Dark Secrets Read online

  He flushed the toilet for no reason other than to make noise and told himself he needed to get back out there before his boy-like crush and subsequent emo questioning of their relationship became obvious. As he opened the door, he saw she’d crawled under the covers and had the corner flipped back for him.

  She was still naked, he could see that much in the space of her invitation for him to rejoin her. So he didn’t reach for anything other than the smooth feel of her skin. He curled up next to her, stroked her back, and tried to fall asleep. But the feel of her hand on his chest, his waist, his hip, brought him to full attention again.

  “You’re not sleeping, Nate Ryder,” she whispered in his ear.

  “Not with you doing that, I’m not.” He grinned as he listened for noises beyond the hotel wall. The window had a bar, but the real safety feature was that the place was too cheap to use glass. Breaking the plastic would be harder and take several hits. He’d looked to the lock on the door when he emerged from the bathroom. Though the limited points of entry were also limited points of exit, there was nothing he could do about that. So he rolled forward into Grace’s firm, yet soft, touch as her hand wrapped around him.

  “Jesus, woman, I may never sleep again.”

  “I’ll let you sleep after this,” she promised, though her voice promised things that had nothing to do with sleeping.

  Chapter Twenty

  She woke to see Nate was still asleep, but she wasn’t disappointed. She had no expectations of this man. One morning didn’t make him the kind to sleep in or not. Now she had double her previous data, though two mornings was hardly a worthy set of information.

  Grace found herself wondering if she would get more. If today would be the day they found out who killed Jimmy and hauled them away. If Nate would lock her in a safe house until he and the Dark Falls PD solved it themselves. Or if they’d just wind up going their separate ways. She had no idea, seeing the cards she been dealt only one at a time, like the game War. She had to play whatever she flipped over. Last night, she’d flipped over Nate. That turned out to be a jackpot, though she’d suspected that would be the case.

  The man played her like a guitar and she’d been happy to be touched and stroked and appreciated until he wrung a stellar orgasm out of her. She wasn’t frigid by any means, but she wouldn’t have thought she was easy either. But the world had disappeared around them, all of it—the cheap motel, Brad’s concern that she was running around with a police officer she didn’t know, her parents’ sadness and Jimmy’s death—and she’d ridden the tide the two of them had created. She’d needed that.

  She didn’t let herself think that she’d also needed Nate specifically. There was no room for hopes and wishes when a drug lord was showing up at your hotel and chasing your car through the streets. If she had any doubts about the danger, the house explosion dispelled that quickly. Whatever it was these people were hiding, they were more than willing to kill for it. She had no doubts they’d killed Jimmy and now they were trying to kill her and Nate, too.

  Nate rolled over and his eyelids lifted lazily. Not like yesterday where he realized he should be more alert suddenly. His hand reached out to stroke her arm and she loved the simple touch. Though it was only then that she realized she’d propped herself up and had probably moved around too much.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “Mmm-mmmm.” He shook his head at her to say that wasn’t the case.

  His lack of actual words made her think it probably was. But his fingers still touched her as though he’d been allowed to touch a Michaelangelo sculpture. If she’d been wondering what the morning would be like between them, he was answering.

  She would have reached out for him, except they couldn’t afford the risk. The first time they’d tried to be together, his reluctance had saved their lives. There was every possibility that Slater X’s men were out looking for them now. With the lack of use of their credit cards or cars, there weren’t many options for them but buses and cash-only motels. They probably wouldn’t be hard to find. “Do we need to leave?”

  With a heavy, regretful sigh, he nodded at her, still not forming actual words.

  “Shower?” she asked him and the spark in his eyes made her laugh. “I mean separately.”

  “Now that’s a mistake.” His grin lit up his face, but his look made her see that he understood. He nudged her, “Go first.”

  Taking him up on it, she wondered if he thought she’d be slow. But she wasn’t.

