“What do you mean?” Conn said, stalling for time. He’d been in love before. He wasn’t that badly fucked up that he thought he’d never love again. This felt different. Trying to pinpoint exactly why while Cady glared at him with narrowed eyes was beyond him.
“We’re coming to an agreement? He’s not trying to push cameras on me, is he?”
“No,” Conn said, totally truthfully. “He meant something else.”
“The accusation that you beat up that prisoner?”
Damn, she was quick. Also, not self-centered. Unlike all the stories he’d heard of celebrities becoming self-absorbed divas, Cady thought about the people close to her. If anyone was acting like a self-absorbed diva, it was Emily, but maybe that was just teenage girl.
He had less than a second to decide whether or not to involve her even more deeply in that case. “Yes,” he said.
“Well? What’s happening?”
“Nothing,” he said. He took her arm to guide her away from the windows at the front of the house, but ended up with her fingers woven through his as they headed to the sofa in front of the fireplace.
“Nothing,” she repeated. “Really? Don’t the police take these accusations very seriously?”
“We do. We are. But usually someone rolls, talks, gives up someone else in exchange for a deal. That’s what we’ve got to offer, a reduced sentence, time served, charges dropped. None of the usual fish are biting.”
“That seems odd,” Cady said.
“It is odd.” Conn stared at his hand, linked with hers, and thought, Not as odd as knowing I’m falling in love with you. Did he tell her about Cesar’s comment? Did he worry her more? How did people manage this relationship stuff? It was insanely complicated, and totally outside his experience. “Very odd.”
They sat in silence for a moment, Cady just being Cady, the firelight making her crazy hair gleam like old oak, turning the curve of her cheek rose red. Conn’s brain tried to think about two things at once: the way his heart was skittering in his chest and the extremely unusual show of solidarity from the East Side’s biggest gang. Why would they do that? Someone usually wanted out badly enough to give up a piece of information, or could be enticed into it. It took real leadership to enforce that kind of solidarity, and the Strykers hadn’t had that kind of leadership since Matt Dorchester took out Lyle Jenkins last summer.
Or so they thought.
Conn’s brain jerked into a gear he didn’t know he had. Maybe they were going about this the wrong way. Maybe there wasn’t an absence of leadership in the Strykers. Maybe an invisible hand was holding everything together more tightly than before. Maybe Lyle’s unexpected death didn’t cut off the snake’s head. Maybe it made room for a King Cobra to take over for a garden snake.
“Okay,” Cady said, a little smile on her face. “I recognize that expression of someone deep in thought. I’m going back to my studio.”
Conn tightened his grip on her hand. “No, wait,” he started. Then he stopped. What was he going to say? I’m falling in love with you? She heard that a dozen times a day from complete strangers. Even if he did say it, nothing changed the fact that she was Queen Maud, and he was a Lancaster cop who’d just made a decision that would end what was growing between them.
Her expression turned from amused to slightly quizzical, her brows drawing in slightly, the smile losing its gleam. “What?” she asked.
“Just keep your phone with you. I’ll be up here.”
“Sure thing,” she said.
She withdrew her fingers from his. He didn’t want to let her go, but he had to, so he held on to what he could, the sweet, electric slide of her skin against his, lighting his nerves on fire. The heat remained long after he heard the door to her studio close.
Finally he shook it off, got up and grabbed his laptop and his notebook from his duffle bag, and opened it. He signed in to the department’s secure database, and tried to think through how a detective would approach this. His detractors joked that Ian Hawthorn, the son of a loved and well-respected former police chief, thought he was the second coming of Jesus. What would Hawthorn do?
He wouldn’t start with Conn’s usual tactic: going out on the street and tracking down people he knew could give him answers, then threatening them until they gave it up. Hawthorn would gather data, analytics, metrics. Information, both detailed and bird’s eye. Conn started by cross-referencing the gang unit’s list of current and former Strykers, even the dead ones, with a list of arrests going back three years. Then he started looking at the results, which cases got dismissed or pled down, and which ones never went to trial because a witness recanted or evidence disappeared. The results matched both the official line when the city government wanted answers on the state of the East Side and the chatter in the department: the Strykers were slippery as fuck. This wasn’t news.
Frustrated, he got up and headed back outside to tackle the woodpile again. It wasn’t running full tilt after a burglary suspect, but it would have to do. Fifteen minutes in, his phone buzzed. Shane.
Got what you wanted. I also picked up her Christmas tree. What next?
Conn looked at the back of the house. Cady would probably be in her studio for hours yet, Shane could be here in twenty minutes, and Conn had no time to waste. He texted Shane her address. Park at the end of the driveway.
