High School Reunion (17 page)

Laurel’s thoughts were as jumbled as her emotions. Her desire was as all encompassing as his arms. She struggled to clear her muddled brain, but he was nibbling on her ear. Heaven help her she was about to come just from the feel of his mouth on her.

She tried to concentrate on their reason for being here, but he was doing things to her insides like nothing she’d ever experienced.

He propped a forearm on the wall above her head and leaned in toward her, letting his chest skim the sensitized tips of her breasts just like his lips were skimming the ultra-sensitive spot beneath her ear. Desire flowed through her like hot lava, wiping all thoughts from her head.

Her body went boneless as he pressed closer. She spread her fingers on his chest and encountered his nipples. A quiet hiss in her ear told her she’d discovered an erogenous zone, maybe one no one had explored before. A thrill of power sent her desire climbing higher.

What would she give to show Cade Dupree something he’d never experienced?

She curled her fingers, grasping handfuls of his shirt, as she sought his mouth. He brought his attention from her earlobe and jaw back to her lips and kissed her more deeply than he had yet. Her bones melted as desire pooled between her thighs.

A knock on the door sent them hurtling away from each other.

Cade wiped a hand across his mouth and grimaced at the ache in his loins. As he forced himself back from the brink of full arousal, the knob turned.

He worked to compose his face. What the hell was he thinking? He’d lost all sense of time and space for a few seconds.

He clamped down on his tongue, using the shock of pain to deflate his arousal. He tasted blood. Even so, his effort wasn’t entirely successful.

“Probably the courier,” he muttered, turning his back on Laurel and heading behind his desk.

The door slammed open and Ralph Langston stomped in. His gaze flickered over Cade’s face, then stopped
short when he saw Laurel. His dark eyes bounced back and forth between them.

Cade risked a glance at her flaming cheeks and too-bright eyes. She finger-combed her hair and tried to look nonchalant. She didn’t succeed. In fact she looked about as far from nonchalant as a woman could. She looked flushed and supple and turned on.

Langston’s eyes twinkled. “Sorry to bother you, Dupree. I see you were interrogating Laurel.”

Jerk!
Cade ground his knuckles into his palm, quelling the urge to deck the man. “I hope you’re here to solidify your alibi for last night,” he growled.

“My alibi? What are you talking about?”

“According to what you told Special Agent Gillespie, you were in the main room of the Visitor Center all night. But you won’t name anyone who can corroborate that. You want to think about your answer?”

“I don’t have to think about it. Am I the only attendee at that party whose whereabouts can’t be verified?”

“That’s not the point. The point is, you don’t ever seem to have a witness to your activities. How do you explain that?”

“Once again, Chief, you’re asking me to prove a negative. I was in plain sight in the Visitor Center the whole evening. If you can’t unearth a witness that will tell you that, it’s not my problem.”

“What did you come here for?” Cade snapped.

“I want that crime-scene tape taken down. I’m paying through the nose for that equipment, and I want to get the land down by the creek bank cleared
today.
”

“Not going to happen.”

“You can’t do this. It’s my land. I paid good money for it.”

Good money?
That was a matter of
dispute. Cade shook his head and sat behind his desk. “It’s my crime scene until I say otherwise.”

Langston’s gaze dropped to the row of plastic bags on the edge of the desk. Cade had to resist the urge to sweep them across the desk and into a drawer. How much could Langston see? Could he read Cade’s bold writing across the face of each bag?

“You crawled all over the area last night,” Langston said. “What else do you expect to find down there?” He took a step forward.

Cade pushed his chair back and came around the desk, casually propping a hip on the corner so that his thigh blocked Langston’s view of the evidence.

Langston’s eyes narrowed and his face flushed. He backed up a step and shifted his gaze toward the back of the office.

“Why don’t you tell me what I can expect to find?” Cade asked, crossing his arms. He’d like nothing more than to throw Langston out of his office, but he needed to hear what the man had to say. “You and Kathy Adler were tromping all over the scene this morning. Were you two just out for a stroll?”

“Kathy wanted to see if she could find anything that would help catch whoever killed Debra.”

