by Jami Alden
“I’ll take care of it,” Marshall said.
“That’s what you said last time.”
“Yeah, well this time I mean it. Just make sure Gates stays in the dark about all of this. If he thinks we’re a liability—”
“We’re both dead,” Patrick finished.
“You weren’t kidding when you said off the grid,” Caroline said as she stepped carefully out of Danny’s Jeep which he’d driven in deference to the weather. It had been pouring in Piedmont when they left, meaning snow in the Sierras, and the tiny town of Whiskey Creek didn’t disappoint.
By the time they got to Emily Parrish’s parents’ house, a good six inches of snow had accumulated on the dirt and gravel driveway, and it showed no signs of slowing. Danny was beginning to wonder if they’d make it out of the mountains even with four-wheel drive and chains.
The Parrishes lived in an A-frame house three miles outside of Whiskey Creek. The green metal of the roof showed through where the snow had slid along the sides to the ground. A carport on the right of the house sheltered an ancient Ford F-150 pickup and about a decade’s worth of chopped wood. Thick smoke curled from the chimney, lending a sharp salty bite to the frigid air.
Caroline took a step forward and cursed as her boots slid out from under her. Danny caught her before she hit the ground. “I told you to go with hiking boots,” he griped. “Or better yet, a pair of these,” he stomped his own black army issue winter boots for emphasis.
Caroline had insisted on wearing a pair of clunky, fleece lined suede boots, thinking they’d keep her feet warmer. “Sorry, I threw out my combat boots last season.” She pulled from his hold and took another step, nearly falling on her ass as she hit a patch of slick gravel hiding under the snow.
Danny lunged forward and wrapped his arm around her to steady her. Snow dusted her dark hair, releasing the fresh scent of her shampoo. His cock, already in a state of semi-arousal just from being cooped up in a car with her, thickened to full hardness.
Something had to happen, soon. He was trying to be patient, hang back, let her come to him, an approach that had worked so well with her years before. But last night had nearly done him in. Danny didn’t think he could take another night of having her sleep just down the hall from him while he jacked off like a loser in her designer sheet draped guest bed.
Something definitely needed to happen. But later, because right now he needed to get his mind off the way Caroline’s luscious round ass filled out her jeans and on whether or not Emily’s parents knew anything about her connection to Anne Taggart and James Medford.
Danny let his arm slide from Caroline’s shoulders as he knocked. A rangy, rawboned man who could have been anywhere from fifty-five to seventy-five answered. His thinning gray hair was cut military short, his white beard was neatly trimmed. His flannel shirt was cleanly pressed and tucked neatly into a pair of heavy canvas work pants. “Are you lost son?” the man asked, his blue eyes showing a mix of confusion and concern behind his wire rimmed glasses.
“I’m looking for Edward and Nora Parrish,” Danny said.
“You’ve found us,” the man said. His expression was guarded and he used his tall frame to block the doorway.
Danny quickly introduced himself, then Caroline. “We want to ask you a few questions related to a case we’re working on.”
“If you’re a cop you better show me some ID.”
“I’m not a police officer sir, I’m a private investigator.” The wind whipped the snow into a vortex and he felt Caroline shiver next to him. “Please sir, it’s really cold out here. If we could just come in and ask you and your wife some questions, I promise not to take too much of your time.”
Caroline gave an exaggerated shiver for emphasis. The man raked her up and down, his mouth taking on a disapproving cast as he looked her over. But finally he stepped back and motioned them inside.
The bottom floor of the house consisted of only one big room, which held the kitchen, a dining area, and a sitting area with a worn small sofa and a padded armchair. A narrow wooden staircase in the far corner led to the second floor. Though the house was lit with electricity there was no sign of a TV, a phone, or even a radio.
A Bible was displayed prominently on the small table in front of the sofa and a magazine with the headline “Is the End of Days Nigh? What You Need to Be Ready!” lay discarded on one of the sofa cushions. The man motioned for Danny and Caroline to sit and called for his wife. “Mrs. Parrish, can you come down here please?”
