He nosed the boat up to the dock and tied it to the post. "Lilah!"
Boots thudding, he raced up the dock just as he had two days before, but the adrenaline burn he'd felt then was nothing compared to the inferno he felt now, as if he might burst out of his skin.
He leaped onto the porch, bypassing the steps. The windows on this side of the house were intact, he noted. He wrenched open the screen door and turned the knob of the main door; it was unlocked, and swung inward.
He stepped into the cool, dim house, his head thrown up as he sniffed the air. The house smelled as before: fragrant and welcoming, the faint odor of biscuits lingering, probably from last night's supper. The windows were up and pristine white curtains fluttered in the slight morning breeze. No odor of death hung like a miasma, nor could he detect the flat, metallic smell of blood.
She wasn't in the house. He went through it anyway, checking all four rooms. The house seemed undisturbed.
He went outside, circling the house, looking for any signs of violence. Nothing. Chickens clucked contentedly, pecking at bugs. Birds sang. Eleanor waddled out from under the porch, still fat with kittens. He stooped to pet her, his head swiveling as he checked every detail of his surroundings. "Where is she, Eleanor?" he whispered. Eleanor purred, and rubbed her head against his hand.
"Lilah!" he roared. Eleanor started, and retreated under the porch again.
"I'm coming."
The voice was faint, and came from behind the house. He jerked around, staring into the trees. The woods were almost impenetrable; he could be right on her, and not be able to see her.
"Where are you?" he called, striding rapidly to the back of the house.
"Almost there." Two seconds later she emerged from the trees, carrying a basket-and the shotgun. "I heard the outboard," she said as he reached her, "but I was a couple of hundred yards away and-uumph."
The rest of her words were lost under the fierce assault of his mouth. He hauled her up against him, unable to hold her close enough. He wanted to meld her into his very flesh, and never let her go. She was okay. She was alive, unharmed, warm and vibrant in his arms. The wind blew her soft curls around his face. He drank in her smell, fresh and soft, womanly. She tasted the same, her mouth answering his. He heard the basket drop to the ground, and the shotgun, then her arms were around him and she was clinging tightly to him.
Need roared through him like an inferno, born of his desperate fear and relief. He tore at her clothes, stripping down her jeans and panties and lifting her out of them.
"Jackson?" Her head lolled back, her breath coming in soft pants. "Let's go inside-"
"I can't wait," he muttered savagely, lifting her up and backing her against a tree. Her legs came up and locked around his hips as she automatically sought to balance herself. He wrenched his pants open, freed himself, and shoved into her. She was hot and damp and tight, her inner flesh enveloping and clasping. She wasn't ready for him; he heard her gasp, but he couldn't stop. He pulled back and thrust again and he went all the way in this time. On the fifth thrust he began coming, his body heaving against her as he spurted for what seemed like forever, until his head swam and his vision blurred and darkened, and still the spasms took a long time to die down, small bursts of sensation rocking him. He sank heavily against her, pinning her to the tree. His legs trembled, and his lungs heaved. "I love you," he heard himself muttering. "Oh, God, I was so scared."
Her hands were clasping his head, stroking, trying to soothe him. "Jackson? What's wrong? What happened?"
He couldn't speak for a minute, still in shock from what he had said. The words had just boiled out, without thought. He hadn't said those words to any woman since his high school days, when he fell in love on a regular basis.
But they were true, he realized, and that shocked him almost as much as saying them. He loved her. He, Jackson Brody was in love. It had happened too fast for him to come to terms with it, to think about it as they gradually became enmeshed in each other's lives. Logic said he couldn't possibly love her after so short a time; emotion said to hell with logic, he loved her.
"Jackson?"
He tried to pull away from that emotional brink, to function as a sheriff instead of a man. He had come here because a man had been murdered, and somewhere along the line he had forgotten that and focused, instead, on the woman at the center of the situation. But he was still inside her, still dazed from the force of his orgasm, and all he could do was sink more heavily against her, pressing her into the tree trunk. Birds sang around him, insects buzzed, the river murmured. Bright morning sunlight worked its way through the thick canopy of leaves, dappling their skin.
"I'm sorry," he managed to say. "Did I hurt you?" He knew he had entered her far too roughly, and she hadn't been aroused and ready.
"Some." She sounded remarkably peaceful. "At first. Then I enjoyed it."
He snorted. "You couldn't have enjoyed it very much. I think I lasted about five seconds." The sheriff still hadn't made an appearance; the man held full sway.
"I enjoyed your pleasure." She kissed his neck. "It was actually rather . . . thrilling."
