Highly Charged! (13 page)

Until the sound of gunfire split the night.

I
T WASN'T THE FIRST TIME
Brad had awakened to gunshots.

He knifed out of bed and yanked on shorts. Nikki stared at him with wide, frightened eyes, the whites so saucer-round he could see them in the moonlit bedroom.

“Call the police,” he spoke softly, still listening to whatever was happening outside. The view from outside the upstairs window didn't reveal any activity, just the dark sweep of leaves blowing in a soft spring breeze. “I'm going to check downstairs. Stay up here and lock the door.”

She nodded jerkily, already pushing buttons on her cell phone.

Another shot rang out and he identified an odd sort of pistol. An antique weapon maybe? As he pounded down the stairs and through the living room, he wished he could remember the training he'd had on gun acoustics better. He'd learned to differentiate an M-4 shot from an M-16, but he couldn't tell much about the quick blast that had sounded somewhere close to Nikki's house.

He burst outside, desperate to get some kind of visual or to at least gauge where the shots had been fired from. He didn't even know if they were aiming toward the house or if some wing nut could be attempting target practice in the dark. But his gut told him Nikki was at risk.

He stood still on the patio for a moment, listening. The screen door banged behind him, echoing through the night. Perhaps it was that sound that startled the unwanted visitor because a moment later, a truck engine fired to life.

Brad's feet churned up the ground as he tore off to the east, toward the fading rumble. He couldn't even discern the outline of the truck, but the dull gleam of the dark paint job and a glint of chrome gave him the impression of a newer model vehicle. Midsize. The license plates had been removed, leaving a blank void where they ought to be.

The bright white Chiefs bumper sticker remained intact, however. Giving Brad a damn good clue where to look next.

 

A
N HOUR LATER, AFTER
the police pulled out of the driveway, Nikki had to drag Brad back into the old farmhouse to keep him from driving over to Angelica's house for a little frontier justice.

Or, at the very least, to see what kinds of cars lurked in her garages.

“Did you see the way those cops shut down at the mention of the Ralston name?” he fumed, glaring through the sagging screen door in the direction the
law enforcement officers had driven. “They're not going to take on the town's big dogs.”

Brad had asked the officers to look into the whereabouts of Angelica's family that night, citing the Chiefs bumper sticker and his conversation with the woman earlier in which he'd pressed for more information about who in the family might be out to get Chloe. Privately, Brad had told Nikki that Angelica had admitted her grandfather had served on a mission in the northern Pacific, probably at the same time as Chloe's mysterious Eduardo. But their exchange had been cut short by the investigators and she still wasn't sure what to make of that information.

Nikki called to Killer before she locked up for the night. The dog raced through the screen door as she held it open, his nails skidding on the hardwood before he slowed his pace.

“Maybe they were just being diplomatic. They can't appear to take sides, right? And a city councilman in a small town can be very influential, so it's not surprising they'd be cautious where he's concerned.” She rubbed a hand on her arm to ward off a chill. She'd thrown on a hoodie with a pair of pajama pants for the pow-wow on the lawn after the shooter had driven away, but they hadn't been enough to prevent the evening from giving her goosebumps.

The chill had more to do with someone wanting her out of the house badly enough to fire shots at the place than any reaction to the spring temperature.

“Right.” There could be no mistaking the strong taint of sarcasm in his response. He punched the butcherblock countertop in the kitchen while she shut off the
lights. “I'm telling you, the only way we're going to get to the bottom of this is to find the diaries and see what secret Chloe sat on her whole life. I can't believe if it was that damn important, her family wouldn't have harassed her more while she was alive. Not that I wish they'd done that, but why the big press to find the books now?”

Nikki warmed inside at the fierceness of his tone, far too swayed by his he-man protectiveness. In fact, she was pretty sure her heart fluttered a little. Truly.

Fluttered.