The interior of the house was almost uncomfortably warm, thanks to the giant wood stove tucked into one corner of the kitchen. An old fashioned coffee pot sat on top, steam curling from its spout.
Mrs. Parrish—Nora—came down the stairs and Danny could see Caroline trying to school her face into impassivity. He knew exactly why—Mrs. Parrish was dressed like an escapee from Little House on the Prairie. Danny introduced himself and Caroline, and she responded with a quick nod. “Let me just get the coffee and I’ll be right with you.”
“Please don’t go to any trouble,” Caroline said, but Nora had already retrieved four ceramic mugs and filled a plate with some kind of dark bread. She loaded everything onto a tray and brought it over, serving Danny and Mr. Parrish first, before offering Caroline coffee and taking a cup for herself.
Only he could detect the subtle arch in Caroline’s brow as it cocked in disapproval.
“How can we help you, young man?” Mr. Parrish asked after he’d taken a sip of coffee.
“We’re working on a missing persons case, and we believe the woman may have had a connection to your daughter, Emily. We were hoping you could help us track her down.”
While Edward Parrish’s demeanor hadn’t been exactly warm up to that point, it had at least been cordial. Now it turned downright glacial. “I have no daughter.”
“Sir, I understand you may have had a falling out with Emily—” Caroline began.
“Do not say that name in this house!” Edward boomed.
Caroline’s eyes widened as she sat back, while Nora Parrish stared at a point across the room.
“Sir, if you could just tell us when you last spoke to her, if she ever mentioned a woman named Anne Taggart—”
Edward slammed his coffee mug down on the table. Steaming black liquid sloshed across his hand but he didn’t seem to notice. “You’ve defiled my home with her name as she defiled it with her presence. She died the day she decided to become a whore. I repeat, I have no daughter. Now take your painted Jezebel,” he pointed at Caroline with a snarl, “and get out of my home.”
Danny stood up and gave Edward a look that had made dozens of new recruits wet their pants in fear. “I need to know where your daughter is, sir.”
Edward turned his back, marched across the room, and went up the stairs.
“Oh dear,” Nora’s soft voice trembled slightly, “you’d better go. I’m afraid he’s fetching the Remington.”
“Shotgun,” Danny said in response to Caroline’s confused look. Her eyes widened as she heard the thumping of footsteps overhead.
“Maybe we should go,” Caroline said.
Danny ignored her, and pinned Nora with a hard stare. Nora’s watery brown eyes darted furtively to the stairs.
“I haven’t seen her in nearly twenty years. Not since she told us she’d gotten herself in trouble.” Her eyes filled with tears and her chin wobbled. “She’d sinned,” she said like a woman trying to convince herself.
“She didn’t come back to live with you and have her baby?” Caroline pressed.
“Edward wouldn’t abide a bastard in this house.”
Booted feet were approaching the staircase overhead, and Caroline edged toward the door.
“Do you have a picture of her?” Danny said, staying Caroline with a hand on her arm. She was vibrating like a hummingbird, terrified Edward was going to march downstairs and open fire.
“We got rid of everything,” Nora said, but Danny could tell from her downcas
t eyes she was lying.
“Please. Anything taken around the time she left would be helpful.”
With another nervous look at the stairs, Nora hurried into the kitchen where she opened a cabinet stocked floor to ceiling with canned goods. She knelt down and stuck her arm all the way back and pulled a snapshot out of an envelope. “This was one of the few I was able to save.”
Danny took the picture, thanked her, and started for the door as Edward’s foot hit the first step.
Nora grabbed his arm and whispered frantically, “If you find her—”
The metallic click of a rifle cocking rang through the air. “I told you to get out of my house,” Edward bellowed as he swung the barrel in their direction.
Maybe Caroline was right to be so nervous.
Danny grabbed Caroline’s arm and yanked her through the front door. Cold air stole their breath as they hurried down the front steps. The blast of a shotgun cut through the thick snowy silence, followed by Edward yelling what Danny thought might be a Bible verse. Caroline gave a yelp of fear and dove for cover. Danny yanked her to her feet and rushed her to the Jeep, shoving her in through the driver’s seat before climbing in after her.
