Silver-Tongued Devil (Portland Devils Book 1)

by Rosalind James

  Dakota’s hand was rigid under Blake’s now. He didn’t look at her. He said, “You asked who’d want to do it. Those two are at the top of my list. I’d appreciate it if you’d check them out.”

  Dakota spoke at last, and now, Blake was the one who was tensing. But all she said was, “I think you should ask yourself something else, Blake. If somebody did this, what else might they have done? What might they do?”

  “Obviously,” he said, “I’ll increase security and add cameras. I’ve already thought of that.”

  “No,” she said. “I mean, those are good ideas, but what else could they have set up for when the resort opens? This might have looked accidental, especially after a couple more months. If somebody had been caught by that net, or been snagged by a hook, maybe gotten scratched—who knows how raggedy and accidental that net might have looked by then? If the point was to have accidents happen at your site, though, what else?”

  Blake started to speak, then caught himself and asked, “Do you have any ideas?” Sawyer shifted restlessly, but Blake didn’t pay any attention to that.

  “Yes,” Dakota said. “Usually, people have one sort of… one kind of focus, when they’re planning something. I mean…” She was looking agitated again, and Blake squeezed her hand to encourage her. “If you get an idea to mess with people’s swimming experience, you aren’t going to go put… I don’t know, triplines across hiking trails. Bombs. Whatever. It’s not the same thing. Those wouldn’t look accidental, ever, and they’re too extreme. Plus, with swimming, it’s hidden. That’s what happened to me, right? The danger was hidden. And it would be hard to booby-trap the resort itself, or someplace where you have security walking, anyplace on the grounds. I worked out there for weeks. You have housekeepers in and out of the rooms. Maintenance people. Waiters. A security focus. They’d notice, or they’d trip the booby-trap before you even opened. So what I’d look for would be what else they could do around the beach. What could they hide? What would look like an accident?”

  “Like what?” Blake asked. Dakota hesitated, and he said, “Come on. Brainstorm. You’re the one here who does all the swimming. You’d know.”

  “Two things,” she said, “that occur to me. Besides something in some other spot on the logs, of course. One’s nastier, but they’re both bad.”

  “Tell us,” Blake said.

  “All right. First: the rocks. The ones that I jumped off, when you saw me. You have those posted ‘No Trespassing,’ because of course it isn’t exactly safe, but people are still going to jump. To some people, that sign will mean ‘Come on in.’ What if somebody dumped—oh, say, an old, ripped-up set of box springs out there, with some of the springs broken? Or something else metal, something spiky? A person could jump in that wrong spot and be caught, stuck on a spike. They could be hurt badly, could even die, and you’d never find out who did it in a million years. It would look like an accident, too.”

  Blake felt sick. Sawyer whispered something that sounded like “Jesus,” but he made a note.

  “The other thing,” Dakota said. “Not as bad, but more likely, maybe. Easier to do, too. You could do it at night, because it’s easy as can be, even without a light. What if you broke a beer bottle and buried the pieces in the sand of the beach? Especially if it was in the shallow water? You put it just under the surface. What are the chances that somebody steps on that on your opening weekend? Every swimmer knows that’s your most likely injury, stepping on something sharp. You have that happen to a couple guests, their feet sliced open? Kids? Babies, even? You wouldn’t kill anybody. It’s not a shark attack. It’s not a drowning. But everybody sees it. Everybody knows it.”

  Sawyer was staring at her, but Dakota said, “Somebody who was willing to put that net up with those hooks—that’s what they’re going for. Who sits on those logs at the edges? Kids. Ten, eleven years old. Adults aren’t messing around out there. They’re swimming laps, or they’re holding their toddlers in the water. It’d be kids. And it’s teenagers who jump off the rocks, too. It’s always worse when things happen to kids.”

  Blake said, “I’ll get on it. I’ve got nine days.” He was sick to his stomach. Teenagers? Babies?

  “Heavy equipment,” Russell said. “Get a couple front-end loaders to turn up that sand on the beach. Have some guys watching for broken glass, raking the sand. It’ll take a while, but if it’s there, you’ll find it.”

