Erin Solomon Mysteries, Books 1 - 5

by Jen Blood

  He hadn’t moved his hand from mine. He traced the lines on my palm with a fingertip, as attentive as a fortune teller.

  “And your mom?”

  “Came and went. We’re not much for long visits.”

  More silence. Our fingers twined, his hands long and fine and masculine. When I looked up, I realized he was watching me—his eyes dark and sad, as though something heartbreaking was happening. I didn’t know what that something might be until I noticed the tan line on his ring finger.

  “You’re married,” I said.

  He pulled his hand back, staring at it like he expected the ring to magically reappear.

  “Not anymore,” he said. “Not for a while.”

  He leaned in before I could ask any follow-up questions. Unlike with Diggs, there were no remonstrations when our lips met. No hesitation. Jack’s hand moved to the back of my neck to pull me closer; the kiss deepened. He leaned back and pulled me with him until our bodies were flush. Outside, the storm was getting worse—I could hear tree limbs creaking as the rain fell in torrents against the double-pained windows. His hands were on my face, in my hair, moving over me with a desperation that matched my own. For the first time in weeks, my father and the Payson fire weren’t the first things on my mind.

  After a few minutes of heavy petting, during which my bra mysteriously came undone and Juarez’s jeans visibly tightened, I summoned enough self control to pull away.

  “Do you want to take this someplace else?”

  I held my breath, waiting for him to explain all the very valid reasons why sex right now wasn’t a good idea. Instead, he stood. Our eyes caught. If we were going to have that whole horrible Should We Or Shouldn’t We talk, now would be the time. He held out his hand.

  I took it.

  We went to his room—after the fight with Kat, my bedroom was the last place I wanted to be. Einstein must have sensed trouble afoot, because he made no move to follow us.

  I shut the bedroom door and we stood in the dark for a few seconds—not quite touching, not quite moving. I found the hem of his shirt and ran my hand along his bare stomach, reveling in his intake of air, the coiling of muscle beneath my fingertips.

  “We can go as slowly as you want,” he said.

  I had been chilled all day, but now my clothes felt too close, the air too warm, my skin hot enough to burn on contact. I pushed him backward until he was against the wall, and did my best to illustrate just how uninterested I was in going slow. I unbuttoned his shirt and already had my hands on the fly of his jeans while his lips were still nipping at my earlobe. He intercepted me just as my fingertips were inching past the waistband of his boxers.

  “Erin,” he said.

  I looked up. It was dark in the room, but I found his eyes and felt myself quiet suddenly. He ran a hand down my cheek.

  “It’s been a while,” he said, in the same tone a prospective lover might tell you he has VD or still lives with his mom. “I don’t want to rush this.”

  I nodded. When we kissed again, it was different—not languorous, necessarily, but the intensity was less frantic. I was hardly a blushing virgin, but I hadn’t been with anyone but Michael for a hell of a long time myself. The fact that Juarez might be in the same boat was unexpectedly comforting.

  When we were on the mattress, he pulled my shirt up over my head and tossed it in a pile in the middle of the room with the rest of our clothes. Then, he just sat there—studying me. My hair was a mess and my heart was beating too fast and it was only by some miracle of fate that I was wearing Victoria’s Secret instead of my sports bra and a pair of Diggs’ boxer shorts.

  “What?” I asked. I pulled the comforter up over my lap.

  “You’re beautiful, you know.”

  I rolled my eyes. “So are you.”

  He was, actually. He had the calves of a distance runner and the ass of a Roman god. His dark hair was rumpled, an errant lock across his forehead and a cowlick in the back. His stomach was flat and his boxers were tented. My blood felt like warm honey slipping through my veins as I dropped my hand to his ankle, tracing light patterns up his leg.

  His breath caught at the contact. “Can I tell you something that may come across as vaguely creepy?”

  “You really want to keep talking?”

  He grinned at me. “You don’t like talking?”

  I lay down, my body curled around him, but Juarez remained sitting. “Not as much as you, apparently,” I said.

  “I had a crush on you, the second summer I was here.”

