Stranger In His Arms Page 17

  She buried her head against his chest, and her soft hair tickled his nose. He could feel her heart pounding and the quickness of her breathing. She stiffened when a voice called out in the attorney’s office.

  “Mr. Crutchfield? Are you here?”

  The unseen female rapped on the bathroom door. “Mr. Crutchfield?”

  From her manner of address, Dylan guessed the woman was one of Crutchfield’s employees. He only hoped she hadn’t arrived to spend her entire Saturday afternoon catching up on work.

  The woman didn’t open the bathroom door, and Dylan waited for her to leave the adjoining office.

  Meanwhile, the longer he held Jennifer, the more he wanted to kiss her, but he’d already promised himself distance in order to analyze his feelings. With her soft curves pressed against him, however, his rebellious body made its own decision. He hoped she wouldn’t notice.

  After waiting what seemed hours of agonizing pleasure, but was actually less than five minutes, Dylan released Jennifer and motioned for her to remain hidden in the shower. He crept to the door and opened it a tiny crack.

  The office was empty.

  Dylan eased out of the bathroom, moved quietly to the hall doorway, and listened. No sounds other than the muted hiss of the central heating system were evident. He quickly checked the rest of the rooms, but whoever had been there earlier had left. But had she noted the files out of place, the freshly made coffee, the lighted monitor in the library and reported them to security?

  He returned to Jennifer in Crutchfield’s office. “We’d better get out of here fast while the coast is clear.”

  Cheeks flushing an alluring pink from their close encounter, she nodded. “Let me get something first.”

  She sprinted down the corridor into the library. When she met him again seconds later, she was folding a printed sheet of paper and slipping it into her pocket. Outside the office, she relocked the door, and they entered the elevator without being seen.

  They had just turned onto the boulevard from the office complex when a police car, lights flashing, crested the hill and headed toward them. The cruiser passed them and screeched into the complex. Once it had disappeared into the underground parking garage, Dylan pressed the accelerator.

  “That was close,” he said. “Our unexpected visitor must have called the cops.”

  “Just keep straight ahead,” Jennifer said. “I’ll tell you where to turn.”

  Euphoric over escaping their close call, he couldn’t help grinning at her. “Mind telling me where we’re going?”

  She removed the folded paper from her pocket. “Lenny’s Carpet Mart.”

  He nodded toward the printout. “What did you find?”

  Her smile was triumphant. “A payment to Lenny’s Carpet Mart made the day after Max Thorne was murdered.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up. There’s not much chance of finding Crutchfield’s original carpet now. It’s probably buried under tons of garbage in a landfill somewhere.”

  “We won’t know till we try.”

  He found her optimism contagious but wondered at its source. For a woman with no family and a killer on her trail, she displayed an amazingly resilient spirit. He doubted he could show such optimism in her situation.

  Ten minutes later, at her direction, he turned the truck into the parking lot of a strip-store shopping center. Lenny’s Carpet Mart occupied the space on the far end of the building, a structure and location that had obviously seen better days.

  They entered the carpet store, and Dylan’s nose stung from the off-gases of racks of carpet samples and several layers of dust. A middle-aged woman with stringy hair, tired eyes and a Yorkshire terrier tucked in the crook of her arm approached them.

  “Can I help you folks?” Her voice was pleasant, but the dog snarled, baring yellow teeth.

  “We’re looking for Lenny,” Dylan said.

  The woman calmed the dog and grinned. “You’re looking at her. Name’s Leonora, Lenny for short. What can I do for you?”

  Jennifer stepped forward and without hesitation patted the scruffy dog. The animal relaxed, then preened under her attention.

  “We’re trying to trace a carpet,” Jennifer explained.

  She gave the woman the date Lenny’s had installed new carpet in the law office and asked where she might find the carpet they’d removed.

  Lenny narrowed her eyes and viewed Jennifer with suspicion. “Why would you want carpet that’s probably been garbage for five months?”

  Dylan started to explain, but Jennifer jumped in with her own story.

