Not that I ever believed in Santa Claus—or sober parents.
“Cemetery Lane?” I asked Sonterra, because, for some inexplicable reason, I couldn’t comment on the house. I felt a rare, raw yearning, just looking at it, and any but the most ordinary words would have stuck in my throat.
Sonterra grinned, pocketing his keys. “Didn’t I mention that there’s a graveyard on the other side of the back fence?” he asked.
I shook my head, let him take my hand. “There are a lot of things you didn’t mention,” I said. I could hear Bernice and Waldo barking happily inside the fantasy house, and my heart did a funny little flip behind my breastbone.
Sonterra opened the gate, and we started up the walk.
“You should stay the night,” he said, as we mounted the front steps.
“I didn’t bring pajamas,” I replied. An inane excuse, I know, but it was all I could come up with.
Sonterra wriggled his eyebrows. “You won’t need pajamas, Counselor,” he said. He opened the front door, which had a stained-glass oval in the middle, without using a key. Bernice and Waldo sprang out at us in furry, ecstatic welcome.
Hell, I thought tremulously. All we need is an old lady holding a Thanksgiving turkey on a platter and we’ve got a Norman Rockwell painting.
Sonterra lifted me into his arms with an exaggerated grunt of effort and carried me over the threshold.
Careful, warned my inner foster kid, don’t get too happy. Let the universe guess that you want something, and it’s as good as gone.
Sonterra didn’t put me down again until we’d toured the whole first floor, with its spacious kitchen, formal parlor, cozy living room, and a small den, where his computer and mine were already set up, along with a fax machine.
Pinch me. The floors were all hardwood, tongue and groove, and the windows were leaded.
I was in love, and I kind of liked Sonterra, too.
At the foot of the front stairway, he set me back on my feet. I recalled the ice-cream binge at Loretta’s the night before and wondered, albeit belatedly, if I really had gained ten pounds.
The upstairs, like the first floor, was straight out of that old magazine picture. A big front bedroom ran the length of the house, and it had window seats, for God’s sake. There was only one bathroom, which would be a major problem when Emma was around, but the claw-foot tub was the size of a horse trough, and the pedestal sink and chain-pull toilet finished off the nostalgic scene. Lastly, there were two other bedrooms, both considerably smaller than the master but screaming with character.
“What do you think?” Sonterra asked very quietly, as we stood in the upstairs hall. “There’s a basement, too, but it’s pretty gloomy.”
“I think,” I said carefully, because my emotions were still too close to the surface, “that I know why Danielle Bickerhelm wanted to buy this place.”
“We’ve got first option,” Sonterra said, turning me to face him, catching my chin in his hand so I couldn’t look away. “One of the perks of being the new police chief.” He squinted, and I knew he’d catch any nuance of emotion that showed in my face. “What’s going on in there, Clare? You’ve been on the verge of tears ever since you got out of your car.”
“I’m just tired,” I hedged. “Tired and pregnant.”
“Bull,” he said gently. “It’s something to do with the house.”
I bit my lower lip and wished Sonterra would let me go. At the same time, I was glad he didn’t. “It’s just—well—it’s not what I expected.”
A grin quirked one corner of his mouth. “We could always move into the Hidy Tidy Trailer Park instead,” he said.
“I think I’d feel more at home there,” I admitted. I was serious, that’s the pitiful thing.
He hooked a hand in the waistband of my jeans, right over the button and zipper, and pulled me against him. The contact promised a hot time on the old air mattress tonight. “Time you got over that,” he drawled. I’d told him about my childhood, of course, and I knew he saw past the grown-up lawyer I’d become to the scared, difficult ward of the state I’d once been. “You’re a big girl now, Clare. No need to play by the old rules.”
The button on my jeans gave way, then the zipper. I groaned. I was all grown-up, all right, and perfectly willing to be distracted from the sentimental emotions the house had aroused in me.
“I want a bath first,” I said.
