Dark Waters (2013) (4 page)

Did his visitor know he was out here?

Leaving the bottle on the deck, he carefully slipped over the side of the porch and melted into the night. It was pitch-black in the woods, but he’d grown up here and knew every tree and hollow. He made his way along the side of the shed and ducked into the forest. Over the last year, he’d gradually stopped listening to the scanner for signs of trouble, stopped keeping firearms in the house. He’d gotten soft, but not stupid. Silently he dropped to his knees beside a massive Sitka spruce that was technically on his neighbor’s property. If she found out about his little cache, she’d be pissed. He swept dirt and dead needles off the top of a waterproof box he’d sunk into the ground, and removed his SIG Sauer. He replaced the lid and covered it as best he could in the dark. He got his bearings, and found the tree where he’d hidden his ammo. He grabbed a magazine and headed up to the road,
circling around. He inched down an old trail and came up behind where the shadow had been.

Darkness cloaked the clearing where his house sat but his night vision was sharp. And damned if the woman—put a man in prison long enough and he could spot a female blindfolded at twenty paces—wasn’t climbing his porch steps shining her flashlight around the place like a laser show. Maybe she was a thief? Maybe someone had figured out Brent Carver was B.C. Wilkinson and sitting on a shedload of very expensive artwork? Then she knocked on his back door.

What the…?

He rubbed his hand over his brow. He was stark naked except for his gun, and now some woman was standing on his deck? He hoped to hell she wasn’t a Jehovah’s Witness, because she was about to have a
come-to-Jesus
moment.

But she could still be armed and dangerous. He’d pissed off enough bad guys in the joint to be wary of anyone turning up in the middle of the night. Hell, no one visited here, period.

“Hello?” She pressed her ear to his door. “Mr. Carver?” she said louder. Her shoulders sagged when no one answered.

He didn’t recognize her voice. He moved fast and silent across the clearing, padded up the stairs just as she reached for the doorknob.

“You’re trespassing.”

She jolted, her hand going to her heart as she spun to face him. “Oh, my God. You scared me.”

Never admit fear
.

“I don’t like visitors, lady.”

Her flashlight dipped and then shot back to his face, almost blinding him. She swallowed, taking in his lack of clothes and keeping her eyes north of the hot spots. “You’re naked.”

“I was in bed.” He didn’t know why he needed to explain himself.

Her voice came out like gravel. “I’m looking for Brent Carver.”

“I’m looking for peace and quiet. Looks like we’re both screwed.”

“You’re Brent?” Her free hand slipped into her bag, and he grabbed her wrist and pinned her against his door before she could get the drop on him. She went ballistic and tried to whack him with the flashlight. He jerked it out of her fingers and threw it behind them. She felt tiny and delicate, crushed between him and that solid piece of oak, although her lungs were in full working order.

Shit, his ears hurt.

“No one will hear you, so you might as well stow it.” She jammed one hand against his chin, squirming like an eel, then went for gold by trying to knee him in the nuts. He deflected the attack and pressed her tighter against the door, wedging her there with his body. She barely came up to his chin but fought like a wild thing. “Want to tell me who you are and why you’re knocking on my door in the middle of the night?” He concentrated on making sure he didn’t injure her while he tried to check out what she was going for in her purse.

She scratched sharp fingernails down his arm, drew in a breath to scream even louder. Her breasts pushed against his chest, which would have worked for him in a big way if she wasn’t so goddamn terrified. Sonofa-
fucking
-bitch.

Why me?

He had nowhere to stick his gun so he removed the pocketbook from her fingers and stepped back, keeping a wary eye on her bloodthirsty knee. She stood there stunned, trembling, and breathing heavily. He didn’t think it had anything to do with his dazzling good looks.

“You bastard.” Her chin snapped up. “You aren’t Brent Carver.”

He cocked a brow. “What makes you say that?” He searched her bag, more by touch than sight in the darkness. A cell phone, wallet, keys, tampons, tissues. No gun or shank.

