Hotshot P.I.

by B. J Daniels

  “Jumping bail and destroying evidence?” Jake asked, that touch of a southern drawl doing little to take the edge off the anger in his voice. He stepped to her side in two effortless strides and, grasping her wrist, plucked the letter from her hand. “You’re just damned and determined to go to prison, aren’t you, Clancy Jones?”

  Chapter Six

  Jake hadn’t thought past finding Clancy. Hadn’t thought of anything but catching her. And now that he had, he stood scowling at her, uncertain as to what to do with her. Several thoughts crossed his mind, surprising him in both content and fervor. “I ought to—”

  Clancy stepped back as he advanced on her, stumbling against the open door of what looked like a homemade closet.

  Jake stopped dead when he saw the bulletin board Dex had constructed on the back wall and recognized the subject. “What the—?” He swore under his breath, that hunch of his doing the Charleston in a bright red sequined outfit.

  He shot a questioning look at Clancy and noticed how pale she’d turned and realized it wasn’t even his doing. “Would you like to tell me what’s going on?”

  She didn’t get a chance to answer. Car doors slammed out front. A moment later, someone pounded on the front door of the house overhead. The screen door creaked open and a woman’s high-pitched, irritated voice demanded, “Don’t tell me Westfall is in trouble with the law, too.”

  “Cops.” Jake swore and glanced around for a way out. He grabbed Clancy’s arm and shoved her toward the bathroom. “I know how fond you are of climbing out windows.” He popped open the bathroom window, pushing aside the garbage and weeds, and hoisted Clancy up and out. A few moments later, he was through the window himself and leading Clancy down the path behind the house.

  “Is that your car?” Jake asked, hardly waiting for her affirmative response before he asked for the keys, opened the passenger door and shoved her inside. He climbed into the driver’s seat, quickly started the car and pulled away.

  “Where’s your—”

  “Parked up the block,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’ll call the rental agency to pick it up.” His second rental car on this case was the least of his worries.

  A few safe blocks later, he threw on the brakes, startling her, startling himself, at the depth of his anger with her.

  “Do you realize the position you’ve just put me in?” he demanded, unable to keep from yelling. “It’s not bad enough that you jump bail and I cover for you. Now I’m withholding evidence from the police on top of it.”

  “I didn’t ask you to cover for me,” she said. “You might recall, I fired you.”

  He narrowed his gaze at her. “Thank you for reminding me of that. I’d almost forgotten.” The fact that she hadn’t asked him to protect her, that he’d done it all on his own, only made it worse. Far worse. And to add insult to injury, she didn’t even appreciate his heroic gesture. He reminded himself she hadn’t appreciated it last night, either. One of them was a damned slow learner.

  “I just compromised myself and my career, put my P.I. license on the line for you,” Jake told her, laying it on a little strong.

  She didn’t look impressed. “Let’s not forget why you’re really here.” She glared at him. “To get the goods on me, isn’t that what you said?”

  “I don’t remember you being like this,” he snapped, forgetting he didn’t want to be reminded of their past. He didn’t want anything to weaken his resolve, and thinking about the two of them back then definitely made him weak sometimes. “You’ve grown into an amazingly irritating woman.”

  “Thank you,” Clancy shot back.

  Irritating. Conniving. Underhanded. Devious. Sneaky. All traits of a criminal mind, he noted. A murderer’s mind. Why else had she jumped bail to get this damned letter? Wasn’t that what really had him upset? That the reason for that mountain of evidence against Clancy was because she’d killed Dex Westfall.

  He jerked the letter from his pocket where he’d shoved it before the impromptu climb out the window. “Is this what you didn’t want the police to find?”

  She started to say something, but he cut her off with a slash of his hand through the air between them. He pulled the letter from the envelope and quickly read it. There was no doubt it would be damaging in court. Clancy had dumped Dex in the letter, warning him not to contact her, to leave her alone. It sounded angry. And Jake couldn’t help but wonder what the guy had done to prompt this letter. Was Dex the reason she’d quit her job at the gallery and moved back to Hawk Island? Jake suspected he was.

