Ambushed at Christmas Read online

  “Hold on a minute, I—”

  It was too late. The line went dead.

  * * *

  LEAH PULLED INTO the parking lot of the Tarrant County Coroner’s office. Dr. Timothy Rex had been with the city since long before her time and he was one of the most respected people she had the privilege of working with.

  She’d no sooner put the gearshift in Park than movement on the east side of the parking lot caught her eye. A pickup truck door opened and Deacon Kent got out of the driver’s side. Her stomach gave a little flip at seeing Deacon Kent again. She ignored her reaction to him, even though instinctively she checked her face in the mirror. She should’ve known he would show. She’d all but invited him on the phone, and had regretted it almost instantly. It wasn’t like her to act on impulse, which is exactly what she’d done when she’d picked up her cell at almost four o’clock in the morning.

  Speaking of which, lack of sleep had dark circles cradling her eyes. She’d never been one to do well without sleep, even though she’d gotten very little of it during her high school years. Unlike her peers, she wasn’t lying awake at night, staring at the ceiling because she worried she’d fail a test. Her stress levels reached far deeper than that. While everyone else met up on Friday nights to find out who would host the next party after Friday Night Lights, she churned all night feeling physically ill. She thought about what she could’ve done differently. Her mind stirred on how she’d let her friend down in the worst possible way.

  Leah pushed those heavy thoughts aside and stepped out of her car. She didn’t bother asking what he was doing there.

  “Good morning, Mr. Kent.” He was already making a beeline toward her by the time she climbed out of her driver’s seat.

  “Call me Deacon,” he said. “I hope it’s okay that I’m here.”

  “You have a vested interest in this case and so do I.” She left out the part where she liked having someone to bounce ideas off of for a change. For too long it had just been her and her three-year-old son, Connor. Even when she’d dated Detective Dougherty, she hadn’t felt the sense of—what?—comfort that she instantly felt with Deacon. She chalked it up to it being easier to talk to a stranger than those closest at times. But nothing felt strange about Deacon Kent. In a way, she felt like she’d known him for years and it was probably just because he was easy to talk to. She didn’t want to get inside her head about what that meant, so she just let it be.

  There were four cars parked in the lot at this early hour aside from Deacon’s truck and her sedan. It wouldn’t be difficult to see if anyone came in or out.

  “The Mitchell case isn’t mine to ask questions about. So I have a Jane Doe who came in three nights ago that we’ll say you might be able to ID. According to witnesses, she’s a vagrant and you won’t recognize her but that’s not the point—”

  “You’re looking for an excuse to walk in the door,” he finished the sentence for her.

  “That’s right.”

  Leah badged them inside the building and then led Deacon down a hospital-like white-tiled hallway that led to a glass door. Etched on it were the words Dr. Timothy Rex along with a series of alphabet letters to indicate his degrees.

  At sixty-eight, Dr. Rex, aka T-Rex was still a crackerjack. His mind was sharper than most thirty-year-olds she knew, which wasn’t exactly an endorsement for the people in her circle. Leah almost laughed out loud. Her circle consisted of the people she knew at work, her babysitter and a three-year-old. Unless she counted the purple dinosaur from Allen, Texas, whose voice she could hear in her sleep thanks to Connor binge-watching the DVDs. Did they call it binge-watching when it was almost-constant background noise and some of the same episodes over and over again?

  Leah made a move for the metal bar to open the door but Deacon beat her to it. She couldn’t remember the last time a man had opened a door for her. She was independent and strong. She didn’t need a man to open doors. But there was something sweet and chivalrous about the gesture that caused her stomach to do another round of somersaults.

  Old-fashioned chivalry was still a turn-on. She mumbled a thank-you and caught a small smile toying with the corner of his lips—lips she had no business focusing on.

