The Gift (12 page)

When Lorilee came to Ty and told him their young love had created a child, Ty went to William Brubaker and asked for his daughter’s hand in marriage. And he told the old man that his half brother had been undermining his every step, and that that would have to stop. He didn’t like using his position as Lorilee’s husband against Gary, but he couldn’t let Gary hurt her. It was clear by then that Gary would do anything to help Gary, regardless of whom he hurt along the way.

Ty sat up in bed, his chin resting in his hands. He’d never forget the day he and Lorilee had married. Bill had arranged a private ceremony at the house, after Lorilee had confessed her pregnancy. Gary made sure the other hands knew all about it and raised a ruckus. Firecrackers went off on the lawn, and Ty’s truck was decorated with tin cans.

So much for discretion.

Somehow, his creep of a half brother had learned about Lorilee’s unplanned pregnancy and written her due date across the back of Ty’s tailgate. It didn’t matter that Gary could be a half brother to both him and Lorilee. Ty spent part of his wedding night beating Gary Harlan to a bloody pulp.

Oddly, that was when Ty seemed to have won the grudging respect of his new father-in-law.

Ty swung his legs over the side of the bed and planted his bare feet on the floor. “Well, hasn’t this been fun?”

He stood and padded barefoot to the window, shading his eyes against the rising sun. Enough pretending. Between his libido and his memories, he wasn’t going to get a wink of sleep.

With another sigh, he headed for the shower.

A cold one.

Beth passed out the moment her head hit the pillow. She’d have been safer downing an entire pot of coffee and staving off sleep entirely, because this level of exhaustion was a surefire prelude to one hell of a nightmare.

In other words, empathically speaking, she was at her most vulnerable while sleeping. She’d become a control freak in her mission to distance herself from her so-called gift. Not only had it driven her to drink, but she’d almost lost her mind.

That last case, the loss of control, had pushed her to the brink. She’d not only feared for her sanity, but for her own life.

Battling her way through alcohol withdrawal had been bad enough. The sheer terror of encountering another needy spirit before she was ready still had the power to make her physically ill.

Some people snored when they slept. Others belched and farted like Heppel’s hound. But not Beth Dearborn. No, she had to dream in wild, vivid, too-often-violent Technicolor.

Sometimes her slumber was peaceful and undisturbed. Other nights—especially those when she was extremely exhausted—she had visitors.

Dead ones. Repeat offenders. Despite the years of separation between now and that last horrible murder in Chicago, the memories of being repeatedly stabbed, shot, strangled, drowned, hanged, suffocated, mutilated, and burned to death insisted on periodic visitation rights. Sure, she could do her best to stay away from the active spirits of those who’d died violently, but she couldn’t purge herself of the morbid, haunting memories of those she had already encountered.

Of course, before she’d walked—rather, run—away from her gift and her career, there’d been many times in her life when she had quite deliberately opened herself to these empathic invasions in order to solve a murder. And no matter how horrifying, once an encounter was underway, she was at its mercy until the victim moved on to the other side and released her. She had no control, and that was too risky.

Layers of shadow and light filled her mind as she drifted. A blurry face drifted by—a woman. Someone she’d never met.

“
I know you’re here,
” the woman said. “
You can help me. Please help me.
”

No, she couldn’t go back to the foyer. Was the spirit getting stronger? Could it reach her here now? As Beth struggled to keep herself from drifting into a deeper sleep, her last coherent thought was a fervent prayer that God not allow the ghost in the foyer to overtake her while she was helpless.

Her dream transported her to another place and time. At least there were no faces in this new dream-world—only two nameless bodies with mouths, teeth, lips, tongues, flesh. Ty’s? Beth’s? They met, parried, touched, sought, and tasted…

So it was
that
kind of dream.

She hadn’t meant to touch him. That was her last coherent thought before his hands streaked up and filled themselves with her breasts. His throaty moan spilled into her mouth like forbidden wine.

Then he was tugging away her shirt and shoving back from the table all at once. “To hell with it,” he muttered against her greedy mouth, and then he lifted her.

Her arms and legs wrapped around him like silken rope, her shirt dangling from one wrist where the buttons held. Beneath, she wore a plain cotton camisole—something Beth didn’t even own—but in her dreamworld it felt as erotic as silk lace.

He handled her as if she were small and light, instead of the long-legged woman she was. As her erratic pulse pounded in her ears, she thought he could have carried a mountain.

