Buried Secrets (16 page)

Cecil wisely left that particular debate alone, for now.

 

“You should probably drive,” Zack told her, as they headed out the door. Jo stopped so suddenly that he bumped into her.
She stumbled, and he caught her by the shoulders to steady her, and she so very much wanted to kiss him again she ached with it.

She
was
starting to wonder what she'd been refusing to notice—to
empower,
Ashley would say—for fear of seeming crazy. True, there was no way
not
to notice the energy running between her and Zack, this afternoon. But the fact that she liked it, that she might deliberately encourage it…that was something she was only starting to believe in.

The more she let herself admit that likelihood, the more aware she felt of Zack's size; his voice; his clean, manly smell. And now his big hands on her shoulders, and his warmth buffeting hers like melding auras or something.

“I…” She had to swallow, to catch her balance. “Maybe I'm hallucinating. I could swear you just said I could drive.”

He narrowed his eyes in that way he had, half challenge, half amusement. “The Ferrari,” he warned, still holding her shoulders and marching her through the door. “Ashley doesn't want me operating heavy machinery today.”

She was ready to argue—partly because she was more comfortable in her truck, partly because she just liked arguing with Zack. Especially about unimportant things. And this really wasn't terribly important.

Then she was hit in the face with a cold blast of sand, and ducked her head against the gust. Maybe a low wheel-base would be better this time, after all. “Okay,” she called, through the wind, wishing she hadn't left her hat in the truck.

“Am I hallucinating?” he called back, shading his eyes as they bolted for the sports car. It beeped and flashed its lights at their approach as he unlocked it by remote. “It sounded like you agreed with me.”

Then they were both diving into the Ferrari's shelter, slamming the doors, their breaths harmonizing in the silence.

“Well, we have to agree about a few things,” Jo admitted, suddenly feeling awkward—and not just because she wasn't used to sitting so low, or surrounded by such vehicular opulence, or because the seat and mirror needed adjusting. “Or else we'd drive each other crazy.”

Zack brushed some sand out of his hair, but held her gaze as he did it. “Can't have that happening.”

“No,” she murmured, lulled again into that sense of fascination which had so badly distracted her inside. What was it about him? Maybe it was not having to wonder what he was thinking; Zack spoke his mind whether you wanted to hear it or not. Maybe it was his devotion to this otherworldly hunt—which showed both decency and a courage of conviction that she feared she'd never shown. Not until recently, and only because of him.

Or maybe it was that the man was big and strong and so blatantly sexy that she felt like squirming, right here in this embarrassingly expensive car, with the need to reach past the stick shift and touch him. She wished they were in the truck. The truck had a convenient bench seat, without hard pokey obstacles rising between driver and passenger.

The way Zack stared at her, maybe he thought the same thing. Maybe he wasn't about to cower in the face of gearshifts.

“Aw, hell,” he groaned—and closed the distance between them by sliding an arm behind her and pulling her, hard, into his chest as he covered her mouth with his, and she was home.

Yes.
Jo opened her mouth to him immediately, excited by the command of his lips, thrilled by the boldness of his tongue. His hands were big enough that while his thumb rubbed a seductive circle against her spine, the fingertips of that hand still fit under her arm to press against the side of her breast. The other hand opened across her blue-jeaned thigh while they kissed. Now she did reach, sliding her own hands over his hard shoulders and then behind him, using the leg still tucked half under her to push more determinedly into him. The steering wheel caught on her hip, and when she tried to compensate for that, something else jabbed her inner thigh. And not in a good way. “Ow.”

“Ow?” Zack drew back from her lips just enough to scowl into her eyes. His own were wary. “I hurt you?”

His worry drew her even more firmly to him. “The parking brake hurt me,” she confessed into his ear, enjoying how his cheek scratched under hers. “This car's not made for…”

She felt her cheeks flush. For
what,
exactly?

“No?” And like that, he'd lifted her across the brake and gearshift both, onto his lap, so he could kiss her unimpeded. Her left elbow bumped the tinted passenger window, and for a moment her butt wedged against the glove compartment, but it was definitely better.

