White Hot (34 page)

He hugged her closer. “Just try to leave.”

They kissed long and leisurely while his hand moved from her breast to the soft, humid mystery of her sex, back to her breast and its hard tip. Since he’d met her, he’d entertained a thousand fantasies of her lying naked with him. But the reality far surpassed even his most arousing daydreams. Now that it was happening, he couldn’t get enough of merely touching her.

When they pulled apart, he looked down the length of her. “You’re beautiful, Sayre.”

“Thank you.”

“Not a single flaw.”

That comment caused her drowsy smile to fade gradually. He felt her emotional withdrawal even before she sat up and pulled her knees to her chest, propping her chin on them.

“I’m flawed, Beck. You’d have been better off never to have met me.”

“Not true.”

“It is. I leave destruction in my wake. We Hoyles are notorious for that. It’s our specialty. We leave people broken, irreparably damaged.”

He placed his hand on her back. Her skin was incredibly smooth, pale compared to his. Her hips swelled gracefully out of her waist. On each side of her cleft was a shallow dimple, and that feminine trait made him ache with a tender longing he’d never felt before. He’d experienced desire too many times to count. Lust, shamefully often. But never this yearning to possess a woman’s body, to know and have the entirety of her.

“What have you done that’s destructive, Sayre?”

“I married two men I didn’t love. I spent their money. Slept in their beds. And I barely remember what they looked like.”

She turned her head to read his reaction, but he kept his features carefully schooled. He wanted her to elaborate on that period of her life. He wanted to know all the ugly details of it.

Turning away again, she spoke slowly and with seeming difficulty. “I wrecked their lives. Deliberately and with wanton self-interest. I had nothing against them personally, but I used them without regard or mercy. I was trying to punish Huff for taking Clark and my baby from me.

“I no longer cared about my own life, so long as I could make Huff’s miserable. When he said marry, I married, with the sole intention of wreaking havoc that would ultimately affect him. Those two men were victims of the infamous Hoyles and our talent for ruining lives.”

“I don’t feel a bit sorry for your so-called husbands,” he said bitterly. “They married you knowing you didn’t love them. They begged to be used. In return for their trouble, they had you in their beds. How old were you?”

“Nineteen when I married the first. Just turned twenty-one when I married the second.”

“And how old were they?”

“Older. Much. Closer to Huff’s age than to mine.”

Two horny acquaintances of Huff’s had known a good thing when they saw it. They’d grabbed at the opportunity to marry Sayre, even knowing it would probably be a temporary arrangement.

“They got to spend every night with a beautiful young woman. Unless you withheld…”

“No. I wish I could tell you I did,” she said in a voice so low he could barely hear her. “But access to me was part of the bargain.”

“Then you were used, too, weren’t you?”

She rested her forehead on her knees. “Not a pretty past, is it?”

Although it cost him a jabbing pain to the rib cage, he sat up and placed his arms around her, pulling her back onto the pillows with him as he reclined. He brushed her hair away from her face and forced her to look at him. “Who could blame you for anything you did after what was done to you?”

“Last night, you overheard Huff and me. Everything?”

“Enough so that I now understand why you hate him so much.”

She buried her face in his neck. “What they did to me was a carefully guarded secret. Not even my brothers knew. Not Selma. No one. I didn’t have anyone to talk to about it, no one to share the grief.”

“Clark?”

“He never even knew I was pregnant. I made the mistake of flaunting it to Huff before telling Clark. After the abortion, what good would it have done to tell him? The baby was gone. Knowing about it would only have made him as miserable as I was.”

“You loved him too much to tell him.”

“Something like that. I still hold him dear. Our courtship will always be a sweet memory, first love. But I anguish…” She stopped, and it was several seconds before she continued. “I anguish for my child. It was the only thing in my life, in the whole realm of the Hoyles, that was innocent. Clean. Pure. And Huff destroyed it.”

Placing his hand beneath her chin, he tilted her face up. As tears rolled down her temples toward her hairline, he kissed them away.

Huskily she said, “I couldn’t stand it if you pitied me.”

“All right. Pity me.”

He took her hand and folded it around his penis. As he kissed her deeply, his hand stayed on hers, guiding it, until she turned. She kissed all the bruises on his chest and stomach and lower.

“This was your fantasy, wasn’t it, Beck? That day at the foundry, you said you didn’t want a man distracted by my hair and—”

“And imagining it sweeping across his stomach. I gave myself away.”

“You gave yourself away long before that,” she whispered. Then she bent to him. Her mouth was by turns shy, provocative, and bold. But wet. And hot. Very.

He gasped her name, pulled her up and kissed her, tasting himself, tasting them on the kiss. Holding it, he separated her thighs and moved between them, stretching out on top of her.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” she asked.

