Lethal Lawman

by Carla Cassidy

  “And what if it was?” she replied with a touch of belligerence.

  “Just asking,” Frank replied evenly.

  “Go home, Treetie,” Marlene said, a touch of weariness in her voice. “The case of who has been here has been solved. There’s no bad guy hiding out. It’s just been me.”

  “Have you got a permit for that gun?” Frank asked as Treetie stood from the chair.

  “Of course I do.... I’ve even got a concealed-carry permit. I’m not a lawbreaker.” She sniffed, as if finding Frank offensive.

  Marlene got up and walked the woman to the door, where she gave her a quick hug. “Even though you scared the heck out of us, thanks for watching out for Aunt Liz’s place.”

  “You know I loved your aunt,” Treetie replied and then disappeared out the door.

  Loved. Interesting that she’d used the past tense to refer to her friend, Frank thought.

  Marlene returned to the sofa and slumped down with a discouraged expression on her pretty features. “I can’t stay here anymore now that Treetie knows I’m here.”

  “She won’t keep it to herself?”

  Marlene gave him a rueful grin. “Telegram...tele-Treetie. By noon tomorrow everyone in town will know that I’m here. She’ll want to keep it a secret, but she can’t help herself. She’ll tell a friend, who will tell another friend, and so on....” Marlene trailed off. “I’d guess by tomorrow afternoon everyone in town will know that I’m here.”

  “Then we’ll have to pack you up and get you out of here.” Frank looked at his watch. Almost ten. “The only solution for the rest of the night is to have you bunk back at my place, and then we’ll figure things out in the morning.”

  She got up from the sofa and he felt the new sick tension of fear wafting from her. “It will just take me a few minutes to pack up.”

  As she disappeared into the bedroom, Frank leaned back against the sofa cushion and thought about this new development. He still wasn’t sure she could be safe indefinitely at his place. She’d be safe for the remainder of the night. He’d make sure about that. But what was he going to do with her after tonight?

  He got up from the sofa, deciding that he and Steve and Jimmy would figure it out in the morning. He’d have his partners meet him at his place before heading into the station and they could brainstorm something together.

  True to her word, within minutes she was back in the living room with the large duffel and smaller bag in tow. “I’m sorry, Frank.”

  “There’s nothing to be sorry about. We have to be flexible when kinks come up.”

  “And Treetie is definitely a kink.”

  He walked over to her and grabbed the duffel, and then together they left the house by the kitchen door, got into his car and left Liz Marcoli’s home.

  “So, tell me everything you know about Treetie,” he asked as he headed toward his place.

  “She and my aunt have been best friends since we were all little girls. I think they bonded because both of them were widowed young and Treetie kind of became like an aunt to us. Why?”

  He felt the weight of her gaze on him as he turned down Main Street. “Just curious.”

  “When a detective says he’s ‘just curious,’ it’s always more than that,” she replied.

  He flashed her a quick grin and then focused back on the road. “She just seems to have grown quite close to Edward Cardell since your aunt has gone missing, and she seems comfortable with a gun in her hand. And I couldn’t help but notice that she referred to your aunt in the past tense.”

  Marlene was silent for a long moment, as if trying to delve into his mind and see what point he was trying to make. “Surely you can’t believe that Treetie did something to Liz so that she could step into her place with Edward?”

  “At this point I’m open to all possibilities. Crimes don’t just happen because of hate or the need for revenge. Sometimes people do terrible things in the name of love or obsession. I’m just saying.”

  “And I’m just thinking,” she replied. “There were times I think it must have been hard on Treetie that Aunt Liz had us in her life, that Treetie might have been jealous that Aunt Liz was surrounded by so much love and Treetie had nobody.”

  “And those jealous feelings might have intensified when Liz not only had three young women who loved her but also a man who was quite taken with her.” Frank mentally made a note to add Patricia Burns to their list of potential suspects in Liz Marcoli’s disappearance.

  “I feel like you just turned my world topsy-turvy all over again,” Marlene said with a new weariness in her voice. “I feel like there’s nobody I can really trust except my sisters.”

  “And me.”

  “And you,” she agreed with a faint smile.

  By that time they had reached Frank’s house. He pulled into the garage and silently they got out and unloaded her bags. They put her bags into the spare room where she’d stayed before and then went back into the living room.

  “You want me to make some coffee?” Frank asked.

  “Not for me, but thanks. I’m already too hyper to add coffee to the mix. I keep thinking, what if Treetie had burst into that room and just started shooting instead of talking?”

  “Thank God she didn’t.” He sat down on the sofa on top of his bedding as she dropped down in the chair opposite him. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket. “The first thing I need to do is call Steve and Jimmy and have them come here first thing in the morning so we can make some decisions about what’s best for you.”

  She sat quietly as he made the calls. “Maybe the danger is gone,” she said when he was finished speaking to his partners. “I mean, nothing has happened since that night in the parking lot.”

