by Linda Howard
“At the supermarket. She said they have a nice video selection, and it saved making an extra stop.”
“Which supermarket did she shop at?”
“Phillips, about a mile from here.”
A neighborhood market, not one where Nadine Vinick would have shopped. But Dane made notes of everything; they wouldn’t know exactly what they had until they had compared every detail with the Vinick case.
“What about you?” he asked. “Are you married?”
“Widowed. Seven years ago. Jackie helped me through a rough time, and that’s when we became close friends. We were friendly before that, you know, working in the same office for as long as we had, but that’s when I really got to know her. She was—she was a really great friend.” Tears slipped down Elizabeth’s cheeks.
Dane patted her some more, aware of and ignoring Trammell’s enigmatic gaze. Trammell hadn’t spoken once, leaving all the questioning to him. Occasionally he did that, when for some reason he decided Dane would have better luck getting answers.
“I’m sorry,” Elizabeth said, still weeping. “I know I haven’t been able to help.”
“But you did,” Dane assured her. “You helped us eliminate several things, so we know where to concentrate and won’t waste our time on dead ends.” Basically it was a lie; all they had was dead ends. But she needed all the comfort she could get, lie or not.
“Do I need to come down to the station or anything? Funny,” she said, wiping her eyes and trying a pathetic smile. “I know how law works on the finished end, the courthouse end, but nothing about the raw stages.”
“No, there’s no need for you to come to the station,” he said, soothing her. “Does Detective Brown have your address and phone number?”
“I think so. Yes, I remember telling her.”
“Then I don’t see why you can’t go home, if you like. Do you want me to have someone drive you? Or call someone, a friend or relative, to stay with you tonight?”
She looked around vaguely. “I can’t leave my car here.”
“If you want someone to drive you, I’ll get a patrolman to drive your car and another one to follow, to bring him back. Okay?”
But she didn’t seem able to make a decision, still too stunned and devastated to think clearly. Dane made the decision for her, getting her to her feet, calling a patrolman over and arranging for her to be taken home, giving instructions for her to call a friend or neighbor to stay with her that night. She nodded as docilely as a child taking homework instructions.
“I have a niece nearby,” she said. “I’ll call her.” And she looked at him as if asking for his permission to call the niece instead of a friend. He patted her and told her that was fine, and sent her off with the patrolman, who had taken his cue from Dane and treated her as gently as he would a lost child.
When Dane turned around, Trammell was still looking as enigmatic as a cat.
“What?” he demanded testily.
Trammell raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You’re thinking something, though. You’ve got that shit-eating smirk on your face.”
“Why would anyone smirk while they eat shit?” Trammell asked rhetorically.
He loved the man like a brother, but honest to God, sometimes Dane felt like messing up that pretty face. But when Trammell was in one of his moods, nothing could pry information out of him. Dane thought about giving him a couple of beers to loosen his tongue, then decided to leave well enough alone. He’d save the beer for special occasions.
There was nothing left to do but assist Freddie and Worley in tying up the loose ends: make certain the trash had been sacked up, to be gone through later; search the house for personal papers such as a diary, telephone and address books, life insurance policies. In death, Jackie Sheets would lose all of her privacy. They would go through her closets and her cabinets, in search of that one snippet of coincidence and fate that linked her to Nadine Vinick. Whatever the two women had had in common was the key to the killer. If poor Ansel Vinick hadn’t killed himself, he could have helped them pinpoint the crucial link, and maybe found a reason for living in helping to find his wife’s killer. In Dane’s opinion, the bumper sticker “Shit happens” should have the word “frequently” tacked on to the end of it.
Ivan had taken his meager findings back to the lab to begin analyzing them; the medical examiner’s office had Jackie Sheets’s body, though there was little to be added other than the approximate time of death. They could have saved the ME the time and trouble; Dane knew the time of death, because Marlie had called him.
