by Dana Marton
Because Bing was as close as he had to a friend in a long time, he told him the truth. “I can’t.”
“You’re a good detective. Don’t throw everything away on this.”
“I have nothing but this.”
“You could have more. Guy with your looks and your brain. You could have anything you wanted. Take the waitress home. She wants you to. She’s a decent gal. Give yourself a break.”
But he shook his head, even as raised voices at the bar drew his attention. Some slick guy seemed to be harassing one of the other waitresses.
He had his hand on her waist, a few inches too low, and seemed to be holding on when she was trying to pull away. Jack drained his beer and pushed to standing, slapping some money on the table in the process. “Better get going.”
By the time he cut through the crowd, the asshole had jostled the waitress enough to spill some of the drinks on her tray.
Jack stopped next to them, his shoulders relaxed, his eyes on the guy. “You want to let her go.”
The idiot swung his way with a sneer, his mouth opening to say something. Then his face suddenly pulled straight, his hands slipping off the waitress. Cold anger came into his eyes for a second, then disappeared.
“Go home, Graham,” Bing told the guy from behind Jack. “You know you can’t hold your liquor.”
The man held his hands up and mouthed okay, okay, which was lost in the din. This close to the band, the decibels were flying in the triple digits. The waitress flashed a grateful smile at Jack, then hurried away.
“Who the hell was that?” Jack asked when both he and Bing were outside and could finally hear each other again.
“Graham Lanius. Thinks he’s a big shot because he owns a gallery. Must make good money. Gives a big donation to the police department every year.”
Jack glared back toward the door. Too bad money couldn’t buy brains. He parted ways with Bing in the parking lot, each going on his way.
He had one more thing to do tonight. He kept that to himself.
He was willing to do whatever it took to take down Blackwell. If it meant something that would end his career, or even his life, so be it.
Which meant it was better to keep Bing at a distance. He was a good captain; his career shouldn’t go down the drain.
* * *
He watched the detective through his binoculars, the landscape abandoned around them, the ice of the reservoir a shining sheet of diamonds in the moonlight, not a car on the road, as if they were the only two people on earth. They both had their quests. They both had their rituals.
Sullivan came to the grave every night.
He could almost hear the detective think across the distance. He wasn’t giving up. He wasn’t pulling back. Another thing they had in common. Neither was the type to walk away from a job until it was finished.
The FBI might have been making pests of themselves, going around town, asking questions, but Sullivan was the true threat—the only threat.
The FBI would give up after a while, move out. They had timetables and a strict budget.
Sullivan would stay and keep distracting him from his art, from his true calling. It pissed him off. Sullivan was nobody. The man had no idea what he was messing with.
Across the reservoir, the detective was staring into the dark hole of the grave.
The ground hadn’t been able to hold him.
The water would, and the ice. New plans had been made. Soon, a new trap would be waiting.
* * *
Jack stood over his grave in the gathering dusk once again, yellow police tape flitting in the wind around him. Should have stayed at the bar where it was warm, gotten another beer. But he was here once again, at a place he hated yet couldn’t walk away from.
He needed a new lead. He needed some progress, dammit. At least one step forward.
His lungs couldn’t get enough air, and it had nothing to do with the freezing temperature. He felt like that every time here. He had come every day since he’d been released from the hospital, hoping the place would jog some forgotten detail loose in his memory that could lead him to Blackwell.
And also hoping that the bastard would return. Maybe he would come to the site of his only failed project to see what had gone wrong. Maybe the grave would draw him too. No sign of him so far, though. Jack hated to think that between the two of them, he was the only obsessed lunatic.
He looked away from the grave and toward the house he knew stood somewhere behind the trees.
Ashley Price.
Every time he thought about her painting the old man in the closet, the short hairs stood straight up on the back of his neck.
Her paintings had nothing to do with Blackwell. Except his.
She painted the dead, those who died violently, in relative proximity to her—about a twenty- or thirty-mile radius. What the hell did that mean?
The dead who had unfinished business reached out to her? Why?
Because she’d come back from the dead? She’d been dead for twenty minutes under the ice. The emergency-response crew had brought her back. Did she want to return to life? Did part of her, feeling guilty about Dylan, want to stay with the kid? Did she still have some faint link to that other world?
Had she been the presence he’d felt when he’d been dying?
He didn’t understand her, and he didn’t like what he couldn’t understand. She couldn’t be pinned down, could not be classified. Probably the very reason why she was getting under his skin every possible way.
He’d even dreamed about her. Naked dreams. Just the thought gave a tug at his groin. Hell, the only thing he knew about her for sure was that his body, very inconveniently, lusted after hers.
The lust wasn’t specific, he told himself. All it meant was that he hadn’t gotten laid in too long a time. He could go back to the bar tonight, hook up with the blonde waitress, share a night of physical release: the perfect no-mess solution.
Yet he didn’t find the prospect the least bit tempting.
