by Brenda Novak
He glanced at the digital alarm clock on the nightstand. Had the trooper left Evelyn’s house yet? Or was it possible he was staying over?
The thought of that drove Jasper wild, especially because tonight was supposed to be his night. He longed to check, to see, but he had to be careful about how many times he drove over there. Someone could get a description of his car and report that it was in the area. The less he risked being spotted, the better. So he had to wait as much as an hour or two before heading back. Then he’d take the chance. He’d park in the secluded spot he’d used before and walk up to see if the trooper’s truck was still there.
“It better not be,” he grumbled and started to imagine all the things he’d do to make Evelyn suffer for such a betrayal. He’d waited twenty years for this moment; he wasn’t going to have some hotshot cop take his place between her legs.
Or...maybe he shouldn’t wait until the trooper was gone. Maybe he should break in while they were sleeping. He could hold them at gunpoint, then tie up the cop and make him watch what he did to Evelyn.
The idea of that excited Jasper beyond anything he’d felt in a long time—even finding Evelyn again.
Yes, he’d make the bastard watch, Jasper decided. That would satisfy the rage pouring through him. He’d go in another hour or so. He couldn’t imagine they’d stay up even that long. It was already midnight.
He set an alarm for one-thirty—as if he’d need one—and turned on the TV to distract himself. He’d never been a patient person. He wasn’t easily entertained, either. Quickly growing bored with the drama he’d put on, he flipped listlessly through the rest of the channels before throwing the remote aside and calling to check his messages. He had to use the landline to access his voicemail since there was no cell service in Hilltop, but he hadn’t spoken to Hillary in two days, knew she’d be upset.
Since he was already angry, he figured this was as good a time as any to hear all the bullshit she had to say.
His wife had left him several messages. Bitching, bitching always bitching. Chelsea had sprained her foot at recess. Miranda had lost her lunch money. Who the fuck cared?
He was so sure all her messages would be the same he almost didn’t listen to the last one. His finger hovered over the button that would delete it, like the others, when he heard her say something that made his heart jump into his throat.
***
Amarok hadn’t been able to find anyone around the houses near Evelyn’s. He’d even driven slowly back to town, searching for vehicles that might be loitering about the area—or were carrying the Jennings boys. He didn’t see Chad or Tex or anyone who seemed remotely suspicious, so he went all the way to the Jennings’ house to feel the engine of the only vehicle the family owned. It was an SUV, not a car, but he figured Evelyn could’ve gotten that wrong. She admitted she hadn’t caught a good look at her visitor or visitors.
But the engine was cold. And the house was dark.
He stood at the edge of the property, waiting to be sure no one was moving around inside, but nothing changed in fifteen minutes or more.
If it had been the Jennings boys, they’d sure managed to get themselves home and in bed fast, he thought, especially considering they had no idea he’d be coming by.
Should he knock? He wanted to see how quickly they’d answer the door. But he took pity on their poor parents and decided he could talk to them tomorrow, like he’d told Evelyn he would. Someone had cut her telephone line. Even if that someone had only done it for kicks, as a scare tactic, he wanted to know if the Jennings were responsible. He also wanted to make it clear that he’d consider it stalking and would act accordingly.
By the time he returned to Evelyn’s house, it was after one, and he could tell when she let him in that his knock had dragged her from a deep sleep.
“Don’t wake up,” he said. “Just go to bed. Makita and I will be out here, on the couch. So you don’t have to worry about anything.”
“You don’t have to stay,” she mumbled, but he took her by the shoulders, turned her around and pointed her down the hall, and she didn’t attempt to argue again.
“Hey, boy,” he said to Makita and shooed him off the couch so he could lie down.
