Murder in Black Canyon

by Cindi Myers

  He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her closer still, her breasts soft against his chest, her mouth warm and fervent, her tongue tangling with his, tasting of ale and promising a hundred ways to make him forget pain and worry and stress.

  He caressed her thigh and moved from her mouth to feather kisses along her jaw. “If you’re trying to distract me, it’s working.”

  “Don’t mind me.” She began to unbutton his khaki uniform shirt. “Finish your sandwich.”

  “What sandwich?” He slid his hand beneath her T-shirt, the flesh of her torso soft and cool beneath his fingers. He skimmed over her bra, dragging his thumb across her pebbled nipple, and smiled at the way her breath caught. She squirmed, and it was his turn to gasp as she rubbed against his growing erection. She had most of the buttons on his shirt undone now, and bent to trace her tongue along his breastbone.

  He nudged his thumb beneath her chin until she raised her head and met his gaze. “Not that this isn’t fun, but where are we going with it?” he asked.

  “I was thinking eventually we could go into the bedroom,” she said. “Though I have a nice sofa, too, if that’s more your speed. I wouldn’t recommend the kitchen table, though.”

  “The bedroom sounds good.” He rose, and she slid from his lap, though he steadied her with his arm. “You lead the way.”

  She glanced back at the table. “Are you sure you don’t want to finish your sandwich?”

  “Later.” He nudged her bottom.

  Kayla’s bedroom turned out to be down a short hall, a small, comfortable room decorated in shades of blue, with a faded flowered quilt on the bed. The air smelled like her—soft and faintly floral. Fresh. In the doorway, she drew him to her once more and undid the final button on his shirt.

  He went to work on the zipper of her jeans. “This is the nicest surprise I’ve had all day,” he said.

  “Why is it a surprise?” she asked. “You must have known I was attracted to you.”

  “I hoped, but you weren’t sending the clearest signals. Or maybe I just wasn’t good at interpreting them.”

  She shoved the shirt off his shoulders. “Is this a clear enough signal for you?”

  “Oh, yeah.” He slid out of the shirt, then pushed up the hem of hers. “Loud and clear.”

  He liked that she wasn’t shy about undressing. And she didn’t seem to mind that he waited until she was naked before he finished shedding his own clothes. She had a slim, athletic body, with small breasts and rounded hips. Her skin was so soft, and touching her sent a thrill of desire through him. He cupped her breast and she arched to him, and when he bent to take her nipple in his mouth, she let out a long sigh that pierced him.

  She urged him toward the bed, paused to fold back the covers, then pulled him on top of her. When her lips found his he closed his eyes and lost himself in her embrace, forgetting time and place and everything but the feel of her body beneath his roaming hands and lips. She responded with a fervor to match his own, kissing and caressing until he was half-mad with wanting her.

  “Tell me you have a condom somewhere in this house,” he murmured into the side of her neck.

  “Bedside table.”

  He shoved himself up, reached for the drawer on the little table and pulled out a gold box. “These aren’t even open,” he said, frowning at the plastic wrapping.

  “I bought a new box just for you.” She laughed and snatched the package from him. “Go back to what you were doing. I wouldn’t want to slow you dow—” The last word died on her lips as he slid down the length of her body to the juncture of her thighs.

  “Don’t let me slow you down,” he said, his attention focused on her sex.

  “Don’t you dare stop,” she said, and he heard the plastic on the box rip.

  He slid his hands up to caress her hips, and lost himself in pleasuring her. Her soft moans and breathy gasps encouraged him, as he worked to bring her close to the edge, but not over. She let out a cry of frustration when he slid back up her body to lie beside her. “There’s more where that came from,” he said.

  “Promise?” She pushed him onto his back and climbed on top of him, then took the unwrapped condom from the bedside table. “Ready to get dressed?” she asked.

  “Ready.”

  Kayla kept her gaze focused on Dylan’s face as she rolled on the condom. She’d fantasized about being with him, but the reality was so much better. He approached lovemaking with the perfect combination of humor and seriousness that kept her from feeling awkward, and his obvious eagerness for her bolstered her confidence and fueled her own desire.

  His eyes lost focus as she squeezed his shaft, and she felt a sharpened pull of desire deep within her. Maybe she had wanted a man this much before, but she didn’t think so. With Dylan she felt less wary, freer to be herself, than with any other man, and that freedom was a powerful aphrodisiac. He grasped her hips and guided her over him, and she let out a long sigh as he filled her. Yes, this was definitely one of the best decisions she had made in a while.

  She set the pace, rocking slowly, then sliding up and down the length of him, enjoying the sensation, drawing out the pleasure, until he thrust up more firmly and dragged her down to press his lips to hers. The mood shifted to one of greater urgency, and she let herself ride the sensation, closing her eyes as he reached down to stroke her, building the tension, coiling tighter and tighter until her vision blurred and she lost her breath, a voice that didn’t even sound like hers calling out his name.

  His fingers raked her back as he increased the tempo, and then his own climax overtook him and he crushed her to him, pumping hard, leaving her breathless and exhilarated. He held her tightly for a long moment, his breath harsh in her ears, then rolled to his side, taking her with him, his arms securely around her.

