Touch of Evil (13 page)

When she could speak again, she whispered, “Oh, Ross. I need…I still want. Have to have all of you.”

She laid him on his back and kissed him hard on the mouth as she positioned herself over him. She paused then, looking thoughtfully at his left chest before splaying her long fingers above the red line of the healing, three-inch scar where the pacemaker had been inserted. Right now, it was controlling a strong and heavy rhythm. Leaning forward, she laid more kisses almost reverently between the widespread fingers covering his heart.

Looking into his face with a tenderness he’d never seen in her, she asked, “Is this all right, Ross? Are you sure you’ll be okay if…?”

Smiling to reassure her, he guided her hand lower. “Does it seem to you like my circulatory system’s having any kind of problem? This will be all right, I promise.”

And it was much more than all right, first when she took him in her mouth and coaxed him into a rhythm that started out hypnotic and built slowly toward explosive; and next, when she moved up over him and sheathed him, riding them both to a shattering climax.

With it, every bit of tension spilled forth, and Ross hugged her to him, feeling the strength flowing through him at the sight of the woman breathing hard above him.

“Oh, Lord,” she said as she climbed off him and kissed his temple. “I’d forgotten how…how good, how perfect this could be.”

Her gaze caught and held his, pain and longing and what he would swear was bone-deep loneliness all shimmering beneath the surface of her expression.

“But the sex was always good, right?” she asked him. “It was the rest of me you couldn’t handle.”

Her pulse picked up speed as she watched the change come over him, watched desire shift into alarm.
It’s for the best,
she told herself.
A necessary evil.

Leaning on his elbow, he frowned up at her as she rose. “Why do this, Justine? One moment we’re laughing, loving, and the next you—”

“I’m telling the truth, that’s all.”

“—you push me away like this,” he finished. “Why not give things a little breathing space? Give us a chance this time. Give
me
a chance to…”

She paused in the act of refastening her bra, remembering her own pain. “Maybe this time I don’t want to be the one blindsided.”
And maybe I’ll find out your cousin’s dead—or neck-deep in these killings.

“I never meant to hurt you.” The regret in his expression was nearly her undoing. She knew regret too well.

“Who says I was hurt?” She prayed he wouldn’t see through her bravado, that he wouldn’t guess she was hurting herself worse now. “I just don’t like surprises.”

“Listen to me,” he said. “There’s something I have to tell you. When I ended things with you, I wanted a clean break, yes. But not from you. It was never from you, just the way we were then, sneaking to that sleazy interstate motel and…I wanted to start over, Justine. I wanted to ask you out on real dates, pick you up at the house, and take you out to a restaurant or maybe to a movie. I wanted to bring you flowers and introduce you to my family and hang out on days off with you and Noah—”

She blinked away hot moisture. “But you didn’t, Ross. You didn’t. You told me we were over and you never called again. And you made me feel like something…something dirty. Like I’d been some kind of damned whore leading you astray.”

He looked stunned, as if she’d slapped him. “No, that’s not
what I meant. Never for a moment. I would have made you understand. If I hadn’t gotten sick.”

He hung his head. “At first, I thought it was just an upper respiratory infection, but then…Well, I’m sure you heard about what happened in the ER. I don’t mean it as an excuse but—”

“I’m sorry.” She tried not to picture him falling, collapsing almost as Lou had in the pasture. Tried not to imagine Ross hooked up to machines. “I didn’t mean to dredge that all up—and I certainly didn’t mean for things to come to this.”

“Was it really so bad?” He turned a sardonic smile her way.

She couldn’t resist smiling back. “Oh, yeah, you couldn’t tell from my reaction? But seriously, Ross, even if you had called me a few months ago, you and I are still the same people, with the same issues between us—even more now. I’m still not ready for anything more—look, it hasn’t even been a full year, since I lost my…”

My husband…my integrity. Lost my way—and then you.
It was a lot of losses in a short time, enough to leave her reeling.

“What if I said I’ve changed my mind?” Rising to his feet, he pulled her against him, his breath warm against her neck as he spoke. “What if I said I could live with whatever you’re willing to give me?”

I’d say you deserve a hell of a lot better.
But Justine couldn’t force the words free. Stepping away from him, she simply shook her head.

“What if I said you were worth it?” he asked.

