She pulled her body up into the driver’s seat. “Ask Irene. She heard it all.”
Cursing under his breath, he released the door.
Rachel tugged the door closed and started the truck. Despite the pull Vaughn had on her, she managed to navigate her way out of the lot and down the road without once searching him out.
Chapter Nine
The shrill beep of the treadmill grated on Vaughn’s nerves like it always did as he ramped his speed up to a hell-for-leather sprint. A sports newscaster prattled with his co-host on the television in the corner. He’d stopped listening more than two miles earlier, his attention fixed on the map of the Sorentinos’ farm taped to the wall in front of him.
After a mile sprint, his lungs screamed. Not bad. Two years ago, he would’ve stopped jogging after five miles, and he never would’ve attempted a sprint. Since he quit smoking, he relished his daily runs as an opportunity to give nicotine the big Fuck You first thing in the morning. He scaled down the speed to a comfortable jog, then focused on the map again, this time on the black dot he’d added at the location of the first vandalism incident, on one of the property’s newly installed oil derricks.
The day before, after Rachel dropped the flash drive off at the station, he’d been too pissed off to talk to Stratis rationally. Instead, he’d taken the flash drive home and fired up his computer. The photographs of the vandalism left his blood cold as ice. Graffitied messages that all threatened the same thing. Someone wanted Rachel and her sisters to leave town. What a preposterous demand, even if folks were peeved about their new dude ranch venture. Vaughn checked, and the Sorentino family had owned that land since 1952.
According to Rachel’s records, the first time the vandals hit was the week Gulf Coast Petroleum broke ground on the wells. The graffiti message was scribbled on a leg of the derrick, as it waited near a large hole to be installed. The second message was on another derrick two weeks later. Intrigued by the possible connection between the vandalism and the discovery of oil on the property, he’d dug through his work files for a map of the county and made an enlarged copy of the Sorentino property on his printer.
With a black Sharpie, he’d spent the next hour mapping the locations of the vandalism incidents. If he included Wallace Meyer Jr.’s vandalism, there were six occurrences all together, spread in a line that reached from the southwest corner of the acreage to the southeast, in the Parillas Valley. Catcher Creek cut through the eastern corner of the line. With fatigued, midnight logic, he’d been absolutely convinced he was on to something. He would’ve bet his house that the vandalism trail followed the bed of oil underground.
He went to bed pretty damn proud of his detective skills. And woke up just as proud—right up until he stepped on the treadmill and asked himself, what does the son of a police chief and his gang of ingrates care about the Sorentino family’s oil?
He didn’t have an answer to that. Epiphanies on open investigations often came to him while he ran, so he’d taped the map to the wall in front of him. Ten miles later, he had nothing. He punched the stop button on the treadmill and caught his breath, swabbing his sweat-drenched neck and forehead with a towel. The sky outside his workout room’s curtained window was lighter. In another few minutes, the sun would pierce the morning haze.
Maybe Wallace Jr. wasn’t the key. Maybe it was one of the other guys. Jimmy de Luca and Shawn Henigin were local boys, like Junior. But Elias Baltierra was a convicted criminal. He was most likely the leader of the group, despite Wallace Jr.’s money and connections.
He glanced at his watch. Binderman would be on shift by now, until midafternoon. As soon as Vaughn’s breathing returned to normal, he dialed Binderman’s number.
“Hey, Cooper here. What’s the rundown for the night?”
“Quiet,” Binderman answered. “A domestic in Devil’s Furnace that Molina took, and Reyes made a routine traffic stop for speeding, which turned up a man with a warrant for his arrest in Tucumcari. We transferred him to the Tucumcari police’s custody an hour ago.”
The domestic wasn’t surprising. Devil’s Furnace, on the north side of Highway 40, was Quay County’s only real slum. The site of a massive, sprawling new home development project two decades earlier, the entire five-mile area had gone up in flames before the owners had the chance to pay their first mortgage bills.