  But the letter wasn’t damaging enough to jump bail, to chance getting caught by the police, to climb out two windows in one day and race halfway across the state with the cops—and him—close at her heels.

  No, Jake thought, glancing over at Clancy, nor did she look much like a criminal. She looked ashen. Shaken. Scared. He remembered the collection on Dex’s back closet wall. “I take it you didn’t know he had all that stuff on you?”

  She bit her lip and shook her head.

  Jake considered how he would have reacted to finding a closet wall covered with his life, complete with candid photographs. He thought about the guy tacking all that stuff up; Dex Westfall had to have been one weird bastard.

  “He was obviously obsessed with you.” Jake could understand that. “What is it you think he wanted?”

  She shook her head. “He planned our first meeting.” Her voice broke. “From the very beginning, he planned it all. But why?” She started trembling as if the summer day had suddenly turned ice cold. He felt a chill himself. But fear was a much safer emotion than what he felt as he. watched Clancy try desperately not to cry.

  That was the thing about the Clancy he’d loved, he recalled. All tomboy tough on the outside but tender and soft on the inside. Before he could consider how stupid it was, he pulled her into his arms. She resisted at first, her body stiff, almost brittle. He pulled her to him, gently rubbing his hand up and down her back. Slowly he felt her soften in his embrace, felt her let the tears out, her face buried in his shoulder. Her back warmed under his hand. He could feel her heart pounding next to his. He concentrated on the rhythmic rubbing of her back, forcing his thoughts to focus on Dex Westfall, a man he was beginning to hate, instead of the soft, wonderfully feminine feel of the woman in his arms.

  The crying stopped; so did the trembling. She pulled away. He sat for a moment, less surprised by the sharp jab of desire he felt after having her in his arms than his longing to kiss away her tears, to protect and shelter her.

  He growled at himself in disgust. Lust he understood. Clancy was one hot-looking woman. But anything beyond that would mess up his head—and his whole reason for being here. Just as she’d pointed out. He wasn’t going to let anything change that.

  He started the car, wondering about Dex’s relationship with Clancy. In his business, he’d heard a lot of hard-luck stories from women who’d been screwed over by men. This was one story he wasn’t anxious to hear. He had a feeling he was going to want to have killed the guy himself. “Let’s get some coffee.”

  * * *

  “HOW DID YOU FIND ME?” Clancy asked, cradling the coffee mug in her hands. He’d picked a truck stop just outside of Bozeman. Clancy looked small and vulnerable in the pea green upholstered booth, but some of her color had come back and she seemed a little less shaky.

  “I added up a few things,” he said, eyeing her over his coffee. At first, he’d been too furious to figure out anything. The fact that she’d run made her look guilty as hell. Not that everything else hadn’t already made her look that way. The fact that she’d outsmarted him didn’t help matters in the least.

  But then he’d calmed down enough to replay it all in his head. From when he’d first seen her, hurrying toward the boat, anxious to get somewhere. The small amount of clothing she’d packed. He’d gone through the suitcase she’d left in the back of his rental car, hoping to find an address or phone number inside. No such luck. Instead, there was only what lo
oked like enough clothes for an overnight stay. She hadn’t planned to go far or for very long. An extra pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, one change of underwear, and a toothbrush and toothpaste.

  Nor had she planned to go anywhere fancy. He happily threw out the boyfriend theory. No sexy nightgown. He added the fact that she’d seemed terribly anxious all morning, worried. She’d needed to get somewhere and in a hurry.

  In the end, he’d felt a little better. Because unless he missed his guess, he knew where’d he’d find her.

  “I placed a couple of calls, found out you’d taken a plane to Bozeman,” Jake said simply. “It was just a matter of getting Dex’s home address.”

  She looked up, surprised. “How did you—”

  He smiled. “You’d be surprised what a motivated P.I. can find out. And I was very motivated after your devious departure.”

  “So, was it imaginative enough for you?”

