Deception Lake

by Paula Graves

  The look in his dark eyes should have given her plenty of warning, but she still found herself slamming forward into her seat belt as he whipped the truck onto the shoulder of the road and put it into Park.

  “I realize that I owe you money and an apology for the things I did, but that goes only so far.” Jack spoke in a low, twangy growl that reminded her of a week she’d spent in Wyoming when she was just eighteen, partying with frat boys who’d taken her along for their spring break trip out West. She hadn’t even been attending the university where frat boys had been students; they’d picked her up at the little diner where she’d been working part-time as a waitress and brought her along for the ride.

  That she hadn’t been left raped or dead in Jackson was a miracle; sure, the frat boys had tired of her quickly when she wasn’t willing to be shared around the group, but at least they hadn’t forced her to do anything. They’d just abandoned her to find her own way back to school in Massachusetts, and thanks to a very nice cattle rancher and his wife, she’d managed to scrape up enough cash for the bus ride home.

  The cattleman had spoken in the same low, slow Western drawl that Jack had just used, with the same dark tone of sad disapproval. She felt herself folding in on herself, like one of those hard-shelled armadillos she used to watch amble across the backyard of her childhood home.

  “I don’t know where we’re going,” she answered.

  “And you’re not going to tell me who we’re running from.”

  “I don’t know that, either.”

  Neither of her answers was a complete lie. She wasn’t sure where he’d be going once she ditched him. And she wasn’t sure whether the man who’d accosted her that afternoon was the same man who’d shot at her tonight, or what his exact reason for targeting her might be.

  So many reasons came to mind.

  “We should get back on the road,” she said after Jack sat silent for another long moment. “We’re sitting ducks on this shoulder.”

  “Which brings me back to the question, where are we going?”

  “Poe Creek,” she answered.

  “And that’s where?”

  “North on this highway.”

  His lips thinned to a grim line as he put the truck in drive and eased back onto the highway. “I wish I’d just taken your advice and given that seven grand to charity.”

  “Not too late,” she muttered.

  “You know damn well it is too late, Mara.”

  His words fell into a thick, tense silence broken only by engine noise, the squeak of the windshield wipers and the relentless drumbeat of rain on the roof of the truck. She kept her gaze angled forward, on the headlights cutting through torrents of rain that looked as if heaven’s floodgates had all opened at the same time on this narrow stretch of four-lane highway.

  The dashboard clock read eight-twenty. She’d left the house at five till eight. How was it possible that less than a half hour had passed?

  “We should go back to Purgatory,” Jack said a couple of minutes later. “My brother-in-law is a deputy sheriff in Alabama. He can help.”

  “No.”

  “Are you running from the police or something, Mara?” He asked the question with a hint of humor in his tone, as if he thought he knew her so well, knew that she couldn’t possibly take one step over the line between right and wrong.

  He didn’t know her at all.

  “I just don’t want to involve anyone else in my problems.”

  “Too late for that, darlin’.” There was that western Wyoming twang again, gravelly, deep and compelling, with just a hint of Texas at the edges.

  She didn’t let herself look at him. His voice was disarming enough. She didn’t need to see the lean angles of his jaw or the dimples that played around the corners of his mouth when he smiled. She had a lifelong habit of falling for the wrong men, and she knew Jack Drummond was as wrong as it got. In so many ways.

  Jack switched to the left lane and began to slow down. She sat forward in alarm. “What are you doing?”

  “Turning around,” he answered as he swung the truck into a U-turn and headed toward Purgatory.

  “Jack, no. Please.” She reached across the seat and grabbed his arm.

  He shot a look at her. “What are you so damn afraid of, Mara?”

  “Please, let’s just go to Poe Creek like we planned.”

  “Like you planned. I wasn’t consulted. And you won’t tell me what’s really going on here. Besides, my truck, my way.”

  “Then let me out. I’ll walk.”

  “In the pouring rain.” Skepticism edged his voice. “For miles.”

  Before she had a chance to come up with a response, the rain-washed road visible ahead in the truck’s headlights took on an eerie red glow. A minute later, she spotted red flashing lights on the road ahead, coming from multiple emergency vehicles.

  Sinking a little lower in the seat, she peered through the windshield, trying to see through the rain to get a better idea of what was happening on the road ahead.

  “Accident?” Jack murmured.

  It was hard to make out their exact location in the driving rain, but she thought the vehicle ahead must be pretty close to Salvation Bridge, which crossed Black Creek about a mile outside Purgatory’s tiny downtown district. As Jack slowed to a stop behind a couple of other vehicles that had been ahead of them on the road, she could just make out the back of a tractor trailer rig lying on its side.

  “Truck jackknifed,” she said bluntly as one of the cars ahead of them pulled a U-turn and started back in the other direction. “Must be blocking the whole bridge.”

  “Is there another way into town?” he asked as he and the car ahead of him pulled forward to where a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer was making sweeping arm gestures to indicate they should turn around, as well. As she opened her mouth to answer, he slanted a hard look at her. “And would you tell me the truth if there was?”

  “You know you can go back by the lake road,” she answered, trying not to let her anxiety show. “If you want to risk driving past a guy with a rifle who knows what your truck looks like.”