***
As Jasper rushed back to Anchorage, so he could catch the first flight out in the morning, his wife’s words kept echoing through his head. “Andy? I don’t even know if you’re listening to your messages. You’re probably not. I haven’t heard a word from you since you left. And I don’t have any other number to reach you by. But the police came to our door this morning, while I was making breakfast. They asked a lot of questions about our car, wanted to look in it. Apparently, some teenage girl claims she saw the same make and model not far from where a woman was kidnapped two weeks ago?”
Hillary had sounded frightened, tentative, which told him that she was afraid the police might have had good reason to ask about him—and that alarmed him more than anything. He needed her on his side, needed her to retain confidence in him. How she made him appear to the authorities could be the difference between being overlooked or examined more closely.
“I-I told them that you were at job interviews that day,” her message had said. “But they want to talk to you anyway. They said they’d be back. I don’t know when they’ll be coming. I couldn’t even tell them the day you’d be home.”
He was returning a lot sooner than he’d planned. He had no choice. He had to get back and reassure Hillary, so she’d stand by him and insist that he could never harm anyone. He also had to make sure that he destroyed any and all evidence left in his hideaway, in case they wound up arresting him and went searching in that area because he or his car had been spotted down there, too.
And while he was in clean-up mode, he figured he might as well do a much better job of burying the last woman he’d killed. He’d grown over-confident, had barely thrown a few shovelfuls of dirt over her body, thinking that she could wait until he returned from having his fun with Evelyn.
He had a lot to do, and he wasn’t sure he’d have the time or the opportunity to do it. But he’d be an idiot not to at least try and fix what he could while he had the chance. It could mean the difference between getting off—or going to prison for the rest of his life. He had a comfortable lifestyle, someone to pay the bills and provide sex—sex that wasn’t nearly as exciting as what he got elsewhere but sex all the same—and a home. He didn’t want to lose all that, didn’t want to have to provide it for himself. He’d tried that before, and it was a hard and boring existence.
Still, it bothered him to be driving away while Evelyn was probably moaning with pleasure beneath that young trooper.
Jasper had had such fabulous plans for them both...
But he’d catch up with her, he promised himself, gripping the steering wheel that much more tightly. He knew where she lived in Boston, too. Maybe it would be even more satisfying to kill her there, and bring the whole thing full circle.
Chapter 13
“I swear I’ve got to buy you some groceries,” Amarok said as he peered into her empty fridge.
Evelyn turned from where she was standing at the stove. “You’re not excited about another bowl of oatmeal?”
He quirked an eyebrow. “Do I look excited to you?”
“Not especially.” But he did look good. He always looked good.
“Let’s go out,” he said.
“I don’t have time. I’ll miss my flight. I have to leave in an hour.”
“So miss your flight. Stay here.”
She paused from stirring. “Are you kidding?”
“No.”
“I can’t do that! I have meetings and conference calls and... myriad things on my to do list.”
“Myriad,” he repeated dryly.
“Yes.”
“Don’t you ever act irresponsibly? Do something simply because you want to?”
“I wouldn’t get very far with my goals if I did that.”
“Okay. Never.
We can work on that too.” He leaned against the counter. “So when are you coming back?”
“In a few weeks.”
When he didn’t say anything else, she glanced over and found him watching her with a look that made her catch her breath. “What are you thinking?”
“I want to try something.”
This made her a little nervous. “What?”
“I want to hear you talk dirty.”
She gaped at him. “You can’t be serious!”
“Why not? They’re just words. Words can’t hurt you. It’ll be a great place to start.”
“Start what?”
He smiled. “Getting to get where we both want to go.”
She didn’t bother denying trying to tell him she wasn’t interested, because she was. And she was intrigued by his suggestion, in spite of herself. “How dirty?” she asked. “Give me an example.”
“Ah, so you like the idea,” he said, obviously pleased.
She felt a flash of embarrassment, and a bit of insecurity too. “I’m not sure I’m capable of it.”
“Sure you are. It’s not hard.”
“So you would like me to say...what?”
The volume of his voice dropped, and his eyes took on fresh meaning. “Are you going to fuck me when I see you again?”