“Like bloody hell.”

“Wouldn’t you rather—”

“No. This is what I would rather.” He thrust himself into her.

“Yes,” she moaned. “Yes.”

She surrendered completely. Her arms were bent at the elbows, her hands lying palm up on either side of her head. He aligned his palms with hers, then tightly laced their fingers. And when he began to move inside her, they were looking directly into each other’s eyes.

“You don’t want pity, so tell me what you want to hear, Sayre, and I’ll say it.”

“You don’t have to say anything. Just…”

“What?”

“Go deep.”

“I am deep. I’m so deep into you, I’m lost. What else?”

“Please…”

Her throat arched up. She clamped her teeth over her lower lip, and he felt her body closing around him like a fist. He watched the orgasmic blush spread across her breasts, her nipples harden. He gauged her rapid breathing, and when he knew she was close, he ground his pelvis against hers in small, rhythmic circles.

“Please what, Sayre?”

“Oh, God!”

“What?”

“Cover me,” she cried helplessly.

He did. He let her absorb his weight, and they clung to each other as their bodies pulsed together and their hearts drummed in unison.

Later, she lay sleeping in the crook of his arm, her hand lying trustfully on his chest, her breath warm against his skin. He rested his chin on the top of her head and stared at the ceiling.

He’d wanted to fuck all that heartache out of her—Huff, the abortion, Clark Daly, all of it. He’d wanted to obliterate it, so she would realize one moment of peace and contentment, perhaps even joy. He’d wanted to give her one blinding instant of life without the taint of anger and regret.

And for those splendid, heart-stopping seconds of sexual abandon, he thought maybe he had.

But as he lay watching the revolving blades of the ceiling fan, he questioned exactly who had delivered whom.

H
uff was on the front gallery having his morning coffee when Red Harper drove up in his official car. He got out, tucked a bundle of some sort under his arm, and approached the house in his plodding gait.

“You’re out early for a Sunday morning,” Huff remarked.

Climbing the steps seemed to require all Red’s strength. His face was gray beneath his uniform hat, which he removed as soon as he reached the gallery. “No rest for the weary, Huff.”

“Holler at Selma to bring you some coffee.”

“No thanks. I can’t stay that long. Just came to give you some news.”

“I hope it’s good news. That would be a change.”

“Can’t tell you how sorry I am about the goings-on at the plant.”

“More to the point, there’s nothing going on, thanks to those government sons of bitches.”

Huff was in a truculent mood. He had slept in bouts, waking up frequently to find himself wound in sheets that reeked of his own sweat. As yesterday’s events had gone from bad to worse, he’d kept on a good face for everyone. If he’d given the slightest indication that his confidence was shaken by OSHA’s intrusion, or that his will was weakening, it would have been disastrous for the future of Hoyle Enterprises. He had appeared undaunted and optimistic, and would continue to.

But the performance was taking a toll on him.

Because in his most private self he was experiencing twinges of fear. He was riddled with uncertainties he hadn’t felt since that evening his daddy had been bludgeoned to death before his eyes. From that day forward, fear had been his enemy. For decades he’d been convincing people that he was immune to it.

But as he watched Red Harper creakily lower himself into the other rocking chair, he wondered if he had fooled himself into believing that his fear was undetectable. Was it as apparent as the ravages of Red’s cancer? Did everyone secretly regard him as aged, decrepit, even terminal?

Until only recently, a single word from him, one meaningful look, could shrivel the most pugnacious of men. Without that ability to instill fear, he would no longer be Huff Hoyle. Without his power to intimidate, he would be just another old man, impotent and stripped of dignity.

He looked toward the horizon where ordinarily smoke would be billowing from his blast furnaces. He had always fancied those streams of smoke as his signature that he’d written like a skywriter above his town.

Today there was no smoke, and he wondered if he, too, would disappear that quickly and completely. The thought brought him close to panic, which he tried to conceal with querulousness. “What’s your news, Red?”

The sheriff winced as though he was in pain, which he probably was. “It’s good news. And it isn’t.”

“Don’t keep me in suspense. What’s in the sack?”

“Evidence. I can’t show you without risking contamination, but it pretty much nails Danny’s killer.”

“Well?”

“Slap Watkins.”

“Good news, my ass,” Huff bellowed, loudly smacking his hands together. “That’s great news. I knew all along that swamp rat was involved.” He motioned toward the sack. “What’d you find?”

“One of his biker friends called me before dawn this morning. He was letting Watkins stay at his place this weekend while he went up to Arkansas for a bikers’ rally. By the time he got home late last night, Watkins had split. But he’d left behind a boot. When the guy saw that it was bloodstained, he called me.”

“Danny’s blood?”