  His mouth tightened, but he didn’t reply.

  A few moments later, they passed the turnoff to Deception Lake, and she let herself breathe deeply again.

  Jack broke the silence a couple of miles farther up the road. “What’s the plan, Mara? Since you’re getting your way, the least you can do is let me in on it.”

  “There are motels there. It’s on the way to a lot of tourist destinations that stay booked up, so the extra motels help ease the overbooking situation.”

  “And motels are going to solve your problem with the gun-toting crazy person how?”

  “I need a safe place to think.”

  “To think. Think about what?”

  About ditching you, she thought, keeping her expression neutral. “About who could be doing this to me.”

  Jack was silent for so long she couldn’t keep from taking a peek at him. He was staring forward through the windshield, his eyes narrowed and his lean jaw set like stone.

  “What?” she asked when the silence between them stretched to the snapping point.

  He slowed the truck and pulled over onto the shoulder again. His gaze turned to meet hers, and in the dim glow of the dashboard lights, his eyes were as black as midnight. When he spoke, the words came out in a low rumble. “Who the hell are you?”

  Chapter Five

  Jack wasn’t sure what he’d meant by the question he’d just asked, but the expression that flitted across Mara’s face at his words sent a queasy sensation through his gut.

  It had been sheer, unadulterated terror.

  Her expression shuttered almost immediately, replaced by a stony facade as impenetrable as the rainy night. “You know who I am.”

  No, he thought, I don’t. “You’re very different from what I remember.”

  “People change.” One shoulder gave a delicate shrug. “A lot has happened in the past four years.�
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  “You lost your sister.”

  “Yes.” The cool stone expression didn’t waver, but in her eyes he caught a flicker of something that might have been pain.

  “I’m sorry I never got to meet Mallory.”

  “She wouldn’t have liked you anyway.” She turned her gaze forward, as if she could actually see through the rain-streaked windshield.

  He couldn’t hold back a soft laugh. “I imagine not.”

  “We shouldn’t keep sitting here on the side of the road,” she said after he said nothing more. “We should find somewhere to stay for the night and then we can talk in the morning.”

  He had the distinct feeling that if he took his eyes off her for more than a minute, she wouldn’t be around in the morning.

  Would that be so bad? he wondered as he pulled the truck back onto the highway. She’d clearly been on her way out of town when she ran into the man with the gun, and who could blame her? She’d already been accosted. And earlier, she’d run into the man who’d not only broken her heart but emptied out her savings account. He was damn lucky she’d never pressed charges, although technically, she’d consented to his borrowing the money.

  He’d just lied about why he wanted it, and when he’d lost it all—and lost her faith in him that horrible night in an Amarillo bar—he headed out of town and left her to pick up the pieces.

  He hated thinking about that time of his life, hated what he’d done. What he’d become. Maybe he’d never really loved her the way she’d loved him, but he’d known she was a special person, someone who certainly hadn’t deserved any of the hell he’d brought into her life.

  She deserved to be happy, and she wasn’t. She deserved to be safe, and instead she was being threatened and hunted for reasons he couldn’t fathom. What had the sweet, simple Texas girl he’d known back in Amarillo gotten herself involved in?

  He had to know. He had to help.

  And then, maybe, he’d feel as if he’d finally paid his debt to her.

  When they came upon Poe Creek several minutes later, the little town seemed to rise out of the rainstorm like an abandoned ship suddenly cresting the waves of a churning sea. Central to the small town square was the alabaster-front town hall, gleaming pale and pristine in the truck’s headlights. Their reflection off its gleaming exterior cast a ghostly glow on the scene that sent an unexpected tremor through Jack’s gut.

  “The motels start showing up just down the road.” Mara’s husky voice broke the tense silence in the truck. “The better places will probably be booked up already—there’s always some sort of festival or another going on around here during the spring—but we can probably find a couple of rooms at one of the seedier places.”

  She was only partially right. The first three places he stopped were completely booked up, and at the fourth place, a boxy two-story brick building with a flickering sign out front proclaiming it to be the Mountain Hideaway Motor Lodge, the bored desk clerk informed him there was only one room left, but it offered two beds. “Best I can do,” she said through a stifled yawn. “The Smoky Mountain Arts and Culture Festival is this weekend.”

  Two beds was better than nothing. It wasn’t as if either he or Mara was exactly a seething bundle of uncontrollable lust, right? They could handle sharing a room until morning.

  “I’ll take it.”

  He paid with cash, and the clerk didn’t ask for any ID, so he didn’t offer any. He supposed that would allow them to remain anonymous and hidden, at least until morning.

  “One room?” Mara looked at him as if he’d just stolen another seven grand from her when he told her about the room.

  “Like you said, some sort of festival in the area. Arts and crafts or something.”

  “I hate festivals,” she growled.

  “Since when? You used to be a festival fanatic.”

  Her cool blue gaze flicked up to meet his. “A lot has changed.”

  “I guess it has.” He reached for her duffel bag and backpack, intending to carry them to the room for her.

  She pulled them more tightly to her and shook her head. “I’ve got them.” She opened the passenger door and dropped lightly to the pavement of the parking lot below.

