Cold feet

Kicking off his jeans, he tossed them aside without caring where they landed, scooped the cordless phone off the nightstand and sank into bed in his boxers. Never had a mattress felt so good....

But he didn't have long to relax. Madison answered almost immediately. "Hello?"

He stared at the ceiling, picturing her almond-shaped eyes gazing up at him and her mouth curved into the same seductive smile as the night they'd gone dancing. "It's me."

She was silent for a moment, a silence fraught with tension. "What's happened?" she asked.

Closing his eyes, Caleb tried to separate what he felt for Madison from what he felt in general. "I'm afraid I have some news you might not want to hear."

"What is it?"

He could tell by the sound of her voice that she was bracing for the worst. "Tye might have a connection to my sister-in-law's murder."

His statement was met with silence. "I was afraid of that," she finally whispered. There was another long pause before she continued. "How did you find out?"

"I have a picture of Susan the night she disappeared. A blue Ford truck just like your father's is parked right next to her."

"There are a lot of trucks like my father's."

"Not with the same license plate. Tye's neighbor saw him driving your father's truck the night Susan disappeared. He said Tye brought it home and parked it out front for a while."

"Driving my dad's truck doesn't prove he hurt anyone," she said, but her voice held no conviction, and because of the locket and other things that had disappeared from under the house, Caleb knew she believed Tye was involved.

"We'll learn more later. I'll call you as soon as I hear anything."

"Does that mean he killed those other women, too?" she asked.

"Nothing's definite, yet. But it's possible."

He heard her sigh. "If so, he got away with it because of my father," she said. "Why would he kill again?"

"Sometimes there's no good explanation for homicidal behavior. To a psychopath, killing becomes a craving, an addiction. Serial killers feed on the power. Maybe the compulsion overcame him."

"Would he go to prison or..."

She let her words drift away, and Caleb knew she was thinking about the death penalty. "I won't lie to you. If the lab is able to come up with the DNA profile they've been working on, and it happens to match Tye's DNA, the district attorney will have a pretty strong case. And there'll probably be other evidence." He punched his pillow and rolled over. "I've called Gibbons. The police will be heading over to your brother's place as soon as they can procure a search warrant."

"I suspected Tye and yet...I can't believe it," she said. "When will we find out for sure?"

"Depends on the lab, but it shouldn't take more than another few days, maybe a week."

"Poor Sharon."

"Are you going to be okay?" he asked.

"I don't know. I'm relieved no one else will be hurt. And I'm numb enough right now that I just want it all to end. It's been part of my life, in one way or another, for far too long."

"I hope it'll be over soon."

"So you can write another book?" she said, her voice caustic.

"So I can go home," he said truthfully. He didn't need the headache of trying to sort out his feelings for her. He was torn between wanting to pursue a relationship and, now that things had turned sour, wanting to back away entirely. Holly had been a big mistake. He had no desire to make another.

"When will you leave?" Madison asked.

"Sometime soon."

Caleb sensed that she was softening toward him, and couldn't help taking advantage of it. "Madison, I want you to know that I didn't intend for what happened between us to--"

"Don't," she said. "I know. When we made love it was too honest for either of us to be pretending. But it's all too much right now. I--I don't know what to think about anything anymore."

He bit back the rest of what he wanted to say. He needed to give her time. She'd just learned that her brother might be going to prison--or worse. "What happened with Holly?" he asked when several seconds had passed in silence. "She was supposed to pick up her purse, but it's still here."

His call-waiting beeped, and he pulled the phone away to see who was trying to get through. He was eager to hear from Gibbons, to find out for sure that Tye was their man. But it was Holly.

"Speak of the devil," he said. "Holly's calling me on the other line."

"Then I'll let her explain."

"Okay."

He felt a nagging reluctance to let Madison go, even though there was nothing left to say. "I'll call you when I hear from Detective Gibbons," he said, forcing some finality into his voice.

"Caleb?"

"Yes?"

"Will you do me one favor?"

"What's that?"

"Don't leave without saying goodbye. After my father...Well, I hate that. I hate that I never got to say goodbye."

He closed his eyes. Despite his best efforts to push the memory away, he could still feel her body beneath his the night they'd made love. "I won't leave without saying goodbye," he said, although he knew it wouldn't be an easy moment.

She hung up and Caleb switched lines. "You never got your purse," he told Holly.

"I couldn't. I couldn't stand being around that woman another minute."

Caleb used one hand to rub both temples while he talked. "You mean Madison?"

"Who else?"

"There's nothing wrong with Madison, Holly."

"She thinks she has some sort of hold on you, Caleb. Can you believe she had the nerve to tell me you don't love me anymore, that I should move on?"

She laughed incredulously, but that only annoyed Caleb further. He'd told Holly the same thing in a million different ways. The fact that he'd divorced her for the second time and moved to another state wasn't enough? What he'd said in the cottage, when he'd told her they were over for good--that wasn't enough?

Maybe he'd been too gentle. Obviously, Holly didn't get it.

He gave up rubbing his temples. He was never going to relieve the tension humming through his body as long as he was talking to his ex-wife. "Holly, Madison's right," he said frankly.

"What?"

"We've talked about this before. We're finished. For good. Do you understand?"

"No, Caleb, I don't. You...you don't mean it. You came back to me last time."

"Last time there were--" he thought of the baby, dared not mention it "--other issues involved."