Twice A Target (Task Force Eagle) (21 page)

Control, restraint, you’re no teenager.
But
control had already burned away in the furnace of passion. She’d leave him
before long, and he needed the feel and the scent of her branded into him.

“Holt.” She writhed against him. Her hand tortured him
where he strained against his fly. She slipped a foil packet from her jeans
pocket and handed it to him.

“Oh, yeah.” He skimmed one hand beneath her shirt to
cup a firm breast. He tugged away the offending fabric to give him access to
those strawberry-pink nipples, taut and eager for his attention. So sweet.

He fumbled with her zipper, and in a flash, he had her
naked and her sexy long legs wrapped around him. Her breath hitching, she
started on his clothing, snapping off buttons in her haste.

“Let me, sweetheart. I don’t want to have to explain
ripped-off buttons to Espie.” When his shirt fell open, the pleasure of her
breasts pressed against his chest had him gasping. She shuddered, her mouth
seeking his.

Once he’d understood the danger he’d placed her in,
he’d been terrified for her. Covering her with his body, joining with her held
panic at bay, reassured him in a way he scarcely comprehended. His fingers
found her, wet and sleek and ready. As she welcomed him into her body, his soul
expanded.

Chapter 21

When he entered her, Maddy arched and sighed with the
satisfaction she felt only with him. Her body was on fire, her pulse
scrambling. She bent to taste his lips, salty with passion, as the deep thrill
sparked within her, rocketed her to white-hot stars. She may never feel this
soul-deep connection again, and she wanted it to last forever.

He bucked against her, pulled her closer as he let go
and joined her in a cascading release.

Long moments afterward, Maddy stirred, squirmed
against Holt. “It’s hard.”

He chuckled. “Not at the moment. But give me a little
while.”

She erupted in giggles against his chest. “No, silly,
the stove. It’s very hard. And cold.”

“Oh.” He separated them and lifted her to her feet.

After they rearranged their clothing, she kissed him.
“I’ll take you up on the offer—later. Hear the Bobby Alarm?”

Intermittent fussing squawks emitted from the nursery,
indicating the baby was cranking up.

“I’ll go.” He stuffed his shirt into his jeans. “I
haven’t seen my little buddy all day.”

While he tended the baby, Maddy sat at the table. She
felt contented and sated and smug. He wanted her. And he cared enough to ensure
her pleasure before he brought her to climax and sought his own satisfaction.
Sex had never been a priority for her, but maybe that was because no one had
ever made her feel the way Holt did.

Maybe it was because she loved him, but he dazzled her
with a mix of tenderness and sensuality that thrilled her from the deep
recesses of her soul to her fingertips. Heat crept through her at the thought
of the approaching night. She had time to make a few more memories. More than
that, she wouldn’t let herself hope.

Banishing further romantic dreams, she began examining
the prints of the crime scene photos. One by one, she pored over each square
inch. The close-up of the shooter’s hiding place, an angled shot of the
roadway, the steep hillside showing the mangled trees—none of them betrayed a
hint of a clue.

She slumped in the chair. Even if Holt hadn’t dared to
hope, she had longed to find something. Anything.

She peered closer at the two blow-ups of the landslide
aftermath. Those weren’t for evidence, but to indulge herself. The composition
of the shadows and textures in the jumble of boulders had intrigued her at the
time and still did.

Frowning, she peered at a section of the rock slide.
What was the odd-looking object protruding from the rocks? A branch? She rooted
in her camera case for a magnifying glass.

When the wide convex lens framed that section of the
picture, what Maddy saw skittered a shiver down her spine. She opened her
laptop, on the kitchen table where she’d been checking e-mail. A few clicks
took her to the same photo. She framed and cropped the section showing the
jutting object.

A few adjustments with the resolution clarified what
she’d suspected. She could only stare, heart pounding like a tom-tom, at her
discovery.

“If you find anything important in those pictures,
I’ll eat it,” he said, cool derision in his voice. “Right, Bobby?”

Bobby wore a one-piece pajama patterned with bucking
broncos. He waved his arms happily. The duck down that passed for his hair made
him look like a surprised angel. He gave a juicy lip-smacking reply.

“Did you ever see that old movie
Blow-Up
?” she
said.

Holt adjusted the baby to a more upright position and
dangled a stuffed cow in front of him. “You mean the one where the photographer
blows up his pictures and finds a—” Shock, then steely concentration hardened
his features.

“Body.”

Gripping the baby tightly to him, he sat down heavily beside
her. “Show me.”

“I thought this was a stick at first.” She slid the
laptop over to him. Clamping her lips together, she waited.

