Falling Hard and Fast Read online

  The note in his voice might have been derision. Her gaze streaked to his. She could see nothing but humor glinting in his eyes. She decided in the next instant that it was as insulting as the emotion she’d expected to see there.

  “Unlike some of your plots, there isn’t a conspiracy involved here, a sinister family secret or a mad relative with a sharp ax living in a crawl space. Janice Reilly’s death was tragic and senseless. But it doesn’t mean our citizens are at risk.” He raised a hand to halt the questions poised on her lips. “I’m not at liberty to give you details. But what we’ve learned so far leads us to believe that she was probably killed far away from Charity.”

  He let the post take more of his weight and slipped his hands into his pockets, surveying her expression. The lady was a tough sell. She was too smart, too…distrustful, to take anybody’s word at face value. He wondered what had happened to her to make her so unwilling to believe in another. And he wondered if she realized that her no-nonsense words were robbed of their effect when uttered in that smoky voice of hers.

  “I guess the real reason I’m here is to ask you a favor, Miss Prescott.” He indulged himself by watching interest and wariness war in her eyes, and betting on which would win.

  “What kind of favor?” It was caution threading through the words, and he gave himself a mental pat on the back for his accurate prediction.

  “Just that you help my department do a little damage control. If you hear talk about the murder in town, change the subject. Or better yet, you could bring up the information about the murder occurring somewhere else. Yeah,” he mused aloud. “That would be real helpful to the department.”

  The man was as transparent as glass. “Would I need to be deputized for these duties?” The flash of those masculine dimples sent her pulse into a fast skitter, proving that Alan had only dulled her response to men, not killed it. Under the circumstances, it wasn’t a realization that gave her any pleasure.

  “No, ma’am.”

  She watched with more interest than she would admit as he raked a careless hand through the thick blond hair at his nape, which had a tendency to curl in the humidity.

  Then that trademark smile bumped up in wattage. “But it sure would be helpful to the department, Miss Prescott. And you’d have my appreciation.”

  “Your appreciation notwithstanding,” she answered wryly, “I think I’ll pass.”

  He nodded, as if her words didn’t surprise him. “Okay. It’s not really your job, after all. My men and I will keep spreading the word ourselves.” He pushed away from the porch post. “Don’t be surprised if people are less willing to talk to you in a few days. About the murder, that is. It won’t be anything personal, you understand.” Turning, he started down her steps.

  She regarded his wide shoulders blankly for a moment before saying, “Wait. What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He faced her again, propped a foot on the first step. “Just that I was serious about calming fears in the parish. You’ve refused to help us out, but other folks won’t. I’ve known most of these people all my life. When I ask some of them to refrain from talking about the murder anymore, they’ll agree.”

  It may have been couched in the most genial of terms, but she knew exactly what he was saying. The warning had her angling her chin. “You mean you’ll tell people to stop talking to me.”

  The hurt look that settled over his face was too innocent to be entirely genuine. “Now there you go, taking this personal. I just told you—”

  She started down the steps and stopped when they were eye to eye, fighting an urge to seat him in the dirt. When she was pushed, even indirectly, it was her nature to push back. “I heard what you told me, Sheriff. And more, I heard what you meant. You’re going to use the fact that I’m a stranger in town to get the people to close ranks. Pretty slick. You’ll still get exactly what you want.”

  Damn. He almost shook his head in admiration. She was as quick as she was pretty, reading him as easily as a dime-store novel. If he didn’t have a ironclad aversion to falling too hard, too fast, she’d already have reduced him to a puddle of hormones. His fingers itched for the cigar. Even if he couldn’t smoke it, holding it would provide a welcome distraction for his hands.

  “Now, don’t go thinking folks won’t still be neighborly. They’ll just be a bit more careful about what they talk to you about.” He hesitated a beat before adding, “But since you’re not part of the media, that really won’t matter much to you, will it?”

