“Use the number at the camp. Someone there always knows how to reach me.”
He hung up before the detective could say anything more. He caught the coin in his fist and banged it down on the table. “The final nail,” he said around a smile. It was now only a matter of time.
Crawford came awake with Holly curled beside him, facing him, her face close to his on the pillow, her thigh snug between his. They still lay on top of the duvet, but at some point after he’d fallen asleep, she had pulled a throw over them.
When she did, he had awoken, lifted her thigh over his hip, and slid into her. Being sheathed in her had brought a drowsy erection to a full one. Invitingly, she moved against him, took him deeper. He exerted just enough motion to create an erotic ebb and flow until they came together. Instead of fireworks, it had been as comforting as a warm bath.
He hadn’t even opened his eyes. Not a word had been spoken. But it had been intensely intimate, and, beyond feeling good sexually, he had felt an inner contentment that he’d missed during the years of sleeping in an empty bed and waking up alone.
Now, gazing into Holly’s face, looking incredibly peaceful and trustful in sleep, he felt a welling of tenderness for her and, with it, a primal surge of ownership. He wanted this woman. He wanted to claim her. He wanted to keep her. He couldn’t.
But he was here now.
He pulled back the throw. The daylight limning the window shutters was new and fragile, but he could see well enough, and all the parts of her that he’d imagined or felt in the dark were prettier than he’d envisioned.
Dipping his head to her breast, he gently sucked the delicate pink tip into his mouth. As he tested the texture of it with his tongue, she stirred, sighed his name, and rested her hand on his head.
“I finally get to see you naked in the light.”
“And?”
“I wish I’d burned all your clothes while you were asleep.”
She laughed softly. “You’re not so bad looking, either.”
She leaned over him and kissed the center of his chest, his navel. Scooting down, she ran her hands over his thighs and when she found the two scars on his calf marking the entry and exit wounds of the bullet that had passed through, she kissed them and spoke softly of how grateful she was that it hadn’t been worse.
“What if you had died that day?” she asked, looking up at him with liquid green eyes. “I’d have never met you.”
The emotional catch in her voice touched him deeply. “Come here.” He cupped her underarms and pulled her up over him until his mouth could take hers in a ravenous kiss. Gradually, mouths still eating at each other, he rolled her onto her back and stretched her arms above her head.
He kissed his way down the undersides of both arms as his hand reshaped her breasts, then rode the contours of her rib cage down to her abdomen. Her breath stuttered against his lips when he trailed his fingers back and forth across the hollow between her hip bones, then through her pubic hair. It was blond and soft. And beneath it, she was silky and wet.
He sank his fingers into the fluid heat and returned his mouth to her breasts. Noticing a rosy abrasion, he asked, “Is that a whisker burn? You should have told me.”
“I didn’t care.”
“Now?”
“I don’t care.”
“I’ll be gentle.”
The merest flick of his tongue elicited a reaction. “Okay?”
“Yes,” she gasped.
“Again?”
“Yes.”
The carnal exploration of his fingers soon had her writhing sexily, and he knew she was close. He stretched above her and brought them eye to eye. “I want to watch you lose it.”
He was stingy with the pressure of his thumb on the outside, drawing out the pleasure, holding off until she released a low keening, and then he curled his fingers forward inside her, creating a gentle squeeze between the two pressure points.
She clamped her lower lip between her teeth. Her back arched as she raised her hips and ground against his hand. Into her ear, he poured a litany of love words, sexy words, dirty words. Finally she coasted down, and her lazy eyes fluttered open.
He laid a soft, tender kiss on her lips. “Beautiful.”
“You are.” She reached up and pushed her fingers into his hair. “And much sweeter than you let on.”
“Me, sweet?”
“Hmm. With your daughter. With me.” She outlined the shape of his lips with her fingertip. “You’re not so tough.”
“Say things like that, you’ll ruin my reputation.”
“I promise not to give you away if you’ll kiss me again.”
“Thought you’d never ask.” He obliged her, sending his tongue deep into her mouth and savoring the taste he was coming to know, to need.
When they pulled apart, she rocked against his erection. “That’s going to leave a bruise on my stomach.”
“We can’t let that happen, it being such a pretty stomach and all. Any ideas?”
She crooked her finger for him to lower his head and then she whispered what she had in mind. He looked at her in shocked wonder. “Have you been spying on my wet dreams?” He focused on her mouth, on that full lower lip, and when he placed the pad of his thumb in the center of it, she stroked it with her tongue.