“He’s a respectable painter. He’s not some nutcase who runs about in the middle of the night, waving around a gun,
among
other things
,” she muttered darkly. “Attacking innocent, defenseless women.”

The scratches on his arm stung enough for him to snort out a laugh at that. Her eyes narrowed. He watched moonlight flow over her features, fine boned and delicate, except for the tight clench of her jaw.

There was no obvious threat in her pocketbook, but it didn’t mean he should let his guard down. He needed clothes. For some crazy reason, he was getting a little turned on by Miss Prim and Proper telling him who and what he was. It was probably being naked and within a hundred yards of anything two legged and female, but he didn’t want to scare her any more than he had already. He wasn’t a hound. Nor was he under any illusion about what she thought might happen when he grabbed her. Someone had jumped him in the shower once and lost their eye for the trouble. Hell, most people thought he was evil incarnate and that was the way he liked it. He reached past her and opened the door. “Inside. Now.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.” She tried to dodge aside.

He grabbed her by the shoulders and forced her across his threshold. “You want to meet Brent? I’ll take you to him.” Her eyes were so huge with fear she looked like she’d been electrocuted. But she’d come to him, she had to play by his rules.

“Get your hands off me!”

An elbow in the gut made Brent let her go. Jeez, she was a touchy little thing. He rubbed his stomach. It wasn’t like he was creeping around her place while she was nude, because he was damn sure she’d be crying bloody murder and he’d be waving at everyone from the back of a police cruiser. This was
his
property. It was nighttime. He’d been in bed. Kind of.

“I don’t even know what I’m doing here.” The tiredness in her voice hit him differently than her anger had.

“That makes two of us.” He opened the door to the laundry room just off to one side and snagged a pair of clean jeans from the top of the basket. Resting the gun and her bag on the washing machine, he kept his eye on her as he pulled the jeans on and zipped his manhood back into place. Then he dragged a black T-shirt over his head, grabbed his gun and her pocketbook, and skirted past her into the living room. He didn’t turn on the light.

She hovered uncertainly in the hallway near the kitchen before following him through the moonlit house to stand beside the couch opposite.

Hair brushed her shoulders in a dark mess. Eyes, wide and bright as a spaniel’s but not as full of terror as before. Hands were tightly clasped, betraying nerves she was trying hard to conceal. She wore a blouse, edged with silver ribbon that glinted in the darkness, and shorts that hit mid thigh and showed off a pair of very fine legs. The sneakers on her feet were the only concession to trekking through the wilderness.

“What do you want with good old Brent?”

“None of your business. Where is he?”

She looked vaguely familiar but he couldn’t place her. “I’m his PA. Persuade me you need to talk to him and I’ll wake him.”

She shifted her feet. “It’s personal. I’d rather talk to him.”

Stubborn, that was for damn sure. “No one talks to Brent unless they go through me first.” Hell, he
should
hire a PA to deal with all the bullshit that came his way, but then he’d be stuck with someone in his house 24-7 and he’d rather not deal with people, period.

He watched the internal struggle play out across her features. Dark eyes narrowing over a cute snub nose, her sweet bow of a mouth thinning, the delicate line of her throat rippling as she swallowed her frustration.

Stymied.

He smiled grimly.

She leaned forward an inch. “I’m…er…in trouble—”

“Pregnant?” No one was pinning a paternity suit on his ass and he’d sure as hell remember doing hers.

“Don’t be an idiot,” she snapped.

Ouch
. He absently rubbed his sternum. She started pacing the hardwood. “Although maybe
I’m
the idiot. I’ve come all this way on nothing more than one of his stupid whims.” She wiped her hands over her eyes. “Brent’s probably as trustworthy as my father was—”

“Was?” he interrupted sharply. “What do you mean
was
?” His mouth went dry because he suddenly knew where he’d seen her before. And he knew who her father
was
. He tried to swallow, but the muscles in his throat tightened like a noose.

Her eyes shimmered in the night, so young, so beautiful. Anna Silver. Her father had been his cellmate for five long years and had read her letters out loud to him so often Brent felt like he knew her inside out. But he didn’t. She was a stranger.

