Jason nodded, but the look he gave her was determined. “But later … No secrets, okay?”
No secrets? He was saying, “no secrets?” Beth lifted an eyebrow.
Jason held up a hand. “I know, I know. But please, if you find out you’re pregnant, you have to tell me.” Then he glanced around, as if realizing for the first time that Maria wasn’t there. “Where’s Maria?”
Beth welcomed the change of subject. “I told her not to come in today. She’s been working every day since before Chris died, and her sister isn’t well. She deserved some time off.”
“Not to mention she’s Montenegro’s cousin,” Jason said.
“Not to mention.” They needed to time to sort out what that might mean, and she and Jason would be better able to discuss the matter if Maria wasn’t around to overhear.
“So you made these?” Jason asked, gesturing with a fork full of pancakes.
Beth smiled. “Yeah. Mom’s special recipe.”
“Wow. And she cooks, too.”
The glint in Jason’s eyes sent a prickle of awareness over her skin that warmed her down to her toes. The easy friendship they’d developed after the wedding was returning, the teasing, the camaraderie.
“But I don’t do windows,” she replied. Ollie finished what was in his bowl, and went to sit beside Jason.
Jason assumed a mock frown. “And here I thought you were perfect. Mother will be so disappointed.” He stabbed another fork full of pancake.
“Your mom’s big on windows, eh?”
“Oh yeah. I had to wash them four times a year after we got our house.”
“You?”
He wiggled his fingers. “Fastest squeegee in the west.”
Beth smiled. “A man of many talents.”
When he’d finished his breakfast, Jason leaned back in his chair and sipped his coffee. He glanced at Ollie who sat staring at him with soulful eyes. “Sorry boy, I didn’t leave you anything.”
Ollie sighed and lay down.
“I need to replace my weapon today. I should have done it yesterday but there was no time. If I’m going to protect you, I need more than a kitchen knife. Damn, I wish we had the key to Chris’s gun safe.” He looked away for a moment, and Beth saw him blink away the moisture in his eyes.
“What about the hands? Doesn’t one of them have a gun you could borrow?”
Jason shook his head. “I already checked. The guy feeding the stock doesn’t carry, and the rest of the hands have the day off. It doesn’t matter. I asked Tom Hendricks if he’d lend me a shotgun yesterday at the wake. He’s going to bring it over this morning.” He wadded up his napkin and put it on the table. “I’ll clean up.”
Beth smiled. “Windows and dishes? You’ll make some woman very happy one day.”
Jason gave her an odd look. “Thanks.”
Beth helped him clear the table, then refilled her coffee.
“Should you be drinking coffee? I mean, if you are … ?”
She stared into the inky liquid. It wasn’t likely, but suddenly she had no interest in another cup.
Jason finished loading the dishwasher. He’d just put soap into the dispenser when the phone rang. Beth picked it up.
“It’s Tom. For you.”
After a brief conversation, Jason hung up. “Go get ready. We have to go over to the Hendricks’ to get the shotgun. Tom’s radiator sprung a leak.”
Beth groaned. She liked Anne and Tom, but she’d already talked to too many people in the last few days. She needed a break from pretending to be Ellie. Beth shook her head. “You don’t need me to do that. The last few days have been a roller-coaster, emotionally and physically. I’m not going anywhere today.”
“I’m not going to leave you alone.”
His protectiveness was touching, but it didn’t change her mind. “All I want to do is rest. I promise, I won’t go anywhere. I won’t even answer the door. Ollie is here. I’ll be fine.”
A muscle jumped in Jason’s jaw as he stood up. “Get ready. I’ll go make those calls. See what I can find out about the mine deal, and how Montenegro felt about shutting down development.”
“Jason—”
“Someone tried to kill you, Beth! And the person who hired him may be watching the house right now, waiting for an opportunity to finish the job. I am not leaving you alone. That’s it.”