Right.
Cade exchanged a glance with Laurel and knew she was thinking the same thing he was. Kathy Adler had never thought about anyone but herself in her life.

“And you?”

Langston pulled his attention away from the back door of the office. He showed his amazingly straight, unnaturally white teeth. “Just helping out a friend.”

“Fine. Help me out and stay away from my crime scene.”

“Don’t forget that
your
crime scene is on my land.”

“Trust me. I haven’t forgotten that. In fact I find it very interesting.”

Langston took another step forward. This time his full attention was on Cade. “Now what are you implying?”

“I’m not
implying
anything. I’m telling you straight out, don’t mess with my crime scene. If you do I’ll arrest you for obstruction of justice.”

“I’m talking to my lawyer.”

Cade shrugged. “Whatever you need to do. Just don’t leave town without asking.”

Langston whirled on his handmade Italian leather heel and stomped out of the office.

Cade turned his attention to Laurel for the first time since Langston had walked in. He felt a keen disappointment that her face was no longer flushed, her body no longer supple and open and her eyes had lost the dewy sparkle of sexual hunger.

His loins tightened at the memory of how turned on she’d been. But the sore place on his tongue reminded him of just how close he’d been to losing control.

He had no business thinking about sex right now. He had a murderer to catch. A cop could get in big trouble if he let his libido do the thinking.

“What do you think that was about?” he asked her, forcing his brain to evaluate Langston’s actions.

Laurel tugged on the tail of her short orange T-shirt. “He didn’t come here to complain about his construction timeline.”

He nodded as he straightened. “Right. Did you see what he was trying to do?”

She nodded. “He couldn’t take his eyes off the evidence bags until you blocked his view with your—” her gaze drifted down his torso for an instant “—self.”

She looked so miserable that he felt sorry
for her, even as he clamped his jaw to keep from smiling at how hard she was working not to look at his thighs.

She walked over to where Langston had stood, then glanced back at her previous position. Her gaze sharpened and her eyebrows rose. “He also checked out the layout of the office.” She took a half step to her left. “Is that the evidence room at the end of the hall?”

“Yeah.” He straightened and stepped over beside her. “That’s what he was looking at?”

“He wasn’t looking at me.”

“So he came here to see what evidence we have. Think he’s planning a break-in?”

“I don’t think he likes getting his hands dirty. After all, he has to preserve those buffed nails. On the other hand—” she straightened “—I think he’d dig six feet down in dirt with his bare hands if that’s what it took to get what he wanted. Which is exactly why I want to get this stuff packed off to D.C. as soon as possible.”

“I agree. But there’s no reason we both have to wait here. I’ll take you to the house so you can relax. Then once the courier gets here, I’ll call FedEx and get it all shipped to D.C. tonight.”

“Why are you so anxious to get rid of me all of a sudden?”

“I’m not. But look at you. You’re a wreck.”

“Thank you so much.”

“You were shot at. You’re pale as a ghost and you haven’t eaten all day. We’ll stop and get you a burger. Then you can take a nap. I need to go over Wen—” He stopped and an almost imperceptible grimace crossed his face. “I need to do some paperwork.”

Laurel’s gaze snapped to his. “You don’t want me to see Wendell Vance’s case file. That’s why you’re trying to get rid of me. Well, I’m not leaving. I have to see it.”

“No, you don’t. You’ll be a lot more help to me if you’d just do what I say.”

She stuck out her chin. “You mean do what I’m told and stay out of your hair?” Her eyes flashed green and gold. “Maybe I will. I’ll just go and leave you to study Wendell’s case file.”

Her expression had turned positively angelic. Cade eyed her suspiciously. “You’re not just going away. I’m taking you back to my house and locking you in.”

“Lock me in? Not a chance, Dupree. In fact, I think I’ll run back over to the crime scene. I’d like to search around the Swinging Oak—see if I can find any pieces of the chain from the missing medal.”

Cade threw up his hands and bit off a very rude curse. “The hell you will. Okay fine. I’ll bring Wendell’s file home with me. We can review it together.”

“Good. I’m glad you finally see it my way.”

He shook his head. “Trust me, Gillespie. I do
not
see it your way. That’s not why I’m doing this.”

