Home Before Midnight

by Virginia Kantra

  “Why wait until tomorrow?”

  “The records office doesn’t open until Monday morning at eight o’clock.”

  “Will they let you see the records?”

  “I’m still a cop,” Steve said evenly. “Clegg hasn’t taken my shield.”

  Yet.

  The unspoken word dropped between them like a stone.

  “I can’t do this,” she said in panic. “This could cost you your job. I don’t want to be responsible for screwing up your life.”

  “You’re not responsible for my choices.” His eyes were steady on hers. “Someone I trust told me that.”

  Emotion tightened her chest. She could barely breathe. “Chief Clegg ordered you not to get involved.”

  Steve advanced on her. “Too late. I’m already involved. With you.”

  “Then your timing sucks.”

  “Bailey.” Just the sound of her name in his deep drawl brought her heart to her throat. “Teresa tried to teach me there is no good time or bad time for love. All we have is the time we’re given. I wasn’t ready to learn that then. But now . . . I don’t want to lose this. I don’t want to lose you.”

  “Oh,” she cried, torn between hope and despair, “how can I think when you talk to me like that?”

  Leaning over her chair, he drew her to her feet. “Maybe I don’t want you to think. Maybe we both think too much.”

  He pressed a kiss to the ridge of her brow, to the corner of her eye, to the tip of her nose. He flattened her hand against his chest. Beneath the soft white cotton, she could see the shadow of his chest hair. His heart thudded under her palm, steady and strong.

  “Let’s just feel for a while.”

  She could feel him, hot and hard against her. Desire uncurled in her belly. He didn’t mean . . . He didn’t want . . . Now?

  “You’re out of your mind,” she said breathlessly, as his mouth cruised the line of her jaw.

  “Mmm.” He nuzzled beneath her ear, and she sagged against him. “Go crazy with me, sugar.”

  She was crazy for him. She had fallen hopelessly for this tough, terse, intense cop, committed to his daughter and a dozen years her senior.

  Maybe she was out of her mind, too. Because this didn’t feel crazy. It felt . . . right. Better than anything had in a long time.

  He brushed his lips over hers, tempting, teasing. She opened to him on a sigh. He kissed her again, slower, deeper, longer. Her fingers slid between the buttons of his shirt. His hot skin, his rough hair, filled her with delight. His big hands skated over her, stroking her back, rubbing her shoulders, kneading her behind. She’d never imagined she was the type of woman who could be appreciated for her body, but under his hands she felt beautiful. She was beautiful.

  He molded her breasts while he lavished her with more slow, wet, devastating kisses. She floated on a current of sensation, tugged along by his expert touch. He nudged his thigh between both of hers, and she gasped.

  She had wanted him before, but this was different. Everything was different now. She eased his buttons from their holes. He slipped her shirt straps down her shoulders. They uncovered one another, standing face-to-face with the last light of day edging the motel curtains. Her heart pounded in her chest. His breath rasped in her ears.

  The air was humid, the room lost in shadow. It was like making love underground or under water. Each kiss spun them down another level. Each touch took them deeper, like water falling, flowing, seeking. They sank down onto the bed. He was open to her, unguarded, his heart and his eyes naked. She was open to him, languid, lifting, her body and her soul bare.

  The room swam. Her heart filled to overflowing.

  “Inside me,” she whispered, holding him. Loving him.

  “Let me . . .” He rolled away from her, breaking the connection.

  She clutched at him. “Stay.”

  “I’ll be back,” he promised hoarsely.

  She watched, wanting him so much, loving him so much, as he sheathed himself with a condom, resenting even that thinnest barrier that kept him from her.

  She ran her hands over his broad, heavy shoulders, down his smooth back, wanting him with her, needing him inside her, thick and hard inside her, filling her with his passion and his strength.

  “Now.”

  “Yes. Oh, God, Bailey.”

  He plunged to her and into her. She shuddered and he groaned. They met and moved together. His hands sought hers on either side of the pillow. Their fingers laced and linked. Their eyes caught and held.

  “With me,” he said through his teeth.

  “Yes.” Always.

  Joined, connected, they tumbled together into the deep, into the dark, into the pulse beat at the heart of the world.

  “I don’t want to move,” Bailey said.

  She was sunk, mired with this man in this bed at this moment, their bodies plastered together, every nerve tingling and every muscle limp with satisfaction. She could stay this way forever.

  He grunted. “I can’t move. So that makes us even.”

  Even. Equal. Matched.

  She snuggled closer. Except, of course, they couldn’t stay like this forever. He had to get back to his daughter. To work. To his life. And she had to get back to . . .

