her, “to see if I could spot whoever’s doing this. And I thought I had.”
I told her about the tan compact that had gotten away from me. “It didn’t even occur to me that someone might still be there. I was so sure whoever it was had escaped me…”
“So you went back?” Charlotte prompted when I fell silent.
I nodded. “Yes. To tell him I’d lost whoever it was, but to keep an eye out for the car. And when I walked into the lobby, I found him and Grimaldi in a face-off with Agent Leslie Yung from the FBI.”
“What’s an FBI agent doing here in Maury County?”
I hadn’t gotten around to asking, but I could guess. “Probably because of the murder. Rafe said he might have to contact the FBI and see if they have a task force put together for this guy. He’s killed a lot of women in a lot of states, so it makes sense that they would.”
I just hadn’t realized he’d done it yet. Rafe, I mean. Called the FBI. Judging from his expression inside the lobby earlier, he hadn’t expected to see Agent Yung. He certainly hadn’t prepared Grimaldi for her. The scene I’d witnessed bore every evidence of being adversarial, the way it would be if Yung had shown up and tried to take over.
“Tell me about it when you get here,” Charlotte instructed.
“Here?” Did we have an appointment I’d forgotten?
“You want to see the video, don’t you?”
I did. But I could look it up myself. Or she could send it to me.
I deduced, cleverly, that she wanted to show it to me in person, though. So—
“Sure, I’ll come over. Are you at your mom’s house?”
She said she was, and I dropped the phone in the console and navigated my way past the mansion, into Sweetwater proper, and down Green Street.
Charlotte was in the front parlor when I pulled up, and opened the door before I’d even latched the picket-fence gate behind me. “It must be quite the video,” I told her as I trudged up the walk to the front porch.
She smirked. “Wait until you see the comments. X-rated, some of them.”
“Jesus. I mean… sheesh. Don’t people have better things to do?”
“Apparently not,” Charlotte said, and closed the door behind me. “Put the baby down. Here.”
She handed me her phone, already cued up, and bent over Carrie. My daughter gurgled and cooed as she was lifted out of the carrier and snuggled in Charlotte’s arms. Her youngest, Richard Junior, or JR, was going on three now, so maybe she missed holding babies.
I turned my attention to the video.
It was taken from the same angle as the others, from the area down the street where I’d been parked and waiting this morning. And it started with Rafe and me coming out of the police station. He kept his hand on the small of my back on the way down the steps, and then we stopped next to the car. I watched as he pulled open the back door and put Carrie inside before turning to me. We exchanged a few words, and then he put his arm around my waist. I watched myself lean back to look up at him, and reflected that I didn’t recall doing that when I’d been standing there. It was very evident on the video, though.
A few more words were exchanged—I remembered them, but whoever had been holding the camera; probably a phone—hadn’t been close enough to catch what we said. Then I smiled up at him, and he nodded, and then he—as Charlotte had put it—laid a kiss on me that had certainly curled my toes at the time, and did it again now.
“Sheesh,” I said, my cheeks burning.
Charlotte chuckled. She was bouncing Carrie up and down, and my daughter was giggling. “Pretty hot, isn’t it?”
“It was. I just never realized what it might look like from the outside.”
“Now you know,” Charlotte said as, on the screen, I came up for air. My expression was part dazed, part aroused, and wholly embarrassing.
“Oh, my God.” I closed my eyes in mortification, as another wave of heat flooded my cheeks.
“At least you know what Rafe sees when he looks at you,” Charlotte told me, and I guess she had a point. It explained that amused chuckle he usually gave me at times like that, too.
On the screen, he waited until I was steady on my feet, and then he tucked me into the car with another quick kiss. He bounded