Love Under Fire

by Frances Housden

  God, it was right under her nose and it had taken Rowan to clue her in. She’d been too focused on Rocky as chief suspect, she hadn’t even contemplated the idea of him having assistance. Suddenly the world seemed brighter. She didn’t mind looking for more than one culprit.

  Filled with renewed fervor, she thought, bring them all on. I don’t care how many as long as one of them is Rocky.

  That’s when she recognized the local fire chief heading their way. “Show time,” she said to Rowan.

  “Well, before we get too busy, what time do you want to meet me tomorrow?”

  The fire must have turned her brain to jelly. “Tomorrow?”

  She couldn’t remember making any arrangements.

  “Te Kohanga.”

  Blast, another day in the country. “Let me get back to you on that,” she said. “I have to check the directions with Ginny and see if she’s still telling the same story.”

  A quick tingle of annoyance brought her up short again. Was Rowan too fixated on proving these satanists existed? On the other hand if they found nothing, the scales would dip down on her side.

  A few hours tramping through the bush was inevitable, she decided. What the heck? That kind of sacrifice, she could deal with. The ones that required rubber boots, she’d rather steer clear of.

  Good grief, she must be tired. Another dreadful pun.

  Jo reached Ginny’s school just in time to watch the rainbow-colored stream of teenagers in their summer clothes, spill out of the high school barely moments after the bell sounded.

  Picking out Ginny wasn’t going to be as easy as she’d thought.

  Finally, after thinking she’d spotted the redheaded girl five times, she caught sight of her in a group, walking slowly, heads together, giggling.

  “Hey, Ginny, got a moment?”

  Color swooped across her cheeks as she saw Jo. Quickly, she broke away from the group with no more than a perfunctory wave and an embarrassed glance over her shoulder at her friends. Her actions weren’t those of a kid who’d laughed over being caught shoplifting with her peers.

  Hoisting her bulging backpack more securely onto her shoulders, she lifted her gaze to Jo’s almost defiantly. Her mouth cut a pale thin line across her face, and the rush of color had disappeared, making her freckles stand out. “I did what you asked, Detective Jo. Granny Monroe said she’d call you.”

  “And she did. Very pleased she was, too. You might want to look in on her now and then. She sounded as if having company was a rare occurrence.”

  “I know and I will, she kept wanting me to stop working to sit and have tea. I didn’t mind,” she hurried to assure her. “And I will go back. She was nice and I don’t have a grandma.”

  “Good idea, but that wasn’t why I wanted to speak with you. I don’t want you and any of your friends going up to Te Kohanga Park at Halloween. If what you heard was true, it could prove dangerous and I don’t want to have to go chasing through the bush looking for you.”

  She grinned at Ginny, pretending to shudder. “Too many creepy crawlies. I just hate bugs.”

  That made Ginny laugh. How was she to know Jo was telling the truth? A truth that fell way short of kidding.

  “I wanted to tell you about a Halloween party that St. Michael’s church is throwing. All are welcome, so take your friends. It’ll be fun.”

  Yeah, right.

  Ginny didn’t need to say the words, they were written all over her face. “Listen, I kid you not, no fuddy-duddies, just cool fun like bobbing for eyeballs, pretty gross stuff like that. It’s run by the youth group and from what I hear there are a lot of potential babes among them. You should try it out.”

  Ginny’s demeanor brightened at the mention of babes. Jo sighed. Did she know how to read her or what?

  “Maybe I’ll give it a look in. I can’t be too late anyway. I’m doing a paper route, filling in for someone who’s sick so I have to get up early,” she informed Jo, making sure she realized visiting the park had been out anyway. “If I do a good job, they said I can have a route of my own.”

  “Well, that’s excellent news. I knew you had a good head on your shoulders.” Slipping her hand into her pants pocket, Jo pulled out a small paper bag. “Here,” she said handing it to Ginny. “You might want to wear these.”

  She could tell Ginny realized what was inside long before she ripped open the bag. “Oh, the pink ones. Thanks, they’re so cool!”

  “No problem. Now, would you like a ride home? On the way, you can tell me exactly where you heard that cult was meeting.”

