Virtue Falls

  “Not deliberately, I don’t think. But she worked and she was always tired and they already had three kids … and I think she missed my mother.”

  “If she missed Misty, she should have treated Misty’s daughter better.” Garik’s jaw looked like granite.

  No use talking to Garik about it. He was a lawman, seeing life in black and white, and Elizabeth’s existence with her aunt and uncle was, in Garik’s eyes, definitely black.

  Elizabeth liked his attitude. It helped make up for her cousins’ opinion that Elizabeth had taken family resources they rightly deserved, and so she should pay in blood, pain, and lunch money.

  “Look,” Garik whispered.

  They watched a doe lead a wary fawn across the park’s campground, the long-legged creatures picking their ways through the debris left by downed trees.

  “What do they think of the earthquake and the aftershocks?” Garik said.

  “They think it’s all part of nature,” Elizabeth answered. “And they’re right.”

  Garik massaged her neck. “Honey, you have to stop worrying about your father. You’re afraid you’re going to lose him too soon.”

  What a great explanation. She should agree and let Garik think the best of her. Yet he always seemed to be the guy with the least expectation of exemplary behavior. That freed her to speak the truth. “No, I’m selfish. It’s that my father is so smart. Or was. If there’s one thing I’ve taken comfort in, it’s that he is a highly intelligent individual, like me. But look how fragile his mind is! I don’t want to know a mind can be so easily broken, or slip away silently in the night.”

  Garik’s gaze grew sober.

  “I know,” she said. “I’m selfish and illogical.”

  Wrapping his hand around her neck, he pulled her close and put his forehead against hers. “I swear to God, if I hear you try to understand this stuff logically one more time, I’m going to—”

  “Going to what?”

  “Spank you.” He sounded half-humorous … and half not.

  “That’s not logical,” she said.

  He laughed and gave her a quick kiss.

  She let him. When he drew back, she remained in place, her eyes closed, her lips parted, breathing him in, tasting him, knowing if he would, he could make her forget …

  He leaned in again and gave her a slower kiss, deeper, warmer.

  All of her apprehension melted away … for the moment. And to have it melt away for this moment was enough.

  She slid her arms around his neck and her hands into his hair. She breathed his name against her lips. “Garik…” And tugged at him.

  He gave a muffled curse, and suddenly he tasted of urgent need and total desperation. “Too soon,” he muttered.

  “Hurry up,” she answered.

  He did. He lowered the back of the seat. Pushed her away from the dash. Climbed over the console and knelt over her, his knees on either side of her hips. He held her head in his hands and kissed her … and kissed her.

  He kissed her behind her ear, nuzzled the base of her skull and inhaled, and chuckled softly, as if she was a flower and her fragrance filled him with delight. Drawing back, he looked at her face, really looked at her, his gaze touching her forehead, her nose, her cheeks, her lips. He pressed his lips to her eyes and closed them.

  Elizabeth placed her hand over his heart, and it beat for her, hard and fast, the rhythm of desire. “Garik…” Her soft voice stroked him from the inside out, slipping into his bloodstream, reminding him of the times they had fought, made up, made love, and fought again … until one day she wasn’t there to fight with, and his soul resided in silence and isolation.

  She was here now, sighing in his ear, lightly sliding her hands down to his waist and over his thighs, touching him until his skin warmed and at the same time, goose bumps chilled his spine. She lifted her hips in a slow, voluptuous roll.

  He slid his hand up the inside of her thigh, under her panties, into the warm, damp beckoning center of her body.

  He had been there before. He knew her scent and how to touch her. He recognized her whimpers and her moans. Yet with him every time was new, real, glorious. Elizabeth always seemed unconquerable, and making her yield and grow wet against his fingers made him feel like the man who owned the world.

  She moaned now, softly, then as he pressed firmly, and then deeply, her moan grew … and quavered.

  He watched her face, at the way she tilted her head back against the rest and stretched into his touch. Inside, her body flexed against his fingers, inciting him with promises of a sensuality beyond recollection, beyond any previous encounter.

