Golden Trail

  Layne rounded the church and blacked out his headlights as he took the alley and entered the church parking lot from the back. He saw her Merc parked in the far corner under a tree. At least she’d parked smart, with the tree shrouding her car from light and her vehicle being black, you had to be looking to see it.

  He scanned the lot and the church and saw no Rocky.

  He parked by her car, unbuckled his seatbelt, leaned to his glove compartment and pulled out a Maglite and a pair of black leather gloves. Then he got out of his car, pulling on his gloves and walking through the parking lot like he, personally, owned the church and he found the side door slightly ajar. She hadn’t left it that way on purpose. The latch hadn’t caught when she slipped through.

  He opened the door just enough to steal through and stood still, no alarm, no beeps warning him to enter the code. He turned and saw the white of the security box by the door, the panel looking in the dark like it was hanging down. He flipped on his Maglite, shone it on the box, saw the panel was hanging down but didn’t see any wires protruding. He traced the door with his Maglite and found the sensors on the door, their wires intact. He leaned into the security box and saw the lighted display saying “unarmed”.

  How did she disable the alarm?

  He moved cautiously through the vestibule outside the sanctuary and remembered coming to this church with his mother. He hadn’t been there in years. He also remembered Rocky came to this church with Merry, Cecilia and Dave. And lastly, he remembered, when Cecilia died, Dave quit bringing the kids.

  He kept the Maglite pointed down but forward and made his way through the vestibule, saw it and stopped, flipping off the Maglite.

  There was a windowed room but the window was internal, no windows to the outside. Layne tried to remember and he thought it was an office, the windows facing into the vestibule. From it, a dim light shone.

  He moved there, around the corner to the opened door and saw Rocky sitting on a desk chair, a file in her lap, her head bowed over it, deep in concentration, her gloved hands moving the papers, a small Maglite between her lips.

  He felt at the wall and switched on the light.

  She let out a small scream and pushed back, rolling the chair across the small room and slamming against a filing cabinet, her head snapping back, the Maglite falling out of her mouth and clattering to the floor as she stared at him with lips parted, eyes huge.

  “Hey sweetcheeks,” he greeted.

  “What are you…” she swallowed, looked out the window into the vestibule then back at him. “What are you doing here!” she hissed.

  “Funny, that’s what I was gonna ask you.”

  She flipped the file shut and stood. “Layne, turn out the light!”

  “No windows to the outside, no one knows we’re in here, no one can see the light and I need it so I can see you when I throw you over my shoulder and,” he leaned forward and barked, “haul your ass outta here!”

  She jumped toward him and lifted a hand. “Keep your voice down!” she whispered.

  “Baby, no one knows we’re here!”

  “Okay, so keep your voice down because you’re freaking me out!”

  He leaned back and crossed his arms on his chest. “I know what wouldn’t freak you out, Roc, bein’ at home in your bed where you’re supposed to fuckin’ be.”

  “Layne –”

  “How’d you disable the alarm?” he asked.

  “Disable the alarm?” she asked back, looking confused and, fuck him, he was pissed but he had to admit she looked cute.

  “Yeah, Rocky, it’s a church but every place has shit to steal. This place has a security system. How’d you bypass it?”

  “I punched in the code,” she told him.

  He stared at her.

  Then he repeated, “You punched in the code.”

  “Well…” she said, “yeah.”

  “How’d you get the code?”

  “Layne –”

  “Are you not gettin’ that I don’t let shit go?” he asked. “How’d you get the code?”

  “Well…” she trailed off and looked into the vestibule.

  “Raquel,” he warned.

  Her eyes shot to him. “Okay, well, do you know Sharon Reynolds?”

  “Do I need to know her for this story to go faster?”

  Her eyes narrowed but she kept talking. “She works in the office here.”

  “And?” he asked when she didn’t go on.

  “And, she also works in the office at the school. She’s part-time for both.”

