Just one more unproductive conversation between father and son.
Seven
"Yes!" Ignoring the startled looks around him, Ty Holloway hung up the phone and flipped his notebook onto the desk.
Leaning back in his chair, he grinned up at the ceiling. His persistence had finally hit pay dirt.
"Marie!" he called out and looked up in time to catch the intern staring at him from three desks over. He grinned and cocked an eyebrow, making her blush. "See what you can do about getting me a flight to Seattle, will you, doll? Oh, and take care of the car rental, too. I will definitely need a car once I get there."
"When do you want to go?" She reached for the phone on her desk with one hand and cyber-twirled an old-school rolodex app with the other until she came to the appropriate card.
"As soon as possible. Leave the return open-ended. I'm not sure when I'll be back." He pushed away from the desk and went to talk to his editor.
Twenty minutes later Ty was back at his desk, going through his notes again, meticulously harvesting all the minutia he could find.
Experience had taught him paying attention to detail nailed a story every time.
His concentration kept getting fractured, however, by one of the photographs included in the info the little weekly in Gravers Bend emailed him. Finally, he set everything else aside and reached for it, turning it up to the light.
Flipping it over he read the name penciled on the back. Kurstin Olivet McAlvey. He went back to studying the photo. Put together with the facts supplied in the accompanying report, it did not take a genius to see what he had here. Hayley Prescott's best friend.
Ty found himself smiling in bemusement at the black and white printout in his hand. There was something about the face gazing back up at him. She was blonde, she was beautiful, and she had a little half smile that spoke directly to his hormones. As an extra added bonus she looked…trusting. Tracing the outline of her jaw with the edge of his thumb, he smiled tenderly.
Elementary, dude. Simple as one-two-three.
It was the band's final break of the night—and it took every ounce of effort Hayley could summon to hang in there to the end of her shift. Her feet hurt, her breasts ached and a band of cramps squeezed her stomach and lower back.
"So, hey," Brian Dorsey addressed her genially as he accepted his drink across the bar. "I imagine you're prob'ly looking forward to them icing the guy who did your old man, huh?"
The splinter of pain stabbing her stomach suddenly had nothing to do with the imminent onset of her period. "You would think so, wouldn't you?" she managed to say in reasonably neutral tones. She picked up the ten he had set on the bar. "Let me get you your change.” Good God, would this night never end? She felt like she had been here a week.
Jon-Michael materialized behind the guitar player and his eyes briefly met hers. "I'll have my usual, Hayley," he said, reaching out with the flat of his fingers to smack his fellow band member on the back of his head.
Brian's bourbon and seven sloshed onto the bar. Swearing, he slammed the glass down and flicked the liquid from his fingers. "Christ almighty, Olivet!" He twisted around. "Why'd you go and do that for?"
"Because sometimes you are too dumb to live," Jon-Michael replied through his teeth. He had been tense all night in the wake of his cozy little chat with the old man, and he was just itching for a fight, any fight. The guitar player’s lack of sensitivity was just the opening he was looking for.
Brian, however, apparently had too much weed floating through his system to take offense and before Jon-Michael could goad him into doing something rash, Hayley intervened.
"Here," she said, shoving his club soda at him with one hand as she wiped up the spilled bourbon from the bar with the other. "Give me that, Brian," she said, indicating his drink. "I'll freshen it for you. And you," she said sternly, tossing the wet bar towel aside and raising her hazel-eyed gaze to pin him in place. "Either take it outside or drop it."
"Hey, no skin off my teeth. Just trying to lend a hand."
"Well, thanks heaps, but don't do me any more favors, okay? Help like yours could end up getting the joint closed down." Her hands suddenly stilled in the middle of rebuilding Brian's drink, and her eyes narrowed as she considered him across the bar. "Or maybe that is what you're aiming for," she said slowly. "Ooh. Yeah. I bet you'd like that, wouldn't you, Johnny?"
"Don't call me Johnny, Granger.”
