Darkling I Listen (10 page)

In your dreams,
he said to himself, smiled, and waved.

The walk back to town was roughly ten miles. If he started now, he might make it home by just after
midnight
.

Resting his head against the seat, he closed his eyes. He didn't really want to walk back to town. He wanted to spend a semi-pleasant evening someplace other than his aunt's room, staring at television, making conversation with his uncle—whom he loved more than life but who, like clockwork, fell asleep in his chair at precisely eight-thirty and proceeded to snore loudly enough to shake the windows.

Opening his eyes, he focused on the illuminated pool and listened to a lone bullfrog
garump
someplace in the dark. Where the hell was
Charlotte
?

He got out of the car, squinting to see beyond the circle of light. His heartbeat accelerating, he moved toward the water, his hands on his hips and his senses expanding.

"
Charlotte
!" he shouted as he stopped at the water's edge. He listened harder, but all he could hear was the roar of his blood in his ears.

A flash of light made him turn. High-beam headlights beyond
Charlotte
's Firebird crawled
toward him up the gravel road. Now what the hell was he supposed to do?

The pickup lumbered out of the dark, windows rolled down and a man's scruffy face grinning out at
Brandon
. Most of the logo on the door had peeled away, but there was
enough left that
Brandon
could just make out the words Carnival Rides. Beyond the man at
the
steering wheel
were two more faces, both craning to see him where he stood in the stream of light from the Firebird's headlamps.

The driver braced one greasy arm on the bottom of the window space and raised a Coors can to his lips. "How's it goin'?"

"It's going,"
Brandon
replied, making a point to keep his voice as neutral as possible. The last thing he wanted was the truckload of creeps to misconstrue his words as an invitation to hang around.

"Havin' fun, I see."

Brandon
followed the man's gaze to the ground near his feet.
Charlotte
's skirt. Christ!

The man grinned and put the truck in Reverse.
Brandon
watched as the truck soiled off through the dark, its red taillights disappearing beyond the trees. Releasing his breath, he turned back to the water—
Charlotte
hit him with enough force to stagger him backward. Laughing and wrapping her wet arms around his neck and her legs around his hips, she squeezed him fiercely and planted another kiss on his mouth before sliding to the ground and prancing again toward the water.

"Did I scare you?" she called, splashing into the water.

"You've got a sick sense of humor," he yelled after her. Returning to the car, he dropped down into the seat and reconsidered the possibility of walking back to Ticky Creek. He was too damn old for kid games.

"Hey, Carlyle. Fancy meeting you here."

Startled from his thoughts, he looked up, straight into Alyson James's amused eyes.

Grinning, she said, "I can't begin to tell you how relieved I am to find you with your jeans still zipped."

«
^
»

"
W
hat the hell are you doing here?" Carlyle demanded.

Alyson watched the look of dark anger and suspicion slide over
Brandon
's features, which were made sharper by the overhead lamp. The amber light made his eyes look green instead of blue. His mouth hooked down at one corner. She didn't want to acknowledge to herself that his animosity bothered her. But it did. For the last ten minutes she'd stood in the distance and watched him with Miss Yamboree, and while a great many emotions had crossed his face, none of them had been anger. Now he virtually simmered.

She looked toward the water where Charlotte Minger floated on her back, her nipples bobbing in the water like two fishing floats. "Let's just say that I'm here to save you from yourself."

"Who died and made you my guardian angel? And how the hell did you know we were out here?"

"Lovely Rita from Wal-Mart. I happened to drop in to the DQ for dinner, and she and some boy had worked themselves into
a lather
over the prospect of
Charlotte
tempting you with southern fried breasts and thighs here at the quarry." Hooking one arm over the top of the car door, Alyson grinned, reached out with one finger and slid it over his bottom lip. "
Either you've been sucking up close and
personal to a Hershey bar or Miss Yamboree put a Mocha Bronze liplock on you."

He turned his face away and ran the back of his had over his mouth, smearing lipstick across his cheek.

"Actually, Carlyle, I'm quite proud of you," she said, shifting her weight so she leaned against the car and crossed her arms over her chest. "You've got self-discipline. I don't know may men who would just say no to such a generously endowed temptation as our Miss Yamboree. Then again, I suppose you've had the pleasure of spending time with some real doozies, haven't you? Of course, I have to question the wisdom of a man who'd put himself into this situation in the first place, considering it could send you back to prison for another three years."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Check her driver's license. Not the fake I.D. she uses to gamble at the Horseshoe in
Shreveport
. She keeps the real one in the glove compartment, just in case she gets pulled over by one of the local black-and-whites who
knows
her."

