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A weight lifted from her shoulders, but she struggled to breathe as she waited for his response. She dropped her gaze, unable to look into those eyes staring at her—eyes with tiny specks of yellow sprinkled throughout the mossy green.
Eyes that devoured every word, every motion, every damn thought in her head. A shiver danced down her spine. If his eyes devoured her, what would the rest of him do?
His ringing phone snapped her from her inappropriate thoughts.
He offered an apologetic smile then answered. “Hi, Pappy. What’s up?”
Owen frowned and Marie caught crumbles of Lewis’ irritated voice.
“Okay. I’ll stop by the house. Hold on a second.” He cupped his palm over the speaker. “I hate to ask you to do this. Pappy still has the tapes I need to see, and it’d be helpful if you could identify Bill on the footage. Would you mind coming with me?”
Anticipation zipped down her spine and she nodded. Finally, she might get to play a hand in putting Bill where he belonged and spend more time with Owen in the process.
She mentally groaned. She was a single mother with no job, no money, and a world of baggage. Spending time with any man was the last thing she should be thinking about—no matter how handsome he was.
Because when it came to hunky men who were out of her league, Deputy Owen Wells took the cake. Forgetting that would be a huge mistake.
Owen tapped lightly on his grandfather’s door before opening it wide for Marie to step inside. He followed behind and a wall of heat greeted him. “The old man needs to invest in some air conditioning.”
“I’m used to the heat.” Marie shot him a tentative smile and crossed her arms over her chest.
He studied her furrowed brow and the unease in her round eyes. “You okay?”
“Not really.” She shrugged and set her purse on the floor and slipped off her shoes. “I’ve never been away from Nora before. Leaving her with people I barely know feels irresponsible, but I didn’t want her to be around all this negative energy. It’s hard to know what’s the right decision sometimes.”
He resisted cringing at her inner turmoil over her child. He didn’t have the extra burden of constantly thinking about someone else’s needs. Being a mother had to be exhausting, especially with no support. “I understand that, but trust me, she’s in the safest hands possible. Laura will call if anything happens, and the second you want to go back to the shelter, I’ll take you.”
“Thank you.”
Lewis appeared and cleared his throat. His plaid shirt was wrinkled and old jeans practically fell from his slim frame. “I told you to leave her alone.”
Owen bit back a sigh. “I can’t do that.”
He glanced at Marie. She stood wide-eyed with a whisper of a smile on her full lips. Her long, raven black hair tumbled around her shoulders, and not a stitch of make-up covered her skin. His stomach knotted. She was knee-deep in trouble, and he needed her help. But he hated to admit there was something else pulling him to her, a magnetic force drawing him to her side and demanding he discover everything about her.
Blinking, he tore his gaze away from her. He couldn’t get caught up in some insane attraction, couldn’t get caught up in the weird emotions that stirred in his gut whenever he even thought about her little girl. He had a job to do, nothing more.
“Lewis, I want to help.” Marie spoke with an authority that contradicted the fatigue etched on the fine lines of her face.
Lewis shook his head. “Getting involved with something you aren’t trained to deal with can be dangerous. You need to stay away, girl.”
“But this situation involves me. No one around here knows Bill, and if I can help find him, I will. What he did to that poor woman makes me sick. He deserves to go to prison. That’s the only way Nora and I will be free.”
A tiny shudder shook her shoulders, and Owen balled his hands into fists to keep from reaching out to her.
“Fine.” The word passed through Lewis’ mouth with a small grunt. “Let’s go look at those tapes. I queued them up.”
“You sure you’re up to this?” Owen asked, even though he’d been the one to request she view the tapes.
She stiffened her shoulders and lifted her chin, showing off her long neck. “Yes.”
Her flash of feistiness brought a smile to his lips, and he nodded.
Dread slowed his steps as he approached Pappy’s bedroom. He hated stepping into this space—hated his mother’s haunted eyes starting at him from the walls. Marie would have a lot of questions after witnessing Lewis’ cave. He hoped she’d keep them to herself, at least until they were out of his grandpa’s range of hearing. One reason he kept his distance these days was because he couldn’t endure more talk about his long-gone mother or his grandpa’s quest to find her killer.
Lewis flipped on a light and settled into a brown leather desk chair in front of a large computer monitor.
Pictures of his mother littered the walls, and he averted his gaze from the wall-to-wall papers plastered around the room. He didn’t have to look at the corkboard above the bed to know photos of suspects hung like posters of the pinup models he’d had in his room as a teenager. He didn’t have to glance in the corner to know files and notes cluttered the bookcase, a constant reminder of the unsolved case his grandpa would never turn his back on.
