In Too Deep_An Iniquus Romantic Suspense Mystery Thriller

by Fiona Quinn

  “Have you met her?” Deep asked.

  “Lynda Stamos? No, not in person. I recognize the name. She was in your database? Does that mean she’s broken a law?”

  “She’s in there because she went to the White House to do a consultation, and they run background checks on all White House visitors.”

  “Oh.” Lacey leaned forward onto her elbows to get a better look, and Deep’s hands moved down her back to her hips. Lacey was suddenly aware of how their bodies were lined up.

  “So after I realized she was an artists’ agent, I wondered if the other three people were, as well.”

  “Were they?” Lacey twisted around.

  Deep caught hold of her and held her still. His eyes dilated to almost all black with a predatory look that he softened with a chuckle and a shake of his head. “If you’re going to sit on my lap, you’re going to have to sit still.”

  Lacey felt the air charge with sexual tension and blushed as her body responded, heat spreading across her chest and catching her breath.

  Deep held her tightly to him as he stood up. “Are you hungry? I made coffee.” With his arm still around her, he moved toward the kitchen.

  Deep had changed directions on purpose. Lacey wondered why he hadn’t taken advantage of that moment. Maybe she had misheard or misinterpreted what he had said before about how he felt about her. Maybe she misjudged those kitchen kisses. “Not hungry. Antsy.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about maybe taking a field trip and get you out of the house for a little bit.”

  “Wait, I was asking about the other three people in the photos?” Lacey reminded him.

  “Three of the four are agents for the artists on the list. I was working on number four when you came down. Why don’t I make some pancakes while you tell me what had you in knots last night?”

  “I was thinking about Steve.”

  Deep offered up an encouraging nod as he opened the fridge.

  “I’m trying to figure out if he’s a good guy or a bad guy. Who do you think Steve is in all of this?”

  “No flour, I gave it to Sarah yesterday. Omelets?”

  “That’s fine, anything really. Just a cup of coffee would be lovely.”

  “You need to eat. It helps your body deal with the stress. Protein.” He raised his brows as if he wouldn’t take any argument on the fact. Lacey thought that was probably a face his mom used to keep him in line when he was a boy. Deep reached for a bowl and started cracking eggs. “About Steve? I’m afraid to speculate.”

  “Please do anyway.” Lacey went to the cupboard to pull out the dishes and flatware to set the table. And for a moment in time, everything seemed domestic and normal. Happy, even. For a moment, she could almost pretend nothing was wrong.

  But then Deep answered her question.

  “Clean file could mean nothing at all. Or it could be a good cover. He’s well-trained—that’s not speculation. He’s fit and ready – that’s not speculation. Higgins is FBI and was in the bar watching you – that’s interesting. Could be that Steve was running late and asked Higgins to serve as his eyes and ears to make sure you were okay. Could be Steve is under Higgins’s spotlight and Higgins was waiting for Steve, just like you were. Could be Higgins has nothing to do with Steve, and it was all happenstance. But that last one doesn’t feel right. I’m pretty sure, though, that Steve is playing on the good-guy team.”

  Lacey poured coffee into the mugs. She doctored hers with sugar and milk and set the mug of black coffee by Deep’s plate.

  Deep wandered over and took a sip. “Thank you.” He took another one, then set his mug down and moved back to the counter. “I can’t imagine another reason that they’d let a stranger from a car accident jump in the back of the rescue squad – he must have flashed his badge and handed them a story.”

  “I don’t think he’s a good guy,” Lacey said, her voice flat and angry.

  Deep was chopping herbs, a kitchen towel tossed over his shoulder. He paused to turn and take her in. “Why do you say that?”

  “He was kissing the fat-lipped girl.” Lacey’s own lip pouted out like a little girl whose feelings had been stepped on. She didn’t want it to be true – but it did hurt her that Steve was kissing someone else. And Lacey wasn’t stupid enough to think that Steve would stop with kissing another woman. They were all adults. Obviously, if Steve was intimately involved with someone else at the same time she was dating him, it made her disposable in his eyes. And that feeling took Lacey right back to when she was six-years old, when she became a knick-knack to be shelved and intermittently dusted.