  Chapter 7

  T he morning after the fire, Rowan stood outside Jo’s address, ready for a day of trekking through the bush. To the rhythm of his boots on the brick path winding between intensive plantings, he weighed up Jo’s seeming unwillingness to discuss today’s project.

  Fact number one, they were going at his insistence. Fact number two, if he’d given her the slightest excuse to bail out, she would have jumped at it. He’d never found Jo to be quite so fixed in her ideas when they’d worked together in Auckland.

  Yet, she had tunnel vision when it came to Skelton. One had to assume the man’s past association with her father in Auckland to be at the root of it. So far, she hadn’t brought him up to speed.

  Some would say he’d been paid in his own coin.

  Secrets, everyone had them.

  No matter. If the cult, satanists, black magic, whatever name they went by, were liable to meet in Te Kohanga Park, he’d rather check out the lay of the land in daylight. He was a planner. Always had been. Give him a pencil, paper and a situation and he’d do the groundwork and come up with a scheme. Stumbling around blindfolded wasn’t his thing.

  And truth be told he’d enjoyed pulling the rug out from her reluctance. Seeing Jo at a loss for words had been a new experience. Before they’d parted company last night, he’d arranged for an expert to check out the fire, and the farm manager, whom he’d known for years, to deliver the bull calf to the pathologist’s door.

  Rowan leaped up the four steps to the porch. He’d barely caught hold of the wizened face decorating the knocker, when the door swung open. Until that moment, he’d thought himself familiar with every shade of red hair in existence. But one look at the mass of vermilion curls, flaring like sunbursts against the shadowy background of the hallway, and he did a double take.

  A quick indrawn gasp, tangled with the words in his throat and his, “Does Jo Jellic live here?” barely scraped out in some sort of order.

  Birdlike, the woman’s bright blue eyes scrutinized him with open curiosity tempered by the warmth of her smile. Looking him up and down, she nodded in a way that told him he passed muster.

  “You’ll be Rowan, then. Jo will be out in a second.” Her soft burr caught him a sneaky sucker punch, echoing his mother’s accent and the way she’d pronounced his name. She’d always turned the first syllable into an ow instead of an oh.

  “I’m Moira MacGregor,” she introduced herself, slipping a fine-boned hand into the one he’d offered automatically. Her warm dry skin felt as if it would crush like tissue paper, but it was her long purple nails that drew his gaze. As he glanced down, Moira’s skirts, which were reminiscent of a seventies op-shop relic, swayed outward revealing a ginger cat. The final touch of eccentricity.

  Tail held high, the cat shimmied against his legs, winding in and out between his boots. The thrum of its purring vibrated in its chest like a boom box. “Nice cat.” Long claws. Its tail twitched, flicking his shin as if it read his mind.

  Moira cocked her head and nodded decisively. “You’ll do. Spoiler likes you.”

  “Spoiler?” he repeated. Strange name for a cat. Then he remembered those claws and had a vision of a sofa with its stuffing spilling in all directions.

  “Once I had him he spoiled me for any other cat.”

  There was no answer to that, but he needn’t have worried. Moira hadn’t finished. “It was time you got here.”

  He flicke
d his wrist. Eight fifty-five. “Actually, I’m early.”

  “No, no, I meant time you got here for Jo. Her sex life has been sadly lacking since she got to Nicks Landing.”

  Stumped again. But he wasn’t about to discuss Jo’s sex life with a woman he’d known less than two minutes.

  Thankfully, Jo appeared behind Moira. Saved! He could have kissed her, but that would only have encouraged Moira.

  One heart-stopping glance at Jo’s glowing features and he wondered why her sex life was nonexistent. What man in his right mind could look at her and not want her the way he did?

  “I guess we’d better make a move,” said Jo.

  “I’m ready if you are.” Damn right he was ready.

  He’d been thinking of her more and more since he came to Nicks Landing. In fact, she was never far from his mind. If he wasn’t thinking about working on the case with her, he was wondering how she’d fit in his arms. His bed.

