the impression Butch wanted to be seen. While she watched, he leaned over to pick up a small rock and threw it at her window. It missed the glass but hit the side of the house with a crack.

He wasn’t sneaking around, as she’d expected. Clearly he wanted to frighten her.

And he did. Far bolder than she’d thought he’d be, he seemed completely unafraid of the consequences. He was flaunting that lack of fear, letting her know he enjoyed the game he was playing.

What should she do?

She didn’t get the chance to decide. Before she could respond in any way, he rose into a sitting position and cocked his head as if he’d heard a noise that put him on alert.

What was he reacting to? Possibly nothing. He didn’t seem overly concerned. He came to his feet and stood there, gazing at her room from beyond the patio. Then he offered her a mocking salute, as though he knew she could see him, and strode calmly to the fence, which he jumped.

A few seconds later she heard what must’ve chased him off—the crackling of a police radio—and rushed to the front of the house. A cruiser sat at the curb.

Suddenly far less concerned about her state of undress, she unlocked the door and charged through it, down the driveway and right up to the officer’s lowered window.

“How did you know to come?” she asked the cop who sat behind the wheel, writing a report.

He put aside his clipboard. “Professional courtesy. Gentleman by the name of Jonah Young called in, said you were being harassed and asked if we could drive by every once in a while. I’ve been by twice already. Why? Somethin’ wrong?” He glanced around.

Heedless of the tears streaking down her cheeks, she sank onto the blacktop. It was over. For tonight.

But what about the next time? Butch would be back. His brazen behavior made it a certainty.

So? Are you going to answer? Will you do it?

Jonah rubbed his tired eyes, then reread Lori’s text message for probably the fifteenth time in three days. He needed to respond to her at some point. Ex-wife or no, he should be civil. But he wasn’t ready to address the issues her request dredged up. The clock on the wall showed three in the morning. He’d been up for nearly twenty-four hours and was in no frame of mind to formulate an answer that sounded halfway polite. Considering how things had gone down when they were briefly married, which seemed like another life since it was before he’d ever become a cop, he didn’t feel he owed her any special consideration.

On the other hand, he couldn’t see a lot of reason to deny her what she was asking for. It wasn’t that big a sacrifice. And he’d made his own share of mistakes in life. Francesca was proof. Besides, he was over Lori. He believed she’d be a good mother. So why not write the letter? Why not support her attempt to adopt a baby?

Resentment had to be the answer. It’d been more than a decade since he’d learned the truth, yet he still cringed whenever he pictured her sleeping with the partner she’d left him for. All those days and nights when Lori had said she needed some “girl time” he’d thought she and Miranda were seeing a movie or shopping. He’d never dreamed they might be romantically intimate—because he’d been operating under the mistaken belief that he and Lori were, on the whole, happily married. That they had a normal sex life and would someday start a family. Lori had always seemed eager enough to make love. There’d even been times, plenty of them, when she’d initiated it.

But that was before she decided he never had and never would be able to fulfill her needs. It wasn’t until she asked him to move out that she claimed she’d never been turned on by him, that all the moaning and writhing had been for his benefit.

Just the memory of those words made him wince. During that final argument he’d realized she’d been involved with Miranda before she ever met him. If she’d been confused about her sexuality it would’ve been so much easier to forgive her. But, according to her, she’d known since she was a girl. Which meant their whole relationship had been a front, a lie. She hadn’t told him the truth because her family was absolutely opposed to same-sex relationships. She knew they’d never accept her lifestyle or respect her choice, and she was afraid she’d lose her position in the family business as well as her inheritance if they found out. She’d also wanted to have her own children and knew only a man could give her that.

Apparently, she’d seen him as some kind of sperm donor. But that was before she’d learned she couldn’t have children. Jonah was sure that news had made it a whole lot easier to toss him aside.

“Hey, what are you doing here? I thought you were going to your motel.”

Startled, he glanced up to see Dr. Leslie Price, the forensic anthropologist he’d been working with since he’d signed on to help with the Dead Mule Canyon murders. Diminutive and soft-spoken, the doctor was in her early sixties. Her white hair reminded him of his mother. So did her confidence and dedication to her craft. But the similarities ended there. As a successful corporate attorney, Rita Young dressed in bold colors with designer labels and took no time to nurture anyone or anything. She could be combative, even with him, and threw her support behind one worthy cause after another. Dr. Price, on the other hand, settled for plain white lab coats and nurses’ shoes and refused to argue with anyone. She also limited her devotion to one cause—making the dead speak through the evidence left in their bones.

“I could ask the same of you,” he said. “You told me you were going to lie down in the back.”

She offered him a sheepish grin. “I did. For a while. That couch isn’t the most comfortable.”

Lack of comfort wasn’t the real problem. Jonah was willing to bet she was so exhausted she could sleep in a closet standing up. The fine lines age had etched around her eyes and mouth were growing more prominent as the week wore on. She couldn’t rest because she knew they had work to do. The bones lying on the tables that’d been set up for her in this makeshift lab weren’t just bones to her—or to him. They represented victims, victims who deserved justice for what they’d suffered.

