by Tami Hoag
He set his on the ledge and leaned his shoulder against the window frame. He had turned no lights on in the room, letting the fire and moonlight provide all they needed. Darkness seemed to bring out the moods in him. The Cheshire-cat grin and lazy, good ol' boy manner came off like a mask.
“I have a son,” he said without preamble.
He didn't look at Ellen to catch her reaction, concentrating his effort on controlling his own. He took a swallow of his whiskey and dug a cigarette out of his shirt pocket as the liquor slid like molten gold into his belly.
“The punch line is that I didn't know it, and he doesn't know it.” He lit the cigarette, took a deep pull on it, and blew the smoke up at the moon. “He's eight. Just like Josh. His mother—my ex-wife—took him away from me before I even knew he existed. It's a hell of a strange thing, finding out after the fact that a part of you has been missing for the better part of a decade.”
“I take it she was pregnant when she left you,” Ellen said quietly.
“I figured that much out during the divorce war, but I never dreamed it was mine.” He gave a bitter half laugh. “I was chasing ambulances back then, working like a dog, miserable as hell. Christine and I . . . well, it was pretty much over but the shouting. She found herself a lawyer higher up on the food chain, a drone, the kind of guy who only wants a partnership and a new BMW every year. . . . I just assumed the baby was his. I didn't think she could have hated me so much. I was wrong.”
It surprised him, how close to the surface the sadness was. Must have been the whiskey—historically, it brought out the latent despondency in Brooks men. Uncle Hooter came to mind, sitting on the veranda on a warm summer night, sobbing at the memory of a dog he had lost as a boy.
As he let the silence drag on, Ellen watched his face, naked in the moonlight, battered and beard-shadowed, tight with a kind of pain that had nothing to do with his physical wounds.
“How did you find out?”
The tip of his cigarette glowed red as he inhaled. An odd dot of color among the shades of gray. “Her grandfather lived in Eudora. She never came to visit, but they came back when he died. The funeral was ten days ago. I suppose she didn't think I'd be decent enough to pay my respects, but there I was, and there she was with her balding senior-partner husband . . . and my son.” He smiled in a way that made her heart ache. “Damned if he isn't the spittin' image . . .”
“Did you ask her?”
“She said to me, ‘Carter Talcott is the only father he's ever known. He's a happy little boy. We have a nice life. Don't ruin that for him, Jay.' ” His chin quivered a little. He shook his head. “Christ, what did she think I would do? Tell an eight-year-old boy right there the man he's called Daddy his whole life isn't? That I was such a bastard his mama saw fit to keep him a secret from me all these years? God.”
He took a last drag on his cigarette and carefully crushed the butt out against the cold windowpane.
“What did you do?”
“I came here,” he said simply. “I'd been watching the case on the news, in the papers and all. I flew to Minneapolis that very night. Ran away. Came to see what real suffering was all about. Try to make some kind of sense of it, get some perspective.
“You know, my son is alive and—and he lives with people who love him. And I didn't even know I was missing him, so—” His Adam's apple bobbed in his throat as he broke off and swallowed. “It's not like the Kirkwoods or the Hollomans, not like having him stolen by some maniac and taken to God-knows-what fate. It's not like Mitch Holt, who had his boy gunned down by some junkie. I don't have any call to complain just because I won't be the one taking my son to Little League.”
But he did, Ellen thought. He had every reason to hurt. That his tragedy wasn't on the same scale as the Kirkwoods' didn't make it any less a tragedy. And yet she could see him trying to grasp that line of reasoning, trying to minimize the pain. She caught a glimpse of vulnerability she would never have suspected lay beneath the layers of charm and cynicism. And she had a feeling it came as much of a surprise to him. Out of the blue. Blindsiding him. Sending him scrambling for familiar ground.
“You won't try to work something out?” she asked. “Some kind of joint custody? Recognition as the boy's biological father, at the very least?”
He shook his head. “He's happy. He's got a nice, normal life. What kind of son of a bitch would I be to come barging in and turn that all upside down?”
