Trespass (11 page)

He heard her huff out a breath and huffed one right back.
A big bed,
he thought.
Too big.
A constant reminder of how alone he’d been these last seven years.

“You’re turning me in tomorrow,” she said quietly.

He spoke against her shoulder. “Of course I am.”

“Please don’t.”

He sighed, trying to ignore the smell of her sweat and the impulse to run his tongue over her skin. He’d forgotten how a good fight got his blood pumping, but he still wanted to wring her neck ten times worse than he wanted to bang her brains out. Plus the sex… The sex hadn’t meant anything. Just a ploy to get Russ sympathetic. Which he’d been to start with. That boiled him—she’d screwed with his heart when she knew damn well she didn’t need to.

“Please.”

Russ adjusted his shoulders, gave his pillow a couple whacks. “I don’t have any choice. You messed with my dogs, you stole from me, did something to make one of my neighbors shoot at you…”
You fucked with my heart and gave me hope.
“You haven’t done a thing to earn my pity, sweetheart.”

Chapter Six

Sarah didn’t escape. She didn’t try, didn’t budge an inch through the night. Russ woke after a couple of restless hours’ sleep with a headache and an undiplomatic hard-on pressed against her warm backside. He pulled away, hoping she’d slept through his body’s traitorous advances.

Russ got about twenty seconds’ peace, long enough to stretch one side of his body and contemplate how to wake his prisoner. A shake? A poke? A gruff order? Then his phone beeped on the dresser, too early in the morning to be anything good.

He left the bed and pushed the Talk button. “Russ Gray.”

“Russ, it’s Jim from Holloway.”

“Of course. Morning, Jim.” Russ met Sarah’s half-mast eyes in a brief warning before he wandered to the kitchen to grab a pad and pen. The folks at the Holloway dairy farm had a sick cow, and Russ hung up with a promise to swing by in the next hour. He returned to the bedroom threshold as Sarah was pulling her tank top down her torso, facing away. There was a bruise on her arm where he’d grabbed her the night before, the purple fingermarks filling him with shame. She may well have earned his aggression, but he hated this evidence he’d deemed her worth getting that upset over.

He glanced around, seeking an escape…not from the room, but from this situation. The last time he’d been badly hurt, when the universe had seen fit to take his wife away, he’d gotten lost in a bottle for a long time. Russ couldn’t stand the taste of liquor now. It brought back memories of the four or five months he’d wasted being a coward, drowning in self-pity and dulled pain, putting off the mourning but not lessening it a jot. What he felt right now, staring at Sarah’s back with hurt churning in his gut, acid burning in his throat… Well it felt damn close to a hangover. And now he thought about it, her eyes sure looked a damn lot like whiskey.

She pulled her second shirt on, turned and started to find him watching. “Morning,” she mumbled.

“We’re heading out now. I have to swing by and do a job on the way to town, and you’ll have to come with me. You aren’t leaving my sight, understand?”

She shrugged and those eyes he’d seen lit up in his direction only twelve hours earlier seemed lifeless now, cold and dull. “Fine. Can I at least pee without an armed guard?”

Russ nodded and let her pass him to close herself in the bathroom. He could see the outside of the bathroom window from the den, and he kept his attention glued to it until she reemerged.

“Are we eating before we leave?” She trailed a hand over his dining room table. Russ fought off an urge to slap it away, to demand to know exactly where she found the gall to touch his things or think she deserved feeding.

“They’ll give you something at the station,” he said coldly, and grabbed his medical case from the counter and ushered her out the front door. He locked up behind them and led to her to the truck, slammed the passenger door as she sat down and jogged to his side. He set his case behind the seat and slid the key from the ignition. “Stay here.”

He headed around back to check the dogs. Kit stood as he rounded the corner, looking dim but happy. Tulah was off at the edge of the field, entranced by something in the distance. He crouched to rub Kit’s head and kiss her between the ears before heading back to the truck.

He climbed in and started the engine. “Buckle up.”

Sarah did. “What sort of job are you going on?”

Russ paused, glared at the speedometer before lowering his forehead to the steering wheel. He let a long, toxic breath ooze from his chest and sat back in his seat. Turning to Sarah, he ignored the little sparks zapping his body—false familiarity, false attraction, false affection. All lies. He held her eyes for a moment, long enough to force himself to feel nothing but resignation. “I got no reason to talk to you.”