“I don’t know for certain yet, but that would be my guess. I’m going to send it to the crime lab in Orleans Parish for the tests. This biker was willing to give Watkins a place to hide so long as he was only wanted for questioning. But when he found this,” he said, holding up the sack, “well, he wanted no part of aiding and abetting a murderer. He cooperated completely. We searched the house high and low, but this is all we found belonging to Watkins. Looks to me like when he cleared out, he accidentally dropped this boot.

“And that brings me to the bad news. We still haven’t located him. When he realizes he left behind his boot, he’ll know his goose is cooked and that he’s got nothing to lose by taking out another Hoyle.”

“He could have killed Chris the other night on the road.”

“Naw, he wanted to prick with him first. That’s like a Watkins. One of his half brothers, I believe it was, stalked his ex-girlfriend for months, threatening to kill her, before he actually got around to it.

“Besides, Slap wouldn’t have done anything too drastic with Beck as a witness. As for his coming into Sayre’s room…Well, let’s just say I’m real glad we found this evidence after Watkins paid her a visit and not before, else he might have really hurt her.

“He’ll go to death row for Danny. He might figure they can’t give him the needle twice, so he’d just as well go all out. That said, want me to station a deputy over here?”

“I can take care of myself.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.”

“I wish he would come here. I’d like a crack at him.”

“I was afraid you’d say that, too, and that’s the main reason I wanted a deputy here. As much for Watkins’s protection as yours. Be careful, Huff. This is no wayward boy we’re dealing with. Slap was mean and violent before Angola, and he only came out meaner. Not too smart, though. Can’t figure why he didn’t destroy the clothes he was wearing that Sunday.”

“No Watkins I ever knew was any too bright.”

“Stupidity is probably what’ll do him in. I figure if we give him enough rope he’ll hang himself.” Then he said, “I truly am sorry about what’s happened at the foundry, Huff.”

The way one thought had segued into the other made Huff wonder if, somewhere in between, Red had stopped referring to Slap Watkins and had started referring to him. Was even this sick old man losing confidence in him?

“It’ll be back up and running in no time,” he said. “Nothing can keep me down, Red. You ought to know that by now.”

Red stared out across the lawn. “I’m glad to have this evidence against Watkins,” he said after a prolonged silence. “If this blood turns out to be Danny’s, it seals the case against him. I can tell you this now, Huff, I was a little worried that maybe Chris…Well…”

The two men exchanged a long look. Finally the sheriff said quietly, “There’s also this.” From the breast pocket of his shirt, he withdrew an envelope and laid it on the small table between the two rocking chairs.

“What’s that?”

“The information you asked me to get on Charles Nielson.”

“What have you learned?”

“It’s all in there.”

“Good stuff? How much is it going to cost me?”

Red didn’t return his grin. “Nothing, Huff. This one’s on the house.”

“That’s a first.”

“Actually it’s the last.” Red used the arms of the rocker to lever himself out of it. “We had a good run. For a long time, we made sure things went your way. But this finishes it. I’m out of it now. I’m washing my hands of it. You understand? I’ll never betray you, but I won’t help you with this.” He pointed down at the envelope. “Whatever you do from here on, you’re on your own.”

Red didn’t look like he had enough stamina to make it back to his car, much less execute the duties of his office, or carry out his extracurricular duties for Huff. At least he recognized his weakness and had the good sense to relinquish his responsibilities. Anyone afflicted with either a physical ailment or moral uncertainty was of no use to Huff Hoyle.

“Take care of yourself, Red.”

“Too late for that.” Then he hitched his chin toward the house. “Better warn Chris that Watkins is still at large and probably more desperate than before. Sayre, too. Tell them to keep an eye out.”

“Sure thing.”

Red replaced his hat and hobbled down the steps. He didn’t look back. He didn’t wave as he drove away.

Huff retrieved the envelope the sheriff had left on the table and went into the house, calling loudly for Selma.

She came from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. “Need more coffee?”

“I’ll get it myself.” He peeled back the flap on the envelope. “Go upstairs and wake Chris. Tell him I need to talk to him.”

“He’s not here.”

Huff stopped what he was doing, realizing now that Chris’s car hadn’t been out front. “Where’d he go this early?”

“He didn’t spend the night here, Mr. Hoyle. He called late last night, told me not to disturb you, but wanted you to know that he was staying the night at the fishing camp. I forgot to mention it to you—”

Huff left Selma apologizing for not telling him sooner and went quickly to the nearest telephone, in his den. He called Chris’s cell number. It rang four times before it was answered by his voice mail. “Come on, Son, answer.”

His fingers had turned clumsy. The muscles of his chest clenched around his heart, which was beating like a son of a bitch, as though he’d actually suffered a recent heart attack. He punched in the sequence of numbers again, but the result was the same.

