Web of Lies

by Jennifer Estep

  “In the backseat. Now.”

  tongue. He groaned, and his hands latched onto my I was more than happy to comply. He maneuvered me arms, yanking me back up toward him. our lips met left and back. I ducked my head and sat down on the seat. again, sucking the breath and life from both of us. SomeDonovan used the opportunity to get rid of his boxers. I how, Donovan maneuvered us once again until he was did the same to my panties. I scooted back into the car. back on top. He covered himself with the condom. Then Estep_Web of Lies_1P EP.indd 226-227

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  I opened my legs, locked them around his waist, and he thrust into me.

  I watched his beautiful hazel eyes dilate as he sank into me, driving deeper and deeper. An ecstasy of gold—

  for both of us. Donovan rocked back. I dug my fingers 21

  into his back and pulled him down hard, so that the full length of him filled me.

  Retreat, pull, retreat, pull. We clacked together like two magnets driven crazy by the vibrations the other was giving off. over and over, Donovan pumped into me, until our hoarse cries of pleasure rang out in time to the gentle rock of the sedan and the tap of rain on the metal roof.

  After we finished, Donovan and I lay in the back of the sedan in a loose tangle of bare arms and legs. The imitation leather felt stiff and sticky against my skin. The windows had steamed over, and the smell of sex permeated the car. Beside me, above me, next to me, the detective’s breaths came in sharp, raspy puffs. The sounds of a man who’d exerted himself to his full, glorious potential. But Donovan made no move to pull away from me or put some clothes on.

  “Well, that wasn’t quite what I had in mind as far as warming up goes, but I’ll take it,” I quipped. “Even if it’s going to hurt like hell peeling myself off this seat.”

  Donovan didn’t say anything, but the corners of his lips lifted into a half smile. “You’re not the only one. I’m sure my back will be screaming at me tomorrow. Not to mention the burns I have on my knees.”

  “Worth it?”

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  He cocked one black eyebrow. “Do you even have to

  “All right,” I said in a quiet voice, not wanting to push ask?”

  him anymore tonight.

  No, I didn’t. Because I’d been moaning just as loud as he had.

  It was after ten by the time we returned to Country Daze. After we caught our breath, Donovan eased up into a The traffic of the day had long since ceased, and the stop sitting position. I followed suit. He reached into the front sign at the crossroads looked like a dull red ghost in the seat and handed me some clean clothes—a pair of khakis drizzling rain. Donovan didn’t have an extra pair of the several sizes too big and a T-shirt that hung almost to my shoes in the trunk, so I had to stick my feet back into my knees. The detective was a bit taller than I was. Donovan muddy boots. First though, I wiped as much of the grime pulled on a matching set of clothes. When that was done, off them as I could with a towel.

  we turned and faced each other in the back seat. Sometime while we’d been gone, Sophia’s black con“So here we are again,” I said. vertible had been pulled off to one side of the store so

  “Yeah,” Donovan replied. “Here we are again.”

  that the classic car rested in the grass. So had Finn’s CadilHe didn’t look happy at the thought. The detective lac. The store itself was dark, the front doors closed and let out a long breath and ran his hands through his black locked.

  hair—lean, strong hands that had just done marvelous

  “Come on,” I said. “Finn said they were in the house things to my body. I hesitated, then reached over, put my around back.”

  hand on top of his, and gave a gentle squeeze with my The detective and I walked through the gap between fingers. I wasn’t sure what prompted the reaction, other Sophia’s convertible and the store. Warren T. Fox’s house than this warmth in my chest I felt for the detective. or lay about five hundred feet behind the store in back of a maybe it was the simple fact I didn’t want things to end copse of maple and oak trees. A creek ribboned around between us like they had the last time we’d slept together. one side of the house. The rain had made it fat and swolWhich had been altogether badly. len, like a snake that had swallowed more than it could Donovan flinched at my touch and slid his hand out comfortably hold. The rush of water drowned out the from under mine. “We should get back.”

