Silent Night (24 page)

T
UCKER CUT THE
engine and leaned his head against his seat, too tired to even push open the door and walk into his house. A house that wasn’t exactly his at the moment with Finn and Miranda underfoot. At least Finn was doing Tucker a favor. Miranda, on the other hand, was going to suck all the comfort out of his damned house. She was going to permeate every square inch of parquet floor and crown molding in the place with her smell and essence.

With a groan, he pushed open the door and all but crawled out into the snow. He’d spent the last three hours alone in his office, waiting on word about Anatole and combing every single orphanage in Ohio that he could find, hoping he’d be quicker with an answer than the labs were proving to be.

He hadn’t been. Everywhere he looked, it felt as though he was staring at another goddamned closed door. It was frustrating as hell.

He left his hat on the passenger seat, but leaned in to grab a few of the Dayton files he thought Miranda might want to look at. Coroner reports, depositions. Nothing that would put her feet too much deeper into the case, and yet would give her something to occupy her time and keep her out of trouble.

He took the porch steps slowly and tested the door. It was unlocked, and the minute it cracked open, he was assaulted by an aroma so delicious, his stomach cramped. It wasn’t a fresh smell, more like something that had been cooked hours ago, and since it was so late, that was likely the case. Still, he turned for the kitchen in hopes of scrounging leftovers when he found Miranda and Finn watching him from the kitchen table.

“You’re late.” Miranda stood, opened the oven, and pulled out a plate of roasted vegetables, steak, and a baked potato. “I tried to keep it warm, but I’m pretty sure it dried out two hours ago.”

She set the plate at the empty setting between her and Finn, then sat back down, returning her attention to the detective. Tucker had obviously interrupted a conversation, because they fell back into it as though he wasn’t there. He didn’t like the way Finn refilled her wine without asking. He didn’t like that neither seemed to care that he was quiet, and he sure as hell didn’t like that they were laughing at jokes that were obviously private.

“Not hungry?”

He looked up from his potato to find Miranda watching him, chin on her hand, elbow on the table, her eyes slightly glazed from wine.

He cleared his throat. “Yeah. I—yeah. Looks great, thanks.”

She lowered her hand and laid it on his thigh. “It’s a sorry thank-you for all you’ve done, but it’s all I’ve got.”

The weight of her hand disappeared, leaving a circle of warmth in its place and sending a rush of blood to his crotch. His attention fixated on the dark red liquid staining her mouth. He downed half his beer to keep from leaning over and kissing the wine from her lips.

He pressed the cold bottle against his forehead. It was late and he was too tired and too hungry and too . . . Miranda’s scent wafted in his direction. Horny. Yep. He was too fucking horny.

“You okay?” Miranda asked.

“I’m fine.” He hadn’t meant to snap, but everything in his body was too tense to do anything else right now.

She didn’t look at all fazed by his tone. Instead, she lightly touched his arm. “I can get you some aspirin. My treat. I bought out the pharmacy today. Let me go get it.”

“I’m fine really—”

Miranda ignored him and disappeared down the hall; the scent of her went with her. It didn’t matter. It was probably going to linger in his blood for the rest of the night.

Finn strode across the kitchen and set his wineglass in the sink.

“Get some sleep. Your mood is worse than the smell of cow shit that blew in tonight.”

“We didn’t all get a nice dinner cooked for us. Enjoy it?”

Finn grinned. “Ah, now I get your mood. Hell yeah, I enjoyed it. But she made it for you. Not me.” Finn clasped Tucker’s shoulder and gave it a brotherly squeeze. “Try to be a little nicer to—”

“Found them.” Miranda reappeared, shaking a large bottle of Bayer in her hands.

Finn kissed Miranda’s cheek. “Thanks again for dinner and the company. I thoroughly enjoyed both.” To Tucker he said, “I’m going to step out back for a smoke, then call it a night.”

