Admit One (Sweetwater Book 2)

by Clark O'Neill, Lisa

“Too many late nights,” he muttered, then toggled over to check his inbox. When he saw the email from the state crime lab, he sat up a little straighter. Hopefully they had some information for him regarding the severed arm. Especially since no one had yet come forward to report a missing person. Will was never happy with John or Jane Doe situations, even when there was no possibility of foul play. When all he had was a piece of an unidentified cadaver, the cause of death undetermined, it made him itchy to say the least.

  He opened the email. “Fingerprints unable to be recovered,” he read. No surprise there. There was some more information about tissue degradation, estimated time spent in the water – less than twenty-four hours.

  When he came to the attachment, Will opened the photos. The partial tattoo Will’d noticed had been cleaned up, and run through a computer program that predicted the likeliest match. There were several possibilities, but when Will saw the stylized grim reaper, something clicked. He’d seen that tattoo before.

  Unable to think of where he’d seen it, Will took another slug of coffee, pinched the bridge of his nose. And reminded himself that this was why he shouldn’t work when he was tired and drug out. His brain was too sluggish to function.

  Pushing back from his chair, Will snagged his coffee cup and headed toward the door. Maybe another hit of caffeine would do it.

  When he opened the door, he saw Alan Barger walking by, and on a hunch, called him into the office instead.

  Barger looked slightly surprised as he stepped in.

  “Have a look at this,” Will said, gesturing the other man over toward the computer. He pointed to the three photos displayed on the screen. “Have you ever seen any of these?”

  Barger leaned over, squinted. After several moments, he pointed to the bony countenance of the grim reaper. “Where’d you find this picture of my ex-wife?”

  The corner of his mouth tugged into a wry smile. “Other than a resemblance to the former Mrs. Barger, you don’t recognize the tattoo?”

  Barger hesitated, then shook his head. “I don’t think so. I mean, I feel like I could have seen all of them somewhere at one point or another, but nothing immediately leaps out. Why?” He glanced up at Will. “Should I recognize it?”

  “No.” Will sighed. “I was just hoping that you would, so that I don’t have to rack my brain, trying to figure out why this one strikes me as familiar. And I promise it’s not because I’ve been scoping out your ex-wife.”

  “Wise decision.” Barger studied the screen again. “Like I said, be in this business long enough, and everything starts to look familiar, because we’ve pretty much seen it all.”

  “There is that,” Will agreed, though something still pulled at him. He knew he’d seen that tattoo. “Thanks, though.”

  “No problem.”

  Will straightened. “What are you doing here, anyway? I thought you were supposed to be off shift.”

  “Forgot something in my locker,” he said. “Although I could ask you the same question. Chief.”

  Will gave him a look. Barger was several years Will’s senior, so the other man liked to rib him about his promotion.

  “The fates are conspiring to make sure that my professional good fortune – if you could call it that – is balanced out by the complete destruction of anything resembling a personal life.”

  “I hear ya.” The other man grimaced. “It almost makes me miss the Reaper.”

  “Really?”

  “Only for about thirty seconds. Then I remember that instead of a scythe, that particular reaper liked to cut grown men down with her tongue.”

  Will scratched his chin. “I think I’d rather have the scythe.”

  “You and me both.”

  When Barger left, Will turned back to the computer, but gave up after several minutes. He knew from experience that trying to force his brain to make connections when it wasn’t ready to make them was the mental equivalent of herding cats. The mental click would come when it was damn good and ready. Generally at the most inconvenient time possible.

  He shut down, locked up and spared a thought for Mason, stewing in that cell. Then he thought of Wesley Norbert, puffed up with indignation, his nose swollen like a balloon animal. Will grinned.

  Yep. He just might like Armitage after all.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ALLIE froze in the act of lifting a dust-cover, assailed by the sudden suspicion that there was something crawling in her hair.