“It’s Prescott, remember?” Brian said, but they were too focused on each other to pay him any attention.
"Omigawd, I bet you would love that,” she reiterated, “since any fight involving you would be good for a headline or two in the Chronicle." She studied him through dense narrowed lashes. "I can see it now. Olivet Heir Involved in Brawl in Eighth Street Blues Bar." Then her gaze locked on his. "What an absolute, perfect opportunity to piss off dear old dad."
Jon-Michael looked at Brian. "My apologies for jumping down your throat, dude," he said. "Mood she's in tonight, the state of New Hampshire oughtta just let her ice Wilson herself and save the taxpayers some money. She’d probably enjoy it."
Hayley sucked in a sharp breath, recoiling from a deep, ice pick stab of inner pain. Jon-Michael looked her up and down with analytical eyes before taking his club soda down to the opposite end of the bar where he fell into an immediate flirtation with a pretty brunette. Hayley watched him for a minute, then turned away.
God, what a night. If things got any damn cheerier around here, she just might open a vein.
She hated it when she got like this. Putting up with a period every month was bad enough, but while never a laugh a minute it was a fact of life women had to live with. But she sure as hell had not signed on for the shit that occasionally came her way before one even began, when for no better reason than crashing or spiking hormones, she got a case of PMS so severe she could not decide whether to kill or be killed.
So sue her if tonight she was depressed and testy and unwilling to take crap off anyone.
It had nothing to do with Jon-Michael's parting shot, she assured herself. Nothing. She was simply furious with herself because she had no real excuse for turning into the psycho bitch from hell. She detested that she couldn't control her moods, that she itched to take it out on someone else…and all because of a lousy monthly cycle. It made her the worst sort of cliché.
Well buck up, she ordered herself bracingly. It could be worse. At least she had been spared the weeps. Now, those were truly horrifying.
"Oh, damn it to hell," she whispered fifteen minutes later when Jon-Michael raised his sax to his lips for the last song of the evening and began to play Harlem Nocturne. Evocative of film noir movies of the Forties, the sinuous, haunting melody wove its way beneath her defenses and wreaked havoc with the few remaining emotions she had managed to keep under control. A crushing sadness settled heavy as stone on her chest. Staring at Jon-Michael across the room, thinking—oh, any number of unacceptable thoughts—she could not quite drag enough air into her lungs.
Tears pooled in her eyes, scalding and viscous, blinding her for brief moments until she blinked and sent them spilling over her lower lids. Immediately, they refilled. "Perfect," she whispered. "Now I’ve just got it all." Scrubbing furiously at her cheeks, she tried for several unsuccessful minutes to pull herself together.
Conceding defeat when a male patron approached the bar, took one horrified look at her face and veered away, she flagged Lucy over to take charge. She headed directly to Bluey's office.
Roughly scrubbing her fingers over her cheeks, she sniffed, took a deep breath, and pushed open the door. "Bluey," she croaked. "I gotta take off early."
"There's only fifteen lousy minutes to go," he snarled at her. "What's so goddamn important that—" Looking up, he caught sight of the steady stream of tears trickling down her cheeks and charged to his feet. "What is it?" he demanded. "Somebody out there givin' you a bad time? ‘Cause I don’t stand for nobody giving my girls shit."
"No." H
ayley waved her hand. The tears ran faster. "Oh, crap. I feel like such an idiot." She swiped at her cheeks and then met the older man's concerned gaze. "I got the weeps, Bluey."
"I can see that for myself. C'mon now, enough of that," he ordered brusquely. "Pull yourself together." He patted her shoulder awkwardly and she cried harder. "What the hell's the matter with you?"
"PMS," she sobbed. It was such a catch phrase for every stray female vagary that she was loath to even admit it.
"Oh." A ruddy flush climbed his cheeks.
Hayley laughed shakily. "Nothing quite like a murderous premenstrual woman who can't stop crying, huh?" She knuckled her nose and sniffed.
