Silver-Tongued Devil (Portland Devils Book 1)

by Rosalind James

  He didn’t seem to care about the state of her hair, because he was smoothing his hand down it, kissing the top of her head. And she might have cried some more.

  “Yeah,” he said when her head was on his chest and his fingers were threaded through hers, holding tight. “That was a bad deal. You must’ve fought so hard, though. When I found you, you were still kicking. Still trying. Man, I was… it was bad.”

  There were the tears, welling again. She said, “I thought…” She had to breathe the terror back, because it kept rising, panicking her as if it were all happening right now. Her chest was raw, her throat like sandpaper. “I thought I was going to die. I would have died. I was too far down. They keep saying I was lucky, but I wasn’t lucky. It was you. But the deputy wouldn’t tell me what happened. He kept asking, ‘And what did Blake do then?’ How should I know what you did? I said, ‘He carried me.’ That’s all I knew. I was stuck, and I couldn’t hold my breath anymore, and the next thing I knew, you were carrying me. But why? It felt like a net, but how could a net trap me like that? Why would it be there anyway?”

  “I don’t know,” Blake said. “I’m going to find out.”

  “And the part about you… I couldn’t believe he was asking me that. I kept saying, no, I was stuck, and it was like he didn’t believe me. He kept asking things like, ‘How long had you two been swimming?’ ‘Whose idea was it?’ and ‘Where was he holding you when you went under?’”

  “Shh.” Blake was still smoothing her hair.

  “You think I’m exaggerating. I’m not. They thought you were trying to kill me. I’m not imagining it.”

  “Dakota. Stop.” His voice was so commanding, she jumped. He blew out a breath. “Sorry. I’m trying not to get you any more agitated, but I’m all out of ideas. Look. They asked. We answered. That part’s done.”

  “Oh.” She swallowed, and it hurt. “OK.” He was right. She was crying all over him. Way too much emotion. She should… she could…

  He ran a hand through his hair, which was sticking up already. He wasn’t groomed either, she realized. He was as tired as she was, and he felt just as bad.

  “Oh,” she said. “You were scared, too.”

  “Yeah. I was. And I guess you need to—I don’t know, work it out, cry it out—but I hate it. I hate that it happened to you, and that I can’t fix it. I hate that I didn’t get to you faster.”

  “Oh.” It took her a minute to process that. “I felt the same thing, I think. Russell said you rescued me, and then I saw your leg, and all those questions… I was so worried.”

  “Well, we can stop now. We’re both here to tell the tale.” His arm was so firm around her, and he’d brought the other arm around her front, too, and that was even better, being held that close. She settled her head against his chest, and his hand was there again, stroking over her hair. They were quiet for a while, and then he said, “It was kinda hard, though, you know, because there I was, trying to explain why I wouldn’t have drowned you, and I couldn’t say the biggest reason. You could say I was hamstrung. Yep, that’s exactly what I was. Hamstrung.”

  Somehow, she was smiling. “How come?”

  “How could I say that I couldn’t possibly have drowned you after I’d had the best sex since… well, for a mighty long time?”

  She opened her eyes, which had somehow closed. “Hey.”

  “Well. Come on. My first time, when I couldn’t imagine how anything in this world could possibly feel that good, and all I wanted was to do it again?” He sighed. “Yeah. And then there was last night. Nope, not drowning you.”

  She was smiling again. “Except now we’re both wounded.” Then she stopped smiling. “And your beautiful boat. I forgot about that.”

  “Boat’s all good.” He yawned hugely. “Rescued, just like us. Yep. Luckily, we’re both tough. Except I might need to take a little nap here, darlin’. I took this pill. Maybe you could snuggle up, get me comfortable. Be my security blanket.”

  He did sound sleepy, and she could feel the rumble of his voice from deep in his chest, right there under her cheek. It was all very… soothing. “Mm. Maybe.” She’d been cold for so long, but the heated blankets, the warmed fluid dripping into her veins, and Blake’s body against hers… Yeah. She was warmer.

  His arm twitched around her, his breathing deepened, and he’d dropped off, just like the night before. Because she was his security blanket, the way he’d been hers last night, the way he was now.

