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“I wonder what he needed to show me…” I mumbled as I rounded a corner and got to the house. Throwing the car into park, I jumped out and headed to the principal barn.
I got there just as Detective Juliann was walking out, a grin on her face. “You’re here. Good. Come inside. The intruder was sloppy this time.”
“Sloppy, how?”
We walked in, and instantly, I was drawn to a cut-open gate and saw a strip of cloth hanging from it. “And there is blood, too,” Detective Juliann nodded. “Micah here said he spotted movement on the camera and rushed to look when the intruder jumped and rushed to the backdoor. They cut themselves. Ripped their shirt on the way. Whoever it is would have a nasty cut and is most likely heading to the hospital. I’ve alerted all the hospitals to look out for any person with that cut and hold them.”
“Damn,” I said. “And you’re sure that will help?”
“The wound was deep enough that we got blood and collagen from the dermis,” she replied. “That’s a deep cut, and unless that person is a doctor, they will need medical attention at some point. We just need to wait them out.”
I turned. “And what were they after this time?”
“That,” she pointed to a bottle resting on a trough. “They didn’t get to open it yet. We dusted it for prints, but that came up empty. We’ll have to rely on blood and the cloth strip. It’ll get us somewhere, trust me.”
I let out a breath. “If you could tie it to West, I’d finally have the last nail in his coffin to stick it to him.”
“Let’s hope the trail leads there,” she said, sticking a hand in her pocket while turning to her tech guys. “Mech, are you done here?”
“Almost,” the man replied before turning back to his powders and vials. “Gimme five minutes.”
She checked her watch. “I need to go home too. My husband is forgiving, but I doubt he would like to miss another dinner.”
I frowned. “Dinner? It’s almost ten o’clock?”
“My husband is a pilot,” she replied. “His hours are very…erratic.”
“And little free time, I would imagine,” I replied. “But thank you for coming out here.”
“Thank me more when I nail this sonofabitch to the wall,” she said as her man picked up his case and nodded. “We’ll be going now. Take it easy, Maxwell.”
When she left, I turned to Micah and nodded. “Thanks for being on the ball, Micah.”
“Sure thing, bossman,” he replied.
Turning, I headed to the house, craving a long shower and my bed, but then, I remembered my phone and doubled back to the truck to get it. Sam’s and Harper's doors were closed, and I headed to my room, resting the cell on a table and stripping as I went to the bathroom.
Under the warm flow, I tilted my head and let the cascade shower over me, reaching my neck and groaning at the tense muscles. God, I wished Rayna was here with me, where I could pin her to the wall and let her body relieve all this stress.
Sighing, I rubbed the stress away—tried anyway—but went to bed clad in my boxers. Exhausted, I reached for my phone to call Rayna but stopped. It was almost midnight—she would be asleep by now.
Settling it aside, I promised to call her the following day.
Moments later, I was dead to the world.
* * *
I hardly had three seconds before a combined eight pounds of weight landed on me. As tired as I was, I grabbed Sam and Harper and launched into a tickle war until the two surrendered with giggles and laugh-snorts.
“Care to tell me why I was ambushed this morning?” I fake-glared at them. “And you two need to work on your sneak strategy. If you keep making obvious moves like this, you won’t survive a day in the wild.”
“Wild?” Harper’s eyes were wide. “What’s that?”
“He means outside in the forest, and we have to find our food ourselves,” Sam replied. “Like fishing with a stick and having a knife to clean it.”
“And one match to make the fire,” I warned.
Harper looked genuinely horrified. “But—but I don’t know how to fish.”
