“I don’t plan to need six shots.” She looked the gun over, nodding in approval. “I like this one better.”
“Keep it, then. And if you should happen to need more than six, you’ll have the derringer as backup.”
Josh set both guns on the bed and reached for one of the holsters, held it up. “You ever use a shoulder holster?”
“Nope.”
“Handy as hell. We’ll have to adjust it to fit you, though. Put it on under a bulky sweater and no one will be the wiser. Just make sure you can grab it in a hurry.” He glanced at her, rapidly adjusting the straps to an approximation of the right size. “We’ll adjust it once you get it on. Here.”
He held out the holster. She took it. Then he peeled off his shirt and grabbed his own holster. “Put it on like this.” He held the holster up to show her. She wasn’t moving, though, and when he looked at her, her eyes were on his chest, not on the holster he held in his hands.
The way she was looking at him made his blood heat. But then she looked away, licked her lips. Set the holster down and peeled her sweater off over her head. She picked the holster up again, held it awkwardly. “Like this?”
Josh cleared his throat, told himself he’d seen her naked, so there was really no earthly reason why the sight of her standing there in her lacy purple camisole should turn him into a drooling idiot. “Here, let me show you.” He put his own holster down, took hers from her hands, moved closer to her. But before he could slide the holster onto her, her palms were touching his chest, sliding slowly over his skin. Josh closed his eyes and let the holster go. It landed on the floor, and he kicked it aside, his hands going to her waist to pull her closer. Silk against his skin, under his hands. She was soft, warm, beneath it. He needed to taste that smooth skin again, and he did, bending his head to kiss her shoulder, the crook of her neck, the hollow underneath her ear. Her hands slid around to his back, and she returned every kiss. His shoulder, his neck, his chin.
With a low growl, he pushed her backward onto the bed, shoving the weapons aside with a sweep of his arm. His body covered hers, and he ground his hips against her as he finally took her mouth. She opened to him. Her lips, her legs. All of her. God, she had a way of turning him on like no woman ever had. He’d decided this was a bad idea. That he shouldn’t do it again. But he’d be damned if he could stop himself. It wasn’t just wanting her—it was a compulsion, a need that couldn’t be denied. He needed her like he needed air.
He worked one hand in between their straining bodies, fumbled with her jeans to get them undone, then managed to shove a hand down the front of them, inside her panties and into the warmth, the wetness, beyond. She shivered at his touch, so he made it deeper, probing inside, one finger, then two. She moaned his name around his tongue, encouraging him. So he used his free hand to slide the straps of the camisole from her shoulders, pushing it lower, baring her. And then he slid his mouth from hers and went to work on her breasts, first laving, then sucking hard on one stiff nipple. Her hands gripped the back of his head, and she arched her back. He nipped with his teeth and she whimpered, so he did it again. He moved his fingers inside her still deeper, then attacked her other breast with his free hand, pinching its little nipple as he bit down.
“Good, baby?” he asked, mouthing her with the words.
“Good, more. Harder, Josh.”
Even as she spoke, she shoved her jeans and panties down, lifting her hips against him and then freeing him of his jeans. She wrapped her hand around him, guided him. And then he was inside her, plunging into her, suckling and biting and pinching and driving deep inside her.
The way she clung to him, pressed against him, matched his every move with one of her own—it was as if she could read his mind. As if they were one being. And she was the most enthusiastic lover he’d ever had, whispering to him, telling him what she wanted, needed, snapping her hips to meet his, wrapping her legs around his waist to take him deeper.
He would have hated himself for not lasting longer except that she climaxed just before he did, her heels digging into his back as her spasms and cries sent him spiraling over the brink.
He collapsed on top of her, panting, breathless. “Damn, Beth, you’re incredible.”
“Mmm.” She nuzzled his neck with her nose, kissed it and sighed. Then she went stiff, hearing what he heard. A car pulling up out front.