  She shrieked, glad that she was alone in the attic, with no one to witness her phobic fit. She batted at the cobweb that clung to her hair in a frantic attempt to dislodge its inhabitant. When a spindly-legged spider dropped to the floor, seemingly stunned, she couldn’t repress a shudder.

  “Well,” she said after a few seconds in which the two combatants merely looked warily at each other. “Don’t just sit there. Go away. I have a shoe, and I’m not afraid to use it.”

  The spider, with a keen sense of self-preservation, wobbled out of sight under a nearby steamer trunk.

  “Ugh.” Allie shivered, shoulders hunching defensively around her ears. She didn’t like to kill things indiscriminately, but she also did not like spiders in her space. Well, technically, she guessed she was in his space, since this portion of the attic had been mostly forgotten for probably the better part of the last century. Why she’d felt the need to come up here and poke around wasn’t quite as clear to her as it had been.

  “Listen up arachnids,” she said in a quavering voice. “I’ll stay away from you if you stay away from me. Far away,” she clarified. “Don’t make me come back up here with the bug spray.”

  She waited a few moments – as if the resident spiders were actually going to respond – and then eased her way through the narrow passage created by two more steamer trunks. She glanced at them, but guessed their age to be too recent – early twentieth century, maybe – for what she was seeking. She could always come back to them later if she needed to.

  Peeking under drop cloths, she wrestled with drawers that had swollen shut over decades of humid summers, wondering why she felt compelled to expend the effort for what was surely a wild goose chase. Curiosity, she guessed.

  And okay, if she were being honest with herself, digging into the scandals and heartbreaks of her family’s past allowed her a temporary distraction from the scandals and heartbreaks of the present.

  Allie squeezed her eyes closed, blinking back the tears that wanted to spring into them. The most current scandal was at least partly her own fault, and she felt sick for the role she’d played in it. She’d resorted to… a very cheap shot in her altercation with Wesley last night, but like a boomerang, it had come back around to hurt her.

  Laying her hand over her churning stomach, she sent up a silent message asking forgiveness. After several deep, cleansing breaths – well, as cleansing as the stuffy air of the attic could manage – she returned to her self-appointed task.

  Allie was on her knees, attempting to figure out the locking mechanism of a wooden box she’d discovered wrapped in a piece of velvet in a bureau drawer when she heard the faint gonging chimes of the front doorbell.

  “Harlan!” she called, knowing it was futile to hope that her eldest brother would hear her. Or that he’d even hear the doorbell. Chances were he was still in bed.

  Not that she could blame him. Their father had been agitated more than usual last night, and Harlan had volunteered to sit up with him, as one would with a colicky baby. She hated to think of her father in those terms, but there was no escaping the truth of it.

  Bran had taken their dad outside to spend some time in the garden this morning, knowing that he wouldn’t be much help while the play was in production. He was busy. Will was busy. They all were busy.

  Just like their father had always been busy. He’d been so busy, in fact, that he’d missed a large portion of their childhoods. And now, when he had the time to finally get to know his offspring, he had all but forgotten that they were his offspring.

&
nbsp; Life could be a real bitch sometimes.

  “Okay, okay,” Allie said when the doorbell chimed again. They’d probably give up and go away by the time she got down there, but she needed to get on with her day, anyway. She had a list of things to do before she headed into work for the afternoon shift, and she had a walking tour tonight. Her little foray into Hawbaker family history would have to wait.

  Allie wiped her grubby hands on the seat of her jeans, tucking the box under her arm as she descended two flights to the main floor. The doorbell rang again when she was just steps from the front door.

  “Alright already,” she muttered, thinking that if it was someone trying to sell her something, or to save her immortal soul, she might have to hurt them. She sat the box on the hall table, and after catching a glimpse of herself in the wall-mounted mirror, considered that given her current appearance, they’d probably write her off as a lost cause on both counts.

  She swung open the heavy mahogany door, a social smile plastered on her face, prepared to be gracious, but to shoo them away as soon as politely possible.

  Mason stood on the deeply shaded verandah.

