by Candace Camp
“Quinn…please…”
His only answer was to walk the few feet to her bed and lay her down upon it. He unfastened her skirt and pulled it off, then stood looking down at her, his eyes ablaze. Slowly he caressed her flesh, running his hands down her chest and stomach, then over her thighs, first outside, then in, moving up to the heated juncture of her legs. He teased them both by stopping before he reached the center of her desire and sliding his hands back down her thighs and around, slipping up the back of her legs and under the flimsy material of her panties to the soft mounds of her buttocks. He dug his fingers into the fleshy curves, lifting her hips from the bed.
Lisa groaned, circling her hips enticingly. His smile was part pleasure, part pain, as he moved his hands down her thighs again and then back up the inside of her legs. But this time he did not stop short of his goal, but cupped her sex in his hand, feeling her heat through the thin material of her underwear. He rubbed his fingers gently against her, eliciting a choked groan from Lisa. She dug her heels into the bed and arched up against his hand. She felt on fire, her entire being seemingly focused where his hand touched.
Roughly, Quinn hooked his hands in the sides of her panties and pulled them down, tossing them aside. Just as impatiently he shucked off his own trousers and underwear, revealing a body that was as fully magnificent as Lisa had imagined it. He stretched out on the bed beside her and devoted himself to exploring her body. He kissed his way down her chest and over her breasts, fastening at last on her nipples and arousing them to hard, dark points. As he suckled at them, his hand slid down her body and in between her legs, opening and caressing her. Deftly his fingers delved into the hot, slick folds of her femininity, stroking and pressing until Lisa quivered with arousal.
Never in her life had she felt such pleasure, and she thought with each new surge of excitement that soon she must explode, but Quinn expertly stoked the desire in her to further and further heights without sending her over the edge. She whimpered and twisted, her fingers digging into his back. Quinn’s own breath was ragged and tortured.
At last, when Lisa thought that she could stand it no more, Quinn moved between her legs and came inside her, thrusting deep with exquisite slowness. He moved, and she matched his rhythm, lost in a haze of pleasure. They were so close, so entwined that she could hardly tell where she left off and he began, and for the first time she understood what it meant to be one. This was love. This was true union. And when at last the desire exploded deep inside her and Quinn shuddered, wrapping his arms around her, the two of them lost in their passion, she knew that something inside her had changed. She would never be the same again.
Lisa awoke before her alarm the next morning, hazily aware of a heavy weight across her chest. Her eyes fluttered open, and she gradually realized that the weight was a man’s arm thrown over her. Quinn. The memory of the night before came back in a rush, and she turned her head to look at Quinn. He was still sound asleep, face peaceful in repose. The sunlight through the window backlit his hair, turning it into fiery spikes.
She smiled, easing out from under his arm and turning on her side to gaze at him. Her heart fell full almost to bursting, and she was sure that there was a sappy grin upon her face. How could it make her so happy just to look at this man asleep in her bed? And what was she going to do when it came time to leave?
Pain pierced her at the thought, and she wondered, with a clutch of panic, if she had been wrong to let things go so far last night. Yet she knew that she would not have given up what she had experienced for anything. Even if it meant sorrow and loss in the future, their lovemaking had been something to treasure.
Quinn’s eyes flew open, and he was instantly alert. Then he smiled, his body relaxing. “Hey, darlin’.”
“Hey, yourself.”
He reached up and smoothed his forefinger over her forehead. “What’s the frown about? You unhappy? Regretting it?”
“No. I don’t regret it at all,” Lisa replied honestly. “I-it was the best night of my life.”
His smile grew wider. He raised up on his elbow, leaning over to kiss her lightly on the lips. “Well, there’ll be plenty more, I promise you. So why the worried face?”
Lisa shrugged. “Just thinking…about when I leave.”
“Leave?” Now it was he who frowned. “What are you talking about? Are you going somewhere?”