She swallowed, her gaze dropping to her hands. Russ immediately inventoried the surrounding area for an object she might want to bludgeon him with and reached beneath her seat for the ice scraper. He tossed it back into his side of the cab.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Russ.”

Too late.
“I wouldn’t put it past you.”

“You’re stronger than me. You’re faster than me. The law’s on your side. I’m desperate, Russ, but I’m not stupid.”

He put the truck in reverse, as though he might be able to speed away from here and escape the sound of his name in her voice and the longing it triggered, the embarrassment he felt to have ever thought it meant something. He turned the car onto the road.

“I won’t run,” she said. “I’ll ask you again…please don’t turn me in, Russ.”

“Quit calling me that.” He kept his eyes on the horizon, chest aching.

“Sorry.” She fell silent for a few minutes then spoke as they passed the border of Russ’s property. “If you let me go, I’ll make it up to you. I don’t know when, but I’ll send you money for everything you gave me…”

Russ’s simmering blood rushed to a boil.

“…the food—”

“Shut up.” He banged a fist on the dashboard, still staring straight ahead. “I don’t give a good goddamn about money.”

Her hands rubbed her thighs in Russ’s periphery. “I don’t know how else to try and make it up to you.”

“You make it up to me by getting the hell out of my life, that’s how.”

The temperature in the cab cooled perceptibly. “Fine.”

Russ sighed, the exhalation harsh and mean, not calming.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered.

“Sorry you got caught.”

“No, I’m sorry I hurt you.”

Russ rankled and tried to keep it hidden. “You didn’t hurt me. You just pissed me the fuck off.” They hit a patch of bad road, truck rattling over gravel for a half mile.

“You didn’t deserve to get jerked around by me,” she said, voice warbling with the bumps.

“You don’t say.”

“I wouldn’t have done it if I wasn’t really, truly screwed.”

What about me? Would you have done me if you weren’t really and truly screwed?

Sarah went quiet and Russ felt her change. She gave up bargaining with him and her posture slumped, broken. She leaned against the window as the wheat fields streamed by. To think Russ had been fantasizing about such a thing just the previous day—this face and body he’d already gotten attached to, beside him on such a journey. Well, a damn different journey here in reality. He’d imagined driving her into town, taking her for a beer at the bar and, yeah, showing her off to the people he knew. Instead, the sheriff’s station. He swore under his breath and turned the truck down the long drive toward the Holloway farm.

“Stay there,” he said as he parked. He switched off the engine and walked around to her side. He opened the door and took her hand. After grabbing his case he led her to the massive metal barn’s entrance, dropping her hand as Jim Ellis appeared in the threshold.

“Walk ahead of me,” Russ muttered to Sarah.

She cast him an annoyed glance and did as he ordered.

Russ nodded to Jim, the farm’s weekday manager. “Morning.”

“Morning, Russ. Thanks for coming so quick.” Jim turned his smile on Sarah, lifting his baseball cap from his thinning gray hair.

“This is Sarah. She’s been helping me the last couple days. Thinking about going into equine medicine.” Easier to lie than explain.

She put out her hand to accept Jim’s shake.

Jim grinned deeper, clearly intrigued. “Nice to meet you, Sarah. Any particular area of interest or—”

“We better take a look at that cow,” Russ cut in, sharing a panicky glance with Sarah, their first taste of unity since her disappearing act.

“Sure.” Jim led them into the vast barn past rows of cows hooked up to milking machinery. They walked to the far end to a separate paddock where the animal in question stood motionless. “I wouldn’t normally call you over like this, but it just hit her so fast. She looked fine last night. Now…”

Russ nodded, coming close to study the cow’s streaming nostrils and glassy eyes.

“It’s nothing I ain’t seen before, but then I said that last winter about one of our girls, and she up and died, overnight,” Jim said.

Russ nodded. “I remember. Better safe than sorry. You can go ahead and carry on with your work. I’ll see if I can get you a diagnosis.”

“You holler if you got questions.” Jim headed back to tend to the farm’s operations.