  “Mason,” she said, her smile fading. And then she remembered what she’d just seen in the mirror. “Of course.”

  “Allison.” Brows raising, Mason shoved his hands into his pockets. “I apologize if this is a bad time.”

  “Bad time?” She only looked like one of Hell’s dustbunnies, but at this point, what did it matter? “Don’t be silly.” And though she wanted, rather badly, to close the door and pretend she’d never heard the doorbell – or Mason Armitage’s name – she’d learned the hard way that avoiding reality didn’t make it go away.

  Allie sighed, and gestured with her hand. “Would you like to come in?”

  “Thank you.”

  He stepped inside, glanced curiously around the expansive entry. “Lovely home.”

  “Thank you.” And weren’t they both just so polite? But then, what did one say to the man who’d spent the night in jail on one’s behalf? Speaking of which, Allie noted that he was still wearing the clothes from last night, which meant he’d come here straight from the police station. And upon closer inspection, looked as tired as she felt.

  “Rough night?”

  “The view left something to be desired, the bed was rather third-rate, and I’m not going to mention the state of the bathing facilities. All things considered, I believe Sweetwater has other accommodations that I would more highly recommend.”

  Despite herself, Allie smiled.

  “Are you all right?” he asked softly.

  “Me? I’m not the one who was arrested. I’m…” she sighed. “I’m sorry about that, by the way.”

  “You weren’t the one who threw the punch,” he returned her apology with an arched brow. “I don’t believe you were the one who placed me in handcuffs, either. Although come to think of it, if that had been the case, my opinion of the experience would probably be entirely more favorable.”

  She hoped her face wasn’t as flushed as it felt. “You were defending me. Or believed that you were, anyway.”

  His brows drew together. “The man put his hands on you.”

  The lingering outrage in his voice was both flattering and annoying. “Regardless, the whole incident was…” humiliating “unnecessary. I shouldn’t have provoked –”

  “Wait just a moment.” Mason held up a hand. “You’re not blaming yourself for this, are you?”

  “No.” She’d at least stopped assuming responsibility for other people’s behavior. “But it was a poor decision on my part to say… some of the things I said to Wesley.”

  “So you’re making excuses for him?”

  “No.” The heat in her voice matched his. “No. Wesley owns his own mistakes – and he made several of them last night – just as I own mine. And it’s become very important to me to acknowledge them when I make them. It’s… empowering. Seeing yourself as a victim to circumstances is not. I know it sounds like a bunch of psycho-babble, but…” She shook her head. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

  “No,” he said thoughtfully. “Actually I do understand.”

  They stared at each other for several moments, until the air between them seemed to heat. But then Mason’s gaze snapped to her shoulder. “Ah,” he said in an exceedingly nonchalant tone. “I don’t wish to alarm you, but there’s a –”

  “Oh my God.” She knew before he’d even finished his sentence. “Get it off. Get it off, get it off, get it off!”

  She batted at her T-shirt, which only served to drive the spider under her sleeve. The shriek she let out when she felt those spindly black legs skittering against her skin could have waked all the haints in the old cemetery.

  Without thinking, Allie began to yank the shirt over her head even as Mason tried to assist her. She heard him say “Ouch,” but couldn’t spare the time to consider where she might have struck him this time.

  “Hold still, will you?” He grabbed her wrists, encircling them in one long-fingered hand as he brushed the other over her bare back. Then he stomped his foot, squashing the hapless spider into the glossy surface of the heart pine floor.

  “Oh.” Allie swallowed, looking with pity upon the wet smear. “Poor thing.”

  “Poor thing?” Incredulity colored Mason’s voice. “You were just shrieking as if the hounds of Hell had been set loose upon you, and now you feel sorry for it?”

  “I don’t like to kill them,” she explained. “I just don’t want them on me. Or anywhere near me, come to that.”

  “Well. You can rest assured that this particular spider won’t be coming near you again. Were you perhaps… crawling around in some rubbish pile? You’ve bits of dust and debris all over you.”

