Alena’s face had gone pale at Melissa’s words, her eyes clouded with the same memory that haunted him. Cal didn’t want her sitting through more of this. He cleared his throat. “Sheriff, why don’t Alena and I step out and let you get Melissa’s official statement?”
Raines gave a short nod. “Good idea.” He reached for his phone again. “I’ll have some more food brought in. Looks like we’ll be here a while.”
Cal checked his watch. It was nearly five. They’d been running on caffeine and adrenaline all damn day, and it showed. He touched Alena’s arm, guiding her toward the hall.
“Come on,” he said. “Breakroom’s this way. You need a breather.”
His plan was simple. Get her off her feet for five minutes, maybe get her to eat something, and remind her that Dexter wasn’t going to touch David. Not while Cal still had breath in his body.
But the moment they stepped out of Raines’s office, the front door swung open. Arneson strode in, his expression tight, his phone clutched in one hand as if he’d been mid-argument.
Alena stiffened beside him, and Cal felt his own pulse tick up. Timing, as always, had a way of turning bad.
Arneson’s gaze darted past Cal and Alena, landing on the open office door. His eyes narrowed when he spotted Melissa sitting inside with the blanket still around her shoulders.
“Did you see him?” Arneson demanded. “Did you see Dexter? Do you know where he is?”
Melissa lifted her chin, her eyes narrowed to slits. “You’d know that better than I would.”
Color flushed up Arneson’s neck. For a moment, Cal thought he might lose it, but instead Arneson turned on Raines, who was coming toward him.
“I’ve got proof,” Arneson insisted, his voice vibrating with raw urgency. “Proof that Kara’s the one who hired those men to grab Melissa. She’s been hounding Dexter, pushing him, driving him crazy, and I had to know why. So, I hired a PI to follow her.”
Arneson yanked his phone up, swiped a few times, then thrust the screen toward Raines. “There. Take a look.”
The photo was grainy, the colors muted, but the image spoke for itself. Alena leaned in, Cal at her side, and Raines bent closer over the screen. It was Kara, no doubt about it, passing a thick envelope to a man in a ball cap.
Cal’s stomach sank as his gaze locked on the man’s face. The cap shadowed part of it, but not enough to hide the truth.
Bryce Keller. Their dead attacker.
Chapter Eleven
Alena stood in Cal’s guest bathroom, towel wrapped tight around her as she tugged on fresh clothes. Another restless night had carved shadows under her eyes, and she could feel it in every muscle. The nightmares had stalked her for hours.
They’d slammed together like jagged puzzle pieces. Flashes of the warehouse attack six years ago, the searing pain of her injury, and yesterday’s fire in the travel trailer where they’d found Melissa. The old scars tangled with the new, leaving her raw and shaken.
And when she’d finally managed to claw her way free of that nightmare, her dreams had twisted again—morphed into heat, into the kind of sex she’d once had with Cal.
She let out a sharp breath, pressing her palms against the cool sink. Her body wasn’t letting her forget that she was under the same roof with him.
Alena forced herself to shove the memories aside, both the violent ones and the hot rush of sex her mind had dragged her into. None of it would help her now. She pulled on her jeans, tugged her shirt into place, and braced herself to face him.
The kitchen smelled of butter and syrup, and when she stepped through the doorway, her chest tightened. Cal stood at the stove, flipping pancakes. Her favorite. The man would always, always stir her blood, and this morning was no different. He was doing it for her, trying to bring a little light into the dark.
Good grief, could he possibly be any hotter? She took in the sweep of his black hair, those drown-in-me blue eyes, and that face, carved sharp and strong, that paired perfectly with the body that went with it.
Today he looked more cowboy, jeans and a button-down tugged over broad shoulders, going back to his ranching roots. It was a hot look on him, no question. But then, so was his special ops one. And after the dream she’d had about him, she could add that his best look of all was naked and in her bed.
Cursing herself for the image of him that kept repeating in her head, she crossed to the counter, poured herself a cup of coffee, and took a long sip. “Any updates?” she asked once she managed to speak.
While Cal flipped a pancake, he said over his shoulder, “Kara’s coming into the sheriff’s office this morning. She’ll have her lawyer with her. Raines is planning to ask about that photo Arneson’s PI got.”
Alena wrapped her hands tighter around her coffee cup, letting the warmth seep into her fingers.
Cal slid another pancake onto the growing stack. “Isla’s been digging deeper with the PI. He shared more photos with her, and she’s trying to ID the other people in them. If she can link one of them to Keller, we might be able to get some info from them to confirm if Kara really hired him.”
She nodded. “So maybe we’ll finally get some answers.”
