Marked for Murder. Lauren Nichols

be another difficult day, and she needed to be clearheaded to deal with it. She needed to sleep. More than that, she needed to forget about the tall, tanned, dark-haired man who’d suddenly dropped back into her life. As if that was an option.

      She started to turn off her bedside lamp again, then paused to look at the clock. She knew Bernice Marshall, knew she generally stayed up to watch the late news. Sighing, she picked up the phone again.

      “Bernice?” she said when the woman answered. “It’s Margo. Are you wearing your mayor’s hat? I need a favor.”

      He squatted in the ferns and pine needles, breathing in the fecund scents of pine, damp earth and blackberries. The remaining berries were on their way to wine now, but the tangy-sweet scent still lingered. He glared at the house—felt the hatred bubble up inside of him as he watched a light go off again upstairs.

      She thought she was hot stuff. Thought she was so superior. Thought she could scare him with threats and warnings, and that utterly pathetic impression of a steely-eyed stare. He fingered the folded sheet of paper in his pocket, although he couldn’t really feel it. Not through the plastic bag and his latex gloves.

      Satisfied that no one could see him, he sprang nimbly to his feet, then made his way through the thick firs and maples toward the creek that bisected the town. It was time he issued a warning.

      Stupid woman.

      She had no idea who she was playing with.

      THREE

      Cole Blackburn sat in the dark on the second-floor turret porch, listening to the party going on a quarter mile away in a clearing local teens had named and claimed. The inn was the last building on the block, so he could even see the faint glow of a fire against the night sky. When he’d worn a badge here, he’d shagged kids out of the “party place” on more than one occasion.

      But that wasn’t the reason he couldn’t sleep tonight.

      His gut clenched as his thoughts spun back to Margo. She was a good cop, and more than qualified to handle the top position. But she was a woman, and no matter how Stone Age his thinking was, he didn’t want her involved in this mess. Not that he was still in love with her. She’d taken a veritable scalpel to that emotion when she’d given back his ring.

      Frowning, he sipped from a bottle of cranberry something-or-other that he’d found in the small fridge in his room.

      He’d known she’d needed to be with her mother after her dad died. That was a given; she was a devoted daughter—probably because Frank and Charlotte McBride had been one of the most devoted couples he’d ever met. Love grows from love. Frank had been the head of the family, making decisions, taking care of the bills, single-handedly managing their finances. Charlotte had created a warm, loving home. When Frank’s death threw her into a world she wasn’t prepared for, Margo became her fiscal and emotional lifeline. He’d understood and agreed to postpone their wedding and Margo’s move to Pittsburgh until Charlotte had a handle on her grief.

      Cole stared out at the dark sky alive with stars.

      But when months passed with Charlotte making no attempt to stand on her own two feet, he’d had to say something. He’d done it badly, but the words had had to be said.

      He’d told Margo she was enabling her mother, and nothing was going to change until she stopped being a crutch. He’d wanted to can the big, fancy wedding, find Reverend Landers and start their married life together. He was tired of being last on her list. First she chose to stay on the job, then she balked at the move to Pittsburgh, then her dad died and she wanted to postpone the wedding again. He deserved better, he’d told her. She’d cried and handed back his ring. That’s when he found out what all the excuses and delays really meant.

      Cole took a long swig of his cranberry-whatever to combat the dull ache in his chest.

      She’d wanted out.

      Down the road, heavy metal gave way to moody saxophone tones and stirring lyrics. And against Cole’s will, Richard Marx’s “Endless Summer Nights” took him back to another night like this one. One clear, moonlit mid-July night, after he’d moved to Charity. They’d gone to Payton’s Rocks, a huge tumble of boulders and high grasses two miles from the town limits.

      Far from the lights of town, they’d sat on his truck’s tailgate, and gazed in awe at the heavens. He’d never seen stars like that before—billions upon billions of them shimmering in an ink-black sky that stretched farther than his mind could ever comprehend. He’d felt small and insignificant that night, humbled in the presence of God’s universe.

      That’s how large his love for her had been back then. Back when he was first in her life, not last in a long string of other people and other commitments.

      Suddenly a police cruiser with lights flashing sped up the street and appeared to swerve into Margo’s driveway down the block. Bolting to his feet, Cole craned his neck past the weeping willow tree in the B&B’s front yard to be certain. His heartbeat skyrocketed. An officer was getting out of the prowl car and rushing up Margo’s front steps.

      Her motion lights went on, followed by her porch light.

      There was only one reason for a patrolman with lights flashing to go to his chief in the middle of the night, and it wasn’t because a bunch of kids were partying. There’d been more trouble.

      Cole flew pell-mell downstairs and out the door. He raced for that porch light, glad he’d had the presence of mind to pack a small duffel. If he looked like an idiot wearing gray sweats with cowboy boots, he didn’t care.

      He could see the two of them now, through the screen door. The interior door had been left open.

      He slowed as he reached the sidewalk, knowing that Margo wasn’t going to like this, knowing that he was overstepping. But the need to know what had happened was strong, and he climbed the porch steps. Hopefully by midday tomorrow, he’d have official standing in the investigation.

      His leather soles scraped on the gritty concrete. Apparently, they heard it, too.

      Margo’s eyes widened for a second and then, lips thinning, she excused herself and stepped out on the porch. She spoke in an undertone. “Sometime you’ll have to tell me how you knew about this.”

      “Are you asking me to leave?” he replied in the same low voice.

      “No, but you need to give me a few minutes.” She nodded at the padded redwood chairs on her lattice-trimmed porch. “Pick one.”

      Then she went back inside and shut both doors.

      They opened again a few minutes later, and she beckoned him inside. The familiar second set of eyes he encountered didn’t look pleased to see him.

      “Steve,” she said to her officer, “I think you remember Cole.”

      O’Dell should remember him, Cole thought, though they’d never been formally introduced. O’Dell had taken his place two years ago, after Wilcox gave him the ax.

      The husky patrolman with the ruddy complexion nodded, but the lips beneath his red brush of a mustache didn’t smile, even when he offered his hand.

      Cole shook it, guessing O’Dell’s age at somewhere around forty. He had a strong grip and thick fingers, and though his stiff expression had cracked a little, Cole knew he and O’Dell weren’t going to hit it off—probably because he saw Cole as the intruder he was.

      If Margo had picked up on the tension, she didn’t react to it. “Since Cole worked the original Gold Star case, he’ll be coming aboard tomorrow as a consultant. I spoke to Bernice a little while ago,” she added when Cole raised a questioning brow. “She doesn’t see a problem.”

      She turned to O’Dell again. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s back up and start again for Cole’s benefit.”

      O’Dell pulled a plastic evidence bag from his pocket. It contained a folded sheet of typing paper with a piece