Darker Than Desire (38 page)

Peter.

The beast.

Slowly, she lifted her head and stared at Bell. A smile spread across Sarah's face before she could stop it. She opened her mouth, but even as the words started to form, the door opened.

A tall man, his skin dark and smooth, stood in the doorway. “Detective Bell, in the hall, if you would.”

“Not now, Dean. Answer the question, Miss Yoder.”

“Do not answer that question.” The man came forward, scooped up the papers. “A public defender has been called. He'll be in to speak with you shortly.”

*   *   *

“Dean, what the
fuck
?”

He spun around on Jensen, his eyes flashing. “Don't.”

“I'm going to fucking kick your ass over this,” she growled, storming over to him and shoving her face into his.

“Save the kinky stuff for bed, darlin'.” A muscle pulsed in his cheek, his dark eyes glittering. “Do you have
any
idea what we're dealing with here?
Any
idea?”

“Yes!” She practically shouted it. “And you just stopped me from getting a confession.”

“If you'd gone forward, I could have gotten that case thrown out.” Dean said it in a flat, level tone. Crossing his arms over his chest, he leaned back against the desk, glad everybody else had decided to vacate the small conference room. “Now I'm good—I'm damn good—and frankly, Jefferson County doesn't have any PDs as good as I am, and anything they throw up at this point I can handle. But if you'd kept going, we could have had problems.”

She opened her mouth, then shut it. A few seconds later, she said, her voice soft and lethal, “I know how to fucking do my job.”

“When was the last time you had to investigate an Amish woman of questionable sanity for
multiple
murders, baby?” he asked. Shoving off the desk, he came closer. He reached up.

She caught her breath, almost pulled away, but in the end she held still as he curved his hand over her neck. “Everybody's tempers are running high. There are men people liked, respected, in jail or out on bond, getting ready to go to trial for the systematic sexual abuse of boys that has gone back for generations. We're now looking at a woman who murdered her own father, two women and a man half this town adored and the other half feared … all because she couldn't get the man she loved to love her back. We're all on-edge. You were getting ready to push, too hard. And if you think it through, you'll see that.”

Jensen rose up on her toes. His lids drooped as he lowered his mouth to meet hers.

Then he yelped as she bit him.

“I don't like how often you're right,” she said, turning away.

“You're a brat,” Dean said, gingerly touching his tongue to his throbbing lower lip.

“Damn straight.” Then she blew out a frustrated breath. Opening the door, she stared down the hall to the brightly lit window. On the other side sat Sarah Yoder.

“Do you think she killed Peter Sutter?”

Dean rested a hand on Jensen's shoulder, keeping a polite distance between them now that they were out of the privacy of a closed room. “I don't know. But that woman has dead eyes. I suspect she's capable of almost anything.”

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Twilight slid slowly across Madison.

A taut, hushed air had clung to the town most of the day, almost like they waited.

Now, as the sun disappeared behind the horizon, a gentle, chilly breeze swept in off the river, almost like a sigh. One of relief.

Adam stood behind the counter at Shakers, taking drink orders in one after the other, so fast they all blurred together in his mind. Lana sat at the far end of the bar, earbuds in, gaze locked on the iPad in front of her. Every so often, she'd look up and find him. She'd smile and he'd feel a warmth spread through him.

Noah and Trinity were at a table, tucked in at the back. They'd been there for over an hour, and although they'd long since finished the burgers and fries, they didn't look like they were in any hurry to move.

Adam glanced up and saw Noah looking at him. He nodded shortly and went back to work on the next batch of orders—a pitcher of beer, a sweet and sour, a Manhattan, a rum and Coke.

It was a nice realization to know he didn't crave a one of them and hadn't for a while. Not even now, after he'd spent most of the day waiting.

A lull came and he moved to stand at the bar.

Lana brushed her fingers across the back of his hand. Because she was there, because he could, he leaned over and kissed her. It had taken her twenty years to come back, but it was twenty years he'd wait all over again as long as she came back. And she was his now.

