Desire & Ice: A MacKenzie Family Novella (The MacKenzie Family) Page 6

  “‘Cause if they run into each other when she’s got a shovel on her, the guys will assume Eliza stole the money no matter what she says.”

  “If there even is any money buried on that property.”

  “So he sent her out here to die,” Danny growled. “That fucking son of a bitch literally sent her out here to get killed.”

  “That’s what it looks like… Hey, Danny…”

  But it was too late. He’d kicked the stack of firewood and sent half of it rolling across the cabin floor like bowling balls. Cooper held up his hands and bowed his head, as if Danny’s fury had taken the form of a cloud that needed time to fill the cabin briefly before it vaporized.

  “You good?” Coop finally asked.

  “One sec.”

  He picked up one of the pieces of firewood he’d knocked over and threw it at the opposing wall so hard it cracked into two pieces before it hit the floor.

  “Now I’m better,” he said, but he sounded like a fire-breathing dragon trying to master English. “I don’t suppose Lance actually confessed to all of this.”

  “He did. To his new girlfriend. The one who was going to flee the country with him. The same one who made the mistake of selling topless photos of her high school friends to some guys on the Internet who were not in high school.”

  “So the girlfriend’s singing to avoid child porn charges?”

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  They just stood there for a while.

  “You’re a good deputy, Danny. But I’ve kept you clear of the kind of work my cousins do, ‘cause this is what it’s like. Brushes with pure evil. That kind of thing, it’ll change you, for sure. You can’t control that. But you can control how it changes you. So try looking on the bright side. That’s my recommendation. Yes, Lance Laughlin turned out to be a murderous bastard with no conscience, but he also got hit with some of the worst luck of any criminal on the planet. And that’s proof of a hopeful universe, if you ask me.”

  “I understand, Sheriff.”

  “And you and Eliza are still alive. That’s the most important thing.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “FBI’s got agents on their way here soon as the storm clears out for good and the airstrip in Myrna Springs opens again. In the meantime, they’ve asked us to start digging on the Laughlin ranch to see if this money even exists. You’re coming back to the station with me. FBI wants to put Eliza on the phone and have a conversation with her. Only good side of that is that they’ll have to break this news to her instead of us.”

  “So I can’t tell her anything?”

  “Not yet, no. But you can be there when she finds out.”

  “I understand, Sheriff.”

  “One thing’s for sure. Lance Laughlin is one of the baddest apples Surrender’s ever produced.”

  “I don’t supposed we can blame him on Los Angeles.”

  “To be honest, I don’t suppose we can blame him on any place in particular, much as I’d like to.”

  It seemed like they were finished, but Cooper stayed in the door, giving Danny a long, cool once-over.

  “Long night here in this cabin,” he said. “What did y’all get up to?”

  “You mean aside from staying alive?”

  “Yes. Aside from staying alive.”

  Danny couldn’t meet the sheriff’s gaze.

  “All right,” Cooper said. “Well, congratulations, kid. But know this. You may think you were big guns last night. But the time to show her what a man you are is now, soon as this news washes over her like a tidal wave. And trust me. Keeping her from drowning in it isn’t going to be easy and it’s going to take every ounce of grown-up you got.”

  7

  Even over the phone the Feds were bossy as hell.

  They’d asked everyone to leave the room, except for Eliza and Cooper, which had left Danny hovering outside. The room in question was Coop’s personal office, thanks to a town council that had twice blocked funding for the type of interrogation rooms you saw on T.V. shows.

  He figured he should count his blessings.

  Being forced to stand outside a closed, solid door while dispatch fielded calls about downed power lines and escaped livestock probably wasn’t so bad, all things considered. Watching Eliza’s emotional destruction through a one-way mirror without being able to take her in his arms might have been a form of torture on par with waterboarding.

  So he put his best game face on and ignored the curious looks the dispatcher kept giving him in between calls. Hopefully Deputy Greyson would be back soon. Greyson wouldn’t give him any shit about what he’d done, that was for sure. Just a few feet from Danny was the jail cell where Greyson had gotten down and dirty with an old flame he’d taken into custody, an old flame to whom he was now married.

  Still, being separated from Eliza filled Danny with fear. Like Lance Laughlin’s dark energy might somehow reach through the sheriff’s phone and spirit her away for good.

  When the door popped open and Coop stepped out, every muscle in Danny’s body tensed. He locked eyes with his boss and mentor, heard again the challenge the man had issued him before they’d left the hunting cabin.

  “You’re up,” Coop finally said.

  Now’s the time to prove you’re all grown up, he thought.

  He stepped past Coop and into the tiny office.

  The last time he’d seen a woman this wrecked was the day after his father had walked out on them for good and he’d come across his mother, sitting by herself in the living room, staring past the wedding photo she was holding loosely in both hands.

  Eliza sat on the edge of her chair, arms resting on the front of Coop’s desk, staring vacantly at the opposite wall. There were no tears in her eyes. This frightened Danny even more. Tears he knew how to handle. Scoop her up. Take her in his arms, whisper assurances into her sweet-smelling hair. That was how you dealt with tears.

