Blood Trails (16 page)

Room 663 brought him to a halt. He knocked, knowing when this door opened it would mark the beginning of the rest of his life.

The rapid knocks were loud and sharp, waking Holly instantly. She leaped off the bed and ran toward the door, pausing only long enough to look through the security peephole, then swung the door inward.

“You’re here!”

Bud slid his suitcase inside the room, swung her up into his arms and kicked the door shut behind him.

“I have missed you so much,” he said softly, and buried his face in the curve of her neck.

Holly couldn’t quit smiling. Why had it taken them so long to get to this moment?

Bud fully intended to take this slow. But when he pulled back and looked down into her face, he was lost.

“Hey, honey,” he said softly.

“Hey,” Holly echoed, then pulled off his hat and tossed it onto the bed.

Bud grinned. He’d feared this moment might never come.

“My life is a serious mess,” she said. “Now’s your chance to take back everything you said. I won’t hold it against you.”

Bud shook his head as he cupped her face. “Never. For me, it’s always been you…only you.”

Holly shivered as Bud’s lips lightly brushed the surface of her mouth. Then they centered, claiming ground with a gentle coaxing push.

She slid her arms around his neck, lost in the magic of that first kiss. She could smell the leather of his coat, feel the steady thump of his heartbeat, and she knew that spending the rest of her life with him would be the best thing she would ever do.

Bud was shaking. He wanted her in every way a man could want a woman, but that would come later. He broke the kiss with a muffled groan, then ran his thumb across the dampness of her lower lip.

“One kiss at a time, honey. One kiss at a time.”

Holly felt as if she were flying. At that moment she could almost believe the hell that her life had turned into might turn out okay.

“I ordered some extra food a couple of hours ago. Are you hungry?” she asked.

He grinned as he took off his coat. “You’ve known me too long to ask that question. Are you hungry?”

“I am now,” she said and, just like that, slipped into the mode that made her happiest: taking care of the people she loved.

She began uncovering the food, filling the glasses from the ice bucket, then adding Pepsi. It was his favorite. By the time Bud came out of the bathroom, the food was waiting.

“Oh, man,” he said, eyeing the small feast. He kissed her quick and hard before picking up half a sandwich and settling into a chair. “That’s for always being you.”

Holly blushed, but she was smiling. She took the other half of the sandwich, crawled up onto the bed and began to eat.

The room was quiet for a couple of minutes as they ate, but it wasn’t long before Bud began talking.

“What’s the status on your situation?”

She shrugged as she tossed away the remnants of her food. “I’m assuming the newly-opened case is progressing. I haven’t been out of this room in two days. However, I don’t expect them to keep me updated. Unless I have more information for them, they don’t really need me.”

“The more you stay out of the public eye, the better off you’ll be,” Bud said, and then popped a chip in his mouth.

Holly nodded, then looked away.

Bud frowned. “I’ve seen that look on your face far too many times not to know what it means.”

“What look?” Holly asked.

“The one that tells me you’re keeping secrets.”

She sighed. How did he always know this stuff?

“Holly?”

“I might have failed to mention one thing to the police.”

“Like what?” Bud asked.

“Like the fact that before I talked to them, I went by the place where my father…where Mackey works.”

Bud nearly choked on his food. “What the hell did you do that for? Did he see you?”

Holly frowned. “What do you think? I wanted to see him, and no, he didn’t see me. I wanted to know if I’d recognize him. I was hoping that if I saw him it would trigger more memories for me.”

Bud laid down the sandwich. “‘More’ as in you have other memories?”

“Some.”

He frowned. “Like what?”

“Without going into the gory details, I’m pretty sure that, as a child, I stumbled onto my father’s trophy stash.”

Bud’s frown deepened. “Trophy stash? What kind of trophy stash?”

“I’ve been having a lot of dreams since I read the journal. The other night I was dreaming that I heard hammering. In the dream, the sounds led me to a small room off the basement. He was inside, at a worktable. There was stuff hanging on the walls.”

“What kind of stuff?” Bud asked.

