Lover in the Shadows

by Lindsay Longford

  And the part of her that reasoned through her careening emotions accepted at a primitive level that Harlan’s shoulders were wide enough to bear the weight of her anger and grief.

  She needed to nurse her resentment.

  After the brief exchange between her and Harlan, Whittaker occasionally leaned forward and murmured to Harlan, but neither talked to her. The lines were drawn, and all three were suspended in the bubble of the car, waiting for the moment of arrival, when time would hurtle them forward into irrevocable events.

  In this bubble of sunshine and suspended time, though, she allowed herself to hope that Reid was laughing somewhere, that someone in her life wasn’t systematically wiping out her family, one by one.

  Shielded inside Harlan’s anonymous cop car, she pretended that evil wasn’t hidden by a face she knew.

  Ross leaned forward. “Half a mile farther.”

  With resentment popping through her, hope still alive, Molly was in no hurry to reach the cabin. Half a mile could be eternity.

  At the cabin, she would face whatever she had to.

  The quiet warmth of the sun coming through the car windshield onto her arms and face was a gift, and she let it seep into her.

  Seeing her lift her face to the sunshine streaming in the windshield, Harlan rolled his window down and rested his arm on the car door. The wind flattened the sunshine-brushed fabric of his black sleeve against the hard curve of his biceps and forearm, and his hand draped to the inside of the car, his thin fingers forming a C against the brown door.

  The rutted road leading to the cabin ran through stands of pines down to the Palmetto River and was nothing more than a lane of washboard bumps and holes, jarring Molly against her seat belt in spite of Harlan’s expert handling of the sedan.

  When they stopped several yards back from the ruins of the cabin, Molly smelled the lingering odor of smoke first, and underneath, the sharp cleanness of the pines. She took a shallow breath, pain splintering her.

  In the rich, late-winter sunshine, the delicate pale blue blossoms of the plumbago blurred in front of her. Reid had always called them the lumbago bushes.

  She took another breath.

  “Let’s see what they’ve discovered.” John Harlan unclipped her seat belt, and his shoulder bumped hers as he reached over her to open her door. “Perhaps they’ve found an item of your brother’s that you’ll recognize.” His words were low in her ear as he added, “Not knowing is the worst part.”

  Several men in nylon Windbreakers labeled with huge orange letters, their movements efficient and concentrated, sifted through grayish black ashes. The heavy beams of the two-story cabin, charred and broken, lay over black lumps that had been appliances and furniture. Tall and stooped, an older man was clearly directing the activities. He looked up as the car doors opened. The bill of his Florida Marlins cap shielded his face as he waved them over.

  “Ross and I will talk to Dr. Franklin,” Harlan said to Molly. “He’s the forensic odontologist we called in as a consultant. It would be better if you waited here.” He touched her cheek, a light, transitory contact that flowed through her and left her lonely as he dropped his hand and picked up his jacket.

  He shoved his sunglasses on top of his head as he stared at her. In that second, his pupils were contracted until his eyes were all gold, their color deepening and swallowing her. “I’ll come back for you.”

  “Whatever you say. You’re the detective.”

  The skin over his cheekbones tightened, and his slow exhalation was a drawn-out hiss shivering over her.

  She swallowed and tried to look away.

  He was angry.

  Before he opened his door, he stared back at her over his shoulder. “This doesn’t make a damned bit of sense to me.” He flipped his glasses down and slammed the door behind him. The car rocked with the force of his exit.

  Maybe he meant the arson. Maybe he meant the hunger that hovered like an almost-visible shape between them.

  She rubbed her cheek. It was an emotion more compelling than hunger. Stronger. She’d glimpsed his loneliness.

  Molly slid out of the car and waited by the headlights. She was as close as she wanted to be to the melted and charred remains of the cabin.

  Whittaker loped off in the direction of the men with their different-sized sieves. The man in charge wiped his face with a grayed handkerchief, lifted his turquoise cap and resettled it as Whittaker poked at chunks in a sieve with a stick.

  Ash drifted on the wind, bits freckling her arm.

