Deathtrap (Broslin Creek) Read online

  His heart rate picked up as he dropped his find to the side, then went back to digging. Two more turns of the shovel before the tip hit something metal. He was on his knees next to the hole in a second, going at the dirt with his bare fingers, but stopped himself before he could pick up his next find bare-handed. He yanked off his shirt and grabbed the handgun with that, carefully. He didn’t expect fingerprints at this stage, but he wasn’t taking chances.

  A gun in the hole that’d been dug the day Stacy had died.

  He had the murder weapon.

  He stared at it as he sat back on his heels. The first significant clue he’d had in the past two years.

  Chapter Nine

  Sophie walked up to her front door with tears in her eyes, her vision so blurry she could barely fit her key into the lock. She glanced behind her before she opened her front door, relieved that Bing wasn’t coming after her. She couldn’t talk to him right now, not about this.

  She collapsed onto the rug in her living room, her back braced against the couch as she sat. Peaches immediately lay next to her and put his head on her lap. This was what unconditional support felt like. She’d always been too sick to have a pet of her own, so she hadn’t really understood that—the kind of love that was possible. Now she soaked up every bit of it.

  “Every day I live only happens because someone else died.” She voiced the sadness that sometimes kept her up at night.

  She was grateful to her donor, beyond words, but at times she also felt incredibly guilty, as if she’d stolen someone else’s life.

  And with the whole body-memories thing, she felt as if someone was trying to take away her true identity.

  She had feelings for Bing. She wanted them to be true and real.

  The attraction had happened so fast, and it was so exciting. He was a great guy. They had chemistry. And even if he wasn’t so damn hot, just the way he’d been with Peaches would have made her fall half in love with him.

  “Except, whatever attraction I feel isn’t coming from me,” she told Peaches. “And whatever he feels…” What if he’d just sensed his wife’s heart in her and that was it? There’d been movies like that. She’d seen them, and they’d given her the heebie-jeebies.

  What she wanted most was to be loved for herself. Not because she needed to be taken care of, and not because she reminded someone of their past great love. She couldn’t compete with a ghost. She didn’t want to.

  The support group flyer on the side table caught her eye. She wasn’t a great fan of the group, but it was the only place where people would actually understand her. Stress was the worst possible thing for someone in her condition, according to Dr. Pratt. Support was essential.

  The next meeting was Monday night, two days away. She put the flyer back down. Maybe she could pop in for a few minutes. She could sit in the back, and if the stories bothered her, she could always leave.

  Since she was thinking about Dr. Pratt, she pulled her cell phone from her pocket and dialed his office. The receptionist put her through.

  “Are you experiencing any difficulties?” he asked immediately, his warm voice full of concern.

  “I’m good. Thanks to you. I was just wondering if maybe you could help me speed up the unsealing of those donor records. It’s really bothering me more and more. I need to know this.”

  “I’ll do what I can. I’m actually heading off to a meeting with hospital administration. I’ll see what I can find out.” He paused. “In the meanwhile, what do we do?” he stretched out the last few words.

  “Quit looking back. Look forward. Life is meant to be lived.”

  “Exactly.”

  She felt a little more optimistic after they’d hung up. Okay, so living with a borrowed heart could mess with a girl’s brain, and there were difficult moments. But it was better than the alternative.

  She scratched Peaches behind the ear, then rose. “You know what we need to do? Get out of here. We’re going to take a leap of faith.”

  Facing an old fear and conquering it was just what she needed to feel better, to feel in control again.

  She picked up the leash she’d dropped inside the door when they’d come in. “We’re going to the big park over at Kennett. Riding in the car. What do you say?”

  Peaches looked like he was grinning.

  Sophie grabbed a bottle of water for herself and one for him, a plastic bag in case they needed it, then locked up behind them and led the dog to the car in her driveway.

  “You sit in the back.” She let him in. “You don’t jump around and scare me, okay? And no barking. It’s not good to startle a nervous person when they’re driving.”

  He lay right down and gave her an innocent look as if he didn’t know what she was talking about.

  Okay, maybe this could work.

  So they went, and she conquered one more fear, driving in the car with a big dog behind her. That and the long walk in the sunshine did make her feel much better.

  They didn’t get home until dinnertime. Since she’d gotten a little chilled, she ran upstairs to grab a sweater.

  She shook her head at the dirt on the stairs. “When did you drag this in?” she called back to Peaches. “What did we say about wiping feet?”

  She’d vacuum up after dinner. She usually did, anyway. Her stomach growled. But as soon as she opened her bedroom door, all thoughts of eating flew away.

  The yellow pansies Bing had planted for her up front lay on her bed in a dirty mess, crushed and wilted. Someone had even dragged his dirty hands against the wall in a nasty streak.

  Peaches sniffed around the room, growling, but there was nobody in there now. Her heart raced as she reached for her phone. She almost called Bing, but then dialed 911 instead. She wasn’t his responsibility.

  But he showed up anyway.

  She didn’t want to be happy to see him, but she was. She was pitifully grateful that he’d come.