Worry had settled new lines in the lieutenant’s face as he glumly surveyed the outline on the floor where Sheets had lain. “Everyone be in my office at ten tomorrow morning,” he said. “For now, go home and get some sleep.”
Dane glanced at his watch. It was almost one, and he was suddenly aware that he hadn’t had much sleep the night before.
“Are you going back to Marlie’s?” Trammell asked.
He wanted to; God, did he want to. “No, I won’t disturb her,” he said. “She’ll be asleep.”
“You think so?”
He remembered the way she had looked when he’d left, that haunted expression back in her drawn face. He hadn’t even kissed her, he realized. His mind had already been on the murder scene, and he had totally blocked Marlie out. He had just made love to her, had gotten off her warm body to answer the beeper’s summons, and he had walked out without kissing her. “Damn,” he said tiredly.
Trammell said, “See you in the morning,” and got in his car. Grace Roeg would probably still be waiting, Dane thought. She was a cop, too; she would understand that he had had to leave suddenly. But Marlie wasn’t a cop; she was a woman who had been too solitary her entire life, a woman who had borne enough pain for ten lifetimes. She was strong, incredibly so; she hadn’t cracked, but she wore the scars, both physically and mentally. It had taken guts for her to let him make love to her, and what had he done? Their first time, and he had turned it into a slam-bam; he hadn’t even said “thank you.”
If he could have reached it, he’d have kicked his own ass.
She wouldn’t be asleep; she would be sitting on the couch, still and quiet, waiting for his return. He couldn’t protect her by keeping her in the dark, because she knew more than he did. She was an eyewitness, inside the killer, watching through his eyes as he gleefully hacked and slashed.
Dane drove quickly, the streets much emptier now. It began raining, the slow-moving storm finally reaching the city. He felt as if it were a replay of Friday night, when he had hurried through the wet streets to reach Marlie.
As he had expected, there was a light on in the living room when he pulled into the driveway and killed the motor. Before he could get out of the car, she had opened the front door and was standing there, silhouetted against the light, waiting for him.
She was still wearing the thin robe, and he could see the outline of her body through the fabric. He ran through the rain and leaped up the two shallow steps onto the porch. She didn’t say anything, just stepped back to let him in. She didn’t have to ask what they had found, because she knew.
She was tired, her face wan, her eyes dark-circled. In those eyes was a weariness that went far beyond the physical, and the subtle air of distance had settled around her again.
He meant to offer comfort, if she would accept it. He meant to take care of her, give her the healing unconsciousness of sleep. She could relax, knowing that she was secure. He meant to hold her all night long, offering her the primitive animal comfort of his closeness.
That was what he meant to do. But as they silently faced each other, with the rain pattering outside in rhythm to his suddenly racing heart, he forgot about all the noble things he meant to do. He had claimed her only a few hours before, making her his in the physical possession of mating, but they had been interrupted. The act had been completed, but the seal of the flesh hadn’t been. True intimacy wasn’t foun
d in penetration and climax, but in the quiet time afterward, in the small ways that two lives meshed. He had left that undone, and his instincts were too primal and sure for him to ignore it.
He shut the door and locked it, without once looking away from her. Then, without haste, he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom, pausing on the way to turn off the lamp.
There were no angry recriminations from her, no reluctance. She lay quietly where he had placed her on the bed, waiting while he impatiently threw off his clothes. He removed the robe from her for the second time that night. Her naked body gleamed dimly in the darkness; he felt the delicious softness of her beneath him, felt her thighs opening to embrace him. He held her head between his palms and kissed her with slow hunger as he probed, found the moist yielding of her entrance, and pushed within. The heat and tightness of her enfolded him, making his shaft throb so violently that he groaned into her mouth.
“Make me forget,” she pleaded, whispering in broken desperation. He forced his way in to the hilt, holding her as she arched beneath him in an effort to accommodate her body to his size and force. She made a hot little whimpering sound, and her tight nipples stabbed against his chest.