  There was no receptionist working this early. Leah had expected that. She didn’t have credentials to badge through the next set of doors leading to the lab. Dr. Rex looked up at her. He rocked his head as though he’d been expecting her. He hadn’t. She’d given him no warning. His manner had always been welcoming. That was just Rex.

  He hurried over to the door, first removing his examination gloves and tossing them into the wastepaper basket positioned next to the door. He acknowledged Deacon with another smile after letting them in.

  Deacon stuck out his hand as the door closed behind him.

  T-Rex took it with a vigorous shake, introducing himself. His eyes sparked for the briefest moment when he heard Deacon’s last name. She figured that happened a lot, even though nothing about the down-to-earth cowboy screamed that he was one of the wealthiest men in Texas. Leah almost couldn’t wrap her mind around it. She came from money. Or, more accurately, her parents had money. They still did because she refused to let their money manipulate her and that’s exactly what they’d tried to use it for. As an only child, she blamed being the sole focus of their manipulation efforts on the lack of siblings to spread the “wealth” of their attention across.

  Leah had gone to the police academy after getting her degree in criminal justice. Neither her philosophy-professor father nor her board-of-directors mother approved of her degree and that’s the reason they’d stated when they refused to pay tuition for her to go to the out-of-state college she wanted to attend. So she’d played the child-of-a-professor card and went to the University of Texas at Arlington instead. Being the child of faculty gave her free tuition and that had helped not to rack up education expenses. Now she couldn’t imagine trying to bring up a child on a detective’s salary and repay college loans.

  T-Rex was given his nickname for his turtle-like shoulders and arms. It might’ve been cruel except that he’d been the one to make the joke and the name stuck. He said he’d had it since college and didn’t mind. T-Rex, after all, had been an apex predator. The real story behind it was that he’d broken both of his arms as a child. His missionary parents who traveled with him abroad had made sure he’d received the best available care. But he’d been given medical attention in a developing country. The incident had left him unable to lift his arms over his head. He liked to say he got a PhD and an MD because he couldn’t get the alphabet letters from his boyhood aspiration, NFL.

  Otherwise, he was tall-ish. Admittedly, standing next to Deacon Kent made T-Rex look smaller. His spectacles slid down on his nose—much like pictures of Santa Claus. With the resemblance, there were other monikers T-Rex could’ve picked up. He had the same belly and carriage as the guy who made midnight rounds one night a year, a night that was coming soon. T-Rex also had a slow smile and quick wit. Both were genuine.

  “How’s the grandbaby?” Leah always asked about the five-year-old light of his life, Harley. She’d come to live with him and his wife after losing his daughter to a rare bone disease. The father had never been in the picture.

  “Growing like a weed.” He beamed. It couldn’t be easy to take on a child at his and his wife’s age. But he was the kind of man who wouldn’t turn his back on someone who needed him and especially not family. “She decided she needs to learn how to do a cartwheel.”

  “What does she need to do that for?” Leah asked with a little more enthusiasm than she felt. She did care. Don’t get her wrong. But she was biding her time until she could ask what she wanted, what was on the tip of her tongue.

  T-Rex rolled his eyes. “She’s made up a list of all the things she needs to do while she’s still young.”

  “She still thinking kindergarten is the end of her childh
ood?” Leah couldn’t help but smile. The kid was a cutup and Leah figured she got half her personality from her grandfather. If she got half of his big heart, she’d do fine in life.

  He nodded before turning his attention to Deacon. “You got kids?”

  “Me? No.” Deacon’s response was a little too quick.

  Leah almost asked what he had against kids. She figured it was none of her business what he thought about anything, except that a little piece of her argued that she did care. And more than she wanted to acknowledge to herself.

  T-Rex must’ve picked up on her tension because he redirected his focus. “What brings you to my humble abode so early in the morning?”

  “I need to see Jane Doe,” she said.

  “Ah.” T-Rex’s gaze bounced from her to Deacon.

