by Mary McBride
“I was around,” he told the burly sheriff. “I met Molly Hansen at the library about noon. Marly can vouch for that.”
“What about earlier?”
“Look, Gil. I didn’t break into the Brenneman place. Okay? Hell. That’s kid stuff. Have you rousted any of Moonglow’s resident juvenile delinquents?”
The sheriff rested a beefy hand on the butt of his revolver. “I know how to do my job, Danny. That’s why I’m asking you where you were.”
It had been a long time since Dan had been on the receiving end of a shakedown. He felt a kind of heat rip through him, and hoped to hell he could control his temper. He did his best to make his voice affable and just nervous enough to appease this asshole behind the badge.
“I was here, Gil. Honest. You can check with Molly Hansen tomorrow, if you want.”
“He can check with me right now.”
The angry voice belonged to Molly, who was stomping down the trailer’s short flight of stairs looking downright perturbed.
She also looked like a woman who’d been made love to recently and thoroughly. Her blond curls were disheveled at best. Her lips were slightly swollen and— dammit! Dan cursed himself for not shaving earlier. Her cheeks and chin showed a mild whisker burn, evident even in the moonlight. She looked fierce and fragile and he wanted her all over again even while he was wishing she had kept that lovely and well-loved kisser behind the locked door the way he’d told her to.
“Ma’am.” Gil Watson gave her a nod and a long look that said he pretty much knew what she’d been up to in the trailer. His sideways smirk at Dan confirmed it.
“What’s the problem, Sheriff?” she demanded, jutting her pink chin in Gil’s big face.
“Molly,” Dan said, “go back inside. I’ll take care of this.”
She stiffened just enough to let him know she wasn’t used to taking orders, then she refocused her glare on Watson. “Dan and I have been together for most of the day,” she said.
“Is that right?” the sheriff drawled. “Well, it’s not that I don’t believe you, Miss Hansen, but I still think I’ll ride ol’ Danny here over to my office for a little one-on-one.” He turned to Dan, dismissing Molly entirely. “You gonna get in my car nice and easy, son? I hate to bother with cuffs if they’re not necessary.”
The last thing Dan wanted was to be hindered by a pair of handcuffs if push came to shove, and he had no reason to suspect it wouldn’t. He drew in a long breath, trying to prepare himself for the inevitable “one-on-one.”
“You don’t need cuffs, Gil. Let’s go. The sooner we get this straightened out, the happier we’ll both be.”
“Dan!” Molly exclaimed. “You don’t have to go with him. For heaven’s sake. You haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Inside, Molly.” He took her arm and propelled her toward the door, then up the steps while he called over his shoulder, “Give me a minute to get my shoes on, will you, Gil?”
Once inside the trailer, Molly started buzzing around like a wet honeybee.
“This is nuts, Dan. That big gorilla has absolutely no right, none at all, to cart you off in the middle of the night. You do know that, don’t you? This isn’t Nazi Germany, for heaven’s sake.”
“No, it isn’t.” He yanked his shoelaces tighter. “This is Moonglow, Molly, where there’s nothing more permanent than a bad reputation. That’s why I asked you to stay the hell in the trailer.”
“I know, but…”
“Just be quiet and listen a minute.” His other shoe tied, Dan stood up and drew her against him. “I won’t be gone all that long. I want you to promise me you’ll stay here with the door locked till I get back. Will you do that?”
“But I…”
He tightened his arms around her. “No buts. You hear me?”
There were a couple hard knocks on the side of the trailer. “You ’bout ready there, Danny?” Gil called.
Molly nearly choked on an oath, and just before she blasted the lawman with her unqualified opinion of him or called him a Gestapo pig, Dan silenced her with a kiss. A long, deep, toe-curling kiss.
“Don’t go,” she whimpered when he finally let her up for air.
“I have to,” he said, tracing a thumb down her soft cheek, then gently across her wet bottom lip. “Stay in here and keep the door locked. Promise me.”
