Stonebrook Cottage (33 page)

Once her legs were free, he drove into her, knowing she was ready, wanting him. She pulled him deeper into her, no tentativeness this time, no pain, just searing need—she felt the climax upon her, couldn't slow it or control it. He did nothing to help her, thrusting fast and deep as she dug her fingers into his arms, quaking, crying out. His eyes locked with hers as if he knew this would happen, planned it, and he didn't let up, his own climax coming now, mixing with hers, endless.

She threw her hands above her head, and he held them, raising up off her, but still inside her, still moving, as the rain beat against the window and filled the room with dark, unsettled shadows.

Twenty-One

C
harlie Jericho sat at the cluttered kitchen table with a fresh mug of coffee and shook his head. "You and Allyson Stockwell. Christ, Pete. She's the goddamn governor."

Pete got to his feet to look for his truck keys in the black hole that was his mother's kitchen. "That doesn't faze me."

"It fazes everyone else."

Pete couldn't see straight. He lifted a stained, ragged flour towel on the counter and found his keys. A cold front had moved through overnight, leaving the morning bright and cool, the air drier. He hoped it'd clear his head.

"You don't want a relationship you have to keep secret," his father said. "Nothing good can come of that."

"You're right about that. Wish I'd seen it sooner." He stuffed his keys in his pants pocket. The damn cast on his wrist was a nuisance. His mother had offered to help him get dressed, but Pete had refused. She was out in the yard measuring for her goat pen. "I'm thirty-four years old, Pop. Time I moved out of the house."

"Where you moving to, the governor's mansion?

Maybe Stockwell Farm?" Charlie crushed a half-smoked cigarette in an ashtray. "You can pour Madeleine tea while you wait for an audience with the governor."

Pete pulled out a chair and sat across from his father, pushed aside a stack of magazines. "You need to quit smoking. You've got a bad cough. You're going to kill yourself one day."

He shrugged. "We all have to die of something."

"Pop…" Pete sighed, wondering how he could explain himself to this crusty old man, why he even bothered. "I don't want to lose Allyson. I've loved her for as long as I can remember. It's not a schoolboy crush. I've had time to think since I took that fall—"

"You've been doped up."

"I need to do this."

Charlie took a sip of his coffee. "You look like a banged-up kid to me. What if someone pushed you into the gravel pit? What if someone doesn't want you carousing with the governor?"

"I don't remember what happened, how I fell. It won't change anything."

"Zoe West has been up there scouring around for clues. Nothing so far. But Pete—"

He got back to his feet. "I have to go. You going to wish me luck?"

"What kind of luck?" Charlie looked up from his coffee, his gray hair sticking out, his age and years of smoking showing in his eyes. "The luck that's good for you or the luck you think is good for you?"

Pete didn't answer, and when he went out to his truck, he could feel the pain in his broken ribs. If he didn't move the wrong way, the collarbone wasn't too bad. He wanted to get off pain medication as soon as he could. Maybe his father was right—maybe it was affecting his thinking. But it didn't matter, he knew what he had to do. He knew it before he fell.

He sat behind the wheel of his truck and realized he couldn't drive standard one-armed. Hell. He'd have to borrow his mother's car. She'd plastered it with goat and herb bumper stickers.

Sam would have liked to lock the doors to Stone-brook Cottage and make love to Kara all day, but her brother was on his way north and she wanted to go back out to the gravel pit. "I'm not taking that as a compliment," he told her over coffee. "Choosing a pile of dirt over me."

She smiled, a hint of the intimacy they'd shared last night in her dark eyes. "I'm thinking of all the rock out there. Then it's not such a big difference." She took her coffee to the sink and stared out at the cool, bright air. He could feel her seriousness, the weight of what the people up here were into affecting her. "Zoe West hasn't found evidence that someone pushed Pete?"

"Not yet." The detective had returned Sam's call a little while ago. "She says everyone in Bluefield knows about the tree house now. Charlie Jericho's not keeping it a secret. Allyson's talking with a state detective this morning."

