Return to Mystic Lake (4 page)

She was aware of Jackson’s gaze lingering on her as she focused on Main Street and searched for Bledsoe’s tavern. It was late enough in the afternoon that Jeff Maynard should be working.

“I think you might be hiding a little bit of charm under a basket and I’ve decided it’s my goal in life to figure out how to get that basket off your head.”

Marjorie couldn’t help herself—laughter bubbled to her lips and she shook her head. “You’re a funny man, Agent Revannaugh.” She pulled into a parking place in front of Bledsoe’s, a long, low building at the edge of town.

“You know, that’s the first time I’ve seen a genuine smile on your lips or heard laughter from you. You should do it more often. It definitely becomes you.”

“I’m not a laughing kind of woman,” she replied as she turned off the car engine. “I haven’t had much to laugh about in my life.”

“Then my second job is to change that,” he replied.

“Duty calls.” She got out of the car and slammed the door, more touched by Jackson’s words than she wanted to admit. She couldn’t let him get to her. She’d seen what men like him had done to her mother’s life, to her life, and she was not going to be one of those women who fell for the charm and never saw the callous calculation beneath.

At just after four in the afternoon, Bledsoe’s already had a few customers seated on stools at the long bar. It was semidark inside and reeked of booze and a faint underlying hint of urine.

It was the kind of place where the clientele was tough, bar fights occurred on a regular basis and nobody came for a social event. A jukebox played an old country song about a broken heart and a Texas man, but Marjorie was beginning to think it wasn’t the tall, handsome cowboys you had to watch out for, it was the smooth-talking Southerners.

As she approached the bar, she pulled out her official identification from her purse, careful to keep the side of her purse that had a built-in gun holster against her body. She went toward the dark-haired bartender, feeling no need to show any more authority than her badge, but she was prepared, should that change.

“Smells like Feds to me,” the bartender said as he slowly wiped a glass dry.

“Ah, nice to know you have a good sense of smell,” Marjorie said, forcing a pleasant smile to her lips. She almost felt as if she had something to prove to her partner, that she could be as charming as she needed to be while talking to a potential suspect.

“You’re cuter than your partner.” He set down the glass and jabbed a finger in the direction of Jackson, who stood a couple of inches behind her.

“Thanks. I’m smarter, too. But I let him think he’s smarter because he has a huge ego.”

Jackson cleared his voice as the bartender barked a dry laugh.

“We’re looking for Jeff Maynard,” she said.

“You found him, sweetheart, but as far as I know I haven’t done anything to get special attention from the FBI.” His eyes were dark with more than a hint of wariness.

“What do you know about Cole and Amberly Caldwell’s disappearance?” Marjorie asked.

“Only that I’m not gonna cry in my beer tonight over it.” He picked up a wet cloth and gave the bar a desultory swipe. “Look, I know you’re here because everyone in Mystic Lake knows I don’t like Cole. I have a problem with authority figures,” he added with a smirk.

Marjorie leaned closer to the bar, closer to the man she knew might possibly have had something to do with Cole and Amberly’s disappearance. “All authority?” she asked with a teasing lilt to her voice.

She sensed Jackson leaning closer behind her, but she kept her gaze focused on Jeff, as if he were the most important person on the face of the earth. A small, lewd grin curved his lips. “Well, maybe not all. I wouldn’t mind getting over it by maybe handcuffing you to my bed.”

Marjorie blinked in shock and leaned backward, bumping into Jackson’s firmly muscled chest. “I must protest,” Jackson said in his pleasant Southern drawl. “If anyone is going to handcuff this little lady to his bed, it’s going to be me.”

Marjorie felt as if she were having an out of body experience. “Where were you this past weekend?” she asked Jeff, trying to get her feet beneath her and get the conversation back on track.

The smirk disappeared from Jeff’s face. “Friday is my night off. I was out with buddies. Saturday night I worked my usual shift here, from four until close.”

“And where did you go with these buddies on Friday night?” Marjorie asked. She didn’t bother to pull out her pen and pad. She knew instinctively that Jackson already had his out.

“We were at Jimmy Tanner’s place, playing poker. He’s newly divorced, thanks to Cole and Amberly and their prying into private lives when they were investigating the murders of those women last year.”

“Jimmy Tanner, what’s his address?” Marjorie asked, realizing she’d just added another name to a potential suspect with a motive of revenge.

“At the moment he’s living at the Mystic Lake Motel on the south side of town,” Jeff replied. “His wife really took him to the cleaners in the divorce.”