  I kissed his ankle, in the spot where my hand had been a moment before. He tasted like salt and cedar—masculine and earthy, strong and sweet. His hand fell to my head, fingers twining in my hair while I continued my seduction.

  “That is creepy. The second summer you were here, I was only…”

  “Fifteen,” he said.

  I could feel the tension in his body coiling tighter when I kissed my way up his leg. I traded tongue for teeth behind his knee.

  “Christ,” he whispered. He shifted where he sat, but he didn’t stop talking.

  “And I was only seventeen, you forget—so not so creepy. Particularly considering the men you’re typically attracted to.”

  I paused. His hand remained in my hair, stroking me like some cherished pet. I realized that he was waiting for me to make the decision: stop, or continue.

  I nipped him again, harder this time. He lay back on the bed, but I made no move to go with him. I kissed my way up his inner thigh, my hand stroking higher up his leg.

  “What do you know about the men I’m typically attracted to?” I asked, when it became apparent he wasn’t going to explain himself.

  This time, he did pull me up. I let my hand brush against the front of his boxers and smiled when he closed his eyes at the contact, whispering curses I hadn’t heard him use before tonight. He turned onto his side before I could find a more comfortable position—preferably on top, and without that last pesky layer of clothes. We faced each other on the bed, eyes wide open.

  “Diggs is what, ten years older than you?”

  “Eight,” I said. I wasn’t crazy about where this was going. “And Diggs and I don’t date.”

  “Right,” he said. He didn’t roll his eyes, but it was implicit. “You said your ex-husband had been your professor, didn’t you?”

  “Your idea of pillow talk could use some work.”

  His hand traveled down my side, his long fingers tracing patterns on my stomach. It made me think of Michael suddenly—of what we’d had, and what we’d lost. I moved Juarez’s roaming digits to my ass, where my thoughts were considerably less sentimental.

  “So, your ex was…?” He studied me. I tensed. “…twenty—no, maybe seventeen, eighteen years older than you?”

  I backed away from him. He stopped me, his eyes holding me as surely as his hands.

  “You like powerful men,” he said. “Crave them, even. They’re in control or you are—and if you are, you’re not with them long.” He bit his lip, his forehead furrowed like he was working a complex math problem. If two trains leave Boston at the same time and one is traveling at sixty miles an hour and the other at forty, the wind is coming from the west and x is equal to 42.6, what makes Erin Solomon tick?

  “Am I wrong?” he asked.

  “I’ve never really thought about it,” I lied. My voice sounded colder than I’d intended.

  I started to sit up, but Juarez wouldn’t let me go. He pushed me onto my back and an instant later was on top of me, his body pinning me to the mattress. His eyes bore into mine, his hands loose at my wrists. A vision of the attack on the island flashed through my mind.

  “Get off me,” I said.

  He didn’t move. His eyes had taken on that darkness again, a hint of the sadness I’d seen earlier.

  “Is this the kind of power you like?” he asked, his breath hot in my ear. “Someone who takes what he wants, keeps things simple?”

  I tipped my head up, intending
to bite or head butt or…something. He kissed me, his tongue pressing past my lips without invitation. I wanted to be offended, repulsed. Terrified. Instead, my legs came up and wrapped around his thighs, my feet at the backs of his knees. He rolled so that I was on top again, and pushed the hair back from my forehead as he kissed me more slowly.

  “I don’t like simple,” he whispered.

  I had no answer for that.

  I was afraid he was about to start talking again, but instead he turned his attention to my shoulder, then lower. His teeth grazed a sweet spot on my collarbone while I tried to divest both of us of our underwear at the same time—not that successfully. Mine were tangled at my ankles and his had him bound at the knees, but neither of us seemed interested in parting long enough to finish disrobing.

  And then, the phone rang.

  “Shit,” I said. “One minute—I just need one more minute.” I made no effort to keep the desperation from my voice.

  Juarez managed a strained laugh. “Trust me, we’re gonna need more than one minute. I’m sorry.” He looked so sorry, in fact, that I thought he might cry. I thought I might join him.