She mouth went instantly dry. “Yeah, um, that’s probably not something I’d ever say, but I have to admit that it would probably work for you. With someone else.”
He slid a little closer. “There’s just one problem with that.”
His gaze suddenly felt like a laser that could melt bones. “What’s that?”
“I’m not interested in anyone else.”
She returned her attention to the oatmeal. “Amarok, you know my story.”
“We’re not going to discuss ‘your story’ today. That’s in the past. We’re moving forward, and in that spirit I think you could use a few lessons.”
“On talking dirty.”
“Yes.”
She propped one hand on her hip in a challenging pose. “And you’re going to teach me?”
“Why not?” His grin went a little crooked—not to mention a little lecherous, but endearingly so. “We can practice while you’re gone,” he said. “And don’t tell me you’d rather see how you do with someone else first. That’s bullshit.”
She shook her head. “You don’t know what you’re getting into. I’ve barely kissed a man since—”
“Barely?” he interrupted. “Or you haven’t kissed a man?”
“There’s been one or two.”
“Dates?”
“Work associates. I pretty much steer clear of dating.”
“Did you want to kiss them?”
“Not really.”
“Well, there you go. That makes a big difference, right?”
Her gaze lowered to his lips. She wanted to kiss him. She’d wanted to kiss him since the first day she’d seen him pacing like a caged panther in the mayor’s office, angry that she’d even propose an institution like Hanover House be built anywhere near his beloved hometown.
“Do it,” he murmured.
Obviously, she’d given away her thoughts. “Do what?” she asked, playing dumb in hopes of a reprieve.
He wasn’t about to allow her to back off now. “Kiss me. I can tell you’re tempted. I’ll let you, and I won’t do anything, I swear. I won’t even touch you.”
She studied his square jaw, the slight cleft in the middle of his chin, the razor stubble that covered that area—and his full, soft-looking lips. “I’m afraid of where it might lead,” she admitted.
“I just told you. It won’t lead anywhere.” He gripped the counter behind him as if to show that his hands would stay there. “One kiss before you leave. That’s it.” He winked. “And maybe you’ll like it well enough to want another when you get back.”
This was an opportunity she didn’t think she could refuse—and yet she hesitated, trying to summon the nerve. Was she really going to take the initiative and kiss a man—after twenty years? Especially a man as virile as Amarok?
This wasn’t just his neck. And she was sober.
“Evelyn?”
“Be prepared,” she said. “I’ll probably be really bad at this.”
“There’s nothing to fear. I won’t be grading you.”
Placing her hands on his chest, she rose up on tiptoe and touched her lips to his. She could feel the sudden intensity rise up inside them both. The power of it frightened her. But there was no refusing the compulsion that prompted her to continue.
Although his mouth opened slightly, as if he was suggesting a wetter kiss, he didn’t just stick his tongue down her throat like the last guy. He waited until she opened her mouth, too, and licked his bottom lip before he responded by taking a small taste of her. He did it cautiously, gently, as if he was only exploring a little—and he didn’t grab hold of her, as promised. That left her free to withdraw at any moment, and having that “out” made it so much easier to continue.
Pressing her lips more firmly to his, she deepened the kiss and felt him stiffen—but in a good way. That he liked what she was doing encouraged her. He tasted like the minty toothpaste he’d just used in her bathroom, and he smelled like her soap. “Nice,” she breathed and slid her hands up his arms and over his broad shoulders until she could grab fistfuls of his thick, silky hair.
She wasn’t sure exactly what happened next. Her body seemed to act of its own volition, to override her brain, because soon they were kissing so hungrily her whole body tingled with the desire to be touched. She was pretty sure she even groaned, and he did too. She was having thoughts of slipping her hands up under his shirt and kissing and licking his chest.
But then she smelled the oatmeal burning and pulled away to take the pan off the burner.
“It-it’s ruined,” she said while trying to come to grips with the influx of hormones that’d nearly swept her away.
