Thread of Fear (13 page)

Carlos stopped at the table. If Jack could have killed a man with his thoughts, he’d have done it right then and there.

“What’s up, Carlos?”

His deputy squeezed right on into the booth, and Jack clenched his teeth. There was no such thing as privacy in this town.

“Ma’am.” Carlos gave Fiona a nod. “Sorry to interrupt, J.B., but I talked to my cousin over in the sheriff’s office.”

“And?”

“And the raid went down at four o’clock. TV guys got a tip-off to be on standby, just like you thought, so that’s how come they got footage of Randy making the collars.”

Fiona tugged her hand away, and Jack realized he’d been gripping it.

“Sharon’s still at the station,” Carlos continued. “She went ahead and faxed out the sketch to all the news people who missed the press conference.”

“Which is pretty much everyone,” Jack said.

“Lowell volunteered to work a double shift, covering phones. But so far, not much response. Just a few crazies who called to say it’s their relative back from the dead or some bull.”

“That happens a lot,” Fiona put in. “And it only gets worse once the sketch really gets into circulation. Still, you never know when the call you need will come in.”

“When it does, we’ll be ready,” Carlos assured her. He eyed the pie, and Jack pulled it closer and took a hefty bite to make his point. Carlos was coming off an extended dinner break, and Jack hadn’t eaten all day.

Fiona picked up her jacket and purse. “Will you excuse me, please?”

Jack frowned. “Where you going?”

“I need to use the restroom,” she said, and he knew she just wanted an excuse to get up. But he scooted out of the booth anyway and watched her walk past the poolroom to the very far back.

“You coming in tonight, Chief?”

Jack sat back down. “Maybe. Late.”

Carlos stared at him, knowing exactly what he was up to.

Shit, so what? Jack had been working round the clock since this case had come in. He’d barely eaten. He’d barely slept. His only breaks had been driving his ass all the way to Austin to hire a forensic artist, and as far as relaxation went, that sure as hell didn’t qualify. Jack was so tightly wound
right now, he was about to snap, and his frustrated libido wasn’t helping. He needed some relief, and he’d already decided the form he wanted it to take.

Carlos was still staring at him, probably hoping to guilt him into coming in.

“You’ve got me on call,” Jack said. “If something comes up, I’m there before you can blink.”

“I know it, J.B.”

“Then what’s with the look?”

“I’ve never seen you like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like a man who’s thinking with his
palo
.”

Fiona splashed water on her cheeks and stared at her reflection. What was she doing here? She should be home right now, preparing for her art show in the soothing comfort of her loft apartment. Instead, she was in Podunk, Texas, in the cramped bathroom of some redneck bar fighting off an alarming attack of lust.

Jack Bowman wanted to sleep with her. He wanted to check her into some seedy motel and set her world on fire.

And he could do it, too. Whenever he touched her, whenever he so much as
looked
at her with those intense blue eyes, she started smoldering inside.

It was just sex. It would be raw and physical and probably just what she needed to wake her up from the frigid state she’d been in ever since she’d walked in on Aaron and that groupie from the Continental Club. The instant she’d seen them together, a frost had settled over her sex drive.

But Jack had melted it. It had happened the moment she noticed him watching her from across her lecture hall.
He’d stood there in the shadows, leaned up against the wall, looking dangerous and determined and much too cocky. Just the type of man she made a habit of falling for.

But she wouldn’t fall for Jack. It would just be sex.

She heard the toilet flush and straightened away from the mirror. She adjusted the lapels of her tailored jacket and smoothed her skirt. She dabbed away the mascara smudges under her eyes and tidied her hair.

The woman at the sink beside her wore tight black Wranglers and a low-cut sweater. She opened a tube of lipstick and smiled at Fiona in the glass. The twang of country guitar music came through the thin paneled walls.

“They’re crowded tonight,” Fiona said, wondering why she felt compelled to make small talk with a complete stranger.

The woman blotted her lips on a tissue and smiled. “Five-dollar pitchers every Thursday. Ralph always gets a crowd.” She winked at Fiona, and squeezed past her and out of the restroom.

When she was gone, Fiona looked at herself again. She didn’t belong here. She didn’t fit in with these people who were open and friendly and lived on farms and drank beer.

