She sighed. She knew she wouldn't get pregnant, though she didn't know how to explain to him how she knew. She wasn't certain, herself. It wasn't a flash of precognition, at least not like the usual flash. It was more a sense than a knowing, but there wasn't a pregnancy in her immediate future. Next month, maybe, but not now.
She sighed. "If you're so worried, then we won't do this again, all right?"
He regarded her for a minute, then grinned. "Some chances," he said, leaning down to kiss her, "are just meant to be taken."
7.
They heard the outboard motor not long after dawn, when the sun had just turned the eastern sky a brilliant gold. The storms of the night had lasted longer than expected, until almost three o'clock in the morning, but now the morning sky was absolutely cloudless.
"Sounds like the cavalry is arriving," Lilah said, tilting her head to listen.
"Son of a bitch," Jackson said mildly. "I was hoping rescue would take a little longer." He took a sip of coffee. "Do I look like an enraged, frustrated sheriff who was left stranded by a turnip-brain two-bit thug, or a man who's had a night-long orgy and whose legs are as limp as noodles?"
She pretended to study him, then shook her head. "You could use some practice on the enraged and frustrated look."
"That's what I thought." Putting his cup down on the table, he stretched his arms over his head and gave her a lazy, contented grin. "Instead of arresting Thaniel, I may give him a commendation."
"What are you going to arrest him for?" she asked in surprise. "I told you I'm not pressing charges."
"Whether or not you do, he stole two boats, not just yours. What happens depends on what he's done with Jerry Watkins's boat, and what Jerry wants to do about it. If Thaniel was smart, he left the boats at the launch ramp, but then again, if he was smart he wouldn't have taken them in the first place."
"If he left them out, the amount of rain we had last night would have sunk them," Lilah pointed out. "It takes a lot of rain to swamp a boat, but I think we had enough to do the job, don't you?"
"Probably." Getting up from the table, he walked into the living room and looked out the window. "Yep, it's the cavalry."
Lilah stood beside him and watched the boat carrying two deputies approach her small dock. The river was high and muddy after the night's storms, so high her dock lacked only a few inches being underwater. They carefully tied the boat to the post and stepped out, both wearing Kevlar vests and carrying shotguns. They cautiously looked around.
Jackson quickly bent and kissed her, his mouth warm and lingering. The look he gave her was full of regret. "I'll come back as soon as I can," he said, keeping his voice pitched low. "I doubt it'll be today, and whether or not I can make it tomorrow depends on how much damage the storms did, and if there are any power outages or cleanup to do."
"I'll be here," she said, her manner calm. She smiled. "I have no way of going anywhere, without my boat."
"I'll either get it back, or I'll make damn certain Thaniel buys you a new one," he promised, and kissed her again. Then he picked up his vest and shotgun, which he had placed by the front door in anticipation of his "rescue," and walked out on the front porch.
Both of the deputies visibly relaxed when they saw him. "You okay, Sheriff?" the older of the two called.
"I'm fine, Lowell. But Thaniel Vargas won't be when I get my hands on him. He stole both the boat I was using, and Miss Jones's boat. But he'll wait; how much damage was there last night?"
Lilah stepped out on the porch behind him, because it would look strange if she didn't. "Good morning, Lowell." She nodded to the other deputy. "Alvin. I just made the sheriff some coffee; would y'all like a cup?" She saw Jackson's brows rise in surprise that she knew his deputies, but he didn't comment.
"No thanks, Lilah," Lowell answered. "We need to get on back. Thanks for offering, but I've drunk so much coffee since midnight I doubt I'll sleep for two days."
"The damage?" Jackson prompted, taking charge of the conversation again.
"Power was out over most of the county, but it's back on now all except for Pine Flats. A lot of trees went down, and there's roof damage to a bunch of houses, but only one actually went into a house, the LeCroy place out near Washington High School. Mrs. LeCroy was hurt pretty bad; she's in the hospital in Mobile."
"Any car wrecks?"
Lowell gave him a weary look. "More than you can count."
"Okay. Sorry I wasn't on hand to help."
"I'm just sorry it took us so long to get out here, but with the storms the way they were, only a fool would have gone out on the water."
"I didn't expect anybody to risk their lives coming after me. I was okay, just stranded."
"We weren't sure, what with Jo telling us she sent you here after Thaniel Vargas. But Thaniel seemed okay, not nervous or anything, and he played dumb, said he hadn't been up here and hadn't seen you."
"You saw him?" Jackson asked sharply.
"He helped us get a tree out of the highway. Anyway, we figured the storm had caught you. We didn't want to take any chances, since you could have run into some other kind of trouble out here, so we came looking."