He stayed at the woodpile while he waited, but the physical exertion didn’t drive away the conflicted emotions swirling in a sick dance in the pit of his stomach. He had to do this. Had to keep her safe. She’d asked him not to. But in a short span of time she’d gone from a face in the glossy magazine rack at the end of the supermarket checkout counter to the woman he couldn’t bear to lose.
His phone buzzed again. I’m here.
He sank the axe into the stump and trotted along the shoveled path around the side of the house, skirting the big evergreens. A dark blue junker pickup with in-transit plates idled roughly at the end of the driveway. A watch cap similar to the one Cady had confiscated at the Christmas tree lot covered Shane’s white-blond hair.
Shane rolled the window down with an actual hand crank. “I figured I should do this incognito, yo,” he said with a quick grin. He handed a white plastic Radio Shack bag through the window. “It’s pretty easy to set up. Took me and Finn a couple of hours while the software installed on our computers. You have wifi?”
“Yeah,” Conn said.
Shane looked at the house. “Nice. Not what I expected a superstar to own, but it’s nice. Homey. I’m kind of surprised it didn’t come with a full security system and a trained guard dog.”
“She doesn’t want cameras,” Conn said, because he’d never lied to Shane and wasn’t about to start now.
Shane’s brows lifted. “So what are you doing?”
“The threat is getting too close. Too personal. I don’t want to lose her.”
His friend was too smart not to follow the chain of repercussions all the way to the bitter end. He shook his head. “You always had to do the right thing. Where do you want the tree?”
Even when he knew another fight to protect a smaller kid would mean getting shuffled to the next family member in the contact list. It didn’t matter if he was on the right side. All that mattered was that he was a pain in the ass. Not easy. He was big, loud, argumentative, stubborn, and in everyone’s face. Bag clenched in one hand, he said, “Got a minute to help me get it into the house?”
“Let me check with my boss,” Shane said. “Oh, wait. I am the boss. Yeah, I’ve got a minute.”
Together they wrestled the fir into the house via the sliding glass doors. It was considerably longer than a minute before they had the tree straight in the stand. “The branches will settle in a day or two,” Shane said. “It’s a nice one.”
Conn remembered tagging along with the Ward women to pick it out, the way Patty and Cady included him in their decision. The plastic bag with the cameras tugged at his conscience. “Does doing the wrong thing for the right reasons make it right?”
“Who the fuck knows?” Shane said philosophically. “Do what you have to so you can look yourself in the mirror, and pray. Mind if I wash my hands before I go? I left Mickey in charge of the shop. I just hope it’s still standing when I get back.”
* * *
He interpreted silence on the social media front to mean Cady was deeply entrenched in her songwriting session. The cameras were small, and simple, the batteries already installed. They were triggered by motion, the footage stored in the cloud. He borrowed a sturdy deck chair. Using the screwdriver attachment on his pocketknife, he had them installed and turned on in less than half an hour.
Observation was on his mind as he worked, surveillance, recording details, actions, which led him to Hawthorn’s meticulously compiled reports, the ones he barely glanced at during briefings. But between one turn of a screw, a thought occurred to him: How did the Strykers stack up compared to other gangs in Lancaster? Surely the units compiled the same metrics on other gangs. Hawthorn was a metrics freak. But Conn couldn’t remember the same chatter about the Twentieth Street Bloods, or the Murder Angels.
He folded up his pocketknife, put the deck chair back, and hurried inside. Behind Cady’s studio door the same fragment of the same song was now on some kind of loop. He didn’t stop, just took the stairs two at a time to the main room and opened his computer again.
Knowing what he was looking for and how to compile it meant the second round didn’t take him as long. The numbers were so interesting he did the same thing for the Solo Angeles. Then he sat back and blew out his breath.
Strykers were arrested as frequently as members of the Twentieth Street Bloods or the Murder Angels crew. Those statistics matched. What didn’t match was the rate of dismissals. Three years ago, the department’s ability to make a good case against the Strykers started to drop. Not off a cliff, but over the course of about eighteen months, something very interesting happened. The Strykers were the baddest guys in town, based on his experience on the streets. He’d assumed that the higher-ups were accumulating trends that contradicted his lone perspective.
The number of arrests started to drop just after a specific group of cops moved over to the gang unit. Conn knew these guys. They were the guys he met for a beer a couple of times a month, guys who got him through his rookie probationary period, who’d watched his back ever since.
The official story was that the Strykers were in disarray, weakened, no longer a threat. The Twentieth Street Bloods and the Murder Angels were smaller, more deadly gangs with connections to out-of-state groups that made them a higher priority than the homegrown Strykers. Conn now saw it a different way. The department had missed it, because you couldn’t compile statistics on arrests that never happened. Someone in the gang unit was at the very least taking money not to go after the Strykers. At the very least. Worst-case scenario, they were actively distributing, insinuating themselves into the management structure. No, it wasn’t the kind of racket a big city gang was running, but as he’d just spent the last two weeks telling Cady, people did all kinds of crazy, illegal shit for not very much money at all. They seized the opportunity in front of them. When Lyle Jenkins died, someone smart stepped in.
