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It was when she tossed that single pair of hot-pink panties in the cart that his head once again went a little wonky. Pink panties and peach lotion—those things had been all he’d been able to think about as they’d raced through the grocery store to buy food to stock his pantry and fridge with what she needed to cook decent meals.
He now pulled on a pair of his worn, comfortable jeans and a black polo shirt and sat on the edge of his bed to get every inappropriate vision and thought he’d had of Nina over the past couple of hours out of his head.
She was the witness to a vicious crime and a victim of arson. She was here to be in his protective custody, not to be an object of his sexual fantasies. Speaking of protective custody, he pulled himself off the bed, grabbed his gun and went in search of his houseguest.
He found her in the kitchen putting away the groceries they’d bought while the savory scent of frying hamburger and onions filled the air. “Hmm, something smells good,” he said.
“Just a simple pot of goulash,” she replied.
“Can I help with anything?”
“Absolutely. Sit at the table and stay out of my way. If we’re going to make this little arrangement work well, then the first rule is that I’m the sole captain of the kitchen,” she said with a slight raise of her chin.
He sat at the table and placed his gun in front of him. “I won’t argue with you on that, but now seems like a good time to discuss the entire set of ground rules.”
He couldn’t help but notice how cute she looked in a pair of pink jogging pants and a matching T-shirt. He also noticed the slight stiffening of her shoulders, as if she didn’t particularly like the idea of rules.
Tough. It didn’t matter to him whether she liked them or not. There had to be rules to assure her safety. He refused to have another stain on his soul. He watched her open a can of tomato sauce and add it along with some spices to the hamburger mixture.
“I don’t have a security system installed here,” he said. “I always figured it would take a real nut job to try to rob or break into a chief of police’s home. But that means we need to get a little creative as far as making the house as safe as possible while you’re here.”
She dropped a handful of egg noodles into a pot of boiling water and then turned to look at him, her hazel eyes narrowed slightly. “Creative how?”
“Your bedroom door stays open at night. There’s only two doors that would allow entry into the house, the front door and the kitchen door.” He pointed to the door that led out to his fenced backyard. “I intend to sleep on the sofa in the living room, that way I will hear anyone trying to come into any door or window.”
“Surely that isn’t necessary,” she protested.
“I think it is, so the rule is your door is open when you go to bed or are in your room, and I’m on the sofa during the nights. The other rule is that you avoid all the windows in the house unless the blinds are shut.” He leaned back in his chair and smiled at her. “Now, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“What do you mean?”
“You tensed up the minute I mentioned rules.”
“I grew up with a father who had a lot of rules. Once I left home I decided I’d make my own rules.” She stirred the noodles and then pulled from the refrigerator the makings of a salad.
“Where was home?” he asked as he realized he knew very little about the woman now under his protection.
“I was born and raised in Casper.” She offered nothing else and appeared to concentrate solely on finishing up the meal and getting it on the table.
An awkward silence ensued, one that grew as she seemed disinclined to break it, and he felt unusually tongue-tied. Part of his problem was that he was incredibly attracted to her. He wanted to get to know her and what better opportunity would he have than this?
Unfortunately, he didn’t get the same vibe from her. He had the feeling that the only thing she wanted to know about him was how fast he could get Hank Bittard behind bars so she could escape Flint’s presence altogether.
Once she had dinner on the table and sat across from him, he decided to attempt to make the best of things by indulging in small talk.
“I’ve been back in town for a little over a year now and from what I’ve heard about you, you’ve been in Dead River three years. I eat in your diner several times a week and yet I know almost nothing about you. Is there somebody in particular who you’re dating?” He waited for her to fill her plate and then filled his own.
“Absolutely nobody. I don’t even have time to own a cat,” she replied. She smiled and not for the first time he noticed that she had the kind of open, generous smile that instantly made the world feel right. “Trying to make the diner a success has taken up all of my time and energy.”
“What brought you to Dead River in the first place?”