  Then she convulsed, quick and hard, coming while he pressed the heel of his hand against her clit. Her fingers dug into his ribs. Her groans were deep, heartfelt, and glorious.

  Now. Now he would strip off his jeans and rip off her panties and—

  Out of the corners of his eyes, he caught sight of something—someone—moving outside the truck.

  A fist slammed against the driver’s-side back window.

  Elizabeth startled out of her sexual daze, pushed at Garik, and shoved her skirt down.

  At the same time, Garik rose onto his knees, fists clenched, ready to fight for her.

  Sheriff Foster—Sheriff Son-of-a-Bitch Foster—stepped up to the open front window. His green gaze swept them scornfully, observing their dishevelment, the way Garik protectively crouched over Elizabeth. “This is a public park,” he announced. “Zip up. Get dressed. No lewd behavior allowed.”

  Garik could barely control himself. He wanted to leap across the console, over the steering wheel, and through the window to grab Foster by the throat and choke him. Instead he stared at Foster while the red tide of fury rose from his gut to wash over his face, and the fires of hell kindled in his eyes.

  He’d been told he was a fearsome sight while in a rage.

  Foster proved it when he stepped back, broke eye contact, and said, “Just doing my job. Thought you might be stranded here. Shouldn’t be, um … teenagers might see and get the wrong idea.”

  “Get. Out.” Garik’s voice was soft and lethal.

  Foster got. Out.

  Garik watched through the rearview mirror as the sheriff climbed in his cruiser, put it in reverse, and drove in the opposite direction from town. The opposite direction from where they were going. “Damned good thing,” Garik muttered. Then he glanced down at Elizabeth.

  She sat with her eyes closed, her head bowed, a disgusted moue on her lips.

  Garik sank back down on top of her. He slid one arm around her waist and one under her shoulders.

  Her head fell back; she opened her eyes and looked at him. “In my whole life I have never been caught making out in a car. I am twenty-seven years old and now, with you, in the middle of a forest in the middle of an earthquake zone … I’m busted.” She wasn’t livid. She wasn’t swearing at him for humiliating her.

  Which for some reason made it okay for Garik to explode. “That worthless piece-of-shit sheriff bastard cocksucker.”

  “Who am I to argue?” she said.

  “How dare he … teenagers, my ass. Nobody’s out here except us people who have places to go and the gas to get there. Teenagers … like we’re the damn corrupters of America’s damn youth who already know more from the Internet than I knew when I was twenty-damned-five.” Garik was raging. He knew he was raging. But damn it! If they’d had another fifteen minutes, just fifteen minutes—less!—he would have been cured of his perpetual hard-on.

  Elizabeth petted his cheek. “We couldn’t have done it in here anyway. The space is very constricted.”

  “Are you challenging me? Because I assure you, I have done it in a lot smaller vehicles than this. I’ll have you know the first time I got laid was in a girl’s Volkswagen Bug, not one of the later models, either. It was her father’s classic Volkswagen Bug, and it didn’t even have sealed headlights.”

  Elizabeth laughed. “I’ll bet you didn’t have sealed headlights, e
ither.”

  Okay. She thought he was being stupid. He was being stupid. He didn’t care. “I did, too. Carried the headlight cover around in my wallet for two years before I got to use it. Between my body heat and my fierce desire to put it on, it’s a miracle it didn’t disintegrate when I pulled it out of the foil packet.”

  Elizabeth started really laughing now, laughing hard enough to weep, so he gave her his handkerchief and let her wipe her eyes.

  He liked the sound, liked the way her breasts bounced, liked the rosy color returning to her cheeks. “I was really hoping to put that handkerchief to a different use,” he said wistfully.

  Which made her laugh more. “Come on.” She lightly punched his shoulder. “We’ve got to go.”

  “You’re right. God damn it.”

  The moment had vanished. He had stuff he wanted—needed—to do, and it wasn’t sex with Elizabeth. So he climbed back into the driver’s side, helped her adjust her seat into the upright position, watched her buckle her seatbelt, buckled his and winced at the pressure on his lingering erection, and headed to town.

