She wrapped a terry-cloth robe around herself and stepped into a pair of flat-heeled slippers.
He might have taken a turn for the worse while she slept, she reminded herself. Or maybe he’d done something el flippo again, like steal the rental car.
As she hurried through the silent hallway, she caught a quick glance at herself in an antique cheval glass Hazel had given her as a housewarming gift. Her hair was a tangled thatch, and her complexion looked pale and opaque in the early light.
Her heartbeat quickened when she reached for the door that led into the garage. After all, she didn’t know what to expect. He could be delirious with fever or even…dead by now, she told herself with grim frankness. She might have something worse than a fugitive on her hands—she might have a fugitive’s body.
The garage was dark and silent when she opened the door. She slapped at the light switch and the unshaded bulb spilled its waxy, pale light.
Quinn Loudon lay silent and still. Ominously so, she thought as she slowly crossed the garage.
“Mr. Loudon?” she called out tentatively. It was chilly out here, but he looked well bundled in covers. “Quinn?”
Nothing. The only noise was a burst of bird chatter from the yard outside. She felt cold dread slowing her even more.
Yesterday she had placed a rush-bottom chair beside the futon. She settled onto it, studying the peaceful set of his face.
“Can you hear me?”
“Yes, of course,” he answered in a wide-awake voice that made her start so hard the chair creaked under her.
His eyes fluttered open to watch her as he grinned. His voice was weak but clear. “You know, you look beautiful in the morning. I like what you’ve done to your hair.”
“Mr. Loudon, my hair isn’t—”
He held up his hand. “This ‘Miss Adams’ and ‘Mr. Loudon’ business seems ridiculous now that you’ve had my pants down. I’m calling you Connie, Connie.”
She had to wait a moment for her heart to stop racing. “Call me what you want. But I hardly ‘had your pants down’ through any choice of my own. Your wound needed tending.”
“You even said you could’ve cut my pants off.” He gave her a lazy handsome grin. “That’s what they do in the movies.”
“I wish this were a movie, Mr. Lou—Quinn,” she corrected herself a bit reluctantly. She was returning toward the kitchen door as she spoke. “A movie would at least be over in two hours. I’ll fix you something to eat.”
She quickly filled the coffeemaker and turned it on to brew. Toast and cereal would take care of breakfast, but the cupboard was definitely getting bare. She pulled a strip sirloin out of the freezer to thaw out for later.
Later…here she was planning meals for a fugitive while a multistate manhunt unfolded all around her. Even as she mulled her self-inflicted problem, hollow, reverberating thuds reached her ears.
She hurried to the front door and stepped outside into the cool morning air. The discovery of her Jeep, the day before, had occasioned much stirring and to-do. Now, gazing toward the mountains, she saw the olive-drab helicopter that had started systematically searching the area around the Hupenbecker cabin late yesterday. Time and again the hovering chopper settled on its skids and men poured out to search another grid before moving on.
She wondered, while she took a quick shower, then dressed in matte jersey pants and a knob-button shirt, why no one had been to her house yet to harass her or search the place. Her best guess was that they must believe Loudon had taken to the woods and caves up on the lower slopes.
Once they exhausted that possibility, however, logic told her they’d be paying her a visit.
She managed to eat some toast and marmalade and drink a small glass of juice. Then she fixed a tray and went back out into the garage.
“Can you eat something?” she asked him.
“I better try,” he answered, struggling to sit up.
“Here,” she told him, folding his pillow behind him to prop him up a little better. “You’re pretty weak. It’ll be easier if I just feed you. At least I won’t have to clean up the mess if you spill.”
Settling the pillow, her hand brushed a hard ridge of lateral muscle. His shoulders, too, were taut and muscle-corded—she could see from the way his shirt stretched against them.
“You must play tennis or racquetball?” she guessed.
He shook his head. “I’m a fencing nut. Been into sword duelling ever since I took it up in college. I compete every year at the international tournament in Iwakuni, Japan.”