I’m not.
She buttoned her shirt and grabbed the gun belt. On her way to the door, she looked back over her shoulder at his honest, handsome face.

Mastering her emotions, she said, “I’m leaving. I’m going to find Roger’s killer, and I’m going to find Laney. Until we know for certain they aren’t the same person, I think we’d
both be better off tabling this discussion. Or maybe permanently forgetting it would be best.”

She walked out of the house, throat aching. She half hoped he would call to her, or perhaps rush to catch up. But Ross Bollinger did neither, though she waited in her vehicle for some time before starting the engine and shifting into gear.

Popular novels and movies often depict frontier judicial hangings as rushed, haphazard, and bloodthirsty affairs. The majority, however, were carefully considered, with much study given to the most efficacious rope material, type and position of the knot, and the precise length of the drop. There is ample evidence the hangman took much pride in crafting a quick, “clean” kill, that is to say, one that offered no disturbing evidence of the condemned’s suffering. On the other hand, those hangings marred by prolonged death throes, alarming bodily reactions, or, most egregious of all, the executee’s decapitation were described in period newspapers as “disastrous” or “disgraceful,” with the hangman’s “sloppy efforts” blamed for the fainting of the more sensitive ladies in attendance.

—Professor Elizabeth Farnum, PhD from “A Natural History of Death in Texas,”

Water slanted toward Ross, shining silver nails of liquid heat. But not comfort, though he remained in the shower long past the few minutes it took to wash and shave. Past the time, in fact, when warmth gave way to first a tepid and then a frigid assault as the hot-water heater emptied.

Shivering, he stepped out, drying himself with a borrowed towel from his aunt’s linen closet and dressing in fresh jeans and a fatigue shirt he had brought from home.

But he didn’t feel a damned bit better, not with regret clinging to his skin like a stubborn film. Regret that the sex, as good as it was, hadn’t done a thing to erase Justine’s pain
and distrust. And regret that making love had distracted both of them from what was most important—finding Laney as soon as possible, seeing that she was safe from both the threat of violence and the law.

Hurrying to make up for lost time, he decided to go through his cousin’s belongings before Justine showed up with a search warrant and hauled everything off. Once in Laney’s bedroom, he pushed past his reluctance to breach her privacy in earnest, rather than just skimming the surface as he and Trudy had last night.

From Laney’s drawers to her closet, purses, and backpack, Ross went through everything methodically. In a bottom desk drawer, he located a file stuffed with an array of e-mail printouts, letters, and notes—more than a few of them on cocktail napkins—that at first appeared to be from Laney’s fans. Flipping through them, Ross smiled at those that compared her voice to some famous singer, or told her they were rooting for her to really make it big. But some of the notes disturbed him, including several that expressed too graphic an interest in her body and one that sent chills exploding outward from his center. Written in red pen, in scratched-out block letters, it was at the bottom of the folder, inside a plain white business envelope.

WHY DO YOU LOOK AT ALL OF THEM AND NEVER ME, BITCH? ARE YOU LAUGHING AT ME UP THERE? LAUGHING AT ME WITH THEM, TELLING YOUR FUCKING FRIENDS HOW YOU WOULD NEVER HAVE ANYONE AS PITIFUL AS I AM?

Surely such a note would have upset Laney, so why hadn’t she mentioned it? Ross wondered. Why hadn’t she called the sheriff’s department to report it?

But then, it hadn’t been a threat, exactly, and it was possible Laney wouldn’t want to give her family any more ammunition to criticize her choice in careers. But Ross was damned well going to bring it to Justine’s attention as soon as he had finished his search.

Forcing himself to put aside the file, he dug deeper into the drawer, where he uncovered the answer to one mystery, in the form of a new cellular phone contract. Beneath it, he found an older contract and put together the pieces. The phone he’d found, it seemed, was an old one from her last plan, with a different cell phone carrier whose contract would expire in the next week.

Come to think of it, Trudy had mentioned Laney’s complaints about her phone service. She must have grown tired enough of frequent dropped calls and lost messages to switch a week or—he rechecked the new contract—three before her old plan ran out.

Which must mean that her new phone had a different number, which for some reason wasn’t written on the contract. If he could find that number somewhere, maybe he could reach her. Find her at some friend’s place and simply ask her to come home.

And everything could go back to the way it had been. Normal, with the exception of the three deaths gnawing like disease through the county’s well-being—and infecting every facet of his cousin’s life.

