A Stone Creek Collection, Volume 2

by Linda Lael Miller

  Jack merely nodded.

  Ashley left the study again, scooped up a mewing Mrs. Wiggins as she passed and climbed the stairs.

  * * *

  Jack waited until he’d heard Ashley’s bedroom door close in the distance, then set up yet another email account, and brought up the message page. Typed in his mother’s email address at the library.

  Hi, Mom, he typed. Just a note to say I’m not really dead…

  Delete.

  He clicked to the search engine, entered the URL of the website for his dad’s dental office.

  There was Dr. McKenzie, in a white coat, looking like a man you’d trust your teeth to without hesitation. The old man was broad in the shoulders, with a full head of silver hair and a confident smile—Jack supposed he’d look a lot like his dad someday, if he managed to live long enough.

  The average web surfer probably wouldn’t have noticed the pain in Doc’s eyes, but Jack did. He looked deep.

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” he murmured.

  His cell phone, buried in the depths of his gear bag, played the opening notes of “Folsom Prison Blues.”

  Startled, Jack scrabbled through T-shirts and underwear until he found the cell. He didn’t answer it, but squinted at the caller ID instead. It read, “Blocked.”

  A chill trickled down Jack’s spine as he waited to see if the caller would leave a voice mail. This particular phone, a throwaway, was registered to Neal Mercer, and only a few people had the number.

  Ardith.

  Rachel.

  An FBI agent or two.

  Chad Lombard? There was no way he could have it, unless Rachel or Ardith had told him. Under duress.

  A cold sweat broke out between Jack’s aching shoulder blades.

  A little envelope flashed on the phone screen.

  After sucking in a breath, Jack accessed his voice mail.

  “Jack? It’s Ardith.” She sounded scared. She’d changed her name, changed Rachel’s, bought a condo on a shady street in a city far from Phoenix and started a new life, hoping to stay under Lombard’s radar.

  Jack waited for her to go on.

  “I think he knows where we are,” she said, at long last. “Rachel—I mean, Charlotte—is sure she saw him drive by the playground this afternoon—oh, God, I hope you get this—” Another pause, then Ardith recited a number. “Call me.”

  Jack shuddered as he hit the call back button. Cell calls were notoriously easy to listen in on, if you had the right equipment and the skill, and given the clandestine nature of his life’s work, Lombard surely did. If Rachel had seen her father drive past the playground, and not just someone who resembled him, the bastard was already closing in for the kill.

  “H-hello?” Ardith answered.

  “It’s Jack. This has to be quick, Ardith. You need to get Charlotte and leave. Right now.”

  “And go where?” Ardith asked, her voice shaking. “For all I know, he’s waiting right outside my door!”

  “I’ll send an escort. Just be ready, okay?”

  “But where—?”

  “You’ll know when you get here. My people will use the password we agreed on. Don’t go with them unless they do.”

  “Okay,” Ardith said, near tears now.

  They hung up without goodbyes.

  Jack immediately contacted Vince Griffin, using Ashley’s landline, and gave the order, along with the password.

  “Call me after you pick them up,” he finished.

  “Will do,” Vince responded. “I take it she and the kid are right where we left them?”

  “Yes,” Jack said. It was beyond unlikely that Ashley’s phone was bugged, but Vince’s could be. He had to take the chance, hope to God nobody was listening in, that his longtime friend and employee wouldn’t be followed. “Be careful.”

  “Always,” Vince said cheerfully, and hung up.

  Jack heard a sound behind him, regretted that the Glock was hidden behind a pile of quilts in the sewing room.

  Ashley stood, pale-faced, in the study doorway.

  “They’re coming here? Rachel and her mother?”

  “Yes,” Jack said, letting out his breath. You could have shot Ashley, he heard Tanner say. A chill burned through him. “They won’t be here long—just until I can find them a safe place to start over.”

  “They can stay as long as they need to,” Ashley said, but she looked terrified. “There’s no safer place than Stone Creek.”

