“I’m a little tired,” she blurted out and came to a painful conclusion. “Besides, I saw how you went out of your way to flirt with Bree tonight. In fact, you did the same thing with Jill Campbell and Julianne.”
Cooper sent her a dubious look. “What are you talking about? I didn’t flirt with anyone. Bree and I talked about Zach. You were standing two feet away when Jill and I had a conversation. Julianne hosted the party so I took a few minutes to tell her what a great job she’d done. Not only that, but all of them are happily married women. I don’t mess around with another guy’s woman. And if you think that, you don’t know me very well. What’s gotten into you tonight?”
“I know what I saw,” Eastlyn insisted, knowing she sounded like a shrew. But she’d already dealt herself this hand and now would have to play it out. She’d just have to make it up to him later.
“Accusations like that are nothing but cheap shots and beneath you,” Cooper fired back. “I think I’ll leave you to your attitude.” With that, he started off down the street without her.
“Yeah? Well…who needs a man who’s a player? The kind who flirts with other women right in front of them is…a cad.”
Cooper didn’t say another word and never looked back as he kept on walking.
The next time she looked up, he’d already disappeared around the corner.
“That was a little too easy,” Eastlyn muttered, a bad taste settling in her mouth over what she’d done. As she headed home to change her clothes, disappointment still lingered. “He didn’t even try to get on my good side.”
Still mumbling to herself about Cooper’s unwillingness to put up much of a fight, she unlocked the door to her house. Once inside, she wiggled out of her dress, sat down on the bed to adjust the height of her prosthetic foot for boots. After changing into jeans and shirt, she glanced down at her watch and realized it was go-time.
On Sandy Pointe Drive, Cooper settled back into his easy chair with the lights off, a cold beer nearby, to watch SportsCenter. But after trying to watch a few highlights, he found he had trouble focusing on baseball scores.
Instead, he replayed the scene with Eastlyn on the street. She’d showed him a nasty side to her, one he was glad to learn about now, rather than later.
But it wasn’t the lonely darkness engulfing his living room that made him feel like a stranger in his own house. No, it was Eastlyn’s abrupt change that bothered him.
Just like Nick had predicted that day at the bank, Cooper had sensed for a few days beforehand that Eastlyn had been pulling away from him on purpose. She’d acted weird that morning when she’d left the house before breakfast. And now, without a word of warning, she’d turned into someone he didn’t even know.
“You’re kidding, right?” Scott said from his seat on the couch. “You actually fell for that? Even though it was the worst acting I’ve ever seen, you bought that crap about flirting? Sometimes I wonder about you, Cooper.”
Cooper eyed him with open disdain. “What are you talking about?”
“Eastlyn obviously needed to ditch you and picking a fight was the best option she had.”
Cooper shot up out of the recliner. “I knew something was off.”
“Off? You mean other than her pitiful performance?”
“Why did she need to ditch me?” He’d no sooner got the words out of his mouth than it suddenly dawned on him. “She’s headed out to that damn compound, isn’t she?”
“Wow, there’s no getting anything past you,” Scott noted, every word underscored with sarcasm.
“She knew how I felt and deliberately deceived me.”
“There are times mystery in a relationship might be considered a turn-on. But deliberate deception like she showed tonight needs to be addressed. I don’t think you should let her get away with it,” Scott prompted.
Cooper sent him a go-to-hell look. “I have no intentions of letting her get away with it. What kind of head start does she have?”
“About ten minutes,” Scott said with a grin. “The woman moves faster than you think.”
Twenty-One
By the time Eastlyn had changed clothes and got underway, Friday night had rolled into Saturday morning. The windy June night had turned misty and foggy. The weather made for slick roads and damp terrain.
It was headed toward one o’clock when Eastlyn parked her Bronco an estimated two miles from the designated destination.
Too remote and isolated, thought Eastlyn as she reached in the glove box for a flashlight. Before getting out to trek through the wooded, dark countryside, she decided to recheck Brent’s map, making sure she had the correct coordinates.