  Dipping her head, Jo bussed Moira on the cheek, then sniffed at the back of her hand as she straightened. “Ooh, this bug repellant you mixed is disgusting. I just hope that it works.”

  “It’ll work…but only on the bugs,” she said with a laugh, then pulled Jo closer and whispered in her ear.

  “Okay, I’ll remember,” she said, but as she didn’t color, he gathered Moira hadn’t reopened the subject of Jo’s sex life.

  Letting Jo lead the way meant having to grin-and-bear the enticing view from behind. Someone ought to fine jean makers for using too little cloth. They played havoc with his equilibrium.

  His resolve was all but shot.

  The sooner he was out of Nicks Landing the better. The longer he stayed, the more his resistance weakened. And no way did he intend turning his life into the living hell his father had endured the last two years of his life.

  Jo settled back into the softness of the fine leather seat, watching Rowan’s hands on the steering wheel. Capable and controlled, that was him in a nutshell. Just once, she’d like to see him let go. “Now that we’re outside the town limits, are you going to let me see what this baby can do?”

  “Ah-ha, police entrapment? I go over the limit and you hand out a ticket.” He threw her a white grin, but kept the Jag slightly below the allowed speed.

  “That’s the difference between us, McQuaid. I can be tempted. How can you not let this dream machine rip?”

  “What? You think I’m not human? I can be tempted all right.”

  Talk about the pot sniping at the kettle. Who was she to imply Rowan needed to get a life? Until he hit town she hadn’t realized how lonely she was for someone who understood her, who spoke the same language. Until he hit town, she hadn’t realized how ready she was for a loving relationship, or remembered the last time her blood fizzed in her veins at the thought of seeing a man.

  “You didn’t tell me that your landlady was a hippie.”

  She spun in her seat. “Moira? Lord, she’s not a hippie, she’s a naturopath, a woman with her own individual style. So what if it’s colorful? She’s comfortable with it.”

  Rowan’s glance left the road for a second, and a smile tugged the corners of his mouth. “I’ve no doubt that she’s a law unto herself, but how do you get used to that hair?”

  “Same way I got used to your moustache.”

  Curious, she licked her lips. How would it feel? What were the chances of tasting his mouth before he shaved it off? There was that moment yesterday when he’d bent toward her and the flame in his eyes definitely hadn’t been the reflection of Rocky’s house burning. Then she’d blown it. One of these days she’d learn when not to speak out of turn. Now she’d probably never know how it felt to kiss Rowan. Unless she took the initiative.

  Time to get real. “I don’t notice Moira’s little foibles anymore, they’re just part of who she is.”

  “Hopefully growing cannabis isn’t one of her foibles. That’s some garden she has.”

  “I think I’d notice if she’d gone to competition with the Smale brothers….” Oh, darn. The guy in the pub had the same name as the guy Bull arrested. It just went to show her instincts still functioned even if they hadn’t clicked straight off. Oh well, better late than never. Bull had stuck her with the grunge jobs for so long, it was a wonder those instincts hadn’t atrophied.

  “You were saying?” Rowan asked as the yellow finger of a road sign appeared ahead.

  “Nothing important.”

  The subject dropped out of the conversation as quietly as Rowan slipped the stick shift down a cog, saying, “This is the turnoff for the park.”

  The scenery merged from fields to tall trees, and the view of the local volcano, Tane’s Throat, hugging the shoreline as the south side of the park became hidden behind them.

  “What was all the whispering as we left?” he turned his head slightly, one eyebrow lifting mockingly.

  Right about then, the Jag hit a patch of rough gravel. The wheels spun as clouds of dust concealed the road behind them.

  “From here on in, McQuaid, you’d be smart to keep your eyes on the road. It would be humiliating all round if we had to call in to have someone tow us out of a ditch. You wouldn’t want Moira’s prediction to come true.”

  “Prediction?”

  “She’s very superstitious. Seems there were rings around the moon last night and she says that means trouble. She told me to take care. By the way, she thinks this is a social outing.”

  After half an hour of riding the bare ruts in the gravel, the road ended at a fenced-off parking lot with a sign on the five-bar gate which read, No Cars Past This Point.

