The Summerland (13 page)

“
Yeah, simple. Except for the fact that I relieved Goltree of duty, remember? I pulled his badge and gun and sent him home. I doubt very much that he’ll be looking to do me any favors.”

“
He’s still a deputy on your force, right? And you and I and Captain Jones are the only people who know about this alleged threat, right? Just don’t tell him. You’ll have an armed deputy there, lurking in the shadows. I really don’t see the problem.”

Frustrated, Bill portrayed his feelings with one heartfelt snort. “You don’t know small towns for shit, Drebin. By now anyone who’s anyone in this town knows that Stumpy’s been relieved, OK? I give up a ton of points by giving him back any kind of authority. He’s on administrative leave. That’s the end of it. I’ll post Doug Brewster on Arden in the morning. He already knows her, at least a little, and he knows more about this than anyone else since he’s doing the missing person’s reports. He can do them in a car just as easily as he can do them at his desk. End of discussion.” Bill pushed away from his desk, angrily working out the kinks that had settled into his shoulders.

* * * *

“
Cease fire?” The gruff entreaty came from the other side of the barely cracked door. Arden squinted through the narrow crack, giving the Sheriff the evil eye before she opened it completely with a sigh.

“
Sure, what the hell. This day can’t get any worse.” Disgusted with both the Sheriff and her own perverse thrill at seeing him at her door, she stalked into the living room of the suite, running her hands through her already disheveled hair. She swung around to face him, realizing then that he’d come bearing gifts. He stood in the doorway wearily, holding a bottle of wine in one hand and a pizza box in the other.

“
I’m sorry. Please, come in.” Arden moved back to him, taking the wine from him, scrutinizing the label. “Is this the same zinfandel we had last night?” She looked up questioningly, making a lame attempt at peacemaking. And was stunned by the intensity, the immediacy of his presence. He dominated the space they occupied, slashing through the barriers she’d unwittingly posted the moment she opened the door. He stepped forward, moving them both in a non-choreographed dance, pushing them deeper into the room.

Bill knew it was a mistake, knew it from the moment he’d battled his way through the press at the front door of the Sheriff’s Department, knew it when she’d opened the door and he felt that immediate zing of high voltage tingle delicately between them.

Then there she was, standing directly in front of him, looking up at him with eyes that were annoyed, tired and delicate all at the same time. He couldn’t help himself, he had to touch her, had to know that the thrum of excitement he felt every time he saw her was not his alone.

The hand that touched her cheek was rough and masculine and tender and shot a crackle of electricity down her spine, grounding her to the spot. Arden couldn’t have moved if her life depended on it. Unconsciously, she turned her face into his sheltering palm, reveling in the warmth and searing vitality of his touch.

Unnerved and a little humbled by her response to his caress, Bill booted the door shut, dropping the pizza box on the floor in the process, then leaned in to frame that fine-boned face in his hands, amazed at the strength and fragility warring for dominance within her. Whispering her name, he dropped his head, his lips barely brushing hers, lingering, sipping from the sweetness she was giving, giving with no thought to what was right, only to what was good. The pure lust that lanced through his body shocked him back to the room, the place, the circumstances. Even as he began to consider disengaging from this dangerous embrace, she became the energizer, the pressure and hunger of her mouth changing the simple exchange to something dark and mysterious and elemental.

Arden surrendered to the wild flow of current between them, pushing against him, yearning for the contact of his long, hard body, striving for the taste of him on her lips. She leaned into him, carelessly dropping the wine bottle, then reached up to twine her hands in the thick tangle of his hair. As that rough silk played through her fingers, she sighed, reaching out to caress the contours of his mouth with her tongue, searching, memorizing the map of his sensuous lips.

With a muttered curse, Bill returned Arden’s kiss, gathering her against him, banding her to his body with no hope of early escape. He stroked his tongue over hers, traced the delicate serrations of her teeth, and learned the elegant curve of the roof of her mouth.