So he walked out to the road and drove up to her house, even if he hadn’t intended to visit Ashley tonight. The last time had been plenty enough, watching her paint, watching her fight against her jumble of emotions that had threatened to pull him in.
Her downstairs lights were on but not the upstairs. Good. She wasn’t painting. He leaned the new shovel he’d bought next to her old one, then ran up the steps and rang the doorbell.
A few seconds passed before the key turned in the lock and the door cracked open a few inches.
“Unless you have an arrest warrant, go away.” The dark circles around her eyes said she hadn’t seen much sleep last night. She wore black slacks made of some soft material that clung to her long legs, and a long-sleeved fitted cotton shirt that showed off her curves.
Predictably, his body responded. The irony that he kept coming back to her like a lover in the night didn’t escape him. He watched her for a long minute before words he hadn’t meant to say came out of his mouth. “Let’s say I believe you.”
She still hesitated a long second before she finally stepped back to let him in.
He kicked off his snow-covered boots, hung his coat on one of the pegs by the door, and followed her into the living room. “Tell me again, how the…visions work.”
She walked away from him, into the kitchen, then measured him up as if trying to make up her mind, running her teeth over her lower lip, looking conflicted. “I see a picture in my mind,” she said at last, “and it makes me sick. I feel—I can’t explain. And it doesn’t go away until I get it out. I can’t stop thinking about it until then.”
He tried to understand how that might work, how that might feel. “And it all started after the accident on the reservoir?”
She nodded.
He sat on a kitchen chair and leaned back, taking as relaxed a pose as possible, putting himself lower to set her at ease. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”
Again she moved away from him, to the counter to stare out the back wi
ndow into the night. “We used to go ice skating every chance we got. And that time, Maddie wanted to bring Dylan.”
“Dylan Miller, the neighbor’s son.” He’d read the file. Victim: Dylan Miller, age four, male. Currently, the Miller farm stood abandoned across the road. The family had moved away shortly after the accident.
“We fell through,” she said, her voice brittle. “Maddie was closest to me. I pushed her out, onto the ice; then I tried to save Dylan, but I couldn’t find him.”
And she wouldn’t get out without the boy. She’d stayed and searched until she’d gotten lost under the ice. She’d spent twenty minutes down there, her metabolism shut down by the cold. Dead. Her file had included interviews with the ER staff. Her rescue had been hailed as a miracle.
“One second he was there,” she whispered, “the next he disappeared. His skates pulled him down.”
He recognized the look in her eyes as she glanced at him, the soul-eating guilt. He knew what it meant to lose someone and carry the blame for it, to be utterly helpless to do anything to save them.
It had been fifteen years and he still wasn’t over Shannon’s death. Dylan had been lost only a year ago. All things considered, Ashley held herself together admirably well. His gaze strayed to the crayon art on the fridge. Her daughter, probably, had kept her sane, given her a reason for living. Everybody needed something.
He had his revenge.
“I think maybe part of you wanted to stay with him,” he said.
She stared at him as she considered his words. “I did. What right did I have to live if I couldn’t save Dylan?” she asked quietly then. “I was dead. They brought me back.”
“They did that to you. You didn’t choose it.”
“So?”
“I think you still have some kind of a link to the other side.” God, now he was talking crazy, but he said it anyway. “As if you’d left a little part of you behind.”
She stared at him, paling. “So the dying can reach out to me,” she whispered.
He nodded.
“I thought it was because I lost a life. I thought if I saved a life, the visions would go away. They didn’t.”
“I’m glad you came for me anyway.” He couldn’t imagine how hard that must have been for her.
She gave a wry smile. “Don’t make me regret it.”
“I’m afraid I might have already.” He watched her. “But thank you. I mean that, Ashley.”
She looked away, then back at him. “I wanted to thank you too, for not giving my paintings to the FBI.”
“How do you know I haven’t?”
“If they had the paintings, they would have said something.”
He hated the agents who kept getting in his way. And he didn’t want them messing with her either.
So he felt protective toward her. So what? She’d saved his life. She deserved something in return.
“Any new urges to paint?” He asked the question to prove to himself that he was here to investigate and not just to see her.
She shook her head as she stood in the middle of the kitchen, looking all alone and vulnerable and completely lost. And completely hot, regardless. She had barely a touch of makeup on, the simple black slacks and cotton shirt she wore hardly seductive. Her body didn’t need enhancement—all curves and mile-long legs. She was a knockout, pretty much. The sight of her certainly knocked him back a pace every time he looked at her. But something deeper than her physical attributes drew him now, and he got his first inkling that he might be in trouble.
He needed to say good night here and go about his business. But when he stood, he walked to her instead of heading straight for the door. He stopped a couple of feet from her. “Does it always make you feel sick when you paint like that?”
She nodded but wouldn’t look at him.
“Next time you feel it coming on, call me.”
“There’s nothing you can do.”
“I can come over.”
“I can handle it. I don’t want…” She bit her lip.
But he knew what she’d been about to say. She didn’t want anyone to see her like that. He got it. He wanted to be alone too, when the darkest of his rage got hold of him. “Call me anyway.”
