Small Town Spin

by Walker, LynDee

  He whistled. “Like the cheerleader thing, you think?”

  I grinned. “Very much.” I’d gone through a true-crime phase, studying cases and the media reports on them for a chunk of my adolescence, and the Texas cheerleader murder was one of my favorites. A mom had killed the girl who was her daughter’s big rival for a spot on the squad.

  “Would she have had access to TJ’s cleats?” Kyle asked. “I mean, do we still think Luke filed them down if we think mom might have killed TJ?”

  “I cannot figure a way she’d be in the boys’ locker room alone, but I’m sure she knows where it is and could come up with an excuse if she had to,” I said. “Which is a long way around ‘maybe.’”

  “You’re chasing vapor here, you know that, right? You have a boatload of circumstantial evidence, but not a damned thing you can prove. Even if you are right. Which I’m not conceding just yet.”

  “Em agrees with me,” I reminded him.

  He was silent for a minute. “Yeah. And she’s as good as it gets at criminal psychology. Every time I try to blow you off, I think about what you told me she said. But this is going to be tough to pin on anyone, honey.”

  “I like tough.” I fell into silence as the dark fields outside gave way to freeway street lights.

  When he pulled off I-64 at the exit for my house, I sighed. “Something about the moonshine could have caused liver failure, too,” I said. “I know the jars I saw came from the Parsons family.”

  “I can’t touch it if it’s staying in the state. And the ABC is on it—you heard him, they’ve almost got enough for a bust.”

  “It’s not. Staying in the state, I mean.”

  “How do you know that?” He pulled the truck into my driveway and turned to face me, his brow creasing. “I asked you about drinking it and you said ‘once was enough,’ too. What did you do?”

  Dammit. Me and my big mouth. “I can’t tell you.” I fought to keep my voice even.

  He held my gaze for a long moment. “I know this is important to you. But I can’t look into it based on a lie, Nichelle. I’m walking a close line with getting in trouble as it is. I know a couple of guys who would say I’ve already put my nose too far in without an open investigation. If the wrong people decide that, I could lose my job.”

  “I’m not lying, and I certainly don’t want you to lose your job.” I fidgeted in the seat, groping for an answer. “People who wouldn’t talk to you will talk to me. I promise you, I’m right. If that helps you with an excuse.”

  He studied every line of my face as I stared at him, trying to look earnest. I was telling the truth.

  Mostly, I just didn’t want to tell him anything that would lead him back to Joey. I knew that was a bomb waiting for a trigger, but I wasn’t looking to provide it.

  “Did you go interview the moonshiners?” he exploded. “Do you have any idea how badly you could have gotten hurt?”

  “But I didn’t.” I skirted the question, my breath coming faster. I tried to slow it. I didn’t want Kyle to be mad at me.

  He tipped his hat back. I turned toward him in the seat.

  “I don’t want you to get hurt.” He reached for my hand.

  “I don’t, either.” I squeezed his fingers. “I’m trying to be careful. Jeez, I’ve only been to Mathews by myself a couple of times.”

  He pressed his lips into a tight line, holding my gaze silently for a minute before he got out of the truck and came around to open my door.

  My head swam when I stood up and I grabbed Kyle’s arm to stay on my feet as the driveway wavered. He put one hand under my elbow and wound the other arm around my waist, concern furrowing his brow. “You okay?”

  I blinked. “Wow. I guess my equilibrium is still off because of my cold.”

  He walked me to the door. I leaned back against the wall, ignoring the porch swing because of my unsteadiness.

  “And here we are.” Kyle’s voice dropped. He rested one hand on the wall just above my head, facing me. I breathed the clean smell of his favorite cologne, his eyes holding mine.

  My pulse quickened. “Who’d have thought you’d be walking me to the front door at the end of the night, like, ever again?”

  “I could walk you inside, if you like.” He tipped his hat back, leaning so close I could smell the cinnamon gum on his breath. He traced one finger along my cheekbone, and the light touch sent such a shockwave through me my knees buckled. Oh. My. God.