  Deep scattered the herbs over the eggs sizzling in the pan.

  Lacey talked to his back. “When I first realized there were two of us, I thought this woman might have duped Steve. He thought he was kissing me, when he was really kissing fake-Lacey. But that’s naïve. Of course he knew he was kissing someone else. Look at you.”

  Deep turned and rested his hips against the counter, crossing one ankle over the other. He held his hands out to either side and smiled. “Look at me.”

  “When you kissed me, your hands knew exactly where to go. Your head knew exactly how far it needed to bend. If suddenly I changed height, even if you missed all of the other subtle things, wouldn’t you know that the person you were walking next to was at a different conversational level? When you kissed all of the women in your life, if suddenly they were a different size in your arms, wouldn’t you know that?”

  “Well, of course. If I played a violin and suddenly I held a viola in my arms, I would need to position my hand differently, change the way I pulled my bow across the strings.” Deep stopped and grinned. “You know, you’re pretty cute when you get that jealous crinkle under your eyes.”

  Lacey blinked, trying to change her expression. Deep was right. She had imagined flashes of other women in his arms, beautiful women, intelligent women, fabulous, world-wise women. She knotted her hands tightly in her lap and felt very clearly that she didn’t belong in that picture. She belonged in a picture with a latte-drinking software engineer. Someone more white bread and less, oh, Channing Tatum-as-GI Joe-like. Maybe a lawyer. Possibly a director of some well-intentioned nonprofit. But not Deep. He was so much more vibrant and . . . male.

  Deep watched her speculatively. “Do you want to share that thought?”

  “No, thank you.” Lacey reached out for her mug. “When I came downstairs this morning, you said maybe we could leave the house today? Go on a field trip?”

  “Yeah. I pulled up the files from your accident with Bambi. It doesn’t follow protocol for an accident. The way things stand, I’m surprised your insurance paid out.”

  “It hasn’t. My lawyer’s trying to figure things out.”

  “I’d like for us to go by the spot and see what there is to see. Nice drive in the country. It should be good for you to see some trees and sky.”

  Lacey gulped in a lung full of air.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Deep

  Sunday

  Deep didn’t need Lacey to point to the place where she’d had her accident. The tire marks decorated the roadway like a picture made with his nephew’s Spirograph. He reached out to squeeze Lacey’s knee, and she held on to his wrist with both hands. He wondered if he made a mistake bringing her here.

  “Looks like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride,” he said. “This is from your accident?”

  She nodded.

  “Do you remember spinning around like that?”

  Her head shook.

  Deep needed to get her talking. The more she talked, the more she could process, and the more she talked, the less she’d get trapped in fear. He wanted her to be able to move through this, maybe get some closure. “Lacey, look behind us. Tell me what was happening before the accident.”

  Lacey unhooked her seatbelt and flipped around in the seat. “I came up that road.”

  “Here, let’s get out.”

  Deep unhooked his belt and popped open his door. Before La
cey could right herself, Deep was at her side, helping her jump down. They moved around to stand at the back of the Land Rover.

  “Okay, so you were driving up that road, and you said you were speeding. That doesn’t seem like something you’d do. I’d guess you’re the kind of driver that has a perfect driving record. Maybe even the kind of stickler for minding the speed limit that ticks off the other drivers.” He hoped if he poked at her a little, it might get her blood flowing again. Lacey was as white as a sheet.

  “What you’re really saying is that when you researched me and the accident, you saw that I had had a perfect driving record.”

  “Well, this is true. I did see that – but it confirmed my suspicions. You’re a little tightly wound, you know, Lacey. Breaking a few rules every now and again is human.”

  Lacey looked down at her shuffling feet. She’d probably missed the teasing tone he’d used. She looked like a child who got caught doing something naughty, even if he was kidding her for the exact opposite reason. “Something made you feel more afraid than the fear you usually experience when you break rules. You said you didn’t come to a full stop at the stop sign; you remember putting on your signal, and then you can’t remember any more.”