  “His friend is missing and she fits my Jane Doe’s description.” Leah didn’t like being dishonest. But if she inserted herself into Charles Dougherty’s investigation and asked the questions she wanted to outright ask, Charles could make her life at work even harder than he had been.

  “Right this way.”

  Chapter Five

  T-Rex motioned toward another hallway that led to another freezing cold room that had been dubbed The Meat Locker by beat cops.

  Leah thought the term was disrespectful and had been teased her rookie year for not embracing the lingo. She also thought about her high school friend being inside a place like that and an icy chill trickled down her spine. She thought about the fact that Millie’s—short for Mildred, which was her aunt’s name—parents would have been brought down to a place like this in order to ID their daughter’s body, a fate no parent should ever have to face.

  “Heard you got a new one in night before. The Mitchell case.” Leah figured there’d been enough casual conversation between the three of them this morning that she could start peppering in her questions. She also knew in her gut—from years of honing investigative skills—that T-Rex’s guard was down.

  “Phone’s been ringing off the hook ever since. I unplugged it.” The case was big-time and people would be interested. He wouldn’t think anything of a few random-sounding questions.

  “Mayor’s office?” she asked casually.

  T-Rex nodded. He paused in front of The Meat Locker. “Sad case.”

  “Heard her foot was missing,” she said.

  “Cut clean off. One slice.” He turned to look them in the eyes. He always did that when he was delivering news that most people would consider disturbing. Leah had learned to keep an emotional distance from cases. That, and her nightly run were the only reasons she could sleep at all and still be able to do the kind of work she did. She gave families peace of mind. She couldn’t bring a loved one back, but knowing what had happened built a bridge to healing. Without it, becoming whole again would always be on the opposite shore, out of reach.

  Deacon, who had been quiet up until now, folded his arms. Strong, silent type? He seemed to take everything in. See what most people couldn’t because they were too busy talking, trying to get a point across.

  “Any idea what he used?” she asked T-Rex.

  “Hatchet, maybe.” T-Rex shook his head. “She was young. Whole life ahead of her.”

  She liked that he thought of the people who landed on his table in terms of being real human beings. People with parents, spouses, children. She’d heard stories of other coroners who’d mentally detached to the point they thought of people as projects.

  “It’s awful.” Leah could only hope her friend Millie had been taken to someone as caring.

  “She fought back, though,” he stated.

  “Good for her.” Leah knew she would. There was no way she’d ever go down easy if faced with a similar situation. She’d take out an eye or anything else she could of her attacker. For one, she wouldn’t stop trying to break free until she took her last breath. Secondly, she knew that she’d leave behind valuable DNA evidence if she clawed and kicked.

  Millie had willingly gone with her abductor. With what Leah knew now, she realized she and Millie had probably known the person who’d taken her. He was most likely someone they trusted.

  “I heard her ankle was cut clean. That true?” Leah asked.

  “Yes.” T-Rex led them inside the frigid room. The wall with drawers still made her queasy as she walked toward it but she swallowed the bile rising in her throat.

  He stopped at the last one on the right, bottom drawer. He pulled out a long table. Deacon watched as the body bag was unzipped and then the face of a woman who looked frozen in time, Jane Doe, was revealed. She was found on a playground swing after a pair of nights with temperatures in the teens. At first blush, it looked like she’d frozen to death until Leah walked around behind the body and saw a bullet hole.

  He shook his head. “It’s not her.”

  T-Rex attended to sealing up as Leah thanked him for his time. Deacon followed her outside, still saying very little. In the parking lot, Leah paused at her sedan. Deacon had slipped on sunglasses from his jacket pocket and between those and his Stetson his eyes were hooded.

  “There a place we can grab a cup of coffee?” he asked.

  She needed to pick his brain about the heifers for a few minutes before he disappeared out of her life. “There’s a little place around the corner.”