  “Make sure your boots are laced up tight,” he said, swinging the Jag into the shade of a tree. “It’s rough going from here on. I wouldn’t want you to sprain an ankle.”

  She rested each boot in turn on the wooden bench of a picnic table to redo the laces. “How come you’re such an authority?”

  “Didn’t anybody tell you? I grew up round here.”

  For once, she didn’t blurt out the first thing that came to mind and settled for the second. “So, that explains Bull and Harry being so cooperative.”

  “From Ginny’s description, this looks like the path we want.”

  “I guess you’d know since you grew up in Nicks Landing.”

  “You’re not going to let it go, are you? Personally, I can’t make out what the big deal is. I didn’t lie to you. The subject simply never came up.”

  Too bad he hadn’t thought to claim Nicks Landing as his hometown the day he arrived. Rowan would be the first to admit his life wasn’t an open book; some of the pages had stuck together, their contents hidden. Things he’d avoided dealing with. Others he’d turned the corners over, places to remember, like the day he met Jo. And where the words blurred? Well, that was the difference between secrets and lies.

  He planted his boot firmly on the ground and pushed on, up a path crowded with ferns and seedlings. As if his conscience wasn’t troubling him enough, walking side by side, continuously, trying not to brush against her had become torture. Easier to suggest, “You go ahead. I’ll follow.”

  Her gaze flicked uncertainly from him to the path ahead. “Maybe you’d better lead. I’ll only slow us down.”

  Her obvious reluctance might have been amusing, if it hadn’t been threaded with fear. What was up with her? It was so beautiful here, especially at this spot with the sun slanting through the gap in the treetops where a giant puriri had been toppled, in a storm no doubt. Even in the green shade, the air was steamy enough to bring him out in a sweat, yet Jo had been walking for thirty-five minutes, and the sleeves of her shirt were still buttoned up tight, as tight as her mood.

  “Maybe you could travel faster if you loosened up a little.” He flicked a finger at the top button of her denim shirt. “Aren’t you the least bit hot?”

  She patted the button as if to make sure it was shut tight. “Just a little,” she replied, eyeing the path ahead.

  Brushing his fingers through his sweat-damp
ened hair, he asked, “What’s worrying you? You know there aren’t any snakes in the New Zealand bush.”

  “Bugs.” A visible shudder rippled through her. “I hate them. Have you seen the size of some of those wettas?”

  The expression on her face startled a laugh out of him. He kicked at a rotten log, testing. “Like those you mean, with the long wriggly feelers?”

  He regretted it the moment she squealed and danced back.

  “Joking, just joking.”

  Remembering Jo, heart rolling at her feet while she batted the flies with the bag attracting them, he shook his head, saying, “I never thought you’d be scared of anything.”

  “You didn’t have four brothers who thought dropping spiders and beetles down your back was a great joke.”

  “No, I didn’t. Didn’t know about your brothers, either,” he replied, insinuating that her past was as much a mystery as his. “I had two brothers. One older, one younger, but they never played those tricks on me. Something we used to do, though, you know the house where you’re rooming? Haggetty House?”

  “What about it?”

  “The house stood empty for years when I was a kid. The grass even grew through the floor of the porch. In fact it was so long, it practically pushed down the fence.

  “We used to dare each other to see who could run through all the rooms without getting caught or peeing their pants. You see, we always thought the house was haunted.”

  Now Jo lived there.

  He guessed in his case, time had proved him right.

  A residual shiver from his youth ran through him and he laughed. “I remember the last time I dived through that door as if my shirttail was on fire. Those were the days.”

  Before everything turned to crap.

  “I’ll tell you what, if you lead, I’ll watch your back for bugs. Okay?”

  Big mistake. The way she filled out those jeans was making him damned uncomfortable. For him, watching her back pockets sway in front of him was a mating call. Jo might be tall, but no one could deny she was womanly. Her waist narrow; her bottom heart-shaped where her jeans hugged it tight. Using his eye to gauge her size, he bet she’d fit his hands like a pair of gloves.