She straddled him, fully aware of the heat and a far more enjoyable hardness between them, arching into the kiss.
Kisses.
They melded, one into another, tasting each other's mouths, battling deliciously with their tongues. Jo rocked, and Zack moaned. He also dragged her T-shirt free of her waistband, so he could slide his hands underneath, quickly finding and claiming her unbound breasts. She arched into that, too, groaning return appreciation.

She heard his elbow thud against the passenger door—heard his grunt—and grinned through one of their kisses.

Crazy or not, she knew exactly what they were doing. They were making out, no holds barred, right here in Ashley Vanderveer's driveway. She dug her nails into his shirt yoke, already stretched across his shoulders, gasping happily as his hidden touch sent fingers of pleasure through her. She felt…

Alive. And on fire. And hungry for way, way more.

From the way his hips moved with hers—the way one of his hands slid back down her spine to cup her bottom and pull her more tightly against that ageless movement—Zack was hungry, too.

They had way too much denim between them, and way too little room. One of Jo's knees wedged up against the parking brake, still. Her head bumped the car's roof. Well, denim was the price they paid for being in the driveway, right?

But the cramped quarters…

Jo untangled fingers from Zack's thick, dark hair on the side that didn't have stitches to fumble down beside his hip until she found the seat release. When she yanked it, Zack dropped backwards with the seat back, taking her with him. His eyes widened, but he laughed, and then they were much more comfortably positioned for this kind of making out, so they did.

Maybe the Ferrari had a few things on the truck, after all. Even if Jo's boot-heel did catch against the CD player.

“We're in a driveway, here,” Zack gasped. The way his hands were stroking her, savoring her, it wasn't exactly a protest. Just a comment. But his hands stayed under her T-shirt; she had enough presence of mind—just—to notice that. The shirt hadn't gone anywhere, in the way or not.
A driveway.

“I know,” she breathed, detouring across his thick, hard thigh on her way back from the seat release, sitting up just a little on her knees to make room. “Damn it.”

“I'd rather not break any—oh, God….”

Well, if he could feel her up under her shirt, why couldn't she explore more boldly across his button-fly?

She liked what she felt. He seemed to, too. “Any laws?” she prompted, sliding her hand farther between his legs.

Not surprisingly, he didn't answer that with anything but a more deliberate thrust into her welcoming palm. Then his hand on her butt slid neatly between her legs, a reminder that
her
jeans weren't exactly armored either. Jo gasped at the jolt of sheer satisfaction that exploded through her, so he did it again, and her world pitched deliciously around her. “Zack!”

He fingered her again, and her mouth opened in wordless bliss—and somehow, while she was still melting from that, he managed to roll her off him and back into the driver's seat.

More or less.

Both the parking brake and the gear shift were poking against the backs of her legs—since her booted feet were still tangled with Zack's legs—and she hardly minded. He could be the biggest chauvinist she'd ever met, but with hands like that, she doubted she'd ever mind.

She minded the idea that they were stopping more. And despite him following her partway, kissing her with a clear assurance that this wasn't over, Jo knew Zack was stopping.

“The way I see it,” he growled down at her, panting, “we've got two options. We either get inside—Ashley's, or the motel, or
somewhere
—real damn soon, or we figure out how to control ourselves for now and put off this…”

Another kiss, hot with tongue and longing, emphasized just how hard this would be to put off.

“…until we can do it right.”

Were we doing it wrong?
But his restraint impressed her easily as much as his hands had. Jo wouldn't do either of them any favors by teasing, at this moment. And she liked that Zack not only wanted this…he wanted it right. She liked that a lot. As if whatever was between them was worth more than just
this.

This
having been pretty damned good too.

She admired Zack all the more for having the guts to say it. Besides… “Cecil's inside.”

“And we've got work to do,” he agreed, sounding mad at the work for being there.

Jo took a deep breath, and it quieted some of the excitement still roiling through her. Some. “Places of the dead to go. Magic users to see.”