In a voice thick with arousal, he said, “I need to shower first.”
They showered together, and the soapy navigation they conducted over each other was inquisitive, extensive, and ended with him leaning against the back of the shower, one hand braced on the tile wall and the other on the glass door, hanging on for dear life, praying that he would survive the avid action of her mouth.
She got out first, dried, and wrapped herself in the familiar robe. “I’ll make breakfast.” She left for the kitchen.
He toweled off and moved around the bedroom gathering his clothes and putting them on. They were uncomfortably damp, but they would have to do. He was slipping Joe’s pistol into the holster when Holly returned, carrying a cup of coffee.
“This will get you—” She stopped when she saw that he was fully dressed except for his windbreaker. “What are you doing?”
“I need to go before it gets any later.”
“Go where?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“You don’t have a car.”
“That’s a problem I’ve got to fix.”
“Crawford!” she exclaimed.
He pulled on his windbreaker. “What?”
“You can’t just leave on foot.”
“That’s how I got here.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I told you last night. Stay alive. If I can.”
“Get Otterman before he gets you.”
“Or Georgia.” He hated even voicing the possibility, afraid of making it an omen. “Because if Otterman wants to get to me, he’ll eventually go after her. And the surest way to protect her is to remove him from the planet.”
“You would kill him?”
He just looked at her, then away, saying, “I can’t do anything until I find him.”
“When you do?”
“I’ll have to wait and see.”
With a solid thump, she set the cup of coffee on the dresser. “What are you going to do?” she repeated, enunciating each word.
“Stop asking, Holly,” he said with matching testiness. “I won’t tell you.”
“Is it lawful?”
“Mostly.”
Her brow was knitted with worry and rising anger. “You don’t trust me?”
“I trust you completely. I trust that you’ll always tell the truth. Which is why it’s better for me that you don’t know everything. About anything. If you have a problem with that—”
“I have a problem with you taking on Otterman by yourself.”
“That’s the way I operate.”
“Which is the height of arrogance and conceit.”
“Yeah, well, think what you want about my ego. I know why I’m doing this, and I’ve gotta get at it.”
He moved toward the window, but she stepped in front of him. “If you break the law, you’ll destroy any chance you have of getting Georgia.”
“Your deal with Joe destroyed any chance I had.”
“That’s behind this morning-after mad dash? You’re angry?”
“No, I’m not angry.” But his near shout sounded angry, so he lowered his voice to a more controlled volume. “Could I fuck you like I did if I was angry?”
“Last night you said you hated me and still wanted to.”
“But I wouldn’t want to wake up with you. Yeah, the sex was great. But I liked waking up next to you almost as much. If circumstances were different—”
“What circumstances, Crawford?”
“Lots of circumstances.”
“Specifically. Otterman?”
“That’s the most immediate circumstance.”
“I agree, so why not call Neal Lester? I’ll own up to sheltering you. Talk to him, reason with him lawman to lawman. Together, playing by the book, you’ll go after Otterman.”
“Okay, say we luck out and get him behind bars by nightfall. He signs a full confession of all his evil deeds. Then what?
Our
problems will still be there.”
“Back to those unspecified circumstances.”
“All right, I’ll name you one. You crossed a line with me.” He motioned toward the bed. “Your job, your career, the thing you hold most dear, wouldn’t be in jeopardy if not for me.”
“No one knows about us.”
“Yet. But secrets like this have a way, Holly. You’re not so naive as to think we can keep a lid on it.” By her silence, he knew she agreed. “Say the secret that we’ve slept together remains intact, and you lose the election anyway, we’ll always wonder if it was because of our association. I couldn’t live with costing you the judgeship. Could
you
?” He shook his head. “There are some things you and I just can’t get around.”
“The biggest one being that I stand in the way of you getting Georgia.”
He spread his hands as though to say,
See?
“We’re each other’s worst enemy.”
“You weren’t concerned about any of this last night.”
“I was. I just wanted you too bad to let the issues stop me.” Before she could offer a comeback, he said softly, “They didn’t stop you, either.”
The fight went out of her. “True. Because I had begun to think, hope, we could overcome these obstacles.”
“Some, maybe. Not all.”
She looked deeply into his eyes and said quietly, “Beth?”
That hit him unexpectedly, and his heart bumped, then began to beat erratically. “What about her?”
“You tell me.” Looking wounded, she glanced down at the tousled bed. “Was she in there with us?”
“No.
No
.” He combed back his hair with his fingers and drew in a ragged breath. “Christ, don’t think that. It’s not that at all.”
