Julia nodded.
“How ’bout you?” he asked.
Julia’s face went pale. Her eyes narrowed, and the lines around her mouth tightened as if she’d bitten into a lemon.
“Yeah. Upstate New York. Ithaca College.”
“Never heard of it. What’d you study?”
“Guys. That’s where I met my ex-husband. Charlie.” Her eyes took on a glassy stare as she looked out over the water again. “It didn’t last long. Four or five years. I don’t even remember. I guess it was my trial run.”
Ben wasn’t sure why, but he felt a sudden twinge of jealousy, thinking that other men — maybe many other men — had been with her. He wondered if Julia meant what she had said about studying guys and might be the kind of woman who had trouble settling down and remaining loyal to one man.
Not that it matters, he told himself, flushing with guilt. Guys like me don’t end up with women like her.
“You graduate?” he asked, hoping to keep the subject light.
Julia nodded and said, “I got a degree in early childhood education, but I never used it. Never got around to it.”
Ben sensed there was more here than she wanted to get into right now, so he let her comment drop, and they were silent for a long time as they both looked at the sky and sea. Finally, after a long silence, Julia shifted her stance and turned halfway around toward him.
“Ben,” she said with a deep-throated huskiness in her voice that made him respond instantly. He raised both hands and gripped her shoulders. After a beautiful moment of tension as they gazed into each other’s eyes, he drew her close.
She didn’t resist. She collapsed into his embrace.
Her arms snaked around his waist and pulled him close until their hips were pressing together … hard. Grinding. He lowered his face to hers, and she stretched up to meet him. Their mouths were open as if they each had something important to say but couldn’t quite phrase it. And then, slowly, Ben moved his head forward until their lips met. As soon as they touched, a hot flood of passion swept through Ben, and he was kissing her desperately.
Within seconds, their hands were all over each other, feeling … rubbing … kneading … touching. Ben’s hands cupped her breasts and felt their soft, warm roundness. She broke off the kiss and, moving closer, moaned as she blew softly into his ear. And then her hands slid down over his hips and around to the front. She started rubbing her hand up and down across the hardness of his groin, sending electric sparks sizzling through him.
Ben nuzzled his face against her neck, intoxicated as he inhaled her fragrance and licked the salt on her skin and nibbled the lobe of her ear. For a moment … a moment that crackled like lightning in the air … they pulled away from each other and smiled, their gazes locked. The liquid glow in Julia’s brown eyes was all Ben could see as slowly … slowly … they knelt down together on the sand, and then she was in his arms again, kissing him and squeezing him while making soft, low moaning sounds.
Ben eased her down onto the warm sand, unmindful of the grit as they slowly, carefully undressed each other, caressing and exploring and reveling in each other’s body as each new part was exposed. And then, with the sea hissing on the sand beside them, they made love for the first time.
“Chief says he wants to see you.”
It was a few minutes before his shift, and Tom was seated in the canteen, his feet propped up on the table as he sipped a cup of coffee that had obviously been on the burner a few hours longer than it should have. It might taste like crap, but at least it was hot and had caffeine. In an instant, Charlie Evans’ words instantly turned the warmth he’d been feeling into ice.
“Right now?” Tom asked. He dropped his feet to the floor and tried to control the tremor in his hand as he placed the Styrofoam coffee cup onto the table.
“No,” Charlie said, rolling his eyes. “He was thinking sometime next week … or whenever you’re in the mood.” He paused, then added, “Of course right now.”
“Any idea what this is about?” Tom asked as he got to his feet.
“Not a clue,” Charlie replied, and then he ducked back out the door.
Tom stood beside the table for several seconds, feeling light-headed. His knees were rubbery, and he was afraid they would fold up on him like a fifty-cent lawn chair if he took a single step. Steadying himself with one hand on the back of the chair he’d been sitting in, he stared at the closed door Charlie had exited.
What the fuck …? he thought. They gotta be onto me.