  “Are you okay? The dispatcher said you had a break-in.” He pushed in by her, looking around, ready to take charge. “What happened?”

  She wasn’t okay, but since she didn’t want to talk about that with him, she ignored that part of the question. She couldn’t go back to where they’d been this morning. She just couldn’t handle it.

  She showed him upstairs. “We were at the park. I didn’t even see that any flowers were missing from the flower bed when we came back. I was too focused on Peaches, probably.”

  He scanned the mess, her ruined white comforter, the dark smears on the light purple wall, his gaze gliding over the posters of faraway places she’d never been to but planned to visit. He scanned the stack of pill bottles on her purple-pink nightstand before his gaze cut back to her, his face darkening. “I want you to go to a hotel.”

  “I’m okay. Hotel rooms are one of the germiest places on earth. I can sleep downstairs. This happened when I was out. Whoever did it wouldn’t come back when I’m in here with Peaches.”

  “I’m not willing to take that chance, dammit.” His voice rose. Then he drew a slow breath. “I’ll put an officer outside your house.”

  “For how long?”

  He didn’t respond, just watched her, his jaw working.

  “Why would anybody do this to me?”

  He took a step closer. Stopped. Shoved his hands into his pockets. “Do you have any enemies?”

  “I barely even know anybody here. How did they get in? I keep the front door locked.”

  “Did you change the locks when you moved in?”

  She stared at him. She hadn’t even thought of that.

  He shook his head, then went out to his cruiser and brought in a crime scene kit. He took pictures and dusted for fingerprints. When he was done with that, he began cleaning.

  She stood awkwardly at the door. Ethan Bing was in her bedroom. Sadly, not under the circumstances she’d daydreamed about a time or two in the last couple of days.

  She was glad he hadn’t brought up Stacy. She wasn’t sure if she could handle it. He
was here in an official capacity and acted that way. Okay, maybe except the cleaning. She doubted cops did that on a regular basis.

  “You don’t have to do this. I have gloves and face masks. I can handle it.”

  He folded up her comforter with all the mess inside it. “You’re not supposed to play in dirt.”

  She waited until he took the mess downstairs; then she grabbed her vacuum cleaner with the super HEPA filter and went to work.

  By the time she finished vacuuming, he was back. “I dumped the plants into your garbage can outside. The bedding is in the washer.” He had a wet towel in his hand and started working on the wall, rubbing the dirt off, leaving a wet stain behind.

  Hopefully, nothing would show once that dried, and she wouldn’t need to repaint, she thought as she moved over to the bed to strip the rest of it.

  The two of them in her bedroom, quietly working together didn’t feel all that strange. She liked having him in her house. She liked his company, even if they were just scrubbing dirt.

  “I wish things were different.” She blurted the words without meaning to. “I hate not being able to trust anything I feel.”

  He stopped and turned to her, holding her gaze, his expression dead serious. “You don’t have Stacy’s heart. She wasn’t even an organ donor.”

  She heard the words but couldn’t accept them. “You don’t understand. I feel things. I know your house. I’m not wrong about this. Hospitals make mistakes.”

  She’d spent enough time in various hospitals to know firsthand. Her meds had been mixed up more than once, tests had been lost, appointments misscheduled. The people were great, but they were only human. “A million health-care workers do a million things in a hurry. Some will be mistakes. Law of statistics.”

  He watched her for a long second, twisting the towel in his hands. “Stacy was shot through the heart. I saw her body.”

  She blinked.

  No. That couldn’t be right. She knew what she felt. He had to be wrong. She scrambled to rearrange her thoughts.

  “Then why am I so attracted to you?”

  He gave a sad sort of smile. “May I suggest natural reasons?”

  She wasn’t sure if she could accept that. She’d been so sure. If she had his wife’s heart, everything made sense. And if not the heart, then maybe something else. Maybe a part of the artery. The transplant had been a pretty complicated surgery. She was definitely going to ask more questions at her next doctor’s visit.

  He passed her on his way out of her bedroom with the dirty towel. “I think I have an extra lock in the garage at home. I’ll bring it over.”

  Against instinct, she didn’t call after him to protest the help. She followed him down, locked up after him, then went back up to put new sheets on her bed. She had just finished putting the room back to normal when he returned.

  He held up two new locks when she let him in—one regular, one dead bolt. “I can install them. It’ll take ten minutes.”

  “Thank you. Okay.”

  He smiled. “Hey, that’s progress. At the very least, I expected you to arm-wrestle me for the drill.”

  “You’re not helping because you don’t think I can handle it.”

  “So why am I helping?”

  “Some men can’t express their emotions, so they show that they care by doing things. It’s a manly thing.” She’d been reading her self-help books in the evenings.

  His lips stretched into a grin. And there was a moment of connection between them, as they stood in her entryway, just looking at each other. Maybe he was right. Maybe the attraction was a natural thing. God, what woman wouldn’t be attracted to him?

  She swallowed. “Have you had dinner?”

  He shook his head as he opened the door to take out the old lock set.

  “Hungry?”

  He looked at her. “Starving.”

  The heat in his eyes sent tingles down her spine. She wasn’t entirely sure he was talking about food. To gather herself, she backed out into the kitchen.