  He hit the potholes a little too hard, and pretended Foster’s balls were under the tires.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Elizabeth looked around Virtue Falls’ streets in wonder. “It is amazing to me that in three and a half days, the town has managed to gain some semblance of normalcy.”

  “The place never changes.” Garik barely glanced around, and he did not sound complimentary.

  “No, really, Garik. It’s even more amazing when you consider that aftershocks still shake the region, communications with the outside world are mostly limited to emergency and law enforcement agencies, and road travel is almost nil.” A group of four people, locals, stood talking on the sidewalk. She didn’t know their names, but she recognized them, so she smiled and waved.

  They stared at her and Garik in the cab of the truck, feebly waved back, then leaned their heads together.

  Pleased that she had elicited a courteous response, Elizabeth sat up straighter. “How often in the height of the tourist season do we see the streets so empty?”

  “All we need is one good storm, rain coming through the roofs, everybody jam-packed into the emergency shelters, and the whole town will go into meltdown.” He glared at the gossips. “They’re quivering with frustration already.”

  “But they brag about their fierce independence and survivalist instincts.”

  “They’re fiercely independent as long as they have clean running water. Cut that off and they’re nothing but a bunch of stinky, pissed-off citizens demanding their rights.”

  She didn’t understand why he was so cynical. But she didn’t care. His lovemaking, however cut short, had released some of her anxiety.

  Garik, on the other hand, seemed more tense.

  “Do you not like the town?” she asked.

  “I like the town fine.”

  “You don’t sound as if you like it.”

  “I sure as hell don’t like the sheriff.” If possible, Garik sounded even more savage than he had when they were interrupted.

  “He was certainly in the wrong place at the wrong time.” She arranged her skirt hem primly on her knees.

  He watched out of the corners of his eyes.

  “So it’s not the town that makes you grumpy, it’s—”

  “I’m horny.” He was very loud, and the windows were down. “Okay? I’m horny. And likely to stay that way, which makes me grumpy, as you put it.”

  She half-smiled. “We could drive out to the other side of town and—”

  “And have the perverted bastard Foster follow us? I don’t think so.” Garik took an exasperated breath. “I’ve got stuff to do in town. It looks like the Oceanview Café is open.”

  It was. As she watched, one of the regulars opened the door and walked in.

  Of course, the door was nothing but a metal frame with a handle. The window that had made up the primary door panel had been swept into a dust pan and tossed into the restaurant’s overflowing trash can.

  “Drop me there. I’ll grab lunch, then I’ll walk out to Virtue Falls Canyon and check on some of the markers I placed.” She thought she was talking sweet reason. “I suspect the aftershocks will have moved them.”

  Garik’s head whipped around. His face turned an odd puce.

  “I want … to … document … the, er…” She faltered to a halt.

  “Like hell you will,” he snapped.

  Being horny really unbalanced the guy. “Why not?” she asked gently.

  “You found your mother’s body yesterday. We discussed the fact Foster did a lousy job investigating her death, and we speculated that your father was innocent—which makes someone else guilty and possibly vengeful. Foster just proved himself to be the major asshole in the state. Dr. Frownfelter is one weird guy. Rainbow is here somewhere. I don’t know where the other possible suspects are, but I do know your phone battery barely got charged this morning.”

  She pulled the phone out of her bag, and made a face. “It’s dead,” she said.

  “And you want to go out alone and work in the field?” Garik double-parked next to a battered white pickup, and turned to her. “Not even, sweetheart.”

  His tone put her back up. “I hardly think you’re in charge of how I spend my time.”

  “Elizabeth, I don’t know jackshit about rocks, but when it comes to killing people”—he tapped his chest—“I’m the expert. And I’m right. You know I am.”

  She wanted to disagree—except he was the expert. He had the creds; he was an FBI agent. She would be stupid to argue. She wasn’t stupid. She might be resentful. But she wasn’t stupid. “Since you put it that way … okay.”

  He watched her cautiously. “Really? You’ll stay in town?”