She literally had nothing to say to that. The men she’d met, including at college, were hunters or fishermen or rock climbers. Even one extreme skier. But Mystery Valley didn’t attract many sword fighters.
“It sure keeps you in good shape,” she observed as she took the bowl of cereal from the tray.
“You have to be. The tournaments combine classic and martial-arts styles. They’re gruelling, but exhilarating. Hell, only one thing in this world beats winning a match.”
“And what’s that? Are you an iron man triathlete as well?” She lifted one eyebrow in skepticism.
“Sex.”
“Excuse me?”
“Sex beats it. Of course.” He looked at her as if she were a little thick in the head.
A moment passed. A long uncomfortable moment. Connie found her hand trembling.
“Well, here goes…” He opened his mouth.
She lifted the spoon from the bowl. He managed to swallow a few bites of cereal, then he shoved away the spoon so he could speak.
“Listen, I was thinking about it last night. I’ve got to get to Billings, Connie. Will you take me?”
“It’s impossible,” she told him flatly. “Hear that chopper? It’s searching for you. And according to the news, now they’re searching every vehicle entering or leaving the valley. We’d never get past the first roadblock.”
“I’ve got to get to Billings,” he insisted. “Otherwise I am crisped. There’s something I need to get.”
“Could—could I get it for you?” she asked reluctantly.
He shook his head. “I wish. But…well, let’s just say it’s in a spot where only I or my lawyer, Lance Pollard, could get it. And I don’t doubt for one second they’ve got tails on Lance, just waiting for him to go after anything. He’d be dead five minutes after he laid hands on it. Just like Cody Anders.”
She watched him in the dim light, fascinated by the Greco-Roman perfection of his masculine profile, its aquiline nose, strong jaw, and taut, handsome lips.
He radiated the same impression Doug had: that of a very attractive man who was quite down-to-earth about his good looks. Quinn gave the impression as Doug had, that he was a man of substance, not just style. But then, she’d been all wrong about Doug, with disastrous results. Maybe this man, too, racked up conquests like notches in a gun.
There was no doubt he certainly could if he chose to.
Again he pushed the spoon away from his mouth. “Thanks, but I can’t eat any more.”
Tiny beads of sweat glistened on his forehead. She wiped it with a damp sponge. He had seemed fine when he woke up, but now felt feverish to her touch.
“You’re running hot and cold,” she remarked, shaking a couple more Tylenols out into her hand.
“Mostly hot,” he assured her, “when you get this close.”
His tone was light. But as he spoke, he raised one hand and touched three fingertips to the inside of her arm. That brief, tickling touch was enough, however, to make a soft warmth spread inside her, accompanied by a sudden racing of her heart.
“Then maybe I’d better move back,” she replied, faking the nonchalance in her tone. Secretly, however, she felt that her own body was betraying her. Close proximity to this man was becoming dangerous, threatening her sense of control.
He opened his mouth to say something. But just then a two-tone chime sounded from within the house as someone pressed the bellpush out front.
I
t was she who froze like a deer in the headlights, not the hunted fugitive.
“No sweat,” he told her calmly. “It’s your house, so relax. Whoever it is, you can deal with it.”
Something in his confident manner rubbed off on her.
“Sin bravely,” he added behind her as she headed toward the kitchen door. “Don’t miss a beat if whoever it is mentions a search. Just agree on the spot—in fact, act eager to have the place searched. Innocent people usually want to cooperate.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Like a fox,” he assured her. “Try it.”
Constance felt her confidence grow a few more notches when she noticed, through the wide front window in the living room, the Colfax County seal on the door of the Blazer in her driveway.
Constable Ray Lofton waited on the red-brick stoop. He gave her a snaggletoothed grin. Like many year-round residents of Mystery, he had a sanguine complexion from much time spent out of doors.
“Morning, Connie, sorry to bother you so early. I wanted to catch you before you left for work.”