“Take the guest room tonight. Miranda can crash in my room and I’ll slum it on the couch.”

Of course, Finn didn’t argue. He wasn’t one to sacrifice lightly where comfort was concerned.

When the back door shut, Tucker took the bottle of aspirin from Miranda, filled a glass with water, and swallowed a couple tablets. When he turned around, she was sitting on the couch sipping her wine and watching him.

“Thanks for saving me dinner.”

“Sorry we didn’t wait on you. It was getting late and I couldn’t let the food go to waste. Finn said you wouldn’t mind if it was reheated.”

He didn’t. In Chicago, he’d worked cases that didn’t give a shit about time clocks. He’d learned a long time ago to eat whatever was available without complaining about
when
it was available.

He took another sip of beer. “You two seemed to hit it off.”

Miranda tucked her feet under her bottom and swirled the red wine in its glass. “I like him. He’s nice.”

“Yeah. Nice.” He grabbed the wine in one hand, his plate in the other, and carried them into the sitting area, carefully choosing a spot on the sofa that wasn’t too close—which wasn’t nearly far enough for his peace of mind. He wasn’t sure Timbuktu would have been far enough to accomplish that.

She took the bottle from him, topped off her glass, and sipped while he adjusted the plate on his lap. Even his damned bones were tired. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, rubbing circles at his temples. He could sleep for a week, but even cold and dried out, he was too hungry not to eat first.

“How’s the cheek?” he asked, cutting into his steak.

She brought two fingers up to her face and gently pushed on the flesh there. “Tender. Didn’t swell too bad at least.”

“That’s good.” He took a bite and moaned. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had cooked for him and hadn’t presented him with a bill afterward.

“Anything new today?”

He stopped chewing to look at her.

She held up her free hand. “I’m not asking for details. Just trying to make polite conversation.”

He took a deep swallow of wine straight from the bottle. “You know, there are those days that being a cop . . . it’s not what I thought I was signing up for. I’m not sure I’ve sat and read anything for as long as I did today. Might need bifocals now.”

She leaned her head back, watching him, her eyelids droopy and her features soft. “Thanks again for letting me stay here. I didn’t feel safe being alone tonight. Tomorrow, maybe.”

“But you feel safe staying here?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Even after what I told you?”

She blushed, the pink adding a deeper hue of purple to her cheek. “Yes.”

That rendered him speechless for a minute. He’d never been so blunt about his feelings before, but with Miranda, he didn’t trust himself not to act on his desire. She had a habit of bringing out the protective caveman in him without even knowing it. Turned out his caveman half was also sex-starved for her.

“Glad to have you, then.” They’d lifted plenty of prints from her cottage, but because renters came and went, there were too many to be useful. And Miranda had said the guy had been wearing gloves. Still, processing-wise, she was free to return to her place whenever she wanted. Courage-wise, he wasn’t so sure she was ready. Which meant she’d likely be sleeping here tomorrow, too.

Her sleepy smile did nothing to ease the doubts he had about his ability to keep his hands off her if she stayed here too long. Who was he kidding? Even if she left right now, he doubted he’d have the good sense not to track her down. He’d been intimate with women who hadn’t moved into his brain and his blood the way she had with a simple smile and a shared table.

“You’re quiet tonight,” she said. “Everything okay?”

He set his plate on the coffee table. It wasn’t an intelligent question. Of course everything wasn’t okay. He had a killer in his town and didn’t feel any closer to stopping him.

“The weather,” he lied. “This kind of cold can seep into your bones and make you do stupid things.”

He heard the back door open and close. Heard Finn’s footsteps disappear down the hall. He should’ve called out. The way his gaze kept falling to her mouth . . . yeah, a chaperone was probably a good idea.

“What kind of stupid things?”

He rose, moving slowly toward her. He could tell by the way she looked at him that she knew exactly what sort of
stupid things
he was talking about. She looked scared, and a hell of a lot intrigued. It was the intrigued part that made him lean closer.