  He paused just long enough to watch the simmer in her eyes turn into a smolder, before turning toward his car. He could feel her eyes stabbing his back with every step he took. As he drove away he reflected on the damn shame of that.

  They really were beautiful eyes.

  Zoey sat in the darkness on the front porch and reveled in the slight breeze flirting with her hair. When the heat in Chicago turned beastly, she’d never thought twice about cranking the air conditioner up to glacial and waiting out the high temperatures in the comfort of her apartment. The humidity in Louisiana made Chicago seem balmy by comparison. Yet here she was, sitting in the dark, taking pleasure in the first cool breath of air to move through the area in days. She supposed it had something to do with small-town living. It wouldn’t have been safe to sit outside at night in Chicago, at any rate.

  The fact that she felt safe doing so now, here, despite a murder victim recently having been found in the vicinity was a bizarre testimony to the change she’d been undergoing since coming to Charity. It certainly had nothing to do with her faith in a certain underhanded backwoods sheriff.

  The thought of Cage Gauthier had her spine straightening in the glider she’d bought at the town’s only department store. Since he’d come to her house three days ago she’d seen him from a distance, once in his car driving through town, and another time driving by here. On both occasions he’d waved a greeting she’d ignored. She wasn’t over being irritated with the man.

  It had quickly become apparent that he’d lost no time doing as he’d warned. Each time she went to town, whether it was to shop or to get something to eat at the quaintly named Stew ’N Brew diner, she witnessed the effects of his handiwork. The residents were still friendly, still curious, but it was tempered with a guardedness that was new. Even the loquacious twins were tight-mouthed about any questions she might put to them regarding the murder, and she cursed Cage Gauthier each time it happened. By using her, he’d managed to accomplish exactly what he’d set out to do—quell the gossip that kept the fear fresh, the rumors alive. Although on one level she might have admired his ingenuity, on another she damned him for his tactics.

  She stretched her legs out in front of her and enjoyed the way the slight breeze molded the short silk nightgown against her skin. Not that there hadn’t been a wealth of information shared during each of her trips to town. A newcomer was just too tempting an audience. She’d heard that Edie Hadley’s hair color owed more to her gal at the Beauty Mark than to Mother Nature. Ben Whitley was suspected of fooling around with the widowed teacher at the elementary school. And Josie McCall over at the Gas and Go had been divorced three times and was on the lookout for husband number four. Rumor had it that Josie had inherited her daddy’s thick head of hair and restless eyes.

  Zoey had listened to the litany of information with something akin to horror. The anonymity of big-city living had a few advantages that she’d never before considered. At least she hadn’t had to contend with the entire city knowing all the humiliating details of the disaster with Alan. She valued privacy too much to easily understand the way people here swapped personal tidbits about each other’s lives with the casual intimacy of lifelong acquaintances. And although the thought of having that beam of gossip directed at her made her shudder, she couldn’t deny an unwilling fascination for each new experience in Charity. That same small-town atmosphere was currently blooming in her novel.

  An insect droned near her bare shoulder, and she waved it away languidly. Th
ere had been one fact she’d gleaned that had sparked her interest. Actually, it had nearly caused her to reach for the antacids she still carried in her purse. The cozy little house she’d rented had promptly lost some of its charm when she’d heard the news.

  Cage Gauthier was her nearest neighbor.

  Her lip jutted out in a cross between a sneer and a pout. She really shouldn’t have been surprised. She’d long ago accepted that God couldn’t resist the opportunity for irony. It would be a long time before Cage’s high-handed actions would cease to rankle. Longer still before she let herself be blinded by a super sampling of half-baked charm wrapped up in an attractive package. Not even to herself would she admit just how attractive a package he made.

  She heard the car before she saw it. The uneven sound of its engine was punctuated by an occasional backfire. Peering through the darkness, she watched as the vehicle drew closer to her house, and then slowed.

  It wasn’t a car, after all, she finally observed, but a pickup truck. An old one, from the sounds of it—one that seemed filled to overflowing with men.

