At Risk (7 page)

Maybe she was crazy, but she’d always seen beauty here. For all of California’s balmy weather, white sand, and blue water, the West Coast had never stolen her heart as the Delaware Bay did. “Bay water in your blood,” Daddy had said.

At Bowers Beach, Jack turned right and headed up the Murderkill River, past the public boat ramps and docks. An old man throwing bread to the ducks looked up and waved, and Liz waved back. The commercial fishing boats were all out on the bay. Private craft bobbed against their moorings on the South Bowers side, but Jack didn’t let up on the throttle. He continued on past the houses and businesses lining the waterway.

“Where are we going?” she asked again.

“Not far.”

They rounded a bend, and he pointed toward a boat ramp ahead on the left. An ambulance, an aging fire truck that read
South Bowers
in white letters painted on the side, and three police cars were drawn up at the landing. At the water’s edge, a crowd gathered around a large wrecker in the process of winching a blue Ford truck out of the river. Several divers in wet suits waited nearby.

Jack steered the boat in a slow circle, then aimed the bow back toward the bay. “Wayne Boyd’s truck,” he said. “I heard they found it this morning.”

“Tracy’s boyfriend?”

He nodded. “Cops never caught up with him.”

“Suicide?”

Jack shrugged. “He wasn’t launching a boat. Apparently, somebody drove straight off the dock at a high rate of speed.”

Stunned, she stared back at the truck. “Did they find a body?”

“Not yet. If they had, the divers wouldn’t be going back in the water.”

“You think Wayne deliberately drove the truck off the ramp?”

“No loss if he did. Wayne was a shit.”

“But why kill Tracy and then himself? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Shits don’t always make sense.”

She was quiet as they motored past the restaurant and rows of pilings lined with squawking seagulls. “If Wayne did it, then it’s over, isn’t it? The other kids at Somerville are safe?”
I’m safe
.

Jack didn’t answer.

That had always been his habit, as well. He didn’t believe in stating the obvious. Liz shut her eyes and tried to imagine what it would be like to stop jumping at shadows.

Once they were out in the bay again, Jack turned the boat north. “I heard you have a kid in college,” he said. “Just the one daughter?”

“Yes,” she answered, grateful to be talking about Katie. “She’s living in Dublin—Ireland. She—”

“I know where Dublin is, Lizzy. I may not have a doctorate, but I did manage a few years at Del State.”

“I’m sorry,” she answered. “I didn’t mean—”

He grinned at her. “I’m a waterman. It’s in my blood, like it’s in yours. I’m not cut out for classrooms or a nine-to-five job. But that doesn’t make me Jed Clampett, either.”

Emotion made her voice husky. “Twenty years is a long time, Jack. I didn’t know what you were doing.”

“Didn’t you?” He pushed the throttle to full. “I heard when you got your divorce.”

She wanted to ask how he’d found out. Instead, she gripped the side of the boat and fixed her gaze on an osprey’s nest atop a buoy. After several minutes, she asked, “Do you have any children?”

“Divorced. No kids.”

“Significant other?”

He shook his head.

“Tracy?”

He scowled. “I told you, she was a friend. She lived down the street. Tracy didn’t have much in the way of family. No father. Mother’s in jail someplace down South. Texas or Arkansas. There’s Aunt Charlene, but she never did much for Tracy except spend the kid’s welfare allotment on beer, cigarettes, and the slots. My mom used to buy Tracy school clothes and shoes.”

“She had ambition.”

“She wanted something more out of life than she had. And she was sweet. Too sweet to be with a guy like Wayne.”

“Did the police question you about her death?”

“Nope. Never found me.”

“Why were you still in the parking lot when Amelia and I arrived? I was late. Tracy was murdered—”

“Earlier,” he finished for her. “She was probably killed while I was sitting there waiting for her.”

“Why would you wait for forty, forty-five minutes?”

“Tracy told me she had this important appointment with her history professor. She wanted to keep it, but she didn’t plan to stay at school that day. She was scared of Wayne, and she wanted to move out of her trailer. After I dropped her off, she asked me to wait and take her home.”

“But you were leaving when I arrived. Why did you go without her, if you thought she—”

“Look, Lizzy, either you believe me or you don’t. Tracy said that she’d see if you’d give her an extension on a paper that was due. She thought it wouldn’t take more than twenty minutes. If she wasn’t back in half an hour, she said for me to just go. There was another guy who had an early class and then nothing until after lunch. She thought he’d give her a ride home.”

