Touch of Evil (22 page)

“So you think she’s hiding something.”

“Don’t you? Doesn’t it sound as if she might be protecting someone, or maybe herself?”

“Why would I tell you what I’m thinking,” he said sharply, “when you’ve already proven you’re willing to use anything I say against Laney? When you’re willing to exploit our relationship to—”

“I wasn’t
exploiting
our relationship. I’m trying to solve—”

“The hell you weren’t using it—and me. The only reason you took the chance on speaking to me in a public place was so you could pick my brain.”

“You’re wrong. Dead wrong about that.” Justine looked hurt by the suggestion. “I was doing my job, that’s all. Following leads as they came up. Like the call I got as I was leaving the funeral about a Chevy Cobalt, a bright red one, found abandoned in the woods.”

She pointed to the tree line some distance beyond the kitchen window, with its cheerful frame of tied-back gingham curtains. “A few miles away, near that little graveyard, you know the one on Old Church Road?”

Ross immediately understood her implication: that Laney, or at least her car, had been in close proximity to the very spot where Roger Savoy had been found shot. Though he couldn’t picture her walking a few miles to kill someone. No more than he could imagine Laney driving to the ruins of a long-abandoned church after leaving her house. Unless she had been going to meet someone.

“What was in her car?” he asked. “Any prints? A weapon?”

“We’re still processing evidence, but you know I can’t—”

“—discuss the details. So you’ve said.” As frustrating as he found Justine’s vagueness, Ross knew one thing for certain: It had been his responsibility to be there for Laney last night, to do all in his power to talk her into accepting his help. She was so young and traumatized, a trained professional like Justine would read her like a road sign. “You should have called me. You absolutely should have.”

Justine’s expression clouded, her dark eyes the perfect backdrop for the lightning strike of her displeasure. “Do you honestly think I can sit around waiting for witnesses to feel up to sharing information about an ongoing murder investigation, or to have their cousins present during questioning? I don’t have that luxury. Not with a murderer running around Preston County, and especially not with the DA breathing down my neck and half my men—half the county, for all I know—thinking I’m the one who had real motive to kill Roger.”

“So you’re after the truth and that’s all?”

Justine moved closer to him, close enough to reach tentatively for his hand and squeeze it. Her voice softened, reminding him of bedroom whispers they’d shared in the past. “What else would I be after? Surely you don’t think, after everything we’ve been through, I’d be looking to throw someone you care for under the bus for no good reason? Come on, Ross. You know me better…Don’t you?”

“I know what you show me.” He jerked his hand away. “The parts
you choose
to share.”

Pain bloomed in her expression the way a drop of blood expands when it hits water. And Ross thought of how she could have gotten herself killed that night, the night she’d taken him with her to find Laney. Thought of how Justine had run into danger without the slightest hesitation.

She
had
shown him herself that night, just as she had
shown him yesterday, when she’d spoken of the errors that had led to the charges of corruption.

“I’m sorry,” he told her. “I don’t mean to hurt you. It’s just…It’s this situation. Can’t you at least tell me, is my cousin a suspect? Can’t you at least tell me as a friend? Because you said to me…Don’t you remember how you told me that at the very least I’d always have a friend in your department?”

He remembered what else had passed between them that day, the lovemaking that had seemed to open the door to a chance of true intimacy between them. Since then, he’d felt the promise of it, had glimpsed it in her eyes and heard it in their conversation.

He saw it now as well, as she looked into his eyes.

“Go ahead and hire that lawyer,” she said. “The best one you can find.”

The Hanged Man is one of the most mysterious cards in the tarot deck. It is simple, but complex. It attracts, but also disturbs. It contradicts itself in countless ways. The Hanged Man is unsettling because it symbolizes the action of paradox in our lives. A paradox is something that appears contradictory, and yet is true. The Hanged Man presents to us certain truths, but they are hidden in their opposites. The main lesson of the Hanged Man is that we “control” by letting go—we “win” by surrendering.

—Joan Bunning, from
Learning the Tarot: A Tarot Book for Beginners

Long as her legs were, Justine had to jog to keep up with Ross’s swift strides when he left the house. Though he said a terse good-bye to her father and Noah, Ross didn’t stop for conversation but made his way straight toward the bright red Mustang.

“Wait up,” she called after him, not caring about the way her dad was staring or what he gleaned from the conversation. All that mattered to her was the possibility—a long shot, maybe, but a chance to make things right—she felt slipping through her fingers. “Don’t leave angry, Ross. Please. I want…I need to talk to you.”