That’s one hell of an exception,
Ross thought as he dug through random slips of paper in Laney’s top desk drawer, which she used to hold an array of junk.

He didn’t have to dig far before finding what looked like a pink sticky note with the slant of Laney’s neat script.
New #,
it read, before a string of digits.

Pulling out his own phone, Ross dialed. As the line began to ring, he whispered, “Pick up, Laney. Pick up.”

Just as he expected voice mail to kick in, someone answered. Sounding as if he’d just awakened, the man said, “Hey, Ross. How’s it going? Forgot I’d given you this number.”

“Kenneth?”
Ross could barely get the name out, he was so astonished. Why would Dr. Kenneth Fleming answer his cousin’s cell phone? “Is this your phone?”

Kenneth’s bark of laughter sounded more like a seal’s than that of the baby-faced ER doc. “Course it’s mine. Forget who you were calling?”

There was a long pause as Ross struggled to collect himself.

“Are you still there?” Sounding fully awake and alert now, Kenneth’s voice grew serious. “Is something wrong, Ross? Do you need—”

“Not from you,” Ross snapped, irritated with his coworker’s concern. “I was trying to get hold of Laney. I thought this might be her new number. She had it written down here.”

This time Kenneth hesitated so long that Ross demanded, “Why’s she have
your
number, Kenneth? You don’t know my cousin, do you?”

“I’ve listened to her sing a few times,” Kenneth admitted. “Other than that, I wouldn’t say I really know her.”

But Ross heard evasiveness in his voice. The same hedging he had heard on more than one occasion at work. When narcotic painkillers turned up missing. When Ross told Kenneth that his wife had called, certain he was at work in those days before she’d left him,

“Don’t bullshit me, man,” Ross growled. “Is Laney there? Is she with you now?”

Though it nauseated him to think of his beautiful and talented young cousin involved with a fat-assed screwup twenty years her senior, Ross reminded himself of his own infatuation with a woman under investigation for corruption. But Kenneth Fleming was no Justine, who, for all her complications, was still a gorgeous, fascinating woman with a core of
genuine decency…an enigma he could spend his life unraveling.

“Laney’s not here,” Kenneth said carefully. “I haven’t seen her today.”

“Did you see her last night, then? And I swear to you,” Ross added, “if you don’t want me showing up at your place and shaking the truth out of you, you’d better give it to me straight.”

“Listen,” Kenneth said. “Yeah, I asked her out a few times. We did have coffee last week, but—”

“Christ, Kenneth. It’s only been a month since her boyfriend was found dead.”

“I never thought I’d have a chance with her, you know, her looking like she does and me looking like…well, you know…”

Was it possible some women found Kenneth’s hangdog self-abasement charming? Or maybe pitiful enough to lull them into supposing he was a hapless victim of his own life?

“Just coffee?” Ross asked, still suspicious.

“Look,” Kenneth said, “I was lonely; she was lonely. I’ll admit, I didn’t ask her out for conversation.”

“She’s
twenty-two,
you asshole.”

“Thing is, it wasn’t about sex, either,” Kenneth assured him. “I, um, I hate admitting this, but it was more that I wanted the boost of being seen with someone young and gorgeous. Or maybe I wanted Connie to hear about it.”

Ross murmured an acknowledgment, understanding on some level that Kenneth still wanted his ex-wife back. But that didn’t mean he believed for a minute that Kenneth hadn’t been interested in sleeping with Laney.

“But Laney’s turned out to be a really good listener,” Kenneth continued, “and when she opens up about all her plans for the future…she reminds me of the way I felt ten years ago, back when I still had hope.”

Having been burned by the man’s lies in the past, Ross
couldn’t care less about Kenneth’s hopes and dreams. “Do you have her new number?”

“She got a new phone?” Kenneth asked. “She looked at mine, and I told her about the great deal I got on it. She said she might look into it.”

After another few minutes of conversation, Ross realized that Kenneth either didn’t know or wasn’t sharing anything of value.

“If you hear from her, ask her to call me,” Ross said. “And then
you
call, too, and leave me her phone number. It’s really important that I reach her. Something happened with her mother on the cruise. They’re airlifting her to a hospital in Miami.”

“Do they know what it is?” Kenneth’s concern sounded genuine.

