Through the Evil Days: A Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne Mystery

by Julia Spencer-Fleming

  “Hey.” Her voice was low and sweet. She reached out and stroked the hair off his forehead. “Hey.”

  “Mmm.” He smiled and closed his eyes. This was one of those dreams. He loved these.

  “Move over,” she said, and he scooted back, leaving a warm place on the folded quilts beneath him. She threw her comforter half over his and slid in next to him. He sighed regretfully. Usually, she was gloriously nude. This time, for some reason, she was wearing panties and a T-shirt.

  Then she put her feet on his legs.

  “Christ, that’s cold!” Kevin’s eyes flew open. Hadley was lying next to him, looking at him uncertainly. He stared. Holy shit. It wasn’t one of those dreams. “It’s you.”

  “Yes, it’s me. Who did you think it was?”

  “I…” His head refused to help his mouth out. Finally he blurted, “What time is it?”

  “About three.”

  “Oh.” His skin was relaying messages like warm and soft and touch. He had to stop himself from pressing against her. His thermal tee and boxers felt ridiculously inadequate. “Hadley.” His voice was too breathy. He coughed. “What are you doing here?”

  She bit her lower lip. Her lips were chapped, and he could imagine what they would feel like, a little roughness over the sinking soft. He scooted back another inch. He waited for her to say something. When she remained silent, he asked, “Is it one of the kids?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “God, this is hard.”

  No kidding.

  “I’m not very good at relationships, Flynn. You met the guy I married. And he was a prince, compared to some of the men I fell in with. So when you came along, all sunshine and puppy dogs, I just … I couldn’t believe you were for real. Then I got to know you, and it got kind of switched around in my head, and I saw that I was the one who wasn’t real. The stuff you like about me, the stuff you say you … love, that’s not me. I mean, it is, but it’s just the surface me.” She looked at him sadly. “I’m not a very good person, Flynn.”

  He laid his hand on her cheek and stroked his thumb beneath her eye. “That’s not true.”

  “I’ve been … cruel to you. There’s no other way to put it.”

  He shook his head. “Hadley—”

  “It’s true. I’ve been like Hudson was tonight, afraid and … disappointed, lashing out at you because I knew it was safe.” She swallowed. “I want to stop reacting like a hurt child. I want to be a grown-up. I want to be able to say that was my old life, this is my new one, and it’s okay to try trusting someone again.” She turned her head and kissed his palm. He shivered. “To try trusting you.” She licked her lips. “If, you know, you still…” Her voice trailed off.

  “Want you.” He could barely hear himself. She nodded. He thought about the first time they had made love, after a long, stressful day full of fear and sorrow. “I do. Want you, I mean. God, I want you.”

  Before he could get out his “but” she nudged closer. “Do you?” Then her hand closed over him, stroking, and all he could manage was a groan. “Flynn,” she whispered. She pushed him onto his back and slid his thermal tee up. His brain was trying to formulate a way to say she was just running away from her emotions again, but his hands went down and yanked his shirt off. She rose over him and bent her head to the blue Celtic knot circling his left nipple. His eyes fluttered shut as she licked his tattoo, licked and bit and sucked until he was panting and jerking beneath her.

  “Hadley.” His voice was a wreck. He couldn’t push her away, so he patted his hands over her hair, her bare shoulder—when had she gotten rid of her T-shirt?—her soft, smooth back. “If this is another ‘have a bad day, screw Flynn to forget’ scene—”

  “No.” She moved down. Hooked his boxers and pulled and he was kicking them off even while he was trying to talk her out of it.

  “Hadley.” He caught at her arms. “Don’t play me. I can’t survive it. Don’t play me.”

  “Oh, Flynn.” She stretched up and slid her arms around his neck. Then he was holding her, drowning in her kiss, and he didn’t care, didn’t care that he was flayed open to her, heart and soul hers for the taking. “I’m sorry,” she whispered into his neck. “I’m so sorry I hurt you.”

  He couldn’t tell if it was sweat or tears on his skin. They rolled together, under and over, touching, tasting, pressing, testing until she was astride him again, sliding over the length of him all wet and slick and he thought he would die if he couldn’t bury himself inside her.