“I think it was the scalps he’d been taking.”

Bud felt sick. “Is that all you remembered?”

“No. There was something else. He told me if I told anyone what I’d seen, he would make me sorry. He said I would never see my mother again.”

Ten

B
ud shuddered. There were so many emotions going through him right then that he had to struggle to find words. What he did know was how strong she must have been, keeping twenty years of ugly, evil secrets. He set his food aside, and pulled her off the bed and into his arms.

“Not that I’m complaining, but what’s this for?” Holly asked.

“I’m giving that scared little girl the hugs she needed and didn’t get.”

Tears welled. Her heart was so full, but she refused to cry. She laid her head against his chest, savoring the strength of his embrace and the steady heartbeat against her ear. Bud had always been her anchor. That he loved her like this was a gift she hadn’t expected. She wanted to be with him—to know this man in a way only his woman could know him.

She stepped back. “Maria has always said she was holding out for her hero. In the middle of all this mess, she seems to have found him. Judd loves Savannah beyond reason, and she knows it, but she’s always kept him at arm’s length. Maybe what’s happening to her will change the way she feels. And then there’s me. The oddest thing about all this is that the older I got, the more I cared for you. I think this took so long to happen because you were already there, just waiting for me to wake up. So, Robert Tate, you’ve kissed me and hugged me, but there’s something missing, and we both know what it is.”

Bud’s heart began to hammer against his chest.

“There’s no need to rush this, honey. You’ve got a hell of a mess on your hands. I don’t want you to feel pressured to take this further until you’re ready. It’s enough for me that I can finally claim you. You are my heart. You’re the reason I draw breath. If you hurt, I bleed. Understand?”

“I understand,” Holly said. “But if there’s one thing this situation my sisters and I are in has taught me, it’s that waiting for the perfect moment can be a mistake. Maria nearly got killed waiting for her hero. What if Savannah had died before she and Judd could make a life together? You’re here. I’m here. I don’t want candlelight and roses. I want you.”

The curtains were already drawn. Bud kicked off his boots, then turned around and, one by one, turned off the lamps, leaving the room bathed in dusky shadows.

Instead of panic or uneasiness, peace settled within Holly so quickly that she knew this was right. Without a hint of embarrassment, she started to pull off her sweatshirt, but Bud stopped her with a touch.

“Let me.”

He feathered a kiss across her lips, then slid his hands beneath the edges of her waistband and onto her skin.

Holly shivered as she braced herself, holding on to his shoulders as he pulled her sweatpants and panties down in one swoop. She stepped sideways, leaving them where they’d fallen, and reached for Bud’s shirt. The snaps popped as they opened one by one. She put the palms of her hands against his belly and pushed them upward. Then she looked down at his hand. The rawness of the healing cut was evident, and yet he never complained.

Bud shucked the shirt within seconds, leaving himself bare-chested and aching for what came next.

Holly reached for his belt buckle, running a forefinger between his belly and the denim of his jeans, but Bud wasn’t a man for games. He came out of the jeans almost as fast as he’d taken off the shirt, leaving him naked to the world with an erection that made Holly weak at the knees.

Seconds later he had her sweatshirt over her head and tossed her bra over the back of the chair.

“Ah…so beautiful,” he whispered, and cupped her breasts, then rolled the nipples between his fingers just hard enough to awaken a surge of longing deep within Holly’s core.

She groaned from the urgency of the lust that swept through her.

When he pulled her hard against him, his erection slid right between her thighs.

A perfect fit,
Holly thought.

He sat her back on the bed, then took a step forward, cupping her hips. Holly locked her legs around his waist, her eyes closing in ecstasy as he slowly slid inside her. For a few seconds he stayed motionless, wanting to remember every nuance of this moment, every facet of her expression.

His woman. Before he was through, she would have no doubt of that fact. She would be loved without boundaries, sated sexually to the point of exhaustion.

“Look at me, Holly.”

