Deep Freeze (40 page)

She held onto his shoulders, clung to him, their bodies straining. He held her around the waist with one arm, while the other tangled in her hair.

“Jenna,” he whispered hoarsely, listening to the tempo of her breathing, watching her breasts rise and fall as she rode him, used him, let loose. Only when he felt her shudder, when he heard her moan, did he plunge deeper, harder, aware of the strain of the cords in his neck, hearing her breathing increase again, her sweet, short gasps as she caught his rhythm and moved with him. Faster, faster, faster, until he couldn’t hold back a second longer and he threw back his head and released.

Both bodies jerked and she grasped him tighter. She let out a soft cry against his throat, burying her face into his neck as wave after wave ran through her body. “Oh, God,” she finally said, her hair as damp as his own, her face flushed as he carried her to the daybed pushed against the wall and fell onto it with her. Wedged upon the small mattress, too many pillows surrounding them, he held her close and kissed her crown.

She glanced up at him and smiled naughtily. “Well, well, well, Carter…forget that man of tinfoil. You really are a man of steel.”

“Ya think?”

“Mmm.” She kissed his cheek, then nibbled at his earlobe. “I don’t think, Sheriff, I know.”

He laughed, a deep, throaty laugh, and it felt good to let go, if just for a few minutes. Soon, they would have to face the world again, but for a few more minutes…He turned his face to hers and began kissing her again. This time, he silently vowed as he felt her respond to him, he’d take it slow. Real slow.

“Slut!” He watched the vulgar display on his screen, compliments of a hidden camera he’d wired into her house, the electronics hidden deep in the insulation of the attic or wired alongside the ducts in the ceiling and floor vents. Everything she did, he witnessed as long as the equipment worked. As soon as he’d learned that she was moving into the old McReedy place, he’d set about wiring it for his special purposes, but some of the tiny cameras had failed and often he’d been forced to stand outside and stare down at her compound from his blind in the trees. Which he enjoyed. Especially with the snow caressing his skin.

But tonight, with the snow so heavy, he was forced inside to watch via monitor and as he did, he felt nausea attack. He was hot, itching from the inside out. Furious, he kicked a paint can and sent it reeling, red color splashing upon the walls. He barely noticed.

She was with another man.

Kissing.

Touching.

Fucking like a bitch in heat.

His pulse pounded, throbbed through his brain, and he felt betrayal of the worst kind as he viewed her getting off on another man. Pathetic. Couldn’t she have waited? Didn’t she know that only
he
could satisfy her? His shrine to her was nearly complete, and this was how she repaid him, by acting like a common tramp, spreading her legs eagerly for the sheriff.

Shane Carter, a man who had vowed to uphold the law, and there he was, stripping off her clothes, running his tongue and teeth over her skin, nipping at her breast. Pushing his cock deep inside her. And she let him.

His
Jenna.

She let him!

Rage burned through him and he plotted out all kinds of satisfying revenge, but he could not abandon his plan. Not now. Precision was the key.

He watched them fornicate and his rage grew hot as the night. He glanced over at the stage where most of the women were already positioned. How long had he worked for this? For years. Long before anyone would guess, and then the news about her move, he’d heard it long before she’d actually arrived in Falls Crossing. From the moment he’d heard a whisper of a rumor about her moving to this part of Oregon, he’d prepared, used the windfall of insurance money to buy this place and prepare it. He’d been lucky in that respect; the stars had aligned. Because it was fate. They were meant to be together. There were no coincidences. His life was meant to be entwined with hers, and everything he did was for Jenna.

Always for Jenna.

From the first time he’d met her face-to-face, he’d known. He’d prepared.

Taking a deep breath, he glanced at his stage. His shrine to her and her work.

Everything was set.

All the characters dressed and in position, painted faces near-perfect replicas of Jenna—Marnie Sylvane, Faye Tyler, Paris Knowlton, and Zoey Trammel, all ready except for the last two. They were waiting for Katrina Petrova and Anne Parks. Jenna Hughes’s most famous starring roles. He’d considered creating Rebecca Lange, but as
White Out
had never been finished, he’d discarded the idea.