“Back to Dallas, eventually. I’m only here for a year.”
“A year! Hell, darlin”, that’s a long time away. No need to worry about that.”
Lisa smiled faintly. “I suppose not.” She certainly wasn’t going to tell him that she worried about it because she had fallen in love with him. That would be guaranteed to scare a man off.
“Right now,” he went on, brushing his knuckles against her cheek, “let’s just concentrate on this….”
He kissed her again, this time long and lingeringly.
When at last he pulled back, Lisa let out a small sigh of contentment. “All right,” she said happily and went back into his arms.
For the next two weeks, Lisa drifted in a world of joyous romance. Every moment with Quinn seemed magical. She went to work smiling, much to the amusement and satisfaction of her secretary, who reminded her that she had told her from the beginning that she should date Quinn. Neither clients nor longwinded colleagues nor even hardheaded prosecutors could destroy her mood. Everything in the world seemed different—brighter, sharper, more wonderful.
She put out of her head all thoughts of the future. She refused to think about what would happen when the time came for her to leave Hammond and Angel Eye. Instead, she resolved, she would simply enjoy life as it was. She would revel in the storybook days she spent with Quinn.
She spent every evening after work with him, sometimes going out for dinner or a movie, but more often just spending the time alone together at her apartment or Quinn’s house. They cooked dinner together, laughing over their mistakes, then sat on the couch, talking or watching TV, spending their time in ordinary ways. But the feeling inside, the atmosphere around them, was anything but ordinary. Desire sizzled between them with merely a look. His fingers linked through hers brought a sweet bliss. Watching him cross the room sent a thrill through her.
Lisa told herself that she was being silly. This sort of romantic fizz was not the kind of thing she felt. She was a steady person, the kind with her feet firmly planted on the ground. But such reminders didn’t make a dent in her mood. She was in love, and for the first time she understood how little practicality mattered when one loved.
She retained enough common sense not to tell Quinn of her newfound feelings. She wasn’t about to risk anything spoiling what they had.
Even their jobs intruded only peripherally. She heard nothing from Benny, and Quinn did not call him in for questioning again. Quinn did not mention the case involving the body they had found in the field except for an occasional grumble that INS or the DEA were poking their noses into it.
Then, one night, Quinn’s cell phone went off shrilly in the middle of the night, startling Lisa awake. She sat up, heart pounding, at first unsure what had happened. Quinn was already halfway across the room, grabbing up his phone and answering it with a terse, “Yeah?”
He listened, frowning. Lisa sat up, a sense of dread settling over her. She reached out and turned on the lamp on the nightside table, blinking in its sudden glare. Quinn listened, replying periodically in sharp terse words: “When?” “Where?” “Who’s on it?” “I’ll be right there.”
He hung up and quickly began to dress.
“What’s the matter? What is it?” Lisa asked.
He glanced at her. “Sorry. I’ve got to go.” He paused, then added in a flat voice, “There’s another body.”
Chapter 10
“What?” Lisa gaped at him. “A—a murder?”
He nodded shortly. “Yep. No question this time. This one was shot in the head.”
Lisa watched, stunned into silence, as Quinn finish
ed dressing. He came over to the bed and kissed her briefly, almost absently, on the forehead. Then, sticking his phone in his back pocket and grabbing up his keys, he was gone.
She sat as she was for a while, knees pulled up and her arms wrapped around them, gazing into nothingness. It was difficult to absorb that murder had happened again in this quiet place. The first one had been bad enough, someone callously abandoning a body in an empty field, but at least the death had been the result of an accident. This, however, was clearly intentional.
Lisa shivered and got up. She knew she would not be able to go back to sleep this night. She glanced at the clock beside her bed. Four o’clock. She decided to put some coffee on to brew and get to work on the papers she had brought home last night and then had not even looked at. Padding into the kitchen, she pulled out the coffee and began to measure it into the coffeemaker.
