Over the Line (38 page)

"You've been busy," she said, choosing to dwell on the idea of him loosening up enough to flirt instead of dwelling on all the implications of the rifle. Could it be that Baby Blue had been thinking things over?

"Help yourself." He dusted off his hands, then joined her. "Catch up on your sleep some?"

"Some. Obviously you didn't. How's the head? And your arm? Maybe I should take a look at it." His mother, horrified by the blood and the real story that Jase had been forced to tell his parents, had dressed it properly before they'd left for Chicago.

"For the last time, the head is fine. The arm is fine. The dressing is fine," he insisted. "I'm fine."

"Yeah, well, don't take this wrong, but you don't look so fine." Actually, he looked like he always did. Delicious, decidedly conflicted, and dead beat. "Why haven't you slept?"

"I'll sleep tonight." He nodded toward the table. "Let's eat. Then we have to talk."

"About?" she asked carefully.

"I spoke with Dallas a while ago."

She studied his face, then felt her stomach knot before he turned to the cupboard and pulled out a pair of plates. "I know that look. That's the 'other shoe is about to fall' look."

The grim set of his mouth when he turned back and set the plates on what appeared to be a hand-carved table confirmed it.

All of her good spirits deflated. "What's happened now?"

"After you eat," he said, looking very domestic wielding an oven mitt as he set the plates of food on the table. "That'll be soon enough."

"Afraid I'm not going to have much of an appetite after I hear what you've got to tell me?"

He didn't say a word. He just dug into his food like it was a job that needed doing. Which told her she was right. The other shoe was about to drop—and the weight of it was probably going to crush her.

"Okay. Let's have it," Janey said after they'd cleaned up the kitchen and settled in the living room.

She curled a leg up under her on a corner of a chocolate leather sofa that matched two overstuffed side chairs.

Jase sat in one of those chairs instead of sitting down beside her. It had been hard enough being so close to her in the kitchen. He needed his head on straight while they talked through Dallas's news. Somehow, they had to make sense of it.

And somehow, he had to break it to her—without breaking her.

"Dallas did some checking on your mom's financial situation," he said, biting the bullet. "Seems that from the time you were little, she never had a steady job. Did you know that?"

She shrugged. "More or less. I reached a certain age and figured out we were probably living off welfare."

"Well, that's the thing. Dallas checked on that, too. He couldn't find any evidence of that in the public records. What he did find," Jase continued when her delicate eyebrows drew together, "was that right up until the time she was killed, someone was making deposits into her bank account. Every month, just like clockwork."

He watched as she sat up a little straighter, gave a little shake of her head—like she was trying to make sense of this news. "From who?"

"That he couldn't find out. Whoever was making the deposits buried the paper trail deep and wide. Dallas ran into one dead end after another."

"So," she said after a long thoughtful pause, "someone was keeping my mother."

"Yeah," Jase agreed, hating the barren look on her face. "It looks that way."

"Someone who didn't want to be traced."

"So it would seem."

"Lemans?" she suggested after a moment. "Or whoever the hell that was at the bank?"

He nodded. "Possibly. And to add to the mix, the payments had increased substantially over the last six months."

"How substantially?"

"Doubled."

She shifted her weight, set her feet on the floor. "And you're thinking?"

He lifted a shoulder. "Maybe she convinced whoever it was that it would be in their best interest if they upped the ante."

He felt bad for Janey when she put it together. "You think she was blackmailing someone?"

"If I had to guess—and guesses are pretty much all we've got at the moment—yeah, blackmail's at the top of the list. It's one of the oldest motives for murder on the books."

Still absorbing and sorting, she ran a hand through her hair. "What about the car? Did he find out anything about her driving record?"

"Nothing. She was never involved in a vehicle-related accident."

She sniffed, sat back. "So, there goes the notion that someone might have used a Pontiac Lemans for retaliation."

"Pretty much, yeah. Look, Janey," he said, reluctant but determined it was time to tell her the rest. "There's more."

"It's bad," he added, and watched her physically brace herself. "Those names ... the four women on the list?"

"You found them?"

"Dallas found them." He'd located the fourth woman just this morning. Jase met her eyes. "They're dead. All four of them."

Her face drained of all color. "Oh, God. When?"

"Within a couple days of your mother."

She swallowed, closed her eyes. "H-... how?"

"At first glance it appears they were all accidents. But like I said last night, there's no such thing as coincidence. We figure there's a good chance they were murdered."

"Like my mother." Her voice was so soft he barely heard her.