“He died.” Her voice cracked but he made no move to comfort her. A huge cavern of darkness opened up inside him, trying to consume him whole.

“I think he was murdered.”

His head jerked up. “What?”

She nodded toward her purse, which he handed back to her. “Last night I received a voice mail from him. That’s what I was trying to show you when you slammed me against the door.”

“I barely touched you,” he snarled.

“You had no clothes on! And have a gun—”

“You’re damn lucky I didn’t shoot you. Christ knows, I’m starting to regret it myself,” he muttered the last. He tried not to think about Davis. It hurt. Like losing Gina all over again. “Ex-cons aren’t the sort of people you drop in on, especially at”—he glanced at the clock on the stove—“two a.m. How the
hell
did you get here?” He dragged his hand through his hair. The water taxi closed hours ago.

She looked away from him. “I flew into Vancouver late last night. Contacted a pilot I’ve used before who flew me into Victoria on his floatplane. I got a few hours’ sleep and then drove up here. When I got to Bamfield, I borrowed a rowboat to get across the inlet, and tied it to the public dock. I figured I’d return it before anyone noticed it was gone.” She kept rubbing her thumbs over one another, actions that belied her no-nonsense attitude. “Dad wrote to me once describing the house and exactly how to get here.”

Brent was intimately acquainted with how much Davis liked to write to his kid. But she was talking about hours of driving on rough logging roads in the Canadian bush at night. Anything could have happened. His stomach churned just thinking about it.

Moonlight flooded the room as clouds shifted across the sky; everything turned bright cold monochrome.

“It wasn’t that hard. Now go and wake Brent Carver so I can figure out what to do next.” The edge to her voice was back as if she were clinging to her temper by the thinnest of margins.

“I’m Brent.”

Something flashed in her eyes. “Oh, please. I’m not stupid.”

Brent figured there were all kinds of stupid, and went over to the kitchen drawer where he kept his wallet. He tossed it to her, not wanting to get too close in case he gave in to the desire to throttle her.

“If you’re lucky,” he sneered, upper lip curling because he’d rather bait her than think about her father, “I’ll show you my etchings.” She was pissing him off and he wasn’t known for his charm or patience.

She took out his driver’s license and squinted at him through the darkness. Damned if he was putting on a light so she could examine him more thoroughly. That thought brought a hot wave of sexual awareness bolting though his blood, and sweat broke out across his back.
Great
. Because twenty years of frustration wasn’t torture enough.

She pursed her lips and stared him down. Not bad for a rookie.

Then it hit him. Davis was dead. His best friend was gone. His throat stretched taut as emotion crushed him. He strode to the window to stare at the sea that glistened with silver ribbons, anything to avoid dealing with the tsunami of grief that wanted to demolish him.

Davis had barely survived his first week in prison. Despite Brent being more than a decade younger than Anna’s father, he’d already been in jail for fourteen years when Davis had arrived,
which made him vastly more experienced when it came to staying alive. He’d taken pity on the older guy, stood up for him, and taught him how to survive in a place where weakness meant years of humiliation or death. In return he’d found a friend in a place where they didn’t usually exist.

The sound of Anna’s breathing was louder than the surf. She was fighting for control, trying to manage what would likely be one of the worst days of her life, and he was being an insensitive prick.

“Why do you think he was murdered?” he asked gruffly.

He heard a rustle as she dug for her cell. The electronic ding as she turned it on.

“
Anna, I’m in big trouble.
” Davis’s voice punched him with memories. Five years in an eight-by-ten cell surrounded by Brent’s canvases and the smell of paint as they dissected each other’s lives from top to bottom, and watched each other’s backs. “
But I didn’t do anything wrong, I swear it. I’m on my way to the FBI offices, but they’re too close. I’m never going to make it! They’re gonna kill me. They’re gonna be looking for their money. I mailed you the printouts but they don’t know where I sent it.
You
know. Take the information to the feds.
”