Strangers in the Night (18 page)

“No thanks, Lilah,” Lowell answered. “We need to get on back. Thanks for offering, but I've drunk so much coffee since midnight I doubt I'll sleep for two days.”

“The damage?” Jackson prompted, taking charge of the conversation again.

“Power was out over most of the county, but it's back on now all except for Pine Flats. A lot of trees went down, and there's roof damage to a bunch of houses, but only one actually went into a house, the LeCroy place out near Washington
High School. Mrs. LeCroy was hurt pretty bad; she's in the hospital in Mobile.”

“Any car wrecks?”

Lowell gave him a weary look. “More than you can count.”

“Okay. Sorry I wasn't on hand to help.”

“I'm just sorry it took us so long to get out here, but with the storms the way they were, only a fool would have gone out on the water.”

“I didn't expect anybody to risk their lives coming after me. I was okay, just stranded.”

“We weren't sure, what with Jo telling us she sent you here after Thaniel Vargas. But Thaniel seemed okay, not nervous or anything, and he played dumb, said he hadn't been up here and hadn't seen you.”

“You saw him?” Jackson asked sharply.

“He helped us get a tree out of the highway. Anyway, we figured the storm had caught you. We didn't want to take any chances, since you could have run into some other kind of trouble out here, so we came looking.”

Jackson shook his head. He never would have figured Thaniel capable of that much brass; maybe that thick-headed act was more of an act than
If so, he'd have to take Thaniel a lot more seriously than he had before. Walking down to the dock, he handed the shotgun to Alvin and stepped into the boat. “Well, let's go to work,” he said. He turned and raised his hand. “Thanks for feeding me, Miss Jones.”

“You're welcome,” she called, smiling as she hugged her arms against the early-morning chill. She waved them good-bye, a wave both deputies returned, then went back into the house.

Jackson settled onto a boat seat. “Y'all seem to know Miss Jones pretty well,” he said, driven by curiosity.

“Sure.” Lowell got behind the wheel. “We went to school together.”

It was such a prosaic answer that Jackson felt like smacking himself in the head. Of course she had attended school; she hadn't lived her entire life marooned upriver. He had a mental image of a small, solemn Lilah sitting in that little flat-bottom boat, clutching her schoolbooks, being ferried back and forth in all kinds of weather.

Because he wanted to know, he asked, “How did she get back and forth to school?”

“Boat,” Alvin said. “Her daddy brought her.
He'd take her to the park ramp, closest to school. If the weather was good, he'd walk her the rest of the way. If it was raining, a teacher would meet them and give her a ride.”

At least he wouldn't have to fret about that young Lilah being left alone at the boat docks, Jackson thought; her father had been concerned for her safety. Though why he would fret about something so long in the past was beyond him.

The trip downriver was much more leisurely than his risky dash up it the day before. The swollen river was full of trash, making caution necessary. Jackson hoped he'd see two boats tied to the shore when they got to the ramp, but no such luck.

“I wonder what Thaniel did with Jerry Watkins's boat,” he growled.

“No telling,” Lowell said. “The damn fool probably just turned it loose. Jerry will be fit to be tied; he set a store by that boat.”

At least Jerry Watkins would have insurance on his boat; Jackson very much doubted Lilah would have it on hers. How would she replace it? He gave his bank account a quick mental check; one way or the other, Lilah would have another boat—by
tomorrow, if he couldn't find hers. He couldn't bear the thought of her being completely stranded out there, though she was so damn competent he could see her hiking into town if necessary, even though it had to be twenty, maybe thirty miles around. But what if she got sick, or injured herself. She chopped her own wood, for God's sake. He went cold at the thought of an ax buried in her foot.

She had become more important to him, faster than anyone he had ever known. Twenty-four hours ago he hadn't known she existed. Within two hours of meeting her, he'd been in bed with her, and he'd spent the most erotic, exciting night of his life in her arms. He had climaxed so many times he doubted he'd get a hard-on for days. Then he thought of Lilah, waiting for him, and a sudden pooling of heat in his groin told him he had miscalculated. He jerked his thoughts back to the day's work before he embarrassed himself.

The Watkins truck was still sitting where Charlotte had parked it, boat trailer still hitched to it. At least a tree hadn't come down on the truck during the storms; that would be the final
insult to a good deed. He looked around; there were some small branches scattered around the parking area, but nothing substantial.

Lowell eased the boat into the bank and both Jackson and Alvin climbed out. While Alvin went to the truck to back the trailer into the water, Jackson surveyed the area. Yesterday he'd been in too much of a hurry to think about details, but now his cop's eye swept the launch ramp, not missing a thing. The parking area was surprisingly large, given how isolated and little-used the launch ramp was. But … was it little-used? The area was free of weeds, showing that there was a good bit of traffic. The sandy dirt showed evidence of a lot of different tire tracks, more than he expected. That was strange, given what Jo had said about the best fishing being downriver.

Lowell and Alvin competently took the boat out of the water. They had come in two vehicles, one county car and then the truck pulling the boat, which Jackson assumed they had borrowed from the Rescue Squad. That made five vehicles he could count since yesterday afternoon: his, Thaniel's, Charlotte Watkins's, and now these two. The rain had destroyed all but the deepest
tracks, but he could still make out at least three more sets of tracks besides the ones he knew about.

Now, why would there be so much river traffic up here? The fishing wasn't good, and right past Lilah's the river got too shallow for boat traffic. He tried to think of a logical explanation for the tracks. Being in law enforcement, his first thought was that maybe drug dealers were meeting here, but he discarded that idea. It was too open, and though Old Boggy Road wasn't the busiest road in the world, there was occasional traffic on it. As if to prove it, at that moment a farmer drove by in a pickup truck, and he craned his neck to see what was going on.

