Excerpt of Cold Midnight by Joyce Lamb

Kendall Falls Police Detective Chase Manning steered his SUV into the muddy parking lot of the construction site for McKays’ Tennis Center. He would have preferred to avoid this case like a bad sunburn, but he couldn’t not respond when it involved Kylie McKay, the woman he loved more than life before she walked out on him. As if Mother Nature shared his mood, lightning flashed against the backdrop of ominous dark clouds on the horizon.

Shoving bad memories out of his brain, he stepped out of the truck into the low rumble of distant thunder. His partner, Sam Hawkins, was talking to a group of four or five construction workers near a mobile home, so Chase headed in that direction.

The construction site was in the beginning stages of development. Freshly felled trees dotted the sandy dirt landscape. Two yellow, mud-caked earth movers sat silent, as did a huge dump truck filled with tree branches and other debris. A chain-link fence with intermittent “keep out” signs surrounded it all.

His stride faltered when he saw her talking to another construction worker. She nodded at the man, her eyes shielded by sunglasses and her mouth set in a grim line. In red shorts, white tank top and sneakers and her long dark hair caught in a ponytail that shed curls around her face, she still looked every bit the professional tennis player. Lithe, tan and toned.

His gaze locked momentarily on the black knee brace that extended from mid-calf to mid-thigh, a harsh reminder of the violent and bloody assault that tore them apart ten years ago.

When dark rage boiled up inside him, he clenched one fist and looked away to see Sam striding toward him. His partner of five years looked rock solid as always, biceps and thighs bulging in a navy polo shirt and khaki slacks. A prematurely gray crew cut topped his heavy brow, making him look dangerous. Very few people messed with Sam.

“What have we got?” Chase asked.

“Maybe it’s best if you let me handle this one.”

“What have we got?” Chase repeated, his voice hard.

Sam hooked his thumbs in his gun belt and rolled his massive shoulders. “Construction worker found a bat.”

“As in baseball bat?”

“Kylie ID’d it as the one used to take out her knee.”

Chase couldn’t respond for a moment. Holy shit. Holy shit. Unable to stop himself, he glanced in her direction. She’d just looked upon the weapon that two unknown assailants used to shatter her dreams, and yet she chatted with the construction worker as if they discussed nothing more major than the impending storm. Her calm facade eerily mirrored the aftermath of the brutal attack, he realized. But she’d been in shock then, pale and hollow-eyed, disoriented from pain medication and spinning from endless talk of surgeries and physical rehabilitation … and no more competitive tennis.

“Chase.”

He blinked and looked at his partner. “What?”

“You sure about this? I can take it from here, you know.”

“Like hell. This case has been cold for ten years.”

“Yeah, I know, and you’ve been itching for a reason to open it back up and now you’ve got it. But there’s a major conflict of interest here.”

“I’ll be fine, Sam. Kylie and I have been over for a long time.”

“That was easier to buy when she lived on the other side of the country. She’s back now, and you’ve been wound way too tight ever since.”

“That’s bullshit—”

“Just let me handle it, Chase.”

Chase started to knead the back of his neck, where tension always settled into a giant, throbbing knot. Sam was right. He couldn’t possibly be objective on this. Not when the mere act of looking at her stirred up a maelstrom of contradictory emotions. Anger.

Grief. Anger. Resentment. Loss. Christ, the anger, after all this time. “Fine. We’ll play it by ear.”

Sam rolled his eyes at the vague surrender but said nothing as they walked over to Kylie, where Sam extended his hand. “Hello, Miss McKay. Detective Sam Hawkins, Kendall Falls Police.”

She clasped his hand and gave him a perfunctory nod. “Detective.”

Sam gestured toward Chase. “You know my partner.”

She glanced at him, her eyes unreadable behind the sunglasses. “Chase,” she said, both her tone and expression neutral.

“Kylie.”

So incredibly poised, cold even, as if meeting a competitor before a career-changing match. Coach Daddy had trained her well.

She gestured to the construction worker beside her, a balding man with a deep tan and a small gut pooching out over the waistband of his faded jeans. “This is the foreman,” Kylie said. “Robert Arnold.”

The men shook hands all around before Sam said to the foreman, “You’re the one who found the bat?”