Beth’s stomach tightened with tangled emotion as she watched Jason walk down the hall to the library. He wanted to protect her, she got that, but that didn’t give him the right to dictate what she did, or to walk away from her without letting her explain—although she wasn’t sure she could. She didn’t want to risk her life foolishly. The memory of dark water closing over her head still made her shake. She just needed a break. A little time. Unfortunately, time was in short supply.
TWENTY MINUTES LATER JASON leaned back in the desk chair as Beth came into the library. The sight of her made him want to pull her into his lap and kiss her silly. She paused for a moment just inside the door as she scanned the room, frowning, then shrugged and came over to him. Was she still upset with him? He had to go get Tom’s shotgun, and she was going to come with him. That’s all there was to it. He didn’t want to fight with her about it, but he’d tie her up and put her in the trunk before he’d leave her alone again.
“What did you find out?” Beth asked, perching on the edge of the desk.
“The two investors I was able to contact both say the same thing: Montenegro voted with the majority. He agreed they should hold off on development of the mine.”
“Okay, so it wasn’t the mine deal. But he could still have been pissed at Chris, if Chris found out he was with the cartels and threatened to tell Connie,” Beth protested.
“That’s a possibility. I also put in a call to a friend of mine in the DEA. I’m hoping he’ll tell me where their investigation of Montenegro stands.”
Beth crossed her legs.
Jason tried to ignore the way his skin tingled with her so near. It was too damn distracting.
“So all I have to do is give Maria some time off, and stay away from Montenegro until Connor can arrest him, right?”
Jason knew how she felt. He wanted to find Chris’s killer, too, and Montenegro was their most likely suspect. But it wouldn’t do to narrow their investigation too soon. “It’s not that straightforward, Beth.”
Beth pursed her lips. “What do you mean?”
“Everyone’s still a suspect at this point. We can’t afford to cross anybody off the list yet. We need to start over again, from the top.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Beth slumped where she sat on the library desk. “But we’ve been over everybody, and Eduardo is the most likely suspect, isn’t he?”
“Not everyone. There’s still the trustee, Jackson, and the other mine investors, and Chris’s bank records may turn up someone we haven’t even thought of. And then there’s Bickford’s associates, too.”
Beth grimaced and shook her head. It was still hard to believe someone had hired a hit man to kill Chris and Ellie. “Investigating all those people will take forever! I don’t have that long. Maria will have to reveal who I am at the inquest, and Connor only gave me until then, too. By Tuesday, everyone will know I’m not Ellie.”
“That’s fine with me. I don’t like using you for bait anyway.”
“But whoever hired him will disappear!”
“We’ll have other leads by then. We’ll find him, Beth.” His voice grew steely. “Ellie and Chris will have justice, I promise.”
Her mind swam with all the people they’d considered and discarded as suspects, and all the others they still had to check out. “Do you think Connor is up to this?”
Jason put a hand on Beth’s thigh. “He’s a good man. And now that we know that Bickford is from out of state, we may be able to get the Bureau involved. But that will be Connor’s call.”
The warmth of his hand raced up her leg. Beth struggled to keep her mind on the conversation. “
So how do you investigate a murder when you don’t have any clues?”
Jason frowned. “I’ve never worked a homicide. But we do have at least one clue. A big one. Bickford.”
So there s nothing we can do until tomorrow?”
Jason squeezed her knee and glanced up at her with a look like a little boy contemplating mischief. “Oh I wouldn’t say that. I can think of a few things we could do.”
Beth laughed. “Oh really? Like what?”
Jason took her hand and pulled her into his lap, lifting her legs over the arm of the chair. “Like this,” he said, just before he kissed her.
His lips were warm and firm and sent shivers of pleasure rippling through her. He was already hard and she felt his erection pressing against her hip. She loved knowing she had that effect on him. Beth threaded her fingers through his thick dark hair, enjoying its silky texture.