“No idea yet,” Ross told him, since the invention had only this moment sprung to mind. Laney was going to kill him when she found out he had used such a cruel lie to force her to make contact. But with her life, and possibly her freedom, challenged, he didn’t have much of a choice, did he?

Finding Laney, seeing her safe, was the only thing that mattered.

After one of her deputies spent nearly an hour confirming that the Elaine Thibodeaux to whom the phone had been registered was definitely
their
Laney Thibodeaux, Justine harassed the cellular communications company again about triangulating the location from the signal.

“Can’t give you coordinates I don’t have.” The technician sounded irritable, tired of explaining the obvious to those who weren’t fluent in geek-speak. “As I told your deputy earlier, it’s the same situation we have with the phone registered to Mr. Savoy—”

“Chief Deputy Savoy.” Justine might’ve fired Roger, but he’d held the title too long to deprive him of it now.

“Of course, sorry. We have no way to find either phone right now. They’re either shut off, nonfunctional, or in a dead zone.”

Justine hoped Laney Thibodeaux didn’t turn out to be in a dead zone, too.

“Listen, there are a few things we can try.” He went on to explain some technology she couldn’t follow.

“You have all my numbers. You get a bead on that phone by any method, I want you to call me personally. No one else.”

Instinct warned her not to allow her men to get out ahead of her on this investigation. Not with one of their own murdered and several of them already muttering about how they would damned well get some answers out of Laney Thibodeaux if they had ten minutes with her in an interview room.

Most of it was talk, she knew, the release valve for their grief and stress—the shock of finding Savoy shot dead with a noose draped around his neck. She’d given them the usual lecture about how even the whiff of professional misconduct could give a defense attorney ammunition to get a murderer off the hook, and how they needed to pull together instead of letting Roger’s death tear them apart.

She walked to the break room for a refill on her coffee, but stopped outside, her feet freezing at the slippery sounds of lowered voices from within.

“You figure Bitchford was thinking in terms of ‘pulling together this department’”—the phrase was spoken in a high-pitched parody of a female voice—“when she fired Roger’s ass?”

“Goddamned cunt.” The ugly words hit like a gut punch, the voice Paul Miller’s, she thought. “Might’ve been smart enough to try for a distraction with that noose, but she didn’t even have the sense to get the body off her property.”

Justine wanted to charge in and light into him, but she
hesitated for a moment, hoping some cooler head would prevail. Instead, the first speaker continued. “Everybody in the department—hell, half the people in this county—knew there was bad blood between the two of them. You ask me,
she’s
the one
we
ought to be sweating in the interview room right now.”

“What about her kid?” a younger voice asked. Calvin Whittaker’s. “There’s no way she’d put a noose on his neck, too. I saw how upset she was. She’d never—”

“Trying to throw us off the trail,” Deputy Baker theorized, his deep voice unmistakable.

“But don’t you worry,” Paul said—she was certain of it this time. “Bitchford’s going to get hers. She was riding for a fall before, but this time, she’s not fucking getting off so easy.”

“Come on, guys,” Calvin Whittaker broke in again. “I know we’re all upset, but you’re crazy, talking about the sheriff that way. Besides, how’d you like to hear a bunch of guys trash-talking your wife or your mama using that kinda language?”

A volley of insults ensued, including various disparagements of Calvin’s manhood and the strong assertion that Justine probably wasn’t the type to “give it up” for some candy-ass suck-up, so why didn’t he just go back to his mama’s titty anyway? Furious that the older men would pounce on her defender, Justine was again tempted to blaze in demanding badges.

But sticking up for Calvin, she decided, would do him no favors at this juncture; nor would confrontation do a damned thing to change the way the remaining men of this department felt about her.

Results,
her father had told her before she’d left Noah in his care.
You need results fast right now. It’s the only chance you’ve got. If you would have worked double-time to solve the murder of any of your men, you’re gonna have to make it triple
for the man who spoke against you. Only then will they start saying you’re fair about things anyway—and that might end up being the first step in building respect.

What if it isn’t?
she had asked him.

Then you pick yourself up and try the next thing and the next thing. Never give ’em any inkling you might have it in you to give up.

Good advice, she thought, grateful her father had shared it even when she didn’t feel like listening. So instead of confronting the gossips, or even demanding they get back to their assigned tasks, Justine took a deep breath and turned back to her office, her mug still empty, to do a little computer research until she calmed down.