“Well, at least you seem glad to see me,” she said, nodding her head toward his bedside table, where the Colt lay beside the lamp. “ ’Cause I can see you’ve got nothing in your pocket.”
He moved toward her then, laying his hands on her bare shoulders, stroking them lightly, marveling at the silky feeling of her skin. She closed her eyes, breathing deeply at his touch, and he ran one hand down to circle lightly under her left breast, then up again to cup it, feeling its weight and its softness, playing with the hard core of her nipple. She shuddered lightly and he repeated the process with the other hand.
Her own hands were busy now with the waistband of his jeans. She unsnapped the fastener, worked the zipper down. His cock, released from the constraining pressure of the tight denim, virtually sprang out into her hand. Her other arm went behind his neck and she moved into him, mouth open to his, her hand working rapidly back and forth on him. He marveled at her for a second before he let her draw him close. She was magnificent. He slid a hand down to her backside, lightly teasing the cleft between her buttocks, then ran his hand over the roundness there, feeling the softness of her skin contrasted with the firm muscle tone just below the surface. Steel wrapped in satin, he thought.
She groaned softly and her tongue shot into his mouth, exploring, seeking, exciting. Her hands were working his jeans down over his hips now. She bent away from him for a second to get rid of the denim pants. He went with her, groaning in his own turn as her nails raked lightly over the taut stretched skin of his sac. Then the jeans were gone and they hobbled in a crazy off-balance dance for a few seconds as he kicked clear of them.
He’d never fastened the flannel shirt and it took only a few seconds for her to shrug that off him. Then they stood, naked, aroused, straining together and he felt her, forefinger and thumb around him, guiding him into her, felt the wetness of her, felt the delicious warmth of her and suddenly he wanted nothing more than to be inside her, and then he was, and her long, long, muscular legs were wrapping around his waist and he thrust into her and felt her respond.
Again.
And again.
Their backs arced and they strained further, trying to work him deeper and deeper inside her, farther than was humanly possible but still they tried. She came and half a second later so did he, helplessly exploding away all those years of not realizing what they meant to each other, what they could be to each other.
She kissed him, wet and fierce, her legs still wrapped around him, her hips still pumping at him, still drawing him into her.
He took a few short steps and they collapsed across his bed. It skidded under them a few feet across the bare boards. And then, and only then, did she release him and smile up at him through the tangle of her wild blond hair.
“Well, Jesus, Jesse,” she said. “You sure took your time coming back for more.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
J
esse woke to the sight of a bare breast a few inches from his eyes.
Lee was sitting up in his bed, still naked, leafing through his notes on the investigation. Without moving his head, he swiveled his gaze up to her face. She was frowning slightly in concentration as she read. The angle and intensity of the light spilling through the uncurtained windows told him that it must be around seven o’clock and another clear morning.
He looked back to her breast, watching it rise and fall slightly with her breath.
“Well,” he said at length. “There’s a sight for sore eyes.”
She looked down at him. A smile widened her lips, reached deep into her tilted gray eyes as she looked at him.
“You never told me you snored,” she said. He shrugged, or as near to it as a man could manage lying prone.
“Never seemed any call to mention it in conversation so far,” he said. “I guess I would have got around to it eventually.”
She smiled again, then the slight frown returned as she tapped the papers in front of her. “So you figure four possibles here?”
He nodded, then stretched and yawned before he answered. “Far as I can figure,” then added, “course, odds are that the real killer will be one of the unlikelys—or someone who’s not even on the list. But a man’s got to start somewhere.”
He slid up in the bed and sat beside her, glancing at his watch. His guess had been close to the mark. It was five before seven.
They’d made love again the previous night, after that first, desperate, headlong rush of passion. The second time had been slower, more deliberate, and just as satisfying in its own different way. He laid a gentle hand on her cheek now, marveling at the depths of desire that he had always felt for this woman, yet only realized the night before. She kissed his hand idly, then looked back to the notes.
“So what makes these four special?” she asked. He reached for the notes, brushed his forearm accidentally against her breast, stopped and looked at her apologetically.
“If we’re talking business, I wonder could we do it with some clothes on?” he asked.
She grinned at him, delighted. “This upsets you?” she said, glancing down at her own bare upper body.
“Hell, no!” he answered quickly, then, being strictly honest, he amended, “Well, yes. In a way. Upsets is maybe the wrong word. It sure as hell distracts me.”
She laughed, a low-pitched sound that reached right into his heart, and slid out of the bed, gathering her clothes together from where they’d fallen on the floor the night before. He watched with some regret as she dressed. There was something indescribably enjoyable about the sight of her naked in his cabin.
Or anywhere else, for that matter, he thought.
She started to pull on her jeans, stopped as she was refastening the waistband and looked at him quizzically.
“This going to be a problem for you, do you think, Jess?” she asked, serious all of a sudden. He didn’t answer immediately, not sure what she meant, so she went on. “I mean, our working together and”—she grinned salaciously—“doing other things together as well. I don’t exactly see this as a one-night stand, you know.”
“Neither do I, Lee,” he assured her, and thought he saw a trace of relief in her shoulders as she bent to buckle her belt. “And no, I don’t see it as any kind of a problem at all.”
He’d thought about it the night before, just before sleep had claimed him. Normally he guessed, a situation like this could be awkward. But not this time. This felt so right, so natural, so normal. He didn’t see it interfering in any way with their work together.
“Good,” Lee said shortly buttoning her shirt. “Now, if you think I’m going to stand here fully dressed discussing a case with you while you’re prancing around buck naked, it must be a frosty Friday in July Get some clothes on and show a little respect.”