He relaxed. He was still in control. He would just have to make a minor adjustment, push things up a bit. But he was ready. Clicking off the monitor, he walked to his bathroom and began to dress. First the contacts, to tint the color of his eyes, then the hairpiece to add a new hairline and change his natural color, and finally a tight bodysuit to alter his physique and lifts in his shoes to add two inches. He was careful how he shaved.

When he was finished, he took a good, hard look in the mirror.

Even his mother wouldn’t recognize him.

He smiled at that, then remembered caps. Slipped them on.

No, his mother would never recognize him.

Which was just as well.

His purpose in mind, he reached for his jacket.

It was time to hunt.

She awoke to the smell of coffee and the feeling that something had shifted in her life. She moved, felt a tenderness between her legs, and smiled. She and Shane Carter had made love for hours and now…she glanced at the clock and groaned. It was barely seven, and he was already up, the first hint of morning light filtering through the closed blinds.

Rubbing a hand over her face, she thought about the events leading up to Carter’s arrival and some of her fear returned.
Wes Allen. The police think Wes Allen has been terrorizing you.
She still couldn’t believe it. Although she wouldn’t discount Wes for some of the things, she couldn’t see him as a murderer, and if her case was connected to the missing women, then whoever was behind it was a cruel killer.

Though no other bodies had been found, Mavis Gette’s decomposing corpse led everyone to fear that Sonja Hatchell, Roxie Olmstead, and now even Lynnetta Swaggert had met the same horrid end.

Carter was on the telephone. She heard the soft, steady sound of his voice and, after throwing on her wrinkled clothes, she peeked into the den, saw that her girls were still sleeping soundly, then padded barefoot into the kitchen.

He took one look at her and, bless him, he seemed to blush. “Morning, gorgeous,” he said, setting down his cup. Before she could respond, he folded her into his arms, kissed her as if he never intended to stop, then lifted his head and with their noses nearly touching, winked at her.

Her silly heart fluttered out of control and her lips tingled where they’d touched his. Breathlessly, she placed a hand over her rapidly beating heart. “My goodness, Sheriff. You really know how to say ‘Good morning’ to a girl, don’t you?”

A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

“That’s the way I’d like to wake up every day,” she admitted, and he chuckled, one thick eyebrow lifting as if he, too, were mentally picturing what had transpired between them the night before.

She felt a flush rise on the back of her neck as she, too, saw their entwined, panting bodies, the sinewy strands of his muscles straining, the way his hair fell over his eyes as he let out a last, violent gasp and clutched her as if he’d never let go. Ridiculously, she wondered what it would be like to live with Sheriff Shane Carter with his gruff, hard-to-crack demeanor, long hours, the danger that often came with his job. But the nights, Lord, the nights would be spectacular.

Dear God, what kind of fantasy was she conjuring up?

“Coffee?” he asked, eyeing her as if reading her thoughts, and she reined in her too-fertile imagination, swiftly closing her mind to such silly fantasies.

“Mmm. Sounds like heaven.”

As he lifted the pot from its holder and poured a stream of coffee into a mug, she glanced down at the way his slacks hugged his tight rear end, remembered how her fingers had dug into those taut muscles as he’d made love to her. Her throat went dry and she glanced at the slope of his back, the way his shoulders stretched his jacket, and thought of the taut skin and muscle beneath the insulated fabric. They’d had one night together, she reminded herself. That was it. A few hours of sexual release, nothing more.
Don’t do this to yourself, Jenna. You and Carter are trapped in an excruciatingly tense situation; you reached for each other last night. End of story
.

He handed her a cup, caught her eye, and as if he guessed what she was thinking, sensed the turn of her thoughts, he turned the conversation to the here and now. All business. “I’ve got to go in to the office, but I’ll call you later.”

“Do that,” she said.

“And I’ll let you know if we arrest Wes.”

Shuddering, she took a sip of her coffee. “I can’t imagine.”

“I’ve talked to Larry Sparks. Someone’s following Wes Allen until we can get a search warrant for his house. You and the girls should be safe here with Turnquist. I’ll have patrols drive by and if anything bothers you,
anything
feels wrong, call me on my cell.”

“I will,” she said. “Promise.”

He checked his watch. “Okay, I’ve got to run. I’ll stop and talk to Turnquist on my way out.”

