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He did want her, but Robin couldn’t imagine he wouldn’t despise her once he knew she’d been tested three years ago and been found a match to give her sister a kidney, but hadn’t done it. Endless rounds of dialysis kept Allie from having any kind of a life. She couldn’t hold a job or even live alone. If she had a boyfriend, she’d never said so during any of her brief conversations with Robin. Allie must hate her, Robin thought with familiar self-loathing. When she screwed up her life, she’d damaged Mom’s and Allie’s lives plenty, too.
Maybe she should give up and tell Seth everything. Get it over with. Why put off the inevitable?
Because he was a cop. He couldn’t let her confession that she’d killed a man slide. She could claim self-defense, but since she’d been trespassing at the time, Robin suspected law enforcement wouldn’t see it that way.
She discovered suddenly that he’d gone completely still, and she was the object of his unnervingly intent gaze. For charged seconds, Robin couldn’t look away. If he could see right through her...well, let him.
In the end, she took the coward’s way out and fled into the house.
* * *
SETH MADE SOME calls to neighboring jurisdictions on Friday, and determined that Hood River County Sheriff’s Department employed a female deputy who might pass as Robin to a distant watcher who saw her moving past a lighted window in the house. She wouldn’t fool anyone who got a good look at her, though.
There was a lot Seth didn’t like about the idea of setting a trap, however. Starting with the possibility that if Winstead was as good a shot as Robin thought, he could fire from across the street, put a bullet through Deputy Jennifer Hadleigh’s head and vanish in seconds. Of course, he’d discover in no time that he’d killed the wrong woman—again—and they’d be back where they started.
Since Seth hadn’t worked with the deputy, he had no idea how competent she was, either. Or whether she’d agree to this scheme.
What he did know was that Robin would balk if he suggested putting another woman at risk in her place. That needn’t stop them, of course, but while he wouldn’t describe himself as sensitive, he knew what Robin desperately needed was to feel in control of her life, not in even less control.
Sometimes, how you made something happen was as important as the result.
The wistful, maybe sad expression on her face when she watched him play with Jacob out on the lawn kept coming back to him. Ignoring his father’s curiosity, Seth had followed her last night after she announced her intention of going to bed at a ridiculously early hour. With a hand on her arm, he’d stopped her at the foot of the stairs.
“You don’t have to run away from me,” he’d said in a low voice.
She’d huffed out a breath. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m tired. Jacob’s an early riser.”
“You have no idea how much I want to barrel right through the walls you’ve built to keep everyone out.”
Her breath hitched. “Please don’t,” she’d said so softly he’d had to lean forward to hear her. “I need them.”
And then she’d jerked away and dashed upstairs, never glancing back.
He’d had to go back to the living room and face his father, who knew him well enough to have a good idea how mixed up he was where Robin was concerned. Fortunately, Dad was also smart enough not to push too hard.
Forcing himself to concentrate on work, Seth sent an email request to Sergeant Hammond inquiring about Winstead’s current and former employees. After that, he turned his attention to other investigations that had gone on the back burner. The most significant was a recent series of burglaries, car prowls and mail theft. He’d begun to wonder if they were all being committed by the same person or persons.
He’d started his career with Portland Police Bureau until his mother got sick and he took the job here in town so he could count on being free to help both his parents. Once Mom was gone and his father was past the worst of his grief, Seth could have gone back to the much larger law-enforcement agency, but had discovered by then that he liked the pace of small-town policing and the independence of being the only detective on the Lookout police force. Four years later, he didn’t have any regrets.