And grinning, she’d hooked his jeans off the floor with her foot and kick-tossed them to him. He dressed while she lit a burner under a pot of water to make coffee, then picked up the notes again.
“So what makes you pick these four as likely suspects?” she asked.
He pulled a sweater over his head, spooned coffee into his old enamel pot and moved to glance over her shoulder. She was sitting now in one of the hard chairs by the plain pine table in the kitchen area of the cabin. There wasn’t much in the way of interior rooms. Aside from a separate bathroom and toilet, it was just one open-plan design, the areas defined by the furniture and fittings in each. He had a bedroom area, a living room area and a kitchen/eating area. If he owned a desk and a stereo, he could have a den area as well. He laid his forefinger on the name at the top of the list.
“This guy” he said. “Mike Miller. Sounds like a real prospect. He was fired from the ski school for banging one of his clients.”
Lee raised an eyebrow at him. “They’re firing ski instructors for that now?” she asked incredulously. “It’s a marvel that we’ve got any left.”
Jesse grinned. “This was a little different. Her husband caught him and our friend here beat him up pretty bad.”
She frowned thoughtfully. “So he’s got some history of violence, okay. But that’s a long way from murder.”
“I agree,” said Jesse. “Except when this guy was fired, he threatened to get even. Went close to ballistic, according to Ben Fuller.”
She pursed her lips, looking from him to the name on the page before her. “That’s pretty thin,” she said, at length.
“Tell me about it. I said there were no probables.”
“I thought you were just being conservative,” she said, then fingered the second name.
“What about this guy here—Anton Mikkelitz?”
He looked at the name, turned up one of the pages below the one she was looking at and checked the details he’d noted there.
“Some previous history,” he said. “Not a lot, but some. He was a paramedic with the Denver Fire Department, then a smoke jumper in Oregon. Came up here for the season three years back and joined the ski patrol. Opie got rid of him because he was always turning up late for work. Sometimes he didn’t turn up at all.”
Her eyebrow rose again. “Tardy is hardly a reason to suspect a man,” she said. He shook his head.
“It was his reaction to being fired that got him on the list. Seems Opie got mad when he ran into him on the mountain one day. The guy had called in sick and there he was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed with a group of friends. Opie kind of lost it. Reamed him out at the entrance to the Storm Peak chair, in front of maybe a hundred people. Mikkelitz didn’t like it. Told Opie he had no right to do it that way—to humiliate him like that.”
Lee shrugged. “Funny how people can be in the wrong and they’ll blame everyone else for it.”
“Too true,” Jesse replied. “Anyway Mikkelitz and Opie were yelling at each other and finally Opie had had enough. He said something along the lines of ‘Try this for humiliation: you’re fired.’ ”
“And?” Lee asked.
“And the strange thing is, Mikkelitz went real quiet. He went pale, then turned around and stormed off, shoving people out of the way. Opie never saw him after that. He left town.”
Lee chewed her lip thoughtfully.
“You said he had some previous history?” she prompted.
“I checked back with Denver PD. He’d had a few priors. Nothing serious,” he added, before she could ask. “Just seemed he had a habit of getting into brawls in bars. One of his victims pressed charges, then dropped them after a week or two.”
“Jesus,” she sighed, beginning to sound discouraged. “That’s even thinner than the first guy.”
“Well,” he said, a little defensively, “it shows a possibility of unstable behavior—and a tendency toward violence.”
Lee let go a long breath. “Yeah, I guess it does,” she said. She didn’t sound anything like convinced. Before she could ask about the third and fourth names, Jesse gave her the details.
“Number three was with the mountain grooming staff. Oliver Prescott by name. Fired for theft from the locker room. Nothing big. Also has a prior for grand theft auto, going back six years in Boulder. Did time in the state pen.”
She went to voice the obvious and he forestalled her.
“I know. I know. There’s no history of violence there. But … he’d been in the slammer for two years. Maybe he learned something there. Could have picked up on jiggers in there. Some of the gang members who used them would have been doing time around then.”
The water was boiling on the stove. He paused to pour it over the ground coffee in the pot, wincing slightly as the cloud of steam scalded his hand lightly.
“And don’t say it. I know it’s thin. They’re all thin. Number four’s no better. Ned Tellman. He was a chef in Hazie’s. They canned him because it turned out he wasn’t qualified.”
“And I guess on top of that, he had a long list of unpaid parking tickets?” Lee asked sardonically. Jesse couldn’t argue with her. He grinned a little wearily.
“Actually he had a conviction for armed robbery up in Wyoming,” he told her. She sat up a little straighter at that.
“Armed robbery?” she said, showing more interest than she had over the previous three candidates. “What was the weapon?”
“A knife,” he replied. Then, as he saw her draw breath to say something, he held up a hand to stop her. “I know, Lee. That’s the closest to the current MO we’ve got. But it was thirteen years ago. He was fifteen at the time and he’s had a clear record ever since.”
She wasn’t convinced. “Except for lying about being a chef,” she said. He conceded that with an inclination of his head.
“Hardly a felony” he said dryly. She had to agree.
“I guess I’m grasping at straws,” she said. He poured coffee into two cups, took the sheaf of notes from her and laid them gently aside.
“Aren’t we all?” he told her. “Look, Lee, it’s always been a long shot that something concrete would turn up. All we can do is check out the names of these people and hope we can find some sort of link to our killer here. At the moment I’m concentrating on any of them with any sort of criminal record. If that doesn’t pan out, I guess I’ll have to look for something else.”