  I closed my eyes and slid my hands up his chest to his shoulders, pulling him the rest of the way home. He brushed his lips lightly over mine, sending sparks skating across the back of my skull. My fingers dug in, pulling him closer, and I parted my lips and traced the line of his with the tip of my tongue. He wound one hand into my hair and deepened the kiss, his other arm sliding behind me and pulling me against him.

  “Kyle,” I whispered into his lips, trying to catch a steadying breath.

  “Nicey,” he murmured, kissing his way across my jaw to my neck. I shuddered at the electricity his goatee brushing my skin sent through me, knocking his hat to the floor as I clutched at the back of his head. His close-cropped hair was soft under my hands.

  He trailed his mouth slowly up the side of my neck and returned to my lips, his tongue moving languidly over mine. The porch rocked under my feet.

  “I need to go inside,” I said, my breath coming so fast my vision blurred. When had Kyle gotten to be such a great kisser? Never mind. I probably didn’t want to think about that. I was having trouble thinking about anything except wanting to lie down, and wanting to kiss Kyle some more. And how to reconcile those two things.

  I fumbled a key out of my bag, handing it to him and leaning my head back against the wall, willing my pulse to slow.

  It refused, a fine sheen of sweat frosting my skin in the cool night air. I gulped for breath as the lights in the house across the street wavered and then blinked out. From far away, I heard the door open. Darcy barked.

  Then Kyle was saying my name with a don’t-walk-out-in-front-of-that-bus urgency, and everything went dark.

  19.

  Crash

  I opened my eyes to the brightest light this side of the pearly gates, groaning and waving it away as I clamped them shut again.

  “Nicey?” Kyle still sounded far away, and it was so bright. What the hell?

  “Where are we?” I asked, not opening my eyes. “And who turned on the high beams?”

  “The ER,” he said. “And the nurses did. While they were hooking you up to machines and trying to get your blood sugar back up.”

  “My blood sugar? Why would it need to go up?” Everything seemed sticky and hard to analyze.

  “Because you haven’t eaten all day and we danced for an hour and a half?” he asked. “You passed out and your skin was so clammy when I picked you up, it scared the shit out of me. I thought maybe you’d been faking your recovery and you had pneumonia or something. But I brought you here and they said your blood sugar crashed. It was forty-two when they checked it.”

  I shook my head, slitting my eyes open against the bright light. “I have never once in my life had a problem with my blood sugar. Am I getting diabetes or something?” That sounded scary.

  The door opened on the end of my question and a balding man with a lab coat, a kind smile and large, seventies-style bifocals answered. “You are not diabetic,” he said. “But you do have to take better care of yourself. Agent Miller tells me you’ve been working even though you’ve been sick, and you don’t eat properly. No case is that important.”

  He checked an IV bag of yellowish fluid hanging over my cot, marked something in the chart, and had just turned back to me when the loudspeaker paged Dr. Gandy to the nurse’s station. “Be right back,” he said, darting out the door.

  “Case?” I looked at Kyle, who was hunched over in a chair next to the cot, rubbing his temples.

  He raised his head and grinned. “I might have flashed my badge and let them think you were my partner. Th
ey would’ve kicked me out to the waiting room, otherwise, and I didn’t want to leave you back here alone.”

  I reached through the bedrail for his hand. “Thanks for looking out for me.”

  “Someone should.”

  “I do all right when I’m not unconscious.”

  He smiled. “Mostly.”

  “So. Blood sugar?”

  “You said you were starving when we got food at the dance, but then you ran off to talk to the girl without eating, and I didn’t see you go back to get your food. I assume from what the doctor said that you didn’t eat it?”

  I opened my mouth and then clamped it shut. “I got waylaid by Morris, and then talked to Luke’s mother,” I said. “And then I was so tired and we left.”

  “Another symptom of low blood sugar. So is being off balance and clammy skin.”

  “Well, hell. I didn’t mean to.”

  “You need to stash a Powerbar in your purse,” Kyle said.

  The door opened again and a nurse came in. “There you are.” She smiled. “Feeling a little better?”