  “You know how we women are,” Jennifer said in a conspiratorial voice. “I’m buying new carpet for my living room, and when I worked for Mr. Crutchfield, I always adored the style and color he had in his office. If I could find that carpet and match it, I’m sure it would be perfect.”

  Lenny still looked skeptical, but Dylan could almost see the dollar signs flashing in her eyes. He was sure the carpet in Crutchfield’s office hadn’t been cheap and that Lenny was contemplating a sale.

  “Just a minute.” Lenny walked behind a sales counter, placed the dog in a large padded basket on the chipped Formica surface and pulled out a ledger. Flipping back a few pages, she stopped and poked her thin finger at the page. “Hank Bainbridge.”

  “Who’s that?” Dylan asked.

  “The man who installed Mr. Crutchfield’s new carpet. He can tell you what he did with the old one.” Lenny grabbed a pencil and a scrap of paper and scribbled an address. “He lives out in the country a good forty-five-minute drive from here.”

  Dylan took the paper and thanked her. Back in the truck, he handed the address to Jennifer. “Know where this is?”

  Jennifer nodded and gave him directions.

  HANK BAINBRIDGE’S trailer sat in a grove of slash pines several hundred feet off the highway. A pack of mongrel dogs apparently lived underneath it, because when Dylan’s truck approached the yard, teeth bared and voices wailing, they surged from under the trailer and surrounded the vehicle.

  A thin man with graying hair appeared at the door and hollered at the animals, who slunk back beneath the structure at his command.

  Jennifer rolled down her window. “Mr. Bainbridge?”

  “Who wants to know?” the man replied in a Southern drawl heavy with suspicion.

  “Leonora—Lenny sent us,” she explained. “We have some questions about a carpet.”

  Shrugging into a denim jacket that matched his faded overalls, the man left the trailer and approached the truck. “I’m Hank Bainbridge. You need a carpet installed?”

  Jennifer shook her head. “I’m Jennifer Reid and this is Dylan Blackburn. He’s a police officer and we’re looking for a carpet you removed from an office building. It could be evidence in a crime.”

  Hank folded his arms on the window frame. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I take all the old carpets to the county landfill. They burn ’em in their incinerator.”

  “Oh, no.” Jennifer slumped in her seat and watched her last chance at convicting Crutchfield evaporate into thin air.

  Dylan leaned toward Hank. “Don’t you ever make exceptions? Give a barely used carpet to a friend for use in his own home?”

  Hank shuffled his feet and avoided their eyes. “Lenny says I’m to burn ’em all. She claims if I give away free carpet, it hurts her business.”

  Jennifer felt a spark of hope. “We’re not looking to get you in trouble with your boss. We just need that carpet. It was removed from Larry Crutchfield’s law office last May. A man was murdered there.”

  Hank groaned and rolled his eyes. “I told Ellie we shouldn’t have kept it.”

  “You have the carpet?” Dylan asked.

  Shamefaced, Hank nodded.

  “All of it?” Jennifer asked.

  “That was a big office,” Hank said. “Except for the stain, the rug’s like new, and there was enough to carpet our whole place.”

  “So you have it all?” Jennifer couldn’t con
tain her excitement. “That’s wonderful!”

  “Wonderful for you, maybe,” Hank grumbled. “What’s Ellie going to do when she finds her carpet gone?”

  “We don’t need all of it,” Dylan explained. “Just the part that has the stain. And we’ll need you to sign an affidavit that it’s the carpet you removed from the law office on that date.”

  Hank looked relieved. “That’s no problem. I used the stained part in the floor of the closet. If I can find a close match, Ellie won’t even miss it. I’ll get it for you.”

  Minutes later, they were headed back to Atlanta with the infamous carpet, wrapped carefully in plastic, jammed between them.

  “What if the crime lab doesn’t find any blood?” she asked. “It looks like it’s been scrubbed clean.”

  Dylan stared at the road ahead, keeping the emotional distance he’d established when he’d learned her true identity. When he spoke, his tone was professional, detached, and she ached at the loss of the intimacy they’d shared.

  “You’d be surprised at how little forensics needs for a sample. I’m betting there’s enough blood left to prove it’s Max Thorne’s.”