"I was scared to death," he admitted baldly.
"Scared? About what?"
Finally, belatedly, the sheriff lifted his head. Jackson discovered he couldn't question her, or even talk about Thaniel, while in his present position. Gently he withdrew from her and eased his weight back, holding her steady while her legs slipped from around his hips and she was once more standing on her own two feet.
"We'd better hurry," he said, picking up her clothes and handing them to her, then pulling up his own pants and getting everything tucked back in place. "The Rescue Squad could be here any minute."
"Rescue Squad?" she echoed, brows lifting in surprise.
He waited until she was dressed. "I was afraid you'd been hurt."
"Why would I be hurt?" She still looked totally bewildered.
As a man, he hated having to question her. As a sheriff, he knew he had to do it or resign today. "Thaniel Vargas's body was found this morning."
A stillness came over her, and she looked at him but somehow she wasn't seeing him, her gaze turned inward. "I knew he'd die," she finally said.
"He didn't die,' Jackson corrected. "He was murdered. Shot in the face with a shotgun."
She came back from wherever she had gone, and her green eyes focused sharply on him. "You think I did it," she said.
9.
"I was afraid he'd come back and y'all started shooting at each other again. I was afraid I'd find you dead, or dying." His voice was remarkably calm, considering how shaken he felt.
She shook her head. "I haven't seen Thaniel since day before yesterday but I don't have any way to prove it."
"Lilah." He gripped her shoulders, shaking her a little to get her attention. "You seem to think I'm going to take you in for murder. Baby, even if you did kill him, after what happened no D.A. would prosecute, at least not the D.A. here. But I don't think you could murder anyone, not even Thaniel, and he was one worthless jackass. If you say you didn't kill him, then I believe you." The man was speaking again. The sheriff struggled to regain his detachment, though he thought it was a losing cause. He would never be detached when it came to Lilah.
She stared at him, a sense of wonderment coming to her eyes. In a flash of intuition he knew then she hadn't believed him when he blurted out that he loved her. Why should she? Men said "I love you" all the time in the heat of passion. And they had known each other less than two days. He was acutely aware that she hadn't said anything about love in return, but that would wait.
"But one thing keeps eating at me. Day before yesterday, you looked at him and said, 'You're dead,' and damn near scared him to death right then." He didn't ask anything, didn't try to form her answer in any way. He wanted her response to come from her own thoughts.
To his surprise, she went pale. She looked away, staring at the river. "I just-knew," she finally said, her voice stifled.
"Knew?"
"Jackson, I-" She half-turned away from him, then turned back. She lifted her hands in a helpless gesture. "I don't know how to explain it."
"In English. That's my only requirement."
"I just know things. I get flashes."
"Flashes?"
Again the helpless gesture. "It isn't a vision, not exactly. I don't really see anything, I just know. Like intuition, only more."
"So you had one of these flashes about Thaniel?"
She nodded. "I looked at him when I came out on the porch and all of a sudden I knew he was going to die. I didn't know he was going to get killed. Just . . . that he wasn't going to be here anymore."
He rubbed the back of his neck. In the distance he could hear the droning of an outboard motor: the Rescue Squad was getting close.
"I've never been wrong," she said, almost apologetically.
"No one else knows what you said." His voice was as somber as he felt. "Just me."
She bent her head, and he saw her worrying her lower lip. She saw his dilemma. Then she raised her head and squared her shoulders. "You have to do your job. You can't keep this to yourself, and be a good sheriff."
If he hadn't already known he loved her, that moment would have done it for him. And suddenly he knew something else. "Are these 'flashes' the reason Thaniel thought you're a witch?"
She gave him a rueful little smile. "I wasn't very good at hiding things when I was young. I blabbed."
"Scared him, huh? And all these people who come to you for treatment-you just look at them and have flashes about what's wrong with them?"
"Of course not," she said, startled. Then she blushed. "That's something else."
The blush both intrigued and alarmed him. "What kind of something else?"
"You'll think I'm a freak," she said in dismay.
"But a sexy freak. Tell me." A little bit of the sheriff was in his tone, a quiet authority.
"I see auras. You know, the colors that everyone has around them. I know what the different colors mean, and if someone's sick I can see where and know what to do, whether or not I can help them or they need to see a doctor."
Auras. Jackson wanted to sit down. He'd heard all that New Age mumbo-jumbo, but that's just what it was, as far as he was concerned. He'd never seen a nimbus of color around anyone, never seen proof such a thing existed.