“When I left Casper I knocked around the entire state, staying in small towns and working as a waitress at different cafés and diners. I knew that eventually I wanted to own my own restaurant of some kind, and I considered what I was doing by working in a variety of places as my college degree of sorts.”
She paused to add more salad to her plate and then continued. “Five years ago my mother passed away and left me an inheritance that was enough for me to buy something when I found what I wanted. Three years ago I stumbled onto Dead River and the diner. Maggie, the previous owner, wanted to leave Dead River and the diner behind, so I made her an offer she couldn’t resist. And now you know pretty much everything about me.”
He knew he’d barely scratched the surface of what he wanted to know about her, but as they finished the meal, the conversation remained pleasant but strictly superficial. She offered nothing else personal about herself nor did she ask him any personal questions about his life.
Even though the conversation bordered inane, Flint enjoyed the very novelty of having a beautiful woman seated at the kitchen table in his home. She filled the silence of the evening that he’d grown accustomed to for far too many years.
There had been few women while he’d been in Cheyenne ambitiously climbing the ranks in the police force. There had certainly been nobody special and only rarely had he had somebody in his home.
Right after the two of them finished eating and cleaned up the kitchen, she told him she needed to finish unloading the bags of personal items she’d bought and disappeared into the guest room.
He was glad that she kept the door open, letting him know she intended to take that particular rule seriously. While she was busy in the bedroom, he went to the master suite and checked to make sure all of the windows were locked. The smallest bedroom he used as an office, and after checking the windows in there he grabbed a handful of files from the desk and returned to the kitchen.
He sat at the table with the files and his gun before him. One thick file was Hank Bittard’s and the other, thinner file was on Jimmy Johnson, the twenty-one-year-old loser who had left his cousin Molly at the altar, stolen her money but more egregious, had absconded with the Colton heirloom ring.
Flint was relatively certain that Jimmy would eventually be found, as the quarantine kept him from being able to get out of town. He wasn’t a seasoned criminal, and he’d get tired of sleeping in the woods and foraging for food, especially as winter set in for real.
He wouldn’t be surprised if the dumb kid wouldn’t eventually turn himself in before the weather got really cold and the snow began to fly.
Flint opened the thicker file on Hank Bittard. The first item in the file was Hank’s mug shot from when he was arrested for the murder of his coworker at the gas station.
At twenty-seven years old, Hank was a fairly handsome man with dark hair and equally dark, soulless eyes. He was six foot two, and with a muscular build, he looked like he’d never backed down from a fight, nor would he hesitate to start one.
He’d had several arrests before the last one, mostly for disturbing the peace and bar fights, but that had been before Flint had become chief of police. His single run-in with Bittard had been on the day he’d arrested him at the gas station for the murder of Donny Gilmore.
Now the man had killed the only eyewitness to that crime, and Nina was a new witness to that second murder, and there was no doubt in Flint’s mind that sooner or later Bittard would come after Nina.
What if Bittard changed his hair color? Somehow managed to disguise himself? Would Flint see him coming? He hadn’t seen the shooter who had taken down Madelaine on the courthouse steps in Cheyenne. He’d vastly underestimated the risk to Jolene Tate.
Bittard was no Jimmy Johnson. He was hard, accustomed to spending time in the woods. He’d have the kind of survival skills that a kid like Jimmy wouldn’t have.
Flint had come back to Dead River for a number of reasons: to help his brother, Theo, in his recuperation after being thrown from a bucking bronco, and to be close to his sister, Gemma, who worked as a nurse at the Dead River Clinic, and the grandmother who had raised them all.
Finally, he’d returned to his home and family to lick the wounds of the job gone wrong in Cheyenne, to enjoy the slower pace of life in the little town. He’d lost his driving ambition in Cheyenne.
He should have never taken the job as chief of police here. After the debacle in Cheyenne, he should have retired from police work altogether.
Evil was loose in the town of Dead River, with nobody getting in to help and nobody getting out, and the truth of the matter was that Flint had lost any confidence he’d ever had that he was the man the town needed to fight the evil.
