by Jen Blood
“You shaved,” he murmured, his eyes still on the computer.
“It’s New Year’s Eve,” I said. “I thought I might get lucky.”
“Here it is,” he said.
“What?”
I opened my eyes to find him smirking at me.
“Work, remember? Saving the town? I’ve got a Cushing address for Lilah Salvator.”
“Oh. Right.” I tried to move my leg. Diggs tightened his grip around my ankle, eyes back on the computer screen.
“Stay there,” he said.
“Yes, sir. What’s the address for Lilah?”
He frowned. “5 Hathorne Point Road.”
“Edie said Lilah told her she lives near the Olson House.”
“Well, according to this, she lives in the Olson House.” He typed in something else. Meanwhile, his hand continued its path under my long johns, fast approaching the sensitive spot behind my knee that Diggs knows makes me crazy.
My phone buzzed. I reluctantly removed my leg from Diggs’ reach and got off the desk, while he continued googling.
“Yeah,” I said into the phone.
“I just spotted Jenny,” Monty said. “Or her car, anyway. I’m still at Edie’s place, but there’s a navy-blue sedan parked on a back road out behind there.”
“No sign of her?” I said.
“Nope.”
“Crap. Check in with Jack, see if he has a line on where Sheriff Finnegan is. I’ll give Cameron a call, see if he’s heard anything.”
“Sounds good. You two holding up all right?”
“Fine,” I assured him. He said something about servicing me himself if Diggs didn’t do his rightful duty soon, and I told him we had it covered. Then, I hung up on him.
“Everything all right?” Diggs asked.
“Jenny’s car is out behind Edie’s place,” I said. I dialed Cameron. He didn’t answer. Doom and gloom settled, just like that.
“Other than the phony address and the Facebook page Edie showed us, I’m not getting anything for a Lilah Salvator,” Diggs said. I settled back on the edge of the desk. Diggs picked up where he’d left off, his fingers homing in on my knee.
“Try Waters,” I suggested. I slid a little bit closer. Diggs eyes flicked toward me for a second. He smiled.
“Yes, ma’am.” He typed in Lilah Waters. We got more hits for this one, but they were all just social media profiles for people who definitely didn’t appear to be Lilah Waters, CEO of Misery at J. Enterprises.
When my jeans kept him from getting any higher up my leg, he slid his hand out entirely and leaned in to kiss my ankle. And then my calf.
“I think we should take a break,” he said.
“We’re supposed to be working,” I reminded him.
“We’ll be more productive if we do this first.”
“This being…?”
He got up. I stayed on the desk. When our lips met, I winced.
“Ow—lip.”
“Sorry.” He kissed me again, very gently, then refocused on my ear. Always a good move. He lifted me off the desk and back to the floor, then pushed me back toward the couch, his mouth moving along my jaw and down to my neck. One hand snuck under my shirt and made its way to my left breast, while Diggs unbuttoned my jeans with the other. Tension—the good kind—coiled in my belly.
“No sweet talking tonight?”
“Right now I can think of better things to do with my mouth.”
The backs of my knees hit the couch. I nearly fell, but Diggs steadied me. He pushed my shirt up over my head without another word, then slid the left bra strap off my shoulder.
“If I’d known at fifteen that we’d be back in this office with you doing that—” I gasped when he nipped my neck.
“Oh yeah?” Diggs said. “Come on. You would have been completely freaked out.”
“At fifteen, we both would have been pretty damn freaked out. By eighteen, I definitely would’ve been on board.”
Diggs took a step back. He pulled off his own shirt and I just lay there for a second, not even remotely decent, and took in his muscles and his scars, his barrel chest, not to mention the very exciting things happening farther south. I’d gone liquid in record time. His eyes were dark when he looked at me, no room anymore for regret or sadness. Now, all I saw was want.
“Come here,” I said, when he just stood there.
“Not yet. Jeans off,” he ordered. “And whatever you’ve got underneath them.”
