Dead End (26 page)

When the door closed, Reb couldn’t seem to move on. The house pressed in around her. She was lonely and a little scared, and the only one who stirred passion—a feeling that she was truly alive—was close to her but might as well be miles away. If he wanted her help, she’d give it. Spike could get at Bonnie’s possessions.

The bathroom door opened again. A candle had been lighted on the tile counter, and gold shadows leaped over pale walls.

Marc leaned on the doorjamb. “I didn’t think I heard you walk on,” he said.

“I didn’t,” she said, redundantly. “I mean, I didn’t want to somehow. I guess I thought I’d wait for you.”

“Are you starting to feel you like having me around?”

She took a breath and held it before saying, “What makes you ask that?”

“I thought you might feel the way I do. I like having you around.”

“We’re in a pickle,” she told him. “Damned if we do and damned if we don’t.”

Marc laughed shortly. “That’s one way to put it.” He shot an arm around her waist, swung her into the bathroom, and locked the door.

She tried to reach the door handle at once, but he made it impossible. “Let me go, Marc. We’re in the rectory. Cyrus isn’t a fool. He knew what we’d been doing when he came to my place last week. Under the circumstances there was nothing he could say about it, but if we’re indiscreet in his house, he can have a lot to say.”

“He won’t,” Marc told her softly, staring at her mouth. “Cyrus’s a priest. He’s also a man, and I think he likes to see other people happy.”

“We don’t belong together.”

“Who says so?”

“Good sense does. We have nothing in common. We don’t want any of the same things. And I’ve only just begun explaining.”

He caught her hair in handfuls, one on either side of her head, and turned her face up to his. She had never been so thoroughly kissed. She had also never heard singing sounds at such a moment, or felt as if she were underwater, floating around and around, guided by a relentless force from which she wanted no escape.

“We’ve got unfinished business,” he said. “I’ve walked around with the evidence of that for days.”

“You can’t have.” Reb deliberately kept her eyes on his.

He unbuttoned her shirt. “Want to bet? No bra? Oh, yeah.” He dispensed with the shirt by feel and tugged her against him. “I love the feel of you.”

Her breasts received his entire attention. His eyes closed and his breathing grew heavy. He held on to her with his teeth and lips while he shed his own sweater, then layered her against him.

Reb saw colors and pressed her eyes shut. She touched him intimately and he cried out as if in pain. When she touched him again, he held her hand there, and she didn’t need explanations for his discomfort.

Marc walked her against the counter and thudded his hips into her pelvis. She met him, and held him with both hands between his braced legs. “I want you,” she murmured.

“Yes, yes.”

The room felt like a sauna. Beads of sweat popped on her forehead. They fumbled with each other’s clothes, their fingers clumsy in such haste.

She didn’t look at him when he reached into his back pocket and took out his wallet. But she didn’t waste the opportunity to push his pants down while his hands were behind his back.

They panted, so loudly, she thought, that surely they’d be heard all over the house. Reb didn’t care. Every inch of her skin felt raw and ready.

Marc ripped her pantyhose and mouthed
Sorry.

She kissed him and let him get rid of her skirt and panties.

Her belly met him and he was so hard she was consumed by her own need. “Now,” she told him, standing on her toes to make his access easier.

Marc ignored her efforts and lifted her. He wrapped her legs around his waist, and she felt wild. He all but threw her free, caught her, and drove himself into her again, and again.

The force of their joining caused him to step backward—and to stumble over the pants that were still around his ankles.

“Ah, hell, sweetheart,” he said through his teeth, flinging wide an arm that didn’t stop him from thudding to sit on the edge of the bathtub.

“Shhh,” Reb crooned to him. She planted her feet inside the tub. “See, we hardly missed a beat.”

At that he laughed. “Great choice of words. I may never be the same when you’re finished with me.”

She made all the action and kissed him to silence every time he protested. “My turn,” she said. “My way.”

Tomorrow she might be sore. Today she didn’t give a damn.

Tension swelled between her legs and inside her belly. Her breasts felt as if they pulsed. She held the edge of the tub to get more purchase and overbalanced backward. Marc caught her around the shoulders, but couldn’t keep his rear on its narrow perch. Amid a chorus of “ouch” and “oh, no” and “hold on to me,” they landed in the bottom of the tub—miraculously still joined together.