  Then he remembered. “Shit!” He could barely get the words out. “Stop. Hadley, stop. I don’t have any protection.”

  She gave him a wild, reckless smile. “My sweet Flynn.” She rode him, up, down. He moaned. “Have you slept with anyone else? Since me?”

  “No,” he gasped. “No.”

  “I’m clean. I got tested regularly before I left California.” She leaned forward, pushing the damp hair away from his face. “You’re the only lover I’ve had since I moved to Millers Kill.”

  His heart did a thump-turn. “Hadley. Oh, God.”

  “You can’t get me pregnant. I had my tubes tied after Genny.” That information skittered and stung across his brain before he buried it for another time. “It’s up to you. But I want this. And I trust you.” Her face was grave, her eyes clear and bright.

  “I love you,” he whispered.

  “That’s why I trust you,” she whispered back.

  He took her then, skin on skin, such intense pleasure it felt like his entire nervous system had short-circuited. He kept his eyes on hers as he drove her up, as she whimpered and thrashed and clenched, as she gasped out her climax. When he came, it felt like a dam bursting, and as the floodwaters receded he opened, too, and found himself sobbing against her breast while she stroked his hair as she might have done with one of her children.

  “God, I’m sorry,” he said, once he had gotten himself under control.

  “It just means you trust me, too.” She kissed his hair. He could hear her smiling. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell the other guys.”

  The other guys. The department. The chief. The Johnson case. So much they had to talk about … then he dropped out of the world.

  2.

  Lyle MacAuley was starting to worry. Well, to be honest, he’d been worrying the past three days, what with Russ stranded up at Inverary Lake and the rest of the force stretched thinner than a poor man’s undershirt trying to cover the storm.

  Now, parked in his squad car on the corner of Burgoyne Street, watching snow pelting down—and wasn’t that just what they goddamn needed?—he had a new and exciting problem gnawing at his guts. Where the hell were Knox and Flynn?

  He had confirmation from Harlene, who had it from the Albany dispatcher, that they had left the capital at the tail end of the afternoon. There had been some noise about her ex taking the kids, but Tim had stopped by Glenn Hadley’s house last night and the old man had told him they were only going as far as the Algonquin. The Northway had shut down, making an unchristly mess; travelers stranded, cars taking “shortcuts” along impassable roads, folks crowding into shelters at the elementary school and the Baptist church. But again, Flynn’s SUV had its emergency lights. He’d have just gotten waved on by the staties.

  Ignoring his doctor’s orders to cut back on his caffeine intake, Lyle took a swig from the go-cup steaming in his holder. He’d gotten maybe five hours of sleep in one of the cots downstairs in the old cell block. With another eighteen-hour shift staring him in the face, it wasn’t going to be the damn coffee that killed him.

  When Knox and Flynn hadn’t shown up this morning, he’d driven himself over to the Hadley house. Knox’s grandfather was doing okay, the gas holding out in his generator, but he hadn’t seen or heard from his granddaughter since the morning before.

  So where were they? With the emergency channels already stressed to the breaking point, Lyle didn’t want to piss off every other law enforcement agency by passing along a BOLO on two officers who h
ad probably stopped at the Days Inn to wait out the storm. He swallowed some more coffee. He hadn’t gotten a squawk himself yet, miracle of miracles. Maybe he was going to get a full hour without a car accident or fire or somebody triggering their carbon monoxide alarm.

  If so, he was going to take advantage of it. He wedged his coffee into the plastic cup holder and shifted into gear. The chains on his tires clanked as he ground out of the parking spot. Goddamn ice and snow. He had half a mind to retire to Sarasota, spend the winters sport fishing.

  He made pretty good time into Fort Henry, considering he got stuck behind a plow and then had to detour around a street where a tree had taken out an entire stretch of power line. He stopped to check, but Huggins had gotten his Fire and Rescue guys there already, and they didn’t need his help.