  “We both agree that I am an eminently logical person, and doing as you wish in this case is logical.” But she was curious, too. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’ve got a friend I need to visit. School friend. Name of Mike Sun. I’ll introduce you someday.” Leaning across her, Garik opened her door. “Can you plant yourself at the Oceanview and catch up on paperwork until I finish?”

  “Sure.” She gathered her bag. “How long will you be?”

  “A couple of hours. I’ll be back for you.” He turned his face to hers and kissed her hard. “Wait for me.”

  She kissed him back, and for one swift and glorious moment, she forgot about Virtue Falls and the earthquake and her father and the onlookers, and fell deeply and beautifully in lust with Garik. When she was breathless, he let her go, and they stared at each other. “I will wait for you,” she said. “But I wish…”

  “I do, too, but there’s not a damned thing we can do about it now.” He slid his hand under her hip. “Hurry up and get out while I remember that.”

  She slipped out of the truck and slammed the door.

  He yelled out the window, “Stay out of trouble,” and drove off toward the courthouse.

  She turned toward the Oceanview, and muttered, “What possible trouble can I get into here?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  For the first time since the earthquake, Elizabeth stepped inside the Oceanview Café.

  Customers were eating at the tables, chatting as if they didn’t notice that the windows beside them were blown out, the floors were catawampus, the tables were tilted, and the food consisted of coffee brewing on a camping cook stove and sandwiches served on paper towels.

  “Hey, hon, grab a seat and I’ll be with you in a minute.” Rainbow sounded cheerful as she bustled past. “But be careful! We’ve cleaned and swept three times, and we’re still finding glass in the damnedest places.” She shook her fanny suggestively.

  Elizabeth stared, then put that resolutely out of her mind, and went to the table in the far back corner where she’d be out of the way and have plenty of sun. She pulled out her chair and checked the seat, then sat down, placed her bag on the chair beside her, and heaved a sigh o
f relief. This was the most normal she’d felt since she’d seen the dog sit down in the middle of the street and brace himself.

  She heard someone at the counter say, not quietly enough, “That’s the girl who saw her father kill her mother with the scissors.”

  That was normal, too.

  What wasn’t normal was a guy calling, “Miss Banner, can I buy you a drink?”

  She stared at the young blond firefighter who sat at a table full of firefighters, holding up his coffee cup. He was smiling, but tentatively, as if he wasn’t quite sure she would smile back.

  Everyone in the café got quiet.

  So she did smile. “Peyton Bailey, thank you for saving my album. I’ve been showing it to my father, and it means so much to both of us.”

  His smile became a grin.

  The customers went back to their conversations.

  She felt as if she’d passed some test and was suddenly part of the group.

  Peyton called to Rainbow, “I’ll buy this young woman a drink!”

  “Yes, Peyton. I got it. You’re the BMOC.” But when Rainbow stepped up to the table, she winked at Elizabeth and recited, “I can offer you coffee or a soft drink, and a sandwich on white or wheat, with baloney or cheese. You can have mustard, no problem. If I were you, I wouldn’t touch the mayo. If you take the coffee, it’ll be hot. That’s all that’ll be hot. The soft drink will be tepid, because everybody’s using their ice to keep their meat cold and we can’t get any more.”

  “Half a cheese sandwich on wheat, and do you have a bottle of water?”

  Rainbow looked around. “For you, I do.”

  “Any word on when the electricity will be back on?” Elizabeth asked.

  “The highway’s a mess. The DOT is working on it, but it’ll be a couple more days before trucks can get through. The mayor decided to ration water and gas. That caused a tizzy. We can’t get anything into the harbor because it’s so torn up and there are boats scattered everywhere on dry land, including the Coast Guard cutter, which no one is allowed near because it’s government property.” Rainbow put her hand on one hip. “Thank God lots of folks here have generators—with the winter storms we get, it makes good sense, but most of them run on propane and sooner or later, everybody’s going to run out. Then there’ll be trouble. No one will give us any update on Kateri’s condition, which has me scared to death. So short answer—we don’t know anything.”