Harlequin Intrigue March 2021--Box Set 1 of 2

by Cindi Myers

  “April doesn’t have to be your best friend. Just...try to say one nice thing to her every day.”

  Mia sighed with the drama only an almost-five-year-old can manage. “I can try,” she said.

  “Thank you.” Audra held up her glass of sparkling water. “Let’s drink a toast to that.”

  Mia grinned, and the two clinked glasses. Audra’s mood lightened. This was why she had opened her day care center, not to please bureaucrats like Superintendent Wells, but to make a difference to children like Mia and April.

  * * *

  “WE’RE NOT UNCOVERING anything the crime scene team might have missed, but the men know to keep a lookout for anything that might identify who dumped all this.” Officer Jason Beck had to shout to be heard over the roar of the front-end loader that was scooping up mounds of construction debris and depositing them in the back of a big dump truck when Hud arrived at the dump site Tuesday afternoon.

  Hud nodded and squinted in the bright sunshine at the piles of old timbers, rock and gypsum board scattered across an acre of sagebrush scrub. An aerial search for Dane Trask a couple of weeks ago had discovered instead this illegal dump, located on federal land just outside of the national park boundary. “I talked to every major construction outfit in a hundred-mile radius,” Beck said as the front-end loader moved farther away, making conversation more possible. “And some not-so-major ones. They all swear they had nothing to do with this. A lot of them offered to show me their dumping receipts for the last three months.”

  “The guilty party isn’t likely to confess,” Hud said. “And I bet dumping receipts can be faked easily enough.”

  “Whoever did this, they stopped as soon as we started watching the place,” Beck said. “They’re either really wary or really lucky.”

  “Maybe our patrols or the drone surveillance the Forest Service is proposing will help,” Hud said.

  “At least we can be pretty sure Dane Trask didn’t have anything to do with this,” Beck said. “As much as that man has been a thorn in our sides, at least there’s that.”

  “He’s like our own bigfoot, a boogeyman people can scare themselves with,” Hud said. For a while there had been almost daily reports from hikers who had claimed to have seen Trask or been chased by him. Almost all of them had turned out to be either attempts to gain attention or people scaring themselves into seeing what wasn’t there.

  “Hey, I almost forgot to show you this.” Beck pulled out his wallet and took something from it. “Cara brought this home yesterday. Someone was selling them at the bookstore downtown.” He handed over what turned out to be an oval white decal, the words Free Dane Trask filling the oval.

  “People can’t decide if he’s a criminal, a myth or a folk hero.” Hud returned the decal, then both men turned as shouts rose from across the open ground. The man operating the front-end loader shut down the machine and leaned out of the cab, waving frantically.

  Hud ran, Beck right behind him. The worker pointed toward the front of his machine. A few steps from the bucket, Hud halted. A man’s body lay half out of the debris, mouth open, one arm flung over his head, like a drowning man emerging from a tumultuous sea.

  “He hasn’t been there long,” Beck said. He looked up into the bright blue sheet of sky. “No ravens circling.”

  “I just saw him last week.” Hud took out his phone to summon help, then slipped it back into his pocket. No cell service out here. “That’s Roy Holliday,” he said. The reporter must have asked too many questions of the wrong person.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Audra arrived at her office after lunch Tuesday to find a Free Dane Trask sticker on her desk. Brenda came in and found her staring at it. “Who put this here?” Audra asked.

  Brenda shrugged. “I don’t know, but I’ve been seeing them around town. Kinda cool, huh?” She laid a stack of mail on Audra’s desk and returned to the outer office.

  It was nice to think that not everyone saw her father as a criminal, but was this just another way of portraying him as someone outside the law?

  “Knock, knock.”

  She turned, and her mood lifted at the sight of Hud. He looked rumpled and windblown, but all the more handsome for it. But when he didn’t return her smile, some of her happiness abated. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  He stepped into her office and pulled the door closed behind him. “We found Roy Holliday,” he said. “Or rather, we found his body.”

  “He’s dead?” How could that be?

  Hud took her arm and led her to the chair behind her desk, then handed her the water bottle from the corner of the desk. She drank, then pulled herself together. “That’s a shock,” she said. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “The coroner thinks he died six days ago.”

  She did the math. “But that would have been Wednesday. The day he was at my house.”

  “Yes. That’s one reason I’m here. You may have been the last person to see him alive.”

  That sounded ominous. She took a deep breath. “Maybe go back a little and tell me everything. Where was he found? And when?”

  “He was found at an illegal dump site a couple miles off Highway 50, in the Curecanti National Recreation Area. Someone—we don’t know who—dumped a couple hundred yards of construction debris there a few weeks back. The Forest Service hired a contractor to haul everything away, and they found Holliday’s body underneath a pile of broken drywall.”

  She made a face. “How horrible. If he’s been out there five days—” Even in June, daytime temperatures could climb into the nineties, and there was so much wildlife out there...

  “He hadn’t been there five days,” Hud said. “He may have been there only a few hours.”

  “Where was he before that?”

  “We don’t know for sure, but the coroner thinks he might have been kept in cold storage.”