Someone connected to, or very possibly inside, the Lancaster Police Department. And Conn knew who, because he had something in common with the gang officers too. The majority of the members of the gang unit were trained by Kenny Wilcox, his training officer.
* * *
Cady switched off the mic, set her guitar in its stand, stood up and put her palms to the small of her back, and stretched until her spine popped. “Ow,” she said, twisting from one side to the other to generate another series of cracks from her hips to her neck. She’d been sitting still for far too long, which was fine when she came out with a melody or a chorus or an idea to show for her work. That kind of soreness was like the way she felt after good sex, a pleasantly lingering ache the reminded her she’d done something awesome. Today she had nothing to show for hours of work except the frustrating sense that the song still wasn’t right, the solution just out of reach.
She opened the drawer where she stashed her phone so it wouldn’t distract her while she worked, and automatically swiped through her social media apps. The posts getting the most attention were the pictures Conn took at the Christmas tree farm. She paused to answer a few of the more recent replies, extolling the coats’ cool features—a phone pocket, a loop for your ear bud cord, the gorgeous wool, the silk lining, the neat way the coat swung as she moved—and texted Em.
Have you seen the chatter about the coats? So cool!
The reply came almost instantly. OMG so not what I was expecting. They weren’t supposed to get this much attention.
It’s nice to have options. Cady slid her phone into her pocket as she climbed the stairs to the main floor in search of Conn.
Conn.
As much as she’d tried to put him out of her mind, he kept drifting into her awareness at the least opportune times. Most men played their cards close to their chests, but Conn had made an art of stuffing everything inside, just like he shoved his hands into his pockets. He all but vibrated with tightly leashed energy that danced between the demands of his job and the very real possibility it would consume him. He walked a fine line between light and darkness, between the good he did and the bad he was capable of doing.
That was the song she wanted write, about struggling with frustration, that sense of being trapped, wishing you could change that, not knowing how, feeling called to more. A song about her, about him, about everyone. Everyone struggled with that, in her experience. In their depths, everyone wanted meaning, connection, more than another song about love, lust, and everything in between. Maybe that’s what her song was missing, the turn from falling in love to finding the love that led you through the deep waters everyone feared.
The idea held some promise. She set it on the back burner of her brain to let her muse chew it over, and headed upstairs for something to eat.
Conn was sitting on the couch in front of the fireplace, his laptop in front of him but dark and quiet. Arms folded across his chest, he stared into the low, flickering flames. Outside the big windows the twilight clung to the last rays of the setting sun, the bare branches of the trees not much darker than the sky.
He looked up when she cleared the landing. His face was impassive, and his eyes reminded her of the night sky, infused with color yet bleak, cold, empty. She longed to walk up to him, give him a kiss, rub his shoulder and tell him that together they’d face whatever was bothering him, but were they at that point?
If you have to ask, the answer’s no.
He didn’t move as she crossed the hardwood floor to the kitchen and ran water into her steamer. “I can’t help but notice that there’s a really big Christmas tree in my living room,” she said.
“Shane brought it over while you were working. I hope that’s okay. I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“I wish you had, but only because my session was pretty crap, and I wanted to tell him thanks. You look like your afternoon was about as productive as mine.”
“That bad?” he asked, but she could tell his heart wasn’t in it.
“That bad,” she replied, tossing the towel over her head and breathing deep. The steam gathered on her face and made her flush as she remembered their erotic encounter in the bathroom. Lightning skittered down her nerves to pool hot and damp low in her belly.
She was going to be in a lot of trouble when she left town if using her steamer made her think of Conn. Still under the towel, she could hear him walking around. Sure enough, when she tossed back the towel and switched off the steamer, Conn was standing by the island, hands jammed in his pockets. His laptop and notebook were gone from the coffee table.
“What’s wrong?”
“If I knew that, I’d fix it,” she said, but with a smile to take the sting out of her words. “I’d ask if you wanted to hear it, but it’s not even close to ready.” It wasn’t working, and worse, it was starting to take on the dense, overkneaded feeling that meant she’d have to trash the whole thing.
“What about you?” she asked. “What were you doing all day?”
“Research,” he said, like he’d spent the day handling spiders or digging through the trash. “It’s not my thing.”
She smiled at him. “What is your thing?
“The street,” he said.
“I could see that,” she agreed, openly looking him over. Even without his favorite watch cap on his head he’d blend right in with the guys on the corners. “But that option isn’t available to you right now, because you’re stuck here with me.”
“I’m here with you,” he agreed, subtly changing her words. “So I’m adapting. I’m an adaptable kind of guy.”
“The computer?” she hazarded.
