when you came here, and you're getting it. But no female
assistant D.A. is gonna get raped, maimed, or killed in my
county. Got that?"
He slammed her car door. Alex watched him disappear
down the dark sidewalk, wishing she'd never heard of him
or his infernal county. She commissioned him to the fiery
hell Plummet frequently expounded upon.
When she saw the headlights of the Blazer approaching,
she backed her car into the street and aimed it in the direction
of the motel that had been home for far too long. She resented
being escorted home.
She let herself into her room and locked the door behind
her, without even waving her thanks to Reede. Dinner was
a tasteless meal ordered off the room-service menu. She
thumbed through the yearbooks again, but was so familiar
with them by now that the pictures hardly registered. She
was tired, but too keyed up to go to sleep.
Junior's kiss haunted her thoughts, not because it had
sparked her sensual imagination, but because it hadn't.
Reede's kisses haunted her because he had so effortlessly
accomplished what Junior had wanted to.
Angus hadn't needed a script to know the kind of scene
he'd walked into when he had entered the hangar and found
her with Reede. His expression had been a mix of surprise,
disapproval, and something she couldn't quite put a name to.
Resignation?
She tossed and turned out of fatigue, frustration, and yes,
fear. No matter how many times she denied it, Plummet
disturbed her. He was a wacko, but his words held a ring of
truth.
She had come to care what each of her suspects thought
of her. Winning their approval had become almost as important
as winning her grandmother's. It was a bizarre fact,
one she had difficulty admitting to herself.
She didn't trust Reede, but she desired him and wanted
him to reciprocate that desire. For all his laziness, she liked
Junior and felt a twinge of pity for him. Angus fulfilled her
childhood fantasies of a stern but loving parent. The closer
she came to uncovering the truth about their connection to
her mother's death, the less she wanted to know it.
Then, there was the cloud of the Pasty Hickam murder
lurking on the horizon. Reede's suspect, Lyle Turner, was
still at large. Until she was convinced that he had killed the
Mintons's former ranch hand, she would go on believing that
Pasty had been eliminated as an eyewitness to Celina's murder.
His killer considered her a threat, too.
So, in the middle of the night, when she heard a car slowly
drive past her door, when she saw its headlights arc across
her bed, her heart leaped in fright.
Throwing off the covers, she crept to the window and
peeped through the crack between it and the heavy drape.
Her whole body went limp with relief and she uttered a small,
glad sound.
The sheriffs Blazer executed a wide turn in the parking
lot and passed her room once more before driving away.
Reede thought about turning around and going to where
he knew he could find potent liquor, a welcoming smile, and
a warm woman, but he kept the hood of his truck pointed
toward home.
He was sick with an unknown disease. He couldn't shake
it, no matter how hard he tried. He itched from the inside
out, and his gut was in a state of constant turmoil.
His house, which he had always liked for the solitude it
provided, seemed merely lonely when he opened the squeaky
screen door. When was he ever going to remember to oil
those hinges? The light he switched on did little to enhance
the living room. It only illuminated the fact that there was
nobody to welcome him home.
Not even a dog came forward to lick his hand, wagging
its tail because it was glad to see him. He didn't have a
goldfish, a parakeet, a cat--nothing that could die on him
and leave another vacuum in his life.
Horses were different. They were business investments.
But every once in a while, one would become special, like
Double Time. That had hurt. He tried not to think about it.
Refugee camps in famine-ravaged countries were better
stocked with provisions than his kitchen. He seldom ate at
home. When he did, like now, he made do with a beer and
a few saltines spread with peanut butter.
On his way down the hall, he adjusted the furnace thermostat
so he wouldn't be frozen stiff by morning. His bed
was unmade; he didn't remember what had gotten him out
of it so suddenly the last time he'd been in it.
He shed his clothes, dropping them in the hamper in the
bathroom, which Lupe's niece would empty the next time
she came. He probably owned more underwear and socks
than any man he knew. It wasn't an extravagance; it just kept
him from having to do laundry frequently. His wardrobe
consisted of jeans and shirts, mostly. Having several of each
done up at the dry cleaner's every week kept him decently
clothed.
While he brushed his teeth at the bathroom sink, he surveyed
his image in the mirror. He needed a haircut. He usually
did. There were a few more gray hairs in his sideburns than
the last time he'd looked. When had those cropped up?
