On Dangerous Ground

by Maggie Price

  The sudden roar of an engine drowned out her words.

  Their heads jerked in unison when a faded blue pickup going to rust shot into the lot, its bald tires squealing on the sun-beaten pavement. Seconds later, the pickup braked to a halt and a tall, wiry man in his twenties with shoulder-length black hair and fury in his eyes shoved open the door.

  Grant’s mind scrolled back two years to Ellis Whitebear’s trial. The man now stalking their way with a can of soda gripped in one hand had pleaded with the jury during the sentencing phase to show leniency toward his father.

  “You stuck him already, didn’t you?” Jason Whitebear demanded. He clenched his fists, crumpling the soda can before tossing it aside.

  Shoving Sky behind him, Grant noted the grease-stained work shirt with an oval patch sporting the name Spider in its center. Worn, faded jeans encased the man’s long, lanky legs. A greasy red work rag hung from one clenched fist.

  “That’s right.” Grant was well over six feet tall, but he had to lift his chin to look Spider in the eye. “We took a blood sample.”

  “I told that woman lawyer to keep you away from my old man.”

  “Wasn’t your decision to make…Spider.”

  “Wasn’t yours, either.”

  “Correct,” Grant agreed smoothly. “It was your father’s. He agreed to give us a blood sample, so we took it. Now, back off.”

  Color swept into the dark tanned skin that stretched over sharp, high cheekbones as Spider took a step sideways and locked his gaze onto Sky. “You lied at his trial. Wasn’t putting him on death row enough? What the hell you trying to frame him with this time?”

  “I didn’t lie.” When Sky stepped around him, Grant set his jaw. “No one lied.”

  “You got up there, swore on a Bible, then spouted some fancy scientific talk that impressed the hell out of the jury. Doesn’t change the fact that you lied through your teeth.”

  “No—”

  Spider lunged for the evidence kit so fast that Grant had no time to stop him from clamping his hand over Sky’s. The same instant Grant grabbed Spider’s wrist and twisted, Sky smashed her heel against the top of the man’s scuffed boot.

  The solid jolt had Spider jerking back. He released her with such suddenness that Sky stumbled sideways, the evidence kit still clenched in her hand. The anger and frustration simmering in Grant zeroed to flash point. He plowed into the man’s chest, slamming him backward against the cruiser.

  Body coiled, Grant pressed his forearm against the man’s throat. “Touch her again, I’ll break every bone in your hand.”

  Grant’s gaze sliced to Sky. She had regained her balance and now stood a few feet away, the evidence kit tucked beneath one arm. She flexed, then unflexed the hand Spider had grabbed.

  “You okay?”

  Sun glinted off her wire-rims when she nodded. “I got some grease on me, is all.” Her voice was even, controlled.

  “Meant no harm.” With Grant’s arm pressing into his windpipe, Spider croaked the words.

  “Tell that to the judge,” Grant stated, his voice icily calm. “I’m hauling you in on assault.” He flicked a look at the crumpled soda can. “And littering.”

  “Go ahead, lock me up,” Spider grated. “That won’t keep me quiet about you trying to pin something else on my old man.”

  Grant narrowed his eyes as he eased pressure off the man’s windpipe. “What the hell makes you think we’re trying to pin anything on Ellis?”

  “You cops got quotas. What happened? You go through some of your old cases and find one you think you can blame on him, too?”

  “We’re not here to make your father’s situation worse.” Although Grant eased his weight back, the anger in the dark eyes that drilled into his prompted him to keep one palm flat against Spider’s chest.

  “Worse?” Spider hissed, his fists cocked. “You want to tell me how it could get worse?” He moved his gaze to the prison’s whitewashed facade. “My old man can’t do nothing on his own in there. They tell him when to wake up, when to go to sleep, when to eat, what to eat. He can’t go outside. Can’t sit in the sun if he wants. He didn’t do nothing, and he’s locked in a cage. In a few years, they’ll slide one last needle into his vein.”

  “He’s here because he murdered Mavis Benjamin,” Grant stated. Beneath his palm, Spider’s chest felt like a solid plane of sinew and muscle.

  Spider cut his gaze sideways, doing a slow study of Sky. “So you say.”