“Is that the truth?”
“Yes. I swear it.”
With alarming intuition, barely audibly, she said, “Just not the whole truth.”
No. Not the whole truth. The whole truth would doom him.
He came toward her slowly and placed his hands on her shoulders, turned her and gave a gentle push, so she landed facedown on the bed.
“Crawford?”
“Shh. Listen.”
Crouching over her, he ran his hands up the backs of her thighs, over her bottom, along her back, his thumbs tracing the corrugation of her spine. Then covering her hands with his, he interlocked their fingers and nuzzled her hair, which was sweet smelling and still damp from their shower.
“Holly, if I could, I’d be falling crazy in love with you. I’d have you in my life, my house, my bed. My heart.” When she moved as though trying to turn over, he pressed her down more firmly. “
If
I could. But I can’t.”
Gradually, he let go of her hands, eased up, and pushed himself off the bed. “Tell them I came in through your bedroom window, overpowered you, and stole your car. It’s all true.”
H
e’d filched Holly’s car keys from the pocket of her jeans, which were still crumpled on the floor beside the bed. He remembered her telling him how she’d driven her car across her backyard, past the main house, and onto the next street without her guards out front being any the wiser.
Before Holly would have had a chance to raise the alarm, he was out the elderly lady’s driveway and winding his way through town, avoiding the thoroughfares. Sooner or later, he would be caught.
But later, he hoped.
As he drove, he called Joe Gilroy’s cell number. Grace answered. “Where’s Joe?” he asked.
“In the shower. He told me to listen for the phone.”
“Everything okay?”
“Neither of us has slept much, but we’re all right.”
“How’s Georgia?”
“Still asleep. She got upset last night, wondering why we’re here. She kept asking if you’d know where to find us.”
He had to talk around the lump that formed in his throat. “If she asks again, tell her I’ll always be able to find her.”
“Do you want me to wake her up so you can tell her that yourself?”
He was tempted, but it would be selfish of him. Hearing her voice would make him feel better, but it would increase Georgia’s homesickness and add to her anxiety over the unusual situation.
“Thanks for offering,” he told Grace, meaning it. “I trust you to keep her reassured.”
When she expressed concern for him, he hedged, mumbling that he was fine. “I hope all this will be over soon and you can come home. I can’t thank you enough for doing this.”
“Be safe, Crawford.”
“You too.” He clicked off before she asked questions he wouldn’t know how to answer.
But Smitty might.
He hadn’t responded to the voice mail message Crawford had left last night, which was a dead giveaway that he knew something he didn’t want to share. But before Crawford could wrangle information from him, he had to find him.
Strip clubs looked desolate in the early hours of the morning, particularly a dreary, rainy morning like this one. He started with Smitty’s establishment that was closest to town, but found the place dark and uninviting without its lurid flashing neon. The parking lot was empty. At Tickled Pink, the same. And the next one he checked was also deserted.
The fourth he’d never been to before. It was even more disreputable looking than Smitty’s other clubs. This was a place for down-and-outers who had hit rock bottom. Its opaque windows, low roofline, and dirt parking lot, now dotted with puddles of muddy water, weren’t inducements for fun-seeking people.
Crawford drove around to the rear of the building, which was situated right on the edge of the forest. The trees and underbrush seemed to be encroaching on the squat structure with the intention of eventually overtaking it, perhaps to put it out of its misery.
Near the back door was an ugly gray car. Crawford rolled Holly’s car to a stop, got out, and looked inside the other vehicle. A lot of trash, stained fabric upholstery, but nothing else.
He slid Joe’s pistol from his holster. He’d already checked the cylinder, knew that there was a .38 bullet in each of the five chambers. Stealthily, he walked to the metal door. The doorknob was loosely fitted and had a standard lock. Crawford didn’t even have to try hard to pop it using a credit card.
The door opened out. He pulled it toward him, creating a gap only wide enough to slip through, then closed it quickly, realizing that his silhouette made a large target even against meager, watery daylight.
Inside, the air was as dank as that of a locker room and smelled of booze and stale cigarette smoke. The darkness was absolute, forcing him to give his eyes time to adjust. He stood perfectly still and listened. He could hear the rain dripping off the eaves outside. Other than that, nothing.
“Smitty?”
His voice was absorbed by the darkness as though the building had swallowed it. Louder, he called the name again, without response. Turning on his cell phone was a risk he had to take. Without a light, he couldn’t see his way any farther into the building.
