Dead Right (36 page)

“Not this time,” he murmured. “I want to draw it out, Maddy. Every whimper and moan. Every shudder.”

He leaned back and slid her shirt up over her breasts.

“Look at you,” he whispered. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

He didn’t immediately touch her. His eyes swept over her, taking her in. Then, lightly, his fingers caressed the skin of her stomach before cupping the ful ness of one breast.

He held it, studying it for a moment in the silver moonlight, then lowered his head to take it in his mouth.

Madeline gasped as his tongue moved over her.

Pleasure pooled hot and low in her bel y. Closing her eyes, she buried her face in his neck, luxuriating in the masculine scent of his skin and hair. Then he lifted his head to watch her as he slipped his hand beneath the elastic waistband of her boxers.

She jumped when he touched her, and she saw him smile in satisfaction before he kissed her neck, her ear.

“Tel me you’ve got birth control,” he said into her hair, his voice ragged.

She could hardly talk for what he was doing with his hands. “In my room,” she said between panting breaths.

He peeled off the rest of her clothes and gazed at her for a moment. Then he carried her across the hal .

Madeline had never made love four times in one night.

But there was an urgency between her and Hunter that hadn’t existed between her and Kirk. It was as if they had to take it al in this one night. Just in case there wouldn’t be another chance.

Now or never…

“You hungry?” she murmured shortly after one o’clock.

“Hungry for you,” he said, sounding half-asleep.

“What?” She laughed. “You’re exhausted.”

“Give me fifteen minutes.”

“Sleep,” she said, threading her fingers through his hair, which felt so foreign on her bare shoulder. “We’re out of condoms, anyway.”

“I’l go to the store.”

“It’s the middle of the night.”

“I don’t care.”

“You’d have to drive for an hour.”

She felt the rasp of his whiskers against her skin as he spoke. “The piggy iggy or whatever isn’t open?”

“That’s Piggly Wiggly. And the answer is no.”

“Then I’l make the drive.”

“It might be raining.”

“Mmm, you’re worth it.”

Smiling, she raised herself onto her elbows. “You’re insatiable!”

He grinned but didn’t open his eyes. “I guess I’m making up for lost time,” he muttered sleepily.

“What lost time?” she said. “We made love practical y the first day we met!”

“But then we wasted last night and this morning. That was stupid.”

Or this was. Madeline wasn’t wil ing to gauge which was worse. Reality would descend soon enough.

She glanced at the clock on her nightstand, dreading the next morning.

“You should cal your mom tomorrow,” he said.

“I wil .”

He noticed the lack of commitment in her voice right away. “That sounds more like a maybe.”

“It was,” she admitted. She already knew that her mother would plead with her to send Hunter back to California. And she couldn’t do that. Earlier she hadn’t known who to trust.

Now she knew she trusted him.

It felt as if she’d barely closed her eyes when the telephone rang.

Madeline lifted her head from Hunter’s shoulder to squint at the clock and realized she hadn’t been asleep long. No more than thirty minutes. Who could be cal ing her at one-fifteen in the morning?

“I’d offer to get it,” Hunter muttered, “but I’m sure you don’t want me answering your phone this late at night.

Especial y when I sound so satisfied.”

She would’ve laughed, if not for the unease that had settled in the pit of her stomach. Cal s that came in the middle of the night were rarely good news. “Probably not a smart idea,” she agreed. “I’l get it.” She extricated herself from his body and the blankets that were wrapped around them both. “Hel o?”

“Maddy? It’s Joe.”

She pushed her tousled hair out of her eyes. “Joe who?”

“Your cousin! Remember me?”

Oh. That Joe.
She rubbed her face. “What is it? What do you want?”

“I’ve got a package that belongs to you.” His words were thick and slurred. He’d been drinking. But that wasn’t surprising. He drank every weekend.

She stiffened, and Hunter immediately understood that something was wrong. He sat up and leaned close, so they could both hear.

“
What
package?” she asked, confused.

“The one I found by the front door of the paper on my way home from Good Times.”

She didn’t want to wake up for this. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Joe. It’s late. Cal me in the morning.”

