Damn, damn, damn. Not caring what happened to himself, he hadn’t given other people much thought either, Sullivan realized, figuring they, like his source, were responsible for themselves. The human being at the other end of their electronic connection had been only a shrill treble, only a ripple in Sullivan’s endless night. And now, looking at Maggie and seeing again in memory the glint of tears in her eyes when she’d torn into him, he cursed his self-centered blindness to everything except his own despair.
Maybe the clerk had been smart as well as cautious.
Sullivan hoped so. If the man had trusted anyone with the meeting arrangements… But he wouldn’t have. That would have been stupid. The man hadn’t been stupid. The proof of that had been in the kind of material he found and delivered.
“Could he be setting you up?”
Sullivan looked at her. “You think I wouldn’t double-and triple-check and then check again everything he handed me?”
Resting her forehead on the steering wheel, Maggie murmured, “It’s all tied together. The payoffs. The zoning. The toxic dump.”
She sounded dazed.
“Yeah.” Sullivan reached out to touch her narrow shoulder slumped against the wheel. He wished he knew what she was thinking. He was thinking he’d been too careless with other people’s lives.
Slowly she lifted her head. “And you need these documents from your source in order to write the story?”
“That and his identification of the dump area. He didn’t tell me where it was. He’ll take me to it from the landing.”
The slope of her shoulder was fragile under the weight of his palm, fragile and infinitely poignant. Big-eyed Maggie was carrying a lot on her slim shoulders, and the curve of her bones under her skin suddenly made him afraid for her. He didn’t like the zing of fear any more than he cared for the way he seemed to need to touch her every chance he could. The pink T-shirt was new, its cotton stiff to his touch. Carefully, he rubbed the cotton against her skin, straightening it where he’d made wrinkles.
“And you’re absolutely sure nobody knows who your source is?”
A flash of anxiety quivered deep inside him. “No one knows. No one could. I haven’t even told my editor.”
“The source. Would he tell?”
“I’d bet my life he’s kept his mouth shut.”
Maggie laughed, her throaty chuckle strained, and Sullivan let his finger trail down her arm, down the tiny pale hairs and back to the dash as she parroted, “You’d bet your life on it? That’s not very encouraging, you know, Sullivan, not with your recent record.”
“Yeah. I reckon you have a point.” He hit his fist against the dashboard. “Maggie, I never thought about putting those kids in danger, not once. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep them safe.” He wanted her to believe him, needed her to understand that he’d been lost somewhere in an unending night of the soul where there’d been nothing except his pain and loneliness and loss. “But I won’t let them be hurt. Do you understand?” His voice was harsh with his regret for his selfishness.
A breeze sighed in the nearby pine trees.
“Yes,” she whispered.
He twined the end of her ponytail around and around his finger, turning her face toward him, not stopping until he felt the smooth skin of her neck under his wrist.
In the hot afternoon her skin bloomed under his touch. Her neck was smooth and silky under his palm. Everywhere, silence and heat and memories oppressed him.
“I want to kiss you, Maggie.” The words slipped out. He hadn’t meant to say them.
“I know,” she whispered again, motionless under his touch.
“Will you let me?” He slid his hand down to the top of her T-shirt. Under the heel of his palm her heart thrummed against him.
Silence and heat, her heart beating so fast under his hand. The scent of her skin, her hair, rising around him, clinging to his skin, sapping his will.
The slight swell of her breast was under his forearm, the tiny point of her nipple pebbling against him as he brushed it, a sweet dot answering his hunger. “Please?”
His breathing was harsh, hers quick and wispy. Close to his mouth, her eyes were the warmest brown, her lashes spiky in the heat. Down between the curves of her breasts he slipped his wrist, watching her all the time, lifting her shirt with each slow slide. Her bare skin was smooth and slightly damp from the heat, her stomach shivering as he touched it, his fingertips rough on her silkiness. With one hand, he tugged on her ponytail, urging her backward. Skimming the midline of her stomach with the back of his wrist, a slow, exquisite stroking, he murmured again, “Please?” and pressed his mouth against her quivering skin, lost in her perfume, lost to the need pounding through his blood, driven.
