Flare, p.13
Flare, page 13
Brock
A few days later, I head to Grand Junction, Ennis Ainsley’s shoebox in tow. I asked Rory to come with me, but she said she had to make up some of the lessons she missed while we were gone.
She doesn’t have to work. I’ll take care of her, but I know better than to suggest that to her. She’ll go straight for my balls. Neither of us are ready for any kind of commitment. Not while so much is still up in the air regarding both our families.
I’m going to see Aunt Ruby’s old colleague—the same one who checked out the bones for us.
He works out of his home, and I drive up to the tiny brick ranch house on the outskirts of the city. I take the shoebox, exit the car, walk up the pathway, and knock.
The door opens, and a gray-haired man stands before me. “Brock Steel, I presume?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Gordon Jackson. Come on in.”
Gordon Jackson is wearing joggers and a T-shirt, no shoes or socks. I enter, and a miniature schnauzer barks at my heels.
“Go on, Theo,” Jackson says.
I bend down and give Theo a few scratches behind his ears. “He doesn’t bother me. I love dogs.”
“Well, you’ve done it now,” Jackson says. “Now that you’ve shown him you’ll pet him, he won’t leave you alone.”
I chuckle. “That’s okay.”
He glances at the box. “That’s the stuff?”
“It is.”
“Follow me. We’ll take it down to my lab.”
We head through a short hallway to a door. Jackson opens it. His lab is apparently in his basement. We walk down twelve steps, and he flips the light switch.
And I stop my jaw from dropping.
This is a lab all right. There’s equipment down here that I don’t recognize. I may have wandered into a secret government complex.
“Let’s see what we’ve got here.” Jackson takes the box from me and sits down on the stool in front of what looks like a workbench but is much more intricate.
“Have a seat.” He gestures to the stool next to him. Then he puts on a pair of glasses, except they’re not glasses. They have something like jewelers’ loupes attached to them, so they’re clearly some kind of magnifying device. Then he straps on some white rubber gloves.
He pulls out the first item, the perfume. Examines it. “You’re not looking for fingerprints?”
“No,” I say.
“Good, because most of these are old, except for a few that appear very new.”
“That would be my girlfriend and me. We’re the ones who found the stuff and brought it back from London.”
“Got it.” He looks at the perfume bottle from all angles. “Definitely nothing on here that I could get DNA from.”
Next he pulls out the cassette tape. He examines it the same way, looking at it from every angle with his magnifiers. He sets it down after a few moments. “Nothing here either.”
“No. We figured our best bets were the hair tie or the panties.”
He carefully pulls the hair tie out of the box. “I don’t want to disturb anything that is attached to it. You do have some hairs here. But if they’re over sixty years old…” He shakes his head.
“We know. It’s a real long shot.”
“It is.” He examines the hair tie and carefully extracts the hairs from it, looking at them closely. Then he removes the magnifiers from his face and turns to a microscope.
He examines each hair under the scope. Then he sighs.
And I sure don’t like the sound of that sigh.
“I’m afraid there’s no viable root on any of these hairs. I thought we might have one, but under the scope, it’s a no.”
“What now?” I ask.
“Let me look at the panties, though I doubt there will be anything there.”
“Okay.”
He takes the panties, puts his magnifying glasses back on, and examines them.
Minutes tick by.
He’s not leaving any stone unturned, that’s for sure. Either that or he likes touching women’s panties.
Just when I’m sure he’s about to tell me he has nothing—
“Here we go. One pubic hair.” He pulls it out. “Damn. She was a real redhead.”
I dismiss the ick factor. I don’t give a shit what this man says. I just want to know if this pubic hair has DNA attached.
He pulls the hair from the panties with tweezers, removes his glasses again, and turns to the microscope. He examines it for what seems like hours but is only a few seconds.
“Shit,” he says.
“Bad news?”
“No viable hair root. I’m sorry.”
I sigh. “Well, I guess that’s it. All that’s left in there are some roses. Dried-up roses.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Any stems?”
“Yeah. Short stems.”
“Another long shot, but let me see the stems.”
I hand the box to him, and he puts his glasses back on and intricately examines the stems.
“I’ll be damned,” he says.
“What?”
“Right here, by the thorn. A tiny speck of blood.”
A spike of hope shoots through me, until—
“That blood could be the Englishman’s,” Jackson says. “It may not be the girl’s.”
“Pretty much a fifty-fifty shot, though, wouldn’t you say?”
Jackson removes the magnifiers. “True enough. But we still have limitations. The speck of blood is probably over sixty years old.”
“And is that a problem? I mean… I don’t know anything about DNA extraction.”
“It’ll be difficult,” he says. “But we at least have a sample. Will we get anything from it? More likely we won’t, but at least it’s something I can try.”
“So you have the DNA from the bones. All you need to do is match it.”
“Right. And if the blood doesn’t match, we know it probably belongs to the guy.”
“Do you need a sample of his DNA?”