No, drug dealers would find a place where they were less likely to attract attention. So … who was coming here, and why?

He strolled over to Lowell and Alvin. “This little ramp gets a lot of use, doesn't it?”

“A fair amount,” Lowell agreed.

“Why?”

They both gaped at him. “Why?” Alvin echoed.

“Yeah. Why does it get so much use? Only
someone who doesn't know the river would come up here to fish.”

To his surprise, both deputies shifted uncomfortably. Lowell cleared his throat. “I guess folks go to visit Lilah.”

“Miss Jones?” Jackson clarified, wanting to make certain there wasn't another Lilah in the area.

Lowell nodded.

Looking around the area, Jackson said, “From all these tire ruts, I'd say she gets a lot of company.” He tried to picture a steady stream of visitors to Lilah's isolated little house upriver, but just couldn't.

“Some,” Lowell agreed. “A lot of women go to see her.” He coughed. “And—uh, some men, too, I guess.”

“Why is that?” A variety of wild reasons ran through his mind. Marijuana? He couldn't see Lilah growing marijuana, but the place was certainly isolated enough. He didn't let himself seriously consider that. Women didn't go to backwoods women for abortions anymore, either, so that was out. Nothing illegal, for sure, because his deputies obviously knew about whatever was
going on up there, and had done nothing to stop it. The only thing he could think of that made sense was so ridiculous he couldn't believe it.

“Don't tell me she really is a witch!” He could just see it now, boat after boat making its way upriver for spells and potions. She had denied the witch thing, said she didn't know anything about spells, but in his experience people lied all the time. He dealt with serial liars on a daily basis.

“Nothing like that,” Alvin said hastily. “She's kind of an old-timey healer. You know, she makes poultices and stuff.”

Poultices and stuff. Healer. Of course. It was so obvious, Jackson wondered that he hadn't seen it. Relief spread through him. His imagination had been running wild, a sick feeling congealing in his gut. He had just found her, a woman who appealed to him on every level, and he couldn't bear the thought of her being involved in something shifty. He didn't know where this thing between him and Lilah was going, but he intended to follow it to the end.

“It's how she makes her living,” Lowell said. “People buy herbs and things from her. A lot of
folks go to her rather than a doctor, because she's so good at telling them what's wrong.”

He wanted to grin. Instead he collected his vest and shotgun from the boat and said, “Well, let's go round up Thaniel Vargas. Even if we get the boats back and Jerry Watkins doesn't press charges against him, I want to scare about ten years off the bastard's life.”

T
haniel Vargas was nowhere to be found. He had gone to ground somewhere, Jackson figured, waiting for the trouble to blow over. Because things were still kind of busy in the county, with the continuing power outage in Pine Flats and cleaning up from the storm, Jackson couldn't devote a lot of time or manpower to finding him.

More than anything, he wanted to get back upriver to Lilah's house, but it just wasn't possible that day. Besides the problems from the storm, the blue moon craziness was still in full force. At traffic court that day, a woman totally lost it and tried to get out of paying a speeding ticket by holding
the judge hostage. Why anyone in her right mind would want to trade a simple fine of fifty bucks for a felony charge was beyond Jackson. Getting the courthouse settled down took several hours out of his day, hours when he needed to be somewhere else.

He got home at midnight that night, tired and disgruntled and aching with frustration. He wanted Lilah. He
needed
Lilah, needed the simple serenity of her, the quietness of her home that was such a contrast to his hectic days. They had known each other for such a short period of time, he wasn't certain that they had anything more than a one-night stand, brought about as much by circumstance as by mutual attraction. But he had been her first lover, her only lover; Lilah wasn't the type of woman to have a one-night stand. For her, making love meant something. It had meant something to him, too, something more than any of his other love affairs.

Lilah was special: honest, witty, with the bite of irony he enjoyed, and gutsy. She was also sexy as hell, with her well-toned, femininely muscled body and her cloud of curly hair that just begged to have his hands in it.

Though he was her first lover, she hadn't shrunk from anything he wanted to do. She had met him halfway in everything, enjoying what he did to her as much as he enjoyed doing it, and returning the favor. He couldn't imagine such uncomplicated joy ever getting boring.

Until now, his house had suited him perfectly. It was an older house, with high ceilings and cranky plumbing, but he'd had the main bathroom completely redone, and the kitchen, not that he was much on cooking. It had just seemed like a smart thing to do. His bed was big enough for him, not like Lilah's too-short, too-narrow bed. They'd had to sleep double-decker, when they slept—not a big sacrifice. He'd liked having her sprawled on top of him, when he wasn't on top of her.

But now his house felt … empty. And noisy. He hadn't realized until now how much noise a refrigerator made, or a water heater. The central air system blotted out the night's sounds of crickets and the occasional chirp of a bird.

He wanted Lilah.

He took a cold shower instead, and crawled into his big, cold, empty bed, where he lay
awake, muscles aching, eyes burning with fatigue, and thought of that first searing, electric moment when he pushed into Lilah's body. That got him so hard he groaned, and he tried not to think about sex at all. But then her breasts came to mind, and he remembered the way her nipples had peaked in his mouth when he sucked her, and how she had moaned and squirmed when he went down on her.

Sweat sheened his body, despite the air conditioning. Swearing, he got out of bed and took another cold shower. He finally got to sleep about two o'clock, only to dream erotic dreams and wake up needing, wanting Lilah even more than before.

A
T EIGHT TWENTY-ONE
in the morning, Thaniel Vargas's body was found floating in the river. He was easily identified because his wallet was still stuffed in his jeans pocket, along with a can of chewing tobacco. If it hadn't been for his wallet, his own mother would have been hard-pressed to identify him, because he'd been shot in the face with a shotgun.