Watch Her Vanish

Book 1: Rockwell and Decker

by Ellery Kane

Genres: Mystery; Amateur Sleuth; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries; Female Sleuths; Romantic Suspense; Thrillers; Crime Fiction; Medical Thrillers; Psychological Thrillers

Synopsis

Shutting the car door against the rain, Bonnie instantly feels safe with her husband’s favorite baseball cap on the seat beside her and the two empty booster seats in the backseat littered with loose Cheerios. She smiles to herself, feeling lucky to be going back to her boys. But she never makes it home…

Hundreds of candles light the stained-glass windows of the church as the people of Fog Harbor, California gather for Bonnie McMillian's vigil. The much-loved teacher, mother and friend has been missing for nearly a week, her car left abandoned on a lonely road. Her husband and two little boys are inconsolable.

Then a scream shatters the silence of the church. Someone has found her body in the shallows nearby, her blouse ripped open to exposing marks on her beautiful neck, her legs bent like broken driftwood. Who would hurt this kind, loving soul? Fog Harbor is a safe and close-knit community, but someone close to her knew she would be driving home alone that night. Could a dangerous killer be hiding among them?

Bonnie would do anything for her students and had changed so many of their lives for the better, but was one more twisted than she knew? She certainly didn’t realize that her marriage wasn’t as perfect as she thought, and her husband was keeping a dangerous secret from her.

When another woman is found, her tiny body dumped against the trunk of a massive redwood, it’s clear that no one in this remote little town can be trusted. The victims knew each other. They also knew their killer. And more women will die unless someone breaks the chain…

Release date: October 9, 2020

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 416

Sample

Prologue

 

Bonnie McMillan sat alone in the theater, relishing the anonymity of the dark. Tonight, she didn’t have to be anybody’s mommy, or wife, or teacher. No sticky little hands grabbed for her popcorn. No one whispered to pass the soda. Her cell phone stayed tucked in her purse, mercifully silent.

She hunkered down in her seat, her face lit by the screen. Behind her, the old-school film reel whirred. Here, she could simply be Bonnie, the same breathless, eager teenaged girl who’d first watched Vertigo at a Hitchcock marathon in San Francisco fifteen years ago. Back then, she’d dreamed of writing scripts and directing films herself.

That girl with big city ambitions seemed light-years away from Fog Harbor, with its bone-cold ocean and dreary winters. For a long five months a year, the tourists vanished like migrant birds, taking their rental cars and fat pocketbooks with them. Many of the locals worked at Crescent Bay State Prison, like her and James. The others lived behind its walls. Permanently.

Bonnie couldn’t remember the last time she’d caught a Wednesday midnight showing at Fog City Cinema, the one-feature relic on the outskirts of town, and it had been ages since she’d been to a movie alone. Certainly not since Noah was born. It felt deliciously strange, indulgent even, to be here, and on a weeknight no less. But when James had offered to take the boys on an overnight trip whale-watching at Ecola State Park, she’d known exactly how to spend her first free evening.

Leaning forward, Bonnie tensed; on the screen, a middle-aged Jimmy Stewart chased Kim Novak up the stairs of the bell tower, where he stopped short, disoriented and perspiring. The woman screamed as her body hurtled toward the ground. Bonnie couldn’t look, so she shoveled another bite of popcorn instead, licking the salt from her lips.

A thin blade of light sliced the theater’s shadowy entrance and Bonnie heard the soft thud of approaching footsteps. The man didn’t look up as he rounded the divider, his face obscured by the hood of his coat. He lumbered up the aisle, dripping rainwater and tracking mud with his boots, and took a seat somewhere in the darkness behind her. Worry prickled at the back of her neck.

She focused her mind back on Vertigo’s spiraling soundtrack. The trills, the brass crescendo, the shuddering dissonance. Pitch-perfect for a cinematic study on obsession. Hitch did crazy better than anybody. And she knew crazy. She’d taught creative writing in the prison’s education department for eight years running.

