McIver's Mission

Creighton sliced open the flap and withdrew the single sheet of paper inside. When he unfolded it, she could see that the words on it were in the same careful block print and the same red ink as her name on the outside of the envelope.

“YOU WILL PAY FOR WHAT YOU’VE DONE.”

She wrapped her arms around her waist and leaned back in her chair, as if she could ward off the threat by distancing herself from the letter.

“We’ll send the letter and the envelope to the lab to check for prints.”

Arden nodded, but she knew better than to expect that they would find anything. The only prints on the other letters had been her own. “Oh, um, a friend of mine picked the envelope up off the floor,” she told him. “His prints will be on it.”

“Who?” Creighton asked.

“Shaun McIver,” she said, unaccountably embarrassed.

“Colin McIver’s brother?” Creighton asked. “The lawyer?”

Arden nodded.

“I played peewee hockey with Colin,” he told her. “Even then we knew he was going to be a superstar.”

“Colin’s married to my cousin,” Arden told him, wondering why she felt the compulsion to share this information. Maybe to somehow explain Shaun’s presence at her apartment Friday night. Not that it was anyone’s business but her own.

“Small world,” Creighton said.

Smaller town, Arden thought wryly.

“As a member of the local bar association, his prints will be on file. That will make it easy to isolate any unknowns.”

“There weren’t any prints on the other letters.”

Creighton nodded. “There probably won’t be on this one, either, but we have to go through the motions. Sometimes these guys get sloppy.”

Arden didn’t think so. Every step this guy took had been planned with care and deliberation. He wouldn’t slip up.

Lieutenant Creighton pulled copies of the other two letters out of the file. Arden glanced away as he laid them side-by-side on the top of his desk. The bold lettering was ominous and compelling, drawing her gaze reluctantly back to the pages.

“YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN I WOULD FIND YOU.”

“YOU HAD NO RIGHT TO INTERFERE.”

The first note had been delivered to her office. She’d found it within the stack of regular mail, although the envelope bore no postage or address, just her name scrawled in the same bold lettering. That had been almost two months ago. The second had also been delivered to her office, about three weeks later. But it was this last letter, delivered to her home, that increased her feelings of trepidation. Somehow she knew this wasn’t a prank, an empty threat. The letters were a warning of something to come. But she didn’t know what or why.

“You’re sure you have no idea who might have sent these letters?”

She shook her head. “If I did, I’d tell you.”

“This one—” Creighton pointed to the first letter “—suggests that you’re acquainted with your pen pal.”

Arden wrapped her arms tighter around herself and pushed away the painful memories that nudged from the back of her mind. More than twenty years had passed since Aunt Tess had brought her to Fairweather; there was no reason for Gavin to look for her now. Mentioning her stepfather’s name, reliving the humiliation and the pain, would only hurt her again. She refused to give him that kind of power. “If I thought I knew who was doing this, I’d tell you.”

“An ex-boyfriend?” Creighton prompted.

Arden’s thoughts drifted from Gavin to Brad. But the way their relationship had ended was unlikely to suggest that he was obsessed about her. “No.”

“A beautiful woman like yourself must have admirers.”

She frowned.

He held up his hands. “I didn’t mean any offense,” he said. “It’s just an objective observation.”

“I’m sure it’s not an ex-boyfriend.”

“A rejected suitor, perhaps?”

Arden rolled her eyes; Creighton shrugged.

“You know as well as I do that almost one-third of all violent crimes against women are perpetrated by their partners or former partners.”

“I know,” Arden agreed. “And I know this isn’t a boyfriend, an ex-boyfriend or a wanna-be boyfriend.” That was all she was going to say without admitting outright that she hadn’t had a date in the past two years.

“Okay,” Creighton relented. “Then we’re back to considering that the threats must be related to one of your cases.”

“That seems like the most reasonable explanation,” she admitted. “But I’ve gone through all of my files, concentrating on new clients in the few weeks preceding the arrival of the first letter, and nothing strikes me as out of the ordinary.”

“I’d like a list of those clients,” Creighton said.

Arden hesitated. “I can’t breach confidentiality.”

“I don’t need any details,” Creighton said. “Just names.”

She hesitated, hating that her fear outweighed her sense of professional obligation. “All right.”

When Arden returned home after her meeting with Lieutenant Creighton, Shaun was seated on a bench in front of her building, his long, denim-clad legs stretched out in front of him. Her heart gave a little sigh. No man should look so good.

One of his wide-palmed hands idly stroked Rocky’s back as he chatted with Greta Dempsey. The dog’s tongue was hanging out of his mouth, his eyes closed. Arden couldn’t blame him. It was all too easy to remember the feel of those hands on her back, stroking, seducing, and she’d been pretty close to drooling herself.

She shook off the memory and stepped closer, heard the musical tinkle of Greta’s laughter. The older woman’s eyes sparkled and her cheeks were flushed, confirming to Arden that her own reaction wasn’t unique. Women—young and old and in between—adored him.

Shaun’s lips curved in response to something Greta said, and all Arden could think about was how it felt to have those lips on hers. How much she wanted to feel them again.

Greta spotted her first and waved her over. “Arden, I was hoping to catch up with you. I have a plate of warm oatmeal-raisin cookies with your name on them.”

Arden stepped toward them. “I’m going to have to buy a new wardrobe if you keep baking me cookies.”

Greta dismissed the comment with a careless wave of her hand. “A few extra pounds won’t do you any harm. A man wants a woman with soft curves he can cuddle up to.” She turned to Shaun and winked. “Isn’t that right?”

Shaun grinned. “I won’t argue with that.”

Greta nodded, satisfied. “Well, then. Come on upstairs to get the cookies. You can take them to Arden’s apartment to have with your tea.”