by Julie Miller
“Deal.” She extended her hand to shake his.
But Duff wasn’t ready to go back to being just friends after what they’d shared a few minutes earlier. Hell, he was still half-hard with need, and that soft, smushy place around his heart didn’t seem to be toughening up any when it came to the stubborn redhead. So he took hold of her hand and helped her climb on to the ATV seat behind him. “Want to check out the boat dock with me? Roy might have been running an errand for Henry—setting up for a drop-off, making a delivery.”
“With Deanna there? Henry wouldn’t risk her safety.”
“It sounds as though their meeting wasn’t planned. Maybe Roy wasn’t expecting to find Deanna there.”
“Or she wasn’t expecting to find him and covered with her usual sexy shtick. Is she smart enough to be a part of this?” Maybe Melanie’s armor wasn’t completely back in place, either, because, instead of clinging to the sides of his belt the way she had on the ride here, she wrapped her arms around his waist.
Duff allowed himself a few seconds to relish the gesture of trust before he started the engine and headed toward the gravel road. “You think that bimbo routine is an act?”
“I wouldn’t have thought so, but so many things have changed around here lately, I can’t be certain.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time someone used an innocent to help mask his crimes, either. Look at meth labs in suburban family homes or children used as suicide bombers.”
“There really is something awful happening here.”
“Something awful enough that innocent people in my city are being hurt because of it. People in my family are being hurt.”
“Your family?”
“KCPD believes a gun smuggled through here was used to shoot my grandfather.” The rain had filled the ruts with water, forcing Duff to slow his speed so they wouldn’t slide into a ditch. “Grandpa was enjoying my sister’s wedding the day he got shot. His spirit’s tough, but his body is fragile. He may never be the same.”
“He survived?”
Pain, anger and a burning need for retribution filled his soul, just like the rain soaking the earth. “Barely.”
“I’m sorry.” Melanie’s arms squeezed around his waist, and that dark desperation inside him seemed to dissolve along with the storm. “I’ll show you a way to the boat dock without taking the main road.”
“Thank you.”
“For showing you a shortcut?”
“For keeping my secret.”
He turned in the direction she’d indicated, ducking his head to dodge the low-hanging branches that masked the path beside the lake. Other than telling him where to turn, Melanie was silent for another quarter mile before she spoke again. “Who called you Tom?”
“My mom.”
Her grip around him loosened and she sat back. “Then maybe I shouldn’t.”
Duff grasped her hands to keep them linked together. “I never asked anyone else to.”
“Tom, I—”
“Yeah. Just like that.” Hearing his name in that husky tone was pretty heady stuff for a man who’d sworn off relationships. He stopped the ATV and let the engine idle while he turned halfway around on the seat. “Maybe you’ve been right all along about the nickname thing. When you say Tom it sounds like you’re not as mad at me as you thought you were.”
“I’m not mad. I just... I wanted you to be real.”
“Trust me, Doc, what I’m feeling for you is real. I thought I had this place all figured out—that you were all part of some country-bumpkin mafia. I never figured on someone like you being here. You’re a distraction I wasn’t planning on.”
“I’m no kind of distraction.” She laughed, but it was a self-deprecating sound that made him a little ticked off at Deanna and the people who had made her feel that way.
“Don’t sell yourself short, Doc, er, Melanie.”
“It’s okay. I’m getting used to hearing you call me that, too.”
“You will be a doctor one day. If anyone can come from where you’ve been and earn all those degrees, you can. I’d bet money on it.” He loved seeing her blush at the compliment. He’d never known a woman so responsive to a word or touch. He prayed to God he was putting his faith in the right woman this time.
He bent his head to capture her wet lips in a kiss. When she reached up to cup his cheek and return the kiss, Duff’s eyes drifted shut, and he drank in her sweet scent and eager mouth, knowing he was falling harder and faster than a smart undercover cop should. There was confusion in her big, brown eyes that matched the emotions roiling inside him when he pulled away. But there was a sound of satisfaction in her sigh that echoed through him, calming his doubts...for the moment. He released her and repositioned himself on the seat before shifting the engine into gear. “You got my back on this?”