He didn’t respond immediately. He seemed to be holding himself rigid, trying to rein in what he was feeling, too. When he did speak, he sounded shocked. “I thought you said you weren’t going to be any good at that.”
“So...I did okay?”
He caught her face and turned it toward him. “The fact that I can hardly breathe right now should answer that question.” He lowered his voice. “Did you like it?”
Heat rose to her cheeks. She found it frustrating that she could be in her thirties and still feel so young and shy. Even that was embarrassing, especially because she was the type of person who always liked to be in control of herself. But she nodded, because it was true, and he responded with a huge smile.
“Good. We’ll get where we want to go,” he said. “Just call me tonight for your first lesson. For someone so buttoned up and proper, I have a feeling that talking dirty might not come as naturally as kissing.”
When he stepped away and called Makita, she said, “You’re leaving?”
“I think that’s a good note to end on, don’t you?”
“What about breakfast?”
“I’ll grab something in town.” He leaned in to give her a quick peck as if he felt like he had to steal even that simple of a kiss. “Nice job on the zero to sixty in nanoseconds, full-on openmouthed blow-my-mind kiss, by the way. Your skills in that area won’t require any work at all.”
***
The next two weeks were probably the happiest of Evelyn’s life. Although she canceled her trip to Pennsylvania and stayed in Boston—Tim said he’d take care of that interview—she continued to work. She was too disciplined not to. But she had Amarok on her mind almost all the time, and she loved the long conversations they had on the phone at night. By the end of those two weeks they were talking even more than at night. He’d call her over lunch to say hello or to see how her day was going. Or she’d call him whenever she had a break in her schedule, just because she couldn’t wait to hear his voice.
She’d never thought she’d be looking forward to mov
ing to Alaska for any reason other than to dig in to the studies she had planned. But it now held a different kind of attraction, one that had her humming to herself for no particular reason, or staring off into space, smiling vacantly while reliving that kiss in the kitchen of her bungalow. Although she was frightened that she was finally starting a relationship, Amarok made it all seem safe, doable.
But...maybe that was because he was so far away. Sometimes she wondered how they were going to fare, given her phobias and history, once she didn’t have a 3400-mile buffer.
“You’re learning,” he’d told her last night, in a husky voice, after she’d described, in great detail, everything she wanted to do to him.
“I’m growing bold since I don’t really have to act on my words,” she’d admitted with a laugh.
“The thought’s there,” he’d said. “That’s where it all starts.”
He was right. The thought was there. She could think of little else.
“Focus!” she told herself, as, once again, she tried to draw her mind back to what she was doing. She’d been packing up her office all day and still had a lot to accomplish before leaving Boston. She even had several things on her list that didn’t include Hanover House business or preparing for the big move. Tonight, for instance, she had a cocktail party for Dr. Fitzpatrick—or Tim, as she was starting to call him. She wasn’t really interested in attending it. She didn’t like the attention she received in those types of social situations. But he’d invited her personally, and since he was closing down his practice to relocate to Alaska and help make Hanover House a success, she felt as if supporting his birthday party was the least she could do.
She checked the time on her phone. Eight o’clock. Darn, she should’ve left already.
With a sigh, she tucked her hair behind her ears and surveyed what she had yet to pack. She had to sort through her desk and box up the contents, but she didn’t have to be out for another few days. The lease didn’t expire until the 31st.
Even with her busy schedule, she’d make it, she told herself, and hurried to the bathroom to repair her appearance for the party, which turned out to be far less crowded than she’d expected. It was only her, Tim and two colleagues she’d met at various forensic conferences, which made her especially glad she hadn’t bailed out. They talked about Hanover House, the list of psychopaths they were having shipped there, a few new and particularly gruesome crimes that were as yet unsolved and the type of person who’d probably committed those crimes. Then they talked about Jasper and where she thought he might be living these days. That he’d never been caught seemed to come up in whatever group she was with.