Removing a tasty hand from his mouth, Bobby voiced a
complaint at the tension he clearly felt in the adults.

Holt rocked him and edged the computer out of reach of
chubby, wet digits. He leaned closer to the screen. When he looked up at her,
his eyes were hard with determination and bright with triumph.

“It’s an arm.” He threaded a hand through his hair.
“Or what’s left of it. Someone is buried under that rock pile.”

*****

After a phone call to the authorities, discussing the
possible meanings of a body beneath the landslide calmed Maddy’s nerves to a
manageable level but she still picked at her dinner. Holt, on the other hand,
concentrated on the lamb stew with all the fervor of a restaurant reviewer.
What that meant she had no idea.

Afterwards, he gave Bobby his bath and put him to bed.
When he returned to the kitchen, she was just stowing the leftover stew in the
fridge.

“There’s enough for another meal,” she said. “I don’t
cook often, so I tend to overdo. You don’t mind leftovers, do you?” She smiled,
her heart tripping on itself at his lean, sexy body and brooding eyes.

He rubbed his jaw, the only betrayal of emotion he
seemed to allow himself. “Leftovers? No, I don’t mind. Thanks for the great
dinner. Sorry I teased you about it earlier. Give Espie that recipe. Maybe she
can make it after you leave.”

A frisson swept through her. She watched his
expression harden. What was going on? Was it the body beneath the rocks or
something else? She stepped closer, held out a hand. “Holt, I’m not leaving
until this is over.”
Not even then if you want me to stay.

His gaze fixed, he held up his hands. “I believe you.
And I appreciate it. But let’s not let sex make us pretend this marriage is
more than a pretext. Because you will be leaving.”

Heart sliding downward, she could think of no good
reply to that frank statement.

He plunged his hands into his pockets as if avoiding
touching her. “I’m damned beat. Gonna turn in now. I need a solid night’s
sleep.”

With those words, he turned and strode down the hall
to his old room, not the master bedroom where the king-sized bed awaited the
newly-weds.

Maddy stood in the kitchen, her heart torn and bloody
at her feet.

The door clicked shut behind him.

*****

Sheriff Foley’s crime scene crew kibitzed by two DEA
agents uncovered the body beneath the slide. Foley wouldn’t permit Holt to be
present, but under pressure from the Denver DEA office, conceded his
participation in a strategy meeting on Thursday morning.

Holt and Maddy were the first to enter the Rock County
Sheriff’s Department conference room. Wanted posters and yellow sticky notes
peppered a nicked cork bulletin board. A photograph of the governor on the far
wall completed the room’s limited décor. He held out a wooden chair for her at
the long metal table, then took the next seat.

She sat silent and stiff beside him. Mouth tight, she
stared straight ahead at the jumbled bulletin board as if it held the answer to
their problems. The sheriff and the DEA agents might not approve of her
presence, but Holt wouldn’t be the one to deny her. In her present mood, she’d
probably flay more than one strip from his hide.

He didn’t blame her for being ticked off. After their
spectacular kitchen fireworks, he’d been as smooth as an earthquake at dousing
the flames. He hadn’t come up with the right words, but hell, how could he have
stated his case? That preoccupation with sex interfered with their real
problems? That it made him feel guilty? Nothing would have sounded any damned
better than what he did say.

That prissy iron bed felt even lonelier now that it
held her scent. Damn. A shaft of sunlight filtered through the conference
room’s dusty window and glinted on Maddy’s wedding ring. Double damn.

After two restless nights alone, he was primed for a
fight if the DEA and the sheriff tried to keep him on the fringes of their
investigation. He meant to make fucking sure they got this hired killer and protected
Maddy and Bobby. He’d feel a hell of a lot better if El Águila would come out
in the open and fight him instead of stalking innocent bystanders.

In the hallway a murmur of voices superimposed by the sheriff’s
booming intonations announced arrivals.

Jarvis Foley entered first, a bulging file beneath his
arm. While the others streamed in and ranged around the table, he stopped to
shake Holt’s hand and greet Maddy.

“Ms. McCoy, I’m right pleased to make your
acquaintance.”

“It’s Mrs. Donovan now, Sheriff,” Holt said. “We were
married the other day.” Apparently the deputies investigating the fire and the
break-in hadn’t apprised their boss of that news tidbit.

“My congratulations to you both,” Foley inserted
smoothly. “Burglary and bullets don’t make an auspicious beginning for a
marriage, Mrs. Donovan.”

“Call me Maddy, Sheriff.” She flashed the man a warm
smile.