She rose, hugging herself, and walked toward the dormant fireplace as if she were turning toward it for heat despite the July night. "Jesus.
Jesus.
What kind of an animal goes around killing people at will?"

It killed him to see her so tormented. And he wasn't finished with his grisly revelations yet. He rose. Went to her. Turned her into his arms.

"You need to be strong, now. Because it gets worse."

She stiffened, stopped breathing.

There was nothing for it but for him to tell her.

"Janey... they found Sanders. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, sweetheart." He hugged her hard against him. "He's dead."

When Jase woke up, it was dead-of-night black. He was stretched out on his side on the leather sofa. Janey was wrapped in his arms.

And he knew instinctively that he was the only one who'd been sleeping. He kissed her temple, then pressed his forehead there. "How you doing?"

"I'm okay," she whispered. "Go back to sleep."

He yawned, stifled a whole body stretch, and shook the cobwebs out of his head. "I'm good. Just needed a little combat nap."

And she was going to need a shrink before this was all over, Jase thought when she turned onto her side to face him, wedging her knee between his thighs and snuggling close.

Her knees had buckled after he'd told her about Sanders. That was how they'd ended up on the sofa. He'd laid her down and wrapped himself around her, then reluctantly answered the rest of her questions.

Sanders's body had been found in an alley not far from the hotel. His throat had been cut.

If she had cried, Jase wouldn't have been as worried about her as he was. But she hadn't cried. Not one tear. She'd just started trembling. Trembling so hard he'd been afraid she'd splinter into a million little pieces.

So he'd held her. Just held her. And then he'd had the balls to fall asleep. While she'd been wide awake hurting.

Some hero he was.

"It's okay to cry, Janey," he said, stroking her hair.

"It won't solve anything. It won't bring my mom back. Or Neal. And it won't make this all go away."

"No. But the release might do you good."

"This is doing me good." She tilted her head back so he could see her face. "Feeling you. Being held by you."

How did a man fight words like that? How did a man deny the implied request? How did he resist the "please make love to me" look in her somber brown eyes?

Maybe a better man could. This one couldn't. This one didn't want to.

He lowered his head to hers. Kissed her. With less fire than feeling. With more emotion than need.

He undressed her slowly then. Learned things about her body in the candlelight that he hadn't taken time to appreciate in the dark.

Learned with his lips that the twin dimples on her lower back were sensitive, that licking her there made her shiver. Learned that the skin on the inside of her upper arm was baby soft, that the tiny strawberry birthmark on the inside of her thigh tasted sweet.

He kissed her face. Kissed her throat. Kissed every part of her that needed special attention. Beneath her eyes. Between her breasts. Around the bruises on her ankle.

And then he made love to her with his mouth. Soft and gentle. Easy and slow. Building her pleasure with each calculated glide of his tongue over her clitoris. Heightening her sensation with finesse instead of speed, with giving instead of greed. He took his time with her, made it all about her as he guided her over the top in a slow and sensual ride that had her melting into his mouth and destroying him with the sensual abandon in which she let him take her.

So. This really was love, he thought as he held her afterward and her heart beat like crazy against his chest.

This was love.

Now he just had to figure out what to do about it.

S
unday, July 23rd

Janey woke up in bed. Alone. Feeling relaxed and limp as a noodle and a little sore between her legs.

Blissfully sore,
she thought with a dreamy smile, remembering the way Baby Blue had made love to her last night.

Remembering and aching to have him love her that way again. And knowing what had provoked him to be the way he'd been. So tender and giving. So unrelentingly determined to destroy her with the most exquisite pleasure she'd ever experienced.

Just sex?

"I don't think so, Baby Blue," she said aloud as she tossed back the covers and headed for the shower in the master bath.

Time, she told herself, would tell. He wasn't much for words, this man who was determined to keep his distance but just couldn't seem to make that happen. He cared about her. Had reached out to her when she'd been hurting—over Neal's death. Over the disaster that was suddenly her life.

In the meantime, she could wait him out. Wait for him to figure out what she already knew. He loved her. He couldn't make love to her like that if he didn't. Yeah, she could wait. And think about all the things he made her feel.

It beat thinking about Grimm, she thought as the hot water stung the cuts on her ankle.

But think about him she did as she dressed and headed downstairs, tensing up again over the prospect of what disaster this day had in store for them.

He bellied down on the rise overlooking the log lodge and focused the binocs.

First-class digs,
he thought, ignoring the biting pain in his shoulder. Ignoring the blood that had started seeping from the dressing.