Western Romance Collection: Rugged Cowboys Part 82

"I'm going to be out of town the next couple days. Work stuff."

"So that's why you needed to meet today?"

"You caught me."

"I thought you were a mechanic?"

"Client needs me to do some work on his bike, and he needs it done yesterday. I know the guy, and I know he's willing to pay, so I'm going to be going down to Arizona. Call it a house-call. But I think it'll take a couple days to get the bike in real good condition."

"Okay."

She didn't need a lie detector test to know that he was hiding something. He might be establis.h.i.+ng an alibi for himself. If he suspected that she was on to him, it would be smart to be out of town for the third murder. That way, she wouldn't be able to accuse him of doing it. After all-he was four hours away.

But if he wasn't, and he really had some business to take care of down south, then what was it, and should she really be letting him go to take care of it?

The answer came before she took even a minute to think about it. She couldn't afford to tip her hand like that. She'd have to let him do whatever he wanted, even if what he wanted was to run roughshod over the law with abandon.

She had no other choice, not right now. So she'd keep her doubts to herself and wait for the right opportunity to arise. Then she'd nail him on whatever she could find.

Twenty-Nine.

Erin put the phone to her ear and forced her voice to sound normal. "Russo."

"Hey, did everything go alright?"

"Everything's fine."

"Is this a bad time?"

She looked straight ahead, not letting the question get to her. "No, I have time. I can talk plenty. No problem."

"You sound strange. Are you sure that everything is alright?"

"I said it was fine, didn't I?"

"Sure. Sorry I asked."

"Thank you."

Erin laid back in the bed and waited to feel normal again. She'd been waiting for a long time, and she suspected that she'd be waiting much longer than the phone call was going to take.

"I was just worried about you. I know that things like this situation, the one with Hutchinson-it can go bad fast."

"Well, everything's fine. You pick up the blue-and-white truck?"

"Sure we did. Everything checks out with him. He's the one from Minnesota, just like you said."

"Well, that's what I figured. I didn't remember his face, not exactly, but from the cap and the fact that I knew he was on that sheet, I guessed."

"Well, it was a good guess."

She suppressed the pride at the compliment. No time for them, and no time to feel good about herself over nothing.

"Just get him dead to rights. Find Juanita Rodrigues, see if she recognizes him. She probably won't, but you never know."

"Maybe he had the window down, right?"

"Right."

The conversation wasn't going anywhere, and she wasn't sure that she wanted it to. Erin let out another breath.

"Are you sure you're okay? You sound kinda down in the dumps, Erin. Do you want to grab lunch?"

"No." She knew that she was doing a bad job of making herself sound anything close to alright, but it was hard to put aside the knowledge that no matter how much work she put into the relations.h.i.+p, it didn't much G.o.d d.a.m.ned matter.

"Are you at the hotel?"

She didn't answer. She wasn't sure she wanted him knowing where she was.

"Say I was."

"Stay there. I'm coming over."

"Don't."

"Erin, I swear-"

"Stop worrying about me, Schafer. I can take care of myself."

"Are you sure?"

"f.u.c.k you, that's my answer. Am I sure, f.u.c.k you."

"I'm sorry-did I do something to p.i.s.s in your cheerios?"

"Honestly? I don't need this right now. Just-go do whatever you F.B.I. people do."

She hung up the phone.

She could hear it in her own voice. That inner b.i.t.c.h that she'd never been able to shake. Why was it so easy to play the part with Craig, but the minute that someone might have taken a legitimate interest in her- She quieted that thought. He hadn't taken a legitimate interest in her. She wasn't going to be with him, not long-term. There was no long-term for them, not really. Regardless of what either one of them wanted. No amount of trying hard was going to make up for a five-hour plane ride.

She wouldn't find the time to go to Virginia. Not the way she attacked work. He wouldn't find the time to come to California, either. Not with the short leash that the F.B.I. kept him on. Karen let out a breath.

It was smarter, and it would be easier, to just get it all out of her system now. Stop worrying about any of it, Just get used to the idea that she was going to have to get over him, and the sooner she could manage it, the less painful it would be when it happened.