After studying the checkpoints, satisfied she’d gotten as close to the compound as was safe, she grabbed her backpack. She’d stuffed it with two bottles of water and a power bar just in case she got stuck out here overnight without provisions. She also had her camera phone, a pair of binoculars, and the police issue M9 Beretta that Brent had supplied this morning.
She had a laundry list of things to do. First and foremost, find out where Judd Thorwald cooked his meth. Get documentation, hopefully clear shots of the place. Flesh out how secure Thorwald kept the area so that future surveillance could be done. Scope out any hindrances to making contact down the road for future buys.
She played sentinel for at least forty-five minutes scouting out the area. She discovered why Bran and Joy had seen high traffic here. Teenagers routinely used the secluded road for make out sessions. At the end of the now-empty lane, she found a slew of trash, beer and liquor bottles, used condoms, and a sea of fast food wrappers.
Other than her activity, she saw no other signs of life. There were no other cars on the road. No people standing guard at the fence line. The lack of both, she found odd. When she got closer to the perimeter the first thing that stood out was the inactivity near the compound. Of course, it was after two a.m. at this point, and everyone most likely had gone to bed. But there had to be a reason there were no guards posted.
She already thought she knew the answer. Traffickers often set up countermeasures and deterrents to make sure unwanted strangers steered clear of their turf. The devices were cheap to build and sent a strong message to any trespasser stupid enough to wander around in the dark. The devices were also difficult to detect. Using her flashlight, she took deliberate, measured steps through the terrain. The slow process cost her time but was well worth the extra precaution.
She went another twenty feet before spotting the first trap. Taking out her camera phone, she approached the area using tentative stages. These weren’t the slapstick, Wile E. Coyote varieties meant for cartoons but rather sophisticated devices meant to bring harm to anyone who got this far on the property.
Not too far from that spot, she saw a clearing and a dilapidated shack. Heading that way, she was more convinced than ever that the region was full of booby traps. With every risky step, she took she noted someone had saturated the wooded landscape with a series of trip wires. From tree to tree, they occurred every few feet. She was by no means an expert, but even she understood that she’d just come across the basis for major criminal charges against the remaining Edgecombes or Thorwald himself.
Once she grew close enough to the decrepit cabin, she took pictures from a messy, littered front yard. But to look through the window, she decided that going around back might attract less attention. If someone happened to approach her, she had a backup plan. She’d go into her junkie act.
Peering through the glass, the inside of the place was a debris-ridden collection of old furniture—a dresser, a mattress, a series of folding tables with a cluttered display of bottles: camp fuel, bleach and other assorted ingredients used to cook crystal meth.
A twig snapped behind her. She cut the beam on the flashlight, made a point to hug against the exterior of the cabin, making herself as inconspicuous as possible.
Eastlyn got a whiff of demon Puerto Rican rum, a smell she knew well from her days in the army. Soldiers often came back to camp
from taking leave stinking of the stuff.
Through the copse of silver maple, she caught sight of a disheveled man with days-old stubble on his chin. A twenty-gauge shotgun rested on his arm as he trudged his way toward the ramshackle cabin. It was at that moment she sensed someone had outflanked her and was headed around the corner.
“Get out of here,” Scott whispered. “Now! I’ll draw them over to the right. You circle back to the car from the opposite direction where you came in, better to keep them off balance.”
“You got it,” Eastlyn muttered, doing her best to hightail it out of there.
It took her three-quarters of an hour to get back to where she’d parked the car. She came up short when she saw Cooper leaning up against the door on the driver’s side of the Bronco.
“I know you’re angry but right now we need to haul ass out of here,” she said in a hushed tone, pushing her way past him to reach the door handle. “Yell at me later. Get in your car! I’m not kidding. We need to get out of here. Now!”
“I’ll follow you.” By the time Coop ran back to the Mustang, Eastlyn had already turned the SUV around and headed south toward the cutoff.
