Even from a distance he could see all the electricity go out of her. She looked up at the truck for only another moment and then turned away. He watched the truck for a moment longer. He saw the driver’s bulky, shadowed form move briefly behind the window glass and then out of sight, back into the cab’s sleeping compartment, then forced himself to make a slow, careful scan of the few trucks scattered around the parking area. Most of their engines were turning over but the cabs appeared empty, their drivers presumably asleep or inside the truck stop.
The girl was already looking around, deciding which truck to approach next, and he knew he had to move, take a risk or give up, spend the night’s remaining hours fighting down the urges inside him. The girl hadn’t moved. Although she showed no sign of having seen him it was as if she was waiting for him to make up his mind. She was unkempt but her body was slim and attractive and someone in one of those trucks would take her up on her offer.
He made his decision and got out of the van himself, his movements slow and casual, like he was going in for a hamburger or something, knowing that if there was risk for him it was here. He’d parked along the windowless wall of the truck stop, shadowed from most of the lights that illuminated the parking and service lots, and away as well from any of the security cameras that festooned most of the public areas. Even so he felt exposed and he hesitated.
She’d heard the car door open and swiveled her head in his direction. She stayed there looking at him for a moment, then made up her mind and walked toward him. He stood still, watching as the energy came back into her, her narrow hips swaying a little now and the same animation blooming in her face that he’d seen earlier.
“Hi,” she said.
“Something I can do for you, miss?”
She smiled to herself, then raised her eyes back up to his own.
Afterward he felt cheated, unsatisfied. The feeling puzzled him only briefly and then he realized what it was, or wasn’t.
It wasn’t her.
He tried to imagine where he was, conjure an aerial view of his own position and more importantly that of any nearby houses or roads. He should have checked his watch before turning off so he could get a sense of how far he’d come. He was too paranoid to get a GPS.
He was worried about his headlights, about somebody looking out into the night and seeing their beams bouncing through the trees and wondering about their source. He’d probably be dismissed as a night hunter anyway. He smiled to himself. Night hunter. He liked the sound of that.
He looked ahead, saw two parallel and hardened ruts in the road. It hadn’t rained in a long time but he brought the van to a stop. He wasn’t concerned about getting stuck but the van wasn’t built for this and could get hung up, blow a tire, anything.
He turned out the lights and got out of the van, standing still for a moment, letting his eyes adjust. He looked up at cold, glittering stars and took a deep breath, feeling the air snap as it went down into his lungs. Then he came back to himself and turned slowly, methodically, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness and at the same time looking for any glimmer of light anywhere that would indicate the presence of a house. He listened. Nothing. The darkness was nearly total.
He literally felt his way along the side of the van until he got to the back and swung the rear door open. No interior lights came on—he’d taken care of that long ago—and he groped inside for the lantern. He got it and then reached farther, his hand brushing her bare legs. They were still, and already getting cold.
16
Normally Frank ran about three times a week, the same route he’d been on when he’d seen them the first time. He hadn’t spoken with or seen Adrienne since the diner, and had debated with himself whether to call her or not. The whole thing reminded him vaguely of high school, so he just put it off. Since his arrest of the two men in Adrienne’s driveway he’d changed his jogging route, somewhat ashamed of himself for cruising her neighborhood in the first place. This time, for some reason, he went back to the old one. In the back of his mind he knew why.
As he approached he could see her raking leaves at the front of the house, facing the sidewalk. It was unseasonably warm and she was dressed for it—white shorts with a cutout at each hip, and a scoop neck striped T—shirt.
He slowed up, dragging the back of his hand across his forehead and mugging shamelessly. She smiled back. She didn’t look surprised to see him.
There was that split second decision to make. Later he would wonder what would have happened if he hadn’t made it—but he knew this was what he had wanted to happen. He came to a stop.
“Hi,” he gasped. Original.
Sweat glistened on her face and all the way down to the deep cleft between her breasts. He didn’t get his eyes away in time and she watched him, a glint of amusement in her eyes.
“Hot enough for you?” she deadpanned.
He grinned back, trying to think of something droll to say to her.
“Too hot for running.”
It wasn’t very clever but the result was wonderful. She smiled at him again.
“Too hot for yard work, too.”
She had ice water in her fridge and they each drank a full glass, drank it like little kids, gasping for breath, then laughed about it.
They were still standing at the kitchen sink. She refilled the glasses and handed his back to him. Their fingers touched for a moment and he was very careful not to draw out the contact, breaking it off before she did. She drank again, then turned around to put the glass in the sink. Her right arm and shoulder brushed against him and stayed there. She put down the empty glass and looked straight ahead through the window. She stretched, leaning forward and looking for something out in the backyard. Her top pulled away from the waistline of her shorts and he could see her taut belly, the dip from her waist into the swell of her hips as she leaned over the counter. He hesitated, wondered if what she was doing was deliberate, if it was some kind of tease.
