Blood Trails

by Sharon Sala

  “Yeah, the weather’s just fine,” Delbert said. “You got yourself a good crew out here. They pretty much know what they’re doin’ and just let me pretend I’m givin’ orders.”

  Relieved to know there were no fires to put out, Bud visited for a few minutes more, then hung up. By that time Holly had finished getting ready. She came out of the bathroom patting her hair into place, then caught Bud’s gaze and stopped.

  “What?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing, honey. I’m just admiring the view.”

  “So am I,” she said, eyeing the tailored Western-cut shirt and the Wranglers hugging his butt. In her opinion, nothing fit better on a good-looking man than a pair of jeans.

  “I hope you have a plan,” Bud said. “Because if you don’t, I do.”

  “I have plans,” Holly said. “We can save yours for later.”

  He closed the space between them with two long strides and then slid his hands around her back to cup her hips, leaving her in no doubt as to the fact that he meant what he said. Then he lowered his head and nestled his face in the curve of her neck.

  “Lord, but you smell good.”

  “I wish Daddy was still alive to know this was happening.”

  “He knew how I felt. You were the unknown in the equation.”

  “He did? You told him?”

  Bud sighed. “I didn’t have to. He saw it in my face every time I looked at you. The only thing he ever told me was, ‘Don’t hurt her.’ That went without saying.”

  “I can’t believe I didn’t know.”

  “I’m fourteen years older than you are, honey. You were all busy growing up.”

  “Well, I’m all grown up now,” Holly said, and then kissed him.

  Bud groaned as want surged through him; they had to stop before they wound up back in bed again.

  “You ready to go eat breakfast?”

  She nodded.

  After a late breakfast, instead of driving, they walked back down to the riverfront. They’d seen the riverboats the night before, and Holly wanted to take the one-hour cruise. When they got off, they had their next destination in mind.

  A tour of the nearby Anheuser-Busch factory lasted into the early hours of the afternoon. By the time the tour reached the paddock and stables to see the famous Clydesdales, Holly was tired. Then she took one look at the magnificent animals and was excited all over again.

  “Oh, my gosh, would you look at the size of them!”

  Bud eyed them with the skill of a man who knew horses, admiring not only their size, but also their conformation. “The smallest one of these guys would probably scare the hell out of Andrew’s old Jim Beam. They’re huge.”

  “Not to mention the hassle of trying to get up on one,” she said, which made Bud laugh. Everyone at the Triple S knew Holly could ride, but she wasn’t an avid outdoorswoman. Her heart revolved around her home and the people she loved.

  By late afternoon their steps were dragging. They’d just left Union Station, an old-time railroad station that had been renovated years ago into an enormous two-story shopping mall.

  They were heading back to the hotel when Bud spied a horse-drawn carriage parked on a street corner. The old-world charm of the carriage and driver, plus the perfectly matched horses, made a package too good to pass up. He pointed.

  “Hey, honey, how about a ride back to the hotel in one of those?” he asked.

  “I’ll take a ride back to the hotel in anything. My feet are killing me.”

  A few minutes later they were on their way, their sacks of souvenirs on the seat beside them. The gentle motion of the carriage and the repetitive clip-clop of the horses’ feet lulled Holly to relax. She leaned her head against Bud’s shoulder. He took her hand, then lifted it up to his lips and kissed it.

  “Thank you, Bud,” she said, and kissed him full on the lips. “This has been the most marvelous day.”

  It was one of those moments in life when, for the space of that instant, everything was perfect. Bud couldn’t speak for the emotion he was feeling. Instead of talking, he just hugged her.

  The sun beamed down on them as they rode, but there was always that cooling breeze off the Mississippi River to take away the heat. Once back at the hotel, the driver got down to help them out.

  Bud stepped out first, carrying the sacks, then turned to help Holly down. She clasped his hand to steady herself, and just before she reached the last step he grabbed her around the waist with both hands and swung her down onto her feet.

  She threw back her head, laughing from sheer delight. They walked back into the hotel, arm in arm.

  Harold saw the carriage coming long before he was able to see the people in it. When they got close enough, he recognized Holly.

  But it wasn’t her arrival that shifted his world off its axis. The moment she stepped down from the carriage and tossed her head back as she laughed, his heart stopped. He’d seen Twila do that a thousand times. Just like that.

  His gut began to rumble. Either he was about to pass gas or shit his pants. Everything was beginning to make sense. That had to be Harriet, and if it was, his days as a free man were numbered. She’d seen his utmost secret, and he’d let her live. Twila had surprised him by sending her away and had died without telling him where she’d gone. Now here she was, grown up and back to talk about what she’d seen. He had no one to blame but himself. If he’d needed to keep his trophies, he shouldn’t have stayed in St. Louis. And even though he’d blocked off access to where they were hidden, he was no longer going to bet his life on them staying undiscovered. But there was a problem. Now that he knew the cops were on to him, he didn’t dare try to get his collection off the property.

  The only option he had was to get rid of her and make it look like an accident or a robbery gone bad.

