Waking Evil

by Brant, Kylie

  “I’m partial to goin’ next door.” He didn’t walk so much as stalk toward her as she pulled the office door shut and unlocked the door to her cabin. And she could feel an answering smile on her face even as she swung the door shut behind him. Felt it grow wider as he caught her around the waist and twirled her into his arms.

  His eyes, when they looked down into hers, were wicked. “You look good enough to eat.”

  “You must be partial to navy drab.”

  “I’m partial to you.”

  There was no response to be made to that because his mouth, that clever intoxicating mouth, was on hers. Inviting a response. Demanding one. And for once in her life, Ramsey gave it freely, without thought of guard or defenses.

  His taste ricocheted through her system, pinballs of pleasure racketing off nerve endings along the way. There was urgency here, urgency she shared despite having had him less than forty-eight hours earlier. But it was layered beneath the soft lazy seduction of stroking tongues, clinging lips. He framed her face in both of his hands, kissing her with a single-minded intensity that was all the more powerful for being focused solely on her. And when the nerve-snapping chemistry sparked to life as easily as a match to a gasoline-soaked fuse, that, too, was familiar. She was beginning to accept this was the way it would be between them. At least during the time they could be together.

  “I missed you,” he murmured against her lips.

  She cupped his hands with her palms for a moment. Savored the warmth of flesh against flesh. “You just saw me.”

  “You’re a dangerous woman, Ramsey Clark.” His lips were curved, but his eyes were alight with intensity. “You’ve got a way of working under a man’s skin.”

  “Sounds painful,” she managed lightly.

  “I had a feeling you might describe this that way, but I certainly wouldn’t.”

  She didn’t trust that expression on his face. Smug and supremely male. “And how would you describe this?”

  “In spite of your better judgment, you and I are having us a romance.” Her expression must have looked as stupefied as she felt, because his blasted grin was back. He dropped a kiss on her forehead. “Like it or not, you’ll have a hard time denyin’ it. But I look forward to you trying to, just the same.”

  Chapter 19

  Because Ramsey’s jaw was hanging open, Dev slipped a finger beneath her chin to help her close it.

  Not surprisingly, she batted his hands out of the way. “Sex,” she croaked.

  He gave a meaningful glance toward the bed. “Okay.”

  “No, I mean we have sex. Had,” she corrected herself. “Once.”

  “Actually, it was three . . .”

  “No, one night.” She slipped out of his arms. He immediately missed the feel of her. Which meant he had it worse than he thought, but he was still convinced he could handle this.

  He was becoming less and less convinced he could handle her.

  “It would be a mistake to confuse that with romance, something all tied up with hearts and flowers. We don’t need that. Neither of us.”

  He was past the time he could claim that himself, though he was unsurprised she did. And it calmed something inside him to see her reacting just this way. Because he was coming to know her, to predict her reactions, he saw just how close panic was running beneath her normally impassive exterior. “At some point, you and I are gonna have a talk ’bout what it is we do need. But for now . . .” For now, he needed to soothe the nerves that were all but jittering off her. “It’s enough you tell me you missed me, too.”

  The lift of her shoulder was jerky. But she didn’t bolt when he slid an arm around her waist again and pulled her closer. “I gave you a thought a time or two.”

  “Poetry.” He pretended to dab at his eyes with his free hand. Needed quick reflexes to avoid the jab she would have sent to his ribs. “Big-city women like you come down here, turn a simple man’s head with your fast talk and smooth lines.”

  “I have a feeling your head is turned so easily you’re lucky it doesn’t fly off.”

  A thread of pure delight ran through him. “Why is it we sensitive sorts always fall for the hard cases?”

  “Maybe you can’t resist a challenge.”

  He recognized the underlying seriousness of her words, wondered at it. “Maybe . . .” Dev ducked his head, nipped at the cord on the side of her throat. Was satisfied to feel her body relax a bit more against his. “. . . it’s because I recognize the softness beneath is all the more satisfying for bein’ disguised.” He nipped again, less gently this time. Immediately soothed the area with the tip of his tongue.

  “Dev . . .”

  A wise man realized when not to push. A smarter one yet knew enough to change the subject when it was apt to turn to something he didn’t want to hear.

  He gave her bottom an affectionate squeeze and deliberately set her away from him. “Enough. If I let you have your way with me, we’ll spend the afternoon rollin’ on that lumpy motel bed and not get any work done.”

  Her look was withering. “You flatter yourself.”

  “When no one else will.” To keep from reaching for her again, he tucked his fingers into his jeans’ pockets. “Can’t think straight when you’re enticin’ me that way, and I’ve got somethin’ to tell you. I think it just might prove to be a real lead in our case.”

  The look that settled over her expression then was pure cop. “Our case? You don’t have a case, Stryker. You have . . .” She made a gesture with her hand. “Ghosts and readings and dancing lights that may or may not be real lights. This investigation—the police end of it—doesn’t concern you.”

