by Cara McKenna
PRAISE FOR CARA MCKENNA
Lay It Down
“McKenna opens her Desert Dogs series on the perfect note, presenting readers with a story that is sizzling, intelligent, and completely absorbing . . . and her well-executed badlands setting reflects her biker gang perfectly: gritty, rugged, dangerous, but noble and utterly captivating. . . . Without a doubt, this is a series to watch.”
—Romantic Times (4½ stars)
“McKenna ratchets up sexual chemistry and danger in equal measure, and tension stays high to the end. Readers will eagerly turn pages to learn the outcome of both the mystery and the romance.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Like a smooth shot of whiskey after a dry desert ride, Lay It Down quenched my thirst for wicked-hot romance. Cara McKenna knows how to write sexy-as-hell bad boys.”
—New York Times bestselling author Jaci Burton
Hard Time
“A lovely, heartfelt romance. . . . The letters, the sweetness, the tender eroticism made this book a recommended read for me.”
—Dear Author (recommended read)
“McKenna has crafted an intense, at times dark, heated romance.”
—RT Book Reviews (4½ stars)
“It’s different and sexy, and I love that Cara McKenna explores protagonists that . . . have more real, grittier lives.”
—Smexy Books
“Hard Time has gripping, emotional sections paired with some serious sexy times. . . . Fans of McKenna will be happy with her latest offering.”
—Fiction Vixen
Unbound
“Beautifully written and brilliant. . . . If you’re looking for nuanced portrayals of complicated characters, I can’t recommend it enough.”
—Dear Author
“I’ve said this countless times . . . but I love Cara McKenna’s voice.”
—Smexy Books
“It’s a very happy day for me when I get to read a new Cara McKenna novel . . . a very emotional, tug-at-your-heartstrings type of book . . . so very good.”
—Fiction Vixen
“I appreciated the depth in this story and the raw emotion that McKenna brought to her characters. She treated the subject matter with great respect and allowed her characters to fully explore their sexuality in a way that sizzled the pages. I think my e-reader needs a cooldown period.”
—The Book Pushers
After Hours
“Intense, funny, and perfectly dirty all at the same time. After Hours is a new favorite.”
—Victoria Dahl, USA Today bestselling author of Fanning the Flames
“After reading After Hours, I went on a Cara McKenna glom and read seven books in a row. This book is that good!”
—Fiction Vixen
“Exceptionally evocative writing . . . fascinating.”
—Smart Bitches Trashy Books
“A well-done, real-life, gritty erotic romance with a bossy, bossy hero and a heroine who can fight back.”
—Smexy Books
ALSO BY CARA MCKENNA
The Desert Dogs Series
Lay It Down
Other Novels
Hard Time
Unbound
After Hours
SIGNET ECLIPSE
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014
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A Penguin Random House Company
First published by Signet Eclipse, an imprint of New American Library,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC
Copyright © Cara McKenna, 2015
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ISBN 978-0-698-16820-6
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
Contents
Praise
Also by CARA MCKENNA
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Excerpt from DRIVE IT DEEP
Biggest thanks to my editor, Christina, who worked as hard on this book as I did. And to Claire, who gave it the final polish.
And with love to Tamsen, and to my agent, Laura, and to the readers who waited so patiently for Duncan’s dismantling. Enjoy.
Chapter 1
Agent Ramon Flores eyed his suspect through the glass.
An average sort of man. Average height, a touch heavy, mouse-brown hair in need of a cut. His clothes were filthy, but that came as no surprise. He was sunburned to boot, scalp flaking where his hair was thinning, and the past weeks he’d spent as a fugitive had aged him—he looked sixty, not the forty-seven Flores knew him to be.
And Flores knew a lot about David Peter Levins. He’d memorized the man’s file in the month since he was assigned to finding the guy. Levins had a wife and two grown sons in Mesquite, and twenty-four years’ experience in construction. He’d been a foreman for a big commercial operation—Virgin River Contracting. And it seemed he’d thrown it all away in a fit of greed.
“He’s ready to spill,” said Dan Jaskowski, Flores’s colleague. “Some of these guys just aren’t built for the fugitive lifestyle.”
“He cracked enough to turn himself in,” Flores said. “No doubt he’s got some interesting shit knocking on the backs of his teeth, just dying to get let out.”
“Like whether he and Tremblay acted alone.”
Flores nodded. “And whether he had anything to do with Tremblay getting offed in the county jail.”
“Whole town’s gonna be curious to hear some answers, once his surrender makes the news,” Jaskowski said.