Squinting at her watch and anticipating the final, fatal scene, she planned to bolt for the door as soon as the film was over. James would’ve laughed at her for her skittishness. The boys too. Silly Mommy. Nevertheless, as the credits rolled, Bonnie quickly gathered her things—purse, umbrella, jacket—and headed for the EXIT sign, its blood-colored letters eerie in the dark. She pushed through the swinging door and into the empty lobby, clumsily putting on her jacket as she crossed the dingy red carpet. Though she heard no one behind her, her heartbeat quickened. Beyond the lobby, she couldn’t see past the rain-streaked outer doors, but she knew the parking lot would be wet and deserted. It was well after two in the morning in a town that fell asleep by nine. Only the liquor store and the Hickory Pit stayed open past midnight.

Bonnie didn’t bother with the umbrella, though she hated the thought of her designer boots getting wet. James had spent way too much on them last Christmas, which had started everybody at the prison whispering behind her back. These boots made her feel like the vivacious San Francisco Bonnie. Not the gray Fog Harbor girl she’d turned into. So, she didn’t care where that money had come from. After ten years of marriage, she’d perfected the art of looking the other way.

The cold rain stung her skin as she ran. Her hair whipped and lashed about her face, covering her eyes, but she pressed on, her car beckoning like a lighthouse, a safe harbor in the storm.

It might’ve been the rain, or the wind, or her writer’s imagination, but the man seemed to loom in and out of her periphery. Working at the prison, she knew what men could do to women on their own for a night. That knowledge had buried itself in her brain, a dormant seed just waiting for the right moment to burst open.

When Bonnie reached the car, she felt the heat of him behind her, heard the hungry splash of his boots. She didn’t turn around, certain she would freeze like a rabbit if she saw him there.

She flung open the car door and collapsed into the seat, locking herself in. The rain beat its tiny fists against the windows, but she was safe now in a world familiar to her. James’ favorite baseball cap sat on the passenger seat—he’d be furious he’d left it behind. Two booster seats in the back, and Cheerios scattered like confetti on the floorboard.

Bonnie turned the key, cranked the heat, and listened to the sweep of the wipers on the glass, the static on the radio. By the time she could see clearly, the man had vanished. As if a seam had split open in the predawn quiet and simply swallowed him whole. If he’d ever been there at all.

Fog Harbor Gazette

“Search for Missing Fog Harbor Mother Intensifies”

by Heather Hoffman

Authorities in Fog Harbor, California, are intensifying their search for Bonnie McMillan, the married mother of two who went missing three days ago. According to Fog Harbor police, thirty-two-year-old Bonnie McMillan was last seen in the early morning hours of Thursday, December 12th, when security footage captured her leaving Fog City Cinema around 2:30 a.m. The following day, her Toyota Corolla was found abandoned with a flat tire on Pine Grove Road, just one mile south of the entrance to Crescent Bay State Prison (CBSP). Both McMillan’s wallet and her cell were found in the vehicle, leading authorities to suspect she may have been a victim of foul play. Local authorities have partnered with the state police in the investigation and have deployed K-9 units to search for the missing woman, but their efforts have been hampered by poor weather conditions, with one inch of rain falling in Fog Harbor on the night of McMillan’s disappearance and another winter rainstorm forecasted for this week.

Police confirmed McMillan’s husband, James, was traveling with their two young children at the time. Sources close to the family say that the couple seemed happy and enjoyed working together in the adult education department at CBSP, where James manages the GED program. Bonnie had been employed there as a creative writing teacher.

Lester Blevins, Warden of CBSP, issued the following statement regarding their missing employee: “Bonnie is a highly valued member of our staff and is well respected by her colleagues and students. We are doing everything we can to assist in the search and pray for her safe and speedy return.”