  “I think so.” I glanced at Kyle, remembering suddenly what we’d been about to do when I’d passed out. “Compared to being unconscious, anyway.”

  “You need to remember to eat,” she said, hanging a new IV bag and taking down the empty one.

  “So I’ve heard. But this has never happened to me before. It’s not like there haven’t been plenty of days when I got busy and forgot to eat. So why now? Does this mean I’m going to get diabetes?” I had a hard time letting go of that worry. I hate needles.

  “Not necessarily,” she said. “Low blood sugar levels can be caused by a combination of things that have nothing to do with diabetes. Illness, poor sleeping habits, inadequate nutrition. Any of that sound familiar?”

  I grimaced. “Maybe. But I’m a little freaked out because I’ve never had this problem before.”

  “Aging makes things in your body work less efficiently, as a general rule.” She winked, noting the time on the chart and turning back for the door. “It only gets worse.”

  I rolled my eyes as the door closed behind her. “Aging. I’m not even thirty yet.”

  “I’m coming up on it quick,” Kyle said. “I feel it some days, too. I can’t lift as much at the gym as I could when I was twenty-four.”

  “I don’t think I care for this getting older business.” I plucked at the threads of the blanket across my lap.

  “Beats the hell out of the alternative.”

  I sighed. “I always thought I’d be in a different place at thirty. Thirty was old. Dentures and walker old. Remember?”

  “We were going to rule the world,” Kyle said, squeezing my hand. “Have it all.”

  “Maybe we do.” I said. “You’re a bonafide hero—I mean, your career is shooting off into the stratosphere.”

  “I guess. I feel like it’s been stalled lately. After my last big case, there’s been a shortage of giant operations to run. I’ve been doing a lot of little one-off busts.”

  “You’ll land another big fish soon. Aren’t you, like, the youngest special agent big shot they’ve ever had, or something?”

  “Haven’t you, like, caught a couple of murderers and won some pretty impressive awards?” he countered.

  “I guess.”

  “Thirty’s not old. We’ll pin that one on forty. ’Til we get there. We can move that line forever.”

  I smiled at the thought of turning forty with Kyle. Which gave me a warm-fuzzy and made me wonder again what the hell I was going to do about my love life. Such a massive mess required more brainpower than I had to spare.

  “I know one thing: I wouldn’t go back to being twenty-one for all the Manolos in the Saks warehouse. There’s something to be said for that whole age and wisdom thing.” I rolled my eyes up toward the bag of yellow fluid. “Is that the magic blood sugar juice?”

  “I suppose.” He sat back in the chair. “You seem to be feeling better.”

  “I’m sorry I ruined our evening.”

  “Eh. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed, but I’m more glad you’re okay. Raincheck?”

  “When the time is right.” I closed my eyes. “I’m sleepy.”

  He kissed the back of my hand. “You rest.”

  I did.

  The doctor pronounced me balanced and ready to go home at a few minutes after two, and Kyle delivered me there without further comment on our missed encounter. I knew him well enough to know that took immense self-control, and I kissed his cheek and thanked him for everything. I shut the door and fell into my bed, wanting nothing but to sleep off my crazy week.

  20.

  Where there’s smoke

  Peter Pan flitting around the room wasn’t usually part of the dream where I got offered a job covering the White House for the Washington Post—yet there he was, Tinkerbell hot on his heels.

  Around the time the editor in my dream (who looked much more like Christian Bale than a newspaper editor ever actually would) began belting out “Second Star to the Right,” dream-me figured out my real-life phone must be ringing.

  Groping for my Blackberry, I cracked one eye enough to see that my bedroom was pitch-dark.

  Had I slept all day? I turned my head and groaned when I saw the clock. I hadn’t even slept three hours.

  “Money or shoes?” I mumbled into the phone, turning my head so I could hear. The only acceptable reason for this call was to tell me I’d won one of those things.

  “Pardon?”

  “Aaron?” I sat up and pushed my tangled hair out of my face. “It’s four-forty-five. In the morning. On Saturday.”

  “You’ll thank me when you’ve had some coffee,” Aaron said. “I know you’ve been sick and I figured your scanner was off.”