  Jennifer didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. With luck, Crutchfield would soon be in jail and her life would be safe again. But Crutchfield’s arrest would also mean Dylan, his duty to protect her fulfilled, would walk out of her life and return to Casey’s Cove without her.

  EARLY THAT evening, Dylan sat in the office of Atlanta detective Skip Hawkins. The setting sun threw golden rays across the desk cluttered with file folders and empty coffee cups where Hawkins sat, taking notes, while Jennifer told her story of the night Max Thorne was murdered.

  Despite Dylan’s attempts to distance himself from her, as he watched her give her clear, concise and fearless account of Crutchfield’s crime he couldn’t help admiring Jennifer’s courage. She’d been as tenacious as a terrier on the attorney’s trail, and if the lab reports produced the needed blood sample, thanks to her, her former boss would soon be behind bars. Jennifer would then be free to assume her true identity, to live her life without hiding, without fear.

  Without him?

  Dylan wanted to love her, he couldn’t deny it. But how much good was love without trust? It would be a cold day in July before he could trust her after the lies she’d told him, and it wouldn’t be fair to ask her to hang around long enough for him to see if he could rebuild that trust.

  The ring of a phone on Hawkins’s desk interrupted Dylan’s thoughts. The detective picked up the receiver before it could ring again.

  “Hawkins here.” The man’s blue eyes, looking as if they’d seen more trouble than any human should have to, narrowed, and his forehead furrowed beneath his sandy crew cut as he listened to the person on the other end of the line.

  “Thanks.” He slammed the phone into its cradle and turned to Jennifer. “The lab report supports your story.”

  Dylan breathed a sigh of relief. This time Jennifer’s story had been right on the money. Guilt pricked him as he realized he’d had latent doubts about her truthfulness.

  “The DNA matches Thorne?” she asked.

  Hawkins shook his head. “DNA testing will take a while, but the blood type from the carpet matches Thorne’s. It’s here in his autopsy report. With your testimony, Bainbridge’s affidavit that the carpet came from Crutchfield’s office and the blood match, I can get a warrant to arrest Crutchfield and to search his home for a weapon. We’ll pick him up as soon as he returns to Atlanta from Madison.”

  “He’ll stay locked up until his trial?” she asked.

  “No bail for a murder charge,” Dylan explained. “You’re safe now.”

  Her shoulders slumped with relief, and for the first time, her vulnerability was evident. More than anything, Dylan wanted to put his arms around her and hold her close, but his hesitation about trusting her kept him from comforting her.

  “Will you need anything else from me before Crutchfield goes to court?” Jennifer asked Hawkins.

  “I have your statement,” the detective said, “but you will have to testify at the trial. That could be several months or more away. Better give me your address so I can get in touch with you.”

  Jennifer hesitated and cast Dylan a look he couldn’t read. “I’m not sure where I’ll be. I’ve been on the run so long, I don’t have a permanent address. My apartment’s only temporary. Can I let you know once I’m settled?”

  “Sure.” Hawkins stood and held out his hand. “I appreciate what you’ve done, Miss O’Riley. It took a lot of guts.”

  She blushed an attractive tinge of pink, and Dylan felt desire stir within him.

  “Not guts,” she said. “Just desperation. I’m glad I can quit looking over my shoulder now.”

  “Thanks for your help, too.” Hawkins shook Dylan’s hand. “Miss O’Riley was lucky to have your protection.”

  “I was glad to help,” Dylan said, “but Miss O’Riley is quite adept at taking care of herself.”

  Hawkins walked them to the door and waited as they entered the elevator and the door closed.

  “Where to now?” Dylan wanted her to return to Casey’s Cove with him, but he couldn’t ask without implying more to their relationship than he was ready to admit.

  “Back to the apartment.” She stared at the control panel, avoiding his eyes. “You’ll want to pick up your things before you head back to the mountains.”

  “Right.”

  Disappointment surged through him. He had hoped she’d return to Miss Bessie’s, but she’d had a life in Atlanta before she arrived in Casey’s Cove. It made sense that she might wish to pick up where she’d left off before Crutchfield came after her.

