The Mysteries of Angel Butte

Standing between her…and danger

Returning to her hometown is Cait McAllister’s chance to stand on her own. That means taking a break from men and relationships. Then she meets her new boss, the intriguing Noah Chandler. As the mayor, he’s got bold plans for Angel Butte. As a man, he’s so tempting that Cait’s vow of independence is in jeopardy.

The most persuasive part of him, however, could be the way he looks out for her. Because when a threat from her past puts her in danger, Noah is there to protect her. And there’s no way she can resist a man who has so much invested in keeping her safe.

If he hadn’t decided to follow her out here…

Cait would be dead.

The knowledge slammed into Noah, a kick to the chest that felt as if he’d been shot.

But she was unharmed. Somehow she had escaped being shot at and having her car forced off the road.

When Cait started to struggle to her feet, he reached down to help her. She wasn’t wearing heels, he saw; she had changed to athletic shoes before she headed out on this expedition. The rusty red dirt coated the gray-and-white leather and mesh.

Churning with emotions he had no ability to decipher, Noah couldn’t help himself. He yanked her back into his arms, with no consideration for her fragile state. If she noticed, she didn’t protest. She leaned as if she belonged right there, resting against him. Was that a very distant siren? He didn’t care.

“Cait,” he said hoarsely.

She looked up, her eyes dark, and the power of all that rage and helplessness and tenderness overcame him.

He kissed her.

Things are not as they seem in Angel Butte, Oregon. Read on to find out how Noah Chandler can protect Cait McAllister from the threats escalating against her in this second book of Janice Kay Johnson’s latest series!

Dear Reader,

It’s always been my opinion that women are more self-aware than men.

Of course I know some major exceptions to that rule (well, let’s call it an observation), but still. My guess is that it’s part and parcel of what makes women talk about experiences and emotions, even embarrassing ones, so much more readily than men do. In real life, a guy who never seems to quite get what he’s feeling can be aggravating.

Writing fiction—I love men who blunder along, falling in love and even developing other kinds of relationships without exactly knowing what’s going on, and who are genuinely flabbergasted when they discover they’re in over their heads and haven’t a clue how it happened. Noah Chandler is such a man. He’s really smart, a successful businessman and politician, blunt and even ruthless, but convinced emotional crap is for other people. Leading him along gave me enormous pleasure, I have to tell you. Hmm. If only guys like that could be led along so easily in real life…. Come to think of it, there’s a reason I write fiction!

Truthfully, one of the joys of writing romance is finding the two perfect characters who will both clash and mesh with each other.

Jayne Anne Krentz wrote, some years back, about how, on some level, the hero should also be the villain—i.e., a threat to the heroine. I think it works the other way around, too. Certainly, Cait McAllister is a major threat to the even tenor of Noah’s life, and he is self-aware enough to know that from the very beginning. Meanwhile, he’s the scariest kind of man to her…when he isn’t making her feel safer than she ever has.

I hope you like these two people as much as I do. I’ve discovered some really great men live in Angel Butte, Oregon!

Janice Kay Johnson

Everywhere She Goes

Janice Kay Johnson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The author of more than eighty books for children and adults, Janice Kay Johnson is especially well-known for her Harlequin Superromance novels about love and family—about the way generations connect and the power our earliest experiences have on us throughout life. Her 2007 novel Snowbound won a RITA® Award from Romance Writers of America for Best Contemporary Series Romance. A former librarian, Janice raised two daughters in a small rural town north of Seattle, Washington. She loves to read and is an active volunteer and board member for Purrfect Pals, a no-kill cat shelter.

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Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Excerpt

PROLOGUE

NOAH CHANDLER GLOWERED at the file that lay open on his desk. Failure was unacceptable. He still couldn’t figure out how and why the bunch of fossilized, mule-headed, self-serving jackasses that constituted his city council had shot down his candidate for the job of police chief and chosen someone so ill-qualified—compelling him to make the offer.

By God, he was going to choke on it.

