Dire Straits_Aspen Falls Novel

by Melissa Pearl

  “A Journey fan, huh?” a voice said.

  Jessica’s eyes flew open, and it took her a second to focus, for her brain to figure out who was speaking.

  Jarrett Pryor was standing in front of her, staring down at her. Smiling.

  She quickly sat up.

  “Didn’t mean to startle you,” he said.

  His hair was ruffled, the breeze blowing softly through it, and his hazel eyes looked golden in the evening sunshine. Maybe it was the effects of the beer, but she was convinced he had never looked so damn delectable before.

  “You didn’t,” she mumbled, which was an absolute and total lie. “What are you doing here?”

  He gave her a quizzical look. “Uh, listening to the concert?”

  She felt her cheeks flush. Duh.

  “You’re not here as a reporter?”

  He shook his head. “Contrary to popular belief, I’m not always on the hunt for my next story. I do have a life. Sort of.”

  He meant it as a joke, but Jessica instantly flashed back to the last time she’d seen him.

  At the river.

  Identifying Katie Simmons.

  His expression changed, and it was almost as if he knew what she was thinking about.

  “How are you?” she asked. “I haven’t seen you since…” She let her voice trail off. Since you saw a woman you once dated lying dead by the side of the river.

  “I’m fine.”

  The words could have been hollow and empty, one of those things people were expected to say but didn’t really mean. But Jess believed him. He looked and sounded…normal. The Jarrett she was used to. The Jarrett with the easy smile and the hazel eyes that managed to seem open and friendly but also penetrate her very soul.

  She nodded. “Good.”

  “Hear anything new about the case?” he asked.

  He didn’t have to clarify which one he was talking about. She knew.

  Jess shook her head. “Not much. It’s still pretty early, and I don’t think autopsy results are in yet.”

  “Nothing?”

  She shrugged. “Not that I’ve heard. And definitive tox results can take up to four weeks. Maybe even longer with the holiday coming up.”

  He gave a slight nod. He probably knew that, considering he was friends with Nate. Real life police work wasn’t like the movies and TV shows, where autopsy results came back instantly. Patience was required…which was something she was pretty sure Jarrett Pryor didn’t have.

  He waited. He didn’t ask questions with his voice, but she could read them in his eyes. Yep, he definitely wanted more.

  “Word is it was probably an accident.” She grimaced as soon as the words were out of her mouth. Why on earth had she told him that? Maybe because she had two beers coursing through her system?

  Jarrett raised an eyebrow. “An accident?”

  Jessica hesitated. She’d heard Nate and Kellan talking about the case that morning when she’d returned to the station. It definitely wasn’t her news to tell. And it most certainly could be a major breach of protocol, especially if word got back to Nate that she was spilling details on a case. And not just to someone in the general public, but to a reporter at the local paper.

  A reporter who was always on the hunt for a story.

  And a reporter who had a vested personal interest in the case.

  She remembered Jarrett’s expression when he’d first laid eyes on Katie’s body. The flash of shock, and then the disbelief. He’d told Nate that he and Katie had dated, albeit briefly. Jessica’s gut had tightened immediately when he’d mentioned it.

  She could imagine how hard it must have been for Jarrett, laying eyes on the woman for the first time since April and seeing her lifeless body prone in the grassy, weedy sand along the river’s edge.

  Jessica swallowed. “I don’t know many details, but Nate said something about a party.”

  “A party?”

  She realized he was parroting her words. Was that what a reporter did to get someone to talk? She didn’t know.

  She glanced down at her hands. “I don’t know how much I can discuss…”

  Jarrett crouched down next to her, his knees landing on the blanket she was seated on. The breeze carried the scent of his cologne and it tickled her nostrils. She tried not to be obvious as she breathed it in.

  His eyes locked on hers, and her pulse quickened. “I’m not asking for a story,” he said quietly. “I’m asking for me.”

  Jessica squirmed under his intense gaze, but she couldn’t bring herself to look away. His eyes were liquid gold, mesmerizing, and the expression on his face was one of solemn determination.

  “You cared that much about her?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper. She wondered if she sounded as vulnerable as she felt.

  “No.” He shook his head. “I care that much about what happened to her.”

  Jessica took a breath, exhaled. He couldn’t have offered a better answer. And she couldn’t have been in a better position to spill. Alcohol was coursing through her system, most likely impeding her judgment. Or maybe those were hormones.

  She nodded. “All I know is that she went to some party the night before. At her boss’s house, up near St. Cloud. The current must have been moving pretty fast for her to end up down here already. I guess Nate talked to the guy yesterday, and he said she’d left the party to go for a walk and never came back. He thought she’d gone home.”

  “What about her car?” Jarrett asked. “Did she drive there?”

  “I think so, yes. But the guy said she’d had a lot to drink and—”

  A frown creased his brow. “He’s lying,” he said flatly.

  “What?”

  “He’s lying,” he repeated. “Katie didn’t drink.”

  “Oh.” Jessica vaguely remembered him saying that to Nate. “Well, maybe she does now?” she offered. “I mean, it’s been a few months since you dated and—”

  “We didn’t date,” Jarrett said. “We literally went out half a dozen times.”

