Читать книгу The Lawman - Martha Shields - Страница 11

Holt saw Molly’s car on the side of the highway and immediately slowed, pulling up behind her.

It was nearly midnight. He’d followed her when she’d left the library. He hadn’t expected to make a second trip into Whitehorn that day, but that’s where she headed, so that’s where he’d followed. As far as he was concerned, the second trip was a lot more worthwhile than the wild-goose chase that Dave Reingard had sent him on for the first one.

Once Molly reached her destination that evening, for three hours he’d sat in his dust-covered truck far enough away to avoid suspicion outside a large house that he happened to know was a domestic-abuse shelter. He grimly speculated over what Molly was doing inside.

Reading group?

He’d doubted it.

Once he’d seen her leave—she’d stood in the front and chatted for a solid twenty minutes with two other women before driving away—he’d left his truck and walked over to the shelter where he’d had a brief chat with the director of the facility.

Angel Ramirez had been annoyingly closemouthed. The only useful thing she had imparted was her comment that there were some volunteers—women who’d escaped their lives of abuse—who met with the current residents in group sessions to help reinforce their belief in a life other than what they’d been enduring.

Afterward he’d pulled into a coffee shop and stared into a cup of coffee, his twisted mind easily conjuring images of the kinds of horrors that those “volunteers” had probably endured.

That Molly had endured.

There was a time when Holt would have gone into a bar and tossed back a shot or two of whiskey to dull the images. But not anymore. He’d given up drinking around the same time he’d given up a lot of other things.

When he finally hit the road, he sure as hell hadn’t expected to come across Molly’s car on the highway, long after she’d already departed Whitehorn.

She should have been home, safe and sound in bed.

The relief he felt when his headlights illuminated the shape of her sitting behind the wheel was all out of proportion. Yeah, it was late. And yeah, she was a good fifteen miles outside of Rumor. He would be concerned about the safety of any woman stopped alone like this on the side of a highway.

The rationalizations were sound, the relief inside him way beyond rationalizing.

He left the engine and the lights going, and walked up the side of the road, giving her plenty of time to see him.

Her window was rolled down, and he could see her fingers flexing around the steering wheel. Her face was a wash of ivory, her hair a gleam of moonlight as she turned to look at him when he stopped beside the car.

“Having problems?”

At least she wasn’t startled by him. Nor did she look exactly thrilled to see him.

“The engine quit.”

“Have you called a tow?”

The glance she cast him was brief. “Yes, Deputy, I called a tow. I stuck my head out the window and yelled at the very top of my voice. I’m sure someone heard and will be along shortly.”

“You don’t have a cell phone.”

“No.”

“Nearly everyone has a cell phone these days.”

“I don’t. Nobody needs to call me.”

“And there is nobody you need to call.”

“Assistant librarians don’t earn enough money to spend it on unnecessary luxuries.”

“You’re head librarian now. And what about emergencies like this?”

“I could have walked.”

“In the middle of the night? Fifteen miles?”

“If I had to.”

She might, at that, he thought, and refrained from giving her the lecture about safety that automatically sprang to mind. “Pop the hood.”

“Why?”

He shoved his fingers through his hair. The woman could give lessons in being suspicious. Not that he was one to talk. “To see if we can’t get this bucket of bolts going again.”

“My car is not a bucket of bolts.” Her voice was defensive. Nevertheless, he heard the distinctive pop of the hood release when she pulled it.

He bent over a little, looking past her into the car at the dash.

She stiffened like a shot. “What are you doing?”

“Making sure your gas gauge isn’t reading empty.”

“I’m not that foolish.”

But she might have been that distracted. Along with Angel Ramirez’s other miserly details, she had told him the group session that night had been particularly grueling.

He headed back to his truck. The opening of her car door was easily audible over the engine he’d left running.

“You’re not l-leaving?”

“No.” He pulled open his door and retrieved his flashlight. He flicked it on. “Remember this?”

The light from his headlights easily illuminated her face, along with the tangle of emotions that crossed it. Relief. Despair.

God. Of all the women for him to jones over, she had to be the most unsuitable.

He walked back to her car and lifted the hood.

She followed, and even though she kept a good distance between them, he was still damnably aware of her. The way she sucked in the corner of her lower lip as she’d look at him when she thought he was unaware. The way a few strands of hair had worked loose of the knot at the back of her head to cling to the delicate line of her jaw, the paleness of her neck.

He glared at the engine, wanting to ask her about the shelter, knowing she’d have a fit if she knew he’d followed her. As if her car had heard his thoughts, the narrow brace slipped and the hood crashed down on his shoulder.

He swore under his breath while Molly jumped back with a gasp. She hurriedly reached out, her hands knocking into his as they both reached for the brace to lift the hood off him.

