Buried Secrets (12 page)

“Yeah.” Cecil, Zack's partner, sent him a lot of paperwork, but Zack did read it. Especially in the middle of the night, when he couldn't sleep. “Child abuse, right?”

Jo nodded, excitement flushing her tanned cheeks. “Her obituary said something about her children being estranged from her, which seemed odd. As opposed to the rest of all this,” she added with a grin, before he could. “So I looked deeper and it turns out the abuse cost her custody. According to the records, she threw a bigger fit about losing her welfare benefits.”

So far, she was still just pretty. “So?”

“So wouldn't you say this woman was a bitch?”

“Depends on how obnoxious the kids—okay, okay!” He laughed at her annoyance. He liked that she could take a joke. That
and
her nape. “Yeah, I noticed that much when I first saw her story. Nobody likely cried too hard when she forgot to drink her Evian.”

Jo stared at him with one of those smug, womanly expressions. The waiting-for-him-to-catch-up look.

Zack shook his head, nowhere near catching up.

“She was a child abuser, and Capelli's
associate
was probably a criminal, maybe a runner, here.” Jo waited.

Zack still wasn't catching up.

“One might even call them…evil?”

“Drug runners and child abusers aren't the same kind of evil we're dealing with,” Zack reminded her. “There's a long road between felonious intent and the dark arts.”

Jo put down her folder and looked at him straight-on. “Why?”

“Why? You don't think there's a difference between, say, slapping around your wife, or robbing a liquor store, and performing human sacrifice to invoke the powers of darkness?”

“Different manifestations, maybe,” Jo conceded, but that was as much as he got. “Who's to say that the forces at work, the actual
vibrations,
aren't the same? In every case, you have someone thinking their own life and needs are so damned important, they justify screwing up someone else's. Whether they do it with a fist, or a gun, or black candles and inverted holy symbols, they're all doing basically the same thing.”

Zack had honestly never thought of evil that
normally
before. It intrigued him. But… “We're talking the walking dead here,” he said. “This is a little bigger than domestic disputes.”

“Not for the individuals involved, I bet it isn't,” she retorted. “And magic hides itself in reality, right?”

Fine. Throw his own explanations back at him. “So?”

Jo leaned forward with impatience, which unintentionally gave her more cleavage. He assumed unintentionally. The heels of her boots thudded more gently against the bar for balance. “So what if this
diablero
is only drafting evil dead people?”

“Like in the Bruce Campbell movies?”

“I think those turned evil after they were dead.” Trust her to know the
Evil Dead
films. He was impressed. “These…oh.”

Some of her excitement drained from her. He may have been arguing with her, but that's because he thought she could take it. Now that she drew back, Zack felt disappointed. He
liked
that she pushed back. It let him cut loose, too.

“Oh, what?”

“You're right. It's a stupid theory.”

“Did I say it was a stupid theory? Just because I make a tiny distinction between little Joey kicking over his neighbors' trash cans and little Damion drinking the blood of innocents…?”

“The college boy,” Jo explained. “Brent, right? He was just out drinking beer with his friends. He wasn't evil.”

“Actually,” Zack said slowly, thinking. “Give me a second.”

He picked up his mobile and dialed from memory.

“You know it's after midnight, right?” Watching him, Jo used her braced arms to readjust her position on the bar.

Definitely no bra,
he thought, noticing in spite of himself.

“Yeah, I know.” When the line picked up with a sleepy, British-sounding hello, Zack said, “Hey, I need you to dig up some dirt on the Harper boy.”

“Zack?” asked Cecil. “You do know that it's past midnight.”

“Jo just told me. How soon can you do it?”

“Josephine is there?” asked Cecil, with his strange knack of completely overlooking the important stuff for the minor, social details. “Oh, do say hello for me.”

“Cecil? Making a request, here. I remember something about Brent Harper having a juvie record. Find out what for.” Zack slid his gaze back to Jo, who was watching with interest.

She had the slightest natural curl in her shiny brown hair. Her tanned arms had muscles—subtle, but there. She still wore her sheriff's star on one hip, though she'd taken off her gun belt to eat. Not a lot like most women of his acquaintance.

Unique.

“Those records will be sealed,” Cecil protested.

“Then ask the mother.”

“Not at one-thirty in the morning I shan't. I'll e-mail her, but the rest simply must wait for dawn.”

“Call me with what you do find,” Zack insisted. “I'm working a theory, here.”

Jo arched her eyebrows at him, and he rolled his eyes.

“Sheriff James and me are working on a theory, here,” he corrected himself grudgingly.

“Will do,” agreed Cecil, sounding increasingly awake. “Have you said hello for me, yet?”