But then again, maybe she was being a snob. Or being too uptight. Courtney was always telling her she needed to lighten up and let herself have fun.

I’m thinking you should stay here. We can get you a room.

A room. At a cheap motel. Funny how he hadn’t asked her back to his house, to the little two-one he lived in not far from the Bowman homestead and his widowed mother. He hadn’t asked her to meet his sisters, both schoolteachers, or his nieces and nephews, or in any way to enter his life.

What he’d asked for, she realized, wasn’t so different from what Hoyt had asked for.
You look like a lady who knows her way around a stick. What say we shoot some pool later?

Jack wanted sex. And she did, too. But if she slept with him, where would it get her? Nathan would hear about it for sure. And in no time she’d go from being a respected APD consultant to a locker-room joke. It had happened before. Law enforcement was a boys’ club. As a woman, Fiona had to work ten times harder than the men just to be taken seriously as an artist, to build a reputation as a professional. And that hard-earned reputation could vanish in a heartbeat if she took her clothes off for the wrong guy.

She should drive back to Austin.

Fiona yanked open the door to the hallway and walked past the poolroom. The corridor was dim, and she nearly missed the dark figure lurking in the alcove beside the pay phone.

“I was beginning to think you fell in.”

Her heart lurched as he emerged from the shadows. The neon sign on the wall cast his face in a bluish light. His strong features looked even more dramatic than usual—the cheekbones, the lips, the prominent chin. She had to get out of here.

She glanced at her watch. “I really need to—”

“Oh, no you don’t.” He took her hand and pulled her into another alcove, this one stacked with boxes and metal kegs.

“You’re trying to flee the scene again,” he said, easing her back against the wall with his body. His gaze dropped to her mouth.

“Jack. Please.”

He smiled slightly. “So polite.” He cuffed her wrists and
pinned them to the wall beside her shoulders. She gazed up at him and felt his breath warm against her forehead. He smelled like rain and beer and woodsy aftershave, and she missed being this close to a man, missed it so much she ached. And he must have read what she was thinking, because he kissed her.

She should have known he’d dive right in. That he’d take control of everything and that he wouldn’t ease back until he’d completely dragged her under. She heard the din of the crowd, the thrum of the jukebox. The wall at her back seemed to vibrate, and Jack pressed her against it, pinning her with the weight of his body, making her dizzy with the force and the heat and the taste of him. His hand slid down over her thigh and tugged at the hem of her skirt. And that’s when she realized her own hands were free, no longer trapped against the wall, but draped limply on his shoulders.

He moved his mouth to her neck and said something against her throat.

“Hmm?”

“Peaches,” he muttered. “You smell like peaches.”

She lifted one knee, frustrated by the confines of her skirt, and those strong fingers moved to help her, jerking the fabric up even farther and hitching her leg up to rest at his hip. His jeans rasped against her skin as she moved against him.

“You’re burning up,” he said. “I swear to God, you’re so hot.”

She felt hot. And feverish and nearly hurting with the need to get him closer. He sucked on the sensitive skin just below her ear, and she felt the pull deep in her body. She wanted him right now, right this very second.

God, what was wrong with her? They were in a
bar
.

“We’re in a bar,” she whispered.

His mouth moved back over hers, and for a moment, she forgot everything but his wonderful, avid tongue.

Crack!
The sound of pool and people snapped her back.

“Jack.” She turned her head away, and watched, horrified, as bar patrons filed back and forth in the hallway. Could they
see
them in here? They were deep in the shadows, but still.

Jack’s hand glided up to her breast and his pelvis rocked against her.

“Jack!” she hissed. “Jack, we need to stop.”

He stopped, his palm cradling her breast, his thumb poised just above her nipple. He seemed to recover his sanity, and he eased away from her, letting her knee drop down.

“We have to get out of here.” She pulled her skirt down and stabbed her foot around, searching for her shoe. It must have fallen off when she’d wrapped her leg around him.

God, what was she thinking?

He laced his fingers together behind her neck and looked down at her. “Go next door.” His voice sounded hoarse. “Get the same room as last time. I’ll be right over as soon as I clear the bill.”

