Shaw's Landing (Haunted Hearts Series Book 4)

by Denise Moncrief

  Shaw placed a firm hand on her elbow. “Are you okay?”

  She stared at him for a long moment. “Not really, but I’m better than I was this time yesterday.”

  “Not backing out, are you?”

  “No. I told you I’d tell you what I know. I keep my word.”

  He nodded. “I know.”

  She wanted to ask him how he knew anything about her, but she refrained. He was going to hide her from Haskins and take her to her brother. Maybe she could see her mother. She needed Shaw Bennett on her side. Still, she couldn’t quite get past feeling like he was the enemy, but then what was the saying? Keep your friends close. Your enemies closer.

  She had no choice. She had to get close to him. For some reason, the thought of getting closer to Shaw Bennett appealed to her.

  Chapter Twelve

  Cooley’s house had been set on a raised pier and beam foundation. No basement. So no tunnel entrance like there was at his neighbor’s house on the hill. Shaw stood in the center of the small living room, his hands on his hips. Dickerson was outside, doing whatever Dickerson did.

  From the corner of his eye, he observed Courtney rub her neck and roll her shoulders. “Does being here make you uncomfortable?”

  She spun on her heel as if a loud crack had startled her. “This place gives me the creeps.”

  He smiled for no other reason than he wanted to smile at her. “Yeah. Me, too.”

  “It’s warm outside. The air conditioner is turned off. Yet it seems really cold in here.” She shivered to punctuate her comment.

  It wasn’t that cold.

  He walked to where she stood and placed a hand on her forehead. She flinched, but his hand stayed put. “No fever.”

  Warmth raced through him as his fingers met her skin, the kind of heat not caused by an immune system waging war with a disease. Funny, when he had moved next to her, he had stepped right into a cold spot. His paranormal radar went on high alert.

  “I’m not sick.”

  He was standing close to her, within a breath’s distance. “Didn’t think so.”

  Her eyes seemed to beg him for answers, and he wasn’t even sure he knew all the questions. Then, his hand slid off her forehead and rested on her cheek, without any instruction from his brain. She placed her hand over his, and his breath stuck in his throat.

  “Why are you doing this for me?”

  “I want your testimony against Haskins.” Even as he stated what he thought was the obvious, he knew he’d just uttered a half-truth.

  It was more than bringing down Haskins. More than digging out the truth. More than rescuing a damsel in distress. Courtney Jepson, who used to call herself Crenshaw, might be in distress, but she was no fainting damsel.

  “No, it’s more than that.”

  He sighed. How to explain why he wanted so much to help this woman without sounding like an idiot or a creep? His hand remained on her cheek like it was glued there or something. He didn’t want to remove it, and it didn’t seem that she wanted him to. Surprisingly, she wasn’t shaking off his touch.

  “I think you’re probably a good person stuck in a bad situation.” That didn’t come out right. Not what he meant or wanted to say at all. Seldom was he at such a loss for the right words.

  She pressed her lips together as if trying desperately to keep what she wanted to say trapped in her mouth.

  “What are you thinking, Courtney?”

  “Nothing.”

  But he knew it wasn’t nothing.

  Her eyes kept begging him for answers. No, more than answers. She wanted honesty.

  “Okay, honest answer? You deserve that, I guess.”

  She smiled at him, a beautiful smile. He’d never seen her eyes light up quite like that. A dull sort of determination had reflected in them until then. He was offering her a new beginning. Hope. Maybe hope did that to a person.

  “You’re demanding honesty from me.”

  She had a good point. Honesty begets honesty, doesn’t it?

  “I never said that.”

  He’d never expected honesty from a witness in her position. Almost all of them lied or left out part of the truth. Courtney was still holding something back. She wanted to tell him everything. The desire to tell him all her secrets glimmered in her beautiful eyes.

  She laughed and the sound of her laughter stirred something in his soul that had been dormant for a long, long time. He cared. For some strange, mystifying reason, he cared what happened to this particular woman. She got to him. Maybe it was chemistry. A sexual attraction. Who understands how that works? He didn’t.