  sound of the rain slapping against the tin roof. I stared at his rugged features. Black hair, bronze skin, I’d come back here this afternoon to check out the golden eyes. But heat and desire no longer brightened structure, but I was once again struck by how much the his gaze. Instead, the detective looked tired, weary, heartclapboard building resembled Fletcher Lane’s house. sick. As though all the pleasure he’d just experienced Both featured the same white boards, the same kind of came with a weight that was just too much to bear, even shutters, the same sloping tin roof. And it wasn’t just the for him.

  house that reminded me of Fletcher—it was everything Estep_Web of Lies_1P EP.indd 230-231

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  about Warren T. Fox. The blue work clothes he wore, Warren rocked back and forth in an oversize recliner his grumpy nature, the old-fashioned store he ran. It that made him seem older and more frail than he really was almost like Fletcher and Warren were identical twins was. The television was tuned to the Weather Channel. separated at birth. The kind you read about who built Warren’s brown eyes focused intently on the storm-front separate, but almost identical, lives for themselves. once graphics on the flickering screen. Finn relaxed in a similar again, I felt that faint softness stir in my chest. Because chair, which he’d reclined all the way back. His laptop everything about Warren made me remember Fletcher drowsed on his lap. Finn was doing the same in the chair and the love I’d had for him.

  itself. Soft snores drifted out of his open mouth. Lights blazed in several of the first-floor windows. I I went over, put my hand into Finn’s broad shoulder, stepped up onto the porch and knocked on the front and shook him awake.

  door.

  “What? What?” he mumbled in a sleepy voice. “I

  “Hmph?” Sophia grunted through the heavy wood. didn’t touch her, I swear.”

  “It’s Gin.”

  “Relax, Casanova,” I said.

  A lock clicked, and the Goth dwarf opened the door. Finn blinked a few times before his green eyes focused Sophia clenched an aluminum baseball bat in one hand. on me. “oh, Gin, it’s you.” He frowned. “Why are you Her black eyes flicked over my oversize clothes, and she wearing a T-shirt that says Ashland Police Department stepped back to let us inside. Sophia crooked her finger on it?”

  at us, and we followed her deeper into the house. For I sighed. “It’s a long story.”

  a moment, I felt like I was coming home to Fletcher’s once Finn was more or less awake, I filled the others after a long day at the Pork Pit. Because the inside of in on what Donovan Caine and I had found in Tobias Warren T. Fox’s house could have been an exact duplicate Dawson’s office. The detective e-mailed the cell phone of Fletcher Lane’s. Same sort of well-worn, overstuffed photos he’d taken to Finn, who started pulling them up furniture, same clutter of knickknacks, same piles of odds on his laptop and going through them.

  and ends that made a house a home. I blinked, and the

  “Anything happen on this end?” I asked Sophia. illusion vanished.

  “Quiet,” she rasped.

  The others were in a large den. Violet huddled on the

  “A couple of folks came in for sodas and cigarettes, but sofa, a heavy textbook in her lap, a notepad and pen by that was it,” Jo-Jo agreed.

  her side. Studying. Jo-Jo perched on the other end of

  “Usual customers,�
� Warren cut in. “Even Dawson the sofa and flipped through a beauty magazine. Several can’t scare off folks when they need their tobacco.”

  more sat stacked at her bare feet. The dwarf had come

  “Those papers you found inside the safe,” Jo-Jo said. prepared.

  “What did they say? Anything interesting?”

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  I shrugged. “Ask Donovan. It was dark. I didn’t really Sometimes, we can feel the tremors down here. once see them.”

  they were so strong, they knocked over some sodas in the All eyes turned to the detective, who also shrugged. store. Made a big mess.”

  “Like Gin said, it was dark. We only used flashlights in“They feel sort of like small earthquakes,” Violet side. They mostly looked like schematics to me. We’ll added. “They’ve been going on a couple of months now.”

  have to wait and see what Finn says.”

