Justice Hunter
Page 18
Rachel glided her hand over his skin, able to use both hands somewhat.
He kissed her mouth and then moved down her neck to her right breast, then on to her left, where he treated her to soft, healing love.
After a while, he rose up and unfastened his jeans. Rachel watched his arm muscles flex and then his abdomen tighten when he got off the bed. His jeans fell to the floor, and she admired his jutting penis as he returned to her.
Making room for him between her legs, excitement pumped her blood hotter as he moved into position. Staying up on his hands, he rubbed himself on her first. Several teasing strokes later, he finally pushed inside.
White-hot fire took Rachel to another world. Flying away on wings of pleasure, she let out a series of breathy groans as he began to go back and forth. He moved slow, taking his time, pleasuring her with excruciating sweetness. Arching as she climaxed, she barely noticed the deep sting in her gunshot wound, crying out in pleasure instead of pain.
Lucas pushed into her once more, having reached his peak with her.
Settling down after that incredible high, Rachel’s chest throbbed in protest of the extra activity.
Lucas lay beside her, pulling the covers over them to ward off the chill. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes.” She grimaced as she adjusted her position to get more comfortable. The pain didn’t lessen. In fact, it felt as though it would hang around awhile and make for a rough night of sleep.
Lucas got up, bold in his nakedness, and walked to the bathroom. He returned with her pain medication. Rachel pushed herself to lean against the pillows, unable to stifle an audible grunt of pain.
Sitting beside her on the bed, Lucas handed her the glass of water on the nightstand. She took them both, swallowing the pill. When she finished, he put the glass back down on the nightstand and then looked at her again.
“We probably should have waited for that,” he said.
She needed more rest. “I’m glad we didn’t.” If they’d have waited, would it have ever happened? Maybe it shouldn’t have. She turned away with that thought.
Outside, wind blew snow against the window. Rachel wouldn’t think about the consequences of this night. She would only think about the wonder of it.
* * *
The muffled ring of Lucas’s cell phone woke him. Then he realized two things. His cell phone was in the pocket of his jeans on the floor, and he was in bed with Rachel.
On the third ring, he looked over and saw her stirring, dark hair fanned out on the white pillow, beautiful eyes fluttering open.
Damn.
Moving the covers off him, he crouched for his phone, catching the caller just before it went to voice mail. It was Sheriff Bailey.
“Lucas,” the sheriff said, “my apologies for not returning your call sooner. I had to follow up on a few leads first.”
Lucas had talked with the sheriff while Rachel was in the hospital, telling him the plate number the neighbor had given him after the shooting.
“The plate traced to Jared Palmer,” Sheriff Bailey said.
He must have known that for a while. Why hadn’t he called sooner?
“I’ve spent every day since this discovery trying to locate him,” the sheriff said.
“He ran?”
“His partner said the last time he saw him was when he left work the night before the fire. A neighbor saw him leave his house around seven that same night. So something made him go out again. I’ve checked phone records. He received a call from a disposable phone at six-fifty p.m. A false ID was used to activate the disposable phone, and the buyer paid cash. I traced the buy to a supercenter store and have my deputy going through the security tapes. Bozeman police are working a missing person case on him, and I’m sharing what I find with them.”
“Have you spoken with Marcy Sanders?”
“She’s another person I haven’t been able to find. She was last seen at a restaurant with Jared the night he disappeared. They left the restaurant at six thirty, and her roommate said she never came home, nor did Jared drop her off. His neighbor said he left alone, and he didn’t see Marcy come home with him.”
Within thirty minutes, Jared had left the restaurant, driven home, received an untraceable phone call and then left right after that. Where was Marcy?
Beside him, Rachel climbed off the bed and walked naked to the bathroom, seeming unabashed. If last night troubled her the way it did him, she gave no indication.
Jared missing could mean one of two things. His failed attempt to kill him and Rachel had made him decide to flee, or someone else had more to lose than him. Was it Marcy? She’d dabbled in relationships with both Eldon and Jared. What kind of triangle had she created? And was Eldon involved somehow? He’d seemed genuinely surprised to learn Marcy was seeing Jared. And Jared had seemed genuinely concerned about Rachel, and sincere when he’d insisted he wouldn’t hurt her. Was Marcy the criminal in this scenario? What would she have to gain from Jared’s fraud? What would she gain from removing Jared from the picture?
Chapter 13
After a week of resting, Rachel began physical therapy. She’d just finished her routine, exercising with gradually increased length and intensity and ending with a bath. She’d started with gentle movements and still wouldn’t call what she did a workout, but it was progress. With her hair up in a clip, she slipped into her nightgown.
Not ready for bed yet, she left the room. She still had to walk slow and felt how weak her injury had made her. In the kitchen she put a kettle of water on a hot burner.
With only the light above the sink on, she didn’t see Lucas until he stood from the table. He’d been working in front of his laptop. He walked over to her and came to stand behind her.