He suddenly realized how lined his face had become. Anchoring
the toothbrush in the corner of his mouth, he leaned
across the sink and peered at his reflection at close range.
His face was full of cracks and crevices.
In plain English, he looked old.
Too old? For what? More to the point, too old for whom?
The name that sprang to mind greatly disturbed him.
He spat and rinsed out his mouth, but avoided looking at
himself again before he turned out the cruelly revealing overhead
light. There was no need to set an alarm. He was always
up by sunrise. He never overslept.
The sheets were frigid. He pulled the covers to his chin
and waited for heat to find his naked body. It was at moments
like this, when the night was the darkest and coldest and most
solitary, that he wished Celina hadn't ruined him for other
relationships. At any other time, he was glad he wasn't a
sucker for emotions.
At times like this, he secretly wished that he'd married.
Even sleeping next to the warm body of a woman you didn't
particularly love, or who'd gone to fat months after the wedding,
or who had let you down, or who harped about the
shortage of money and the long hours you worked, would be
better than sleeping alone.
Then again, maybe not. Who the hell knew? He would
never know because of Celina. He hadn't loved her when she
died, not in the way he'd loved her most of his life up until
then.
He had begun to wonder if their love could outlast their
youth, if it was real and substantial, or merely the best substitute
they had for other deficiencies in their lives. He would
always have loved her as a friend, but he had doubted that
their mutual dependence was a healthy foundation for a life
together.
Perhaps Celina had sensed his reservations, and that had
been one of the reasons she'd felt the need to leave for a
while. They had never discussed it. He would never know,
but he suspected it.
Months before she left for El Paso that summer, he had
been questioning the durability of their childhood romance.
If his feelings for her changed with maturity, how the hell
was he going to handle the breakup? He had still been in a
muddle about it when she had died, and it had left him wary
of forming any future relationships.
He would never let himself get that entwined with another
human being. It was deadly, having that kind of focus on
another person, especially a woman.
Years ago, he'd sworn to take what women could expediently
give him, chiefly sex, but never to cultivate tenderness
toward one again. He would certainly never come close to
loving one.
But the short-term affairs had become too complicated.
Invariably, the woman developed an emotional attachment'
that he couldn't reciprocate. That's when he'd started relying
on Nora Gail for physical gratification. Now, that had soured.
Sex with her was routine and meaningless, and lately, he was
having a hard time keeping his boredom from showing.
Dealing with a woman on any level demanded a much
higher price than he was willing to pay.
Still, even as he lay there mentally reciting his creed of
eternal detachment, he found himself thinking about her.
At this advanced stage of his life, he'd started daydreaming
like a sap. She occupied more of his thoughts than he would
have ever thought possible. At the edges of these thoughts
was an emotion very akin to tenderness, nudging its way into
his consciousness.
Nipping at the heels of it, however, was always pain: the
pain of knowing who she was and how irrevocably her conception
had altered his life, of knowing how decrepit he must
appear to a woman her age, of seeing her kiss Junior.
"Dammit."
He groaned into the darkness and covered his eyes with
his forearm as his mind tricked him into witnessing it again.
It had produced such an attack of jealousy, it had frightened
him. His fury had been volcanic. It was a wonder he hadn't
erupted from the roof of the Blazer.
How the hell had it happened? Why had he let her get to
him when absolutely nothing could come of it, except to
widen the gulf between him and Junior that had been created
by her mother?
A relationship--the word alone made him shudder--between him and Alex was out of the question, so why did it
bother him to know that to a smart, savvy career woman like
Alex, he must look like a hick, and an old one, at that?
He and Celina had had everything in common, but she'd
been unattainable, so how the hell did he imagine there was
common ground on which he and Alex could meet?
One other small point, he thought wryly. Celina's murder. Alex would never understand about that.
None of that sound reasoning, however, kept him from
wanting her. An influx of heat surged through his body now,
and with it, desire. He wanted to smell her. He wanted to
feel her hair against his cheek, his chest, his belly. Imagining
her lips and tongue against his skin cost him precious breath,
but the lack of sufficient air was worth the image. He wanted
to taste her again and tug on her nipple with his mouth.
He whispered her name in the darkness and focused on
that instant when he had slipped his hand into the cup of her
bra and caressed forbidden flesh. He was consumed by the
fire of his imagination. It burned brightly and fiercely.
Eventually, it dimmed. When it did, he was left feeling
empty and alone in the cold, dark, lonely house.