Robert nodded. “Dug it up this morning while we were cleaning out the trees. It was wrapped in a dirty T-shirt and a garbage bag. I set it aside for my kid and didn’t think anything of it until one of the other guys said it looked like the one …” He trailed off as he shot an apologetic glance at Kylie. “Kind of makes all the other stuff that’s been happening a bit more significant, in my opinion.”

Her expression remained unchanged, but her shoulders tensed. “I don’t think—”

“What other stuff?” Chase cut in, narrowing his eyes at her.

“Nothing that—”

“Vandalism started about two weeks ago,” Robert said. “Sugar in the gas tanks of the earth-movers. Sabotaged engines. Stolen materials. More annoying than serious, but definitely suspicious.”

“Why didn’t you call the police?” Chase directed the question at Kylie.

“I didn’t see a need. Like Robert said, the incidents were more annoying than serious.”

“But escalating,” Robert pointed out. “Whoever’s behind it is getting more bold. I don’t—” The ringing cell phone on his belt cut him off. “Excuse me, folks,” he said and stepped away.

Chase moved in on Kylie, deliberately invading her space. “Someone’s trying to scare you off, and you’re not doing anything about it?”

“Chase …”

He ignored Sam’s warning tone. Screw the conflict of interest. Kylie was being threatened. “You should have called the police, Kylie.”

“You’re here now.” Cool and solid, not a flicker of emotion.

“That’s not the point,” Chase said. “Escalating vandalism can quickly turn into violence. You should have—”

“We need to stay on track here,” Sam said.

Chase took a breath to check his temper. Figures. Her past had just risen up to take a swing at her, and he was the one on the verge of losing control. Being near her could make him so irrational. “Where is it?” he asked, teeth gritted.

She gestured with a rock-steady hand toward the off-white trailer that served as the foreman’s office. A metallic blue aluminum baseball bat with red lettering sat propped under one of the shadeless windows. On the dirty yellow tape wrapped around the grip, one word had been scrawled in black marker: KILLER.

Chase’s stomach flipped, because … Jesus, that was the bat that demolished her knee to the point where only the fast work of one doctor saved her leg. Saved her life.

He realized now that she must have locked everything inside her down. No way could she look at that thing and not feel something. So she’d done what she could: kept her eye on the ball with the same laser focus that won her the Australian Open at seventeen, launching a tennis star mere weeks before two barbaric bastards held her down on a deserted path and viciously destroyed her.

He swallowed as the same old helpless rage welled inside him. He’d been head over heels in love with her, and all he could do after the attack was stand there, powerless and lost and pissed off, while her world imploded. She lost everything that day, in the course of one or two bloody minutes. Her future. Her sense of security. Her innocence. Her very identity.

When he was feeling rational, he couldn’t blame her for running away from Kendall Falls. She’d landed on center stage, under a glaring spotlight, at the most vulnerable time of her life. It was like being assaulted twice. A flash of lightning, closer now, jolted him out of his thoughts, and as he looked away from the bat, he realized Sam watched him with a warning in his gaze. Keep it together, man.

Chase cleared his throat. No problem. Do the job. “Where are the shirt and bag?”

“Foreman said he tossed them before he knew what he had,” Sam said.

“Tossed them where?” Chase asked.

“Dumpster.” Sam jerked his thumb toward the back of the site.

“We’ll have to go through it,” Chase said.

“Is that all you need from me for now?” Kylie asked.

So stoic and controlled and, God, still so achingly beautiful. When she cocked her head, waiting for his response, he had to swallow against the tightness of his throat, sure she had no idea what was coming.

Thunder crashed, and Chase noticed everyone except Kylie glanced up at the furious clouds. Her focus had zeroed in on him and his next words.

“Construction has to be shut down,” he said. Blunt, to the point. Like ripping off a Band-Aid.

Nothing in her expression changed, her eye obviously still on the ball. “Completely?

Delays have already put us behind schedule.”

“It’s only temporary, until we can determine that this is indeed the weapon used in your attack.”

“Of course it’s the weapon. It’s exactly the same. How many bats have you seen with ‘killer’ written on the grip like that?”

So matter-of-fact and unemotional. How did she do that? But he knew. As her training partner so long ago, he’d helped make her the player she’d been, the woman she seemed to be now. Cool, focused, driven.