Jackson shook his head. He never would have figured Thaniel capable of that much brass; maybe that thickheaded act was more of an act than fact. If so, he'd have to take Thaniel a lot more seriously than he had before. Walking down to the dock, he handed the shotgun to Alvin and stepped into the boat. "Well, let's go to work," he said. He turned and raised his hand. "Thanks for feeding me, Miss Jones."
"You're welcome," she called, smiling as she hugged her arms against the early morning chill. She waved them good-bye, a wave both deputies returned, then went back into the house.
Jackson settled onto a boat seat. "Y'all seem to know Miss Jones pretty well," he said, driven by curiosity.
"Sure." Lowell got behind the wheel. "We went to school together."
It was such a prosaic answer that Jackson felt like smacking himself in the head. Of course she had attended school; she hadn't lived her entire life marooned upriver. He had a mental image of a small, solemn Lilah sitting in that little flat-bottom boat, clutching her schoolbooks, being ferried back and forth in all kinds of weather.
Because he wanted to know, he asked, "How did she get back and forth to school?"
"Boat," Alvin said. "Her daddy brought her. He'd take her to the park ramp, closest to school. If the weather was good, he'd walk her the rest of the way. If it was raining, a teacher would meet them and give her a ride."
At least he wouldn't have to fret about that young Lilah being left alone at the boat docks, Jackson thought; her father had been concerned for her safety. Though why he would fret about something so long in the past was beyond him.
The trip downriver was much more leisurely than his risky dash up it the day before. The swollen river was full of trash, making caution necessary. Jackson hoped he'd see two boats tied to the shore when they got to the ramp, but no such luck.
"I wonder what Thaniel did with Jerry Watkins's boat," he growled.
"No telling," Lowell said. "The damn fool probably just turned it loose. Jerry will be fit to be tied; he set a store by that boat."
At least Jerry Watkins would have insurance on his boat; Jackson very much doubted Lilah would have it on hers. How would she replace it? He gave his bank account a quick mental check; one way or the other, Lilah would have another boat-by tomorrow, if he couldn't find hers. He couldn't bear the thought of her being completely stranded out there, though she was so damn competent he could see her hiking into town if necessary, even though it had to be twenty, maybe thirty miles around. But what if she got sick, or injured herself. She chopped her own wood, for God's sake. He went cold at the thought of an ax buried in her foot.
She had become more important to him, faster than anyone he had ever known. Twenty-four hours ago he hadn't known she existed. Within two hours of meeting her, he'd been in bed with her, and he'd spent the most erotic, exciting night of his life in her arms. He had climaxed so many times he doubted he'd get a hard-on for days. Then he thought of Lilah, waiting for him, and a sudden pooling of heat in his groin told him he had miscalculated. He jerked his thoughts back to the day's work before he embarrassed himself.
The Watkins truck was still sitting where Charlotte had parked it, boat trailer still hitched to it. At least a tree hadn't come down on the truck during the storms; that would be the final insult to a good deed. He looked around; there were some small branches scattered around the parking area, but nothing substantial.
Lowell eased the boat into the bank and both Jackson and Alvin climbed out. While Alvin went to the truck to back the trailer into the water, Jackson surveyed the area. Yesterday he'd been in too much of a hurry to think about details, but now his cop's eye swept the launch ramp, not missing a thing. The parking area was surprisingly large, given how isolated and little-used the launch ramp was. But . . . was it little-used? The area was free of weeds, showing that there was a good bit of traffic. The sandy dirt showed evidence of a lot of different tire tracks, more than he expected. That was strange, given what Jo had said about the best fishing being downriver.
Lowell and Alvin competently took the boat out of the water. They had come in two vehicles, one county car and then the truck pulling the boat, which Jackson assumed they had borrowed from the Rescue Squad. That made five vehicles he could count since yesterday afternoon: his, Thaniel's, Charlotte Watkins's, and now these two.
The rain had destroyed all but the deepest tracks, but he could still make out at least three more sets of tracks besides the ones he knew about.
Now, why would there be so much river traffic up here? The fishing wasn't good, and right past Lilah's the river got too shallow for boat traffic. He tried to think of a logical explanation for the tracks. Being in law enforcement, his first thought was that maybe drug dealers were meeting here, but he discarded that idea. It was too open, and though Old Boggy Road wasn't the busiest road in the world, there was occasional traffic on it. As if to prove it, at that moment a farmer drove by in a pickup truck, and he craned his neck to see what was going on.
No, drug dealers would find a place where they were less likely to attract attention. So ... who was coming here, and why?