  He cleared his throat and shifted from one foot to the other. Seldom was he this nervous. The only time he could remember being this hyped up was when someone had a gun pointed at his face.

  “If we weren’t in this weird situation…” Telling this particular truth was hard. “If we had met somewhere else, I would want to get to know you better. I’ve never met anyone like you. You…fascinate me.”

  Her whole body stiffened. The heat disappeared. Her face suddenly felt cold.

  “I fascinate you? Like a specimen of some sort? Like a science fair project?”

  “No, no. You’re misunderstanding me.” He removed his hand from her face and then rubbed the back of his neck hard. “I’m not very good at this.”

  “No, you aren’t.”

  He groaned. “How do you do that?”

  “Do what?” Her shoulders tensed.

  “How can you be so strong after you’ve been…” She didn’t shrink. She didn’t cower. She stood her ground. Courtney was an unusual woman.

  “Oh, I get it. You’re trying to figure out my psychology. You can’t understand why I would stay with Jared Crenshaw so long, do you? Not when he beat the crap out of me all the time.”

  “No, I get that.”

  She shook her head once, quick and hard, as if he’d slapped her. “What do you think you get?”

  “Look, this is not…I can’t…Courtney… The truth is that I wish we’d met in different circumstances. That’s all. You fascinate me. Not like I find a case fascinating, but more like a man finds a woman fascinating.” Did that sound lame?

  “Whoa.” She stepped back from him. “Whoa. All I owe you is what I know. I don’t owe you anything else.”

  Oh God, how could he have screwed up the conversation so badly? “No, no. That’s not what I meant. I don’t expect that from you.” Although, the thought of being that way with her also fascinated him. “No, it would be wrong, really, really wrong for anything like that to happen between us.” He stopped and caught a breath. “All I’m saying is that I wish we were free to explore the possibility. But we’re not, so—”

  “Hey, Bennett. I think I have something… What’s going on here?” Dickerson squinted first at Shaw and then at Courtney.

  Shaw backed another step away from her and addressed Dickerson. “What have you got?”

  Dickerson hesitated, alternating his pointed glares at first one and then the other of them. “I found a footpath out back. It goes a ways into the woods. There’s a shed back there with a lock on the door.”

  “Okay. Let’s go take a look.” He pointed toward the back door, indicating Dickerson should lead the way.

  Dickerson was out the door, and Shaw had one foot over the threshold.

  “Shaw?”

  The sound of his name on Courtney’s lips sank into his heart. The fire from her earlier irritation at him had obviously dissipated. Her voice sounded low and husky, possibly filled with strong emotion. He sucked in a deep breath and turned toward her.

  She had remained in the middle of the living room floor. Her neck glowed with a beautiful shade of pinkish read. “Me, too. If things were different… I wish we’d met some other way.”

  He nodded to acknowledge her admission. “You better keep up with us. I have a weird feeling you shouldn’t be alone in here.”

  She glanced around Cooley’s house and turned her gaze back to Shaw. T
he red disappeared from her neck, and her face lost some of its usual color. She rushed to catch up with him.

  The trail twisted over a rocky downhill path. Limbs weighted with new spring leaves blocked what was left of the day’s sunshine. Even in the shade, the air was warm, heavy with moisture. A couple of birds startled and took flight through the upper branches of tall trees. If Shaw weren’t on a case, he might have taken his time wandering the trail, enjoying being outdoors in the company of a woman that fascinated him.

  When they finally arrived in front of a wooden shed, Dickerson stood to one side of a padlocked door. He produced a pair of bolt cutters. Shaw hadn’t even noticed the tool in his hand until he raised it to the padlock and went to work with it. The man was full of surprises.

  “Where did you get that from?”

  Dickerson smiled. “I keep it in my trunk for just such occasions.”

  Shaw had heard that before.

  Once the lock was removed, he pushed Courtney around the corner of the building. Dickerson took up a position on the other side of the door from him. When Shaw flung open the door, he wasn’t surprised to find spare parts that could easily be used in a meth lab. Common everyday things, but assembled in just the right way the odds and ends could be used for an illegal purpose.