“I don't know. Maybe her family thought the diaries would be lost forever once they heard she'd been diagnosed with dementia. Perhaps they assumed she would forget where they were hidden and the books would never see the light of day. Which is sort of what happened, except they hadn't counted on me inheriting the house and having access to search for them.” She twined her fingers through his and urged him toward the stairs. “But I discovered today that I didn't know Chloe as well as I thought I did. I started reading one of the original diaries and a misplaced entry from the missing 1943 volume fell out of the pages.”

“You have some of the original diaries here?” He stopped on the third step near a painting of the Seine that Chloe had purchased from a street artist on a longago trip to Paris. “And you've never read them?”

“Chloe showed them to me ages ago. But I never read them because they were personal. She didn't publish them unedited when she was alive because of the private nature of the contents.”

“Maybe the big mystery is hidden in the diaries you
already have.” He started up the steps again. “Are they up in your bedroom?”

“Yes, but—” She hurried to follow him as he passed her. Quickly, she explained the revelation about a secret engagement to Eduardo. “So I'm beginning to think the edited diaries might vary quite a bit from the versions she first penned.”

They hurried down the hall, past an old mannequin wearing a negligee that would have been suggestive in its time.

“No doubt.” Brad dropped onto the bed where they'd made love just a few hours ago, now occupied by the sleeping ginger kitten he'd rescued from the oak tree. “Do you think her family even knows now about an engagement to this Eduardo guy? Could there be any reason they'd want to lock that down?”

He cracked open the journal that Nikki had already read while she rounded up four others that had been hidden behind the covers of various books Chloe kept on her shelves.

“This isn't the forties. What taboos could there be about a marriage that would bother anyone in this day and age?” She stacked up the other diaries on the bed and sat down next to Brad to read. “I don't think that's it.”

Nikki wished she'd quizzed Chloe about the journals a little more, but the older woman had been so distracted at the end and Nikki hadn't wanted to press.

An hour of side by side reading passed before Brad's cell phone rang, startling them both and sending the recently rescued ginger kitten diving under a pillow.

“Riddock,” he barked into the phone. A long silence
followed as he listened. “Of course we're pressing charges,” he shot back finally. “If anything, the kid is probably guilty of a whole slew more of—”

His jaw went rigid as the party on the other line—a police officer, obviously—cut him off. Nikki stared down at the passage in Chloe's journal that he'd been reading before the call came—the scene of self-discovery in the meadow that she'd read earlier. He said little else before disconnecting the call.

“They found the person who fired the shots?”

She didn't realize she felt cold all over again until Brad pulled her hip next to his, wrapping her in one arm.

“They're saying it was Angelica's daughter and her boyfriend.”

“Emily? The cheerleader?” Nikki found it hard to believe. “I'm being harassed by a high school junior?”

“Apparently the boyfriend is a track star who ‘borrowed' the starting pistol from the school to make the sound of gunfire. But since it's a closed barrel weapon, there was no possibility of injury and the police encouraged us to let them off with a warning. At most, they could receive a misdemeanor for violating local noise ordinances.”

“They weren't interested in asking the kids about the threatening text messages or the brick through the window?” As much as she'd like to think she'd been a victim of teenage mischief gone too far, it seemed rooted deeper than that.

“The boyfriend drives a brand-spanking-new Ford F-150, so it definitely wasn't the old pickup that tore up the yard.”

Nikki stared unseeing down at Chloe's journal in her lap as she thought about the dismissive attitude of the police. Even if the kids hadn't been the ones to tear up the lawn, they were joyriding, shooting off things that could be mistaken for gunshots—what if some poor scared homeowner shot back? Wasn't there a zero tolerance policy for underage kids with things that clearly looked like guns? Rules should be rules no matter how rich your daddy was.

“My head's too foggy for this,” she announced, slamming the book closed in her frustration. “We've been puzzling over this for too long and it should be simpler. If Chloe didn't reveal what happened to those original diaries in the first place, she must have felt some sort of security that I'd find them without her help, right?”

