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Guilty as Sin (Sinful, Montana Book 1) by Rosalind James (46)

 

 

Jace was quiet afterwards, helping her clean up and get dressed again, his touch exactly as gentle as it hadn’t been earlier. He kissed her, his thumb stroking over her cheek, and asked, “All right?” When she nodded, he said, “Good.” And that was all. He stopped by the inn and changed his shirt, then took her to Wildfire, the restaurant by the lake, put his hand on her lower back while they walked through to their table, and let her feel how solid that hand was.

She slid into the booth, looked out at late-afternoon sunlight slanting low over water that was ruffled tonight by the wind, and said, “You know—that’s almost the first time I’ve seen the lake on this trip. That’s crazy.”

She didn’t say, And now I’m leaving again, and neither did he. He made some noise in his throat, and she thought about the near-ferocity in his touch earlier and said, “I hope we can make some progress on your stalker while I’m still here. Did you get your house wired up today?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I did. And before you ask—I went out and took care of the goats and chickens before I came to collect you at the shop. I re-keyed the cabin, too. Just in case. I gave Lily a copy of the key, and the alarm code, too.”

“Oh. You mean because she could still be in trouble if the stalker doesn’t realize that we’re two different people. I need to do the reveal before I go back. If she wants to let her story leak tomorrow about the easement thing… that’s when we’re taking the boards off the windows at the shop. Maybe I should go in there. She could spread the word that she’ll be making an announcement, and we could make a sensation of it. Since I need to fly back Sunday. What do you think?”

“Sounds good,” he said.

The waitress came over, and Jace looked at Paige, his gaze as remote as the stars, and asked, “Would you like wine? Beer?”

“Oh. A beer, please.” She grabbed the menu and chose a local brand at random. What was going on here?

She didn’t find out. Finally, in desperation, she asked him about the books, and they talked about that. Like two people out on a first date, which this almost was. They hadn’t had long enough. She could have brought up that subject, but she couldn’t force herself to. She didn’t want to have a fight or another weepy scene. She wanted to hang out with Jace. She wanted the comfort back, the ease. She wanted to say, “Come visit me in San Francisco,” and to have him say, “Sure.” She didn’t say it, because she was afraid that wasn’t what he’d say back, and she didn’t want to hear it.

Back at the inn, she took a shower, then crawled into bed wearing Lily’s chocolate-brown nightgown, and eventually, Jace took it off her. Whatever he hadn’t been willing to say at dinner, he told her now, or at least she thought that was what was happening. Surely a man couldn’t be that thrillingly tender, that bone-meltingly thorough, or that intensely focused on you unless he wanted you just that much. She thought it, she wondered about it, and then she forgot to think about it, because she had to focus on this.

But when he was buried so deep inside her that it felt like he could touch her heart, when she was going over the top one more time and he was starting up, too, and all she knew was what she was feeling—at that undefended moment, she held his shoulders, called his name, and thought, I love you. I need you. Please stay with me.

But she didn’t say it.

 

 

She was already scrabbling in the dark for her phone when it rang under her hand.

“Lily? What?” she asked over the pounding of her heart. Beside her, Jace had sat up fast.

“Somebody’s out there,” Lily said, her voice shaking. “Tobias is barking. I see a light moving around. But the alarm didn’t go off.”

Paige was already out of bed, and Jace was, too. Paige could hear Tobias in the background, a cascade of barking in the distance. As if Lily were upstairs, and Tobias was at the front door. “Do not open the door,” she said. “Call 911 and report a prowler. We’re on our way.”

“No,” Lily said. “I’m going out the back and calling from out there. I’m not going to wait for them to come get me. I’m getting out.”

“Lily. No. Wait.”

“No. I’m not waiting anymore. I’m running to Jace’s house. I’m taking Tobias.”

The phone went dead, and Paige swore, tossed the phone onto the bed, grabbed the clothes she’d taken off earlier from the closet door, because they were the easiest to find, fastened her thigh holster, and told Jace, who already had his jeans on and was pulling on a flannel shirt, “She’s going to your house and taking the dog.”

“Good,” he said.

“What do you mean, ‘Good?’” She grabbed Lily’s blue velvet jacket and yanked it on over her tunic. “How is that better? She doesn’t have a car. It’s windy. It’s dark.”