By the time they left Bledsoe’s, they had not only added Jimmy Tanner’s name to their list, but also Raymond Chandler, who had also been at the supposed poker party on Friday night.

“I’m impressed, Ms. Maggie. I think there’s a bit of naughty woman trapped inside you,” Jackson said once they were back in the car.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she scoffed, cheeks far too warm. “There’s no naughty inside of me. I’m by the book, rigid and uptight. Trust me, Jackson, I know who I am.”

“I wonder,” he mused. She kept her mouth firmly closed, not wanting to know what he wondered. “Let’s head on back to Kansas City,” he said. “We can drive back out here and start with this Natalie Redwing first thing in the morning.”

“Why not do it now?” Marjorie asked.

Jackson looked at his watch. “It’s going to be close to six by the time we make it back to Kansas City. I say we order a pizza and sit down and go through what we know, figure out who needs to be interviewed next and get a general idea of where we are.”

“Right now it feels like we’re nowhere,” she replied.

“Exactly. It might surprise you to know that I can be a by-the-book kind of guy despite my huge ego.”

She glanced over to catch him smiling that sexy grin of his. “So, what does that mean?”

“It means I’d like to feed my notes into my laptop and see if we really have nothing or if we’ve already made any connections that might lead somewhere. I also want to utilize some resources I have with the agency to double-check bank records, travel and anything else that might pop up with Amberly or Cole’s names.”

“But you just assigned that task for Deputy Black to take care of,” she replied.

“You know our resources are better than theirs.”

“Okay, sounds like a plan,” she replied somewhat reluctantly. She had a feeling being in a motel room with Jackson Revannaugh for any reason probably wasn’t the best idea.

Chapter Four

He couldn’t get the vision of her smile, the sound of her laughter, out of his head. Something about Marjorie Clinton was getting under his skin, Jackson thought as he paid the pizza delivery boy an hour later.

He carried the box to the table and chairs that sat in front of the windows in the motel room. His laptop was open to a file labeled Mystic Lake/Kansas City.

While they had awaited the food delivery, the two of them had sat side by side as he fed into the file the bits and pieces of information they had attained so far in the case.

He’d tried not to notice how shiny her hair was beneath the lamp that hung from the ceiling over the center of the table. He’d tried not to draw in the sweet scent of her that made him think of tangled sheets and slick bodies.

The pizza was a compromise. His half was spicy pepperoni and sausage, and hers was mushroom and green pepper. It was just an indication to him that they were complete opposites and he had no business thinking about what she would look like naked, how her lips would taste or if he could evoke any passion that might be hidden beneath her emotional walls.

Surely these thoughts were only because they were in a relatively intimate setting and there was no question that he was physically attracted to her.

She looked relaxed for the first time since they’d met. Her blouse was unbuttoned at the top, revealing her delicate collarbone, and her body appeared to hold none of the tension of the day.

“So, tomorrow we check out the names we have of people from Mystic Lake,” she said as he opened the box and handed her several napkins. She leaned closer to him to look at his computer screen. “Jimmy Tanner, Raymond Chandler and Natalie Redwing—we should be able to have those interviews finished by noon, and maybe one of them will give us more information.”

“We also need to check back in with Deputy Black and maybe interview some of the other deputies who worked with Cole.” He waited until she took a piece of the pie and then he grabbed a piece for himself. “It’s possible that somebody who worked for Cole didn’t have his back.”

Marjorie frowned thoughtfully. “We might reinterview John Merriweather again to see if he’s thought of anything new.”

“He’s still at the top of my suspect list,” Jackson replied and then bit into the slice he had folded in half.

“I’m anxious to talk to Jimmy Tanner and Raymond Chandler to see how well they can corroborate Jeff’s poker game alibi for Friday night,” she replied.

“He seems so obvious as a suspect,” Jackson replied, sorry when she leaned back in her chair and put some distance between them. “He didn’t make any bones about the fact that he doesn’t like the sheriff.”

“Sometimes it’s the most obvious suspect that turns out to be the perp.” She wiped her mouth with the napkin and for the next few minutes they fell into silence as they devoured the pizza.

He liked watching her. She had the kind of expressive face that let him know when her thoughts were happy or somber. He found himself wishing he knew what was going through her mind.

He chided himself irritably. Marjorie wasn’t a player. She was with him now because she was assigned to work this case with him, and when the case was over she’d probably never think of him again.

And that was the way it was supposed to be, he reminded himself. He glanced up to find her impossibly green eyes locked with his. “You’ve gotten very quiet,” she said. “What are you thinking about?”