He heard the way she sucked in her breath, and wanted to swear at the way she yanked her hand back. He was no prize, he’d be the first to admit it. But he wasn’t used to women being afraid of him. Not unless they were walking on the wrong side of the law.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah. But hold this,” he muttered, and pushed the flashlight into her hands. “So I can see what I’m doing,” he added pointedly.

She made a soft huff and redirected the beam from his eyes to the engine.

He stared hard, waiting until the spots in front of his eyes disappeared, then began checking hoses and belts. He found the problem quickly enough. “You need a new fan belt. For that matter, you ought to have the whole thing tuned up.”

“Do-re-mi,” she murmured.

He caught himself from smiling as he lowered the hood. “Lock it up. I’ll drive you back to town.”

“You can’t fix it?”

He didn’t know whether to be flattered that she’d thought he might be able to or amused that she seemed peeved that he couldn’t. “Yeah, I could. With the right parts.” He took the flashlight from her and turned it off. “I’m not carrying even the wrong parts.”

“Only flashlights and first-aid kits.”

And evidence-collection kits, he thought. One that contained the print he’d lifted from her drinking glass. There was a part of him that wanted to run that print no matter what so-called agreement he’d struck with the woman.

There was a part of him that wanted to forget he’d ever taken the damned thing in the first place.

“Do you need help with anything?” He glanced at the lumps sitting on the passenger seat.

“No.” Her voice was sharp. Defensive. If he’d been back in L.A., he’d have wondered just what was in that briefcase and enormous purse that would cause a driver to be so antsy with a cop. But he wasn’t in Los Angeles anymore. And thank God for it.

He was standing on the side of a deserted highway in the middle of the night with a woman he wanted but couldn’t trust, even if he could get past her thick defenses.

“Suit yourself.” Leaving her to deal with her car, he went back to his truck and radioed in for a tow. Then he sat there, wrist propped over his steering wheel, as he watched her through the windshield.

The soft-sided briefcase she hefted over one shoulder looked heavy enough to knock her over, and he muttered an oath and shoved open the door and strode over to her.

“Don’t argue. There are some things you’re just going to have to put up with when it comes to me,” he said flatly as he slid the strap from her shoulder and took it. “What’s in here? Bricks?”

She pulled the second bag out of the car and slammed the door shut. “Books. For the reading group, remember? I told you I could manage it.”

The reading group story again. Right. Angel Ramirez hadn’t said squat about a reading group. “So you did. Am I complaining about it?”

“I—” She looked up at him, her expression guarded. “I’m sorry. I thought you were.”

“I wasn’t.” He headed toward his truck. When she stayed right where she was, he looked back at her. Standing beside her twenty-year-old car, clutching her enormous carpetbag of a purse to her with both hands, the faint night breeze barely enough to stir the hem of her floaty pink dress about her shapely knees.

She’d spent her entire Monday evening with a group of women living at a shelter. She still had a small plastic strip on her shin that he figured he recognized.

He let out a long breath. “Come on, Molly,” he said quietly. “Stop expecting the worst. Everything is going to be fine.”

Her fine eyebrows drew together. “With my car, you mean.”

“Yeah. Right.”

She hesitated a moment longer, then walked to his truck. She stowed her purse on the floor by her feet and carefully nudged aside the jacket of his suit as if she might catch something from it.

She didn’t speak until the lights of Rumor were visible through the windshield. “Thank you for stopping.”

“All part of being a public servant.”

She made a noncommittal sound that grated on his nerves. He took the exit down to Main Street. “Your car will be towed sometime tonight.”

“Oh, but—”

“I called it in already.”

Her lips started to tighten up.

“I know you’re perfectly capable of doing it yourself.”

She absorbed that, and slowly lost the tight-lipped expression. “As long as I didn’t spend the night sitting on the side of the highway, trying to decide the best course of action,” she finally admitted. “What were you doing out there, anyway? Surely you weren’t still on duty. Not after having been in Whitehorn all afternoon like you said. You haven’t even changed out of your suit. Your jacket is probably unforgivably wrinkled from lying on the seat in a heap the way it is.”

He was saved from coming up with an answer when he pulled up in front of her house. “Here you go. Will you need a ride to work in the morning? I could send around a car—”

“No!” She hurriedly gathered up her purse. “Of course I don’t need a ride. It’s just a few blocks around the park. A nice walk, in fact. I do wish the heat would let up, though. I keep telling myself that in a month, when the weather has really turned, I’ll be wishing for a little heat.”

She was speaking fast. Too fast. Making him wonder what had set her into this latest panic. He got out to carry in that enormous bag of books of hers. “Sure it’s a nice walk as long as you don’t have to cart this thing back to the library.”