“You underestimate her.” He had his own jacket on, was tying his shoes, and she was still reaching for her boots. “She’s spent enough time trapped. She’s not going to let herself be trapped anymore. She’d rather be in danger taking action than sit where she is and feel helpless.”

Paige gave it up, because arguing about it wasn’t going to get them anywhere. Jace grabbed the duffel that held the shotgun, said, “You can load it in the truck,” and led the way out the door. In another ninety seconds, they were jumping into Jace’s pickup, he was headed up the mountain, and Paige was doing just that. Once she’d loaded it, she sat with it in one hand and her phone in the other and waited for the call from Lily.

“The alarm hasn’t been tripped,” she told Jace, “or you would’ve heard from the company. But Lily said she could see a light moving around. Somebody came onto the property and left, do you think?”

“How did Tobias sound on the phone?”

“Angry. Growling. Barking.”

“Then there was something he really didn’t like, and no kind of false alarm. He doesn’t bark at squirrels.” He was passing the turnoff to his cabin, and Paige wished she could see it from the road. She’d like to have seen lights on, to have known Lily was there and safe. In another minute, Lily’s house came into view. Faint light from inside, and nobody’s truck parked conveniently in the drive, signaling their presence. Jace pulled to a stop and said, “Night-vision goggles in that duffel. Hand me a pair and take one for yourself. I’ll show you how to switch them on and put them in infrared mode so you’ll see heat signatures. That’s what we’re looking for.”

She wanted to ask him when he’d thought of those, but she didn’t. She put the goggles on instead, and the darkness outside turned a bright green, the fence and shed standing out as if she were standing in a differently-colored daylight. Jace had the truck’s lights off now. He pointed, and she saw. A barely visible, glowing shape moving off to the left, all the way past the chicken coop.

Jace had picked up the shotgun, and now, she unholstered her weapon. The moment she did, her mind flipped the switch from anger to action. Jace had turned off the overhead light, and when he opened the pickup’s door silently, dropped to the ground, and didn’t close the door again, she did the same. Then she was following his pale, glowing form, getting his hand signal at the edge of the fence.

You go right. I go left.

She did it. The goggles were heavy, trying to drag her head down, and she had to resist their pull to look up. The wind was blowing up here, sighing and singing in the evergreens, and as they moved through the dark, she heard the yip of a coyote, coming from someplace close. An answering cry, then an eerie wail. She kept going, turning her head every few steps to keep track of Jace.

Around the shed, and the figure came into view again, together with a sudden flurry of small forms. The chickens. And from the right, the pack of coyotes in full bone-chilling howl.

Jace was already there, grappling with the figure near the coop, and she heard nothing but the wind, nothing but the coyotes. She saw somebody else, though, in the distance, then heard something like a rasp of wood, then a crash. She was running, stumbling, her depth perception thrown by the goggles, and she was there. Her hand on the person’s arm, pulling it out and up behind them. “Police,” she said, barely realizing she was saying it. “You’re under arrest.”

A solid figure. A man. He was twisting, trying to get out of her grip. She started to shout. “On the gr—”

She thought for a long moment that she’d been Tased. A shock of pain, then another one. And a third. She kept her grip on the man but was stumbling away, and the pain continued.

“Shit!” the man yelped. “Holy mother—”

Another sting, and Paige saw them. Hundreds of tiny bright-green specks.

Bees.

She was still hanging on desperately, but she couldn’t kick the man’s legs out from under him. Her gun hand had gone up to ward off the bees, and she forced it down and shouted, “Get on the ground! Now!” Then somebody else was there, knocking the man in the back, shoving him to his knees.

Jace. She said, “Bees. Bees,” and he said, “I know. Back off. Go get the woman. She’s on the ground. Hold her there.”

Paige’s face was swelling. She could feel it. Little lumps of fire on her cheek, her upper lip, her ear, her neck. A buzzing in her ears, the cackle of chickens, the wailing of the coyotes. She was wading through a nightmare, going toward a pale-green figure rising to her knees, getting a foot in her upper back and kicking her to the ground.

“Stay down,” she ordered. “I’m armed.” She dropped down herself, planted a knee in the woman’s back, and called out to Jace, “Got her.”