"Then they're on the case. That's good." Kara continued to stare out the window, the morning air refreshing after yesterday's humidity. "You told Zoe about

Wally Harrison turning up at my place?"

"Yes."

"I still want to go out to the gravel pit."

Sam drank some of his coffee. It was hot, strong, but it didn't cut his mood, his certainty that this woman had penetrated all his defenses. He'd watched her sleep in the midst of the thunder and lightning, her dark lashes against her creamy skin, a strand of hair on her cheek. Soul mates. In the light of morning, in a rich woman's cottage kitchen, he knew it was crazy and there was no such thing.

"You want to look for Lillian's binoculars," he said.

Kara nodded, her back still to him. "Maybe she dropped them farther down the hill than she remembers. Sam—" She swung around, arms folded tightly on her chest. She was in khakis and a little blue V-neck top that outlined her breasts, reminded Sam of making love to her. But her mind was a million miles away from their night together. "Something's not right with Allyson.
Really
not right. I think she wanted to tell me yesterday at the barn, but she just couldn't."

"Do you think it involves the kids?"

"It must."

"Zoe West is talking to Harrison this morning. Maybe his story will unravel and we'll get to the bottom of this thing."

"I hope so." Kara dropped her arms to her sides. "I can run out to the gravel pit and then meet you back here, or at the Stockwells' if you want to go on and see the kids." She smiled suddenly. "Don't worry, I'll be careful."

Sam slid to his feet. "You won't just be careful— you'll have me with you."

She nodded absently, as if she'd expected his response. "Well, you won't want to trip out there." She dumped her coffee in the sink and headed out back, adding as the screen door shut behind her, "Your gun might go off and you'll end up shooting yourself in the ass."

"Not my gun." He followed her outside, down the steps, still wet from last night's rain. "Jack's gun. Don't think he's forgotten."

"Jack never forgets anything. None of you Texas Rangers do." Her irreverent mood, he knew, was a cover for her darker thoughts. She ran a foot over the top of the grass. "It's soaking wet out here. We should drive. We can take your car. That way, if we wreck the suspension bouncing over rocks and ruts, it'll be on your tab."

"No, ma'am. Yours. You're paying my expenses for coming up here after you, remember?"

"I said that?" She smiled, walking past him and back up the steps. "Good thing I'm a well-paid criminal defense attorney." She emphasized criminal, as if there wasn't much difference between him and her clients.

Sam followed her into the kitchen, got his keys and beat her into the driver's seat. "I think maybe you didn't get enough sleep last night."

She slid into the seat next to him, cut a glance over at him, a wicked gleam in her eyes. "Maybe I got too much."

He grinned. "Be careful what you wish for, Miss Kara."

He'd sensed no hesitancy in her last night. There was no question of her inexperience, but also none of her passion and openness—and that had rocked him to his core. It made him feel vulnerable, shaken, this need mixed with desire, this heart-stopping yearning not to possess or protect but to give himself entirely to her, empty himself into her and become one with her.

Scared the hell out of him.

When they reached the access road, he negotiated the pits and ruts as best he could and drove into the gravel pit itself, pulling in behind an idle dump trunk. A crew was working today, the sifting machine running loud.

Kara winced. "I wouldn't be surprised if Madeleine can hear that up at her place." She climbed out of the car and met Sam around front. "I suppose somebody could have tossed Lillian's binoculars into one of these piles of sand and rock. We'd never know it."

Sam looked at her. "What else is on your mind, Miss Kara?" he asked quietly.

"When you and Zoe West were talking this morning, it occurred to me that Wally Harrison could be playing both sides of this thing—looking out for the kids for Hatch and at the same time making sure they kept quiet for whoever killed Big Mike." She tilted her head back, squinting at Sam. "But you've already thought of all this, haven't you?"

"Not as soon as I should have."

Kara balled her hands into fists. "I hate crooked cops—I don't care if they're ex-cops."