  Jess just nodded, mostly because she didn’t know what to say. But she knew how she felt when he uttered those words.

  Relief.

  Total and complete relief.

  Not that it mattered, of course.

  She would be a fool to think that it did. She had no more claim to Jarrett Pryor than she did to…to…to Blaine. To Nate. Hell, to any guy she knew in town.

  She should be bothered by what she was feeling for the man crouched down next to her. She wasn’t herself around him. She was a hot mess, actually. Jarrett Pryor came around and she turned into a lovesick schoolgirl, mesmerized by his good looks. He opened his mouth and asked her a simple question, and it was like she’d forgotten every bit of police protocol that had been drilled into her.

  What the hell was wrong with her?

  Jarrett was still kneeling on the blanket, but he wasn’t looking at her. His leg was within an inch of hers, and she could feel the hairs on his shin tickling her calf. If she shifted just the slightest bit, they would be touching. Touching.

  She squeezed her eyes shut.

  Seriously. What was wrong with her?

  “You okay?” he asked, startling her.

  She pressed her lips together. “I was going to ask you the same thing,” she finally said.

  “No,” he said bluntly.

  “No what?”

  “No, I’m not okay.”

  She stared at him. “What’s wrong?”

  “I already told you.” His eyes narrowed. “The guy Nate talked to is lying. And I’m going to prove it.”

  14

  Friday, June 29

  8:00 pm

  “How?”

  It was a simple question from Jess, but Jarrett didn’t answer her right away.

  He was too lost in what she’d told him.

  It hadn’t been much—just a couple of pretty benign statements, actually—but they’d rubbed him the wrong way.

  Katie didn’t drink. He knew that as sure
as he knew the sky was blue. He’d teased her about it the first night they’d gone out for dinner with Charlie, when he’d just tagged along with his friend and his friend’s former student. He and Charlie had ordered beer to go with their wings and apps, but Katie had stuck with soda. Jarrett had laughed and double-checked that she didn’t want alcohol, but she’d held firm. She didn’t drink. Not because she worried about getting drunk, but because she hated the taste and because even the littlest bit made her sick.

  So no, he had no doubt that the man Jess described as Katie’s boss was lying.

  That didn’t mean he was doing it because he had something to hide. Jarrett was the first person to recognize that. Maybe the guy had simply speculated that it was what had happened to Katie.

  But Jarrett knew how rumors got started, how stories got misreported. Surely the autopsy could help clarify how much, if any, alcohol was in her system at the time of death, but if those untruths started being repeated now, there was no way of walking them back at a later date. People had selective memories, and the story of a drunk woman walking home along the banks of the Mississippi and meeting an untimely death held morbid appeal. Mostly, Jarrett knew, because people could picture themselves in her shoes. Hell, he could count at least a few times that he’d done the same thing, stumbled home drunk from a college frat party, walking along the path that wound its way through campus and then along the river, back toward the apartment he shared with three roommates in Dinkytown. It was a hell of a long walk, and there were plenty of opportunities for things to go awry.

  Lucky for him, the worst he’d ever suffered was a sprained ankle from when he’d slipped on the icy path. With his cell phone long dead, the battery completely drained, he’d lucked out that an off-duty officer had been out on patrol and was able to call for an ambulance before hypothermia set in.

  So yeah, he wanted to at least set the record straight about Katie. He felt like he owed her that.

  He turned his attention back to Jessica. She was staring at him, a puzzled expression on her pretty face.

  “How what?” he asked.

  “How are you going to prove that her boss is wrong?”

  Jarrett noticed that she chose her words carefully. She didn’t say the man had lied, and he was pretty sure that was the cop in her.

  He shrugged. “I’m not sure yet. Probably go talk to him.”

  She frowned.

  “I’ll keep it quiet,” he promised. “Remember, I’m not looking into this as a reporter. I’m doing it for me.”

  And he was. He wanted answers, especially because what Jessica had just told him didn’t sit right. He and Katie might not have spent much time together, and he might not have seen her or talked to her at all over the last few months, but he knew alcohol was something she’d avoided. Why would that have changed?

  “If this gets back to Nate or Kellan, I’m screwed,” Jessica murmured.

  He nudged her with his knee, and she drew in a sharp breath. He stilled, wondering if it was because of the physical contact. Because he felt it, too, that instant spark of skin touching skin. He debated shifting away from her—for all of half a second. But he didn’t want to. He liked how she felt.

  “I promise,” he said.

  She looked at him, and he noticed just how brown her eyes were. They were a richer brown than her hair, flecked with amber, and he knew then that he could lose himself in those eyes.

  She exhaled. “Okay.” There was a pause. “When will you go?”

  “Hmm?” His leg was still pressed lightly against hers, their eyes locked, and he was having a hard time concentrating.

  “I asked when you would go. To see him,” she said.

  He blinked. “Oh. I don’t know. Soon.”

  Something flickered in her expression and she broke eye contact with him. He physically felt the loss.

  “What?” he said.