Cooper shifted into gear, determined to trail the Ford and keep one eye on the rearview mirror at all times. Sure enough, he spotted another car approaching from a hundred yards or so behind them, closing in at a high rate of speed.
“Damn it, Eastlyn,” he muttered as he hit the gas. “Right about now, I’d like to wring your sneaky neck.”
There wasn’t time to take his phone out to call or text. So he got as close to the Bronco’s bumper as he could get and flashed his lights, hoping she’d know to speed up. When she accelerated, he kept eyeing the car in the rear as the distance between them grew. The headlights got smaller, indicating the vehicle had fallen back.
But Cooper didn’t breathe any easier until the two cars had made the turn west and headed toward the Pacific Coast Highway.
At the city limits sign, he watched as Eastlyn slowed down and pulled her car to the side of the road. When she got out, so did he.
“So we’re doing this in the middle of the 101. That’s fine by me,” Cooper shouted.
“Why?” she screamed when she got within earshot. “Why did you follow me? Don’t you trust me at all?”
“Me? Don’t turn this back on me. Don’t do that shit. You deliberately picked a fight with me so I wouldn’t catch you sneaking out here behind my back. Apparently trust and the fact that we now share a bed means nothing to you.”
She stepped up toe to toe with him. “If you’d just listen…”
“To what, another bogus performance? You didn’t clue me in about where you were going tonight because you knew I’d be upset. You did it behind my back. I never considered you so devious. Deny it.”
“No, I did, but…”
“Why the hell did you go out there knowing how I feel about that place?”
“Nailing those bastards and catching them in the act is the right thing to do. And there’s no need to yell at me.”
“I’m yelling because right now I’m so furious with you I want to scream it out to the stars.”
On impulse, she gripped his shirt, bunched it up in her hands and pulled him into her. Covering his mouth, she ate at his tongue. When she came up for air, she breathed out, “I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you.”
“I’m not that easy,” he stated. But even as the words left his mouth, he fused his lips to hers.
They broke apart once again and she fired back, “Sure you’re easy, you just won’t admit it.”
To prove her words, she kissed him again, this time taking her time in slow, deliberate moves. Lingering at his mouth, she breathed, “Now are you finished being miffed?”
“Newsflash. I moved past miffed while sitting out there in the dark waiting for you to come back to the car worrying about whether you were safe or not, worrying that maybe they’d caught you and cracked open your skull or worse.”
“Ouch. Okay, I’m guilty. I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. Brent swore me to secrecy.”
“Don’t give me that crap.”
“He deputized me. But you’re not supposed to know about it.”
“Damn it! What was Brent thinking?”
“Maybe he was thinking that I could do this job. You know what? I heard Scott’s voice telling me to get out of there right before I saw two men sneaking up on me.”
Coop slung his arm around her shoulder. “We’ll talk about ghosts at breakfast. Right now, we need sleep. I don’t know about you, but my adrenaline rush is about to hit a wall.”
She dug out her cell phone, turned back to get into the Bronco to make the call.
Cooper eyed her with suspicion. “What are you doing?”
“I have to touch base with Brent or he’ll be pissed.”
“More like he’ll send out a statewide alert.”
“That too.”
“At least he didn’t hang you out to dry.”
“Don’t start,” she warned, putting her index finger to her lips so he’d shush long enough for her to talk into the phone. The last thing she needed right now was for Brent to know Cooper was now involved up to his eyelids.
Twenty-Two
The next morning she dragged herself awake before Cooper and sat up in bed. She cut her eyes around the little bedroom inside her bungalow and realized last night hadn’t been a dream. She still needed to give Brent a complete accounting of what had transpired.
She looked over at Coop’s sleeping form and was tempted to run her hands under the sheets to make up. But he looked so peaceful she decided to let him sleep.
Instead of make-up sex, she hobbled into the shower to wash off the layer of grime from the trek through the mud.
By the time she got out of the bathroom, Cooper was no longer asleep. After getting dressed, she made her way into the kitchen where he sat stoic, drinking his first cup of coffee. The way he held his shoulders, rigid and unyielding, showed no signs their tiff was over. He barely said two words and then grunted through a bowl of corn flakes.