  She knew it couldn’t actually feel the same to him as it did to her, but she didn’t need to think about it right now. She could go to sleep.

  Blake was underwater, and he couldn’t see. He was groping in the dark, feeling wispy strands under his hands. It was hair, he realized with a surge of terror. Dakota’s hair. But he couldn’t see her, and he couldn’t grab her.

  She was drowning, and he had to get her out. She was dying.

  He couldn’t find her. Every time his hands touched something—her hair, her shirt—it drifted away before he could grab it. He was lunging in the water, frantic, his lungs bursting. He needed to breathe. He couldn’t find Dakota. He couldn’t get her.

  Then he saw her. Her face, white in the dark-green water, her dark hair streaming around it. Her eyes open. Staring.

  Her mouth was gaping open. Because she was dead.

  “Huh!” He woke up with a start and sat up straight, his heart galloping like it would burst through his chest.

  The shout had come from him. He wasn’t underwater, he was in a hospital bed. And Dakota was beside him, sitting up herself, looking sleepy and confused but absolutely alive, pushing her hair out of her face.

  She was here. Right here. She was fine.

  “What?” she asked. “What’s wrong? Your… your knee?” Her voice was raspy, and she coughed a few times. See? More life.

  “Oh.” Blake felt stupid and fuzzy. It was the drugs. “No. Bad dream, that’s all.”

  “Do you want a drink of water?” she asked.

  He almost laughed, it was so prosaic after the horror of his nightmare. “Sure. Thanks.”

  She reached over for it and handed it to him, and when he’d drunk from the straw, she took the cup from him and drank herself. It was so unexpectedly intimate, and something in that sharing, and in seeing how pale her face was, the tubes and wires, the mess of her hair, was making his chest tighten.

  “Sorry, baby,” he said. “Wrecked your nap.”

  “No,” she said. “That’s all right. Bad dreams are the worst.”

  He lay down with her again. She came right back into his arms, and it was so much better. “Except maybe good dreams,” he said. “You ever have those?”

  “Like when you’re talking to somebody you love, and you wake up smiling, and then you realize they’re gone? Yeah.” She sighed. “Those can be even worse. They feel so good, and they’re not true.”

  “Oh. Well, yeah, that would be worse. I was more thinking like you’re playing football, and you wake up and you’re not.”

  “I suppose that would be bad, too,” she said. “Maybe not quite the same, though.”

  Eventually, he fell asleep again, and when he woke the next time, it was to the sound of voices. A nurse, he found when he blinked awake, who was switching the IV bag on Dakota’s stand.

  “Oh,” Blake said. “Sorry. I’ll just…” He got his good leg on the floor and himself in the chair.

  “No problem,” the nurse said. She had a thermometer in Dakota’s ear now. “We’re usually one to a customer, but we make exceptions.”

  Dakota asked, “What time is it?”

  “Almost two,” the nurse said, and Blake blinked again.

  Dakota said, “That was a while. Our nap.”

  “It was,” the nurse said. “I’ve been in here twice. That’s good, though. You might as well sleep. Sleep is healing, and being in the hospital’s boring otherwise.”

  “Do you know where my stepdad is?” Dakota asked. “Russell? I don’t have my pho
ne, or… or anything.”

  “He went home to get you some clothes, since you’re likely to be released soon.” The nurse wrote something on Dakota’s chart. “Do you need to use the bathroom?”

  “Uh…” Dakota glanced at Blake again. “Yes. Please.”

  “Good. That’s what we like to hear. I’ll give you a hand. It can be a little bit of a production.”

  Dakota hesitated. “Uh… Blake?”

  “Yeah?” he asked.

  “This hospital gown is sort of, uh… do you think you could wait for me? Outside?”

  “Oh.” He considered pointing out that she’d been naked, or close to it, during most of the time they’d spent together in the past eighteen hours or so, but decided it wouldn’t be too helpful. Women were weird about things like this. “Sure,” he said instead. “I’ll go down and grab some coffee and something to eat, and get you something, too, if you want. You must be hungry.”

  “All right,” she said. “Or you could go home. I’m all right.”

  That one rocked him back. “Do you want me to go home? Want to be alone?” The nurse was still waiting, but too bad. He needed to know.