The glow of the screen provided just enough light for him to make out his immediate surroundings. Dead ahead, liquor crates were stacked against a concrete block wall. An industrial mop bucket occupied a corner to his left. The mop was dry and covered in cobwebs. To his right was a narrow passageway. He started down it.
The first door he came to was ajar. Just as he drew even with it, the cell phone’s screen blinked off. Heart thumping, he waited in the stygian darkness, and when nothing happened, he turned the phone back on and gave the door a push with the short barrel of the .38.
His was the only image reflected in the mirror above the dressing table that ran the width of the room. He backed out and moved along the hall past a second door that opened into a phone booth–sized restroom with a disgusting toilet and a stained sink.
The third door belonged to an office that resembled the others in which he had ambushed Smitty over the course of their association. The cramped room had a littered desk, beat-up file cabinets, overflowing trash cans, and walls papered with pornographic pictures.
And Smitty was there. On the floor.
Crawford hissed, “Son of a bitch!”
It was a familiar scene—she in her living room being questioned by Neal Lester and Matt Nugent. Only a few hours after she’d seen them off and joined Crawford in her bedroom, the detectives were back, and Crawford’s whereabouts was once again the subject under discussion.
Neal asked, “You have no idea where he was going?”
“You’ve asked me that twice already,” she replied. “If I knew where he was going, I would have told you when I called.”
She had alerted him as soon as she reached her back door and confirmed that her car was missing. “I caught a glimpse of taillights as he turned left out of the driveway of the main house. That’s all I know.”
“You didn’t know he planned to take your car?”
“Only moments before he left. He must’ve gotten the keys earlier from the pocket of my jeans.”
“How’d he manage that without you knowing?”
She looked at Nugent. “I wasn’t wearing them.”
“Oh.”
It felt like betrayal, informing on Crawford to the police, to Neal especially. But he had to be found, stopped, before—
She didn’t allow herself to think beyond that, to conjecture what might happen to him, or what he might do to Otterman. She vacillated between being furious at Crawford and fearing for his life. He would despise her for calling the dogs on him, but she’d rather have him alive and hating her forever than dead.
The two detectives were watching her as though expecting her to produce something more substantive. “Why aren’t you out looking for him?” Frustrated by their inactivity, she left her chair, a hint for them to get going. “He’s driving my car. Even if you don’t know the tag number he swapped for mine, you know the make and model.”
“I’ve put out an APB,” Neal said. “But we wouldn’t be in this situation if you’d told us last night that Crawford was here.”
“You didn’t ask me if he was here. I answered all of your questions truthfully.”
“That’s whitewashing, judge. Truth withheld is a lie. You deliberately misguided us.”
“Because you wanted to detain him when you should have been following other leads, such as the nightclub video on Crawford’s phone. He left it for you, practically a signpost pointing to Chuck Otterman for the murder of that policeman.”
“We’re trying to follow up on that video by tracking down a guy named Del Ray Smith.”
Smitty, Crawford had called him, but she didn’t let on that she knew that.
Neal yielded the floor to Nugent, who looked eager to be helpful. “He’s the owner of the club where Connor and Otterman met. I went to the place last night and was told by an employee that Smith had left around ten o’clock. Nobody knew where he was going, but he didn’t come back before closing. We’ve been trying to track him down.”
“Without success,” Neal said.
“Did you try the club this morning?” she asked.
“Locked up tight. He’s not at his apartment. Car’s gone, too. We’ve had a deputy watching the place.”
Smitty must have left Tickled Pink shortly after she and Crawford had. But rather than dwell on him, she wanted to pound home the importance of Otterman. “Why would Pat Connor have been meeting with Chuck Otterman?”
“Mr. Otterman explained that.”
Disbelieving her ears, Holly gaped at Neal. “You’ve talked to him?”
“Before dawn this morning. He had checked in with his foreman, who told him I’d been trying to reach him. He called me.”
“He’s still conveniently out of town?”
“Fishing somewhere in Louisiana. He couldn’t be more specific. Friends drove him. He said he didn’t know exactly where he was.”
“He didn’t know?” she exclaimed. “A man with his managerial personality didn’t know where he was? You actually believe that, Sergeant Lester?”
Stung by her incredulous tone, he took a defensive stance. “He owned up to the meeting with Connor even before I asked him about it. He said they met at Connor’s request. Otterman thought it might have something to do with the courthouse shooting. But he said that when they met, Connor was incoherent. Paranoid and anxious.”
