Roan (30 page)

“That shouldn't be too hard to figure out,” he said, retreating another step and shoving his hands into the back pockets of his jeans.

“No? Well, I must be missing something, because I don't get it. Unless I did something wrong…”

“It isn't you,” he said swiftly, even as alarm crawled over his scalp at the idea that she was blaming herself. “It's me. I'm the sheriff, you're my prisoner. It's unethical for me to take advantage of you.”

“I don't remember that part, you taking advantage,” she objected. “I was perfectly willing.”

“I didn't mean it literally,” he answered, trying to ignore the interruption. “But it's my duty to keep my distance so there is no possible question of using my position to…”

“To force me to make mad, passionate love with you?”

“Don't make this any harder than it is already,” he said without meeting her gaze. He couldn't remember the last time a personal discussion had been so uncomfortable, though he thought it was some time back in grade school. The problem was not embarrassment, however, but the powerful urge it gave him to overturn every ethical pledge he'd ever sworn in his life.

“I wouldn't dream of it,” she returned. “Nor would I dream of influencing you based on the aforementioned mad, passionate love. Even if I wanted to, and even if it was possible—and guessing that's the next place you might be going with this.”

“No, but it isn't enough to discount the possibility. I have to remove all chance of even the appearance of influence. Either way.”

“It's your duty to avoid me.”

“Exactly,” he said, and felt a slight smile curve his mouth as relief for her understanding flooded over him.

“Two things are wrong with that,” she said, her features solemn as she sat up and swung her feet off the bed.

Wariness gripped him, but he could no more have failed to ask than he could stop breathing. “And they are…?”

“Number one, I've been living under your roof for the best part of three weeks and, thanks to Cal, everyone already suspects that you had only one reason for bringing me here. And number two…”

“Number two?”

She slid off the mattress and padded toward him in silent, lissome menace on her bare feet. Her gaze was open and innocent, too innocent, as she answered, “Nobody's watching.”

S
he was testing him, Roan thought. She was also torturing him. Did she know how much he would like to throw his damned Benedict ethics to the four winds? Did she have any idea how delectable she was with her bed-rumpled look of wrinkled skirt, smudged eye makeup and tangled hair? Could she guess that nothing in his whole life had ever been as hard as standing there and watching her when all he really wanted was to pick her up, put her back in bed, then crawl in beside her and hold her all night long?

He hoped not, or he was a goner.

“Doing what's right doesn't depend on whether anyone can see,” he said, his voice vibrating deep in his chest. “It's a matter of personal integrity. And it has nothing to do with what I want, or what you might need. It's about what's best for everyone, including the people who voted me into office and have kept me there all these years.”

“If what I need is you, then you'll sacrifice me as well as yourself?”

She reached out to put her hand on his chest, trailing her fingers over the oxford cloth of his shirt. The touch was as light as duck down, still he felt each fingertip as a separate spot of heat. “It's the way it works.”

“For how long?” She lifted her fingertips to brush across the faint beard stubble in the hollow of his cheek.

“As long as it takes,” he replied, or thought he did. His senses felt scattered, yet so attuned to the warmth and scent of her, to the feel of her breath on his throat and the brush of her skirt against his shins, that he was fast nearing overload.

“You won't kiss me or touch me, won't take me to some of the private corners of your home or your lake and its swamps?”

“Not on your life. If I did,” he said deliberately, “I might never stop until we were both so sated with love that we couldn't move.”

She met his eyes, though hers were not quite focused. “I like the sound of that.”

This was, he thought, a game that two could play. He let his voice drop lower, to something just above a whisper. “So do I. If I could, I'd take you to the attic and make love to you at midday when it's dusty and dry, and so still and hot you can hear the roof shingles melting. Or I'd have you at midnight beside the lake while the bullfrogs call and the loons cry, and the moon sails above us on guard duty. I'd take you out in a boat and rock with you on windblown waves until we were lobster red and tender from sunburn. Or I'd walk with you down some path in the woods until I found a bed of pine needles. But most of all, I'd take you into my own big bed. I'd hold you while we both slept, and wake with you in the early morning to new dawn love that is often best, and always right.”

She moistened her lips, a slow movement, before she asked in tentative wonder, “Would you? Really?”

“It isn't the most sophisticated program, but nothing could be more satisfying.”

“I don't need sophistication.”

The words were so stark that he thought they might almost be true. “No Eiffel Tower, no Paris in the rain? No Venetian gondolas or lavender-scented satin sheets in a five-star Mayfair Hotel?”

“Romance is where you find it, and love.”

“As long as that's what you're really looking for,” he answered.

