Page 29 of Maverick Detective Dad
“If you believe someone might be a killer, then you need to say something,” Noah said, sounding all cop. “What if this killer goes after someone like Megan? Or you? What if—?”
“Jared,” Bobby blurted out.
Everly certainly hadn’t expected Bobby to say that name. She’d figured if Bobby pointed the finger at anyone, it would have been River.
“Jared?” she repeated, and yes, she sounded skeptical. “He’s in a wheelchair.”
“Maybe,” Bobby muttered.
That got both Noah’s and her attention. “Are you saying Jared’s not paralyzed?”
Bobby met Noah eye to eye. “At the last meeting, I happened to glance at Jared’s shoes, and I saw mud on them. How did mud get there if he can’t walk?” But Bobby didn’t wait for an answer. “I’m saying you need to take a closer look at him because if I had to put money on who’s killing in the group, it’d be Jared.”
Chapter Nine
Jared.
The moment Bobby had left Grayson’s office, Noah had dived right into starting a deeper background check on Jared. On Bobby as well. And Noah had also called Jared to insist he immediately come back in for another interview. Jared had balked, no surprise there, but after Noah had made it an order, Jared had finally agreed that he would make a repeat trip to Silver Creek. He’d assured Noah that he would get there within the hour.
That agreement was somewhat of a victory since it had saved Noah the paperwork of having someone in SAPD pick up Jared and bring him in. However, Noah had also reminded himself that this could be a huge waste of time and Bobby could be a liar.
Worse, Bobby could be the vigilante killer.
If so, that was going to give Everly and him the mother lode of flashbacks. The mother lode of guilt, too.
Of course, the guilt had always been there.Always.It was impossible to reconcile that they’d been responsible for the death of a woman. But if Bobby was killing to get so-called justice for the woman he considered his mother, then it would only add to that guilt. Everly and he had been the ones to set all of this in motion. No way for him to get around that, so he had to focus on getting to the truth and stopping the killer from claiming anyone else.
“Helen was trying to get away from the abuse,” Everly muttered, drawing Noah’s attention back to her.
Not that his attention had strayed too far from her. No. He’d been keeping a close watch on her since Bobby had left, and he knew that all of this was taking jabs at the old wounds they shared.
“The car wreck was an accident,” Noah said, hoping to remind both her and himself.
Since Everly didn’t react to that and because she still looked on the verge of having the old grief consume her, he set aside his computer search for a couple of minutes, stood and went to her. Everly was at the window, staring out, but he doubted she was actually seeing anything outside. She was almost certainly trapped in those nightmarish images of the past. Noah took hold of her shoulder and eased her around to face him.
“The car wreck was an accident,” he repeated.
This time, she acknowledged what he’d said with a nod and a murmured, “I know,” but as he’d expected, it did nothing to ease any of the guilt.
Noah considered telling her that because Helen had been on the run from an abusive husband, that she might have been distracted. The woman was darn sure speeding. The cops had determined that. But putting any portion of the blame on the victim wasn’t going to help. A hug might not help either though that didn’t stop Noah from gently drawing Everly to him.
“We’re going to find this killer and stop him,” he muttered, putting his mouth close to her ear. “In a way, stopping him will be the right kind of justice for Helen. I refuse to believe she’d want anyone committing murder because of what happened to her.”
Everly didn’t voice any kind of agreement or give him a nod, but she did sigh and moved closer to him. Until they were body to body. Even with his mind wracked with guilt, that didn’t stop the heat. Noah cursed it and then added another curse word for what he was about to do next.
He brushed a kiss on Everly’s cheek.
It was a mistake. He’d known it would be because that brief touch yanked him back to a different set of memories. A time when Everly and he had done more than just cheek kiss. A time when they’d been lovers.
Noah hated that the images of that night were now mixed together with the car crash. He could pick through them and latch on to the ones of them together. The kisses, the touching, the urgent need clawing its way through them. But he doubted Everly could remember one without the other.
But he rethought that when she eased back and looked at him.
He saw the old attraction in her eyes. Felt it in the buzz of her body. Felt it in his own body as well. Noah knew certain parts of him didn’t always make the smartest decisions, and he got proof of that.
When he leaned in and kissed her.
If the cheek kiss had packed a punch, the mouth to mouth was more like an avalanche of fire. It raced through Noah, bringing back much better memories. Ones that would surely rob him of any common sense. And that couldn’t happen.