“I’ve got your back.” She rested her cheek between his shoulder blades and held on tight as they sped around the lake.
* * *
MELANIE WAS RIGHT about the shortcut. In a matter of minutes, they popped out of the trees onto a man-made beach and approached the modern aluminum boat dock along the edge of the water. After parking the ATV, Duff pulled out his cell phone and switched it into flashlight mode. He followed Melanie up the rocky embankment and slipped beneath the metal railing to reach the stairs that led up to the parking lot and storage shed or down to the boathouse and covered dock where two power boats bobbed up and down in the slips where they’d been tied.
Duff took the lead and headed down the stairs. “Do you know which boat Roy would have been on?”
“Probably the August Moon. We usually rent the Ozark Dreamer out to tourists.”
Unlike the quiet cove where the Edwina was beached, this place was all about modern amenities. There were four slips in total, one rigged for docking power skis. There were canoes stacked on racks inside, too, along with equipment cabinets and life vests. Melanie opened a toolbox sitting on one of the shelves and pulled out a flashlight.
“I think this is where Deanna was waiting for Roy.” She knelt beside a wadded blanket and an overturned cooler and pulled out a can of soda pop, indicating the contents before setting it upright and closing it again. “Looks like they left in a hurry. I understand wanting to get away from the water with the lightning—but why not grab their stuff and go up to the storage shed to wait out the storm?”
“It seemed to me like Roy was a lot more anxious to leave than she was.”
“What are we looking for?” Melanie asked, poking around inside the canoes and equipment.
Duff walked out along the gangway and peered inside the August Moon. “Guns, ammo and cash would be the obvious thing, but that’s probably too easy. Anything that looks out of place. Storage compartments that look like they’ve been recently disturbed.” Duff spotted a trio of scratch marks on the aft fishing deck of the August Moon, and climbed on board for a closer look. “Tracks along the shore, in case Roy hauled something off the boat.”
They explored the area for several minutes. Duff snapped pictures of the scratch marks and a smear of some gelatinous goo on the gunwale that hadn’t been washed away by the rain or the waves. Fish guts? He found a deeper gash on the fishing deck itself, as if someone had tried to butcher a fish or cut something loose.
He heard a soft gasp before Melanie called out to him. “Tom? I found something.”
Duff vaulted over the side of the boat and hurried to the last slip on the dock. He swore like the man’s man he was when he saw the decomposing dead body caught halfway beneath the dock, bobbing among the cattails.
He reached for Melanie, palming the back of her head and turning her into his arms, away from the nibbled-on bones and bloated, peeling skin wrapped in a long black coat. “Ah, hell, Doc. I never wanted you to see something like this.”
The leather belt bi
nding the arms to the body, and the shreds of rope tied to the wrists and ankles, indicated that this was no accidental drowning. Although Duff and the task force had suspected that the people involved in the gun smuggling were capable of murder, he hadn’t expected a dead body to be the type of evidence he’d find.
Melanie’s fingers clung tightly to the front of Duff’s soggy T-shirt, but short of wrestling her to the ground, she was determined to look at the distorted body. “He’s been dead awhile, hasn’t he?”
“I’m no forensics expert like Niall, but I’m guessing the body has been submerged for a couple of months, give or take.” He wondered at the marks he’d seen on the back of Henry’s boat. Had Roy discovered the body, too, and tried to hide it from Deanna? Or were those cut marks and the fraying ropes indicators that Roy had been trying to dispose of the body? “The storm must have stirred it up from the bottom of the lake.”
Melanie’s grip on him eased and she turned her light back to the boat he’d been inspecting. “Or it got caught on the Moon’s propeller.” As the dock bobbed with the waves, the boat and lift rose above the water, giving him a glimpse of frayed rope caught in the propeller blades.