  Silently she rose and slipped into the house. She shut and locked the door before moving to the front window and pulling aside the curtain. She couldn’t see well enough to determine how many men there were, but judging from the hollering going on, all of them had been imbibing freely. Letting the curtain drop back into place, she headed to her bedroom upstairs.

  As she slipped between the crisp cotton sheets, she heard a loud whoop and an engine gunned. Grimacing, she directed the fan standing next to the bed toward her and turned it on. Some good ol’ boys were going to have pounding heads in the morning, she imagined. She only hoped the pain they suffered was as obnoxious as their behavior tonight.

  Somewhere between dozing and slumber, the first sound rang out, rousing her. Blinking groggily, she rolled over, trying to disentangle dream from reality. The second sound had her sitting straight up in bed, confusion fading. Then the noises came in rapid succession.

  Gunshots.

  Even as she sprang from the bed and pulled on jeans and a shirt, a more rational part of her mind took over. She’d been living in the city for far too long if she was automatically assuming that the sounds were gunfire. They could be fireworks, or, or… Her usually fertile imagination ran dry.

  Pounding down the stairs, she ran barefoot to the front door and looked out. The splinter of moon shed little light in the dark sky, but she could see that the street in front of her house was empty. She hadn’t expected otherwise. The shots, or whatever the noises would prove to be, hadn’t sounded close enough to be coming from her yard.

  She went to the telephone and reached for the receiver, then groaned mentally, dropping her hand. Although she’d contacted the phone company the day she’d moved in, her phone had not yet been hooked up. She’d assumed that the service, like so much else in Charity, moved at a slower pace than in the rest of the world. It hadn’t been a problem until now.

  She scooped up her keys from the hallway table and opened the door. Running down the steps, she headed for her car. There was no way she could return to sleep without alerting the local law enforcement about the sounds she’d heard.

  Backing out of her drive, a thought formed in her mind and refused to be banished. Janice Reilly had died brutally, but not from gunshot wounds. Somehow, under the dark cover of the night, that thought failed to comfort her.

  It had been a waste of a fine cigar, Cage thought aggrievedly, surveying the damage to his home. He’d been on the front porch, feet propped on the railing, an icy beer in one hand and his nightly smoke in the other. He’d recognized the sound of that sickly engine even before he’d seen the truck. Caution had sent him into the house, flipping off the lights as he went by. Caution may have saved his life. Either that, or damn poor aim.

  The first bullet had taken him by surprise, but there had been no mistaking the sound it made, tearing through wood and plaster. Instinct had had him dropping to the faded rug and rolling across the room, in the direction of the holstered gun he’d unstrapped earlier and laid on the table.

  The volley of bullets had shattered the front window, raining him with shards of glass. When he’d reached his gun and unleashed some fire of his own, the truck had squealed out of his drive amid more shots and some high-pitched hollering.

  He reached an arm behind him awkwardly and pulled out a splinter of glass that protruded partway from his skin. His back felt on fire. No doubt there were countless tiny pieces to be picked out of it. He scowled at the thought. And he hadn’t even gotten to enjoy his one cigar of the day.

  Crossing to the telephone, he picked up the receiver and punched in some numbers. “Yeah, it’s Gauthier,” he said when Harriet, the night dispatcher, answered. “I had some trouble out here. Send a couple men.” He could feel the faintly sticky traces of blood crawling down his skin. “No, they’re gone. And if it’s who I think it is, they won’t be back.”

  Hanging up, he skirted the broken glass and headed to the kitchen to get himself a towel—and froze as he noticed the twin spear of headlights coming up his drive at a snail’s pace.

  Reversing direction, he scooped up the gun he’d laid next to the phone and padded silently into the dark dining room. He unlocked the door and slipped out onto the side porch, jumping nimbly over the railing and landing in the flower bed. He crept around the side of the house and paused. The car had shut off its lights, but no one had gotten out. Training he’d thought long dormant kicked in, and he dropped to his belly, approaching the vehicle at a crawl. If someone had come back to finish the job, he was in for a shock.