She set down her cup and tugged on his hand, dragging him back to the guest room. Once there, she put her hands in the pockets of his jacket, pulled him close, and tilted her face up to kiss him again.

“Jenna,” he protested.

“What, no kiss good-bye?”

“Maybe one.” With a groan, he placed his arms around her and slanted his mouth over hers. She kissed him back, feeling a thrill race through her blood, desire bloom lightning-quick, her legs wanting to fold as she drew him to the floor.

“I really have to go,” he said, and slowly released her.

“Spoilsport.” As she withdrew her left hand, her fingertips brushed against the corner of something—cardboard?—in his pocket. Snapshots fluttered to the floor, and she felt his body freeze. He reached down and swept the photographs into his palm, but not before she saw the images of a woman—a beautiful, sexy, voluptuous woman, dressed scantily in a gold thong and holding her hands over her breasts as she visually made love to the camera. Another picture showed her on rumpled sheets, and this time she was completely nude, her hair mussed, her skin flushed as if from recent lovemaking.

Jenna took a step back. Her heart crumbled into a billion painful pieces.
What in the world had she been thinking, with all her stupid fantasies about this man she barely knew? Dear God, what an idiot she was!
Her gaze found Shane’s, and a spurt of hot fury surged through her bloodstream.

“Oops,” she said.

“I can explain.”

“You don’t have to.”

“They’re pictures of my wife. My deceased wife.”

“You carry snapshots of your naked wife around with you, in your pockets?” she snapped. “I hope to God that you’re in counseling, Carter, because that’s pretty damned weird. Maybe borderline obsessive.”

He didn’t respond, but his eyes narrowed.

She shoved her hair from her eyes with one hand, and from the corner of her eye glimpsed the daybed, the pillows tossed carelessly onto the floor, a quilt and sheets torn from the mattress. Again she thought of their hard, hot coupling, the fact that she’d never used any protection, and the cold realization that Shane Carter could have done what he’d done with her with dozens of women.

“There are things you don’t know,” he said, and winced as if it sounded lame, like something out of an ancient soap opera.

“Obviously.”

“The pictures mean nothing.”

She snorted. “Yeah, I run around with photographs of things that I really don’t care about all the time.” Before he could come up with another useless, see-through excuse, she began straightening the daybed, tearing off the sex-scented sheets and rearranging the pillows. “Listen, you don’t owe me any explanations or apologies or anything.” Gathering the sheets in her arms, she turned to him. “Just catch the damned stalker, okay? That’s your job. That’s why you’re here.”

She carried the sheets to the laundry room as the back door opened and Turnquist appeared. Carter stopped and talked with him for a few minutes as she stuffed the sheets into the washer, turned on the water and added soap. She didn’t watch him leave, heard the back door open and close, and collapsed against the dryer.

Don’t do this, Jenna. It was just sex. It happens all the time.

But not to her. She’d never let this kind of thing happen to her. Because she’d been guarded. Wary. Careful of her heart.

Until now.

Until she’d met that damned lawman.

Carter’s back teeth ground so hard that his jaw ached. He’d blown everything. Now that someone had seen the pictures of Carolyn taken from Wes Allen’s house, he’d jeopardized the investigation. “Damn, damn, damn!” he growled, pounding on the steering column as he drove home. The roads were still dicey, some plowed and graveled, others still covered with last night’s snowfall. What had he been thinking, making love to Jenna Hughes?

He hadn’t been. That was the problem. Blame his stupidity on too many months without a woman, too many hours without sleep, too many worries about the investigation, but it all boiled down to the sorry fact that he’d been horny as hell, half in love with the Hollywood princess anyway, and the opportunity had presented itself. What red-blooded American male would have done differently?

“Shit,” he muttered as he pulled into his lane and the four wheels whined against the accumulation of snow. He made it home and burned the damned photographs, making sure, as he added more firewood, that every scrap of evidence had literally gone up in smoke. He checked his e-mail, searched the Web again for Leo Ruskin, and found several scant, old entries. More searching online for
White Out
did little to help him except to come up with the name of the company that did the makeup work on the unfinished movie. Why the hell did he think the movie was connected to the killings? Because of Jenna? Because of the damned cold weather? Or because he was sick to death of the snow? He couldn’t find the makeup people listed anywhere in his first search and he didn’t have any time to waste. In a dark mood, his tired brain still running over the information and trying to insert Wes Allen into everything he knew about the case, Carter fried bacon, eggs and frozen potatoes, ate the meal with one eye on the news before he dumped his plate into the sink and climbed the stairs to his loft.