“Hold that light steady if you can.” If she was willing to play detective with him, and it kept her focus off the dead body, Duff was going to put her to work. While she held the light, he got down on his stomach and took several pictures before plucking a few rope strands free and stuffing them into one of the plastic bags left in his pocket. Maybe Roy had accidentally snagged the body and had tried to cut it free. “The rope looks like a match.”
“You should take pictures of the body, too. Before he floats away—” she cringed “—or falls apart.”
“Wait for me in the boathouse while I get it up onshore.” With her father’s drowning, this was probably the last crime scene she needed to be around.
But either that endless curiosity or red-haired stubbornness had kicked in. “Don’t be such a tough guy. I can help.”
“It’s not a tough-guy thing. I’m trying to look out for you.”
“There’ll be cadavers in med school.”
Not like this one, he’d wager.
Maybe speed was the kindest thing he could do for her at this point—get this awful task out of the way so that she could move on to something less gruesome. He pointed to the poncho she was still wearing. “We’ll use that.”
While she stripped off the poncho and spread it on the ground near the dock, Duff waded into the water and carried the body to the shore. He set it on the poncho and pulled one corner over the poor guy’s ravaged face so Melanie wouldn’t have to look at it. While he checked pockets for a billfold and identification he suspected he wouldn’t find, she pointed to a hole in the chest of the long, black duster that was holding the main part of the body together. “That’s a bullet hole, isn’t it? Right through his heart.”
“Looks like it.”
She pointed to the belt that had been tied, not buckled, around his torso and arms. “If this is his belt...” Before he could stop her, she touched the two ends of the swollen leather square knot. “This hasn’t been chewed on. It’s been cut. Where’s his belt buckle?”
A really bad feeling washed over Duff, rocking him back on his heels. His brother Keir had identified their grandfather’s masked shooter by a one-of-a-kind fancy belt buckle in pictures he’d taken during the ambush at the church. And the man Duff had chased across the roof had worn a long black duster. If the gun had come from the Fiske farm... If this man was the killer hired to destroy his family...
“Tom?” He snapped his gaze over to Melanie, startled from his thoughts by that sweet husky voice. “We have to report this,” she said.
He needed to talk to his family. Pronto. This could be the connection they’d been looking for. Duff raised his phone up to the moonlight peeking through the lingering clouds, hoping to see bars of connectivity here. “One of us will have to stay with the body while the other gets to a phone.”
“There’s one in the shed.”
“I’d prefer to use a secure line that won’t show up on your uncle’s phone bill.”
“You can’t call Agent Benton. That’d give you—us—away if he and a crime scene team showed up here.”
“I don’t want to give anyone a chance to move it. We’re still out of cell range. I need to get back to the fire tower or find a private spot in one of the main buildings to notify my team.” He pushed to his feet, climbing a few steps up the embankment. “I need you to call Sheriff Cobb. You can use the shed phone for that.”
“What if he’s part of the smuggling operation? What if Cobb already knows there’s a dead body in the lake and hadn’t planned to do anything about it?”
“I’ll get word to the task force. They can keep an eye on Cobb and whatever he does or doesn’t do.”
But Melanie wasn’t listening. “It’s hard to be sure, but this coat looks familiar.”
“You know this guy?” Duff pocketed his phone and jumped down to the shoreline behind her. There wasn’t enough of a face to identify, and the fingerprints would be long gone. Maybe Melanie had spotted something he hadn’t.
“SueAnn’s brother had a coat like this. It would have been cold enough to wear one when he went missing. You don’t suppose...” Now that he was done taking pictures, Melanie pulled the edges of the poncho over the dead man’s body. “This will kill SueAnn. With her blood pressure, I don’t know if she could handle the stress of finding out Richard’s dead.”
“If it is him. Let’s not jump to conclusions. We have to identify him first.” Duff watched her rise to her feet and stumble back to the edge of the dock. Her normally telegraphic skin was as pale as the moonlight. Forgetting the potential link to his grandfather’s case, his task-force mission and the urgency of getting word to his family, Duff knelt beside her to peer into her eyes. “Doc? What’s wrong?”