Ray seemed somewhat embarrassed as he paused, then added, “I’m under orders, from the U.S. Marshals, to search every house in town. With permission, of course,” he added quickly. “I mean, you can refuse and require a warrant.”
Don’t miss a beat, she reminded herself rapidly. She held the door open wide. “Sure, come on in, Ray. I’m sorry the place is a little messy. How’s Bonnie?”
Ray’s wife was editor of the town newspaper, the Mystery Gazette. Ray and Bonnie had been classmates with Constance’s mom.
“Busy as a one-legged man at a butt-kicking contest,” he replied as he stepped past her into the house. “You know her staff writer, Jacquelyn Clayburn, is off on maternity leave. Bonnie has to write all the copy now.”
Ray, looking apologetic, accompanied her down the hallway. He glanced only briefly into her bedroom and the spare room she used as an office. He didn’t bother with closets or looking under beds.
Quinn was right, she thought. My total cooperation makes Ray feel embarrassed.
“So you think this guy Loudon is actually hiding in town?” Constance asked as Ray headed into the kitchen.
At her question Ray seemed to grow self-conscious with importance.
Despite her nervousness, she had to fight back a grin when he aped the lingo of the federal agents.
“Our intel on Loudon,” he assured her officiously, “says he’s smart and dangerous. But I’m wondering how smart can he be? I mean, you talk about stupid. The guy steals your Jeep, then drives it back where he started? Brilliant…this guy doesn’t even know where he wants to run to. I’ll lay two to one odds we nail him in the next twenty-four hours.”
So Ray, too, knew that Quinn took her Jeep. Meaning it wasn’t held back from the cops, only from the media.
“You’re that close to an arrest?” she asked.
He glanced at the door to the garage. “Affirm on that,” he replied.
“Excuse me?”
Ray flushed a little as his new jargon tripped her up. “Ahh, yeah, we are. Okay if I peek in the garage, Connie?”
“Of course,” she told him in a don’t-be-silly tone, in fact almost choking on the words.
So the bluff didn’t work after all, she thought in a welter of panic as Ray hit the light switch and poked his head out into the garage.
“Well I’ll be darn,” he said. “Look at that!”
Her calves went weak as water, and she looked past Ray’s stocky bulk. Her old futon was rolled up again, and there was no sign of Quinn Loudon.
“All them for sale signs,” Ray chuckled. “Must be a dozen of ’em. You’re ambitious, girl.”
“‘Hitch your wagon to a star,’” she returned lightly, quoting the cover of her high-school year-book.
“Don’t sell the town from under us, that’s all I ask.”
“Yeah, you and Hazel McCallum,” she quipped, nearly blinded with fear.
But relief flooded her when Ray shut the garage door and headed back toward the front of the house.
“Well, hey, thanks, Connie, ’preciate the cooperation. The feds thought, you know, folks would take better to locals bothering them.”
“You kidding? It’s no bother at all, it makes all of us feel better.”
“Give us a call, if you see anything suspicious.”
The moment she saw the Blazer rolling down the driveway, Constance returned to the garage.
“Where are you?” she called.
“Behind all these damn signs he was gawking at,” Quinn’s muffled voice replied, somewhat snappish. “I swear he looked right at me. Wanna help me out of here?”
“I couldn’t see you either,” she assured him.
Somehow he had managed to squeeze into a cramped space behind the row of slanted signs. Now he was pale and exhausted. The effort had almost been too much for him.
She helped him out from the pile. He was incredibly agile, she thought—one touch would have sent all those signs sliding down.
“You have a real knack for eluding the law,” she remarked as she unrolled the futon and helped him back onto it.
She had meant nothing insulting by her comment. But a shadow moved into his face, and the intense, smoke-tinted eyes darkened with something a little wild and reckless—and something worse, perhaps.
Or maybe it was just his weak condition. He was clearly tired and in pain. For a moment he ignored her while he laid himself out on the futon and succumbed to exhaustion.
“I have to make a phone call,” she told him. She headed across the garage toward the kitchen door.