She opened her eyes, saw her reflection on the dark surface of his pupils, and then inhaled swiftly when he started to move, rocking steadily within her in long, steady strokes. His penis was thick and hard, delving deep into the heat of her womb, taking her higher, getting her hotter and hotter.

A minute passed, then another, and when a third had come and gone, Bud felt like he was going to explode. The muscles in his legs were starting to burn, and the ache in his belly was next to unbearable. He needed to climax. He wanted to let go so bad that he hurt.

Then salvation came. He felt the tiny quivers of her body beginning to contract around him, and he knew. Gritting his teeth, he slid his hands beneath her hips, pulling her hard against his pelvis as he increased the power of his thrusts.

Lust had coiled itself so tightly in Holly’s belly that when Bud slammed into her, moving harder and faster, there was nothing left for lust to do but explode. And she did, her body bucking uncontrollably as the climax burst within her.

As he came, Bud grabbed her hips to keep from falling, spilling his seed into her with a deep, guttural groan. When there was nothing left of him, he collapsed on top of her, then crawled onto the bed and took her into his arms.

“Oh, my God,” Holly whispered, as she buried her face against his chest.

“Who loves you?”

“You do,” Holly said.

He tightened his grip. “Who do you belong to?”

“You.”

“Yes, me,” Bud said. “And I belong to you and no other. I will cherish you, and honor you and our children, for the rest of our lives, and nothing—and no man—can change that. Understand?”

Holly sighed. She knew he was talking about the taint of being her father’s daughter.

“Yes.”

“Then close your eyes, sweet baby, and rest. No one’s ever going to hurt you again.”

He pulled the covers over them as Holly closed her eyes. She’d awakened this morning as alone in the world as she’d ever been, but from this moment on, she had the love of a good man at her back. A woman couldn’t ask for more.

The task force was still sorting through the evidence. More and more facts were added to the murder board with each passing hour. At the end of the second day, they’d accumulated quite a spread of information, and yet not one thing they had could physically connect Harold Mackey to any of the victims.

Whit Carver had received Riley’s notes on Mackey’s route, but with only two days’ worth of info from twenty years after the murders, there wasn’t anything there to latch on to, either. His current route didn’t coincide with any of the victims’ places of employment, and it was going to take time to find out what route he’d driven all those years ago—if that were even possible. They were at a loss. Carver had even let himself toy with the fact that Holly Slade’s mother could have been wrong. He didn’t want to think that he’d jumped the gun by assuming her accusation was true. But the possibility existed that her mother—and she—had been mistaken. Still, his instincts told him that wasn’t the case. He felt certain Mackey was their man. He just needed to prove it.

As was his habit, Harold did his job without fraternizing with the other drivers, clocked in and out with his usual gruff demeanor, and picked up his dinner on the way home that night.

But when he settled down in front of the television, instead of watching the screen, he was watching the house across the street, looking for that faint glow of light between the parted curtains. To his relief, he saw nothing. He began to consider the possibility that the man might not have been watching him after all. He knew for a fact that the kid three doors down was selling dope to his friends. The steady stream of cars full of teenagers coming and going from that house weren’t because of some party. Maybe the guy was a vice cop and had been watching that house, not his. Just because the telescope had been aimed at his house, that didn’t mean it had started or stayed that way.

He was relieved enough that by ten o’clock, when he should have been thinking about going to bed, he got up and got himself a beer from the kitchen instead. He popped the top on his way back into the living room and took his first sip just after he’d settled into his chair.

He felt the burp coming up his throat at the same time he saw the light, and he frowned. Okay. So someone was still over there watching, but Harold was no longer convinced he was the target. He downed the beer as he watched the late-night news and weather, mentally cursing the fact that if the weatherman was right, he would be making deliveries in the rain tomorrow. When 11:00 p.m. rolled around, he got up and began going through the house, turning off the lights. If the guy across the street was watching him, he wasn’t giving him anything to see.

After a few moments he walked back through the house into the kitchen, then out the back door and, just like the night before, up the block through the alley, crossing the street under the broken streetlight, then back to that house through the alley on the opposite side of the street.