Her thoughts, however, were on Quinn and what he had gone to do. Was this murder connected to the other body they had found? It seemed too coincidental for it not to be. Two suspicious deaths probably exceeded the total in a town like Angel Eye for several years. With a clutch of dread in her stomach, she wondered if Benny were somehow connected with it. He had vehemently denied recognizing the other corpse, and Lisa believed him. She was not so certain, however, that he was not involved in whatever illegal activity was going on. He had been shaken and scared that day at the sheriff’s office, and she suspected that there was more reason for it than just seeing the picture of a body.
She sincerely hoped that he was not involved in it. She liked Benny and hated to think that he had gotten caught up in anything illegal, but especially in something as dangerous as drug-smuggling.
Later that morning when she went into work, the office was already buzzing with gossip about the body found outside of Angel Eye the night before.
“I heard he’d been there for a long time,” her secretary Kiki said, looking at Lisa for confirmation.
Lisa shrugged. “I don’t know any more than you do. Probably less.”
The girl gave her a disbelieving look. “Right. You and Quinn are…”
“Just because I’ve gone out with Quinn doesn’t mean that he calls me first thing about dead bodies,” Lisa retorted.
Kiki shrugged. “Well, that’s what I heard. That the body was in pretty bad shape, but there was ID this time. Don’t know who it was, though. Some kids who were out parking found it. Gross. Can you imagine, going out to some secluded spot to fool around and coming on a decomposing corpse?”
Lisa made a face. “That’s gross all right. I don’t think I want to hear any more of the details.”
“That’s all I know,” Kiki admitted.
Lisa heard about the murder wherever she went that day—the district courthouse, the burger stand where she had lunch, even the drugstore where she picked up a few purchases after she left the office that evening. It was there that she learned that the radio had announced the identity of the body—a young man from San Antonio named Miguel Sanchez. Lisa breathed a sigh of relief, realizing what she had not admitted to herself earlier—that there had been a bit of fear in the back of her mind that the body might turn out to be Benny Hernandez.
She did not hear from Quinn until almost seven o’clock, when he called her apartment to tell her that he had to break their date for the evening. “It looks like I’ll be tied up here for hours,” he said, his voice weary.
“I’m sorry. Has it been terrible?”
“Not good,” he admitted. “I’ve seen worse, but not here. I really hate it that it’s happened here.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” Everything Lisa could think of to say seemed inadequate. She remembered the things he had told her about his time in the San Antonio police force and how he had hoped to leave it behind him when he moved back to Angel Eye. “I heard it was somebody from San Antonio.”
“Yeah. At least I didn’t have to notify the parents—the San Antonio police did that. But it’s still connected here. It was in a remote spot, not someplace that somebody from S.A. just looking to dump a body would have found. I think somebody local put it there.”
“And you think it’s connected to the other?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“I may have to pull Benny in again,” he warned.
“I figured as much.”
She spent the rest of the evening trying to read a book. When the phone rang shortly before ten o’clock, she was not surprised to hear Benny Hernandez’s voice on the other end of the line.
“Ms. Mendoza?”
“Benny. Are you at the jail?”
“No. No. I just called…I heard they found another dead guy. Is that true?”
“Yes, it is. Do you know anything about it?”
“My grandmama said—she said his name was Miguel.”
“Yes. That’s what I heard. He was from San Antonio.”
“Okay.”
“Benny, if you are somehow involved in this, it looks like it’s turning into something pretty serious. Maybe we need to talk.”
“No. I can’t.”
“You can’t talk to me? Benny, I’m your attorney.”
“I gotta go. I—got something I need to do.”
“Benny. Don’t do anything hasty. I’m here to help you. Remember that.”
“Yeah. Okay. Goodbye.”
“Benny—”
The dial tone buzzed in her ear. With a sigh, Lisa put the receiver down. She sat, thinking about the phone call, worrying her lower lip with her teeth. The phone call made her uneasy. There had been an undertone of fear in Benny’s voice, she was sure. She wished that he had agreed to talk to her.