  It wouldn’t be a safe place for long if Lombard tracked his ex-girlfriend and his daughter to the small Arizona town, but Jack didn’t point that out. There was no need to say it aloud.

  * * *

  Jack shut down the computer and retired to the sewing room.

  Knowing she wouldn’t sleep, Ashley showered, put on blue jeans and an old T-shirt, and returned to the kitchen, where she methodically assembled the ingredients for the most complicated recipe in her collection—her great-grandmother’s rum-pecan cake.

  The fourth batch was cooling when dawn broke, and Ashley was sitting at the table, a cup of coffee untouched in front of her.

  Jack stepped out of the sewing room, a shaving kit under one arm. His smile was wan, and a little guilty. “Smells like Christmas in here,” he said, very quietly. “Did you sleep?”

  Ashley shook her head, vaguely aware that she was covered in cake flour, the fallout of frenzied baking. “Did you?”

  “No,” Jack said, and she knew by the hollow look in his eyes that he was telling the truth. “Ashley, I’m sorry—”

  “Please,” Ashley interrupted, “stop saying that.”

  She couldn’t help comparing that morning to the one before, when she’d virtually seduced Jack right there in the kitchen. Was it only yesterday that she’d visited Olivia and the babies at the clinic in Indian Rock, had that disturbing conversation with Melissa outside the nursery? Dear God, it seemed as though a hundred years had passed since then.

  The wall phone rang.

  Jack tensed.

  Ashley got up to answer. “It’s only Melissa,” she said.

  She always knew when Melissa was calling.

  “I’m picking up twin-vibes,” her sister announced. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” Ashley said, glancing at the clock on the fireplace mantel. “It’s only six in the morning, Melissa. What are you doing up so early?”

  “I told you, I’ve got vibes,” Melissa answered, sounding impatient.

  Jack left the kitchen.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Ashley said, winding the telephone cord around her finger.

  “You’re lying,” Melissa insisted flatly. “Do I have to come over there?”

  Ashley smiled at the prospect. “Only if you want a home-cooked breakfast. Blueberry pancakes? Cherry crepes?”

  “You,” Melissa accused, “are deliberately torturing me. Your own sister. You know I’m on a diet.”

  “You’re five foot three and you weigh 110 pounds. If you’re on a diet, I’m having you committed.” Remembering that their mother had died in the psychiatric ward of a Flagstaff hospital, Ashley instantly regretted her choice of words. This was a subject she wanted to avoid, at least until she regained her emotional equilibrium. Melissa, like Brad and Olivia, had had a no-love-lost relationship with Delia.

  “Cherry crepes,” Melissa mused. “Ashley O’Ballivan, you are an evil woman.” A pause. “Furthermore, you have some nerve, grilling me about Alex Ewing, when Jack McCall is back.”

  Ashley frowned. “How did you know that?”

  “Your neighbor, Mrs. Pollack, works part-time in my office, remember? She told me he arrived in an ambulance, day before yesterday. Is there a reason you didn’t mention this?”

  “Yes, Counselor,” Ashley an
swered, “there is. Because I didn’t want you to know.”

  “Why not?” Melissa sounded almost hurt.

  “Because I knew I’d look like an idiot when he left again.”

  “Not to be too lawyerly, or anything, but why invite me to breakfast if you were trying to hide a man over there?”

  Ashley laughed, but it was forced, and Melissa probably picked up on that, though mercifully, she didn’t comment. “Because I’m overstocked on cherry crepes and I need the freezer space?” she offered.

  “You were supposed to say something like, ‘Because you’re my twin sister and I love you.’”

  “That, too,” Ashley responded.

  “I’ll be over before work,” Melissa said. “You’re really okay?”

  No, Ashley thought. I’m in love with a stranger, someone wants to kill him, and my bed-and-breakfast is about to become a stop on a modern underground railroad.

  “I will be,” she said aloud.