“It still has to be tested,” he said. “Your description of it was common knowledge back then. Someone could have, well, made one based on that.”

“Like some kind of joke?”

The crack in her voice hit Chase like a soft blow to the gut, and suddenly he hoped like hell she’d get her game face back and fast. She’d been broken ten years ago, but he’d never seen her broken. He suspected no one had.

“The whole site is a crime scene,” he said. “It has to be off-limits to everyone but the crime scene investigators.”

“How long is this going to take?”

Steady again. He almost let out a sigh of relief. “If we don’t find any evidence on the bat or shirt that connects them to your attack, we’re looking at a day.”

“And if you do?”

“We’ll have to search the site for more evidence. Best-case scenario: a couple of weeks.”

Nothing in her face moved, but the set of her shoulders firmed. A couple of weeks was not a good answer. “Worst case?” she asked.

“A couple of months.”

She looked away for a moment, a muscle flexing at her temple. “I can’t afford that much of a delay.”

“Don’t you want to know who did that to you?” He gestured none too smoothly at her braced knee.

She looked at him, eyes well-hidden behin dark shades, but he sensed their narrowing. “Finding out who did it won’t change anything.”

“Might be nice if the bastards paid for what they did.” Nice was a major understatement. He wanted blood. A shitload of blood. And some screams for mercy.

“We’re getting ahead of ourselves here,” Sam said. “Kylie, can you at least shut things down for a day while we test the evidence? We’ll go from there.”

Chase had to give him credit for making it sound like she had a choice.

She nodded reluctantly. “I’ll let the foreman know.”

“Thank you,” Sam said. “We’ll be in touch.”

She’d taken only a few steps when Chase went after her. “Wait.”

She faced him, and he saw from the angle of her head that she darted a glance after Sam, as if she’d lost her buffer. “Yes?”

“Are you okay?” So lame, he thought. Of course she wasn’t okay. Why was he asking anyway? They hadn’t parted friends, and every time they’d run into each other since she returned, they’d danced around each other as gracefully as newborn colts.

She gave him a thin smile. “I’m fine. Great, really. Couldn’t be better.”

Before he could snap back with something equally sarcastic, she blew out a huff of air as a small, contrite smile softened her features. “Wow, that was bitchy.”

The stiffness in his shoulders eased some, and he smiled back. “I won’t argue with that.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve had … well, this day …” She trailed off, eyebrows cinching together above the rims of her sunglasses. “It can’t be easy.”

The splash of puddles in the parking lot had them both looking in that direction. As a news van parked next to Chase’s SUV, she sighed. “Terrific.”

“Media hell all over again, huh?”

She nodded without looking at him. “It never seems to end around here.”

“So you’re taking off soon then?”

He knew it was a dig, and part of him, the ugly, still- ticked part, meant it as one.

When the going got tough, and the spotlight switched on, Kylie got packing. Why would now be any different than ten years ago? And, really, who could blame her? She had a past the press loved to rehash. Nothing sold newspapers like blood and guts and brutalized, pretty women.

She glanced at him, her smile hard now, forced. “I’m staying. Dad wanted a tennis center in Kendall Falls with the family name on it, so that’s what I’m doing. Sabotage didn’t chase me away. And neither will a ten-year-old baseball bat and endless media attention. Any other questions?”

He was glad she couldn’t tell by looking at him that the determination in her voice had sparked awake something long asleep inside him. He’d always been so turned on by her competitive spirit. He’d missed that since she’d gone. Hell, he’d missed it before she took off.

“I think that about covers it,” he said, unable to stop the quirk to his lips. “Have a nice day.” If he’d worn a hat, he would have touched the brim with a muttered “ma’am” and a nod.

“You, too,” she said stiffly before she turned and walked away.

He watched her go, appreciating the slight sway of her slim hips. As a teen, she’d had a compact, athletic body trained for lightning speed and power serves. But the tomboy had grown up, toughness and strength tempered by soft curves that were way too sexy for the guy in him to ignore. The black knee brace, so stark against the tanned skin of her leg, cooled the heat in his gut, though. That brace was part of the reason he’d become a cop. He’d vowed to make the people who did that to her pay.

As the wind picked up, and lightning cracked, almost immediately followed by a crash of thunder, he thought that maybe now he’d get the chance.