The Sheriff's Surrender (11 page)

Unexpectedly Reese swung her into his arms. She felt curiously light-headed—swept off her feet—and strangely uncomfortable. She wanted to go limp and enjoy the experience, and wanted to struggle down and run, not walk, all the way back to Kansas City. She settled for holding herself very still, for barely breathing or thinking and certainly not feeling, and when he set her down on the tabletop, she gave a great, silent sigh of relief. Not disappointment. Not regret. Neither pleasure nor hunger for more.

“Stick your foot up here.”

The sane, rational, intelligent part of her insisted she refuse and remove her own stickers. The reckless, irrational, once-a-sucker-for-this-man part of her obediently presented first one foot, then the other, to him.

“Guess I should have given you a pair of shoes after all,”
he said gruffly as he plucked a half dozen stickers from the bottoms of her feet. “Between stickers and copperheads—”

“Copperheads,” she repeated. “There are copperheads out here? In the grass?”

“And curled up places that still hold the heat of the day, like the dirt road, rocks, stone.”

She jumped to her feet in a whirl of fabric and gave the tabletop a thorough look, then subjected both benches to the same. He watched her, waited until she gathered her skirt close and sat again, then dryly said, “I wouldn't have set you there without looking first.”

“Oh, right. You expect me to believe you'd pass up a chance for me to die from natural causes and to save yourself from having to do me in?”

“Damn it, Neely, stop it!”

His sharp response startled her into silence. She'd just been teasing…sort of. She wasn't sure she
really
believed he wanted her dead. She just couldn't convince herself that he would feel even a moment's regret if it happened.

After a moment of silence, she made another effort at conversation. “What is this place?”

“Buffalo Lake.” He answered grudgingly, like a recalcitrant child not yet ready to give up his pouting. After a moment, though, he sat at the opposite end of the table, feet braced on the bench. “It's where the kids go on Saturday nights to party, which means my deputies spend a fair amount of their time out here, too.”

“Is this where you came when you were a kid?”

“Yeah. Sometimes.”

“With your girlfriend?”

He merely shrugged.

“Can you swim here?”

“Sure—if you watch out for the water moccasins.”

“Oklahoma's just full of dangerous creatures, isn't it?” And she was sitting four feet from one of the most dangerous. A bite from a water moccasin or copperhead could leave her
dead, but Reese could make her wish she was dead. She knew that from painful experience.

She rubbed the ache in her right shoulder, feeling the thickened scar tissue through the fabric of her top. As gunshot wounds went, it had been fairly minor. She'd required surgery to remove the bullet and then some physical therapy, but she'd regained full use of her shoulder and arm. But at times the healed wound hurt worse than it had nine years ago. There was no reason for it, the doctor had said. It was all in her head.

Maybe he was right. Maybe it was merely a reminder to her to keep herself safe.

And sitting here in the moonlight with Reese, with the water lapping and a soft breeze blowing, she needed all the reminders she could get.

“Where do kids go in Wichita?”

His question pulled her from her thoughts and coaxed a faint smile. “I don't know. I never went anywhere.”

“Why not?”

“No boyfriend. No time. No opportunity.”

“You didn't have a single date in high school?”

Turning to face him, she sat crosslegged, her skirt tucked over and around her legs. “Five nights a week I went straight from school to a job at the neighborhood burger place. I got off at eleven, home by eleven-thirty, studied and did homework. On Saturdays and Sundays I worked twelve-hour shifts as an aide at a nursing home. I didn't have much time for dating.” She hadn't had her first date, first kiss, first sex, until college, but she hadn't minded. She hadn't met the man who could compete with her drive to succeed.

Not until she'd moved to Thomasville and practically fallen at the feet of the handsomest, sexiest, most charming man she'd ever met.

“You, on the other hand, probably spent far more time dating than working, studying and doing homework combined,” she said lightly.