  “So says the evidence,” Grant pointed out levelly.

  “I don’t give a flying flip what you claim it says. It’s wrong. You’re wrong.”

  When Grant dropped his palm and took a step back, he noted Spider was favoring the booted foot Sky had stomped. “Okay, Whitebear, have your say. Why do you think the evidence is wrong?”

  “I know my old man.” Using a forearm, Spider swiped at the sweat that beaded his tanned brow. “Sure, he hated that bitch apartment manager. Everybody knew it. But hating her doesn’t mean he killed her.”

  Grant had lost count of the guilty people who had looked him straight in the eye and sworn their innocence. Still, he glanced at the evidence kit in Sky’s hand. He couldn’t help but wonder at the outcome of the test she would soon do on Whitebear Senior’s blood sample.

  Still, no matter the result, he had to go with what they had at this point. “A jury heard all the evidence and decided your father killed her.”

  “The jury was wrong.” Dropping his gaze, Spider scrubbed the red rag against the palm of one hand. “I was out north of town on a job,” he muttered. “Got stuck in rodeo traffic, then had a flat.” He stuffed the rag into the back pocket of his jeans. “If I’d been here, you wouldn’t have stuck another needle in him.”

  Grant leaned in. “Your father gave us permission to take his blood. That’s all we needed.”

  Spider sneered. “You going to arrest me or not?”

  Grant let out a slow breath. He could make an arrest, haul Jason, aka Spider, to McAlester PD, then have one of the locals do the paperwork. That would take a couple of hours. Spider would probably bond out long before he and Sky got back to Oklahoma City.

  “Not this time.”

  Spider pushed away from the cruiser. Passing by Sky without a look, he limped along the shade-covered sidewalk toward the prison’s front doors.

  As the adrenaline drained out of him, Grant scrubbed a palm over his face, then turned to Sky. “You’re sure he didn’t hurt you?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “You want to go back inside and wash the grease off your hands?”

  Her gaze tracked Spider until he pulled open the prison’s front door and disappeared inside. “I think we’ve had enough of the Whitebears for one day, and vice versa.” She looked back at Grant. “I’ll wash my hands when we stop for something to drink.”

  Nodding, he gave her a long, silent inspection. His heart wasn’t safe around her. And something was keeping Sky from letting him get close to hers. Maybe she never would.

  His mood darkened like storm clouds.

  “We’ll get the drinks to go.” He turned and stabbed a key into the lock on the cruiser’s door. “After that, I’ll take you back to the lab.”

  He hadn’t spoken more than a few words since they’d left the prison. With fingers of tension curling around her stomach, Sky glanced across the cruiser’s front seat. Grant’s mouth was set, his eyes narrowed behind the lenses of his sunglasses. He had one arm propped against the window; the other hand gripped the steering wheel tight enough to make the veins on the back of his hand strain against his tanned flesh.

  Easing out a quiet sigh, she sipped soda through a straw and shifted her gaze out the passenger window, taking little notice of the scenery blipping by as the cruiser headed west on Interstate 40. At the café where they’d stopped, she had washed the grease off her hands while Grant waited in a line of rodeo fans for a waitress to bag two sodas. Now, as the cruiser sped west out of McAlester, Sky wondered if they
would make the entire four-hour drive back to Oklahoma City in the uneasy silence that hung around them.

  Probably best if they did, she decided, feeling a sense of resignation sliding through the aching fatigue that held her in its grip. She and Grant had said everything there was to say, outside the prison before Jason Whitebear showed up.

  The cool soda she sipped did little to ease the dry throat that came with the memory of how, when Whitebear grabbed her hand, Grant’s eyes had turned to glass. The kind of glass that left jagged gashes on flesh. For the first time she had seen the inner core of hard, immovable strength behind Grant’s outer, almost careless self-ease.

  A protector. Although she had the training to defend herself, inside her stirred a basic, instinctive need for a man who could be counted on to keep her safe. A white knight to shield her. A defender. What woman didn’t want a man who fit that bill?

  And that was the problem, Sky acknowledged. She wanted what she couldn’t have.