“Metrics,” he said, lumping the word in with research. “Statistics. Analyzing trends.”
“I’ve sat through meetings like that,” she said, remembering hours of conversation about market penetration and crossover appeal, how soul-deadening if you just wanted to do, to be. “Do-be-do-be-doooo,” she sang, then, when he looked at her like she’d lost her mind, said, “Sounds like an absolute blast.”
“It’s not my favorite thing.”
She waited. She’d spent enough time around men, long hours on tour buses, and in the studio, and across tables and bars to know that sometimes the best thing you could do was keep quiet. Conn looked like he was being ground between two steel plates dusted with shards of glass. She offered him what she knew he needed. “Let’s get out of here.”
His lips twitched up in a ghost of a smile, but his eyes lightened. “Where do you want to go?”
Their options were so limited. Her house wasn’t yet her home, much less the safe haven she longed for, and Lancaster itself was filled with threats. “For a drive,” she said. “Let’s just drive.”
“I can do better than that,” he said. “Want to take your car out for a few test runs at the airfield?”
Her brow furrowed. “Can I do that?”
“We run occasional rookie nights, where people can get the hang of the process so they’re comfortable on race nights. Tonight is one of those nights.”
“Yes,” she said, and ran water into the kettle to make her Cady juice. “Or more specifically, hell yes.”
“Bundle up,” he said, already heading for his room. “Temps are in the twenties.”
“Wind?”
“No wind.”
She darted into her bedroom and scrambled into long underwear, wool socks, a pair of jeans, and several layers of sweaters. By the time she was dressed, the water was boiling. A hefty squirt of honey into the insulated cup, boiling hot water, and she was set. She jammed her feet into her hiking boots, pulled on the coat Emily made for her, and tugged Conn’s watch cap over her hair.
“Oh, sorry,” she said, and pulled it off to hand to him. Sparks flew as static crackled in her hair. “Ow.”
“Keep it,” he said. “It’s not windy. I’ll be fine.”
Feeling a little like he’d just loaned her his letter jacket and not the least bit ashamed of it, she put it back on, wrapped a blanket scarf around her throat, and followed Conn down the hall into the garage. He walked to the driver’s door, then looked down at her when she came up beside him and held her hand out for the keys.
“If I can drive it at the track, where chances are good I’ll be recognized, I can drive it to the track,” she said.
He wavered for a second, then dropped the keys in her palm. “Do not get us pulled over,” he said.
“This time, I’ll drive like my mother,” she promised.
“How does your mother drive?” he asked, a wicked glint in his eyes.
“Very carefully,” Cady said, indignant. “Really? You think my mom’s a speed demon?”
“You never know,” Conn said as he walked around the hood to the passenger door. “I once busted a mom in a Volvo station wagon for doing sixty-five in a thirty. She was running late for her daughter’s ballet class.”
Cady backed out of the driveway, stopping every few feet to adjust her position so she didn’t take out a tree. “Someday I want you to teach me to do that backing thing where you zip down the driveway at thirty miles an hour.”
Conn looked up from his cell phone, obviously startled. “Any time,” he said easily.
Were they not supposed to talk about the future? Because Cady was having a very hard time imagining a future that didn’t include Conn by her side, day and night. Don’t be ridiculous, she thought. He’s got a job. Roots. He’s not some aimless adrenaline junkie who can pick up and leave at the drop of a hat. As she drove through the gates and onto the main highway leading into Lancaster, she ratcheted back her expectations and tried to imagine herself in a hotel in London, maybe even Paris, after a show or an interview, checking her watch to calculate what time it was back in Lancaster. Shows ended around midnight. That would be right when Conn would be finishing his shift.
“Do you work nights or days?” she asked.
He slipped his phone in his pocket. “Three to eleven on patrol. Whenever when I’m needed for undercover work.”
“Oh,” she said, trying to think through the time difference. This was ridiculous. She’d text him like she’d text any other friend. Except Conn didn’t feel like just her friend, and the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach told her texting wouldn’t be enough. “What were you doing?”
“Texting Shane to see if he was at the track with Finn.”
“And?”
“He is. He brought my car, too. He’s got the timing issue worked out. I told him Finn could give it a couple of trial runs before the next race night.”
“That’s nice of you to let Finn drive it,” Cady said.
“I remember what it was like to be sixteen,” Conn said, then went quiet. He loosely gripped the handle over the door, but in way that suggested it was a reflex, not an indication that her driving frightened him. His hand flexed, the knuckles going white for a moment, then he relaxed.
“How long have you been drag racing?” she asked.
He huffed. “All my life. I started going to the races with my dad when I was six or seven.”
“That’s neat. He passed it on to you,” she said, expecting that his father had given him the car when he had grown too old to race, or as a rite of passage.
