Tangled Threat ; Suspicious

by Heather Graham

  As she read his notes, she could feel him. He was standing directly behind her chair.

  “Go on,” he snapped, sounding angry again. “Keep reading.”

  Words began to swim before her eyes. She wondered how much time had passed.

  It felt like forever.

  She pushed the chair away from the desk, pushing him back, as well. “Michael, I told you, I’m not a researcher, so I don’t even understand what I’m reading. I was just curious.” She stood. “And I’m tired, really tired.”

  He shook his head. “You’re not leaving here. Not until you tell me what you’re up to.”

  “I’m not up to anything,” she lied flatly.

  “Then why break into my lab?”

  She lowered her head, seeking a plausible explanation. She looked up at him again, knowing she had to be careful. “Michael...you’re an attractive man.”

  “So?”

  “I...well, frankly, I was interested in you. As a man. As a scientist. I was curious about you. I wanted to know what made you tick, why you’re so fascinated with such strange creatures. But then...”

  “Then you met Jesse.”

  She shrugged, not wanting to commit.

  “You’re sleeping with him,” he accused her.

  “Michael, that’s really none of your business.”

  “Ah, I see. You break into my lab because of a crush on me—sorry, interest in my life, what makes me tick—but your life is none of my business.”

  She lifted her hands. “I’m sorry.”

  “I should report you to Harry.”

  “Do whatever you feel you have to,” she murmured, looking down.

  “You’re making a mistake, you know.”

  He was close to her again. Just a foot away.

  He reached out a hand. She nearly jumped.

  He touched her face. “A big mistake,” he told her.

  “I’m afraid I’ve already made more than a few of those in my life,” she murmured.

  He tilted her chin upward, meeting her eyes earnestly. “No. You’re making a big mistake with Jesse. You don’t even know him.”

  “I know something about his past, if that’s what you mean,” she said.

  “He’s a loner, Lorena. Do you want to spend your entire life sitting on a mucky pile of saw grass? He belongs here. You don’t. His passion is the land and the tribal council. He’s decent enough as a human being. But he puts a wall up. He always will. Think about it.”

  She caught his hand and squeezed it. Like a friend. She was more anxious than ever to get the hell out of his lab.

  “Michael, we’ve got a bigger problem than my love life right now. There’s a killer gator out there.”

  “People have been killed by alligators before,” he said flatly.

  “Yes, but this is different. And we breed gators here. People are liable to think we have something to do with it.”

  He laughed a little bitterly. “You think? Who cares? Maybe that gator will make things better here. Think about it. People love to stop and stare at accidents. They love horror movies. People don’t mind watching terrible things happen to strangers. I think the fact that there’s a man-eater out there will draw even bigger crowds.”

  “Michael, that’s horrible!”

  He shrugged. “A lot that’s horrible is true.”

  She hesitated for a moment, feeling another tremendous surge of unease.

  “They should be coming back soon,” she murmured. “Very soon.”

  “Are you trying to get away from me?” he asked her.

  She straightened determinedly. “I want to see if they’re back yet, if they’ve caught that thing,” she said.

  She headed for the door.

  She felt him following her.

  For a minute she was terrified that she wouldn’t be able to open the door easily, since it was locked.

  She twisted the knob, feeling his heat as he moved up close behind her, almost touching her.

  She was certain he was reaching out, about to grab her, but the door opened easily, and as she threw it open, Sally was coming down the hallway.

  “Sally!” she exclaimed loudly.

  If Michael had been about to touch her, his hand fell away. “Hey, Sally.”

  “I think they’re coming back,” Sally was saying excitedly. “Harry was just on the radio with someone. They’ve got something.”

  “They caught it?” Michael asked.

  “Well, I don’t know if they caught ‘it,’ but they caught something. Come on.”

  * * *

  JESSE FELT DRAINED and uneasy when they arrived back at Harry’s. Jack Pine had come too damn close to being that alligator’s last meal.

  But he was apparently the only one who felt uneasy. Everyone else, including the hunters who had come back empty-handed, seemed to be on some kind of a natural high—amazed and excited by the size of the creature.

  “It’s a record,” Harry said as the men made their way to land, a number of them dragging the nearly headless carcass onto the hard ground.

  Harry was barking out orders, getting people to take measurements. He, too, seemed pleased and excited.

  Jack, who had been given the tape measure, cried out, “Son of a gun, we just beat Louisiana. Twenty-two feet, three inches!”

  “I don’t care what it costs, we need the best taxidermist in the country. What’s left of this sucker is getting stuffed. Hell, who shot the thing so many times? Never mind, never mind, the bullet holes are good. They make him look tougher than a Tyrannosaurus rex,” Harry said.

  “Harry, it’s going to a lab. There’s going to be an autopsy,” Jesse said. He was drenched and covered in muck, and in no mood for the spirit of joviality going around. The thing had been a killer.

  “An autopsy? On a gator?” Harry said.

  Jesse felt his stomach turn. “We need to know for sure if this was the animal that took down Billy Ray.”