  “That’s because nobody has known where you were,” he countered. “The last thing you want to do now, Marlene, is let down your guard. Until we know the who and why, we have to function with the idea that you’re still a target. Nothing has happened that lets me believe any differently.”

  Frank bit back his frustration and continued, “We’re doing everything we can. We have pictures of Matt with every officer in town. If he’s here, sooner or later somebody will spot him. I’ve also got the Pittsburgh police sitting on his home so that if and when he shows up there he can be questioned.”

  “Why do you sleep out here?”

  The change in topic startled him and he stared at her wordlessly for a moment as he gathered his thoughts. “After Grace died, I just never went back to our bedroom,” he finally said.

  “Was she sick a long time?”

  “Yeah, she was.” Frank knew he was playing with semantics, perhaps giving Marlene the idea that it had been cancer or some other dreadful disease that had been present before Grace died. But didn’t her depression fall under that category? And really, what was the point after all this time of explaining to Marlene that his wife had committed suicide?

  “That sofa looks terribly small for a man your size,” Marlene said, a new glow lighting her eyes to a warm dark blue. “I definitely want you to be at the top of your game if you’re going to find who’s after me. Maybe it would be good for you to bunk in with me tonight and sleep in a real bed.”

  Shock rocketed through him at her unexpected words, the unmistakable invitation both in what she’d just said and the brilliant shine from her eyes.

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” he asked, aware that his voice sounded huskier than usual.

  She got up from the chair and walked over to him. When she reached where he sat, she held out her hand. He automatically took it and stood. “Honestly, Frank, I don’t know if it’s a good idea or not. I have somebody crazy trying to kill me. I’m discovering that it’s dangerous to trust people who have been in my life for years. Tonight I just want to be held in your arms. I want you to kiss me like you m
ean it, make love to me as if it matters. Just for tonight, because we both know things will change tomorrow.”

  The flare of heat that surged inside Frank was impossible to deny. He’d wanted her since the moment he’d first seen her months before. He’d dreamed of making love to her, of having her in his bed. Tonight it appeared he was going to get his dream. He just hoped it somehow didn’t ultimately lead to a nightmare.

  Chapter 11

  Marlene knew getting fully intimate with Frank might be a mistake. After sharing with him all of her secrets, all of her inner pain and regrets, she felt achingly vulnerable but also hungry for his touch, for the whole sum of him.

  Despite the fact that she hadn’t had actual face time with him over the past five days, she felt that their phone conversations had brought them closer, had yielded an intimacy between them that normally came from months of dating.

  The minute they entered the bedroom, she turned and he took her in his arms. They shared a kiss that threatened to buckle her knees and drove all doubt of what they were about to do out of her head.

  She needed this night. She wanted this man, and for the first time in years she intended to take what she wanted, with joy, with a feeling of rightness.

  He broke the kiss and quickly slid off his holster and gun. He placed it on the nightstand and then once again pulled her against him as his lips crashed back on hers.

  They tumbled to the bed, entangled arms and legs, as their lips remained locked together in a fiery kiss of desire. In many ways Marlene felt like a virgin, excited yet nervous about the new experience. And she knew making love with Frank would be a completely different experience from what she’d suffered through with Matt.

  As his lips moved from hers, they trailed flames down the side of her neck. He pulled her closer, tighter against him on the bed. She molded her curves into his hard muscular body and couldn’t help but notice that he was already fully aroused. That only increased her excitement.

  His hands caressed up and down her back on top of her T-shirt, warming the skin beneath as she closed her eyes and fell into the sweet sensations that sizzled through her.

  She trusted him implicitly. There would be no roughness, no need to master or control her. She knew without a doubt she could expect only tenderness from Detective Frank Delaney.

  And that was what he gave her. They parted from each other as if of one mind and undressed, and then when both of them were naked they returned to the bed and slid beneath the sheets.

  He touched her bare skin with reverence as his mouth plied hers with heat. She ran her fingers over his muscled chest and then placed her palm over the frantic beat of his heart. She knew she was meant to be here at this moment with this man.

  She had no idea what tomorrow might bring, knew that neither of them was in a position to talk in any meaningful way about a future between them, but that didn’t matter.

  She was here now, and as his mouth moved down her body to capture the tip of one of her breasts, she gasped with pure pleasure.

  Lowering her hand from his firm chest to his flat abdomen, she wanted to give him pleasure, feel his hardness in her hand. He stopped and rose up, his eyes glittering with a wildness as he gazed down at her.

  “Don’t touch me,” he whispered urgently. “It’s been over three years since I’ve made love. If you touch me now, Marlene, it will all be over, and that’s not the way I want this to go.”

  She thrilled at the thought that a single touch might push him over the edge, but she abided by his wishes, because that wasn’t the way she wanted this to end, either.

  It quickly became obvious that his desire was to bring her as much pleasure as possible before thinking of his own. He teased and tormented each of her nipples while one of his hands stroked slowly down her stomach.

  She fought the urge to arch her hips, to invite his most intimate touch too soon. Her heart raced with anticipation; her blood rushed through her veins with a surge of expected pleasure.

