Forbidden (Southern Comfort) (18 page)

A tube of bubble-mint flavored toothpaste. A yellow Tweety-bird toothbrush. Some hair bands, a brush with rhinestones around the handle, a pair of white cotton underwear, three dollars, and a box of condoms.

A box of condoms.

Clay pushed his all too human
reaction aside, continuing his search on autopilot.  If he let emotion come into play, he’d never be able to do his job. 

Even in the shelter of the trees, the afternoon sun was unbearably hot.  The air was thicker here, the timber a natural windbreak.  And death hung over this patch of earth like a sickly pall.

A cloud of insects droned in a low buzz, drawn from their lassitude by the smell of rotting flesh.  They hovered impatiently and Clay swatted at them with his hand.  Sweat dripped down the back of his neck, adding to the unmistakable aroma of violent death.

He himself was somewhat inured to the stench, as were the coroner and most of the crime scene techs.  But he couldn’t help but notice that one or two of the deputies on the scene looked a little green.  Bentonville – in fact the whole county – was a relatively safe jurisdiction. Murdered, rotting corpses probably didn’t turn up all that often.

He did a quick visual to see how Deputy Loverboy was holding up, and noticed him over by the road, talking to Tate.

Tate had insisted on coming along, rather than hanging back at the station or being dropped off at home, in case the body was Casey.  Clay knew if that had indeed been the case, she would have wanted to also go to see Casey’s mother, to offer what comfort she could.  She was just that kind of person.

Guilt was going to rip her to shreds if they found Casey like this victim.  Whether she should or not, Tate would wonder if she’d missed the opportunity to stop the man before he’d taken the girl from the carnival.

If she’d paid a little bit closer attention, would she have seen him lead her away?

If she’d been a little bit more observant, would Casey be safe in her mother’s arms?

She didn’t have the benefit of professional dispassion, of having been inundated with so much violence and pain and misery that she could let those questions roll off her shoulders.  She’d be miserable as she tried to figure out what to do with her misplaced guilt.

Hell.  Like he was one to talk.

He’d been miserable ever since that asshole in Topeka had fired his gun.

He needed… something to take the place of that emotion that was even now eating a hole in his gut.

He looked toward the road again, wiping the sweat from his brow as he straightened from the knapsack.  The emotion that was sweeping through him currently was probably just as detrimental to his well
-being as that misplaced guilt.

Deputy Harding had his hand on Tate’s arm, and she was nodding, looking relieved.  He was no doubt talking to her about the fact that the body wasn’t Casey’s.  The physical description was all wrong, not to mention the fact that this girl had been buried in the woods for
a good bit longer than a day.  Tate had been waiting, very patiently, for the past hour.  Hoping that it wasn’t Casey.  Fearing that it was.

Clay could tell from the way she was standing – shoulders slumped, arms limp – that she was now feeling the punch of released tension.  The body language equivalent of
Thank
God
.  She was taking this entire thing very much to heart.

Deputy Harding moved his hand to her shoulder,
then rubbed a comforting circle on her back.

The green-eyed monster reared its ugly head as Clay removed his gloves with a practiced
snap. 
He was just about to move in that direction when he heard his name.

“Agent Copeland?”

Clay turned at the sound of the coroner’s voice, looking toward where the older man was crouched as he examined the body.  His bald head was covered with a fine sheen of sweat, giving it the appearance of a well-polished cue ball.  He pushed his glasses up his nose, motioning abstractly to Clay.

“There’s something I’d like you to see.”

Right.

Clay carefully picked his way back toward the gravesite, and with one last glance toward the roadside, refocused his attention on doing his job.

CASEY
Rodriguez stirred, trying to stretch her aching muscles.  Her left arm seemed to float completely independent of her body, like a slab of flesh someone had stuck to her shoulder and forgotten to attach to her nerves.  But as she shifted, pain lanced like a knife.

“Oh-oh-oh.” She tried to jerk the limb back toward her side.

But her arm
was
attached, attached to something solid. Something that bit into her skin, rubbing it raw.

Turning her head on an achy wince, Casey blinked the arm into focus.  A metal bracelet clamped her wrist, big and ugly and tight.  A chain dangled from one end…

A handcuff. 
She
was handcuffed.

To an old iron bed.

Rising up, muscles screaming, head pounding, Casey scrambled away as best she could.   The bed was lumpy, the springs broken down, and her feet slipped on sheets gone clammy.  The air in the room sat dense and heavy, the stink of her own sweat was like something spoiled.  Dim light crept sulkily through the slats of yellowed blinds, serving only to illuminate the room’s faded neglect. 

So hot,
she thought, looking around. Where the heck was she?

The clank of metal on metal had her eyes going wide, tears stinging as she looked back at the handcuffs.  Panic didn’t allow her to feel the pain of rent flesh when she yanked as hard as she could.

Gotta get away,
she thought, desperately. 
Gotta get out.

But the blood seeping down her arm stopped her.  It welled, then rolled, dripping off her elbow to stain the ratty white sheets.

Frightened, confused, Casey wiped at the blood which stung the burns on her forearm. The burns she’d gotten when grease had splattered from the frying funnel cakes.

The funnel cakes
.

There’d been a man at her mother’s trailer.  Smiling at her even when her mother leaned over, offered up a serving of cleavage.  Smiling at her as she walked by to throw away her sister’s trash.

Smiling at her next to the Ferris wheel…

It was the last thing she could remember.