Police Chief Sheila Flack also issued a statement Sunday morning urging anyone who may have seen McMillan on the evening of December 11th or who may have information regarding her disappearance to contact the Fog Harbor Police Department. McMillan is described as five feet, four inches tall, with an average build, blonde hair, and blue eyes and was last seen wearing blue jeans and a beige raincoat. A public vigil for McMillan is planned for Sunday, December 15th at 4 p.m. at Grateful Heart Chapel in Fog Harbor.

 

 

Chapter One

Olivia hesitated outside the door of the chapel. No one should be afraid to set foot in a church, but Olivia was terrified, frankly, and with good reason. Every time she’d pushed open those heavy oak doors, crossed the threshold, and seated herself in a pew, something terrible had happened. It started on the day her mother had forced her into a dress and itchy white tights and dragged her into a church near their apartment in the Double Rock Projects, where they’d dropped to their knees to pray. That very night, the jury had returned with a decision—guilty—and the police carted her father away to the place he still called home. Prison.

“Going inside?”

The voice, a man’s, belonged to the hand on the bronze door pull. The door pull that stood between her and the curse which had begun with her mother at Holy Name’s in San Francisco, but hadn’t ended there. Not even close. The man’s nails were clean and cut short. His grip, strong and capable. The middle knuckle bore a faded bruise and a small knife scar marred the skin between his thumb and forefinger.

The man opened the door without effort, and held it there expectantly, while she gaped at the somber crowd already gathered inside.

“You expecting a formal invitation?”

Olivia bristled at his tone. She could go toe to toe with any smartass even on her worst day. But when her eyes left his hand, she went mute, swallowing the razor-sharp comeback on her tongue. Not because he carried a gun and wore a Fog Harbor police badge on his waistband, but because she didn’t recognize his face. And in Fog Harbor—population 6,532—that was something of a miracle.

“Thank you,” Olivia managed, taking a quick breath as she breached the doorway. Done. No turning back now. At least it was warm inside.

She took a vigil candle from the basket at the entrance and lingered near the back of the church, assessing her options while Mr. Wise Guy Detective settled himself into the last row of pews. A few up, she spotted a smattering of familiar faces, some of the fifteen or so staff members she supervised as chief psychologist at Crescent Bay State Prison. Leah waved her over, but Olivia couldn’t bear to walk down the aisle.

The moment she’d start that walk she’d be eighteen again, with the trumpet announcing her arrival, the organ playing Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March”. The congregation would stand and Erik Ziegler, not Bonnie McMillan’s family, would be waiting for her at the end of the aisle the way he had seventeen years earlier, his eyes brimming with the kind of love she’d hoped would fill the dad-sized hole in her heart. But they hadn’t even cut the wedding cake before she’d caught Erik in a broom closet with one of her bridesmaids. And the worst part? She’d been so desperate to leave Fog Harbor that she’d given him five hundred and fifteen more days of her life before she’d sent him packing. Him and his last name.

So there you go. She leaned against the wall, claiming this spot as her own, the sting of betrayal as sharp as ever. Cursed.

Anyway, she liked it better back here where she could make a quick getaway. As she watched Bonnie’s husband drag himself up to the podium, their two boys clinging to either hand, she suspected her position close to the exit would come in handy. She already felt hot, stripping off her coat and lifting her hair from the nape of her neck.

Olivia scanned the crowd for her sister. Emily had promised to be here. Granted, she’d been half asleep and still hungover when she’d mumbled yeah, yeah, yeah to stave off Olivia’s nagging. But Emily had known Bonnie, too, even better than Olivia. Since the state cutbacks a few years earlier, Crescent Bay’s education department had shared space with the dental clinic, where Emily worked as a hygienist. She’d even babysat the boys a few times. Yesterday afternoon they’d both joined the search outside the prison grounds and beyond, tromping around with the other volunteers. Looking for the tiniest clue that might tell them where Bonnie had gone. What had become of her.