“You’re bossy tonight.”
He grinned. “I’ve missed you too much to wait. Come on, sweetheart—show me what you’ve got.”
I pulled off my jeans while he watched. Then my long underwear. I kept my panties on. He shook his head.
“Everything.”
Okay—yes, there was a blizzard, and homicidal lunatics, and we were in our old office with both said blizzard and lunatics just outside the door. But this was Diggs…and it really had been far too long. I ignored the blush rising in my cheeks, and teased my panties down my freshly shaven legs.
“That’s my girl,” he said.
When he finally came to me, he knelt beside the sofa and pulled me closer. Nuzzled my knee. I rested my hand on his head, twisting my fingers in his short hair. He kissed my thigh. I waited for him to speak—Diggs is usually a talker, and once you hit the bedroom he knows all the right things to say. Tonight, he was silent. His big hands were warm on my thighs; his scruff abraded sensitive skin as he nipped, kissed, tongued his way farther up.
I ran one hand along his back, my nails lightly scoring corded muscle while my other hand remained on his head. Before long, I stopped thinking about all he wasn’t saying; I whispered his name and a dozen other things I don’t really remember, that tension spiraling as he worshiped every inch of me.
When I came apart, there was barely time to recover before Diggs’ jeans were off and he was inside me, my legs wrapped around his waist and not a centimeter of space between us. His mouth at my ear, he whispered just three words before we both tripped over the edge.
“I adore you.”
◊◊◊◊◊
“Are you okay?” I asked, an indeterminate amount of time later. I was still getting my breath back. We were crowded together on the couch, his arms around me. I kissed his jaw, despite my puffy lip.
“I think so,” he said.
“You can talk to me if you need to,” I said.
“I know.”
He didn’t talk, though. Neither did I. Time passed. It got chilly.
“We should get back to work,” I finally said.
“I know,” he agreed.
I started to move; he didn’t. I shifted to look at him. “You’re not moving.”
“Two more minutes,” he said.
I nodded. Things went quiet, the seconds ticking past. If he wasn’t going to bring it up, someone really should. “Listen, the stuff Laurie said, about the reverend wanting to hurt you—the things he thought about you… None of this is your fault. Nothing you did could have changed any of this.”
“I know that,” he said. I wondered, though, if he really did.
I shifted to look at him. His eyes were the intense, stormy blue I love, his forehead furrowed. I smoothed the furrows with my index finger. “You know, even in the worst of it, somehow life with you really beats life without you.”
He kissed me, somehow managing to get my mouth without hurting my bruised lip. Diggs is magic that way. He wrapped his arms around me and held me tight, laying his head at my breast. “I love you,” he mumbled into my chest.
“Is that directed at me or the girls?”
“All three of you,” he assured me.
I ran my fingers through his hair, his head still pillowed on my breast. Thought of all the shit we’d been through over the years—the divorces and the marriages and the drugs and the endless fighting. And, of course, Payson Isle and my father and Diggs’ father, J. and Kat and whatever we were on the cusp of here in Littlehope. And then, I thought of
the people we’d been. Me, at ten, fifteen, nineteen… Now. Diggs had been there, every step of the way.
“It was always you,” I said. His hand stilled. He waited for me to finish, or at least explain myself. It wasn’t an easy thing for me—I really hate talking about this kind of crap. Somehow, it’s always worth trying, for him. “I saw who you were—when you weren’t high as a kite, I mean. Or nailing everything with tits in a hundred-mile radius. And even at the worst, you were always…careful. Of my heart. I knew that first summer we were together, I’d never find someone else. It wouldn’t ever be the same.”
He held me closer, his ear pressed to my heart. Diggs isn’t the kind of man who asks for comfort. He’ll ask for sex; he’ll hold me when I need it. But this… It was the first time I could remember when it felt like the only thing I could give him, the only thing he needed, was this—the two of us, quiet, knowing that there was no one else on the planet I would rather have in my arms.