“He left it behind when he left town. Eventually I forged his signature to a title transfer.”
“Oh,” Cady said, wishing she’d kept her mouth shut. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said. “It happened a long time ago.”
That was the thing, she reflected as she took the on-ramp to the highway leading south of town, that made writing songs so easy, and so difficult. Things happened. Their dad left when Emily was a baby, and yet Emily was still dealing with it. Conn’s dad also left, and he never even mentioned his mother, so Cady assumed she hadn’t been in the picture any longer than his father had. You could put something like that out of your mind, but never out of your soul.
She was home, but she wasn’t home. Home used to be her mom’s house. For the last eight months it had been a tour bus, a series of hotel rooms in which Queen Maud slowly took over more of Cady. Her roots felt shallow, dry, exposed.
Was this how Conn always felt?
Silence reigned on the rest of the drive. Conn was lost in thought about something, and Cady used the quiet to let the melody and lyrics for a new song burble through her head like a stream over rocks. Normally she had confidence in her process, but the last few months had been so abnormal, and the last few weeks had been like being tipsy and tossed in a blanket. The narrative arc she’d weave from notes and lyrics, carrying chords and bridges from beginning to end, weren’t coming together.
Let it go, she thought. Let it all go, the song and the stalker, the sex and the secrets. Set it all aside and be here now.
The gates to the airfield were open, the lights on. Fewer trailers and trucks lined the taxi strip, and Cady heard nothing except the roar of engines and tires revving. She found Shane’s trailer and pulled in beside it.
“No announcer?” she asked.
“The guys on the track run the show. Cars go one at a time, not in tandem, in case a rookie loses control,” Conn said. “The point isn’t to get your best time. It’s to learn how the process works.”
He did a fist-and-shoulder-bump thing with Shane, then Finn. “Hi, Cady,” Finn said, his cheeks pink. He alternated between staring and looking away, then his gaze snagged on Conn’s hat. He glanced at Conn’s bare head, then Cady’s covered one, then a crestfallen look crept over his face.
“Hi, Finn,” she said, bumping him a little with her shoulder. “How’s it going?”
“Good. Really good.”
“I hear you want to race,” Shane said.
“Well, not race, but drive fast. I’ve had a very difficult day and I would like to drive fast.”
“Nice car,” Shane said. “Three hundred horse?”
“Thereabouts. Hits sixty in under five seconds,” Conn said. “How’s the track?”
Shane wiped his hands on a rag and tossed it into a bucket on the trailer. “Dry as a bone. Great conditions, if you don’t mind freezing your nuts off.”
“Let’s get you in the line,” Conn said.
“Could Finn take me?” Cady asked. “That way you can talk to Shane about whatever he’s fixed with your car.”
Finn turned tomato red. Conn and Shane kindly ignored that, but Conn did shoot Finn a sharp look that made Finn straighten up. They got into Cady’s Audi, and she drove carefully to the main runway, where a short line of cars waited to take a turn at the warming strip.
“You’re going to do more harm than good warming up street tires,” Finn said. “You want something slicker if you’re going to race regularly. For tonight, just give it a quick rev to knock off any rocks you’ve picked up on the way here. Watch the guys in the reflective vests. They’ll tell you when to move forward.”
“Got it,” Cady said.
“Uncle Conn’s a good guy,” Finn said.
“He is,” Cady agreed, her attention focused on the drivers in front of her. Another car rolled forward, leaving her two spots from the warming strip.
“I’d hate to see him get hurt.”
“Me, too,” Cady said absently. “Wait, what?”
“You’re wearing his hat.”
Maybe it looked more like a girl wearing her boyfriend’s class ring than she’d thought. “I am,” Cady said somewhat stupidly. “I borrowed it when we were at the Christmas tree farm.”
“I know,” Finn said. “I saw the pictures on Instagram. Look, Conn’s not like other guys, okay? He’s not a player. He’s never brought a girl to the track before. I can remember meeting, like, one girlfriend ever, and even then he brought her to a holiday dinner at my aunt Susan’s house, not the track. Roll up.”
So … the track matters more than a dinner with family? Of course it did. Family didn’t last. In Conn’s mind, the track was forever. The track was the place he did battle with his demons. It was like her studio. Cady shut her gaping mouth and tapped the accelerator. “I’m only here because he’s my bodyguard while I’m home,” Cady said. “He can’t leave me alone. This is just work for him.”
Finn shot her a disbelieving look only a disgusted teenager could pull off. She’d seen the expression on Emily’s face many times. “You’re up.”
Cady rolled down her window to better hear the official’s instructions. He beckoned her forward, positioning her tires on the strip. “Foot on the brake?”
Terrified of running over a track official, she jammed the brake to the floor, put the car in first, and tapped the accelerator. The wheels spun for a second. The official gave her a thumbs-up. Cady rolled the window back up just in time to see Conn jog behind her car and open Finn’s door. “Out,” he said with a jerk of his thumb.
