Virtue Falls Read online

  “You were lucky to get through!”

  “You always make me feel like the village idiot. But I’m not stupid!”

  “Worse than that,” he said bitterly. “You’re dedicated.”

  The injustice stung her. “You’re one to talk.”

  “But when I walk into danger, it’s because—”

  “I know. Because your job is important.” She could do bitter, too. “Mine is not. It can wait another million years or so.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You don’t have to. You’re not exactly a subtle thinker.”

  He didn’t answer.

  So she’d finally stumped him, finally won the fight. She didn’t feel triumphant, just let down and gray. Although perhaps she hadn’t won. For he was staring at her face, her body …

  A lot of things occurred to her then, silly things: that the towel she’d used on her face had been dirty, that she had been shoveling rocks and was covered in sweat, that she’d tied a bandana around her head to try and keep her hair out of her way, that she hadn’t been sleeping well because every time she shut her eyes, she heard her father’s voice saying, What about the bones?

  “I must look like hell,” she said.

  He shook his head. In a voice deep and rich and lavish with desire, he said, “You look absolutely … beautiful.”

  “Ohh.” It was more of a sound than a word, a quick sip of breath as she recognized the look on his face, remembered the weight of his body, gloried in the scent of his desire.

  No matter how they fought they had always been like this: balanced between anger and passion, between hurt and glory.

  When they first got together, she didn’t understand how two people who had so little in common could be so madly, passionately in love.

  When they split, she had realized madness and passion could never keep a couple together.

  But the hunger … it still seethed between them.

  The earthquake had given him reason to fear for her life.

  And she had been lonely, an outcast among the townspeople and the scientific team.

  Now the gold in his eyes intensified to a heated amber, the air grew thick and warm and so still it almost shimmered … and his lips descended to hers.

  He kissed her.

  He tasted like toothpaste and desperation. He smelled like cinnamon and teak wood and explosive need. He felt … oh, God, he felt right, his weight a memory of good times and bad, of long afternoons of leisurely sex and quick morning gropes in the shower. And the way he kissed her … familiar, with all the same moves, yet so intense it felt like the first time, a flashfire that could not be contained.

  She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, slid her hands up his neck.

  He was muddy, and she wanted to laugh.

  He was skinny, and she wanted to scold.

  He was so desperately unhappy, that she wanted to cry.

  Grabbing his hair, she pulled his face away from hers. “Garik. Why…?”

  He answered by grabbing her hair, too, and tugging her head back, and tasting her neck. He pressed his lips over the artery, sampling the excitement that spread through her veins. “Damn you for leaving me.” His lips moved against her skin, his breath touched her lightly as a scent, the words were barely audible.

  She didn’t need to hear. She knew how deeply she had wounded him.

  Yet she had left to save herself. All the days of their marriage, she had ached with fear and loneliness. Fear that he would be killed in the line of duty. Loneliness because if he was, she would have nothing, not even the memory of their closeness to warm her through the rest of her desolate years.

  So now she yielded, allowing him to kiss her throat, the hollow at the base of her neck, then her lips again. It was no sacrifice; he kissed as he did everything, expertly, thoroughly, with the passion that gave her a hint of the soul he hid so well. Those kisses, those hints, had first seduced her, then kept her in their marriage long after she should have given up.

  Now he stole her breath, and her heart.

  Not again. Not again.

  She gave him a push. “Garik. That’s enough. Off!”

  He rolled with her, bringing her on top of him, freeing her from his weight, and with his head cradled by mud and his hands barely touching her waist, he looked up and said, “Then you kiss me.”

  “No.” Even as she pressed her mouth to his, she said, “That would be stupid.”

  Oh, my God. Even with her eyes closed, he was beautiful. He let her have her way with him, let her kiss him, suckle his tongue, savor his tenderness spiced by desire.

  He’d been the first man she’d ever slept with—and she’d slept with him on the first date.

  She’d been a twenty-one-year-old virgin, not for any dedication to purity or for religious reasons, but because the men who’d pleaded and arm-twisted never moved her to anything but annoyance. She had figured she was frigid, that passion was one of those things that her warped upbringing had stolen from her.

  One kiss, and Garik convinced her otherwise. She had jumped on him, so eager for a taste of genuine lust that he’d had to slow her down, warn her away … and all the while he’d been taking off her clothes, and ripping off his, and thank God the man showed power and stamina in the back stretch …

  She lifted her head, and looked into his face. She pushed his hair off his forehead, and whispered, “Garik.” She wanted to say more: Take me, love me, need me. And she knew he would do all those things.

  But talk to me? Not so much.

  “In my truck,” he murmured, “there’s a blanket. We could put it on the seat, and I could take off your clothes and kiss you here”—he touched her mouth—“and here”—he touched her breast—“and…”

  She put her knees down on either side of his hips and sat up.

  He was hard. His body was making her a promise …

  “And here.” He slid his index finger between her legs and put slow, hot pressure on her clit.

  She tilted her head back, seduced, tempted, on the verge of coming, shuddering with … No. Wait. She opened her eyes, saw the green pines trembling against the blue sky—and realized that wasn’t the earth moving for her.