Olivia checked her phone again. No new messages. She did another sweep of the crowd. No Em. Plenty of cops though, everywhere, in plain clothes and uniform. She understood it, but the unease that had been swirling in her stomach since Bonnie disappeared ratcheted up a notch. Cops meant something bad had definitely happened. Cops also meant she might see Graham. Which meant she might have to explain why she’d never called him back. Why seven perfectly adequate dates and one semi-awkward night were enough.

When the church bells marked 4 p.m., the doleful peals thrummed straight through her and resurrected another long-dead memory: her mother lying cold and still in a cherrywood coffin in this very church two years ago, Emily falling apart at her side. Little sisters could do that, while big sisters had to prove their mettle, had to put up prison-worthy walls around their hearts. Big sisters got stuff done. Big sisters showed up, curses be damned. And little sisters, well—Olivia searched once more for Em’s strawberry-blonde curls—they arrived late or not at all, leaving big sisters alone and fretting.

James McMillan tapped the microphone, bringing everyone’s focus to the front of the church. She squinted up at him, trying to recognize him as the boy she’d gone to Fog Harbor High with years ago. Somehow, in the last four days, he’d grown smaller. His frame shrunken, his cheeks sunken in. Grief and worry could do that to a body. She’d seen it in her father. In the inmates who sat across from her every day. In her mother too, and then, for a time, in herself.

James lit the candle in his hand and dipped the flame toward the vacant-eyed woman on his right who looked a lot like Bonnie. Her mother, Olivia guessed. The woman did the same, reaching up toward a somber Warden Blevins. One by one, the candles began to glow in the dim room, casting shadows and light that reflected in the stained glass.

“Hello, everyone. Thank you for being here tonight. I’m not sure I’ll be able to get through this, but I’ll give it my best shot. As you all know, Bonnie has been missing since early Thursday morning, and the boys and I…”

He wrapped his arms around the two of them, pulling them to his sides and squishing their little faces against his hips. Holding them close or holding himself upright, Olivia couldn’t tell which.

“Well, the boys and I have been a total wreck. Bonnie is the light of our family. She never complained. So many of you probably don’t realize all the things she gave up to move here with me eight years ago when I was reassigned to Crescent Bay State Prison. Before that, Bonnie studied film at UC Berkeley, and she’d won awards for her screenwriting. But she’s been even more impressive as a wife, a mother, and a teacher. We asked some of her inmate students to put down their thoughts to share with you so you’d understand, if you don’t already, just how special Bonnie is…”

Is. Such a small word brimming with hope. Olivia’s throat ached.

The flame had traveled through the room like a whispered secret, finally reaching her, full and bright and perfect. She extended her unlit candle to the woman next to her, who she recognized as Jane Seely, a bartender at the Hickory Pit, and the wick slowly began to flicker. Then, she leaned over, carefully offering the flame to the mohawked teen on her left. He juggled his candle and his cell phone, trying to capture the exchange on video.

“…and how much we miss her and need her home with us. The first poem was written by Drake Devere, one of Bonnie’s most accomplished students. With Bonnie’s help, Drake self-published his own novel last year, donating all the proceeds to a domestic violence shelter.”

A disapproving grunt from the back row startled Olivia, and the candle dropped from her hand, landing like a fallen angel at her feet. It hardly made a sound as she extinguished the flame with the toe of her boot.

“Damn, lady.” The teen viewed her through the apathetic eye of the camera, still rolling, and his exaggerated whisper turned heads. “You almost set the whole place on fire.”

But Olivia had already spun away, seething. Because she knew who to blame. Mr. Wise Guy with his handsome face and his disapproving noises. She concentrated on the back of his head, his hair a perfect match for the mahogany pews, willing him to look at her. When he finally glanced over his shoulder and shrugged, one corner of his mouth turned up.

At the podium, James continued his speech, plodding ahead with the steady persistence of a zombie, and Olivia cursed herself for making it harder on him. She should’ve known better than to cross the threshold into the church. She slipped back into her coat and slunk toward the exit, suddenly craving the burn of cold air in her lungs.

