Fool's Gold (A sexy funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 2) (36 page)

How many days were left?

He bunched her hair in his hand and pulled
her head back. “Sweetheart, I—”

She put her hand over his mouth. “I’m going
with you. We’re going to figure out who killed Carl. We’re going to
save Maggie.” She put her lips to his, a hairsbreadth away, as he’d
done to her. “You don’t have to do it all alone.”

He searched her face, then seemed to find his
answer. “All right. But you’ll need better shoes than that.” He
pointed to her sandals. “And we sure can’t leave this room with
your lipstick still in place. It’ll look like I made up all that
noise for nothing.” He took her mouth, stroked her lips, then dived
deep. She tasted him all over again, his heat, his tang. Then he
sucked her lower lip into his mouth and devoured her remaining
cherry lipstick.

* * * * *

Brax opened the door, guided Simone before
him, then stepped out, buckling his belt as he turned in the
hallway. Like the proverbial pin drop in a silent cathedral, the
unmistakable clank of metal filled the trailer from one end to the
other.

He wondered at the wisdom of his blatant
display. He could have done up his belt while Simone changed her
shoes. Ariana would find the belt exhibition distasteful. Simone
would know it meant he wasn’t ashamed, not of being with her, not
for being loud and crude about how damn good she made him feel.
What was between them was far beyond the physical. Simone needed a
statement and making a statement required drama.

It also required further cementing action. He
tucked his fingers beneath Simone’s hair, kneading her nape. “From
now on, you can only wear yellow. It makes you glow,” he said, once
again loud enough to fill the entire trailer. Then he turned her
head with a gentle brush of his fingers along her jaw and kissed
her, reveling in the warmth of her mouth, the zest of their
lovemaking, and the pulse beating wildly at her throat.

He was damn sure Ariana Chandler had never
before been at a loss for words.

Simone had struggled to build her own
foundation, and he wouldn’t let anyone—especially not her own
mother—tear it from beneath her.

Judge Della Montrose blinked, slowly, like an
owl.

Simone fanned herself with the sheaf of
papers. “We’re going out for a while.”

“Simone! You cannot leave me alone.” Crumpled
silk filled her mother’s fisted hand.

“I’ll be back, MOTHER.” Simone’s teeth
snapped on the title.

“But—”

“We’re going for a hike, Mrs. Chandler. A
long hike. In the hills. We’ve got things to discuss.” Brax paused
long enough to suggest to Ariana that talking wasn’t all they’d be
doing.

Academy Award-winning Ariana Chandler blinked
as owlishly as Della.

Simone slapped Brax’s arm with twenty pages
of pure fantasy. “Stop that,” she hissed, then spoiled the effect
by giggling.

Just as quickly, her smile faded. He knew the
moment she remembered why they were going up there. Because Carl
was dead. Murdered. You wanted to forget, you tried to forget, but
as soon as you
did
forget, guilt slammed home like a
battering ram.

It was like the first time he’d laughed after
his dad died. When he realized he was laughing with his old man
only days in the grave.

Simone turned soberly to her mother.
“Kingston and Jackie will entertain you.”

“They’re gone. Kingston looked nearly
apoplectic and begged Jackie to accompany him. He practically
dragged her out of here by her hair. I’m sure he wanted to save her
from corruption.”

Right. Brax had a feeling Kingston Hightower
dragged the pretty Jackie out by the hair for a very different
reason. There was something between those two. Furtive looks,
sideways glances. A smile just between the two. He’d been in their
presence perhaps all of ten minutes, but their byplay had set off
his radar.

Ariana wouldn’t have let them go if she’d had
even an inkling.

“I would have rushed out with them, but”—she
glanced at Della—“we have a guest.” Her how-could-you look stabbed
Simone.

He wondered if Ariana’s sanctimonious,
holier-than-thou attitude was a calculated method of belittling
Simone.

He suspected the answer was yes.

Della jumped to her feet, tripped on a
buckled bit of shag, then scuttled sideways, like a crab, to the
front door. “Thanks for the coffee. Think about what I said. We’ll
talk later. Bye.” The screen door slammed behind her.