“Yeah.” And somehow he managed to push himself back into his own seat, so they weren't pressed against each other anymore. “Better visit the cemeteries while it's still daylight.”

“Just one.” It felt almost sad, retrieving her feet from his, though she really would need them for driving. “Only one in Almanuevo, anyway. I already checked out the one in Spur.”

The way Zack sat up then didn't seem regretful at all. “You did
what?
”

“Y
ou what?” Zack felt she'd knocked the breath out of him. Considering what had just happened between him and the sheriff, he could use all the breath he had.

Her. Cemetery. Alone. Talk about your buckets of ice water!

“I stopped by the Spur cemetery on my way back,” she repeated, more deliberately. Like she either thought he was slow, or more likely was figuring out that this bothered him.

Hell yes, it bothered him! “You went by a cemetery. Alone.”

“What part of that didn't you understand?” asked Jo.

“Are you
trying
to get yourself killed?”

She didn't quite roll her eyes—if she had, he might've had to launch himself out of the car, windstorm or not, to keep from punching something expensive. But she looked deliberately away, and not with remorse. Or contrition. Or even a freakin'
clue.

The woman kissed like heaven on a hot day. Under his questing hands, her skin and her curves and her responsiveness to his touch was more than he'd known sex could be. Considering that Zack had held sex in pretty high regard all along, that was saying something. But at this moment, between his frustration with
her—and the fear, bitter in his mouth, of what could have happened—he would sooner kiss Cecil.

And no, he didn't find Cecil particularly attractive.

It didn't help when she said, in that calm way of hers, “Zack, it hardly even counts as a cemetery. Thirty graves, tops. And that's dating back a good hundred years.”

“Oh, well that's different then. We all know how much less dangerous the
old
walking dead people are!”

“Well, it's not like they suck brains,” she defended, then at least had the grace to doubt herself. “Is it?”

“You're the one who saw some of them up-close and personal in the mine,” he challenged. “Did they want to
dance?
”

The only animated corpses Zack had ever seen, he'd never been positive
had
been corpses. He'd been too busy carrying a hysterical eight-year-old out of one of Chicago's largest funeral homes at the time. But there shouldn't have been anyone else in there, and the figures he'd glimpsed watching from shadowy viewing-room doorways had vacant stares, sickly floral smells and fancier clothes than fit anyone's funeral but your own.

Even
he'd
had the sense to not stop and ask questions. “You're the closest thing we have to an expert, and yet you walk in like the blue plate special.”

Jo busied herself with readjusting the driver's seat, then the mirrors. “That was underground. This was sunny.”

“You should have called me anyway.”

“I did call you.” She started the car—which started on the first try, as if anxious to please. Unlike either of them.

“Called me to
come check out the cemetery with you.
”

Her expression was dangerously close to incredulous. “An hour each way? That's ridiculous. It was
on my way.
”

Zack yanked more sharply than necessary on his shoulder harness to fasten his seat belt. “I can't talk to you like this.”

And he couldn't; his throat hurt and his pulse was throbbing so hard that his headache was back. So he scowled out at the low-blowing sand. It hissed against the door, sometimes the window.

Finally he looked back and asked, “How am I supposed to feel if you get yourself killed?”

Jo had backed out of Ashley's driveway, but slowed on the all-but-deserted two-lane road to look at him again. Her eyes softened, as if he'd just said something significant.

Zack suddenly realized why—realized that it sounded as if his problem with her getting killed was because he cared so freakin' much. He didn't want her going mushy on him because she misunderstood. “I'm the one who involved you in the first place.”

Not that he
didn't
care, but that part he was still figuring out. And the issue of trust….

He wasn't about to put himself in another relationship, working
or
personal, that couldn't support complete trust.

“No, you didn't.” Jo slowly accelerated the powerful car down the street. Sand writhed across the road in low waves.

“Yeah. I was there. I remember.”

“
I'm
the one who saw zombies up-close and personal in the mine,” she mimicked, using his own damned words. “You reminded me of what I already knew was out there, that's all.”