“Drake titled this tribute, ‘A Student’s Haiku’. ‘All our eyes on her. Classroom of second chances. She treats us as men.’” James paused, and Olivia waited, her hand on the door. If she left now, in the utter quiet, everyone would realize.

But standing there, another memory bowled her over, inescapable now as an oncoming train. The last time she’d been in a church, just two weeks earlier. The prison chapel, with its straight-backed chairs, simple wooden crosses and hidden spaces to do very unholy things. What she’d seen there. What she’d run from. It all flooded in, welling up in her throat, thick as cotton.

To hell with it.

She nudged the door ajar, imagining them all looking at her, including that smug detective. For a moment, she froze under the weight of their judgment. Until a scream, sharp as a blade, slit the white-bellied silence wide open.

 

 

Chapter Two

Olivia ran in the direction of the screaming. Though it had stopped now, the absence of it chilled her. Down the steps of Grateful Heart, up the stone path that wound around the back and into the grove of ancient redwoods. Here, the path turned to dirt and led to the Earl River that flowed into the bay.

“Doctor Rockwell!”

Olivia heard one of the Murdock twins calling her name before she saw her, bone-white and trembling, near the large drainpipe at the river’s edge. A dog whined and circled her, its leash trailing behind, forgotten. Olivia knew then, it was Maryann and her poodle, Luna.

Just behind Maryann, plain as day, Olivia saw the feet. The soles, booted and unmoving. The legs, still as driftwood. They protruded from the pipe and rested on the mossy rocks below. Whatever else remained lay inside the tunnel, shrouded in the endless dark.

“It’s her,” Maryann said, her voice one-note. Hollow as a dead piano key.

Olivia hurried down the embankment to the river, careful not to slip, and past Maryann toward the pipe’s entrance. In the summer, the river beneath the bridge slowed to a trickle here, and kids smoked cigarettes and weed, and immortalized their names in spray paint under the shelter of the drainpipe. Other things happened too. Bad things. Like the rape of the Simmons girl a few summers back. But now, the water hit Olivia, ice-cold, at mid-calf. She sloshed across the river and toward that pair of feet, extending her arms to keep her balance on the shifting rocks.

“It’s her,” Maryann said again. “It’s her.”

Olivia heard voices behind her. A panicked jumble of them. One, in particular, rose above the others, announcing himself as an officer of the law, telling her to get back. To wait.

She ignored them all. All her life she’d run toward trouble. How else could she explain her chosen profession? Em called it her savior complex. But in truth, Olivia had only ever wanted to save one person. But her dad didn’t want saving. So, she had to settle for saving somebody else. A whole lot of somebodies.

Bonnie, though, was beyond saving.

Olivia had known it from the moment she’d heard Luna whimpering, seen her wandering free, her fur slick with river water. Luna, the kind of dog who had outfits for every holiday and rode around town in a baby carriage and had her hair groomed more often than Olivia. Luna, who Maryann loved so much she had a life-sized stuffed replica in her office at the library.

Maybe, in some dark crevice of Olivia’s heart, she’d known all along. Mothers don’t go missing voluntarily. Not mothers like Bonnie.

When Olivia reached the drainpipe and could finally see inside, it hit her like pounding waves breaking against the sheer cliffs that bordered Fog Harbor.

First, the hands, partially submerged and bloated as oven mitts. Olivia braced herself against the tunnel’s rim.

Then, the blouse strewn open; the jeans undone. Olivia’s legs anchored her to the spot like the roots of the centuries-old trees that watched, unaffected by it all.

The eyes open but opaque and unseeing; the lips slightly parted. Olivia intended to scream, but the sound got stuck, and she only managed a shallow gasp.

Finally, the ligature around the neck. The head, oddly angled. Olivia bent over, dry-heaving, and felt her knees buckle beneath her, just as a hand cleaved to her elbow to hold her upright. She knew that hand. It belonged to the smartass detective.