Careful to keep his weight off her, he propped his hands on either side of her head, holding her captive between his arms. “Showing you would be a hell of a lot more fun.”

She looked at him, her eyes sleepy, but not dulled from the wine. “Showing will move us into dangerous territory.”

“Sweetheart, we’ve been there for a long time.” He dipped his head and dragged his lower lip lightly over hers.

Her arms drifted up to circle his neck as she opened up to him. He slipped his tongue inside her mouth, moaning against the silky feel of her tongue. The heat of her mouth made him instantly hard, and he pressed himself against her thigh, letting her know how deeply into this he was so she could stop it now if that was her intention, before they went too far.

Her body responded to his like they’d danced this dance a hundred times already, and his thoughts became indecipherable as the need to bury himself inside her turned his blood to liquid fire.

“Miranda,” he sighed against her mouth.

She pulled back, clasping his face in both of her tiny, warm hands, and looked him in the eye. “Me too.”

His gaze trailed over her chin, down her throat, and settled on the buttons of her sweater and the promises that lay beneath them. He moved slowly, the way a man moves when touching a skittish colt, afraid she’d make him stop and yet giving her every opportunity to. Bracing himself on one arm, he used his other to carry his fingers over the buttons, toying with them, searching her gaze for permission.

She bit her lip and smiled. Tucker didn’t need anything else. The buttons were opened within seconds, her pale, flat belly appearing below a soft pink bra that cupped the most delicious-looking flesh he’d ever seen. Creamy white mounds of cleavage beckoned him, and he went willingly, spreading his hand over first one, then the other.

They filled his palm perfectly, and as he leaned back down to kiss her again, he slid his hand inside the fabric and pushed it away, freeing her breasts and finding her nipple. She moaned against his mouth and his dick strained against his pants.

Something feathery-soft brushed the tip of him and his entire body jolted as though he’d just been plugged into an active socket. Then she was stroking him through his uniform, fondling him, killing him slowly and sweetly. When her fingers brushed his belly and tugged his shirt from his pants, he adjusted to help her, desperate for her to feel his skin the way he was feeling hers.

He nearly died when she unbuttoned him and slipped her hand inside.

He adjusted again, giving her room to play. “If we don’t stop, you’re going to wake up in my b—”

She rose up and kissed him again, burying his warning with frantic strokes of her tongue. She was tugging at his pants, as desperate to get them off his body, it seemed, as he was. He was so lost in the sound of her breaths and moans that he thought the shrill ringing was coming from inside his own head.

It wasn’t. The vibration of the phone in his pocket broke the spell. He rested his forehead against hers.

“Do you have to answer that?”

The ringing stopped. Hoping to recapture the moment, he bent his head and took her exposed nipple into his mouth, brushing his lips and teeth against the tender nub while her fingers began playing once again to strip off his pants. He rose to help her, but the phone interrupted again. This time, it let out three rapid, high-pitched beeps, alerting him to a waiting text message.

He claimed her lips with a hard kiss. “Hold that thought,” he mumbled, digging his phone out of his back pocket. He looked at the screen. The 911 message cooled his desire. Zipping his pants, he moved off the couch and away from Miranda. He took several deep breaths. Distance helped. The taste of her still clung to his skin, but the fire in his blood and fog in his brain dissipated.

Once again in control of himself, he called Andy back.

“It’s Tucker. What’s the emergency?”

“Sorry to bother you so late, Tuck, but you’re going to want to join me out by the old First Baptist Church.”

He glanced at Miranda. She sat on the edge of the sofa, her hands trembling as she refastened the buttons on her sweater. Her questioning gaze watched him. He turned his back to keep her from seeing his unfiltered reaction to Andy’s phone call. “What happened?”

“We found another body.”