  This was something altogether different. A blend of anger and darkness that threatened to take Eliza away from him, away from everyone, for a very long time.

  “Did you know?” she asked.

  “Coop told me back at the cabin. But the Feds wanted us to stay quiet until they talked to you.”

  “I understand,” she whispered.

  Danny took a seat. It didn’t help. Settling into the sheriff’s chair made him feel like he was just playacting at this whole grown up thing.

  He reached across the desk and placed a hand over hers. She closed her eyes. But he couldn’t tell if she was savoring his touch.

  He hoped so.

  God, he hoped so.

  “Listen, I know I talk too damn much, but I need to tell you a story. It’s partly a story about why I talk so damn much, but I wouldn’t be telling it if I didn’t think it would help.” Don’t tell her how to feel, he thought. Not right now. “If I didn’t want it to help, I mean.”

  Eliza nodded, but she was staring at the empty desk. She adjusted her hand just enough so that she hooked one of his fingers in between her own.

  “I’m the reason my father left when I was fourteen,” he said. “Well, not really. I mean, I’m not the reason he was driving truckloads of drugs over the Canadian border for the del Fuego cartel. But I’m the reason my mother found out about it, and I’m the reason he ran. See, he had two cell phones. One for us and his job with Rawley Beamis. The other was for the del Fuegos. And one day, I saw the second phone and I said something to my mom about it. That was all.

  “I had no idea what he was up to. I just thought it was strange that he had two phones, is all. And I thought it was something Mom should know. Like maybe there was another woman or something. Anyway, once I asked the question, Mom turned around and started asking him questions and that’s when he ran. That’s when he picked drug money over us.”

  He had her full attention now.

  “So for a week I blamed myself. I was the reason he ran. If I’d just kept my big mouth shut, he’d still be at home. He’d still be her husband and
he’d still be my dad. I mean, people had always told me I talked too much so it made perfect sense, didn’t it? Danny’s big mouth blows it yet again. So I just stopped talking altogether. I held my momma while she cried but I barely said anything cause it was me saying too much that had caused all this pain in the first place.”

  Eliza shook her head to protest.

  Danny held up his free hand to stop her.

  “Finally, Momma backed me to the wall and asked me why I was being so quiet. And I just exploded. I broke down into tears and told her everything I was feeling. How I thought I was responsible for it all. I told her I was never going to speak again. That I’d speak only when spoken to. That I’d stop asking so many questions and having opinions about stuff. I swore it up and down the living room while she listened to me cry. I must’ve swore it a dozen times.

  “Then, once I’d managed to calm myself, she told me something I’ll never forget. She said my father was a bad man and bad men use your goodness against you. They take what you do to help others and they use it for their own bad ends, and when they walk away, leaving you destroyed inside, they count on you feeling like your goodness was to blame. Like your goodness was just a weakness and you should have known better. What destroyed my family was that my father decided to run drugs for the del Fuego cartel. And when we found out the truth, he chose them over us. Period. End of story.

  “And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I never kept my pledge. I never stopped asking all sorts of questions and I never stopped having opinions and I never stopped trying to talk my way to the truth of the matter. Because my mother told me I couldn’t. Because my mother told me I wasn’t allowed to let my father break me like that. To let his crimes break me like that.”

  The story had earned him her full attention. But there wasn’t pity in her eyes, thank God. Instead, she was regarding him as an equal, as someone who shared in her pain without lecturing her about it or dismissing it or trying to call it something other than what it was—pain. And only now did he realize she’d taken his hand in hers while he’d talked. Now her grip was firm.

  “Good,” she whispered.

  “Yes, that’s good, and what’ll also be good is if you don’t allow yourself to think for one moment that you were almost killed last night because you were too trusting or too helpful, or just too determined not to see anyone get killed, even if that person was your ex-husband. What happened last night to you, to us, happened because Lance Laughlin is a criminal and he was determined to do whatever he could to cover his tracks and leave the country. It didn’t happen because you’re weak. It didn’t happen because you cared too much. It didn’t happen because you opened your heart and loved him once.”

  Now the tears slipped easily from her eyes. She closed her hand around his and gripped it firmly.

  “Truth is I’ve only been on the job a year, Eliza. I’ve never fought in the military, and the most violent offenders I’ve dealt with up close are drunk and disorderlies and pissed-off horses. So I don’t have some big wise speech to give you about the evils I’ve seen with my own two eyes. I only have my own story, my own past. So just know that if I’d kept my pledge to my mother that night, if I’d stopped asking questions and barging my way into things with my mouth in the lead, I never would have gone up there last night, and if I hadn’t gone up there then…”

  “I’d be dead,” she whispered.

  Three simple words, but they unleashed the full force of her pain and sadness. He rose, pulled the empty chair in front of the desk up close to hers and took her in his arms. The fight went out of her body. She wilted against him as the sobs shook her.

  “But you’re not,” he said after a while. “You’re not dead.”

  At these words, she held him tighter, as if the feel of him was the best confirmation of this fact.

  8

  “Where you headed, mister?” Eliza asked.

