Frostfire

Something shifted in her eyes before she smiled and demolished him with four words. “I don’t want to.”

He pushed the door open. “Then invite me in, baby.”

Ethan cleared his head, jamming on his hat before scooping up the room key where she’d left it by the phone. She’d rented the room; the night manager would have her particulars. He headed toward the motel office.

“Sure, Sheriff, I remember her,” the bearded college student said a few minutes later as he sorted through the guest information cards. “Nice lady. I think her last name was Anderson. No, here it is.” He pulled out the card and peered at the scribbled handwriting. “Her name is Anishon. J. Anishon.”

Ethan plucked the card from the kid’s fingers and skimmed it. “Aniston. Damn it.” He dropped the card on the counter. “Did she show you any ID? You make copies?”

“She paid cash, and she looked over eighteen. I’m only supposed to get ID on people who use charge cards.” The boy frowned. “Aniston. That sounds familiar. Wait, isn’t that the name of the one who was married to Brad Pitt? Before Angelina, I mean?”

“Jennifer Aniston.”

“Yeah, that’s her.” The kid’s grin lasted only three seconds. “Oh, man. Sorry, Sheriff. I’m so used to people using ‘Smith’ or ‘Jones’ that I don’t pay any attention to the normal-looking names.”

Which she had probably been counting on. Ethan checked the card again and memorized the plate number before stalking out of the office and heading for his Escalade. Once inside, he booted up his dashboard monitor, typed in the license number, and sent it to CDOT. The state licensing agency sent back a registration for a UPS truck in Boulder, and a stolen-plate report filed by the fleet manager yesterday.

Ethan didn’t know why she’d swapped out her plates and used a fake name at the motel, but he was going to find out. He typed up a request for every police and sheriff’s office in the region to be on the lookout for J. Aniston and her car, with a notation that she was to be immediately detained and held for questioning on suspicion of grand theft auto. Just before he hit the send button, he glanced at the door to the room he had shared with her.

She had told him a little about herself last night. She’d been sprawled on top of him, her head tucked under his chin, her breasts rubbing against him as she tried to catch her breath. He’d been stroking her spine with lazy fingers and wondering if there was enough room for both of them in the room’s shower. He was about to ask her to try it anyway when he realized something.

“Hey.” He waited until she looked up at him. “You never told me your name, sweetheart.”

“How rude of me.” She propped herself up and kissed his chin. “I’m Lori. What do I call you, besides amazing, incredible, and a godsend?”

He chuckled. “Ethan. So, you have family around here?”

“Just my sister.”

He felt her shoulders tense. “You two close?”

“We haven’t been, but I’m trying to change that.” She traced the outline of his lips. “How about you? Any brothers or sisters?”

“A brother I don’t talk to, and I’m not changing that.” He rolled her over onto her back and slid between her legs. “How about you and I get a little closer?”

Lori might be a liar and a car thief, but she’d been the best lover he’d ever had. While he slept, she also hadn’t touched the credit cards in his wallet or helped herself to his gun, his Escalade, or his briefcase and the four hundred dollars in cash he kept stashed in it.

Slowly, cursing himself as he did it, Ethan reached out and erased the BOL he’d typed up on his one-night stand. Bye, baby.

He stopped to have breakfast at the diner, and sat in the same booth he’d shared with her last night. He could still smell her, although her scent was not coming from the vinyl cushions of the booth. It was all over him. He should have showered before he’d dressed; now he’d be smelling her the whole way back to Frenchman’s Pass.

As Ethan paid his check, he couldn’t help asking if Lori had stopped in before hitting the road. The bleary-eyed waitress, just coming off her double shift, nodded as she gave him his change.

“Came in around five, I think. Had a cup of tea and a muffin to go.” She slid the cash drawer shut. “I asked her if she was all right—she looked upset—but she said she was just a little tired.”

Against his better judgment Ethan drew a business card from his jacket and handed it to the waitress. “You see her again, would you give her this?”

She read the card. “You’re a ways from home, Sheriff Jemmet.”

He pocketed his wallet. “Heading back now.”

She nodded and pinned the card up on the small cork-board next to the register. She turned back, clearly hesitant, and then said, “With you looking for her, maybe I ought to give you this.” She reached under the counter and brought up a square plastic basket filled with odds and ends. From it she took a short strand of silver-linked miniatures.

“Where did you find this?”