Danny hazarded a look back at Edward just in time to see the man fire into the air.
Caroline dove for the floor and screamed as the blast reverberated around the Jeep.
“Relax,” Danny said as he started the car and put it into gear. “He’s just firing into the air.”
“Well excuse me,” Caroline said, her voice shrill, “if having a gun pulled on me scares the shit out of me. You may be used to people trying to kill you, but the experience is still relatively new to me.”
“Edward wasn’t trying to kill you,” Danny said as he carefully negotiated the Parrishes’ drive. In the brief time they’d been inside, the storm had increased in intensity. He could barely see through the windshield as the wipers struggled to keep pace with the dumping snow.
“Says you. You weren’t the one he called a painted Jezebel,” Caroline said, grunting a little as she pulled herself from the floor.
“Now that he mentions it, you could lighten up on the lipstick there, Tammy Faye.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“But it’s so much better when you do it.”
She responded with a disgusted noise and turned her attention pointedly out the window.
As Danny turned onto the main road, it became evident that Edward Parrish’s shotgun wasn’t their only worry. The snow lay in a thick blanket, and as they inched along, the wind buffeted the Jeep until Danny had to use all of his strength and concentration to keep the car on course. After a few miles he pulled off to put chains on his tires, but all the tire traction in the world couldn’t help anyone navigate in zero visibilty.
He kept their pace to a crawl as they passed through Whiskey Creek, knowing that the only hope of escaping the snow was to get to a lower elevation. As he reached the outskirts of town, flashing lights barely penetrated the thick curtain of snow.
“What’s happening?” Caroline asked as the Jeep crawled a few more yards.
A sheriff’s SUV blocked the road ahead, positioned in front of a closed metal gate. Yellow lights flashed where the two sides of the gate met. “The pass is closed because of the snow,” Danny said.
“Maybe they’ll let us through—”
Before Caroline could even finish her sentence the sheriff tweaked his siren at them, signaling them to stop. A thickset man in a wide brimmed hat and fur trimmed parka climbed from the SUV. He stomped through the snow and Danny lowered the driver’s side window.
“Sorry folks, road’s closed.”
“Well how are we supposed to get home?” Caroline snapped as she leaned across the console to the driver’s side.
“Sorry ma’am, I’m afraid you’ll have to turn around and wait it out until we can get the roads cleared.”
“How long will that take?” Caroline asked, exasperated.
“Can’t say, ma’am,” the officer said, getting irritated and no doubt yearning for the warmth of his car. “But seeing as this is the only road out of here, I suggest you turn around and wait it out.”
“Wait it out? Where the hell are we supposed to wait it out? There’s nothing there.”
Danny rolled up the window mid tirade and gave the officer a friendly wave before turning the Jeep around. “Will you give it a rest already? So the road is closed. We’ll deal with it.”
“What are we going to do? Sit in the car for the next twelve hours?”
“No,” Danny said, slowing as a truck pulled out of a parking lot in front of him. He signaled and turned right into the driveway. “I figure this place will do.”
“We’re going to spend the night in the 7-Eleven?” Caroline asked.
“No,” Danny drove past the 7-Eleven toward the dimly lit sign that was barely visible through the snow. “We’re staying at the Whiskey Creek Motor Inn. We’re in luck. The VACANCY sign is on.”
The Whiskey Creek Motor Inn was a squat, two story building painted a color that was probably once white or cream but had turned to a dirty putty color over the years. The rooms opened to the outside and offered an unobstructed view of the parking lot. The lot was full of trucks pulling trailers loaded with snowmobiles on the back.
Danny pulled under the awning in front of the motel’s office and got out. Caroline followed with a faintly disgusted pull to her mouth. “We’re going to stay here?”
“Unless you want to stay in the car, princess, this is our only option.”