  It was moving.

  “Earthquake,” he said hoarsely. “Earthquake!”

  She jumped up, scrambled away from him, gave him room to stand.

  He vaulted to his feet, too, his mouth tight with tension, his hands held at the ready for battle. But what would he battle here and now? If the walls of the canyon came down, he could do nothing about it.

  The walls did fail: plumes of dirt rose up and down the river as landslides large and small bore witness to the instability of the region.

  The shaking increased. Her feet slipped in the mud. Roughly he pulled her close, watching, prepared to move on a moment’s notice.

  Two great boulders ripped off the canyon rim and plummeted down the slope. One boulder missed them by twenty feet. The other, smaller boulder bounced into a nearby massive pile of brush.

  Dust rose. Twigs and branches clattered and broke. The boulder hung there like a bird’s egg in the middle of a nest, then slowly subsided, sliding out of sight and all the way to the ground.

  The shaking became trembling, then ceased altogether.

  She clung to him anyway, and she remembered the other thing she had so loved about him—when he held her in his arms, she felt safe and cherished.

  She could have stayed here forever.

  Then he pushed her back, and looked down at her accusingly, no doubt remembering her assurances about the aftershocks and how she was safe here.

  She glanced around, prepared to defend herself … when she saw it. Sprawled on the pile of brush, revealed by the broken branches.

  She freed herself, and walked closer, hypnotized by the sight of … bones.

  Bones … shattered secrets revealed by this day’s disaster.

  But these bones had not yet spent over a century in the earth. Flesh
still clung to these bones, and clothing … a flowered dress, marked by mud and an older, darker, more ominous stain. Patches of short, blond hair cluing to the skull.

  Elizabeth knelt by the outstretched, skeletal hand.

  The ring was gone from the finger, but she recognized the material of the dress. She recognized the body. And the stain on the material—that was blood.

  In a calm voice that seemed to come from a great distance, she said, “This is my mother.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Their trip into town went swiftly, for Garik drove like a maniac along roads cracked from the earthquake. He drove like a man about to report a recent crime.

  Their visit to the sheriff’s office had not gone smoothly, for Foster had been incredulous and insulting, both about their find and about the mud that coated them.

  The drive back to the canyon involved a convoy of police cars that followed close on Garik’s bumper, and a monologue from Elizabeth that sent chills down Garik’s spine.

  “I’m not even that surprised,” she said. “My father warned me I would find her. Which is weird, I know, but the nurses at the care facility say he talks to my mother, so I suppose if one believes that is true, one could hypothesize that my mother knew her bones would be discovered. There’s a weird sort of logic there.” Elizabeth’s eyes were bright, her color was good. She appeared to be fine.

  But she was chatting. Elizabeth never chatted.

  Always, Elizabeth weighed her words. She spoke carefully, as if the speechlessness of her childhood had taught her the heft and power of language. During their marriage, as time went on, she had been more and more reticent.

  So one good thing had come from the shock and horror of finding Misty’s body—Elizabeth was talking to him now.

  And he, by God, was listening.

  Garik nodded and kept driving.

  “Garik, do you believe in the afterlife?” Elizabeth asked.

  “You know I do. When I was eight, Margaret adopted me. Margaret is Catholic. Therefore, so am I. It’s a requirement for living in her house.” He drove slowly, his attention torn between the rutted dirt road and his ex-wife.

  She was in shock, whether she knew it or not, and if chatting was what she needed to do, then he would listen. And learn. Because she was saying things he had never heard before.

  “I never have believed in an afterlife,” she declared. “I’ve seen no proof of ghosts. I’ve seen no sign of a just God. So why would I believe?”

  “God works—”

  “I know. In mysterious ways.”

  “Actually, I was going to say, at His own speed and with His own timetable. Sometimes justice takes longer than we would like.” Bitterly, Garik reflected on the truth of that in his own life. “Sometimes justice doesn’t come in a lifetime … and that’s what the afterlife is for.” He hoped. He knew a few candidates he would nominate to burn in hell.

  “I suppose that makes some sense. I mean, if you believe that the universe must remain balanced and justice must be fulfilled.” Elizabeth looked like a dirty urchin.

  No matter; she was still beautiful, and right now, she needed somebody.

  She needed him.

  She continued, “Personally, I find it fascinating that the nurses who work at the Honor Mountain Memory Care Facility, men and women who deal with death every day, do believe in ghosts and the afterlife.”

  “Maybe they know something you don’t.”

  “Maybe.” Elizabeth looked out the window at the pines, green and lush, bent and twisted by the eternal winds that blew off the Pacific Ocean. Finally she said, “Beautiful here, isn’t it? For millennia, it’s been an important ritual to humans to inter the bodies of the beloved of their family in a place of honor. If one was to think in such a manner—because it’s not like it matters to the person who has died—then this place is appropriate for my mother.”

  He wanted to pull Elizabeth close and hug her, tell her Misty would be buried with honor and Elizabeth would have a place to visit where she could place flowers in tribute to the woman who had given her life.

