by Tess Oliver
She had her arm resting along the top of the seat and her thighs parted just enough to make me groan with anticipation. "What the hell took you so long?" she teased. She shoved me back to sit on the seat. She threw her long, sleek thigh over to straddle my lap.
Her mouth covered mine, and she writhed over the erection swelling against my shorts.
"Hmm, these athletic shorts are nice and slick," she whispered against my mouth. "I might just come rubbing my pussy on them."
"I could help with that." I pushed up toward her, pressing my cock harder against her as she rubbed along the length of me. My hands wrapped around her ass. I slipped a finger underneath the panties.
"Hot and wet, my favorite kind of pussy," I growled before plunging my fingers into her.
"King, that's what I need." She pushed against my hand while still rubbing against my cock. I was close to coming just from her sliding back and forth over me. She pulled my face against her breasts and held me there as she came against my hand.
"Yes, fuck, yes," she cried. Then she reached between us, slipped her hand down my waistband and pulled free my cock from the loose fitting shorts.
I yanked aside the crotch of her panties. It was clumsy, urgent and hot as fucking hell. She held me tightly and pushed the end of my cock against her still pulsing pussy. "Fuck, please King. Take me now."
I grabbed her hips and turned her onto her knees on the back seat. She gripped the edge of the seat, and I pushed up to my knees behind her. The cab of my truck was wide but we filled the entire back. I grabbed her waist, held her steady and thrust into her. The truck shimmied and shook as I slammed her from behind.
"Harder," she pleaded.
My fingers dug into her hips as I pulled her against me. My balls slapped against her as I ground myself into her deeper and harder and faster.
"Fuck, you're tight," I growled as I tried hard to keep from going over the edge. "Come for me again, sweet baby. Again." I reached around and jammed my hand between her legs, searching blindly and finally finding her clit. I massaged it as I penetrated her to her core.
Her legs tightened around me. "Yes, there, like that," she uttered breathlessly, then she gripped the edge of the seat harder. It seemed her legs were about to collapse beneath me. She cried out as her pussy tightened around me. Her body shuddered in waves of ecstasy, a movement that pushed me to the end.
"Fuck yeah, baby. I will never fucking let you go," I groaned. "Never fucking letting you go."
We collapsed in a heap on the seat. With some maneuvering, I managed to pull her into my arms and hold her cradled against me. She rested her head against my chest. We listened to the wind as it whipped and whistled around the truck. It was the kind of wind that would have us on high alert if we hadn't already had some significant early season rainfall.
"Thank you for today, King. For the first time in my adult life, I felt like I belonged, like I had people around me that weren't utter strangers. All your friends are funny, by the way, and that guy, the one you call Kaos, what planet of giants did he arrive from?"
"Yep, he's a bit of an outlier. We always joke that the jump plane is happy to dump his ass out." I lightly pushed her hair behind her ear. "I'm glad you had a good time today. My buddies are the kind of people who can make you feel instantly part of the gang. And I want you to feel that, always, Sutton. You have found your place. It's here, with me. We can get to the other side of this. No matter what happens with your dad, I want you with me. I'll take care of you."
She lifted her head to look at me. "I've been pretty good at taking care of myself, King," she said a little sharply.
"No, I know. I don't mean it like that. I just want to be by your side, so you can stand up to your dad."
"By my side," she repeated and relaxed against me. "That's better." She sighed. "Only I'm not sure if you understand what a powerful enemy my dad can be. He might pretend that he's out in some cabin just getting gray and easing into retirement with his fishing rod but he's a madman. I know that better than anyone. He put on a good act for the people in Westridge, but I knew the true man. He was a monster."
I squeezed her tightly against me. "Then, I will help you slay the monster. I think Bronx gave us a good start. I'll go talk to Tyler Martin at the police station. I'll tell him everything you've told me and let him know what I saw that night. I can ask him to help."
She snuggled her face against me. "That sounds like a plan. Only one thing—you need to change the pronoun I to we. Being with you, feeling connected to a past that I've had to ignore for years has made me more resolved than ever to stop running. I need to, as they say, face my demons or, in this case, demon. We're going to do this together."