  There were three bath towels hanging next to the old tub shower, and she claimed two of them. Long hair gave her that right, she decided. She emerged from the steam—having finally figured out how to get the water the right temperature—less than five minutes later.

  Nate sat on the edge of the bed, ogling her. Whether that was because they’d screamed each other’s names several times the night before or because the towel was so short it could only be worn in front of a man she’d just had sex with, Grace couldn’t tell.

  He stood with the weariness of a man who wasn’t quite ready to be awake, but he kissed her square on the lips as he passed her, then he smacked her butt so lightly she almost wasn’t sure it had happened.

  Still, when he came out—towel slung low enough on his hips to make her think about peeling it off him—she was standing there, ready. Another set of borrowed clothing on, bag packed, feet in shoes. Grace quirked a brow at him as if to ask why he was so slow. Nate only grinned at her and shook his head.

  Damn, she liked this guy. She watched while he got dressed, dropping the towel to the floor and leaving that fine ass in full view. Whether it was comfort or tease, she didn’t know. Since she’d already gotten all her things together, she had nothing to do but sit and stare. So she did. Then she reminded herself that they lived on opposite sides of the country, each with a career firmly in place. That wiped the smile off her face. She managed to get back to neutral by the time he turned around, the first Masuka-button-down shirt back in place.

  “You ready?” he asked, though that was clear before he’d started.

  “What are our plans for today?” She hadn’t moved, realizing that she had no clue where to go from here.

  He pulled the burner phone out of his pocket—his regular one tucked into his bag like hers—and checked the time. “It’s still pretty early. One, we just have to get out of here. Sadly, we have to stay on the move. Two, I think we find a big store that’s open and buy ourselves some clothing—”

  “Hallelujah,” Grace almost shouted it. She was tired of borrowed clothing. She disliked everything about it, including that she was almost the same size as Grandma Masuka. The indignity of Nate finding the clothing too small was balanced by the dignity of not fitting into the things in the closet.

  Nate laughed, “Three, get breakfast.”

  “You won’t top yesterday’s breakfast for lunch/dinner thing.” She tipped her head at him as if to ask if he could.

  “Oh really? Just wait.” He slung his bag over his shoulder and grabbed for his gun. With the efficient movements of a law enforcement officer, he checked the weapon, making sure he had one in the chamber.

  Then he motioned her behind him as he slowly undid the lock on the door and pulled it open. Luckily, no one was around, but Nate didn’t let down his guard. Grace reminded herself that anyone after them could squeal into the parking lot at any time and open fire. They could capture her and Nate, demand to know what they’d found out, then kill them and leave their bodies in a shallow grave. She thought about the irony of a forensic investigator being left in the woods and not found for years or decades. But the thought of what that would do to her parents kept her glued to Nate’s back. It kept all her comments about “overkill” buttoned tight behind her lips.

  She only relaxed when they were in the car again and she pointed out that Nate had zipped past a perfectly good department store.

  “Two problems with that,” he said as he took a ramp onto a freeway. �
�One, it’s too close to where we spent the night. We need to hit a different section of town. So if they find where we were, at least where we are isn’t close.”

  Grace nodded. She usually thought about putting things back together, about tracing steps after they happened. Nate thought the other direction. He was thinking about how to stay safe going forward, how to anticipate moves. She was still thinking about it when he spoke again.

  “Two, a department store is probably more expensive and we need to conserve our cash. Since we don’t know how long we’ll be living on it.”

  “I don’t know,” she countered, watching the city of Fort Collins go by outside the window. “You can get some good deals at a department store.”

  “Sure, but we should go someplace where we can also get condoms.”

  “Well, when you put it that way…” she let it trail off. She was getting hungry, but breakfast was the third thing on their list.

  He was pulling into a far-too-well-known discount store before her stomach could work up a grumble.

  “Ahhhh.” She climbed out of the car, wondering if they were safe or if people would think to look for them at a store. “Mart of Darkness.”