  There wasn’t anything she was eager to go back to. She wanted to look forward. Only now, when she envisioned her future, she saw Steve. Steve and Gabrielle. Bailey smiled. Steve and Gabrielle and Stokesville, which was a nice town, really, unless you didn’t particularly want to stay the person you had been in high school for the rest of your life.

  Her smile faded.

  Steve threaded his fingers through her hair, smoothing it behind one ear. “You’re thinking again.”

  “I know. Bad habit.”

  “I like it,” he said, surprising her. “What are you thinking about?”

  She opened her mouth and then closed it again. How could she tell him she was worrying about marrying him and spending the next fifty or so years in Stokesville when he hadn’t even said the L word?

  But she knew that was an excuse. After what they had shared, he didn’t have to tell her. He cared for her. She felt it, in the marrow of her bones, in every cell and fiber.

  She was simply afraid.

  At her continued silence, his eyebrows raised. “It wasn’t a trick question.”

  She flushed. “I was just thinking you probably need to get home soon. Gabrielle will be expecting you. You don’t want to be late.”

  “Yeah. She’s already sulking because I didn’t bring her today. She wants to see you when all this is over.”

  “That’s nice, because I want to see her,” she said honestly. And then, even though she had told herself she didn’t need the words, she heard herself ask, “What about you? Do you want to see me, too?”

  His gaze narrowed on her face.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said softly. “I want.”

  She felt the muscles of her womb contract.

  So he was late getting out the door after all.

  “I’ll call you,” he said, as he slung on his shoulder holster and adjusted his jacket.

  That awoke some old, bad memories. Bailey briefly felt like teenage Tanya getting the brush-off from her high school crush. But Bailey wasn’t Tanya. And Steve wasn’t like any other man she’d known. His job would always interrupt the daily rhythm of their lives, would always put him at risk. If they were going to be together, she had to get better at good-bye.

  “Are you going to the prison in the morning?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “Well, good luck with that.”

  He frowned. “I don’t like leaving you alone.”

  “Don’t worry. I told you, I don’t intend to be the dumb dead girl.”

  He smiled reluctantly. “Glad to hear it. This guy is escalating. He’s getting closer to his victims and he’s apparently convinced he won’t be caught. He worked on Billy Ray to kill Tanya, and he may have arranged for Billy Ray’s death in prison. But he pull
ed the trigger on Ellis himself. He waltzed into your parents’ house in broad daylight and attacked your father. You be careful.”

  “I will,” she said, and thought about adding, I love you. But after all his warnings it sounded too final, as if she didn’t believe she would see him again.

  As if they wouldn’t have another chance to say it.

  And maybe a small part of her still wished he would say it first.

  “You be careful, too,” she said.

  This time he didn’t ask her why.

  ON Monday morning at eight o’clock, the prison reminded Steve of the ant hills that erupted in his front yard every summer. Uniformed guards patrolled like worker ants, crossing the yard, marching purposefully through the corridors, while hordes teemed out of sight.

  Leaning against the front counter of the main building, Steve missed the familiar weight of his gun. He had turned it in at the main gate. The lockbox key rested in his pocket.

  He showed his shield to the female deputy on the other side of the glass. “Steve Burke, Stokesville PD. I’d like to see William Ray Dawler’s visitor list for the past month.”

  The young woman examined his ID and then his face. She was pretty in a severe kind of way: no dangling earrings or long hair for an inmate to grab hold of.

  “You’ll have to ask the warden.” She gave him another once-over. “I could place the call for you if you’d like.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” he drawled.

  The warden was genial and incurious. “Go talk to the ladies in Records. They’ll take care of you.”

  The ladies in Records, bless their hearts, tried. But when they brought Steve the list of Billy Ray’s visitors, he saw at once the only person to visit in the past thirty days was Paul Ellis.

  Another dead end. Frustration balled in his gut.

  He had been so sure Paul’s killer would have attempted to reach Billy Ray. But then why wasn’t he on the visitor list? All friends and family members at the prison needed an appointment. Only officers of the court, law enforcement personnel and attorneys, could come and go as they pleased.

  Only officers of the court . . .

  The hair rose on the back of Steve’s neck. He spoke through the glass. “Could I see the professional log, too, please?”

  Unlike the visitor lists for each individual inmate, the professional log consisted of a daily log sheet at the front counter where all officers of the court who visited the prison were required to sign in.

  “Those are filed separately,” the female deputy said.

  “Is that a problem?”

  “Not really.” She smiled at him through the glass. “Wait here.”

  He waited, his impatience firmly in check.

  Eventually the deputy returned with a stack of scrawled on sheets which she slid to him under the pass-through.

  Steve raised his eyebrows at the size of the stack. “I might be a while.”