Her scent enveloped him. Nudging her shirt higher, he nuzzled his open mouth across her sleek skin, the taste of her overwhelming him as he moved up from her stomach to her breasts. Reaching the soft curves, he took her into his mouth, closing his mouth fiercely around her, biting gently on her lace-covered, delicate nipple.
She arched, a tightly strung bow to his mouth.
Her slim arm was around his neck, her fingers scrabbling under his shirt.
A whisper of sound in the heat. Hers.
A shudder. His. And the pulsing need as he took her nipple deeper into his mouth, his, all his.
He was lost to everything except the taste of her, the supple, sleek feel of her skin against this lips, and in his ears the only sound was the rhythm of her heart beating with him.
Her small hands curled around his neck, brushing his throat, and he shivered.
Everywhere he felt her light touch against him, an awareness of her even where she was separated from him by cloth and air. Slanting her to him, one palm cupping her hip, the other still tangled in the unruly mass of her hair, he had an image of her against him as if she were lying over him, his hands running down her sides to the slight swell of her hips, the dip of her navel quavering under his thumb as he pressed against it, his fingers spanning the slope of her belly, his little finger resting in the beginning of soft curls, and in his ears the sound of the tide running as fast as it would in a storm.
Horn blaring, a semi racketed past. Sullivan blinked. Dazed, he lifted his head slowly from the satin of Maggie’s skin.
Pine trees and a bleached-out concrete road, Maggie’s pink T-shirt bunched around her neck, her face flushed and blurry soft.
He could still taste her sweetness.
“Boy, Sullivan, that’s your definition of a kiss?” There was sleepy teasing in her smile when he’d expected a verbal slap in the face.
“Not exactly.” He realized she was working hard to keep things light between them and was grateful to her because he couldn’t. The moment had shaken him to the core.
There’d been more than lust in his hunger.
“For future reference, should the question come up again—not that I expect it to, you understand—” she was talking so fast she was tripping over her words “—but I think I’ll take a pass on kisses, okay?”
In the bright sunlight her skin was glossy pale, woman warm. Over the slope of her breast, lace dampened by his mouth clung to her nipple, shaping the burgundy-rose point. And a hand’s breadth to its left a puckered scar, red and raised, bisected her slight chest. “Aw, Maggie,” he muttered, hurting for her. He touched the scar again. Such devastation a piece of metal could work.
Maggie felt the even pressure of his finger tracing her scar, all the way to its end. In time the scar would flatten and become only a faint line.
Above her, the bones of his cheeks were hard, his expression somber as he returned her gaze. His right eyebrow lifted in question and he stopped, his finger lingering between two ribs. “Did you have someone to sit by your side and hold your hand during those long hours? Or were you alone, too? And frightened?” He bent his head, his shaggy rough hair brushing her stomach, and kissed the ruched skin where the bullet had entered her and changed her forever.
“Most of the time I was alone.”
He lifted his head and she moved away from him, the separation leaving her melancholy. Easing her T-shirt down, he covered her hands, his fingers sliding between hers, linked. “No family?”
“No.” She was quiet. “It was all right. Royal came to visit as often as he could. Chief Jackson twice.”
“No one else?”
“No,” she repeated. “Funny, isn’t it? I think I must have been so busy that I never realized I hadn’t yet made any friends in Palmaflora. The job must have been enough, I guess.” She shook her head. “I don’t think I cared, one way or the other. But I don’t remember being lonely.” During that drug-muzzy twilight when light and dark mingled and shifted, terrifying her, she’d slipped in and out of a gray nothingness, fighting its tenacious pull, reaching out for consciousness. But she hadn’t been lonely.
“Frightened.” He flipped the ends of her scarf back over her shoulder. “You would have been scared.”
She nodded. That grayness had been a powerful undertow, sucking her down until she thought she’d never see sunshine again.
“And now?”