“You don’t need my permission,” he replied in a churlish tone. “It’s your house.”
“Yes, that’s twice you’ve reminded me now. I know it’s my house—I have the payment book to remind me.”
“Take me to Billings,” he demanded apropos of nothing.
“We’d never make it,” she insisted.
He lapsed into a restive silence, and she went inside.
Grabbing the telephone on the bookcase in the living room, she tapped in the number of the real-estate office.
“Mystery Valley Real Estate, Ginny Lavoy speaking.”
“Ginny, hey, it’s me.”
“What’s up, Connie?”
Ginny’s voice sounded a little strained. That’s what happens, Constance lamented, when old regular-as-the-equinox Connie varies in her orbit.
“I think I’ll take the day off.” She wished she could easily lie, just make up some good excuse: doctor’s appointment, PMS, anything. But she had never lied to Ginny in a friendship that went back to childhood, and she wasn’t eager to start now.
“Everything okay?” Ginny coaxed.
“You know, I…Ginny, I’m kind of having some strange problems right now. I just need a little personal time I think. It’s kind of hard to get into it, but I’ll tell you when I get back to the office.”
It had never been Ginny’s way to pry. In fact, she was one of the most discreet persons Constance had ever known. So it alarmed her when her business partner persisted, “Connie, is…I mean, does this have anything to do with the phone call I got yesterday from the district attorney in Kalispell?”
Alarm prickled her nape. “Ulrick called you? Why?”
“You tell me. He wasn’t asking for a date, that’s for sure.”
“Did he threaten you?” Constance demanded.
“No, not in so many words. He was actually polite most of the time. When he first identified himself, I thought maybe we had run into some trouble with the credit-background check on the Margolas deal. Remember how I joked how Vincent Margolas looks like a crime syndicate don? Anyway, after just a few questions it was clear Ulrick was asking about the fugitive attorney. Quinn Loudon.”
“What kind of questions?”
“You name it, everything from did you know Loudon before Friday, to, are you an honest person. It was awful. I finally freaked out and just told him I
didn’t feel comfortable with all the questions.”
“How’d he take that?”
“I couldn’t tell. He did make his only threatening remark right before he hung up. Something about how a real-estate license isn’t carved in stone. Naturally, right after he hung up I thought of a great come-back—neither is the license to practice law. I never think of a good zinger until it’s too late. The guy’s a bully.”
“Trust your first impression,” Constance assured her. “Anyhow, I don’t have much lined up for today. Can you call the Helzers and reschedule our two o’clock showing?”
“The Helzers, the Helzers…oh, yeah, that’s the three-bedroom chateau on Bluebush Road, right? Hey, I can show it if you’d like. I’m free until four anyway.”
“Would you, Ginny? I owe you one. And I promise to explain all this as soon as I can.”
“You’d better. I’m bursting with curiosity. Just promise you’ll be careful? I didn’t like that Ulrick guy one bit.”
“Promise. Careful as I can be.”
Constance hung up the phone, her face blank with worry. It’s hard to be careful, she realized, when someone else is in control and dictating the moves in a game she didn’t understand.
It left her no option but reaction.
But nobody made you bring Quinn here, the voice of conscience reminded her. And you can tell him you believe him all you want to. You believed in Doug, too, and look what that got you. Maybe it’s time you start to learn from experience.
The expression in her eyes darkened. Her mouth turned in a frown.
Quinn was sleeping well by midmorning, and Constance was starting to feel cabin fever. Realizing she couldn’t stay holed up forever, she decided to take care of her postponed shopping.
If the tail was on her again, she couldn’t spot it on the moderately busy streets of Mystery. She shopped for groceries, then stopped at Blackford’s Bakery for a loaf of fresh seven-grain bread and a half-dozen blueberry muffins.
When she returned home, just past noon, the garage was empty. But she could hear shower noise from the hallway bathroom.
The Lawman Meets His Bride Page 10