  “Oh. No,” she said, looking flustered. “I’d rather you stayed. But you don’t have to.”

  “Yep. I do.” He reached over, took her cheek in his hand, gave her a kiss on the mouth, and said, “I definitely do. Back in half an hour. Don’t leave without me.”

  When he got back up there with a cup of coffee and a sandwich for her, Russell was there, and Dakota was dressed. Baggy T-shirt and shorts, which he’d bet wouldn’t have been what she’d have chosen.

  “You hear anything?” Russ asked him when they’d settled in again. “About what happened?”

  “Nope. Blake sipped at his own coffee. “Called the sheriff, though, and he said he’d come by later. Said they’re working on it.”

  “Milo Sawyer. He’s got a my-way-or-the-highway streak in him.”

  “I noticed.”

  “No mean streak, though. Not like some of the Sawyers. Come on back with Dakota and me if you want. Stay for dinner, watch the ball game. It’s no good going home alone after a day like this, when you’re shook up. Better to be with friends.”

  Blake did that, because it sounded good to him, too. That was why he was eating meatloaf and mashed potatoes in Russell’s kitchen, his leg propped on a chair, when the sheriff finally showed up.

  “Offer you some meatloaf, Sawyer?” Russell asked as he brought the sheriff into the kitchen.

  “This is an official visit,” Sawyer said.

  “It’s also dinnertime,” Russell said, “and these two have had kind of a rough day. Besides, mashed potatoes don’t heat up good. There’s a whole bunch more in the pot. You’re welcome to it.”

  Sawyer looked like he wanted to refuse, but also like he wanted meatloaf. “Thanks,” he said. “If you’ve got enough. My wife’s got us on this diet. Mediterranean. You don’t eat red meat.”

  “Huh.” Russell dished up a hefty plate of meat and potatoes, added a healthy spoonful of green-bean casserole with fried onions, and put it in front of the sheriff. “Can’t say I’d care for that.”

  Sawyer took a bite of meatloaf, potatoes, and gravy, then sighed with the contentment of a man deprived. “When I get hungry, she tells me to eat a handful of nuts. I don’t want a handful of nuts. I want a steak.”

  “Well, yeah,” Russell said.

  There was silence for a while as everybody concentrated on Russell’s cooking, but finally, Sawyer pushed back his chair and said, “So—we found something out there.”

  Blake’s neck muscles, which had been tense ever since Sawyer walked in, tightened some more, and he looked over at Dakota and saw the same thing. He put a hand on hers and said, “Shoot.”

  Sawyer opened the manila folder he’d set beside him on the table, which Blake had been trying not to eye as they ate, and pulled out some color pictures. “Gill net,” he said. “Caught up in those logs, some holes ripped in it, nothing bigger than a human head, weights at the bottom like you’d have. It was a mess. Some fish hooks caught in it, too.” He slid a close-up along the table to Blake. “Take a look at this.”

  Blake said, “Treble hook.” The three-pronged hook was laid alongside a ruler. “What size is that?”

  Russell reached a hand for the picture, frowned at it, and said, “That’s a No. 1. Got to be. Rolled-in point. Could be a salmon hook, yeah. That’s for a good-sized catch, and one that puts up a fight. What’s that in it? Feather dress, or what’s left of it?”

  “Hair,” Sawyer said. “Torn out at the roots.”

  Dakota put a hand to her head. “Oh,” she said faintly, looking white again. “That’s why… my scalp hurts at the front here.”

  A catch that puts up a fight. A woman, caught in a net made of nylon fishing line, hard to see, impossible to tear. A woman hooked by the hair, by the shirt, every twist and turn of her body catching her more securely, like a salmon set on the hook.

  Russell’s mouth twisted as if he were imagining the same thing. “How many of those in the net?”

  “Almost ten hooks,” Sawyer said. “Most of them trebles. About six feet of ripped-up gill net, caught between the chain and the log in a couple spots, weighted at the bottom.”

  “That’s not an accident,” Blake said. He kept his voice level, because his hand was still on Dakota’s, and Dakota didn’t need to see his rage. She needed to know this was getting taken care of. She also needed to see whoever had done it caught.