“But if you're his father—”
“Carter Talcott is his father. Me, I just provided the raw materials.”
He tossed back the last of his drink, crushed the cup in his hand, and turned to face her, his expression colder, tougher as he wrestled to regain control. “I'm not looking for advice or sympathy,” he said tersely. “You wanted to know why I came here, why I picked this story. There it is. It doesn't have a damn thing to do with Anthony Costello. I couldn't give a shit about the money I'll make. I came here to lose myself in someone else's misery.
“If you want to think I'm a bastard, go right ahead, because I surely am. Any number of people will gladly tell you so. I just want you to hate me for the right reasons, that's all. If I'm going to stand accused of something, I'd rather it be a sin I've actually committed.”
He walked away from her, across the room, tossed the empty cup into the fireplace and watched the flames swallow it up.
“Finish your drink,” he growled without looking up. “I'll take you home.”
Ellen left the cup on the window ledge beside his crushed-out cigarette and moved slowly toward him. The house was cold, despite the fire, a kind of cold she associated with emptiness, with loneliness. Leaning back against the stone beside the fireplace, she took in the furnishings of his “home,” office machines and lawn chairs, an army cot and a thick down sleeping bag. A transient's home.
“I don't hate you,” she whispered. “I hate this case. What it's doing to this town. What it's doing to me. It's reminded me of things I'd rather not believe about human nature—my own included.”
“You? But you're the heroine of the story.”
“No. I'm just doing my job, a job I walked away from two years ago because I couldn't stand what it was turning me into. Being a cynic wears you down, burns you out. I didn't want to stop caring about the people who needed justice. I thought if I came here, it wouldn't take so much out of me, that there'd be something left over for me. And now . . .”
“And now you have Garrett Wright and Tony Costello and a dead lawyer and a missing boy . . . and me.”
From some reserve she didn't know she had, she found a smile to match his. “And you. Well, maybe you're not all bad. You're a diversion, at least,” she teased. “Although I can ill afford to be diverted.”
“A diversion?” He tried the word on his tongue like a piece of strange fruit. The old devilish sparkle rekindled in his eyes. “Mercy, Ms. North, you make me feel like a gigolo.”
“You've been called worse things.”
“By you, no doubt.”
“No doubt.”
She hadn't realized he was so close, close enough to raise his hand and touch her cheek. Close enough to draw her to him with just a look, with just the longing in his pale eyes. He leaned down and kissed her, his lips warm and tasting of whiskey.
“My God, I want you, Ellen,” he whispered.
“I can't. The case—”
“This has nothing to do with the case.” Sliding a hand into her hair, he undid the clip that held it back. It fell free around her shoulders.
“This is just us,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to her temple. “It's just . . . I need . . . to touch you. Let me touch you, Ellen.”
His vulnerability touched her. The yearning in his smoky voice touched her. The attraction that had sparked inside her from the first flared up as hot and bright as the flames of the fire. He was nothing she had been looking for. She wasn't a woman given to fits of passion. She didn't lower her guard. But even as his lips brushed her cheek
, she could feel logic slipping away.
She made one last, halfhearted reach for it, drawing a breath for the voice of reason. Jay seemed to sense the words before she could form them. He touched a forefinger to her lips.
“Don't think,” he whispered. “Not tonight. Please.”
Please. They could have this night, cross this line. There would be no going back. There would likely be regrets, but those were in the gray mists of the future, and they didn't outweigh the need to connect, to touch, to shut out the rest of the world for a few hours.
Ellen closed her eyes as he framed her face in his hands and kissed her again, deeper, slower. She let her mouth open beneath the pressure of his, allowed him access, shivered as he took it. He drew her away from the wall. Her coat fell to the floor. She slid her hands up the front of his shirt and brought them back down, parting the buttons from their moorings.
Impatient for the feel of her hands on his skin, he slipped the shirt off and tossed it aside, pulled his dark T-shirt off over his head and flung it away. The firelight played over the ridges and planes of muscle in his chest. His shoulders were broad, in the way of a man who did physical work.