“Whoa, wait a sec…” There was a long pause, fol owed by a guttural chuckle.

“What?” she said, now ful y awake and so nervous she was jittery.

“I just opened it.”

She glanced at Hunter, felt his hand curl more tightly around hers on the phone. “What is it?” she asked.

“You’d better get over here,” he replied and hung up.

21

M
adeline’s hands shook from the adrenaline rushing through her body as she and Hunter dressed. It was nearly two in the morning. She didn’t want to see anyone.

Especial y her cousin, who was as unpredictable as he was uncouth. But something had happened. Joe would not have expected her to show up at his insistence, immediately and without question, unless what he had was good.

And
good
to him was probably not
good
to her.

Banging her hip on the corner of the dresser in her hurry to leave, she cursed at the pain but started for the stairs.

Hunter pul ed her back, holding her by the shoulders as he gazed intently down at her. “Hey,” he said. “Calm down, okay?”

She couldn’t. No matter how much stuff she shoved in her basement, she was losing everything that counted in her life.

He lifted her chin. “You’re going to make it through this.”

She forced a smile and nodded briskly before pul ing away.

He trailed her downstairs and grabbed her keys from the kitchen counter.

She almost snatched them back. Joe had something that would shock her or he wouldn’t be so happy. Was this when she learned whether or not Hunter was right about the Montgomerys? The moment she’d have to face irrefutable facts?

If that was the case, she wanted to brave the next few minutes on her own, wasn’t sure she could tolerate a witness like Hunter, who would understand so clearly the depth of her pain.

But it wasn’t safe to go out alone.

Ducking her head, she fol owed him to the door. Who said “ignorance is bliss”? If they’d lived
her
life, they would’ve said “ignorance is only slightly less painful than the probable truth.”

Probable
truth…God, she was losing al confidence.

Joe wouldn’t answer. Madeline rang the bel , knocked and rang the bel again. Then she cal ed him using her cel .

“Are you going to let me in or not?” she snapped, moving to the porch railing and staring out at the cold, misty night. She’d talked Hunter into letting her go to the door alone, just in case Joe wouldn’t deal with her otherwise.

Moody and quick to anger, her cousin was not an easy guy to get along with. She never knew what to expect from him

—except an undying jealousy of Clay and an undying hatred of Grace.

“Sorry, I was busy,” he said.

He stil sounded happy.
Too
happy. “Doing what?”

He chuckled. “Describing what was in your package.”

What the heck did that mean?

A lone car passed on the highway fronting the property.

Not many people in Stil water were out this late. “Who were you talking to?” she asked.

“Cindy.”

His ex. “Why?”

“She likes it when I talk dirty to her.”

Madeline eyed her car, which was sitting in the drive, the engine ticking as it cooled. Hunter was there, in the driver’s seat, but she couldn’t see him. The light streaming through the windows of Joe’s house made it too bright where she was and too dark where he was. “What’re you talking about, Joe?”

Her cousin didn’t answer. He’d already hung up. But he opened the door almost immediately afterward. “You gotta see this to ful y appreciate it,” he said beckoning her in.

Hunter had told her not to go inside. “Just turn on the porch light,” she said.

“It’s burned out.”

“That’s okay. You can give me the package here, especial y since you had no right to take it in the first place.”

“We only need a minute,” he said with a scowl. “And it’s not like I’m going to hurt you. Jeez, Maddy. What’s up with you? We’re
family.
”

Considering her opinion of his character, she wasn’t pleased to be reminded of the connection. But she couldn’t think of one reason he’d want to hurt her. For the first time, they were on the same side. She was going after the truth about her father—his uncle—regardless of the risk it posed to the Montgomerys. He’d wanted her to force the issue for years.

“Are you coming in?” he asked.

She told herself to quit being sil y and go inside. She was just skittish because of that note Clay had brought to the restaurant….

“Fine.” She turned in the direction of the car and shrugged, then stepped across the threshold. “Where’s my package?”

“Right here.” He kicked an open box sitting beside him.

“It’s empty.”

“I’ve got the contents in my office.” He waggled his eyebrows. “I wanted to show Cindy on my webcam.”