I hugged her closer. Nothing was going to stop me from making this right for her. Jensen was going down.
18
I drove around the last bend before the county police precinct. It was a cloudy, gloomy day, but Sutton and I were feeling hopeful. She was doing her nervous hand rubbing, occasionally shoving them between her knees to stop, then pulling them out again to rub them together. She'd brought a baseball hat and glasses to wear as a form of disguise. There were still people in the precinct who had worked under Sheriff Jensen and knew him well. Whether they had fond feelings for him or not, we couldn't take the chance of exposing the shocking truth about Sutton being alive.
"I know I was sounding all brave about this, let me help, I'm going too, blah blah blah," Sutton started. She looked over at me, and once again, I wanted to pound Jensen into the ground for producing the fear I saw in her eyes.
"Tell you what," I said. "Let me go in and talk to Tyler alone. We don't even know for sure if he's in or on patrol or off for the day. Then we'll go from there. If he's in the precinct, I'll feel him out, see how he reacts when I tell him that I think Jensen murdered his wife. He was always kind of a low-key guy. We played football together. We weren't tight, but we hung out sometimes."
Sutton released a breath that she'd apparently been holding. "That sounds like a good plan. I'm sorry I chickened out. It's just driving through here and the memories and even that police building, all of it is sending me straight into a panic attack." She held out her hands. "You might have noticed that I'm rubbing the skin off my hands. It was a stupid nervous gesture I started in my teens. Can't seem to break the habit."
I chuckled. "You two really were alike," I said. "I swear Kenzie used to do the same thing before a test."
She smiled. "Like you said, we were really alike."
"Except for with singing talent," I added.
Sutton's brows were bunched in question. "Why do you say that?"
"It's just that Bronx told me Kenzie couldn't sing at all. Apparently, they were standing next to each other at the fifth grade winter program, and your sister sang loudly, in his ear. He said she was not a singer."
She burst out with a laugh that I wasn't entirely expecting. "Forgot about that."
"Oh?" I asked, baffled. "Did Jack tell you about it?"
"No," she said abruptly. "Uh, no, but Kenzie told me she did it just to irritate him. He wouldn't lend her a pencil in math, so she decided to crow in his ear during the program just to throw him off. Kenzie and I could both sing." She grew quiet. "We sang little concerts for our mom. But we never sang when Dad was in the house. He hated music."
"Figures," I said. "Guess music and evil don't really mix. That would explain why he'd write us up a citation whenever we had music playing too loud down by the river." I pulled into the parking lot for the county police department. There were a few cars parked in the visitor spots, but most of the rest of the lot was taken up by official vehicles, including a few patrol cars. I'd been busy making note of the cars in the lot and had stupidly not realized that my passenger was hyperventilating. Her shoulders lifted and fell as she struggled to take a decent breath.
"Oh shit, Sutton." I rolled down the windows, allowing the cool mountain air to flow into the truck. I was trained in first aid and panic attacks
were usually just temporary. I didn't have a paper bag handy. I unbuckled my seatbelt and reached over to unbuckle hers.
"Turn your back to me," I said. She couldn't answer but twisted so her back was toward me. I leaned over the console and gently rubbed her shoulders. "Close your eyes and think about drawing that breath in all the way to your stomach. Slow and easy and hold it."
She nodded and after a few labored breaths, her shoulders relaxed under my hands. She took a deep breath.
I put my mouth next to her ear. "Hold it there for five, four, three, two, one . . . " The breath flowed out of her. "Another," I said quietly. She was a good patient. After five rounds she had relaxed and was breathing much more normally.
I pushed her hair aside and kissed the side of her neck.
She wriggled in her seat. "Careful, doc, you're about to make me breathless again." She turned to look at me. "Thank you. I don't know what happened. I saw that cold gray building and the patrol cars, and it was all too much."
"Your dad is not here. If you're feeling all right now, I'm going to head inside and find out how I can talk to Officer Martin."
She nodded but started to rub her hands together. She quickly pushed them between her knees. "I'm just going to close my eyes and keep doing the breathing exercises."