  Molly stared at the flecks and couldn’t look away. Her vision hazy with unshed tears, she touched one of the bits and watched it crumble and blow away.

  A smudge so small she had to strain to see it dotted her finger.

  Wrapping her arms around herself and letting her hair tumble into her eyes, she watched Harlan take a pen from his pocket and stir the contents of the older man’s sieve. The man hunched his shoulders and nodded as if to say “Who knows?” and Harlan gestured for one of the men to cart over a large black plastic bag. Through the open back doors of the white van, she saw four more bags.

  Molly didn’t know what she had expected to feel on seeing the burned cabin. Numbness, overpowering grief, an awareness of evil. But after that first, wrenching sight of the plumbago, she could have been looking at any cabin anywhere.

  And she was glad.

  Any lingering sense of Reid at this desolate ruin would have been too much to bear after everything else that had happened.

  With the breeze blowing her hair into her face, she thought about Reid and the ties that had bound them over the years. Flattening strands of hair, she tried to recall the last time they had spent hours together, laughing and joking. Teasing, the way they had as children alone on the bayou.

  In one panicky beat of her heart, she realized she couldn’t remember.

  She’d been so certain she would know if anything had happened to him. Maybe that certainty had been her own wishful thinking, creating bonds that no longer existed.

  They hadn’t spent much time together in years. She’d gone off to college, while Reid had finished military school, entered and dropped out of a different college, joined the army and eventually taken over the ranch in Costa Rica with their parents’ encouragement. Had she and Reid become strangers, and had habit become their link as adults?

  Molly frowned.

  Maybe she wouldn’t know if her twin had died.

  Molly doubled her fists. None of that mattered. She wanted Reid to saunter over, punch her on the arm and shake his head, his handsome face screwed up in unholy amusement at the thoughts she’d had. She wanted him to hoot and rag at her for being a dope.

  But most of all, she wanted him safe at her side.

  Looking at the collapsed roof and walls, the blasted remains of the cabin, Molly thought about the circumstances. One way or another, her parents, Camina and maybe Reid had become victims. Their murders hadn’t been a random series of events, an irrational glitch in the universe. She knew that now.

  Someone had planned and set these events in motion. Someone had meant for her to be blamed for Camina’s death. Harlan had tried to make her accept that, and she hadn’t.

  Someone she knew, smiling and affable, thought there was gain in death.

  Anger ramrodded her spine and she walked over to Harlan and Dr. Franklin. “Is there anything you want me to take a look at?” She hardened herself to memories, sentiment, to everything except the necessity of doing what had to be done to uncover the monster behind the smiling mask.

  “So far, all we have is a heap of stuff in garbage bags. Some tear-shaped things that might be plastic with ash corroded on ’em might also be teeth. Can’t tell ’til we X-ray ’em. We’ll run the whole bag through and see if teeth or—” Dr. Franklin looked at Harlan’s forefinger pressing his arm. “Whatever. But nothing looks like anything anybody would recognize at this point, ma’am.”

  He turned away from her and drew Harlan to his side,
but Molly heard the muttered comment, “Problem is, John, this sucker’s been burning so long that even if we find teeth, they may crumble right to pieces. Folks think teeth’ll survive anything, and usually they do. But this was a bitch of a fire, I’m telling you. Intense and long lasting. We may find nothing.”

  “Reid had a crown on one tooth,” Molly said. She imitated Harlan and stepped away from pain, moved across the dividing line. “Gold and porcelain.”

  “You sure about that?” Franklin squinted at her. “That’s real precise. I’m damned if I’d know what my wife has in her mouth by way of dental work unless I saw the X-rays.”

  “I sell dental supplies. My ex-husband, Dr. Paul Bouler, is an oral surgeon. And Reid lorded it over me because he had gold in his mouth and I didn’t. I’m positive. If Reid…” She cleared her throat. “If Reid’s in there, you might find the crown. No fillings. No other dental work for either of us. Paul’s his dentist. He’ll have Reid’s records.” She looked hard at the sieve in the odontologist’s hand. It held shiny, melted black objects, chunks of wood or something else.