Wasting no more time, Huff dropped the phone and went to the gun cabinet.

At some point during the night, the antique air conditioner had shut itself off and failed to recycle. Chris lay on the hard, narrow bed amid a jumble of damp and dingy sheets that smelled of mildew. He was wearing only his boxer shorts, and even that much clothing was cloying in the stifling heat.

It was almost as hot this morning as it had been on that Sunday two weeks ago when Danny had been shot to death in this very room.

Had it only been two weeks? It seemed like ten years.

The old wood floor had soaked up Danny’s blood like a sponge. Chris doubted the discoloration would ever come out, no matter how much chemical scouring it underwent.

He’d come here to escape the pressures of yesterday. One good thing that had come out of it: he had settled that matter with Lila. He would be cleared of all suspicion of Danny’s murder as soon as she talked to Red, which she would do in order to save George’s job.

But the plant was silent. Which had caused Huff to rant like a madman.

Unable to stand any more of Huff’s ravings, in addition to the reporters who kept calling him for a comment, Chris had isolated himself at the fishing camp, the last place anyone would look for him.

It guaranteed him privacy, which he needed, but the place had lost its allure. He used to have fine times out here with buddies, drinking, fishing, playing poker marathons that lasted for entire weekends, guys enjoying the rusticity of the camp.

But both he and the camp had gotten older. He’d matured; the cabin had become derelict. Maybe it was time to sell it. With those bloodstains on the floor, how could he and Huff ever enjoy it again?

They could buy a boat instead. Or a beach house. Biloxi maybe. Although Huff hated Mississippi for reasons known only to him. He—

Chris actually smelled him before he heard the planks on the porch squeak beneath his weight. Seconds later he came crashing through the door.

Chris sat bolt upright.

“Don’t move, Hoyle. I’d hate to have to kill you right off. Before I slit you open from gullet to gonads, I got some things to say to you.”

In one hand, Slap Watkins was wielding his knife. In the other he held several articles of clothing, which he threw at Chris. They landed in his lap. He took one look at them, then recoiled and frantically flung them off.

Watkins laughed. “That’s right. That’s what come from your baby brother’s head. It splattered like a pumpkin that fell off a tall truck.”

Chris glowered at him.

“What’s the matter, Hoyle? Are you too prissy to hear the grisly details? Too bad, ’cause I’m gonna tell you anyway.” He propped one foot on the end of the bed as though they were old friends about to have a casual conversation.

“Danny boy told me he was expecting to meet you here. He warned me that you could show up at any time, so why didn’t I just take whatever I wanted and leave before you got here and called the cops.

“Ain’t that a hoot? He thought I’d come to rob the place.” He gave the surroundings a scornful glance. “As if I’d want anything. This place makes my prison cell look like a palace.”

Chris inched closer to the edge of the bed.

“No you don’t,” Slap warned. “You’re gonna sit there and listen, and if you so much as blink, I’m gonna pop your eye out with the tip of this knife and then you won’t need to blink no more, will you?”

He paused to let the threat sink in and assure himself that Chris was going to comply, then he said, “Where was I? Oh, yeah. Brother Danny. When I took the shotgun off the rack, he commenced to praying. The prayers got louder as I loaded the thing. I have to tell you that it came as a relief to shut him up when I poked the barrels into his mouth.” He paused a second, then leaned slightly forward and in a stage whisper said, “Bang!”

Slap laughed again. “Messy as all get out, but almost too easy. He didn’t even fight me. Oh, he put up some token resistance, but nothing that a little intimidation didn’t put a stop to, and right quick.”

“You’re a moron for saving those clothes. Why didn’t you get rid of them?”

“I wanted you to see what Hoyle brains and blood look like. Surprise! Ain’t no different from anybody else’s.”

“Why did you break in on Sayre?”

“Yeah, I thought that might yank everybody’s chain.” He winked and smacked his lips. “I’d sure like her yanking something of mine, know what I mean?”

“Very clever, the Bible story.”

“I thought so. Thought that up all by myself.” Then he scowled. “But you only got me to talking about that to distract me from the business at hand. Ain’t gonna happen. No sir.” Leering, he leaned in closer and said, “I get to kill my second Hoyle. Am I lucky or what?”

Beck was framed in the back door, watching Frito tree a squirrel, when Sayre entered the kitchen. He was wearing only a pair of cargo shorts. His back was a patchwork quilt of bruises. Moving up behind him, she slid her arms around his waist and kissed a mean purple bruise on his shoulder.

“Good morning.”

“Good and getting better.” He turned around and pulled her against him, kissing her lips tenderly. When they pulled apart, he took in her dishabille and smiled.