Sonterra slid his hand inside my panties and played with me until my breath caught. “Are you sure about that?” he teased.
“Oh, God,” I whimpered. Just then, I, the queen of certainty, wasn’t sure of anything.
His finger made a slow, wet circle. I smoldered in a delicious misery of need. Then the flames erupted, and I was at flash point in no time.
“Really, really sure?” he asked. He backed me up against the wall, really working me now.
I didn’t—couldn’t—answer.
Sonterra buried his face in my neck, nuzzling, then started nibbling at my earlobe.
My hips began to grind, seeking his hand.
“I’ve been thinking about this all day,” Sonterra told me, pulling up my cotton blouse, not even bothering with the buttons. The front catch on my bra popped open. “Give it up, Clare. Let it happen.”
Heat suffused me, spreading from the apex of my thighs to race along my nerve endings and pulse in the marrow of my bones. I felt a couple of Sonterra’s fingers slide up inside me, while his thumb continued the slow, sweet revolutions around my clitoris. I swear I would have slid down the wall, like so much warm wax, if he hadn’t been holding me up.
He bent his head, took one of my nipples into his mouth, and sucked.
That was it.
I went over the edge, consumed, clinging to him with both hands, bucking against his hand, sobbing with the ferocious release of tension.
When it was over, I could barely stand.
Sonterra looped an arm around my waist and took me into the bathroom, setting me carefully on the toilet seat. While I sat there, my insides still reverberating with the force of that multilevel orgasm, he put the plug in the tub and started the water running.
I was to have my bath after all.
I figured I was in real danger of disintegrating and spiraling down the drain.
“No candles?” I joked lamely. “No foaming bubbles?”
He looked back at me, over one shoulder, and grinned. “I could make a run to the supermarket for bubble bath and a candle or two,” he said, “or I could just lay you out on that air mattress downstairs and go down on you until you lose your mind. Take your choice.”
I’m nobody’s fool.
I took door number two.
It was hard to leave Sonterra, hard to get up off that blow-up bed and pull my clothes back on, but I did it. Somehow, legs quivering, I did it.
“Stay with me tonight,” Sonterra said.
“I can’t,” I answered miserably, digging my cell phone out of my purse and checking it. I’d thought I’d heard a muffled tune while Sonterra and I were making love. Sure enough, the message light was blinking.
Sonterra sighed, reached for his wrinkled uniform pants, and made himself decent. “There’s probably a law on the books,” he said, standing up to zip and button. “Driving under the influence of an orgasm. I counted seven.”
I swayed, willing my knees to come back online with my central nervous system and hold me upright. “Six,” I corrected. My personal tally was nine, but he didn’t need to know that. “Cocky bastard.”
He laughed, but he didn’t sound all that amused.
I put the cell phone to my ear after pushing the appropriate buttons. My fingers were awkward, and I had to start over twice.
Message one: Loretta. “Clare? You should have been back by now. I’m getting worried.”
Message two: Loretta. “Turn on your damn phone, will you? I’m in crisis, here.”
Message three: Guess who. “Okay, I’m just going to eat all this freaking pizza by my
self!”
I sighed. “Damn it,” I said, “I think she’s been into the martinis again.”
“How long do you think she’ll keep this up?” Sonterra asked. I gave him points for leaving it at that. Some men would have complained that they should have come first, but Sonterra understood the bonds of friendship.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Until she gets it out of her system, I guess.” How long would it take for her to get Kip out of her system? She really loved him, and like any red-blooded woman, she enjoyed his money, especially since she’d never had much of her own, but I knew Loretta. She’d have married Kip Matthews if he’d been selling Slurpies at 7-Eleven.
I found my car keys, started reluctantly for the door. The dogs meandered in from the kitchen, where they’d curled up on a hooked rug to wait out the sex marathon, and I bent to ruffle their ears in farewell. I’d call Loretta from the Escalade, I decided, let her know I was on the way. Tell her to lay off the booze.