Wes Allen never had anything to do with makeup. He wasn’t directly or indirectly involved with any of Jenna’s movies. It could be the lowlife is innocent.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered and stripped off his clothes. Nothing about this case was easy. None of it made sense. But someone, some bastard who had access to her house, was linked to her films. Her husband? No—they’d checked and he was still in L.A. An old boyfriend? As far as the police could determine, Jenna had none. Few dates and nothing serious. Not so much as a one-night stand.

Except for you
.

What the hell did that mean?

While showering, he thought of Jenna and couldn’t stop the erection that sprouted at the memory of making love to her. She’d been as beautiful as she’d been in all of her movies, maybe even more so. Eager. Supple. Hot.

“Jesus.”

So you nailed a Hollywood actress, literally star-fucked, so what? You gonna brag about it? The fact that she chose you, over all the men drooling after her, to sleep with? And you messed that up, too, didn’t you? Just like Dr. Randall predicted. Anything you really want, you screw up, don’t you?

Ignoring the damning questions, he washed, rinsed, stepped out of the shower, and wrapped a towel around his hips. He scraped the stubble from his face with a razor and stared angrily at his image in the fogged-over mirror. He looked as tired and frustrated as he felt, but knew it was another day of powering up on caffeine and maybe some nicotine.

Because today was the day that Wes Allen was going down.

He felt another sharp niggle of doubt about the bust, but didn’t examine it too closely.

Innocent until proven guilty, Carter—remember, innocent until proven guilty.

“Allen’s alibi checks out,” Sparks said from his end of the cell phone connection.

Driving through town, Carter passed by the theater and noticed there were no cars in the lot. Ice and snow had piled over the parking spaces, and no illumination streamed through the stained-glass windows. “The night Sonja Hatchell was abducted, Wes was at the Lucky Seven, sipping suds until well after midnight. The waitress remembers him because she has a thing for the guy.”

“Jesus. Tell her to be careful.” Carter cruised down the main street, saw a few familiar faces and vehicles collecting near the diner. Hans Dvorak, Charley Perry, Seth Whitaker, Harrison Brennan, and Blanche Johnson were migrating toward the door of the Canyon Café, as they did each and every morning. He spotted Dr. Dean Randall, paper coffee cup in hand, heading toward the library, and Travis Settler walked into the hardware store. But Wes Allen wasn’t among those who were looking for a cup of coffee or pastry this morning. “What about the other women? Where was he when Roxie Olmstead and Lynnetta were abducted?”

“We’re still working on it.”

“Maybe he has an accomplice.”

“And maybe we’re barking up the wrong tree.”

No way
, Carter thought as he hung up. But the doubt was still there, and a voice inside his head accused him of going after the man who had stolen his wife from him. Stolen?
Or did you hand her to Wes Allen on a silver platter?

He pulled into the courthouse parking lot and locked his Blazer.

Inside, the heat was sweltering, rising three stories to settle in the sheriff’s department. He cracked a window and the cold air crackled inside, blowing on the wilting fronds of his Christmas cactus.

“Hey, are you out of your mind? What do you think you’re doing?” BJ asked as she settled into a desk chair. “Jesus, Carter, what happened to you last night?”

“I look that good, huh?”

“Better,” she said sarcastically.

“That’s what a night without sleep will do. Did you find anything else? What about Ruskin? And the makeup people. Especially whoever did the makeup for
White Out
. That’s the movie that connects everything. It’s the one that ended Jenna Hughes’s career, the one where the Ruskin phrase was supposed to be used for the promo, and the one with the musical score that she heard in the background of the crank call.”

“I’ll double-check. As far as the paper that the notes were written on, it’s standard stock, could be bought anywhere from wholesale office-supply outlets to smaller stores. Same with the ink and printer. Dead end.”

“So far.”

“What about the alginate?”

“Most of the stuff ships to California. The particular type found on Mavis Gette comes from a firm in Canada, and I’ve got a list of their clients for the last five years.”