Vaughn had been fifteen at the time and still recalled the eerie orange-gray smog that settled over the county during the week of the fires. The rubble of the burned homes had only partially been cleared, to make way for trailer parks and low-income housing. The perfect petri dish for breeding druggies and criminals.
“Any news on Baltierra or Henigin?”
“Two anonymous tips came in to Lea County. Molina worked the graveyard shift, so I passed them on to Kirby. She’s on the swing shift with me today.”
“Good. Thanks. Listen, I’ve got some crime scenes that need processing. Do you have much of anything on your plate today, or could you meet me at the Sorentino house at, say, eleven o’clock? I want to run forensics at the sites of the other vandalism incidents, see if we turn up any evidence. Maybe someone left a fingerprint we can salvage.”
“Roger that. Happy to help.”
“Good.” He swabbed his face with a sweat towel. “By the way, I’m reassigning you to be my second on this case.”
Long pause. “I thought Stratis . . .”
“Stratis is busy tracking down the source of the AR—15s.” An executive decision Vaughn had made about two seconds earlier. No way would Stratis get near Rachel again anytime soon if Vaughn had anything to say about it. Binderman was still pretty green, but he’d proved himself to be an eager apprentice at the job. This was an ideal opportunity to kick his training up a notch.
“Okay. Thanks on that.”
After the call ended, he folded the map of Sorentino Farm and set it by his car keys on the table in his entryway. En route to the bathroom, he stripped out of his workout shorts and started the water for the shower.
While the water heated—slow business in a house as old as his—he braced his hands on the lip of the sink and stared at his reflection in the mirror.
The scar on his jaw shone bright pink, usual for after a workout. He didn’t mind its presence, and in fact felt lucky to have escaped with such a minor injury from the junkie who’d pulled a rusty switchblade on him during a routine traffic stop in Devil’s Furnace the year before. He rubbed at it absentmindedly, then angled his head to study his hair. It needed a trim. He leaned in closer and scowled at the sprinkle of gray hairs at his temples. Job stress and genetics—two of life’s inescapable constants. Not that Vaughn had anything in his life worthy of complaint. At thirty-six, he had it pretty damn good—a great job, a house he owned, loyal friends, and a solid relationship with his folks.
He didn’t have Rachel, and he wished that didn’t bother him as much as it did.
There were other women, something he kept reminding himself of. In the year and a half since Rachel broke off their affair, he’d been on a few dates. Nothing that got past dinner and a kiss on the cheek. No one he ever wished he knew more about, or wished they wanted to know more about him. It kept coming back to Rachel.
More than once, he’d forced himself to consider the possibility that his preoccupation with her stemmed from the same source that made him love his job as a cop—there was something intoxicating about learning people’s secrets and solving the mysteries of their lives. No one on this planet was as big a puzzle to crack as Rachel Sorentino.
Then again, maybe he was fooling himself to boil his attraction down to such a simplistic reason. She was a mystery, all right, but a beautiful, passionate one. When the two of them crashed into each other, the result was euphoric. Nothing he’d ever done in his life felt as good, as extraordinary, as connecting with Rachel, bringing her pleasure and finding his pleasure with her.
A month had passed since the last time they’d succumbed to the unyielding pull of each othe
r. The memory stirred his body to life, his cock rising to nudge the cold porcelain sink.
He stared at his reflection, thinking about Rachel and their last time together, until the mirror steamed over. Then he stepped into the shower, adjusted the heat, and, bracing a hand on the tile wall, ducked his head under the stream of hot water.
The meeting with Rachel hadn’t been planned. Never was, even though he put himself in her path as often as opportunity allowed, which was easy enough in a town as small as Catcher Creek. The diner, Parrish Feed & Grain, the vet’s office. They knew each other’s trucks, and knew what it meant when one approached the other. When Rachel wanted him, she let him know it loud and clear, and he took the reins from there.
The last time she wanted him, last month, she found him at Smithy’s Bar. She’d sat across the room and never once looked his way, but he paid the tab for her single beer on the sly, then followed her out and helped her into the passenger seat of her truck. He’d pulled her truck into his garage. No need to set tongues wagging with her truck parked out front.