  Without warning, tears welled up and she blinked them furiously away. In her mind, she replayed Grant’s assurances that he would give her the care and time she needed. He would wait until she was ready. His words had simply melted her heart…then broken it.

  He could give her all the time and care in the world, but that wouldn’t change things. Six months in therapy with Dr. Mirren hadn’t altered anything. Not really. Nothing, Sky was now convinced, would keep the demon inside her at bay, except silence. If she didn’t talk about the rape, didn’t stir things up further, the horrifying nightmare would subside—she had to believe that. Had to believe that the monster would creep back into her subconscious where it had lurked for the past nine years.

  Then maybe she could sleep. And begin thinking again with some sort of clarity.

  Sliding her gaze sideways, she studied Grant’s face. In the deepening afternoon shadows, his profile was a study of sharp lines and determined angles. Her chest ached with the knowledge that his need for her to open up, to let him into her life was the one thing she couldn’t give. Didn’t dare try to give.

  Resting her head back against the upholstered seat, she closed her eyes. In less than four hours she’d be back in the controlled confines of her lab. Safe and shielded. For the past nine years, work had been her haven, her solace. It was all she needed.

  It would have to be.

  A few minutes later, the loud sputter of the engine had her eyelids popping open. The cruiser coughed, jerked, then shimmied.

  Grant swore viciously, eased out of traffic and steered the wheezing cruiser to the highway’s shoulder. The engine heaved one last, gripping shudder then died.

  “Out of gas?” Sky hazarded.

  “We’ve got half a tank.” Scowling, Grant turned the key, pumped the pedal and was rewarded with a metallic grinding that made Sky wince.

  “Should have driven my Porsche,” he muttered. Seconds later, he shoved open the door, climbed out, then slammed the door behind him for good measure.

  “Hafta’ say you folks are lucky.”

  Grant shot a dark look at the man steering the wrecker through the thickening traffic on McAlester’s main street. Sky sat between him and the driver, her evidence kit and purse piled in her lap, her gaze focused straight ahead out the windshield that displayed the smashed remains of an uncountable number of bugs.

  Without the benefit of air-conditioning, the inside of the wrecker felt like a sauna. Grant set his jaw at the feel of sweat trickling down his spine, pooling at the small of his back. The immediate prospect of one of the spongy springs in the seat beneath him shooting up through his backside did nothing to lighten his mood. Nor did Sky’s soft, subtle scent that wafted on the heated air, creeping into his senses and tightening his gut.

  “How is it you think we’re lucky?” he ground out.

  The driver shot him a mile-wide, nicotine-stained grin. “The police dispatcher’s call came through just as I was closin’ shop.” He nodded at the line of traffic out the windshield. “Rodeo starts this evening.”

  “Yeah.” Grant fisted his hands against his thighs. “Just drop us off at the nearest garage so someone can take a look at the car…Hank,” he added, noting the name on the front of the worn ball cap from which peeked strands of wiry gray hair.

  “Well, now, I can drop you and your car off at Wade’s Garage,” Hank drawled, using the tip of his thumb to shove up the cap’s brim. “Ain’t gonna do you or your car much good, though.”

  “Closed for the rodeo?” Grant speculated.

  “Yep. Until first thing in the morning. This here’s the first night of the rodeo. Nobody wants to miss the fun.”

  Frustration churned in Grant’s stomach. “I don’t guess there’s another garage open?”

  “Nope. Like I said, nobody wants to miss the fun.”

  Grant shoved a hand through his sweat-dampened hair. How much better could this get? He’d already used his cell phone to call his office. Lieutenant Ryan had advised that there was no way the city would pay to send a wrecker on a two-way run that would take over eight hours. Not unless a vehicle was beyond repair. Grant twisted in his seat, shot a killing look at the hulk of city-issue scrap metal winched behind the wrecker.

  “Here’s the deal, Hank. I’ll pay you to drive us and the car to Oklahoma City.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sky slide him a hopeful look.

  “Well, I might’ve just taken you up on that, but I promised the wife I’d take her and the kids to the rodeo.” Hank raised a bony shoulder. “It’s the first night, you know.”

  “I heard that somewhere.” Grant took a deep breath, which only pulled more of Sky’s scent into his lungs. “Any other wreckers in town?”