“Mmm,” Jason murmured, as his tongue explored her mouth.
“Hmm?” Beth responded, shifting her head.
Jason pulled back just enough to say, “I like that,” then resumed licking and nibbling his way down her throat. His hands found their way up under her shirt and caressed her heated skin. Her nipples ached for his touch, and when he slid one hand around to cup her breast, the hot pleasure of it pooled between her thighs.
Jason’s tongue stroked in and out of her mouth in a familiar rhythm that made her hungry for more. Then suddenly he lifted her from his lap onto the desk. Beth squeaked with surprise before Jason covered her mouth with his again.
“The desk?”
Jason shrugged and released the button on her shorts, while she reached for the zipper on his jeans.
An unwelcome thought intruded. “What if Anderson comes back early?”
Jason stilled, then hung his head. She could see his rueful smile. “What are you doing to my brain, woman? You’re right. Bedroom. Condoms. Much better.” He pulled her to her feet, but instead of moving toward the door, he brushed her cheek with his thumb and kissed her again. Joy zinged down to her toes and fingertips.
Guilt followed hard on its heels. What was she doing? Her sister was dead. Her brother-in-law. And for what? They still didn’t know. She pulled away from Jason’s mouth. She should be thinking about solving this, not her own pleasure. Jason’s hands tightened on her waist for a moment then released her as she slipped away and went to look out the window. The wind was whipping up. Another storm was blowing in. That was good. They needed the rain.
“Why does someone kill another person?” She hated the wistfulness in her voice. She sounded more like a child in need of comfort than a woman looking for a killer.
Jason came and pulled her away from the window and closed the shutters. Did he really think someone could be out there, waiting to shoot her through the glass? The other murders had looked like accidents, after all. He folded his arms around her, and after a quiet moment he said, “I miss them too.”
He lost his best friend. He was so stoic, so strong, that he made it easy for her to lean on him. She kept forgetting that he’d lost someone he cared about, too. She turned in the circle of his arms and hugged him back, then she stepped out of his embrace. She ought to shoulder this herself instead of adding to his grief. “I’m serious. Why do people commit murder?”
Jason sighed and answered her question. “Most homicides are committed in the heat of the moment, but that doesn’t apply here. The most common causes of murder are drugs, gangs, and domestic violence. But Chris wasn’t involved with any of that.”
“I should say not!”
Jason held up his hands in surrender. “Since we re not talking about an impulse killing, we look at motive. The big three are love, money, revenge.”
“Well, we ve eliminated love. Connie is happy as a clam with Eduardo.”
“And you said Elle didn’t have a jilted boyfriend hoping to pick up the pieces of her broken heart.”
“No. No one serious. Besides, why would he want to kill Ellie too?”
“Jealousy. You know, the old, ‘If I can’t have her, no one will?’ Was she having trouble with anyone?”
Beth shook her head.”No. There was no one like that.”
“Okay. Then there’s money.”
“We’ve already ruled out Hendricks and Palmer. That leaves us with Montenegro.”
Jason perched on the corner of the desk.“Or someone we don’t know about yet.”
Beth grimaced in frustration. “So how do we find out who had a motive to kill Chris and Ellie?”
“Now that the sheriff is on board, we can subpoena Chris’s financial records and have a forensic accountant go through them. That should tell us something.”
“The lady at the bank said we’d have the bank statements tomorrow.”
“That’s only part of it. We’ll need to see the trust records too.”
“Okay. I’ll call Jackson tomorrow.”
Jason frowned. “I’m thinking that we should wait for the subpoena.”
“Why?”
“If the trustee is involved somehow, we don t want to tip him off and give him a chance to cover his tracks.”
“You think Jackson … ?”
“I don t know who to suspect right now, so everyone is on the list.”
“We could ask Bob if he s noticed anything funny going on with Palmer’s money,” Beth said.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea—”
“You don’t trust him?”
“I don’t trust anybody right now.”