  “Damn right you will,” Melissa replied, and hung up without a goodbye. Of course, there hadn’t been a “hello,” either.

  Classic Melissa.

  The upstairs shower had been running through most of her conversation with Melissa—Ashley had heard the water rushing through the old house’s many pipes. Now all was silent.

  Thinking Jack would probably be downstairs soon, wanting breakfast, Ashley fed Mrs. Wiggins and then took a plastic container filled with the results of her last cooking binge from the freezer.

  A month ago she’d made five dozen crepes, complete with cherry sauce from scratch, when one of her college friends had called to say she’d just found out her husband was having an affair.

  Before that, it had been a double-fudge brownie marathon—beginning the night of her mother’s funeral. She’d donated the brownies to the residents of the nursing home three blocks over, since, in her own way, she was just as calorie-conscious as Melissa.

  Baking therapy was one thing. Scarfing down the results was quite another.

  Half an hour passed, and Jack didn’t reappear.

  Ashley waited.

  A full hour had passed, and still no sign of him.

  Resigned, she went upstairs. Knocked softly at his bedroom door.

  No answer.

  Her imagination kicked in. The man had aliases, for heaven’s sake. He’d abducted a drug dealer’s seven-year-old daughter from a stronghold in some Latin American jungle.

  Maybe he’d sneaked out the front door.

  Maybe he was lying in there, dead.

  “Jack?”

  Nothing.

  She opened the door, her heart in her throat, and stuck her head inside the room.

  He wasn’t in the bed.

  She raised her voice a little. “Jack?”

  She heard the buzzing sound then, identified it as an electric shaver, and was just about to back out of the room and close the door behind her, as quietly as possible, when his bathroom door opened.

  His hair was damp from the shower, and he was wearing a towel, loincloth style, and nothing else. He grinned as he shut off the shaver.

  “I’m not here for sex,” Ashley said, and then could have kicked herself.

  Jack laughed. “Too bad,” he said. “Nothing like a quickie to get the day off to a good start. So to speak.”

  A quickie indeed. Ashley gave him a look, meant to hide the fact that she found the idea more than appealing. “Breakfast will be ready soon,” she said coolly. “And Melissa is joining us, so try to behave yourself.”

  He stepped out of the bathroom.

  Her gaze immediately dropped to the towel. Shot back to his face.

  He was grinning. “But we’re alone now, aren’t we?”

  “I’m still not on birth control, remember?” Ashley’s voice shook.

  “That horse is pretty much out of the barn,” Jack drawled. He was walking toward her.

  She didn’t move.

  He took her hand, pulled her to him, pushed the door shut.

  Kissed her breathless.

  Unsnapped her jeans, slid a hand inside her panties.

  All without breaking the kiss.

  Ashley moaned into his mouth, wet where he caressed her.

  He maneuvered her to the bed, laid her down.

  Ashley was already trying to squirm out of her jeans. When it came to Jack McCall—McKenzie—whoever—she was downright easy.

  Jack finally ended the kiss, proceeded to rid her of her shoes, of the binding denim, and then her practical cotton underpants.

  She whimpered in anticipation when he knelt between her legs, parted her thighs, kissed her—there.

  A shudder of violent need moved through her.

  “Slow and easy,” he murmured, between nibbles and flicks of his tongue.

  Slow and easy? She was on fire.

  She shook her head from side to side. “Hard,” she pleaded. “Hard and fast, Jack. Please…”

  He went down on her in earnest then, and after a few glorious minutes, she shattered completely, peaking and then peaking again.

  Jack soothed her as she descended, stroking her thighs and murmuring to her until she sank into satisfaction.

  She’d expected him to mount her, but he didn’t.

  Instead, he dressed her again, nipping her once through the moist crotch of her panties before tucking her legs into her jeans, sliding them up her legs, tugging them past her bottom. He even slipped her feet into her shoes and tied the laces.