“Maybe I should drive you to the ranch,” Sonterra fretted.
“I’ll be fine,” I answered. He had to work in the morning, even though it was Sunday. “Anyway, it’s only fifteen minutes from here.” I stood on tiptoe to kiss him. “I’ll call to say good-night.”
He walked me outside to the Escalade. There weren’t any near neighbors, which was probably good. It wouldn’t do for the populace to see their new police chief in crumpled uniform pants and nothing else, fresh from a lengthy session of mattress mambo.
“I hate this, Clare,” he said, as I hoisted myself into the driver’s seat and turned the key in the ignition.
“Me, too.”
He leaned in, kissed me, closed the door with a slight bang. “Call.”
“I will,” I promised.
I didn’t look in the rearview mirror as I pulled away.
I’d left Dry Creek behind when I remembered my cell phone, got it out of my purse, and called Loretta.
She didn’t answer.
I tried again.
Same result.
I felt a twinge of fear, as well as irritation, hung up, and hit REDIAL once more.
In the next instant, headlights suddenly burst on behind me, flooding the interior of the Escalade with a harsh, invasive glare. I barely had time to drop the phone and grip the wheel with both hands before the driver of the other car rammed me hard enough to rattle my teeth.
My car swerved with a screech of tires, headed for the ditch.
I fought to keep it on the road, succeeded, for what that was worth, and the other vehicle struck again, harder this time. The Escalade spun a figure eight in the middle of the highway, and the engine died.
Sonterra, I thought desperately, wishing I’d held on to the cell phone. It was on the floor somewhere, immersed in shadow and out of reach.
I peered through the driver’s-side window, one hand resting on my abdomen in an instinctive attempt to protect my baby. It was dark, and I couldn’t see much of anything but the vague outline of what was probably a truck, and those headlights, flaring in the gloom like the devil’s eyeballs. I watched, stunned into temporary immobility, as the lights receded. There was more squealing of tires, then my attacker gunned the engine, and I realized, in horror, that they were coming at me again. I was a sitting duck, broadside on that lonely road.
In the split second before the crash, I must have unhooked my seat belt and dived to the other side of the car.
That was where I woke up, crouched on the floor in a fetal position, blood dripping into my eyes, my arms wrapped around my knees.
Seven
T he beam of a flashlight swept the inside of the Escalade, glittering across a snowfall of broken glass.
“Holy Christ, Lanna!” a voice shouted, youthful and male. “There’s blood everywhere!”
I hugged myself, trembling with cold. Other than that, I was numb.
My baby, I thought, dazed.
The car shook violently.
I couldn’t move. I looked up, saw a face peering at me through a fist-sized hole in the windshield.
“Lady!” the face yelled. “Unlock the door! The gas tank is leaking!”
When I didn’t move, a hand reached down through the hole, groping for the release button on the armrest.
Another face appeared, that of a young girl, with long, dark hair. For a moment, I thought I was having another weird experience, seeing myself again, this time as a teenager. But no—the boy had called her “Lanna.”
Then I smelled the gas.
The premonition of an explosion rocked my bewildered mind, so vivid that I thought the Escalade had already disintegrated, taking me and the baby with it. I must have clicked the lock, because the next thing I knew, I was tumbling out the door.
Strong hands caught me before I could strike the pavement, dragged me roughly over the asphalt and into a ditch.
I was befuddled with shock and confusion. They’d saved us, the baby and me.
Or had they? Maybe they’d been the ones to ram me from behind. Maybe this was a kidnapping, not a rescue.
I struggled wildly, trying to scream, but all that came out was a primitive, senseless sound.
Then there was a whoosh, followed by a horrendous roar, and heat blistered my back, singed my hair. Chunks of burning metal showered down around me, like a firestorm in hell.
My vision zoomed in to a pinpoint, then nothing.
“Clare?”
The voice was familiar. Verbal sanctuary. I struggled upward, toward it, through the black void that had swallowed me whole.