Jonah had spent a lot of hours here, trying to help. Without the information only she could provide, he didn’t even have a good place to start the investigation. But that should be changing very soon. Now that they’d arrived at an approximate victim count, which hadn’t been easy due to the number of bones that’d been scattered or broken in two or more pieces, they were busy establishing the biological characteristics, the time since death and the cause and manner of death for each set of remains. The more quickly they learned what these bones could tell them, the more information he’d have with which to direct the investigation.

“I hope you’re letting your girlfriend know that the woman you’ve been spending your nights with is old enough to be your mother.” She nodded toward the phone in his hand. “Handsome guy like you…she’s got to be wondering.”

He grinned. “Fortunately, I don’t have a girlfriend.”

“Fortunately?” She settled at the next table, where she’d been piecing together pelvic bones most of the evening.

“My job can be tough on close personal relationships. The travel. The hours. You know.” He shoved his phone into his pocket and went back to measuring those femurs and tibias that weren’t broken. Dr. Price would use his allometry measurements to determine the general height of each victim. She’d also examine the thickness of the bones to suggest a body type.

There was a great deal of work to be done yet, and soon she’d be doing it exclusively with the help of the trained assistants who came in during the day. His strength lay on the investigative end, using the information she provided. That information just hadn’t been coming quickly enough, so she’d trained him to do some of the simpler measuring.

“Close personal relationships are what will keep you sane in all this.” She ran her finger over the sciatic notch of a pelvic bone. A broader notch indicated a woman; a narrower notch indicated a man. But some didn’t seem particularly wide or narrow. She’d told him these final few were the tricky ones. That was why she’d taken a short nap. She’d hoped to come back refreshed.

Going by her frown, he wasn’t sure the nap had improved her ability to decide.

“That depends on the relationship,” he said. “The people closest to you can also drive you crazy.”

“My best guess is female.”

“If you’re talking about the person driving me crazy, you’d be right,” he teased, purposely misunderstanding.

She laughed. “I was talking about this victim.” After making a notation, she set the pelvic bone aside. “Anyway, it’s not like that for me. My family is the reason I do what I do. I want to make the world a better place…for them.”

He wondered how eager she’d be to fall into another man’s arms if her husband unexpectedly announced that he’d been in love with his golfing buddy all along. Jonah’s experience with Lori had altered his outlook on relationships, made it difficult for him to trust. Not long after the divorce, he became good at spotting at least one fatal flaw in every woman he dated. That flaw insured his emotional safety, kept him from making any commitments.

He felt his lips twist into a humorless smile as he recalled the argument he’d once had with his mother. She’d told him he needed to stop trying to prove his desirability to every available woman he met, that he should quit thinking with his cock. Offended by her blunt assessment of his behavior and her language—she was his mother, after all—he’d snapped at her to stay out of his business, told her she didn’t know what she was talking about.

But now he could see that she’d been right all along. She usually was. Unfortunately, that didn’t make her any easier to put up with. No one could get on his nerves faster than she could, probably because they were too much alike. Although he wasn’t nearly as high-strung or brutally frank, he was stubborn to a fault and determined to live life on his own terms. That meant he was going to take a few hits, and he had.

“Do you think you’ll ever get married?” Dr. Price asked.

“Maybe someday.” He didn’t mention that he’d already been married. He never told anyone, hadn’t even told Francesca. Tying the knot when he was so young, and for such a short period of time, to a woman who claimed she’d never been attracted to him seemed better forgotten. Only his mother and sister knew he’d been married, and the friends who’d attended the wedding, of course. But even they had no idea of the real reason for the divorce. Terrified that word would leak back to her family, Lori had begged him to keep silent about her homosexuality. How her parents could continue to believe Miranda was her “roommate” he’d never understand. Except…he hadn’t seen it, either, had he? Lori just didn’t fit the stereotype.

“Marriage isn’t easy,” she said. “But if both people go into it with the proper attitude, with real dedication and loyalty, it can work.”

It hadn’t worked for his parents, but as dynamic and talented as his mother was, Jonah didn’t blame his father for bailing. He couldn’t imagine how Wesley had remained in the relationship as long as he had. He’d stayed until Connie, Jonah’s older sister, was in college and Jonah had nearly graduated from high school. That was admirable, considering it was difficult to put up with his mother for a weekend, let alone twenty years. “I’ll take your word for it.”

She’d started to say something else when his phone rang. Covering a yawn, he muttered, “Just a sec,” and dug it out of his pocket. “Hello?”

“Mr. Young?”

“Yes?”

“Sergeant Lowe here, from the Chandler Police Department.”

Immediately conjuring up the image of Francesca sitting in Investigator Finch’s cubicle, scratched and bruised from her confrontation with Vaughn, he stiffened. “Is anything wrong?”

“No, Ms. Moretti is fine, but…I thought you should know…someone cut her phone line tonight.”