“Cecil says hello,” said Zack to Jo as he hung up the phone. “He'll call back when he finds anything more.”

“When he finds anything more about what?” asked Jo, eyes bright with shared interest. “What kind of juvenile records?”

Zack came to stand beside the bar, sorting through the folders beside her blue-jeaned hip, increasingly excited himself. He loved when ideas snapped into place like this. “His mother mentioned him getting into trouble. At the time, I didn't follow up on it. Stupid, I know, but why make a grieving mother linger on her dead son's mistakes. But in Nurse Vanderveer's initial report on little Brent's body, she mentioned…”

There! The folder with the report she'd filed. He found the description of the body, skimmed it, and poked one finger at the pertinent piece of information before holding it in front of Jo, not even considering that it would disgust her. And it didn't.

Seated on the bar, she was as tall as him. If he leaned a little closer, while she read, he could have rested his chin on her shoulder. She smelled good, womanly and natural. Not like Gabriella's perfume, which he had loved. Soapy and sunshiny, instead. The scent tugged his interests in a new direction.

“A swastika tattoo,” Jo read softly.

Zack closed the file and nodded. “A swastika tattoo.”

“Which could mean anything, among teenage boys.”

Zack was too busy savoring the existence of any theory at all. “
Or
it could mean the kid was into white supremacy, which plenty of folks, myself included, would equate with evil.”

Jo's face was only inches from his now. “Whatever
diablero's
doing this, he may be targeting morally corrupt people.”

“Yeah.” Bracing one hand on the bar, beside her thigh, Zack scanned her face. Smart lady, to have figured this out. Beautiful lady. “Now, I know you're new to this stuff, Sheriff. But in the private investigation biz, that's what we call a clue.”

“Oh is it?” Jo demanded, her words low with amusement.

“Damn straight,” he agreed, his voice husky—and enjoyed watching her soft smile widen, her blue eyes brighten.

“You're welcome,” Jo said smugly, which was even better.

So Zack kissed her.

T
he kiss didn't surprise her.

Not at first, it didn't. Although Jo hadn't been expecting it—had expended considerable energy
not
expecting it—the minute Zack stepped between her knees and brushed his mouth across hers felt too right to be a surprise.

The kiss was pure Zack Lorenzo—part bluster, part investigation, all competence. His lips felt firm, warm, provoking…and either safe, or truly dangerous. Maybe both.

Her world shook, like standing too near a blast site.

Once he kissed her, Zack stood there, his face very close to hers, and waited. His green-brown gaze searched hers, expectant. He'd planted one big hand on either side of her thighs, on the counter, so that even when she dropped her gaze, his sheer size filled her field of vision. A glimpse of chest hair and a gold religious medal.

Her lips felt…alive.

“Thank you,” Zack said. Careful. Feeling her out.

Jo looked back up, startled. “Thank…?” For the
kiss?

“You said, ‘you're welcome,'” he reminded her, eyes teasing. And she realized what he was doing, here.

He was giving her an out. Asking—without the messy business of actually asking—if it was okay for him to kiss her like that. Maybe if it was okay to kiss her some more.

At the moment, she could think of nothing more okay in the world.

“Anytime,” she agreed—and lifted her arms to drape across his big, burly shoulders in invitation.

Zack clearly didn't need it engraved. He leaned even closer now, one big hand sliding behind her to cup the small of her back. Jo arched into the sensation, the support of him.

Then he kissed her more deliberately, more intensely, and she arched into that instead.

Oh God…how long had it been since a man had kissed her? Diego, of course. Everything had ended with Diego's death, not just because she'd loved him but because of what his death showed her. Darkness haunted this world. Good didn't always win.

No amount of crying would get your ball back.

But damn it, there was life in this world, too. And heat. And heartbeats, and raspy, gasping breath. And hot, increasingly confident kisses from big Italian P.I.s.

Jo slanted her mouth across Zack's, to better respond to the dare of his lips. Had they been trying to one-up each other, during this investigation? It didn't stop when the kissing started. He slid a hand into her tight back pocket. She looped her legs behind his, her heels hooking behind his thighs, and drew him hard against her. He kissed across the line of her jaw to her ear, then the side of her throat, almost the back of her neck, his breath hot, real. She rubbed her nose across his cheek, savoring the rasp of his shadowy whiskers.

And still they kept returning to lips.

Alive. She felt alive enough to wonder where her heart had gone, all these years. Alive enough to be glad Zack had shown up to help drag her out of that self-inflicted stasis. Had the
Bruja
wanted
her
to lead
Zack
from some kind of darkness? Maybe the old witch had confused things. Jo was the one peeking out of the darkness, now. She could breathe again. She could feel things.