  Nate laughed out loud. “Is that what you call it?”

  “I can’t say I think it’s a good idea to give them my money, but… well, they could completely survive off the times people say, ‘but where else can I get itch medicine and snorkeling fins at the same place?’”

  “It is the perfect place for running from criminals,” he conceded, and they headed inside where they got t-shirts and cheap jeans…and condoms.

  Nate grabbed a few extra things—snacks, bottled water, and a few more necessities—making their cart full and the condoms almost invisible. Though why she even thought about that Grace didn’t know. It wasn’t like Breathless, Georgia where she’d grown up, where her parents still lived. That place was small enough that people would drive into Atlanta just to buy condoms anonymously. No one even knew her here.

  After paying cash for the whole lump, they headed out to the car and Nate commented, “Shit. I want to wear the jeans and t-shirt, but we’ll need to stop to change.”

  “Gas station?” she asked, and they were off in a different direction and she still didn’t know about breakfast.

  Later, they pulled up in front of the same restaurant where they’d eaten the day before.

  “They have one here, too?” she asked, surprised. “It’s a chain?”

  “I think there’s only about three or four of them, but there’s one here. You told me I couldn’t beat yesterday and you’re right, but I can match it.”

  She teased him about conserving their cash at Wal-Mart but then blowing it here. It didn’t stop them, though, and by the time they were headed out the door, she would have sworn she was waddling rather than walking.

  As they climbed into the car and waited for the heater to kick in, Grace pulled her new, cheap jacket tighter around her shoulders. Nate had insisted they get new jackets. The ones from the Masuka house had been different from their own. Since people often work the same jackets all the time, they were beacons of identification if anyone was looking for them. They needed to change up their outerwear periodically if nothing else. She was just grateful that this one was warm, it seemed the temperature had dipped again since they’d come out.

  “I thought it was getting warmer,” he said and cranked the heater up. “I’d love to say it’s not normally like this, but it is. You think spring is coming and then it pulls the rug out from under you again.”

  “Could it snow?” She had no idea. Her Georgia-girl self had seen snow only when she traveled. “Would that be bad for us?”

  It was something she hadn’t considered.

  “Could help, could hurt. Just depends on how it ends up.”

  That was not comforting. He started the car and she asked, “Where are we going now?”

  “That’s the problem. I don’t know, but we have to move.”

  They burned gas and talked about what their next steps were. They decided they needed to see Jimmy’s texts to Grace, but they couldn’t turn on the phone. In the end, Grace called Brad again to see if he could help.

  “I know you don’t hack tech, Brad,” she said into the burner phone, “but if you could find us someone, that would mean a lot.”

  “No worries. I already have someone.” It made Grace wonder why Brad was already in with a hacker, but now was not the time to worry about it. “I’ll get it to you when I have it. In the meantime,” he warned her, making the hair on her arms raise, “be careful, I don’t like what we’re finding in Dark Falls.”

  “What are you finding?” She glanced at Nate, wondering if he was listening in. But he seemed to be focused on driving to nowhere, looking for landmarks and turns.

  “I don’t have anything concrete yet, Grace.” Brad sounded apologetic. “But I can tell you this: don’t trust any of them. Something is up, I just don’t know exactly what or who to pin it on.”

  He hung up with promises, but his words made her shiver. Was he insinuating something was up with Zaragosa? Or with Masuka? She’d given him both those names before. Brad’s digging made her nervous and she glanced sideways at Nate again.

  “Next order of business,” she told him, “I’ve been thinking we need to get Jimmy’s ashes. I can maybe get them tested.”

  “Will they still have them?” He seemed confused by the possibility.

  “They won’t be in an urn anywhere, but they might be in one spot. Supposedly the crematorium would have them waiting for me or my parents to pick them up.” That was standard protocol. Though the way this was going, Kevin might have been given the ashes. “Unless the crematorium is in on it, too, there’s no reason for them to have done anything untoward with the ashes.”