That was the question she wouldn’t answer, not for Royal, nor for Sullivan Barnett. She wouldn’t admit to the fear stalking her in the quiet moments of her nights, when she was alone—the sense of something over her shoulder, at the edge of sight. “And now I’m doing my job.”
Smoothing the curling wisps around her face, he said, “Keep on repeating it, Detective, and maybe I’ll believe you.”
The tender sarcasm almost broke her. She wanted to lean on his shoulder and weep.
Instead, she turned the car key to the right, the engine a purring animal she could control. She swallowed. “Where’s the first gas station?”
He told her.
When they stopped to fill up, he uncapped the gas tank and dug into his side pocket. She put her hands behind her back when he handed her the wad of bills.
“I have my charge card. I’d rather put it on my bill.” Keeping it business defused the impact of that maybe-it-was, maybe-it-wasn’t kiss, lessened the invitation of his tenderness.
Rotating the metal handle, he set the gas pump. “Take it. Charge cards leave a paper trail. I’d rather not have one.”
Maggie took the money. Stopping first at the washroom, she splashed cold water on her face and made a pit stop. Washing her hands again, she looked at the battered phone on the wall.
If she wanted a good time, she could call Hank. Or Bronco Bud.
She didn’t want a good time, but she wanted to let Royal know where she’d disappeared to.
They were supposed to meet at four to compare ideas. She couldn’t leave him waiting, feeling like an idiot with no word from her. She’d already hurt him enough.
Eyeing the greasy receiver, Maggie decided that if she couldn’t reach Royal, she wouldn’t leave a message that anyone else could see. She’d talk to Royal or no one. Sullivan didn’t want a paper trail. She shared his concern. But she could trust Royal. He was her partner. She knew him inside and out—his strengths, his flaws. Maybe she hadn’t told him about her reactions after the shooting, maybe she didn’t want him knowing about them, but, at rock bottom, he was her best friend. And he was a good cop.
She owed Royal the courtesy of not leaving him stranded.
Dialing quickly, she punched out Royal’s car-phone number.
*
Carrying colas and peanuts, she sauntered up to the passenger side of her car and handed the packets and cans to Sullivan. “Food.”
“Loosely defined.”
Her eyes flew to his.
“Like the kiss, Maggie. I was trying to make a joke.” He sighed. “I reckon I’m out of practice, huh?”
“A little.” She laughed. “Third time’s the charm, tough guy. I’ll recognize the next one, I promise.”
Swinging open her car door from the inside, Sullivan said, “Want to pour the peanuts in the can?”
He was almost smiling. More than a twitch. A definite almost-smile.
“Sure.” She fastened her seat belt and drank from the can he handed her. “I got us both the real thing—no diet colas, just pure sugar water undiluted with chemicals.” Peanuts plopped wetly into her mouth. They had a solid crunch, but they’d be soggy before long. “How far to the meeting place?” She pulled out onto the highway, leaving the oasis.
“Twenty miles up the road. You’ll see a big orange Park sign where we have to turn left off this road and head north again on a dirt road.”
“You checked the meeting place out already, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.” He swigged cola, then mashed the can in his hand. “Want to tell me how you knew that?”
“Woman’s intuition?”
He shook his head.
“Because you don’t like surprises, and it’s smart to scope things out beforehand?”
“Could be.” Rolling the can back and forth between his palms, he said, “Is that how you knew? A lucky guess?”
“Nope.” She couldn’t resist sticking out her tongue. “You chunked dirt off your boots when we were at the range. I knew you’d been somewhere after the rain and before you showed up at Taggart’s.”
“Smart aleck.”
“Told you I was a good cop.” She hunched down in her seat, settling the cola can on the console. “How will you recognize your source?”
“Except for us, he’ll be the only human with all his teeth stupid enough to show up back here with the rattlers, cottonmouths and gators. I’ll know him,” Sullivan said grimly, staring ahead at the road running flat and endless before them.
