Impulse

by JoAnn Ross

  The second hit home. He could’ve been shooting at the bull’s-eye on a paper target at the police range.

  Metallica stopped dead in his tracks. Will waited for him to drop.

  But he twisted a half turn, a .45, Dirty Harry’s gun of choice, in his hand.

  And damned if the bastard wasn’t smiling.

  Okay. He wasn’t going to go down easy.

  Wishing he’d joined the fire department instead of the cops, Will pulled back on the hammer. His arm weighed a ton. His fingers were beginning to go numb.

  “Police.” His voice sounded raspy and winded to his own ears. “Drop. The. Fucking. Gun.”

  He sucked in a breath. His vision blurred, but not so badly that he couldn’t see the .45 drop from his assailant’s hand as Metallica crumbled to the cobblestone sidewalk.

  Keeping his Glock trained on the supine form, Will crouched down beside him and had just placed the fingers of his right hand to the man’s throat when Gray came running around the comer.

  “I lost the son of a bitch,” he said. “One minute he was there, the next he was gone. Like a freakin’ ghost, or something. You okay?”

  “Sure.” Perspiration dripped from Will’s forehead, stinging his eyes. “At least I’m doin’ better than this jerkoff.”

  Blood was spreading across the front of the black, burning-skull T-shirt. A haze the same deadly red swam in front of Will’s eyes.

  Sirens shattered a night scented with smoke and cordite. Lights coming toward them.

  “The guy’s toast,” Will managed.

  He could hear Gray shouting something, but he couldn’t make out the words through the buzzing in his brain.

  He slumped against the wall.

  Damn. He felt sick and his head was spinning like it’d gone off on its own and taken a ride on a Tilt-A- Whirl. A metallic, coppery taste was in his mouth.

  More voices were shouting at him. Hands were tearing open his blood-soaked shirt. Lights from the cruisers flashed like strobes, reminding him of riding the Ferris wheel at the Coastal Empire Fair.

  The gently swinging metal seat atop the double- decker, brightly lighted wheel had offered a dazzling, bird’s-eye view of the midway, the city, and the lit-up bridge spanning the Savannah River.

  But all of Will’s attention had been riveted on the woman whose kisses were sweeter than the fluffy, pink cotton candy they’d shared earlier. The woman who’d actually had him considering settling down in a cozy little house with a white picket fence, two-point-five kids, and a big stupid dog.

  It had been the closest thing to nirvana he’d experienced in his thirty-three years on the planet, and sitting atop the city, breathing in the fragrance of Faith Summers’s perfume, conveniently overlooking that he’d been lying to her for weeks, Will had thought that if he were to die at that moment, he’d go a happy camper.

  Riding on the soft, pleasant swells of memories, with calliope music floating through the shadows of his mind, he allowed his eyes to drift closed.

  “Gardenias,” he murmured.

  A comforting sense of calm drifted over him as Savannah police detective Will Bridger checked out.

  2

  December 28

  The arctic storm that had held Hazard, Wyoming, in its icy grip for days had left behind a midnight blue bowl of sky studded with stars. The mountains surrounding the town soared in rock and timber, and snowfields were tinted Christmas-card silver and blue by the light of a full, white moon.

  Erin Gallagher had driven by the lake earlier this evening, on the way from her job at the radio station, and noticed that the ice was remarkably free of snow. If that was still the case, it would be a perfect night for skating.

  The sexy, satiated male in her bed rolled over, flung an arm over her pillow, then groggily lifted his sleep-tousled head.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  She could not have said the same thing only a few hours ago, when she’d escaped the lodge, feeling used and dirty.

  When she’d picked him up in the parking lot of the mini-mart, she’d been looking for some quick, hard, anonymous sex. Punishment sex. The kind she didn’t have to think about later. The kind that wouldn’t leave her confused and hurt and feeling desperate and lonely.

  But it hadn’t worked out that way at all. His surprising tenderness had proven a balm, soothing her senses, easing her anxieties.