He fisted his erection, remembering the way she’d undone his pants right there in the truck the minute the garage door closed. The wet heat of her mouth on him, the dragging friction of her tongue and lips.
Every tug of his hand on his flesh brought the memory into sharper focus. The silky soft feel of her hair in his hand when he’d brushed it away from her face. The way the back of her throat felt on the head of his cock, the hint of teeth. Her hands working his balls.
They’d spilled out of his truck, a tangle of clothes and skin. In his head, he heard the mewling cry she gave when he bound her wrists with his tie and looped it over the hook on the wall. They didn’t always play that game, but she seemed to need it rough that night.
He drizzled soap over his hand and worked his fingers over the ridges of his shaft in long, pumping strokes. His teeth gritted, he relived the taste of her wetness when he’d dropped to his knees and buried his head between her thighs. Her exquisite pussy, pink and swollen, opening for him. He’d rolled her flesh between his lips, then suckled her clit as he worked his fingers inside her wet, hot body. She’d whimpered his name.
Damn, he loved the sound of his name in her husky, desperate tone of arousal. Knowing it wasn’t just sex for her—it was him. It was all the things he could do to her that no other man could. He replayed the sound. The breathy whimper of his name on her lips that signaled her surrender to pleasure.
Build up came too swiftly at that particular memory. Panting, he backed off, sliding his hand to the base of his erection. He fluttered his fingers over his balls, taking a break to fast-forward the vision to the moment he’d wrapped her legs around his waist and entered her, pushing inside until her tits hit his chest and his balls smacked her ass. He slid his fist along the length of his shaft, squeezing hard, mimicking the feel of entering her body.
Bracing her back against the wall, he’d removed the tie from the hook so she could drop her bound hands around his neck. They’d kissed openmouthed, violently. She’d bit his lower lip hard enough to draw blood, then licked it away. His eyes shut tight, he rubbed the sensitive flesh behind the head of his cock, recalling the wicked look in her eyes as her tongue had darted over her lip to lap the blood. She’d used the tie binding her wrists to pull his face to hers for a second taste.
Fuck, he couldn’t hold back anymore. He pumped hard and fast, Rachel’s voice echoing through his head, whispering his name when she came. Release swept through him, buckling his knees, summoning a grunt from his throat, as it had that night. Only this time, instead of spilling himself into a condom buried deep inside Rachel, his seed fell to the shower floor.
Instead of collapsing into the warm, soft body of the sexiest woman he’d ever been with, all he had to lean into was the cold tile wall.
* * *
Parrish Feed & Grain sat smack in the middle of Main Street, straight across from First Methodist Church and two buildings down from Smithy’s Bar. A square, single-story building with a two story façade of wood shingles done in a Wild West, frontier style, the store had probably looked sharp and fresh thirty years ago, but now looked old and tired.
Rachel admired the family’s ability to keep their doors open despite years of a downward spiraling economy, family deaths and squabbles, and the opening of a new feed supply superstore in Tucumcari the previous year.
At nine-thirty, Rachel pulled into their parking lot, which sat empty save for the company’s old beater of a forklift and one other truck Rachel recognized as belonging to Kate Parrish. This time of day, most farmers and ranchers were still busy mucking stalls and tending to livestock. Thanks to the hiring of Ben Torrey, Rachel was at liberty to make this trip to town for supplies without worrying about falling behind on her work.
She came armed with a long list she and Ben had written out that morning, supplies to prep the fields for the first alfalfa crop, as well as a credit card she hoped carried a high enough limit to pay for it all. Ben had all kinds of good ideas on getting the farm up to snuff as a competitive alfalfa grower, and neither he nor Rachel could wait to dig in and get started.