  “In a refrigerator?” She couldn’t even wrap her mind around the idea.

  “Or a morgue or somewhere similar.”

  She shuddered. “That’s bizarre. How did he die?”

  “He was shot in the head. Small-caliber bullet. I need you to go over again everything he did and said when you saw him last Wednesday.”

  “Right.” She rested her hands on her knees and thought a moment, then said, “When I opened the door to him, I don’t remember another car parked on the street or in my driveway. I wasn’t looking for one. But I think I would have noticed if one had been there. My house isn’t set that far off the street and though it was early, it was quite light.”

  “What was his manner?” Hud asked. “How did he seem?”

  “He was very relaxed. He apologized for coming to the house so early, but he really needed to talk to me. I asked if this was about a new enrollment and he asked again to come in and talk.” She flushed, remembering how naive and vulnerable she had been. “He introduced himself as Roy Holliday, and I thought the name sounded familiar, but I thought I must have seen it on an application for enrollment. We’ve been getting a lot of those, now that word has gone out that we’re moving to the new elementary school and doubling our capacity.”

  “When did you realize he was a reporter?” Hud asked.

  “He said he was working on a story about Dad. He wanted to know if Dad helped me to get the contract for the new center, since TDC was building the facility. He asked me what it was like growing up with Dane as a father, and if I had any idea what he was planning when he disappeared. I felt really foolish for letting him in.”

  “Did he act aggressive at all?”

  “Not really. He took my phone away when I tried to call 911, but he just laid it on the back of the sofa. He was really very relaxed. Confident. When I told him I was leaving, he didn’t try to follow me. He probably thought it would be a good opportunity for him to snoop around.”

  “Did you hear him leave?” />
  “No, but I was on the phone with you. When I got back into the kitchen and he was gone, I was surprised, but I guess he heard me on the phone and didn’t want trouble.”

  “Did you think it was odd that the back door was standing open?”

  “Not really. I figured he was in a hurry, and sometimes the latch doesn’t catch all the way. You have to pull it hard until it clicks into place.” She pictured that back door again and gasped. “Do you think someone took him from the kitchen?” she asked. “They forced him to leave and then killed him?”

  “We’re going to interview all the neighbors around the house and on the adjacent streets,” Hud said. “Maybe one of them saw something.”

  “I can’t believe all this is happening,” she said. “It was bad enough when Dad pulled his disappearing act, but lately, every time I turn around, something horrible is happening.” She put her head in her hands. “I’m ready for it to stop.”

  Hud rested his hand on her back. “What else has happened?” he asked.

  She straightened. “Oh, it’s more of a nuisance than anything. At least, I hope that’s all it is.”

  “What?” He pulled the visitor’s chair around beside her and sat.

  “Oh, yesterday I got a call from the school superintendent, summoning me to his office. My day care and preschool are a private concern, not part of the school district, but the new elementary school is district property. TDC donated the land for the new school and gave them a big break on the construction costs. Rather than operate their own day care and preschool, the district decided to award a contract to a private concern. I’ll actually be leasing my classroom space from the school district.”

  “What did the superintendent want to see you about?”

  “He—Vernon Wells—was upset about what he termed all the negative publicity about me. I got him to admit the publicity was about my father, not me, and that I had nothing to do with it. But he said it looked bad to have the Trask name associated with this project.”

  “You have a contract, don’t you?” Hud said. “There would be consequences for pulling out.”

  “Yes, and believe me, I’ll fight him all the way if he tries to back out on the deal. But he said the contract has a morals clause and he could exercise that.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “I don’t know.” She chewed at her lower lip, gut churning. “But he might find a reason.” She clasped her hands tightly together, wishing she could as easily contain the anxiety within her. “Have the police had any luck identifying ‘Lawrence’?”

  Hud shook his head. “I haven’t heard anything. Any word from your lawyer?”

  “No. She’s filed some motions, and we’re waiting on the judge.”

  He slipped his arm around her. “What you need is a night out. You still owe me a dinner out.”

  “I do, don’t I?”

  “A movie and Thai food?”

  “I want to see something funny. I need a good laugh.”

  “I think we can manage that.”

  * * *

  THEY SAW A comic mystery that was both silly and fun. Sitting next to her in the dark theater, laughing at outrageous situations, Hud felt transported to another world, one where pain and trouble couldn’t intrude, where he and Audra could be more than a cop and a crime victim, but friends.

  Over pad thai and pineapple fried rice, Audra told him about the Free Dane Trask sticker someone had left on her desk. “It’s probably one of the teachers,” she said. “Depending on who it is, they’re either trying to cheer me up or giving me a hard time.”

  “I’ve seen those around,” Hud said. “Apparently your dad has fans.”

  “I don’t get it,” she said. “The media have made him out to be so horrible.”

  “Some people like to root for the underdog. And he has a lot of friends in the community—veterans he helped through the veterans’ group he founded.”