  “What about—the quickie?” she asked, burning again because he’d teased her with that little scrape of his teeth. Because as spectacular as her orgasm had been, it had left her wanting—needing—more.

  “I guess that will have to wait,” Jack said, sitting down beside her on the bed and easing her upright next to him. “Didn’t you say your sister would be here for breakfast at any moment?”

  She looked down at the towel—either it had miraculously stayed in place or he’d wrapped it around his waist again when she wasn’t looking—and saw the sizable bulge of his erection. “You’ve got a hard-on,” she said matter-of-factly.

  Jack chuckled. “Ya think?”

  Melissa’s voice sounded from downstairs. “Ash? I’m here!”

  Ashley bolted to her feet, blushing. “Coming!” she called back.

  “You can say that again,” Jack teased.

  Smoothing her hair with both hands, tugging at her T-shirt, Ashley hurried out of the room.

  “I’ll be right down!” she shouted, from the top of the stairs.

  Melissa’s reply was inaudible.

  Ashley dashed into her bathroom and splashed her face with cold water, then checked herself out in the full-length mirror on the back of the door.

  She looked, she decided ruefully, like a woman who’d just had a screaming climax—and needed more.

  Quickly, she applied powder to her face, but the telltale glow was still there.

  Damn.

  There was nothing to do but go downstairs, where her all-too-perceptive twin was waiting for cherry crepes. If she didn’t appear soon, Melissa would come looking for her.

  “You were having sex,” Melissa said two minutes later, when Ashley forced herself to step into the kitchen.

  “No, I wasn’t,” Ashley replied, with an indignant little sniff.

  “Liar.”

  Ashley crossed the room, turned the oven on to preheat, and got very busy taking the frozen crepes out of their plastic container, transferring them to a baking dish. All the while, she was careful not to let Melissa catch her eye.

  “Olivia and the twins are coming home today,” Melissa said lightly, but something in her voice warned that she wasn’t going to let the sex issue drop.


  “I thought the babies had to stay until they were bigger,” Ashley replied, still avoiding Melissa’s gaze.

  “Tanner hired special nurses and had two state-of-the-art incubators brought from Flagstaff,” Melissa explained.

  Once the crepes were in the oven, Ashley had no choice but to turn around and look at Melissa.

  “You were having sex,” Melissa repeated.

  Ashley flung her hands out from her sides. “Okay. Yes, I was having sex!” She sighed. “Sort of.”

  “What do you mean, sort of? How do you ‘sort of’ have sex?”

  “Never mind,” Ashley snapped. “Isn’t it enough that I admitted it? Do you want details?”

  “Yes, actually,” Melissa answered mischievously, “but I’m obviously not going to get them.”

  Jack pushed open the inside door and stepped into the kitchen.

  “Yet,” Melissa added, in a whisper.

  Ashley rolled her eyes.

  “Hello, Jack,” Melissa said.

  “Melissa,” Jack replied.

  Like Brad and Olivia, Melissa wasn’t in the Jack McCall fan club. They’d all turned in their membership cards the last time he ditched Ashley.

  “Just passing through?” Melissa asked sweetly.

  “Like the wind,” Jack answered. “Your brother already threatened me, so maybe we can skip that part.”

  Ashley raised her eyebrows. Brad had threatened Jack?

  “As long as somebody got the point across,” Melissa chimed.

  “Oh, believe me, I get it.”

  “Will you both stop bickering, please?” Ashley asked.

  Melissa sneezed. Looked around. “Is there a cat in this house?”

  Jack grinned. “I could find the little mutant, if you’d like to pet it.”

  Melissa sneezed again. “I’m—allergic! Ashley, you know I’m all—all—atchoo!”

  Ashley had completely forgotten about Mrs. Wiggins, and about her sister’s famous allergies. Olivia insisted it was all in Melissa’s head, since she’d been tested and the results had been negative.

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  Another sneeze.

  “Bless you,” Jack said generously.

  Melissa grabbed up her coat and purse and ran for the back door. Slammed it behind her.