He was convinced he was going to be busted … He’d go to trial … maybe even do time in Warren. Just great. A town cop in the state pen. How many men had he arrested and helped put there? He’d never come out alive.
“Screw this,” he muttered as he picked up his cup and dumped the contents down the sink. He tossed the cup in the general direction of the trash can and missed, but he didn’t bother to pick it up.
He could always run.
He didn’t have any ready cash. He would have, if Ben hadn’t been such a dick about his proposition. Still, why not go home, pack a few things, get the suitcase with the drugs, and take off? Maybe go to Boston … or Providence to unload it. He knew people in Rhode Island. Hell, if Ben hadn’t been such a prick and hooked him up with Richie Sullivan, maybe Richie would have hooked him up with someone down there. He might not get the best price, certainly not what it was worth, but it’d be something. And right now, anything was looking better than what he was facing.
“Jesus Harold Christ on a rubber crutch,” he whispered.
He was still wondering if he should bolt or not when the door opened, and Chief Harlan walked in.
“Hey. You coming up to my office?” he asked. It didn’t matter what he said or who he was speaking to, whenever Harlan spoke, the flat, emotionless pitch in his voice always sounded threatening.
“Yeah … I’m on my way.”
“Make it snappy,” Harlan said, and then he left, the door whooshing shut behind him.
Tom turned to the sink, ran the water until it was good and cold, and splashed his face several times. The cold shock numbed him, but it felt good. It cleared his head … helped him focus. He had to face whatever was going to happen, no matter what kind of shit came down.
A minute later Tom knocked on the police chief’s door, a few quick raps.
“I’m in. You’re out,” Harlan shouted.
The metal doorknob was slick in the palm of Tom’s sweating hand as he turned it and pushed the door open. He saw a man wearing a dark blue suit in a chair next to Harlan’s desk. They both rose to their feet when Tom entered the room.
“Shut the door.”
Tom did as he was told and lingered by the door
“Come in … Come in. Have a seat,” Harlan said, indicating the empty chair next to the mystery man and his desk. Tom walked over to it and sat down.
“So,” he said, his voice dry and flat. “What’s this all about?” He was amazed that he could speak at all
After a short pause that seemed to stretch out forever, Harlan sat down behind his desk and said, “Tom. I’d like you to meet Jerry Lincoln. Jerry’s with the DEA. Jerry. This here’s Tom Marshall.”
Even before the introductions were over, Tom felt his stomach clench. Sweat popped out on his forehead as he nodded to the man. Jerry extended his hand for Tom to shake. Tom’s arm felt as limp as a twisted dishtowel as he reached out to shake hands. Lincoln’s grip was strong and firm enough to hurt as they shook.
“You see, Jerry’s got a bit of a problem,” Harlan went on, “and I think you’re just the man who can help him out with it.”
“I — Yeah. Sure. I’ll do whatever I can,” Tom said, confused and worried about the direction this conversation was taking.
Tom took a moment to ease back in the chair, trying to look perfectly relaxed and comfortable as he tried to gauge the man.
If anyone looked like a narc, it was Jerry Lincoln. He was thin as a rail, muscular, with blond hair cut
in a severe crew cut that exposed his pink scalp beneath the short bristles. His face was thin and lined. There was a cold, flat gleam in his pale, blue eyes that Tom found genuinely unnerving.
“So what’s the problem?”
“I need some information,” Lincoln said, “about some people around town.”
“Information?”
“It’s common knowledge there’s a network of people working with organized crime in this area.”
“I wouldn’t say it’s all that organized,” Tom said, trying to inject a bit of humor to smooth over his initial nervousness. Maybe things weren’t as bad as he thought.
“We know some local fishermen bring drugs in from boats off-shore,” Lincoln said without the slightest trace of a smile.
“Yeah …” Tom shifted in his seat. “I’ve heard rumors to that effect …”
“We’re trying to crack that ring, and I need someone — a local who’s willing to give me information.”