After she nodded, albeit rather glumly, Dan kissed her forehead. “That’s my girl.”
Then he stepped outside, listened for the lock to click securely while he wondered exactly where—between Molly’s place and the Sheriff’s office—Gil was planning to unofficially interrogate him.
When Molly awoke on the air mattress, sunlight was seeping through the blinds, giving a bronze cast to the inside of the trailer. She had no idea what time it was. The only thing she knew for certain was that Dan was still gone.
She raced for the house, hoping she’d find him there—under the sink, maybe, making it worse in another disastrous attempt to fix it. His car was still parked in the driveway just where they’d left it yesterday. The back door still squealed like a stuck pig when she jerked it open. No Dan under the sink. Just a bucket, filled nearly to the brim.
Hurrying to the bedroom, Molly came upon Buddy Jr. who was measuring the door frame in the bathroom. “Buddy, have you seen Dan this morning?” she asked loud enough to make herself heard over whatever was playing on his headphones.
“Probably out in his trailer,” the boy said.
“No. No, he’s not.”
Buddy Jr. shrugged. “Maybe he’s in town.”
Maybe he’s in jail, Molly thought. A little shiver of fear ran through her. She hoped he was in jail. That seemed like a very safe place when she considered alternatives, such as lying in a ditch somewhere out on the old State road or dangling from a rope someplace. God only knew what that gun-belted, tin-starred Gil Watson would do to a man he suspected of fooling around with his wife.
Fooling around. The thought brought Molly up short. She and Dan had made love last night, and there had been no “fooling around” about it. It had been hot and wild and more intense than anything Molly had ever experienced. They’d just about burned to a crisp in each other’s arms.
Dan was a generous, patient lover, at least after their first combustible encounter. She could still hear his voice whispering in her ear, encouraging her, goading her, inspiring her to heights of physical pleasure she’d never known before. Good Lord. He’d stripped away her inhibitions as completely as Buddy Jr. had stripped the wallpaper off her bedroom walls.
She thought about the times that she and Ethan had made love, how she’d always held back, how her fiancé never seemed to notice, or if he noticed, didn’t seem to mind. Poor stunted Kathryn.
Lucky, lucky Molly. She couldn’t imagine being Kathryn again. Kathryn didn’t have Dan Shackelford in her life. Molly did. And she intended to keep him.
She changed out of her slept-in clothes, told Buddy Jr. to keep up the good work and was on her way down Second Street barely ten minutes later. The Sheriff’s Office was a one-story asbestos-shingled building, wedged between the volunteer fire station and Pike’s Saddlery. She pushed through the front door with both hands.
A uniformed young man sitting at a desk put down his copy of Field and Stream, eased his lanky bones to a standing slouch, and drawled, “Morning, ma’am. It’s Ms. Hansen, right?”
“Yes, it is,” Molly said brusquely. “Is Sheriff Watson in?”
The man, apparently a deputy, shook his crew-cutted head. “No, ma’am.”
Molly’s plan had been to confront Gil Watson directly to find out what had happened to Dan. Now, in light of the sheriff’s absence, she felt knocked off course. She raked her hair back from her face.
“I’m looking for Dan Shackelford,” she told the deputy. “Any idea where he might be?”
His gaze dropped to the desktop for a second as he shifted his weight from one long leg to the other. “Well, ma’am, I’m really not—”
The deputy angled his head toward a door. “In there. In a cell.”
“In a cell?” She’d considered the possibility, but the fact left her nearly speechless. “In jail?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “You’d have to ask the sheriff about that. I haven’t seen any paperwork on it yet.”
Feeling as if she’d been punted back to square one, Molly stepped closer to the desk. “I want to see Dan.” She pointed toward the door. “Right now.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Ms. Hansen. You’ll have to ask the sheriff.”
“All right, I will. Just tell me where he is. I’ll go ask him. Better yet, I’ll call him and we can resolve this immediately.”
When the deputy mumbled something she couldn’t understand, she gave the leg of the desk a little kick and told him to speak up.