  She wasn’t used to sudden passions. Things with Jeremy had been nice and comfortable. This was something new, something a little out of control that was partly frightening, partly exhilarating.

  True to his promise, he had her new locks up in ten minutes. About as much time as she used to heat up some pasta and put it on the table with a bowl of salad.

  “Door is done,” he said at the same time she said, “Dinner is ready.”

  There was a mutual recognition that this very much felt good and right, as if they’d been doing this forever.

  They talked through dinner, about Peaches and more about who might have pulled up her flowers and why. She voted for bored teenagers trying to freak her out. He wasn’t so sure.

  “Do you have family in the area?” he asked.

  “My mom lives in Maryland. No siblings. You?”

  “Mother died in a car accident when I was a kid. My father lives in town. We’re not that close these days. I have a younger brother, Hunter. He’s deployed in Afghanistan. He was on active combat duty for a while. Now he’s with the peacekeeping force there.”

  A sibling. She would have loved that. “Are you close?”

  “Not as close as we could be. He only comes home two or three times a year. It’s been a long time since we spent any time together. But he’s a great guy. I’m proud of him.” The truth of that, the love and the pride came through in his tone. “We do fund-raisers at the station for his unit and send care packages. It’s not much, but it’s something. I’m his older brother. Sometimes I feel like I should be there, watching his back.”

  “You chose different careers. But you’re both serving your country and protecting people.” She appreciated that.

  He tilted his head. “In fact, we’re having our first spring fund-raiser this weekend. Maybe you could come.”

  The invitation flustered her, the thought of him introducing her to his friends. It implied something. Or maybe she was overcomplicating things again. “Only if I can help.”

  He smiled. “I’m sure that could be arranged.”

  They chatted through dinner and agreed that she’d make a variety of salads to go with the copious amount of burgers and chicken the boys at the station would be grilling. Sitting there, sharing a meal, and talking seemed like such a natural thing to do. It felt comfortable and nice.

  “I’ll be right outside in the cruiser by the curb,” he said once they were finished and the dishes put away. “Just to make sure whoever broke in doesn’t come back to give you any more trouble.”

  “I have new locks. I have Peaches. And just as a warning…” She put her fists up. “I float like a bee and sting like a butterfly.”

  A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “How about I stay anyway? For my own peace of mind.”

  Peaches went to the back door, a signal that he wanted the backyard, so Sophie let him out while considering her answer. She did feel better with Bing here. Confidence aside, that a stranger had been in her house, in her bedroom, had shaken her more than she cared to admit.

  “You don’t have to sleep in your car,” she offered. “You can take the couch.”

  He rubbed his hand over his face, thought about it for a few seconds, then nodded.

  She went upstairs to get him a pillow and a blanket. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

  Their fingers touched as she handed the pile over. Neither of them moved.

  “The truth of what I need would shock you.” There was that hunger in his eyes again. “This is real,” he told her. “Do you believe me?”

  Maybe she did. Every cell of her body wanted him. She was half in love with him already. If she slept with him, she’d be head over heels. Did she want to risk that?

  She decided she did.

  She lifted to her toes and pressed her lips against his.

  He caught on to the program pretty quickly. He hesitated less than half a second before taking what she was offering.

  The
pillow and blanket disappeared from between them. Maybe he’d dropped them onto the couch. Since her eyes had fluttered closed, she couldn’t see. She was pressed full-length against the hard planes of his body. He was fully aroused, the knowledge of which did wonders for her self-esteem.

  He kissed her dizzy, then lifted her. She wrapped her legs around his waist as he kissed his way down her neck.

  “Make love to me,” she whispered. “Like I’m a full-grown woman.”

  He pulled back to look at her. “As opposed to…?”

  “I mean real sex. All the way.” She suddenly grew embarrassed. “Jeremy…” She bit her lip. “He was always too scared of hurting me. When we were in bed, we mostly focused on him.” She wasn’t a virgin, but pitifully close. “To make sure I was safe. Jeremy said I shouldn’t get too excited.”

  Bing stared at her for a moment, then took her earlobe into his mouth and sucked gently, and she couldn’t think at all, let alone of her ex. “Lucky for you, I’m a thorough kind of man,” he said, nuzzling her neck. “I learned that on the job.”

  The raspy tone of his voice sent delicious shivers across her skin.

  He picked her up in his arms and walked toward the staircase with her. “Your bedroom?”

  But she shook her head. She’d never made love outside of a bed. She was done with being careful. She wanted to be wild, wanted everything that life had to give. “Here.”

  Heat and surprise flared in his eyes.

  All she could do was hang on to him as he lowered his head for a kiss.

  Heat filled her instantly. Need ribboned through her body, impatient and demanding. Every touch, every move he made, aroused her. And at the same time, his presence was somehow comforting. He was a solid bulwark around her, and she wanted to melt into him.

  She was entering a whole other world. Was she up for this?

  He caressed her lips with patience, taking his time as if he were going to have to file a report on every nook and cranny. When his tongue finally swept inside her mouth, she was more than ready for him.