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He laughed and turned down more roads, following a series of smaller and smaller side streets until he took a hard right onto a freshly paved blacktop driveway. It snaked up the side of the mountain, winding around a switchback curve, and then pushed up to the final stretch.
The house waiting for them was not what she had expected when she had heard farmhouse. It was large and at least a five-thousand-square-foot extravagance of stone, tall glass windows, and a wide covered porch that wrapped around the entire front of the house.
“Wow, Grandpa rolled large,” she said.
“He built roads for a living.”
“And made a small fortune.”
He hit a button on his visor and a garage door on the side opened, allowing him to pull in. He shut off the engine. “I’ll give you the grand tour.”
“Why not?”
A combination lock opened the door leading from the garage into the kitchen. She paused to study the neat display of mountain bikes, hiking gear, and ski equipment precisely arranged along the walls.
“How long did he live here?” she asked.
“Forty years.”
“This gentleman was also Ellis’s grandfather?”
“No. I’m related to Ellis on my mother’s side. George, my grandfather who built this house, was my dad’s father.”
“You were close to George?” She’d slept with the guy, but neither had really talked about their pasts.
“My grandfather raised me from age fifteen onward after my parents died.”
“You never told me that. How did your parents die?”
“Car accident. Hit head-on by a drunk driver.”
“I’m sorry about your parents.”
“It was a long time ago.” He waved her in before he disappeared inside.
She traced her finger over the handlebar of a mountain bike, realizing she wanted to know more about Nevada. Curiosity served her well on the job, but it wouldn’t in this case. She liked the guy a lot, but the less she knew about him, the better. Regardless of their pasts, their futures were headed in opposite directions. If she went inside Nevada’s house, the odds of her sleeping with him were high. God knows she wanted it. But when the case ended and she returned to Quantico, she would again endure the one-two punch of loss and longing.
“Since when did fear stop you?” she muttered.
Shouldering her backpack, she followed him inside. Nevada shrugged off his boots and hung his coat on a peg in the entryway. Her gaze was drawn to the vaulted ceiling cutting high into an A-frame and a wall of windows that overlooked another deck and the rolling mountains behind the house.
She toed off her shoes and crossed in sock feet to the window. “You have the high ground. Expecting an invasion?”
“As Grandpa used to say, no one ever expects one.” He selected a glass from open shelving and filled it with water before handing it to her.
“Thank you.”
He opened the double-door, subzero refrigerator and pulled out several precooked meals. He set the temperature on a convection oven and unwrapped the meals. “Do you eat meat?”
“Don’t I strike you as a carnivore?”
He laughed. “No comment.”
She set her bag down and got out a bottle of ibuprofen. She popped two and drained the glass of water.
“How’s the leg?”
“Surprisingly good.”
“Would you tell me if it weren’t?”
“Probably not.”
While the oven came to temp, he removed cheese and bread from the refrigerator and sliced pieces of both. He placed them on a plate in the center of the island.
The oven now ready, he popped the two meals in. “Grab a piece of cheese, and I’ll show you around while dinner cooks.”
“This is not what I expected.”
“What did you expect?”
“Let’s say I shouldn’t assume anymore.”
He moved into another room and flipped on lights. This room was smaller with a lower ceiling and painted in a dark-navy color. In the center was a tall stone fireplace, its firebox blackened by decades of use. Beside it was a neat stack of wood. Across the room was a large mahogany desk covered in more piles of papers. “Now that it’s getting cooler, I’m gravitating toward this room.”
“Snow on the trees and a crackling fire. You’re on the verge of being a holiday greeting card.”
Again he smiled as he showed her several more rooms on the first floor, including a room with a pool table and another with gun cases displaying shotguns that ranged from modern era to antique.
“Very nice, Nevada.”
“It’s a work in progress.” He walked down the hallway back into the kitchen and flipped on more lights.
She settled on a barstool around the large kitchen island made of reclaimed barnwood. Industrial pendant lights hung above. The place smelled faintly of fresh paint. “If you’d told me in Kansas City we’d be sitting here now, I’d have laughed.”
“You and me both.” He glanced at the timer on the convection oven, which had five minutes remaining. He removed two plates from the cabinet and set them on the table.
Whatever he was cooking smelled delicious. “So what are we eating?”
“Steak and potatoes.”
“My two favorite food groups.” As he set out silverware and two cloth napkins, she said, “Did you ask Ramsey for me on this case?”
He stood still for an instant as he placed a fork on a gray napkin. “I called him when the DNA results came back. He told me he’d received your application. He also told me in the few weeks you’d been at ViCAP you’d connected the dots linking six stabbing cases in five different cities to one offender.”
“It wasn’t all me. If local law enforcement hadn’t entered the case data, we wouldn’t have had anything to analyze.”
“That offender liked to use a serrated knife.”
So he had done more homework than she’d imagined. “He stabbed his victims in the lower left portion of their backs.” There was little correlation between the victims other than a method of death that was very specific.
When the timer dinged, he grabbed a set of hot mitts and removed the steaming food packages. Removing the top seal filled the room with the scents of beef, butter, and fresh herbs.
“I know my frozen foods, Nevada, and this is a cut above.”
“I special order it.” He set one on each plate and placed one before her. “The killer made knives for a living.”
“His blades have a national reputation with his customers.”
“What brought your attention to the case?”
“Two stabbings occurred in Raleigh, North Carolina, in a ten-hour period. Local law enforcement sensed he’d done this before and filed a report with ViCAP. My colleague Andy and I pulled up all stabbing deaths and then narrowed our search from there. Once we identified ten possibly related cases, we sent the case to a forensic pathologist to look at the images taken of the wounds and then created a likely weapon profile from there.”
“How did you trace it to him?”
“I visited several knife experts in the area. Our boy has a fan following in the world of handcrafted weapons. I checked out his website and then cross-checked dates of the murders with the trade shows on his events page. He was picked up in Tennessee five days ago.”
“You’re smart as hell, Macy.”
“If I were so smart, I wouldn’t have connected Debbie Roberson’s romantic getaway to the serial offender we’re hunting.”
“Better you sounded the alarm and she ended up fine than the other way around.”
“Nice of you to say, but I still feel foolish.”
“You are nobody’s fool, Macy.”
She ate in silence and realized she was hungrier than she had thought. When she finished off the last slice of steak and drained her soda, Nevada looked pleased.
“Once again, you’ve fed me when I didn’t realize I needed to eat.”
“Here to serve.”
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“Let me clean.”
“No, I have this.”
As he took the plates away, Macy walked to the large windows that overlooked the sloping yard below. Moonlight bathed what looked like a work shed and beyond that a stone firepit with adirondack chairs around it. She could imagine him sitting out there with the fire blazing, drinking a beer under the stars.
When she heard him approach, her gut tightened with longing. He stopped several inches away from her, but she could feel the snap of energy radiating from his body. Delicious sensations flooded her.
She didn’t want to think about cases or bad guys or weird dreams, at least for a little while. “I’m wondering if you could help me out with something.”
“What’s that?” His voice sounded deep and rich.
She worried he might not want her anymore. Scrub brush hair, thin arms and legs, and scars conjured images of a scarecrow, not a seductress. Instead of wondering too much, she kicked caution to the wind as she faced him.
“I haven’t had sex since Kansas City.”
He didn’t touch her but his attention intensified. “That so?”
“I’ve missed it. I’ve missed you.”