  “And do it in the water, too,” Dakota said. “They’d do it close in, not far out. The other one’s easier. Hire a couple people with SCUBA gear to go around by the rocks, and anywhere else people might jump.”

  “Got it,” Blake said. “And I’m asking myself why I didn’t stick with sports bars.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Dakota said, her tone dry as dust. “I hear people can have accidents in those, too.”

  Sawyer inhaled, a sharp sound, and Blake said, “You’re right again.” He looked at Sawyer. “What else?”

  “Nothing. I’ve got what I need.” He stood up, collecting his printouts and shoving them back into the folder. “Thanks for the meatloaf, Russell. Orbison, I’d like a word with you.”

  “Sure.” Blake shoved himself out of the chair and made his stiff-legged way to the door. Sawyer looked at him measuringly and said, “Front porch, I think,” so they did that.

  Blake started it. “I realize I came on a little strong this morning. Maybe too strong.”

  “Yeah. You did. But then, men can get that way when it comes to women.”

  Just like that, the tension was back. “You’re right,” Blake said. “I’m sensitive about Dakota. Especially when somebody tries to kill her.”

  “Seems to me that you could have some prejudices. But there are two sides to every story, and Dakota and Russell—they’ve got an agenda. Dakota might have said something about Steve, but plenty of people have said something about her. She didn’t have a good reputation when she was younger. Sexually. Of course, it’s not a crime for a girl to get around. The boys are happy enough about it at the time, but they do tend to talk. And, yeah, Steve might have talked, but that’s not a crime either, or I’d have closed down the locker room at the high school a long time ago. And he’s got no record at all. No safety record, no police record.”

  “No,” Blake said. “There aren’t two sides to every story. Sometimes, there’s one side. I’m asking you, man to man. If you can’t tell your department to question your nephew, say so. He sure-enough hates my guts. There’s nobody who hates them more, and that’s saying something.”

  “I’ll do my job,” Sawyer said, and if Blake was stiff, so was he. “I’m still putting my money on the tree huggers. If you find something else out there, let me know.”

  He left. Not an enemy, and not a friend. But at least a sheriff. At least that.

  Dakota watched as Blake limped back into the kitchen. He didn’t sit down, though, just leaned up against the wall of the breakfast nook. Trying to make it look casual, like admitting his knee hurt would destroy his manhood. She knew all about that. She lived with Russell.

  “Let me guess,” she said, getting up and starting to clear the table. “The sheriff’s concerned that you’re getting yourself into bad company.”

  “Now, why would you think that?” Blake asked.

  “Yeah, right.” She began to scrape plates. It was no surprise, and it shouldn’t bother her. Blake wouldn’t have heard anything new. He’d already heard it all from her. And if knowing that he’d probably been out there hearing Steve Sawyer’s version of it, what he’d probably said about her, hurt all the way down in her chest? Her chest already hurt.

  “You know what I’m realizing?” Blake asked after a moment. “How somebody can turn the tables just by saying it’s so. Somebody does wrong by you the way Sawyer has, and he flips it all the way around, so you’re the one with a grudge and he’s the victim.”

  “You just realizing that?” Russell asked, even as Dakota turned to face Blake. She made a cutting-off motion wit
h her hand, trying to signal to him. Stop.

  Maybe Blake got it, because he said, “I’m a slow learner, I guess. I should take off. It’s been a long day.”

  Dakota said, “There are stairs to your bedroom. A lot of them.”

  “Yep.”

  She hesitated, looking at Russ. He said, “I thought you were sticking around to watch the ball game, Blake.”

  “And if you go home, you’ll have to get your own ice,” Dakota said, then thought, Well, that was lame.

  Blake scratched his cheek. “That’s true.”