After a while, she got up and began to get ready for bed. The apartment felt strangely empty. It was the first time in two weeks that she had gone to bed without Quinn, she realized. It was a little shocking how quickly she had become accustomed to his presence…dependent on it, even. The thought bothered her. She had gotten along without Quinn for twenty-seven years of her life; she certainly should be able to get through one night without him.
Irritated with herself, she got into bed and tried to go to sleep. But sleep would not come. She tossed and turned, and her mind kept going to the phone. She had thought that Quinn would call her before she went to bed, just to wish her good-night. She was disappointed—and annoyed that she felt so disappointed. Was she turning into a clinging woman—unable to sleep without him there, expecting him to call her every night?
The phone rang, and she jumped for it. “Hello?”
“Hey, darlin’, it’s me,” Quinn said on the other end of the line.
Lisa could not keep a smile from spreading across her face. “Hi, ‘me.’ How are you?”
“Tired,” he answered candidly. “I’m about to turn in. But I didn’t want to go to sleep without saying good-night to you.” He paused, then said, “You know, it’s damned lonely here without you.”
“Here, too,” Lisa replied, warmed by his words.
“I thought about coming over, but I’ll be up early tomorrow morning. I’m just going to grab a few hours sleep. No point in disturbing you.”
“You don’t disturb me.”
“Don’t tempt me.” He sighed. “I told Ruben I’d be here.”
“Okay.”
“Talking to you makes it better.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“I miss you.”
“I miss you.”
They stayed on the phone for a few minutes longer, both of them reluctant to hang up. But finally they said their good-nights, and Lisa went back to bed, smiling to herself.
She was dressing for work the next morning when there was a knock on her door. Surprised, she went to the door, buttoning her blouse and tucking it in as she walked. She looked through the peephole and saw Quinn standing outside.
Smiling, she undid the lock and opened the door. Quinn looked at her. H
is expression was grim, and she could see the lines of weariness at the corners of his eyes and mouth.
“Have you seen Benny?” he asked without preamble.
“Well. Hello and nice to see you, too.”
His expression softened a trifle. “I’m sorry. I’m worried. Good morning. You look, as always, beautiful.” He leaned down to kiss her on the lips. “Mmm. That improves my outlook a lot.”
“Good.” Lisa smiled at him. “Would you like a cup of coffee? I’ve just made some.”
“I wouldn’t turn it down.”
“Come on in.” Lisa turned and went into the kitchen to pour him a cup. He followed her.
“Now, what is this about Benny?” Lisa asked, turning to hand him the cup. “Have I seen him?”
“Yeah. Or heard from him?”
Lisa hesitated, and Quinn caught it immediately. “You have, haven’t you?”
“Well, yes, he did call me last night.”
“What did he say?”
“Now, Quinn, you know I can’t tell you that. It’s privileged communication.”
“Damn it, Lisa, I need to find him.” Quinn scowled. “This is no time for legal quibbling.”
Lisa stiffened. “Attorney/client confidentiality is hardly legal quibbling. The whole system would be unworkable if I had to tell you everything my clients tell me.”
“I’m not asking you for any kind of confession or anything. I just want to know where he is! Don’t you care about your client in any way besides legally?”
“Yes. I do.” Lisa shot back, irritated by his attitude. “I happen to like Benny, and I think that he’s a decent young man. That’s why I’m going to do my best to keep him from being harassed and stigmatized by you and your investigation. In case you haven’t noticed, Quinn, your interests and my client’s are not exactly the same.”
“I am trying to help him!” Quinn burst out. “A boy has been killed, Lisa, one just about Benny’s age, and he was seen leaving and entering that same house where Benny has been seen. I’m sure the smuggling is headquartered there, and Benny is in it up to his eyeballs. I am trying to get him out of it before he gets sent to prison or worse.”