  “How’s your day now?” she asked, when she had caught her breath. She traced one finger down his cheek, enjoying the roughness of his unshaved face.

  “The best.” He laid his head on her shoulder and closed his eyes. “The best.”

  * * *

  “DYLAN, WAKE UP. Your phone is ringing.”

  Dylan opened his eyes and stared into Kayla’s worried face. Still half asleep, he smiled and reached for her, but she pushed him away. “Your phone,” she said. “Whoever it is has called back twice. You’d better answer it.”

  He struggled to sit, and wiped his hand over his eyes. He’d been deeply asleep, after an evening that had included the sandwich, a shower and another bout of lovemaking with Kayla before surrendering to slumber.

  “Answer the phone.” She nudged him.

  He followed the sound of his ringtone to his trousers, which were on the floor atop his shirt and shoes. “Hello?” he croaked, then cleared his throat and tried again. “Hello?”

  “There’s been a development in the Matheson disappearance,” Graham Ellison said. “Grand Junction Police found his car half submerged in an abandoned gravel pit. There was a bundle of bloody clothes shoved under the front seat. It looks like Daniel Metwater’s prophecy might be true, after all.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Dylan met Graham and Simon at the Grand Junction impoundment yard a little after four in the morning. A forensics team was already at work on Matheson’s car. Floodlights on tall stands illuminated the area around the vehicle, where technicians in white paper coveralls and booties combed the interior for hair and fibers, fingerprints, blood and any other evidence. Another man worked on the exterior, examining the body for recent dents and scratches, and collecting samples of soil from the tire treads.

  “No good prints but a few of Matheson’s own,” Simon reported, after consulting with one of the techs. “They’re sending the clothing to be tested to determine if the blood is Matheson’s or someone else’s.”

  “A dive team will search the gravel pit
as soon as it’s light,” Graham said. “A second search team with cadaver dogs will comb the area around the pit.”

  “Any theories on what happened?” Dylan asked.

  Graham shook his head. “A couple of kids apparently drove out here to make out and noticed the top of the car in the moonlight,” he said. “The girl mentioned it to her older sister when she got home, the sister told the dad and the dad called the police. They got a wrecker out here to haul it out of the water and when they ran the plate they knew they had something big.”

  “I think we should bring Metwater in for questioning,” Simon said. “Maybe with this new development we can sweat a confession out of him.”

  “He’s not going to break that easy,” Dylan said. “And we don’t have enough evidence to hold him. Until we have Matheson’s body, we can’t even charge him with murder. And he’ll have a dozen followers who will swear he hasn’t been anywhere near Grand Junction in months.”

  “Except Abe and Zach said they thought that’s where he was for a big chunk of yesterday,” Simon said.

  “Which I’ll admit makes him suspicious,” Dylan said. “Except he supposedly had Andi Matheson with him, and considering her reaction to news that her father was dead, I can’t imagine her conspiring with Metwater to kill the senator.”

  “Stranger things have happened,” Simon said. “And if we don’t detain him he’s liable to disappear.”

  “We’ll wait until we have a body,” Graham said. “By then we may have enough evidence to make something stick. In the meantime, Michael and Marco are watching the camp. There’s only one way into that canyon. The Prophet won’t leave without our knowing it.”

  Simon pressed his lips together. Dylan knew he wasn’t happy with this decision, but he wouldn’t argue with their captain. Dylan sympathized with Simon’s point of view. “Have you come up with anything in Metwater’s background that we can use?” he asked. “I tried doing a little digging on my own, but you’re better at background forensics than I am.”

  Simon shook his head. “We’ve got nothing. He’s the blue blood heir to his family’s manufacturing fortune. His dad died last year—apparently he’d had a heart condition for years and died on the operating table, so we can’t blame that on the son. Metwater inherited equally with his twin brother, David, who was apparently the family screwup. He embezzled money from the family firm, got crosswise with some Mafia types and ended up dead. His body was found dumped in a river. He’d been shot in the head. A month later, Daniel declares he’s had a spiritual revelation, sells the family business and takes his evangelical show on the road, recruiting followers to join his Family. And a few weeks ago they end up in our jurisdiction.” He made a face. “Aren’t we lucky?”

  “So, no ties to the brother’s death?”

  “The local cops say he’s clean. And it was pretty common knowledge that the brother was in over his head with organized crime.”

  “Maybe Daniel’s religious conversion had more to do with fear the mob would come after him than a spiritual revelation,” Graham said.

  Simon shrugged. “If it did, he’s taking it to extremes. If I had the fortune he has, I wouldn’t be living in an RV in the middle of nowhere, without running water and electricity.”

  “When does their camping permit expire?” Dylan asked.

  “Next week,” Graham said. “But they can move to another spot in the wilderness area and renew the permit. For now, I would just as soon they stay put, where we can keep an eye on them.”