“I thought you wanted to clear the air,” Eastlyn charged as she took down a bowl from the cabinet. “Not talking to me is clearly the way to keep the animosity going.”
“Let’s see. You’re upset because I’m angry. The thing is I’m still trying to process the fact that you took a job as Brent’s deputy and didn’t bother to mention it. I’m just the guy you’re hitting the sheets with and no one important enough to confide in about the important stuff.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Sure it is,” he grumbled. “My resentment is all I have. I don’t particularly care for cunning women with their own agenda. I had enough of that as a kid watching my mother’s manipulative games play out.”
“Don’t you dare compare me to your mother!” Eastlyn fumed. “I didn’t manipulate you. I just didn’t tell you about going to the compound because I knew you’d react this way. Well, maybe not this bad, but I knew you’d be pissed. So far I haven’t been disappointed. This is the very scene I wanted to avoid.”
“I see. So my reaction is not something you worried overly much about. Thanks for that.”
“That’s not what I meant at all. Don’t you see? I had to make sure I could do this thing by myself, without help from anyone.” She raked her fingers through her damp hair. “I wasn’t sure but I thought maybe after everything I might’ve lost my nerve.”
Cooper melted a little as he got to his feet to put his bowl in the sink. Without warning, he snaked his arm out, seized her around the waist. “You, lose your nerve? That’ll be the day. You have a steel spine when it comes to formidable situations. It’s in your DNA. Don’t you know that about yourself by now?”
She laid her head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about going out to the compound.”
“I’m sorry I yelled at you. But I really was worried you might not make it out of there without getting your head bashed in.”
“If Scott hadn’t showed up to run interference, I might not have.”
“He’s the one who told me where you’d gone.”
She cocked a brow. “Oh really? The traitor. I should’ve known he couldn’t keep his trap shut.”
“Obviously Scott was worried too because he showed up out there right when things might’ve gone south.”
“Hmm, I guess you’re right. He did tell me the best way to make it back to the car.”
“See, Scott was looking out for you.”
“Yeah, just like River said he would.” She ran her fingers up his chest. “Last night you mentioned an adrenaline rush. Was that for real? Could the bookworm become an adrenaline junkie?”
“Possibly. But only if my partner chooses to fully disclose what she’s up to.”
She held up a hand. “Scout’s honor. No more lying.”
His hands went around her shoulders. The look in his eyes said he wanted to make up.
The knock at the door stalled that.
Eastlyn flung it back to see Nick standing there.
“I know it’s a Saturday but I tried to call before stopping by out of the blue like this. You didn’t answer your cell,” Nick pointed out.
She puffed out a laugh. “I probably cut it off last night and must’ve forgotten to turn it back on when I got up. Come on in.”
“Hey, Coop, how’s it going?”
Cooper looked over at Eastlyn. “Better every day. Want some coffee?”
“No thanks. I had to run to Ferguson’s this morning to pick up paint. Our three-year-old went crazy yesterday with a batch of permanent markers trying to recreate the Mona Lisa, or something. Whatever it is, it takes up a swath across the living room wall.” He turned to look at Eastlyn. “Anyway, I thought you’d like to know you’re free to start work on the chopper. Paperwork’s all taken care of. I also thought you’d like to know that I was able to trace the aircraft’s ownership.”
Her pulse picked up. “And?”
“It was originally bought by the Navy in 1953. The U.S. Coast Guard purchased it from the government for use in search and rescue. Cleef came across it at an army surplus auction over in Scott’s Valley in 1988. There’s some indication Cleef thought it had been used in the TV series MASH and had some value for resale. When that turned out not to be the case, he obviously couldn’t find a buyer for it. I did come across an interesting side note to its history. That copter once participated in the manhunt for escaped Alcatraz prisoners in June, 1962. For roughly two weeks the crew flew over Angel Island looking for any signs of men or bodies.”
Lavender Beach Page 22