"That works. I'll be right back." I climbed out of the truck and glanced back. Sutton's eyes were closed. It seemed she was doing just as she said, taking in long, deep breaths. I held the door for a woman and her preteen son. The kid looked angry about something and she looked even angrier.
A young officer was standing at the front desk, behind a piece of Plexiglas. I walked up to the counter. "Hi, I'm looking for an old friend. I heard he works here. His name is Tyler Martin." I reached for my wallet to show him my firefighter identification card. It always helped get a foot in the door at official places like police stations. "I'm currently working Station 52. My regular job is with the Western Smokejumpers."
The officer, a rookie if I'd ever seen one, had three cuts on his chin. It seemed he was a rookie with the razor too. "Wow, those guys are awesome. You parachute from planes, right?"
"Yep, that's how we get to a site. Any chance I can talk to Officer Martin?"
"Officer Martin?" he asked. "Yeah, wait no, I think he's on patrol, but you might find him at Queenie's Burgers over on Main. That's where he stops for lunch."
"Thanks a lot. You've been a great help." I swept out of the building and hurried to the truck. Meeting Martin at his favorite lunch spot would be just the right place to talk to him.
Sutton opened her eyes as I climbed inside. "Uh oh, that was too fast. No Tyler?" she asked.
"He might be having lunch over at Queenie's. In the mood for some burgers and fries?" I asked.
"I never say no to burgers and fries. Extra ketchup this time, please."
19
We were in luck. I worried that we might end up chasing shadows trying to find Officer Martin, but the rookie cop had given me the right information. I had no intention of telling Martin that I'd gone to the station looking for him. I didn't want to get the young rookie in trouble for giving out information. I was sure he wouldn't have if I hadn't played the smokejumper card.
A patrol car was parked in the lot at Queenie's Burgers, an off the side of the road joint that had good burgers. Most of the tables were filled with customers. Officer Martin was sitting on his own. He looked the same with his thick, dark red hair pushed under his hat and the freckles that dotted his face and hands. He would always have to slather up with stinky sun block anytime we had football practice. Even then, he always managed to look as beet red as a lobster by the end of the game. There was no wad of gum to pillow out his cheek, but he was shoveling down the fries at a pretty good pace.
"What do you think?" I asked Sutton. "Are you going to stay in the truck?"
Her pout was cute but also made me sad. "I feel like such a loser, but I'm afraid—what if he—I mean he works at the station—"
I took hold of her hand. "I've got this. And you are absolutely not a loser. Be right back. Let's see if I can put the ole Kingston Bristow magic to work on Tyler Martin. I'm just kidding. No such magic exists, but I can always toss out that I'm a smokejumper. It worked back at the station."
Before I could turn to the door, she took hold of my face. Her hands were warm and smooth on my jaw. She kissed me, sweetly, and lowered her hands. "Hmm, I think you were wrong about that magic thing."
I winked at her, left the truck and walked over to Tyler's table. Being a cop, he was probably always on alert. He stopped mid-chew on a fry, his posture straightened, and he stared at me, suspiciously.
"Well, if it isn't Tyler Martin," I said cheerily.
His eyes narrowed as he tried to assess whether or not he knew me or whether this was some kind of ambush. Then his red brows bounced up. "Bristow? Kingston Bristow?" He quickly wiped his hands on a napkin and threw a leg over the bench.
"No, man, really don't get up," I said. "Back to your fries, officer." I sat down on the bench across from him. "Aren't you supposed to be eating donuts?" I joked.
He smiled. I was instantly reminded that Tyler easily blushed a dark pink that sort of made his freckles into one blur. "That's more for breakfast. A guy's got to have his protein." He pointed to his half eaten burger. "Can I get you something?" he asked. "My treat. They give me a discount on account—" He waved toward the patrol car, and his freckles blurred again. "Guess the uniform was a dead giveaway."
"Yeah, that and Jack told me you were on the force now."
His face lit up just like most people from my past who knew Jack Devlin. His leaving, or escape as some of us called it, made him somewhat of a Westridge legend, like the guys who supposedly swam away from Alcatraz.
