“It wasn’t him. I’m sure of it.”
“Maybe not. But he’s working for someone, isn’t he?”
“Yes. Yes, he is. Or with someone. Do you really think he—or they—hurt Hester?”
“She started downstairs in the middle of the night. None of us could ever figure out why. I’m going to start looking at this, all this, from a different angle. In the morning,” he added as they reached the kitchen.
He set down the flashlight, the glass, then rubbed her arms. “It’s colder in the Amazon than I thought.”
She laughed, shook her hair back, lifted her face.
They stood, bodies close, his hands slowing to a stroke instead of a rub.
She felt the flutter in her belly, one she’d ignored since she began her sexual fast, and the lovely rise of heat behind it.
She watched his eyes change, deepen, flick down and linger on her lips before coming back to hers. And, drawn, she leaned toward him.
He stepped back, dropped his hands.
“Bad timing,” he said.
“Is it?”
“Bad timing. Trauma, upset, wine. Let me get a fire started. You can warm the chill off before I take you home.”
“All right, but tell me it cost you a little.”
“A lot.” For another moment, his eyes stayed steady on hers. “A hell of a lot.”
That was something, she supposed, as he walked away. She took another sip of wine even as she wished they’d chosen another way to warm the chill off.
Nine
WHEN KIRBY DUNCAN CLOSED THE DOOR AFTER THE county deputy left, he walked straight to the bottle of Stoli on the windowsill, poured two fingers.
Son of a bitch, he thought as he downed it.
It was a damn good thing he’d had receipts—one for a fancy coffee a few blocks from the Landon house, and another for gas and a ham and cheese at a pit stop a few miles south of Whiskey Beach.
Once he’d determined Landon had been driving home, he pulled off to fuel up the car and himself. Damn good thing. The receipts proved he hadn’t been anywhere near Bluff House at the time of the break-in. Otherwise, he was damn near sure he’d have been explaining himself to the local cops, in-house.
Son of a bitch.
Could be coincidence, he thought. Somebody just happens to pick the exact night he reports to his client Landon is in Boston for the evening for a break-in?
And pigs fly south for the winter.
He didn’t like being played. He’d stand behind or in front of a client, as need be, but not when the client screwed with him.
Not when a client used him—without his knowledge or consent—to break into a house. And sure as hell not when the client roughs up a woman.
He’d have taken a tour inside Bluff House himself if the client had directed him, and he’d have taken his lumps if he’d been caught at it.
But he wouldn’t have laid hands on a woman.
Time to put cards on the table, he decided, or for the client to find a new dog, because this dog didn’t hunt for clients who knocked women around.
Duncan snatched his cell phone off the charger, made the call. He was just pissed enough not to give a good damn about the hour.
“Yeah, it’s Duncan, and yeah, I got something. What I’ve got is a county deputy questioning me over a break-in and an attack on a woman at Bluff House tonight.”
He poured himself another shot of vodka, listened a moment. “You don’t want to bullshit me. I don’t work for people who bullshit me. I’ve got no problem doing a dance for the locals, but not when I don’t know the tune. Yeah, they asked who I was working for, and no, I didn’t tell them. This time. But when I’ve got a client who uses me to clear a path to break into the house of the guy I’m paid to investigate, and that client goes after a woman in the house, I’ve got my own questions. What I do from here on depends on the answers. I’m not risking my license. Right now I’ve got information about a crime that includes assaulting a woman, and that makes me an accessory. So you better have some damn good answers or we’re done, and if the cops come back on me, I give them your name. That’s right. Fine.”
Duncan checked the time. What the hell, he thought, he was too pissed to sleep anyway. “I’ll be there.”
He sat at his computer first, typed up detailed notes. He intended to cover every square inch of his ass. And if necessary, he’d take those detailed notes straight to the county sheriff.
The break-in was one thing, and bad enough. But the assault on the woman? That tipped the scales.
But he’d give the client a chance to explain. Sometimes the dumb shits just watched too much TV, got in over their heads, and God knew he’d had dumb shits for clients before this.