“If you leave with him, Simone—”

Ariana’s unfinished threat hung in the air.
Brax prayed Simone would take up the gauntlet and tell her mother
to shove it in no uncertain terms. Yet at the same time, he feared
it. Neither woman would win, both of them would lose, and nothing
would ever be the same.

Simone wasn’t ready for that
confrontation.

He also realized he wanted to be there for
her when she was, whenever and wherever the time came. For now,
though, she at least ignored Ariana Chandler and left with him.

Chapter Twenty

“This is it. This is the cave. Just like Carl
described it.” Simone flapped page twenty beneath his nose,
pointing.

“Yeah. Looks like it is.” After two hours of
hard walking and two bottles of water, they’d made it.

Glancing over his shoulder for the umpteenth
time, Brax couldn’t shake the bad feeling. He noticed nothing out
of the ordinary on the way up, but he couldn’t throw off the itch
between his shoulder blades.

Carl’s fantasy had been a map all right.
Every landmark he’d requested Simone to use matched the long trek
exactly. The story ended with the words,
And then he took her
inside to bestow his final gift
.

When he’d first read it, Brax had imagined
the gift was of the physical variety. Something sexual that he’d
planned for the woman of his dreams—be it Maggie or somebody else.
A spectacular ending that only Carl himself could write.

Now, Brax considered that something of an
entirely different nature lay inside.

Simone, like a child on a treasure hunt,
skipped several steps into the gaping mouth of the cave. “Come on.
Let’s find out what’s in here.”

“Bad idea.” Brax wasn’t given to flights of
fancy, but he’d often relied on instincts, which had saved his life
in times gone by. “We’ll come back later with backup.”

A gun wouldn’t be a bad addition to the
party. The nape of his neck prickled. He threw another wary glance
over his shoulder. Nothing. The path lay empty until it twisted
behind a rock outcropping.

When he turned back, Simone was gone.

Shit.

“It’s dark in here.” Her voice, disembodied,
echoed off the walls and came at him in multiples of sound. “I
can’t see a thing. Bring the flashlight.”

He’d retrieved it from the 4Runner’s glove
box before they left.

“Dammit. Get back out here, Simone.”

“Come in and find me.” She laughed, the sound
floating out.

He clicked the light on, then followed the
beam, locating Simone in the middle of a large, dank cavern.

“Let’s see, let’s see.” She practically
bounced in her tennies.

He sprayed the walls and ceiling with the
flashlight beam. The roof rose thirty feet or so above their heads
and the cave extended perhaps fifty in each direction. It wasn’t
large, and it didn’t appear to harbor any small offshoots leading
to other attached caverns. A dank, musty, earthy smell and cool
moist air wafted over him.

At least there weren’t any bats. And no bat
guano. Is that what Carl had wanted to prove to Maggie? That
spelunking didn’t necessarily mean bats?

“Well, this is sort of disappointing.” Simone
slapped her hands on her hips. “It doesn’t even lead anywhere. All
that build up for...not much.”

Brax admitted to being mystified as well. Why
twenty pages of mounting tension for so little payoff?

He moved the beam more slowly along the
walls, wondering if he’d missed something the first time. Like a
crime scene, it required a thorough going-over, and more than
once.

Simone’s warm hand grazed his arm. “Why do
the walls sparkle like that? It’s sort of eerie, isn’t it?”

The walls sparkled, even as he moved the
light away, almost as if they absorbed it for a few seconds after
the beam hit.

“Brax. Is that,” she gasped, then added,
“gold?”

Almost as if he’d been expecting them, he
heard the soft footfalls as a shadow passed over the cave’s
entrance.

“Yes, Simone, it’s gold.”

Filling the small cavern, bouncing from wall
to wall, he almost didn’t recognize the voice. Then he knew.

“Simone, you should have listened to your
lover and stayed outside,” Della Montrose said without a single
inflection. “Everything would have been fine. Brax, please put the
flashlight on the ground. I can’t have you shining it in my eyes
and trying to blind me.”

If not for Simone, he would have done just
that, shone the beam in the judge’s eyes, then thrown himself at
her in the brief moments it would take for her eyes to adjust.

Della had her own flashlight beam—as well as
the gun in her hand—fixed on Simone. Jesus Christ. His heart beat
loudly in his ears. But he couldn’t afford the slightest
miscalculation.