Thoughtfully, he added, “Everybody with a badge is taking Connor’s murder—his execution—hard. First Chet. Days later Pat Connor. Even if the evidence bears out that he was the courthouse shooter, it’s like there’s a contaminant seeping through the whole law enforcement family.”
“Crawford isn’t the contaminant,” she said.
Neal slid his gaze toward the hallway that led to the bedroom, but before he could speak aloud what his arch expression implied, her cell phone rang. She snatched it up. “Hello?”
“Judge Spencer? Harry Longbow.”
She could have melted with relief. She mouthed his name to Lester and Nugent. “Have you heard from Crawford?”
“Not since last night. That’s why I’m calling you. I thought maybe you two… He’s not with you?”
Spirits sinking again, she explained the situation.
Having been brought up to speed, Harry gave a long sigh. “Lester and Nugent are on it?”
“They’re still here with me, but they’ve put out an APB.”
“And Crawford left your place at dawn?”
“Soon after.”
“Hell bent on chasing down Otterman.”
“Yes,” she said with desperation. “He was dead set on going alone. I’m afraid for him.”
“He can take care of himself. But I’d feel a lot better if he had more reliable backup. You say Lester has already put out an APB for Otterman?”
“For Crawford.”
“
Crawford
?
” He muttered something she couldn’t decipher, but his tone was disdainful. “It’s Otterman he should be after.”
“I agree completely. But Sergeant Lester spoke to Otterman this morning, and he had an explanation for that meeting at the nightclub.” She related it, but the veteran Texas Ranger was no more persuaded of Otterman’s innocence than she had been.
Harry said, “Smooth talker, but I ain’t buying it. We don’t have proof yet, but bits and pieces are starting to add up.”
“To what?”
“Halcon. Crawford needs to know, like now. I’ve been calling this new number he gave me, but he’s not picking up.”
She sat on the edge of the chair she had recently vacated and rubbed her forehead. “Why wouldn’t he answer?”
“Could be any number of reasons.”
She wasn’t deceived by his reassurance. He was as worried as she.
“But listen,” he said, “if you talk to him before I do, tell him to get back to me or Sessions right away.”
“Yes, of course. I will.”
“And, just in case… I don’t want to alarm you or anything, judge, but if Otterman thinks there’s something between you and Crawford, you could be in danger, too.”
“I’ll take care.”
“Do.”
When she disconnected, Neal said, “Well? What did he say?”
She looked at him with reproach. “That he would feel a lot better if Crawford had more reliable backup.”
“
You’re ruining my
life!”
“Put the gun down, Smitty.”
“I want to kill you.”
“I want to kill you, too.” Crawford reached behind him and groped for the light switch, flipping it on. Smitty was hunkered down beneath the desk, aiming a pistol at Crawford’s midsection.
Calmly, Crawford thumbed back the hammer of Joe’s revolver. “If I kill you, I’ll be eradicating a moral abscess, and I’ve got law and order on my side. Somebody will probably erect a statue of me in the town square. If you kill me, you get the needle for taking out a law enforcement officer.
“That is if you even make it to death row,” he went on conversationally, “which I doubt you would. Texas Rangers don’t take kindly to fellow Rangers getting killed by anybody, but pimps and bootleggers really piss them off. Some of those boys wouldn’t think twice about intercepting you on your way to trial, squashing you under their boots as you tried to ‘escape,’ and scraping you off like so much dog shit. It would save the state the cost of a syringe.”
Smitty actually sobbed.
“For the last time, put the gun down.”
His grip on it hadn’t been all that firm or steady. When he let go of the pistol, it clattered to the floor. Crawford walked over and kicked it out of reach, then bent down and grabbed a handful of Smitty’s shirt. He hauled him from beneath the desk and onto his feet, then shoved him backward into a chair.
“Your life is nothing to brag about, Smitty. How am I ruining it?”
“Pour me a gin.”
“Not likely.”
“Please. I’m shaking here.”
He was. Like a leaf in a high wind. Even for Smitty, he looked a wreck. His comb-over was flipped the wrong direction, his clothes disheveled. However he’d passed the night, indications were that it had been long and tortuous.
Crawford took mercy, not because he felt sorry for him, but because he had no time to waste, and Smitty could backpedal, whine, and drag this out forever.
A Styrofoam cup on the desk contained an inch of coffee dregs. He emptied it onto the floor, then filled it with cheap gin from the bottle sitting on top of the file cabinet and handed it over. Smitty took a gulp. Before he could take another, Crawford reclaimed the cup.