He glared at her before opening the glove compartment, which was stuffed full of miscellaneous paper, chewing gum, hairbrushes, and a pair of foam rubber shoulder pads. Under them was a
Texas
driver's license.

Gazing over his shoulder at it, Alyson said, "Nice picture. Don't care much for the birth date, however. It just screams statutory, doesn't it?"

He flung the I.D. into the glove compartment and slammed it closed.

"And I hate to be the bearer of more bad news, but according to lovely Rita, our Miss Yamboree had a long talk this afternoon with Dillman. Now maybe I'm letting my writer's fanciful imagination run away with me, but I'm thinking that if Dillman wants to mail your cute butt for something other than a traffic ticket, how better to do it than to catch you in a compromising situation with a minor?"

Grabbing the tank top from the steering wheel and swearing under his breath, Carlyle unfolded out of the car, his shoulder ramming her aside as he stalked toward the water, pausing only to sweep up Charlotte's skirt from the ground. Bathed in light from the headlights, he looked as if he were on stage. He focused on
Charlotte
breaststroking her way toward him.

"Get out of that damn water,
Charlotte
, and get dressed." The smile on
Charlotte
's face evaporated as Alyson sat on the Firebird's front fender. As
Charlotte
stood and waded toward shore, her hands doing a pitiful job of covering up her feminine assets, Carlyle flung her clothes at her. "You want to tell me what you and Dillman have cooked up to put me back in jail?"

Charlotte
dragged the tank top down over her wet shoulders and stepped into her skirt. She glanced toward Alyson, her expression sullen. "I didn't want to do it," she declared, hopping up and down on one foot. "I just wanted a freakin' hamburger and to get to know you better, but Dillman said he'd forget about my shopliftin' a lipstick from the Discount Drugs if I saw my way to get you out of your pants." Her eyes widened as Carlyle turned his back on her and started toward the car. "What are you gonna do now?" she yelled as she zipped up her skirt.

He moved past Alyson and said, without looking at her, "I assume you rode here in a car and not on a broomstick."

"And here I thought you'd get all mushy with appreciation over my saving your tush."

With a curse, he kicked the car door closed and started down the road into the dark. Alyson ran after him, deciding that the less said, the better, at least for the moment. Carlyle had every right to be angry, but she didn't want to take any chances that he'd turn a fraction of that infamous anger her direction.

Suddenly, from up ahead, headlights flashed on, bright and blinding, bringing Brandon and Alyson to a stop. They raised their hands to shield their eyes.

Dillman climbed out of his cruiser, one hand resting on the butt of his revolver, and sauntered toward Carlyle, looking like Gary Cooper in
High Noon.

"Oh, boy," Alyson muttered, "here we go again."

She ran to Carlyle's side as Dillman stopped, looking surprised to see her. "Ignore him, Brandon. He's bad news."

"Get out of my way." He nudged her aside, his gaze still locked on Dillman.

"He's not worth going back to prison. You're playing right into his hands. If he pushes you hard enough, you're going to push back."

"What's wrong, Carlyle?" Dillman called. "You look like a man who was almost caught with his pants down."

"
Charlotte
told me about your plans, Dillman. It didn't work. I've got a witness here who can testify that I didn't touch the girl. She also heard Charlotte admit you coerced her into setting this whole thing up, so maybe you should
fuck off
before I decide to call the State Police and inform them that Ticky Creek's sheriff dabbles in collusion and blackmail."

Alyson elbowed him in the ribs. "Cool it."

Dillman advanced slowly, gravel crunching underfoot. His face, backlit by the cruiser's headlights, looked sinister, almost inhuman. His teeth showed a little under his yellow mustache.

He moved up against
Brandon
, butting him with his body. Carlyle set his heels and didn't so much as stagger, just looked straight into Dillman's eyes with a "go to hell" intensity that made Dillman's jaws knot.

"One of these days," Dillman drawled, "we're gonna meet when I ain't in this uniform. And when we do, I'm gonna take great pleasure in rearrangin' your face. There won't be a plastic surgeon in this country
who'll
be able to put you back together."

"Did that sound like a threat to you, Alyson?" Carlyle said as he continued to stare into Dillman's eyes.

"Sure sounded that way to me," she replied.

Dillman cut his eyes to her then, but as he made a move toward her,
Brandon
shoved her back and stepped between them. The belligerence that had earlier made him stand his ground in the face of Dillman's hostility suddenly turned into something more threatening.

Brandon
shook his head and said in a low voice, "You don't want to go there, Jack."

For an instant—so quick that Alyson might have imagined it, the expression on Dillman's face faltered. His mouth moved nervously; he licked his lips and slid his hand down over his pistol grip. Alyson sensed she should do something to stop the impending disaster, but she was afraid to move for fear the slightest provocation would cause the combustible moment to erupt.

