Chapter 31
She didn't remember it ever raining this hard in August. Today's aberrant weather would probably set state records. The clouds had rolled in from the northwest at about two o'clock, providing unexpected and welcome relief from the sun and heat. But it wasn't a passing thundershower. It had begun as a hard, steady rain and hadn't let up.
Rennie sat on a hay bale with her back propped against the door of Beade's empty stall. Beyond the barn door, the rainfall looked like a gray curtain. Gullies had been gouged into the hard, dry earth. Channels of rainwater filled puddles that had formed in natural depressions. Rain had washed away the tire tracks left by the cattle truck that Toby had arranged to haul off the carcasses.
Carcasses. Her beautiful horses. All that magnificent power, beauty, and grace reduced to carcasses.
She wept without restraint, sobbing audibly, shoulders shaking. Her heart was broken. Not only for her loss, which was enormous, but for the sheer cruelty of the act. She wept over the wanton waste of those five beautiful, living creatures.
She wept to the point of exhaustion. When her weeping subsided, she remained as she was, listless, eyes closed, tears drying on her cheeks, listening to the hypnotic patter of raindrops striking the roof.
Sounds of his approach were eclipsed by the rainfall, but she sensed his presence. She opened her eyes and saw him standing in the open doorway of the barn, seemingly impervious to the torrent beating down on him.
He had offered to assist with the removal of the carcasses but had been reluctant to leave her alone. Toby had suggested calling Corinne to sit with her, but she had declined. She'd wanted to be alone for a while. He had seemed to understand that and had honored her wishes.
Nevertheless, he had asked a sheriff's deputy to remain parked at her gate until his return and had told her to stay inside the house, rifle nearby, with the door bolted. And for a while she had complied. But the barn had seemed the only appropriate place in which to mourn. Taking a throw from the sofa, she had used it as protection from the rain as she ran to the barn. Either the deputy hadn't seen her or had elected to leave her undisturbed.
Taking advantage of the solitude, she had grieved for each of the animals individually, then as a group. They had been her family. She had loved them as children. And now they were gone. Destroyed maliciously.
She didn't know how long she'd been here in the barn alone, but Wick would consider any amount of time too long. He would be angry at her for leaving herself unprotected.
He stepped inside and started down the center aisle. His boots squished rainwater. It had plastered the old T-shirt to his skin, making a mold of his torso. His blue jeans were soaked through, too, and clung to his legs. His hair was dripping rainwater and lay flat against his skull.
He stopped a few feet away from her.
Contrary to what she had expected, his expression wasn't angry, but anguished. His eyes weren't hard with annoyance, but soft with compassion. He stretched out his hand, clasped hers, and pulled her to her feet. Before her next heartbeat, she was in his arms and his mouth was possessively taking hers.
This time she gave herself over to it. She went with what had been her inclination the first time he'd kissed her. Mouth, hands, body--all responded. She pushed her fingers up through his wet hair and clutched his head, kissing him back hotly and hungrily, with desire finally unleashed.
She worked the clinging T-shirt up his chest and ran her hands over his wet skin, enmeshing her fingers in the curled hair, brushing his nipples.
Then she dipped her head and kissed his chest, her lips skipping over it lightly, greedily.
Hissing swear words of surprise and arousal, his large hand closed around her jaw, lifted her mouth back up to his, and made love to it.
When at last they broke apart, she clawed at his T-shirt until, together, they had it off.
"Get close to me, Wick. Please. Be close to me."
He peeled her top over her head and brought her up against his bare chest. His skin was wet, cool; hers felt very hot against it, an erotic contrast.
He buried his face in her neck. His arms enveloped her. She felt the imprint of all ten of his fingers on her back as he held her hard and flush against him. She worked her hands between their bodies. It was difficult to unfasten the metal buttons of his jeans because the wet fabric was stubborn, but she stayed with the task until they were all undone and she was touching him.
His breathing was harsh and loud in her ear as he walked her backward until she was pinned between him and the door of the stall. They kissed ravenously while he dealt with the zipper of her slacks. He pushed them down, along with her underpants. When her legs were free, he lifted her up.
With one thrust he was inside her. "My God, Rennie," he gasped and was about to withdraw.