  “It’s clear, Courtney. You can come in.”

  She moved from around the corner of the building, her hands raised in front of her. A man he’d never seen before had a gun pointed at her head. A new player in the drama, just when Shaw thought he’d identified every character.

  Dickerson dropped the bolt cutter. Shaw spread his hands out at his sides, quickly assessing the situation and his options. He had to stall for a little time while he decided the best course of action. “Lower the gun, and no one gets hurt.”

  Courtney shot Shaw a pissed off look, a withering glance that spoke volumes, as if asking him if that clichéd line was all he had.

  “Courtney, why are you hanging around with cops?” the man asked with a sharp tone, obviously identifying Shaw and Dickerson for what they were.

  So Courtney knew the guy. Shaw needed to take charge quickly before Courtney left with the man and disappeared without a trace. “Who are you?”

  The man’s eyes narrowed, his fingers tightened around the grip of the gun. He motioned toward the path. “Walk.”

  Shaw didn’t move. He stared at Courtney. Her eyes flashed at him, trying to tell him something he wasn’t getting. Did she want him to leave her alone with the guy? Did she think she could handle him?

  The man tilted his head, an impatient expression forming on his face. “My gun is pointed at her head. Are we going to play games, or are you going to do what I tell you?”

  “We should do what he says,” Dickerson muttered behind him. “We don’t have much choice.”

  “Throw your guns in the shed.” The man’s weapon never wavered in his hand.

  Shaw hesitated, his eyes latched onto the barrel pressed against Courtney’s temple. Dickerson’s weapon clattered as it hit the hard pack floor of the shed.

  “You’re wasting my time. Just do it,” the man shouted.

  Just do it. Shaw had always hated that phrase. He’d never been one to do things impulsively.

  The world seemed to move in slow motion. His eyes shifted from Courtney’s to her captor’s. Shaw’s weapon joined Dickerson’s on the shed floor.

  “The other one too.”

  Shaw had counted on being able to keep the small caliber gun he kept strapped to his leg just above his ankle. He bent and loosened the holster strap, keeping his eyes on the man as he did so. His fingers wrapped around the weapon.

  “Don’t be a hero. I’m not in the mood for it, and you know that seldom works.”

  There was no way Shaw was taking control. He hated it like hell, but he had to play by the other man’s rules, at least until something created a shift in the power position. He tossed his backup gun across the short space, and it landed in the shed out of sight, clattering as it hit the ground.

  The man’s arm wrapped around Courtney’s neck, and he shifted his aim toward Shaw. “Head toward the house.”

  Dickerson grumbled his irritation under his breath, and Shaw wanted to hit him. Anger had to be left out of the situation. That could come later. Once they were out of danger. In the moment, he needed a sharp mind to deal with an equally sharp mind. This guy wasn’t the average criminal. He wasn’t anxious or desperate. This criminal was cold and calculating. He probably knew the rulebook Shaw played by, probably inside and out, backwards and forwards. He acted like he was well-acquainted with law enforcement.

  Shaw decided to do what the guy expected him to do. “You have us. Let her go.”

  The man snorted his contempt for Shaw’s apparently lame attempt at negotiating Courtney’s release.

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “She’s just a woman. She can’t help you.”

  Courtney emitted a hiss. Those were fighting words for a woman who had fought to survive in a cruel man’s world. He tried to apologize to her with his eyes, but she turned her gaze away from him.

  Shaw and Dickerson stepped away from the man and the gun, backing up the trail while still facing him. The man pushed Courtney in front of him, while still following them. Were they going to do this all the way back to the house? It would be a long backwards climb. The shed had been maybe a hundred feet from the house, downhill all the way.

  The crack of breaking limbs came from their left. The man shifted his eyes that direction, lowered his weapon just a bit. Jordan Clark stepped out of the shed while the man’s attention was diverted and placed the barrel of a police issue service weapon against the stranger’s head. The handgun looked a lot like Shaw’s.

