Catherine Coulter - The Cove

"I've got my mother back now. I'd sure like to have Aunt Amabel, too. I'm praying really hard that she isn't involved."

"Not only do you have your mama back, you've got me, and you'll never lose me, I swear it. And you'll have all my family. They're obnoxious, loving, pains in the butt, all in all a great family. Now, if Amabel is somehow involved with all this, we'll deal with it, you and I together."

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

He felt her palm slide down his chest, felt her fingers slip inside his shirt to caress him. He nearly bowed off the bed. No, she was exhausted, he couldn't let her do this, not now, not tonight.

He'd made up his mind. No way was he going to rush her on this. He shook his head and said, "Sally, are you certain?"

"Oh, yes," she said and kissed his chest. "Let me get this shirt off you, James."

He laughed. He was still laughing when her mouth was on his belly, then lower, closing over him. He moaned and jerked with the power of it. He didn't think he'd ever stop moaning, stop wanting, until he was deep inside her. That was what he wanted more than anything, to be deep inside her and for her to accept him completely, to love him, to shout it to him, and to the world.

And when he was deep inside of her, he knew it was right, better than right. She was his lifeblood, his future. It was about the best thing he'd ever managed in his life.

She whispered against his chest, "I love you, James." He was shaking, heaving over her like a wild man, but she was just as wild, and that made him even wilder.

A man, he thought just before his body shattered into orgasm, a man needed to belong as much as a woman. A man needed to be desired, to be cherished, as much as a woman.

When she bit his neck, then cried out, he knew everything would be just fine. "I love you, too," he said, his breath warm in her open mouth.

Life, he thought, just before he fell into a deep sleep, was weird. He'd gone to The Cove to find a crazy woman who could have murdered her father.

Instead he'd found Sally.

Actually, life was dandy.

26

THE DAY WAS warm, the air salty with the ocean spray, the sun high overhead. The Cove had never looked more beautiful, Quinlan thought, as he helped Sally out of their rental car.

"It's a picture postcard," she said, looking around. "There are the four old men playing cards around the barrel. Look, there are at least six cars parked in front of the World's Greatest Ice Cream Shop. There's Martha coming out of the Safeway with two sacks of groceries. There's Reverend Vorhees walking with his head down like he's got to tell someone that he's sinned badly. How could anything bad happen here?

It looks perfect. All calm, nobody running around waving an ax, yelling, no kids ruining buildings with graffiti."

"Yeah," Quinlan said. He was frowning.

"What's wrong?"

He just shook his head. His intuition. She poked him in the ribs. He grabbed her hand and said only, "It's too perfect. Why is that, I wonder? How did it get to be so perfect? Look at all that paint, Sally. It's Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

fresh. Nothing's run-down. Nothing's old. Everything is in tip-top shape.

"But enough of this postcard place. We're meeting David and two FBI agents from the Portland office over at Thelma's at two o'clock. It's just about two now."

"I'll meet them and then go to Amabel's house, all right?" He looked worried, and she punched him again on his arm. "Do you think she's going to lock me in a root cellar? Don't be silly, James. She's my aunt."

"Okay. I'll be along as soon as I can. Make sure Amabel knows that."

David Mountebank looked tired. He looked harassed. When he introduced Quinlan to the man and woman agents, he didn't sound like a happy camper. He sounded like he was being bossed around, which occasionally did happen when the feds came in and treated the local law as yokels. It had happened a lot in the past, but not as much now. He sure hoped that wasn't the case here. In the sixteen-week training program at Quantico, agents were told never to usurp local prerogatives.

Maybe he was wrong. Maybe David was just depressed about these killings. He knew he'd be as depressed as hell. Corey Harper and Thomas Shredder didn't look too happy either. They all shook hands and sat down in Thelma Nettro's parlor. Martha came in and beamed at them. "Sally. Mr. Quinlan.

How nice to see you again. Now, would everyone like some coffee? And some of my special New Jersey cheesecake?"

"New Jersey cheesecake, Martha?" Quinlan asked as he kissed her cheek.

"It's better than any cheesecake from New York," she said and gave Sally a brief hug. "You folks just get on with your business. I'll be right back."

"How's Thelma doing, Martha?" Sally asked. "She's primping right now. Not for you, Sally, but for Mr.

Quinlan. She even had me go out and buy her some pumpkin peach lipstick, if you can imagine." Martha tsked and left the large parlor.

"I'd like to get to work here," Thomas Shredder said with just enough impatience in his voice to make Quinlan want to loll back, lock his arms behind his head, and take a snooze, just to aggravate him.

Shredder was about thirty, tall and lanky, and very intense, one of those men Quinlan tried to avoid like the plague. They made him nervous simply because they never laughed, wouldn't know a joke if it bit them, usually saw the forest but never the individual trees.

As for the woman, Special Agent Corey Harper, she hadn't said anything yet. She was tall, with light hair and very pretty blue-gray eyes. She also looked eager, sitting on the edge of the sofa, her notebook on her knee, her ballpoint pen poised above an open page. She looked as if she hadn't been out of Quantico for very long. He'd bet the Portland office was her first assignment.

"Corey told me all the excitement you had back in Washington," David Mountebank said, ignoring Thomas Shredder. "Jesus, that was something. You okay, Sally?"

"Yes, fine now. They still haven't caught my father, but James promises me they will. It's just a matter of time."

Quinlan thought that Thomas Shredder was going to explode. He smiled at the man and said, "I came here looking for Sally. I was a private investigator-that was my cover-hired to locate two old people who Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

disappeared over three years ago in this area. And that was true. These folk did disappear in this area.

Funny thing was that when I started asking questions, bad things started happening. Sally, tell them about the woman's screams."

She did, leaving out the fact that Amabel hadn't believed it was really a woman screaming.

"We came across a woman's body the following morning when we were walking down the cliffs,"

Quinlan said. "She'd been murdered and thrown off the cliffs. Not a very nice thing to do. It's difficult not to believe that this was the same woman Sally heard screaming on two different nights. She must have been held prisoner somewhere close to Sally's aunt's cottage. Why was she being held prisoner? We have no idea. Now, I'm willing to wager the farm that the murders are tied directly to these missing folks."

"Yes, yes, we know all this," Shredder said, and he actually swatted at Quinlan as if he were a fly to be removed from the bread.

“We also know your opinion about this so-called tie-in. However, as yet we don't have any real proof that there is a tie-in. What we've got is two murders, one a longtime local in Doc Spiver and the other a woman from the subdivision, not at all local in the same sense. What we need is a tie-in between the two of them, not between them and the disappearance of these old folk over three years ago."