  There was no reason that should have wounded. But it did. A quick vicious burn. “Okay then. Get your purse. We’ll go out to lunch instead.”

  Ramsey didn’t move. She was watching him closely, seemingly fighting an inner battle. “I’m not belittling what you do. I can’t say I understand it—I don’t at all—but I got a little taste of it the other night and can certainly agree that some things aren’t easily explained.”

  He turned toward the door. “The Half Moon doesn’t open until four, but The Henhouse serves until two. Unless you want to head over to Kwik Serv for another pizza.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  Maybe not for food, but if he didn’t miss his guess, curiosity was already working at her. “You can watch me eat.” He headed to the door

  “You could still tell me what information you’ve come across,” she said to his back.

  “Nope, you’re probably right.” It took effort to toss a friendly grin over his shoulder. “You don’t need me messin’ around in your investigation.”

  “I didn’t say . . . shit.” She hissed out a breath, jammed her fingers through her hair. “I’m sorry, okay? That was snotty and mean. And automatic.” There was a bleakness in her eyes, there and gone so quickly he might have thought he imagined it if he hadn’t seen it there before. “The thing is, I’m all those things, Stryker. You’ve said it yourself. I’m mean-tempered and surly, and other people’s feelings are rarely my first consideration.”

  His ire faded in the face of her misery. He gave a slow nod. “You can be all those things, Ramsey. Can’t deny it. But you’re more, too. And damned if it isn’t the more that trips me up, every time.”

  “Since you’re outside the investigation, discussing the case with you is enough of a stretch. I can’t divulge any aspect of the case not already public—”

  “When have I asked you to?”

  “—but I’m interested in the information you have. I’m just saying it might be a one way street.”

  The words struck him as ominous only because they so closely paralleled what he feared might end up being the summation of their relationship. He decided then and there he’d be having a beer with his meal. He’d never met a woman who took more energy just to be around than this one.

  “In that case, you can buy me lunch. Even up the score.”

  They
ended up settling on pizza, and Dev insisted on eating it in the middle of the town square. Ramsey expressed some uneasiness about him drinking a Bud Lite in the center of town, directly across from the courthouse, but he waved away her concern. They were in far more danger from Mary Sue Talbot if she found out they’d swiped the quilt from the motel bed to spread out beneath the huge boughs of the ancient oak than from an enterprising town cop set to write him a ticket for an open container.

  Eventually Ramsey even seemed to get into the mood, although he’d be willing to bet she couldn’t name the last time she’d been on a picnic. She’d slipped out of her suit jacket, seeming unconcerned that her shoulder holster showed. He’d managed to talk her into unbuttoning the top two buttons of her short sleeve blouse, but only because there was no one close enough to notice.

  And he found he liked this side of her, a little too much, when she relaxed enough to set aside the uptight cop and just enjoy being.

  Dev set his beer on the pizza box and took a healthy bite of the slice he held in his hand. He reflected that it was just as well Ramsey had had the foresight to buy paper plates, since he’d talked her into a pizza loaded with all the fixings.

  As if in response to the thought, a glob of tomato sauce plopped off his pizza to the plate beneath it.

  “Okay, give.”

  He made a show of looking first at the quilt, then at her. “Here?” Then dodged the wadded up napkin she threw at him.

  “The information you said you ran across.”

  “Oh, that.” He chewed reflectively, considering the sight she made in the buttoned-down white shirt and navy slacks. “Y’know, if it weren’t for the gun, you’d look like a Catholic school girl in uniform. Sorta Mary Katherine Gallagher, packin’ heat.”

  She looked blank. “Who?”

  Of course she wouldn’t understand a reference to old Saturday Night Live reruns. He doubted popular culture headed the list of her personal favorites. And she was far better looking than the comedienne who’d made the SNL character famous, with her short streaked brown hair, hazel eyes, and long lithe curves. “Never mind.”

  He caught a teetering mountain of sauerkraut before it slid from his pizza and resettled it more securely. “We’ve discussed it before when we went to talk to local healers. How the plant I shouldn’t know anythin’ ’bout could have somethin’ to do with healin’, or witchcraft, or religion.” He saw the slight wince she gave at his verbal jab and immediately felt petty and mean for slipping it in.

  “So I got to thinkin’ . . .” He finished off his slice of pizza and reached for another. Ramsey was still working on her first, but only because she was such a finicky eater and she was picking all the toppings she didn’t like off and leaving them in a growing mound on her plate. “Coupla people have mentioned this Rufus Ashton fella, the town founder, and how he also started the first church in this area.”

  She took a careful bite, as if afraid to encounter anything not already preapproved. He imagined she approached life much the same way she did a kitchen-sink pizza. She wasn’t one to enjoy meeting the unexpected.