  Harlan had moved toward her with her first words and cupped her elbow. “Good.” He beckoned to Ross, who loped over. “Get on the cellular phone. We need Bouler’s records.” His fingers slid against her wrist and she stifled the impulse to hold onto his hand. “That’s a real big help, Ms. Harris. You’ve saved us time.”

  “Good,” Molly said. “May I see his rental car?”

  Harlan shrugged. “It’s been dusted? Checked out?”

  Franklin nodded. “The records from the rental agency and the odometer match with his trip from the airport to your house and up here. We’ve accounted for the mileage. The car wasn’t driven anywhere else, apparently.”

  The door to the shed creaked when Harlan opened it and stepped in before her, moving to one side as she followed. “So? What do you see?”

  Hesitating, Molly scanned the dilapidated interior. “It looks the same. It’s been years since I was here.”

  Separate from the two-story cabin, the shed had been built to shelter the boat when they took it out of the water. Lawn chairs, an old bicycle and a wooden raft hung on hooks along the wall. Oars and bait buckets filled one corner. Dust covered the gasoline cans and stacks of old magazines along the shelves. The interior of the shed was hot and stuffy. The small, square windows, grimy and smeared with wasp droppings, kept the shed dim, ghostly in the waning light.

  “Take a good look. I’m in no hurry.” Jamming his glasses once more on top of his head, Harlan rubbed his neck. Fine lines radiated from his eyes.

  Sadness crept into her. “I don’t know what I expected. I thought…” She shrugged. The urge to involve herself and not wait helplessly for the next disaster had made her ask. She walked over to the rental car and opened the driver’s door.

  The car was empty, smelling a little of stale air and cigarette smoke. “Reid doesn’t smoke,” she said absently, running her finger along the steering wheel.

  “No?” Harlan reached in front of her, she stepped back against the metal doorframe and he pulled open the ashtray. Two quarter-inch-long marks showed where the techs had removed cigarette ashes. “Someone did.”

  His arm lay beneath her breasts, but in that hot, still, dusty moment, as they stared at the ashtray, Molly couldn’t move. She leaned forward, resting her head briefly on his shoulder. There was comfort in the solid strength under her forehead. Then, like an old woman, she straightened. “Or the rental agency was careless about checking the cleaning crew’s work before renting out the car again.”

  “Yes.” Harlan shut the tray and stepped back, giving her room to move away. “That would explain it, too.” In the dusty dimness, where the smell of smoke lay like a pall over them, he said, “Molly, I promise you. If your brother is dead, I’ll find out who killed him.”

  She rested against the car. “You think he’s alive?”

  He lowered his gaze and moved away from her. “I don’t think anything at this point.” He pivoted and placed his hands flat against the car roof on either side of her and bent his knees until he was eye-to-eye with her. “But I know this case is going to get nastier before all the answers are in.” Lowering his head, he nudged her forehead with his, just as she had lain hers against his shoulder, and said, “The blood on the knife was Camina’s.”

  “Oh.” Molly shut her eyes.

  “You knew it would be. It’s no surprise.”

  “I expected it.” She had, but her stomach churned.

  “As of today, an arrest warrant hadn’t been issued.” Sliding closer to her face, his palms moved along the metal, making a shushing sound, until his broad hands cupped her face and his fingers spread over the back of her neck. “I think one will be, though. Especially now. You should prepare yourself.”

  “All right. I will.” Molly opened her eyes. “I wondered why—”

  He interrupted. “You’re one of Reid’s beneficiaries. The situation doesn’t look good for you—all these coincidences joining together like a spiderweb with you at the middle. And it’s been a week since Camina’s murder. The department honchos are getting antsy. An arrest would look good.”

  “For you?”

  He nodded. “Of course. It’s my case, after all.” Under her hair, his fingertips traced the curve of her ear. “But it’s in the department’s hands. They’ll make the decision with the state’s attorney.”

  His thumbs slid to the corners of her mouth, touching, stroking, the rasp of his thumb somehow an overwhelming comfort.