“You just make yourself comfortable.” Beaming from his
bushy eyebrows to both ends of his handlebar mustache, he took her proffered
hand and made a small bow over it.

Chris Hawke entered bearing a tray with a carafe and
paper coffee cups. He wore his customary Anasazi amulet at the neck of a denim
shirt and topped with a corduroy jacket. In deference to the meeting’s gravity,
Holt surmised.

Luke Rafferty, seated already near the sheriff,
snorted a laugh. “Didn’t know the Legal Eagle moonlighted as waitress.”

Chris spread his lips in a smile as cold as a
rattler’s. He eased the tray onto the table and sat on Maddy’s other side.
“Sheriff, your secretary seemed hassled, so I offered to bring in the
refreshments. I can take them back if Rafferty here objects to the quality of
service.”

“Foley, I asked Mr. Hawke to join me in case Maddy or
I needed counsel,” Holt put in. The Denver SAC probably wised up his agents to
the enmity between these two. Maybe it had nothing to do with murder, but he
wanted all bases covered.

“Of course.” The sheriff gave his deputy a pointed
glare.

Luke shrugged and reached for the carafe and a cup.
“Appreciate your help, Hawke.”

Foley stood at the end of the table and made a
production of arranging his documents. “Teller County had those escaped Texas
convicts awhile back, but this is the most excitement Rock County’s seen since
the Indian Wars. No offense meant, Hawke.”

“None taken.” Cold-blooded smile smoothed to a neutral
expression, Chris extracted a yellow legal pad from his briefcase and set it on
the table before him.

Foley’s barrel chest expanded with such self-importance,
he looked like a courting pigeon. He introduced the two DEA agents seated
opposite Holt and Maddy.

Special Agent Georgia Bonnyman’s red hair and freckles
made her look too young for her senior status. Big boned and rangy, she gave a
stern and efficient impression. Probably an effect cultivated to offset her
baby face.

Special Agent John Salazar was his partner’s physical
opposite. Dark and of average height, he would blend in anywhere. He smiled
congenially. “We’ll catch this killer before El Águila can extract further
revenge, Mrs. Donovan.”

“I hope your plan suits the confidence of your words,”
Maddy said.

Although her features were composed, Holt detected a
waver in her voice and saw her hands gripped tightly in her lap. He wanted to
reach out to reassure her, but he didn’t think she’d welcome the gesture. When
Chris covered her hand with his, Holt suppressed a spurt of anger.

He turned his attention from his friend and
his...wife. “Sheriff, what can you tell us about the body you dug up
yesterday?”

Foley folded himself into his chair and donned reading
glasses. He lifted one of the reports before him. “First time I ever heard of a
rock slide
un
covering a body.” He shook his head. “Lab and autopsy
reports won’t be ready right away, and decomposition makes visual ID
difficult.”

“Any credit cards, driver’s license?” Holt asked.

“No papers of any kind. No wallet. Nothing. The
general build, coloring and clothing fit the description of that drifter who
disappeared from the Circle-S back in March.”

“K.C. Riggs?”

“As it turns out,” Bonnyman said, “that’s one of the
names used by a professional hit man who’s been working out of California. The
FBI has been on his trail. The suspect got careless, whacked innocent
bystanders who crossed him. Very unprofessional. The FBI lost track a few
months ago, and now we may know why. They’re sending more information.”

Luke Rafferty nodded thoughtfully. He looked up from
the doodles and notes on his small notebook. “Pro, huh? That makes a strong
case for him being the one who killed Rob and Sara.”

“If K.C. Riggs, or whoever he was, was the one who
shot out Rob’s tires, what happened to his camper?” Holt asked. “Sheriff, how
did the man get under those rocks? In March that area was snow covered and
frozen.”

Casting Maddy a glance, the sheriff shifted in his
chair. “Looked like he was buried deliberately. Wrapped in a tarp. Someone
worked their butt off to hide him good.”

Chris Hawke leaned forward, as intent as Holt. “I suppose
it’s too much to ask for the high-powered rifle used to shoot at Rob Donovan.”

Foley pushed his glasses to the end of his nose, a
move that made him resemble a beardless Saint Nick. “There’s nothing near the
body. I have some men digging around, but the hillside’s shaky.” He sighed.
“Even if he’s ID’d as this hit man, we still have nothing solid to connect him
with the crash. Merely the coincidences that he disappeared the next day and
was found in the same location as Rob’s truck.”

“Two coincidences too many, Sheriff.” Holt caught
Special Agent Salazar’s eye. The genial man wasn’t smiling anymore. “The cause
of death, then. Any educated guesses?”

“It was clearly murder.” Foley frowned at his papers.