He could give her only the forgetfulness of passion, fill her senses with his body, and the pleasure he could give her. He couldn’t make the night go away, but he could turn the darkness into their own private sanctuary. He could rein in his own unruly passion and make certain she was with him this time, and afterward, lying in the warm silence, he could hold her so that, all through the night, she could feel his warmth and the steady beat of his heart and know that she wasn’t alone.
14
MARLIE STIRRED AND CAME ABRUPTLY AWAKE, STARTLED BY the realization that there was someone in the bed with her. She knew who he was, recalled everything, but still there was that first jarring moment when consciousness adjusted to reality. He had slept with her the night before last, too, but she hadn’t been aware of it. This was the first time that she had awakened with a very hard, very warm man lying close beside her, one heavy arm thrown across her waist and anchoring her to the bed. It was a good thing he was holding her, she reflected, since he took up most of the space, and she might well have fallen off if he hadn’t held her pinned.
She turned her head to look at him, enchanted by the novelty of having a naked man in her bed, of having Dane naked in her bed. She savored the moment, a small, quiet oasis of happiness.
The soft morning light, filtered through a light rain, gleamed on the curve of his shoulder. She lightly cupped her hand on the ball of the joint, feeling the cool resilience of his flesh, the relaxed power of the muscle beneath her palm. He stirred at her touch, tucking her more closely into the curve of his body before lapsing with a grunt back into his morning dreams.
He radiated heat like the healthy animal he was, despite the surface coolness of his skin. She felt as warm and cozy as if the bedcovers were tucked around her, rather than lying in a tangled heap on the floor.
In all her life, she had never been physically demonstrative because the mental barriers had always gotten in the way. But the psychic damage she had suffered at Gleen’s hands had demolished those barriers, and last night Dane had forcefully shown her, several times, that now she could give herself over to the physical.
She felt tremulous with joy at this new world he had opened up, a world she had thought permanently closed to her. She loved him, and he had claimed her body, and given her his own. She had always been alone in the darkness, but not last night, and she had understood what he had been saying with his body, his hunger. There was death, yes, but life marched hand in hand with it. There was evil out there, but between the two of them there had been pleasure, a basic and joyful celebration of life and flesh. She had always protected herself from the world, set apart from birth by her own abilities, while he had reveled in and dominated the hot, pulsing currents. He was fierce and vital in his intensity, meeting life on its own terms and coming out the victor. Last night, with Dane, she had broken free of her self-imposed restrictions.
And now this big bruiser was lying totally, blissfully naked in her bed. She had the freedom of his powerful body, to explore and excite as she wished. She felt like a child at an amusement park, an adventurer opening the sealed door to a room of treasure. There was so much to see and do, and she quivered with excitement at the possibilities. To totally give in to the needs of her body, to find out exactly what those needs were—she almost couldn’t bear it.
She smoothed her hand over his chest, delighting in the roughness of the thick, curly hair under her palm. Beneath the hair was a rock-solid layer of muscle, hard and warm. She found his nipples, flat brown circles with tiny points in the middle, points that hardened when she touched them. Fascinated, she rubbed her fingertip over one of the little points and watched chills roughen his skin.
A deep rumble in his chest made her look up. He was awake, the hazel eyes heavylidded and sleepy. Down below, his sex twitched and stretched, prodding her in the stomach. “Like what you see?” His early morning voice was like distant thunder, rough and barely audible.
“Very much.” Her own voice was raspier than usual, too.
He rolled over onto his back, spreading his arms and legs wide. “Then take a good look.”
The temptation was irresistible. Though they had made love several times, it had been in the dark. She hadn’t been able to see her lover’s body, only to feel him. Now that he had given her permission, there was no way she could deny her fascination. She got to her knees, unconscious and unheeding of her own nudity, intent on exploring this new and wondrous territory.