She dragged her gaze from the corpse back to Duff. “Is this what happened to my father, too?”
Chapter Eleven
Everyone Melanie knew from the farm and Falls City seemed to be gathered near the fishing dock as the sun came up. Everyone except for Tom, who’d left to place a call to Agent Benton, and SueAnn, who was dealing with a lack of sleep and explicit instructions from Melanie not to be disturbed.
Although she was praying that the dead body down on the shore wasn’t Richard Lloyd, Melanie had a bad feeling that Mother Nature had uncovered one secret that the farm had been hiding. Yet, with one revealed, a dozen more seemed to hover in the air around her.
Roy and Deanna sat in his pickup at the top of the embankment, looking as miserable as Melanie felt. Her own jeans and shirt were still damp, and sticky now that the sun was warming the air. Apparently, Roy had admitted to snagging the body on the boat. That explained why he’d been so anxious to get Deanna away from the fishing dock. But why hadn’t he reported it? And why had he been out on the lake so late in the first place? And if this did prove to be murder, would Henry or whoever was responsible make Roy the fall guy for the crime?
Henry was on the dock with Silas and Sterling Cobb. Silas seemed more concerned about the dock bobbing beneath him than with the hushed conversation. His fist was wrapped in a haphazard bandage that was stained with dried blood. The rifle she’d seen him wearing at the house was missing from his shoulder, as were the gun and knife that were usually strapped to his waist. Had she ever seen the bald man unarmed before? Did his weapons have anything to do with the bullet hole in the dead man’s chest, or the ropes and belt binding the corpse’s limbs? And would the sheriff appreciate her pointing out that he’d been wearing leather gloves in July, possibly hiding that injury to his hand the night before last? She had a strong feeling that Silas wouldn’t.
And what about the bespectacled paramedic who’d shown up with the coroner’s van and was helpi
ng a deputy and another paramedic zip up the body and load it onto a gurney? Although it had been dark and rainy last night at the old fire tower, she was certain that the dark-haired man with a ball cap pulled down low over his forehead was Tom’s brother. She didn’t think she should strike up a conversation with him, but as she glanced around the crowd of onlookers standing behind the yellow crime-scene tape, she wondered if Tom knew his brother was here—if there’d be a surprised recognition between them that would be hard to hide from Henry, Silas or the sheriff.
And where was Tom, anyway? Clearly, he’d had time enough to contact his task-force handler and his brother. She’d told the sheriff that she and Tom had been at the dock looking for shelter and privacy when she’d discovered the body and called it in, and had let Sterling Cobb fill in the blanks about why they’d been together and what they’d needed privacy for.
How far would that kiss-and-grope session at her father’s boat have gone if Roy and Deanna hadn’t interrupted them? Had she ever let down her guard like that with a man before? Had she ever felt that crazy sort of hunger, that connection to another person’s soul?
She’d wanted to stay mad at him for lying to her. But he’d touched her heart, instead, sharing the story about coping with his mother’s death, truly understanding her pain. She’d meant her kiss to console him, to promise she’d never betray to anyone those painful emotions they shared. But that chemistry he mentioned had flared between them, instead, and getting closer—learning his body, absorbing his strength, feeling his caring surrounding her—suddenly felt like the only way she could ever feel normal or safe again. She’d been ready to straddle Tom’s lap and give him access to whatever he wanted from her, so long as he never let her go.
Until Roy and Deanna’s arrival had reminded her of the reality at hand. Storms and secrets. Lies and danger. Falling in love with Tom Watson had no place in her world.
Melanie shivered. Falling in love? Is that what was happening to her?
Tom had comforted her, argued with her, made her laugh and gotten so far inside her thoughts that she was having a hard time reconstructing the defensive barriers that had sustained her these past several months. She hadn’t needed anyone for a long time. But she needed him.