Ecstasy in Elk's Crossing (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (21 page)

“I wish I could be so confident that he will stay away,” Aaron said, sipping his after-meal coffee. He turned to the sheriff. “Are you sure there’s nothing the law can do about him?”

“He’s on parole, and as long as he stays in the area where he’s under court supervision, then he’s fulfilling the terms of his parole. I’ll call San Francisco and ask them to keep an eye on him, but that’s nothing they wouldn’t do anyway.” He sighed and tilted his sheriff’s hat back a little on his head. “Trust me, I’d love to slap the handcuffs on him, but for now, I’ve got no just cause to do that.”

Katie was thoroughly and completely tired of talking about David. He had done his damage, and now he was gone, and that was that as far as she was concerned. She was surrounded by her McGowan men. They loved her, and she loved all four of them. Whatever problems she had would be concerned with her being in a love relationship simultaneously with four brothers. David was now out of her life forever.

The noon crowd began filing out, but Aaron stayed at the bar, sipping his coffee.

“Go on now,” Katie said to him. “You’ve got work that needs to be done, and I’ve got work to do around here. You think the supper rush just happens smoothly without me preparing for it?”

“Maybe I should leave Garrett here to keep an eye on you? He’s still got a wounded wing that keeps him from working one hundred percent.”

Katie shook her head emphatically. “No, that’s not necessary.” She placed her hand over his on the bar and gave it an affectionate squeeze. “Tonight, when I get home after the evening rush, how about we have a party? A quiet, private McGowan-brother party.”

“With you as the main attraction?”

“The center of attention,” Katie said, keeping her voice low because there were still a few customers in the saloon other than the McGowans. “Think of me as an entertainment committee of one.”

Katie saw the lusty fire come to life in her lover’s eyes and knew in her heart she was in for a rollicking good time when she finally arrived at the Circle-Square-Circle Ranch that evening. How would they want her tonight? Who would want what? Their endless permutations and seemingly limitless sexual creativity made each night of ménage loving a new lesson in the possibilities of pleasure.

“Sure you don’t want to play?” Garrett asked, extending the hand unit of a video game toward Aaron.

“Thanks, but I just cracked a fresh one,” Aaron replied then took a long swig of cold beer to add emphasis to claim. “Besides, you kick my ass at that game every time.”

“That’s why I like playing against you.”

Aaron chuckled and took another drink of beer, turning away from his brothers. It was late, and soon Katie would be finished with her night shift at the Mountain View Saloon. Then she’d hurry to the Circle-Square-Circle Ranch, where he and his brothers would prove to her, in words and deeds, just how much they were all in love with her.

Thoughts of making love with Katie brought a smile to Aaron’s lips, but it didn’t last long. He couldn’t be away from her company without thinking about the man who hated her, and who was still on the loose. David was unfinished business, and Aaron had been working for himself too long—his whole life, in fact—to be satisfied when there was unfinished business.

He walked over to the high windows facing the east. The sun had long since set, and it was very dark outside, the moon hardly more than a sliver. The trees along the eastern windbreak seemed to be flickering a pale, almost pinkish color. Aaron studied the trees a moment, wondering what was causing the color change. There wasn’t enough moonlight for the leaves to be reflecting that.

Behind him in the room, some action on the video monitor caused his brothers to all shout in unison. Blair called out, wanting Aaron’s opinion on a contentious call. With a wave of his hand, Aaron dismissed himself and walked stocking-footed to the front door, his stomach suddenly turning a little, the beer no longer tasting fresh and clean in his mouth.

He set the beer bottle down on the dining room table, and, with each step he took, the sense of unease became stronger.

The front door wasn’t open an inch before he caught the scent of smoke on the breeze. When he opened the door wide, he saw that the barn was already well ablaze, with flames within the barn casting their colors red and gold against the windows.

“Boys! The barn’s on fire!” Aaron shouted. “Garrett, you call the fire department. The rest of you, come with me!”