Again he patted her and then guided her to the door. "Go on, get out of here," he said gruffly. "I'll close down the bar."
Hayley swiped at her cheeks again. "Thank you," she said, blinking up at him. "I'm sorry. God. I’m a damn cliché."
She sat out in the parking lot for several minutes, gasping in breaths of air and trying like hell to pull herself together. It was not until patrons began trickling out the front door that she fired up the Pontiac's engine and drove carefully onto the road.
Pulling into the garage on the Olivet estate a short while later, she climbed from the car, slammed the door, and dodged the lowering garage door as she stepped out onto the apron. Her tears had finally dried, but she took one look at the darkened house and turned toward the shore. No way in hell was this going to be one of those drift-right-off-to-sleep nights.
Dropping her purse on the dock’s weathered planking, she stripped off all her clothes, stepped out of her shoes, and dove into the lake. A shock of cold water closed over her head and she strenuously frog-kicked underwater to propel herself as fast and far from shore as she could get.
Oxygen-deprived lungs finally drove her to the surface and shooting out of the lake with enough force to expose her to the night air clear down to her waist, she flung her hair out of her eyes and sank gently back into the water until only her neck and face rose above the dark surface. Treading water, she sucked in a noisy inhalation, blew it out, then struck out for the center of the lake in an efficient crawl stroke.
She had only swum about a hundred feet before it occurred to her that while exercise helped alleviate both the mood swings and her pre-period cramps, heading for the middle of the lake all alone at two o'clock in the morning might not be the mark of a mature, responsible adult. She turned and swam back to within a yard of the dock where she could touch bottom if she ran into trouble. She swam back and forth parallel to the shore.
After innumerable laps she finally decided she was too tired to feel sorry for herself any longer and was probably now weary enough to fall sleep. She swam back to the dock and pulled herself up the ladder.
Slowly straightening, she thrust her hands through her hair and gathered its mass to one side in a thick ponytail. She leaned forward and wrung water from it onto the bleached planks beneath her bare feet. Releasing it, she tossed it behind her shoulder and slicked her hands down her arms, her chest, her breasts and stomach, sluicing away what excess lake water she could. Then, feeling relaxed and almost content for the first time since she had rolled out of bed early that afternoon, she folded at the waist to give her legs the same treatment.
And nearly had heart failure when, out of the darkness, a voice commented dryly, "I am glad to see suicide wasn't on the agenda here."
Eight
A short while earlier.
Three separate people went out of their way to tell Jon-Michael Hayley had left the bar in tears. He put the same effort into insisting to himself that was her tough luck. There was no good reason why he should get involved.
But the minute the band finished its last set he climbed on his Harley Softail and burned up the road between Bluey's and the old man's estate.
Remembering over and over again the devastated look in her eyes when he tossed off that thoughtless, smart-ass remark about saving the state money by killing Wilson herself.
At the turnoff, he killed the lights and the engine and coasted the bike down the driveway. No sense in waking the entire household if he could avoid it. Rolling to a stop at the apex of the circular drive, he straddled the bike's seat and stared up at the guest room where his sister had installed her best friend.
Not that there was a damn thing to see beyond a dark window.
Assuring himself he had done his Boy Scout best, he was about to push his bike back up to the road when he heard the tell-tale creak of the dock's old timbers and a splash in the lake. He rocked the bike back onto its kick stand, climbed free and sprinted down the manicured lawn to the water.
Rounding the stand of ancient Douglas firs, he arrived at the dock in time to see Hayley shoot up out of the depths of the lake like some mythic Siren, flashing pretty shoulders and a long, sleek naked back. She tossed her hair, sending an arc of crystal droplets flying before the soaked mass slapped against her back.
A nanosecond later, she sank to her neck again in the stygian water and that dark mane floated around her. She bobbed gently in place for a moment, then started swimming with strong, determined strokes away from shore. For one panicky minute, he actually thought she was about to drown herself.