As the miles ticked over on the speedometer, Maggie grew silent. Away from the neon and gimcracks, Florida was still primitive, with its own heart of darkness deep in the marshes and swamps where camera-laden tourists never ventured, even though their swollen bodies sometimes floated up in the bayous.
Not a place to take one’s leisure when the sun plummeted below the horizon, leaving the southern night black and filled with the shrieks and squeals of creatures on the prowl.
Night comes late in the tropics, but the shadow of her car passing over the kudzu along the road was already long and thin when she turned north at the orange sign and exited from the highway onto the dirt road. Moss-strung trees crowded together alongside the muddy, rutted road. Passing underneath, Maggie shivered as overhanging branches blocked out the last of the afternoon, plunging them into an early twilight.
They were at Seth’s Landing.
Somewhere off in the deepening dark, the Palma River cut a channel through the weeds and brush. Seth’s Landing was an abandoned dock where passengers in the early 1900s had disembarked for a day of picnicking, returning to town after elaborate buffets as they chugged back upriver during the evening. The actual landing had rotted from disuse after the county bought the land, leaving it untended. The landing was now only a name on a map, accessible only by the dirt road and the sluggish Palma.
Sullivan leaned over to her speedometer and checked it. “All right. Now drive exactly one mile and pull off under the trees. We’ll have to walk from there.”
The hairs on her arm were rising the farther she drove down the road. She had an impulse to raise the windows and turn on the air-conditioning, isolating them from the brooding darkness on either side of the car. Yet she wanted to be able to hear anything that was out there. “Your contact has been careful.”
“Yeah.” But Sullivan was edgy, bending forward and staring through the increasingly heavy gloom. He glanced behind them. “He’d see anybody following him.”
Maggie didn’t like Seth’s Landing.
When the speedometer turned over at the end of a mile, she pulled the car into the brush, where Sullivan pointed to a stand of palmettos and cabbage palms. The car w
as no longer visible from the road.
“Wait a minute,” Maggie gasped as her sneakers sank into the spongy ground. “I want to get my hiking boots out of the trunk. You came prepared.” She scowled at his boots as the mud cleaving to the bottoms of her shoes threw her off balance.
“Hurry up, Maggie,” Sullivan said, pacing back and forth, his head turning as he watched the road.
The urgency in his muttered order squelched Maggie’s retort. She lifted the trunk lid and pulled out the boots, bracing herself on the back bumper as she threw her sneakers into a plastic bag and back into the trunk. “Are we late?”
“No.” He stopped pacing and cocked his head, listening.
Maggie grabbed a flashlight, tucked her wallet and keys into the side pocket of her jeans, and retrieved her notepad before plopping her purse into the trunk and closing it quietly. Whether it was Sullivan’s pacing or the rustling around her, she didn’t know, but she had an urge to tiptoe and speak in undertones.
“I don’t know. Something doesn’t feel right.”
“You’re telling me? This place scares the heck out of me,” Maggie whispered as she walked beside him.
Checking the compass he held in his hand, Sullivan headed off through the ankle-grabbing underbrush, Maggie close behind him. She had no intention of losing sight of him, not out here. The edge of a sawtooth slapped her cheek, scratching it. Sullivan turned at her “oomph” and touched the spot. “All right?”
“Sure. But get me out of here as fast as you can. This ain’t Kansas, Tin Man.”
“For damn sure.” He checked his compass and stopped. “The river’s over there.” He pointed through a particularly vicious patch of jungle. “We’ll have to go down to this spot on the river and wait.” He brushed his hand across the scratch on her cheek. “I shouldn’t have brought you.”
“You didn’t. I talked you into letting me come with you. No big deal, Sullivan. Don’t sweat it,” Maggie said, fighting an urge to walk right up to him and beg him to hold her. “Lead on, Captain.”
They struggled through the brush to a wide bend in the river. Rotting vegetation and the stench of decay burned Maggie’s nostrils. A smell of rotten egg hung like a mist in the air. She covered her nose and breathed through her mouth.
SULLIVAN'S MIRACLE Page 13