  Aaron hated working weekends and almost never called me at home. Which was the only reason I didn’t hang up and dive back into my pillows.

  “What’s up?”

  “I’ve got a hotel fire that will make a hell of a headline if you feel up to dragging yourself over here.”

  I shook the haze out of my head. A hotel fire? Andrews was still pissed at me, best I could tell. I needed all the brownie points I could get. “Thanks, Aaron. My scanner didn’t even make it out of the car last night. I owe you one.”

  “Bring an extra cup of coffee. It’s cold out here.”

  “Text me the address and give me twenty minutes.” I clicked off the call and threw my sage duvet back. Darcy growled at me from her bed.

  “I know. But what can I do?” I put my feet on the cold wood floor and wondered why I didn’t have a rug for the bedroom.

  Shuffling to the bathroom, I stretched out of sleep and pulled a pair of jeans and a heavy cable-knit sweater from the dryer that sat across from my bathtub. I scrubbed my face and brushed my teeth, yanking my hair back into a hasty ponytail since I didn’t have time to wash it.

  While Aaron’s coffee brewed into a plastic Starbucks cup, I ran back to the bedroom and jammed my feet into a pair of lavender silk Manolo Blahnik sandals. An absolute eBay steal at less than two hundred dollars, because of a tiny pull in the fabric. A quick dot of clear nail polish, and it wasn’t even visible.

  Darcy raised her head, squinted at the overhead light, tucked her tiny face back under her paw, and resumed sleeping.

  “Lucky dog,” I mumbled, moving back toward the kitchen.

  I put a lid on Aaron’s coffee and punched the button to brew a cup for myself. The coffeemaker burbled, and I spooned half a can of Pro-Plan into Darcy’s footed silver dish for when she got up.

  I added a shot of sugar free white chocolate syrup and a little milk to my cup, then grabbed my bag and the coffee and headed for the car.

  Flipping the scanner on, I listened for something about the fire, but it was eerily quiet. A hotel blaze should warrant a fair amount of beat cop and dispatch chatter, which meant someone had told them to shut up. Why? I checked my Blackberry for a text with the address and m
y jaw dropped. Not just any hotel. The poshest hotel in town. I owed Aaron more than a coffee for the wake-up call.

  Slamming the gas pedal to the floor accomplished two things: it got me to the grand whitewashed building with the knot of police cars and fire engines out front faster, and heated up the car a little quicker. By the time I got off the freeway, I was positively toasty, which was good since I was likely to spend the next couple of hours freezing my ass off. It would warm up quickly after sunrise, but early spring still carries winter’s chill in the pre-dawn hours.

  “Your coffee, detective.” I presented the cup to Aaron with a flourish and he smiled.

  “Thanks.” He sipped it, staring at me. “You okay?”

  “Do I look that bad?” I shook my head.

  “You look a little peaked, as my momma would say.”

  “I managed to crash my blood sugar and earn myself a trip to the ER last night,” I said. “I didn’t get home ’til after two, and now here I am, awake and freezing with you.” I looked around, spotting a gaggle of teenage girls in dreamy gowns and smeared makeup, huddled under a ratty wool blanket near the back of a fire truck. “What’s going on, anyway?”

  The front of the hotel didn’t show signs of damage, and the firefighters milling about meant the blaze was under control.

  I hoped I wasn’t about to get really irritated with Aaron for dragging me out of bed. But he knew what was news and what wasn’t.

  He grinned and shook his head. “Debutante ball meets Girls Gone Wild. The St. Mary’s prom was here last night. Most of the kids got rooms, that being what kids like to do after the prom.”

  I nodded to the frocked group. “That them?”

  “They’ve been begging us not to call their folks since I got here,” he said. “Their boyfriends went on a drugstore run, and the girls had set up dozens of candles in the suite. Trying to set the mood, I guess.”

  “Wait.” I tried not to laugh. “A bunch of teenagers trying to create a sex scene set fire to one of the most beautiful buildings on the eastern seaboard?”

  Aaron nodded. “Told you.”