“I’m curious myself.” Flores grabbed his recorder and his fat file labeled LEVINS, DAVID P. and headed for the door. Let him fold. Let him break, and let Flores get back home to Spring Valley in time for his daughter’s sixth birthday party in two weeks. Combination pony and mermaid theme. Highly anticipated.
Levins was st
ooped in his hard plastic seat before the metal table, wilted by exhaustion, but he sat up straight at the click of the lock. Flores closed them in together, in this little cube of cinder block intimacy.
“David,” he said, and sat. He switched the recorder on. “I’m Agent Flores. Everybody’s been looking for you, son.” He tacked the diminutive on just to keep the guy on edge. No matter that Levins was eight years his senior. “Me especially. Can’t figure out if I’m disappointed I didn’t catch you myself, or relieved you finally decided to give us all some closure. You ready to talk?”
“Do I get my sentence lessened? Because I turned myself in?”
“That all depends on what comes next,” Flores said. “On how cooperative you decide to be. Because three people are dead. A fine deputy—Alex Dunn—and your accomplice, Chuck Tremblay. And this mysterious body we’ve heard about but not actually been able to get our hands on.”
“Tremblay handled the bones. I got no idea what he did with ’em.”
“How convenient for you. And how about Tremblay’s bones? You got anything to do with his unfortunate end?”
Levins shook his head violently. “No, no way. I was in Texas when I heard. But I know who did it—his creditors.”
“Creditors?”
“He had gambling debts. Huge ones—a hundred grand, at least. I dunno who with, but some real rough characters. Mob types down in Vegas, if I had to guess.”
Flores hid his surprise. He’d heard nothing about that, though it had a ring of truth to it. Tremblay had been an alcoholic—fifteen years sober, but one self-destructive compulsion often got swapped for another. He made a casual note, one that would prompt an intense investigation and probably ruin somebody’s weekend.
“That’s why he needed my bribes,” Levins continued.
“Bribes in exchange for what?”
“For overlooking some corners I had to cut, with the work.”
“Now, why would you be cutting corners, David?”
“’Cause all the foremen get big bonuses for hitting these crazy deadlines that the Virgin River bosses laid out for us. Shit they promised the casino developers to score the contract in the first place. Only way I could’ve hit those was to cut corners. And I couldn’t cut corners unless I had somebody in the department willing to rush and fudge my permits.”
“Why’d you approach Tremblay? Seems awful ambitious, going straight to the sheriff of Brush County.”
“I didn’t—Tremblay approached me. I was sweating over this blasting permit I needed, like, yesterday. They sent Dunn over, but no way was he signing anything without going through every goddamn check box. So I went straight to Tremblay. I was desperate, and I kind of knew him from other issues with the construction. I knew he was really pro-casino, and thought maybe he’d respect my worries about the deadlines. He told me, if he helped me out, would I maybe help him out? Slip him a percentage of my bonus? As a ‘show of appreciation,’ I think he called it.”
“And you said yes.”
Levins nodded, looking . . . sad. “I did. I had to.”
“Had to?”
The man shrugged. “Looking back, it sounds so trivial . . . But I got two kids, one in college and one about to start. My wife’s out of work. I needed the money. It was harmless shortcuts I was trying to take, just red-tape, bureaucratic shit. Nothing that would hurt anybody.”
“But now it has—Dunn, for one. Your old partner in crime, the sheriff. And who else, David? Whose bones did that migrant worker find on your site?”
“I dunno. I really don’t. Just a heap of charred shit, in a shallow grave. Some drug runner, Tremblay figured.”
“So you covered it up?”
“Yeah. We did. The way we saw it, if we obeyed the law, then construction gets halted. We lose our slice of the bonuses, hundred men lose a few weeks’ pay while guys like you investigate it. We find out in the end it was just some shit-bag narcotics mule, probably some illegal—”
Flores raised his eyebrows at that, and Levins blanched.
“Some undocumented migrant,” he said, backtracking. “Some criminal, not worth risking all that money, and all those workers’ paydays, to do right by.”
“That’s an awful lot to assume about some pile of bones, David. And there’s some folks who don’t believe you actually found bones. They think maybe those bones were still inside that man or woman or child’s body, and that you maybe burned them up yourself. Forensics thinks that’s real likely, matter of fact.”
Levins went pale beneath his sunburn. “No, it was bones. Just bones. Animals had started digging them up. I’ve never killed nobody in my life. Not Dunn—that was all Tremblay’s plan. Not Tremblay, neither. I was in Texas, like I said, too scared to risk coming back here. And not those bones. I never killed no one in my entire life. I wanted the money, that’s all. Wanted the best for my family.”
