Confessing to the Cowboy

“I’m worried about you,” he said softly.

“About me?”

His hands slid down her arms and then back up again to her shoulders. “You might be the owner of this café, but that makes you the head waitress and somebody is killing waitresses and we don’t know if that somebody might consider you the ultimate prize.”

His words shot a shuddering chill down her body. Until Dorothy’s murder nobody had been sure what was driving the murderer. Now they could make an educated guess that whoever it was had a thing for waitresses.

“But I’m different,” she said, her voice a faint whisper. “I’m different than the other waitresses who have been killed. I don’t live alone and I have Matt.”

“And we don’t know how this killer might escalate.” He raised a hand to her cheek and she found the impulse to lean into him and instead took a step back, away from his touch. He dropped his hand and instead shoved both of his hands into his coat pockets. “I’m just saying you need to be careful, Mary.”

“I promise I will be. Doors and windows firmly locked and I’ll sleep with one eye open,” she said in an effort to lighten what had suddenly become a tense tone.

“I’m not kidding. Life wouldn’t be the same for me without you in it.” He frowned as if irritated with himself. “Grady Gulch wouldn’t be the same without your famous apple pie. Lock up after me,” he said.

“Always,” she replied.

When he’d stepped out the door she carefully locked it, then turned out all the lights except the dim security ones over the long counter and went back to her living quarters. Her cheek still burned from his touch and the desire she’d had to lean into him.

She stopped at Matt’s bedroom door, surprised to find him still awake. “Hey, buddy, why aren’t you asleep?” She eased down on the edge of his bed as he sat up, his blond hair tousled with the beginnings of a bed head.

“I heard what Sheriff Evans said and I just want you to know that I’ll never let anyone hurt you.” His voice held all the vehemence a ten-year-old could hold. “I’ll protect you always.”

Mary’s heart squeezed tight and she reached out and shoved a strand of his pale blond hair off his forehead. “Thanks, but that’s not your job. That’s the sheriff’s business. Your job is just to be my favorite son.”

He eyed her with a small smile. “Mom, I’m your only son.”

“Well, then, that makes your job easy.” She rose from the bed and kissed him on the forehead. “Don’t worry, Matt. Sheriff Evans is a good sheriff and he’s going to get the bad guy and nothing bad is going to happen to me.”

“You promise?” Matt asked, this time his voice filled with youthful concern.

“I promise,” she replied firmly. “Now, get to sleep. I don’t want you snoozing through math class in the morning. If you can’t go back to sleep right away, then think about what you want to do for your birthday on Saturday.”

Matt’s tension wafted away as a smile touched his lips. “My birthday...yeah, I’ll think about that,” he said and then dutifully closed his eyes. Within minutes he’d fallen asleep, hopefully to dreams of birthday cake and colorful balloons, and Mary moved away from his door and fell onto the sofa in the living room.

The left side of her head suffered a faint pounding that spoke of the beginnings of a headache. Three dead women...not just employees, but also friends.

She’d scarcely had time to grieve for Dorothy as the café had buzzed with business all day. Weddings and deaths brought people out of their isolation and into the café to talk with friends and neighbors.

Now, in the quiet of the room, she still couldn’t find the grief that Dorothy deserved. Instead the only emotion she could tap into was a simmering anxiety that bordered on terror.

Was Cameron right? Were these murders really about somebody trying to get to her? Was somebody toying with her?

Destroying the people she loved, the business she’d built before finally killing her?

Why? And who? She’d never gotten any negative vibes from anyone who had entered the café, the people she visited with day after day.

But Mary knew better than most that monsters could wear smiling faces. They were chameleons who could blend into any setting, who appeared like ordinary human beings. They could be charming and make you believe any of their lies.

Oh, yes, Mary knew very well about monsters. A little over thirteen years ago she’d married one...and then she’d killed him.

Chapter 3

“I think we need to look at all the newcomers to town,” Cameron said as he faced his men the next morning.

“How new of newcomers?” Deputy Larry Brooks asked.

Cameron frowned thoughtfully. “Let’s say anyone who has moved to town within the last year or so. I also want somebody checking into anyone Mary Mathis does business with, vendors and services she utilizes and people who repair the café equipment.”

“You have a premonition or something that she’s our next victim?” Deputy John Mills asked as he moved a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other.

“No, but I think we can all agree that these murders revolve around the café and that’s where our investigation should stay focused,” Cameron replied.

What he didn’t need to focus on was how soft her cheek had been when he’d touched it the night before, how he believed he’d seen desire flame up sharp and hot in the depths of her blue eyes. Wishful thinking, he mused as he also remembered how quickly she’d stepped back from him.

He dismissed these wayward thoughts and once again gazed at the men who worked for him. “Brent, I want you to check to see if any murders like these have occurred any place else in Oklahoma. If you find nothing, then expand the search to include Texas and Kansas. This killer is just too good for Candy Bailey to have been his first. Someplace he’s honed his craft and if we can find where, then maybe we can identify who.”

“Unless he’s a local,” Adam Benson said.

There was a moment of silence. Nobody wanted to believe that a killer walked among them, that somebody who had been born and raised in the small town was a cold-blooded murderer.

“Damn, but I hate this case,” Ben Temple said as he twirled a pen between his fingers as he broke the momentary silence.

“We also can’t rule out a female killer,” Cameron said. The room exploded as the deputies talked about the pros and cons of the possibility of a woman perp.

“I just don’t want to think about any woman I know being capable of doing something like this to another woman,” Adam said. “But I can’t forget it was a woman who tried to kill Courtney Chambers and take my brother’s baby from her.”

“And I don’t like the idea of one of our own home-grown men involved in this,” Brent said. “We’re a close-knit community. I know most every single man by name, have talked to them over a cup of coffee or been to their houses.”

By eight o’clock everyone had their assignments and had dispersed from the room. Only Adam remained behind. “You look exhausted and the day has barely begun,” he observed with a critical gaze at Cameron.

“I’m all right, just couldn’t sleep much last night.”

“I don’t think any of us are going to get a lot of sleep until this creep is behind bars.”

Cameron nodded. “How’s Melanie?”

Softness swept over Adam’s features. “She’s terrific. Her dance costume business is really starting to take off and she’s keeping busy with it. I’m trying to talk her into a Christmas wedding.”

“That’s great,” Cameron replied, truly pleased for the couple who had been to hell and back. Melanie had been a successful dancer in New York when idiopathic neuropathy and foot drop had landed her permanently in a wheelchair. Adam had moved into her upstairs apartment and the two had fallen in love.

Before their love could be fully realized Melanie had been kidnapped and left in a field to die. The perpetrator had been Deputy Jim Collins, one of Cameron’s best men, and Cameron would forever feel more than a bit of guilt for not seeing how sick Jim was, sick enough that he’d harbored an obsession that had turned into a sick rage against Melanie.

“What worries me is that our perp is somebody like Jim, somebody who wears the face of a friend or neighbor and easily hides the evil in his soul,” Cameron said thoughtfully.

Adam stood and clapped him on the shoulder. “Stop beating yourself up about Jim. He didn’t just fool you, he had us all fooled. We’re going to find this creep, Cameron. We’re all committed to finding him so we can give you back your quiet, beautiful town.” With these words he left the conference room.

Cameron remained seated, working over in his mind the duties he’d given his deputies, making sure that everything that had to be done was being done.