Rob Cornell - Ridley Brone 01 - Last Call (14 page)

I lay in the double bed, the sheets I’d retrieved from the closet smelling musty. My body tensed when I heard the floorboards creak, and a new dose of pain scoured me from the inside out.

I widened my eyes, trying to will them to adjust to the darkness. I thought I saw a shape standing over me. I made a fist under the covers.

“Relax,” Autumn said, and stroked my face.

I exhaled a breath I didn’t know I was holding, let the fist melt. “You shouldn’t sneak up on a private eye like that. Haven’t you read Robert Parker?”

Autumn climbed into the bed next to me. She didn’t speak, only traced her fingers across my cheek. Her light touch soothed my aching face better than the wet rag had. Her skin felt cool. After a moment, the tension seeped from my muscles, easing more of the pain.

“What are you doing?” I asked, voice lilted with sleep.

She answered by brushing my lips with her fingertips.

“You thought my bed would be more comfortable?”

My eyes finally adjusted to the small amount of moonlight coming through the window above the bed. I saw Autumn smile.

“Are you going to speak to me?” I asked.

Her fingers lingered at my chin, then skated down my neck, over my Adam’s apple to my chest. She pressed her palm flat over my heart.

“You shouldn’t be in here.” Though hadn’t I imagined this scenario the night she came to the
High Note
? Wasn’t this what I wanted?

Autumn sagged down onto the bed, her one arm tucked under her head. She wore only a t-shirt, which had slipped up over her hips, exposing her body from the waist down. Shadows kept me from seeing whether or not she wore panties. I almost reached to find out.

We lay still for a moment, staring at each other.

“I could feel you in the next room.” She closed her eyes. “I’m a horrible person.”

“You’re confused,” I said, my throat hitching.

“I feel like I’m in a vacuum. It still hasn’t really hit me that he’s gone. I mean, I saw him …”

She rolled on her back. Her chest rose as she inhaled deeply. The shadows pulled away, revealing the lacy pattern of her panties.

“I saw him dead.”

I found one of her hands with one of mine and squeezed. I shouldn’t have touched her at all with her in my bed practically naked. But I couldn’t ignore her either.

“You are sort of in a vacuum. I put you there. When things get straightened out and you return home, reality is going to hit.”

“Reality,” she said and sighed.

“Anything that happens here can only complicate that reality.” The words sounded right and responsible. I should have felt proud for saying the right thing. Instead, I regretted it and hoped she would argue with me.

“You’re right,” she said.

I couldn’t breathe.

She turned back on her side to face me. “But there’s still something between us. It never went away.”

“Yes.”

“There was never any closure.”

“No.”

She touched my face again, drawing a line with her finger tips along the edge of my jaw. “It wasn’t fair.”

I closed my eyes. Why fight? She clearly wanted it. Even if she only wanted to use me to numb her pain, I could handle it. Wouldn’t I be using her, too?

I took her hand and put it to my lips, kissed her palm.

The shuddering breath Autumn released sounded like music. I wanted to hear her breathe like that again, and know that I had caused it.

I sucked on her fingertips, then drew her hand down to my chest, down over my abs, ignoring the pain of my bruises, eating the pain, even liking it. By the time Autumn’s hand slipped under the waistband of my boxers, I was ready for her. Her grip sent waves of sensation through me strong enough to shake my body.

Autumn groaned, sliding up against me, and I pulled her harder to me and kissed her, tasting the inside of her mouth, tasting what I had been missing for so damn long. This was how it was supposed to be. This worked. Her body seemed to fit like a joint against mine, as if she were carved to the perfect shape. There was no way Doug could have ever felt this way about her. She was mine.

I gyrated my pelvis into Autumn’s hand, growing manic, clawing at her t-shirt, tugging it up off her waist, sliding my hand over her skin, feeling every ridge of her spine, down to her panties, then underneath, slipping around to the front, reaching with a need that unraveled the last thread of my self-control.

My touch acted like a trigger for the both of us. She yanked off my boxers while I tore at her panties, thinking I could get them off with one tug, only the elastic band wouldn’t rip.

Autumn’s mouth laughed against mine. “Nice try, cowboy.”

“Works in the movies.”

“This is quality underwear you’re dealing with. Not some cheap movie prop.” She rocked away from me, threw her legs in the air, and slipped her panties up and off.

I dove on top of her and yanked off her t-shirt. We laughed, and touched, and rubbed our naked bodies against each other. The whole time my body screamed as if from two mouths—one of need, the other of pain.

The need screamed loudest.

When I slid inside Autumn, everything else drifted away.

The world seemed to right itself, and for the rest of the night, until dawn colored the light in the room a pale orange, I felt like I belonged.

I should have known better.

I slept for a couple hours and spent another hour staring at the ceiling and listening to Autumn’s breathing.

Gently, I slid my arm out from under her and eased out of bed. I picked my clothes up off the floor and carried them into the front room before putting them on. Through the window the sky showed mostly blue with thin strips of white clouds, promising clear weather. It was a good day to track down a fellow high school alum and see what kind of trouble she was into.

First, I needed a breath of fresh air.