She stared at him in the dimness, at the hungry, impatient look in his eyes. No one had ever looked at her like that, like if he didn’t have her in the next minute, he’d simply combust. That was how she felt, too.

“Hurry.” She stood on tiptoes and kissed him. “If I think about this for long, I’ll lose my nerve.”

T
he air outside Becker’s felt cold, doubly so because her skin was already damp with sweat. The bar had been warm. She’d been overheated all through dinner, and Jack hadn’t helped matters when he’d slid up beside her and started copping a feel beneath the table.

She glanced across the parking lot to the run-down motel next door. If their sign was any indicator, they had a vacancy. If their parking was any indicator, they had way more than one. And Fiona was about to walk into the front office and request Room 22, where she’d stayed last time and where tonight she intended to have scorching hot sex with a man she barely knew.

Well, she sort of knew him. He’d become less of a stranger after her talk with Ginny. But she still didn’t really
know
him, and given the geography and everything else between them, she didn’t realistically expect that to change. Maybe that was why this felt so exciting. Her lips were still swollen from his mouth, and her skin tingled.

Her foot sank into a pothole, and she yelped as freezing water filled her shoe. She braced her hand against a truck so she could take off her pump and shake it out.

“Fee-yo-na.”

She whirled around. Hoyt stood beside the Dumpster at the edge of the lot. He wore the familiar camo hat and a jacket, and it looked as though he’d stepped out for a smoke.

Or had he followed her out?

“Hi, Hoyt,” she said, feigning comfort she didn’t feel.

He tossed his cigarette away and walked toward her, and she noticed he wasn’t very steady on his feet. Fiona resumed her path down the row of trucks, wishing she could remember for sure where she’d parked.

“You promised me a game of pool.” He caught up to her, and she darted her gaze around for any sign of Jack.

“We’ll have to do it next time,” she said, walking faster. She spotted the bumper of her little white car just up ahead.

“Hey!” He gripped her elbow, hard, and panic zinged through her. He jerked her close to him. “I’m
talking
to you.”

God, he was drunk. And angry. And they were alone in a sea of pickups.

“Okay, you win.” She forced a smile, although her heart was pounding furiously. “Let’s go back inside. You can break.”

He clenched her arm tighter, and she smelled beer and tobacco.

“Hoyt, you’re hurting me.”

A slow, mean smile spread across his face, and she knew he had no intention of letting her go. Every self-defense class she’d ever taken came flooding back to her, but all the moves and tactics churned together in a big soup. Suddenly, she remembered her high heels. On a burst of adrenaline, she stomped his foot.

“Shit!”

He dropped her arm, and she lunged away. But a yank on her ponytail toppled her backward onto the asphalt. Pain shot up from her tailbone, and tears sprang into her eyes. She heard a
thud,
and then something heavy slammed against the truck. Above her was a blur of denim and leather as Hoyt wrestled with someone against the pickup.

Jack.

Fiona scrambled to her feet just as Hoyt planted a fist in his face.

“Oh my God!” she shrieked, rushing forward. “Stop!”

An elbow jabbed into her chin and she reeled back against a car. Jack launched himself at Hoyt, and the next instant they were both on the ground in a tangle of limbs and grunts.

Fiona gripped the side of the truck and tried to shake off the dizziness.

“You’re under arrest, asshole!” Jack’s voice was muffled as he struggled under Hoyt. He was fighting off punches with one hand and reaching for something with the other. His handcuffs? A weapon?

“Stop it!” Fiona screamed. She spotted her purse on the ground and snatched it up. “Stop it right now!”

Jack managed to roll on top, but Hoyt cuffed him across the nose and regained control. She saw a flash of metal and a line of blood streaming from Jack’s nostril. Did someone have a
knife
?

Fiona thrust her hand into her purse and yanked out her gun. “I said
stop it
!”

She aimed it right at Hoyt’s chest, but his attention was fixed on Jack.

Jack glanced up at her, and in his moment of shock, Hoyt landed another blow.

“Hoyt!”
she squeaked.

Finally he looked up at her, and this time Jack seized the opportunity. Another flash of metal, and Hoyt’s left wrist was handcuffed.

“What the fuck?” he stammered, looking from the handcuffs, to the gun, then back to the handcuffs again.