“Maybe you did. But that doesn’t change the fact that now there’s three human beings—with families of their own, I’d wager—dead. And what I need, and what you have to bargain with, is answers.” He consulted his notes. “These creditors of the sheriff. Now, why would they do that? Have the man murdered? Surely that’s no way to collect on his tab.”
“So he wouldn’t disclose who they were, I guess. When he went to trial. Their outfit didn’t sound too legal.”
Flores made another note, faking boredom, so Levins would stay eager to be of use. “These answers are all very convenient, David. You sure nobody else from Virgin River was in on your little arrangement with Tremblay?”
“Nobody I know of.”
“So there’s nobody else? Nobody with blood on their hands, aside from you and the late former sheriff?”
Levins swallowed, eye contact wavering.
“Tell me.”
“There is one other guy who knew about it all. Who got his slice, just like Tremblay.”
“Tell me who.”
Levins licked his sunburned lips. “Not from VRC, or the sheriff’s department.”
Flores leaned in, leveled the diminished man with his stare. “Tell me, son.”
Chapter 2
I’ve got to stop sleeping with Miah.
Raina shifted under the covers, feeling him all around her. His arm locked to her waist, the warm length of his sleeping body pressed along her back and legs. His bed beneath her, his scent in the pillow under her cheek.
She was surrounded by old smells. Familiar ones. Though strangely, until a few weeks ago, she’d never actually been in Miah’s bed. They’d been lovers for a few short, blazing months, two summers back, but the man was claustrophobic. They’d come to know each other’s bodies on blankets under the wide-open northeastern Nevada sky, on the grass, and in the bed of his truck . . . Closest she’d ever come to laying him indoors had been the cab of that F-150. She still remembered every moment. The radio had been playing. “Life in a Northern Town” had come on, and goose bumps had broken out all over her skin, Miah’s fingers on her clit and his mouth on her neck as she’d come.
This is different, she reminded herself.
Jeremiah Church’s long, strong body was dressed in a tee and shorts, and Raina still wore her jeans and tank and bra.
This sleeping together was strictly literal.
But it really had to stop.
They’d lost a childhood friend six weeks ago—Alex Dunn, a sheriff’s deputy. Raina hadn’t slept properly since the day she accepted that Alex’s death hadn’t been the drunk-driving accident everyone had believed it was. The same day, Sheriff Tremblay had been called out and incriminated himself. She’d shut Benji’s late that night—three a.m., probably—and even after that, she and Miah had sat together on the bar’s front stoop, nursing a whiskey between them. Miah had been too drunk to drive home, and too upset besides.
They’d fallen silent. It should have felt cold. It got
down to the forties at night in Fortuity, even now at the close of summer. But Raina hadn’t registered the temperature, couldn’t even remember the minutes or hours passing, with the two of them just sitting there.
After a long time she’d said, “Well.” No other thoughts had come, no lament about the state of their town or the tragedy surrounding their friend.
Miah had said even less. Not a single word. Instead he’d gotten to his feet and taken her hand. He’d led her through the bar to the back stairs, up to the second floor to her apartment. Through the kitchen and den and into her room, where the dawn light was just beginning to slip through the front windows and swallow the aura of the neon sign flickering outside.
He’d thrown the covers wide and she’d taken his lead when he pushed off his boots. Whatever he’d needed, she’d have given. Any persuasion of sex that might have offered an escape for the both of them. But all he’d done was draw her onto the mattress and held her. Spooned her. Fully dressed. No words, no sex or kissing, just the jerky sound of his uneven breathing against her neck, and his strong arms clinging as though she were the only thing keeping him from drowning.
The same thing, the night after. And the night after that. Then they’d switched to meeting at Three C, Miah’s family’s cattle ranch, as his work demanded that he get back to his usual routines. And her new routine became driving over there once the bar was closed. She’d find him waiting on the front porch, and he’d lead her inside. Sometimes he held her, sometimes the other way around. Sometimes they lay on their backs, fingers laced on the sheets between them.
It was weird, and probably not especially healthy, and no doubt confusing. But so was everything about their lives just now. She was thirty-two and he was a couple of years older, but all the recent uncertainty had them feeling lost as teenagers.
She took a deep breath, ribs expanding and pressing her into Miah’s warmth. Everything was so fucked right now, fucked and shapeless, the mysteries far from solved. But their two bodies were solid, amid the chaos—something to hold on to.
This fraught spooning was what Miah needed, and Raina had gotten herself accustomed to offering far less to men, the past few years. It felt nice, being what a man needed beyond the mechanical release of sex, for a change. And this particular man deserved good. Which was more than she could say for most of the ones she’d known. Or fucked.
