by R. J. Jagger
Okay.
She could do that.
Coyote moaned and said, “That feels nice.”
“Good.”
Then Coyote flipped over, raised her arms above her head and closed her eyes. “Can you do the front?”
“Are you serious?”
The woman wiggled her stomach.
“I don’t want to get burned.”
Yardley hesitated.
Then she rubbed lotion on the woman’s legs.
And stomach.
And arms.
She was just about done when Coyote pulled her bikini top up and exposed her breasts.
Nice ones.
Not too big.
Not too small.
“You missed a spot.”
Yardley looked around to see if anyone was watching.
No one was.
She had never touched another woman’s breasts and made a spur of the moment decision to see what it was like—strictly as research for future books. Coyote’s nipples were perky and hard and she moaned every time Yardley’s fingers brushed against them. She felt powerful, making this beautiful woman moan; and touched her more and more to get that reaction.
Then suddenly the woman pulled Yardley’s head down and kissed her on the mouth.
Something inside told her to pull away but she didn’t, and instead she let the woman stick her tongue in her mouth.
45
I t took fifteen minutes for Dalton to kill Malcolm. Fifteen bloody minutes. Fifteen minutes of fighting for his life with every ounce of strength he had. When it was over, he didn’t have enough energy left to walk. He collapsed flat on his back, with his arms limp, and listened to his lungs pass air in and out.
He didn’t turn his head.
Or move his fingers.
Or shift his legs.
His body needed to be motionless and he let it.
He let it for a long time.
Then he raised a hand to his face to get a feel for the damage. There was a lot. He needed to wash the blood off and check the wounds in a mirror.
But not yet.
Right now he just needed to lie there.
Yeah.
Just like that.
The front door was open, the way Malcolm left it.
If someone popped their head inside, they’d see a six-foot-five man lying next to Dalton, dead. They’d know Dalton killed him. They’d be able to run faster than him; and would be able to call the police. He knew he should get up, close the door and lock it. He knew it was important.
But he couldn’t.
Not yet.
He needed to just lie there first.
Two minutes later he heard a car engine directly outside. It shut off. Then someone stepped out and headed for the building at a brisk walk. At that moment, Dalton realized that the person would get to the door before he would.
He pushed up onto one elbow.
The movement was more painful than he expected.
But he fought it and got to his feet.
Too late.
The person was already stepping into the building.
46
C hief Forrest F. Tanker aka Double-F had only one question after Teffinger told him the story—“So what were you going to do when you caught up to her?”
Teffinger shrugged.
“Tackle her, I guess.”
Tanker creased every wrinkle in his 60-year-old face.
“Tackle her, you guess.”
Teffinger nodded.
“Then I’m glad she’s faster than you because that’s the only thing that kept us out of a lawsuit,” Tanker said. Teffinger knew what he meant. The simple fact that he saw the woman twice in two different locations didn’t give him sufficient probable cause to physically chase her down and tackle her, irrespective of his gut feeling that she was the one who shot at him.
“You’d understand better if you were the one shot at,” Teffinger said.
Tanker nodded.
“You want some time off?”
“No.”
Tanker leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “Next time you see her, call Sydney. Let her set up some backup to come in and find a reason to make contact with the woman. That way we can at least find out who she is. Maybe she’ll say or do something to give us a reason to search her—if she’s packing a gun or drugs or something, game over.” Tanker stood up and rapped his knuckles on a photograph hanging on the wall—of him and the mayor. “Do you know why he’s smiling?”
No.
Teffinger didn’t.
“Because no one is suing the city,” Tanker said.
Teffinger nodded.
“And do you know why I’m smiling?”
He didn’t.
“Because the mayor’s smiling.”
“Understood.”
Two minutes later, filling up at the coffee pot, Teffinger must have had a look on his face because Sydney walked over and asked, “What’s wrong?”
Teffinger exhaled and lowered his voice.
“Double-F doesn’t want me tackling strange women for no reason. It makes him picture himself sitting at the defendant’s table.”
“Well, if the choice is either him sitting, or you being dead, then let him sit,” Sydney said. She took a sip of caffeine and added, “You want to head down to the river and see if we can find the guy who hit you with the rock?”
Teffinger shook his head.
“No, he was just doing what he thought was right.”
“You don’t think he saw your gun and knew you were a cop?”
Teffinger shrugged.
“I don’t know, maybe,” he said. “But we need to stay focused on Lindsay Vail.”
Jessie-Rae called and wanted to meet for lunch. Teffinger didn’t have time, but she talked him into a quickie at Wong’s. They got a booth and he told her about the chase this morning and the fact that it was a black woman trying to kill him.
“So keep a look out for her,” he said. “You could be a target by association.” He cocked his head and added, “In fact, you should probably stay away from me until this is resolved.”
She chuckled.