“I thought you and Cindy hated each other.” Madeline spoke mostly to distract herself from the smel of alcohol on his breath.

“She’s good for an occasional lay,” he said with an indifferent shrug.

“You disgust me,” was on the tip of Madeline’s tongue, but she held it back. “Just tel me what it is,” she said instead.

But he didn’t have to tel her. They’d already reached his computer alcove; she could see it lying on the desk.

It was a dildo, grotesque in its enormous size but lifelike in its shape and imitation flesh—exactly like the one found in the trunk of the family car.

“Cool, huh?” Joe said.

Madeline broke out in a cold sweat as the cal er’s voice again echoed in her head:
Spread your legs for me, okay,
baby?

Distantly, she heard the front door open and close. Then Joe said, “Hey, who the hel are you? And what makes you think you can just walk into my house?”

But she couldn’t turn away. Not until she felt Hunter’s hand on the smal of her back, urging her to move. “Go to the car,” he said gently. “I’l bring it with me.”

The next morning, Hunter watched the sun begin to peek through the blinds in Madeline’s bedroom. She was warm and pliant and gloriously naked, but he hadn’t made love to her since they’d come home. The menace of what that package contained had been too dark. He’d simply held her for the rest of the night, and now that she was final y sleeping, he didn’t want to wake her.

Getting careful y out of bed, he dressed as silently as possible and went downstairs, where he found the keys to the car and let himself out. The break-in. The dildo. If Barker had been molesting girls, as Hunter now believed, he’d been kil ed because of it, so whoever was tormenting Madeline couldn’t be him. If Irene had kil ed Barker and then enlisted her family’s help in covering it up, it couldn’t be the Montgomerys. Otherwise, this would expose their motive, which threatened to expose their culpability. So who else was there?

He was missing something, something important and potential y dangerous to Madeline. And he knew only one person who could tel him what that might be.

Ray sat in the far corner of the diner. He’d come to town early so he could drive by Madeline’s office. He was eager to see if the package he’d left her last night was stil out front. He could hardly wait for her to get it—and had felt a definite thril when he’d found it gone. Deciding to celebrate by enjoying some eggs and ham at Two Sisters, he’d been smiling to himself ever since, relishing what she must’ve thought and felt when she pul ed out that gigantic dildo and realized it was the same as the one in Barker’s Caddy.

Ray was staring at his plate, trying not to chuckle out loud, when Walt Eastman slid into the booth opposite him.

“You okay, buddy?” his friend asked in concern.

Ray’s levity evaporated. Glancing up, he held his fork halfway to his mouth. “I’m fine,” he said cautiously. “Why?”

“I know you were close to Bubba.”

“Oh, right,” he mumbled. “It was a real tragedy.” In his preoccupation with Madeline, Ray had almost forgotten about Bubba. It wasn’t a memory he cherished. Maybe Barker could kil without compunction—Ray knew the reverend had run Katie down; he could remember Barker tel ing him with absolute certainty that she’d never talk and that was wel before there’d been any news of the accident.

But Ray didn’t have the stomach for murder. In order to get what he wanted from Madeline, he knew he’d have to resort to it eventual y. But that was later. Hopeful y, much later. If a guy was smart, he could keep a captive in the mountains for a long time, couldn’t he? He’d make it so she could never get away. And who’d hear her scream? She’d get used to having him visit, get used to the games he wanted to play. Soon she’d perform for him just like a little girl.

And when he had to kil her, it’d be easier up there. He’d have plenty of privacy and lots of forest….

“And then to have this private investigator going around asking questions about Rose Lee,” Walt said, shaking his head. “If you ask me, he’s going too far, implying there might be something strange about her death.”

Ray set down his fork. “What’s he saying about Rose?”

Walt leaned closer and lowered his voice. “You haven’t heard?”

Ray waited instead of answering, and Walt started in, as Ray knew he would. No one loved gossip as much as Walt.

“Word has it he thinks Barker was a pedophile. Can you believe it? The
reverend?
The Vincel is are going to flip when they hear this. Elaine considers herself a pil ar of the community. She’s always been proud of her brother’s reputation.”