  “Ah,” Layne said, his head tipping back and his gaze hitting the ceiling.

  “Anyway,” Rocky said sharply and Layne’s eyes went back to her.“I remembered her complaining once that the pastor is a security freak and changes the alarm codes so often she never remembers them. She comes in every once in awhile when no one is around and has to punch them in and she’s gotten them wrong so many times and set off the alarm, now she writes them down and keeps them in her wallet.”

  “Reason one for the pastor to be a security freak and reason one to lose his office lady,” Layne noted.

  “Layne!” she snapped.

  “So, you got the code how?”

  “I, um…” She stopped and bit her lip.

  “Baby –”

  She interrupted him quickly. “When everyone in the office was at lunch, I went to her desk and got into her purse.”

  “Fuck me,” Layne whispered.

  “No one saw!” she cried.

  “Okay, how’d you get the door open?”

  “Shouldn’t we be, I don’t know, taking pictures of the personnel file or something?” she asked.

  He dropped his arms and took a step toward her.

  She took a step back, putting her hand up and saying quickly, “Okay!” She dropped her hand and explained, “Sharon’s always losing her keys. She’s famous for it. She leaves them everywhere. It’s crazy. So, um… while I was in her purse, I uh… kinda nabbed them.”

  Layne closed his eyes.

  “It’s okay,” she assured him and he opened his eyes. “She was going on and on this afternoon about how she,” Rocky tucked the file under her arm, lifted her hands and did air quotation marks, “lost her keys and tomorrow I’ll just,” she did air quotation marks again, “find them.”

  All right, it was safe to say he was done.

  “Rocky, what’d I tell you about this shit?” he asked.

  “Layne –”

  “Put the file back and get your ass to your car.”

  “Layne –”

  He leaned into her. “Do it or I carry your ass to your car.”

  “I think he’s doing something to the girls,” she whispered and Layne leaned back.

  “Come again?”

  She shook her head and stepped forward. “I heard it today, in the bathroom, two freshmen talking through the stalls. One of them is Alexis McGraw. She’s a pretty little thing but about twenty years older than she actually is. She comes to Youth Group here and I heard her bragging about sharing her gum with the Youth Minister.”

  “So?”

  “It had been chewed.”

  Oh fuck.

  “And they didn’t use their fingers when they handed it off,” Rocky finished.

  Damn.

  “Could she be lying?” Layne tried but not holding much hope in the attempt.

  Rocky took in a breath. “She’s older than her years and she’s dying to grow up and she’s obvious about being impatient for that to happen. So, yes, she could be telling tales but with that, and the rest of the stuff I’m hearing, I can’t sit on this but I also can’t start a witch hunt either if it’s just a bunch of overenthusiastic kids who really, really like Jesus.”

  Layne studied Rocky while his mind went over what he knew.

  That ‘burg was in the bible belt and religion was vital to that community but that didn’t translate to the roster of the Youth Group at the Christian Church that had been skidding by wit
h around ten or fifteen members for the last thirty years adding over fifty new recruits in the last six months, most of them girls.

  Fuck.

  Layne made a decision, turned to the copier just inside the door and switched it on.

  “What are you doing?” Rocky asked.

  He turned back to her and held his hand out for the file. “We could take pictures, sweetcheeks, but it’d take forever, the copies would suck and we got a copier right here. Hand me the file and see if they keep attendance records for Youth Group.”

  She stared at him a second, eyes wide. Then she gave him the dimple. Then she handed him the file and whirled around, her ponytail flying, and opened a filing cabinet drawer.

  * * * * *

  “I don’t see anything here,” Rocky noted and Layne looked at the back of her head.

  He was sitting on her couch sifting through Youth Group rosters and making note of names and how attendance wasn’t inching up, it was shooting up, the vast majority of new recruits female.

  Raquel was cross-legged on the floor beside his leg, head bent, the back of her neck exposed, an opened bottle of fancy-ass beer in front of her and she was reading through the personnel file on TJ Gaines, the Youth Minister.