He strolled over to Lowell and Alvin. "This little ramp gets a lot of use, doesn't it?"
"A fair amount," Lowell agreed.
"Why?"
They both gaped at him. "Why?" Alvin echoed.
"Yeah. Why does it get so much use? Only someone who doesn't know the river would come up here to fish."
To his surprise, both deputies shifted uncomfortably. Lowell cleared his throat. "I guess folks go to visit Lilah."
"Miss Jones?" Jackson clarified, wanting to make certain there wasn't another Lilah in the area.
Lowell nodded.
Looking around the area, Jackson said, "From all these tire ruts, I'd say she gets a lot of company." He tried to picture a steady stream of visitors to Lilah's isolated little house upriver, but just couldn't.
"Some," Lowell agreed. "A lot of women go to see her." He coughed. "And-uh, some men, too, I guess."
"Why is that?" A variety of wild reasons ran through his mind. Marijuana? He couldn't see Lilah growing marijuana, but the place was certainly isolated enough. He didn't let himself seriously consider that. Women didn't go to backwoods women for abortions anymore, either, so that was out. Nothing illegal, for sure, because his deputies obviously knew about whatever was going on up there, and had done nothing to stop it. The only thing he could think of that made sense was so ridiculous he couldn't believe it.
"Don't tell me she really is a witch!" He could just see it now, boat after boat making its way upriver for spells and potions. She had denied the witch thing, said she didn't know anything about spells, but in his experience people lied all the time. He dealt with serial liars on a daily basis.
"Nothing like that," Alvin said hastily. "She's kind of an old-timey healer. You know, she makes poultices and stuff."
Poultices and stuff. Healer. Of course. It was so obvious, Jackson wondered that he hadn't seen it. Relief spread through him. His imagination had been running wild, a sick feeling congealing in his gut. He had just found her, a woman who appealed to him on every level, and he couldn't bear the thought of her being involved in something shifty. He didn't know where this thing between him and Lilah was going, but he intended to follow it to the end.
"It's how she makes her living," Lowell said. "People buy herbs and things from her. A lot of folks go to her rather than a doctor, because she's so good at telling them what's wrong."
He wanted to grin. Instead he collected his vest and shotgun from the boat and said, "Well, let's go round up Thaniel Vargas. Even if we get the boats back and Jerry Watkins doesn't press charges against him, I want to scare about ten years off the bastard's life."
8.
Thaniel Vargas was nowhere to be found. He had gone to ground somewhere, Jackson figured, waiting for the trouble to blow over. Because things were still kind of busy in the county, with the continuing power outage in Pine Flats and cleaning up from the storm, Jackson couldn't devote a lot of time or manpower to finding him.
More than anything, he wanted to get back upriver to Lilah's house, but it just wasn't possible that day. Besides the problems from the storm, the blue moon craziness was still in full force. At traffic court that day, a woman totally lost it and tried to get out of paying a speeding ticket by holding the judge hostage. Why anyone in her right mind would want to trade a simple fine of fifty bucks for a felony charge was beyond Jackson. Getting the courthouse settled down took several hours out of his day, hours when he needed to be somewhere else.
He got home at midnight that night, tired and disgruntled and aching with frustration. He wanted Lilah. He needed Lilah, needed the simple serenity of her, the quietness of her home that was such a contrast to his hectic days. They had known each other for such a short period of time, he wasn't certain that they had anything more than a one-night stand, brought about as much by circumstance as by mutual attraction. But he had been her first lover, her only lover; Lilah wasn't the type of woman to have a one-night stand. For her, making love meant something. It had meant something to him, too, something more than any of his other love affairs.
Lilah was special: honest, witty, with the bite of irony he enjoyed, and gutsy. She was also sexy as hell, with her well-toned, femininely muscled body and her cloud of curly hair that just begged to have his hands in it.
Though he was her first lover, she hadn't shrunk from anything he wanted to do. She had met him halfway in everything, enjoying what he did to her as much as he enjoyed doing it, and returning the favor. He couldn't imagine such uncomplicated joy ever getting boring.
Until now, his house had suited him perfectly. It was an older house, with high ceilings and cranky plumbing, but he'd had the main bathroom completely redone, and the kitchen, not that he was much on cooking. It had just seemed like a smart thing to do. His bed was big enough for him, not like Lilah's too-short, too-narrow bed. They'd had to sleep double-decker, when they slept-not a big sacrifice. He'd liked having her sprawled on top of him, when he wasn't on top of her.
But now his house felt. . . empty. And noisy. He hadn't realized until now how much noise a refrigerator made, or a water heater. The central air system blotted out the night's sounds of crickets and the occasional chirp of a bird.
