Page 24 of Into the Veins
“I’ll be sure to remember that next time.” He took the towel and rubbed the mess from his hands into the fiber before turning his attention to the cold splotches on his face. Memorizing the space, he forced himself to focus on the details—the crack in the garage floor, the empty box of porcelain clay in the corner, the crusted length of paint in her hair—and not on the thin stretch of fabric barely hiding her frame. “I like what you’ve done with the place. The mismatched paint stains all over the floor really brighten up the space.”
Another laugh broke through her control as she surveyed her domain, and he noted a fresh blot of paint under her ear. “Yeah. I thought I would decorate for the next homeowners, as long as one of them is blind and can’t see the mess.”
“You’re working on a set of bowls. Can I see?” He motioned to the sculptures lined neatly on the table’s surface to keep himself from reaching out for the smudge of paint blemishing her skin.
“Oh, they’re not finished.” She moved between him and the table, blocking his path, but her height allowed him to see over the top of her head. Nervous energy brought her bruised fingers to each elbow as she crossed her arms, and his heart ticked wildly. She settled her attention on the bowls, seemingly giving up trying to keep them to herself. “I couldn’t sleep. I came out here to…forget for a little while.”
He stepped around her and caught sight of the brushstrokes within each different-colored bowl. Clenching the towel to keep himself to picking them up as they dried, Colson fell into a near meditation as he counted the rows of lines she’d painted into the insides of the sculptures. Dozens of them, each of varying length and width. Simple yet elegant. Like her. “They’re beautiful.”
“Do you want to try?” Blair moved into his peripheral vision. Picking up a clean, medium-size brush from the small tin bucket at the end of the table, she rotated the wood in her hand before offering it to him.
He’d never painted anything in his life, let alone a sculpture, but the compulsion to do something he’d never done before, to seek out the next adventure, had him reaching for the brush. Saying no wasn’t an option, and the investigation, the attempt on their lives, the pain—it all slipped away at the excitement of throwing himself into something new. “I don’t know where to start.”
“First, you pick a color.” She wedged a wooden paint palette against the inside of her left arm and threaded her fingers through the grip at the front. Varying shades of acrylic paint blended and dissolved into one another from originating stains across the board. She stepped into him, her arm pressing against his. In his next breath, Blair secured the paint brush into his hand and wrapped her fingers over his. She lowered their hands together and swiped the end of the brush into the black pigment. “Then you dip your brush, picking a small amount of paint. Hold onto your bowl with your free hand.”
He did as she instructed, heat spreading from behind his sternum down his arms and into his legs at her touch. His pulse rocketed into his throat. The pain in his side evaporated, leaving his senses free to absorb everything about this moment.
“Now, envision the end result.” She closed her eyes, but he couldn’t look away from the beauty less than a few inches away from him. As though sensing the weight of his attention, she cracked one eye open, then the other, and her smile stopped his heart cold.
One look. That was all it took. Colson dipped his mouth to hers, and the palette tilted against his chest. The board shifted between them, half a dozen splotches of paint mixing against his white shirt.
Blair leaned back. “Well at least the paint on your face won’t feel lonely anymore.”
His mouth tingled to taste her again. Securing her hips against his, he hauled her up onto the table and wedged himself between her knees. He kissed her again. “I don’t care.”
She secured one hand around the back of his neck. “Then neither do I.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“I don’t even want to think about how much scrubbing it’s going to take to clean off all this paint.” Blair tipped her head back and ran her fingers through the dark smudge of black under his right eye. The past few hours played on repeat in her head, shoving out the nightmares she hadn’t been able to process when they’d left the hospital. It was only a matter of time before they found her again, but right now, she wanted nothing more than to commit to the moment.
The tarps they’d used as sheets scratched at her skin as she followed a mixed trail of paint to the bandage over Colson’s side. Spots of red bled through the gauze, and a nodule of guilt solidified in her gut. They’d survived the worst out there in those woods. Beaten, drugged, left for dead. How they’d managed to make it out alive, she didn’t know, but the feeling of needing him—of needing to get to him—had ingrained itself into the deepest recesses of her mind. “I think you may have popped a couple of your stitches.”
