“You make me forget,” he murmured against her neck.
She angled her chin. “Forget what?”
Smiling at her breathless response, he pinned her hands above her head and pulled back to admire her. “Everything.”
As she gazed up at him with her hair fanning out on the floor, her body glistening with a damp layer of sweat and her pupils so dilated that her eyes looked black, he thought she had to be the most striking woman he’d ever seen. He even liked her tattoo sleeve because it was so much a part of who she’d come to be.
A crease in her forehead told him she wasn’t quite sure how to take his words. But she didn’t question him. “You make me remember,” she said.
He wondered where she was going with this. “Remember what?”
A faint smile curved her lips. “Everything.”
He didn’t ask her to explain. Whatever they felt, it was too new to define. It was there. They’d acknowledged it. That was enough.
“Good. Then remember this,” he said, and bent to kiss her again.
It had grown completely dark outside, but Sophia was still on the living room floor with Rod. She was too exhausted to move, even to the bedroom. She’d known she was under a lot of pressure, but she hadn’t realized just how heavy the burden of her job had been until that burden was removed. The UDA murders would become someone else’s problem soon. The fight was over. She’d lost—but at least it was over, right?
Maybe she’d move out of state, she decided. Sell everything she couldn’t fit on her Harley and go wherever the road took her….
“What are you thinking?” Rod murmured. He’d dozed for the past half hour or so while she’d been absently running her fingers through his hair and staring at the shadows cast by the rising moon.
“Montana.”
He lifted his head from her shoulder. “Montana?”
“I’m wondering if I’d like it up there.”
“You’re planning to move?”
“After everything that’s happened, I don’t think I want to stick around here.” Her heart nearly broke when she thought about Rafe. He’d be homesick for her by the time he returned from camp. And where would she be? Packing, with only a few weeks left in town?
No, more than a few weeks. She’d need to sell her house. She couldn’t move right away. But she’d have to make a change fairly soon. Without substantial savings, she wouldn’t have enough money to last long….
Hoping to put off difficult decisions, she squeezed her eyes shut. But there was no avoiding the truth. She couldn’t leave Bordertown without feeling she’d abandoned Rafe, which she’d promised herself she’d never do. She knew what it felt like to be abandoned, emotionally if not physically. And yet she couldn’t be happy living among the people who’d let her down so terribly….
“It’s a lot colder in Montana,” Rod pointed out. “You don’t want to go there.”
“Everywhere’s colder than here. Except…I don’t know…maybe Africa.”
“You wouldn’t mind leaving your mother?”
She wanted to mention Rafe, but wasn’t positive he’d understand. And why bother? She doubted he’d be around long enough for her bond with Rafe to become an issue. “Our relationship is…complicated. Sort of like your relationship with Bruce.”
“Bruce and I don’t have a relationship.”
“But you’re not quite as indifferent as you’d like to believe, remember?”
“I wasn’t referring to him.”
Smiling at the implication, she continued to thread her fingers through his thick hair. “I can tell you one thing—I wouldn’t mind leaving my stepfather.”
“Did you ask him why his number was in that safe house?”
“No. First, I want to go through his office at the feed store.” She told Rod about her aborted efforts at her mother’s place, and finished by saying, “All his bank statements and business documents are at the store. If there’s anything that’s going to reveal his connection to the safe house, I’m guessing it’ll be there.”
“What about the gun you found?”
“What about it?”
“We should test it.”
“You think Gary could be the UDA killer?”
“After what you told me about him, I wouldn’t put it past him.”
“Sexually unscrupulous doesn’t automatically equate with murder.”
“It proves a lack of integrity. And we did find his number at the safe house. Besides, the murder weapon is the same make, model and caliber as his. That’s a bit coincidental right there. Why not have a ballistics expert take a look?”
“He’s not racist enough to have killed those immigrants.”
“How do you know?”
“He likes Mexico. The people. The culture. He taught himself the language, and he always wants to vacation there. He’s already talking about going to Rocky Point for Christmas.”
“I still think we should do some testing.”
She pursed her lips, considering it. “I suppose we could ask him to turn the gun over to us voluntarily. But I doubt he will. He’ll use it as yet another example to show my mother that I’m out to get him.”
Rod’s breath fanned her cheek as he placed tiny kisses along her jawline. “We might be able to get a warrant.”
“Owning a Glock isn’t illegal, not if he has a permit. And it’s not as though the judge is remotely sympathetic to our cause.”
“If Special Agent Van Dormer will step in, we could go federal. That might help.”
She didn’t respond. She was battling a fresh wave of frustration and disappointment. Just when she thought she’d given in and succumbed to her fate, planned her motorcycle escape into the wild blue yonder, she realized she wasn’t willing to let her days in Bordertown end so negatively. She was too much of a fighter. Besides, she couldn’t really bring herself to leave Rafe behind. What’d happened to her had left too deep a scar to do the same to him.
Rod rolled up on his elbows. “Sophie, you still with me?”
“Sophie?” Only her mother and Rafe ever called her that.
“It’s an endearment. You don’t like endearments?”
“I don’t mind them if you don’t, Roddy.”
Laughing, he stole one of her throw pillows, then blocked the punch she tried to land to his ribs. “Whoa! So much hostility.”