The loud rattle of the machinery made conversation difficult. She started past the pile of tiny, polished, smooth pea stone, toward the spot where they'd found Pete Jericho. Sam watched his footing in the slick dirt, wet from the overnight rains. Huge puddles had formed in the various holes and ruts, rippling in a stiff, dry breeze. Kara sank almost to her shoelaces in the light-colored mud, but she pressed on at an angle toward the woods.

Sam glanced back at the work crew and pictured Henry and Lillian sitting up in their tree house, watching the big machinery in their private little world. He noticed that the pea stone looked as if it had shifted during the night, probably because of the rain. He went to turn back to Kara, but saw something and stopped, peered closer.

A foot, or just a cast-off work boot. He couldn't be certain. He took a couple of steps to his left, and he went very still inside, seeing an arm this time, sticking out of the stone.

"Sam?" Kara slid beside him. "What is it?" But she followed his gaze, and he felt her stiffen, heard her gasp. "Oh, no…Sam…"

He moved quickly now, Kara skidding next to him in the mud, shouting and waving at the work crew. Sam stepped onto the pea stone, the arm at shoulder height, and he reached for it, felt for a pulse. No point. The arm was grayish in the bright sun, covered in wet dust from the stones, lifeless.

Kara got the crew's attention. They shut off their equipment, and three men leaped onto the dirt, running toward the pea stone. "Holy shit—we gotta dig him out.
Jesus!"

A bearded kid jumped into a front-end loader, but an older man, probably the foreman, shook his head. "There's no way he's alive. You get on top of this stuff, it shifts and you start to sink. You can't get your footing, and pretty soon you're sucked down deep. It's worse in the smooth rock. The rough rock doesn't move around on you as much. Probably suffocated." The man's face reddened, his frustration and horror making him angry. "Goddamnit, what was he doing here? You know, we tell people it's not safe out here—you know who it is?"

"I have an idea," Sam said.

Kara was grim beside him, breathing hard. "We should call the police."

Sam took out his cell phone and dialed Zoe West directly. She answered on the fourth ring, silent as he relayed what had happened. "A body? As in a dead body?
Who?
"

"Walter Harrison if I'm right."

"Damn it. You're sure he's dead?"

"Yes."

She was fully alert. "What, it's just his arm and foot sticking out? All right, look—go ahead and let the work crew dig him out. You never know with suffocation. Maybe there's a chance he's still alive. I'll get an ambulance over there." She swore under her breath. "I'm on my way. Secure the damn scene, will you?"

Sam hoped he didn't need to remind West that he had no jurisdiction as a law enforcement officer anywhere in the state of Connecticut. He hung up and nodded at the foreman. "Detective West says to dig him out."

They all moved out of the way of the front-end loader as it gingerly knocked the top off the pea-stone pile, exposing more of the body. It was Walter Harrison, and there was no doubt he was dead. The foreman passed out shovels from the back of his pickup, and Sam took one and helped dig at the small, smooth, shifting stone. There weren't enough shovels to go around, but Kara dug with her hands.

Harrison's body rolled toward them, and Sam and the foreman grabbed him and got him down on the wet ground. Kara, who must have seen countless crime scene photographs, breathed in shallow gulps, but the two younger men turned and vomited in a puddle. The foreman swore viciously and kicked some of the stones that had come loose from the pile.

Kara stood back, her face pale, her dark eyes hollow. "He didn't just crawl up there and accidentally suffocate to death. What was he doing here, anyway?" she asked no one in particular.

Sam squatted next to the body. "I'd say, no, Mr. Harrison did not just accidentally suffocate to death."

Blood had coagulated on his chest where, obviously, he'd been shot. Kara leaned over the body and touched Sam's shoulder, her fingers icelike. "Ah, hell, Sam."

He rose and asked everyone to sit tight until Zoe West arrived, and the men nodded without speaking, the foreman leaning against the bumper of his truck, scowling. The one who'd dug out Harrison climbed down from the front-end loader and grimaced. "Wally Harrison. That lying SOB finally got his own."