They weren’t outside in the dark now, but somewhere in the house—the kitchen?—in broad daylight. Sunlight streamed through a tall window next to the mudroom door. Even the risk of being caught didn’t dim their fierce hunger.

Her busy mouth never paused, racing from cheek to jaw to ear and back, while little whimpers purred in her throat. He started out of the kitchen, stumbled over a loose throw rug, and knocked her back against the doorjamb. She only laughed, breathlessly now, and tightened the vise of her legs around his waist.

How could he possibly walk and carry her this way? It didn’t matter. All that mattered was having Ty Malone. All of him…

Their lips fused again in a rough, desperate kiss until he tore his mouth free to fasten it to her breast, suckling greedily through tissue-thin cotton.

The pleasure of it, dark and damning, lanced like a spear through her system. This was more, she realized, as the blood coursing through her veins began to hum. More than she’d expected. More than she might even have wanted. But there was no turning back.

He whirled away from the wall.

“
Hurry,” was all she could say as he strode toward the stairs. “Hurry.
”

His footsteps rang in her ears. Hurry. Hurry. Beth clung like a burr as he all but leaped up the stairs.

He turned left at the top of the stairs, then right into a bedroom where sunlight spilled like liquid gold through open curtains. She welcomed him as he fell with her onto the neatly made comforter.

There was no thought or need for gentleness, for soft endearments or slow caresses. They ravished each other, recklessly shoving aside pieces of clothing, pulling, tugging, kicking off shoes, all the while feeding each other ravenous kisses.

Her body no longer belonged to her. She was losing control. Completely. She rolled and reared while her breath seared out in burning gasps. Seams ripped, needs exploded.

His hands were rough from hard work. Another time they might have smoothed over her body like butter. But now they grasped and showed no mercy, bringing her indefinable joy that soared through her system as that dreaded storm had torn at the sky two nights past. Now, with no barriers between them, he drew her sensitive nipples into his mouth.

She gasped, not in pain at the none-too-gentle scrape of his teeth and tongue, but in pure carnal bliss as a merciless orgasm tore through her.

She hadn’t anticipated it would come so fast and so profound,
nor had she ever relinquished control enough to experience the utter helplessness that followed. Before she could do more than wonder or worry about her loss of control, renewed need surged through her.

She’d never imagined, never, that sex could completely devour her and leave her trembling. But she trembled beneath his hands, under the wild demands of his mouth. For another crazed moment she was totally vulnerable, defenseless, her body liquid and her brain stunned into capitulation by the power of her own climax. Then he was gone.

Darkness pressed down on her, the air thick with dread. Where was she now? She knew this place. Chicago. Lakeshore Drive. That last time…

Not again. Not again.

“Wake up, Beth. Wake up,”
the shreds of sanity commanded.

Blood. Crashing rivers of it erupted from the corners of her mind.

The shimmering steel blade ripped and retreated again and again. Crimson waves of pain pierced her. Dripping life’s blood…

Death tugged at her, greedy and demanding, dragging her into the victim’s world, toward the cold, the dark.

Not yet…She had to see the face. The killer’s face.

Beth bolted upright in bed, sweaty sheets tangled around her, a silent scream tearing through every cell. She held her head in trembling hands, waiting for her heartbeat to slow. The ragged sounds of her breathing filled the room.

“Just a damn dream.” She drew a deep, shaky breath and shoved her wild hair back from her face. Well, part dream and part nightmare.

But the dream—no matter how delicious—had
shattered her control and made her vulnerable to the nightmare. She squeezed her eyes shut, allowing herself to remember, just for a moment, what it had felt like to have Ty’s mouth and hands on her.

“Oh, God.”

But she had to maintain control. No matter what. Maybe once Sam engaged the spirit in the foyer, Beth could let down her guard just a little, but not completely. Maybe…

And she remembered the voice just as she drifted off to sleep, and the face—a woman’s face.
Help me,
she’d said.
I know you’re here.

Was the ghost in the foyer gaining strength? More importantly, was it Lorilee? Beth had seen photographs, and she knew from family comments that Sarah closely resembled her mother. The face in her semidream state could have been Lorilee. Whoever she was, her spirit was trying to contact the empath in residence, and that was one very reluctant Beth Dearborn.

“Hurry the hell up, Sam.”

Beth spent some time washing away the dregs of her dream-nightmare in the shower, organizing her thoughts and notes, going through the Rolodex Ty had given her, and planning her strategy for the day. She also figured that would give the master of the house plenty of time to get out to his field—or whatever farmers did during the day—so she wouldn’t have to face him.