  He was a yard from the car when the driver’s side opened. He lunged to his feet and closed the distance in one smooth motion, clamping his arm around the driver’s neck and pressing his gun hard against the temple.

  “I never was much for surprises,” he murmured matter-of-factly.

  The hard body behind her, the pressure of what was surely a gun barrel to her head, had terror sprinting down Zoey’s back and pooling nastily at the base of her spine. It took a second for recognition to filter through the panic, another for the dam of relief to break.

  “I’ll remember to call before dropping in next time,” she managed shakily. Even before she’d completed the sentence she heard his muttered curse, then he was releasing her and stepping away.

  “What in hell are you doing here?”

  Temper, she noted, sharpened his words, made the drawl all but disappear. She faced him in the darkness, raised her chin. “I heard something that sounded like shots.”

  He snorted and half turned away in disbelief, before swinging back to her. “There was a good reason for that, sugar. They were shots. Which doesn’t explain why you decided to plant yourself right in the middle of the fray.”

  From the distance he heard a siren approaching and mentally groaned. He should have warned Harriet. That damned DuPrey was like a kid. He’d run a siren for a jaywalker, given the chance.

  “I knew they were gone. I saw the truck come out of your drive.”

  She had his interest now. “You saw the truck?”

  As two sheriff’s-department cars pulled into the drive, she gave him a rundown of what she’d observed outside her home. “I’m pretty sure it was the same truck that passed me on the road,” she concluded. “It’s hard to mistake the sound of that engine.”

  “You’re right about that. But next time leave the investigating to the professionals.”

  “My phone isn’t hooked up,” she said tartly. “It was either drive into town to report the shots or go back to sleep and ignore the fact that someone could be in danger. If I’d known that the someone was you, my decision might have been different.”

  The snooty tone was back. His mouth quirked unwillingly. He’d been the rock his mother and sister had leaned on for long enough to have acquired an appreciation for strong women. Something told him that the woman standing before him was finely forged steel. He didn’t know why th
e thought made him want to see just how deep that steel went.

  DuPrey and Fisher climbed out of their units, and Cage turned to face them. He heard her gasp and suddenly remembered what his back must look like. Not that he could forget for long. It felt as though an army of fire ants were marching across each spare inch of flesh.

  The headlights of the cars spotlighted the two of them, and the sight of that raw, angry skin sent a tremor through her. “You’ve been hurt.” Her hand lifted, almost reached him, before she snatched it back and tucked it in her jeans pocket.

  “Yeah, it was flying glass. Get me a wet towel, would you, honey?”

  She watched him saunter away, and just that easily, that casually, she was relegated to nursemaid. She didn’t know whether to laugh or snarl.

  Minutes later, she was doing neither. He sat on the porch steps giving his deputies instructions while she knelt behind him, wiping away blood. Most of the cuts were shallow, she was relieved to note, but there were a few that still had glass embedded in them. She didn’t dare try to remove them. Her nursing experience had been limited to soaking up blood and bandaging Patrick after his various mishaps.

  She tended to him silently. But when the two deputies got into their cars, the questions that had been bubbling just below the surface came tumbling out. “Who are the Rutherfords? Why are you so sure they’re behind this tonight? Did you see them?”

  He flexed his shoulders gingerly, flinched when he felt a sharp jab. She hadn’t gotten all the glass out yet. “Well, the fact is, sweetheart, I kind of fibbed to you a few days ago.”

  Her hands stilled, more from the term of endearment than from the confession. It occurred to her that she’d come a long way from “Miss Prescott” in the space of a few days. “Sugar,” “honey,” “sweetheart”—some men preferred endearments to going to the bother of remembering a woman’s given name. She scrubbed at a trace of blood more vigorously, causing him to release a hiss of breath.