Tami Hoag - Dark Paradise

In a soft, unguarded corner of his heart he wondered fleetingly how Samantha was faring without him.

“Shit,” he snarled half under his breath.

He fell back against the seat, jerked an old University of Montana baseball cap off the gun rack behind him, and pulled it on, settling the brim just above the rims of his sunglasses. As if he were in disguise. As if he thought he could hide his character flaws from his brother with a costume. Will Rafferty incognito as Everyman. Christ, as if J.D. couldn’t see through that in two seconds. J.D. could see through bullshit the way Superman could see through steel. He wondered how long it would take before J.D. found out about the sixty-five hundred and the busted flush of last night’s poker game in Little Purgatory. He figured he had maybe a day and a half to live.

J.D. studied his brother from the corner of his eye as they headed out into the rolling green velvet countryside. Half brother, really, though he had never been one to use the term. The only child of Tom Rafferty’s second marriage, Will was J.D.’s junior by four years. Twenty-eight going on seventeen. The joker, the charmer, this generation’s wild Rafferty. He had a natural disdain for responsibility that rubbed hard against J.D.’s grain. But then, Will was his mother’s son, and J.D. had never thought much of Sondra either. She had pampered and indulged Will in exchange for the kind of unconditional love and blind forgiveness J.D. had never been willing to give her.

He had seen Sondra for what she was early on-a spoiled city girl who had fallen in love with the idea of loving a cowboy but had quickly fallen out of love with the realities of ranch life. She had taken out her unhappiness on her husband, punishing Tom Rafferty for her own failings and miseries, and punishing his eldest son for seeing past her pretty golden façade. Will had been too young to know the difference. J.D. had never been that young.

He shoved the memories away, succeeding in shutting out all but the lingering, bitter aftertaste. That he very easily transferred onto outsiders as the maroon Jag roared past, all shiny new chrome and dark-tinted windows hiding the rich interior and the richer occupants.

There had been Raffertys on the Stars and Bars for more than a century. That heritage was something J.D. had been born proud of and would fight to the death to preserve. As a rancher, he had several enemies-capricious weather, capricious markets, and the bone-headed government. But as far as he was concerned, no threat loomed larger than that of outsiders buying up Montana.

Their pockets were bottomless, their bank accounts filled by obscene salaries for work that seemed a parody of the word. They paid the moon for land they didn’t need to make a wage off and drove the property values out of sight, taking the taxes along and leaving production values in the dust. Half the ranches around New Eden had sold out because they couldn’t afford not to, sold out to people who wanted their own private paradise and didn’t care who they stepped on to get it. People who had no respect for tradition or the honest workingman. Outsiders.

Lucy MacAdam had been one of those outsiders, camped on the very edge of Rafferty land like a vulture. Marilee Jennings was too. She was trouble. He had made up his mind to dislike her.

She thought he was a jerk.

You don’t have to like me, Mary Lee.

Lucy had been of the opinion that emotions just got in the way of great sex, an attitude J.D. had been more than happy to share. He would bed Marilee Jennings if he got the chance, but damned if he would like her. She was the last thing he needed in his life. She was an outsider.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” Sheriff Dan Quinn tried to sound nonchalant, but he couldn’t quite keep from raising his eyebrows a little as he took in the sight of Marilee Jennings. There were too many contradictions-the faded denim jacket two sizes too big, the feminine, silky dress, the shit-kicker boots and baggy socks. Dangling from her earlobes were two triangles of sheet metal dotted with irregular bits of colored glass. Her hair was a wheaten tangle with near-black roots. She scooped back a rope of it and tucked it behind her ear.

“No. I’m from California.”

The sheriff hummed a note that all but said it figures . He tried to look noncommittal. He had to deal with a lot of outsiders these days. Part of his job was to be diplomatic. With some of these big shots, that seemed harder than saying the right thing to his mother-in-law. As he looked down at Marilee Jennings, he worried a little that she might be someone famous and he was failing to recognize her. She looked as though she could have come off MTV.

“What can I do for you, Miz Jennings?”

“I was a friend of Lucy MacAdam’s,” Mari said, staring up a considerable distance to his rugged face.

He could have either been a boxer or gotten kicked in the face by a horse. His nose had a violent sideways bend in it, and small puckered scars tugged at his upper lip and the corner of his right eye. Another scar slashed an inch-long red line diagonally across his left cheek-bone. He was saved from ugliness by a pair of kind, warm green eyes and a shy, crooked, boyish smile.

He stood in the middle of the squad room with his hands on his hips. Around them, dotting the small sea of serviceable metal desks, several deputies were working, clacking out reports on manual typewriters, talking on the phone. Their eyes drifted occasionally toward their boss and his visitor.

“The shooting,” he said, nodding as the name clicked into place. “Did someone get a hold of you? We been trying to call since it happened. Your name and number were in her address book.”

They’d been trying to call a phone she had had disconnected as she had hurried to dump her life in Sacramento for something truer. Mari rubbed a hand across her eyes. Her shoulders slumped as a vague sense of guilt weighed her down. “No,” she said in a small voice. “I didn’t find out about Lucy until I got here.”

Quinn made a pained face. “I’m sorry. Must have been a terrible shock.”

“Yes.”

Two phones began to ring, out of sync with each other. Then a burly, bearded man with a face like a side of beef and lurid tattoos from shoulder to wrist came hurtling through the door. He wore biker basics-jeans riding down off his butt and a black leather vest with no shirt beneath it, a look that showcased a chest and beer gut carpeted with dense, curling dark hair. His hands were cuffed behind his back and he was dragging a red-faced, angry deputy in his wake.

They crashed into a desk, toppling a coffee cup on a stack of reports and sending the deputy at the desk bolting backward. The air turned blue with assorted curses from three different sources. Quinn scowled as he watched the fiasco. He slid a hand around Mari’s arm, ready to jerk her out of harm’s way. But the biker was finally wrestled into a chair by a pair of deputies and the excitement began to dissipate.

Satisfied that the worst was over, Quinn turned back to Mari. “Let’s go in my office.”

Keeping his hand on her arm solicitously, he guided her into a cubicle with one windowed wall that looked out on the squad room, and shut the door behind them. Mari sat down on a square black plastic chair that was designed neither for comfort nor aesthetics, her eyes scanning the white block walls, taking in the diplomas and certificates and framed photographs of rodeo events. One was of Quinn wrestling an enormous steer to the ground by its horns. That explained a lot.

The sheriff settled into the upholstered chair behind his desk and adopted the most official mien he could manage, considering he had unruly yellow hair that stood up in defiant tufts in a rogue crew cut.