“What the hell are you thinking?” he asked. “You can’t just go charging into a crime scene.”

Olivia couldn’t tell him she blamed herself for this; it sounded ridiculous. But she’d knowingly gone into Grateful Heart, and now Maryann and Bonnie had to suffer the consequences of her curse. She also couldn’t tell him the other thing: that it wasn’t her first dead body. Not even Em knew that. Only her father knew, and he’d made her swear to take it to the grave.

She couldn’t explain any of that, so she simply nodded, her head bobbing like a child’s balloon as he guided her to the rocks nearby. With his help, she lowered herself onto a dry spot next to Maryann. She focused on her breathing and Luna’s lolling pink tongue until she felt halfway human again.

At the top of the embankment, James pushed his way through the crowd, but he didn’t make it far. His face twisted. Animal sounds escaped his mouth. Someone grabbed him, and he collapsed to the ground, sobbing. Olivia knew it was a moment she’d live again and again in the worst of her nightmares.

“It’s her, right?” Maryann sounded better now. Less like the undead and more like the Maryann who worked as the prison librarian, her nose stuck in a book and everybody else’s business.

There was no one else but Olivia to answer.

“Yes.”

“Tell me your name, ma’am.”

The detective stood with his back to Olivia, notepad in hand, while the other cops milled around the drainpipe. They’d already dispersed the shell-shocked crowd and extended yellow tape around a wide perimeter of the river, marking it as the scene of a crime. Clad in a hooded, disposable jumpsuit, a person—man or woman, Olivia couldn’t tell—captured the whole scene with a camera. Why would you want a job like that? A job that required you to stare, unblinking, into the vilest parts of our animal nature. She’d been asked the same herself.

“Maryann Murdock.”

“Ms. Murdock, my name is Detective Will Decker, Fog Harbor Homicide. I know it’s been a difficult afternoon but I need to ask you a few questions.”

“Of course. I’ll do my best. I’m very observant. I watch Forensic Files. My sister always says I’d make a great witness.”

So Mr. Wise Guy had a name. Will Decker. Olivia mulled it over, certain she’d heard it before.

“This is your dog?”

“Luna. Isn’t she precious? Poor little thing got the scare of her life. I did too.” Maryann hugged the dog to her, a wet spot forming on her ample chest where Luna’s paws rested.

“Can you tell me what happened this afternoon?”

“I intended on coming up here to the vigil but Melody—that’s my twin sister—she had to pull a double up at Crescent Bay. She’s a CO. That’s stands for correctional officer, in case you didn’t know.”

Olivia couldn’t see Detective Decker’s face but she could picture it. Lips pressed together in an unforgiving line. A faint eye roll, perhaps. “I’m aware,” he answered flatly.

“So, I didn’t want to leave Mama alone at home for too long. She’s pretty out of it these days. But Luna… I guess you might say nature was calling. I walked her down the block, and she did her business. Then, she spots one of those pesky gray squirrels, and she’s off to the races and into the woods. Now, you can probably tell I’m no runner, Detective.”

Maryann gestured down the length of her body. She and Melody were shaped just the same, from their short bowl haircuts to their stout, tree-trunk legs. The only difference, Maryann wore floral blouses and Crocs to work, while Melody squeezed herself into a standard green officer’s uniform.

“Before I caught up, Luna was already in the water getting her paws all filthy. I just had her groomed. I was so worried about Luna, I wasn’t really looking around until I got down here and saw… well, you know what I saw.”

As Maryann talked, Olivia’s phone vibrated in her coat pocket. Finally, a text from Em.

U ok? Got here late. Up at the church. Heard what happened. Please tell me it’s not really her.

Olivia closed the message without responding—let her worry for a change—and typed William Decker police into the search bar, gawking as hundreds of results populated her screen. So, this was the Will Decker. No wonder he acted like someone had spit on his shoe. They probably had.

“Did you go inside the tunnel?” he asked Maryann.