“So you waited how long?”

“Half an hour. Then another ten, maybe fifteen minutes, before I took off. I’m not sure. I wasn’t expecting to provide an alibi. Hell, I didn’t expect her to end up dead.”

She took a deep breath. “Did you have anything to do with that truck in the river?”

“If I did, would I be stupid enough to tell you?”

Liz felt suddenly chilled despite the warmth of the morning. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t.”

His gaze locked with hers for what seemed an eternity. “I didn’t do anything to Tracy or to Wayne. If I had found him, I wouldn’t finish it that way.”

Was he telling the truth? She thought he was. She’d never known Jack to lie to her, not even when he knew that his words would tear her world in two. On the other hand, he had a temper, and he was capable of violence. She’d always known that.

She remembered an afternoon in August hot enough to scorch the soles of her bare feet on the sandy Bowers Beach streets. She must have been seven, eight at the most. She and Crystal had been waiting outside of Casey’s for their dad when they’d heard yelling in the vacant lot behind the bar. Running to find the cause of the excitement, Liz had discovered Jack and a taller boy, Sonny Shahan, rolling on the ground locked in bloody combat.

Fists, knees, and curses flew. Hooting local kids egged the pair on, but they needed no encouragement. Both opponents were already bruised and bleeding. Liz had started backing away when her sister grabbed her shirt and yanked her sideways. “Look out, stupid!” Crystal had warned.

Startled, she’d stared down at what she’d nearly stepped on. In the flattened grass lay the crushed and mutilated remains of a nest of newly hatched mallard ducklings. Later, when older heads and harder hands had separated them, Jack and Sonny had each blamed the other for the atrocity, but she had been too ashamed to pay much attention to the outcome of the fight. In full view of the jeering onlookers, she’d crouched in the gravel beside the weathered building and vomited up the moon pie and the grape soft drink she’d had for lunch.

Liz still couldn’t abide the smell or taste of grape soda.

“Go ahead. Say it.”

Jack’s words jerked her back to the present. “What?” she asked.

“Say what you’re thinking.”

“I . . . wasn’t,” she stammered. “Not what you . . .”

“No?” His eyes narrowed. “You weren’t going to remind me that I just spent over three years in jail for assault and attempted murder? That I tried to kill Randy and Daryll Hurd and damn near succeeded?”

“No, I wasn’t going to say that,” she insisted. “You’ve got the Rafferty temper, but I don’t think you’re a murderer.” She shook her head. “But it wouldn’t be the first time you decided to take justice into your own hands.”

“Defender of stray pups and wronged women, that’s me.”

“Cut it out,” she said. “We’ve known each other too long to play games.”

“Have we? Games are what people do, aren’t they? At least, most men and women.”

“Take me home.”

“All right.”

Jack steered the boat in silence for a quarter of an hour before saying, “I heard Tracy’s funeral is Saturday. What time?”

“When did you start attending funerals?”

“Some things have changed in twenty-odd years. You were away a long time, Lizzy. I’d given up expecting you to come back.”

“Don’t call me that,” she said. “It’s Liz now. Or Elizabeth.”

“Or Doctor Clarke.”

“Don’t, Jack. We don’t need to fight.”

“We didn’t part on the best of terms.”

“That was a long time ago. I’m not the same person I was then,” she said. “I don’t want to be.”

“No more Donald Clarke’s girl?”

“Or Crystal Clarke’s sister. I’ve worked hard for what I have, for what I’ve made of myself. For the life I’ve made for my daughter.”

“And I haven’t?”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“Believe what you want. I had nothing to do with George’s business. He knew how I felt, and he made sure that . . .” Jack exhaled softly. “Hell. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I had my suspicions. But George is my brother, and Raffertys—”

“Stick together?” she offered. “Did your father know?”

“Pop?” He shook his head. “If George was running whiskey, Pop would have laughed and told tales about the old days. Not drugs. Pop’s old school. George was lucky that it was the Feds that caught him. Pop would have put a bullet through his head if he’d caught him running that shit on one of our boats.”

“You lost the boat, didn’t you?”

