“Same here, kid.”
The minute Seth exited the back door, Perdue sat down at the kitchen table, taking the chair directly across from Derek.
“You’re not staying here,” she told him.
“I’ll bet if Jack were here—”
“He’s not.”
“What are you afraid of, Perdue? Afraid you’ll succumb to my many charms?”
She groaned, and then burst into laughter.
He didn’t know whether to be insulted or just laugh along with her. He chose the latter.
Chuckling, he looked her right in the eye. “I’m glad to see you have a sense of humor.”
Her laughter died away, but the smile remained.
“We’re both grown-ups, both professionals,” he said. “We’re going to be working together for as long as it takes to find our killer and put him behind bars. That could be weeks or even months. You’re going to have to find a way to put aside your personal feelings for me and—”
“I have no personal feelings for you. None.”
“Prove it.”
She huffed again as she narrowed her gaze and glowered at him. “Dare I ask how?”
“Let me stay here.” When she didn’t respond, he added, “Separate bedrooms, of course.”
Her big blue eyes widened for a split second and then she grinned. “Were you always like this, even as a kid? God, if you were, I don’t know how your mother put up with you.”
“I was. And she didn’t. I’ll have you know that I’m a trust-fund baby. I was reared by a series of highly trained nannies and first-class private schools.”
“Of course you were. Pardon my ignorance.”
“And you grew up in this house, didn’t you, you and Jack?”
Her smile vanished and a storm-cloud frown darkened her expression. Instead of replying to his question, she shoved back her chair and stood. “Come on. I’ll show you to one of the guest bedrooms. You can unpack and then we can discuss the new information that just came in at the agency.”
“What sort of information?”
“Several things, but the most interesting is the title of the only movie that my client, Lorie Hammonds, ever made. The stars of that film were Dean Wilson and Hilary Chambless, aka Woody Wilson and Dewey Flowers.”
“Some stage names, huh? So, what was the title of the movie the three of them made together?”
“Midnight Masquerade,” Perdue said.
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
Lorie and Cathy usually closed up shop at six on Friday and Saturday nights, but with Easter fast approaching, Lorie had extended the closing until seven for both nights. Three lingering, undecided customers, who wound up buying nothing, had pushed closing time to seven fifteen. Just as she waved good-bye to the last to leave—Paul Babcock, one of their regulars—and was in the process of closing and locking the front door, she saw Mike Birkett park his truck directly in front of Treasures.
What the hell was he doing here?
She stood in the open doorway and waited for him to emerge from his Ford F-150 pickup. He got out and walked toward her. Her heart skipped a beat. Why did he have to be so damn good-looking? And why, dear God, why did she still want him more than she’d ever wanted any other man?
“Closing up?” he asked as he approached.
She nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“Got a few minutes?”
“Sure. Come on in.”
After he entered Treasures, she locked the door and placed the CLOSED sign in the window. When she turned around, she almost bumped into him. He stood so close to her that only a few inches separated her body from his. She sucked in a startled breath and eased backward, intentionally putting some space between them.
“I won’t keep you long,” he said.
“That’s all right. I’m in no hurry.”
“I just thought that maybe you…Well, it is Friday night, and—”
“I don’t have a date.”
“Good.” His cheeks blotched with embarrassment. He coughed and then cleared his throat. “I didn’t mean it’s good that you don’t have a date. I meant it’s good that I’m not keeping you from anything important.”
“I knew what you meant.”
He nodded. “You didn’t move in with Maleah last night.” He worded it as a statement of fact, not a question.
“No, she actually spent the night at my house and left early this morning. She was expecting Seth over for breakfast. And Derek Lawrence was supposed to arrive sometime this morning to assist her with my case.”
“Is she staying with you again tonight?”
“No, I’m going home this evening, packing a few things, and moving in with Maleah until further notice.” Lorie wished Mike would stop looking right at her. His intense scrutiny unnerved her. “What is it? Do I have dirt on my face? A black hair growing out of my chin?”
“Huh?”
“You’re staring at me as if I’ve suddenly grown an extra head or something.”
“Sorry. I…uh…Why don’t I follow you home and then escort you over to Maleah’s after you pack a bag.”
Had she heard him correctly? Was Sheriff Birkett, the man who thought she was only one step above pond scum, actually worried about her?
“Why?” she asked.
“Why what?”
“Why the pretense of being concerned about my welfare?”
“I’m the sheriff. You’re a citizen of my county whose life has been threatened. I’m just doing my civic duty.”
“Bull. You could have sent a deputy to check on me.”
“You’ve been monitored all day today,” he told her. “Between my men and Chief Ballard’s police force, somebody’s been by here every hour since you arrived at Treasures this morning.”
“So to what do I owe the honor of your visit this evening? Why put yourself out for little old me?”
“Damn it, Lorie, that smart mouth of yours—” Grimacing, he clenched his teeth together and snorted. “I came by here to apologize.”
“What?”
Their gazes met and locked. For a split second, she thought she saw something achingly familiar in the way he looked at her. But the expression vanished so quickly that she realized she had probably imagined it.