  “You’re not gonna see anything, Roc, especially if it’s bogus, not until I run his shit through my systems at the office tomorrow,” he told her.

  Her neck twisted and her head tilted back to look up at him.

  “Do you think we should go back tomorrow night, set up camera surveillance or something?”

  Yep, she was cute.

  “No, we aren’t gonna do shit. I run him tomorrow, I find dirt or even that he lied on his application, I turn it over to Merry or Colt or Drew and they run with it.”

  “That’s it?” she asked, sounding disappointed.

  He grinned at her and somewhat lied. “Baby, on TV, they make my job look exciting. Most of the time it’s done either sittin’ at a computer or sittin’ somewhere else. The action man shit is a stereotype based on total fiction.”

  Her eyes dropped to his middle and, to hide what that said, she quickly turned and grabbed her beer, tipping her head back to take a sip.

  When she put it down she turned back to him and asked, “What if there isn’t any dirt?”

  “There isn’t any dirt, we go deeper.”

  “Cameras?”

  “Cameras are expensive, it’d take forever to set them up, I’d need the feeds to come into the office, I’m not set up to do that and I don’t have the cash to get set up so I’d need recording devices which are bulky, therefore hard to hide, and someone would have to go and collect the DVDs. Each time I go in, I court gettin’ caught. I’m good but the law of averages on that kind of operation are never on your side. And, I go that way, I got hours of DVDs to watch, most of the shit on ‘em not worth watchin’, and I don’t have hours to waste.”

  She turned her body toward him and rested her bent arm on the couch beside him. “So what do we do?”

  “Again, we don’t do shit, sweetcheeks. I’m workin’ this case because you’re worried and what I’ll do is send in undercover recruits.”

  Her brows shot up. “Undercover recruits?”

  Layne leaned down, reached around and grabbed her ponytail, giving it a gentle tug as he got close to her face. “Jasper or Tripp. I’m thinkin’ Tripp. He’d do good at bein’ a Jesus Freak. Not to mention, the Youth Group is filled with girls. He’ll be all over that.”

  Tripp would be all over that for the girls but mostly Tripp would be all over it because his old man asked him to do it and Layne would let it slip that it was a favor for Rocky.

  Her eyes got bright and she whispered, “That’s brilliant.”

  He let her hair go, handed her the rosters and she took them. “Your job is to look over those rosters and call me tomorrow with Tripp’s target.”

  “His target?”

  He nodded. “A girl, on those lists,” he tipped his head to the papers in her hand, “who’s been goin’ to Youth Group awhile. Not a new kid, someone who’s been around, could have seen things, heard things.”

  She nodded.

  Layne went on. “And she has to be open to Tripp. A shy or plain girl who’ll be flattered at attention from a kid on the football team.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not setting up some girl to –”

  He put his finger to her lips and she fell silent but he felt her lips part under his finger as he watched the intensity shift into her eyes.

  In about a week, or, hope to God, sooner, he’d kiss her after seeing her eyes get like that.

  Now, he took his finger from her lips.

  “I’ll coach Tripp, he won’t leave her high and dry. This is a friendly operation with no collateral damage.”

  She was still looking at him with that intensity in her eyes when she whispered, “Okay.”

  “Now, it’s late, baby. Go get me a pillow and a blanket and go to bed.”

  Her back went straight and she asked, “What?”

  “Get me a pillow and a blanket, I’m sleepin’ on your couch tonight.”

  She looked at the couch then at him. “Why?”

  “Because it’s after one in the morning, I’m wiped and you don’t have any security sensors on your doors.”

  She looked at the doors then at him. “But –”

  “Go get me a pillow and blanket.”

  “Layne, you live five minutes away. You could be wiped and still walk that far.”

  “All right, sweetcheeks, I can also walk as far as your bed. You got two choices, get me a pillow and a blanket or I walk upstairs to your bed.”