  But he couldn’t. Not now. They were on a mission to retrieve her mother’s bones, and until they had completed that mission, Elizabeth would have to be strong all on her own. Instead he infused his voice with support. “This peaceful, ancient forest has been a good resting place for your mother.”

  Elizabeth sat now with her hands in her lap, palms up, and she nodded. “Yes. Peaceful and ancient.”

  “And you work nearby. She knows that.”

  “She’s dead,” Elizabeth said with impeccable logic. “She can’t know that.”

  “Some people might say you didn’t find her, Elizabeth. Some people might say she found you.” Which he was pretty sure was going to bug him later.

  Elizabeth frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  He thought she understood him perfectly well.

  She ran her fingers through her hair, shedding leaves, twigs, and chunks of mud onto the back of the seat.

  He started to protest, then shut his mouth.

  They were dealing with bigger issues here than the cleanliness of his truck. And after that drive across four states, through a billion bugs and a dozen McDonald’s drive-throughs, he had no business whining about a little mud.

  She looked behind them. “Sheriff Foster is tailgating.”

  “Yes. He doesn’t want us to think we can get away.”

  “Why does he have his police lights flashing? Why did he bring his deputies with him? Does he think we committed the crime?”

  Garik glanced in the rearview mirror, at Sheriff Foster’s clenched jaw and furious eyes. “He has issues.”

  “What kind of issues?”

  “For one thing, he doesn’t like me. I was nobody, a vagrant’s kid. Then Margaret adopted me and made me somebody. Then I became a juvenile delinquent, and he got to say, I told you so.”

  “To Margaret Smith?”

  Her openmouthed horror made him laugh briefly. “I know. What he lacks in intelligence he makes up for in balls. She’s been gunning for him ever since.”

  “I would not make Margaret Smith my enemy,” she said fervently.

  “No. No, it’s not a good idea. What really pisses off Foster is that I straightened out, went to college, went into the FBI, and was by definition cooler than him.” Garik still loved that that was true.

  “Even suspended, you are cooler than him,” Elizabeth said.

  “No arguments here.”

  “That is not so large an accomplishment,” Elizabeth pointed out. “I don’t think Sheriff Foster actually qualifies as cool.”

  “My darling.” Garik patted her knee and chuckled. “Honest to the last.”

  She looked at his hand, then at him. “You are, however, younger, more intelligent, and more pleasing to the eye.”

  “That, too.” He was glad she had noticed.

  “And taller. I have noted that men who are less than five-ten seem to have issues with men of your height.”

  “True. And he lives with his mother.”

  She sent Garik a startled glance. “Oh, dear.”

  “She’s in bad health, always has been.”

  “But has he never had a relationship with a woman?”

  “Not that I know.”

  “Or a man?”

  “Not that I know.”

  She seemed confused. “After living with you, I find it hard to believe a man could abstain from sex, but I have read some men are not at all interested.”

  “It is hard to believe, isn’t it?” Today, it had taken a jolt from the earth itself to throw Garik off Elizabeth, and even then, as soon as the aftershock had ceased, he would have tugged her up to the canyon rim, tossed her in his truck, and had his way with her.

  She would have gone, too.

  Today, only one thing could have called a halt to the sex. And had.

  Her mother. For a woman who had been dead for twenty-three years, she did a good job of protectin
g her daughter.

  “I don’t understand it,” he said, “and I don’t like things I don’t understand. Foster’s not happy with us, and you’d think finding your mother’s body would be the culmination of his lifetime’s law enforcement work.”

  Elizabeth mulled that over. “You’re right. When we were at the courthouse, he went out of his way to insult us. It’s one thing to insinuate that we’re muddy because we’ve been having intercourse on the ground, but when we told him about … about my mother, he refused to believe us. He said it must be one of the … the whores from the cemetery. Then I told him about her … her dress. You told him she had blond hair. White … blond hair.”

  Garik listened to the hitch in Elizabeth’s voice, and wished he could help her through this.

  But Elizabeth shouldered past her pain. “Misty Banner’s body was never recovered. How would he know whether it was my mother or not?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I think Sheriff Foster should be happy. The forensics experts will examine her body and at the least, they’ll say yes, she was killed with the scissors that my father held.” Elizabeth placed her hand on her throat, as if she could feel the fatal blow. “If Sheriff Foster is very, very lucky, DNA will link my father to the crime.”

  “And with this discovery, Sheriff Foster will be thrust into the spotlight again, which would make his next run for reelection easier.” Garik realized how good he and Elizabeth were together—not just in the sack, but also tracking the sheriff’s illogical reaction. “So why is he angry?”

  Elizabeth answered promptly. “It would follow that he fears some new evidence that will reveal incompetence and strips him of the glory of the case.”

  Garik glanced again in the rearview mirror. “A fair assumption.”

  “Garik … do you believe there’s a possibility my father is innocent?”

  He hesitated. He could see it—she was hopeful. He hated to crush that hope, but he couldn’t lie to her. “I read the file on the Banner case, and if there had been reason to believe him innocent, I would have investigated further.”

  “Oh.” Elizabeth picked at the mud on her arm. “The nurses say my father was innocent. But if that’s true, who is guilty?”