  He rolled to a stop in front of the Johnson house. Seeing the driveway bare, he could admit he had been hoping Knox and Flynn had come here to fill the Johnsons in on whatever new information they had dug up in Albany. Not like he knew what it was. Nobody was giving up bandwidth for an extended chat.

  A woman answered the door, her face alight with hope and fear. “Mrs. Johnson? I’m Deputy Chief MacAuley. No news, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh.” She stepped back, letting him into the foyer. “Dear. Well, I guess that no news is good news. Isn’t that what they say?”

  A man around Lyle’s age met them in the living room and introduced himself as Lewis Johnson.

  “Mr. Johnson.” Lyle tucked his cover under his arm to shake hands. “I’m sorry that I don’t have anything to tell you. I just wanted to check in since the phones aren’t working. I don’t suppose you two have heard from—”

  “Nobody’s dropped by to threaten me to keep my mouth shut, if that’s what you’re getting at.” Johnson sounded bone-tired. “They don’t have to. As soon as they clear up the roads again I’m headed to Fishkill. I’m going to talk to this Tim LaMar and tell him he doesn’t have anything to fear from me. I’m not testifying.”

  “What?” Lyle turned to Mrs. Johnson. She looked resigned. “That’s crazy. You might as well put out a contract on yourself. If Tim LaMar knows who you are, you’ll be dead before you make it back home to Fort Henry.”

  “Do you think I don’t know that?” Johnson settled his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “If it saves Mikayla, it’s worth it.”

  “Look, we still don’t know for sure that LaMar is behind her kidnapping. Right now we’re concentrating on finding your daughter.”

  Mrs. Johnson shook her head. “Annie isn’t organized enough to keep Mikayla hidden away for this long. Either she handed her over to someone else”—she glanced at her husband—“or she never had Mikayla in the first place.”

  Lyle jettisoned the argument he had been about to make. If these folks knew what they proposed was deadly and didn’t care, his bleating wouldn’t make much of a difference. He decided to try another tack. “I realize it seems hopeless right now, but I assure you, we’ve got law enforcement all over the state looking for your granddaughter. I have absolute confidence she’ll be found and returned to you without dragging Tim LaMar into it.”

  “If she’s getting her medicine, if she has proper medical attention, if you find her before her liver fails—” Johnson broke off. He took a shaky breath. “We never should have agreed to let her stay with the MacAllens.”

  His wife squeezed his waist. “The FBI agents—”

  “We should have told that pair to go stuff themselves. If she had been with us, she’d be safe right now.”

  Lyle shook his head. “I understand you folks are feeling desperate right now. All I ask is that before you go tearing off to Fishkill, you talk with us. Hmn?” He looked at Mrs. Johnson. He figured she’d do about anything to get her granddaughter back, but she’d rather it didn’t involve her husband painting a target on his back.

  “Okay,” she said. “Yes.”

  “We’re gonna do everything we can to get your little girl back for you. You have my word on that.”

  Johnson sighed. “We know you’re trying. And we thank you for that. It’s just…” He trailed off, but MacAuley could hear the rest of the sentence.

  It’s just not enough.

  3.

  “Mommy?”

  Hadley grunted and burrowed deeper under the covers.

  “Mommy?

  “Is she awake?”

  “I dunno.”

  Something tickled her forehead. “Go watch cartoons,” she mumbled.

  “We can’t! The TVs don’t work ’cause the power’s still out!”

  Hadley cracked an eye open. Genny was almost nose-to-nose, her hair falling onto Hadley’s face. “Kevin told us we couldn’t bother you until you were awake.”

  It all came back to her in a flood—Dylan, the white-knuckled drive, lying awake in the wee hours weighing her bad decisions. Flynn. Hadley was suddenly aware of her body; the ache of unused muscles, the tender dampness between her legs, the faint sting of beard burn along her chest.

  “She’s awake!” Genny bounced on the sofa bed. “Can we go help Ron with the chickens?”

  “What?” Her head was still spinning.

  “They got real chickens in the barn,” Hudson explained. “Ron said we could help feed them and pick up the eggs, but Steve said you had to say it was okay first.”

  “Yes,” Hadley croaked. “Sure. Go. Wait! Are you dressed?”

