by Nora Roberts
“He’d have been just a boy. This Ethan. If that happened, if he saw that happen . . .”
His face went hard, went cold. “That’s what his lawyer will say. The poor, abused boy, damaged, broken by an alcoholic father and a passive mother. Sure, he killed all those people, but he’s not responsible. Screw that.”
“Learned behavior isn’t just for animals. I’m not arguing the point, Coop. In my head, killing is a clear choice. But everything you’re telling me says he was predisposed, then he made choices that brought him his life’s work. If all this is true, a lot of people are dead, and those who loved them grieving because of those choices. I don’t feel sorry for him.”
“Good,” he said shortly. “Don’t.”
“I don’t feel sorry for him,” she repeated, “but I think I understand him better. Do you think he stalked the others, taunted them the way he is me?”
“Barrett looked like a killing of opportunity, of impulse. Molly Pickens, by her boss’s account, went off with him of her own volition. But Carolyn Roderick? I think there was some stalking, some taunting there. I’m going to say I think it depends on how well he knows his quarry. And how invested he is.”
“If Jim Tyler’s dead, at his hand, that would be another impulse killing.”
“Or a form of release. None of the women whose bodies were discovered had been raped. No sign of sexual assault, no torture or mutilation. It’s the kill that gets him off.”
“I can’t quite see that as the glass is half full. Anyway, what he’s been doing has put me, put everyone on alert. It’s made it close to impossible for him to get to me, or to mine. So . . .” She read Coop’s face perfectly. “Which makes it—me—more of a challenge?”
“Maybe. If I’m right, this is at least his fourth time here, in this area. He may have been here other times. When he didn’t make contact with you, or when you were away. He could’ve picked up work around here, on one of the farms, one of the outfits. He knows the territory.”
“So do I.”
“He knows that, too. If he just wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.”
The cool, flat way he said it brought on another shudder. “Now that boosts my confidence.”
“He could’ve picked you off the night he let the tiger out. Or any other time you were here alone, he could’ve kicked in the door, and taken you out. You ride over to your parents, he ambushes you. Lots of scenarios, but he doesn’t do any of that. Yet.”
She picked up her wine, took a slow sip. “You’re trying to scare me.”
“Damn right I am.”
“Unnecessary. I’m scared enough, and I intend to be careful.”
“You could take another trip. There has to be somewhere else you could work for a few weeks, a couple months.”
“Sure. I’m practically renowned. And he could find out where I am, follow me, go after me somewhere I’m not as familiar with my territory. Or he could just wait me out, wait until I start to relax. And you’ve already thought of all that, too.”
“Maybe a better than halfway decent cop,” he acknowledged. “Yeah, I’ve thought of it. But I’ve also thought of the odds of tracking him down while you’re somewhere else. I like the odds.”
“I’m not leaving, Coop.”
“What if I could arrange for your parents to be somewhere else for a few weeks, too.”
She set her wine down, tapped her fingers on the table. “That’s low, using them.”
“I’ll use whatever it takes to keep you safe.”
She rose then, walked over to start a pot of coffee. “I’m not leaving,” she repeated. “I won’t be run off my own place, one I built. I won’t leave my staff, my animals vulnerable while I hide out. You know that, or you don’t know me.”
“It was worth a try.”
“You put a lot of time and work into this.”
“You want a bill?”
She glanced back. “I’m not trying to make you mad. I was before, hoping you’d get pissed off and go, give me some space. I don’t know what to do about you, Coop, that’s a fact. I just don’t. I know we need to have all that out, but it’s not the time. Not enough time,” she corrected. “I need to call my parents, and take my shift outside.”
“There are enough people out there. You don’t need to take a shift. You’re worn out, Lil. It shows.”
“First you boost my confidence, now my ego.” She got out a thermos. “I guess that’s what friends are for.”
“Take the night off.”
“Would you? Could you, in my place? I’m not going to get any sleep anyway.”