Tom sat up straight as if a jolt of electricity had passed through him. He raised his eyebrows and slowly smiled, relieved that he wasn’t in the world of shit he’d been imagining. What he really wanted to do was throw his arms out wide and whoop for joy.
Lincoln was looking for a snitch.
It was almost too good to be true, but Tom cautioned himself not to overplay it in case this was a setup.
What if they were trying to lull him into a false sense of security?
“Since 9/11, we’ve gotten increased funding through Homeland Security,” Lincoln said, “so we’re expanding our investigations into some of the off-shore activity here and up the coast all the way to Canada. I understand you have significant contacts with various local fishermen and lobstermen.”
“Well … yeah. Sure. I know all the guys down at the wharf,” Tom said with a shrug as much to relieve the tension inside him as acknowledge what Lincoln had said. “I know everyone ’round here.”
“And you wouldn’t find it a problem to inform on some of them if you were to, say, find out some of them were running drugs?”
“The law’s the law,” Tom said. “My job’s enforcing it.”
“What if it were even someone you know well like, say, your father-in-law, for instance?”
“Wally … Wally Brown?” Tom covered his mouth with the flat of his hand and rubbed his cheek as though it had been bee-stung. All the while, Lincoln sat there and stared at him with a cold, unblinking look.
“Your father-in-law is a known associate of Richard Sullivan, otherwise known as ‘The Crowbar.’ Sullivan’s a member of an organized crime family based in Providence.”
“I don’t know anything about that, but — yeah … Sure. I know Sullivan. He owns a bar down to Boothbay.”
“Among other business interests,” Lincoln said tonelessly.
Tom glanced at Harlan, who was leaning back in his chair and staring out the window as though he wasn’t even a part of this conversation.
“I’m not so sure I’d want to be checking into what Richie Sullivan’s doing,” Tom said with a nervous laugh. “I — uh, I’d rather not end up going overboard with a cement block tied ’round my ankles.”
“I’m not interested in you going after Richie Sullivan,” Lincoln said. “The way I’m going to get to him is by breaking the system he and his criminal associates have going. Get one of the little guys in the ring and squeeze him until he gives up whoever’s above him.”
Tom leaned back and released the tension gathering in his shoulders.
“So that’s my proposition to you,” Lincoln continued. “Can I count on your help?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“I was hoping for a little more enthusiasm than that,” Lincoln said, and Harlan shifted his eyes and looked at him.
“Absolutely. You can count on me.”
“You can take some time to mull it over, if you’d like. Once things go to trial, you know, you might end up having to testify against people you’ve known all your life.”
The sensible response, Tom knew, would be to agree to take some time before he decided. He knew it wouldn’t look good if he jumped at this proposition too fast, not without at least appearing to give it due consideration. They certainly wouldn’t expect him to decide right here on the spot, but Tom found himself smiling.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “I’ll do whatever you want me to do.”
Lincoln and Harlan exchanged glances that, once again, gave Tom a spike of suspicion that this might not be what it appeared, but he realized he was in too deep to back out now.
Tom glanced at the wall clock and said, “I — ah, I have to get out on my patrol.”
He stood up and, again, shook hands with Lincoln. The man’s tight grip made his fingers tingle.
“Thank you for your cooperation,” Lincoln said, his voice flat, his face nearly expressionless.
He turned to leave. Tom sensed both men’s eyes boring into the back of his head as he opened the door and walked out of the office. As he closed the door behind him, he wished he could hear what the two men said next.
He made his way down the hallway, realizing he’d been holding his breath, so he let it out in a slow whistle. It felt like he had been holding it for the entire duration of the interview. Tiny white spots of light zigzagged across his vision. If Harlan had any idea he’d stolen those drugs, they would have busted him right there and then.
No way they’d let him walk.
He was sure of that.
