Mr. Write (Sweetwater) (34 page)

“I am British, darling.”

“No.  I mean yes, of course you are, but the… intonation or something is different.  You hit it dead on.”

“Well.”  He cleared his throat.  “I suppose I’m clever with that sort of thing.  Do you?  Shag, that is?”

She had to remind herself he was referring to the dance.  “I know how to, certainly.”  Was that flirtatious tone coming from her?  “In fact, I guess you could say it’s the sort of thing with which I’m clever.”

When he chuckled, obviously delighted, Allie considered it a small, personal triumph.

Mason held out a hand.  “Care to teach me?”

S
he glanced at where Wesley stood, flirting with the redhead.  “You know what?  I’d love to.”

DEEDEE
MacKenna swung her arms as she walked home from the concert. Although walking wasn’t quite the appropriate term for her manner of locomotion.  She was
floating.

The warm night air seemed a cushion beneath her feet, carrying her on its languid current.

Wesley Beaumont.

She’d danced most of the night
away with Wesley Beaumont.  And better – so much better – he’d kissed her beneath the sprawling limbs of one of the oak trees at the edge of the park.  She knew,
knew,
that if she’d accepted his offer to walk her home, he’d not only be walking with her right now, but almost certainly would be spending the night.

DeeDee closed her eyes and sighed.

She’d admired – okay, lusted after – Wesley the entire time he’d been engaged to Allison Hawbaker. And couldn’t deny she’d been overjoyed when that relationship went south. 

Not that she had anything against Allie.

But Wesley was just so… mmmm.  There was something about a man in horn-rimmed glasses and a high quality pinstriped suit.

DeeDee was confident s
he’d be getting him out of that pinstriped suit soon enough. She could have had him out of it – or rather out of the casual slacks and loose shirt he’d been wearing tonight – if she were simply after a quick tumble. 

But DeeDee’s thirtieth birthday had come and gone last month, and the fact was she was looking for
a relationship with a little more longevity.  Of the permanent variety.

Sweetwater wasn’t a particularly large town, though it had its share of eligible bachelors.  Some of them being more eligible than most.

With that in mind, s
he’d considered making a play for Tucker Pettigrew after she’d seen him in the library. But it seemed that he was already hooked up.  DeeDee furrowed her brow as she took a shortcut across the shadowy corner of the playground, skirting the empty swings, her high heeled sandals sinking into the soft sand beneath her feet.  Probably for the best, anyway. Despite his pedigree, the man seemed a bit… rough around the edges.  Which might be exciting if she were interested in that quick tumble, but as far as long-term prospects went, she preferred her men to be a little more… manageable.  

Like Wesley.
Wesley’s edges were smooth indeed. So, she was spending the night alone because she figured the first step to managing Wesley was to draw the chase out a little.  Men liked a good challenge, after all.  Maybe tomorrow she could –

The arm came out of nowhere, pulled her roughly back against a big body.  A hard hand clamped over her mouth before she could even draw the breath to scr
eam.  Panic exploded in her chest, her heart beating so hard against her ribs that she swore she heard them cracking, 

“Well, well,” said a low voice, the words hot against her ear
as the scent of him – sweat, stale smoke and the pungent stench of alcohol – seemed to clog her nose. “What’s that word I’m thinking of? Come on, help me out here. You’re the one with the fancy vocabulary. Oh yeah.” The arm around her middle tightened to the point of pain. “
Déjà vu.”

DeeDee couldn’t m
ake sense of the words, couldn’t think clearly enough to really try. Instinct ruled, and she struggled against the man’s hold, throwing her head back so that it smashed into his nose.

“Ouch.
Bitch.”

She was suddenly flying forward, pitched to the ground. Her head struck
the metal pole which held the swings, the pain so bright and hot it was like a lightning bolt through her brain.

Then the man was on her, his heavy weight pushing her into the ground, knocking the breath from her lungs. 

She couldn’t breathe.  Terror clawed at her, a living thing, even as her vision wavered and doubled. Then the hand clamped over her mouth again, wrenched her head to the side.

Struggling to pull air into her deflated lungs, she
blurrily watched the man’s eyes narrow through the slits of the black stocking mask he wore.

“Who the hell are you?”

Through the panic, the pain, a tendril of hope began to wrap around her brain, pull together her scattered thoughts. This was a mistake, somehow.  Just a mistake.

“DeeDee,” she said, her voice no more than a faint croak.  “I’m DeeDee.”

The weight lifted, and DeeDee found herself being studied as she was rolled over onto her back.

“DeeDee
,” the voice said, his tone almost companionable.  He gathered up her hair, seeming transfixed by it as he wrapped it around his gloved fist.

When he used that fist to slam her head against the metal pole again,
hope fell away as the pain roared back, tenfold.  “Well, DeeDee. You’re not who I was expecting, but I guess you’ll just have to do.”

WILL
pinched the bridge of his nose. Hard.

He would have liked to say that the gesture helped, but it did nothing to alleviate the throbbing ache behind his eyes.

And it certainly didn’t do anything to help DeeDee MacKenna.  Having left the hospital, where he’d been unable to talk to the woman, as she’d been whisked into surgery to relieve swelling on her brain, Will pulled his cruiser to the curb alongside the playground. In the harsh glare from the lights which had been set up around the perimeter of the crime scene, he saw Bascomb and Miller collecting evidence. Being a small town, the department budget didn’t run to a separate forensic team, but one of the first things he’d done as acting chief was to beef up training and continuing education.  Given the constant changes in technology, the rising tensions these days between law enforcement and the communities they served, Will considered that a wiser investment than the armored vehicles and militaristic toys of which other police departments seemed so fond.