“I could shoot you with the drug gun. That’d get you a few hours.”
“What are friends for?” he said when she laughed.
She filled the thermos, took it to him. “Here you go. I’ll be out after I call home.”
He got up, set the thermos on the table to take her arms. “Look at me. I’m never going to let anything happen to you.”
“Then we’ve got nothing to worry about.”
He laid his lips on hers, a brush, a rub. And her heart rolled over in her chest. “Or given that we’ve got other things to worry about. Take the coffee.”
He pulled on his rain gear first, then picked up the thermos. “I’m not sleeping on the couch.”
“No.”
She sighed when he went out. Choices, she thought again. It seemed she was making hers.
LIL STATIONED HERSELF and wandered along the fenceline of the small-cat area. Despite the rain, Baby and his companions played stalk-and-ambush with the big red ball. The bobcats raced each other up a tree, making a lot of mock growls and snarls. She suspected if it hadn’t been for the floodlights, the sounds, scents, sights of humans, the cats would have settled down out of the rain.
Across the habitat, the newest addition sent out the occasional barking roar, as if to say she didn’t know where the hell she was, as yet, but she was pretty damn important.
“It’s like they’re having a party.”
She smiled at Farley as he stepped up beside her to watch. “I guess they are. They appreciate an audience. I feel stupid out here tonight,” she told him. “Nobody’s going to troop down here in all this mess to bother me.”
“Seems to me that’s just when you have to be most careful. When you figure you’re safe.”
“Oh, well. Want some coffee?” She offered her thermos.
“I had some already, but I can’t say no.” He poured himself a little. “I’m figuring Tansy told you about things.”
“She did.” She waited until he’d glanced over. “I think she’s pretty lucky.”
His smile spread slowly. “Feels good you’d say so.”
“Two of my favorite people become each other’s favorite people? There’s no downside for me.”
“She thinks I’m going through a phase. Well, she wants to think that. Maybe she’ll keep thinking it until we have a couple of kids.”
She choked on a gulp of coffee. “Jesus, Farley, when you finally move, you move like a damn cheetah.”
“When you find what you want, what’s right, you might as well get going. I love her, Lil. She’s all flustered up about it, and how she feels about me. I don’t mind that so much. It’s kind of flattering, really.”
He drank coffee while the rain dripped from the brim of his hat. “Anyways, I’m hoping you’ll do me a favor.”
“I talked to her, Farley. Told her I thought you were perfect for her.”
“That’s nice to hear, too. But that’s not the favor. I was hoping you’d go with me and help me pick out a ring. I don’t know anything about that kind of thing. I don’t want to get the wrong kind.”
For a moment Lil could only stare. “Farley, I . . . Just like that? Seriously? You’re going to buy a ring and ask her to marry you? Just like that?”
“I already told her I love her and I’m going to marry her. I got her into bed.” Even in the dark she could see he flushed a little. “I don’t mean to talk out o
f school on that, but you said she told you. I want to get her what she’d like, and you’d have a good idea. Wouldn’t you?”
“I guess I would. I’ve never shopped for an engagement ring, but I think I know what she’d like if I saw it. Holy shit, Farley.”
“You think we could find the right one in Deadwood? Otherwise, I could drive us on into Rapid City.”
“Let’s try Deadwood. We should . . . I can’t get over it.” She studied him through the curtain of rain. “Farley.” With a laugh, she boosted up to her toes and gave him a smacking kiss. “Have you told Mom and Dad?”
“Jenna cried. The good kind of crying. She’s the one who said I should ask you to go with me for the ring. I made them promise not to say anything until it’s all done. You won’t say anything, Lil?”
“Lips. Sealed.”
“I wanted to talk to them first. Sort of—I don’t know . . . it sounds dumbass.”
“What?”
He shifted on his long, grasshopper legs. “Get their blessing, I guess.”