  When he’d been inside her, he had, if only for those few stolen minutes, allowed her to almost forget her secret shame.

  “The wind’s stopped.”

  “’Bout freaking time.” He patted the cooling sheets. “Come back to bed.”

  “I was thinking of going skating.”

  He squinted his eyes, peered at the bedside clock. “It’s nearly midnight. And probably as cold as a well digger’s ass out there.”

  “I’ll bundle up.”

  “You’re crazy,” he muttered.

  The depression that had been threatening all day lifted. Who’d have guessed that uncomplicated sex could be better than Prozac?

  “That’s what you love about me.”

  “Can’t argue that,” he responded on a broad yawn. Erin knew he didn’t love her. But there’d been a fleeting moment, just before he’d come, when he’d looked deep into her eyes, smiled, and brushed his lips against hers. The kiss, as light as the snowflakes falling like white feathers from the sky, was not meant to claim. Or even arouse.

  Let’s be friends, it had said.

  She’d felt something in her heart turn over as she’d smiled back up at him. Friendly sex. And wasn’t that a new concept?

  Like everything else she’d been experiencing since moving to Hazard, the idea had her feeling reborn.

  "We’ll only go out for a little while,” she coaxed.

  “What’s with this we, kemo sabe?”

  “You’re the man.” She saucily tossed her blond head. “You’re supposed to take care of me.”

  Proud of the independent woman she was becoming (despite this morning’s painful backslide), Erin didn’t really believe that. She suspected he didn’t either, since she sensed his life was pretty much as screwed up as hers had been before she’d arrived here in Hazard.

  But sometimes it was fun to pretend.

  “Come back to bed and I’ll take care of you.”

  The moon lit up the room, allowing her to see the tented flannel sheet. “What you want is for me to take care of that woodie you woke up with.”

  “I was dreaming of you.” He flashed his dimples, the quick, boyish smile sending ribbons of golden light twining around her heart.

  She hadn’t known, until tonight, that he was even capable of smiling. But now, bathing in its warmth, she decided it had definitely been worth the wait.

  “It was a really hot dream.” Which she could certainly see for herself. He patted the mattress again. “Why don’t you come over here and we’ll take care of each other?”

  She was tempted. Who wouldn’t be?

  Erin’s gaze shifted from his muscled chest out the double-paned window toward the silvery blue landscape, then back to the bed.

  Decisions, decisions.

  One thing she’d discovered since moving to Hazard was that making choices about even the most mundane, everyday things was more difficult than she’d ever imagined. But wasn’t that a good thing?

  After having spent eighteen years with others deciding every single thing about her life—what she wore, what she ate, when she went to bed, and when she got up—every decision she made felt like a victory.

  Most decisions, anyway. As her mind flashed back to another rumpled bed, another man, she could feel the dark gray wolf of depression lurking in the midnight shadows.

  No! Don’t think about that.

  “Ten minutes,” she agreed. “Then you come skating with me.”

  Sexy male dimples flashed again. “How about I give you fifteen minutes to convince me?”

  3

  “Wow.
”

  Faith Prescott stood on the steps of the double-wide trailer that served as KWIND studios, staring up at the dazzling panorama of stars. You never saw stars like this in Las Vegas. The blinding, flashing neon of the Strip outshone them, not that any tourists cared, since she doubted anyone went to Sin City to commune with nature.

  And speaking of lights… the aurora borealis shimmered emerald on the horizon, while ruby and sapphire danced across the sky in a light show Las Vegas could never hope to duplicate.

  And, wonder of wonders, as if Mother Nature had decided to create one night of absolute perfection, the wind had actually stopped blowing.

  Not that Faith minded the wind. She had, after all, certainly lived with it during those six months she’d somehow lost herself in the desert. Where she’d discovered that after a while, you sort of stopped hearing it.

  Like death and taxes, you knew it was there, but you just stopped thinking about it.

  She’d lived in Hazard for a year now—which was a record for her—and was certain she could count on one hand the times when the wind had actually stopped.