He hadn’t tried to make love to her again since that first, glorious time. But now he slid his arms around her and put his face beside hers.
“I can see your body through this nightgown,” he said.
He could? She glanced down and couldn’t see anything, but she supposed the filmy material would be transparent where it fell away from her skin.
He kissed her neck, sending off an array of tingles. She turned in his arms and looped her good arm around his neck. They kissed, with his hand roaming her body over the soft material of her nightgown.
Passion heated up. Rachel sought more of him and he answered her, their mouths a perfect match for satisfying this marvelous need.
“You make me want to believe I can have this,” she whispered against his mouth, and then regretted letting that thought out. While she didn’t spell out what this was, he must have guessed.
Moving back from her, his hands fell away from her hips, and the look on his face made her go cold.
This to her meant family. Love. All the things she remembered about her parents, everything that had been taken from her at a vulnerable age.
“Maybe we should back off a little,” he said.
Back off? They’d barely started. Was his commitment level that low?
“Yes, we should.” She didn’t need to get her heart wrapped around a lost cause. He had too much to resolve personally. She’d been a fool to hope otherwise.
* * *
Almost three weeks later Rachel felt like herself again, except for the tension that living with Lucas generated, and the fact that her period was late. The shooting may have caused the delay, her body struggling to recover, but another reason had taken seed in her mind. While having a baby filled her with wonder and love, the timing couldn’t be worse. With a man like Lucas, maybe there’d never be a good time. Maybe he needed this to stop him from hanging on to a negative part of his past.
He’d refrained from intimacy since that last kiss. They’d managed to get along like roommates, but there had been the occasional brush of skin and long looks. A f
ew times she’d gotten close to tossing caution aside just to assuage the constant desire to feel again what she had that magical night. But then the reminder of the last kiss doused any flickering flame. Conversations were either related to Jared or Luella or cordial and out of necessity. No one had found Jared or Marcy, so there wasn’t much to say about the case.
Lucas’s expertise in walling her off disconcerted her. She tried to tell herself it was for the best.
She watched Beverly’s husband plow the road beneath sunlight they hadn’t seen in days. Lucas couldn’t take the isolation anymore. They’d been cooped up inside through three storms. The snow had piled high. Rachel wasn’t sure what bothered him more: not being more involved in the investigation or being too close to her. They could have returned to Bozeman over a week ago were it not for the weather. Lucas may have argued that point. Although he’d been aloof, he’d not slacked on her care. He’d seen to her every need, the only thing that had contradicted his need for distance.
Rachel hated that she didn’t share that need. If things had gone her way, they’d have had sex every day. She had often caught herself daydreaming about a life with him. Family. And that had only intensified after she realized her period was late. She’d thought more of her life with her parents than she had since she’d been arrested as a teen. The thoughts had not been tainted by sorrow and resentment, either. No rebellion. Nothing but good memories filled her, contentment and yearning for that happy stability again.
“Are you sure you’re healed enough for this?”
Jarred from a peaceful state, she turned from the living room window. He must know she was. There had to be another reason for his reservation.
“Yes.”
“Maybe you should stay here.”
She faced him, curious as to why he’d like to leave her behind. Concern for her safety? Or fear of close proximity? “Why?”
Not a meek-minded man, or a stupid one, he turned as he said, “You’re safer here.”
“Maybe what you really mean is you’d be safer if I was here and not close to you. Easier to deny what’s happening between us.”
“What is happening between us?”
Oh, he aggravated her when he did that, acting as though he felt nothing for her. He may not be falling madly in love, but they had a connection. Could he not at least acknowledge that much? “Apparently nothing.”
When he didn’t respond, she became more irritated. “Now isn’t the time to say I think I’m pregnant,” she said, just low enough.
But he stopped and asked, “What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
A moment longer, subject to his scrutiny, he finally went on his way.
Rachel faced the window again, seeing the big plow disappear down one of the roads on Lucas’s property. It would be stored in one of the outbuildings, protected until needed for the next storm.
She faintly heard Lucas’s cell phone go off, and then his muffled voice. She couldn’t hear what he said, but the rich baritone penetrated her senses. She lost herself in wistful pleasure.
Then his booted feet thudded back into the living room. “Jared’s body’s been found.”
While the length of time he’d been missing should have prepared her for this, hearing the fact spoken gave her a jolt. Jared was dead.
“His car rolled down a steep ravine in a remote area north of Big Sky. His body is fairly well preserved due to the cold. He was strangled.”
“He was in the car?”
Lucas nodded. “But the strangulation suggests he was somewhere else when he was killed. The angle of the ligature marks doesn’t support him sitting in the car.”
That meant someone else had to drive the car to the cliff and put his body in the driver’s seat. “Marcy?”
“Still missing.”
Had she driven Jared’s car to the dump site?
“I have directions to the crime scene. If we leave now, we’ll make it in time.”
In time for what? Before the investigators completed their evidence-gathering? She didn’t ask, just went with him.