She took a deep breath again.

That was the right approach, and if she was smart, that was what she'd keep in mind when he knocked on that door. She was a cop in California, and he was an out-of-town, sticking-his-nose-in, F.B.I. cop.

There wasn't going to be any compromise, not in the end. They might try for a while, waste a couple of years imagining that one day they'd spend a little more time together, or they could be honest with themselves now and admit that s.h.i.+t wasn't going to happen. Not in the long run. It would be less painful if they just admitted it to themselves now.

Erin rolled herself over and closed her eyes. She was tired. She had been for days now. The shooting had only made it that much worse, and having to keep Roy at arm's length took a lot out of her. If not physically, certainly emotionally.

She needed to get herself straightened out. That idea was a laugh. As if she was going to do anything remotely like that. She might get a nap or she might not, but the idea of being able to think straight for one G.o.d d.a.m.ned minute before Craig Hutchinson sat in a courtroom and stood trial for the murder of her sister, and whatever other myriad crimes she knew he was guilty of-that wasn't going to happen.

Erin's eyes shot open when she heard the knock. She was out of the bed like a shot, her first reflex to reach for the pistol. She stopped herself. n.o.body was going to knock before they shot her, and if they did-maybe they would. She didn't know.

Maybe they would. She left the gun on the table regardless, a subtle f.u.c.k-you to the instinct that told her to make sure that she always had something ready just in case some crazy son of a b.i.t.c.h tried to attack her.

She was in control of her life, and if she was going to get killed, she was going to get killed. n.o.body was pulling her strings. Not Craig, not the f.u.c.ker in the blue truck, not her father, and definitely not-she put her eye to the peep hole.

Definitely not Roy f.u.c.king Schafer, who was standing in the hall outside.

"Go away."

"You know I can't do that, Erin."

"I said, 'go away.' "

"And I said I'm not going to."

"For how long? A few minutes? An hour? What happens when I let you in? What happens when we solve this thing? You gonna wait outside my apartment then, too?"

"Erin-"

"Don't you 'Erin' me. Go away. I don't need you here. I can take care of myself."

He took the comment like a slap in the face. The expression was every bit as satisfying as she'd thought it was, in the deep place in the pit of her stomach where right and wrong didn't matter nearly so much as making sure that people suffered when you wanted them to suffer.

He waited a minute, opened his mouth just about long enough to close it again, and then walked off. Even from the limited view of the peep-hole she could see that what started as a casual walk away quickly became frustrated, even angry.

She smiled the way that people smile when other people hurt inside. That was all she needed. Another way to f.u.c.k her own life up. It was a mess, and it was perfect, and that was all she'd ever asked for. Doing this to herself didn't even bother her, not any more.

No need to worry about whether or not there was a future for them any more, not when she could just end it now. She could almost feel the weight of doubt falling off her shoulders already. No more need to question what was going to happen between them. Nothing was going to happen between them, and that was good enough. As long as she could know where she stood, it didn't matter that it hurt.

After all, she'd always deserved to suffer. Maybe Roy did, or maybe he didn't. But she hurt worse, which in the end meant it was okay.

Thirty.

Erin let herself slump back against the bed and felt the tugging in her chest that told her to go back and apologize. She couldn't just leave things the way they were. She shouldn't have said it. She should have opened the door.

That was exactly why she didn't do it, though. Because every part of her wanted to, and that part was going to hurt now or it was going to hurt when he had to leave her behind when he left. But the hurting, that part was built in.

And if she was going to hurt, then she wasn't going to let someone else hurt her. She'd been a b.i.t.c.h for twenty-five years, and looking back it had hurt her as much as it had hurt anyone else.

Then she crawled back into bed and got ready for the time that was going to come. Things wouldn't stay this way. Craig had told her he was going out of town, and he'd done it for a reason, though she couldn't begin to guess what that reason was.

That meant that she needed to be ready for just about anything. Someone was going to get killed, and it was going to be soon. Neither of the two men she'd met so far had been accidents.

Nor had they been caught by accident. The one who broke into her house, 'Ryan,' had been sent there. No chance in h.e.l.l was he there of his own volition. He wouldn't even know where she lived.