M
IRANDA PACED
T
UCKER
’
S
small bedroom, her nails chewed to the quick. Finn was gone. Tucker was gone. She was alone with nothing but her fear and her morbid hope that whatever had happened would finally point the finger at Anatole and stop him once and for all.

Tucker hadn’t told her much, but then, his phone call had been too brief to give him any significant information, either. But he
had
told her that another body had been found.

Could be natural causes
.

She didn’t believe that.

She wrapped her arms around herself and climbed into Tucker’s bed. The smell of him offered her a bit of comfort as she wrapped herself in his sheets and smothered her face in his pillow. They’d come close to something real tonight. She tried to process how she felt about that. Closing her eyes, she tried to conjure his face, but before she could latch on to it, the image morphed into what he might be seeing at that moment.

She shivered, rolled to the right side of the bed, and peered out the parted curtains. From her position on her side, she could see the moon beaming down on her Range Rover. She’d never put it back in the garage. Hadn’t seen the point. She wanted to go, to see for herself. But where? She had no idea where they’d found the body, and even if she did, she was finally beginning to trust Tucker and she wanted the same in return. If she did anything stupid now, all that momentum would be lost and he’d push her out of the loop even further.

It was after midnight. They’d been gone only an hour. More than likely, the sun would return before Finn and Tucker did.

No way would she be able to sleep.

Climbing back out of bed, she padded her cold, bare feet to the bag she’d finished packing that evening before dinner. Buried beneath her sweaters, she reached her fingers around her icy, metal laptop case and pulled it out. She settled herself back on the bed with it and waited for the video app to load.

So far, no one had called in Anatole’s APB. Her viewing of footage last night hadn’t shown her anything useful, but maybe she could try again to catch him on film, give them some direction to look . . .

It wasn’t much, but for the moment, it was all she could do. She plugged the laptop in . . . It was going to be a long night.

T
UCKER CHECKED HIS
watch again. What was taking Doc so long?

Finn shoved his hands in his pockets, the hood of his coat pulled low over his head. “She better hurry. It’s fucking cold.”

“She’ll be here,” Tucker said, not pulling his attention off the rutted path leading from the road to the old church. The building had stood on this ground since Christmas was founded. Even when the new church had been built several miles away, the townspeople had elected not to demolish the First Baptist Church. Not that it was being maintained, either. Tucker had never seen it in its heyday. All he knew was that in the dead of night, the wooden structure with green lead glass windows made it the perfect setup for one creepy-ass haunted house.

God, his head hurt. They already had half the property taped off and Tucker had done all he could do until Sam collected what she needed and they could all go home. That they had a serial killer in their small town was making him nauseous. As was the fact that they still hadn’t been able to locate Anatole. Officers had been to the priest’s house and office, but there was nothing to indicate where he might have gone.

Maybe Finn was right. These cops weren’t cut out for a case like this. It was fully possible that they’d missed something he or Finn would have known to be important.

He squeezed his eyes shut against the images of the scene inside that wouldn’t leave him alone. It had to be connected to the others. The religious undertones were unmistakable. The man had been kneeling at the altar, a Bible and rosary positioned at his knees. All he needed now was for Doc to confirm that there were numbers carved into the man’s abdomen.

Finn paced a rut in the snow, lit a cigarette, and blew the smoke in Tucker’s direction. Tucker swatted it away, checked his watch again. Doc had been called before Tucker had even left his house. Where the hell was she?

Finn pushed his hood off and resumed pacing, the red glow of his cigarette tip dangling from his fingers like a devilish firefly. “Fuck this. I’m cold. I’ll be in the cruis—”

Headlights broke through the trees and bounced down the road toward them. “Thank you, Jesus.”

A few moments later, the coroner’s van pulled up beside them and idled. Sam hopped out, looked Finn over from head to toe, then directed her attention to Tucker. “Sorry. Just got back from Knoxville when I got your call. Caught me in the shower.” She jutted her chin toward the church. “Is it ready for me?”

