Hot As Sin

by Debra Dixon

  “So, what happened to the window?” the blonde asked as they sat down.

  A half hour later Emily and Gabe had eaten most of the casserole for breakfast. Marsha Jean had sided enthusiastically with Gabe on just about every issue of how Emily Quinn was going to be made over into someone new. The waitress swore it would be easy to fool those pesky reporters on the trail of celebrity romance. Despite Emily’s protest that nothing was really settled, the woman was on the phone to her baby-sitter to arrange for an extra few hours.

  When she hung up, Marsha Jean gathered up her coat and keys. “Listen, Gabe, Sunday school is about to start. I gotta go raid the church’s garage sale closet for some clothes while the doors are unlocked, but I’ll be back in half an hour to pick up Emily. I should have everything else we need at home.”

  “She’ll be ready,” Gabe answered without consulting Emily.

  Forcing herself to hold her tongue until the waitress was down the steps, Emily gathered up the dishes and took them to the kitchen. She felt like a spectator in her own life. All the decisions were being made by people she barely knew. Of course, that wasn’t a whole lot different from how her life as a skater had been. She’d been expected to show up, wear the clothes they gave her, do as she was told, and keep her mouth shut. Gabe expected her to do the same. He expected her to give him control, and that made her angry.

  She reopened the argument the moment she heard the stairwell door close. Flinging the dish towel back to the cabinet, she said, “Now that Marsha Jean is gone, maybe I can squeeze a word in! Gabe, I don’t think you’ve given this makeover enough thought. The nun’s habit was fine. It got me here in one piece. You know it works. Why change now? Marsha Jean didn’t recognize me in it!”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “Not while I was wearing it!”

  “Emma, we’ve been through this. You aren’t listening. We do not want you to attract attention. In this town you will get more attention as a nun than as my mousy little cousin from Indiana.” He got up and went to his closet. “We don’t get too many nuns around here. Trust me.”

  “Trust you? Ha! That’s what the government said, and look where that got me!”

  “Well, you’re not trusting the government anymore,” he told her as he pulled clothes off hangers. “You’re trusting me.”

  “Only because I’m desperate.”

  “Thank you. That’s my point exactly about the makeover. You don’t have a choice.”

  “I don’t think a change of disguise is necessary yet.” Emma knew her objection was repetitive and weak even as she made it. Despite the urgency, she wasn’t sure she was ready to give up her old self and plunge into the new.

  Gabe sighed. “Look, darlin’, I know you and that habit have been through the war together, and it’s your security blanket, but this makeover is going to have to happen sometime. You can’t skulk around up here forever.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better if I just stayed out of sight rather than risk being recognized?”

  “No. It’s better if you try out your new look here, where there’s less chance of your being recognized. Besides, I’ve got to take care of some business. It’ll be easier if you can go with me. After what you told me this morning, I don’t like the idea of leaving you alone.”

  “Go with you where?”

  “Cemeteries, for a start.”

  “Not much chance of being recognized there,” she pointed out in case he missed the obvious. “Everyone’s dead!”

  “You’ve made my point again.” Gabe smiled. “I need to find the name of someone deceased who would have been about your age but died young. Then I’ll need to check the social security records to make sure they were never issued a card.”

  “That won’t take long. I can stay here. And you do all the social security stuff by computer from here. I thought you could just hack in or something.”

  “Look, the cemetery isn’t the only problem. We still have to send off for the duplicate birth certificate, which could take a week even if we rush it, and we don’t want to do that. Calls too much attention to us.” He rummaged through some drawers and pulled out what looked suspiciously like black briefs. “I can’t have a nun hanging around the bar for the amount of time it takes to do all this.”

  Gabe walked into the bathroom. “I’m taking a shower,” he announced. “Stop worrying. Marsha Jean used to be a shampoo girl. I’m sure she’ll do a great job. Besides, the best place to hide is in plain sight,” he said before shutting the door.

  “In plain sight,” Emily murmured to the closed door. “Well, you’re not the target, Mr. Gabriel. Or the guinea pig.”