She matched him with each embrace, her hands leaving their subtle caress of his scalp only to discover the contours of his body before they returned to trap his mouth against hers.

His hands glided down her body, fingers sinking into her hips as he drew her against him, his tongue penetrating and retreating, all thought vaporized in a hot, mindless flash.

The tempo of their exchange grew more frenzied with each second that passed, feeding upon itself until both were heaving for breath.

Arden suddenly broke their contact, stepping back and pulling in a shuddering breath. Pushing her hair off her forehead, she studied Bill. He seemed as unnerved, as out of control as she, consciously trying to pull himself together.

In an instinctive move designed to shield herself against her unholy attraction to him, she gave a short laugh, nodding to the bottle of wine lying drunkenly on its side next to the pizza box. “Now that’s what I call service with a smile.”

“
Arden,” he began, before she held up a hand, the gentle smile on her face belying the turmoil churning through her stomach.

“
No fears, no worries. It ends here.” She shook her head sadly. “I wish it didn’t have to, but we both know it does. I can’t do this. I’m just not built for it. Right now I wish to God I was, because I haven’t wanted anyone this much in a long, long time.”

She smiled ruefully, wistfully. “I don’t even know if you’re married or committed or anything. And you know what? It doesn’t matter. As soon as this is over I’ll go back to L.A. or wherever the Air Force decides to send me next and you’ll be here. I’ve already got enough crazy things going on in my life right now to deal with this.”

Both of them knew exactly what ‘this’ was. A hot, passionate, risky love affair. The attraction, the utter magnetism was there, and about as subtle as a three hundred pound sumo wrestler.

“
God Arden. I’m sorry.” Bill stepped forward, then brought himself up short. “I never meant for that to happen. Really. I didn’t think you’d want to go out because of the press and I just wanted a little dinner company. It can get damned lonely for a bachelor out on my ranch, and after last night I knew I would enjoy your company.

“
But you’re right. As much as I’d like to be one of those guys I read about in Penthouse or watch on the Playboy channel, it’s just not gonna happen. There’s too much between us without there being anything between us, if you know what I mean.” He shook himself slightly, as if pulling out of a daze. “I’ve gotta go. I’ll see you around.” He turned to the door, more than ready to leave her in peace when a slender hand caught at his arm.

“
Please don’t go, not yet. Stay, have some wine and pizza with me, take me away from the media and Samantha’s foolishness. Tell me about you and your town, what makes it so special that you’d give up the bright lights of L.A. for it. Stay and be my friend, please? Can’t we be at least that?” She looked so genuine, so real, that he couldn’t refuse.

So they sat at Arden’s little table, spending the second night in a row together. He regaled her with stories of his boyhood in Mariposa and all of the things that had changed and the many things that had stayed the same. Of 110-degree days and wildfires that raged across the land, nothing stopping them and earthquakes which devastated the coastline and tore the state apart, one inch at a time. Of criminal elements in and out of police departments around the world. Of choices made and marital promises broken.

And they watched each other, watched with that awareness that grows thicker and more potent with each passing day, watched with the knowledge that the agreement they’d made on their newly defined friendship probably didn’t matter one damned bit.

Chapter Fourteen

Teddy rolled into the one-stoplight town a few minutes after eight on Friday morning. The flight had been uneventful and the drive from Fresno boring and monotonous. It was a good thing their informants had known where Arden Jones was staying, because this little burg was so pleasant it was creepy, almost a Stepford town, and not one that Teddy wanted to ask questions in. People who asked questions were remembered in a town like this. Carlos had been very clear on how this was to be handled. Arden Jones was to be taken to a quiet, secluded place and interrogated as to exactly what she knew. Then she would be killed.