Noah had been trying to tamp down his anger since the vote after last night’s meeting. When he had won the election in November and had taken over the mayor’s office, he had known he would have to deal with a council composed primarily of good ol’ boys incapable of objective, forward thinking. So far he’d succeeded in manipulating them into voting his way whatever their original inclination. What he couldn’t figure out was why the rebellion had come now, and over something so critical.

Corruption ran deep in the Angel Butte Police Department, and this town needed someone fully competent to root it out, not a yeehaw cowboy who knew Southern California gangs and hookers but had next to no administrative experience and probably thought small towns were good only as a place to get off the interstate and fill up the gas tank. Had the city council members been thinking at all? Or were they interested only in thwarting him?

A third option had presented itself, and Noah liked it least of all. What if a couple of those fine citizens serving on the council, influential with their peers, had real personal motivations for ensuring the investigation into drug trafficking and illegal payoffs floundered?

Fuming, he picked up his phone and dialed.

Three rings and a brusque male voice answered, “Raynor.”

Noah unclenched his jaw. “Lieutenant Raynor.” His voice came out as a growl. “This is Mayor Noah Chandler in Angel Butte, Oregon. I’m calling to offer you the position of police chief. You were the final choice of our city council.”

There was a moment of silence that lent him hope. The weather had been bitterly cold when Alec Raynor, a homicide lieutenant with the Los Angeles Police Department, had flown into Angel Butte for the interview. A blizzard had shut down the airport, delaying his departure for a day. Maybe in the past week he’d rethought the whole idea of accepting the job here. For all the line of bull he’d fed them during the interview, his motives for wanting the job were still a mystery to Noah.

“What about you?” Raynor asked unexpectedly. “Was I your choice?”

Noah swiveled in his desk chair to stare out the window at a partial view of Angel Butte, one of the small cinder cones that dotted this volcanic country in central Oregon. A nineteenth-century marble statue of an angel, imported all the way from Italy, crowned the crater rim. Back some years ago, before Noah’s arrival in town, the angel had been given a granite pedestal to hoist her higher, maybe so she could keep a better eye on errant townsfolk.

“No,” he said, blunt as always. “I was in favor of a candidate who had significant administrative experience. The job here doesn’t have much in common with what you do down there in L.A. We don’t have a lot of homicide cases to close. Our problems have to do with recruitment, staffing, training, scheduling, budget and morale.” Keeping our probably too-low-paid cops honest, he thought but didn’t say. “Politicking to bring in the money. Do you know how to do any of that, Lieutenant?”

“On a smaller scale, yes.” There was a pause. “Did you have experience in city government when you won the election, Mayor?”

Noah rubbed the heel of his hand over his breastbone to settle the burning coal beneath it. “I’m a businessman. Running a city isn’t all that different from running a business.”

Raynor didn’t have to say, In other words, no.

“This may not be what you want to hear, Mayor, but I accept your offer.” The steel in Alec Raynor’s voice sounded like a challenge to Noah. “As I indicated, I need to give notice here. Is your acting police chief willing to stay on for another month?”

That was the next call Noah had to make: the one to Colin McAllister, to let him know he wasn’t being offered the permanent position. The news would not go over well. McAllister had every reason to think he had it in the bag.

“We’ll work it out one way or another,” Noah said. “Let us know your arrival date when you can.”

“I will.” Irony threaded the deep, crisp voice. “I’ll look forward to working with you, Chandler.”

Noah didn’t have to manufacture any upbeat remarks; dead air told him the call was over. He grimaced. He’d liked Raynor better during this phone call than he had during the interviews. Noah preferred direct give-and-take, and that’s what he’d gotten.

And, damn, he owed it to McAllister to tell him the decision in person, not over the phone. With a grunt, he pushed back his chair and rose. He’d walk. The route from the historic courthouse that now housed his office to the new public safety building would take him right past Chandler’s Brew Pub. Wouldn’t hurt to stop by, surprise his employees. Since going into politics, he had been forced to trust them more than made him comfortable. He might even have lunch there, he decided. Today was downright balmy for the beginning of March, which was still the dead of winter in central Oregon. He might as well enjoy the deceptively springlike weather. He wouldn’t even have to wear a coat.