As he pulled on his boots, Aaron was already doing a quick mental calculation of the contents of the barn, the livestock that would be lost, and what machinery would be destroyed. How much of the loss would insurance cover? He thought, too, of the volunteer firefighters who would come to help. If the fire had been at a different ranch, Aaron and his brothers, who were all volunteers for the Elk’s Crossing Fire Department, would be racing into town at that moment.

He started running, his long legs eating up the ground as he approached the barn. The fire had started inside the barn and had not yet made it through the windows or up to the hayloft on the second story.

How long until the fire department arrived with the old red truck, with the long hoses and the enormous water tank that had saved so many buildings in the territory over the years?

He almost ran to the enormous sliding doors on the end of the barn, but his better judgment told him to go to the much smaller side door. A fire needs oxygen, and opening the wide sliding doors would only make matters worse.

He looked into the interior of the barn from the window near the side door, and his stomach clenched. Three of the four pens were ablaze, as was the bin for the oats. The pens were empty, and he breathed a sigh of relief, only now remembering that the calves that had been in the pens had been released into the pasture just that morning.

Aaron was no expert on fires, but it didn’t take a lot of experience to understand that, barring some assistance, a fire didn’t “accidentally” start simultaneously at four or five different places inside a barn.

“How bad is it?” Blair asked, coming up fast from behind.

“We’ve lost it,” Aaron said, watching as the flames curled up along an interior wall then slid sideways along the ceiling. The old wood accepted the flames with resignation, as an old man might accept death after a long, happy life. “Don’t open the doors. Let’s wait until the fire truck gets here. All we can do is make sure we don’t lose any of the other buildings. Maybe we can save...”

His words drifted off. The ranch was too far out in the country, and the fire had been started at too many different places in the old barn, for the destruction to not be complete. He could feel the heat now radiating through the window.

* * * *

David decided he liked the smell of gasoline. What had that line been in
Apocalypse Now
? The one Robert Duvall used?
“I love the smell of napalm in the morning. It smells like…victory!”

Fuckin’ A right, it smells like victory!

He had been on a losing streak. David would admit to that, but only now that the losing streak was behind him. And he’d
known
the losing was behind him when he’d slipped secretly into the barn, splashed gasoline around, and then watched as the place so quickly and easily went ablaze. He didn’t stick around long—maybe thirty seconds after dropping the match into the gasoline-soaked hay—but it was long enough to feel the heat of the fire against his face and watch as the fire grew into a conflagration in very, very little time.

He flexed his fingers around the steering wheel of the Lexus. He’d have to get rid of it pretty soon, even if it did have completely new license plates on it that he’d stolen from a car in the parking lot of a truck stop in northern California.

Ahead of him, perhaps a mile or more away, he saw the red flashing emergency lights on an oncoming vehicle. The swirling red light cut an ominous streak through the ebony darkness of a night in deep country.

He felt his heart accelerate, and he told himself to remain calm. He was on a winning streak now. That was undeniable. All the proof he needed was to smell the gasoline can on the floor of the front seat of the Lexus and remember how beautiful it had been to watch and smell the barn take to the flames so quickly, almost greedily, as though welcoming its own destruction.

A few seconds later, driving in the opposite direction of David’s Lexus, roared the single truck belonging to the Elk’s Crossing Fire Department. The fire engine was headed, hell bent for leather, in the direction of the Circle-Square-Circle Ranch.

Too late, you dumb fucking cowboys! By now the barn’s so far gone it would take an ocean of water to put the fire out.

More proof, David decided, that he was on a winning streak. Perhaps this was
the
winning streak that would put him back on top, with a corner office on one of the upper floors that had a view of San Francisco harbor and Fisherman’s Wharf.

A minute later, a pickup truck with its emergency flashers blinking roared by David, headed for the Circle-Square-Circle and its burning barn. The pickup was traveling very fast, so David only had a glance into the cab, but it looked like there were four big men piled into the cab.