  Lacey stared at the length of street that she had sped down, then looked at the stop sign. And then she looked up the street at the skid marks. Gripping at her chest, she said, “I remember not being able to breathe. Like I was suffocating. And my heart – my heart had been doing strange things.”

  “Do you remember why you were frightened, Lacey?” Deep asked gently. “Do you remember someone chasing you in their truck?”

  Lacey looked up at him, her eyes wide.

  Deep reached for her hand, and they walked to the front of the car. “See here? These are your wheels. But this track here? Those are from a different vehicle. See how they line up? The vehicle behind you hit your back left bumper and spun you. Come on.” Deep hoped he wasn’t pushing her. She looked awful. But when he started walking, she tucked under his arm and walked with him.

  “Three circles, and then the rotation stops. There’s a break . . .” He walked farther up the road until he found a tree that had obviously taken one heck of a blow. “And this is where your car stopped. Did Steve ever tell you why he was out this way?”

  Lacey shook her head.

  Deep’s eye caught on the glint of sunlight on a lens. His jaw tightened. And he felt his chest expand, ready for action. He pulled Lacey in to his body and stepped back so a tree on the hill stood between him and the reflection. He peeked back over his shoulder and saw two points of light. Binoculars — not a rifle sight. Still, he didn’t want anyone’s eyes on Lacey.

  “You’re trembling,” Deep said. “Let’s get you back into the car and warmed up. I want to take some pictures before we leave.”

  He didn’t like how quiet she was. He wondered if he had overstepped, bringing her to the place where she’d had such a traumatic event. He had hoped being here might get her talking about things that would give him more clues to work with. Even though he was working to solve her case and make life safe for her again, he still felt selfish.

  Last year, he remembered watching Lynx go through the rings of hell when a lunatic was stalking her. He had watched Striker try to navigate the act of managing Lynx as a crime victim living in their safehouse, Lynx’s role in solving the crimes, and Striker’s own feelings for her. Deep suddenly had a great deal more insight into what a tightrope act that had been for Striker. And now he had to walk a similar tightrope with Lacey.

  With the heat blasting out of the vents, Deep grabbed his camera and climbed onto the roof of his Land Rover. While he wanted to take photos of the area in order to study them later, he also wanted to use his zoom lens to figure out who had their eyes on him.

  Soon a pale blue mid-century Ford, more rust than paint, chugged its way up the road and pulled over on the opposite shoulder. Deep tapped his elbow against his hip, reassuring himself that his sidearm was ready.

  “Howdy,” the man said as he jumped down from his cab. Dressed in jean coveralls, a red plaid wool overshirt, and a baseball cap that said NRA, the man tilted back to get a good look at Deep, then spit a stream of tobacco juice into his Budweiser can.

  “Hey,” Deep said and climbed down from his roof. “You the guy watching us from over in the woods?”

  “I was out tracking rabbit for tomorrow morning’s hunt. Thought I saw something peculiar happening over here, and decided to come take a look see.”

  “I’m Dean Huit,” Deep said reaching for his wallet, pulling out a card, and handing it over.

  “I’m Horace Taylor. It says ‘investigator’ on here. Whatcha investigating?”

  Deep pointed up the road. “My client’s insurance company doesn’t want to cover her accident. So we’re going to end up in court. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about the accident here, would you?”

  “I reckon I do. But I already told the authorities all about it. You can get hold of the report. That should be all you need.” He reached in his pocket, pulled out a bag of Red Man, and packed a little more tobacco back in his cheek. “The lady, she lived through it? They wouldn’t tell me – said it had to do with some damned HIPAA privacy crap.”

  “She survived. It took her a while to get better. Amazing, though. When you look at these road marks you wouldn’t think it was possible. Could I ask you, Mr. Taylor, to share with me what you know? Could I tape record it so I can understand what I’m seeing when I get back to my computer with my photos and measurements?”

  “Name’s Horace, not Mr. Taylor.” He held Deep’s eye like he was taking his measure. “You look to me like a military guy.”

  “Yes, sir, Marine Raiders. Three tours in Afghanistan.”