“Life was easier then.” He was gazing out over the lake,
turned slightly away from her, and what little she could see of his expression was as distant as he sounded. “All I had to worry about was not getting anyone pregnant and keeping my arm in good shape. I was going to graduate and get a college scholarship regardless of my grades. By the end of my sophomore year at Oklahoma State, a pro career was pretty much guaranteed as long as I stayed healthy. When I went to the Royals, I thought I had it made. I was getting paid big bucks to play a game I would have played for free. I had a great condo, a great car, more women than I knew what to do with. People asked for my autograph wherever I went. Kids were starstruck around me. Baseball fans around the world knew my name. And then it ended.”

After she'd met him, Neely had gone to the library and looked up all the old newspaper stories. He'd been considered something of a phenomenon—so good, so controlled, so young. Sportswriters had routinely compared him to the greats in baseball history, had made predictions about how far he could go. And then one day he'd thrown a pitch, just as he had ten thousand times before, and something went wrong. He'd suffered a torn rotator cuff—not a particularly serious injury as a rule, but the kiss of death to his pitching career. He'd had the corrective surgery, done the rehabilitation and tried to come back, but Reese before the injury and Reese after were as different as night and day. As different as a hot-shot pro pitcher and a weekends-only, beer-belly-league softball lobber.

“You'd lived a charmed life,” she said. “Then you had to come live in the real world with the rest of us.”

He gave her a long, heavy look. “I liked the charmed life better.”

Why? Had he found the adulation from sports fans and baseball groupies more satisfying than the complete love and adoration of a small-town lawyer? Had being a sports hero meant more to him than being
her
hero? Did he prefer the charmed life because
she
could never have been a part of it?

So he wished he'd never met her. That was no surprise. Plenty of other people had made the same wish.

But none of them had claimed to love her.

Deliberately she turned away from him, looking back the way they'd come. The moon showed open grassy areas and glinted in fractured ripples on the water's surface, but even its silvery light couldn't penetrate the woods. The only light capable of that was headlights, she thought as she watched twin lights move far too quickly for a handheld lantern. She watched them move for a moment before suddenly realizing what that meant. “Someone's coming.”

Reese looked over his shoulder as the vehicle broke free of the woods and started the long, straight shot toward them. Sliding to his feet, he swung her into his arms, carried her to the passenger side of the truck and set her down, then un-snapped the strap that secured his pistol in the holster. “Stay here.”

The truck was parked at an angle and offered her some cover. She watched the second vehicle, a battered pickup, pull into the grass some fifty feet away and a dozen or more kids pile out. “Hey,” one of them called in their direction as he lowered the tailgate. “We're gonna have a party. Ya want to join us?”

“Is that you, Robbie Langley?” Reese asked from the other side of the truck.

“Yeah. Who are— Oh. Reese.”

“That's Sheriff Barnett to you. Does your daddy know you're out here?”

There was a moment's silence, then, “No.”

“Does he know you're hauling all those kids around in his truck?”

Another silence, then another grudging response. “No.”

“Does he have any idea that you've raided his liquor supply?”

“Aw, hell, Reese—Sheriff. How'd you know…?”

Because he'd probably done the same thing when he was young, Neely thought, suppressing a smile. He'd come out
here with his friends and girlfriends—had probably gotten drunk more than a few times, had probably gotten lucky every time.

A young girl came to stand beside the boy. Her blond hair gleamed like platinum in the moonlight. So did her skimpy little white top and shorts that exposed a tremendous amount of skin. “What are
you
doing out here, Reese? And who's that with you?”

“I'll ask the questions here, Tiffany,” Reese replied.

“Why is she hiding back there? Is she married? Is she naked? Are you trying to recapture your lost youth by coming out here and pretending you're kids again?”

He ignored her sarcastic questions. “Robbie, how many ice chests you have there?”

“Two.”

“Bring 'em over here.”

“Aw, Reese…”

“Come on. Some of you kids help.”

Neely sank down onto the running board as, with much grumbling, Robbie and three other boys carried the two ice chests over and loaded them into the back of Reese's truck.

“That's my dad's ice chest,” one of them said sullenly.

“He's gonna want to know what happened to it.”

“He can have it back. All he has to do is come by the office. Your dad, too, Robbie.” As the boys headed back to their group, Reese called, “You guys be careful—and enjoy your party.”