“Just in time to get you involved with a necromancer.”

“Just in time for me to maybe do some good. The kind of good you've been doing for years. You did me a favor.” She barely slid her gaze from the road to him, then back. She was a good driver, anyway. “Zack, I was dying out there in Spur. Now I'm helping…I think I am, anyway. That's because of you. It's a
good
thing.”

Which wouldn't mean jack if she went and got killed.

She asked, “Have
you
ever investigated cemeteries alone?”

“Not when I thought the residents might be out and about.”

“Which means you have on other occasions.”

He remembered that funeral home. The eight-year-old girl who'd gone missing on Halloween night. The frantic phone call about a neighbor's prank, gone terribly wrong. The funeral director had called him, afraid to contact the authorities or to venture into his own place of business, that one night. The man had agreed to meet Zack at the employee entrance and unlock the door, but except for that, Zack had been on his own.

He usually was, when it came to fieldwork. He'd had to be, until now.

He waited until Jo pulled to a stop outside the wrought-iron gate of the Almanuevo Cemetery, so that she could look at him, too. And so that he could speak more calmly.
Calm
being relative.

“Look,” he said. “This isn't the sort of job you advertise for in the
Sunday Times.
There
wasn't
anybody else. Now there's you. But if I can't trust you, I can't work with you. Period. So from now on, you do
not
go anywhere alone. Someone's shooting at us, remember? I bet you made a great target out in the open.”

Her eyes narrowed as he spoke; he could see how angry he'd made her from the set of her jaw, the force of her swallow. Well, too damned bad. If she didn't want to be talked to like a child, she shouldn't act like one.

He said, “We have work to do, Sheriff. Are you in or out?”

But Jo said, “You either.”

That confused him. “What?”

“You don't go anywhere alone either. As long as I'm on restriction, so are you.”

For Pete's sake. Zack spread his hands, tried to look superior. “
I'm
fine with that.”

“Then so am I.”

“Good,” he said, getting out of the Ferarri. He put on his sunglasses against the wind, thankful that most of the sand whipped across his jeans and hiking boots.

“Good,” Jo agreed, following him. She'd left the hat back in her truck but wore her sunglasses, so he couldn't read her eyes. Her posture was none too welcoming.

At least they had a working arrangement he could trust.

But he didn't exactly want to kiss her anytime in the near future.

 

At first, Jo felt so angry that she couldn't talk to him. Not more than what she'd managed in the car, anyway. She just stalked along first one row, then another, of gravestones—wary of snakes. But the wind helped, there. Snakes didn't seem to enjoy blowing sand any more than humans did.

Who the hell did Zack think he was?
You do
not
go anywhere
alone.
Like he had the right to permit her to do anything. Nothing gave him that right, not even the incredible way…

No. She didn't want to think about kissing him, much less the rest. She kind of wanted to stay angry; it felt safer. Stopping by the cemetery on the way out of Spur had seemed perfectly reasonable, damn it. It was daylight, and
Spur,
not a corpse-strewn mine tunnel. And as for shooters—even if last night's sniper
was
aiming for Jo instead of Zack, how would anyone possibly know where she'd be ahead of time? Clearly, since nothing had happened, she'd been safe. Zack was paranoid, just like that first morning at the Alpha Inn. Except…

The part that confused Jo was that the longer she walked, the more reasonable Zack's request seemed. The tone of voice he'd used; okay,
that
still pissed her off. But in the week or so she'd known Zack Lorenzo, when had she imagined him to be a diplomat? He said what he thought, blunt though it may be.

And at least he'd agreed to follow the same rules. That took some of the edge off his bossy tone.

And he was right that they had work to do.

Finally, she unbent enough to ask, “What are we looking for anyway?”

“Hell if I know,” he said, also scowling at tombstones. “Hopefully if we see something important—”

“We'll know it,” she finished for him.

“I'm figuring this out as we go along,” he reminded her. Because that's how magic worked. Except…after this morning, she found herself believing that on deeper levels than ever.