  “Room 126,” he said as he dashed behind her to the walkway that ran the length of the first floor. The walkway for the second floor provided cover from the rain, and as Mara walked ahead to their room, he took the opportunity to shake some of the rain off his hair and clothes. His Carhartt waterproof jacket was probably a little warm for a Tennessee spring, but the rain rolled right off him, dripping to the concrete walkway beneath his feet.

  He could’ve used the Stetson he’d left in his hotel room, however.

  He wondered what Riley imagined him to be doing right now. Probably nothing as remotely strange as what he was actually doing, he realized, a grim smile curving his mouth as he used the key the clerk had given him to unlock the motel room door and let himself and Mara inside.

  There were two beds, as promised. But that was about all the furniture there was in the room.

  “On a scale of one to hazmat level four, how bad do you think the bed linens are?” Mara dropped her backpack on one of the beds and cast a baleful gaze in his direction. “This was really the only room available in town?”

  “That’s what the clerk said.”

  “He probably just wanted your business.”

  “She. And if she wanted our business so much, she’d have given us two rooms like I asked.”

  For a second, Mara slanted a look his way that reeked of suspicion.

  He frowned. “You think I asked for one room on purpose?”

  She didn’t answer, but her own brow furrowed in response as she looked down at the duffel bag she’d dropped on the floor at her feet.

  “God, Mara. I know you think I’m a complete ass, but manipulating situations like this has never been my style. You know that.”

  Her lips pressed tightly together, as if she were trying very hard not to throw a retort back at him. Mara had never liked confrontation. She had never really fought back. She’d certainly never bristled with fury the way she was doing at the moment, her rain-curled hair a deep, shimmery red in the harsh motel room lighting and her eyes blazing cobalt-blue, as if her anger had sent electrical charges racing through her body, sparking explosions wherever they met resistance.

  He felt an answering energy coiling low in his belly, a jolt of pure sexual adrenaline that caught him entirely flat-footed. He’d wanted Mara during their time together, as he would have wanted any attractive, available woman. But he’d never felt anything quite as intense as the potent wave of desire that rolled up his body to settle in the center of his chest like a blazing ball of fire.

  Maybe he was just reacting to her unexpected fury. But whatever it was shooting sparks through his nervous system, it was making the tiny hotel room feel considerably smaller.

  He dug into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a couple of packs of crackers he’d bought from the rickety vending machine in the motel office. “Cheese or peanut butter?”

  She dropped wearily onto the bed closest to the door and looked up at him through a lock of hair that had fallen halfway across her eyes. “Cheese.” She bent and pulled the duffel bag up on the bed beside her, examining the single bullet hole visible in one corner of the bag. “I guess it wasn’t a through-and-through after all,” she murmured, her complexion going pale.

  He quelled the urge to sit on the bed beside her and give her a comforting hug. “Anything damaged in there?”

  She unzipped the duffel and dug through the contents, pulling out a folded pair of socks that had been ripped by the bullet. “Seems to be the only thing.” Digging around a little more, she came out with a misshapen slug. “And here’s the culprit.”

  The sock must have slowed the velocity of the projectile, he guessed, trying not to dwell on how badly the situation might have gone if the assailant with the rifle had made a better shot.

 
He sat across from her on the second bed. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  Her eyes flickered toward his without meeting them. “I’m sure.”

  “And you have no idea why someone’s targeted you?”

  She kept her gaze averted and shook her head.

  He didn’t believe her, but he decided pushing her on the topic wasn’t going to solve anything. Maybe she just needed time to decompress. Time to feel a little safer, a little less hunted.

  Meanwhile, he had no desire to eat a pack of crackers without something to wash them down. The drink machine in the motel office had been out of service, but he had a cooler full of iced soft drinks in the back of his truck that he hadn’t yet unpacked from their morning of fishing.

  He handed her the pack of cheese crackers and started toward the door. “Be right back.”

  He felt her gaze on him but forced himself not to look back at her as he left the room and dashed through the driving rain to the truck. He hauled the cooler from the bed of the truck and had started back toward the motel room before he remembered that he had a bag of dirty clothes stashed in a plastic garbage sack in the backseat of the truck cab. He might be able to find something clean enough to wear the next day, at least until they could hunt down a laundry.

  He stopped short, ignoring the rain sliding beneath the collar of his rain jacket. Hunt down a laundry? Just how long are you planning to spend running with this woman, Drummond?

  A flash of lightning lit up the sky, thunder crashing within a couple of seconds. The loud boom propelled him away from the truck as fast as he could run while burdened by a cooler full of ice and drinks and a plastic bag of dirty clothes dangling from his rain-slick fingers.

  He spotted a glimpse of Mara’s face between the motel room curtains before she disappeared from view and the door to the room opened. He hurried inside to put the cooler on the floor. Tossing the plastic bag next to it, he stepped outside again long enough to shake the rain off his jacket.

  “What’s this?” Mara asked, gesturing toward the cooler.

  “Beverages,” he answered, pulling up the top to reveal that the unseasonably warm March day hadn’t managed to melt the ice surrounding about a dozen cans of soda.