  But he was a target now. As much of a target as she was.

  They were sitting ducks waiting for the opening day of hunting season. Only no one would tell them when that day was coming.

  The Rock Falls police station was an old brick building dressed up with a new coat of white paint and fancy gold lettering on the plate glass door. The station didn’t do a booming business any day of the week, but Sundays were especially slow. At least that’s what Gabe decided as he strode through the front door. The dispatcher was involved in an obviously personal call, but Officer Derick Willis was giving the city value for their tax dollars. He always did.

  A scraggly mustache and sideburns that would have made Elvis proud did their best to cover up Willis’s baby face, but he couldn’t do much about his small, wiry build or his age. He was young, maybe early twenties, and new to the force. But what he lacked in impressive physical stature and experience he made up for in determination and shrewdness. Gabe imagined Willis just might be police chief one day if he wasn’t lured away by a bigger city. All the more reason to be careful, he cautioned himself.

  Willis stood the moment he spotted Gabe, and offered his hand. Gabe doubted the boy’s gun had ever cleared leather in the line of duty, or that it ever would. But he suspected Willis kept himself ready all the same, that an examination of his targets at the range would show tightly grouped shots. The boy took his duty seriously, too seriously. Last month he had actually given someone a jaywalking ticket.

  Ordinarily, a guy like Willis would have set Gabe’s teeth on edge. But he was also the first one to open his wallet when a family was in trouble. He did odd jobs for the seventy-year-old widow who lived next door to the station and had an 8 GALLON DONOR sticker from the Darrington blood bank on his car.

  “Hey, Gabriel. What can I do you for?”

  Gabe shook his hand. “Someone threw a rock through my bar window last night.”

  With a what-are-things-coming-to kind of sigh, Willis pointed to a chair beside his desk. Then he tsktsked and said, “Better file a report on that. You’re going to need one anyway for your insurance in case they come back and do more damage. Never hurts to get your ducks in a row.”

  For the next ten minutes Willis asked a number of questions and hunted-and-pecked his way through an incident report. When he finished, he snatched it out of the typewriter and slapped it on the desk with a pen. “You look that over and sign it. I’ll get us some coffee. Black, right?”

  Gabe nodded and smiled when the officer turned away. Coffee equaled a bribe for staying awhile longer, for shooting the breeze and relieving the boredom. Choking down a bad cup of coffee was a small price to pay for information.

  Willis liked to talk about the job and the latest in law enforcement toys. But Rock Falls was a small, peaceful town without much in the way of real crime beyond petty theft and the occasional bar fight. Most of the other cops were happy with the low crime rate and carried old-fashioned six-shot revolvers. Willis saw Gabe as an oasis in a desert of unbelievers. Gabe liked toys, guns, and ammo.

  When Willis came back, Gabe accepted the coffee and let him drone on for a while before casually saying, “You know, hearing you talk makes me miss the action. Makes me miss the rush of getting orders.”

  Willis’s eyes widened in surprise. “Didn’t think you missed anything. Thought you said you were
glad to be out.”

  “Oh, I am. But I miss the rush. You know the one I’m talking about, don’t you? The charge you get when you know something might be going down for your team. You swallow your fear and grab your gear.”

  Leaning back in his chair, Willis dangled his empty mug from his index finger and nodded sagely. “Oh, yeah. Yeah. I know just what you mean. A rush like that puts the fear of God in you and starts the heart pump.”

  “Anything juicy lately?” Gabe asked, studying the officer’s reaction without appearing to care. “Any dangerous fugitives we citizens should be looking out for? Any mad killers on the loose?”

  “Nah. No such luck. Nothing that’d even make a good story for one of those tabloid ‘news’ shows,” Willis scoffed.

  “Can’t be that dull around here,” Gabe insisted. “Those people can fabricate a story out of just about anything.”

  “They couldn’t from the stuff I’m getting lately. A couple of prisoners escaped from county during transport to their robbery hearing, but that’s about it in the fugitive department. Unless you count our regular hit parade.” He pointed to the wall behind him. Posters of law enforcement’s most wanted were thumbtacked to the wall.