  She bit her lip, and suddenly he was focused on that part of her countenance. They were soft and pink, both of them full, and he immediately wondered what it would feel like to kiss them.

  “I want to come with,” she blurted.

  His gaze lifted from her lips to her eyes. “What?”

  She was nodding vigorously, almost as if she were trying to convince herself, too. “I want to come with,” she repeated.

  “Why?”

  She flicked a piece of grass off the blanket. “So I can help.”

  “I’m not following,” he said with a frown. “I already told you, I’m not going in any sort of official capacity. I just want to go and talk to the guy for my own personal reasons.”

  “I know,” she said. Her eyes were glassy, her cheeks flushed. “But…I want to come.”

  “Okay,” Jarrett said. “But how will that look to your boss?”

  “I won’t go on police time,” she said. “And it doesn’t matter what I do on my own time. As long as I’m not breaking the law, I mean.”

  He gave her a small smile. “We will not break the law, I promise.”

  She smiled in return.

  He studied her for a minute, his brain buzzing with questions. Why was she so eager to go? From what he knew about her, she was pretty by the book. Going and asking questions of a guy related to a case involving a suspicious death didn’t seem like it fit her MO.

  “Can I ask you something?” he said.

  Her brow furrowed but she managed a slight nod.

  “Why do you want to do this?” She opened her mouth to answer and he held up a hand. “I know you said you wanted to help. But I want the real reason.”

  She didn’t answer right away, and Jarrett was left to wonder if she was going to at all.

  But then she cleared her throat and spoke. “You promise you’ll keep this between you and me?”

  He immediately nodded. “Promise.”

  She shook her head and muttered, “I can’t believe I’m going to tell you this.”

  He leaned closer, and his leg pressed more firmly into hers. She was so soft, so feminine, so warm. Idly, he wondered what the rest of her body felt like. The small of her back, the curve of her hips…

  “I always wanted to be a detective.”

  He felt his eyes widen. “What?”

  “That was the whole reason I became a police officer.” Her words were coming out in a rush, almost as if she wanted to get as many out before she changed her mind about telling him. “It was why I went to school and got my criminology degree. I thought I’d go into federal law enforcement, maybe the DEA or the FBI or something, but I knew I probably wouldn’t be able to start there. I knew I’d need to put in my time, work my way through the ranks, prove myself. As soon as I graduated, I started applying for jobs. I think I put in a dozen apps with different cities throughout the state.”

  Jarrett said nothing, just listened.

  “Aspen Falls was the first police department to call me. They hired me pretty much on the spot. And I knew what the job was—just a regular police officer. But I was okay with that, you know? I thought I’d do that for a while, prove myself, then maybe make detective. I was willing to put in the time.”

  Jarrett didn’t know a ton about the inner workings of the police department, but he did know that Nate hadn’t just walked into the station and been hired as a detective.

  “Isn’t there some sort of process?” he asked. “It doesn’t just happen right away, does it?”

  “No, of course not. It can take years.”

  He frowned. “But you’ve only been a cop for a few years, right?” He didn’t know how many, but he couldn’t imagine she’d been there for more than four or five.

  “Right. But I have a college degree. And I’ve asked to take on more roles. To assist with some of the bigger cases. To take some of the specialty classes the academy offers. To maybe take on other specialized roles, like school resource officer, to sort of get me prepared.” She sighed. “Kellan has shot down every single thing.”

  Her shoulders slumped and she closed her eyes. Jar
rett wondered if she was regretting the fountain of words that had just erupted from her.

  He felt bad for her, that she was struggling to be able to get the chance to do something that was so obviously important to her.

  But a small part of him was delighted. She’d confided in him, and judging by how quickly the words had spilled out of her—and how quickly she’d clammed up afterward—he had a sneaking suspicion that it wasn’t a secret she shared often.

  If at all.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  Jessica opened her eyes, and Jarrett once again found that he was losing himself in them.

  “Me, too,” she said. She gave him a rueful smile. “And I’m sorry I just dumped all that on you.” She shook her head. “Wow. I seriously don’t know what came over me.”

  “Maybe it was the music,” Jarrett suggested.

  She rolled her eyes. “Maybe.”

  Secretly, he hoped her confessional had everything to do with whom she’d just confided in. Maybe he wasn’t the only one who felt this odd connection.

  Maybe, just maybe, she was feeling it, too.

  “So,” she said, her tone suddenly more businesslike. More Jessica-like. “I’d like to go with.”

  “Okay.” He saw the surprise in her expression, and he stifled a grin. Apparently she’d been ready for him to put up more of a fight. “But it’s not something I want to wait on, if you know what I mean.”

  “When do you want to go?”

  “When are you free?” he asked.

  “I’m free right now.”

  He grinned. “We’re also sitting at a concert.” He glanced up. “With a very nervous blonde woman pacing nearby, stealing glances in our direction about every five seconds.”

  Jessica’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh shit. Megan.” She turned and waved at her friend, then held up a hand, signaling she needed another minute. Satisfied that the blonde got the message, she focused her attention back on Jarrett. “I’m free any time this next week.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You are? How did you manage that?”