She all but ran back to her car, which was parked a block away, got in, and started the engine. Leave Kris and Rach for another day-for the night of the reunion. There is someone else who deserves your immediate attention, someone less important than the exalted three, but someone as guilty as they, someone who deserves to die. And soon.

Dinner with the Delmonicos had been nice. Dean liked Ross and hoped he and Kristen would continue trying to make their marriage work. And not just because they had a kid together, but because they seemed to genuinely love each other. Maybe when all was said and done in a relationship, love really was all that mattered. Real love. Not lust. Not fleeting passion. Not memories of raging teenage hormones.

Who was he kidding? He didn’t know the first thing about real love. As a teenager, he’d bonked just about any girl who’d let him. And later on…well, he’d been around the block a few times before he got married. He had loved Kellie and she him, but it hadn’t been enough, hadn’t been real and true and meant to last a lifetime. His parents had had that. Still had it. They were off traveling across the country in their motor home, loving life and loving each other as much as if not more than ever.

He wanted that kind of relationship. Hell, he wasn’t getting any younger. If he was going to remarry and produce a few offspring, he needed to get started pretty soon. After all, he was scaring forty to death. So maybe that was the reason he kept putting Rachel into the scenario, kept thinking about her as a life partner, as the future Mrs. Dean McMichaels. Ever since they were kids, he’d been protective of her, almost like a brother, but somewhere along the line, he’d become possessive, too, and by their senior year in high school, he’d known he loved cute, bubbly Rachel Alsace.

He glanced over at her where she sat looking out the passenger side window in his Thunderbird. “Penny for your thoughts.”

She turned to face forward, then glanced at him. “I was just thinking how lucky Kristen is. She and Ross. They have each other and a daughter and…And Lindsay just reconnected with Wyatt Goddard. I told you about them and their son and…”

“And at our age, being alone isn’t all that great, is it?”

“You’re right,” she said. “And it makes us more vulnerable to getting involved with the wrong person or persuading ourselves that a relationship is more special than it actually is.”

Dean harrumphed.

“Was that a laugh or a grunt?” she asked.

“A bit of both,” he admitted. “I was actually thinking along the same lines. About us, to be honest.”

“Us as in you and me?”

“Yeah. I used to care about you, back when we were kids. My feelings were sort of complicated. I pestered the hell out of you and tried to protect you, sort of like a big brother, but then when we were teenagers, I wanted you…you know, wanted wanted you.”

“I wish you’d told me…back then.”

“It wouldn’t have made any difference. You were too infatuated with Jake.”

“If you had just told me how you felt-”

“I’m telling you now. I’d like to take you back to my place and screw you all night long,” Dean said. “But if we did that, then we would both be even more confused about our feelings than we are now. Heck, I’ve halfway convinced myself that I’m in love with you, and I think you’re starting to wonder if we might not have a budding relationship in the works. Right?”

“Maybe. Why is that so wrong?”

“For the very reasons we just discussed. We’re both nearly forty, unmarried, no kids, and envy old friends who seem to have what we want. I don’t want us to make a mistake and wind up hurting each other by jumping into a relationship.”

Rachel didn’t reply. He glanced at her and noticed she had turned to look out the passenger window again.

“Rachel?”

“Hmm?”

“Did I say something wrong?”

She cleared her throat. “No, no, you didn’t say anything wrong.”

When he pulled into the Youngs’ driveway and parked the car, Rachel opened the door and hopped out, then called, “Don’t bother seeing me in. It’s late and I don’t want to disturb Uncle Charlie and Aunt Laraine.” Just before she slammed the door closed, she added, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Dean sat there and watched her practically run to the door and let herself in, not once looking back. He released the tight hold he had on the door handle, then huffed loudly. Women! He’d never understand them.

Don’t just sit here, he told himself. Go home. You messed up big-time with Rachel, and it’s not something you can fix tonight.

Exactly what had he done? He’d been honest with her. Why was that so wrong? He’d thought she felt the same way-that they were in danger of thinking themselves in love, and that before taking their relationship to the next level, they needed to make sure of just where they were headed. Not for his sake, but for hers. He cared too much about Rachel to use her to simply scratch an itch.

Apparently, sometimes honesty wasn’t the best policy.

Rachel spent the next week with two objectives in mind. One: to continue searching for the answer to a twenty-year-old murder case. Two: to spend as little time with Dean McMichaels as possible. The first had been easy enough because it was within her control. The second had proven to be more difficult. Dean acted as if nothing had happened, as if he hadn’t all but told her to back off, that he wasn’t interested in anything serious happening between them. She had to accept the fact that Dean probably flirted outrageously with every woman he met, that the sexual banter they had exchanged was simply par for the course for him. And all that garbage about him once having feelings for her was probably little more than a ploy to get into her pants. After all, he did have a reputation with the ladies, something she’d found out from others who knew him. Since his divorce, he had dated dozens of women. She figured she was just one more “date” to him.

Apparently he had realized she was beginning to fall in love with him, and that was the last thing he wanted. Okay. Fine with her. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t live without him. Her feelings for him hadn’t deepened that much that fast.

Or had they?

If she wasn’t hung up on the guy, why did she feel as if he had slapped her in the face with a major rejection? Why did she get tight knots in her stomach whenever he was around? Why did she catch herself daydreaming about him?

Because you’re an idiot!

Rachel’s cell phone rang. She picked it up from where she had placed it on her desk here at headquarters, checked caller ID, and hesitated when she didn’t recognize the number. Another cell phone coming off a Portland tower.

She flipped open her phone and identified herself immediately.

Silence.

“Hello. Is anyone there?”

Breathing. Heavy breathing.

This is ridiculous. “Look, if you have the wrong number, just say so or hang up.”

“I have the right number,” a disguised voice said. Rachel immediately knew that whoever was on the other end of this conversation was using some type of voice-altering device, just as he or she had done for other calls. Those voice-altering things could be bought just about anywhere for little to nothing or for hundreds of dollars. Trying to trace who might have bought one in the past few months would be time consuming. A fruitless endeavor.

“Who is this and what do you want?” Rachel kept her voice calm and even.

“Someone is going to die.”

Every nerve in Rachel’s body came to full alert. Reacting as the professional she was, she asked, “Is that right? Are you going to kill them?”

“Yes, I am. Just like I killed Jake.”

Rachel’s heart lodged in her throat. Was she really speaking to Jake Marcott’s killer? “Did you kill Haylie and Aurora?”