  “Doubt you’ll see any of those gentlemen in Rock Falls.” Gabe put his cup down, laying the groundwork for his departure.

  “Don’t I know it. I got a buddy—a county badge down in northern California—he just hit pay dirt.”

  Gabe forgot about leaving, glued to the chair by the way Willis looked over at the dispatcher to make sure he was still on the phone. “How’s that?”

  “This is not for public circulation, but my buddy just had to drop a dime to rub it in.” Willis gave him a shrug and a sore-loser smile. “He’s the one that found the abandoned car. Seems the feds have misplaced a mighty important person. A smooth professional by the name of Joseph Bookman. Just disappeared during a routine prisoner transfer yesterday. The deputy marshal disappeared with him. Every badge in three counties is making like a bloodhound on this one. And coming up with zip so far.”

  Carefully schooling his features to shield his reaction from Willis, Gabe realized that Willis didn’t know the half of it. Gabe bit back a curse. The situation just kept getting worse. Any lingering doubts he had about Emma’s story evaporated. Given what he knew, he had to wonder if the missing marshal was dead-never-to-be-found or if the son of a bitch was the same one who’d come after Emma, the one who was working both sides of the fence. That was a question he couldn’t ask and Willis couldn’t possibly answer.

  “We don’t take it well when one of our own goes down or missing,” Gabe said, including himself in the universal fraternity of men who served their country with a gun.

  “No, we don’t.” Willis leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers to make a rest for his head. “But there’s not much chance of that around here. We’re not looking for people with guns; we’re looking for car parts. We got a tip there’s a chop shop operating in Arlington, so you watch that truck of yours.”

  “Will do.” With his mission accomplished, Gabe got up to leave. “Thanks for the warning.”

  “Anytime,” Willis said, coming around the desk to clap him on the back and walk him to the door. “Consider it a professional courtesy. You watch your back.”

  “Always do.” Another old habit that died hard.

  Once outside in the cold, Gabe climbed into his truck, gathering his coat and his thoughts around him. No news would have been good news, and any news was bad news. This was bad. He hadn’t expected Bookman to be on the loose.

  At least the marshals hadn’t focused any serious attention on Washington as an escape route for their star witness. Willis would have spilled that too. He didn’t, so Emma must have done a decent job of covering her tracks.

  Didn’t matter though, she was an amateur. A decent job wasn’t perfect. If they wanted her bad enough, they would eventually find her.

  Gabe started the truck and let it idle for a minute as he reminded himself that in this case the good guys and the bad guys were on the same team. If the good guys didn’t know where Emma had run yet, then maybe the bad guys didn’t either. He frowned as he realized what a self-serving piece of logic he’d concocted to make himself feel better.

  Only a wet-behind-the-ears ensign would buy that, Gabriel. And to make matters worse, you’ve got that feeling again, like somebody’s breathing down your neck.

  He knew better than to ignore the sixth sense that sent him to the police department in the first place. Gabe was playing a deadly game of chicken with very little to go on. How long was too long to wait to hear from Patrick before he moved Emma? He wrestled with that question the rest of the day, because somewhere out there, the opponent was on the move.

  And maybe there were two of them now.

  SEVEN

  Emily stared out the window of Marsha Jean’s double wide trailer at the split rail fence that framed a tiny yard. In one corner two bicycles leaned against the rails. Snow drifted almost to the wheel hubs and piled high on the seats like an extra-thick layer of padding or an avalanche waiting to happen. The well-used sled leaning next to the gate should have made her smile, should have made her remember the carefree childhood joy of racing down a hill.

  But she couldn’t call up those memories. All she could remember was one particularly joyless ride. A tree had somehow jumped into her path. She remembered the breathless excitement vanishing suddenly. In its place came a split second of agonizingly real terror. But that second seemed to go on forever before she finally crashed.