  Silence fell over the crowd at last as they all realized what Jesse was saying.

  The gator would still have been digesting its last meal when it was killed.

  “All right, Jesse. Have it taken to the lab.” Harry sounded unhappy but resigned. “Do I get it when you’re done?”

  Jesse didn’t answer, just turned away. Lorena was there, standing back in silence.

  He felt a flip-flop of emotion.

  In the heat of the hunt, he’d forgotten that he’d left her here. Alone.

  But she appeared to be fine. More than fine. As ever, she was stunning. A rose in the midst of swamp grass.

  “Are you taking the carcass to Doc Thiessen?” Harry asked.

  Jesse kept staring at Lorena as he answered. “They’ll have better facilities upstate, at the college,” he said, turning away from Lorena at last.

  Everyone had their cameras out now. They had hoisted the alligator up over one of the steel light poles. The thing was actually bending with the weight. Everyone had gone back to talking excitedly and having their pictures taken with the carcass.

  The head...just the head...dear lord. The size of what was left was terrifying.

  Lorena stayed apart from the crowd, but he saw that Michael and Sally were posing, Hugh snapping the picture.

  “Harry, we’ll see about getting the gator to you when we’re done, okay?” he said congenially.

  “Folks, we got the cafeteria open!” Harry called out, beaming at Jesse’s words. “There’s just coffee and sandwiches, but you’re all welcome!”

  Still grinning broadly at Jesse, Harry walked away.

  Lorena was still a good twenty feet away, but her eyes were on him.

  “Hey,” he said softly.

  “Hey.” She smiled, apparently having forgiven him, and walked toward him slowly.

  Damn, but he
was in love with just the way she walked. The slow, easy sway of her hips. The slight look of something secretive, something shared, in the small curl of her lips. The way her hair picked up the lights, burning gold.

  She reached him and touched his face, apparently heedless as to whether anyone noticed or not.

  “You know, Officer Crane, you look good even in muck,” she told him.

  “I’d be happy to share my muck,” he told her.

  “Not here,” she whispered. He thought she shivered slightly. “Not tonight.”

  “Are you coming home with me, then?”

  Her head lowered; then she looked up, and her smile deepened. “Yeah, yeah, I guess I am.”

  The feeling of dread and weariness that had taken such a grip on him as they returned seemed to melt away. Strange, how life could be, how human emotions could be changed by something as simple as the sound of someone’s voice.

  The sway of someone’s hips. Her smile.

  Chemistry. She had been fascinating but unknown, and now she was known. Everything he knew now made her slightest movement all the more seductive. The thought of touching her again was deep, rich, combustible.

  “Should we take my car?” she asked.

  He arched a brow with a rueful smile, indicating the state he was in.

  “I told you, I like you in muck.”

  “Down and dirty, eh?” he teased.

  “I was thinking of a shower,” she murmured.

  “Jesse!” someone called excitedly.

  He was startled from the absorption that had made him forget that dozens of people surrounded them.

  “Jesse!” It was Sally. She came over and gave him a big hug. “Aren’t you excited? That’s the biggest gator on record, and you’re the one who bagged it.”

  “It was a killer, Sally.”

  “That makes you one big, bad hunter, then, doesn’t it?”

  There was innuendo in her voice. Once it had amused him, but now it was an imposition.

  She suddenly realized she had her back to Lorena and turned. “Oh, I’m sorry, Lorena. It’s just so exciting.”

  Exciting? Yeah, Sally was excited, Jesse thought. Sally was the kind who found sensual stimulation in danger.

  He looked at Lorena, and at that moment he realized that he was falling in love. She was clearly amused by the situation. Her eyes didn’t fill with anger, fear or suspicion; there was even a slight smile on her face. She was willing to let him handle it. And she would wait.

  “It was an alligator, Sally. Thousands of alligators are killed on hunts. But I guess you’re right. There are people who like the hunt. Frankly, I’m not a hunter.”

  “Jesse! Your people have lived off gators for over a century, hunting them, wrestling them.”

  For some reason, the way she said “your people” didn’t sit right with him. He realized suddenly that Sally would always be fascinated with someone for what they did, not who they were. He hadn’t really given it any thought before, but she’d never been more than someone with whom to enjoy a friendly flirtation. Tonight, he found that he was slightly repelled.

  A wry smile came to his lips. That was, of course, because he’d never realized he could actually fall in love with anyone again.

  “Isn’t the casino the big moneymaker these days?” Lorena asked, her smile growing deeper as she and Jesse met each another’s eyes.

  “Oh, yeah. Bingo,” Jesse agreed. “But we’re all glad this guy’s been caught. I think he’s the one that got Billy Ray, and we’ll know for certain soon enough. Good night, Sally.”

  He didn’t actually step around her, just eased into a position that let him slip an arm around Lorena’s shoulders.

  “Good night, Sally,” Lorena said.

  The woman stared blankly at the two of them for a moment. Then she seemed to realize that they were leaving. Together.