And oh, she was feeling this. Hot and hungry and real.

“Josephine,” murmured Zack, anchoring her against him with a hand on her back. Her breast scraped briefly against the leather of his shoulder holster; they grinned and readjusted accordingly.

“It's Jo,” she corrected him with a half laugh, kissing and tasting down his throat.
Josephine
would never kiss like this.

“Josie?” He breathed it into her ear, like an offering. He was still imagining an “e” in
Jo,
wasn't he?

“Get over it,” she warned, nuzzling his collar. “Zaccheri.”

He groaned at what she assumed was her mispronunciation. Or maybe it was at the collar nuzzling. “Aw, Jo…” he murmured, spreading fingers into her short hair, cradling her head, holding her in place for more kisses. She was happy to oblige.

Lips made way for tongues in a silent, delicious game of double-dog-dare. Each going just a little deeper, just a little longer, hands wandering toward places just a little naughtier….

And something thudded against the curtain-shrouded window.

Jo jumped, startled and suddenly aware. The way Zack spun out of their embrace to face it, drawing his pistol while shouldering himself between her and the interruption, was the only thing that kept her from drowning in that awareness.

What was she doing? What was
he
doing? And—were those footsteps she heard?

It was one thing to enjoy being alive, what with breathing and feeling and all—but weren't they going a little fast, here?

Thank God for distractions! If they were lucky, it would be something dangerous that needed immediate attention. More likely, though… “It sounded like something flew into the window,” Jo assured Quick-Draw Lorenzo, hopping off the bar. The ugly shag carpet muffled her boots' landing.

“Uh,” said Zack.

She crossed to the drapes. “That happens more during the daylight, but it could have been a bird.”

“Nuh…” said Zack, like some kind of preverbal warning, even as Jo extended one hand, caught the edge of the curtain, and drew it aside to peek out at the parking lot.

She tried to stay out of his line of fire.

The lot was fairly dark, the better to see the waning moon
overhead. Most of the lights by individual doors had been turned off, for a better night's sleep. Beyond that, pools of light from high streetlamps lit the asphalt. The only cars in view—some with trailers, one hopeful SUV with a boat—looked parked and locked. Nothing moved on the two-lane highway; it was that late.

Jo was in a motel room with a big, sexy man,
this late.

She distracted herself by focusing on the noise, looking downward to where a fallen bird might have dropped. She had to squint to make out the shape that marred the white sidewalk.

“It's a snake!” she called over her shoulder. “But I think it's dead. Either it hurled itself at the window hard enough to knock itself out, or someone threw it, but why….”

Did she see something moving past the parking lot?

When she glanced back, Zack hadn't moved from the bar, except to lower his pistol. But he'd paled. And Jo's heart, only so recently aware of its renewed rhythm, stumbled.

Lorenzo was staring at the window—but his left hand was moving, unconsciously fingering his wedding ring.

 

Windows at night. Only a fear that irrational would have Zack drawing against a freaking
noise,
from the middle of the best damned kissing of his life. Faced with instincts he couldn't even name, he barely managed to lower his pistol when Jo stepped into his line of fire. Even as she opened the drapes to reveal shiny, glass-covered blackness, Zack felt that old, unnamed paralysis wash over him. He couldn't draw breath even to protest. Then he was staring at it, losing himself in that mirror into darkness. Clearly, from words he heard only at a distance, Jo could see things beyond it. He clung to her voice like a lifeline. Bird, no. Snake, yes. Dead, maybe.

But mostly, all Zack could see was a glimpse of his own small reflection floating against the blackness. All he could feel was the certainty of failure, loss, death. Some kind of threat waiting in the glassy darkness. Some kind of ruin. Loss like he never wanted to know, ever again….

Blessedly, Jo let the drapes fall back into place as she turned
back to him. But even as Zack found himself able to swallow again, able to draw breath, she attacked.

“You
are
still married, aren't you?”

He blinked at her.
“What?”

Only then did he follow the line of her gaze and see that at some point during his embarrassing check-out, he'd begun to twist at his wedding band. Nervous habit, that was all. So he had one nervous habit. So sue him. “No, I'm not still married.”

Had she not noticed the kissing? What kind of bastard did she think he was? What kind of woman did she think he thought
she
was?

He holstered his pistol with one sharp movement.

“Something's going on,” she insisted with a quick shake of her head, striding back to the table for her gun belt.

“Something?” Zack challenged, starting to regain his sense of balance. “A lot of things are going on. Wanna prioritize?”