Finn shot Cady a look then scrambled out of the car. Conn slid in and slammed the door. “Passengers add weight to your car,” he said, reaching over his shoulder for the seat belt. “Normally you make it as light as you can, but you’re stuck with me tonight.”
She’d like to be stuck with him forever, but between Finn’s protective warning and the adrenaline rush of the drag racing, her heart was pounding. The starting line official beckoned her forward. “Aren’t you driving?”
“I’ll go after you’ve had a couple of rounds. Eyes on the lights.”
The lights counted down to green. Cady gripped the steering wheel with her left hand and the gearshift with her right, and floored the accelerator. The car leapt forward, the RPMs revving up as she shifted through second, into third, barely pausing between shifts because she still had the accelerator floored. The car shot past the red lights indicating the end of the quarter mile, and Cady let up on the gas pedal.
“Breathe,” Conn advised.
“Wow,” Cady said, then gasped in air. “Just … wow.”
“Nice job.”
“My shifting was weak,” Cady said.
“You’ll get the hang of it, newb.”
“I should give you your hat back,” Cady said as she crept around the turn to taxi back to the starting pole.
“You got a hood on that coat?” Conn said.
“No,” she admitted. She was wearing Emily’s design, and the longer she wore it, the more she liked it. She was both warm and looking very, very fine.
“Keep it, or Chris will have my ass.”
“He’s not going to … it’s already on Instagram, isn’t it?”
“Yup,” Conn said.
“Great. Just great.” She reached in her pocket and checked for texts. Two from Chris.
Goddammit Cady. Followed by a string of frowning emojis.
“Go again,” Conn said.
She ran once more, already getting the hang of the test strip, improving her shifting and her time by half a second. Then she drove off the track and parked by Shane’s trailer, where Conn’s car was running. Finn was sitting half in and half out the driver’s seat, listening to the rumbling engine with an attentive ear. He gave Shane a questioning thumbs-up, one Shane returned with a definitive thumbs-up.
“Why is it so loud?” Cady shouted.
“The exhaust stops right after the manifold,” Conn said, his voice also raised. “Mufflers are great for making cars run quietly, but every inch of exhaust pipe reduces performance.”
“Oh.”
Finn hoisted his lean frame out of the car, then leaned through the open window after Conn got in, explaining something Cady caught only in snatches and didn’t understand anyway. Conn tossed her a vague salute as the car rolled toward the waiting line.
Cady wandered toward the chain-link fence. The stands, normally full on a Saturday night, were all but empty. The canteen was open, one bored-looking girl alternately serving up the occasional coffee or hot cocoa and flirting with the various crew members. Finn was among the guys at the counter, nursing a cup of coffee. Shane walked to the canteen, hands shoved deep in his pockets. Cady wondered if he’d picked up the habit from Conn, or vice versa. He ordered a cup of coffee, then walked over to stand beside her.
“Conn asked you to keep an eye on me, didn’t he?”
Shane just smiled at her. “I don’t usually get to watch the races,” he said in answer. “Usually I’ve got two or three cars I’m tuning up between runs.”
“You don’t want to drive?”
“Sometimes I do. But I don’t feel about it the way Conn does.”
She turned back to the track. Conn was second in line for the warming strip, staring straight ahead. She took the opportunity to watch him. His eyes resolutely turned forward, his jaw set. Something struck Cady.
“He doesn’t look like he’s having fun,” she commented before she could fully think through the stupidity of that statement. Of course it wasn’t fun for him. Maybe it was a different kind of fun, the kind that comes from a depth and breadth of experience, a total immersion in a hobby or sport. Conn knew cars and racing inside and out. She’d had a couple of moments of exhilaration. He had two decades of racing in his brain and body.
“This isn’t much fun for Conn anymore,” Shane agreed, to her utter shock.
She looked at him. “Why not? Why is he still doing it?”
“You’ll have to ask him that,” Shane said.
Cady thought about this. In her experience, doing something after the fun was gone meant you were either in something for a profound love and fulfillment or you were stuck in a rut you needed to hop out of. Based on the expression on Conn’s face, she was leaning toward the latter.
He rolled up to the starting lights. They counted down from red through amber to green. The Camaro shot off the starting line.
“Good shifting,” Shane commented. “It’s trickier than you’d think.”
“I figured that out after one run,” Cady said. Conn had some serious driving skills.
They watched the car rocket down the runway, then turned in unison to see the time flash up on the LED display: 10.00.
“Damn,” Shane muttered. He blew out his breath. “All we need is two hundredths of a second. I’ve got to figure that out.”
“Figure what out?” Cady said. She felt like she’d been dropped into act three, maybe four, of a family drama. “I thought the point was consistency.”