  “But –”

  “Three seconds.”

  “Layne!”

  “One.”

  “This is stupid,” she hissed.

  He started to get up. “Two.”

  “What about –?”

  “Three,” he pushed up further but she shot up, her hands going to his shoulders to press him down.

  When his ass was on the couch, she muttered, “I’ll go get a pillow and a blanket.”

  Then she whirled around and ran up the stairs.

  Layne watched her ass move as she did.

  Chapter Ten

  Your Boyfriend is Hot

  He felt her hands on him, her mouth on him, her hair gliding across his chest following her lips.

  They trailed up, then along his collarbone and his hands moved to her waist, down to her hips and in, over her ass as her lips went up his neck to his ear.

  “You need to get home to your boys, baby,” Rocky whispered.

  * * * * *

  Layne’s eyes opened.

  He was on his stomach on Rocky’s couch.

  He rolled to his back and he smiled.

  Then he rolled off the couch and stretched, looking out her huge-ass windows, the lights from the parking lot shining in, dawn not close but not far away.

  He bent and replaced the back cushions on the couch. He’d been right, he could sleep there and he did, like a log. The seat was wide, especially with the back cushions off, plenty of room. Enough, Rocky could stretch out with him to watch a game. He remembered she loved football, she loved basketball and she loved baseball. It was chick love, it was cute, but there was no denying she liked her sports.

  He turned to her stairs and went up, his bare feet silent on the steps. He’d taken off his boots, socks and tee and slept in his jeans.

  The doors in the hall upstairs were all closed. One blank wall, the wall to the outside, three doors on the inner wall, another one at the wall facing him at the end. One of them had to be a bathroom.

  He tried the first and found it was a bedroom. Nothing in it that he could see.

  He tried the second and it was a linen closet, mostly empty.

  He tried the third and found a bathroom. He used it then washed his hands, splashed water on his face, tagged a hand towel and dried his face, seeing she’d already decorated. Little chrome boxes on a
shelf over the toilet, matching chrome soap dispenser and toothbrush holder. Thick towels, a color combo of a bright green and yellow. He was pleased she’d got herself sorted out before that asshole cut off her funds. At least she had what she needed around her while she worried about not being able to make the rent.

  He turned off the light, left the bathroom and didn’t hesitate when he turned to her door and opened it.

  He stopped when he saw her form easily in the queen-sized bed, her curtains open, the lights shining in. Her bedroom was on the third floor, not easy to peer in, but with a man trailing her with a camera, they’d be having a conversation about her keeping her curtains open.

  He moved to the bed and then halted, staring at her sensing something was wrong. He kept his eyes glued to her as he tried to figure out what it was.

  Then it hit him.

  Growing up, she’d had a double bed. He knew this because he used to make out with her on it and she’d told him she’d had it as long as she could remember. She slept in the middle of it, on her belly, on a slight slant, one arm pinned by her body, one arm thrown out, one leg hitched at the knee. She wasn’t petite but she wasn’t a big girl by any stretch of the imagination. Sleeping like that, however, she took up most of the bed.

  He knew she slept this way because she had not changed this habit when she’d moved in with Layne. He’d had a queen-sized bed but she did not stick to her side. She slept in the middle and the way she slept meant her arm was thrown over his abs, her hitched leg was resting on his thigh and her head was on his chest or shoulder. He slept on his stomach too but this position pinned him to his back on the bed and, since Rocky slept like the dead and didn’t move all night, that meant he was pinned that way all night.

  This left him with two options, he moved her and trained her to sleep on her side or he got used to it.

  Layne got used to it.

  If memory served, it took two days.

  Now she was lying on one side of the bed, closest to the windows and she was tucked into a ball so her frame was as small as it could be.

  He stared at her and he knew she had ten years of that. Ten years of keeping her distance and protecting herself from Astley, even in her sleep.