“I’m wondering why you don’t have some boyfriend ticked off because you’re working with an irresistible, handsome devil like me.”

She tossed the last of a piece of crust into the box and wiped her mouth once again. “I don’t have a boyfriend because I don’t want a boyfriend. I’m perfectly comfortable alone.” She hesitated a moment and her eyes deepened in hue. “I had enough scheming stepfathers in my life to be done with the idea of relationships or marriage for the rest of my life.”

“What do you mean by scheming stepfathers?”

She hesitated, as if weighing how much of herself she was willing to give to him. “When my father died, he left my mother a very wealthy woman, wealthy enough and lonely enough that she was easy pickings for smooth-talking con men to take advantage of.”

She worried her napkin in her lap as Jackson’s pizza suddenly sat heavily in his stomach. “It took three husbands to swindle her out of her last dime and leave her broke and alone.” She shrugged. “I’m not much inclined to share anything with anyone after that experience.”

“I’m sorry,” Jackson said, knowing it was inadequate and also recognizing that if she ever found out about his own father, she’d hate Jackson and would never believe that he wasn’t a chip off the old block.

“It’s not your fault, and I have Mom settled in a nice apartment, surrounded by beautiful furnishings so she can feel like she’s still living a bit of the good life.”

“And what has that done for your lifestyle?” he asked.

Once again she shrugged. “I don’t require much. I’ve managed to get myself a little two-bedroom house that’s just right for me.”

Although she didn’t say it, although she didn’t even intimate it, Jackson knew she must be making personal sacrifices to keep her mother happy. An unexpected pain ripped through his heart, along with a lot of guilt he knew he didn’t deserve but hadn’t been able to shake from his psyche for years.

“You know you shouldn’t judge all men by what happened to your mother,” he said.

“I don’t. I’m a cautious woman, Jackson. I just don’t take chances, not in my job as an FBI agent and not in my personal life.”

“Being too cautious can close you off from important experiences,” he replied.

“I recognize that and I’m okay with it. My life is just the way I like it—predictable and without chaos.”

“And love equals chaos to you?” He raised a dark eyebrow.

“Not necessarily.” She gave a small, dry laugh. “What are you doing? Trying to be my life coach? You, who has never met a woman he didn’t like, who probably changes girlfriends as often as you change your shirt? You’ve already told me you aren’t the marrying kind, so why is it any different for me not to be the marrying kind?”

He knew it was crazy, but what he wanted to tell her was that she deserved a man who would cherish her, a man who could bring that magical and elusive laughter to her easily and often.

“You’re right. I shouldn’t give relationship advice to anyone,” he finally said.

“So, what are your personal issues when it comes to marriage and long-term commitments?”

Her question surprised him, and he didn’t have an answer that he was willing to share with her. “I just don’t think I’d do it very well,” he replied. He gave her an irreverent smile. “You know, so many women, so little time,” he said flippantly.

Her emerald eyes narrowed as her gaze held his. “I wonder what baggage you’re carrying around.”

He leaned back in his chair with surprise. “What makes you think I have baggage?”

“Maybe it’s like sensing like,” she replied. “I know what my baggage is and I think I’m not the only one seated at this table who might have some issues.”

He could easily fall into the depths of her eyes—
so green
—and he felt as if her gaze was so intense she was looking inside his soul, seeking answers he had sworn he would never give to any woman.

She finally broke the gaze and glanced toward the window, where the sheer curtains couldn’t cover the darkness of night that had fallen while they’d talked.

“It’s getting late and we need to get an early start in the morning. We have a lot to accomplish tomorrow. It’s time for me to head home.”

“You’re right,” he agreed, wondering how the conversation had gotten so personal so quickly. He’d have to be more careful—she was far too easy to talk to, and there were far too many secrets and shames in his life to let down his guard.

They both got up from the table, and the windows in front of them exploded inward. Instinctively Jackson grabbed Marjorie and pulled her to the floor.

He rolled her to the opposite side of the room, where they would be partially shielded by the edge of the bed as the tat-tat-tat of an automatic weapon resounded and bullets shredded the curtains, slammed into the walls, and furniture splintered.

He lay on top of her while the world around them exploded, and knew that there was nothing more he could do but wait and pray that when the shooting stopped they would both still be alive.

* * *

P
ICTURE
FRAMES
SMASHED
and fell from the walls, and Marjorie braced herself for a piercing bullet to find her, even though Jackson’s body covered hers.

She could feel his heartbeat, as rapid, as frantic as her own, and the shooting seemed to last forever. A squeal of tires was audible from the broken windows, and after that, utter silence.