They entered an office that smelled of old coffee and stale cigarette smoke. An ancient TV, complete with rabbit ears, displayed a picture even snowier than the storm outside. A worn rust colored couch flanked by two Naugahyde arm chairs completed the retro seventies feel.
No one was at the reception desk, but when Danny rang the bell a hacking cough, followed by a husky, “Be right with you,” sounded from the back. The hacking started up again, and a woman with an iron gray beehive emerged from a room behind the desk. Her face was as weathered as an old boot, a slash of scarlet lipstick the only color in a complexion roughly the color of her hair. Her thin shoulders were covered by a thick wool sweater with puffy birds sewn on the front. She paused long enough in her coughing to ask, “How can I help you?”
“We need a couple rooms for tonight,” Danny replied.
“You have a reservation?” the woman asked in a voice that sounded like she’d been swallowing gravel.
“No,” Caroline said, “we got stranded by the storm.”
The woman tapped on the keyboard of a vintage IBM machine and squinted at the monitor. “Afraid we only have one room,” the woman said.
“Are you sure?” Caroline asked. “Maybe if you check again—”
“There’s a big snowmobile rally this weekend over in Lake Alpine and we’re full up.” Danny saw Caroline wince as the woman paused to hack up another quart of phlegm. “You’re lucky we have anything available, but someone canceled at the last minute.”
“We’ll take it.” Danny drew his money clip out of his pocket and pulled out his credit card.
“But we can’t share a room,” Caroline sputtered, her dark eyes wide with alarm.
“It’s all we have,” the woman repeated as she snatched up the card in arthritic fingers. “Don’t worry hon,” she said as she ran the card through an old fashioned manual credit card imprinter, “there are two beds. I’m sure your virtue is safe with him,” she said with a sly wink at Danny and handed over the key.
CHAPTER 11
Caroline followed Danny into their second floor room and chafed her arms against the chill. Danny switched on the light and quickly located the thermostat. “Wood paneling. Nice touch,” she said over the low hiss of the wall heater.
Danny threw his leather coat across an armchair in the corner. Caroline snatched it up and hung it with her own in the closet, then took a closer look at their accommodations. Next to the lumpy,
worn armchair was a round table coated in wood laminate with a table lamp on top. Two double beds were covered in polyester bedspreads in shades of green, orange, and gold, divided by a bedside table that held another lamp. She could feel Danny standing beside her, too warm, too close, and the shiver that ran through her had nothing to do with the cold.
She moved away and heard the thump of Danny’s duffel bag hitting the thinly carpeted floor. Unlike her, Danny carried an overnight bag with him everywhere, so he was prepared for an event like getting stranded in a hotel overnight.
With someone he used to have sex with.
Really, really, amazingly awesome sex.
She pulled back a bedspread to distract herself and fingered the rough sheets. “Ooh, what is this, like, twenty threadcount? How luxurious.” She injected as much snottiness into her tone as she could muster, trying to remind herself that there was nothing sexy or provocative about being stuck in a dive of a motel with Danny Taggart.
“You didn’t used to be so particular,” Danny said from right behind her, so close she could feel the heat of him against her back. And there she was, so close to the bed her thighs brushed the edge. Why had she moved so close to the bed? She froze, willing him to move away, promising herself that as soon as he did she would sit her ass in that armchair and not move until morning.
But Danny got even closer. “In fact, this kind of reminds me of something.” Her eyes fluttered closed as she felt him brush her hair to the side. Warm breath wafted against her cheek as he bent his head to that ultra sensitive spot right below her ear. “Remember that hotel in Spring Lake?”
Oh God, she did. The hot press of his mouth on her skin sent warmth pooling between her thighs. Danny had been stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and she’d managed to get a few days off. Danny got a three day furlough and took her to a hotel in nearby Spring Lake. It was the last time she’d gone to visit Danny, right before he’d been deployed on yet another mission she couldn’t know anything about.
“Remember how bad it stormed?” His hands curved over her hips, up to circle her waist, his touch burning her through the weave of her sweater.