“Heck no. But I knew it was Bonnie on account of the boots. They’re designer. She got those last Christmas from James. All the girls at Crescent Bay turned into green-eyed monsters. Ask Doc over there. She remembers.”

Olivia wondered at how pathetic her life had become since she’d returned to Fog Harbor three years ago, because she did remember the boots. They were Marc Jacobs, black leather and ankle-high, and looked too good to wear to work in a place that smelled of bleach and bodily fluids. When Bonnie had shown up in them the week after Christmas, the rumor mill had begun its brutal churning.

James is selling cell phones to inmates. How else did he get that kind of money?

He had an affair with a CO and had to buy her something special to make up for it.

The Vulture gave her those boots. James is just saving face.

Bonnie thinks she’s so special, prancing around here. They’re knockoffs anyway.

Olivia sorted through the rumors she’d heard, preparing the perfect answer. One that involved none of them. But Detective Decker didn’t glance in her direction.

“Go on,” he encouraged Maryann.

“As soon as I saw those boots, I screamed bloody murder.” Maryann clamped her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide behind her thick glasses. “I didn’t mean to say it that way. It’s just that I was real upset. I thought I might pass out, kind of like a heroine in a Brontë novel. Thank God, Doc came running when she did.”

At least someone appreciated her responsiveness.

Detective Decker jotted Maryann’s contact information into his notepad. “You’re free to leave, Ms. Murdock. If we have any other questions, we’ll be in touch.”

He turned toward Olivia but his gaze traveled past her, to the drainpipe. To the boots. The fine leather had already turned a dirty gray and Olivia imagined them in their final resting place: a sealed cardboard box in a stuffy evidence room.

The detective cleared his throat. His broad shoulders tensed. Olivia wondered why he wouldn’t look at her.

“If you don’t have any questions for me, Detective, I’d like to go. My sister’s waiting at the church. It’s getting pretty cold out here, and my clothes are wet.”

She stood up, brushing off her backside, the legs of her pants clinging to her skin. A gust of wind stirred the crime scene tape, raising the fine hairs on her arms. She shivered.

“Actually—Doctor, is it?—you’re not free to leave.” When she finally met his eyes, they’d hardened into stones of amber. “You’re under arrest for obstruction.”

 

 

Chapter Three

That same damn look. Dr. Smarty Pants—of course, she would be a doctor—had been giving Will that look, or some variation of it, since he’d held the door for her outside the church. He’d seen it before, too. Women were always giving him that look, though it happened less since he’d fled from San Francisco four months ago and moved here, where the cover of the fog and the redwoods seemed to keep the real world at bay. Equal parts pity, confusion, and judgment, that look meant one thing. She knew. Somehow, she knew.

That’s why he’d said it, told her she was under arrest. Total bullshit. But he had to say something. Anything to wipe that look from her face. And it worked. Only problem, the new look wasn’t much better. Fierce green eyes and a scowl that cut him off at the knees.

Smooth, Deck. Real smooth. No wonder he hadn’t been laid in two years.

“Seriously? On what grounds?”

“I identified myself as an officer of the law. I told you to stop. Several times. And you blatantly, willfully, ignored my commands.”

Will waited for her to argue. He welcomed it, actually. That way he could justify being an asshole.

“I just thought—well, I don’t know why I did it. I guess I hoped there was a chance… I know it sounds silly.”

He couldn’t bear seeing her eyes fill. But he’d started it, and he couldn’t back down now. “What if the perp had been hiding out in there? What if you’d stepped on some crucial piece of evidence? Blown our chance at catching this guy? That’s obstruction in my book.”

She took a step toward him, teetering on the rocks, until she was close enough to touch, but he resisted the urge to steady her. She extended both her hands, goosebumps visible on her skin. The tears in her eyes had vanished. “Fine. Arrest me then. Let’s get it over with.”

Heat crept up his neck. She’d boxed him into a corner. Nothing could save him now. Except—