After all, he wasn't just unnerved from her flashing dark glass at him. He'd kissed her. He'd liked kissing her. He wanted to kiss her some more, hold her some more, maybe…more. If they ever hit another stopping point. But in the meantime…

“I
am
prioritizing.” Jo buckled the belt, pulled on her denim jacket. “I'm seeing what that snake's doing out there.”

“Not alone you're—” Several shrill bars of Journey's “Don't Stop Believing” sang from Zack's mobile phone. “Aw, crap.”

Jo was already unchaining the door—would it kill her to wait for backup? He flipped open his phone, said “Cecil, I'll call you back,” and flipped it closed again, even as he shouldered after her into the windy night.

Zack had given up wondering why darkness never bothered him through doorways, or anything else but glass. That didn't mean he threw caution to the wind. To his relief, nothing jumped them.

“It's dead, alright,” noted Jo, extending a pointy boot-toe to nudge the reptile that lay doubled across itself like a length of forgotten siphoning hose. “But not from hitting the window.”

Zack looked at the window—with the lights on inside, glowing through the drapes, that didn't bother him so much either. Only windows into darkness…

He shook off his primal reaction to that thought and instead noticed how a smear of blood marked one corner, where the slain rattlesnake had impacted it. “So someone had to throw it.”

Together, they turned to better scan the parking lot, the silent highway, the desert that stretched into true darkness beyond until, to judge from the appearance of stars, it became sky. The only place that seemed to hold anyone awake was the Ambrosia Café, down the road.

“If it was even on purpose,” said Jo. “Maybe a prank…”

“You are freakin' kidding me if you think this was some kind of accident.”

“I'm just trying to keep an open mind.” Yeah. The way she avoided meeting his gaze just screamed
Open Mind,
didn't it?

As far as that went, “You thought I was
married?
”

“Not until you slammed into reverse,” she snapped back, still stubbornly pretending to scan the rocky desert. “Whoever it was, they're gone now.”

She sounded downright disappointed, but he had a feeling she was disappointed for the wrong reasons—not because they'd lost a clue, but because she couldn't keep avoiding him. Or what had just happened. Maybe she hadn't thought he was married. Maybe it would just make things easier on her if he was. Otherwise, she might have to wake up and live a little, for once.

“What, you aren't gonna put your ear to the ground and figure out which way they went?”

“Tracking's a lot easier by daylight,” Jo insisted, then confirmed at least some of his suspicions. “I should probably get home, so I can be back first thing in the morning.”

Reason number bazillion and three for not working with women. Nothing could ever be straightforward with them, could it? Whether she'd liked kissing him at the time or not, she wasn't interested in return business, but God forbid she say so.

“Yeah, you go on back to Spur,” he said.
La la la.
“If you aren't here by eight, I'll assume other duties called.”

“I'll be here,” Jo said.

Maybe she even believed it. “I'm just saying.”

She backed away, into a golden pool of illumination from one of the streetlights. “I'll be here,” she insisted.

Zack felt something then. Sixth sense, common tactics, God knew what. But he felt the danger, and he went after her. “Jo!”

Which was when the window of the car beside her exploded in a burst of pebbled glass.

She didn't scream. She jumped, sure, but then she dropped into a defensive crouch, drawing her revolver to face the expanse of desert from where the rifle report echoed.

A lure. The snake had been a freakin' lure!

Zack didn't breathe until he'd reached Jo's side, planted himself between her and danger. He fired one clean shot, at the streetlight above them, dropping them back into shadows. The shooter had waited until Jo was in the light to make his move, so that should help.

Then he sighted against the darkness beyond.

“Zack!” exclaimed Jo, leaning out from behind him.

“Stay down!” he snarled, edging in front of her again.

“
You
stay down! I don't need—”

Which is when he saw the burst of blue, heard the retort from their sniper's location. Zack squeezed off one more shot, in unison with one of Jo's, before everything vanished.

 

It was happening again. Damn it,
it was happening again!

One moment, Jo had been doing a perfectly fine job at taking cover, watching for a chance at opportunity fire. The next moment, Zack had to wedge himself between her and danger.

Had she asked him to? Had she
wanted
him to? This was the exact
opposite
of what she wanted from him!

And none of that helped when he dropped to the asphalt like so much dead weight.

“No,” she insisted, squeezing off a second shot toward the rifle fire while there was even the slightest chance she might hit something. “No, no, no…”

It became a desperate chant, of sorts. What folks around here might call a mantra. This wasn't happening again, she told herself, looking to see how badly Zack had been hit. Head wound. Oh God. Blood was fingering down across his unshaven cheek.