“You okay?” she asked softly. “You seem tense.”

He shrugged. “Waiting.”

“Aren't we all?” She glanced over her shoulder toward Noah, and as though he felt the weight of that look, his head lifted.

Adam wasn't surprised when the couple moved to join Lana at the bar. “Anybody heard anything else?” he asked once Noah had settled between the two women. It had started that way. Noah. Lana. Only David was missing.

Full circle.

“He's not at the police station,” Noah said softly. He shrugged. “I went by there, looking for him.”

“Maybe…” Lana's voice trailed off. “Maybe he's at Sybil's.”

They lapsed into silence and then Noah sighed. “I don't know. He was off the other day when we were working. Saw her, and it was like he went to stone. I didn't ask, but when I went to check on Taneisha after she'd woken up, she mentioned she'd gone out to talk to him. David ended things.”

“Well. He's a dumbass,” Lana said grimly.

“I'm still trying to wrap my mind around what people are saying happened. I mean … this Sarah, she was practically like his sister, right?” Trinity said, looking down the bar at Lana, then at Noah before glancing at Adam. “And she attacked Sybil.”

“Obsession.” Adam swiped his rag down the bar. “It does crazy things to your head.” Then he slid his gaze to Lana. “Trust me, I know.”

He'd spent twenty years obsessing, hadn't he?

“It's not just obsession.” Noah looked up. “There was more there. If that's what happened, if she did try to hurt Sybil because of David, then there was more than obsession. She wasn't … whole…”—he reached up and tapped his brow—“up here to begin with. She obsessed. Wanted what she couldn't have. Saw things that weren't there. And something pushed her over.”

“Like what?” Lana put the iPad down with a
thunk
. “I mean, David
left
. It's pretty obvious that he wasn't going to settle down and be a happy little Amish guy. That isn't who he is.”

“Exactly,” Noah said softly. “And there she was, feeling abandoned and confused, because everything she had painted in her head was falling apart. He'd rather come back home to this place where people had treated him like hell than be there with her.”

Silence fell between them.

Somebody yelled for Adam and he turned away with a muttered curse.

The other three remained silent.

Waiting.

*   *   *

Jensen needed a drink. A drink. Then bed. Then sex. Or maybe sex, then drink, then bed. No. Drink. Sex. Bed.

But Dean was still at the station, arguing about warrants and arguing with judges, and he wasn't going to be home for a little while. But she was done.

Sarah, for now, was locked behind bars. Bail would be high.

The PD had arrived and practically glued her mouth shut, not that it was necessary. Once Jensen had left the room, Sarah had refused to say anything, but that weird little smile hadn't left her face.

She had something to do with Peter's disappearance.

Jensen knew it as well as she knew her own name.

Maybe she'd—

“Stop it!” She groaned and pressed the heels of her hands to the sides of her head. Up ahead a car was pulling out of a spot in front of Shakers, and on instinct she nosed into it. She needed a drink. She'd just leave her car there. Have a drink. Walk home. It was only two blocks away, and she seriously doubted anybody would tow
her
car.

“Abuse of authority,” she muttered, rubbing the tension gathering at the back of her neck. “Damn straight.”

She'd been working ten to twelve hours a day for the past few months, and now she finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel. She could be lazy for one damn night.

Of course, she should have realized that if she was in the mood for a drink so was half the damn town. Brooding, she stood in the doorway of Shakers a few minutes later, aware of the odd stillness that had fallen across the crowd. The noise had dropped by half since she'd walked in, and as she took one step, then another, she could feel people staring at her.

Her brother, Tate, stood slumped against the bar and he grinned at her, tipping a bottle in her direction. She smirked, and as she passed him she said, “Man, you'd think these people never saw a cop before.”

A few people laughed and some of the conversations resumed.

She breathed a little easier as she made her way down the bar, looking for an open seat.