  “Oh! Uh, good night.”

  They avoided the cafeteria, where people had started massing. As they walked down the hallway, they could hear Jack talking. “I’m telling you, I thought I was a goner. If it hadn’t been for Jesse, I’d have been chum.”

  Outside, Jesse protested again. “Lorena, this is swamp muck. Heavy, smelly dirt. The car—”

  “There’s a towel in back. You can throw it over the seat,” she said. After rummaging for a moment, she found the towel and put it over the driver’s seat.

  “Hey, I’m the dirty one,” he told her.

  “And I don’t know where I’m going. You need to drive.”

  She tossed him the keys. He shrugged. It was true. If you didn’t know where to take an almost invisible road off the Trail, you were never going to find his house.

  It was no more than a ten-minute drive, and both of them were too preoccupied to talk. And they were barely inside the door before she had slid into his arms, shivering slightly, clinging to him, her arms slipping around his neck, her body pressed to his, her lips seeking his mouth. It seemed an eon of ecstasy that they remained thus, and he felt a renewed sense not just of fervor and hunger, but of that deeper rise of emotion that came from the fact that they had made the subtle adjustment from wanting to needing, from carnal chemistry to a melding of body, heart and soul. She, too, was soon covered in swamp mud, and they made their way to the bathroom, where he managed to turn on the shower spray while disrobing himself and her, barely breaking contact the whole time.

  Flesh, naked flesh, soap and suds, and hands. She touched him everywhere. He returned the favor. She had magic hands, taking a slow course of discovery. Light on his shoulders at first, and then with a pressure that both alleviated strain and created the sweetest strain of a very different kind.

  Her fingers played down the length of his spine, over his hips. He touched her in return. The darkness of his hands over the pale roundness of her breasts was arousing, his palms rubbing over her nipples before his head ducked and his mouth caressed them. The water sluiced through her hair. He caught it and cast it over her shoulder, turning her against him so that his lips could fall on her nape, below her ear, on her shoulders, her back. He turned her in his arms, continuing his erotic ministrations against her abdomen, her thighs, then between them. She gripped his shoulders, quivered at his touch, moaned slightly, then cried out, sliding down in sudsy sleekness to meet his mouth with the furious hunger of her own once again.

  Her hands were delicate, then fierce, stroking against his chest. They knelt together in a steaming spray that seemed almost fantasy, something keener, sharper, than he’d ever known before. She stroked his sex with her hands and tongue, and he wound his arms around her, bringing them both to their feet, bracing her against the tile of the shower, lifting her until she came back down on him and the hard arousal of his sex slid easily into her. He nearly whispered the words to her then, that he was more than physically one with her, that he was falling in love. But he would never have her doubt such words, as she would if they were spoken in the urgent desperation of the desire that drummed through him like a storm tearing the Glades asunder, so he whispered instead that she was beautiful, and the words she returned were ever more arousing. He became aware of the ancient thunder throbbing through his body, his lungs and his heart, and in a matter of moments they climaxed together in the steamy spray. The winds began to ease while they remained entwined.

  Later, when they had sudsed again, then slipped into each other’s arms to sleep, but wound up making love again, he held her, spooned against him. He lay awake, stroking her hair, in wonder. He had thought he would never find a woman like his wife again, someone who had loved him fiercely, been brave and funny, sweet and strong, an equal, but able to make him feel his own strengths, that he was very much a man.

  And, of course, he hadn’t found his wife again. In a place in his heart, he would love and cherish her forever.

  He had found someone unique, who was passiona
te and righteous, confident, her own self. Different, and yet with qualities that resonated in his heart and soul.

  He adjusted his position slightly. Pressed his lips to the top of her head. “I think I’m falling in love,” he whispered.

  She gave no reply. He wondered if he had pushed her too fast, if his great epiphany was not exactly shared.

  But neither did she move or deny him.

  Then he realized that he had found the words to say what he was feeling too late, at least for that evening.

  Her breathing was soft and even, her fingers curled around his.

  And she was sound asleep.

  He smiled to himself.

  It changed what he was feeling, deepened it, to know that she would sleep beside him, that they would wake together in the morning.

  That he wanted to sleep this way every night of his life, and wake beside her again and again.

  Would she feel the same? he wondered. Enough to really love this place, where predators roamed, the mosquitoes seemed elephantine and bit like crazy...and the sunsets were the most glorious man would ever see, and the birds that flew overhead came in all the colors of a rainbow.

  He rose in the night and padded naked to the back window, looking out on the eternal darkness.

  He heard her, felt her, before she came behind him, arms winding around his back as she laid her cheek against him.

  Words failed him again.

  He simply turned and took her into his arms. Though tenderness reigned, he found himself afraid.

  Afraid to break the moment...

  Afraid she didn’t feel the same.

  And later, still awake, he wondered if there was even more that had stopped him.

  Fear...?

  They had almost certainly killed the man-eater that had gotten Billy Ray.

  They had not, however, captured the man who had created it.