Sweeping lights, blue, then red, rushed across my eyelids.
The voice again, more urgent this time. “Clare!”
The effort to open my eyes was monumental, but I did it.
Sonterra was leaning over me, rimmed in the flashing lights.
“The baby?” I whispered.
“I don’t know,” he answered gravely.
I realized I was on a gurney, and it was moving.
Sonterra kept up.
Invisible hands loaded the stretcher into an ambulance, and Sonterra scrambled in beside me, along with a paramedic, who kept calling out numbers to somebody up front. I heard the siren shriek, and we shot forward at warp speed.
“Can you tell me what happened?” Sonterra asked, when I’d had a few minutes to connect with current reality.
I struggled to remember the details of the incident. It was as if my memory had been tucked away on some internal shelf, just out of reach.
I felt his fingers entwined with mine. Good. I still had at least one hand. My head began to ache savagely, reaching a new crescendo with every hard beat of my heart.
It came back, a piece at a time.
The headlights.
The first crash into my rear bumper.
Spinning out.
The lights, the engine of the other car roaring like a dragon as it surged toward me a second time, then a third.
The kids, pulling me to the roadside.
Oblivion.
“Somebody came up behind me,” I said carefully, feeling my way from one word to the next. Please, God, let the baby be all right. “Flashed their lights. Then—then they hit me.” I paused. My lips were so dry they hurt, but nobody offered me water. Maybe they thought I’d spring a leak. “Kids. There were two teenagers—”
Sonterra stroked my cheek. His eyes glistened. “Michael Brown and Lanna Peterson. They saved your life. Came around the corner and saw the Escalade in the middle of the road.” He sighed. “Whoever slammed into you took off before they could get a plate number or a model. They said it was an old truck, and they didn’t see who was inside. They were busy getting you out of the wreck.”
I drifted.
The paramedic called out more numbers.
“What about the baby?”
Sonterra didn’t answer, so I turned to the paramedic.
“What about the baby?” I repeated.
The man’s glasses glinted strangely in the light. I cou
ldn’t see his eyes. I thought, oddly, of Danielle Bickerhelm.
“Try to relax, Ms. Westbrook,” the paramedic counseled. “We won’t know much until we get you to the hospital, where you can be examined.”
A sob rose up in my throat, spiky, like a giant burr.
Then, perhaps mercifully, I lost consciousness.
Awareness came and went, after that. It was as if I were on some crazy carnival ride, now in shadow, now in light.
I felt myself being jostled.
There was a blinding dazzle, and I screamed—or, at least, I meant to scream—sure that I was back in the Escalade, with that other car speeding toward me. Needles pricked my arms. Sonterra’s face loomed and receded, loomed and receded.
The effect was dizzying. I seemed to have no equilibrium.
It was the pain that finally woke me up for real.
I felt as though I’d been tossed into a low-speed cement mixer.
My eyes flew open, my hands went to my abdomen.
Every bone and muscle in my body throbbed.
“Clare.”
I focused. I was in a hospital bed, and Sonterra was there, pale and gaunt, with a shadow of beard darkening the lower half of his face.
“Clare,” he repeated. “It’s all right.”
“Did I lose the baby?”
He shook his head. Smiled wearily. “No,” he said. “The kid is tough, just like his mama.”
I let the tears go then, the tears I’d somehow been holding inside, awake and asleep, ever since the horror began. Sonterra held me while I sobbed.
A nurse came in, gave me a shot.
The sobs subsided to hiccoughs.
There was so much I needed to know. “How long—when—?”
Sonterra stroked my hair. I felt fine grit rolling over my scalp, and realized it was probably broken glass. “It happened last night,” he told me gently.
“I was so scared.” I groped for him again; he held me close.
“It’s okay, Babe.” When I stopped trembling, he settled me gently back onto the pillows. The shot was taking hold; I was getting groggy.
One Last Look Page 6