Jack got to his feet, dragging Hoyt with him. He wrenched Hoyt’s arm back behind him and shoved him against the nearest truck. “
You
are fucking under arrest.” Jack clinked the empty bracelet on Hoyt’s other wrist, and then glared at Fiona. “Put that thing away!”

Fiona’s hands were frozen around the revolver. She lowered it and let out a deep breath. Suddenly her legs felt weak, and she slumped against the side of the truck.

Jack shook his head and whipped a cell phone out of his back pocket. He punched a button and brought it to his ear.

“Carlos? Yeah, it’s me. I’m bringing in Hoyt Dixon on a drunk and disorderly, plus a raft of other shit.”

Hoyt squirmed against the truck and turned his head. His right eye was cut and bleeding, and he spat a curse at Fiona. Jack clapped his ear and snarled something, then he got back on the phone. “Send Sharon over here to escort Fiona Glass to her motel room. Make sure she brings a first-aid kit.”

“Jack, I don’t need—”

“Not a word.” He gave her a pointed look as he hauled Hoyt out from between the cars. “Come wait inside for your ride.”

She blew out a breath and zipped her gun back into her purse. She tasted blood in her mouth, and her chin stung, but the last thing she wanted was Sharon rushing over to babysit her. “Jack, this is ridiculous. I don’t need—”

“Just do it,” he said. “I’ll come find you as soon as I’m through.”

She thought about arguing, but he seemed to be at the end of his patience. And even if she didn’t need a first-aid kit,
he
certainly did. Blood trickled from his nose and his eyelid was already starting to swell as he recited Hoyt’s Miranda rights. So instead of arguing, she simply complied.

A faint siren came from the direction of the police station. The noise got closer, and people stepped out of the bar to check out the spectacle. It was going to be a long night.

Jack glanced at the crowd, then back at her, and she could tell he knew what she was thinking. “I mean it, Fiona. Don’t even think about taking off.”

Jack did another visual sweep of the area, and knocked on Fiona’s door. Her car was still at Becker’s, so it was possible she’d actually followed his instructions and let Sharon give her a ride.

She opened the door looking disheveled. She still wore the last remnants of her suit, but her hair was down and the heels had been replaced with yellow flip-flops.

“You didn’t ask who it was.”

She rolled her eyes. “There’s a peephole.”

He brushed past her and into the room. She’d turned on the bedside lamps and cranked the heater up full blast. Her coat and blazer were draped over a chair, and a rolling suitcase was parked beside the bathroom.

Maybe she’d intended to stay the night after all.

“That was quick,” she said as she bolted the door.

“I let Carlos handle the paperwork.” He pulled her close to the bedside table and lifted her chin with his finger. “What happened to your lip?”

“I caught an elbow. It’s fine, really. I’ve been putting ice on it.”

He took her hands and turned them up. She had some minor scrapes on her palms, but she’d cleaned them. He knew her tailbone must hurt like hell. He’d come out of the bar just in time to see Hoyt yank her backward by her hair, and twelve years of police training had flown out the window as Jack had shot across the parking lot in a blind rage. Beating the living shit out of Hoyt had been his only thought.

His mistake. He should have handled the situation like a professional.

He swallowed the bitterness in his throat. “Sharon said you don’t want to see a doctor.”

“I don’t.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

She sighed. “I’m fine. It’s just a few scratches.”

Just a few scratches. Yeah. And it could have been a lot worse.

Jack shoved his hands in his jacket pockets and wandered to the other side of the tiny room. Anger was pumping through his system with a force that scared him.

“That’s quite a gun you’re packing, Professor.” He spotted her purse on the dresser and nodded at it. “Mind if I…?”

She waved at it. “Help yourself.” Then she walked over to the vanity and lifted the lid off an ice bucket. She started transferring cubes to a clear plastic bag.

Jack unzipped her purse. It was small and stylish, made of supple black leather. He never would have guessed she carried a fucking cannon around inside it.

“Where’d you get this?” he asked, pulling out the revolver. It was a Ruger .357 with a six-inch barrel.

“My grandfather.”

He checked the cylinder. Loaded. “Who’s your grandfather? Jesse James?”