She put both hands on his chest and circled his nipples with her thumbs, watching in delight as they hardened again. She looked up at him, eyes luminous with discovery. “You like that, too.”
He swallowed. He was breathing roughly, his deep chest expanding with the force of it. “Yeah. A lot.”
His heart almost stopped at the luminous smile of discovery she gave him.
She turned her attention back to him, leaning down and circling a nipple with her tongue, then gently sucking at it. He stifled a groan as a shudder racked through him. She moved her attention to the other nipple, giving it the same tender treatment while her hands slipped around his rib cage, molding the shape and feel of him, learning the textures of his skin.
Dane sucked in his breath, digging his fingers into the mattress as he tried to control himself. Oh, God, he wanted to touch her so much, he could barely stand it. He had never felt anything as excruciatingly gentle, as exquisitely painful, as her slow exploration of his body, and he had the feeling that it was going to get much worse.
She ran her hands up to the tufts of hair under his arms, enjoying the silkiness that seemed so incongruous on so tough a man. His skin, in those hidden, protected areas, was as sleek as her own.
The crisp mat of hair on his chest narrowed to a thin line that ran down the center of his belly, circled his tight navel, then flared again at his loins. She followed the line of hair with one finger, down, down, until her hand brushed his straining erection. She paused, then turned her hand and curled her fingers around him. He gave a shaky groan, and his legs shifted restlessly, then he was still again. Marlie lifted her other hand and held him between her palms, examining him with absorbed fascination. She was entranced by the contrasts, the coolness that contained intense heat, the soft skin lying over iron hardness. He was very thick, and pulsing with arousal. She thought of taking that thickness into her body, and grew excited; she could hear herself breathing, in soft, rapid pants. Her blood was singing through her veins and she felt too warm, her skin too tight.
The sheer masculinity of him was beautiful. She cupped his heavy testicles in her hands, very gently, and his powerful body arched. He shook from head to toe. “Lord have mercy,” he said in a strangled tone.
“The Lord?” she asked softly. “Or me?” The sense of her own feminine power over him was heady.
Her secret places were damp and swollen, throbbing with need. Sex, even last night with Dane, had always been something that had been done to her. She wanted, needed, to be in control this time of her own body, and his. She wanted to give pleasure as well as seek it. She wanted the warm sexual confidence of a woman who had no fears, no restraints. She was tired of boundaries.
With a sigh like a soft spring breeze she mounted him, straddling his hips and holding his shaft steady as she positioned it and slowly sank down. She was sore; she bit her lip at the discomfort of her tender flesh stretching to admit him. But there was also the wonder of feeling that warmth and hardness probing deeper inside her as she slowly took him, and lingered over the taking, inch by slow inch. The sensation was so exquisite that she lifted herself almost completely off him and began again. And again.
Dane’s fists knotted in the sheets, and sweat popped out on his forehead. She was only taking about half of him before sliding upward again, and he thought he was going to go howling mad for sure. He didn’t dare touch her, because if he did, he would lose control. This was her show, all the way. Her face was solemn, dreamy, absorbed as she explored the pleasure she could take from his body. She was concentrating on nothing except her physical sensations as she slid up and down on him, but he didn’t feel left out. Watching her learn about her own sensuality was as much a turn-on as anything in his life had been, and the way she was doing it was killing him with pleasure.
Marlie closed her eyes against the almost overwhelming surge of passion and pleasure. All that she had learned the night before was as nothing compared to this; now her body knew the sublime ecstasy awaiting, and enjoyed as well every inch of the path leading up to it. She fought against the need to rush to the finish. She wanted to savor every delicious explosion of sensation deep inside her as she lifted herself from him, feeling the drag of his sex on her acutely sensitive tissues, followed by that indescribable moment of deepening penetration as she took him again. She moaned aloud, sensing the approach of climax drawing inexorably nearer. Not yet, she thought dimly. She was enjoying this too much. There was no hurry.