  Neither of them spoke during the ride to her apartment. He followed her into the living room and began gathering his belongings. Torn between not wanting to leave her and fear of committing to a relationship doomed by mistrust, he dreaded saying goodbye. This might be the last time he’d see her.

  “Can I ask you a favor?” she said.

  “Sure.”

  “Promise you won’t say yes unless you really mean it?”

  She had piqued his curiosity. “I promise.”

  “Are you in a hurry?”

  If she only knew how reluctant he was to leave. “Not especially. I’m not due back at work till Monday.”

  She drew a deep breath, like someone ready to plunge off a cliff. “I’m going to call Miss Bessie and ask if she’ll have me back. If she agrees, can I catch a ride with you?”

  He made himself pause, not to appear too eager. “Why not? I have room.”

  “Thank you.” She turned, picked up the phone and punched in a number.

  Dylan paced back and forth while the phone rang.

  “Miss Bessie? This is Jennifer.”

  She paused, and Dylan could picture Miss Bessie on the other end of the line. What he couldn’t guess was whether the old woman was glad to hear from her employee or angry at Jennifer’s desertion.

  “Yes, I’m fine,” Jennifer said. “I’m sorry for the worry I’ve caused, Miss Bessie, and I’m hoping you’ll let me have my job back.”

  Dylan held his breath. If Miss Bessie said no, Jennifer would have no reason to return to Casey’s Cove. He wasn’t ready to provide her with a reason himself, so he was counting on Miss Bessie.

  “Some of the things I’ve told you weren’t exactly the truth,” Jennifer was saying. “I won’t hold you to a final answer until you’ve had a chance to hear my story and make up your mind.”

  Dylan watched Jennifer’s face, looking for a clue to what Miss Bessie was saying. Suddenly, Jennifer’s green eyes filled with tears that overflowed and tracked down her cheeks.

  His hopes fell. Miss Bessie had said no.

  With the back of her hand, Jennifer wiped tears from her cheeks. “Thank you, Miss Bessie. I’ll see you soon.”

  She hung up the phone.

  “She agreed?” Dylan asked.

  Jennifer nodded. “She
said it didn’t matter what I’d done, that I was to come straight home.” She hiccuped as she tried to swallow a sob. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had a place to call home.”

  Dylan felt like whooping with joy, but he kept a lid on his feelings. His heart and his head hadn’t yet come to an agreement on what to do about Jennifer-Rachel.

  “You’d better get packed,” he said. “Miss Bessie’s waiting.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Dylan swung the last Christmas tree onto the trailer of the eighteen-wheeler and wiped sweat from his forehead with a bandanna. “You’ve had quite a crop this year, bro.”

  Jarrett signaled the driver, who started the heavily loaded rig down the mountain, then he waved Dylan toward the house. “I appreciate your help. Come on up. I have some cold brew in the fridge.”

  Dylan trudged up the steep incline toward the house where he’d grown up. Theirs had been a happy family, just the four of them, and Jarrett, five years older, had been both mentor and friend. He’d gladly stepped in to run the farm when failing health had necessitated their parents move to Florida for the warmer climate.

  Dylan reached the house and settled in his father’s rocking chair. The sinking sun beat on the worn boards of the porch, making the outside air comfortable, even in late November. Holding two frosty bottles by the necks, Jarrett stepped out of the screen door and let it slam behind him.

  “Mom would get you for that if she was here,” Dylan teased.

  Jarrett handed him a beer and sank into a rocker next to him. “I wish she were here. I miss ’em both.”

  “Me, too.”

  Jarrett took a long pull from the bottle and stared out across the valley. “Lucky for you they’re not.”

  “Why?”

  “Mom would be all over you like a duck on a June bug for the way you’re treating that girl of yours.”

  “I don’t have a girl.”

  Jarrett fixed him with a stare that reminded Dylan of his father. “Others might believe that lie, but it won’t wash with me.”

  “I never lie,” Dylan protested hotly.

  Jarrett shook his head. “I saw the way you looked at Jennifer when she first came here. And I know you took a chunk of your vacation days to travel to Atlanta to help her out.”