"I haven't told anyone about the auras," she said, her voice shaking. "They just think I'm a ... a medicine woman, like my mother. She saw them, too. I remember her telling me, when I was little, what the different colors meant. That's how I learned my colors." She gave a quick look at the river, where the boat had come into view. Tears welled in her eyes. "You have the most beautiful aura," she whispered. "So clean and rich and healthy. I knew as soon as I saw you that-"
She broke off, and he didn't pursue it. The Rescue Squad boat had reached her dock, and the two men in it were getting out. One was Hal, who had come along himself to take charge if the Squad was needed, and the other was a tall, thin man Jackson recognized as a medic, though he didn't know his name.
Lilah did, though. She left Jackson's side and walked out of the trees into the open, her hand lifted in a wave.
Both men waved back. "Glad to see you're okay," Hal called as they started up the dock.
"Just fine, thanks. Thaniel hadn't been here, though."
"Yeah, we know." Hal looked past Lilah to Jackson. "You left about a minute too soon, Sheriff. I still can't believe it."
"Believe what?"
"Jerry Watkins drove up just as you went out of sight. We were just getting the boat in the water. I tell you, Jerry looked like hell, like he'd been on a week-long bender. He looked at the body bag in the meat wagon and just broke down, crying like a baby. He's the one killed Thaniel, Sheriff. He jumped Thaniel about his boat, and you know how Thaniel was, too stupid to know when to back down. He told Jerry he sunk the son of a bitch. Beg pardon, Lilah. Jerry set a store by that boat. The way he tells it, he lost all control, grabbed the shotgun from his truck, and let Thaniel have it."
After years in law enforcement, little could surprise Jackson. He wasn't surprised now, because dumber things had happened. And though the full moon was waning, weird things would continue to happen for another couple of days. He did feel as if he'd dropped the ball, however. He should have thought of Jerry. Everyone who knew Jerry knew how he loved that boat. Instead he'd been so focused on Lilah that he hadn't been able to see anything else.
"He sat down on the ground and put his hands on his head for your deputies to arrest him. Guess he saw that on television," Hal finished.
Well, that was that. Thaniel's murder was solved before it had time to become a real mystery. But one little detail struck him as strange. Jackson looked at the medic. "If you knew Lilah was okay, that Thaniel hadn't been killed in a fight here, why did you come along?"
"He came to see me," Lilah said. She shook her head. "I can't help you, Cory. You've got gallstones. You're going to have to see a doctor."
"Ah, hell, Lilah, I haven't even told you my symptoms!"
"You don't have to tell me, I can see how you look. It hurts like blue blazes every time you eat, doesn't it? Were you afraid you were having heart problems, maybe?"
Cory made a face. "How'd you know?"
"Just a hunch. Go see that doctor. There's a good gas-tro specialist in Montgomery. I'll give you his name."
"Okay," he said glumly. "I was hoping it was an ulcer and you could give me something for it."
"Nope. Surgery."
"Damn."
"Well, that's taken care of," Hal said. "We'd better get back, we still got some more work to do in Pine Flats. Will you be along soon, Jackson?"
"In a little while," Jackson said. From the way Hal winked, he figured the older man had cottoned on to the fact that there was something between him and Lilah. Frankly, Jackson didn't care if the whole county knew.
He and Lilah watched the two men get back into the boat and head back downriver. Jackson squinted his eyes in the bright sun. "Auras, huh?" What the hell. If he believed she could have flashes of precognition, why not auras? If you loved someone, he thought, you accepted a lot of stuff that you never would have considered before. Privately he'd check on Cory's diagnosis from a doctor, just to make sure, but for some reason he figured Lilah had been right. Auras were as good a reason as anything.
She reached for his hand. "I told you that you have a beautiful aura. I probably would have loved you just because of what I saw in it. But I had another flash when I saw you the first time."
He closed his hand warmly around hers. "What did that one tell you?"
She gave him a somber look. "That you were going to be the love of my life."
He felt a little light-headed. Maybe it was just the culmination of a very stressful morning, but he remembered that feeling of dizziness the first time he'd seen her. "Didn't you say those flashes had never been wrong?"
"That's right." She rose on tiptoe and kissed him. "They're one-hundred-percent accurate."
He needed to get back to work. He needed to do a lot of things. But he didn't need to do them as much as he needed to hold her, so he wrapped his arms around her and held her tight, breathing in the essence of the love of his life, so happy he thought he might burst.
"We're going to do this up right," he said aloud. "The whole enchilada. Marriage. Kids."
"The whole enchilada," she agreed, and hand in hand they walked into the house.
White Out