He was out of practice at this. His breath caught and he hesitated. His right hand was resting on the counter in front of her. He kept his hand there but used it as a pivot, moving slightly behind her as he looked out the window from over her right shoulder. They were very close, and Frank waited for her to pull away, even react with surprise and anger. She didn’t. He became aware of a slight, almost imperceptible shift in her body weight and the brush of her buttocks against his crotch. He couldn’t help himself, traced a fingertip very lightly along her left hip. She turned slightly from the window and he saw her lips part very slightly. He leaned against her, very gently, in case he was about to make a huge mistake, horrify her.
“What are you looking at?” he asked.
She didn’t move away from the pressure, just stayed there. He felt her push lightly back against him and he wondered if she could feel him hardening, rising against her, all the way through the two layers of fabric that separated them. He brought his right hand off the edge of the counter and ran his palm up along her ribcage. Her breath caught as he hesitated, then lightly cupped his hand over her breast—it seemed impossibly firm—and he brushed a forefinger across the fabric, feeling her nipple become erect. She arched backward and he kissed the nape of her neck. Her left hand groped behind her and he guided it inside the elastic waistband of his shorts. Her hand closed around him and she stroked him slowly. He reached around to her waist and unbuttoned her shorts, pulling them down together with the bikini panties underneath. She let go of him and turned around, leaning back with her hands braced against the edge of the counter, her legs slightly parted. He got rid of his shorts, crouching slightly and then pushing up and inside her. She was slick, wet, and she opened her legs and pushed up against the counter and she was riding him, sliding up and down on his cock. He wanted to drive himself into her as hard as he could but he resisted the impulse. She was incredibly strong but if he gave in to his impulse he might hurt her, knock her backward, and finally neither of them could hold that position any longer and they sank to the
linoleum floor, somehow maintaining the connection as she rolled onto her back and he plunged into her as deep as he could go. Her back arched and her hands clawed savagely at his upper arms and shoulders as she pushed up with her hips. He took his own weight on his arms and let her hold him there for a moment until he couldn’t wait any longer and he pushed himself slowly into her, forcing her back down to the floor and fighting the urge to just let everything go. He held himself deep inside her and he could feel her hips rolling against him. She bit hard into his shoulder, and the pain helped him concentrate on holding himself back even as her hips bucked beneath him and she whimpered, almost crying, and then she suddenly convulsed against him, her breath coming in gasps and finally subsiding, her hands moving to his hips and slowly pushing him back and out. He didn’t resist, as much as he wanted to, and their eyes met. He was still hard, teetering on the edge of losing control, and he felt her hands slide down to the back of his thighs. Then he understood what she wanted him to do and he straddled her, sliding his cock up along her belly, letting its tip brush her nipple as she watched. She moaned and her back arched again, the momentum bringing him up over her face. Her lips parted and she ran her tongue slowly along the underside of his cock. He raised himself high on the palms of his hands and slowly and deliberately pushed himself downward into her mouth, impossibly far, watching for a sign from her that it was too much—but no sign came and he rhythmically slid up and down, his forearms straining as his wrists and hands took all of his weight. Her hands clamped onto his buttocks and finally one hand let go, reaching under him, her fingertips brushing his scrotum and he knew he wouldn’t have to warn her, she wanted all of it. He drew himself out of her mouth to her lips and then slowly buried it back in and just let everything go, his belly shuddering against her face as he pumped everything he had into her. He could feel her swallowing, her hands going back to his butt and actually pulling him back in until he was past any conscious thought at all.
17
After that first time circumstances had intervened and he hadn’t called her, not right away. Wheelock had come up with a few ambitious—and totally unrealistic, given the limited resources they had—ideas about pushing the investigation into the lake homicide farther and Frank had been brusque and dismissive when Wheelock, being Wheelock, had brought them up in front of Brent and Raycroft. Wheelock’s face had dropped and he’d withdrawn from the conversation entirely, finding an excuse to be somewhere else only a few moments later. Frank had been vaguely aware of Brent’s troubled expression but at the time nothing more was said. Brent was making up for that now.
“They don’t think you give a shit, Frank,” he told him, “We all know where you come from—and we all know this isn’t Pittsburgh—we’re just a pissant little town and a pissant little department.”
Frank bridled, started to protest. Brent held up a placating hand.
“I know, I know...but you want me to tell you the way things are or just what you want to hear?”
Frank stopped, looked at him.
“What do you think?” he asked. Brent met his eyes, hesitated only a moment.
“I think there’s some truth in it, Frank,” there was nothing confrontational in Brent’s voice. They were in Frank’s office, the door closed. Brent had made a point of coming in at the end of his shift and waiting until the next shift had gone out. The station was as quiet as it ever got.
“Frank, I don’t have the background you do. But I’ve been doing this a long time. We both know it’s a real long shot if we ever find out what happened to that girl—but the rest of the department doesn’t understand that. Most of them—it’s the biggest thing that’s happened here since they’ve signed on. It’s a big deal—but what they’re seeing from you is just business as usual. I know you’ve seen all this shit before so it’s not the same for you—but they don’t get that. They started out all pumped up and now ...” Brent shrugged.