* * *
Dr. Rafe Granger was unsurprised as he made his way down the hallway of the clinic just past midnight and saw the lights on in Dr. Lucas Rand’s office. They’d all been working long hours but none more than Lucas.
The man had been working like a maniac to find a cure for the virus that had taken his ex-wife as its first victim. Mimi Rand had been gone from town for some time when she returned with a baby she’d insisted was Theo Colton’s. Although Theo was suspicious, the baby had the Colton vivid green eyes, and he’d had a one-night stand with her around the right time for the baby to be his.
Mimi had been on her way to Theo’s house with her three-month-old little girl, Amelia, when she’d stopped in to grab a cup of coffee in the café before heading out to Theo’s place. Shortly after arriving at Theo’s ranch, she collapsed, and within hours she was dead.
Lucas had been inconsolable. He’d known about Mimi’s pregnancy and initially had assumed the baby was his. He’d done the stand-up thing and had been financially supportive from the moment the baby was born. It had only been when Mimi had confirmed that the baby was Theo’s that Lucas had stepped back from the role of potential fatherhood. Lucas had heard through the grapevine that a DNA test was in the process to assure the paternity of the baby.
Other victims had followed Mimi, and while everyone at the clinic was working nearly round the clock to find the source and a cure for the virus, nobody had taken the illness and deaths as hard as Dr. Lucas Rand.
No place else in the country had the virus shown up. It was as if it had specifically chosen the little Wyoming town to grow and breed.
Rafe gave a quick knock on the door and then opened it. Lucas didn’t look up from whatever was in front of him on his desk. It was as if he was unaware that anyone had entered his office.
“Lucas.” Rafe walked over and dropped a hand on the man’s broad shoulder, and Lucas started and whirled around in his chair to face Rafe.
Lucas Rand was a handsome man, with dark hair and eyes, but at the moment his eyes burned with feverish desperation. “I feel like I’m so close to figuring out a cure that will save everyone, but I can’t get it right. There’s something I keep missing. I’ve got to get it right. We’ve got to fix this before we lose more people.”
“I know, and we will, but it’s late, Lucas,” Rafe said gently. “Why don’t you knock it off for a while and get some rest. You’ve been pushing yourself so hard, and eventually you’re going to crash and then you won’t be good to anyone.”
Lucas leaned back in his chair and ran his hand through his thick dark hair. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe a little sleep will bring everything into better focus. I am tired,” he admitted.
He rose slowly, as if the mere act of pulling his tall, muscular frame out of the chair was almost too much for him. He appeared haggard, much older than his thirty-two years. “I just feel like I’m missing something, and if I could figure it out I could solve this.”
“Surely we’ll get the answers we need when the expert from the CDC, Dr. Colleen Goodhue, gets here,” Rafe said as the two men left Lucas’s small lab.
“If she ever gets here,” Lucas said darkly. “By that time everyone in town might be sick. In the meantime, my hope is that I’ll find the cure for this scourge before she arrives. Every day it seems like we have a new patient or we lose somebody else.” He heaved a weary sigh.
They stopped at the door of one of the closetlike offices the doctors had been given to work in or take a break in while dealing with the virus. “Get some rest, Lucas,” Rafe said kindly, knowing the kind of hours Rand had been putting in. “Right now that’s what you need more than anything.”
“I should be able to save them,” Lucas said in frustration. “I’m a good doctor. I’m a smart man. I’m just missing something. I’m afraid if we don’t figure this out soon, eventually everyone in town will be dead. This is killing people, and we don’t know how to stop it.”
His words hung for a moment in the dim hallway, and then he turned and entered his office and closed the door behind him.
Rafe rubbed his own gritty eyes and decided sleep was exactly what he needed, too. He only hoped while he slept no other patients arrived with the virus symptoms. He was already exhausted by the sick and the dead. All the doctors and nurses had been working side-by-side with the CDC personnel since their arrival at the beginning of the quarantine, but so far they’d had little success. He could only pray that when CDC Dr. Colleen Goodhue, a virus expert, arrived, she’d have the advanced equipment and the knowledge to save Dead River before it was too late.
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