  He frowned as he watched the big man walking her into the hotel. The guy was at least as tall as he was himself, and a good twenty years younger. Harold didn’t like the fact that he’d let this slide until she had protection. It would have been a lot easier to get her while she’d still been alone. But it was just one man. Harold had faced more difficult situations and lived to tell.

  The dream started in the wee hours of the morning, long after Bud and Holly had fallen asleep in a tangle of arms and legs.

  She could hear her mother’s footsteps coming toward her room as the sound of her daddy’s truck disappeared down the street. Good. At least he was gone for a while. Maybe if she kept her head down and kept coloring, Mama wouldn’t be able to tell she’d been crying. She discarded the yellow crayon for a pink one and began coloring in the Easter Bunny’s hat as if her life depended on it.

  “There you are, honey,” Mama said. “I’m back from getting groceries. Do you want to come help me put them up?”

  She shook her head no and kept coloring, hoping that her refusal to do something she always liked to do hadn’t set off warning bells in her mother’s head.

  When her mother’s footsteps came into the room instead of receding back down the hall, Holly flinched, then gripped the crayon so hard it suddenly snapped in two.

  Relieved to have an excuse, she began crying again as her mother knelt beside her.

  “Don’t cry, honey. It’s just a crayon. Look. Now you have two pieces instead of one.”

  Mama peeled back a little bit of the paper so the crayon would work from either end, but it didn’t help. The fact that Harriet had an honest reason to cry was alleviating the sheer terror that was in her heart.

  “Honey…can you tell Mama why you’re so sad?”

  “No,” Harriet said. “I can’t tell. Ever.”

  “Who said you couldn’t tell?” Mama asked.

  “Daddy. He said he’d make me sorry.”

  Mama started to shake. She grabbed Harriet by her shoulders and then pulled her fiercely against her chest.

  “No, baby, he won’t do anything to you. Mama won’t let him. Now tell me, what happened to make you cry?”

  “I saw
in Daddy’s secret room, and I wasn’t supposed to,” she said, and then started sobbing all over again.

  Mama frowned. “What did you see in Daddy’s room?”

  “Hair like on Daddy’s trophies, lots of hair. All kinds of colors of hair. It got tangled in my fingers. I tried to put it back, but he got mad.”

  She couldn’t see her mother’s reaction, but she felt her body suddenly shudder.

  “Hair? You mean fur, like on animal skins?” Twila asked.

  “No. People hair. Stuck to his wooden trophy boards.”

  “Oh, dear God.”

  All of a sudden her mother sat her down on the bed and jumped up. “I’ll be right back.”

  Harriet jumped up and ran after her mother, crying all the way. “No, Mama, no. You can’t look. He’ll know I told. He’ll know I told!”

  Twelve

  Holly sat up in bed, choking on tears, a scream caught at the back of her throat.

  Bud was awake within seconds, reaching for her and pulling her into his arms.

  “What’s wrong, honey? What’s wrong? Were you having a bad dream?”

  Holly turned and buried her face against his chest as she started to sob.

  “I told. Oh, my God, he told me not to, but I told her anyway.”

  “Look at me, Holly.” When she wouldn’t look up, he grabbed her by the shoulders and forced her. “Look at me.”

  She lifted her head as tears streamed down her face.

  “Talk to me. Tell me what you remembered.”

  “Mama came home and found me crying as Daddy was driving away. She began asking me what happened, and I told her, even though he’d told me not to.”

  Bud was still confused. “Exactly what did you tell her?”

  “That Daddy had trophies in his secret room, that there were pieces of hair on trophy boards, and that he told me I’d be sorry if I said anything.”

  “Oh, hell,” Bud said. He got out of bed to get her some tissues, returned with the box, then crawled back in bed.

  “What did she do?” Bud asked.

  “I’m not sure. I woke up from the dream as she was heading for the cellar, but I’m sure she found them. That’s got to be the reason she sent me away with Andrew. She was afraid of what my father would do to me. I think I blocked it all out because when she sent me away, I believed it was because I was the one who’d done something bad. I’d told when I wasn’t supposed to. I didn’t understand that it was for my protection, and not because of what she was afraid my father might do.”

  Bud ached for the torment he could see in her eyes. Poor little girl. No wonder she’d blocked it all out.

  “I’m sorry, honey, so sorry.” He scooted her into his lap and rocked her where they sat. “As an adult, you can see how much she loved you, and what a sacrifice she made to get you safe before she went to the police.”

  Holly nodded as she continued to cry. “And that’s part of the reason I feel like I have to stay. I need to find my mother. I need to know what he did to her. I know now she must be dead, but I have to find her body. She deserved a long and happy life. At least I can find her and make sure she’s buried properly in holy ground. That would matter to her. It would matter a lot.”

  “Then we’ll stay awhile longer,” Bud said. “Surely they’ll connect the dots soon and he’ll be arrested.”

  Holly nodded as she pulled a fresh handful of tissues from the box.

  “Thank you, Bud. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “You’re welcome, darlin’. And the feeling is mutual.” He glanced at the clock. “It’s too early to get up. It doesn’t matter if you can’t go back to sleep, but we can stay here and cuddle, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Holly slid beneath the covers as Bud spooned himself against her. She tried to sleep, but the devil was still too fresh from the dream. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the rage on her father’s face, then heard the sound of her mother’s footsteps disappearing down the cellar steps.