He had his shoes off and his jeans down around his ankles by the time she turned around and started stroking her leisurely way back to shore. Feeling like the world's biggest dumb shit, he simply watched her. Then, whispering curses, he yanked his pants back up. Christ, what the hell was he thinking? Hayley was a fighter; she always had been. If she’d been the type to opt out of life's problems when the going got rough, she sure as hell would have done so long before tonight.
And over something a lot more important than a single thoughtless remark out of his mouth. He started to turn away.
But something stopped him. Because on the other hand, neither was she the weeping type. Try as Jon-Michael might, he could not recall a single time he had ever seen her cry.
He parked himself in the shadows and watched her swim vigorous laps up and down the shoreline.
It took her twenty minutes before she finally climbed up the ladder. And looking at her as she rose out of the lake to stand on the dock facing him, Jon-Michael forgot for several long seconds how to breathe.
He knew damn well he should alert her to his presence. Instead he just sat there paralyzed, taking a dazed voyeuristic pleasure in watching the progress her hands made squeezing the water from her hair. Stroking it from the surface of her skin.
Damn. He really needed to say something. But, oh, Jesus, he had tortured himself for more than a decade now wondering what her body looked like, thinking of all the possibilities given what he remembered from seeing her in various bathing suits over the years.
Now here she was, gloriously naked but for transparent panties and a bedraggled, sopping wet bow tie. Finally, he had an image to connect to all those vague imaginings.
And, Lord have mercy. What an image it was.
Hayley’s turquoise work vest was low-cut on the sides. For over a week he had watched Bluey's customers give themselves eyestrain watching the point where the armholes teasingly bisected the soft outer curves of her tits. Watched idiots who had done everything but stand on their heads to score themselves a more revealing glimpse. One guy, a longtime regular, had started drinking the damnedest concoctions in order to make her reach for a bottle on the top shelf. Another, a man Jon-Michael knew for a fact did not even like beer, consistently ordered a bottle of imported for the sheer enjoyment of discovering if this would be the time she bent to retrieve it from the refrigerator unit instead of her usual habit of stooping.
The breasts everyone was so curious about were small and round and set way up high on her chest. Her skin was colorless in the moonlight and looked smooth as whipping cream. Pale nipples had drawn up into tight little beads aimed like miniature bullets straight at his heart.
The rest of her was slight. Her ribcage flowed into a narrow waist. Her stomach mu
scles were long and firm, her navel deep, and her hips had a curve so delicate as to be damn near nonexistent. But it was the apex of her long, firm thighs that drew his gaze. She had a soft little mons with a downy swirl of hair above plump denuded lips. Jon-Michael stared. And stared.
And could not look away. Every single oft-repeated word he had spoken that long-ago night rose up to haunt him anew.
Licking lips gone dry, he drew in a deep breath, eased it out, and managed to say in a reasonably wry tone, "I am glad to see suicide wasn't the agenda here."
A startled scream tried to rip Hayley's throat in two, and she danced in place for an interminable moment. Then the identity of the man in the shadows made its way to her blood-deprived brain.
She launched herself at him to do—she wasn't sure what. Before she could attain her nebulous objective, however, his hands reached out to grip her biceps. Holding her at arm's length, he stepped out of the darkness cast by the evergreen trees.
"I don't believe you!" She tried to kick him but he nimbly dodged her bare foot. "You scared the shit out of me, Jon-Michael! My God, I would have wet my pants if I had any pants on to wet." Abruptly she quit struggling. She felt her eyes go wide. Oh, perfect. How utterly...blooming...bloody...perfect.
Okay, it’s okay, she assured herself. At least she had kept her undies on. Except…
She glanced down and sure enough, thin nylon turned completely see-through when it was wet.
And he didn’t even have the courtesy to turn away. He just stood there watching the chilly rivulets of lake water drip from the ends of her hair and roll down her chest, down her stomach and into the soaked hip-band of her panties.
Abruptly releasing her, Jon-Michael reached over his back and grabbed his T-shirt, dragging it off over his head. He extended it to her. "Here, put this on."
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