  “Welcome Home Warriors was very dear to his heart. He helped so many men and women to find jobs or get counseling, or simply to find friends with others who shared common experiences.” She rested her chin in her hand, a wistful expression on her face. “Those people were really his tribe. I was more shocked that he left them behind than that he left me.”

  The words tugged at his heart, and he searched for something he could say to comfort her. But Audra wasn’t looking for sympathy. She squared her shoulders. “Enough of that. I’m not going to get all maudlin, I promise. Tell me about your family.”

  So he told her about growing up with a younger brother and sister, a father who worked in marketing and a mother who ran a women’s boutique. “They don’t understand why I wanted to be a cop, but they never tried to talk me out of it. My other brother works in marketing like my dad, and my sister works for a big corporation in sales. When we get together at the holidays, the four of them have a lot more to talk about than I do.” He shrugged. “It’s okay. I like my life, even if it’s not the one they wanted for me.”

  “My dad never put any expectations on me,” she said. “I think my mother would have liked if I had married money, or done something more glamorous than teach toddlers how to tie their shoes, but she’s too involved in her own dramas to worry much about mine. My dad always said he just wanted me to be happy.”

  “I like him better, the more you tell me about him.”

  “I think he’d like you, too,” she said.

  If they ever met, it might be with Hud pointing a gun at Trask and ordering him to accompany him back to the station. He probably wouldn’t like Hud much then, but there was always hope they could get past that.

  He took Audra home and kissed her good-night at the door, a lingering kiss full of passion and promise. He wanted to stay with her, but he wouldn’t press. When she was ready, she’d let him know.

  He had just turned onto the highway leading out of town when his phone signaled an incoming text message. He pressed the button to have his car’s system read the text out loud.

  “From Audra,” the mechanical voice intoned. “Come back. Spend the night.”

  He did a U-turn in the middle of the highway. “Text Audra I’m on my way,” he ordered.

  She met him at the door, dressed in the same silky robe that had so distracted him when he arrived the evening when the private detective had trespassed. “What took you so long?” she said, pulling him inside and shutting the door behind him. Then she slipped her arms around him and kissed him, a kiss that pulled him under, out of the real world of unsolved crimes and petty annoyances into a universe where the two of them were the only things that mattered.

  He broke the kiss and pushed back the edge of the robe, the sight of her nude body stirring him more than all his fantasies. He pulled her to him, smoothing his hands down her sides, then bringing them up to cup her breasts. He looked into her eyes, watching her pupils widen and darken as he brushed his thumbs across her nipples, a deep pull in his groin as the tips hardened and pressed into his palm.

  “Oh, yes,” she whispered, arching to him. He bent to take the tip of one breast in his mouth, swirling his tongue around the areola, the tension inside him building as she gasped. She smelled of peaches and vanilla and tasted slightly sweet. She clutched at his head, fingers digging into his scalp, the softness of her breast against his cheek. He closed his eyes, determined to savor the moment, determined not to lose it in a rush of need and heat.

  He slipped his hand between her thighs, her skin warm and softer than any satin. He entered her with one finger, then two, feeling her tighten around him. She rocked forward, pressed against him, making incoherent sounds of pleasure as he dropped to his knees and sealed his mouth over her center, tasting sweet and sour and female.

  He teased with his tongue, fingers still stroking inside her. She moaned, the sound resonating through him, his erection pulsing in response. He experimente
d with different rhythms and pressures until she rocked against him, impatient. Demanding.

  He smiled against her, delighting in her pleasure, delight building and expanding as she came, thrusting hard against him, spasming against his fingers. She sagged against him, and he stood, gathering her close once more and leading her to the bedroom.

  They lay down together and she opened her eyes and looked up at him, eyes still dark with desire. “Oh, that was very good,” she said. “But you and I are just getting started.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Audra had lit candles in anticipation of Hud’s arrival, and now she watched him undress in the golden light, revealing a lean, muscled body, strong legs and arms, and an erection that made her tighten in anticipation, desire building once more. He slid under the sheets beside her and reached for her, and she rolled on top of him, reveling in the feel of him along her full length.

  Then she broke the kiss and straddled him, smoothing her palms along his shoulders and down his chest, his erection hot and eager at the junction of her thighs. He reached up to cup her breasts, gently pinching her nipples until she gasped with pleasure. “Do you like that?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes.” She wrapped both hands around the length of his erection, stroking until his eyes lost focus, then leaned across to take a condom from the bedside drawer, unwrap it and roll it on.

  He grasped her hips and guided her as she slid over him, and he arched up to drive deeper, beginning a rhythm that she quickly modified, a thrust and parry that satisfied them both. When he reached one hand down to fondle her, she silently thanked whoever had taught him that move and abandoned herself to pleasure.

  She didn’t know how long they rode that wave of pleasure, but when she climaxed for the second time that night she would have said she had never enjoyed anything more.

  They fell asleep in each other’s arms. When she woke again, sunlight was just streaming through the gap in her bedroom curtains, and the shower was running. She smiled and wrapped her arms around her herself. She loved that Hud was so passionate and intense, but he was also so much fun. She loved his bad jokes and flippant remarks, his silly faces and even his off-key singing in the shower.