  Holly was in the shower when she heard the bathroom door open. The shower curtain slid back, and before she knew it, Bud was in the tub behind her.

  She laughed. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Multitasking,” he said, and took the washcloth out of her hand. “You missed a spot.”

  He ran the washcloth across her breasts, then beneath them, gently cupping the ivory globes before giving the dusky pink nipples a brief tweak.

  A surge of heat hit her core so fast her legs went weak.

  “Oh, Lord.”

  Bud put a finger to her lips, turned her to face him and slid the washcloth around her waist, down her buttocks, then around to her belly.

  “Hold on to me.”

  Holly grabbed hold of his shoulders, then locked her hands around his neck as he moved the washcloth down between her legs. The nubby texture of the warm, soapy cloth quickly aroused her. Bud dropped the washcloth, pulled her out from under the spray and pinned her against the wall.

  She saw his eyes darken and his nostrils flare, as he parted her legs and slid inside. His erection was full, his penis hard and swollen, and the feel of him slowly filling her was an excruciating moment of completion.

  “You like that, baby?”

  She nodded.

  He gave a quick thrust, filling her completely.

  She moaned.

  He braced himself, planting his hands on the shower wall on either side of her head. “You want more?” Their gazes locked. His eyes were so dark they looked black. She saw heaven waiting for her. All she had to do was say yes.

  “All of you, Buddy. I want it all.”

  A muscle jerked at the side of his mouth, and then he swooped. His lips caught hers in a hard, hungry move, capturing and parting them before the onslaught of his tongue. He began to move within her in a steady rhythmic motion—all the way in to his hilt, all the way back out to the swollen head, then back again…over and over, slowly increasing the tempo, pushing deeper, taking her higher.

  Holly met him thrust for thrust as the steam from the hot water began to build, filling the shower and then the bathroom, until they were lost in a fog of lust. One moment she was still with him, and then she shattered. The gut-deep groan came up her throat just as the climax burst within her, turning the blood flowing through her body into a heat-seeking missile. It slammed into her groin with such force that she forgot to breathe.

  Bud pulled her hard against his chest with one hand while he held on to the shower rod with the other, and then, thrust after shuddering thrust, emptied himself into her womb.

  Whit Carver strode into headquarters, then straight to his office, carrying a handful of files and a box of doughnuts. He dumped the files on his desk, then carried the doughnuts through to the headquarters of the task force.

  Two detectives were still going through old files, and another was moving pushpins on the map.

  “Anything I should know about?” Carver asked.

  The detective turned around. “We had the addresses wrong on a couple of the first victims—just correcting them.”

  Whit walked up to the map and gave it a new look, then frowned. It didn’t change anything obvious. He snagged a doughnut and went back to his desk.

  It was a little over an hour later when one of the detectives came looking for him.

  “Hey, Whit, did you know that Riverfront Wholesale wasn’t always Riverfront Wholesale, and that it used to be at a different address?”

  Carver stood up. “Why are we just now becoming aware of this?”

  “We started out going through the old victim files with the task of matching those victims to Mackey and his place of work, which is Riverfront Wholesale. We were told he’d always worked for them. It was only when we started looking for info on his old routes that we found out the company had changed hands and its name, and moved.”

  Whit’s interest surged.

  “Get the address of the old company, and if he’s still alive, I want to
talk to the original owner.”

  Whit went back to his paperwork but couldn’t concentrate. He rejoined the task force on the pretext of getting himself another doughnut and a refill on his coffee. In truth, with this new information, he wanted a fresh look at the map.

  Bud was at the concierge desk, while Holly was trying to call Maria. She’d gotten through to her sister’s room, only to find out she wasn’t there because she was in the process of being released. That was good news, but Maria wasn’t answering her cell phone. Then it occurred to Holly that it might not have survived the explosion, so she would have to count on Maria to call her when she got a chance. She dropped her cell back into her purse as Bud came up behind her and slid his hand along her waist.

  “Come on, sugar. Let’s get the car. We have some where to go.”

  Holly turned. She was still reveling in the fact that the man she loved was freaking amazing in bed—and in showers, and standing up, as well as lying down. She shivered with longing. He was a habit she didn’t want to break.

  “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see.” He took her by the hand and headed for the exit.

  When the valet brought the car, Bud surprised her by putting her in the passenger seat.

  “I have the directions, so I’m driving. Buckle up,” he said, and winked to soften the order as he slid behind the wheel.

  Holly reached for her seat belt as Bud started the car.

  The secrecy of the moment was a rush, as she was sure Bud had known it would be.

  Watching her reliving the devastation of her past without being able to help or fix it was torture for him. He wanted her happy, not in this constant stage of torment and fear. And right now Holly’s eyes were dancing.

  Holly kept up a constant run of questions. Every time they passed a tourist attraction, she asked, “Is this it? Is this where we’re going?”

  “Nope, that’s not it,” he would say, his delight increasing, and keep driving.

  After the third failed guess, Holly threw up her hands.