“She dropped it on her way out. Looks like the clasp broke. By the time I saw it over there”—the waitress pointed to a spot near the entrance—“she was already gone.”

Lori had taken off something from her wrist and dropped it on the nightstand. He vaguely remembered seeing a glint of silver.

“When she comes back looking for this,” he told the waitress, “you give her my card and tell her to call me.”

Ethan didn’t examine the charm bracelet until he was back in the Escalade. It was an expensive, custom-designed piece made of pure silver and stamped in three places with maker marks, which would help him when he tracked down who had made it. From the fine, twisted links hung seven exquisite charms: a rosebud, a star, a crescent moon, a quill, a book, a crystal ball, and a cameo. Diamond chips accented five of the charms; the crystal ball had been fashioned from a dark blue moonstone.

The cameo, an oval of onyx set with a circle of rubies, had an ivory carving of a man’s face in profile. He turned over the minuscule portrait and saw three words engraved in fancy script.

Essere Libero Valori.

“Italian.” Ethan didn’t speak the language, so he couldn’t translate the phrase, but he could Google it later. It was the last word that fascinated him: Valori. “Valori. Lori.” He repeated the name, drawing out the syllables until he realized what the English version might be. “Valerie.”

He tucked the bracelet into his breast pocket, feeling a little smug now. He knew women and their trinkets, and something this personal and expensive had to be dear to her. Aside from her cheap watch, it had been the only jewelry she had worn. Whoever Lori/Valori/Valerie was, whatever she was running from, she’d be back for her bracelet. When she called him, he’d make the trip down the mountain one more time.

And then, Ethan decided, he’d slap the cuffs on her and take her back with him.

Chapter 5

A jolt brought Lilah out of the darkness and somewhat awake; she felt so sleepy she almost slipped back at once. Something held down her chest and legs, the weight of a heavy arm, a leg. Someone was beside her, in her bed. Then she felt the hard, cold surface under her and wondered how she’d ended up on the floor.

Opening her eyes took a very long time, and when she did pry her lids apart, they felt gummy, as if they’d been sealed with defective glue. Blinking to clear her blurred vision, she began to register other things. A blue tarp over her, covering her from head to toe. Something metal around her right wrist. The sense of being exposed came from her body; she was naked. Her right arm had gone numb, but not enough to miss the sensation of a long stretch of warm skin over hard muscle.

A body.

She squinted in the dimness, trying to see who it was, where she was. Short, black bristles of hair no more than a quarter inch long covered a scalp, curved over an ear. She shifted her gaze down, and saw part of a cheekbone, the tapered end of a wide black brow, the jut of a hard jaw.

A man was right next to her. A strange, unconscious man.

A naked man.

Lilah swallowed against her dry throat, her head swimming with sensory overload. “Help.” It came out like a cough, short and wheezing. She tried again. “Help. Me.”

The head next to her face turned slowly, exposing more of his face. He opened his eye slowly, only partway, and stared at her. From the one she could see, he had dark eyes, framed by lashes beaded with drops of water. Sweat streaked his skin and collected in little pools by the bridge of his nose and the corner of his mouth. He tried to pull back, only to go still. A muscle throbbed in his cheek as his jaw shifted.

“Drugged,” he breathed out, his voice more air than sound. “Taken.”

“Me?” She watched his head move in a small nod. “You?” Another nod. “No. Please, no.”

The man didn’t say anything, but she felt something move against her neck. His fingers, stiff and clumsy. His was the arm draped across her, and he was using it to try to reassure her.

Lilah didn’t dare close her eyes again. “Where? Who?”

“Truck.” The lines beside his mouth deepened as he tried again to move, and managed to slide a little of his weight over her right arm. “Men. Two.”

Lilah went still, listening. Now she felt the motion of the truck beneath them, heard the hum of the engine. The truck traveled at a steady speed, but she didn’t hear any signs that there were men around them. She couldn’t try to move until she knew for sure.

She gazed at the man beside her and swallowed against the dryness until it receded. “Are they GenHance?” He nodded again, confirming her worst fears. “Where are the men?”

He shifted his eyes up toward the sound of the engine.

Lilah felt his rigid body tremble, and saw pain in his eyes before he shut them tightly. He was in worse shape than she was, perhaps having some reaction to the drugs he’d been given. She moved the lead weight of her left arm, forcing it up until she felt the back of his arm under her hand, and held on as he shook. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">