“Wound-check later,” Marc said, breathing harshly and using his heels to keep his hips coming at Reb.

They clung together, and cried out at the point of no return. Holding Reb’s face in the crook of his neck and speaking streams of incoherent satisfaction and affection, Marc fell to his back.

He squirmed, and straightened her on top of him, and continued to kiss any part of her he could reach. Reb tried to hold his face still, but he was too strong.

“I’ve dreamed of this,” he told her.

“You’re mad.”

His chest shook with silent laughter. “Then you’re mad too, unless you can say you didn’t like it.”

These were the feelings she’d only heard about. “I do like it.”

“I’m so glad to hear you say that, cher, but we’d better get out of this tub and make ourselves respectable. Cyrus will be back, and we need to talk to him—before I carry you away again. We’ve got to be where we can give our entire attention to doin’ all the things we need to do.”

“Mm.” Reb wanted to sleep on his chest, but she shifted, and Marc reached behind him to find a handhold and push them up.

He didn’t let go of the faucet in time. He did make real solid contact with the shower controls.

At the exit for Lydia and Patoutville, Precious left Highway 90 and headed directly south. She had made the switch from the Jaguar to a Honda Civic she paid to keep in a barn on some old man’s property deep in a swampy cypress grove. They’d had the arrangement for over a year, and she hadn’t set eyes on him since they’d struck their deal. Each time she came, she left an envelope containing new twenties on an upturned crate outside the door to his cabin. When she returned, the money was gone. A good arrangement.

Her own place was built on stilts, a single story with a gallery on all sides. Close to Cypremort, so she had some view out to the Gulf, but on this muggy gray day—in the aftermath of so much rain—she would see little through a frame of trees filled with sullen mist.

The same shed that protected her rowboat had room for the Honda. She made the switch and set off on the short crossing to the tin-roofed cabin. Not twenty-five yards from the boat, the surface of the sludgy water parted and a gator’s weed-draped jaws smoothly knifed ahead of its humped and glassy eyes. The place smelled like a hundred years of mildew cut with sweetgum pitch.

Nothing changed around here. Precious liked it that way.

She tied up at a piling and climbed a vertical ladder twice, carrying one oar to the short boardwalk each time. Once they were stashed and locked away with a combination padlock, Precious let herself into the cabin. There were supplies in the boat, but she’d get them once she’d checked things out here.

The place smelled bad. She’d have to open up the windows and get some fresh air inside.

Scraping and rattling sounds from the bathroom grated on her nerves. Her plans had gotten more difficult to pull off, but she was still determined to make them work.

Before the exhumation, everything had seemed smooth. But
ba
m
,
from left field Chauncey the fuck-up had jumped the gun and gone into action without even warning her. No way was he supposed to empty that tomb without letting her know first. It had to mean he thought he was still in charge and had come up with a new plan. The fact that he hadn’t let a word of it slip made her jumpy.

She wanted explanations, and she’d intended to get the information she needed out of Dante, but things had gotten out of hand. She smiled at the thought. He’d never have the guts to tell Chauncey what they’d done together, and she’d bought enough time to lose Dante—and gain a beautiful little gift she intended to use if and when the time was right. After all, a poor, helpless little woman like her couldn’t force a strong man like Dante to do a thing. She had been wronged.

Precious took her gun from her purse, stashed it in the waistband of the jeans she’d changed into, and threw the purse on a bamboo chair.

Taking a deep breath and making sure her denim shirt covered the weapon, she opened the bathroom door.

Sagging shades were drawn over the windows at Chauncey Depew’s “office” in the middle of the lot at his body shop.

“Don’t do this, Sheriff Devol,” Dante Cornelius said. He squeezed out each word. From the black hair that fell from the top of his head straight down on all sides, to his mangled black suit and shoes so caked with mud who knew what color they used to be, he was one miserable-looking bastard. “Please,” he said, clasping his hands in front of him.

“Calm down,” Spike told him. “You were lost. Now you’re found, and I’m takin’ you home to your best buddy.”

“I wanna go to a hotel.”

“Which hotel would that be?”

The man’s eyes darted around. “The, er, Lay By. It’s out by—”

“I know where it is. You got a reservation for tonight?”