Did that include her? “Not anybody?”
Jason seemed to understand what she was asking. “I’m sleeping with you,” he said.
Beth rolled her eyes. As if that answered the question. “You also do undercover work.”
Jason’s eyebrows rose. “Not that kind.”
Beth was silent. What else would he say? How much did she really know about him, anyway? They’d talked a lot on the phone, but he obviously was good at keeping secrets. What else hadn’t he told her? They were all reasonable doubts, but her heart rebelled.
“I trust you, Beth.”
Shame washed over her. “Even though I lied to you?”
Jason shrugged and smiled. “You’re a special case.”
Her heart leapt, but she tried not to read too much into his words. “Why?”
Jason sobered. “Don’t misunderstand. I don’t like it that you lied to me. But …” He lifted his hands in a broad shrug. “I know you.”
“It must be hard to go through life suspicious of nearly everyone.”
Jason smiled again. “I’m not suspicious of everyone, I just don’t trust people until they earn it.”
Which brought them back to where they’d started.
“Then you’d better go see Tom now.”
Jason’s brow furrowed.
“If you don’t trust Bob,” Beth continued, “then you won’t want to leave me alone with him, right?”
“So you’ll come with me.”
“No. Please. So much has happened in the last week …” A sudden welling of loss and turmoil brought unwelcome tears. Beth turned her head, blinking them back. “I feel like if I don’t get some time to myself my chest is going to explode.”
Jason put his hands on her shoulders. She liked the warm steady feeling that gave her.
“Please. I’ll keep the house locked up tight. I won’t even answer the phone.” At Jason’s frown she hurried on. “You’ll only be gone an hour. You’ll be back before Bob gets back from church. I’ll be fine. Besides, we don’t even know for sure if someone hired that guy who tried to kill me, or if he was working on his own.” She looked up at him, and one of her tears rolled down her cheek.
Jason pulled her to him, and she went willingly into his arms. More tears fell as horrible reality crashed over her and the emotions she’d kept locked away escaped. Ellie is dead. Ellie is dead. And no one could take her place.
JASON ROCKED BETH BACK and forth as she wept like her heart would never be wh
ole again.
He ached for her. She’d held it together through trauma and loss, an attempt on her life, and in front of crowds of people at the memorial service and the wake. The wonder wasn’t that she was crying, it was that she hadn’t come apart before now.
“This is stupid … I’m sorry … I’m getting your shirt wet.”
“Shush. It’s all right.”
Several minutes later, Beth sniffed and stepped back. He let her go, but kept one hand on her back as he reached over to the desk for a tissue.
“Thanks.” She dabbed her eyes, then turned her head and blew her nose.
He handed her another tissue and she used that too.
She drew a deep breath and blew it out through pursed lips. “Okay. I’m better now.”
“You don’t have to hide your grief from me, Beth. I understand.”
She looked at him with watery eyes, then turned away. “I know. It’s just … I don’t know what to do with all these feelings. It’s like I’m drowning. It’s not just Ellie. It’s Mom and Dad, and all the friends we left behind every time we moved. There’s nothing to be done about any of that now. It’s all in the past. But I can’t …” She stood there rigidly, hardly breathing, with her arms crossed tightly under her breasts as though she were holding herself together.
He reached out to touch her, but she shook her head. He let his hand drop. “Beth—”
“Please. Go to the Hendricks’. I just need a little time alone.”
Jason hesitated. He looked at her watery eyes and red nose. She was barely keeping it together. He didn’t want to push her over the edge again. If he hauled ass, he could be back in less than an hour. “All right. But don t go anywhere, or let anyone into the house while I m gone, okay?
“Okay,” Beth gave him a damp smile.
“And don’t go near the windows.”
“I won’t.”
Jason nodded and squeezed her shoulders, but couldn’t make his feet move.
“I’ll be fine. Really.”
VEILED MIRROR Page 21