Look where the dead things go.
She hadn't imagined that.

That's when she sensed something—eyes upon her. The hair on the back of her neck prickled, and some powerful instinct urged her to keep her head down, not move, not become a target. Luckily, she was getting better at pushing through that temptation to disbelieve in the magic. She was able to look up.

Then she blinked. She could have sworn that she saw someone standing beside one of the larger crypts, but when she blinked, all she saw was cemetery, desert and blowing sand.

Just your imagination.
She was turning away, silent, when she recognized the danger of that and turned back.

“Zack, I think I saw something.”

He was at her side in a moment, seeming to scan the area where she was looking. “What?”

“I thought I saw a man, maybe a boy, standing over here.” With Zack beside her, it seemed less foolish to stride across the graveyard, weaving around tombstones until they reached the tomb. She crouched to look for footprints where whoever it was had stood, and saw nothing. Eerie.

Then again, the wind was blowing pretty hard.

“What did he look like?” At least Zack wasn't dismissing it as feminine jitters.

“I got barely a glimpse, but…” She closed her eyes, imagined her feet rooting into the ground, her arms as branches into the cosmos. If she
had
seen something, what would it be?

“Light hair, broad shoulders, what looked like a letterman jacket,” she recited quickly, and opened her eyes, pleased. “Does that fit the description of our frat-boy neo-Nazi?”

“Brent Harper was brunette. Good thought, though.” Zack circled the tomb. Luckily, it was low enough that Jo could see him even on the other side.

That
don't-go-anywhere-alone rule
was sounding increasingly wise, all of a sudden. Even in broad daylight.

“I don't see anything,” he admitted, reaching her again. He studied the tomb.
“Montoya,”
he read. “Ring any bells?”

She shook her head.

“Me nei—” Then he stiffened, jaw tight, sunglasses aimed across the cemetery. Jo looked that way too—and saw nothing.

“What?”

“Girl,” Zack said. “Lots of skin.”

“Oh
really?
”

His sunglasses blocked the brunt of what she assumed from the rest of his face was a screw-you glare. “The impression I got was a teenager—you know how skimpy the kids are dressing lately. I thought I saw her, then she wasn't there at all.”

Just like the boy she'd seen. “Ghosts?”

“Let's find out.” And he headed in that direction.

“Do people see ghosts during the day?” Jo asked, following.

“Sure. A lot of the time they look just like real people, too—
substantial, not all transparent. But what I don't get, and don't go calling me a racist here, is what kind of fair-haired guy would go by the name of Montoya?” When they reached the place Zack thought he'd seen the girl, Jo crouched and looked for any sign of a track. Again, she saw nothing but blowing sand.

After looking around, Zack said, “Or why some teenager's ghost would hang around a cluster of graves from the '50s, when everyone buried nearby seems to have lived into their eighties.”

“So maybe they're not ghosts,” said Jo. Zack offered his hand as she straightened, but she'd managed by herself so didn't take it. “They don't match the descriptions of our walking dead.”

He took his hand back, arching a brow. As if she was just ticked about earlier, and she wasn't. He'd been right, hadn't he?

Surely she wasn't contentious enough to be ticked
because
he'd been right.

“Maybe something…” But Zack stopped, staring at yet another section of the cemetery. “Look. Slowly.”

Jo turned slowly this time, hoping she wouldn't startle whatever it was—and saw nothing. Maybe the briefest impression of shoulders, a shadow. Nothing more.

“I wasn't fast enough,” she admitted.

“Another man,” Zack muttered. “Red-haired. Glasses. Skinny. But it's like whatever he was blew away.” He shrugged, disgusted. “Damned sandstorm.”

Jo snorted. “This isn't a sandstorm, Zack.” She'd seen sandstorms, and this wasn't a sandstorm. “It's just wind.”

“Damned wind, then.” He shoved his hands into his pockets—and just stood there.

“Aren't we going to go check it out?”

“I'm thinking,” he offered slowly, as if working it out as he spoke, “that's just what it wants us to do. I think something's playing games with us.”