  Danny had just tucked her into his bed, but now he seemed eager to leave her alone. One hand on the bedroom door, he turned and looked at her through the flickering shadows. While she’d showered, he’d lit some scented candles throughout his tiny house—maybe pumpkin spice, but she wasn’t sure––and drawn the window shade.

  His place was tiny and he’d been too busy during the run-up to the storm to haul the pieces of his outdoor gym inside, so when the two of them had walked through the backyard, they’d found his free weights and benches iced over like something out of a horror movie about the end of the world. Inside, however, the one-bedroom house was spotless and quaint, in that way that straight men try to make things quaint. By hiding their mess in drawers and hanging small family photos in random spots along the walls.

  Now, after a shower and changing into some boxers and a T-shirt he’d given her, she was snuggled into the warmest and most comfortable bed she’d ever experienced. But she wasn’t sure what made it feel that way—the awful night she’d had, or that it was Danny’s bed.

  “Thought I’d shower,” he said. “Give you some time to rest.”

  “I slept most of the night. You’re the one who needs some rest.”

  “Still. I wasn’t sure if…”

  “Wasn’t sure if what?” she asked.

  He bowed his head, blinked, trying to find his words, a series of moves that made him seem both innocent and chivalrous.

  “I don’t want to sleep alone, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Okay,” he answered. “Okay. Sure.”

  “But I do want to sleep. I mean, I probably need to sleep some more. You certainly need to sleep, that’s for sure.”

  “Sure. Right.”

  “Take a shower, Danny. Then come get in bed with me.”

  “Sure,” he answered, only this time the word didn’t come out sounding robotic.

  Soon FBI agents would arrive in Surrender with more questions. Soon she’d have to dig up the entire sad story of her marriage for a room full of impassive government men. Or at least she thought they’d be all men and she thought they’d look impassive because that’s how it always was in the movies, and right now movies were the only frame of reference she had for a situation this insane.

  But those were worries for tomorrow or the next day. In the meantime, the agents had made it clear that Lance was going down, and they had his new girlfriend to thank for that.

  Today was about Danny’s bed, and Danny. Today was about imagining what Danny looked like in the shower as water sluiced down his hard, young body.

  Maybe she should join him. Had he refrained from joining her under the spray moments before because he thought she wasn’t ready to be touched?

  She did want to be touched.

  Hard.

  Shameful! Just shameful to be thinking such lustful thoughts in this moment. She should be devastated, destroyed. Tearing the room apart in a rage. She’d almost died, after all. Worse, she’d almost been murdered.

  Emphasis on almost, thanks to the gorgeous young man showering a few feet away.

  Was she obligated to be upset? Was she obligated to ignore her attraction to Danny for at least another twenty-four hours? If so, that just seemed like another win for her bastard ex. And if the answer to those questions was no, that left her with another dilemma.

  Was she using her desire for Danny as a distraction and nothing more?

  He probably wouldn’t mind if that was the case. But she would.

  The more she thought about it, the more the answer to her question seemed implicit in the phrasing she’d just used.

  Desire.

  Being an English teacher for years had taught her one incontrovertible fact.

  No matter what the dictionary said, everyone had their own personal definitions of the words they used. And for her, desire was more than lust; it was more than hunger or passing fancy. Desire was what you felt for the man under the muscles when he did something more than ask you to follow him on Instagram.

  Desire was what you felt when a man used his muscles to save yo
ur life.

  Desire was what she felt for Danny Patterson right now as he stepped into the bedroom, a towel wrapped around his waist, the hard ridges of his torso glistening with droplets of water.

  Yes, it was a young body—a young, hard body that would have made most of her girlfriends squeal—but most men twice his age weren’t capable of doing the things he’d done for her these past twenty-four hours. Not because those things required stamina or physical strength. They’d required courage, a level of courage that had nothing to do with age and everything to do with character. And if he’d just been some smooth, skinned hulk of muscle, she would have felt nothing for him in this moment. But the things he’d done for her, the risks he’d taken, the sacrifices he’d made, those things had stepped out of the shower with him and now electrified the air in the darkened, candle-lit bedroom.

  “Just need to get some clothes,” he said quietly.

  “No, you don’t.”

  He went still, straightening.

  “I wasn’t sure you…”

  “Wasn’t sure I’d what? Be in the mood?”

  “Something like that, yeah.”

  “After you saved my life? Lord, what do women usually make you do to win their affection? Wrestle grizzly bears in a pit of vipers?”

  “I hate snakes.”

  “Me too.”

  He started toward the bed, still holding the towel at one corner of his waist, steps slow and careful.

  “And I wouldn’t know anything about other women,” he said.

  “Don’t tell me you’re a virgin.”

  She wasn’t sure if the idea frightened her or thrilled her. She’d never taken a man’s virginity before, unless, of course, you counted the man who’d taken her own, a nervous high school boyfriend. And it hadn’t felt like either of them was taking much of anything, per se. More like they’d just sort of bumped into each other in the dark and ended up sweaty and confused. Kind of like stumbling into someone in a haunted house only to discover they were another frightened visitor and not one of the actors dressed as psychotic clowns.