“Got him,” he called back. She heard another wail, now. Far off, fading away, then coming closer, and the coyotes had stopped. A siren. The police, finally.

Jace was moving toward her, shotgun in one hand, dragging somebody by the arm with the other. “On the ground. Now,” he told the man. He hesitated a moment, and Jace said, “If you don’t do it, I’ll hurt you.” He sounded exactly like he meant it. The man obeyed.

Paige said, “We’ll keep them here until the cops come,” and Jace nodded.

“Did you get stung?” he asked.

“Yeah. Five times? Ten? Not sure. Felt like a lot. You?”

“A few times. He was knocking the beehive apart, I reckon.”

She was feeling the pain now. In fact, her face was on fire. Jace said, “Are you allergic?”

“No. Just sensitive. I’m OK. It’ll swell more, that’s all.”

Silence beneath them, but when the red-and-blue lights were finally visible, the siren turned off, the woman beneath Paige began to struggle once more, and Paige said, “Stay down, asshole,” and kneed her in the back again.

The woman gasped. “You little bitch.”

Oh, yeah. This was going well. She called out across the yard, “Paige Hollander and Jace Blackstone. We’ve got a couple intruders here. Light us up.”

No answer, but a minute later, Paige’s vision was split into starbursts of pain, and she recoiled. Jace was grabbing at her, and after a moment, she realized why. He ripped the goggles off, and she gasped, shut her eyes, and tried to breathe.

She didn’t hear the person approaching until he was almost there. “Police. Drop your weapons and get on the ground.”

She did it, and so did Jace. Right down into the dirt. She said again over the throbbing pain in her head, “Paige Hollander and Jace Blackstone. We have intruders.”

“Hands over your head,” the voice said. “And tell me again.”

The woman on Paige’s right stirred and said, “Chris? It’s me. Tell her to let me go. She attacked me and dragged me here at gunpoint.”

Jace said, “Sergeant Worthington, I presume. Here’s your sister Jennifer. I can’t wait to hear the rest of it.”

 

 

Jace needed to see how bad Paige’s face was. “Sensitive” didn’t sound good to him, and the bees were still buzzing around. Sergeant Worthington got stung, yelped, and swatted, and Jace felt all the satisfaction of it. Sometimes, it was good to lie quietly on the ground, and an angry, disturbed beehive was definitely one of those occasions.

It was another ten minutes or more, though, before he got to check on Paige. When Worthington finally had handcuffs on his sister and her husband—surely not an experience any officer would relish—Jace said, “Paige has been badly stung. I need to take her into the house and check it out.”

“You can’t,” Paige said. “I didn’t bring my purse. The keys are in there.”

“Hand me that torch, mate,” Jace told Worthington, and when he didn’t comply, added, “Flashlight. Let me check.”

Paige was right. She was sensitive. Her upper lip was three times its size, and her ear and cheek were puffing up, too. He asked, “How do you feel?”

“Not bad,” she mumbled through that fat lip. “My throat’s fine. I told you. I’m sensitive. I need a steroid shot, that’s all. It doesn’t matter.” She asked the woman beside her, “Why would you do this? You heard Brett Hunter say he’d pull out of the project if something happened to me.”

Jennifer said, “Because that was a lie. Obviously it was a lie. He’s not going to leave a profitable project like this on the table because somebody messed with your chickens and bees. He was just saying that. This is business.”

“Joke’s on you,” Paige said, “because my sister’s already made an agreement with Hunter for her land. You’re making your brother arrest you, you’re facing charges for malicious mischief and a lawsuit, and your reputation’s going to be toast, and it’s all for nothing. It was going to happen anyway.”

“What sister?” Jennifer asked. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Her husband didn’t say anything. He hadn’t said a thing so far, in fact. Dragged along, Jace would bet anything, and wishing like hell that he’d married somebody else. Paige said, “I’m not Lily Hollander. You didn’t even get the right woman. I’m Lily’s sister Paige. I’m with the San Francisco Police Department. Like I said. Joke’s on you.”

Life didn’t always give you that moment of pure satisfaction, but this time, it did. Until Paige suddenly said, as Worthington was leading Jennifer’s still-silent husband to the patrol car, “Lily.”

Jace asked, “Lily what?”

“Something’s wrong with Lily. Something bad. We need to find her. We need to go.” 

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