Brad shrugged. “You knew her a lot better than me.”

Nikki nodded. “I don't want to waste my time left with you by talking about ancient history. I feel like I've shared my whole life with you these last few days and I hardly know anything about you besides the fact that you're a kick-butt volleyball player and you can climb tree branches like Tarzan.”

Shuffling aside the stacks of leather-bound volumes, she lay down on the rumpled white chenille bedspread, plucking the kitten from its resting place to resettle the animal under her chin.

Brad switched off the bedside Tiffany lamp so that only the moonlight and the glowing numbers from a bedside clock lit the room. Her heartbeat jumped and skipped at the sensation of having him here, in her bed, all to herself. Last night had been fueled by a need to
take a risk and indulge her pleasures for the sake of feeling fully alive and uninhibited. Earlier today she'd been overwhelmed by gratitude at what he'd done for her in rescuing the kitten. But right now, there was no urgency. No rush to prove anything to herself.

Just a room ripe with the possibility for intimacy.

“Don't forget my mad skills with a tractor,” he prompted, reaching toward the bedside table to retrieve some thing.

A daisy from the wildflower bouquet she'd collected on her walk this afternoon.

He held it over her, allowing a droplet of water from the stem to fall on the skin bared above the zipper teeth of her hoodie. The bead rolled down into the hollow at the base of her throat.

“Brad?” Did he know he was dripping flower water on her? By the way he held the stem, poised and steady above her, she'd say yes.

“Hmm?” He scooped up the kitten with his other hand and tucked it onto a pillow on the floor.

“What are you doing?” She noticed the flower stem never wavered even with all his maneuvering.

“I'm helping you get to know me better.”

Drip.

“How so?” The droplets warmed against her skin, then rolled down the side of her neck, pooling somewhere along the base of her scalp.

“I'm making sure that the next time you list the things you know about me, you include something like ‘Sexual Dynamo.'” He said it with a perfectly straight face.

As if he really felt his bedroom prowess was on par in importance with his military training or his strong
sense of honor. Maybe she knew more about him than she gave herself credit for.

“And covering me with flower water will help your cause?” She decided to feign ignorance of what he had in mind. It served him right when she had the strong suspicion he'd led the conversation away from himself very purposely.

Dropping the stem to the zipper on her sweatshirt, he used it to lower the teeth inch by inch. Slowly, he revealed the lace-and-silk bra she'd wriggled into after the gunfire sounded. Then, popping the zipper free at the base, he skimmed the flower petals along the tops of her breasts.

He brushed the petals down onto the navy blue lace of her bra, circling the nipple so lightly she began to fully appreciate his intent. He meant to recreate the scene in the diary. The sensual encounter in the secret garden meadow.

She would have smiled if she hadn't been frozen in place by the erotic tease of such a delicate touch when the heavy heat of Brad's hands waited so close by—restrained by his need to build anticipation.

Instead, a gasp caught in her throat, a soft inhalation that whispered against her lips. Her eyes slid closed, her body focused on the trail of the silky soft petals along her skin.

Being distracted had never been such a pleasure.

 

B
RAD PROMISED HIMSELF
he'd talk to Nikki more later. That way, he didn't have to feel like he was being purposely evasive.

Right now, he just wanted to stock up on memories
with her to take with him when he left in ten days. After reading the scene in the meadow that Chloe had written—and knowing that Nikki had dreamed about him in that very same spot today—he wanted to implant himself in that moment somehow. He couldn't be there with her earlier, but he could give her the sensual thrills for real that she'd only imagined. When they were half a world apart, he wanted to know he'd imprinted himself in her memory in every way possible.

“I think you need to be more naked for the full impact,” he observed as she strained against the clothing he'd left on her.

Setting aside the flower, he tugged down the straps of her bra before he unhooked it. He was careful not to touch her too much because his restraint couldn't be trusted. If he started, he might not be able to stop.