He wanted Lilah.
He took a cold shower instead, and crawled into his big, cold, empty bed, where he lay awake, muscles aching, eyes burning with fatigue, and thought of that first searing, electric moment when he pushed into Lilah's body. That got him so hard he groaned, and he tried not to think about sex at all. But then her breasts came to mind, and he remembered the way her nipples had peaked in his mouth when he sucked her, and how she had moaned and squirmed when he went down on her.
Sweat sheened his body, despite the air conditioning. Swearing, he got out of bed and took another cold shower. He finally got to sleep about two o'clock, only to dream erotic dreams and wake up needing, wanting Lilah even more than before.
at eight twenty-one in the morning, Thaniel Vargas's body was found floating in the river. He was easily identified because his wallet was still stuffed in his jeans pocket, along with a can of chewing tobacco. If it hadn't been for his wallet, his own mother would have been hard-pressed to identify him, because he'd been shot in the face with a shotgun.
"I don't think he's been dead long," the coroner said, standing beside Jackson as the body was wrapped and loaded in a meat wagon. "The turtles and fish hadn't been at him much. As fast as the river's flowing, the current would have kept him on the surface, plus that dead branch his arm was tangled in gave him added buoyancy."
"How long?"
"It's just a guess, Jackson. I'd say . . . twelve hours or so. Hard to tell, when they've been in the water. But he was last seen night before last, so it couldn't have been much longer than half a day."
Jackson stared at the river, a sick feeling shredding his guts into confetti as he thought this through. He plainly remembered Lilah staring at Thaniel and saying, "You're dead," in that flat, unemotional tone that had been even more chilling than if she had screamed it at him. And now Thaniel was dead, from a shotgun blast. Lilah had a shotgun. Had Thaniel gone back to her house yesterday, or even last night? Had she made good on her threat, if it had indeed been one?
That was the best-case scenario, that Lilah had been forced to defend herself, or even that she had shot Thaniel at first sight. He didn't like it, but he could understand if a woman alone shot first and asked questions later when a thug who had been shooting at her the day before came back for more target practice. He doubted the district attorney would even indict under those circumstances.
Worst-case scenario, however, was the possibility that Lilah was lying in a pool of blood at her house, wounded or even dead. The thought galvanized him, sending pure panic racing through his bloodstream.
"Hal, I need that boat!" he roared at the captain of the Rescue Squad, referring to the boat they had used to retrieve Thaniel's body from the river. He was already striding toward the boat as he yelled.
Hal looked up, his homely face showing only mild surprise. "Okay, Sheriff," he said. "Anything I can help you with?"
"I'm going up to Lilah Jones's place. If Thaniel went back to shoot up the place again, she might be hurt." Or dead. But he didn't let himself dwell on that. He couldn't, and still function.
"If she's hurt, she'll need medical attention, and transport. I'll call for another boat and follow you." Hal unclipped the radio from his belt and rapped out instructions.
The Rescue Squad boats were built for stability, not speed, which was a good thing in the roiling river, with all the broken limbs and debris floating downstream, but Jackson still cursed the lack of speed. He needed to get to Lilah. Desperation gnawed at him, tearing at him with the knowledge that, if she had been shot, if she still lived, every second help was delayed could mean she wouldn't survive. He knew gunshot wounds; damn few of them were immediately fatal. A head or heart shot were about the only ones that could kill on contact, and that wasn't guaranteed.
He couldn't think of her lying bleeding and helpless, her life slowly ebbing away. He couldn't. And yet he couldn't stop, because his experience gave him graphic knowledge. Images rolled through his mind, an endless tape that made him sicker and sicker.
"Please. God, please." He heard himself praying aloud, saying the words into the wind.
Getting to Lilah's house took forever. He had started out much farther down the river than from the ramp on Old Boggy Road. He had to dodge debris, and a couple of times the boat shuddered over submerged limbs. The engine stalled the last time, but it restarted on the first try If it hadn't, he probably would have jumped into the river and swam the rest of the way.
At last the house came into view, nestled under the trees. Heart pounding, he searched for any sign of life, but the morning was still and quiet. Surely Lilah would have come out on the porch when she heard the outboard motor, if she was there. But where else could she be? She had no means of transportation.
"Lilah!" he yelled. "Lilah!" She had to be there, but he found himself hoping she wasn't, hoping she had gone for a walk in the woods, or borrowed a boat from some of the multitude who evidently found their way to her house for folk remedies. He hoped-God, he hoped almost anything at all had taken her away from the house, rather than think she didn't come out on the porch because she was lying somewhere dead or dying.