For several long moments they remained in place, hearts racing against each other’s, the slight scent of pepperoni coming from him. He finally rose slightly and asked, “Are you all right?”

“I...I don’t know,” she admitted truthfully. “I’m not shot, but I’m a little dazed.”

Siren screams filled the night, drawing closer, and the scent of cordite was thick in the air. “I wondered what it might be like for me to be on top of you on a floor or in my bed, but this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” he said.

She shoved him off her and he stood. “Do you always have sex on the brain?” she asked as she got to her feet. “Don’t you realize that somebody just tried to kill us?”

Cherry swirls just outside the motel room indicated that the police had arrived. Jackson grinned at her. “Snapped you right out of that daze, didn’t I?”

He was right. The fogginess in her brain was gone and she was acutely aware of everything. “It was probably some heartbroken woman who followed you here from Baton Rouge to put a bullet through your black heart.”

“Or could be a man you cut off at the knees with your attitude and sharp tongue,” he replied.

At that moment several officers raced into the room, guns drawn and terse expressions on their faces. “You both okay?”

“No,” Marjorie replied. “He’s an egotistical ass.”

“And she’s an uptight witch,” Jackson said. “But other than that, we’re both fine. Unfortunately the room appears to be a bit of a mess.”

Marjorie looked around and her knees threatened to buckle. “A bit of a mess” was definitely an understatement. The walls were riddled with bullet holes, glass was everywhere and even the bed hadn’t escaped the carnage, as tufts of mattress padding peeked out of gaping holes. It was a wonder—no, it was a miracle—that they had survived unscathed.

She sank down on the edge of the bed, unable to take in how near death she had come. She listened as Jackson made introductions to the officer who appeared in charge and then told him what had happened.

“I have no idea what kind of vehicle the perp was in, but it was definitely an Uzi that was used to shoot up the place. I know the sound,” Jackson said.

The officer wore a tag that identified him as Lieutenant Larry Segal. “Do you have any idea who might be behind this attack?”

“We’re investigating a case of a couple of missing persons in Mystic Lake. Apparently there’s somebody who doesn’t like the questions we’re asking people,” Jackson replied.

“Apparently,” Segal replied. He yelled to one of his other officers. “Let’s get a crime scene unit in here. We need to find as many bullets as possible.” He motioned for Jackson and Marjorie to follow him outside the room.

Marjorie grabbed her bag from the floor next to the table and clutched it to her chest, the feel of her gun in the purse holster somewhat comforting. Jackson’s laptop computer was toast, exploded into pieces of plastic and metal.

As they stepped out into the darkness of the night, Marjorie’s knees still felt wobbly and the sound of the bullets slamming into a variety of items echoed in her head.

“What’s going on?” A short rotund man came running toward them. “What in the hell happened here?” He threw out his arms, his round face screwed up in anger. “Drug deal gone bad?” He glared at Jackson and then eyed Marjorie. “Are you a prostitute working out of my motel? Did you tick off some john or what?”

Marjorie nearly swallowed her tongue in shock. Never in a million years had anyone ever mistaken her for a hooker. Jackson took a step closer to her, as if to protect her from the angry little man. “This is FBI business,” he said.

“I don’t give a damn if it’s YMCA business, what I want to know is who is going to pay for this damage? I run a respectable motel here.”

“Wayne, don’t worry, we’ll figure it all out,” Lieutenant Segal said.

“Somebody better figure it out fast. This is bad for business and I need somebody to get this room back in shape as soon as possible.”

Marjorie imagined she could see fumes rising off Wayne’s nearly bald head. “I’ll call my director and he’ll see that the repairs on the room are taken care of after the local officials are finished processing things.” She was appalled to hear her voice tremble slightly.

She straightened her back and tried to mentally pull herself together. The last thing she wanted was for Jackson to believe she wasn’t up to the job, that she couldn’t handle danger when it reared its ugly head.

Wayne’s strident voice grew more distant as one of the officers led him back toward the motel office. Jackson and Segal were still talking, and she was just trying to process what had just happened. Two patrol cars were parked in a way to deny entry to any other vehicle into the motel parking lot.

She’d never experienced anything like this before. As long as she’d been working in the job, she’d never had her life personally threatened.

Death had whispered on the back of her neck, and even now a shiver tried to work up her spine. Surely it was normal to feel this way after such an experience.

“Are you okay?” A deep voice came from beside her, jolting her out of her thoughts.

She turned to see Officer Kevin Winslow standing next to her. He was a young cop and she was surprised to see that his brown eyes held the same kind of horror she felt.