Growing up, Rachel and Kate had been a few years apart in school, with Kate being Amy’s age, and so hadn’t really had a good reason to be friendly until Kate took over as the feed store manager five years earlier, leaving her dad more time to make deliveries to bigger farms and ranches. The two sometimes walked across the street to the Catcher Creek Café for lunch or a slice of pie if the store was slow, and Kate regaled her with stories from her time in Washington, D.C., where she’d gone to college and briefly tried to make a living in politics. Sometimes she talked about her sister, Chelsea, who was a rancher’s wife in Clovis, or her younger brother, Carson, a deployed marine.
Rachel wasn’t sure what had brought Kate home to Catcher Creek, and Kate never got specific. Maybe she’d grown tired of politics, or maybe something happened in the Parrish family that Rachel wasn’t aware of.
The front entrance of Parrish Feed & Grain chimed when Rachel entered. Kate smiled at her from behind the counter, on which a thick ledger book was open. A fancy calculator held one side of the book open. Her curly, reddish-blond hair had been wrangled into a braid that had fallen forward over the shoulder of her denim shirt.
She propped an elbow on the counter and smiled. “Well, hello, stranger. I heard tell you were shot, but you don’t look very shot.”
Rachel grinned. “How, exactly, does a shot person look, do you think?”
Kate got a saucy look in her eye. “Horizontal, with IV tubes and a pale complexion from all the blood loss and pain.”
Chuckling, Rachel showed her the bandage on her arm. “I was only grazed by a bullet. It’s going to leave me with an impressive scar, but that’s about it.”
“Girl, that’s the weakest story I’ve ever heard. You need to manufacture yourself a real tall tale. One about your bravery and sacrifice. How you threw yourself in front of a bullet to save a child’s life, then rose from your deathbed and endured great pain in the name of working on your farm. That’s what this town likes—a good story.”
They shared a laugh.
Rachel leaned against the counter. “I’ll work on it, but my imagination isn’t all that creative.”
“You already have the start of a good story, what with all the talk about Vaughn Cooper swooping in to save you. Word is he carried you into the hospital in his arms.”
Rachel pushed her tongue against the roof of her mouth until her shock faded enough that she could speak. “Is that the rumor going around?”
“By my word.” She arched a brow and leaned in closer. “But I know that’s not true because cowgirls like you and me, we don’t need no saving. All we need is a loaded Smith & Wesson and a direction to aim it in.”
Rachel’s mouth went dry. “Anything else people have been saying about me?”
Kate fiddled with the turquoise rings on her fingers. “There’s been talk.”
/> “What else is there to say? I got in a shootout in Parillas Valley and took a bullet in the arm.”
“Not about the shootout.” She stared at her hand, where her fingers were busy sliding a ring up to her first knuckle and back.
Her frustration mounted at Kate’s silence. Why the hell was she making Rachel dig the information out of her one spadeful at a time? “About what then?”
Kate stopped working her ring and pressed her palms on the counter, meeting Rachel’s gaze. “We’ve been friends a long time. I’m telling you the talk I’ve heard, woman to woman, even though you know I don’t have the stomach for hearsay and rumors.”
Seemed to Rachel that her stomach was doing just fine with hearsay and rumors at the moment. “Spit it out, Kate. What are people saying about me?”
“Not only about you, but you and Vaughn Cooper. They say you’re having a secret affair.”
Rachel wouldn’t have been more surprised if a unicorn had come trotting out of the darkness of the stock room. She gripped the counter, lightheaded.
“You know,” Kate said. “Sheriff Cooper is one of the most eligible bachelors in the county now that Kellan Reed’s off the market. You’d snuff out the dreams of a lot of girls around here if you landed him, including mine. I thought I was making headway when your name started popping up during conversations about him at the beauty salon.”
Rachel’s temper flared. She crushed the list in her hand. “Has Sheriff Cooper returned your interest?”
Smiling like a fool, Kate cocked her head. “We’ve been out a couple times.”
Goddamn it. She wrung the list in her hands until she heard the rip of paper.
Kate heard it too and pointed at Rachel’s hand. “Ah—ha, so there is something going on with you two. Linda Klauss was right.”
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