  “Mo-om. We’ve been up for hours.” Hudson and Genny ran out, slamming the door behind them.

  She waited until she was sure they wouldn’t come bursting back in for some desperately important item, then swung her legs out of bed. She smelled like sex, she had no clean underwear, and she was going to have to wash Steve Obrowski’s T-shirt before she could give it back. She scooped up her clothes and fled into the tiny bathroom.

  Door safely locked behind her, she stared at herself in the mirror. Her lips were still swollen, and there was a rosy streak along the side of her throat where Flynn had—she shuddered. Good God. She had had sex while her children were practically next door. What had gotten into her?

  Wetness on her leg told her exactly what. Unprotected sex. She shook her head in disbelief. She hadn’t done that since she set out to get pregnant with Genny.

  Steve and Ron had left a jug of water on the counter, and she splashed some into a washcloth and scrubbed herself down. She toweled off and got into her clothes, all the while planning her next moves; collect the children, thank the innkeepers, get the kids back to Granddad’s—

  Don’t play me. I can’t survive it. Don’t play me.

  She stopped. Leaned against the counter and hung her head. She was planning on running away. She took a deep breath. Her heart was pounding, and she realized she was terrified.

  This thing with Flynn wasn’t just sex, it wasn’t just for fun—it was something new, so new she felt raw-pink and tender, blind and utterly vulnerable. She had set aside all her shields and defenses, and right now, staring at her almost unrecognizable face in the mirror, she knew Flynn could break her with a word.

  But he won’t. He loves you, too.

  He loves you, too.

  I love him, she mouthed to the mirror, not daring to say it aloud. I love him. She held the thought close against her still-thudding heart. Terrifying, yes. But there she was.

  Back in the living room, she stripped the sheets and blankets from where she and the kids had slept, packed up the rest of their things, and, squaring her shoulders, walked down the freezing hallway to the kitchen.

  Flynn wasn’t there. Ron Handler was whisking something in a stainless steel bowl and Steve was frying an entire hog’s worth of bacon atop the enormous iron range. An old-fashioned pendulum clock—no electricity needed—told her it was nine o’clock. She winced. Lyle MacAuley probably thought she and Flynn were dead, and when they made it in three hours late for their shift, they would be.

  The kids—her kids—were setting napkins and silverware around the big butche
r’s block island. “Who are you and what have you done with Hudson and Genny?” she asked.

  “Good morning!” Steve Obrowski smiled at her as if oversleeping were a personal compliment. “These two are great little helpers.”

  “Steve says we’re gonna eat in here because it’s the warmest place in the inn,” Hudson explained.

  “I got to use the feather duster.” Genny almost dropped a napkin onto the butter dish. “It has real ostrich feathers.”

  “And I got to help Steve fix the loose sconches—”

  “Sconces.”

  “Sconces in the hall. I got to use the hammer and everything.”

  “My God,” Hadley said.

  “I know.” Ron crossed to the stove and poured what looked like a gallon of scrambled eggs into two skillets. “Child labor. The Victorians were really onto something.”

  The door swung open and Hadley’s heart surged, only to drop back down in disappointment as a couple in their seventies and the woman they had rescued last night pushed into the kitchen. “They’ve gotten the Smiths’ car out,” the woman said. “They’ll be in in a minute.”

  “Great timing,” Ron said. “Everybody pull up a stool for breakfast.”

  “Officer Knox.” The woman smiled brightly at Hadley. “Your—I mean, Officer Flynn explained we had been saved by the Millers Kill Police Department. Thank you again.”

  She and the couple hitched themselves up onto stools at the far end of the island, chatting as if they were old friends. “Officer Flynn and Mr. Keene are shoveling out the drive,” Steve said, handing her a jug of orange juice. “The Smiths are doctors; they couldn’t wait any longer to head home.” He glanced out the window. “Although maybe the snow will help the driving.”

  “What?” Hadley set the pitcher on the table and went to the window. It was snowing. She had been so distracted, she hadn’t noticed the cessation of the rain drumming on the roof. After three days, the temperature had finally fallen far enough to turn the precipitation into snow.