Beside the car, he paused to dig the keys out of his pocket. Flicking a glance her way, he growled, “If I hadn’t come here, when were you going to warn me? After you’d handcuffed Laney and read her her rights? She’s my family, Justine.”

“She’s an adult.”
And maybe an accessory to murder.

“And I still have a responsibility to look out for her.”

Hearing the back door, Justine realized her father had taken Noah inside to give them privacy. And she thought of how her old man had reacted when he’d learned a member of
his
family was under the cloud of suspicion..

If you committed a crime, Chili Pepper, that’s one fall you’re taking on your own,
he’d told her not long after he’d learned through a friend that the Texas Rangers were looking into her finances.
Those Rangers don’t go huntin’ fire where there’s no smoke.

More bothered than she should be that Ross made no such exceptions, Justine lashed out. “What century are you living in, anyway? Because in this one, the law trumps your macho head-of-the-family bullshit.”

“Not in
my
family,” he told her.

“What, do you think money gives you some kind of special dispensation? Or is it having a…a
past
relationship with me?”
Before you threw it out the window. Threw
me
out,
she thought, remembering the way he’d made her feel so ashamed, so hollow for protecting herself, and him, too, as best she could manage.

His strong mouth drew tight. “Don’t pull that on me, Justine. I’m there for Laney because I know what it’s like to live with the consequences of
not
being there for someone I loved. Because I know what it’s like to live with that kind of regret.”

“You’re talking about Anne?” Justine had never wanted details. That had been another of the rules between them: that neither one would dampen their encounters with any reference to the spouses they had lost. Or much of anything of consequence.

But she understood the rules had changed, and in this round of the game, the issues of their real lives could no longer be ignored. Because they were no longer pretending that what they had was casual…

If
they had anything at all, considering the issues that stood between them.

Ross nodded. “She was a cop, too. An HPD detective.”

“Did she…did she die in the line?”

“Yeah.” Another tight nod, his voice hoarsening as he spoke. “A traffic accident, but still…She’d just left me for a call. She was on a lunch break, out of service. But she chose to take it. Because we were arguing.”

“I’m so sorry.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “I wanted kids. She didn’t. I’d known it up front, known she’d had a bad childhood. But for some reason, I thought I’d talk her out of it. Damned stupid.”

“Ross…” She’d never imagined he was carrying such a burden.

“I always wondered what would’ve happened if I’d just accepted things as they were. Or if I’d at least been there to stop the bleeding. It’s what I do—for other people…”

Justine shook her head. “You can tear yourself apart wondering stuff like that. I have, imagining what would’ve happened if I’d forced the issue with Lou, made him have that physical he kept putting off. Or if I’d found him a few minutes sooner. You can’t undo it, Ross. Can’t take back a single second. There’s no reverse gear on the time line. The only possibility is moving forward.”

A breeze ruffled his hair and lifted strands gilded by the autumn sunlight, a bright note in contrast to the haunted depths of his gray eyes. “Maybe you can’t change the wondering, but it can damned well change
you.
It should…should make you less afraid of telling the people in your life you love them. And less afraid of showing love in every way you can.”

Justine felt a burning in her throat, the regret for all the things
she’d
left unspoken. With Ross and before. “I didn’t love my husband. When I married him, I mean.”

Ross said nothing, only listened, looking even sadder.

“He knew,” she confessed. “Knew how hard it was for me to trust, after Noah’s father…But Lou said he felt enough for both…for both of us, enough to tide me over till I could feel it with him.”

“And did you, after you were married?”

“God, yes. It took a while for me to be certain he didn’t just want a young trophy wife on his arm and in his bed. To be certain I was after more than some stability for my son. But Lou was good to Noah, and he was patient with me. Not perfect, but patient enough to win me over. It was tough, Ross. I’m not…I’m not a woman who loves easily.”

“That’s because you’re a woman who loves hard,” he ventured, reaching to touch her face, to smooth back an errant lock of hair and tuck it behind her ear. “So hard you’re afraid.”

“I was afraid,” she said. “Afraid to tell him. And I let Lou die, not knowing. I never said the words.”

Ross reached for her, and just like that, she let go, leaning against his chest, letting the tears come. Stroking her back, he assured her, “He knew, Justine. Of course he knew it.”