"How is Jack? What's that name you called him after he moved out to the ranch?"
"Bronx," I answered. "We're both working together as smokejumpers."
His smile grew. "No kidding? That's awesome but then you guys were always cool like that. I could totally see you two parachuting into fires."
"You're not doing too badly yourself." I looked pointedly at his uniform. I'd gotten him buttered up. He was as nice as ever. I snuck a quick glance back at the truck. Sutton was wearing her hat and sunglass disguise as she watched our conversation from the passenger seat. "Listen, Tyler, I'm not going to lie. This wasn't a chance meeting. Bronx had mentioned that you were working for the force. I need your help with something, something that could be a really big deal."
His smile wiped away, and he took on a serious expression. "Yeah? What kind of big deal?"
"I need your help finding a body."
His face blanched. Instead of his freckles blurring, they stuck out dark red on his pale skin. "A body? What the heck are you talking about, King?" He looked past me. "Is this some kind of joke? Is Jack going to hop out from behind a tree?"
"Nope, Jack is not here and it's no joke. Do you remember the day that Sheriff Jensen's wife, Mary, went missing?"
The color hadn't returned, and it seemed the fries and burger were no longer sitting well with him. "She didn't disappear, King. She left the family. Just packed up her things and left. Least that's what my parents told me. That's what they say around the station whenever the topic comes up."
"What if I were to tell you there's a witness who knows for certain that Mary's car and clothes were still at home when she disappeared?"
"Seriously?" he had lowered his voice. "That would be huge, but who on earth would know that?"
I leaned closer. "This is where it gets kind of sticky. I need to tell you something, but it can't leave this table."
"Uh, King, I don't know about that. I've sworn an oath to this badge and—"
"Sutton Jensen is still alive." The words shot out before I could stop them. I was losing him, and I had to pull out the big guns.
His face blanched, then he smiled and shucked me on the arm. "See, you are pulling my leg. I knew it."
; "No, he's not," Sutton said quietly.
We both twisted back. Sutton glanced around, then took off her sunglasses. She left the hat low on her head. I'd learned Tyler's fair freckled skin allowed him to take on many different shades. At this point, everything was white, even the freckles had faded to mere shadows.
"That's not possible. Kenzie?" he asked. "But you were pulled from the river. I remember that day. It was just awful, just—"
"This is Sutton. None of us saw her pulled from the river. We were told she was dead by Sheriff Jensen, but she was very much alive. She's been on the run ever since. That's why we need your help."
"But, King—" he started.
I needed to get out ahead of whatever he was going to use as a denial. Sutton circled around to my side and sat down next to me.
"Just listen, Tyler, to what I have to say. If it all sounds too risky for you and your job, we'll just get up and walk away. But you never saw either of us. Deal?"
He nodded. "Yeah, all right."
"The day Mary Jensen disappeared, her daughters saw her car and all her clothes at the house. Then Jensen drove them to a sitter. You might remember, it was raining really hard that day."
Tyler nodded tentatively as if the details weren't all that clear. I continued.
"I was riding my bike around all night, and I headed to the park. I decided to hike up to the old shack. It was dark and wet and not a night to be hiking, but I heard two voices. Sheriff Jensen and his creepy little sidekick—"
Tyler knew exactly who I was talking about. He snapped his fingers. "Isaac Rangel. Still just as creepy and getting crazier every day. We've been trying to talk him into moving into a home or some place he could get some help but—" He shook his head. "Never mind. Go on. You were saying you saw the sheriff up there? Was Rangel up to no good?"
"I think they were both up to something nefarious. Rangel had a shovel and Jensen a flashlight and they were covered in dirt. Needless to say, they were both surprised and mad to see me. Sheriff yelled at me to get out of there. I was a kid, a kid about to have a really disappointing birthday, so I never thought about it again." I glanced over at Sutton. More pink had returned to her cheeks, and she looked as beautiful as ever, even with a hat pulled low. "Not until I ran into Sutton. Then we started piecing stuff together. Look, all we need is—I don't know—" I paused realizing that my plan once I'd buttered him up was not as solid as I thought.