  I rolled off his body and pulled my underpants back up, while he went to retrieve his phone. He pulled on his boxers and answered with a hushed, “Juarez here.”

  He straightened when he heard whoever was on the other end of the line, then went to the other room with an apologetic glance my way, gathering the rest of his clothes under his arm. I gave him what I considered a respectful amount of privacy—maybe forty-five seconds—before I followed him with the sheet wrapped around me.

  The storm hadn’t let up while Juarez and I had been getting to know each other in the other room. The lights flickered as a gust of wind rocked the house and rain battered the windows. Einstein got up from his spot by the fire, whimpering now that I’d chosen to rejoin him. Jack stood at the fireplace with his shirt off and his jeans unbuttoned, his hand running distractedly through his hair as he listened to the caller.

  “Listen to me,” he said. His voice was even, but there was no mistaking his anxiety. “You need to calm down. It doesn’t matter what happened—it doesn’t matter what you did. We can handle this.”

  I touched his side. His arm came around me with an ease I found disconcerting.

  “Matt?” I mouthed.

  He nodded. “Just tell me where you are and I’ll come get you.”

  Matt’s voice rose, loud enough for me to hear him shouting, though not clear enough to make out the words. Jack turned his back to me.

  “Nothing will happen—everybody’s safe. I’m safe, Matt. You don’t need to protect anyone anymore. You just need to tell me where you are.”

  The call went on like that for another ten minutes, Juarez alternately soothing and pleading, before he finally stopped talking mid-sentence and the call disconnected. For a few seconds, he didn’t say anything—just stood at the fireplace, still half-dressed.

  “Where is he?”

  “He wouldn’t say.” He ran a hand through his hair, his eyes wide and weary. “He didn’t sound good, though.”

  “Do you think he’s dangerous?”

  “To himself—absolutely. To others… I don’t know anymore. Maybe.” He took a step back. I handed him his jacket, already aware of what came next.

  “You should go,” I said. “I can give Finnegan a call over at the sheriff’s office if you want, let him know you talked to Matt. That you’re still looking for him. But if you have any idea where he might be…”

  He nodded. I expected distance from him—that inevitable, mumbled apology and the awkward after-kiss before we parted ways. Instead, we walked to the doorway of Diggs’ house with the rain pouring down, me still clad in only a sheet, Juarez exhausted and disheveled and surprisingly sweet, by my side.

  “I’ll call you as soon as I find out anything,” he said.

  He kissed me again. Whispered ‘thank you’ in my ear—presumably for all the sex we hadn’t had—and left. Einstein and I remained in the doorway, watching his taillights disappear into the night.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  It was three a.m. when Juarez left, and I couldn’t sleep. I considered calling Diggs but refrained, afraid he might be trying to get some rest himself. I flipped the light switch in my bedroom. The bed was neatly made, everything on my nightstand at perfect right angles. I went over the events of the past forty-eight hours, lingering on the things I’d discovered at Noel Hammond’s house and then out on the island.

  It may not have been my father who’d been living in his old cabin, but someone had clearly been there recently. The same someone who had attacked me and killed Hammond? If it was, then it stood to reason that Hammond had figured out who that someone was—which was why he was dead. The fact that I was still clueless about who the bad guys were in this unfolding drama had presumably saved me up to this point.

  For the first time since Hammond’s death, I remembered the notes and clippings I’d taken from his house. I went to the closet and felt blindly along the top shelf for the shoebox I’d hidden Hammond’s research in.

  It wasn’t there.

  I’d been rushed and in a panic when I’d returned from the island with Juarez the night of the fire. Despite that, I’d still taken the time to hide Hammond’s research, aware of how critical what I might find in those faded notes might be. Shoe box, top shelf. There was no question in my mind.

  I did a perfunctory search of the rest of the bedroom anyway, though I knew I wouldn’t find what I was looking for. When that was done, I retrieved my cell phone from Juarez’s bedroom floor. Dawn was still hours away—anyone in their right mind would be sound asleep at this hour—including the woman who, I was sure, had taken the shoebox filled with Hammond’s research with her when she high-tailed it out of Littlehope just a few hours before.