  Russell pulled himself up from the table. “Game’s on right now. And if all this dancing around is because Dakota doesn’t want to ask you to spend the night in front of me and you don’t want to say it either, you can both stop. Last I checked, everybody here was full-grown, and everybody had a real bad day, too. I suggest you quit pussyfooting around, Dakota, and ask the man to stay with you. He needs to be sitting down with that leg up, and putting some ice on it, too. He might as well do it watching baseball with me, and then he might as well go to bed with you. He’s going to want to make sure you’re feeling OK, and you’re going to want him to, so just go on and ask him.”

  Blake was laughing, and if Dakota had been the blushing kind, she’d have been doing it. “You’re invited,” she said, knowing she sounded stiff but unable to change it. “No obligation. If you’d rather go home, that’s fine.”

  “Now, darlin’,” Blake said, “why ever would I rather go home, especially when I’ve got my toothbrush and everything, thanks to Jennifer? I’ll be out in one minute, Russ,” he added.

  Russell nodded and took off with Bella, as always, right behind. Blake waited until the door shut, then said, “Ground rules.”

  “What?” All the warm fuzzies she’d felt with him since the night before vanished. “You don’t get to set rules.”

  “Sure I do. Sure we do. Every game needs rules. Here’s my Rule One. Tell me the truth. I’m a lousy guesser. If you want me to go home, say, ‘Blake, honey, I’m real tired. I almost drowned today, and I don’t feel like spending my night helping you out with your bad knee and bad dreams. Come back when you’ve got something to offer.’ And I’ll say ‘OK’ and go. I’m not what you’d call sensitive. I can take it.”

  “I’m not going to say that.” She’d started on the dishes again, and she’d started to smile, too. “What, I only want you if you can perform? And who says you’re not sensitive? Who was that guy holding me today so I wouldn’t be scared?”

  “Nah. The holding was for me. And what do you mean, ‘if I can perform?’ I can perform fine. Just because I don’t do it when a woman’s in a hospital bed coughing her lungs out, that doesn’t mean I can’t.”

  She was laughing. “I take back the ‘not sensitive’ thing. Your knee hurts, though.”

  “In case you didn’t notice, that isn’t the essential equipment.”

  “All right. Now I know. I probably do feel too bad tonight, though. I just want to lie down again, but I’d rather lie down with you.”

  “See, now? How hard was that? Now tell me what I wasn’t supposed to say to Russ.”

  She started to wipe the counters. It was too hard to look at him, even now, and say this. “He doesn’t know about Steve. About what he did to me. I don’t want him to.”

  “I’m going to ask why not,” Blake said, “You can tell me it’s none of my business if you want. If it’s because you think Russ would think differently about you, I think you’re wrong.”

  “I don’t think so. At least I hope I don’t. But I think he could try to kill Steve. And I mean that.”

  “I think you’re right. I know I want to.”

  “So don’t say anything.”

  “I’ve got it.” He reached into the freezer and pulled out a new ice pack. “You going to come lie on the couch with me?”

  “I’ll be reading a book if I do. I’m not a baseball fan. Not a football fan, either, I hate to admit.”

  “There won’t be a quiz,” he said.

  Blake didn’t make it through the whole game. Maybe because he could tell Dakota was tired.

  All right, that wasn’t it. It was because he watched it lying on the couch with her basically on top of him, and how could a man take that for very long?

  He’d started out all right, lying down, his bad leg propped on a pillow on the coffee table, and Dakota sitting up beside him, resting against his good knee. But then she seemed to get tired, because she was sliding on down so her back was against his front and her head was on his chest. He had to do something with his hand, so he rested it on her belly.

  Unfortunately, she’d changed before she’d come out to join him and Russ, and she had her hair loose and was wearing this soft little black cotton dress that he guessed was a nightgown. He could feel that belly button ring right through it, and it was riding up enough that he could see a whole lot of toned brown thigh, too. She was reading her book, because she was turning pages, and Blake had to watch the game, and even comment on it to Russell.

  That is, until Dakota sighed and shifted position one too many times, managing to rub up against him once again while she did it. He put his hand on her thigh, and the dress rode up a little more, and…

  Enough was enough. He gave her a shove. “Come on, wild thing. Time for me to get to bed.”