“He’s at the hospital.” Again, the young man’s eyes evaded Molly’s. “Mrs. Watson had a little accident last night.”
Probably driving under the influence after she left the Blue Moon, Molly thought uncharitably. “Well, I’m sorry about that, but I still need to talk to him. Where is he? County Hospital?”
When he nodded, she reached for the phone on the desk. “What’s the number?” she demanded, then stabbed the numbers as he gave them to her one by one.
It took a full ten minutes of being transferred from one department to another at the hospital before Sheriff Watson came on the line, only to tell Molly that the deputy could have easily beeped him. She pitched a dark look across the desk as she continued to talk. When she told the sheriff she wanted to see Dan immediately, he surprised her by saying, “Sure you can see him. You can even take him back to that dented tuna can where he lives. Hand the phone over to Jess and I’ll tell him I said so.”
Jess, the deputy, nodded and uh-huhed and okayed, then put the receiver back in its cradle and reached in a drawer for a set of keys. “Chief says your friend is as free as a bird. Follow me.”
Molly didn’t know what to expect when he opened the door and ushered her into a narrow, dark hallway. All she knew was that the smell—a mix of sweat and vomit covered by a thin veneer of Pine Sol—nearly bowled her over as she followed the deputy down a line of empty cells no bigger than closets. He stopped at the last one, turned a key in a lock and pushed the door in, banging it hard against the cement-block wall behind it.
“You’re free to go, Shackelford,” he said, then to Molly he added, “Tell him he can pick up his wallet out front. No rush. Take your time, ma’am. I’ll be out at the desk.”
After the deputy brushed by her on his way out, Molly edged forward until she could see into the cell. As soon as she saw Dan, her heart squeezed tight. He was sitting on a metal cot, leaning back, his head tilted against the wall and his eyes closed. One of those eyes was puffy and there was a nasty cut on his cheek.
But it wasn’t the sight of those physical injuries that affected Molly so deeply. It was something else. Something she couldn’t quite identify in Dan’s demeanor. A look about him that signified utter dejection, total defeat.
“Dan?” she asked softly, tiptoeing into the cell.
His eyes opened, but for a second he didn’t even seem to recognize her. Then his mouth quirked in a half grin. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey, yourself.” Molly sat beside him on the cot, lifting a hand to touch his face. “My God. What happened to you? You look awful.”
“I accidentally ran into Gil’s nightstick once or twice. It’s not as bad as it looks.”
“Well, it looks pretty bad. Do you think you ought to see a doctor?”
He shook his head.
“Okay.” She sighed as she took his hand. “Let’s go home and put some ice on that eye.”
They had walked half a block from the Sheriff’s Office when Molly stopped and said, “I can run back to the house and get the car, if you want. I really think I should.”
Dan gritted his teeth. It was bad enough that he felt like a punching bag, but now Molly was treating him like a ninety-year-old man who probably wouldn’t live to see ninety-one. She kept babbling about bruises, internal injuries and X rays, when she wasn’t blathering about corruption, injustice and civil rights.
“Just keep walking, Molly, will you?” He took her hand and tugged it. “I’m okay. I swear. All I need is a long, hot shower and a couple hours’ sleep.”
“And a lawyer,” she added grimly, matching her steps to his.
“Never mind about that.”
What he needed was to get away. From Molly. From Moonglow. From everyone and everything. He needed to get back to that whiskey-soaked limbo he’d been living in where he didn’t feel anything.
Dan wasn’t quite sure how it happened, but last night Gil Watson’s nightstick and big fists had done more than merely bruise him. He had taken the pummeling because he didn’t want to blow his cover or risk his ability to remain in Moonglow to protect Molly. But those blows had felt strangely like a punishment he deserved, and they had jarred something loose in Dan’s head or maybe even his soul.
All night long, after Gil had shoved him in the cooler, he’d sat with his eyes closed while visions of his last assignment played through his mind like a never-ending film. Rated X for hard-core violence. His partner, Carrie, died again and again. His witness, Morales, bled until every surface of the dream scene was slick and red.