“No. Unless you need it for something else.”
“No, I don’t.”
“All right,” Jackson says. “Give me twenty-four hours. I’ll be in touch.”
“Thank you. You’ll be compensated very well.”
“I know, and I appreciate it. Tell Ruby I said hi.”
“Will do.”
I leave the stems with Jackson, but I take the rest of the items in the shoebox with me. Once everything is over, I’ll return the entire box to Ennis.
“I’ll see you out,” Jackson says.
“Don’t bother,” I tell him. “Go ahead and start your work.”
Back in Snow Creek, I stop at the cinema to talk to Jenny Mabel, the manager.
Jenny and I went to high school together, and she always blushes profusely when I talk to her. True to form, her cheeks are bright red when she comes out of her office.
“Hi, Brock.” She looks at her feet.
“Hi, Jenny. Thanks for seeing me. I need to change my reservation for Rory Pike’s concert.”
“You do?” This time she looks at me, and she widens her eyes. “We were all really looking forward to that.”
“Don’t worry. We’re not canceling. There’s just some stuff going on right now, and Rory can’t get the program together as quickly as we first thought. I’m thinking maybe mid-December?”
“Come on back to my office, and I’ll take a look at our schedule.”
Schedule? Really? The Snow Creek cinema has a schedule?
“Okay.”
I follow her back to her office, which is the size of a large closet. She sits down at a tiny desk and taps on the computer.
There’s no extra chair, so I stand.
“Yeah,” she says. “Just as I suspected. We’re planning a great big Christmas movie marathon beginning December fifteenth. We’ll have all the oldies. Miracle on Thirty-Fourth Street, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Bells of St. Mary’s…”
“What about Elf?” I ask.
“Elf?”
“Yeah. It’s a freaking classic.”
She reddens further. “Okay. I’ll see if we can get it.”
I chuckle. “I’m kidding, Jenny. What if we booked Rory on the fourteenth?”
“That’s a Thursday.”
“So what?”
“Wouldn’t you want her concert to be on a weekend?”
Jenny raises a good point. “What would it take for me to get the place on that Saturday night, the sixteenth, and then you start your holiday thing on Sunday?”
“We’re not open on Sunday, Brock.”
Of course not. Nothing is open on Sunday in Snow Creek. Sometimes small-town living really sucks.
“Saturday then.” I smile. “Give Rory Friday, and start the Christmas classic marathon on Saturday.”
“Well… I might be able to swing that.”
“Friday would be great,” I say. “A Friday evening, ending the workweek… Coming to see Snow Creek’s most beautiful woman with the voice of an angel singing—”
Jenny frowns.
Yeah, not my best moment. Mentioning how beautiful Rory is.
“I’m willing to pay more.” I smile. “Enough so you can probably get Elf for your Christmas movie marathon.”
She taps on her computer. “All right. You can have Friday. I’ll send you a contract. Sign it and send it back to me.”
“You’re a doll, Jen. Thank you.”
Red cheeks once more, as Jenny stares at her computer screen. “You’re welcome, Brock.”
Rory now has over a month to plan her program, and I can get back to dealing with this other bullshit.
Man… I hope the blood on that rose stem belongs to Patty Watson.
But then… What if it does?
That means…
That means we have the bones of an innocent eighteen-year-old girl buried on our property.
And that can’t mean anything good.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Rory
It’s two o’clock, and I just finished my last lesson for the day. I tidy the studio and then take a glance out my window.
Brock is walking up the street, looking luscious as usual in Levi’s, a black button-down, and black ostrich cowboy boots. What’s he doing here in town? He’s supposed to be in the city meeting with Ruby’s DNA expert.
He disappears behind the building.
I finish, lock up, and head down.
Sure enough, Brock is standing by my car.
“Hey.” I walk into his arms and give him a kiss on the lips.
“Hey yourself, beautiful.”
“What are you doing here in town?”
“I went to see Jenny over at the cinema. I changed the reservation for your concert to Friday, December fifteenth.”
“Thanks for that. That gives me a little over a month.”
“I thought you’d be happy.”
“Surely we can figure out all this other stuff in a month, right?”
He doesn’t reply.
“Brock?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart. I just don’t know. There’s so much going on. It may take a while to find the answers.”
“We have to. We have to at least find out if Pat Lamone is really your cousin.”
“Yeah, we will. Although DNA may not be entirely conclusive.”
“It’ll be able to tell you if he’s a second or third cousin, right?”
“I don’t know. He’s allegedly descended from a half sibling, which makes it more complex. A lot of it is Greek to me. I mean, sure, I studied agricultural science in college, and I can tell you all the parts of a bovine. When it comes to human anatomy and DNA? Not so much.”
“Yeah, me too. I definitely don’t have a science brain.”
“So we’ll leave it to the expert. The hair samples from the hair tie weren’t viable, and he found another hair on the panties, which also wasn’t viable. But…he did manage to find a speck of blood on one of the rose stems.”