  “You are so beautiful,” he whispered against her neck, and at the same time his fingers found her moist heat. She couldn’t fight the automatic response of raising her hips to meet him. It was as if she stood on the edge of the ocean and his simple touch shoved her into the depths of the waves.

  She cried out with an orgasm that was both unexpected and intense, shuddering through her as she moaned his name. Her release apparently snapped something in him, and he moved between her thighs, a husky groan escaping his lips even before he entered her.

  He slid into her, and in the moonlight drifting in through the windows she could see the struggle for control in the tautness of his features, the corded muscles in his neck.

  She didn’t want control. She wanted wild and intense. She squeezed her muscles around him, drawing him in deeper, and he began to stroke into her, their gasps mingling together until he stiffened against her and cried out her name.

  He held his weight on his elbows and leaned down to kiss her softly, with such tenderness it brought tears to her eyes. “I’m sorry it was so fast,” he said as he ended the kiss.

  She smiled up at him. “That just means we have time for a second round before we go to sleep.”

  He rolled to the side of her. “I hope I’m up to the job,” he said teasingly.

  “I have a feeling you’re just the man for the job,” she replied.

  Hours later, after making love a second time, Marlene lay awake, Frank cocooned around her back with an arm thrown across her side, his rhythmic breathing of deep sleep warming the back of her neck.

  This was what it was supposed to be like...to love and to be loved, to be held without fear, kissed without panic and touched with gentle joy.

  She could fall in love with Frank if she allowed herself. He was the man she’d dreamed about as a teenager, the kind of man she’d once envisioned as her husband and the father of her children.

  Of course she wasn’t in a place to be ready for love, she reminded herself. She didn’t even know where she was going to be staying tomorrow.

  Besides, the fact that Frank still couldn’t face the bedroom that he’d once shared with his wife spoke of his inability to move on. She also couldn’t forget that they’d both agreed that neither of them wanted any kind of long-term relationship.

  Making love with him shouldn’t change that, but somehow it did inside her. She squeezed her eyes closed, seeking sleep and fighting against the burgeoning love in her heart for him.

  That hadn’t been part of their deal, and she’d be a fool to chance another opportunity for heartbreak. She was still in a new healing process and had a killer trying to find her. Love should be the very last thing on her mind.

  She must have fallen asleep, for when she opened her eyes she was alone in the bed and early-morning light peeked through the nearby window.

  She moved her hand to the pillow next to hers that held the indentation of Frank’s head. The pillowcase still retained his body warmth, letting her know he hadn’t been up that long.

  Rolling over on her back, she stared up at the ceiling as she smelled the scent of fresh-brewed coffee mingling with the faint fragrance of Frank’s cologne.

  She didn’t want to get out of bed. She wasn’t ready to face a new day of uncertainty, of potential danger. But it had been her unwillingness to face her reality that had kept her in a marriage too long, the same inertia that had kept her in a fog of lifelessness for the past year.

  She wasn’t sure if those five days and nights alone were responsible for her new desire to face her issues head-on or if it was the presence of Frank in her life. She only knew that her days of just walking through her life without her dreams, with only guilt to carry her forward, were over.

  Forever she would mourn the baby girl she’d lost, but she couldn’t go back and change her mistakes—she could only go forwar
d and make sure she didn’t make those same kinds of mistakes again.

  She got out of bed and fumbled through her duffel bag to find clean underclothing, a fresh pair of jeans and a slightly wrinkled blue blouse, and then headed across the hall to the shower.

  By the time she was dressed and had her makeup on and her hair fixed, she heard male voices coming from the kitchen and realized that Jimmy and Steve must have arrived.

  She walked into the kitchen, and Frank gave her a welcoming smile that warmed her heart and made her remember how sensual and slowly they’d explored each other’s bodies the second time they’d made love.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” she said to Steve and Jimmy as she walked toward the coffeemaker on the nearby counter.

  “There are no gentlemen here, just us cops,” Jimmy said with a grin.

  “Well, I hope you cops are figuring out a plan for where I’m going to call home until you get the bad guy behind bars.” She poured herself a cup of coffee and joined them at the table.

  “That’s just what we were discussing,” Frank said.

  “You know you can stay at my place with Roxy,” Steve offered.

  Marlene shook her head. “I want to stay as far away from my sisters as possible right now. We’ve already lost one family member. I don’t want to be responsible for bringing any danger anywhere near another one.”

  “That’s what I figured you’d say,” Steve replied.

  “Travis has a couple of rooms upstairs at the tavern. It’s probably too early in the season for him to have rented them out to anyone,” Jimmy offered.

  Marlene looked at Frank, who frowned thoughtfully. “That might work,” he said slowly. “As far as I know, nobody goes upstairs to those rooms on a regular basis. It’s not unusual for us to show up there for a beer, and it would be easy enough to sneak upstairs to check on her.”

  “Her is sitting right here,” Marlene said.