  “Well, according to this, Dawson is pouring most of

  “You’re going to have to give me a few minutes,” Finn his money and manpower into the new shaft these days,”

  said, typing on his laptop. “I’ve got to sort through and Finn said.

  read some of this. It doesn’t make much sense to me ei“Why would he do that?” Violet asked. ther. Not to mention that the photo quality isn’t the best Finn read some more. His frown deepened. “That I’ve ever seen.”

  can’t be right,” he muttered. “It’s not possible.”

  “Sorry,” Donovan sniped. “I was a little more worried

  “What?” Jo-Jo asked. “What’s not possible?”

  about flashing too much light around and getting caught

  “What Dawson is drilling for,” Finn said. “According than taking perfect pictures for you.”

  to this, it looks like that shaft isn’t to get more coal out of We lapsed into silence while we waited for Finn to read the mountain. It’s for—”

  and decipher the documents. But I had a pretty good idea

  “Diamonds,” I said in a soft voice. “He’s found diaof what they’d say. So I leaned against the wall and started monds in the mountain.”

  thinking about what came next—getting close enough to Silence. For a moment, everyone looked at me. Then Tobias Dawson to kill him. Because that was the only way they all started talking at once.

  this thing was going to end, if my suspicions were correct.

  “Diamonds?” Sophia rasped in surprise.

  Sophia stood beside me and twirled the baseball bat in

  “That’s not possible,” Violet Fox said.

  her hand like it was a metal baton.

  “Darling, anything’s possible,” Jo-Jo replied. After about ten minutes of reading and clicking, Finn

  “So that’s why Dawson wants the land so badly.” Donfrowned. “That’s weird.” He looked over at Warren. “Did ovan shook his head.

  you know Tobias Dawson has recently started construc“I wonder how big they are,” Finn said in a speculative tion on a new, separate mine shaft?”

  tone.

  Warren nodded. “That’s the rumor the miners have Warren T. Fox was the only one who didn’t say anybeen spouting. There’s been more activity at the mine thing. Instead, the old coot stared at me, his eyes dark, lately too.”

  pinched, and worried in his brown, wrinkled face. He

  “What kind of activity?” Donovan asked.

  knew what the diamond find meant as well as I did. DiWarren shrugged. “More blasting, more drilling. saster. For him and the mountain.

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  If the diamond I’d found in the safe was any indicaBesides, the store, the land, the house. They were all tion of the size and quality of the others Tobias Dawson that Warren and Violet had ever known. They were simhad discovered, the dwarf would tear the whole mounply home. I knew Fletcher Lane would have done whattain apart to get every last gemstone out of the ground. ever he could to help his friend. The old man wasn’t here, And it wouldn’t end there. Word would eventually leak but I was. And I was going to protect the Foxes—no matout about the diamond find, and then, well, it would be ter what.

  worse than the California Gold Rush around here. EveryWarren raised his dark eyes to mine, asking a silent one would be bulldozing and blasting the area, hoping question. I nodded. Question asked and answered. Jo-Jo to find diamonds on their own land and get rich themDeveraux saw the exchange. An emotion flickered in her selves. They’d destroy the whole mountain in their hasty pale gaze. It looked like relief—mixed with a spark of anticgreed—and Warren T. Fox’s house and store lay at the ipation. About what, I couldn’t imagine. But it was there. epicenter. He’d go under first. The knowledge flashed in After about three minutes, the babble of voices and his eyes, steady, weary, certain.

  conversation wound down.

  Unless I did something to stop it.

  “I just don’t see how it’s possible,” Donovan Caine I’d never considered myself to be any sort of environsaid. “Diamonds? Here?”

  mentalist, but these mountains were as much a part of me I nodded. “They have them over in Arkansas, why as they were of Warren Fox. I took the same sort of pride not here in Ashland? Tobias Dawson’s found plenty of in their beauty he did. If Tobias Dawson’s current mine coal in the mountain. That’s all a diamond really is—coal was any indication of things to come, it would be a public put under pressure long and hard enough to evolve into service to stop this now. And there was only one way to something else.”

  do that—by killing Tobias Dawson.