You missed the fire engine, but you’ll be just in time to watch the barn burn to the ground, you idiots! You’ll stay busy, though. Yes, you’ll stay busy running around like chickens with your heads cut off fighting that fire. That’ll be long enough for me to do what I came here to do.

If ever he’d had any doubts as to his own intellectual superiority over everyone in North Dakota, it vanished as the pickup’s taillights disappeared in his rearview mirror. Setting fire to the barn had been an act of pure, unfettered genius.

* * * *

Katie glanced at the clock, and her brow furrowed briefly. The Mountain View Saloon was completely empty of customers. A half hour earlier, the four customers that had been playing seemingly endless games of team eight-ball had suddenly tossed two twenty-dollar bills on the bar, half of them shouting something about having to leave right away. The twenties not only covered the beers, they also amounted to about a one hundred percent tip on their tab.

Had one of the cowboys suddenly remembered a promise to a wife to be home before eleven? Had one forgotten a girlfriend’s birthday? Whatever it was, Katie figured some girl or woman was going to get flowers in the morning.

Leave it to a cowboy to forget a girl’s birthday! she thought with amusement, certain that the four McGowan brothers she loved would never forget hers.

She felt a warm flush go through her. It was a common reaction whenever the reality of being in love with four men at the same time came, colliding like freight trains going in opposite directions on the same track. A sane, intelligent, sober woman like Katie simply didn’t put herself in the lurid and socially unacceptable position of being the lover of four gorgeous brothers.
Right?

The bell attached to a thin ribbon of metal over the front doors tinkled, signaling the arrival of late-night patrons. It wasn’t unusual for a couple cowboys to show up for “one last one” before closing time.

Except this time, when Katie saw who had stepped into her saloon, her heart seized in her chest, and, for just a moment, she wasn’t altogether certain she wouldn’t get sick.

“Hello, Katie. It’s good to see you again,” David said, holding a five-gallon gasoline can in his left hand and a very large kitchen carving knife in his right. “I can’t really say that I’ve missed you, though I can say that I’ve been thinking of you almost constantly since our separation.”

Just for a moment, for a time span no more than a second or two, Katie was afraid that she was going to faint.

No, no, no! the fiercely independent voice of self-preservation screamed. Fight this bastard. Don’t give up without a fight!

“What’s the matter?” David asked, his voice a little high-pitched, almost whiney. “Cat got your tongue?”

When Katie looked into his eyes, she saw his pupils, and they appeared to be no larger than pinpricks. She knew right then that he was high on cocaine. How high? And for how long had he been high? Katie hated hard drugs, and she especially hated the way David got whenever he used them. Whenever he snorted coke, he said he was going on a “power run,” which, Katie knew with dreadful experience, might mean a three-hour power run, or a three-day power run. The longer they went on, the weirder and more psychotic David’s mood swings were.

“Well? Answer me, damn it,” David said when the silence ticked on. “Or maybe you’ve finally put in one of those tongue studs? You know, the kind that I asked you to put in so it would feel good on my cock while you were sucking me.”

He’s such a sick bastard
.

She had come to the conclusion before, but now she meant it literally, both in the psychological sense and in the physical sense. His skin looked pasty, and though there was an intensity in his eyes that suggested a man vividly alive, they were red-rimmed and rheumy. Did the right side of his mouth have a twitch to it that she hadn’t noticed before?

Don’t make him angry. He’s over the edge now. This is different from all the other times he’s gone postal. This time he’s brought a knife and a gasoline can, and there’s no telling at all how many days he’s been awake without sleep.

Katie shook her head. “No, David, I never did get my tongue pierced. I know you wanted me to, but it just seemed so icky to me, I guess. Was that a big disappointment to you?”

She saw his eyes narrow as he looked at her, studying her. Clearly, he hadn’t expected her to respond in such a calm, lucid fashion. After a couple seconds, he cocked his head slightly to the side, as a dog might who has suddenly heard a sound he couldn’t recognize.

“Can I get you a drink?” Katie asked. “How about if I make you a Manhattan? Are those still your favorite?”