“That’s not going to happen.”
Teffinger considered arguing.
But knew he’d lose.
“Now that we know it’s a black woman,” Jessie-Rae said, “it’s definitely connected to that voodoo doll. My guess is that the woman is from New Orleans.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s where all the hardcore voodoo stuff comes from,” she said. “What you should do is find out if the dead lawyer made any trips down there. If he did, that’ll confirm it.”
Teffinger cocked his head.
“So now you’re telling me how to be a detective?” he asked.
She nodded.
“After we confirm it, we should head down there,” she said.
“To New Orleans?”
“Yes.”
“And you said we—”
She nodded.
“That I did.”
“Why would we go there? Obviously, she’s here.”
“Simple,” Jessie-Rae said. “If she’s from there, and you head there, she’s going to follow. Then she shows up on an airline manifest.”
Teffinger nodded.
Impressed.
Jessie-Rae took a sip of tea, leaned across the table and lowered her voice. “I am going to screw your socks off tonight, stitches or no stitches. So be warned.”
Teffinger chuckled.
“In that case, I’m going to wear two pair. So be warned yourself.”
47
Y ardley let Coyote kiss her but only for a few seconds—partly because it was too hot and too bright—but mostly because she wasn’t sure why she was doing it. She didn’t know if she was turned on, or just curious, or whether she was trying to get in good with the woman so she could find out why she was under surveillance. When it came up that Yardley couldn’t swim, Coyote said, “I can
teach you in fifteen minutes.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I’m serious.”
She actually did look serious.
“No, that’s impossible.”
“I’ll make you a bet,” Coyote said. “If I can, you have to buy a bottle of white wine and bring it over tonight and help me drink it.”
“And if you can’t?”
“Then you get your money back.”
Yardley chuckled and said, “You’re on.”
“Okay,” Coyote said. “I’m going to teach you the same way my dad taught me back when I was eight. You’re going to have to trust me though. Will you do that?”
“Trust you how?”
“You’ll see. I won’t let anything happen to you. I swear.”
Yardley didn’t have a swimsuit so Coyote let her borrow a white bikini. “Raise your hands above your head,” Coyote said. When Yardley did, Coyote tickled her, but then got serious and tied one end of a 30-foot rope around Yardley’s chest. She knotted it in the front and tied the other end to a stern cleat.
Then she stood on the swim platform and told Yardley to slide into the water and hold on to the platform.
“You got to be kidding.”
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you. I’m going to be holding you by the rope, plus you’re going to be holding on to the boat. You’ll be fine. Just scoot over the edge, get your legs and stomach in the water, and hang on to the boat.”
Yardley did it.
The water was cold.
But warmed up almost immediately.
“Now move your legs around and get a feel for the water.”
She did, for a full five minutes, and started to get a feel for the moves that made her more buoyant.
“Okay, now here’s the part that takes a little guts,” Coyote said. “What you’re going to do is keep moving your legs but let go of the back of the boat. You’ll sink down but I’ll be holding you up by the rope so your head won’t go under the water. Then I want you to keep your arms under the surface and move them around in sort of a pushing down motion.”
Coyote moved her hands to demonstrate.
Yardley swallowed.
“You sure you got me?”
“I got you. Trust me.”
Yardley breathed deeply several times and then let go of the boat.
Sinking immediately, she flailed wildly with her feet, trying to find something to stand on, but got nothing. The rope snagged her before her head went under.
“Good!” Coyote said. “Now move your arms.”
She did.
Ten minutes later she was treading water on her own.
“See if you can head out a little from the boat.”
She treaded five feet away.
Then back.
Then did it again, ten feet this time, and came back.
“I can’t believe I’m swimming!”
As she walked back to the sailboat a half hour later, the marina took on a whole new feeling. It wasn’t as scary. Yardley could fall off the dock and not drown.
Cool.
She hiked up to the payphone by the restroom, called Aspen Asher at work, told her she thought she was under vice surveillance, and explained everything that had just happened.
Except for the kiss.
“Under surveillance for what?”
Yardley didn’t know.
“The only thing I’ve done questionable in the last twenty years is the thing we did last night,” Yardley said. “But what I don’t get is, if they know about that, why wouldn’t they just arrest us?”
“Maybe the guy who’s letting you use the sailboat has drugs stashed there,” Aspen said. “Maybe vice is trying to figure out if you’re dealing for him.”
Not probable.
“Do me a favor,” Yardley said. “Sometime today, go to a public phone and call the vice department. Ask if Coyote’s in and see if they confirm that she works there. Then call me and let me know what happens. My cell phone might be bugged, and yours too, so talk in code when you call.”
An hour later Yardley’s cell rang.
Aspen said, “You were right about the time for that meeting. It’s exactly what you said.”
“Okay. Thanks for checking.”