“Shit.” He got off her, yanked his jeans up, pulled on his holster and jammed the gun into it. Then he reached for her. “Here, babe.” He put her holster on her, over the camisole. “We’ll tighten it up later.” He thrust the .38 inside. “Put on a sweater.”
She spun to snatch a sweater from the nearest pile of clothes—she’d been sorting, and most of them hadn’t yet been put away. He saw her tuck the derringer into her jeans even as he pulled his own sweater over his head and started out of the room. She was behind him within a second, had to hear the footsteps on the front porch.
Beth came out of the bedroom into the hall, met his eyes, and there was no mistaking the fear in hers. But there was determination there, too. God, she was something.
“I expected him to come in quietly,” she said, pulling her sweater down over her waist, adjusting it to hide the bulge of the weapons.
He took the lead, heading down the stairs and toward the front door, never standing directly in line with it. He was just about to peek through the curtain when someone knocked, startling him.
Beth was standing about four feet back. Not far enough, in his opinion. “Who’s there?” she called.
“Chief Frankie,” a voice replied. “And, uh—and company.”
Beth frowned at Josh. He shrugged and moved to the nearest window to take a look outside. A half dozen people were standing on the front porch. A few he recognized. Most he didn’t, and he didn’t like that. But then Beth was beside him, her breath warm on his neck as she leaned in close to look outside. “What in the world…?”
“More cars are pulling up,” he said, nodding toward the headlights. “What do you want to do?”
She lifted her brows. “Open the door?”
He sighed, but went to the door and opened it. Chief Frankie stood front and center, a small crowd gathered behind her.
“What’s going on, Chief?” Joshua asked, even as Beth crowded up beside him.
Frankie shrugged. “I came by to check on things. These others—well, I’m not real sure. But my best guess would be that they read their newspapers.”
“Darn straight we did,” a woman said from behind her. “Beth Slocum—or Marcum or—well, hell, you’ve lived here a year, girl. Maude loved you enough to leave her home to you, and in my book, that makes you one of us.”
“That’s right,” someone else said. “And in Blackberry, we take care of our own.”
Frankie lifted her copper-red eyebrows, glancing from Josh to Beth.
Beth tapped Josh on the shoulder, then stepped aside and said, “Come on inside. It’s cold out there.”
The chief backed away and stood beside the door, her eyes telling Josh without a word that she would make sure no strangers were among those filing into Beth’s living room.
One woman was carrying a pie, another a cake, another a bouquet of flowers. Before Josh knew it, the living room was full, and one of the women was hustling Beth into the kitchen, talking about putting on a fresh pot of coffee.
“Hold on a moment, sir. Just wait right there,” the chief said, drawing Josh’s attention back to the doorway.
A large man stood there, turned partly to the side as the far smaller woman in the police uniform waylaid him, apparently because she didn’t recognize him. Josh did, though.
“It’s okay, Chief. This is Arthur Stanton, the man I told you would be coming. Art, this is Blackberry’s Chief of Police, Frankie Parker.”
Art looked surprised, but hid it quickly and offered a hand to shake Frankie’s. “Nice to meet you. Good to see you’re on the job here.” He glanced inside. “What is this, some kind of
party?”
Josh followed his gaze to see that several women had cleared off the buffet in the dining room, draped it in one of Maude’s crisp white tablecloths and were setting food they had brought there. A whole group had gathered around Beth. Snippets of their conversation reached him from the noise in the room.
“…so sorry…”
“…. you don’t need to go…”
“…for having misjudged you…”
“…didn’t know, didn’t understand.”
“…proud to have you tutor our daughter…”
“…anything we can do to help you through this…”
“…Maude would have wanted you to stay…”
“Blackberry is lucky to have a woman like you living here.”
Beth seemed to sense his eyes on her, met them through the ever growing throng, found them, clung to them. He saw something he had never seen before shining there amid the tears that seemed to be gathering.
He saw peace.