After all, her car wasn’t going anywhere, and that was the most important thing she had to do this morning—examine the damage. It could wait until Ty was away from the house.

“Coward,” she muttered to herself.

So she wasn’t exactly a coward, but when it came to touchy-feely stuff, she was less than forthcoming. And her dream of Ty had definitely backed her into a touchy-feely corner in the wee hours of this morning. She wasn’t ready to face the man or her feelings just yet. Later, she’d face the man, because she had no choice if she wanted to finish this investigation. Much later—okay, probably never—she
might
face her feelings.

First things first. She called a federal judge who owed her a favor and explained the situation regarding the letter, allegedly from Lorilee. The appropriate steps would be put in motion today, ordering the sheriff’s office in Brubaker to turn the evidence over to Avery Mutual, which would have the signature analyzed by a handwriting expert.

Beth checked that item off her list and opened her laptop. Ty had a wireless network, but it was secure, of course. She should have asked him for the password. Or maybe Beth could hack into it. It was worth a try. She tried combinations of the kids’ names with various symbols, birth dates, the usual common password suspects. No luck there.

She flipped through Lorilee’s file. Her wedding date leapt off the page. “Hmm.” Beth typed it in month first, date first, then she tried the year first and spelled out the month. “Bingo!” She was online.

She was able to network her computer with the farm’s operation within a matter of minutes. “Thank you, Apple, Mac, and Steve Jobs.” She didn’t expect to find anything particularly useful or incriminating, but just being connected to the outside world again was good.

After sending a quick e-mail to Sam to remind him of his promise to come to Brubaker, along with directions to the farm and an update regarding all the primary players in her investigation, she sent another to an associate at Avery Mutual, alerting him about Lorilee’s letter. She didn’t want any screw-ups or delays with the handwriting analysis. That had waited long enough already. Ty had provided another sample of his wife’s handwriting, so that was a go.

Then she spent a little time looking through various farming operations. Most of it was simple accounting software, a few databases—boring stuff. Then she saw the webcams.

“How cool is that? High-tech
Green Acres.
” She clicked on the icon that said “Barncam.” Ty walked right past the camera, almost as if he knew she was watching. Of course, that was impossible. Still, she should probably feel a little guilty, spying on him this way. But in her line of work, she’d learned to squelch that useless emotion a long time ago.

He opened a stall, and she wondered if she could get any audio. Granted, the internal speaker on her laptop wasn’t all that great, but she turned the volume up full blast and waited.

“Hey there, girl,” Ty said in a gentle voice. “Are you going to have that baby today?”

She saw the top of his head and the mare’s as he stroked the animal’s long neck and continued to speak in soft, soothing tones. The beast nuzzled his sleeve lovingly and nickered.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Ty rested his forehead against the mare’s neck. “Not sure I can stay awake all night again, Cissy.”

A lump lodged in Beth’s throat as she watched Ty and the horse. He continued to speak softly to his mare while he stroked her neck. The trust between the man and his horse was undeniable. Was that what they meant by “horse sense”? Did Cissy know something about human nature Beth couldn’t begin to understand?

Or maybe all those years in Homicide had left her jaded. “Go figure.” She slammed the mental vault on those memories. Last night’s nightmare had been more than enough.

With a sigh, Beth rested her chin on her fist and tapped her touch pad with her other hand to keep the screen from going dark. She focused on the clean, square line of Ty’s jaw, the way the muscles worked in his neck as he stroked the mare.

He’d touched Beth differently. Feverishly. There’d been no gentleness in either the reality or the dream. Beth’s nipples hardened and her body warmed from the memory. That had been a first-class wet dream, but it had also served as a reminder that she needed to hold herself back enough to protect herself. She couldn’t let down all her shields again.

“I envy you, Cissy,” she whispered. Beth wanted nothing more than to feel the unconditional love and trust she was witnessing right now. Her relationship with her cousin was the closest she would ever come to that kind of trust, because he shared his own personal version of the Dearborn curse.

But oh, how she would have loved to give herself over to the kind of passion she’d experienced in that dream, and feel the kind of trust she saw in Cissy’s soft brown eyes right now.

But she couldn’t. Beth Dearborn had a job to do and an empathic gift to keep at bay until Sam showed up to strike some kind of bargain with the spirit in the foyer.

Unless it turned out to be Lorilee.

Then what? “Then I find out who killed her. And why,” she murmured.