  “And I happen to know someone in that line of research. He checked some stuff out for me, and I found out this Rufus Ashton left Pennsylvania back in the early 1870s. Belonged to the Church of Elders. Seems he and several other young men were ordained and given money to buy land in different states to spread the religion. But once in Tennessee, Ashton had a fallin’ out with the church bigwigs. Had his own set of beliefs and was eventually kicked out of the church for them. But until that time, there are records of his doin’s in the church’s name.”

  He let her digest, both the pizza and his words, and waited for the inevitable questions.

  “So Ashton settles Buffalo Springs, starts the town, begins the church. Builds that house where Rose Thornton lives now.”

  “Actually begins the first bank and the quarry ’mong other things, but seems he didn’t cotton to just anyone bein’ in his church. Had quite strict standards, did Rufus Ashton, and some of those standards led to the Church of Elders cuttin’ him loose years later.”

  “Must’ve been bad to have the Church of Elders disagree with him,” she observed. He noted that in her distraction, she didn’t even seem to notice she’d just bitten into a mushroom that she’d missed in her earlier mining. “Aren’t they the ones who believe only thirty-five people a century go to heaven, and the rest of the godly go to like a press box or something?”

  He made the mistake of trying to swallow when she’d made that last remark. Almost choked for his efforts. “I believe it’s compared more to a waiting room while the holiest in the church prepare the faithful’s way into an eternity of paradise.”

  Ramsey snorted and reached for her Diet Coke. “Sounds like a religious snipe hunt to me.”

  She had the most fascinating mind. “In a sense. Anyway, I’d always imagined there’s some wicked politickin’ goin’ on tryin’ to get to be one of the chosen in that century.” He bit off a piece of pizza, chewed reflectively. “I mean, I’ve seen people get downright nasty just to secure their spot at the annual Buffalo Days Parade. I can’t imagine what some would do to wedge their way into eternal paradise.” He thought of Reverend Biggers then. Considered it fortunate all around that the man was a Baptist. “Anyway, one of the first instances of Ashton’s beliefs departin’ from the church’s was his enthusiastic way of metin’ out punishment for violations of the faith. Another was his view on marriage. Seems he was for it. Over and over and over again.”

  She paused in the midst of bringing the slice of denuded pizza to her mouth. “He was a bigamist?”

  “He was a ‘celestial channeler,’ ” Dev corrected. He wished he’d brought his laptop, where he’d downloaded all the notes Denny had sent, but he thought he remembered that part correctly. “He maintained that he was in direct contact with God. And apparently his being in direct contact with nubile young virgins, in the plural tense, just made the signals stronger.”

  “What, his penis was a sort of heavenly antenna? A divining rod in the most literal sense?”

  That had him bent over in a spate of coughing so violent he vowed to stop trying to eat until this conversation was over. When he recovered his power of speech, he gasped, “You are a dangerous woman to eat ’round. Are you tryin’ to kill me?”

  She selected another slice of pizza. Her technique was losing some of its earlier finesse: this time, she merely flicked the excess toppings off with her finger. “C’mon, tell me the rest. I fail to see how it remotely connects to this case, but I find myself morbidly fascinated. So this Rufus Ashton guy—a perv of the highest order—starts this harem of women in the name of religion. Then what?”

  “Apparently Rufus Ashton, as head of the church, was allowed unlimited wives. The men in his church, the ones he allowed to be a part of it, were allowed wives in direct correlation to their standing with Ashton. Children were raised in a community atmosphere, and the female children were kept separate from the males. Many of the male children were banished from the town between the ages of ten to sixteen for various offenses.”

  Her voice was caustic. “Here’s betting their biggest offense was making the old guys in the church look bad in comparison.”

  “That’s where Denny’s research starts moving into supposition, but yeah. That’s what he’s figurin’. Of course by that time, the main Church of Elders had cut all ties with Ashton, so most of their written records end, at least relatin’ to him. But Denny had an undergrad student use this topic as an honor’s thesis recently, and there were a few more details uncovered in her research. Ashton did a bit of travelin’ and preachin’ on the side, in an attempt to gather more church members. In 1888, he was travelin’ through what’s now south-eastern Illinois, and he stayed with a farm couple by the name of Klinkel.”

  He took a moment to tip his beer to his lips and swallow before he continued. “The Klinkels were quite taken with his preachin’. Seems he’d been ’round that are
a before. And durin’ the course of his stay with them, he took a shine to their daughter, Ruth. Pretty as a speckled pup she was, and Denny’s student apparently scared up some photos that proved it.”

  Ramsey put a hand to her stomach. “Don’t tell me. She was his next ‘bride.’ ”

  “You guessed it. He convinced her folks it was Ruth’s path to salvation, and they agreed to stand up with her as the Reverend Ashton took her hand in marriage. I ’spect it was pretty convenient with him bein’ able to say the words over them, while bein’ the groom and all.”

  “How old was she?” Ramsey had given up all pretense of eating. Her gaze was grim.

  “Fourteen.”

  “And he was likely decades older. He prettied it up with religion, but a pedophile is still a pedophile,” she muttered.