Mordecai drove past the old house slowly, because driving quickly would have been impossible, with the cars, pickups and SUVs lining both sides of the road. People were exiting vehicles, some of them carrying covered dishes, others empty-handed. They were bundled in coats, their breath making steam clouds in the chilly air. The house blazed with light and movement. It looked as if there were a party going on inside.
He glanced down at the newspaper on the seat beside him. “No doubt they’re rallying around her. This pile of garbage makes her sound like a saint. No mention of her lies, her betrayal.”
He kept driving, knowing he couldn’t get close to her tonight. “What if she leaves before I get to her?” he asked.
Don’t you think we would have told you if she were about to flee? Where is your faith, Mordecai?
He sighed. “The newspaper says—”
Stop speculating and trust Spirit.
He closed his eyes and prayed for patience, pulling his car, a gas efficient blue hatchback this time, onto the shoulder near the end of the line of vehicles. No one would notice one more in the pack. Then he got out, hopped over the ditch and moved carefully through the scrub lot beside the Bickham property. He kept to the cover of scraggly trees and brush, tall dry weeds and grasses brushing his legs as he walked. It was dark. He wouldn’t be seen. He needed to get a closer look at what was going on at the house, and he thought the woods in the rear would be the safest vantage point.
He half expected the guides to forbid him from this little expedition, but no voices rose in objection. It was cold tonight, a visitation perhaps from the icy breath of the winter ahead or the death to come. To her, maybe to both of them. Maybe if they couldn’t be together in life, they could be in death. Assuming he could cleanse the stains from her soul in time to save her from hell. And assuming, of course, he could get to the boy in time. The guides wouldn’t let him leave until he had connected to his heir—done whatever they wanted him to do to leave his powers behind.
He trudged through the waist-high weeds until he reached the denser cover of the woods; then he moved behind the house, keeping just inside the tree line.
But before he’d decided on the perfect spot from which to approach the house for a closer look, he heard a harsh whisper.
“What in the heck is going on in there?”
A boy’s voice. Mordecai went motionless, straining his eyes in the darkness.
“I don’t know, Bry. But we’re never going to get in there now,” a female whispered back.
It was the boy and his little girlfriend, Mordecai realized. All day he’d been wondering where the young man and his female companion were hiding, whether they had told anyone where Mordecai was staying or what sort of car he was driving when they’d seen him. He’d spent the entire day preparing, in case he should have to flee the house. Everything was ready. He’d taken the computers down and stored them in the back seat of the newest car. Oh, he had no doubt a good forensics team could prove he had been in the house with little effort—a stray hair, a used water glass, a thousand other minuscule traces of his presence would remain long after he left the house behind. He didn’t plan to leave a house for them to search. The name on the rental agreement was that of the unfortunate Oliver Abercrombie, a man whose body might never be found. The house would not be readily connected to him. He’d covered everything.
“I’m going for a closer look,” the girl whispered. And then she was out of the trees, her body silhouetted in the lights that spilled from the house as she crept closer. She wore a down-filled coat, and her hair was bundled up beneath a knit cap.
Who was she?
The girl is unimportant. She’ll only distract you from your purpose here. It’s the boy you need to get to. Don’t forget, Mordecai, that boy is his son.
“But she knows where I’m staying as well as he does,” he whispered.
Where you’re staying doesn’t matter. It’s your mission that matters, Mordecai.
His mission. God, it all got so twisted around in his mind. He had come here to destroy Lizzie. To tear everything away from her and make her realize the error of her ways. To humble her before the living God, to bring her to her knees before Him.
And then to kill her. Unless the guides changed that order.
But that wasn’t the entirety of it, and he knew that too well. His priorities were skewed due to the power of his emotions. He was too human to be entirely detached. He needed clarity of mind, and God, it was getting harder and harder to cling to that. His mission was to locate and train his heir, the child who would carry on when Mordecai left this world. That child was Bryan.
The guides were right. The girl didn’t matter.
He approached the boy, moving silently, slowly. But before he reached the lad, the girl came creeping back to his side. “I can’t get close enough without being seen, Bry. Maybe we should get out of here, try again tomorrow.”