  “Ooh-rah, son. I served in Nam, myself.” He rotated his cheeks and jaw and spit into his beer can. “Sure, I’ll tell you what I seen. That’d be fine.”

  Deep pulled out his phone and hung it from his pocket, allowing him to hands-free video record.

  Horace pointed back at the stop sign. “I was out ahead of deer season, tracking to figure out where might be good to put my hide. Engines come racing up the road over there. I thought it was some high school kids playing hooky. I was going to get a description of their cars and call it in to the sheriff. You can see pretty far from my hill over there.” He turned and pointed. “That’s where I was with my binoculars. I never go out the house without ‘em. Curious darn thing, that’s for sure. I saw a grey car — found out later it was one of them rich cars, an Audi A3—coming up too fast, like I said. But behind it was a truck coming up even faster. Black Chevy Silverado. The faster it came, the faster the girl in the Audi drove until she run out of road. She slowed down to make that there turn, see, and the truck tapped her back bumper. Looked to me like it was aimed and on purpose. Guy brakes his truck in the middle of the road. The girl, her car’s making crazy circles down the center. Well you can see – kind of banged along some of the berms. Good darned thing they slowed her down some before she hit the tree. See here? These ain’t ditches and hills. They’re trenches dug during the Civil War. Some parts still come up to a man’s neck. Here, they’re eroded down. Some parts of the shoulder are softer than others. Still, if her wheel caught in there, her car would have flipped for sure. Seen it happen time and again. This here’s a dangerous stretch of road.”

  “It’s interesting how you can see the spin marks, but then it looks like she straightened out like she regained control but for the curve in the road. If the road had gone straight, she might not have crashed,” Deep said.

  “Yeah, I can see how you might think that – but she never had control of that car. So imagine she’s spinning down the road and all that squall from up under her tires trying to grab ahold of the roadway, a buck comes flying out of the woods, and she clips him. He’s flat out dead, and she’s wrapped around the tree. Blink of an eye.”

  “Deer in the road, girl in the tree,” Deep s
aid, and clicked a picture with his camera.

  “You’d think that’d be the end of it. I was getting ready to run to the house and get her some help.” He pulled a red bandana from the back of his coveralls pocket and mopped at his face, even though the day was vivid with cold. “The guy in the Silverado slowly rolls up to the deer. He jumps down and for a while I can’t see him.” Horace turned to point. “I hustled up to that there hill. When I got to that oak, there he was. He’s looking up and down the road. He stands right there in front of that holly tree and watches another car come up and park in the road behind him, and they’re arguing. The wind was carrying their voices my way. They sounded right heated, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. The big guy — big as in tall, not, you know, muscle-y big – skinny guy but really tall. Good guy for a basketball team. He pulls a pistol out from inside his coat. He walked over to the woman’s car and aimed his gun at the woman’s head. I thought for sure I was witnessing a murder.” Horace spat in his can again. “The other guy—the short one with brown hair—is pushing the gun down and gesturing for him to get back in his truck. The tall guy finally does and takes off down the road. So the brown haired-fella runs over and gets the door open on the back passenger side. It’s the only one that isn’t bashed in – he crawls over to the front seat. I’m thinking he might be trying to kill her, ya know? I was creeping up on them. I’m a quiet man; I’ve had my time in the jungles. I had my knife with me. Course, it would have meant a swim through that there gully. If I needed to, I coulda tried to stop him. You know, if the guy were trying to kill her.”

  “Had you already called 9-1-1?”

  “Ain’t got cell service in this here part of my land. Things are kinda spotty out this way. But the brown-haired guy must have a different provider, ‘cause he was on the phone. He was looking up and down the street like he was trying to give them landmarks. I saw him staring at that historical marker up the road.” He pointed up past the tree Lacey had hit. “Probably gave them that as the place they should head. He seemed to be trained in what he was doing; he checked her over. Held his fingers to her neck and the like. She wasn’t conscious. He kicked at the door to open it, then gave up and crawled back over the seat. He moved his car to the side of the road, put up flares, and grabbed a first-aid kit. Professional. This wasn’t his first rodeo.”