  “Nope. I’ve got me a monopoly on the service.”

  “If that’s the case, we’ll need a place to stay.” He and Sky were sitting so close, there was no way Grant could have missed her body’s instant stiffening.

  “Stay?” she asked. “We have to spend the night here?”

  “No, Milano, we’ll start back,” he stated, jerking his thumb toward the wrecker’s back window. “Just as soon as you pop the hood on the cruiser and fix whatever the hell’s wrong.”

  She shoved her wire-rims higher up on her nose. “I don’t know anything about cars.”

  Grant scowled at the smudges of grease that had appeared on the sleeve of his linen shirt after he’d spent thirty futile minutes fiddling with the cruiser’s dead engine. “And I don’t know enough about them to figure out what’s wrong with that piece of junk. So we’re stuck here until Wade—who’s making merry at the rodeo’s opening night—shows up at his garage in the morning.”

  “Well, that’s settled,” Hank mused, rubbing his grizzled chin. “Seein’ as how this is you folks’ lucky day, I don’t expect you’ll have to spend the night in your car.”

  Sky jerked her head his way and gaped. “In the car?”

  “Rodeo.” Hank nodded toward the other side of the street where three cars vied for one parking space. “Motels’re booked. But I know one that’s got a room you could rent. All I gotta do is convince my cousin Delbert that you’re not gonna raise a fuss about a little musty smell and bare floors.”

  “A room?” Sky asked. “One room?”

  The thread of unsteadiness in her voice had Grant biting back a curse. He thought without smugness of the women who regularly tossed offers at him to join them in bed. The one woman he wanted to spend time with panicked at the thought of being in the same room with him.

  Hank shot her a speculative look. “Well, Del’s got two rooms at his place, if that’s what you folks want.”

  “It is.” Propping an arm on the dash, Grant leaned as far forward in the seat as the spongy springs allowed. “If everything else is booked, how come Del has two vacant rooms?”

  “Well, there’s a story there,” Hank stated, then dove into a lengthy tale of exploding water pipes, dissolving Sheetrock and soggy carpet. “Me ’n’ Del redid the Sheetrock last night. Plan to tape
and paint the walls tomorrow. Some hitch came up about gettin’ the carpet steamed and stretched. Won’t be done for a day or two. Del wasn’t happy when he heard that. He was hopin’ to rent out both rooms during the rodeo.”

  Sky nodded. “You’ll tell him it doesn’t matter to us, right? We won’t complain about unpainted walls and bare floors.”

  Hank sent her a wink. “Leave Del to me, ma’am. He’s got two hefty teenage boys who’ll have the furniture back in those rooms in no time.”

  Two hours later, Sky sat in a booth at Darcy’s Diner, the evidence kit on the seat beside her and a piece of warm apple pie in front of her. The big red plastic cup that held the lemonade she’d ordered with her dinner was half-empty, a ring of sweat pooling on the paper place mat beneath it.

  Across from her, Grant leaned back in the booth, his expression closed, his gray eyes unreadable as he worked through his second beer. The sleeves of his linen shirt were rolled up, emphasizing tanned forearms with corded muscles. Seconds before, he’d shoved his fingers through his sandy hair, leaving it appealingly rumpled.

  Because her fingers itched to smooth that sandy thickness, Sky balled her hands into her lap. She kept her gaze on her pie and off of the rodeo fans who packed every table, booth and stool at the counter. She’d long ago had her fill of the admiring looks Grant had garnered from every female in the place.

  She had no right to feel that way, she reminded herself as despair pressed against her heart. She and Grant had no future because her past wouldn’t let her go. It was as simple as that. And each moment she spent in his presence, all the more devastating.

  She checked the cat-shaped clock with moving eyes and shifting tail that hung over the diner’s big, wide-pane front window. By now, the motel owner’s two hefty sons would have finished lugging furniture into the rooms she and Grant had rented after a quick glance inside. Hank, the wrecker driver, had made short work of convincing his cousin Delbert that the “police folks” from Oklahoma City wouldn’t complain about carpetless floors and unpainted walls. With that assurance, Delbert had happily swiped Grant’s gold credit card through the reader.