“No way. We need to tell someone where Mordecai is hiding out. Tonight. Even if it means blowing our cover and admitting I never left town.”
The girl’s head bent lower, and she sighed.
Mordecai moved closer, closer, and then stepped on a twig that snapped like a gunshot in the night. Bryan’s head swung toward him, his eyes widening as they picked out Mordecai’s face, locked with his steady gaze. The girl stared, too, but the lights from the house stood at her back, so she was little more than a dark silhouette.
Bryan choked out one word, his wide eyes fixed to Mordecai’s in the darkness. “Run!” Then he turned into the forest, clasping the girl’s hand, and followed his own advice.
Chapter Nineteen
Bryan ran, Dawn’s hand in his own. He had no idea where they were going, except away from Mordecai Young. God, he wished Dawn had taken off in the opposite direction. He wished he’d thought to hide her in some brush and keep on running. He didn’t think Young had realized who she was yet, and he was afraid to think of what would happen if he ever found out. So they ran, and the man ran after them.
Chills raced up Bryan’s spine as his brain tried to wrap itself around this situation. It didn’t seem real that he was being chased through the forest by a crazed killer.
“Bryan! Wait, I must talk with you!”
Bryan didn’t reply, because doing so would take much-needed air, and he was already starting to run out of breath. Beside him, Dawn panted roughly, and her hand jerked tighter on his at the sound of the man’s voice. That he had called out to Bryan, not to Dawn, confirmed Bryan’s suspicion: Mordecai didn’t know that it was his own daughter he was chasing through the night.
Running wasn’t easy. The woods grew thicker, darker, with every yard they gained. Roots and stumps tripped him every third step, and when he wasn’t stumbling over them, Dawn was. He tried to help her, tried to use his arms to push limbs and low branches aside, but they were both being smacked repeatedly anyway. The ground sloped upward, and the farther they ran, the steeper the slope.
After twenty minutes of nonstop, p
anic-powered flight, Bryan paused, bending over, hands on his thighs, breaths rushing in and out of his lungs as his heart pounded. Dawn sank to her knees, gasping for breath.
Bryan tried his cell phone, then hers. No signal. He looked behind them, knowing he couldn’t listen for their pursuer the way he was panting, with his own heartbeat thrumming in his ears. His face was hot. He couldn’t see anyone coming, but then again, the forest was thick with darkness. He could only see clearly for a distance of about a yard. “I think we lost him,” he whispered. Then, sighing, breathing a little easier, Bryan rolled his eyes at his own stupidity. “Of course we lost him. The guy has to be in his forties. No way could he keep up with a pair of teens in the peak of health, running uphill, in the dark.”
Dawn lifted her head, stared at him. “He’s forty-eight,” she whispered. “And don’t underestimate him.”
Something moved behind and below them, and then a voice came, clear and kind. “Why are you running from me, Bryan?”
Bryan straightened up so fast he almost lost his balance, and Dawn shot to her feet and gripped his arm.
“I’m not going to hurt you, son. I only want to talk to you.”
“How the hell did he keep up with us?” Bryan whispered. “He doesn’t even sound winded.”
Tugging his hand, Dawn started moving again, angling toward the left this time. In seconds they were moving fast again, pouring it on, lunging up the hill with every ounce of energy they possessed. Bryan tripped once, fell on his face on the damp, spongy ground, and because she was holding on so tightly, Dawn fell, too, landing right beside him. They pushed themselves up, helping each other, and kept right on going. They pushed, pushed, pushed, and Bryan kept thinking they would have to come to a road or a town or something sooner or later, and then he could flag someone down and get some help. Or find a phone and call his father.
God, he would love to be able to hear his father’s voice right now.
But they didn’t come to a road or a town. The woods only got thicker and darker, the hillside steeper. And, grimly, Bryan remembered Beth’s warning. She’d told him the forest spanned some twenty thousand acres.
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