Fifteen minutes later, he’d walked into the police chief’s office and said his piece.

Colin McAllister’s face had gone hard the minute Noah had started. He listened in silence, not rising from his chair behind the desk. “I deserve to know why I wasn’t hired.”

Only thirty-four years old, he’d been with the department since he’d started as a rookie right out of college. He had risen fast, making captain—only one rank below chief—two years ago. Noah understood him to be well liked by his officers, although he also had the reputation as a tough son of a bitch when being tough was called for. He was the one who’d uncovered the corruption in the Angel Butte P.D. and brought it to Noah. It was thanks to McAllister that Noah had been able to ask for the former chief’s resignation. McAllister had handled the beginning stages of the investigation into the deeper layers of corruption well, as far as Noah could tell.

“I blocked your hiring,” he said.

A man as tall as Noah if not quite as bulky, McAllister stood now, his hands flat on the desktop. Fury glittered in his steel-gray eyes. “Why?”

“I can’t take the risk that you’re part of whatever crap is infecting this police force,” Noah said bluntly. He held up a hand to silence his acting police chief. “I have to ask myself how could you have worked here this long without seeing that something was wrong. You’re young to make captain, even in a department this size. You’ve been rewarded with promotions a hell of a lot faster than is the norm. I’m making no accusations, but I also can’t ignore the possibility that you got where you are by sharing information or worse. Even a willingness to turn a blind eye to illegal activities might have won you brownie points. I like you. I still had to make the best choice for this town.”

“No accusations?” The gray of those eyes made Noah think of gun barrels now. “Sounds to me like you just made some. Tell me why, if I were dirty, I’d have been stupid enough to open this department to a top-to-bottom investigation.”

“You might have thought you could get rid of Bystrom, step into his office and then block some turns of the investigation.”

“If you’d asked, I would have shared my financials with you.”

“You might be honest enough not to have accepted bribes, but not so honest you weren’t willing to look away when fellow officers did.”

The sound that came out of McAllister’s mouth could have been a snarl. “You know you’ve opened yourself to a lawsuit.”

Noah met that burning stare. “Tell me you wouldn’t have made the same decision if you were in my shoes.”

“So now you want my resignation.”

“No, I don’t. My gut says you’re clean. I want you to stay on as acting chief for the next month and to return to captain of investigative services after that.”

Colin McAllister gave an incredulous laugh. “You’re a son of a bitch. You know that, Chandler?”

Yeah. He could be. Today, a son of a bitch who felt like he was developing an ulcer. “Tell me you wouldn’t have made the same decision,” he repeated.

“I wouldn’t have made the same decision.” Muscles knotted in the other man’s jaw. “Are we done here?”

“Think about what you want to do.”

“Oh, yeah, I’ll be thinking.”

Noah nodded. “Then we’re done.”

He walked out, deciding he might have a beer with lunch, something he never did. He was also thinking he’d just made an enemy—and the new police chief and he weren’t set up to be good friends, either.

Leaving the building and ignoring curious glances, it occurred to him that Colin McAllister and Alec Raynor were unlikely to have a real cordial relationship, either, not when one was taking over the job the other had wanted, and thought he’d earned.

Had earned, Noah admitted, if only to himself.

He paused on the sidewalk to let two lanky boys on skateboards shoot by before he turned back toward downtown.

Half the city council members despised and feared Noah, who despised them in turn and was plotting to get rid of them as soon as he could.

His mouth tilted up at the black humor. Yep, city government, as usual.

This called for two beers with the burger and fries he intended to have for lunch.

CHAPTER ONE

“GOOD WORKOUT,” a woman called from down the row as Cait McAllister slammed her locker door closed and picked up her gym bag.

Smiling her agreement, Cait lifted a hand. “See you Thursday.”

Today’s class had combined step aerobics with what the instructor called “butt and gut,” exercises aimed at core muscles. Cait was currently alternating this class with kickboxing. Conscious of a pleasant ache, she liked that she was getting stronger all the time.