Teddy’s preferred method of execution these days was by garrote, it was quick and silent and clean, but Carlos had specifically asked that a handgun be used, and that the bullet placement mirror the bodies found earlier that week. Even if the caliber didn’t match, the cops would automatically link the two scenes together, which would muddy the investigation of Captain Jones’ death sufficiently. By the time the police discounted the obvious connection, Teddy would be long gone and safely ensconced back in the high-rise grandeur of Los Angeles. And a valuable lesson would have been learned.

Pulling over to the side of a quiet, shady street, Teddy surveyed the surroundings. It was Hicksville personified. With the exception of the cowboy passed out in his truck a few spaces up, the street was completely deserted. If not for the rumble of traffic from the main drag a few blocks down the community would have resembled a suburban utopia. Teddy settled down into the imitation leather seat of the rental car, waiting for the target to show.

* * * *

A screaming siren. For a moment Arden thought she was back in L.A. Then reality hit. She was in Mariposa, California and her sister had disappeared. She rolled over, glancing at the clock as she did so. Shit. She hadn’t slept past six o’clock since basic training. It was now past eight.

She flopped back on the bed. Her eyes were heavy and she knew she looked like hell without even glancing at the mirror. The strain of facing the press, the anonymous voice’s casual, almost offhand threat and her encounter with the Sheriff had surely etched itself on her face in no uncertain terms. And it had all happened in one incredibly long day.

The memory of the intimacy and overwhelming truth of the kiss they shared had plagued her throughout the night. She’d spent most of the darkening hours thinking about where that kiss should have led and her utter lack of control when it came to Bill Ashton.

When she wasn’t obsessing about the empty space in her bed, she concentrated on researching the Wiccan religion. In the wee hours of the morning she finished off the bottle of wine both had thought prudent to avoid with dinner, then drifted off to dream fragmented, hot dreams she hadn’t had since adolescence.

Staggering to the door, she picked up the coffee and the day-old version of the paper the managers had kindly left for her. Settling into the armchair, she poured a cup of coffee and scanned the paper. She snickered a little as she read the loose cow and loud music reports. Not much had changed since last week’s edition. Her eyes narrowed as she saw an advertisement for crystals and ‘mood enhancers’ at a place called The Eight-Fold Path. In one corner of the ad was a depiction she vaguely recognized from last night’s research. By then she’d been too preoccupied to really retain a whole lot anyway.

She put the paper to one side of the chair, then sipped her coffee while staring blankly out the window onto the quiet street below. She had never been very good at avoidance. No matter how much she drank or tried to amuse herself with the antics of a small town or lusted after the local hunk, her mind refused to budge from the inescapable facts that had become her life over the last three days. Samantha was missing and now someone had locked Arden herself into his or her crosshairs.

It seemed like the last several days had conspired against her, but by God, she’d learned long ago that the only person who will take care of you is yourself. And one of the first rules of taking care of yourself was to stay smart. Now that she’d seen that advertisement, today seemed like a fine day to meet the owner and operator of The Eight-Fold Path and investigate the Wiccan coven’s gathering place. But first, she needed to rid herself of these awful bags under her eyes and feel like a real person again.

* * * *

God, he was hung over. Stumpy Goltree groaned, barely lifting his head from the back of the bench seat of his truck. He didn’t remember all that much about last night, but looking at the empty bottle of Beam in the seat next to him, he had a pretty good idea of what had caused his amnesia. How in the hell had he ended up here of all places? Out of the corner of one eye he saw a person walking out of the shi-shi little bed and breakfast some fags from San Francisco had bought and refurbished for the goddamn bloodsucking tourists. The woman who approached was wearing running shorts and a white tee shirt. It was Arden Jones. He watched as she leaned down and touched her toes, stretching out a damned nice set of legs. Then she began to lope down the hill toward the downtown district. He was too freaking tired to go chasing after her, and he still couldn’t quite remember why he wanted to, it was too fuzzy and he was still half drunk. What the hell, he thought, she’ll have to come back. He leaned his head back on the seat again and fell into a light doze.