“But that could be Ennis’s.”
“Exactly. It’s a shot in the dark. But it’s better than anything else we’ve got.”
“When do we find out?”
“He says he’ll try to have more information for me within twenty-four hours. I called Dale and Donny and my dad and gave them the info. Then I came over here to deal with Jenny and the cinema and to see the most beautiful woman in the world.”
He brushes his lips lightly over mine.
Then he gazes at me, his dark eyes flaring with fire.
Already I know what he’s thinking.
“Not here,” I say.
“Why not? There’s nobody around.”
“This is Snow Creek. There’s always someone around.”
“Is Willow down in the salon?”
“No, not today.”
“Then who else would be around? Who else could see us in this parking lot right now?”
“No way.”
He kisses me then—a hard and passionate kiss complete with clashing teeth and sliding lips and mashing tongues.
And I’m ready.
I’m always ready for him.
I break the kiss, breathing rapidly. “Upstairs. Studio.” I grab his hand and pull him through the back door of the salon and up the stairway.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Brock
Rory fumbles with the key in her purse and then has trouble getting it in the keyhole.
I take it from her, have trouble myself, but I’m able to get it unlocked.
I shove the door open.
The studio is a small room, not that I expected it to be huge. An upright piano sits against one wall, and one bookshelf stands against the adjacent wall. It’s filled with what I assume are music books, and more music books are stacked in neat piles against the rest of the wall.
Her bachelor and master of music degrees are framed and on yet another wall.
There’s a piano bench and a small desk with a chair.
Not really anywhere to make love.
But that doesn’t matter.
All I need is a fucking wall.
I’m so hard already, raring to get inside her.
“Take off your jeans, sweetheart.” I unbuckle my belt, unsnap my jeans, and slide them down along with my boxer briefs.
My cock springs out, awake and ready.
Rory flips off her shoes, removes her socks, jeans, underwear. I grab her then, hoist her into my arms, her back against the wall, right next to her music degrees.
I shove my cock into her.
She screams out, and I crush my lips to hers, silencing her.
I pump. I pump hard.
She pushes at my shoulders, breaking her kiss.
“Condom!” she gasps.
“Don’t fucking care.” I slam my mouth back down on hers and continue thrusting.
Do I want a kid? No, I don’t.
Right now? I need to fuck Rory.
I need to feel myself inside her with no barrier. I can feel every ridge, every valley inside her tight pussy. I don’t want to ever wear a damned condom again with this woman.
She feels like heaven. Indeed, heaven can’t feel any better than this place between Rory Pike’s legs.
I plunge, and I plunge.
Will she come? I don’t know, but I—
She grips my shoulders hard, and I feel it.
Her contractions, her moans and screams coming straight into my mouth as our lips are still locked.
Yes, she’s coming, and that’s all I need.
My balls scrunch up, and the contractions begin at the base of my cock. And I—
I pull out. I pull out of her, and my come shoots onto her thighs.
Not what I wanted, not what I was planning, but old habits die hard.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
“It’s okay. I understand.”
Does she? She’s not smiling, but she’s also coming down from an orgasm.
“We’ll think of something,” I say.
“I don’t like the idea of the pill. I don’t like putting hormones into my body that aren’t meant to be there.”
“I get it. Maybe an IUD?”
She shakes her head. “No. I don’t want a foreign object in me either. And before you say it, no shots and no messy jellies.”
“All right, sweetheart. Diaphragm?”
She nods finally. “Yeah. You have to use spermicide, but only a little. I’ll see my doctor.”
A diaphragm isn’t my weapon of choice, but really, it’s no worse than a condom. It won’t hinder either of our enjoyment of the act except she’ll have to stop and insert it. Same as me stopping to put on a condom.
“Brock…”
“I know. You might be pregnant. When will you know?”
“My period is due in about a week.”
I nod.
And part of me—that part of me that I try to ignore most of the time—almost hopes she is pregnant.
“Bathroom?” I ask.
She nods to the door on the opposite wall.
It, like the rest of the place, is tiny. Just a sink, toilet, and a small shower. She doesn’t have any washcloths, only paper towels.
I moisten one as best I can, bring it back out, and wipe my come from her thighs.
She gets dressed quietly.
“Dinner tonight?” I say.
She nods. “That would be nice.”
“My place?”
“Actually…”
“What?”
“How about my place?”
“Aren’t you staying with your family?”
“Yeah. But…my mom and dad really want to meet you.”
“Rory, we’ve met.”
“I know, but Callie is bringing Donny for dinner tonight, and my mom asked if I’d like to bring you.”
“And you’re just telling me about it now?”
“Yeah. You were gone all morning, Brock. I was going to call you, but…”
“But…what?”
She sighs. “I don’t know. It feels like it’s too soon, in a way. This has happened so fast between us, you know?”
“It has, but it’s kind of great.”
She smiles then, and things seem okay between us once more. “I agree. It’s pretty great, and I’d really like you to come to dinner tonight.”