I went out onto the back deck accessible through the kitchen. The morning air was chilly and a little wet, but the sun coming up over the lake added enough warmth to make it bearable. I stood at the railing and stared into the glittering water. My mind crawled over the events of the last few days, lingering on the night before with Autumn. I sucked deep of the cold air, and for a second felt content.

Then my bruised face started hurting.

That lead to a worming in my stomach as I thought about what we had done. It shouldn’t have happened. Autumn had hired me as a detective, and… Who was I kidding? It wasn’t a lack of professionalism that bothered me. What I’d said to her last night was true—outside of this cabin reality sat waiting to slap the smug smile right off my face.

I’d fucked the wife of a murdered man.

What did that say about me?

The view ruined, I went back inside and found Autumn in the kitchen rummaging through cupboards.

“I don’t know why I’m bothering to look. Even if I found coffee, there’s no coffee maker.”

“Might be one in the front closet,” I said, watching her search through a stack of canned vegetables and soup with yellowed labels.

“Would you drink some or should I quit wasting my time?”

“I have to get going.”

She slapped the cupboard shut. “Where?”

“Find Dixie,” I said, tugging on my right shoe.

“Do you have to go now?”

I slipped into my left shoe. My words came out sharper than I intended. “You’re still a murder suspect, remember?”

“I remember.”

I felt like something was slipping out of my grasp. It fed the edge in my voice. “What happened last night doesn’t change that we’re both in deep shit.”

“I never said it did.”

“Good.” I picked my jacket up off the loveseat where I’d tossed it last night. While shrugging into it, I said, “Remember what I said about reality.”

She looked down at her hands, started picking at her nails. “I get it already.”

I left the cabin feeling justified and like a complete asshole at the same time.

I stopped home first and noticed the unmarked car across the street and down a ways, two shadows sitting inside. Tom and Palmer, I presumed. I smirked to myself, knowing they probably wondered where I had been all night. I’d have to stay careful, though. The only reason Tom probably hadn’t figured out a way to put me in a cell was because he expected me to lead him to Autumn.

I had to clear this up fast.

I showered and changed, finally giving the damage to my face the attention it deserved with Neosporin and a couple of Band-Aids. The shiners weren’t too bad, though between those and the saucer-sized bruises on my torso, I looked like a cross between Herman Munster and a Rorschach inkblot.

Feeling a little more refreshed, I sat down at my computer and did some web-searching. I checked the state’s correction website, typing in Dixie’s real name, Samirah Jawhar. I came up with two hits and cracked a grin checking out the more recent. Looked like Ms. Jawhar was on parole. I clicked into the record and learned her latest encounter with the Michigan corrections system came about due to an auto theft and assault with intent to do great bodily harm.

Bad girl.

After clicking on the link to get information about her parole office, I went back and checked out the earliest charge listed. Home invasion. Weapons felony. Assault with a weapon. This was what Autumn had told me about.

The more I thought about her as Doug’s killer, the more right it felt. The timing might have been off, but her second trip to prison could have delayed her revenge plans. Or maybe she had let the frustration build until she couldn’t take it anymore and blamed all her problems with the law on the girl who had helped put her away the first time.

I used the info I’d pulled off the net to call Dixie’s parole officer and find out where she was hanging out these days.

I found Dixie in the sort of place I expected, a trailer park on the south side. While I’d taken care to lose my tail on the way, I wondered if Tom had put two and two together and already checked on Dixie. Frankly, I didn’t know what my old friend was thinking anymore.

The trailer park wasn’t a complete dump. A number of the units had some meager landscaping in their meager yards, adding character to an otherwise mundane living space. And most of the yards looked well maintained.

Dixie’s trailer sat just off center of the park and blended well with those around it. She had curtains in the windows, flower beds on either side of the door, and even a couple of those gnome statues peeking out from between the shrubbery.

Maybe the park had a groundskeeper that cared for the yards. The place seemed a little too homey for Dixie.

When I knocked, a shirtless man with all manner of tattoos writhing along his toned arms answered the door in a tank top. He had a sharp, angular face with somewhat feminine eyes. His complexion was almost as dark as the tattoo ink. Before I even opened my mouth, the guy looked like he wanted to kick my ass.

“What?” he asked.

I gave him a bright salesman smile. Maybe not the best strategy, but I knew my own limitations. I didn’t think intimidation would work here.

“Hi. My name’s—”

“I don’t care.”

He started to swing the door shut. I got bold and held it open. That won me the Glare of Death. I held my smile as if it had been Botoxed in place.

“I’m looking for Dixie,” I said.

His expression changed. He looked sick to his stomach, and didn’t move or say anything.

“Samirah Jawhar,” I added.

“I know who you’re talking about.” He opened the door and flexed his muscles, making all that ink on his arms undulate. “Dixie’s dead. Go home.”

I almost laughed. “Recently? ‘Cause I just talked to her parole officer and she said—”

“Do I know you?”

I tripped over my words, stopped. I looked in his eyes and had to admit he looked familiar. “You graduate from Hawthorne High?”

“Holy fucking shit.” A smirk quirked up one corner of his mouth. “Brone?”

I stared even harder at his face, struggling to find a name in my cluttered mind. I couldn’t place him.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

I sputtered, no clue how to respond.

His smiled widened. “You can’t figure it out, can you?”

I shook my head.