Frank started to say something but then stopped. Shooting the messenger would be stupid. He trusted Brent, at least as much as he trusted anybody, and knew him well enough by now to understand that he probably had everybody’s—even Frank’s—best interests at heart. Brent seemed perfectly content as Frank’s number two—if he had a hidden agenda it would have been better served if he just stayed quiet and let Frank hang himself. Which, he suddenly realized, was what he had been in the process of doing.
“So what do you think I should do?”
Brent looked relieved, as if he’d been expecting Frank to fire him or throw him out of the office.
“Just talk to ‘em a little more. Show the flag, do some ride—alongs. Most of them are just kids—they look up to you, Frank.”
Or they did, Frank thought. Brent read his mind.
“Right now they’re just frustrated and they don’t know what the hell they’re doing. I try, but...” he shrugged again, “let’s face it, there’s a lot of this stuff I just don’t know, not the way you do.”
Brent stood up, a bit sheepish now.
“That’s it, Frank. I just figured you needed to know.”
Brent had just told his boss—very politely—that he’d been skating, phoning it in. Frank thanked him, more formally than he intended to, and Brent had left, closing the door softly behind him. Frank got up and stared out the window, wondering what else he was missing.
18
It was a few days before he got in touch with Adrienne. He’d taken Brent’s words to heart, up to and including the ride—alongs, and he made a point of working on his attitude—or at least trying to.
Even with Brent’s words in his mind he had to keep consciously reminding himself not to let his cynicism show. He was sure they’d turn up nothing substantive, but he reminded himself that his officers didn’t know that—and there was always a chance, remote as it was, that they’d get something. He’d even caught an approving wink from Brent when he’d saddled up with Wheelock to respond to a vague phone call from Mr. Jenkins that ‘he might have seen something’ a couple of nights before the girl’s body had been found. While Frank doubted it, he and Wheelock dutifully showed up at Jenkins’ house and then suffered through a rambling interview with the old man that inevitably veered off into a tirade about that damned intersection near his house.
When Frank finally did call Adrienne he wasn’t sure how his negligence—seemed to be an underlying theme with him lately, he thought wryly—would be received. Even to him the fact that he hadn’t called seemed insensitive. He expected some anger, even a furious rejection, but when he reached her on the phone none of that happened. She seemed perfectly happy to hear from him, but certainly not as if she’d been waiting for it, or even as if she’d remembered that after the first encounter he’d been out of the house in less than half an hour. That had been at her behest, not his, since she thought her daughter might walk in the door and know immediately what had happened.
He had a mental picture of her daughter walking into the kitchen and finding them—fucking. Fucking on the kitchen floor, because that’s what it was.
He did the standard thing, asked if he could take her to dinner. She actually chuckled, or made a noise that sounded like it, as if she knew it was just a euphemism, a means to an end. He wanted her tonight, because that was his urge and he didn’t want to wait for it. She didn’t say anything for a moment—maybe she’d been insulted after all.
“I can’t tonight,” she said finally. So at least it was a matter of when, not if. He waited.
“Saturday, ”she said.
She told him he could pick her up after 7 o’clock. She made it clear it would have to be at seven, not before, but didn’t say why.
For some reason the time seemed to drag between the phone call and Saturday. On Saturday he actually found himself checking his watch a couple of times. He knew his body was anticipating, and he spent the afternoon in a state of restlessness. Hell, he was horny. Call it what it was. He was experienced enough with women, experienced enough to know that what ha
d happened the first time wouldn’t necessarily be repeated. She could reconsider, decide that she’d made a mistake, maybe be embarrassed or disgusted by it.
For that matter he wasn’t sure how he felt about it either. He knew he was acting outside himself, outside his normal behavior. Whatever normal was, he thought. He’d had the requisite high school romance, been married once, and had one or two pretty serious relationships and several casual ones during his years in Pittsburgh—but when he finally came back home he just wasn’t sure what would happen.
Basically he had no expectations, which in a way worried him. A couple of random fantasies about some of the girls he’d known in his teens, maybe—but from his infrequent visits back over the years he’d seen that—of the few that hadn’t married—many of them had either moved away or else they’d just aged. Like he had.
After coming home he hadn’t been celibate but he hadn’t pursued anyone either—if anything the reverse was true. He was a middle-aged home boy with a touch of big-city glamor, a good job in a position of respect and authority—in various ways the few unattached women so inclined made him aware of their interest.
He’d taken advantage of that, too, for the first year or so, until finally he’d grown a little tired of the whole thing—their relentlessly local mindsets, the expectations of commitment at a time in his life when he was still lugging too much baggage around, and finally the realization that he was setting himself up for trouble in a job and in an environment that just didn’t have the scope to allow for it. It was a bad place and time in his life to get a reputation as a casual swordsman.
So he’d backed away, largely kept himself to himself. He was solitary by nature anyway, and no matter where it was police work demanded as much or more human contact as he could handle.
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