  “I’ll follow you.” She ignored the deep rumble rippling through his voice. Any other circumstances and she’d want to get to know Deacon Kent better on a personal level. She knew deep down she’d never allow herself to get close to a man like him. There was something different about him, something she couldn’t quite pinpoint but felt like a threat. Maybe it was the fact he was the kind of person she could fall for. Being near him brought out feelings she’d thought long since dead. Besides, she had Connor to think about, and after dating Charles Dougherty, the last thing she needed to do was complicate her life further. She’d done a bang-up job with the last one.

  Leah hopped into her sedan and led the way to Marvin’s Diner. It was one of those eateries that looked like a silver bullet train on the outside, complete with red vinyl benches and ’70s throwback decor on the inside.

  She parked away from the front door where there were two parking spots together in the almost full lot. Marvin’s was always bristling with activity at this time and kept hours from 5:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Breakfast and lunch were all that was on the menu. Ask any cop what he or she had in common with New York City cabdrivers and he or she would say both always knew the best places to eat.

  Leah got out of her car and waited for Deacon. Again, her heart thudded against her rib cage when she saw him. He’d taken off his sunglasses and hat, leaving them inside his pickup. Rays of sunlight streaked his hair. His eyes were steel gray.

  Detective Andrew McKeever, aka Keeve, came walking out the door to Marvin’s as Deacon made a move for the handle.

  “Hello, Keeve.” Leah felt compelled to greet the man. He was one of Charles’s closest friends—which wasn’t saying a lot since Charles had pushed nearly everyone out of his life—and had been cold-shouldering Leah ever since the breakup. Keeve needed to get over it and she figured she’d kill him with kindness because the two of them had always had a solid professional relationship. Years ago, marrying Connor’s father, a detective, had made her think it would be okay to see someone socially from work. She quickly realized after Charles the flaws in that thinking. Because she and Wyatt Cordon had had a beautiful child together, whereas she and Charles had had a fling that ended badly, leaving a whole bunch of messiness in its wake.

  Keeve’s gaze bounced from her to Deacon and back. His face muscles tensed. “Detective.”

  That one word had such a dismissive quality in it that Leah didn’t bother to respond.

  Keeve walked right past her, his gaze locking on to Deacon whose face of hard angles and planes gave away nothing of his reaction.
/>
  As they headed inside, Sunny Bowman, the diner’s most popular waitress, grabbed two menus. “How many in your party, hon?”

  “The two of us,” Deacon responded.

  She smiled at him and her cheeks flamed. Leah could only hope her own reaction to seeing Deacon for the first time wasn’t so obvious. A stab of jealousy she had no right to own caught her off guard.

  “Right this way, Detective,” Sunny said. She was midthirties but looked older when Leah focused on the lines etched in the woman’s face. Her poufy white hair was in pigtails and her lashes were so long they practically touched her eyebrows. Sunny worked her hips when she walked and good food wasn’t the only reason so many male officers hung out at the diner.

  Sunny stopped at a booth in the far corner, Leah’s favorite, and spun around with her arm out like she was presenting a new car to a game show winner.

  “Thanks, Sunny,” Leah said. Before today, Sunny’s flirtatious personality hadn’t felt like fingernails on a chalkboard.

  To Deacon’s credit, he didn’t seem to notice. Was it his good upbringing that made him such a gentleman? She’d read about his family. The Kents seemed like the best of the best, unlike her family, which was all surface and no substance. Her parents had tried to persuade her to at least become an attorney if she insisted on going down the path of criminal justice. When she’d told them she wanted to be a cop and then a homicide detective, they’d gone down a familiar road, reminding her she couldn’t bring her friend back by putting herself in danger. She’d have liked to believe they were worried about her safety, but then she’d heard her mother on the phone with Leah’s aunt, talking about how embarrassing it was that Leah didn’t have more ambition. That she’d always be stuck feeling sorry for herself for losing her best friend. Her mother had no idea then and nothing had improved since.

  “Did you want coffee, Detective?” Sunny blinked at Leah expectantly.