She especially liked the feeling because Blake sneered at women wanting to be muscular.

Swiping her card to check out at the front desk of the health club, Cait grimaced. Oh, sure, show how defiant you are now.

The truth was, Blake hadn’t liked much of anything that took her focus away from him. With every day, week and month since she’d broken up with him, she had realized how much she’d surrendered. Friends, activities, even time to herself. She still couldn’t believe she’d let it happen.

Problem was, he thought their relationship had been perfect, with only the little flaw that she’d left him. Five months down the line, he still couldn’t believe she had meant it when she’d said, “We’re done.” In fact, she paused now at the door, uneasy to be going out into the dark parking lot. In the glass she could see the reflection of the bright interior: herself, two guys leaving one of the racquetball rooms, laughing and wiping sweat from their faces, an employee behind the desk. Outside: nobody.

She could ask for an escort to her car.

Ridiculous. She’d moved a few weeks ago and was bunking with another grad student, so her name didn’t appear on a lease anywhere. She was on a second new cell phone number. She’d changed health clubs again—this was only her third week coming here. She’d found yet another new favorite Thai restaurant, stopped at different coffee shops. Taken to varying her parking on campus when she needed to use the library at the university or talk to her adviser, rather than automatically heading for a certain lot. Shopped at a different grocery store each time. Tried to become unpredictable in as many ways as she could.

Blake actually did have a job. He couldn’t possibly be stalking her 24/7. Plus, she really thought he’d freaked even himself out when they’d had that last fight in November and he had hurt her badly enough she’d had to be hospitalized overnight. So far, when he tracked her down, he’d been coaxing, not threatening.

Even so...it was April now, and he hadn’t given up. To him, her “no” meant “I’m still mad at you, but I’ll come around eventually.” His frustration and anger had been thinly veiled the last time she’d seen him, when he’d suddenly fallen in behind her with his shopping cart in the cereal aisle at Whole Foods and stayed with her until she drove away. He had pulled out right behind her, too, and tailgated until she’d darted onto the freeway and then off, so last-minute she’d heard brakes squealing behind her and caught a glimpse of his furious face when he couldn’t make the exit, too.

Cait squared her shoulders. He couldn’t possibly know she was here. She refused to huddle at home every evening. Between her thirty-hour-a-week job and work on her dissertation, her days were full.

Nobody else seemed even to be close to ready to leave, so she pushed open the door and went out.

She was parked just around the corner of the building. There were pools of darkness, but really the lot was well lit. Lights of a passing car on the street washed over her, momentarily blinding her and leaving her trying to blink away dancing spots.

Even so, she was still a good ten or fifteen feet from her car when she saw that a man leaned against the hatchback. She stopped, and he straightened at the sight of her.

“Hey,” Blake said, totally friendly. “I was passing and saw your car.”

He couldn’t have seen her car from the road. He’d either followed her or taken to prowling the parking lots of health clubs she might conceivably have joined.

Cait stayed where she was, wishing someone—anyone—else would come out. A couple of guys would be really good. Poised to run, she also eased her hand into her purse, groping for her phone and praying he couldn’t see what she was doing.

“I’ve asked you to leave me alone, Blake.” Thank God, her voice was calm and confident.

He took a step toward her. “I can’t even say hello?” He sounded offended, as if she’d been rude.

Bad moment to be hit with how really skewed his perspective was. He was not normal. Of course, she’d already known that, but...

Later.

Refusing to retreat, she lifted her chin. Her fingers touched a smooth, flat surface. Her phone, thank God. Now, could she dial without being able to see what she was doing?

“No,” she said. “I don’t even want you to say hello. I really don’t want you cornering me in dark parking lots.”

“I didn’t corner you—I waited for you!” Anger was making his voice more guttural. “How can I say I’m sorry if you won’t listen to me?”

“You’ve said it.”

“Yeah, and how many times do I have to? I’m sorry! Goddamn it, I’m sorry, okay?”