"Get in the car,"
Brandon
ordered her.

She backed toward the Escort she had parked in the trees. Her brain scrambled over what she would do if Dillman decided to pull his gun and pop a bullet between Carlyle's blue eyes. Dillman might be a bully, but he wasn't stupid, she told herself, swallowing her panic.

Alyson crawled into the Ford and turned the ignition, holding her breath as the engine choked, then started. She flipped on the lights, shifted the transmission into Drive, and eased the car onto the road. Reaching across the passenger's seat, she shoved open the door. Staring out at the men standing toe to toe in her lights, she said to herself,
Come on, Carlyle, stop being a tough guy and get in the car before you get yourself killed.

At last, Carlyle turned away and walked toward the car. Alyson kept her eyes on Dillman, determining that if he did go for his gun, she'd hit the accelerator and flatten his broad backside into the gravel.

Brandon
dropped into the seat beside her and slammed the door. Carefully, she steered the car around Dillman, who remained in the middle of the road, as if daring her to hit him.

She didn't relax until turning left onto Highway
59
,
back toward Ticky Creek. Still, she kept glancing into the rearview mirror, expecting to see the flash of red and blue lights in the dark. Carlyle dug into his shirt pocket and extracted a cigarette. He lit it with a disposable lighter and inhaled deeply. The red-orange glow of clean ash momentarily brightened his angry face.

"Carlyle, you're a study in self-destruction. I'm not sure I've ever met anyone who so dared the world to take a punch at him."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Maybe you should. You might feel better. It might even save your life—unless, of course, you don't really give a damn about that. Is that it? You haven't got the balls to blow your own brains out, so you try to bully someone else into doing it for you?"

"Why don't you mind your own business, Miz James?"

"If I minded my own business, you'd be bare-assed and boffing to the tune of statutory rape. Tack on another four years to the three you still
have
left to do in
California
, and you'll be collecting Social Security by the time you get out again."

He sucked hard on his cigarette,
then
looked at her. She kept her eyes on the road, her hands on the wheel, palms sweating and heart hammering. She realized that her anxiety had nothing to do with the fact that she had nearly witnessed his murder, and everything to do with the lightning-hot tension suddenly charging the air between them.

"Pull over," he told her, his voice rough and semi-mean.

She frowned and gripped the wheeler harder. "Why?"

"Just shut up and pull the damn car over."

Slowing, hesitant, she eased the car onto the shoulder of the road. He reached over and shifted the car into Park.

"What are you doing, Carlyle?"

He didn't respond, just opened his door and got out. She watched as he walked around the front of the car, the cigarette hanging loose from one corner of his mouth. Reaching the driver's side door, he waited until an eighteen-wheeler roared by, blowing his hair over his eyes and scattering glowing cigarette ashes into the dark, then he flung the cigarette onto the road and jerked open her door, took her arm, and hauled her roughly out of the car.

Shoving her against the car, he took her face in his hand and kissed her. Hard. Forced her lips apart and slid his tongue inside her mouth while he pressed the length of his body against her, moved his hips into her so his erection felt like a crowbar digging into her stomach.

A startling response ignited inside her, as shocking and confounding as his actions. He tasted like cigarettes and something else, something musky and erotic that made her go liquid, despite the wall of denial that her heart struggled to erect in those first blinding seconds that his tongue slid against hers and a groan rumbled deep in his throat. The heat from his body turned the air into steam. His cotton shirt felt damp with sweat, and so did his face. Her first instinct was to wrap her arms around his neck and kiss him back, forgetting who he was and what she was and why she had come to Ticky Creek. Hell, if she wanted to be absolutely honest, she would admit to herself that her reasons for butting in on Charlotte Minger's action had more to do with green-eyed jealousy than with saving Carlyle's butt from Dillman.

But she wasn't about to be honest with herself. She'd been down that road before, swept away by looks and charm and celebrity. Steve Farrington might not have been in Carlyle's league, but he was certainly enough to make a naive, starry-eyed, small town girl from
Longview
believe in happily ever after.

Still, in the two years that she and Farrington had shared the same name, he had never kissed her like this. And her body had never reacted like this, as if every nerve had been electrified, so that the very brush of Carlyle's breath against her cheek made her skin feel on fire. Then she reminded herself that this unsettling turn of events had nothing to do with any real or imagined attraction; it was just another infamous Carlyle tantrum.

She turned her face away, gasping for air and sanity and control over the rush of white-hot lust that made her hurt between her legs. "Back off, Carlyle."