“It doesn’t sound dumbass. You’re a prize, Farley, I swear to God. How come you didn’t fall for me?”
He grinned, ducked his head a little. “Lil. You’re all but practically my sister.”
“Can I ask you something, Farley?”
“Sure.”
She began to walk with him, at a pace that would’ve been a stroll in the rain but for the guns both carried. “You had it rough as a kid.”
“Plenty do.”
“I know. I think I’m more aware of that because I didn’t. I had it pretty damn perfect. When you took off on your own, you were still a kid.”
“I can’t say I felt like one.”
“Why did you? Decide to leave, I mean. It’s a big, scary step. Even when the familiar’s crap, it’s still the familiar.”
“She was a hard woman to live with, and I got tired of living with strangers, then being put back with her and whoever she’d taken up with. I can’t remember many nights there wasn’t yelling or fighting going on. Sometimes she’d start it up, sometimes the man she was with would. Either way, I’d end up bleeding sooner or later. I thought about taking a bat to this one guy once, after he slapped us both around. But he was a big man, and I was afraid he’d get it away from me and bash me with it.”
He pulled up short. “God, Lil, you’re not thinking I’d hurt Tansy, that I’d do her that way?”
“Not in a million years, Farley. It’s something else I’m trying to figure out, trying to get a handle on. You were broke when you got out here, and hungry and just a boy. But there was no meanness in you. My parents would’ve seen it. They may be soft touches, but they have good instincts. You didn’t steal or brawl or cheat your way here. You could have.”
“I’d’ve been no better than what I left, then, would I?”
“You chose to be better than what you left.”
“God’s truth is, Lil, Jenna and Joe saved me. I don’t know where I’d’ve ended up, or if I’d’ve made it there in one piece without them taking me in.”
“I guess we were all lucky that day you stuck out your thumb and my father drove by. This man, the one we think is out there, he had it rough as a kid.”
“So what? He’s not a kid now, is he?”
She shook her head. It was simple Farley logic—and while she appreciated it, Lil knew people were a lot more complicated as a rule.
Just after two, she went inside. She stowed her rifle and went upstairs. She still had some nice lingerie from her Jean-Paul days. But it seemed wrong to wear for Coop what she’d worn for another man.
Instead she changed into her usual sleeping garb of flannel pants and a T-shirt, then sat on the side of the bed to brush out her hair.
Tired? she thought. Yes, she was tired, but also aware. She wanted him to come to her, wanted to be with him after a long and difficult day. To make love with him while the rain drummed and night crept toward morning.
She wanted something bright in her life, and if it was a complicated shine, it was better than the dull and the dark.
She heard him come in, and rose to put her brush back on her dresser. Letting her mind drift, she walked back to turn down the bed. And turned to face him as he came in.
“We need to talk,” she said. “A lot has to be said. But it’s two in the morning. Talk’s for the daylight. I just want to go to bed with you. I just want to feel, to know there’s something good and strong after a day that’s been so bleak.”
“Then we’ll talk in the daylight.”
He came to her then, tunneled his fingers through her hair, tipped her head back. His lips met hers with a tenderness, a patience she’d forgotten he could give.
Here was the sweet they’d once shared.
She lay down with him on cool, smooth sheets, and opened body, mind, and heart. Slow and soft, as if he knew she needed . . . tending. Tension slipped away, swept back by pleasure. His hands glided over her, hard palms, a gentle touch. On a contented sigh, she turned her head as his lips explored her throat, her jaw.
No need to rush, to take and take, not this time. This was silk and velvet, warm and smooth. Not just sensation now, not just desires met, but feelings. She slid his shirt away, traced her fingers over the scar at his side.
“I don’t know if I could have stood it if—”
“Shh.” He brought her hand to his lips, kissed her fingers, then her mouth. “Don’t think. Don’t worry.”
Tonight he could give her peace, and take some for himself. Tonight he wanted to show her love as much as passion. More. Tonight they would savor each other. Skin, sighs, scents.
