Page 44 of Colton's Second Chance
He heard Kansas grunt. “I’m sure he’d much rather be helping you hunt down that bastard than be lying in the hospital with a cracked head.”
Eli pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re right. That was insensitive of me.”
“No.” Kansas groaned. “I’m sorry, Eli. I’m just edgy and out of sorts because of everything that’s happened.”
“We all are. Look, I’ll check by the hospital when we get back in town, but then I have to go to the office and start putting these new puzzle pieces in place.”
He disconnected with Kansas, and after putting his phone away, he faced Noelle again. “Okay. No more interruptions, I promise. Please…finish what you were saying. I want to hear everything.”
“You have the gist of it, I think. What’s important now is finding Scott, whether or not he turns out to be the Fiancée Killer.”
“He’s the key to solving the case, at a minimum.” Eli nodded. “All right. Let’s go home.” After turning off the dome light, he pulled back onto the dark highway.
“We,” Noelle said.
Head buzzing with too many thoughts, Eli blinked at her. “What?”
“You told Kansasyouwould be working on the new puzzle the case has presented. But I’m going to be working on it with you. You just said you’re shorthanded since Asher is in the hospital. Soweare going to figure this out together.”
Warmth filled Eli’s chest. He liked the sound of that. Sparing a glance from the road, he smiled at her and repeated, “We.”
In order to have the space to spread out and the privacy to talk openly about their suspicions without someone in the ABI office overhearing, Eli and Noelle decided to work at his house.
“I’d like to stop by the hostel and pick up a few things if this is going to be an all-nighter, as I suspect—” Noelle caught the intrigued lift of Eli’s eyebrow as he cut a lustful glance her way. She returned a dry look. “Aworkingall-nighter, Colton. We’re trying to catch a killer, remember.”
He shrugged. “First we work, then we play.”
Noelle snorted indelicately but gave no other reply. She turned her gaze out the passenger window, studying the lights of the town and harbor as they approached her hostel. Wasplayhow he viewed any intimacies between them at this point? Noelle had never considered their lovemaking anything but the most private and intentional connection between them. Nothingabout it had been casual. Playful at times, but never casual or intended as cheap thrills.
But if that was how Eli now thought of potential sex between them—an itch to be scratched, a fun distraction or stress reliever—perhaps it would do her well to rethink her position.
She angled her head back toward Eli, studying the masculine cut of his cheeks and jaw, made all the sharper and more defined in the dim glow from his Renegade’s dashboard lights. His lips were pressed in a grim line at the moment, a sure indication his thoughts had reverted to his case. Scott’s deception and vicious attack or some other stressor from a long litany clearly haunted him. She let her attention linger on his mouth, remembering all the sensations those lips had stirred in her in past years, all the private places on her body they’d grazed, tasted and wakened with tender manipulation.
A tingling flush raced over her skin, and she felt her breath hitch, as if Eli were kissing her now.
The crunch of gravel under tires roused her as Eli pulled onto the drive of her hostel and parked. She sobered quickly and retrieved her keys from the front pocket of her messenger bag. Seeing the empty place where her rental should be parked reminded her she’d left it in the hospital lot.
“We should probably pick up my car from the hospital parking lot on the way to your place,” she said as she climbed out of his Jeep.
“Good idea,” he said, waiting at his front bumper for her to precede him up the walkway to her door.
Hostel key in hand, Noelle approached the small concrete landing and aimed the key for the knob—and noticed the door stood ajar.
The wood around the latch plate was freshly scarred and splintered.
She gasped, and a chill washed through her.
Eli seized her arm. He tugged her backward, dragging her behind him with one hand while his other unsnapped the holster of his service weapon. “Stay here.”
“But it’s—”
His blue eyes glinted with steel.“Stay here.”
Crossing her arms over her chest to ward off both the cold of the Alaskan night and the foreboding of what could be inside, Noelle waited. Her breath clouded around her, the white puffs lit by the pinkish glow of the security lamp at the edge of the street. After a couple of minutes, she drew a breath, prepared to call to Eli for a progress report but stopped, the words in her throat. If someone was inside with Eli, she couldn’t alert the prowler to Eli’s presence.
Then she remembered what had happened the last time Eli had investigated suspicious circumstances at a house.
Rigged with a bomb…triggered when we entered…