  “I was looking through the attic. My cousin – Eugene – I learned some interesting things. And though it seems silly just at the moment, I wanted to see if there might be anything of his, journals or letters maybe, still stored away.” She sighed. “Mostly what I found were spiders.”

  As the adrenaline from her panic attack began to wear off, Allie realized that her shirt was dangling from her wrists, which were still clutched in Mason’s hand. Which meant that she was standing, inches away from him, all but naked from the waist up. She should probably feel mortified by her rather undignified state – not to mention her banshee-like outburst – but instead she felt aware. Of him. Of the warmth of his hand encircling hers. The heat of his body so close to her bare skin. The way her breasts seemed to swell, to chafe at the lace that covered them.

  Of the air sawing in and out of her lungs for quite a different reason than fear.

  Mason’s thumb rubbed in a gentle circle against her wrist.

  She looked up, her breath catching in a gasp, her own desire reflected back in his eyes. “You kept the hair. From your movie,” she said when she saw his confusion.

  “So I did.” And something moved behind his eyes. “I meant to have it cut, but…”

  “I like it.”

  “You do?”

  Allie reached up with her free hand, brushed a lock of it back from his forehead. On some men, it might appear unkempt, but it just made Mason look more elegant. “It suits you.”

  His gaze dropped to her mouth. “Allison –”

  “Allie?”

  They both startled at the sound of the deep, gravelly voice. Whipping around, her shirt clutched to her chest, she looked up to see her eldest brother, dark hair standing out in spikes, wearing a pair of hastily pulled-on pants as he stood at the top of the double stairway. Harlan had put on a little weight recently, food taking the place of the emotional crutch once provided by alcohol, but Allie was happier than she could say to see his blue eyes clear of the fog of inebriation.

  That is until those eyes – slightly puffy with sleep – narrowed in suspicion.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “Harlan.” Her voice cracked like a whip. “That’s no way to speak to a guest.”
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br />   “It is if he’s taking your clothes off in the foyer.”

  “I took my shirt off, you big idiot.” Then she sniffed. “There was a spider on it.”

  “Good grief.” He rubbed a hand over his stubbled face. “That’s what all the racket was about? I thought you were being murdered at the least.”

  “You’ll notice the lack of spilled blood on the floorboards.”

  “Not yet, anyway.” His gaze slid toward Mason.

  “Two out of three,” Mason said to Allie, his tone dry as toast. “I believe that forms a consensus. Your brothers do not like me. Though I would appreciate it,” he called up to Harlan “if you would defer the blood spilling portion of today’s schedule until after I’ve at least had coffee. Not,” he held up a congenial hand “that I wasn’t offered some at your local jail, mind you. But while it wasn’t quite old enough to walk away on its own, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it toddling about town by tomorrow.”

  Harlan grinned. “Wait. You’re the guy who punched Norbert.”

  “I…” Mason shot a guilty look at Allie. “Yes. Mason Armitage. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  “Well hell. Go on back to the kitchen. Allie will make you a fresh cup of coffee, won’t you Al?”

  She glared at her brother. “Since you’ve volunteered my services.”

  “I can’t believe you haven’t already offered. That’s no way to treat a guest. And you might want to put your shirt back on.”

  “Ya think?”

  Harlan shook his head at Mason. “She used to have much better manners. I’m not sure where I went wrong.”

  When Mason chuckled, Allie turned a gimlet eye his way. He coughed behind his hand.

  “Hmmph.” Yanking on her shirt, Allie marched down the long center hall toward the kitchen, leaving Mason to follow.

  “You’re not going to slip any sort of deadly herb concoction into my cup, are you?”

  “Don’t tempt me.” She pushed open the swinging door into the bright light of the kitchen, then gestured for him to have a seat at the island.

  “It would only be fair,” he murmured as she crossed to the pot sitting on the marble counter. “Considering all you have to do to tempt me is to breathe.”