  He saw the beginning of a smile on her lovely face. “You want me to admit that you outsmarted me, don’t you.” He wagged his head at her. “All right, Jones, you got me. You happy now?”

  Clancy smiled, her face transformed, sunshine after a storm. “You are good at your job, Jake.”

  He returned her smile, recognizing a reluctant compliment when he heard one. “It’s what I get paid for.” He hadn’t meant to say that.

  Her smiled faded. “Yes, I haven’t forgotten that,” she said, looking into her cup. “Or what really motivates you.”

  They finished their coffee, then he drove them to the airport where the small plane he’d chartered was waiting. He stopped for a moment to speak to the pilot, then ushered Clancy onto the plane. “I couldn’t help but overhear. I didn’t know you had your pilot’s license,” Clancy said as they boarded the plane.

  “There are a lot of things you don’t know about me, Clancy.”

  She was starting to realize just how true that was, she thought, hugging herself as if the afternoon had gone cold. Jake’s arms around her had left an imprint, one she didn’t want to forget. How could he have such compassion for her when at the same time he held such hatred for her? He’d just possibly postponed her going back to jail, and at the same time, risked his license and a brush with the law. She wondered if he even understood himself.

  Still, she had been glad to see him when he showed up at Dex’s. She’d needed someone desperately, and there was Jake. Just like old times. She’d almost run into his arms. Almost forgotten the bad blood between them.

  “Thank you for helping me,” she said, meaning it. “Again.”

  He mumbled something under his breath, then motioned to the empty plane. “Sit anywhere you like.”

  She headed for a window seat near the wing. Jake disappeared into the cockpit to speak to the pilot. A few moments later the plane began to taxi out to the runway. She was fumbling with the seat belt when Jake took a seat beside her. “I guess all of this sleuthing has made me a little nervous,” she said, all thumbs. He took the seat belt strap from her and with practiced smoothness locked it into place.

  “Try not to worry,” he said, buckling up his own.

  She clenched her hands together, her nerves a steady vibration running through her body like the whine of the plane engine as it readied for takeoff. The engine revved and the plane roared down the runway.

  She looked out the window at the endless blue sky instead of at Jake’s bottomless gray eyes. Only a few clouds huddled over the Tobacco Root Mountains. The rich green valley floor raced to the foothills and the pines. Below her, rivers ran to meet at Three Forks, the Jefferson, Gallatin and Madison converging to form the Missouri.

  “Tell me about Dex Westfall.”

  She snapped back around in surprise, having momentarily forgotten the trouble she was in, both with the law and Jake Hawkins. “To help you put me in prison?”

  Through the window across the aisle, the sun glistened, blinding white off the plane’s wing as the pilot banked toward Flathead Lake and home.

  “Come on, Clancy, you know I don’t want to see you go to prison.” He almost sounded like he meant it.

  “Right. You’d much rather see me hang.”

  Jake pulled off his cap and raked his fingers through his hair. “Look, I’m still going to get the truth out of you, but in order to do that, I need to find something that proves your innocence. I don’t see any way I can do that without your help.” He slapped the cap back on his sandy blond head. “The way I see it, that puts us on the same team.”

  “Not hardly.” She locked her gaze with his, wishing for the look she’d seen earlier, wishing for the old Jake, the one she’d once trusted with her life, the one who’d trusted her. “I’m fighting for my life, Jake. You’re fighting for redemption. You want me to tell you that you were right, that I’m a liar, and that I betrayed you and your father.” His jaw tensed, his gray eyes darkened. “You want me to tell you that you didn’t make a mistake ten years ago. Well, I’m sorry, Jake. You’re wasting your time if that’s all you came to Montana for. I didn’t lie. And you’ll have to judge just how large a mistake you made.”

  Jake stared at her for a long moment, then, unsnapping his seat belt, he stalked off to the front of the plane without a word.

  Clancy sat stunned, surprised by what she’d said to him, surprised even more by her raw anger. She felt the same way she had the last day of the trial when Jake had pushed himself to his feet, his gaze finding hers just before he walked out of the courtroom—and her life.