  Simon and Garfunkel had nailed it. Silence did, indeed, have a sound.

  Or it would, if it weren’t for the wasplike drone of the snowmobiles that had invaded the valley.

  A shooting star streaked across the black velvet sky overhead, overcoming her faint annoyance. She drew in a breath of appreciation.

  “You’d better be careful,” a rough voice that sounded like a bald tire riding over river rock warned from the doorway behind her. “You keep that up and you’ll get frostbite on your lungs.”

  She’d heard that countless times since moving to Wyoming. Enough that she’d actually asked a doctor, who’d assured her that the lungs’ blood supply is so well developed it was virtually impossible to draw in enough cold air to cause any damage.

  Because Mike Reed, the producer for Talking After Midnight, seemed to feel it was his duty to watch out for Hazard’s newest city slicker, Faith didn’t want to hurt his feelings by contradicting him.

  “Wouldn’t want to do that,” she said truthfully.

  She turned and came back up the three steps, then stomped her boots on the threshold mat so she wouldn’t track snow all over the green-and-white-checkerboard vinyl floor. She glanced down at the stopwatch alarm she’d taken out with her.

  “I’ve only got another forty seconds anyway.”

  The song her last caller had requested—ironically the bluesy country “Wild Wind”—lasted exactly five minutes and four seconds.

  Midnight to six in the morning were often considered the throwaway hours by many station programmers, who preferred to concentrate on the “money” daytime shows. But, although Faith had hoped for a slot doing a more high-energy newscast, since coming to work at KWIND, she’d almost grown accustomed to working the night shift.

  After years of waking up before dawn to report on morning drive-time traffic snarls, the hours after dark were proving a less frenetic and hurried time, which allowed the pace of programming after the rush of the day to be more relaxed. Listeners took the time to enjoy the music and, between cuts, engage in conversation, delving into topics they wouldn’t have time to discuss while calling in from a cell phone while stuck in drivetime traffic.

  Not that there was all that much traffic in Hazard. But the principle was the same, lending itself to long, uninterrupted sweeps of extended-play cuts, which not only allowed her to escape to look at the stars, but was exactly what the night owls who’d tune into KWIND during the midnight hours wanted.

  She hung her parka on the hook by the door, returned to the studio, sat down, and put her earphones back on while Mike took his usual place on the other side of the window. She’d worked the board herself earlier in her career and, on those occasions when she’d worked nights, hadn’t minded being alone.

  But those stations had been in fair-sized cities: Fresno, Raleigh, Chattanooga, Savannah, Flagstaff. And they hadn’t been in a metal box stuck out in the middle of nowhere. Somehow, tonight, the eeriness caused by the sudden cessation of wind made the trailer seem even more isolated.

  Not helping her edginess had been the fact Mike had called her at home around nine to tell her that one of his mares was showing signs of colic, which could prove fatal.

  Fortunately, the problem had been caught early, the horse was doing fine, and Faith had only been forced to work alone for the first hour of the show.

  While she doubted that Mike, who was packing at least fifteen extra pounds beneath that Indian-print fleece shirt, could do much physically to protect either of them, the twelve-gauge shotgun he kept in the wall rack might prove a deterrent to anyone who might try to break in.

  Not that anyone would, since crime in these parts consisted mostly of kids shooting up stop signs, drunken cowboys brawling in bars, and tourists who’d underestimated the combined effect of altitude and alcohol consumption driving into snowbanks.

  Then again, wasn’t Hazard exactly the type of small, isolated place depicted in all those B horror movies, where the dangerous and deranged showed up to slash babysitters and campers and generally commit murder and mayhem?

  Although it was warm in the studio, Faith hugged herself to ward off the shiver that skimmed up her spine.

  Dammit, she was letting her imagination get away from her! It’d been eighteen months since she’d felt so edgy and defenseless. She hadn’t liked it back then. And she damn well didn’t like it now.

  Shaking off the chilly sense of unease, she focused her attention on Mike, who was signaling with his fingers through the glass window draped in flashing red, white, and green Christmas-tree lights. Three… two… one.