“Oh, God,”
Casey whispered, trembling.

Everything her mother told her had come true.  She’d flirted with that man, shamefully encouraging him, even though he was old enough to be her dad.  It had to be him who had her.  Who’d chained her to the bed.

Was he going to kill her?  Or merely… do things?

Tears mingling with sweat, Casey wiped her face, considering which fate was worse.  To be kept alive as some sicko’s toy, or maybe just shot through the head.

No. 
Please
.  She really didn’t want to die.  But at the thought of what that man could do if he kept her alive, she began to cry in earnest. And with sobs racking her slender body, didn’t hear the heavy footsteps on the stairs. 

When the door opened, fear turned her insides liquid.

“Oh good,” the man said, acres of pale skin gleaming ghost-like in the dimness.  “I was thinking it must be about time for you to wake up.”

THE
sun hovered just over the horizon by the time Clay drove his Four-Runner over the bridge, the pinks and oranges of impending sunset the final strokes on the day’s canvas. 

A day, he mused, that had turned singularly ugly. 

He’d tried, several times, to talk Tate into allowing one of the deputies to see her home, but the damn fool woman had insisted on waiting for him.  He saw the strain of that etched in the line between her eyes, but her determination hadn’t faltered.  Ridiculous as it was, he got the impression she was worried about him.  

Like
he’d
never seen a teenage corpse.

And that concern, combined with the stench of senseless death and his own reservations about just what, exactly, he was doing, served to provide a fairly uncomfortable silence on the ride home.

He could tell Tate wanted to talk. But not about
her
feelings regarding what happened.  Uh-uh.  Oh no.

She wanted to talk about
him
.  She’d been looking at him funny ever since he’d told her about Topeka
.
 

Which one of them, exactly, held the degree in this relationship?

Relationship.

There was that freaking word again.

Somehow this entire thing had gone way off track.

When had he gone from pursuing this woman with the single-minded but reasonable goal of mutual pleasure, to worrying about her being offended if he didn’t open up and spill his guts?   He’d told her about what happened, game over, enough said.  Being with Tate was supposed to be a no-strings-attached vacation from reality, and he damn well didn’t need to be bringing along a luggage cart full of baggage.

And why the hell was she looking at him like that, all sweet and quietly supportive, when what she should have been doing was high-tailing it the other way?

He was
no
good
for her; she deserved so much better.  Better than a man who could maybe schedule a few days for her a couple of times a year.

She’d been right.  There was no way they could do this.  He’d end up hurting her, and Max, and … hell, probably himself in the long run.  He should make the break now, while it could still be clean and painless, and leave
someone like Deputy Harding free to fill the vacancy he left behind.

Tate needed a good man, one who’d be there to hold her at night, and though Harding was a cop – not the easiest career for a relationship – he at least had the benefit of being local.

Shit.

Who the hell was he kidding?  He’d sooner cut off his own hands than push her toward Josh Harding.  And wasn’t that just ridiculous?  The desire to rip out the throat of any male who even sneezed in her direction?

Clay tried not to glance toward Tate as they drove past the old market, stopping to allow a group of tourists clutching sweetgrass baskets to shuffle across the street.  “What’s so funny?” she asked when he laughed.

“Life,” he answered, knee-jerk.  “I figure it’s better to laugh than to cry.”

It was the completely wrong thing to say.  “I didn’t mean –” he tried to backpedal, but she was already speaking over him.

“I’ve noticed that,” she said.  “You use humor as an anesthetic.”

“Yes, well why do you think they call the stuff the dentist gives you laughing gas?” 

He
pulled into the parking lot behind the B&B, and left the engine idling.  

“Do you want to come in?
” Tate offered hesitantly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Grab some dinner?  Talk?”

Well, well, well
.
Clay cocked a brow in her direction. Just what he’d been waiting to hear all day.  Because underneath all of those polite dinner and conversation noises, Tate’s body language suggested that wasn’t all she had on her mind.

And for the past several hours, he hadn’t even been
trying
to herd her in that direction.

After that attack of guilt at lunchtime, he’d simply been playing the whole thing straight.

And now that she was offering… 

Well hell, he just couldn’t do it.

He
liked
this woman too much to take her to bed.

Uncharted territory, to be sure.

And now came the tricky part.  Did he fudge the truth, say that he had some calls to make, that he was tired, busy, or otherwise occupied in some legitimate way?

Past experience – both on the giving and the receiving end – led him to believe that such bullshit could be smelled from a mile away.  And because he liked Tate too much to sleep with her, it should follow that he liked her too much to bullshit her.  Therefore, he played the honesty card, laying it face up between them.

“I want to come in,” he admitted, looking her squarely in the eye.  “And while dinner sounds nice, it’s secondary to the fact that I want to be inside you.  Crude, but it’s the truth.  And while you’ve done the whole resistance thing very well, I’m sensing that that particular little wall might be crumbling.”

He reached over, took her hand.  “I’m not going to lie to you, Tate.  I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than spend the next, oh, say… twelve hours making love until neither one of us can walk. But crazy as it may seem, I think you were right in what you said last night.  Taking this any further is too much like skating on thin ice – chances are one or both of us would end up falling through.  You…” He looked out the window, sought the right words, “deserve a lot better than what I’d be able to give you.  Not in bed,” he clarified, lightening the moment with a wicked grin.  “You and me together… well, let’s just say we’d set a whole new standard for copulation.”