“I let my personal feelings get in the way of doing my job,” he admitted. “I had no right to assume you were lying about being threatened and to dismiss your concerns as if they were nothing. I’m sorry.”
To say she was stunned was a gross understatement. She never thought she would live to see the day that Mike would ever again apologize to her for anything.
“I’m sorry, too,” she told him. “I’m sorry that I gave you reasons to believe I’d do anything to get back into your good graces. I should have accepted the fact, years ago, that you didn’t want to have anything to do with me…and with good reason.”
He shuffled uncomfortably. “Yeah, sure. Apology accepted. So, what about you?”
She forced a fragile smile. “Apology accepted.”
“Good. Why don’t I help you close up shop and then I’ll follow you home.”
“There’s nothing to do except turn out the lights, get my purse, and lock the back door on my way out.”
“I’ll walk you to your car,” he said. “You’re parked in back, right?”
“Right.”
She glanced at him briefly. He smiled. Her nerves tingled with awareness. This was the first time since her return to Dunmore that Mike had smiled at her.
Don’t make too much of it. He’s just doing his best to be civil, to do his job, to prove to you and Maleah—and probably to Jack and Cathy—that he won’t allow his personal feelings to interfere with doing his duty.
Mike loaded Lorie’s suitcase into her Edge SUV and closed the hatch. “All set?”
“Yes, but it’s really not necessary for you to escort me to Maleah’s. I’m sure you’d rather be home having dinner with your children.”
“Hannah and M.J. are visit
ing Molly’s parents over in Muscle Shoals this weekend. Carl and Gail picked them up right after school today. They stay with them on average one weekend a month and they go over for a couple of weeks every summer.”
“I know your wife’s parents appreciate your being so generous with the kids.”
“It’s what Molly would have wanted.”
Lorie smiled and nodded before moving away from him and grasping the driver’s side door handle. “I’m ready to go.”
“I’ll be right behind you.”
As soon as she pulled out of her driveway, he started the truck’s engine and fell in behind her. He really wasn’t sure why he was doing this.
Paying penance, maybe.
His feelings for Lorie hadn’t changed. He still hated her, still wished she would leave Dunmore and never come back, still wanted to drag her off to the nearest bed and fuck her like crazy.
But he owed her the common courtesy of showing her that the sheriff’s department intended to do everything possible to keep her safe. He might despise Lorie, but he couldn’t bear the thought of someone killing her. She might deserve some of the bad things that had happened to her, but she didn’t deserve to die.
You’re an idiot, Birkett. A damn idiot.
Lorie didn’t deserve any of the bad things that had happened to her. Just because she’d left him high and dry, had broken his heart and nearly destroyed him didn’t mean she should be punished forever for wanting a life he couldn’t be a part of. She had begged him to go to LA with her.
“Oh, Mike, it’ll be so much fun,” she had said. “We can both get jobs. You can go to school at night until you get your degree and I can sign with an agent and get small parts in TV at first. And later on, when you’re a big-time LA detective and I’m a movie star, we’ll be the envy of every other couple in Hollywood. Just think how romantic that is—the detective and the actress.”
Those had been her dreams, not his. She had wanted a glamorous life surrounded by the rich and famous. All he’d ever wanted was to finish college, work for local law enforcement, get married, and raise a family. He was a simple man with simple wants and needs. Lorie had been—and probably still was—a complicated woman with the kind of wants and needs he could never fulfill.
It had been his choice to stay in Dunmore and not follow her to LA. At first, she had called him every day, then every week and then every month. He would never forget the last time she’d called and the things they had said to each other.
“Honey, forget all that fame and fortune bullshit and come home where you belong.”
“Oh, Mike, why can’t you understand? I just got a speaking part on a Law and Order episode. I want you to be happy for me. I want you to fly out here and—”
“I can’t.”
“You mean you won’t.”
“Yeah, okay. I won’t. I don’t belong out there and neither do you.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I’m not going to live and die in Dunmore, Alabama, and waste the talent the Good Lord gave me. I’ve got a good singing voice and I’m taking acting lessons and my teacher says I’m a natural. And I’m told I have the kind of looks that will help me go far in the business.”
“You do what you have to do,” he’d said. “And I’ll do what I have to do.”
“What you have to do doesn’t include me anymore, does it? You’ve stopped loving me…if you ever really did.”
“How can you say that? I love you so damn much it hurts,” he had told her. “And I miss you something awful. It’s you who doesn’t love me. If you did, you’d come home and we’d get married the way we planned. In a few years, we could save up enough for a house and our first baby.”
“I don’t want a baby! Not now. Not for years and years.”
In the end, Mike had been forced to accept the fact that Lorie would never come back to him, that he had lost her forever.
It had taken him years to get over her, to move on with his life, and he could thank Molly for that. She had been his salvation. All the dreams he’d once had that included Lorie, all the plans the two of them had made together, he had fulfilled with another woman, with Molly. Thinking about his children, he knew that was the way things were meant to be.
He wasn’t the kind of man who wasted his time looking back and wondering what if? or wished for things that he couldn’t have.