So if he played his cards right, he stood a chance of looking a whole lot better in the department and still getting the money he needed — finally — to get the hell away from this goddamned town and his fucking wife and her family.
If he hurt his wife’s family in the process, and Capt’n Wally did some time in jail …Who the fuck cared?
Chapter Eight
Slashers
The sun was a soft, ruby-red ball near the horizon. Long shadows of pine trees and scrub brush stretched across the rocks and darkening sand that glistened like spilled oil. A crow sat in a dead tree nearby, cawing its ragged call. In the aftermath of their lovemaking, Ben and Julia cuddled on the sand, resting in each other’s arms. Finally, Julia shivered.
“We ought to get going,” she said, holding herself close against Ben. He ran his fingertips along the length of her arm as though reading the sprinkling of goose bumps and sand like they were Braille.
Moving languorously, they got up, brushed themselves off, and got dressed. The wind was blowing strong off the water now, chilling them and drying the sweat on their skin, but both of them were smiling, filled with contentment.
For Ben’s part, he couldn’t remember the last time he had felt so close, so damned good being with a woman. When a memory of Kathy Brackett crept into his mind, he pushed it aside. Any feelings he might still have for Kathy had been whisked away this afternoon by the sun and the sand, by the breeze off the ocean and the gentle touch of Julia’s hands all over his body.
Before today, he had been convinced that the jagged pieces of his life would never fit together perfectly smoothly, but then again — whose did?
He had wondered hundreds if not thousands of times if he would ever feel genuine love again. Sexual attraction? Sure. But he had been convinced that any real connection with a woman was gone from his life for good. He’d been sure that some part of him — the part that would allow him to give himself unconditionally to a woman — had been dead. That had been the first casualty of seeing — and participating in — the depraved things human beings can do to each other in war.
After what just happened with Julia, he wanted desperately to believe some of the things he was feeling were real.
For Julia’s part, she felt an amazing sense of satisfaction and triumph mixed with inexpressible joy. For weeks … for months, now, she had been hearing talk around town about Ben Brown coming home from Iraq almost as if he were some sort of mythical being, not a flesh-and-blood human. Although none of the town
sfolk had ever spoken about him directly to her — she was, after all, an outsider — she had overheard enough so, even for her, Ben Brown had become something special … so special, in fact, that she wondered if anyone could live up to such high expectations.
But now on the beach, he had … and then some.
He had proven to be a sensitive and skilled lover who had done things to her — with her — that had amazing intensity. Maybe it was being outdoors instead of in one of their bedrooms … Maybe a wild, savage spirit had energized their lovemaking … Maybe she had been so pent up, so frustrated by Tom Marshall’s inadequate lovemaking … Maybe it was the element of danger, of being seen making love on the beach …
Whatever it was, something gave their lovemaking an extra edge that had been beyond anything she had ever experienced.
Or maybe … just maybe … Ben Brown really had lived up to the unrealistic expectations she had built up.
To her amazement, she had experienced a powerful connection with him.
After the disappointment of her first marriage, she had convinced herself that she was immune to love. Love was nothing but a foolish, immature infatuation. There was no way it could be some deep and lasting connection she had grown up thinking it might be.
Now … she wasn’t so sure.
But what she did know was, she wasn’t lonely anymore.
Neither one of them said much as they walked, hand in hand, up the winding dirt path to the top of the hill that overlooked the tiny cove. Julia leaned her head against his shoulder, smiling and breathing in the musky scent of sweat in his armpit. The wind cooled their skin and blew Julia’s long, dark hair back over one shoulder like a fanned cape. Ben stopped and, brushing her hair back, leaned down and kissed the nape of her neck. His tongue lapped her salty flesh like he was a kitten, drinking fresh cream. He inhaled sharply, taking in the lingering scent of her perfume and her warm, salty flesh.
“Do you think anyone saw us?” Julia asked. She giggled, but her voice was edged with worry.
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