“Anything new from Knoxville?”

“Nope, but Shannon called, said you didn’t answer your radio, but would want to know the crime lab got a lead on that medallion. St. Jerome’s Orphanage for Boys. Just outside Dayton. She said it’s the closest match they could find to that emblem.”

The pleasure that the smallest break in this case was giving him warmed Tucker from the inside out. He quickly retrieved his notebook to write the name down before he forgot it.

“I’ll fill you in more about Knoxville . . . after this. I need to focus.” Sam returned her attention to Finn. “And who might you be?”

Tucker introduced them and led the way to the church. Whatever sparks were exploding between them was none of his business. Sam could handle herself with Finn. He wasn’t so sure Finn would be able to handle himself with Sam, however.

His sigh escaped with a puff of white. It wasn’t much warmer inside the church, but at least they were out of the snow. “I wouldn’t touch anything more than necessary. Whole place is a scene and it hasn’t been properly contained yet.”

“Right-o.”

As Tucker fished out his flashlight, he heard the distinctive snap of Sam’s gloves in the dark. He trained the beam on the path to the altar. “Watch your step here. We already photographed the footprints, but I’d rather they not be disturbed just yet.”

The floor was covered in dust and debris, which had been a boon. That meant footprints were pretty visible, and at least this time, there was no snow to wash them away.

From the doorway, Tucker listened to the sounds of Finn’s camera. Sam took her own pictures as she walked, the click-click-click sounding like a pathetic BB gun in the otherwise quiet chapel. She turned back to look at the doorway and traded her camera for her own penlight, which she dug out of her pocket.

She aimed the small light at the doorway, up the left side, across the top, down the right.

“Already checked,” Tucker grumbled. “No blood. No noticeable prints.”

Shrugging, Sam turned back toward the altar. “Never know. If there was an escape attempt . . .”

When she reached her final destination, she studied the altar, pulled her camera off her neck again.

“The blood is on the altar, but also around it and under it,” Tucker said.

Finn stepped beside him. “It was on the floor, too, nowhere near the body.”

As Sam made notes and took more photos of the scene Tucker had already captured, he moved to the far side of the body.

“You ready for me to collect these?” Tucker asked, gesturing to the floor beside her where three white candles had been placed on either side of the altar. “There’s a cup, silver dish, and some oil on the right corner over there.” Usually, he remained silent and let Doc do her job. This time, however, he wanted to assist, get the body on its way to the morgue, and return to giving the old church a thorough check.

She peered around the corner to where he’d shone his beam. “That’s a chalice, not a cup.” She took a picture. “Go ’head and collect them.”

Tucker handed his light to Finn, adjusted his gloves, and pulled out the stack of baggies from his uniform jacket. He removed all the rulers he’d placed around the objects, and then carefully slipped the
chalice
, dish, and oil into the bags.

He signed off on them and passed them to Finn, trading them for the two flashlights.

Finn stuffed them into his duffel. “Which sacrament was next? First Communion, maybe?”

Tucker thought of the oil he’d just bagged. “There are only two left. Anointing the sick and holy orders. That was probably anointing oil.”

“Autopsy should tell us if he had any diseases or whatever. Here, you can bag these, too.” Sam handed him the Bible that had been placed at the victim’s feet, and the crucifix that had lain against his stomach.

Tucker took them, bagged them, signed and passed those to Finn as well. “I feel like your damned caddy.”

Tucker ignored him. “Can you check his abdomen here? I really am sick of waiting on reports.”

He held his beam steady as Sam carefully pried the fabric away from the victim’s chest, lifted the oversized shirt, and revealed tiny, bloody scratches just below the man’s navel.

Another Scripture. Tucker took a close-up shot of it.

“I’m going to call Detective Langley, let him know what’s going on here,” Tucker said. “There are things on these bodies that weren’t leaked to the press. This has to be enough to make the people of Dayton reopen the case.”