"No!" She slid her hands over his butt and drew him deeper into her, rocking her hips against him. He rasped her name again and began to move.
He stroked them toward a climax that seized them quickly and simultaneously.
Supporting her on his thighs, he gradually lay her on the throw she had brought from the house and stretched out above her. He brushed loose strands of hair off her face and lowered his head to kiss her. "Wick--"
"Hush."
His lips moved over her face delicately, caressing each feature in turn. She tried to follow them, to capture them with her own for a kiss. But they were elusive, moving from ear to eyelid to temple to cheek to mouth. His breath was warm and sweet on her skin as he traced a slow path to her breasts.
He touched her nipple with his lips, sipped at it tenderly, then tugged it into his mouth. The other was reshaped by his hand, the nipple fanned with feather-light strokes until it was stiff and flushed and even then he continued to fondle her.
She moved restlessly beneath him, but when she reached for him, he stretched her arms high above her head and traced kisses on the underside of her arm from her wrist to her armpit. By the time he returned to kissing her breasts, she was aching to have him inside her again.
But he withheld. Sliding his hand between her thighs, he found her center. He drew small circles on it with his fingertip. The lightest of touches, yet it created an exquisite pressure inside her.
Darkness closed in around her. Her limbs began to tingle. There was a quickening in her middle.
"Wick ..."
He timed it perfectly and was nestled deep inside her when she climaxed. Wave after wave of sensation pulsed through her, each more pleasurable than the one before it, until she heard, as from a great distance, her own choppy cries of ultimate release.
Eventually, when she opened her eyes, Wick was smiling down at her. He kissed her softly on the lips, whispering, "Welcome back."
Feeling him still full and firm inside her, she squeezed him from within. He winced with pleasure. "Again." And then, almost inaudibly,
"Jesus. Again."
He bridged her head with his arms. His deep blue eyes held hers as he began thrusting into her smoothly and powerfully. She ran her hands over his back, loving the feel of his skin. It emanated vitality. Her fingertips felt the currents of energy that made him unable to remain still, that made him Wick.
She was careful not to caress his incision because she didn't want to detract from his pleasure, even with an unpleasant reminder. Her hands skimmed over it to the small of his back, which dipped gracefully before swelling into his hips. She pressed his buttocks with her palms, and when he came, she held him tightly within the cradle of her thighs. Drawing his head down beside hers, she held it fast until his body relaxed.
THE RAIN HAD DECREASED TO A SPRINKLE. They dodged puddles on their way back to the house.
"The sheriff's car is no longer there," she observed.
"When I saw you in the barn, you were crying but you were all right. I sent him away."
"Why?"
"I wanted to be alone with you."
"So you thought it might happen?"
He placed his arm across her shoulders and hugged her close. "A guy can hope."
The phone was ringing when they entered the house. It was Toby Robbins asking after Rennie. Wick assured him that she was all right. "Still upset but holding up."
"Can I speak to her?"
Wick passed her the telephone. "Hello, Toby. I'm sorry you had to be the one to find them. It must have been horrible."
Earlier she had been too traumatized to talk about it. Wick could hear only one side of the conversation now, but he knew Toby was giving her his account of finding the horses dead in their stalls when he arrived to let them into the corral.
Rennie listened for several minutes in silence, then said, "I can't thank you enough for making all the arrangements. No, the authorities haven't made an arrest. Yes," she said quietly,
"Lozada is definitely a suspect." Then Wick heard her say "Sandwiches?"
He pointed to the Tupperware container on the table and whispered, "Corinne sent them back with me."
"We were just about to sit down to them," Rennie said into the telephone. "Please thank Corinne for me."
After she hung up, Wick said, "I forgot about the sandwiches during my mad search through the house looking for you."
"I'm sorry I alarmed you."
"Alarmed me? Scared me shitless is more like it." He motioned her into a kitchen chair.
"Hungry?"
"No."
"Eat anyway."
He coaxed her into half a ham sandwich and a glass of milk. After their meal he went around the house checking doors. "A locked door won't stop him," Rennie said.
"I'm only checking out of habit. Lozada won't come back here."
"How can you be sure?"
"Criminals often return to the scene, whether to gloat or to see if they overlooked something, whatever. But as you know, Lozada isn't a common criminal. He's too smart to return to the scene. He did what he wanted to do here."