She was quiet a moment, while she searched his face. “But you don't think that's what I want?”

“Here and now, maybe. But what about later, when the days are all the same, and the nights, and the only exciting thing that happens in a month of Sundays is old Mrs. Adams's Persian cat running off with the ugly tabby down the road? What about when you realize that there's not a single mall in Turn-Coupe, and that the best hairdresser is run by a woman who likes Twinkies and big hair, calls her place Millie's, and wouldn't do a pedicure on a bet?”

“I'd live,” she said with a trace of defiance, “since I prefer shopping by computer and have done my own pedicures for years.”

“It wouldn't work.”

“Because I wasn't born a redneck?”

“Because you're a rich lady with a wide view of the world, and I'm a small-town sheriff with small-town ideas and small-town ways. You can't fit in, and you never will.”

“And you're too afraid of being left alone again, afterward, to let me try,” she said, and set her lips in a thin line.

“Low blow, Tory.” Was it accurate? He didn't know. He hadn't thought about Tory in relationship to Carolyn and what had happened with his ex-wife. For one thing, there'd been no time and little encouragement as long as she was classed in his mind as a prisoner. But they were also far too different for any comparison. Tory, for all her
insecurities, was a fighter. Carolyn had never been that; it just wasn't in her.

“I don't need fancy things around me, and I don't need change,” she said. “What I need are things that
don't
change, and people who don't.”

That was laying it on the line, he thought, at least to a point. The problem was that he was in no position to do the same. He wouldn't be until this was over, if it was ever really over.

“And what I need,” he said with care, “is for you to let me do my job. I need your trust.”

She removed her hand, looking away from him. “That's so hard.”

He took a deep breath, his first since she'd touched him. “It's never easy, not for any of us. But it doesn't work without it.”

It was an exit line if he'd ever heard one, especially since she didn't seem to have an answer for it. He stepped away from her, then stopped. “About this engagement of yours, was there a prenuptial agreement?”

Her gaze was remote as she faced him again. “What about it?”

“I was just wondering if it included a will, or anything about the distribution of assets if anything happened to you.”

“It didn't, as a matter of fact. Harrell suggested a mutual agreement wherein anything he had became mine on his death, and vice versa. Since I was more likely to outlive him, statistically speaking, and didn't need his money, I didn't see the point.”

Roan nodded. “And you didn't consider that he might need your money.”

“He appeared to be on a sound financial footing at the time.”

Roan digested that a second before he asked, “So who does inherit in the event anything happens to you?”

“Various charities, a few old friends, and my stepfather,” she said with a careless shrug, or one that was meant to appear that way.

“Isn't that a little strange, since you don't care that much for him?”

“The will was drawn up by family lawyers, and is basically a copy of my mother's will. Besides, there's no one else.”

“But you'd change the beneficiary if you married?”

“Of course, especially if there were children.”

“That's what I thought,” he said, and went from the room, closing the door carefully behind him.

It was twenty-four hours later, give or take, that the call came about the bodies. Since it was late, Roan was at home. His dad had gone fishing for the day with Lewis Crompton, and hadn't yet returned, which left only Jake to watch after Tory. Roan called Cal in for duty at Dog Trot and waited until he drove up, then he took off.

The accident was at the old iron bridge again. The vehicle was in the water, lying on its side and submerged so that only the right rear tire appeared above the surface of the deep creek-like tributary of the lake. The wrecker was already there when Roan arrived, and the driver was attaching a line. First Response and rescue squad members had made several dives. They reported that it was a pickup truck with two passengers, both males. As far as they could tell, neither had survived the crash.

Roan examined the skid marks and debris on the road with the aid of a spotlight, and talked to state police troopers who were taking measurements. From all appearances, the pickup had been traveling at a high rate of speed when it was hit from behind with enough force to send it through
the guardrail. The skid had been minimal, indicating the rear-ending was unexpected. Paint flecks suggested the perp in the hit-and-run was driving a white vehicle, which covered a good 40 percent of cars in a state where light colors meant cooler interiors during the torrid summers.

Roan had a gut feeling about the occupants of the vehicle in the water. It came to him when he saw the mud grip tire that stuck up out of the water and learned it was a red truck hidden by the creek's murky swirl. The identification of the passengers as two males added to it. By the time the pickup rose slowly to the surface and was dragged ashore, he was ready for the news.

Zits and Big Ears. No doubt about it. He'd have recognized them from Tory's description, but he also had the still photo made from the video camera film. It was the two men who had kidnapped her, and they were very dead. Someone had not only run them off the road, but had stopped long enough to spray the van with automatic weapon fire before it settled to the bottom of the creek bed.