Her gaze came up, her eyes wide—that impossible shade of green that haunted his dreams. She blinked hard, fighting to be strong. But underneath it all, she was broken still on so many levels.
He didn’t think at all before he stepped all the way up to her. His arms went around her, and he pulled her closer, tucked her against him. Every inch where they touched, his body came alive.
For a split second, she leaned into the offered comfort. Instant lust cut through him, the urge to have her mixing with the urge to protect her. But, before he could have done something stupid, she pulled away.
They stared at each other for a moment.
She’s going to be a complication, he thought, not for the first time.
He was a cop. Regardless of whether he thought her innocent or not, she was an FBI suspect. “I shouldn’t have— This isn’t why I came. I came—” He had no idea how to finish that sentence, so it was a good thing she cut him off.
“To soften me up and see if I spill something?” Hurt and betrayal rang in her voice.
The momentary truce was gone between them.
Her face hardened, and her chin came up. “I want my paintings back.”
Of course. That was all she wanted from him. Not comfort, and not more than comfort, certainly. And he shouldn’t want anything from her at all. Even if his entire body ached with the need to have her back in his arms.
To hell with that.
“No,” he said.
She folded her arms. “What do you want from me, Jack?”
Just a few days ago, he would have known the answer: a confession. But he no longer thought she was really Blackwell’s accomplice.
Except, then why was he here?
He had no right to want anything from her. She didn’t even like him, and to be honest he couldn’t blame her. He’d been a jackass to her from the moment they’d met.
His ringing phone saved him from having to answer her question. He took the call—Mike from the station.
“I’m not supposed to tell you this, but someone just reported bones in the woods out beyond Beckett Road.”
He walked away from Ashley. “Who?”
“Some kids out looking for trouble, no doubt, or a quiet place to smoke weed.”
“Anybody dispatched yet?” He stepped into his boots and grabbed his coat.
“Bing is going out.”
But he was closer.
He looked back at Ashley, standing alone in the middle of her kitchen, her arms wrapped around her, her haunted green eyes watching him. The twinge of reluctance to leave her was something new and unexpected. It surprised him more than a little.
Something else drew him in the opposite direction, something darker. He gave in to that, leaving her with a brief nod as he walked out the door. And then everything else fell away, his mind focused on Blackwell.
Anticipation hummed through him as he jumped into his car and slammed his foot on the gas. He wanted to be first on the scene.
He reached the spot in five minutes, saw the snowmobiles’ tracks, pulled over by the side of the road, and followed the tracks in. His boots crunched on the snow, his flashlight illuminating the path ahead. The trees stood silent, their barren branches scraping against him now and then. In a minute or two, he could see the bright headlights of the snowmobiles up ahead.
“Who are you?” One of the four teenagers standing around challenged him.
“Broslin PD.” Jack turned his flashlight on the kids.
Four boys squinted at him, one familiar, the one he’d caught on Ashley’s land. The kid recognized him too and hunched down in his jacket.
They were all around high school age, red-cheeked and wide-eyed, half scared, half excited.
“What are you doing here?”
; “Just hanging out,” the one who’d challenged him a second ago answered, sounding defensive, probably the gang leader. “The bones are over there.” He pointed to a stand of bushes.
Jack panned the bleached bundle of bones scattered over the frozen ground. They’d been there for a while, probably since the summer. Predators had gotten at them. He didn’t even have to bend over to make ID. The remains belonged to an unfortunate calf that had somehow wandered away from a nearby farm and gotten tangled in the bushes.
He kicked at the bones and swore under his breath as they scattered, all the tension and anticipation leaking out of him, leaving nothing but stark disappointment.
Through the leafless trees, in the silent night, he could hear Bing’s car coming up the road, slowing.
“You stay right here,” he snapped at the kids, then walked out to the road to meet his captain.
Bing was shaking his head as he got out of his cruiser and spotted Jack. “If I thought it would work, I’d come up with some trumped-up charge and put you under house arrest. I thought putting you back on admin duty would keep you out of my hair.” He got his industrial-size flashlight from the trunk.
“I haven’t started admin duty yet.” He had to pass a physical and get a psych approval first, which he planned on doing first thing in the morning. He’d already scheduled his appointments.
“Smart-ass. What’s going on here?”
“Some old bones from a stray calf. Couple of teenagers where they shouldn’t be.”
Bing gave a resigned groan as he headed for the bushes, Jack following. The captain panned the kids with his flashlight when they reached them, settling on the tallest. “Your father know you’re out here, Bobby?”
“No, sir.”
“You know them?” Jack asked.
Bing turned away from the boys. “One of them is the son of the high school principal; the other one’s father is Jim Foster, a local councilman,” he said under his breath as he shook his head. “Might as well have them turn out their pockets. Read them the riot act. They probably already tossed whatever weed they brought to smoke out here, but it won’t hurt to put the fear of God in them a little.”
It didn’t happen that way. A call came in before he took two steps.