"Punish me for being away with you."
"I told you that when he struck we wouldn't see it coming."
"But my horses," she said, her voice cracking. "He knew what would hurt me most, didn't he?"
Wick nodded. "He's done the deed. If I thought he would come back, I wouldn't have left you here with only a sheriff's deputy posted at the gate."
"Then why were you so frightened when you couldn't find me in the house?"
Grimly he said, "I've been known to be wrong."
They went upstairs. He switched on the nightstand lamp. The pale light cast deep shadows on her face, emphasizing her weariness.
"How 'bout a hot shower?"
"You read my mind."
The shower was a time for leisurely exploration.
He was delighted and surprised by her lack of modesty and the access she gave him. Nor was she shy about caressing him.
He asked her if she liked hairy chests, and she showed him how much she liked his.
She apologized for one breast being slightly larger than the other, which gave him an opportunity to weigh and measure them with his hands and mouth.
She ran her tongue across his crooked front tooth and told him she really got off on that.
They kissed often, sometimes playfully with the water splashing on their faces, sometimes deeply and with feeling. They caressed each other with slick, soapy hands. And once, after she'd had her way with him, he knelt in front of her, nuzzled her thighs until they parted and then made provocative use of his tongue.
The foreplay was stimulating and left their bodies buzzing, but they didn't take it too far. It resulted only with their holding each other very close.
Afterward, they got into bed and were lying spooned together when she said, "At least they didn't suffer.
Lozada didn't torture them."
"Try not to think about it." He pushed aside a handful of her hair and kissed the back of her neck.
Lozada had killed the horses using the same efficiency, and probably the same detachment, with which he'd killed Sally Horton--a couple of bullets through the brain. Wick didn't have to wonder why Lozada hadn't dispatched him that neatly. He'd wanted him to suffer. He had probably planned to stab him more than once with that screwdriver, let him die slowly and painfully.
Lying next to Rennie like this, he was very glad to be alive, and he knew that he was alive only because Lozada had unwisely decided that for Wick Threadgill only a protracted execution would do.
"Rennie?"
"Hmm?"
"You ..." He searched for a tactful way of putting it. "You were so ..."
"It almost stopped you."
She lay facing away from him, her hands beneath her cheek. He stroked her arm. "I'm not registering a complaint." He laid a soft kiss on her shoulder. "It was like a ... a fantasy. A gift. Like you'd never--"
"I haven't been with anyone since the tragedy with Raymond Collier."
That's what he had surmised, but hearing her say it lent this moment, this day, even more significance. Had she told him before he'd made love to her, he would have been astonished.
He probably wouldn't have believed her.
"That's a hell of a long time to pay penance, Rennie."
"Not penance. It was a conscious decision. I felt that after what happened, I didn't deserve to have a normal and fulfilling sex life."
"That's nuts. Collier got what he had coming. You were a child."
She laughed dryly. "With my track record? Hardly. No way could I be called a child."
"Maybe a child in desperate need of guidance."
She gave a small shrug of concession.
"Collier was the grown-up. He had no business messing with you. If he did have this sexual obsession for you, he should have stayed away from you, got his own counseling, something. He made a conscious decision too, Rennie, and the consequences of it were his own fault. Whatever caused you to pull that trigger--"
"I didn't."
Wick's heart jumped. "What?"
"I didn't shoot him. I never even touched the pistol. Not until afterward, that is. When the police were already on their way. I held the pistol then, but it didn't make any difference because they never tested it for fingerprints. They never looked for gunpowder residue on anyone's hands. Nothing."
"Who would have had gunpowder residue, Rennie?" When she didn't say anything, he spoke the name that was blaring inside his head. "T.
Dan."
She hesitated, then gave a quick nod.
"Son of a bitch!" Wick sat up so he could look down at her, but she kept her head on the pillow, staring straight ahead, giving him nothing except her profile. "He shot Collier and let you take the blame?"
"I was a minor. T. Dan said there would be less mess if I admitted to shooting Raymond in self-defense."
"Did he try to rape you?"
"I had been avoiding him since that one time I met him at the motel. I was disgusted with him, and more so with myself. I wouldn't agree to see him, wouldn't even talk to him on the telephone.