“Not a problem.”
48
W hen the person who walked through the front door of the buildingturned out to be Samantha Dent, Dalton sank down to the floor and leaned against the wall. Then he remembered that she was supposed to meet him here to help clean.
She still looked bad.
Maybe even worse than last night.
Her lower lip was swollen.
One eye was puffed and purple.
“What the hell happened?” Samantha asked.
Dalton nodded his head towards the body and said, “That’s G-Drop’s gopher. He came around looking for his boss and figured out what happened. He was going to go to the police unless I came up with a whole lot of money. We got in a fight.”
“Is he dead?”
Dalton shrugged.
“I certainly hope so.”
Samantha felt the man’s wrist and found no pulse. She shook him and got no response. His left eye was half open and didn’t blink when she blew on it.
“God, this never ends,” she said.
Dalton exhaled.
“It’s going to get a whole lot worse once G-Drop is a no-show for the concert tonight.”
She wrinkled her forehead.
“Can we survive this?”
Dalton cocked his head.
“You can,” he said. “The only person who knows who you are is me, and I’m obviously not going to tell anyone. As for me, it’s going to depend on whether G-Drop mentioned my name to anyone besides this freak. I kind of doubt it. He was taking a lot of pains to keep it on the DL.”
Samantha looked at the body.
Then she said, “We need to dump him where he won’t be found in a million years.”
She helped Dalton take a shower and clean his wounds. Four of the cuts needed stitches, but a doctor was out of the question. Samantha left and returned an hour later with needles, thread and new clothes. She stitched him up and then helped put the body in the trunk of the man’s Lexus.
Then they headed west on I-70 into the Rocky Mountains.
Dalton left his phone off, back at Refuge-7. He couldn’t afford to have it ring a hundred times and create an electronic trail that followed him into the mountains.
His face was a mess.
“We look like Mr. and Mrs. Frankenstein,” she said.
Dalton chuckled.
“I hope a couple of mine scar up,” he said. “I need a little character.”
“Trust me—you’re already a little character.” She paused and added, “Thanks for everything. I really owe you.”
“Forget it,” he said.
They kept the radio off and worked on their stories. As they approached Floyd Hill, Dalton had a thought. “You know what we should do? We should dump this guy at the same place as G-Drop. That way, if the police ever find them, they’ll think they got killed at the same time. That’ll give us a better alibi.”
Samantha frowned.
“Won’t that be dangerous? Going back to where you put him? Someone might see us—”
“I think it’s worth the risk.”
Silence.
He pulled off at the Floyd Hill exit. As he did, the passenger-side front tire exploded and the Lexus jerked to the right.
Dalton didn’t panic.
He immediately took his foot off the accelerator, gripped the steering wheel with both hands and coasted to the shoulder. Then he killed the engine and smacked the dash with his hand so hard that Samantha jumped.
Damn it!
Damn it!
Damn it!
He turned to the woman and said, “The spare’s under the body.”
She swallowed.
“Maybe we should just call a tow truck.”
“Can�
��t,” he said. “The driver will write down the type of vehicle and the license plate number. He’ll see our faces. Plus we’ll have to pay him with a credit card, unless you have a lot of cash with you. The end result is that we’ll end up tied to a dead man’s car.”
Dalton stepped out and opened the trunk.
The body was already starting to smell.
Suddenly a state trooper appeared from nowhere and pulled up behind.
49
T he I-25 southbound traffic was so thick that an 18-wheeler rode the Tundra’s bumper, not more than ten or fifteen feet behind, and there wasn’t a thing Teffinger could do about it. It filled his rearview mirror with a mean-looking grill and made his palms sweat.
He tightened his fingers on the steering wheel.
“I have half a mind to pull this guy over,” he told Sydney.
“And how would you do that, exactly?”
“I don’t know.”
“You could slam on the brakes and puncture his radiator,” she said.
“You’re brilliant. Did I ever mention that?”
“Strangely, no.”
Teffinger spotted daylight in the slow-speed lane and scooted over. Almost immediately the truck sped up and got behind the next car.
They passed Alameda.
Then Santa Fe.
The traffic thinned but still remained heavy.
Sydney turned on the radio, got an old Sean Paul song—“Give it Up to Me”—and cranked it up. Teffinger reached over, dialed it down to medium and said, “Jessie-Rae made an interesting comment at lunch.”
Oh?
What?
“She thinks the black woman trying to kill me is connected to the voodoo doll and that she’s probably from New Orleans because that’s where all the heavy voodoo comes from,” he said. “She said we should fly down there, let her follow, and then figure out her name from the airline manifests.”
Sydney cocked her head.
“That’s actually a pretty good plan,” she said.
“I know.”
“Brains plus beauty,” Sydney said. “Now you’re doubly out of your league. Are you going to do it?”