  “How do you know that?” the detective asked. oh, I had no doubt that the dwarf had told a few of

  “I know a little bit about stones, especially precious his most trusted men what he had found, like those two ones.” I didn’t mention the fact I could hear their vigiants who’d come to the office to investigate the robbrations, tap into them, and get them to do anything I bery tonight. But without Dawson around, without his wanted. I never flaunted my magic, and I wasn’t about mining expertise and know-how, it would be that much to do it now.

  harder for his flunkies to do anything about the dia“But if Dawson’s already started drilling this other shaft monds. Even if they did make a move later on, I could to get to the diamonds, why is he still threatening us?”

  always take them out too. No, killing Dawson was the Violet asked, confusion flashing in her eyes. “Why even key here. Eliminate the dwarf and the rest of the monster bother? Why not just take the diamonds out on the sly?”

  would more than likely die along with him.

  “Because the dwarf doesn’t own the mineral rights to Estep_Web of Lies_1P EP.indd 236-237

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  the land,” Warren rumbled. “I do. So legally, they aren’t Warren shook his head. “It’s just my word against his. his diamonds. They’re ours.”

  Dawson’s men are the ones who’ve been harassing my

  “And people might realize that, if he started mining customers, never him directly. But his men would never them,” Jo-Jo finished. “Word would get around. It always speak out against him. He pays them too well for that.”

  does. And then Warren could cause problems for him.

  “But you own the land, Warren, the mineral rights,”

  Legal problems.”

  Donovan said. “Dawson just can’t do whatever he wants Warren nodded. “or try to at least.”

  with your property. You could take him to court to get We all fell silent. I gave the others a few minutes to him to stop. We have the files from his office. We can think, but my decision had already been made. prove what he’s doing.”

  “Finn?” I asked in a low voice.

 
Finn snorted. “Yeah, files which you and Gin got by

  “Yeah?”

  breaking into Dawson’s office. No judge would ever allow

  “What else did you find out about Dawson today?”

  them in court. And I don’t think Dawson would be eager He stared at me with his green eyes. “All the usual info. to cough up any more information. Besides, look at it Finances, business interests, hobbies, homes, social confrom the money angle. A court case would drag on for nections.”

  years, and Dawson’s pockets are a lot deeper than War“Anything we can use?”

  ren’s are.”

  Finn stared at me. His gaze cut to Warren. He saw the

  “Even then,” I said, “Dawson could probably buy the resolution in the other man’s face and realized it matched verdict he wanted. And while everything was getting setmine. “Yeah, there are a few angles. Nothing too easy, tled the wrong way in court, Dawson could continue his of course, but I’m sure we can find something. There’s reign of terror in the meantime. Make another play for always a way in.”

  Violet in the meantime. Face it, detective, the dwarf isn’t That’s what Fletcher Lane always used to tell me. I going to walk away from a mountain full of diamonds. smiled.

  Nobody would. There’s only one way to get him to stop. The detective stared at me, his gold eyes dark. “Surely My way.”

  there’s another way besides killing Dawson.”

  our eyes met and held, gold on gray. After a moment,

  “And what way would that be, detective? Turn ToDonovan Caine looked away, but not before I caught the bias Dawson into the cops? For what, making threats?

  weary resignation in his gaze, the sag in his shoulders, It wouldn’t take, and you know it. Besides, the police the deep lines of defeat in his face. He knew what I said usually require a pesky little thing called proof. And I’m was true. He didn’t like it, but the detective was going to betting there is none. Dawson’s too smart for that. Am I let me do it. He knew I was going after Tobias Dawson, right?” I looked at Warren.