  Or maybe that was him.

  “No,” Sawyer said. “Of course, gill nets aren’t legal in the lake, or anywhere around here except on the reservation. The Indians… they make their own rules.”

  “Doesn’t mean nobody uses ’em,” Russell said. “And all those hooks in there? No. Were those tied with knots?”

  “Yep,” Sawyer said, and Dakota shuddered.

  “How do we find out who did it?” Blake asked.

  Sawyer looked at him, impassive. “You got cameras on that area?”

  “No.” Something Blake would remedy tomorrow.

  “You’d do it from a boat,” Russell said. “At night, maybe.”

  “Not at night,” Blake said. “You’d need lights to do it, and we have security patrols walking the property. They’d see lights. No. It’d be somebody in a fishing boat, a small one. Outboard motor, and you stop for a minute when nobody’s around and wedge that net in. A rowboat, even. A kayak. Could be anything. Sunday, early in the morning. Who’s going to see that?”

  “We can ask,” Sawyer said. “We’ll be interviewing everybody on your security team.”

  “You’ve got it,” Blake said. “Whatever you need.”

  “More likely to get to it a different way, though,” Sawyer said. “Who’d want to mess with the resort, or with you? Obvious place to start is the no-resort pukes who put up a fight early on. The Earth Firsters who spike trees so the logger’s chainsaw skips and he cuts off his hand. They care more about trees than people. A pig is a dog is a boy, and killing a frog is murder. We’ll be talking to them.”

  Blake scratched his cheek. This was a whole lot more cooperative than he’d expected Sawyer to be, but he needed to go easy. “Maybe. But I made a big donation, jumped through a lot of hoops to defuse that kind of protest. I donated that mountain, too, and I’m building that trail.”

  Sawyer snorted. “Think that’s going to convince them? They’re fanatics. They don’t want a trail. They want wilderness. The only good land use is no land use. Any other names for me?”

  “I fired Jerry Richards as my head of security a few weeks back,” Blake said. “He didn’t take it well, and I hear he hasn’t found a job since, and that he blames me for it.”

  Sawyer nodded. “I heard that. And, yeah, it didn’t look good for him. I heard not everybody on his team was happy about it, either.”

  “Tough,” Blake said.

  “Of course,” Sawyer said, “Jerry’s an ex-co
p.”

  Russell muttered, “Which means what,” which earned him a stare from Sawyer.

  “And,” Blake said, tightening his hold on Dakota’s hand, “there’s your nephew Steve. I fired him, too, or the next best thing. I’ve had a couple run-ins with him since, and a lot more recently than Richards. Hostilities haven’t ebbed, let’s say.” Dakota’s hand jerked under his, but he didn’t look at her.

  If Milo knew about Dakota and his nephew, he didn’t show it. “Like what?”

  “Took his team off the job painting the resort,” Blake said. He’d bet Sawyer knew that. “I gave that job to Dakota and her partner.” He’d bet he knew that, too.

  “Uh-huh.” Now, Milo was looking at Dakota.

  “A couple weeks ago, I questioned him about Russell’s accident last year,” Blake said. “That happened on my job, but he was the contractor. He didn’t like the question. And then, the other night—last night, I guess—he was nasty to Dakota at a party out at the Schaefers’, and I called him out on it. Him and his wife.”

  “Nasty how? Called them out how?” Milo asked.

  “They made personal comments. I made personal comments back.”

  “Steve’s a good man,” Milo said, not sounding nearly as relaxed as he had been. “And last night? There’s no time in there for something like this. Somebody thought this out. Anyway, Steve? He’s always done well, kept his nose pretty clean. High school, quarterback of the football team. College, fraternity and all that. Business, too. He’s got a clean record, other than a traffic ticket or two when he was a kid. I’ve known him his whole life, obviously.”

  “Uh-huh,” Blake said. “Football players can do some bad stuff. I should know.”

  Milo shrugged. “He did the usual dumb things, sure. Some parties, some drinking, some wildcatting around like every young guy does, but nothing since then. He’s still with his high-school girlfriend, and that says something. I don’t see him setting a mantrap, no matter how pissed he was.”