She smelled of the rain, somehow both dark and fresh. Tasted of it. He drew her clothes away, touching, tasting the newly exposed flesh, lingering when she shivered.
Scars crossed her, too. Scars that hadn’t been there when they’d first become lovers and all that lovely skin had been unmarred. Now she bore the marks of her work. Just as, he supposed, the scar left by a bullet had been a mark of his.
They were not what they had been, either of them. And yet she was still the only woman he’d ever wanted.
How many times had he dreamed of this, of loving Lil through the night? Of having her hands run over him, of having her body move with his.
She rolled, shifted to trail her lips over his chest, to bring them back to his and sink, sink, sink into the kiss while her hair fell around him in dark curtains. Beneath her hands, her lips, his heart tripped and stumbled. He rose up to wrap his arms around her, to rock and hold as his mouth found her breast.
Here pleasure was thick, movement slow, and every nerve alive.
She watched him as she took him into her, watched as her breath caught, then shuddered out again. Her lips came to his, trembling in the kiss. Then her body bowed, her eyes drifted shut.
She rode, gently, gently, drawing out every drop of pleasure. Slow and silky, so the beauty of it had tears rising in her throat. Even as her body released, her heart filled.
She let her head rest on his shoulder as she drifted down again. He turned his face into the side of her throat. “Lil,” he said. “God, Lil.”
“Don’t say anything. Please don’t.” If he did, she might say too much. She had no defenses now. She eased back to touch his cheek. “Talk’s for daylight,” she repeated.
“All right. There’ll be daylight soon enough.”
He lay down with her, drew her close. “I need to leave before dawn,” he told her. “But I’ll be back. We need to have some alone time, Lil. Uninterrupted time.”
“There’s so much going on. I can’t think straight.”
“Not true. You think straighter than anyone I know.”
Not about you, she admitted silently. Never about you. “The rain’s slowing down. Tomorrow’s supposed to be clear. We’ll work things out tomorrow. In the daylight.”
But the daylight brought death.
20
Gull found Jim Tyler. It was more luck than skill th
at brought him, his brother Jesse, and one of the greener deputies to the bend of the swollen waters of Spearfish Creek. They were walking their horses through the mud on a morning hazed with fog like a window steamed from a shower. The water, churning from the rain and snowmelt, beat like a drum, and above its rush thick tendrils of mist wound in long gray ribbons.
They were well off the logical route Tyler would have taken to the summit of Crow Peak and back to the trailhead. But the search had spread out through the tree-covered slopes of the canyon, with small groups combing the rocky high ground and the brown, deadwood shale of the low.
Gull hadn’t expected to find anything, and felt a little guilty about enjoying the meandering ride. Spring was beginning to show her skirts, and the rain teased out the green he loved in the hills. A jay shot—a blue bullet through the mists—while the chickadees chattered like children in a playground.
Rain had stirred up the waters, enlivened them, but there were still places the creek was as clear as gin in a short glass.
He hoped he got himself a tour group soon who wanted to fish so he could spend some time reeling in trout. Gull figured he had the best job in the whole damn world.
“That man got himself all the way over here from the marked trail, he’s got no more sense of direction than a blind woodpecker,” Jesse said. “Wasting our time.”
Gull glanced over at his brother. “Nice day to waste it. Besides, could be he got turned around in the storm, in the dark. Zig insteada zag, and he kept going the wrong way, he might’ve come this far off.”
“Maybe if the idiot’d find a rock and sit still somebody’d find his sorry ass.” Jesse shifted in the saddle. He spent a lot more time shoeing horses than riding them, and his sorry ass was sore. “I can’t take much more time riding around looking for somebody hasn’t got the sense to get found.”
The deputy, Cy Fletcher—the baby brother of the girl who owned the first pair of breasts Gull had ever got his hands on—scratched his belly. “I say we follow the creek another little while, then we’ll circle back around.”