Some kind of flu, Russ guessed. He turned the cow’s head this way and that, assessing her symptoms and the nasty color of its discharge. Infection, but not a terrible one, he decided. It was a relief to have this distraction, to let Sarah’s presence by his side slip lower on his list of worries. He got his case open and took out a small vacuum and found an outlet for it, pulled a hose over from the corner. He disinfected the vacuum’s long probe and set to work clearing the cow’s nasal passages so she could breathe easier. He took a sample to have checked later for any serious signs of trouble.

Behind Russ’s shoulder, Sarah cleared her throat. “Can I help with anything?”

He opened his mouth, poised to be gruff, then he turned and caught the look in her eyes—pure, agendaless concern. “No, it’s fine. Or actually…” He paused his task, crouching to wet a fresh cloth with water and handing it to her. “You can wipe that crusty stuff around her eyes. Just be gentle.”

“I will.”

Russ watched her as the little vacuum did its job and saw how the task calmed her. He’d seen that fleeting, placid quality in her before, the times she’d helped him around his place. He didn’t know what she’d been through before she’d turned up on his doorstep, but it was something that made her crave an assignment, a distraction. He knew that desire well, himself. Productivity was still his drug of choice years after he’d swapped a bottle for it.

“That’s a nice job you’re doing,” he said softly.

She kept her gaze on the cloth. “What’s wrong with her? Anything serious?”

“Bit of an infection is all, far as I can tell, though I’ll want to rule out anything exotic. She’ll be fine once she can breathe a little better and I get some antibiotics into her.”

Sarah nodded, patting the cow’s neck. “What’s her name? Do you know?”

Russ craned his neck to check the number branded to her flank. “One-two-six-two-oh-two.”

“Oh.” Her lips quirked to a frown. “How depressing.”

“You can name her something else, if you want,” Russ offered.

Those honey-colored eyes met his. “Why? Because I’m so good at making up names?” There was no combat behind the words, merely sadness…apology with only the slightest bitter edge to it.

“Nope. Just thought you might want to.”

She looked back to the patient, giving the tuft of hair on the cow’s head a combing with her fingers. “Nah. She’d never know the difference, anyhow.”

Russ wondered if Sarah had the same vision he did then—her own number stenciled onto a prison uniform, if that’s what the future held for her. Strange. Russ had always had a subconscious idea of what a criminal looked like, and it wasn’t this woman. This
girl
. Twenty-seven and possibly about to have her life taken away, reduced to a string of digits, perhaps another sort of label—
burglar,
maybe. But no…something worse, he bet. Something worth running from.

He finished with the vacuum, gave the cow an injection and counted out pills into a bottle for Jim to administer later. Russ and Sarah found him tending to some machinery.

“How’s she lookin’, doc?”

“I’m near positive it’s a sinus infection, but I’ll send a sample to the lab this afternoon, to be safe. I’m sure she’ll be okay, though. Should perk up by tomorrow. Keep her on her own for a couple days, and give her one of these every night and every morning ’til they’re gone.” He handed over the pill bottle.

“Will do. Thanks for coming so quick.”

“Not a problem. We were headed into town anyhow. You call me straightaway if she gets any worse.” Russ shook Jim’s hand and Sarah followed suit.

“Good luck with your studies, young lady.” Jim tipped his brim again. He dug in his pocket and came out with a business card. “You ever get sick of horses and have any questions about the dairy business, you give me a call.”

She studied the card and tucked it in her jeans. “Thanks.”

They tendered their goodbyes and Russ led Sarah into the bright fall sunshine. Without speaking they climbed into the truck and Russ got them back on track, just fifteen miles between here and the end of the road. The end of Sarah’s road, anyhow, the end of Russ’s worry. He’d be able to draw a line under this whole debacle and get busy forgetting it’d ever happened.

“You know,” he said as they neared the town line, “I hope things go okay for you. You know, as okay as possible, given whatever it is you’ve done.”

She nodded, her focus on the horizon.

“No harm no foul, about my stuff. Or the dogs.”

“Sure.”

Russ’s chest tightened, a feeling he couldn’t quite identify clenching his heart. Some kind of sadness. Sad he’d gotten his hopes up only to have them dashed, sad for this woman stuck in the situation she was, sad for what her future held. Sad for his own future, back to how it’d looked just a few days before—steady and busy, yet empty. The truck trundled off the gravel and onto faded, cracked pavement, civilization. He drove them down the main street and into the parking lot of the little gray building where he and Sarah would become the stuff of each other’s memories.