  “At least you know I couldn’t have killed Reid.” She touched his chest, whether by accident or on purpose, she didn’t know, but under her hand his heart thundered, speeded up. “Everyplace I’ve been this last week, you’ve been right behind me. You’ve been at my house every night, prowling and circling and watching. You’re my alibi, Detective, aren’t you?”

  “Perhaps.” His mouth was so close to hers that his breath buzzed over her lips and made them tingle. “I’m going to do something incredibly stupid right now, Ms. Harris.”

  “Don’t,” she whispered, lifting her face. “We don’t even like each other.”

  “I have to,” he murmured against her mouth and kissed her, his mouth slanting over hers. He never moved his hands from her face, where his thumbs pressed lightly at the corners of her mouth. His bent knees bumped hers awkwardly as he lowered himself to her. “And liking has nothing at all to do with it.”

  He nipped her lower lip and she took a breath to tell him no, this was a bad idea, no, she didn’t want this at all.

  But she was lying to herself and she knew it. She wanted the wild taste of him, wanted the weight of his chest against her, the race of his heart. Oh, it was stupid, foolish, for both of them.

  “Yes,” she said and curled her arm around his neck and pulled him closer, because here in this dusty shed she was alive, he was, and death was far away in this moment of heat and pounding blood.

  “Come on, sweetness, open for me,” he muttered, trailing his lips down her neck and up again, his mouth fierce and hard against her. “Let me taste you, please.”

  “Yes,” she said, because this was what she wanted—him touching her, helping her forget. She wanted. She slid her fingers through his thick black hair and opened her mouth to him, kissing him back as hungrily as he was kissing her, needing his touch to keep the demons at bay.

  Her choice, to run her open mouth along the cords of his strong neck. Her decision, to slide her hand inside the silky fabric of his shirt. Her choice, to press her mouth over his thundering heart, to taste the skin burning there and to sink into his heat.

  Her choice.

  He tilted her face toward him once more and held it for his sipping kisses, for the butterfly flick of his tongue against the lobe of her ear. He groaned, shivered, and then his arms were around her, lifting her off her feet, pulling her into the cradle of his legs. He turned and rested against the car frame, pulling her left leg over his hip.


  Against the nylon of her panties, his belt buckle was cold, hot, and she pressed closer restlessly.

  And that was her choice, too.

  He was right. The river of heat sliding through her had nothing to do with liking and everything, everything to do with craving and obsession and need.

  She needed him. Her body craved him, melted against his hardness, chest, thigh, groin.

  One arm anchoring her to him, he cupped her breast, curling his hand over her nipple and plucking the small nub until she rubbed anxiously against him, needing.

  Her mouth was full and aching, needing the flick of his tongue over it. Her skin ached with need, and she forgot everything—resentment, grief—forgot everything as he lowered his head and took the tip of her breast in his mouth, everything flowing to that pressure of his teeth and lips against her, pleasure a burning blackness behind her eyelids.

  She whimpered.

  And he stopped. But not easily.

  He was shaking against her.

  Need, like hers, was raw in his unmasked face. Hunger, like hers, glittered in his eyes.

  But he stopped. “Well, damn me to hell,” he said, leaning his head back against the car but not releasing her. “I said I was going to do something stupid. Stupid, dumb, irresponsible. I didn’t mean to be this damned stupid, though.” He swore fluently, filthily and earnestly, cursing himself in a flat, unemotional tone that made the curses even more powerful. His breathing slowed, but his nostrils still flared. “I thought I had more control. I was wrong.”

  “If you say you’re sorry, I swear I’ll kill you,” Molly muttered. Not her choice, this unsatisfied aching.

  His laugh barreled up from his chest, rumbled against her breasts, and the spring unwinding inside her tightened, hitched, uncoiled. “Ah, Ms. Harris, you might want to re-think your choice of words…under the circumstances.” His chest shook against her again as he let her slide to her feet.

  She stumbled on the concrete floor.

  He rubbed the back of his neck as he looked around the shed. “This is, without a doubt, the worst idea I’ve ever had in my life.” He glanced down at her, his eyes narrowed and ruthless. “And, no. I’m not one damned bit sorry.”