He was discussing the timing of the accident with the state police when a Jeep came barreling down the road and swerved onto the shoulder just short of the bridge. Luke and Kane got out, followed by Pop. Before Roan could ask about Jake, his son hopped from the back. They all strode toward him, as fascinated by the accident as a quartet of ambulance chasers. Roan stepped aside to let them get a good look at the carnage.

Luke whistled. Kane swore. Jake looked a little green, and didn't object at all when his granddad put an arm around his shoulder.

“That who I think it is?” Kane asked with a narrow glance in Roan's direction.

“Yeah.”

“Witnesses?” Luke asked as he deliberately moved to block the view of the boy as well as that of the female driver of a passing car.

“None that stuck around or felt the call of civic duty strong enough to report it,” he answered. “So where did you guys come from?”

It was Jake who spoke up. “We got back from fishing maybe ten minutes after you left. Tory knew all about the wreck since she'd been listening on the scanner.”

He might have known, Roan thought. He tried to think if anybody had given descriptions of the victims or the truck. It was entirely possible, in which case, Tory would know by now that Zits and Big Ears were no longer around to trouble her. She'd also know, he hoped, that she might be in danger from whoever had whacked them. “Cal was still at the house, right?” he asked without even trying to temper the abruptness of the question.

Pop said, “And royally pissed over being sent to Dog Trot instead of hightailin' it out here where the action's going on. Speaking of which…”

“If you want to know who did this, your guess is as good as mine,” Roan said.

“Right,” his dad said, though the look in his eyes was jaundiced. He was no fool.

“It has something to do with Tory, doesn't it?” Jake asked.

“Jake,” he said in warning.

“Well, it does,” he muttered, though he didn't press it.

Kane did, however. “If Jake's right, then it puts a whole new light on this deal with your lady prisoner. It looks as if somebody is covering their tracks, which means—”

“I know what it means,” Roan said shortly. He just didn't want to think about it, couldn't stand to think about it.

“Somebody wanted our Tory out of the way before, and now they may want it even worse,” his dad put in. “If they're willing to risk turning a couple of guys to hamburger with an assault rifle on a public highway, what would they do to her?”

Luke barely glanced at the others as he asked, “It has something to do with this gambling business, right?”

“So it seems.” Roan filled them in on the details, as much as he knew of them, in a few short sentences.

“Reminds me of something,” Pop said in ruminating tones. “You may have wondered why I agreed to come home when you called in the clan. It wasn't exactly a snap decision.”

“Pop,” Roan began, trying not to sound as impatient as he felt.

“Bear with me, boy, bear with me. Now I'd been hanging around the casinos, mainly because that's where the ladies like to hang out playing the slots. I fell into talk with a croupier who happened to be from Natchez, where he got his start on the gaming boats on the Mississippi. He told me how this bunch of bigwigs were wanting to put a big old boat like that on Horseshoe Lake, and of course I was all ears.”

So was Roan, all at once. “Go on.”

“Thank you, son. Well, seems this group of investors had mob connections, not exactly a huge surprise. But they had nothing to do with our Louisiana branch of the Cosa Nostra. Seems they were from Florida, where they'd made piles of cash running drugs. They'd been busy laundering a lot of the take, running it through furniture stores because of the high cash flow, not to mention all those shipping crates of stuff with great hiding places. They'd also turned their eye toward gaming, but felt places like Vegas and Atlantic City would be too hard to crack. They settled on
little old Turn-Coupe because it was quiet and backward and they could run all sorts of rigs without anybody noticing until it was too late. Once they had that base, they could branch out into bigger things.”

“Why is it that I'm only just hearing about this?” Roan asked, his gaze steady.

“Looked as if you had the situation under control—until people started turning up dead, like these two.”

Roan looked at Kane and Luke, and the repudiation he saw in their faces was a mirror for his own feelings. If this bunch of creeps thought it was going to be that easy, they'd soon discover their mistake. Their gaming operation was history in Turn-Coupe. They just didn't know it yet.

“The guy who showed up at the house, the man Tory was supposed to marry,” Jake said with a frown between his brows, “wasn't he supposed to be some kind of whoop-de-do-big-deal furniture dealer?”

“That he was.” Roan wasn't certain how much of what his dad had said to take at face value, but it sounded as if Harrell Melanka was in bed with the mob, big-time, and trying to get an extra share of the mattress. He'd thought he could use Tory's money to buy his way into the gaming deal, and had turned vicious when it failed. Now it appeared he was covering his bases while doing his best to see that the venture went on as planned. The question was what he meant to do about Tory.