  They split up, Dylan and Simon in separate vehicles to head back to the Ranger Brigade offices, Graham to a meeting with FBI agents in the Bureau’s Western Slope division. Dylan turned down his radio and contemplated the barren hills and red dirt washes that filled the landscape between Grand Junction and Montrose. He debated calling Kayla, to hear her voice and see how she was doing. Was she having any second thoughts about spending the night with him? Could he say anything to make her feel more comfortable with the decision?

  Better to hold off on calling her. Right now it would be too easy for him to betray his own feelings and frighten her off. The truth was, he was falling in love with Kayla. Yes, it was happening fast, but he was as sure of his feelings as he had ever been sure of anything. He wouldn’t take things too fast or try to push her, but he would find a way to gain her trust—to show her he was nothing like her father and the others who had let her down before.

  He was almost to Montrose when his phone rang. “Lieutenant Holt?” a woman’s voice asked hesitantly.

  “Yes? Who is this?”

  “This is Veronica Asher.”

  Dylan signaled and pulled to the side of the road. “How can I help you, Mrs. Asher?”

  “I received something very strange in the mail this morning. I should probably call the Bureau, but frankly, I feel more comfortable talking to you.”

  “What did you receive?” he asked.

  “It was a plain white envelope, addressed to Mrs. Frank Asher, with no return address, though the postmark is Grand Junction. Inside were a bunch of money cards—you know, the credit card things you can put a cash balance on. I called the number on the back of the cards and each one of them is worth twenty-five hundred dollars. Twenty-five thousand dollars in all.”

  “Twenty-five thousand dollars?” Dylan repeated. “Does that amount have any significance for you?”

  “No. Except it’s a crazy amount of money to get in the mail.”

  “Was there anything else in the envelope? A note?”

  “There was a sympathy card, the kind you could buy in any store. No signature or anything.”

  “Do you know anyone in Grand Junction who might have sent you the money?” Dylan asked. “Maybe a charity or an organization that thought you needed the funds?”

  “I don’t know anyone in Grand Junction,” she said. “And whatever his other faults, Frank left us well provided for. I don’t know what to think about this except...” Her voice trailed away.

  “Except what?”

  “Do you think the money might be from Frank’s killer? A kind of guilt payment or something?”

  “That’s definitely worth looking into. What have you done with the money cards?”

  “Nothing. They’re right here in the envelope they came in. But I wasn’t being very careful at first. They’ll have my fingerprints on them.”

  “Leave them there and call Frank’s supervisor at the Bureau. They’ll have the best resources to investigate this. Or I can contact them for you if you like.”

  “Would you? Every time I have to deal with them, all I can think is that they knew what Frank was up to and none of them bothered to tell me. That may be an unfair assessment, but it’s how I feel.”

  “I’ll call them and ask them to send over an agent—maybe someone who didn’t work with Frank.”

  “Thank you.”

  She ended the call and Dylan mulled over the information she had given him. Daniel Metwater had a fortune at his disposal. It would have been easy enough for him to send one of his followers to one or more locations around Grand Junction to purchase the money cards with cash. He and Andi might even have purchased the cards themselves when they came to town yesterday. Even if Metwater hadn’t personally pulled the trigger to kill Asher, he might have ordered one of his followers to do so. Maybe he had decided to alleviate some of his guilt by paying off Asher’s widow.

  Dylan put the Cruiser into gear and pulled back onto the highway. He would do as he had promised and notify the FBI of this latest development. But he would tell Graham first, and the Rangers would conduct an investigation of their own, one focused on Daniel Metwater and his followers.

  * * *

  KAYLA DRIFTED IN and out of sleep after Dylan left, her slumber disturbed by replays of their time together. While he had been with her, she had be
en sure a relationship with him was the best decision she had made in years. But away from his magnetic presence she felt less certain. She had been honest with him when she told him she didn’t do relationships. She didn’t have the emotional tools to be comfortable relying on someone else, and she had managed fine alone for years. He, on the other hand, was close to his family and more than comfortable with the idea of settling down with a wife and kids and the whole storybook setting. She didn’t know how she would fit into that kind of life. Trying to make things work when they were so different was probably setting them both up for disappointment.

  At seven she rose and made coffee, then switched on the television to the local morning program. “Very early today Grand Junction police recovered a vehicle belonging to missing senator Peter Matheson from an area gravel pit,” the news anchor announced. “Divers are scheduled to search the pit for the body of the senator, who has been missing since last Friday.” Video footage showed a late-model sedan being pulled from the water, the scene lit by floodlights. Superimposed on these images was a still photo of Senator Matheson, one Kayla recognized from his campaign posters.

  Though Dylan had shared the news of the discovery before he had left for Ranger headquarters, seeing the footage on television somehow made it more real, Kayla found. She switched off the TV and returned to her bedroom to dress. She should have known news of the discovery of the senator’s car would spread quickly. It was probably the top story on every channel. Even cut off from communication the way they were, Andi and the other Family members were bound to hear about this sooner rather than later. Dylan hadn’t said, but Kayla suspected he or someone else from the Ranger Brigade would show up at the camp to question Daniel Metwater once more. Andi would be upset all over again. Kayla needed to be there for her.

  She was on her way out the door when her phone rang. Hoping it was Dylan, she hurried to answer it, not even bothering to look at the screen.