Ellen touched her fingertips to his belly, felt the muscles quiver beneath the tight bandage that bound his ribs.
“Will this be all right?” she asked. “You won't hurt—?”
“That's not where I hurt,” he whispered. Curling his fingers around her wrist, he raised her hand and pressed it over his heart.
The honesty of the gesture surprised her. She spread her fingers and felt his heartbeat. He was just a man and he hurt and he wanted this time with her to escape that pain. She hurt in her own way, for her own reasons. She wanted the same escape. It was as simple and as complicated as that.
Leaning into him, she pressed a kiss where her hand had rested. Then Jay's mouth was on hers again, hotter, hungrier.
They sank to their knees together. His fingers stumbled down the line of buttons on her blouse. He pushed the blouse and her cardigan off her shoulders without completing the task, the need to see her, to taste her, too urgent.
She hadn't bothered with a bra. Her breasts were there for the taking, the color of cream, the texture of silk, a size that filled his palms perfectly. He cupped them together, rubbing his thumbs across the rosy buds at their center, the need snapping inside him like a whip as they hardened beneath his touch. Bending her back over his arm, he lowered his head to take one tightened peak between his lips.
The sensation was electric. A gasp caught in Ellen's throat. She clutched at his shoulders, then his head, raking her fingers through his short hair, pulling him tighter against her. The need for this act, for this man, burned within, wild, hot, too intense. She had never known what it was to let go of her self-control completely, but she felt it sliding away from her now. The feeling was terrifying and exhilarating at once.
He lifted his head and looked at her, his lower lip slick and shining, the pupils of his eyes huge, ringed with neon blue. He looked uncivilized, as if the same fire in her had seared away the thin veneer of manners he wore in public, revealing what she had sensed all along was at the core of him—something dangerous, untamed, raw.
He moved away from her for a moment, and the sudden absence of his body heat left her feeling cold. She pulled her blouse together over her breasts as she watched him snatch the thick down sleeping bag from the cot and spread it open in front of the fireplace. Then he offered her his hand.
She stood, passive, as he undressed her. He freed her arms from the blouse and sweater, caressing her shoulders, her back, her belly. He hooked his thumbs in the waistband of the leggings she wore and drew them slowly down her hips, kneeling at her feet to remove them. All thoughts of being cold vaporized as he reached up and inched her silk panties down, following their descent with his mouth.
He pressed a hot, openmouthed kiss to the soft spot below her navel as he slid his hands around to cup her buttocks, then dragged the kiss lower to the tender area just above the delta of dark-blond curls, then lower.
Ellen gasped at the touch of his lips, at the bold probing of his tongue. She tried to step back, but he held her easily, his fingers stroking, kneading, pulling her closer, tilting her hips into the shocking intimacy of his kiss. The intensity of the pleasure stunned her, scared her, swept her toward a towering precipice—and left her hanging there.
An involuntary whimper of frustration escaped her as Jay pulled her down to the floor with him and pulled her hard against him. He shared the taste of her own desire with her. She ran her hands along the taut muscles of his back, his arms, feeling his strength. His urgency seemed to feed her own.
When he rose on his knees to unfasten his trousers, she rose with him, pushed his hands away from his belt and unbuckled it herself. Her fingers trembled as she unbuttoned his khakis and eased the zipper down. She touched him through the fine silk of his boxers, savored the feel of his hardness beneath the whisper softness of the fabric.
Jay tolerated her delicate teasing with gritted teeth, holding on to his control until he could stand it no longer. He wanted her, needed more than the tentative feather touches she was giving him.
“Jesus, Ellen, touch me,” he rasped, closing her hand around his shaft, guiding it slowly up and down the length of him. “Feel what you do to me . . . how much I want you.”
A sense of feminine power swelling inside her, Ellen followed his commands, savoring the feel of him in her hand. Hot, hard, thick, pulsing. She traced her fingertips over the tip of him and found a spot that made him suck his breath in through his teeth. With his hand still curved over hers, she reached down and cupped him, and a shudder rippled through his whole body.