She licked dry lips. “Thank you for saying it. That’s better than not saying it. But no. It’s not okay.”

“You love me. I know you do.” He took a couple more steps toward her, his voice now low and persuasive. Warm, affectionate. “Jesus, Cait. I’ve gotten your message, loud and clear. I swear I won’t do anything like that again. Why won’t you believe me?”

“Maybe because you swore two other times that you wouldn’t hit me again? And, oh gee, you did?” Making a decision, she yanked her phone out and dialed 911 really fast.

“You knew you were pissing me off!” The guttural, furious note was back. He seemed oblivious to the phone.

In the yellow light of the overhead lamps, she saw that his hands had knotted into fists. The sight made her pulse rocket. She slid one foot back, then the other. Please, please, please, let somebody come outside. A car pull in.

If she said no often enough, he’d eventually have to believe her, wouldn’t he?

“I don’t love you anymore. You killed what I felt for you. You need to accept that.” Cait brandished the phone so he couldn’t miss it. “If you don’t leave right now, I’m calling the police. If I have to scream, a dozen people will come running out of the health club.”

His face was ugly, transformed by shock and rage. She was shaking, and she hated knowing he could make her so afraid.

I should run.

He’d be on her before she could round the corner of the building.

She was still frozen with indecision when he snarled an invective and turned to her small car, then kicked the bumper until the car rocked.

“You bitch!” he yelled, and used his booted foot to crumple the fender. As she watched in shock, he circled the car, kicking, smashing, doing to it what he wanted to do to her.

Backing away, gasping for breath, she tore her gaze from him long enough to look down at the phone. Just as she reached the corner of the building, she pressed Send.

At that very moment, he went still and stared at her across the distance separating them. His voice floated to her, quiet compared to the invectives. “I will never accept that you’re not mine.”

Terrified now, Cait ran for the lighted front of the health club.

* * *

“TODAY’S MAIL,” RUTH LANG announced and plopped a pile in front of Noah. Of course, she’d already slit each piece of mail open and paper-clipped the correspondence to the envelope.

He grimaced. “Thanks, Ruth.”

His assistant’s predecessor had retired when Mayor Linarelli lost the election. In the first week after he’d taken office, Noah had chosen Ruth, middle-aged, brisk and efficient, from internal applications. There’d never been a moment of regret. Choosing the right personnel was one of his strengths, although he was beginning to realize that hiring a bartender wasn’t quite the same as hiring a city engineer or attorney. He’d been glad to have the chance to do both, but there were days he thought all he did was hire. Half the long-timers had decided to retire when they saw the way the wind blew with Linarelli gone.

Ruth smiled sympathetically. “That’s what you get for advertising two jobs at once.”

Yeah, it was. He wanted to get somebody competent in the job of city recorder, but his real interest was in filling the position of director of community development. Angel Butte had stagnated compared to comparable towns within a three-county area. The only significant move to alter that before his tenure had been the annexation that doubled the size of the city while leaving it struggling to provide expected services. Like too many city employees, the former head of planning had been an old crony, unimaginative and more interested in hanging on to the way things had always been done than he was in new trends in the field. Noah had been hoping that, at sixty-two, he was starting to think retirement. What happened instead was a heart attack. The guy had survived, but he’d admitted to Noah that his wife had put her foot down and refused to hear about him returning to work.

Noah had hoped for more applications than he’d received so far. He supposed Angel Butte seemed isolated to most potential applicants, a backwater with a lousy climate. But the area was booming economically thanks to tourism. It was beautiful, and there had to be some people in the field who loved to ski or hike or fish. Or, hell, just wanted to breathe air that wasn’t yellow with smog, or commute five minutes to work instead of spending two hours a day crawling in heavy traffic on the freeway.