He showed up at the house that afternoon. I wasn't happy to see him. I don't know why I took him into T. Dan's study. Maybe subconsciously I wanted him to catch us together.
I don't know. Anyhow, when my father walked in on us, Raymond was trying to kiss me. He was crying, pleading with me not to refuse him."
"T. Dan fired and asked questions later, is that it? He walked in, read the scene wrong, and thought he was protecting you from being raped?" She didn't answer. "Rennie?"
"No, Wick, protecting me wasn't his reason for firing. Raymond was a savvy businessman. My father was in partnership with him because he was smart. He was relying on Raymond to make them a lot of money on a real estate deal. So when he came in and saw Raymond clinging to me, he was furious. He told him he was making a fool of himself by crying like a baby over "a piece of tail."
Wick's jaw bunched with anger. "He said that?
About his sixteen-year-old daughter?"
"He said much worse than that," she said quietly. "Then he went to his desk and took the revolver from the drawer. When the smoke cleared, literally, Raymond lay dead on the floor."
"He murdered him," Wick said in disbelief
"In cold blood. And got away with it."
"T. Dan forced the gun into my hand and told me what to tell the police when they arrived. I went along because ... because at first I was too stunned to do otherwise. Later, I realized that it was, ultimately, my fault."
"No one ever contested T. Dan's story?
Your mother?"
"She never knew the truth. Or if she did, she never let on that she did. She never questioned anything T. Dan told her. No matter what happened, she kept up appearances and pretended that all was well and harmonious in our household."
"Un-fucking-believable. All this time you've assumed the blame and guilt for T. Dan's crime."
"His crime, Wick, but my blame. If not for me, Raymond wouldn't have died. I think about that every day of my life."
Wick expelled a heavy breath and lay back down. She had carried this burden just as he had borne the guilt for letting Lozada escape prosecution. Both of them had suffered severe consequences for behaving irresponsibly. Maybe they should learn to forgive themselves. Maybe they could help each other to forgive themselves.
He placed his arm around her but, unlike before, she held her body stiff and didn't adjust to the contours of his.
"Are you flattered that you're my first lover in twenty years?"
Softly he said, "I'd be lying if I said I wasn't."
"Well, you shouldn't be. There were so many others."
"It doesn't matter, Rennie."
Turning only her head, she looked at him over her shoulder. Her expression was nakedly vulnerable. He was reminded of what Toby Robbins had said about her eyes being larger than the rest of her face when she was a child.
"Doesn't it, Wick?"
He shook his head. "What matters to me," he whispered, "is that you're with me now. That you trust me enough to be here with me like this."
She turned and took his face between her hands.
"I was afraid of you. No, not of you. Of the way you made me feel."
"I know."
"I fought it."
"Like a tigress."
"I'm glad you didn't give up on me."
She touched his hair, his cheek, his chin, his chest.
They continued nuzzling until they fell asleep.
When he woke up hours later, he was very hard. Rennie must have sensed it because her eyes opened seconds after his. They gazed at each other across the width of the pillow.
He reached for her hand and drew it down to his lap. She closed her fingers around him and rolled her thumb across the glans, discovering a bead of moisture. One nudge of his knee and she separated her thighs. Moving closer, he propped her thigh on his hip, opening her. She was wet, but knowing that she was probably tender, he held back and didn't enter her.
Instead he covered her hand that was holding his penis and, guiding her, positioned it so she could caress herself with the tip. Connecting in that most intimate way, her eyes conveyed to him an immensity of feeling. And it was incredible. The sensations were new and novel, and holding back was a delicious agony in itself.
He was almost past the point of endurance when she slipped only the tip of his penis within the lips of her sex and came around it warmly and wetly while her hand milked him. He wouldn't have thought it was possible to have a more satisfying climax than the ones they had already shared. He'd been wrong.
He hugged her close and breathed in the scent of her hair, her skin, their lovemaking. He wished for the honor of killing T. Dan Newton for sentencing this beautiful, talented woman to twenty years of self-sacrifice and loneliness for a crime she hadn't even committed. He wanted to give her enough happiness to make up for all that lost time. He wanted to be with her every day for the rest of their lives.
But first they had to survive Lozada.