Walking After Midnight (43 page)

„Nothing too specific, at least nothing that I could take to a prosecutor and they could prove in court. But apparently the CIA made a deal with the DEA to let drug deals go down in return for intelligence information on the countries where the deals were spawned. Latin American countries, mostly.“

„You mean the government is using drug dealers for spies?“ Summer gasped.

Steve gave her a crooked smile. „Something like that. I don’t think we’ll ever get completely to the bottom of it. What we’ve uncovered here is just the tip of the iceberg. Some of these dudes – they call ‘em ‘assets’ but what they are is a bunch of drug smugglers and mercenaries – are actually paid by the CIA to infiltrate these drug rings. In return for information, they’re allowed to pretty much do their own thing without interference.“

„There’s big money in drugs,“ Sammy observed, with a glinting, under-the-brow glance at Steve. Then the waitress brought their check, and the talk turned to more general topics.

An hour later, Summer stepped into a tub of the hottest water she’d been able to coax from the ancient faucets of her hotel bathroom. She was ensconced for the night at the Dew Drop Inn, a fifties-era motel that offered necessities rather than luxuries. The room was small, with a bathroom that was smaller, but it sported a standard double bed that was going to feel like nirvana compared to the surfaces she’d slept on lately, as well as a toilet and a bathtub with a shower. It even had mini bottles of shampoo and moisturizer and mouthwash on the chipped Formica vanity. Summer, having already washed her hair and wrapped it in a towel, felt positively blissful as she sank chin-deep into the water that was hot enough to turn her skin instantly pink.

The only fly in her ointment was that she missed Steve. But Sammy had very firmly escorted her to her own room, while Steve had been left to find his way alone to his. Watching him go, Summer had been amused to note that Steve’s room was at the far end of the long, rambling, single-story motel where the accommodations had more the flavor of connecting cabins than hotel rooms.

Sammy was very protective of her, just as he had always been. She hadn’t had the heart to remind him that she was thirty-six years old, no longer married to his son, and perfectly capable of deciding whether or not she wanted to sleep alone. Instead, she had regretfully watched Steve vanish into his room and kissed Sammy’s cheek by way of good night.

„See you in the morning,“ he said gruffly as he turned away from her door. The first thing she had done was run herself a steaming-hot bath.

Then she had called her mother.

Soaping her legs, sparing a fleeting regret for the absence of a razor, Summer thought back on that conversation with her parent. It had been all she could do to dissuade her mother – and her sisters – from rushing from their hotel instantly to her side.

„I’m fine, Muffy’s fine, we’ll both see you tomorrow,“ she had concluded firmly. „And I’ll tell you everything then.“

She might tell them a little more than she had told Sammy, Summer decided, leaning forward to rub suds into her toes, but she wasn’t going to tell them
everything.

Some things they didn’t need to know. Though, being women and her relatives, they would probably guess.

A drop of cold water splashed onto her spine.

Startled, Summer spun her head around so fast that she nearly gave herself whiplash.

41

„Hi.“ Steve, still clad in the orange Nike shirt and cutoffs, was leaning against the bathroom door grinning at her. She was sitting with her back to him and her knees bent because of the small size of the tub, so not an awful lot of her person was on view, but his eyes gleamed appreciatively over as much of her as he could see.

„How did you get in here?“ Summer gasped, instinctively clapping the washcloth she’d been using over her bosom. The washcloth was small, and thin, and didn’t cover much, but that didn’t matter. It was the thought that counted.

„Cheap lock. I used the laminated list of motel rules that I found on my bedside table to jimmy it. Next time, put the chain on.“ Steve straightened away from the door-jamb, and held up a brown paper bag. „I brought you a present. Toothpaste, toothbrush, a comb and a lipstick. Courtesy of the last of Renfro’s money and what passes for the hotel gift shop.“

„A toothbrush?“ Summer reached eagerly for the bag. He grinned and drew it back out of her reach.

„Come and get it.“

„Steve Calhoun, a toothbrush and toothpaste are too important to kid around about! Put that bag down on the counter and get out of this bathroom! I’ll be finished in a minute.“

„Okay,“ Steve said obligingly. Setting the bag on the counter, he withdrew, pulling the door shut behind him. Summer was too eager to get hold of the toothbrush and paste to question his apparent willingness to oblige. Giving in without an argument wasn’t like Steve – but she didn’t think of that.

Stark naked except for the towel wrapped around her head, and dripping wet, Summer stood in front of the sink watching herself in the mirror as she scrubbed her teeth when Steve opened the door and walked back in.

He was naked, too. Her glance absorbed the details: He was broad-shouldered, heavily muscled, liberally gifted with luxuriant black body hair in all the right places – and extremely well endowed.

„Get out of here!“ Summer ordered around a mouthful of toothpaste, scandalized on principle alone. Despite the fact that he was her lover and her love, she felt suddenly, ridiculously shy. New settings came complete with new rules: she’d never been alone with him in a motel room before.

„You’re not turning modest on me all of a sudden, are you?“ he asked with a lopsided grin that nevertheless missed nothing of her body. „With an ass and tits like yours, you don’t have any reason in the world to be shy.“

„You sweet-talker, you,“ Summer said with bite as soon as she had rinsed out her mouth.

„It’s a compliment. I swear.“ His eyes twinkled at her, and he awarded the ass in question an approving swat.

Then, without another word, he stepped into her tub.

„I’m
taking a bath,“ Summer protested as soon as she had recovered from the smack. Was she really going to be able to make a life with a man who smacked her bottom? „What do you think
you’re
doing?“

„Joining you.“ He was leaning back in the tub, rubbing the soap in lazy circles over his shoulders and chest and arms. The contrast between bronzed skin and white tile and suds and soap was striking. His legs were bent sharply at the knees, his wide shoulders cleared the water by a good six inches, and his head rested against the chipped tile wall rather than the rolled rim of the tub. But he looked supremely content. And very cute. Summer decided to forgive him that chauvinistic swat. Once he was hers, he could always be retrained….