Her angelic expression turned more beatific. “It’s not? Then why are you?”

“Because I can’t trust you as far as I can throw you. Maybe it doesn’t mean much to you that someone’s obviously trying to harm you, but it does to me.”

That stopped her. Her eyes widened. “It does?”

“Yeah.” That wasn’t what he’d meant. Okay, it was what he’d meant but it wasn’t what he’d meant to
say.
Feeling flayed open by his unintentional revelation, he scrambled to think of a flip answer.

“Yeah. Because if anyone around here is going to shoot or strangle you, it’s going to be me.”

Chapter Ten

A couple of hours later, Cade was sitting at his living room table with an open pizza box and a large manila envelope next to him. He looked up, took in Laurel’s T-shirt and pajama pants, then went back to flipping through loose pages.

“Wendell’s case file?” she asked. She took a handful of paper napkins and eagerly helped herself to a good-size slice of pizza.

Cade nodded, chewing.

“Did you get the evidence sent?”

He nodded. “I told you I would. They picked it up about eight, just before I came home. The ME sent a sample of Debra’s DNA with the key. And yes, he sent the fibers.”

“What color were they?”

“They looked black or maybe dark gray.”

“Great. That eliminates no one. Over half the people at the party had on black—including me.”

“We’ll get specifics. We can match the fibers to the clothing Shelton collected.”

“I just hope we got them all. Did he get Kathy’s dress?”

He nodded.

“So everything is on its way. Hopefully the lab can identify the fibers. If they’re unusual a
t all maybe we can trace them to the piece of clothing they came from. I’m praying they can lift DNA from that false nail. But even so, you never know where you’re going to fall in the testing schedule. DNA results can come back in a few days or not for six months. Did FedEx say they’d get it there early?” Laurel asked.

“Before nine.”

“Great. Mitch will have some preliminary findings for us by tomorrow afternoon. By then I want to be through reviewing Wendell’s file. It’s possible that our evidence will lead us to something that your dad missed the first time around.”

Cade didn’t say anything. She knew he was sensitive about his dad. “You feel responsible for your dad’s stroke, don’t you?”

His face turned dark as a storm cloud. “Hell, no, I don’t. That was James’s fault. He went and got himself killed. He was always taking risks. Always thinking he was some kind of superhero. He
knew
he was Dad’s—” Cade tossed down a crust of pizza and picked up a fresh slice.

“Screw it,” he muttered, then took a big bite.

Laurel saw the same expression on his face that she’d seen at his dad’s house. Love, of course, and a slightly impatient indulgence of his dad’s infirmities. But there had been something else—a wistfulness. At the time she’d figured it was a wish to have back the strong, competent father he’d known all his life.

But now, behind the vehemence of his anger at his brother, behind the denial that he felt responsible for what James’s death had done to his father, she still heard that note. And before he’d bitten off his words, she knew what he’d been about to say.

Dad’s
favorite.
The unspoken word ma
de her want to cry. Cade had given up his own dream to come home and be the dutiful son, because the son his father had always wanted was dead.

“Cade, I’m sorry about your brother—and your dad.”

“Yeah, well, that’s not your responsibility.” He flipped through a few pages.

“Here. Here’s where Dad described seeing Wendell for the first time.
Bishop Carter discovered the body of Wendell Vance around 5:00 a.m. on the morning of Sunday, June 21, the day after Vance’s high-school graduation. Carter stated he did not touch the body. When I arrived on the scene, Vance was hanging from the Swinging Oak by the rope swing. The rope was knotted around his neck, and a few links of chain were caught between the rope and Wendell’s neck. (See evidence bag marked #1.)
”

Cade looked up. “Just like Dad said.”

Laurel nodded. “Where are the evidence bags? Is that them?” She reached for a padded folder Cade had lain aside. “Do you mind if I look?”

He shook his head. “Careful, though. If there’s anything in there that’s not—”

“Bagged. I know. I’ll be careful.” She opened the envelope and cautiously emptied the contents onto the tabletop.

“Not much.”

“There’s the chain.”

She nodded. “And the rope. And a few pictures. Look.”