She didn’t say anything, and Jack looked up. She was watching uncomfortably as he handled her gun.

He slid it back into the purse, and replaced it carefully on the dresser. “How long you been packing that thing?”

“Three years.”

He crossed his arms. “You want to tell me why?”

“Not particularly.”

“You have a permit for it?”

“Yes.”

“You know how to use it?”

“Yes.”

“Who trained you?”

“My grandfather.”

Jack was trying. He really was. But his frustration had about reached the boiling point. He was pissed at Hoyt, and Fiona, and most of all at himself. He’d told her to leave the bar alone. Yes, this was Graingerville, but there were ass-holes everywhere, as Hoyt had so aptly demonstrated.

Fiona took a few steps toward him and raised a tentative hand to his eyebrow. She touched the skin just above his cut, and he flinched.

“I’ll make you a deal,” she said softly. “I’ll tell you about the Ruger if you let me take care of that eye.” Without
waiting for an answer, she slipped her hand into his and led him to the bed. He sank down onto the edge and watched, silently, as she shuffled through a small box on the counter. Sharon, evidently, had followed orders and left Fiona with a first-aid kit.

She returned to the bedside and put some tubes on the table, along with the ice pack she’d made. Then she pulled the lamp closer for better light.

“Is that a toothbrush?” he asked, frowning.

“Yes.”

She picked up a tube of what he’d thought was ointment, but was actually Colgate. She squeezed some onto her fingertip and dabbed it around his left eye, right where the bruise was forming. After rubbing it in, she cupped his face in her hands and tilted it up. She had soft hands. He watched her eyes in the lamplight as she gently stroked the toothbrush over his skin.

“This how they treat shiners in California?”

She smiled, but her attention didn’t leave his bruise. “The peppermint stimulates circulation and helps break down the blood clot under the skin. Same with the toothbrush.” She did a few more strokes, and he held his breath when she got to the really sensitive part just above his eyelid. “With any luck, this won’t show too badly tomorrow. A little concealer, and you might even be okay in public. In case you have a news conference.”

Jack looked up at her uneasily. “Where’d you learn that?”

She shrugged. “Just something I picked up along the way.”

He watched her face. For whatever reason, she’d erected her wall of privacy with the big keep out sign.

This woman confused the hell out of him. She was aloof one minute, then compassionate the next. She abhorred violence, but she carried around a gun that could put a hole the size of a baseball in someone. She spent her time making big, beautiful oil paintings and portraits of hardened killers. She dressed herself up in staid business suits, but underneath she had the body of a Playmate.

And the more time he spent around her, the more she drove him crazy. What had she been thinking tonight? Jesus, did she think he needed her help taking down Hoyt Dixon? If something had gone wrong after she’d whipped out that gun, a parking lot scuffle could have turned deadly.

“Fiona.” He caught her wrist in his hand, and she looked at him finally. “What’s with the gun?”

She didn’t say anything.

“We had a deal.”

She glanced down, cleared her throat, then met his gaze again. “A couple years ago in L.A., I worked on the case of some gang members who were involved in a drive-by. I testified at their trial, too. One of them—after he went to prison—he started harassing me through some of his contacts on the outside.”

“Define ‘harassing.’”

“Threatening letters. Obscene phone calls. Someone broke into my apartment and vandalized everything. It freaked me out.”

“So what happened?”

She pulled her hand loose from his and put the toothbrush on the nightstand. “The guy was behind bars, and no one could ever trace anything back to him. I talked to my
supervisor about it, but I think people thought I was just paranoid. Maybe I was.”

Jack could tell she didn’t believe that. If she felt certain about the source of the threat, she was probably right. Jack was all for good, hard evidence, but he believed in gut instincts, too.

“Anyway, I stopped taking cases for a while. Went to visit my grandfather for a few months, get some R and R. When I went back to Los Angeles, things subsided for a little bit. But then it all started up again, and I didn’t feel safe anywhere. Pretty soon after that, I decided to move.”

She pressed the ice pack to his eye, and he winced. “Keep that on there for a few minutes,” she told him, replacing her hand with his own.

She walked back to the sink, and he watched her, thinking about what she’d been through. She’d dealt with some major lowlifes in her career and had every reason to be cautious.