“How can you be sure? How can I?”

“Because you’re not half as good at hiding your emotions as you think. Not from anyone who loves you.”

Surprised, she pulled away to look at his face, trying to gauge what he’d just told her. Struggling to deserve it.

But her hesitation went on too long, the silence turning awkward. Unsure what to do, she swallowed hard, then pulled her phone from her pocket and hit a number on the speed dial.

“Hey, Dad,” she said when her father answered. “Would you mind holding down the fort for a couple hours?”

“Everything all right?” her father asked her.

“You tell me, Dad. You’ve been watching from the window.”

“At first, your doctor friend looked plenty mad, but then I
got to thinkin’, how dangerous could a fellow who makes house calls and dispenses cookies really be?”

Her gaze traveled from Ross’s broad chest and strong shoulders to a face that could have doubled for a Nordic god’s. A face that watched hers with singular intensity.

She stroked the contour of his cheek and smiled at him, lifting her brows in a suggestion. “Dangerous enough, Dad.”

“Then you’d better be careful, Chili Pepper,” he said. “We’ll see you in a bit.”

In her father’s voice, she heard an unfamiliar warmth. Approval, Justine realized. Her father approved of Ross, or of her decision to pursue him.
There’s a first.

“Thanks.” She broke off the connection.

“What was that about?” Ross asked, but in his eyes she read a supposition…and his enthusiasm for it.

Justine reached into the car, her hand caressing the Mustang’s white interior. “How ’bout we go for a ride, Ross?”

“Justine…” Reluctance filtered through the lust that roughened his voice. “I have a call to make. You’re the one who told me to hire a good lawyer.”

She put a finger to his lips. “It’s Sunday. That can wait. But this can’t.”

He pulled her finger into his mouth, his eyes closing and his tongue stroking the tip in a way that had her melting like a candle.

Standing on tiptoe, she whispered into his ear, “Let’s drive somewhere private, and you can meet me in the backseat.”

Releasing her finger, he stared her down. “You want to come with me, you’re riding in the front seat, Justine. To my house and not some pissant motel. And this time, we’re both walking in through the front door.”

Though the dungeon, the scourge, and the executioner be absent, a guilty mind can apply the goad and scorch with blows.

—Lucretius

Ross knew what Justine was up to. He was pretty sure he understood it better than Justine did herself.

Not wanting to frighten her off, he’d kept his admission low-key, but he
had
let her know he loved her. And she’d gotten the message. He’d watched her eyes flare with alarm and heard her choke on an attempt at speech.

All too quickly, she’d slipped into the comfort zone of sexuality. Because somewhere along the line, she’d learned to trust a man’s reaction to a smoldering look, a subtle caress, and anything-but-subtle curves. And somewhere along the line—probably when Noah’s father abandoned her—she’d learned to distrust everything else. Or maybe some earlier wound had caused her to devalue herself young, so much so that she would hand over her heart to an irresponsible loser in the first place.

If Ross were a better person, he’d stop things right now. Point out to her that she was worth a hell of a lot more than the backseat tumble she’d just offered.

But the truth was, words would never convince her. And the greater truth was, that look, that touch, that body of hers had him so wild with the need to have her that it was all he could do to grind out the condition that she go with him to his house.

If she turned and walked away from him, Ross knew his resolve would crumble—had the uncomfortable suspicion, in fact, that he’d throw himself at her feet and beg her to join him in the backseat, on the Mustang’s hood—any damned place he could have her. Even though he suspected he’d regret it later.

But instead of leaving, Justine looked at him uncertainly. “You’re sure, Ross? Sure you want to be seen with me? This situation with Savoy’s death…Whether I end up blamed or Laney does, your family isn’t going to understand.”

He walked around and opened her door for her, then smiled and gestured toward the front seat. “I’d be honored to be seen with you. Anytime and anywhere.”

Blinking hard, she stared down at the ground between them, staying silent for a span Ross counted out in his own heartbeats.

At ten, she nodded. “Okay, then. Let’s do this.”

As the miles rushed past, she said nothing, her body’s stiffness in stark contrast to the waving tendrils of hair teased loose by the wind.

“You all right?” he asked as they passed the edge of town.

“I’m fine,” she told him, reaching back to free the rest of her hair. The dark chocolate spill of it looked alive, flapping like a shiny banner in the sunshine. “Really. Just a little—”

“Nervous?” He flashed a smile her way. “It’s not as if we’ve never—”

“I’ve never been inside your house, you know that? In all the time we were together, I never even tried to get to know you.”