“The boat. Not the bank note. Pop had to sell off the
Nellie IV
to make up the difference while I was upstate. We’ve got seven boats left. Two crabbers, one still commercial fishing. Pop runs the
Sea Sprite
as a headboat, and the rest I manage as charters. We hire captains and crews for the other boats.”

“I know the fishing is much worse than it used to be. It’s not easy for a waterman to make a living today.”

“When was it? In your dad’s time?” He scoffed. “You’ll have to come see sometime. I live on the
Dolphin III
. It’s corporate office and home sweet home all wrapped up in one. We’ve gone high tech, state-of-the-art computers.”

She looked at his scarred hands. “It’s hard to imagine you at a keyboard.”

“I told you I put in a couple of years at Del State, and they have quite a decent computer lab at the prison. Sorry if it damages my image as
good old boy
.”

“What next? Your own website?”

“
www.fishcap’njack.com.
”

Liz chuckled. “Things have changed a lot, haven’t they?”

Neither said much for the remainder of the return trip up the twisting creek and through the marsh to her landing. When they reached the dock, Liz tossed the looped bowline over a mooring post and eased the boat in.

“What was it like?” she asked him. “Prison.”

“Not open for discussion.”

“I can’t imagine—”

“No. You can’t. And you don’t want to.”

“Jack . . . I’m sorry if I—”

“It’s over.” He signaled for her to sit tight while he stepped up onto the wooden platform. Crouching down on the salt-treated planks, he offered her his hand and helped her up.

“Thanks,” she began. “I—”

He cut her words off as he pulled her against his chest and ground his mouth against hers.

To hold Liz in his arms felt better than Jack’s wildest fantasies. She clung to him, wrapping her arms around his neck, seemingly as hot for him as he was for her. Her mouth never left his as they discarded a trail of clothing along the dock and up the bank into the yard. Although he had the best of intentions, it soon became clear that neither of them could wait until they reached the house.

Instead, he stripped off Liz’s jeans and lifted her onto the edge of an oak picnic table. Amid a haze of searing kisses, he managed to extract a condom from his wallet and fit it over his erection before completely discarding his cutoffs. Liz reached for him, wrapped her legs around him, and drew his rigid member deep inside. Her eager cries and the sensation of her nails digging into his bare back intensified his need to possess her completely. Groaning, he thrust harder.

From the trees a few hundred feet away, Cameron Whitaker watched the couple intently, conscious of his own stiffening cock. “Bitch,” he said. “Cold-hearted bitch.” The professor was getting it on, all right. His breathing quickened as he saw her partner nuzzle Liz’s naked breast, then draw the nipple deep into his mouth. “Yes,” he urged. “Yes, stick it to her. Hammer her!”

Cameron lowered the binoculars and wiped his mouth. Damn, he could almost taste her. Much more of this and . . . Hastily, he fumbled with his zipper, pulled himself free of his boxers, and began to jerk off.

When he trained the glasses on the pair again, he felt his hands slick with his own juices. Liz lay back on the tabletop with the bastard on top of her, and her lover was playing with a lock of her hair.

Cameron fine-tuned his Leicas. The binoculars were 10×50, state of the art, and they magnified every inch of Liz’s long legs and luscious ass. He could even make out one well-formed breast and the dark smudge of a nipple. “Roll over, you cocksucker,” he muttered. “Stop blocking the view.” He wanted to see her thatch.

Jack pushed himself up on one elbow. “Sweet heaven.” He groaned. “That takes twenty years off my life.”

Liz smiled at him. “Some things are worth waiting for.”

He leaned close and kissed her bruised mouth tenderly. She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. He remembered her doing just that a long time ago, and something dangerous stirred in the pit of his stomach. He sat up. “Brrr—getting a little damp out here, isn’t it?”

“I hadn’t noticed.” She looked at him with amusement. “Good thing I don’t have close neighbors.”

He motioned toward the house with his chin. “I could use a cup of coffee.”

“What? No cigarette? Winstons, wasn’t it?”

“Gave them up fifteen years and three months ago.”

“And you still want one?”

“Like a man in hell wants ice water.”

She laughed. “I’ve missed you, Jack.” Liz located her bra, slid down off the table, and found her jeans and what was left of her silk panties. “I’ll put in a claim for these,” she said, holding up the torn garment. “$14.99. Victoria’s Secret.”