„Joining me?“ Her voice was indignant. „I’m not in there.“

„Get in.“ The invitation was accompanied by a seductive grin. It was amazing, Summer thought, just how sexy a man could look with two black eyes, a scabbed-over cut on one cheek, and enough assorted bruises to keep a doctor happy for days.

„There’s not room.“

„We’ll make room.“ He reached out, grabbed her hand – and before Summer knew it she was being partly dragged, partly coaxed into the tub. She collapsed chest-down in a heap on his stomach, her legs caught between his and bent at the knee so that her calves climbed the tile wall.

„You’re right,“ Steve said as if making a great discovery. „There’s not room.“

Sliding her to one side, he stood up with a great squelching sound. Summer had just an instant to admire his body – she really did admire his body – before he bent, stuck his shoulder in her stomach, and stood up with her.

Summer shrieked, and immediately clapped a hand over her mouth. She didn’t know for sure, but she suspected the walls were thin.

Hanging over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, the towel around her head falling loose to be left behind on the floor, Summer gritted her teeth to keep from yelling and pounded his back with her fists. He paid not a bit of attention as he stepped from the tub with her and carried her into the bedroom.

„Put me down, you…“ she growled threateningly, giving him a particularly solid whack between the shoulder blades.

„Yes, ma’am.“ The teasing note in his voice should have warned her.

But still she wasn’t prepared as he collapsed on the bed with her. She shrieked again as she landed on her back, bouncing on the soft mattress.

This time he clapped a hand over her mouth. „Shhh! Somebody might call the police.“

Oh, ha-ha.
Very funny. But before she could tell him what she thought of his jokes Summer thought of something. „Steve, no! We’ll get the bed soaked!“

„Do you care?“

If Summer had had a chance to think about it, the answer to that would have been no, she did not care. But she didn’t have a chance to think about it, because he was sliding up her body and she was scowling at him and he was kissing her and loving her and she couldn’t think about anything at all but him.

Much, much later, they headed for Steve’s room to spend what was left of the night because Summer’s bed had, indeed, gotten very wet. Snickering behind their hands like schoolchildren, they crept along the yellow-lighted sidewalk in front of the rooms. It must have been about midnight, but except for the moths fluttering around the small sconces outside each door not a creature stirred.

As they reached the door to his room Steve swung her around into his arms and kissed her.

„Hey,“ she protested playfully when she could talk again. „Haven’t you had enough of that yet?“

„Nope.“ He kissed her again, lingeringly, smiling as he lifted his head. „I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of
that
as long as I live. It’s one of those forever kind of things.“

„Is it?“ She leaned against his chest, hands curled around the straps of his muscle shirt as her lips formed a secret little smile.

„Isn’t it?“

He felt very big and solid against her, and his eyes as they met her gaze were no longer dead and hopeless-looking as they had once been, but warm and bright and almost carefree. Summer looked up into that unhandsome but powerfully magnetic face and had her answer.

„Yes,“ she said clearly. „It is.“

He grinned, kissed her, and let her go, patting the pockets of his cutoffs.

„Here it is.“ He fished the key out of a pocket and inserted it into the lock.

„Why not just break in?“ Summer asked sardonically as he stood back to let her precede him into the room.

„And waste a perfectly good key?“ He shook his head at her as he followed her inside. Summer was already groping for the light switch as he closed the door.

She caught just a glimpse, the merest hint, of a man in the shadows leaping forward before Steve was felled with a mighty blow to the back of the neck.

He collapsed without making a sound.

Summer was too shocked even to scream.

42

It was a beautiful night. A warm breeze caressed Summer’s face, swirling tendrils of hair across her cheeks. Thousands of stars twinkled down from a midnight blue velvet sky. The moon was a mere sliver, a silvery crescent that would have been right at home in a nursery rhyme. Frogs croaked in the nearby lake. The cicadas were once again in full chorus.

Summer lay on her side in the dirt, gagged and trussed like a Thanksgiving turkey, watching as Mitch dug a shallow hole to bury her and Steve in.

Steve, still out cold, lay nearby. Like her, he was bound and gagged. Though that precaution seemed almost wasteful, as it appeared likely that he would die without ever regaining consciousness.

Lying there on the cool ground, listening to the hypnotic rhythm of the shovel digging into the earth, Summer thought that Steve had the better of it. She wished she were unconscious, so that she would not have to experience this.

Not far away, the headlights of a car cut through the darkness. She lay in the construction site she had noticed each time she had passed through Cedar Lake, and the road was tantalizingly near. If only the big earth-moving machines weren’t in the way….

Then Summer realized something: Even if the Caterpillars weren’t there, no one could see this far into the field. It was so dark that she, only a dozen feet away, could see Mitch only in silhouette. Aside from the sounds that reached her ears, she had only known he was digging when an errant moonbeam struck silver on the shovel blade.

Steve was stirring. Like her, he was bound hand and foot, and wrapped like a mummy in nylon rope for insurance. His feet moved, and his shoulders moved. Summer thought his eyes opened, because she saw a faint gleam through the darkness. But she couldn’t be sure. With all her heart she longed to go to him – she tried rolling on her back. Steve was only a foot or so away.

Suddenly Mitch was there. Instinctively Summer lay very still, like a rodent in the flight path of a hawk. But it was to Steve’s side Mitch went.

„You’re awake.“ Mitch’s voice was a soft murmur as he dropped down on one knee beside Steve. „Damn it, Steve, why didn’t you stay away?“