  Nate didn’t ask, maybe he’d already heard of the kinds of things that could happen with ashes, such as straight up mixing them up, mixing several sets of remains together, or just faking them with some other kind of ashes. All those options took a reasonable level of forethought or severe disregard of standard operating procedures. She could only hope that whoever was trying to cover up Jimmy’s death would think that getting him cremated would be enough. She sighed. “My first check will have to be that they are Jimmy’s ashes and only his ashes.”

  It wasn’t something she’d thought about in conjunction with her little brother. She didn’t like thinking it now. “We should also get in touch with Kevin if we can.”

  Finally, Nate spoke. “I don’t know if that’s a possibility. If they know about Jimmy, they know about Kevin. Thus, they’ll be watching him as it would make sense for us to show up and talk to him. In fact, it’s odd that we haven’t already.”

  Grace agreed with that, though being tailed by killers reduced the oddness considerably. It was understandable that she hadn’t reached out to her brother’s long-term boyfriend. “So are we headed back to Dark Falls?”

  “I think we have to be. We can only hope that they know we went out of town and it will buy us some time before they figure out we’re back. This is going to take some serious maneuvering.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Nate wished he’d been kidding when he talked about how much work it would be to get back into Dark Falls unnoticed. He’d almost told Grace it would “take some serious maneuvering to keep them safe,” but that would have made it sound like he could do that. He couldn’t.

  Slater X and his men had already proved they were more than willing to kill, and he and Grace had to be the most obvious targets. To get to Kevin, they would have to do so not only unseen, but not alerting anyone that they had contacted Kevin. This meant Kevin couldn’t do anything unusual, couldn’t exhibit any changes in behavior. That was a lot riding on Jimmy’s boyfriend—a man Nate had met only once and didn’t have any real experience with.

  Nate and Grace first went and bought another burner phone. Then another, and another. They had to go back through Denver
to get to Dark Falls, so it was going to be an all day event just to get there. Nate also insisted on buying the phones in several different places. Stores usually sold batches because most people didn’t give a crap if their phone could trace back to the location and time it was sold. But if Slater and his people had the tech—and Nate wasn’t willing to bet Grace’s life that they didn’t—then finding one phone would mean they could ping the batch. When another phone from the same batch sold in Fort Collins triangulated in Dark Falls, they’d be found. He didn’t like that idea.

  So he made them buy each spare burner phone in a different location. They bought other clothing; each of them buying a spare jacket. He went into a tech store and picked up three car tracers. It was only there that he flashed his DFPD badge, having decided that he trusted the man behind the counter was not in league with Slater X and crew. It was a risk, but he had to take it. A man coming in and asking after three car tracers with trackers—not cell phone apps—was suspicious in and of itself. He would rather the clerk know not to talk about it than not know and say something about his weird purchase. In the end, Nate had no idea if it worked or not, he probably never would.

  They didn’t get close to Dark Falls until well past midnight, and even then, he stopped two small towns out. Chances were very high someone had searched for him here already. Whether they’d asked the front desk in the motels if he and Grace had been by, or they’d been warning people to call in if they were spotted, the results were the same: no motels. They just weren’t safe.

  Grace had been unprepared for his proclamation. She hadn’t realized why he’d spent their dwindling money on a tent and survival blankets. He was hoping to get in touch with Zaragosa or Masuka for another infusion of cash, but he knew it had to be hurting those guys. He’d tried to spread the love around not just lean on those two. He said he also trusted Sevier and Cantu after Masuka looked into their histories and declared them safe. Now he was hoping no one would think to ping their phones to check for Nate. But they couldn’t help, they’d been called out on an arson case that they were in up to their eyeballs. So he would lean on his partner again. It didn’t matter that he would make sure the money got paid back, it was a loss to her savings now. If she had any. He didn’t know, and that made things worse. He’d still have to ask.