“You were still grieving,” he said, and waved at an older man raking leaves out of his front yard. Now retired, Mr. Yardley had taught him biology in high school, while the woman beside Ross had put a whole new spin on the subject within the past few months. But he found it was another subject
altogether—that of her psychology—that kept him fascinated with her. That made him want to spend a lifetime unraveling her secrets.

“That’s true,” she allowed. “And in a lot of ways, I’m still grieving. But as selfish as it is on my part, I don’t want to lose you again. I don’t want to be alone.”

She
was
alone, he realized as he turned onto his street in the historic district. Despite her child and her father, Justine had always struck him that way. From what she’d said about her marriage to Lou Wofford, she had been alone then, too, in her fear.

“You don’t have to be,” he promised, catching sight of the blue Craftsman bungalow he’d taken more than two years to restore on days off. Since last week’s cold snap, the leaves of the sweet gum tree in the front yard had turned a vibrant yellow, with two smaller ornamentals blazing orange right beside it.

He laid his hand atop hers, feeling the strength beneath her smooth flesh. But underneath that strength, he suspected she was terrified of this step, of saying the things she’d said and taking their affair out of the shadows.

“I didn’t mean what I said as an ultimatum, back at your place,” he said. “What I’m telling you is, we can hold off if you want to. Because you’re worth the wait.”

His heart bumping uncomfortably, he added, “So it’s your call, Justine. Do I pull into the driveway or take you right back home?”

All Justine had started out wanting was the distraction of an hour—or maybe two or three. A chance to be with Ross before circumstances forced her to bring his cousin in for a much harsher round of questions. Questions bound to center on the presence of Laney’s fingerprints—and her fingerprints alone—on the nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol found
beneath her front seat. The same handgun that was now being tested to match to the bullets removed from Roger Savoy’s chest.

Depending on how things shook out, it was altogether possible Ross was going to regret ever having anything to do with Justine. And altogether probable he’d forget he’d ever implied such an impossibility as love.

The right thing, the honest thing to do, she knew, was to tell him to turn the car around, head straight back to the ranch. Because accepting anything more suggested she was ready to commit to a relationship she knew was doomed to failure. And she wasn’t certain she was strong enough to make it through another loss.

“Pull into the drive,” she said, her voice a husky rasp she barely recognized. A stranger’s voice, one she acknowledged as her own misguided impulse. But she didn’t want to think of it, couldn’t bear to think at all now, when she wanted so desperately just to
feel,
to live inside the physical for whatever brief span circumstance allowed them.

They made it inside the house—barely, Ross fumbling with his keys while Justine kissed him long and hard at the front door, as she had promised. She heard a car pass by but didn’t look up, couldn’t do much more than wrap herself around him in an urgent invitation.

Finally, Ross rammed the key home and pushed open the front door behind her. Once inside, an autumn’s worth of clothing fluttered to the floor: colorful leaves that marked a trail across the hardwood, past the brick fireplace, and into a bedroom with walls painted in a softer blue than the house’s exterior.

The king-size bed was a mahogany four-poster, and she had a vague impression of quilted stars as Ross ripped the coverlet aside and laid her down on smooth sheets. On all fours above her, he leaned in to devour her mouth, his tongue
plunging, stroking, and teasing her until white-hot excitement ignited like a new sun at her core.

Reaching up, she rubbed her palms across his hard chest, scraping his sensitive male nipples with her thumbnails. Then she reached much lower, eliciting a hiss near her ear.

“Not yet,” he whispered. “You touch me like that right now, and this is going to be one short date.”

Encircling his length, she smiled wickedly up at him. “I wouldn’t call it anything like short.”

He grabbed her wrists and, in one swift motion, pinned her arms above her head. “I kind of wish you’d been in uniform. Could’ve used those pretty silver handcuffs right about now.”

“You don’t need them,” she whispered as he kissed a path toward her breasts. “I’ll be good. I promise.”

“Come to think of it, I might prefer
bad,
” he said, the last coherent words either of them managed as he occupied his lips, his mouth, his clever tongue with other pursuits.

Writhing beneath him, Justine lost herself in sensation. Let the heat and light of him drive down the darkness as he finally took her, rocking toward a supernova that burned away awareness of the world beyond blue walls.