Beth Andrews - Unraveling the Past

Okay, maybe there had been plenty of times when she’d thought Chief Gorham should’ve been less…flexible…with the law. It was a danger having kids partying and then getting behind the wheel of whatever car mommy and daddy had bought for them.

So, no, she couldn’t honestly say she didn’t back Chief Taylor. She just wouldn’t. Say it, that was. To him or anyone else. Not when she should be the one calling the shots, not some hotshot detective from Boston.

Twigs and dead leaves crunched under her boots as she approached the spot where she’d left the chief and his niece. Still a good fifty yards away, she heard them before she saw the glow of the chief’s flashlight.

“—found it in the first place,” the girl was saying, her words not quite as slurred as they’d been earlier.

“For the last time, you’re not getting a reward,” Taylor said gruffly. Impatiently. “Drop it.”

“You suck,” the girl snapped but underneath the bite in her tone, Layne heard the threat of tears. And wouldn’t it be interesting to see how Taylor handled an angry, drunk, weeping teenager?

But he didn’t handle it. He didn’t make any response at all. No attempt to either reprimand or soothe the girl. He continued searching the ground by the end of a fallen tree as if his niece hadn’t even spoken. As if she wasn’t even there.

No chance of this guy winning Uncle of the Year.

He must’ve heard Layne’s approach because he turned, the light from his flashlight skimming over her before he lowered it. “We have a situation.”

“I gathered.” She stepped over a rock and handed him the flares. “What’s up?”

He aimed his flashlight so the beam hit the ground at the end of the log. Illuminating a dirt-encrusted skull.

Layne’s eyes widened. “Yes, I’d say that is definitely a situation.” And not what she’d expected. Not in Mystic Point.

She knelt next to the skull, discerned it was human and, as far as she could tell in the dark, very real. Chills broke out on her forearms. “How’d you even see it?”

“Jess stumbled upon it looking for her phone.”

“Which he’s holding hostage,” the girl—Jess—said, slouched on the far end of the log.

Taylor didn’t even glance her way. “Not the time, Jessica.”

Layne pulled her cell phone from her pocket. “I’ll contact the state forensics lab…have them send a team out here.”

“Already have one on the way. I’ve also contacted all available officers. We’ll get some lights out here and start a search for the rest of the remains.”

“I’m not staying while you hunt for more bones.” Jess wrapped her arms around her legs, her entire body shaking. “I want to go.”

“We will,” Taylor said. “Soon.”

“I’m cold,” Jess whined in a tone guaranteed to make dogs howl. “And I don’t feel good.”

Taylor’s jaw moved, as if he was grinding his teeth to powder. “Then I guess you shouldn’t have been drinking.” But he took the blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders. Surprise, surprise. Maybe he wasn’t a heartless cyborg after all.

Jess shrugged him off, the blanket sliding to the ground. “I want to go home.” Her voice cracked on the last word, her eyes shimmered with tears she tried to blink back. “Could you tell him to let me go home?” she asked Layne. “Please?”

Layne couldn’t help it, though Jess had no one else to blame for the vomit on her clothes, the dirt in her hair, the drying blood on her knees—Layne’s heart went out to the kid. She seemed so…lost.

Layne remembered that feeling entirely too well.

“I’m sure the chief will get you home as soon as he’s finished here,” Layne said, having no idea if that was true or not. God knew the new chief was an enigma. A frustrating one.

Jess’s smirk was more sad than cocky as she laid her cheek on her knees. “Yeah, right.”

Layne inclined her head meaningfully at Taylor then walked away, stopping next to a scraggly pine tree.

“Another problem, Captain?” he asked in the flat Boston accent that grated on her last nerve.

Though it was past midnight he was, as always, clean-shaven, his flat stomach a testament to his refusal to indulge when one of their coworkers brought in doughnuts. His dark blond hair was clipped close to the sides and back of his head, the top just long enough to start to curl. He had a high forehead, thick eyebrows and eyes the color of fog over the water.

The private, female part of her admitted he was attractive—in an earthy, overtly male way.

The cop in her resented the hell out of him for it.

“If you want to run her home,” she said quietly, “I can get things moving here.”

“She doesn’t want to go home—to the house we’re renting. She wants to go back to Boston.”

“Oh.” She had nothing else to add to that. Didn’t want to get involved in his family problems. “Still, I have this under control if you want to get her out of here.”

“You ever handle a case like this?”

She rolled her shoulders back like a fighter preparing to enter the ring. “Not exactly like this. No.”

“You get a lot of missing persons’ cases in Mystic Point?”

“People don’t go missing from Mystic Point.” Although plenty of them left. “But this isn’t some Utopia. We have our share of crime, including battery, burglary, rape and occasionally, murder. All of which I have investigated.”

“Still, I think I’ll take the lead on this one.”

And then he walked away.

Layne curled her fingers into her palms and followed, her steps jerky, the camera bouncing against her chest. “Is it because I’m a woman?” she called.

He picked up a flare, lit it then stuck it in the ground, his back to her the entire time. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

She stopped behind him, her fists on her hips. “You want specific, sir, how about this. Is the reason you’re not handing this case over to me—the only detective on third shift, your second-in-command and the person who should be assigned it—because I don’t have a penis?”

“He’s a total misogynist,” Jess said with the exaggerated seriousness only the inebriated could pull off.

They both ignored her.

Taylor straightened slowly, the flare casting an orange glow over the hard lines of his face. “Tread carefully, Captain, or you might overstep.”

But she’d never been one to play it safe. Bad enough he’d come into her town and taken the position she was meant to have, now he wanted to screw with how she did her job?

“I don’t think it’s overstepping to clear the air, Chief. So let’s lay it on the line, right here, right now. You have something against having a woman on your force? Or maybe it’s just me you have a problem with?”

Lights flashed, bounced off the trees as a car drove toward the quarry but Taylor didn’t take his attention off her. She wanted to say having his cool gray eyes watching her so intently didn’t unnerve her but she’d never been a good liar.

“The decisions I make as chief aren’t personal.” She didn’t doubt he used that placid tone because it made her seem out of control in comparison. “I assign cases based on experience and expertise.” He stepped closer. “You don’t have to like how I run this police department,” he added softly. “You don’t even have to agree with me, but if you feel the need to question every decision I make, perhaps the Mystic Point Police Department is no longer the right place for you.”

Her vision blurred, her throat burned. “Is that your oh-so-subtle way of threatening my job?”

He moved closer, so close she picked up a hint of his spicy aftershave, felt the warmth from his big body. “For over a month you’ve fought me, skated the line of insubordination—”