“I wasn’t attached to them anyway.” Colson lowered his mouth to hers, waking only a fraction of the burn of pleasure they’d shared. Not physically. No. Their injuries hadn’t accounted for that. But painting each other, memorizing every curve of muscles and inch of skin with the ends of her brushes had been just as exquisite. He grazed his fingers along her forearm, then higher, and a flood of anticipation charged through her. One touch, one kiss, and the nightmare of what they’d been through together vanished.
How was that possible? She’d despised everything he and every other private investigator had stood for since she’d been ten years old, but the past three days had shown her exactly what kind of man Colson Rutherford was. Generous, determined, not at all as careless as she’d pegged him. Flecks of dark green paint crumbled from the skin under a long laceration across his cheek at her touch, and she pressed her forehead to his, unable to keep herself from connecting with him. She’d had flings over the years—a couple of officers in Seattle PD, even an EMT she’d met at the scene of a domestic dispute. None of them had been like this. Colson had tunneled beneath her skin and become part of her in more ways than one. Mentally, emotionally. No matter how hard she’d fought the pull between them, her guard had shattered the moment he’d pulled her back from the edge of that cliff. He’d risked his life to save hers, disobeyed her order to find her. That had to count for something. All private investigators had been the same in her book, but he wasn’t one of them. “It’s going to take a long, hot soak to get all this paint off.”
“Do you want to know what I came in here for first?” he asked.
“You mean you had other intentions besides scaring the crap out of me and seducing me into painting every inch of your body?” Her laugh eased from her chest, and for the first time in years, she felt herself relax. Her thoughts stayed here in the present. Not focused on the investigation, not reminding her of the guilt born the night her parents had been killed. There was only Colson, and a sense of peace and curiosity that came with him.
“I did, but I have to admit, that was a bonus. Even with a mild concussion, you’re still a lot stronger than I am.” He stretched one arm a few feet behind him and collected his phone that’d fallen from his clothes when she’d stripped him bare. A brand-new crack spiked across the screen from one corner, and she buried her smile against his chest.
“Sorry about your phone,” she said.
“It was worth it. Trust me.” Colson kissed the top of her head. The camera recognized his face and unlocked the screen. He brought up the video of Rachel Faulkner and Cardin Townsend arguing outside of Sharde and turned up the volume. “Listen.”
She knows.
Blair leveraged one elbow underneath her and took the phone from him. Rewinding the video, she listened to it again. “It sounds like Cardin is saying, ‘She knows.’”
“It can’t be a coincidence our first victim was accused of being a fraud by hiding her divorce from fans while the second is defending herself against a plagiarism scandal.” He reached over her wrist and paused the video, resurrecting a combination of his clean scent and paint. “Cardin Townsend released two singles to streaming services, both of which have more than a hundred thousand listens. One of her posts hinted that she was in talks with a record label, but the details weren’t finalized yet. If those executives discovered she hadn’t written her own songs as she claimed—that she lied to them—it could be enough to lose her a record contract altogether.”
“They lied to their fans.” But was it enough motive for murder? Two secrets. Two bodies. One killer. There were thousands of self-proclaimed social media influencers. Why had these two become a target? Their industries were entirely different, as were their followings. Yet both victims knew each other. Geographically? Blair tried lining up the pieces of the puzzle, but there were still too many missing. Her instincts warned her there was a deeper connection here. Not something methodic as the evidence suggested, but personal. The woman who’d attacked them in the state forest had targeted Rachel Faulkner and Cardin Townsend specifically, had planned this from the beginning. Not only had the killer arranged her escape from those woods ahead of law enforcement, but she’d used that shed to procure the poison and breed the vipers for months. She’d known the ranger’s shift schedules, the lesser-known trails, and that no one would walk into that maintenance shed by chance. The conversation she’d had with Lawson Mitchell in the hospital filtered through the chaos of buzzing thoughts. I was in the observation room when she admitted there were others out there just like her.
A shiver that had nothing to do with Colson’s slight retreat chased down her spine. What if the cases were connected? What if there were more serial killers out there, and this was just the beginning? Blair raised her gaze to Colson, memorizing every line, every angle as fast as she could. What if this was one of the last times she had the chance to connect with someone more than her family?
“Hey.” Colson threaded his fingers through the hair at the back of her neck, bringing her back to the present. Deep brown eyes narrowed as he studied her, and the urge to lose herself all over again spread through her. “You okay?”