  “And that was ‘Wild Wind,’ from Robert Earl Keen’s Live from Austin album. You’re talking with Faith, on 91.5 FM KWIND, Wyoming’s best mix of classic and young country. Coming up we’ve got Miranda Lambert’s ‘Kerosene.’ Rut first, here’s a message from Joe Redbird’s Used Auto Trader, where the Rocky Mountain High Country goes for a fair deal. If Redbird’s doesn’t have it, Joe’ll get it.”

  Since coming to work at KWIND, Faith had found it hugely ironic that she’d ended up playing country music for a living. She also definitely identified with Lambert’s line about life being “too long to live it like some country song.”

  Faith had been born into a country song. Her mama, a former Miss Teen Del Rio, had dreamed of escaping the Texas border town, moving to Nashville, and becoming a famous country-music star, just like Tanya Tucker or Reba McEntire.

  She made it out of Del Rio by marrying an oil-rig worker she met while singing in a biker bar. He took her to Houston, where the marriage broke up five months later when she caught him in bed with a red-haired cocktail waitress from the roadhouse where she’d gotten a gig singing for tips.

  Deciding that Diane didn’t sound much like a country star, she changed her name to Tammy—after her idol, Tammy Wynette, who also hadn’t had real good luck with men—and hooked up with a small-time hood who introduced her to drugs and supported their habit by boosting TVs and other electronics from the containers that came into the Houston port.

  That marriage had ended when he was arrested in a sting operation after selling a case of video cameras to an undercover cop.

  More men followed, including Faith’s father, a Hell’s Angel who ended up in a maximum security prison for manslaughter before Faith had begun to walk.

  Tammy had continued her downhill slide, drifting around the Southwest, selling her body to pay for drugs as the singing jobs dried up. When she noticed her johns paying more attention to twelve-year-old Faith than they did to her, a lightbulb flashed on over her head. That’s when she began selling her daughter.

  Unsurprisingly, Tammy never made it to Nashville; she’d OD’d sometime in the night right after Faith's thirteenth birthday; at the time Faith had considered it the best—and only—gift her mother had ever given her. She still did.

  As the brash, confrontational roc
k country lyrics began blasting out into the dark, spookily still night, Faith decided the idea of burning up your past made for a good song.

  Unfortunately, as she’d learned the hard way, it wasn’t all that easy in real life.

  4

  Salvatore Sasone hated three things: Democrats, spaghetti sauce from a jar, and cold weather.

  Before being forced into making a living chasing down fugitives as a bounty hunter, he’d spent twenty years on the mean streets as a cop and had long ago concluded that laws passed by bleeding-heart Democratic politicians were responsible for the revolving door that was laughingly called the American judicial system.

  Given that his great-grandfather had immigrated to America from Sicily, obviously an appreciation of spaghetti (which had, by the way, been invented in his ancestral city of Catania) had been woven into his DNA with his black hair and dark eyes. Right along with the need for sunshine and a warm climate.

  There was no way in hell he would even be here in Bumfuck, Wyoming, if it weren’t for a damn woman.

  Sal had to give her credit. For an amateur, she’d done a damn good job of covering her tracks. The thing was, the woman was up against a pro.

  Which, of course, meant that she had no freaking chance.

  Oh, yeah, he thought, as he gulped down a bottle of foul-tasting Pepto-Bismol, one more thing… he also hated flying. His court-appointed anger-management therapist accused him of being a control freak.

  Which, okay, so maybe he was. Especially now that he’d stopped drinking and didn’t have booze to soften and numb the hard edges.

  But what the hell was wrong with that?

  If his ancestors had been laid-back, que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be, type individuals, the Roman Empire would’ve stopped at, well… Rome.

  Even discounting that God couldn’t have intended for people to defy gravity, Sal hated that he wasn’t the one in the cockpit. He might not know how to fly a plane, but how did he know the pilot really did, either? With all the airline cutbacks these days, hell, they were probably hiring guys right off the street. And not just guys.