“Oh, yeah, like
that's
gonna happen,” someone muttered.

As Neely cautiously stood up again, Reese reached through the truck's open window, flipped a switch, then opened the door. The interior light didn't come on. “Come on, Neely. Let's get out of here.”

She climbed inside and fastened her seat belt, then softly sang, “‘Every party needs a pooper. That's why we invited you.'”

As thanks for her serenade, he scowled at her. “Duck until we're past them.”

Obediently Neely bent forward, her arms on her knees, her chin on her arms. Through the open window, she heard a whistle or two, along with a few disgruntled words. Once he gave the all-clear, she sat up again and combed her fingers through her hair. “Let me guess…Robbie is the Reese Barnett of this class, and Tiffany is his cheerleader, homecoming queen, senior-class-vice-president girlfriend. She comes from money and considers a public servant exactly that—a person there to serve her. Her primary goal in life is to marry someone rich and powerful so she can be pampered and powerful and can turn out spoiled children just like her.”

“Sounds about right.”

“What happened to your Tiffany?”

“Her name was Jana. She went to the University of Oklahoma and dated the star quarterback of their national championship football team. He got drafted, she got pregnant, they got married. She followed him from team to team, popped out two more kids, plus he had a couple more with various girlfriends. He developed a drug habit, eventually got kicked off the team and divorced her to marry a girl half his age. Jana got half of everything he owned, which by that time was basically nothing and, last I heard, was selling real estate somewhere down in Texas.”

“I'm sorry.”

She sounded as if she meant it, Reese thought. She was sincerely sorry that the life of someone she didn't even know—someone who wouldn't have given her the time of day back in high school—hadn't turned out the way it was supposed to. He didn't bother telling her to not waste her time. Jana felt sorry enough for herself, and she hadn't even learned anything from the experience. She was actively searching for another man with a lot of money and power and a weakness for her. But this time she intended to get her share of the fortune from the beginning. He wouldn't have the chance to leave her with nothing.

“She got pretty much what she deserved,” he said with a shrug.

“That's a bit cold. But then, I forgot who I was talking to. Mr. Never-Made-A-Mistake-In-His-Entire-Life Barnett. Never arrested an innocent man, never condemned an innocent woman. Never judged anyone unfairly or loved anyone unwisely or— Oops. Looks like you did make one mistake.”

His fingers tightened fractionally around the steering wheel. “Knock it off, Neely. I'm not in the mood.”

“Did you tell people that about me, too? That I got what I deserved? That I'd deserved your walking out on me because I was a criminal defense lawyer who'd defended—surprise, surprise—a criminal? That I'd deserved to get shot by your deputy friend because I'd gotten his grossly mishandled case thrown out?”

Reese brought the truck to a halt in the middle of the dirt road, sending up a spray of gravel and dust. “You didn't ‘get shot' by one of the deputies,” he argued hotly. “Your client murdered a woman in cold blood in front of a half dozen cops, and you had the misfortune to get caught in the cross fire.”

She stared at him a long time before smiling thinly. “Misfortune. Right.”

Frustration made his neck itch and his face hot. Impatiently he switched the air conditioner on high, then rolled up both windows. “You're implying it was something other than bad luck. What's your story?”

“I don't have a story.”

“Come on, Neely—”

“From the beginning you've chosen to believe what's comfortable for you—what makes you feel innocent and blameless. Fine. It's gotten you through nine years. Maybe it'll get you through the next ninety.”

“Are you saying one of the officers deliberately shot you?”

“I'm not saying anything. I was merely asking a question. Did you tell people that, like Jana, I got what I deserved?”

He ignored her. “Because I don't believe it. Not for a minute.” The Keegan County Sheriff's Department might not have been the best law enforcement agency around, but the deputies had been good cops. A little gung-ho sometimes, but
in police work, dedication was a good thing. And they
had
been dedicated. They'd done a difficult job with long hours, lots of headaches, its own share of danger and too damn little pay. Maybe they had screwed up Leon Miller's arrest, but it was because they'd been overzealous and frustrated by the system's inability to deal with him properly. But for one of them to deliberately shoot Neely… He couldn't believe it.