He drew away just long enough to shuck his pants and fish a condom out of his wallet. He came back to her ready, eager, the muscles in his arms trembling as he braced himself over her.
She arched up to meet him. Her eyes drifted shut as he entered her. Her body tightened around him like a fist.
“Sweet heaven,” he groaned, fighting the instinctive urge to possess, to bury himself in a single stroke. “Relax for me, sweetheart,” he whispered, slowly drawing her leg up along his thigh.
He slid a hand beneath her hip and lifted her into him, allowing himself to sink deeper, closer to oblivion. She caught her breath, then let go a sigh of pure sensual pleasure. Slowly, erotically, they moved together, without words, the glow of the fire gilding their bodies.
Ellen let go of the self-restraint that was so much a part of her, shivering inside at the idea of her own vulnerability.
Jay felt as if his soul were just an inch from hers, straining to connect in a way that was primal, more than physical, deeper than anything he'd known in a long time. More than he'd bargained for in coming to this place. He had meant to lose himself, now he wanted nothing more than to hold on to this moment, this night, this woman. The idea scared the hell out of him.
Then they were both beyond thought. There was only need and urgency, a rush to an explosion of bliss.
Ellen cried out as her climax came in wave upon wave. She held Jay tight as he came just after her. Even as the tension began to ease out of his body, she held him, suddenly afraid of what she would feel when she let go—alone.
Odd, when she had always felt comfortable with herself, self-sufficient, self-reliant, capable of sharing a relationship or going her own way. She had never defined herself in relation to her status with a man. It was the case, she supposed. She had been feeling the weight of it pressing down on her like a pile of stones. For just a while she had felt the burden lift. For the time she could lie here next to Brooks with his arms around her, she felt . . . safe.
Safe. With a man she barely knew and barely trusted.
At 4:06 A.M. an explosion rocked Dinkytown. The blast shattered windows up and down one block, including all the windows in the Pla-Mor Ballroom. At 4:08 Alvin Underbakke called 911 to report the incident and request the fire department come and put out th
e blaze that was engulfing a big white Cadillac across the street from his house.
CHAPTER 27
Where were you at four this morning?” Mitch asked, his hands braced on the back of the chair he should have been sitting in.
Tyrell Mann met his gaze with arrogance. “Gettin' my beauty z's. Where'd you want me to be, Chief? What you tryin' to pin on my black ass?”
“Let's get something straight here, Tyrell,” he said. “I don't give a shit what color your ass is, or any other part of you, and, frankly, I'm about ready to take that chip off your shoulder and put it where the sun don't shine. All I care about here is getting a straight answer. Where were you?”
“Like I said—asleep. We went to the party for the Doc, then crashed.”
“At the hostel on campus?”
“Whatever.”
Mitch straightened away from the chair and advanced toward him.
“Yeah, at the hostel,” Tyrell gave in. “Why?”
“Someone blew up Ms. North's car this morning.”
A nasty smile split Tyrell's features. “Was the bitch in it?”
Mitch leaned down into his face. “You know, Tyrell, it's that attitude that's going to land your ass in jail for the rest of your life one of these days. I thought you had to have some brains to get into the Cowboys.”
“I got brains enough to know I can have a lawyer here if I want one.”
“Why would you need a lawyer, Tyrell? You're not under arrest. Should you be?”
“Fuck you, Holt.”
Ellen watched the exchange from the hall, where a one-way mirror gave a thirty-inch view of the show. The chances of one Cowboy giving up another were nil. The chances of their being tripped up in their story was slim. No one was going to get anything out of Tyrell. Down the hall Agent Wilhelm and J. R. Andersen were going through the same song and dance. Andersen played innocent, false concern oozing out of him like sap.
If one of the Cowboys had torched the Cadillac, it was going to take an eyewitness to finger him, and people in Deer Lake were in their beds at four o'clock on a Sunday morning. No one had seen anything. No one had seen Tyrell Mann or J. R. Andersen or Speed Dawkins or Todd Childs or anyone else.