  “Take your time. Nobody here is going anywhere.” She smiled at her little joke.

  “Right. Thanks.”

  Each day’s log recorded visitor’s name, inmate’s name, time in, time out, and the nature of the visitor’s business. One day, one sheet, one line at a time, Steve studied the scribbled columns, searching for Billy Ray’s name.

  He didn’t find it.

  Occasionally he recognized another name: a cop pursuing a lead in an investigation, an attorney visiting a client. Macon Reynolds was there.

  Steve frowned. What was an estate lawyer doing at the prison?

  He studied the spidery signature—Macon Reynolds III—a prickling at the back of his neck and in the tips of his fingers. Last Tuesday afternoon, two days after the murder of Helen Ellis, her lawyer had paid a prison visit to a Clyde Miller.

  He nudged the log sheet toward the window, tapping a finger on the relevant entry. “You know this guy?”

  The deputy squinted through the glass. “Miller? Sure. He was just transferred to isolation.”

  Apprehension gripped Steve. “Why?”

  “He killed that other inmate.”

  “Which other inmate?” he asked urgently.

  The pretty deputy’s face creased in confusion. “Why, the one you were asking about. Billy Ray Dawler.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  MACON pulled his Lexus SUV into his reserved space in front of the law office at nine-thirty. He had a ten o’clock appointment with that little bitch Regan Poole, after which she would undoubtedly expect him to take her to lunch.

  He might. He might not.

  Her usefulness to him was over. The girl just proved Macon’s general rule that once you stuck your dick in a woman, she became less interesting and more demanding. She was too conscious of what he owed her, too critical in bed. Hell, if he wanted that kind of attitude, he could fuck his wife.

  He swung out onto the sidewalk—God, it was hot—pausing to admire the picture of Leann Edwards strolling up the street, a pharmacy bag in her hand. Two kids and twenty years hadn’t robbed the bounce from her tight little cheerleader’s body. He rather regretted missing his chance with her in high school. Back then, of course, good girls hadn’t interested him. And by the time he finished law school, Leann was already married to that stick, Bryce.

  He wouldn’t miss his chance now.

  He lengthened his steps to intercept her. “Leann. This is a pleasant surprise. What brings you into town?”

  She waggled the bag at him. “I had to pick up a prescription for Mama. She’s that upset about what happened to Daddy.”

  He arranged his face into a suitably grave expression. “I heard. How is your father?”

  “Doctor says he’ll be fine.”

  “That’s good. You tell them I missed them in church yesterday. Your sister, too,” he added casually. “How’s she holding up?”

  Leann rolled her eyes. “You know Bailey. She’s making a big fuss over nothing.”

  Macon didn’t know Bailey, but she hadn’t struck him as the fussy type. She seemed quiet. Smart. Observant. All of which made her more dangerous to him.

  “I guess that’s natural,” he said. “It can’t be easy for her, being in that house all alone after your father was attacked like that.”

  “She’s not staying in the house. She checked herself into a hotel.”

  Macon widened his eyes. “Really? Well, the Do Drop’s nice.”

  “She’s not at the Do Drop. She’s at one of those nasty places out by the highway.”

  His pulse picked up. “Some of them aren’t so bad. Which one?”

  “Pineview? Pinecrest? I went to see her this morning, and all I can say is I’m glad I’m not staying there. Of course, it didn’t help any that she has papers all over the room.”

  “Papers?” Macon asked carefully.

  “Just something she’s working on. The Lord knows what she’s going to do with herself now that . . . you know, she doesn’t have a job. She asked me to bring her my old yearbooks, of all things.”

  “Yearbooks.” He could barely breathe. His blood drummed in his ears.

  “All four of them. I thought it was funny, too.”

  Not funny. And now Leann would remember this conversation, would remember she told him about the hotel and the yearbook . . . Shit.

  “Maybe she was bored,” he suggested. “Staying by herself.”

  “She could have stayed with us. Although Mama’s in the guest bedroom now, and I don’t know what Bryce would have said, having my whole family staying with us as if they didn’t have a perfectly good house not ten miles away.”

  He had to think. He had to act. Quickly.

  “I’m sure Bryce would go along with whatever you wanted, Leann. He’s a lucky man.”

  She dimpled and didn’t deny it. “Aren’t you sweet to say so.”

  “I always thought you were the prettiest girl in high school.”

  “You did not. You never once looked my way. You thought I was just some skinny ass little Goody Two-Shoes.”

  M
acon heard the hint of pique and smiled. He could use that. He could use her.

  “Oh, I looked,” he assured her. “But you were one of the good girls, and back then, well . . .” He smiled disarmingly. “I was always such a bad boy.”

  She laughed.