He hated giving up his only weapon, but
attempting hand-to-hand combat when she had a gun on Simone was the
worst of a bunch of bad choices.

“Put it down, Brax.”

He squatted close to the ground, then let the
flashlight slide off his fingers. It rolled a few feet in the
direction opposite to where Simone stood.

“I suspected there’d be trouble when the two
of you said you were taking a hike. Taking a hike, my butt. I knew
you’d end up here. Somehow, some way, you’d end up here.”

Shit. He’d been so busy showing off his
prowess to Mommie Dearest that he hadn’t given a thought to what
he’d revealed. He’d surrendered Simone to a killer through his own
idiocy.

“Della, it’s gold. Carl found gold.” Simone
didn’t seem to get it. With Della standing behind the beam, maybe
she hadn’t seen the gun.

“Carl found the gold months ago. Three months
to be exact.”

About the time Carl starting acting funny and
dribbling money out of the checking account.

Brax shuffled his feet, moving imperceptibly
farther from Simone, circling round and closer to Della’s right
side. Her gun hand.

“Why didn’t he tell anybody?” Simone sounded
slightly bewildered but not yet afraid.

“He told
me
,” Della said. “I was
helping him stake a legal claim.”

“Gee, that was awfully magnanimous of
you.”

“Sometimes, Simone, I really wonder about
you.” Della sighed, the sound shushing around the cavern like the
flutter of bat wings. “You can’t be that dumb.”

Brax knew Simone wasn’t. And he got a bad
feeling she was planning something.

* * * * *

Simone
was
stupid for having blundered
into the cavern in the first place, but not so stupid she didn’t
realize Della had killed Carl. Because of the gold, she’d lured him
or followed him up the fantasy trail and pushed him over the edge.
Della. Della did it all. Simone wanted to curl into a ball and plug
her ears.

The only thing stopping her was Brax. She
couldn’t shut down and leave him all alone with Della. Della would
kill him, and that was worse than anything. Brax needed her
help.

She tried to keep the tremble out of her
voice. “Was he going to cut you in on the gold in exchange for your
help?”

She’d keep up the stupid questions, hold
Della’s attention, take it off Brax for as long as she could. With
soft stealthy movements, he separated them so that Della couldn’t
easily take them both out at once.

“I wouldn’t make him do that. I didn’t give a
flying fuck about the gold,” Della snapped. “I only made him give
me money for filing fees so he’d think I was actually making the
claim. I’ve still got it all, didn’t use a dime.” Affront hardened
Della’s voice. It was okay to be a murderer, but she didn’t want
anyone to think she was a thief?

Brax had inched away another few feet. In
minutes, he’d be flanking Della.

“That’s far enough, Braxton. You move once
more, and I’ll blow your sweetheart’s head off.”

Brax stopped, his fists clenching,
unclenching. “You shoot her, Judge, and you die.”

“May I remind you that I have the gun? I can
shoot you both.”

“I’ll take you down before you even blink.
And you won’t die pretty.”

Darn it, he was baiting Della. This wasn’t
happening. It wasn’t real. Simone couldn’t think straight. But she
would not let Della harm a hair on his head.

Her only weapon was her big mouth.

“But if you didn’t want the gold, Della, why
did you kill Carl?”

“I’ll tell you why.” A silhouette filled the
entrance. A tall, lanky silhouette, and there was no mistaking the
smarmy voice. Jason Lafoote.

“I’m here to save the day, Simone. Your
pretty little sheriff boy here failed miserably. Della, I’ve got a
gun at your back, sweetheart.” Jason wasn’t holding a thing. Empty
hands dangled at his sides. “You better give your own gun to the
nice sheriff, Della. The jig is up.”

“You blackmailing bastard.” Della’s jaw
tensed. “I didn’t kill Carl. You did.”

“Right. That’s why you’re the one holding a
gun on my sweet Simone here. The perfidy of women. Now you’re not
even going to admit throwing Carl to his death and parking his
truck at the bottom of the trail.” He nodded at Simone. “I saw her
drop the truck off, you know.”

“Shut up, Jason.” Della snarled but didn’t
move.

Jason was bluffing; he didn’t even have a
gun. They were all going to die the moment Della figured that out.
Simone started to breathe hard, harder, faster.
Oh my God.
Please do not let me panic
.