Being with Molly, he decided, had only been a brief vacation from the reality of his failure. Lovely as it had been, it was over now. During the night in the cell, he had made up his mind to call Houston and resign, effective as soon as Bobby could send a replacement. Somebody good. Somebody better.
When they walked in the house, Dan was relieved to discover it nearly free of fumes. He glanced at the puddle in front of the kitchen sink where the bucket was overflowing. He probably ought to tell Bobby to assign a deputy who was as good with a wrench as he was with a gun. Hell, it wouldn’t hurt if the guy was single and halfway decent-looking, too, for Molly’s sake.
The sudden thought of somebody taking over for him not just in Molly’s house but in her bed burned in his gut. He shouldn’t have slept with her. He should have had more discipline, more sense. And she should have been a whole lot smarter than to fall into bed with some bum she didn’t know the first thing about.
That thought irritated him enough that he stiffened slightly when Molly wound her arms around him and leaned her head against his chest.
“Poor baby,” she said. “I’ll go get the shower started so it’s nice and hot by the time you’re out of your clothes.”
“You don’t have to.” He rested his chin on the top of her head, letting his arms remain at his sides. Damned if he’d hold her and watch all his good resolutions go down the drain.
“I know. And I don’t have to tuck you into my bed after that, but I’m going to.” She lifted her head up a bit and sniffed. “No more stripper fumes, thank goodness.”
“I’ll sleep out in the trailer, Molly. Thanks, anyway.”
“I wish you wouldn’t.” She hugged him tighter, causing his battered ribs to protest and his breath to whistle in sharply. “I’m sorry,” she squeaked, letting go and stepping back. “Dan, are you sure you don’t need to see a doctor? We could be at County Hospital in a few minutes.”
A sudden frown crossed her face and she swore softly.
“What?” he asked.
“Oh, I just remembered that’s where the sheriff was when I spoke with him this morning. Apparently his wife had some kind of accident.”
He let out a sharp little laugh. “I doubt if it was an accident. Gil probably did the same thing to her last night that he did to me. Interrogated her.”
“Beat her up, you mean?” Molly sounded shocked.
“Wouldn’t surprise me.”
“What should
we do?” she asked. “Shouldn’t we report him to somebody?”
“What do you want to do, Molly? Call the police?”
He sounded as cynical as he felt, then regretted it immediately when Molly’s pretty face crumpled and tears filled her eyes. Against his better judgment, he reached out and pulled her into his arms.
“It’s not your problem, sweetheart. And there’s not a damned thing you can do. Guys like Gil Watson usually get what they deserve sooner or later.”
“I hope in his case it’s sooner,” she said.
He pressed his lips to her warm hair, knowing how he’d miss the feel of her in his arms, how he’d miss the incomparable sweetness of her body beneath his. Get over it, he told himself, knowing he never would.
Molly stood at the kitchen sink, listening to the pipes clank in her little house, hoping that a hot shower truly would be the best medicine for Dan. After she’d turned on the water for him and put out a clean towel, she’d come back to the kitchen to empty the brimming bucket and wipe up the floor.
What a mess. If she had any sense at all, she’d tell Dan she no longer required his services. It was stupid for him to hang around here, accomplishing nothing. Well, no, that wasn’t exactly true. He’d accomplished a good deal in the week he’d been back in Moonglow, mostly rekindling old flames and stirring up ancient resentments, not to mention turning her own world upside down and inside out, playing havoc with all the adjustments she’d made in the past year.
He’d made her feel alive again after a year of living in limbo. He’d made her forget to mourn the demise of Kathryn Claiborn and to take delight in Molly Hansen. If he left—when he left—she was going to feel like nobody again.
She swore, reaching for a glass and turning on the faucet, only to hear the water run relentlessly into the bucket below. Suddenly, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at her miserable plight, so she bent her head and did both.
“Are you okay, Ms. Hansen?”