She just about swore and turned around when she found one. It was the only one, too. Right next to the one group of people she had no desire to talk to.

Planting her feet, she crossed her arms over her chest and eyed them. Noah looked up first, glancing over his shoulder. A golden-blond brow slid up and then his new wife, Trinity, glanced up. Lana barely spared Jensen a look, but she wasn't fooled by the casual lack of interest. “If I didn't know better, I'd get a little paranoid, coming in here to find the three of you.”

“Well, technically, it's four.” Noah nodded toward the bar.

She swung her head around and sighed as she saw Adam. He was mixing up drinks, but his gaze slid her way, a glint in his eyes.

“Of course.” Head pounding, she took the stool and stared at the bottles lining the back of the bar. Have a drink and relax or get hammered and tell Dean to be ready to save her from herself?
Decisions, decisions.
“You know, everything comes back to you guys.”

“No.” Lana leaned forward, her elbows braced on the scarred surface as she stared down the bar at Jensen. “It comes back to me and David. The others were just caught in the mess of it. But if we wanted to be fair, it all goes back to the sons of bitches who started Cronus. Let's lay the blame where it belongs.”

Jensen smiled sadly. “I'm not blaming you. It's just a weird circle that might finally come to its weird little end.” Because she knew why they were here, she waved Adam down. “Wine. Something red and sweet—I hate that dry stuff. And then five minutes of your time.”

Adam looked out at the bar, an amused grin lighting his face. He was ridiculously handsome, and half the female population had probably lost their panties because of that grin. Now, of course, he had focused all of that heat on one woman. It didn't surprise Jensen. She'd always known Adam ran from demons. That the past was tied up in Lana wasn't much of a surprise, looking back.

“Oh, I can spare five minutes,” he drawled, looking back at Jensen. “I'll spend thirty minutes catching up, but anything to help out the law.”

“Just smile at the ladies, Casanova,” she said dryly. “They'll forgive you if the drinks come a little late.”

He snorted. “Clearly, you haven't seen how impatient people get when they wanna get their drink on.”

*   *   *

Adam took the five minutes, and he took them away from the bar.

The break room was quieter—marginally. He stood with the door shut, his back to it.

Lana stood next to him and she refused to think about how her stomach jumped and lurched. David was fine. She knew that. He had to be, because if he weren't
somebody
would have heard about it and that meant Noah would have heard.

That was just how things worked in this town.

So David was fine—

“I can't tell you what happened earlier, because we're still investigating,” Jensen said, interrupting the ramble of Lana's thoughts. “But…” She stopped, cocking her head as though she was picking her words carefully. Finally, she focused her gaze on Lana.

Lana felt the impact of that look to the soles of her feet.

“I understand what the two of you tried to do. And I understand why you came back, why he decided to make his presence known. You realized it wasn't done and you couldn't leave it like that.” Taking a deep breath, Jensen finished the rest in a rush: “It's done. It's really done.”

She looked from each of them, a sad smile on her face. “All of you ended up tangled in this mess and you're connected to it. It's not
over
yet, but they are done.”

A knot in Lana's chest loosened and her eyes started to burn. But she fought it all back. She hadn't heard what she needed to hear. Not yet. “What about David?”

Lifting a brow, Jensen asked levelly, “What do you mean?”

“Don't give me that.” Lana tucked her hands in her back pockets, staring at the detective, smiling coolly despite the knot in her throat. “You know how this town works. Everybody and their brother knows something went down at Sybil's today. And if Sybil was involved, David was.”

“Where she is, there you'll find him,” Jensen murmured, tipping her head back and staring up at the ceiling. “Yeah. He was involved. Again, I can't go into detail. I'm not surprised you haven't heard from him. But he's fine. I suppose all of it will come out soon. But he's fine.”

She moved toward the door, pausing when Adam didn't step aside. “May I go?” She looked down at the glass she'd brought back into the break room with her. “Oddly enough, I seem to have drunk my wine already.”