* * *
Lucas left Rachel in the warm vehicle while he walked down the precarious, snow-covered hill to the ravine below. The car had been partially buried by snow and well hidden by the steep terrain and thick branches of shrubs and trees along the bank of a frozen stream. Only flowing water beneath the layer of ice could be heard. Late afternoon, a good, Montana bite of cold had settled in the air.
Several investigators worked the scene, searching the land surrounding the vehicle, meticulously going through every millimeter of the interior. Jared’s body lay slouched over the console, not belted in. His body showed signs of being jostled violently on the descent to the stream shore. The window was down on the front passenger side. The others were up. Had Jared rolled the window down to talk to someone?
Maybe his killer had pointed a gun at him. Marcy? She smoked, so maybe she’d rolled the window down for that and had then drawn the gun.
“Over here,” one of the investigators called.
Lucas made his way through the deep snow to a cluster of thick shrubs. Two investigators were careful not to disturb the item, a briefcase. The female investigator snapped photos. The man opened the case with gloved hands and some fine lock picks. A crude hand-drawn map lay on top of folders and papers.
Lucas didn’t see any marks in the snow to indicate the case had tumbled here from the car. He also noted how shallow the case sat in the snow. If it had been hurled from the car, it would have sunken deeper. Not only that, had this case flown from the open window in the car, it would have been buried by snow over the weeks Jared had been here.
Someone had planted this, and someone had planted it recently.
“I need a copy of that map,” Lucas said. He took a pair of gloves the woman handed him and lifted the map. He recognized the location right away. Luella had purchased a cabin before marrying Jared. A small structure on about twenty acres, it wasn’t much in the way of vacation homes, but it had been what Luella liked. Cozy space tucked away in isolation.
The X marked a spot in the back, within the thick forest of trees.
He put the map back down. Whoever had left this had intended for police to find it. Straightening, he met the sheriff and asked him to give him a copy of the report when it became available. The sheriff nodded with a yawn.
* * *
After driving back in the direction they’d come, they finally arrived at Luella’s cabin. Rachel didn’t find it odd that both siblings preferred the wild of Montana’s mountains. What was peculiar was that Lucas leaned more toward the expensive and Luella the more conservative. Her choice in men didn’t give any indication of that quiet reserve. Lucas’s rugged background gave equally vague clues. Rachel attributed that to their humble upbringing. Joseph had experienced incredible success with Tieber Transport, but he’d also stuck to his principles. An honest, good man, he was someone Rachel respected. She supposed his stepchildren had learned from his better qualities.
She watched Lucas look over at the cabin, memories taking him as he led her through the snow to the back. He didn’t yet have a copy of the map. He didn’t need one. He knew this land. Something about it struck her as familiar, too.
Lucas stopped short.
Rachel bumped into him and stared at something hanging from a tree limb. It swayed in the slight breeze. Rachel had the image of a piece of skinned meat before she moved closer and realized it was much worse.
It was her pillowcase. Something had been stuffed inside. Blotches of blood gave her a sick feeling.
Lucas recognized the pillowcase. She’d had it on her daybed, the lavender stitching distinctive on the white material. Even dirty and soaked through with blood in places, there was no mistake.
Lucas shot an incredulous look
back at her, neither accusing nor believing. But his doubt hurt.
He didn’t actually think...
How could he?
Incensed, she marched forward to yank the pillowcase off the branch. The ties held sturdy but gave under her pulls. Drawing the top open, she fell backward onto her butt when she saw the bloody clothes inside.
Lucas didn’t lift out any of the items. They were Luella’s clothes from the night of her murder...or so they appeared. How could the blood have soaked through in places if it was Luella’s? Her pillowcase had not been missing that long. But would Lucas believe that? She had extras in her closet.
“These are Luella’s clothes.” He said the obvious.
She didn’t say she knew. That might make her seem guilty. How would she know if these belonged to Luella? He might dismiss natural insight.
Rachel touched the side of the case on one of the blood stains. “Someone put these in my pillowcase on purpose.” Didn’t he see that? She looked up and saw his turmoil. Finding his sister’s clothes inside one of Rachel’s pillowcases delivered shock the killer had surely intended.
His lack of response said he did see, at least distrustfully. As a detective, he had to consider the possibility—and it was a good possibility. The clue had clearly been left for them to find.
“Someone is trying to set me up.” If Jared had still lived, she’d think it was him.
Lucas took out his phone and made a call to the local police. Then he called the sheriff.
As he did so, he made sure to indicate the pillowcase belonged to Rachel. While he had doubt, he still didn’t trust her. She felt so betrayed. How could he so easily throw her under the bus like that? The region of her heart stung and ached. She fought for steely resolve that normally came easy to her, but now it failed her.
Would he just stand by and watch her be arrested for a crime she didn’t commit? If other detectives became convinced of the plausibility of her guilt, would he take their side? She had to say yes. She couldn’t believe it.