  Those long-ago emotions were so clear, because that’s how she felt now. Emily hugged herself and tried to shake the nagging fear that colored everything she saw. But she couldn’t do that either.

  Beyond the fence was rugged country, hills and trees dusted with white, a road that scarcely deserved the name. It should have been a beautiful scene of peace, but not to Emily. To her the landscape felt unnaturally quiet, almost threatening, because she couldn’t forget that a savage reality hid behind the serene beauty.

  Gabe’s protection was like the landscape. Reality hid behind the pretend safety, waiting for her to let down her guard, waiting for her to make a mistake. Mistakes would be so easy to make right now; she was tired. Since Idaho she’d jumped at every sound, every silence, every shadow, every heartbeat. Every night.

  Surrounded by the warm chaos of Marsha Jean’s home, the contrast between her life and the waitress’s became a hot knife that sliced and burned its way through the lies she fed herself, peeling away the last of her illusions. She was never going to have peace. Her future wouldn’t be any more “normal” than her past.

  For twenty years ice skating had run her life. Now survival was going to take over the job of taskmaster, forcing her to run and keep running. Forcing her to move when anyone got too close. Emily actually envied the waitress her trailer, her two kids, and the pile of dirty dishes in the sink. At least it was normal. At least it was a home.

  “My Eddie used to stand there for hours,” Marsha Jean said, breaking into her thoughts.

  Emily pulled herself away from the view. “It’s gorgeous.”

  “That’s why we bought the place. Eddie got sick before we could build a house. And when he was gone—” For the first time since she’d met her, Marsha Jean lost some of her brassy confidence. She shrugged. “I didn’t have the heart to build our house. It wouldn’t have seemed right. Now it’s just me and the two kids, but that view keeps me going. We don’t have anything like that down south. Not even close!”

  The snap was back in her voice on that last sentence, obviously she didn’t let much keep her down. Emily asked the obvious question, “What is it that you do have in the South?”

  “Deer season.”

  Emily laughed and came away from the window. “Deer season?”

  “Oh, yeah. Deer season and pick-’em-up trucks with gun racks. The two coming-of-age rituals—cruising for girls and gunning for deer.�
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  “Oh, come on. It’s not that bad.”

  “Oh, but it is. Our menfolk pride themselves on a Zenlike dedication to putting deer meat in the freezer and on the table.” Marsha Jean picked up a pair of orange-handled scissors. “We have getting ready for deer season, bow season, doe season, regular season, rehashing the season, and talking about next season.”

  “Then I guess they must be pretty good at it.”

  Waggling her finger, Marsha Jean said, “I believe they could get a lesson or two from you. I don’t think any of them can bag a buck as fast as you. My hat’s off. You managed to make old Gabe fall in love, and I had given up on him. The man’s a hard case. Hopeless. Or was.”

  Emily choked back a laugh. She hadn’t “bagged” anyone, certainly not Gabe. “Why’d you think Gabe was hopeless?”

  “That man can freeze a woman cold in her tracks with one of those get-out-of-my-life stares of his, and he hasn’t had a date since he came to town, despite my best efforts to fix him up. Of course, I didn’t know he was savin’ himself for you.” Marsha Jean smiled mischievously. “Judging from what I saw this morning, it was worth savin’ up.”

  Startled, Emily realized that’s exactly what kissing Gabe felt like—like she’d been saving up all her life. Then she realized that she didn’t want to feel that way about any man, not now. Especially not Gabe. She didn’t want any kind of bond with him beyond gratitude. She didn’t want to become attached to anyone and have circumstances rip them away from her. Only fools expected happy endings.

  “Can’t put it off any longer, girlfriend.” Marsha Jean pulled out a dining room chair and made snipping motions in the air with her scissors. “While I whack off that gorgeous head of hair, you can tell me how you and Gabe met. This story has to be good. Did he save you from terrorists or something?”

  “Or something,” Emily said softly as she sat down, but before she could tell sweet Marsha Jean a pack of lies, the fear inside turned to terror.

  The unmistakable crack of a rifle forced a scream from her throat.