He’d already received three online applications that morning. Now, he flipped through the day’s mail, which included several more résumés for people interested in the city recorder job and five for the community development one. Two of those he tossed in the recycling bin after barely a skim. Two were possibles, but not exciting. The fifth... He couldn’t quite decide. In one way, she was overqualified, apparently only months from receiving an interdisciplinary PhD in urban design and planning. Actual work experience was somewhat scantier—after getting her master’s degree in urban planning from the University of Washington, she’d worked as a planner in community development in Kitsap County, on the other side of Puget Sound from Seattle. From there she’d gone to Spokane, where she’d spent a year completing a special position as parks project manager, preparing an updated plan for the city’s parks and open spaces. She’d included excellent letters of recommendation, as well as one from her dissertation adviser at the UW. Noah had advertised for someone with a minimum of four years’ experience in a position of comparable seniority to the one in Angel Butte. This woman didn’t quite have that—although close if he added in her various internships—but she shone if he wanted someone with cutting-edge knowledge of the field.

He glanced again at her name. Caitlyn McAllister. As it registered, a frown gathered on his forehead. The last name had to be coincidence. Didn’t it? He went back to the first page of the résumé to see when she’d received her degrees. BA in political science from Whitman College... The date of graduation likely put her in her late twenties now. Thirty at most, if she’d been a slow bloomer.

He had no idea whether police captain Colin McAllister had a sister. If this Cait was related to him, that might explain why someone of her education was interested in a town so off the beaten path. On the other hand—as pissed as McAllister was, as undecided as he was about his future in Angel Butte—surely his sister wouldn’t have applied to work closely with his sworn enemy, the man who had in his eyes betrayed him.

Damn it, if she was related to McAllister, did he even want to consider hiring her?

Noah read her qualifications again and, impressed, thought, Why not? By the time they reached the interview stage, he might have half a dozen other strong candidates. So far, though, she was the cream of the crop.

He reached for his telephone.

* * *

CAIT’S EYE CAUGHT the blue-and-white roadside sign. Entering the City of Angel Butte, Population 38,312.

Oh, boy. She hadn’t expected to be so nervous. She didn’t even know why she was. Some of her memories of the years before her mother had taken her away weren’t so good, but she also had happy ones. So it wasn’t the town, per se.

Seeing her brother, maybe? The farther she’d gotten down the road, the more she wished she’d called to let him know she was coming. It was just that she didn’t know how he’d feel about her moving back here, and really their relationship was so stiff and distant, she wouldn’t blame him if he was less than thrilled.

My fault.

Yes, it was. He had tried. She knew he would have liked to be closer to her. Her feelings had been so complicated, her memories so muddled, she was the one to keep him at arm’s length. At the same time... Well, she remembered him walking her to school, holding her hand. With seemingly endless patience, Colin had taught her to ride a bike, not Dad or Mom. When she’d started playing soccer, he’d kicked the ball with her by the hour. He’d teased her, and put up with her trailing him around like a hopeful puppy even though he was six years older than her. He’d been sixteen when Mom had hurriedly packed her own and Cait’s things one day, loaded her in the car and driven away. By then Colin was a man, with a stubbly jaw come evening and a man’s muscles, capable of such terrifying anger and violence.

The tumble of images and memories running like YouTube videos were so vivid and frightening, she put on her turn signal and pulled to the shoulder of the two-lane highway leading into town. Stopped, she clutched the steering wheel, closed her eyes and breathed deeply.

Her father had hurt her mother. Hurt Cait, sometimes. Colin and Dad had fought viciously, even sometimes punching holes in walls or breaking furniture. How, growing up in that kind of environment, had she let herself get sucked into an abusive relationship? Shame rose in her, making it hard to breathe.

Why? she cried inwardly, and had no answer.

There was no way she could ever tell Mom. Cait didn’t know if she could bring herself to tell Colin, either. Except...if there was any chance at all that Blake were to follow her to Angel Butte, she’d have to, wouldn’t she? Wasn’t she there to interview for this job because of Colin? Because he was a cop, and she knew he’d protect her? Because he’d persisted in saying, “I’m your brother”?

Yes. But...she could wait to see if Blake appeared, couldn’t she?

Why did she care what Colin thought of her?

Because. Because he was her brother. Because he loved her, and she knew it.