Her expression lightened a little. If he wasn’t mistaken, she almost smiled. Which, of course, there in the middle of the godforsaken ninety-degree night made him determined to see just what that might look like. A real smile on Molly Brewster’s face when she looked at him.

Knowing he was probably one of the last people on earth to be able to succeed at that annoyed him no end.

She was fumbling a little with her keys. “Fortunately, the books are mine,” she assured as she finally pushed open the front door. “They get to stay here. Um, thank you, again, Deputy. For the ride, and all.”

Once again she stood squarely in the doorway. Not budging an inch, telling him absolutely that she was not going to invite him in. Not for coffee. Not for discussion about Harriet. Not for…anything.

“We never did get around to talking much about Harriet.”

“Well, it’s a little late tonight, and you warned me earlier today that you’d be by the library in the morning. Call me selfish, Deputy, but I’m thinking rather longingly of my bed.”

She wasn’t the only one. The thought darkened his mood even more.

He deliberately reached past her to dump the heavy briefcase just inside the front door. “D’ya ever let anyone in your house, Molly? Let down that guard of yours enough to let someone in?”

She went still. “Is that pertinent to your investigation?”

He pushed his hands into his pockets where they couldn’t do any damage to either of their peace of mind. “No.”

“Then it’s really none of your business.”

He’d expected no other answer. Didn’t have to mean he liked it, though. Or had to acknowledge the least bit of sting. “Be available to help me tomorrow. I want to go through Harriet’s office again. Her desk, her files. Everything.” He turned to go.

“Deputy, wait.” She caught his arm, her touch too light to have the impact it did. “You’ve, um, you have a tear in your shirt. It must have happened when the hood of my car hit you.” She slipped under his arm, and he felt her fingers probing his shoulder. “There’s blood, too. Why didn’t you say something?”

“I wasn’t thinking about my shoulder.”

“I think the tear is right there at the seam. It should be easy to fix. But you should soak it right away to get the stain out.”

He was too old to get turned on by a woman just from a fleeting, simple touch. Had his partner still been alive to witness the way Holt nearly scrambled off the porch away from the blonde, he’d have laughed himself into a coma.

As it was, Molly was staring at him with dismay. “I’m sorry. Is it painful?”

He felt like choking. “Excuse me?”

“Your shoulder. You jumped when I touched the spot where you were bleeding. I thought—”

“It’s fine.” He cleared his throat. “Fine. Don’t worry about it.”

Her lashes drifted down, then up again. “Well, it was my car that did it. The least I can do is fix your shirt.”

“Don’t sweat it, Molly. It’s just a shirt. I’ve got a closetful of them.”

“Of silk shirts?” Her eyebrows rose. “They must be paying cops better than I remember. Come on, Deputy. I’d rather fix your shirt than have to buy you a new one. I’m on a budget, remember?”

Her lips weren’t drawn up all tight and prudish now. She wasn’t avoiding looking at him. She looked a little ornery and a lot determined.

“How would you know anything about what a cop earns?”

“I…don’t. I just assumed.”

“You shouldn’t lie, Molly,” he told her flatly. “Your face gives you away every single time.”

Now, he could add stony to the list of expressions on her face. “I’m really quite weary already with your accusations, Deputy. Liar. Killer.”

“I know you didn’t kill Harriet.” He knew he sounded impatient, and he really didn’t want to scare this woman, when it was so obvious that she shrank into herself whenever he raised his voice the least little bit. But some things a man couldn’t help. His voice got a little louder when he was pissed, annoyed and aroused.

Only question was, which of the two of them he was more annoyed with—her or him.

Probably him. For having the disgustingly bad judgment to get the least bit involved with this woman.

A witness, for God’s sake.

A woman ten years his junior.

A woman with lies that sat badly on her soft, pink lips and painful secrets that lurked in her pale, pale blue eyes.

He deliberately, carefully, kept his tone low. “I also know you’re hiding a past that may be relevant.” And if the woman would just open up to him a little bit about it, maybe he’d be able to help them both.

“We’ve played this song before, I believe. And we were talking about your shirt, anyway.”

“Forget about it.”

“I always pay my debts.”

He dragged the shirt over his head, not even bothering with the buttons, except the top two, and tossed it to her.

She gaped at him. But she caught the shirt as it fluttered toward her.

“You wanna sew the shirt, fine,” he said, his voice hard. “Sew your little heart out. While you’re doing it, you might try thinking about the debt that you may owe Harriet. Maybe then something will come to you that will help me find the person who did kill her.”

He turned and walked back to his truck, the vision of her slender fingers tangled in his shirt burning into his mind.