  “Oh. Sure.” She got to her feet, flashing a whole lot more leg, and he wondered how the sight of a woman’s skirt sliding up her thigh could be so damn sexy.

  “Night, Dad,” she said, leaning over to give Russell a kiss, which showed Blake a little more.

  “Night,” Russell said, his eyes on the screen. “Now go on. Count’s three and two.”

  Blake stopped at the bathroom and said, “Ten minutes. I need a shower. And, darlin’, I don’t want to be telling you what to do, being as how you hate it and all, but seems I just can’t help it. You’d better be in that bed when I get there, and you get bonus points if there’s nothing underneath that little dress.”

  “Bonus points?” she asked, her hand on her hip, frowning at him from behind those hot-librarian glasses. “Do you give out the points? And do you get to order me around?”

  He grinned, because that was just what she did to him. And then he gave her a hard little slap on the butt that felt too good, watched her jump, said, “Oh, yeah. I do. Ten minutes,” and shut the bathroom door.

  He took a pill first off, because he didn’t want to be thinking about pain, and then he took a shower. Jennifer hadn’t packed his razor, so Dakota was going to get a little beard burn tonight, but he was guessing she might not hate that, either.

  When he opened the door of the bedroom, she was there. Glasses off, hair loose, and under the covers. Her cheek was resting on her folded hands, her eyes on the door. And when he shut it, she pushed the covers back, walked across the bed on her knees to him, and said, “I think you might need a little help tonight. Being incapacitated and all.”

  “Uh… sure,” he said. “Help would be good.”

  She smiled, slow and wicked, and his heart was already starting to beat harder, even before she got her hands under his T-shirt and pulled it up his body, touching him more than was strictly necessary along the way. She got it to his shoulders, then said, “On the other hand… you can probably take it from there.” She was stroking her palms over his chest, down his sides, and leaning forward and beginning to kiss his chest while he wrenched his shirt over his head in one big hurry.

  Soft, feathery kisses, soft female hands lighting him up everywhere they touched, and then she was licking over his nipple and closing in on it, and he went all the way to hard, just like that.

  He said, “Ah…” and then had to suck in a breath, because she was going to work on him for real with hands and tongue and teeth. “I have some… jeans on, too. Got a… bad knee.”

  “Mm,” she said, licking down his midsection, then back up again to his chest, like he was her ice-cream cone and she was going to eat h
im up. “You taste too good, though. You might have to wait awhile.”

  “Dakota…” he groaned. “No. I need it… ah… faster.”

  She didn’t even answer. “Standing up’s good for you. I noticed that.”

  She was on her feet, then, pushing him against the wall. She wasn’t going to have it all her own way, though, whatever she thought. He had his hands in that soft black material and was pulling her nightgown right up, and he was enjoying what was under it a whole lot.

  “Baby,” he said with a sigh, “you have got the prettiest body.”

  Points for her. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath. Just sweet curves and soft skin, and once he had her nightgown off, he had his hands on all of it.

  “Not your turn,” she whispered against his neck before she bit him. “Mine.” Her hands were still stroking, but they were moving right down his body, and she was dropping to her knees.

  His heart was knocking against his chest wall, and all he wanted was whatever would come next. But he wanted to see her, too. He wanted to see her bad.

  That was when he realized that she had a mirror on the back of her door, and that all he had to do was turn his head.

  Holy hell. There they both were, and if he’d thought she’d look good on her knees? His imagination hadn’t been nearly good enough.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Oh, hell, yeah.” He wrapped his hands in her hair and watched himself do it. And then he watched her unbuckle his belt and unbutton his Levi’s.

  His mouth was already dry, because she was going so slowly. Too slowly. She looked up at him, saw where he was looking, and turned her head herself.

  “Oh,” she said. “You like to watch?”

  “Oh, yeah, baby.” He barely knew what he was saying, not with her inching his zipper down. She had her hands on his waist, underneath the elastic of his briefs, and was kissing him just above them, her tongue licking into his navel, then sliding down. And still, she wasn’t quite there.