“You’ll have to ask him that,” she and Shane said in unison. “Got it. Good thing I like a mystery.”
“It’s not much of a mystery,” Shane said easily. She liked the way he smiled at her, despite the serious look in his eyes. “Pretty common story, truth be told. But it’s Conn’s to tell, and I’m betting you’re the right person to hear it.”
Cady wasn’t so sure about that. She and Conn were involved in a freakish, spur-of-the-moment relationship that was about sex and a total absence of privacy. They’d been thrown together because Chris thought she was in danger and Conn needed to be shuffled aside while Hawthorn tried to find out who’d beaten a man to a pulp and was trying to frame Conn for it. It was hardly something to write a song about. “What makes you think that?” she said, absently. Conn’s car had crawled up the return runway and angled into the back of the line for another run.
“He’s never brought another woman to the track,” Shane said.
“He has to bring me to the track,” she said, exasperated. Shane and Finn were acting like Emily and her BFFs, parsing every situation for meaning where there was none. “It’s work.”
“No, he doesn’t,” Shane replied. “You could be back at your house, or in a safe house, or in your car driving the back roads if you needed some variety. He’s protected this place for as long as I’ve known him.”
Trying to ignore the flicker of pleasure that the thought of being special to Conn brought her, because one hormonal teenage girl in her family was plenty, thanks very much, she thought back to their earlier conversation. She suggested a drive. Conn suggested the track. One glance at his face told her the second run held no more appeal for him than the first.
“Okay. I’ll ask him,” she said. Now the whole situation felt like a dare, except it looked like Conn’s soul was on the line.
Conn’s second run came in at exactly the same time as the first, which matched the runs she’d seen the last time she was at the track. “He’s consistent,” she said.
“Yup,” Shane answered without humor.
Conn pulled through the gap in the chain link, the car growling like a junkyard dog. Finn wandered back from the canteen while Conn parked by Shane’s trailer, slung himself out of the Camaro, and slammed the door hard enough to rock the car on its frame. Apparently the pull of male bonding and the car trumped the pretty girl behind the counter. “Hey, Conn,” he said.
“I’ll take a look at the timing,” Shane said. Finn already had the hood up, the smell of oil and gas dense and acrid in the cold air. “Maybe it’s off. You might need a new—”
“It’s not the car,” Conn interrupted. He shrugged out of the fire-retardant jacket and tossed it through the open window. His hair and shirt were plastered to his body with sweat, and the sight of steam rising from his shoulders sent a hot zing through Cady’s body. “We both know it’s not the car. Just forget about it for a while.”
Anger and frustration radiated off Conn like the heat off the car. Finn dropped the Camaro’s hood and took a step back. “Sure,” Shane said. “You guys done?”
One eyebrow lifted, Cady looked at Conn. “We’re done,” Conn said. “Let’s get out of here.”
Cady waved goodbye to Shane and Finn, then got into the passenger seat of her Audi. “I think you need to drive more than I do,” she said.
The fact that Conn didn’t argue about it spoke volumes to his state of mind. He turned over the engine and whipped the car in a tight semicircle, then squealed out of the lot.
Cady waited until they were on the highway before starting the conversation. “That didn’t look like much fun for you.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Then why are you doing it? Loyalty to Shane?”
A muscle popped in his jaw. “He’s got a waiting list a dozen names long for guys who want to drive with McCool’s Garage sponsorships. He keeps me out of loyalty to me, not the other way around.”
“Conn. Why?”
“When my dad ran that car, his best time was nine point nine-nine. He ran that multiple times. I’m trying to beat his time.”
Cady digested this for a second.
“I know it’s stupid,” Conn started.
“It’s not stupid,” she said tartly. “I was just trying to think of the right thing to say.”
“Give up.” Conn huffed out a bitter laugh. “That’s the right thing to say. Just give up and accept that my reflexes aren’t as fast as my dad’s. The car is the same weight. I’m the same weight. His was more beer gut than muscle, but pounds are pounds. The weather is nearly identical. It’s down to me. To my reflexes.”
“Why are you trying to beat his time? Not that I discourage people from having goals,” she added hastily. “Goals are good. But … why?”
The sharp white light from the dash cast Conn’s face in planes and shadows. “He skipped town when I was in the fifth grade. My mom died a couple of years before then. He kind of fell apart when she died. Started drinking. It’s nothing earth-shattering. It’s not even that uncommon.”
“That doesn’t make it any less difficult. I’m so sorry,” she said. “How old were you?”
“Ten.”
“Who raised you?”
“I bounced around,” he said, eyes firmly fixed on the road in a way that told her he wasn’t seeing it, but rather an endless round of new rooms, packed bags, and different schools. “Extended family mostly, although I stayed a couple of times with a friend of Dad’s when I got older and my aunt and I had a fight. I learned to make myself at home in other people’s houses way earlier than the search module at the academy.”