“No…Yes, I got a standing reservation.”

“Wow,” Spike said. “You live a rich life. Must be hard slumming it with Chauncey. Unfortunately I have it on record that you live with Depew. Got it from the man himself, and the last time I talked to you, you were glad to agree.”

Spike drove around the hut and parked facing out of the lot. He’d had no reason to handcuff Dante, useful as that would have been. In such situations, a man had to improvise, and he couldn’t be sure Dante wouldn’t run if he got a chance. He grabbed his guest’s left hand, unlocked the doors on his cruiser, and dragged Dante across the two front seats and out of the vehicle.

“What d’you do that for?” Dante said, all righteous and outraged. “You was afraid to let me out of my own door, right? You thought I wouldn’t stick around. I got rights. Police brutality, that’s what that was.”

“Do you have witnesses, Mr. Cornelius?”

“Let me leave and I won’t tell a soul about any of this.”

Rather than grin, Spike pressed his lips together and hauled Dante to Chauncey’s door. He still held the man’s hand.

Spike knocked.

“Lemme go,” Dante hissed. He sounded desperate.

“I like holding your hand,” Spike said.

“Hey, I ain’t no faggot.”

“No,” Spike said without inflection. “Gays usually get born with brains in their heads.”

Dante struggled. “Hold anything you like, just make sure Chauncey don’t think I’m no wuss. That type of thing’s bad for the image.”

“You’ve got it.” A handful of the back of Dante’s pants raised him to his toes, and he squealed. Spike knocked again, harder this time. “Come on, come on.”

“I remember now,” Dante said. “He ain’t here. He—”

From inside the hut, Chauncey asked, “Who the fuck’s there?”

“Good friends,” Spike said, and to Dante, “What part of New York are you from?”

Dante glared at him and didn’t answer.

“Same place as Chauncey?”

“He ain’t from New York, sucker. He’s from Toussaint, and you know it.”

“Funny, you both talk the same, and I could have sworn it was Brooklyn, or the Bronx, maybe. Tough-guy talk. Come on, where are you from?”

“Fort Wayne, Indiana.”

Spike was nodding wisely when the door opened and Chauncey stood framed by the yellow light he’d had to switch on early because he had a need to shut out daylight.

“You’re goin’ to have to watch Dante,” Spike said, helping his companion inside by the seat of his pants. Dante tripped along on his toes, adding a little jump from time to time. “He reckons he’s from Fort Wayne, and I know that’s not what you told me.”

“Fuck,” Chauncey said. “The perfect end to a perfect day. Where the fuck you been, Dante?”

“Here and there,” Dante said, smiling. A disconcerting sight. With his eyes he gave what Spike presumed was a warning signal, and jerked his head in Spike’s direction. “Got stranded hell and gone by a flat tire.”

“You ain’t got no tires,” Chauncey said. “That’s on account of you don’t see so well. I make sure you get where you need to go.”

Spike stuck out a forefinger and wiggled it. “Thank you, Chauncey. You solved my puzzle. You should have fessed up, Dante, and told me about your eyes. That explains why you were wanderin’ in the woods. I surely am grateful we got the 911 call from the nice lady who thought she had a thug trespassing on her property.”

The whole time he spoke, Spike watched Depew. He looked ill and as if he’d like to leap on Dante. He drummed the fingertips of his right hand on an expensive desk that looked ridiculous in the hut. “Thank you, Officer Devol,” he said with the kind of smile that would make mothers cover their babies’ eyes. “Might as well be honest. Dante wanders. Seems to be getting worse, but I’ll take care of him.”

Dante moaned.

“Good thing, too,” Spike remarked with a straight face. “Must have gone thirty miles or more today. If he keeps that up he’s going to show up missing one of these days—and with man-eating blisters on his feet.”

Dante moaned again and Spike let go of his pants.

“Thanks for bringing him back,” Chauncey said, edging toward the door. “I’ll make a donation to the widows and offenders fund.”

“That would be ‘orphans’,” Spike said. The way this man had kept himself out of prison was a testimony to the power of dumb luck. “Before we carry on with the small stuff, I got another point to clear up. Is it true Oiseau is living in one of your warehouses?”