  Frankly, I wasn’t at all concerned about interrupting my mother’s beauty sleep.

  Kat’s cell phone went straight to voicemail. I tried her house phone, and got the same result after six rings. An answering service picked up when I called her office. I left messages of varying degrees of urgency at each number. I considered getting in the car and driving to Portland. I’d track her down, give her holy hell for going through my room, and force her to give me back my stuff. And then, I’d demand to know why the hell she’d taken it in the first place.

  Portland was two hours away, though. There was a typhoon raging outside, and I didn’t want to go anywhere until I’d heard back from Juarez. There wasn’t a lot I could do for him, I knew, but I still wanted to at least be there to find out how things with Matt resolved themselves.

  Matt. I thought again of the most plausible scenario I’d come up with so far, given everything I knew about the Paysons now: Matt and Ashmont, about to kidnap Rebecca and take her away from the island. When Isaac found out, he… what? Decided to make a clean break from the church by killing everyone in the congregation, so he could be with Rebecca? That made no sense.

  But then, there wasn’t a whole lot about this that did make sense. Who was the man who chased Dad and me on the island that day?

  What was the secret Rebecca had been holding over my father’s head? And why was her rosary in Isaac Payson’s bedroom twenty-two years after the fire that had killed them both? I thought again of everything I’d learned about Rebecca and Zion Ashmont, including Rebecca’s apparent compulsion to sleep with every man of the cloth who crossed her path. Their remains had never been found.

  Joe Ashmont had known they were out there; Reverend Diggins had known they were out there. Edie Woolrich had told me she’d gone out to the island to tend to Rebecca and Zion over the years, presumably providing medical care of some kind. Which meant they must have had some kind of medical documentation, right?

  If it was general knowledge that they were out there, and medical records had been available, why hadn’t anyone been able to identify their bodies with the rest of the victims in the Payson fire?

&nb
sp; I thought about Zion Ashmont for a minute.

  Rebecca had been Native American, Edie had said. Dark-skinned. Zion was born in ’77.

  “I was only seventeen—two years older than you…” Juarez had said.

  Jack Juarez, a teenager with no memories of his childhood, whose life changed abruptly when a stranger from Maine showed up and became his mentor. His friend. Uncle Matt.

  I went to Juarez’s room with my heart hammering so hard my teeth rattled. The cardboard boxes I’d noticed the day before were still there, pushed up against the wall and sealed with duct tape. I used my fingernails to open them, too impatient to look for a knife. Someone else might have felt guilty, may have had some stab of conscience at such a blatant violation of personal space. I had none.

  The first box was filled with books, DVDs, and a few CDs that made me wince. I expected they were things Matt had been hanging onto for Juarez for a while. Einstein eyed me accusingly from Juarez’s bed, where he’d hunkered down among blankets still tangled from Jack’s and my thwarted tryst. I ignored him and went for the second box.

  A handmade afghan was on top, with a couple of cracked knickknacks beneath—salt and pepper shaker policemen that I was sure must have belonged to Matt; a crudely carved dolphin with JJ and the year—1993—on the tail. There was a small stack of letters that I looked at but didn’t read, all of them addressed to Matt. Jack’s name and a Miami address were in the upper left corner. I was just starting to feel guilty for the breach of trust when I caught a glimpse of what looked like a feather, half-hidden in an old tapestry I hadn’t bothered to take out.

  I moved the fabric aside.

  Everything stopped.

  One feather became several, stitched together to form one of two delicate wings. Placed carefully in the tapestry to keep it safe, a Payson angel stared up at me with piercing, china-blue eyes.

  ◊◊◊◊◊

  The rain was still falling and the wind was still blowing when I left the house that morning. Einstein stayed out just long enough to do his thing before he leapt into the car, settling in the backseat without complaint. It was six a.m. Kat had probably been asleep when I’d called before, but I had no doubt she’d be up now. I tried every contact I had for her, yet again. Yet again, I had no luck.