“Does that mean you’ll marry me?” he said.
I tensed. I would have gotten up, I think, but he still seemed very much opposed to the idea. “I’m thinking about it.”
“What are you thinking?”
I rolled my eyes. “Whether or not it would be a good idea.”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Diggs.” I pulled him up, so I could look him in the eye. “We don’t even know what we’re going to do after this—after we take J. down. I mean…have you even thought about that? You and me together when we’re on the run is one thing. But when we’re just normal people living a normal life, how well do you think we’ll do? How well do you think you’ll do?”
“You’re saying I can’t do normal, and you can?” That was a challenge in his eyes if ever I’d seen one.
“I was a respected journalist married to a respectable professor for six years,” I reminded him.
“A respectable professor who was twenty years older than you. And an asshole. I was a semi-respected reporter married to a very respectable accountant for three years. What’s your point?”
I had to think about it, since I’d kind of lost track. I decided to abandon any conventional arguments, and go with the question I was most curious about at the moment.
“What do you want to do when this is all over?”
“Be with you,” he said, without a moment’s hesitation.
I slapped his naked chest. “Besides that. Where do you want to go? What do you want to do for work? I’m assuming if we survive this, we won’t suddenly be independently wealthy.”
“You don’t think Cameron would be willing to support us for the rest of our days?” He got serious when I arched my eyebrow at him. “Okay. Honestly? I don’t know. I know I want to be with you. I don’t think I want to move to the suburbs, and I know I never want to be an editor again. At least, not an editor with a dozen reporters I have to manage. What do you want to do?”
Secretly, I’d actually been giving this a lot of thought. When I wasn’t thinking about taking down J., of course. Or what horrors my past contained. Or whether or not Diggs and I would even survive all this madness.
“Do you remember that first summer we worked together?” I asked. “Running Buzz’s paper? Late nights doing research, checking sources…”
“Making love…” Diggs finished for me. “Making love some more.”
I warmed at the look in his eye. “Well, yeah… That was a key part of that summer. But the rest of it was fun too, wasn’t it? Just the two of us, accountable to no one else.”
“You’re saying you want to start a paper. I just said I don’t want to be an editor again.”
“Not a regular paper that covers a dozen stories, and no employees. Just the two of us, and one story at a time. We could have our own website. Do a regular podcast. Travel wherever we want. You said you hate this town—so let’s not stay here. We pack up—with Einstein—and we go.”
“Are we married in this scenario?”
“Is it a deal breaker if we’re not?”
He frowned. I was genuinely surprised to realize he was serious about this. “Is that a no?” he said.
I shook my head, but before I could answer, my phone buzzed again. I held up my hand. “Hang on, it’s Cameron. Hold that thought.”
I reached for my clothes and flipped my phone open. “What’s up?” I asked, pulling my long underwear on at the same time. It was creepy talking to Cameron when I was naked, even if he couldn’t see me. Somehow, it felt like he’d just…know.
“Have you heard anything from Jenny yet?” he asked.
“No—I actually called to ask you the same thing a while ago, but you didn’t answer. Monty found her car parked out near Edie Woolwich’s place. Why? Have you heard anything else?”
I put the phone on speaker so Diggs could listen in, and set it on the desk. “Jenny hasn’t contacted me,” he said. “What else is going on?”
I figured he didn’t mean Diggs’ and me canoodling on the Trib sofa or Diggs’ sudden interest in another trip down the aisle, so I stuck with the headlines. “The last I knew, Jack was trying to get Bennett’s Shanty shut down for the night. Oh—and Trent Willett just showed up.” Dead silence. “Cameron?”
“Trent Willett?”
“The FBI agent—the guy who shot me last year, and followed—”
“I know who he is. How did he find out?”
“How the hell should I know?” I said. “We didn’t do a lot of chatting the last time I saw him.” I could almost hear Cameron frowning through the phone. “What do you want us to do?”