Yeah, sure, he could have Lorie, could have had her when she first came back to Dunmore, could have had her before and after Molly died. He could probably still have her. But the Lorie he had known and loved no longer existed. His Lorie was as dead to him as Molly was. The Lorie who had come to him a sixteen-year-old virgin, the girl who had been his and only his. The teenager who had planned her future around him and the family they would one day have.
The Lorie Hammonds who had returned to Dunmore nine years ago was a bruised and battered, used and discarded whore. God only knew how many men she’d had sex with, not just in that sleazy porno movie she’d made, but during the years she had been trying to get her big break. Just about every man in Dunmore had seen her in that film. He had seen the movie once, and the sight of her and what she’d been doing had made him sick.
Why she had ever thought when she returned to Dunmore, her reputation in tatters and her life worthless, that he would forgive her, that they could be friends again, he’d never know.
Mike had been so lost in his thoughts that he almost missed Jack and Cathy’s driveway and had to slam on his brakes and back up a few yards. Lorie parked her SUV, got out, and opened the back hatch. He pulled his truck up behind her vehicle, killed the motor, and got out.
He rushed over to her, grabbed her suitcase, and said, “Here, let me get that for you.”
She released the suitcase without protest and started walking toward the porch. He kept in step alongside her. When they reached the front door, she rang the doorbell and they waited together.
“I appreciate the escort, Sheriff,” she said in a soft, sexy voice that caressed every nerve in his body.
“You’re welcome, Ms. Hammonds. Just doing my job.”
When the door opened, Derek Lawrence stood in the doorway. “Hello, Lorie.” He reached out, grasped her hand, and pulled her over the threshold. He glanced around her and spotted Mike. “Hello, Sheriff. Nice of you to see Lorie here all safe and sound.” He held out his hand. “Here, let me take her suitcase.”
Reluctantly, Mike handed over the suitcase. “Where’s Maleah?”
“On the phone at the moment,” he said. “Seems the newlyweds called to check on Seth and on the old homestead.”
“She isn’t going to tell them about me, is she? I don’t want them worrying while they’re on their honeymoon,” Lorie said.
Derek put his arm around Lorie’s shoulders and ushered her inside the foyer. “I’m sure she won’t say a word. And there’s no reason for anyone to worry about your safety. You have two Powell Agency employees acting as your bodyguards. And may I say what a pleasure this job is for me.”
Mike cleared his throat. Derek glanced over his shoulder. “Oh, are you staying for dinner? Perdue didn’t say. I set the table for three, but I can add another—”
“No thanks.” Mike had the sudden urge to punch Derek Lawrence. “I’ve got other plans.” When Lorie looked at him, he said, “If you need me, I’m just a phone call away.”
“I’m sure she won’t need you,” Derek told him.
With that said, Mike nodded, turned and tromped off the porch. Cursing under his breath, he got in his truck, backed out of the driveway, and couldn’t get away fast enough from the image of Derek Lawrence’s arm draped around Lorie’s shoulders.
Chapter 7
After locking the door and securing it so that no one with a key could enter, he took the laptop from his suitcase and carried it with him to the desk in his motel room. He retrieved the DVD from the pouch on the laptop case, flipped open the plastic case, and carefully removed the disk. With steady fingers, he inserted the disk i
nto the side slot on the computer and waited for the movie to load. He reached over to the far side of the desk, upended a glass, and quickly added ice from the ice bucket that he had filled earlier. As the film credits played, he poured a cola into the glass. He didn’t need to read the credits. He knew them by heart.
Midnight Masquerade. Written by Casey Lloyd and Laura Lou Roberts. Directed by Grant Leroy. Produced by Travis Dillard.
He kicked back in the chair and turned sideways to prop his feet up on the edge of the bed.
Dewey Flowers and Woody Wilson were the stars, the main players in this piece of filth.
Dewey and Woody would never make another sinful movie such as this. They had been punished for their wickedness, for polluting the minds and hearts of everyone who saw this movie; punished for their parts in destroying the lives of the innocent who were adversely affected by the pornography industry, this sickeningly vulgar movie in particular. There was an ironic form of justice in the fact that he was the one who was righting the wrongs they had committed. He supposed that he had known for years that it was his fate to someday seek retribution.
And not only for himself alone.
His gaze settled on the screen. Watching the depraved acts that had been captured on film no longer nauseated him the way it once had. Over the years, he had become immune to the disgusting obscenity, the bestial perversions.
Well-endowed men and big-breasted women frolicked about at a costume ball, but their only costumes were beautiful masks covering their faces. They kissed and licked and sucked one another, their bodies entwining in an orgy of carnal acts. Two men, one wearing a devil mask and the other an intricate court jester/joker mask, laid a voluptuous black woman on the floor and while one penetrated her, the other one toyed with her silicone-enhanced tits.
The two men were Charlie Hung, a strikingly handsome man of Asian descent, and a big, rugged blond—Sonny Shag. The dark-skinned beauty, whose red sequined mask had fallen off and lay on the floor beside her, was Ebony O.
In the background the two stars danced, their bodies rubbing seductively against each other. Woody placed his hands on Dewey’s waist and lifted her high into the air, then let her slide down the front of his body until she was on her knees, his erect penis directly in front of her face.
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