Will climbed out of the vehicle, made his way carefully toward the swings so as not to disturb the scene.  Well, to disturb it as little as possible, he amended, frowning at the sand that shifted beneath his feet.  Talk about your frustrating crime scenes.  Public parks weren’t exactly known for having a shortage of fingerprints, random fibers
, hairs and other debris to confuse the evidence collection as much as possible. 

“Chief,” Bascomb said by way of greeting when she saw Will headed in her direction.  Her caramel-colored skin seemed to have tightened over her cheekbones, and her dark
eyes held questions.

“She’s in surgery,” Will said.  “Might be some time before we can speak with her.
  The doctors won’t know the extent of the brain injury until they get the swelling down.”

“Bastard,” Bascomb breathed, and Will knew she meant the man who’d inflicted such grievous injuries rather than himself.

“Indeed.  What do we have?”

“Blood.
” She gestured toward the base of the swings, where the metal pole and the ground beneath it were both liberally stained. “Plenty of it, but that’s not surprising given the way head wounds tend to bleed.  I’d like to think that some of it is the perp’s, that she got in a few good punches or at least scratched the hell out of him, but given that the only thing under her nails was sand, I don’t think it’s likely.  But that’s for the lab to determine.  Hair,” she held up one if the plastic evidence bags she’d already labeled. “Matches the victim’s length and color.  A button, again appears to match the ones on the blouse worn by the victim.  But I’m just getting started, really. If he left anything of himself behind, I’ll find it.”

Will squeezed her shoulder before leaving her to her work.

Skirting the perimeter of the lighted area, Will moved into the shadows of the trees, the sound of his footsteps muffled now by pine straw rather than the shifting sand.  Miller, a veteran officer with heavy jowls and deep-set eyes who’d always reminded Will a bit of a bloodhound, was reinforcing that image as he squatted low, seeming to scent the air as his flashlight scanned the ground.

“There’s a path here,” Miller said before Will even had a chance to speak.  “A shortcut, I think, to the apartment complex
the next street over. The vic’s driver’s license indicated that as her address.  Likely she was headed home.  Her bad luck some pervert was headed the same direction.”

Maybe, Will thought.  Maybe that was just how it happened.  Wrong place, wrong time.

Miller looked up, his brown eyes serious in his hound dog face.  “She was at the concert in the park tonight.  I was doing foot patrol, recognized her.  From the library. She was gettin’ pretty cozy with your sister’s ex-fiancé.”

Will rocked back a little, but his tone was even as he nodded.  “I’ll send someone over to talk to him.” Because he damn sure couldn’t do it himself.  “Thanks.”

Will started to move off, knowing his people would work more comfortably if he wasn’t looking over their shoulders, when Miller called his name.

Will turned, saw that the older man had moved a little off the path, and was shining his light at something on the ground.

“What do you have?”

“There’s a depression here,” Miller said. 
“The ground’s a little boggier just beneath this tree.  Looks like a pretty decent shoe print.”

Will crouched down, examined the imprint in the mud.  From the size, he judged it to be a man’s.  Relatively fresh. It could be anyone’s, he knew, but it was more to go on than they’d had before.

“Get a mold,” Will said, patting Miller on the shoulder as he stood.  “Good eye.”

Unclipping his phone from his belt, Will placed a call to a secondary team of officers, asked them to track down Wesley Beaumont.
He might have liked to instruct them to make their questions as uncomfortable for the man as possible, but aside from the fact that Wesley was a lawyer, Will wasn’t the type of cop – or man – to let personal vendettas color the way he did his job.

But if even a hint of evidence linked Beaumont to this crime, Will couldn’t deny that he would thoroughly enjoy tossing the other man’s ass in a cell.

In the meantime, Will thought, as he looked at the shadowed playground, thought of the innocent kids who played here. Of the unspeakable violation that had taken place. 

He’d do everything in his power to
catch the bastard so that something like this didn’t happen again.

CHAPTER TWENTY

TUCKER
was definitely a sprawler, Sarah mused, from her stingy little corner of his bed.  And as neither of them was exactly petite, that made for a serious shortage of real estate to work with. 

And swe
et Jesus, the man was hot.  He had the heat producing capacity of your average nuclear reactor.  Despite the fan chugging overhead, and the light breeze coming through the window, it was like being wrapped in an electric blanket and then shoved into a sauna.

But when she tried to ease out from beneath the arm he’d thrown across her, with visions of morning coffee
– preferably iced – dancing in her head, he hauled her neatly against him.

“Stay,” he mumbled
sleepily against her hair.  “I like you crowding me in bed.”

“Excuse me, but I’m not the one taking up three quarters of the available space.”

“I’m bigger.”  He nuzzled her neck.  “In fact, I’m getting bigger as we speak.”

She laughed.  She couldn’t help it.  “Pervert.”  She hit him with her pillow.

“I will be, if you give me half a chance.”  He grabbed the pillow, rolled with her until she was pinned beneath his body.  As she’d been most of the night.  “Look at you.”  He pushed her hair away from her face.  “All rumpled and flushed and sexy.”

“Meaning I need fluids and a brush.  Let me up.”

“Why should I?”

“Because I’m planning to make coffee?”

That perked him right up.  He tilted his head, considered.  “After.” 

And slid into her.

The pleasure was nearly shocking, even after the excesses of the past night.  Day was still a rosy shimmer on the air, and a bird called outside the window.  Their pace was lazy, the mood easy and fun, just as Sunday morning sex should be.

When it was over, he walked his fingers up her
damp belly.  “Any chance you’d be willing to make breakfast to go with that coffee?”