Craig could have been the man pulling the strings, but why? Why would he want her dead? Because she knew too much? That directly contradicted what he'd told the others in that little grove. She was 'on the hook,' he'd told them. Then, not four hours later, he sends someone to kill her? It didn't make any sense. Not one lick of sense.

There was always the chance that he expected her to get the better of her attacker. Maybe Craig had told the guy that the owner of the apartment was out of town. Just an easy break-in. But then why bring the gun?

She'd seen evidence plants before. This wasn't that. The weapon was holstered and b.u.t.toned in. So it wasn't the uniforms trying to protect her.

If it wasn't Craig, who was it?

The thought ran through her head that whenever things seemed impossible, there was probably a wrong a.s.sumption somewhere. Too many detective novels as a girl, maybe, but she'd learned a long time ago that it didn't always work that way. Sometimes the only wrong a.s.sumption you had was that their reasons would make sense.

But just in case, she ran through a few of them. First was that Roy wasn't involved. More than a few television shows had given rise to the notion that there might be dozens or hundreds of killers who took over investigating their own murdering, and then have to pin it on someone else. If Roy were involved he would have certainly wanted her dead. And he'd left with about enough time to kill Becca. The pieces fit together, sort of, but only in the broadest strokes.

She didn't get the gut feeling that he could have done it. It wasn't a h.e.l.l of a lot to go on, but as she thought it through, the circ.u.mstances got pretty ugly. Why sleep with her d.a.m.n near right up until the moment her sister died?

Well it was to taunt her. The questions were easy to answer. But if he was trying to taunt her, he could have done a better job of it. He could have asked about her family, asked about her sister. How things are going with them, the works.

He had a phone, if it was just an ordered killing then he could have stayed at the resort until after Erin got the call. That would have protected him from any suspicion. That he didn't know not to have circ.u.mstances make him look suspicious was evidence by itself that he didn't know about the murder in advance.

She a.s.sume that Craig was involved. But it was impossible that he didn't know anything. He'd been slowly handing her the killers one-by-one, in order. As if he had them all in his back pocket and every day or two he decided that she should have another one. Just barely slow enough that it might be inconspicuous.

By now he'd know that the cops had picked up the blue-and-white truck. No doubt he'd known it before he told her he was leaving town, probably got a text about it during their brunch together. Very possibly they'd reached out to him as soon as the guy was picked up.

The questionable a.s.sumption lit up like a Christmas tree. She a.s.sumed that there was someone else in the shadows, someone who was manipulating these guys into killing the women they'd killed. Or, at least, someone manipulating them after the fact. Now that they were here, and the women were dead, someone was pa.s.sing them orders.

That one hadn't been because of a feeling or a hunch or anything like that. She just had trouble believing that Craig would make such erratic decisions, so much relying on chance.

But maybe he wasn't as smart as she had him pegged for, or maybe he was much smarter than she had figured. Maybe- Erin heard the sound of footsteps coming to a stop in front of the door. She saw the shadow of the figure outside, saw it widen just a bit, and then an envelope slipped under the door. She reached for it and grabbed, but she could already tell that whoever had dropped it was in the wind. They'd taken their sweet time coming up, but the minute that the envelope was all the way through they'd started booking it down the hall, towards the fire escape. It was closer than the elevator.

Right on cue as she opened the door, the fire alarm hit. Someone had gone through the fire door. The heavy door sent a loud slam echoing through the hall. Erin winced as it sounded, and looked down at the envelope in her hands.

Russo, it said. The handwriting was nice, neat, even. She tore the envelope open neatly and tossed the torn-away bit in the trash can by the door. The paper was neatly folded. She unfolded it and started to read.

The handwriting here was atrocious. She knew right away that someone else must have written the letter, than the person who folded it up and addressed it to her.

She could barely decipher it in some parts, but the parts she could told her that what she was looking at was a diary. A diary for the writer and the writer only, or they might have tried to fix the numerous misspellings and mistakes in writing. Then again, maybe they didn't know about them. Maybe this was how the person always wrote, but n.o.body wrote anything like this.