“Stay away from him,” Cameron said without hesitation. “He’s dangerous—and given his past actions, he obviously doesn’t care what happens to you.”
“But if he wants to take down J.,” Diggs interrupted, “doesn’t that technically make him someone on our side? Maybe we should just pull him in.”
“No,” Cameron said unequivocally. “We don’t know what other interests Willett might have—I’m not convinced he isn’t working with J. himself. Stay away from him.”
Another call came in from Monty while Cameron was still ordering us around. I cut him off.
“Okay, got it—no talking to Willett. Is there anything else, Mein Kommandant?”
“That’s it,” he said. He hesitated. “You’re safe there? Keeping a low profile?”
“We are,” I said. “We’re checking in with Jack and Monty periodically, though. Trying to figure out what happens next.”
“Good. Just stay out of sight, as much as possible. Where are you now?”
“The Trib. We’re just doing some research.” Diggs smirked at me.
“Good,” Cameron murmured, almost inaudible through a wave of static. “Contact me if anything changes—in particular, if you get some idea of where Willett is headed next.”
“Wait,” I said. “Does that mean you’re not leaving the island?”
He hung up without answering. Diggs was already redressed and back at the computer typing away. I settled at my former spot at the edge of the desk. His hand immediately found my ankle again.
“About that ring,” I said.
He smiled. It seemed genuine. “Don’t worry about it right now. I just wanted you to know I’m serious.”
I leaned in and kissed his cheek. “You’ve made that pretty clear. Now…what are you looking at?”
“Call Monty back,” he reminded me. “Something could be up.”
Monty answered on the first ring. “Tell me I interrupted something good,” he said.
“I will not,” I said. “What’s going on?”
There were voices in the background—several of them, it sounded like. “I’m at Edie’s place. I was taking a look around and noticed one of the windows open on the second floor, and footprints in the snow. I went in just to let them know something might be up. Turns out that guy you were worried about earlier is running loose.”
“Nate?”
“Yeah—that’s the one. I know I was su
pposed to be keeping an eye on Jenny, but that car’s still out there under about six inches of snow now. I don’t know where the hell she is, but I’ll keep looking.”
“Okay,” I agreed, uneasy now. “Be careful, all right?”
“Now what fun would that be?”
“I’m serious,” I said.
Diggs looked up, frowning. “What’s up?” he mouthed.
I held up a finger for him to wait. “Monty—careful, all right? With a capital K.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll check in again shortly.”
I hung up. Diggs raised his eyebrows and waited for the story. “Nate’s missing—I think he climbed out his bedroom window. Monty’s over there now.”
“And Jenny?” Diggs asked.
“He hasn’t seen her, but he says her car is there. I don’t like it. Something’s happening, I can feel it.”
I returned to the desk, where I looked over Diggs’ shoulder at the computer. “What are you looking at now?”
“The coordinates. I’m just trying to figure out what they could be targeting, if they’re based here and they’re really considering hitting tonight.”
“Honestly?” I said. “It doesn’t make sense to me why they would, you know? Why wouldn’t they at least wait for the storm to blow over?”
“Maybe they’re planning to use the storm to their advantage—emergency vehicles crippled, the cops out of range… It would be the perfect way to send a message to Jenny to stop screwing with them.”
“Where else do you think they’d strike?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m just saying it might be smart to expand our search.”
That headache I’d finally gotten rid of returned with a vengeance. “How are we supposed to do that? We’re in the middle of a blizzard—what are we supposed to do, just start cruising the countryside?”
“Would you relax, woman?” he said. “I’m not saying I think it’s far from here. I’m just saying, maybe the target itself isn’t in Littlehope. It could be Cushing, Rockland, Thomaston, Warren…”
I put my head in my hands.
“Sorry. Why don’t you give Jack a call,” Diggs suggested. “See what he thinks.”
I did, then waited uneasily for him to answer. Things were quiet now, I knew, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that this brief respite was about to end—and none of us would like whatever came in its place.