Page 69 of Dangerous Secrets

Right now, for instance, he could be in bed with the waitress in the dingy diner where he’d eaten a cheeseburger. Or the check-out girl where he’d bought the whiskey.

He could have more or less any woman he wanted. He could dress and drive down to the tavern he’d seen five miles down the road. Half an hour after walking through the doors, he’d have company for the night, guaranteed.

He didn’t want anyone else, though. Just Charity.

His hand dropped down, fisted around his dick.

He sucked in his breath between his teeth and thought of her. He gave an experimental pull with his fist, then opened his hand immediately. His hand was callused, rough. The exact opposite of the softness of Charity. His dick refused his hand, simply rebelled. He didn’t even try another stroke, just let himself go and lay on his back, naked, hard and aching.

He didn’t want to be here, in this musty room smelling of hundreds of traveling salesmen jacking off and two-bit whores selling $30 blow jobs.

He knew where he wanted to be. With Charity. In her lovely little house that smelled of lavender and lemon polish and the scented candles she continually lit.

He wanted—so fiercely he thought his heart would beat its way out of his chest—he wanted to turn the clock back forty-eight hours.

He lay on the bed until gray light started to fill the room, then got up and dressed. He’d worn the same clothes for three days running now. They were rumpled and smelled of sweat.

He walked down the stairs to the lobby. Basic tradecraft—take the stairs if you’re under cover. Fewer people will see you and you won’t be trapped.

He’d paid the night before in cash, so he could walk right out without being stopped. He waited until the guy behind the desk was busy checking in a family of five, then slipped out the front door.

It was a cold day—gray and sleety. The cheap nylon parka he had on barely mitigated the cold. He felt chilled down to his bones and not just because of the weather.

When he was behind the wheel, Nick started the engine and drove to the feed road into the Interstate where he’d been yesterday, braked and idled.

If he turned left, he’d start the journey back to DC, where he was already in a world of trouble for not showing up. Right was back to Parker’s Ridge. It would be crazy to go back to Parker’s Ridge, of course. If anyone recognized him, he’d blow the mission. Instant FUBAR.

Nick sat in the car, watching the exhaust rise like smoke in the rear view mirror. Even wasting this much time was criminal, a career-buster.

Fuck it.

He gunned the engine and headed right, straight for Parker’s Ridge.

Chapter Nineteen

Parker’s Ridge

November 29

Charity lifted her head when she heard a car drive up the street outside her house, the sudden movement making her nauseous. She swallowed the tickle of bile, knowing from experience that bile was the only thing shecouldthrow up. The only things she’d been able to choke down—half a dozen crackers, a glass of milk, once half a peach—had come right back up again.

The fact that she couldn’t eat didn’t surprise her. She could barely breathe. Sleep was almost a forgotten concept, which was for the best. When she did manage to nod off, she would wake up immediately in a cold sweat. Her dreams were filled with images of flaming cars flying off a mountain, explosions and charred bones. Her nightmares were incredibly vivid, down to the smell which would remain a part of her forever.

Charity had insisted on going to the coroner’s office to identify Nick. The sheriff and the coroner both had told her thatvisual identification was impossible and so she was exonerated from viewing the body. What remained of the body.

Something, some Prewitt concept of honor, made her insist on seeing the remains, overriding the sheriff’s and coroner’s wishes. At one level, she wished with all her heart that she’d listened to them. Nick’s charred remains had been enough to make even the coroner wince.

What had been laid out on the autopsy table bore no relationship to a human being—it was simply a collection of blackened bones, some cracked open to the marrow, laid out in a terrible facsimile of a human shape.

Blackened skull on top, the flesh burned away, baring Nick’s mouth of perfect teeth in a macabre grin. The coroner had arranged all the bones in the anatomically correct positions, except for the right tibia, which had never been recovered. It left a blank spot in the sooty sketch of what had once been a human being.

The sheriff clutched her elbow, hard, in case she fainted.

Prewitts were made sterner stuff than that, though. She didn’t faint and she didn’t break down. Whatever she felt was to be saved for the privacy of her own home. As she gazed at Nick’s remains, she could feel her own face, stiff and expressionless.

She’d stepped forward, away from the sheriff’s hand, and approached the table.

The sheriff had said that it wasn’t necessary to view the body, but itwasnecessary.

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