  That day she’d expected him to come back. She’d been wrong. Today, she told herself she was smarter: she didn’t expect him to come back for the rest of the flight. He’d said he wanted the truth, but look how he reacted to it. She cursed him for the coward he was and had worked herself up into a pretty good mad by the time he returned. She probably would have shared a few more choice words with him, but those words died on her lips when she saw what he’d brought her.

  “I had the pilot pick us up a little something,” he said, handing her a soda, a bologna sandwich and barbecue potato chips. Her childhood favorites; he’d remembered. “I figured you haven’t had any more to eat today than I have.”

  All she could think to say was “Thanks.” She hadn’t realized just how hungry she was until that moment. She took a bite, aware of his gaze on her as he sat down with an identical lunch, just as they had a zillion times as kids.

  They ate in silence, Clancy intent on her sandwich right down to the last bite. “I feel like a prisoner on death row eating my last meal.”

  “Clancy.”

  The way Jake said her name made her catch her breath. That single, simple word broke down the barriers she’d built around her heart. She could forget the past. She could forgive. If only he loved her again.

  “Yes, Jake?” she asked softly, wiping the last of the bread crumbs from her lips. When he didn’t answer, she glanced over at him, half hoping, half afraid.

  She found his gaze soft, his eyes a rich light silver. She wasn’t sure, but his expression seemed as hopeful as she knew hers must be. Did he want to believe in her? Was there a chance he could forget vengeance and remember what they’d shared before the trial and really help her?

  In the length of a heartbeat, whatever she’d witnessed in his expression died. It blew out like a fledgling fire in a strong wind. “Jake.” It came out a plea.

  He shook his head, the moment lost, then looked past her to the plane window. “I forgot how incredible the sunsets can be in this part of the country.”

  Clancy turned to the scene outside, disappointed that he’d decided not to say whatever had been on his mind just then. The sunset was indeed spectacular. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen anything so beautiful. Slivers of sunlight pierced the clouds like daggers of gold. The growing darkness dipped the peaks in deep purple while the dying sun painted the sky with a pallet of pinks.

  The sight stirred something in her, giving her a feeling of strength and renewed hope. The sandwich
helped, too. So did the truce, however uneasy, between them.

  “I don’t know what I can tell you about Dex Westfall,” Clancy said after a moment. She didn’t kid herself that Jake was on her side. But she needed his help. It was that simple.

  “Dex planned our first meeting,” she said, feeling a shudder at the memory of the bulletin board on the back of the closet. She told Jake about the day in late February when Dex came into the gallery pretending to look for the artist of a sculpture in the window.

  Jake raised a brow when she told him she’d accepted a dinner date that very evening with a man who was a total stranger. She couldn’t tell Jake that she’d been starved for a man in her life after Jake left her, but had never found one who even made her heart pitter, let alone patter.

  “Dex was charming. He said and did all the right things.” He’d swept her off her feet. At first.

  But he never made her ache inside for him. Never made her deliriously happy at just the sight of him. Never made her want more. Like Jake had. Nor had his kisses ever made her feel the way nineteen-year-old Jake Hawkins’s had. Nor had the kisses of any other man she’d dated.

  “We dated for a few months,” she said. “I never knew that much about him. He didn’t like to talk about his past. All he told me was that he was raised in eastern Montana, on a farm. His parents were very poor, and once he got away from there, he’d never gone back.”

  “Why do you think he wanted to meet you?”

  Dex had led her to believe he was as lonesome as she was. “He said he’d been looking for me all his life. At least that part was true.” She grimaced at how gullible she’d been. “He told me he loved me.”

  “No kiddin’?”

  She narrowed her gaze at Jake. “That surprises you?”

  “On the contrary, in case you haven’t looked in a mirror lately, you’re not a bad-looking woman.”

  His compliment, although not eloquent by any means, warmed her nonetheless.

  “What about you? Were you in love with him?” He balled up his sandwich wrapper and didn’t look at her.