  The man elbowed Clark in the nose, and he dropped the gun he had been holding. The stranger’s actions were so swift it took Shaw by surprise. Clark bent over double, holding his nose and groaning from the blow. He hadn’t looked so good anyway, like he’d been punched repeatedly. Something had happened to the man while he was missing, and Shaw was anxious to hear the story. But first, he had to deal with the current problem.

  The man twisted to face Clark and aimed his gun at Clark’s head. His grip on the weapon was no longer steady. Red flushed his lower jaw. Anger radiated from him. While his attention was on Clark, Shaw dove for the weapon Clark had just dropped to the ground. The man shifted his gaze to Shaw. Dickerson rammed his thin body into the man’s mid-section, forcing a huff of air from his lungs and out his mouth. The man’s gun flew into the overgrown brush at the edge of the path.

  Shaw and the man scrambled for the loose gun Clark had dropped, both of them diving to the ground to retrieve it. Rolling in the dirt, the man swung at Shaw, but missed his chin by a fraction of an inch. The punch landed on the side of Shaw’s head. For a moment, the stars had shown bright in his vision. Both Dickerson and Clark seemed frozen for a few seconds, and then Clark grabbed the man by his arm and twisted it behind his back, forcing him to loosen his grip on the weapon. The man screamed from the sudden wrench to his shoulder. Dickerson grabbed the loose gun and pointed it at the man.

  Clark shoved his knee into the middle of the man’s back. “Be still, idiot.”

  Shaw finally exhaled and assessed the damage. Dickerson didn’t look any worse for the struggle, but Clark’s bloody nose was dripping blood. He wiped it with his free hand and smeared red across his already bruised cheek.

  Shaw glanced around the small clearing in front of the shed. Courtney had once again disappeared. He couldn’t search for her and retain control of the man who’d held a gun on her. Clark was in no condition to run through the woods searching for her, and he might not be able to control the man.

  Dickerson caught his eye. “I’ll go look for her.”

  “No, let her go. When she’s ready, she’ll find me again.”

  “Are you nuts? You can’t just let her get away like that.”

  The man face down on th
e ground added his opinion. “You’re not gonna find her. She’s like a wild animal. Long gone.”

  “Shut up.” Clark increased the pressure on the man’s back until the man swore under his breath.

  ****

  The man who had held a gun to Courtney’s head had been identified as Jake Richards after Bennett had searched his pants pockets. Bennett had interrogated the man until he’d lawyered up. He’d finally called the Sheriff’s Department, and a deputy had come out to haul Richards to the county lock up to be booked for assaulting a law enforcement officer. The man had left in handcuffs without divulging how he knew Courtney or what he had been doing on Cooley’s property.

  Curious about his surroundings, Jordan glanced around the house. Cooley hadn’t lived very large for a meth cooker. Someone else must have been reaping the benefits of Cooley’s illegal drug sales in northwest Arkansas. Jordan’s guess was Haskins.

  Jordan pressed a bag of ice to the back of his head. In a few moments, he’d shift it to his swollen nose. In no mood to answer a lot of questions, Jordan had hung back and hoped Bennett wouldn’t get around to quizzing him about his activity.

  He wasn’t going to be so lucky. Once Richards was out the door, Bennett turned his attention to Jordan. “Start at the beginning.” Bennett sat in front of him, perched on the arm of the sofa with his arms crossed.

  Dickerson cleared his throat, an aura of impatience radiating from him while he paced the short distance from one end of the tiny living area to the other.

  “Can we talk about this…alone?” Jordan directed his question to Bennett, but shifted his eyes toward Dickerson.

  “No.” Apparently, Bennett was going to be hostile. “Why did you go back to Laurel Heights?”

  Jordan studied Bennett. The other man was one of the best at piecing together little bits of information and making them make perfect sense. Did he know for certain Jordan had gone back to the house or was he just making a good guess?

  Come clean or be vague? He licked his lips and drew in a breath. Choosing honesty might be a rough road, but he couldn’t lie to Bennett. The man could sniff out a lie with his eyes closed. So he chose a diversionary, take-the-offense tactic. “Why did you go back there with that red-haired guy?”