Cady all but gaped at him. He was so calm about it. “Conn, I can’t even imagine. When Dad walked out on us, Emily was devastated. She alternated between screaming fights with Mom and sleeping in her bed. She’s still suspicious of people.”
“Why aren’t you?”
She thought about that for a moment. “I was a little older, able to understand Mom when she promised she’d never, ever leave like Dad did. And I had music. That’s when I set my goal of being a singer-songwriter. If I lose that…” Her voice trailed off. Right now, losing music was a real possibility. She’d heard of dry spells lasting for months. Years. “Mom keeps what’s hers,” she finished.
“Maybe that’s why you can be the way you are. You know she won’t ever give you up.” He smiled at her, rakish and so heartbreakingly vulnerable all at once.
She wanted to look away, but couldn’t. She knew how he felt. In some ways, an unreliable parent was worse than one who cut out on you. Abandonment gave you something to push against. Unreliability kept your hopes up until you refused to hope anymore.
She and Emily couldn’t trust their father, but at least they had their mother, who was the picture of reliability. Conn had no one. His mother died. His father treated fatherhood like something he could walk in and out of like a revolving door. But Conn didn’t behave the same way. He did a job that at its most basic was a commitment to show up when called at the worst time in people’s lives, day after day, year after year. He looked after Shane’s nieces and nephews like they were his own. Conn expected people to duck out on him, with a glance, with their lives. So she met his gaze without flinching, and found that meant letting him see deep inside her, too. She wanted to look away, but couldn’t.
Because she was falling in love with Conn.
“Why aren’t you afraid of me?” he said, out of the blue.
She laughed, shifted her weight, rested her elbow on the door panel and her temple on her bent fingers, the better to look at him. “Because you’re not that scary.”
He looked at her, one hand on the wheel, the other loose on his thigh, eyes heartbreakingly dark and vulnerable. “Most people are.”
“Then they don’t really see you.”
“And you do?”
“I think so,” she said, well aware that the dark cocoon of the car, the night, their unreal circumstances all contributed to an intimacy that might not stand the bright light of day, much less real life.
“I’m terrified of me.”
“Why?”
“I’m capable of what you saw in that picture.”
She considered this. “We all are. Pushed the right way, by the right person, we all are. But you don’t act on it.”
“No,” he said quietly. “I don’t. But I have that temper.”
“And a fairly long fuse,” she replied. “You’ve got people in your face all day, every day.”
“Don’t try to make me a better man,” Conn said. “Don’t idealize me.”
That stopped her. She thought carefully before she spoke. “I’m not,” she said at last. “All I can speak to is what I see. You have a shadow side. That doesn’t make you bad. It makes you human.”
They were on the long, straight highway out of town, heading for Whispering Pines. “How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“See the shades of gray.”
She shrugged. “I’ve been thinking about this lately. Love songs are easy. Songs about hooking up and dancing in clubs and broken hearts, all easy. Ramp up the beat and no one pays much attention to the lyrics. I’ve got an album ready to drop that’s nine songs about all of those things, with nothing new or different or unique about it. It’s got all the right collaborators and all the right beats. It’s slick and shiny and about as human as slick, shiny things are.”
He cut her a glance. “It wasn’t that bad.”
“It’s not bad. It’s just not what I want to be doing. We get one life, you know? One human life. I don’t know what to do. One thing lights me up inside. The other makes the most sense, capitalizing on momentum, fame, more money. All the big voices in my life are telling me to drop the studio’s album.”
He aimed the clicker at the gate. “Who are the small voices?”
“Mom. The voice inside me.” The road to her house was dark, silent, only a few porch lights dotting the darkness, far fewer of them than the stars overhead.
“Add me to that list,” Conn said.
She parked the car inside her garage, leaned over the console and kissed him. It was the least practiced kiss she’d given since high school, landing awkwardly on the corner of his mouth and obviously startling him. But then he turned to her, pressing his lips to hers and returning the kiss. His lips urged hers open, his tongue sliding in to rub against hers. She tightened her grip on his rough, flattened sheepskin collar and added the strength of her right hand, fisting her fingers in the front of his coat.
His hand grazed the top of her head, sliding his hat from her hair in a shower of staticky sparks visible in the car’s dim interior. His hand cupped the back of her head, holding her mouth to his like she might get away. But she wasn’t going anywhere. She couldn’t get enough of Conn’s lush mouth, his deft tongue sliding against hers, the soft, rough noise that escaped his throat when she nipped his lower lip, then licked the spot to soothe it.
The hand not in her hair snaked between her waist and the seat to haul her over the console, into his lap. She twisted as she moved, her bottom cradled against his warm thighs, her feet still in the passenger seat. It was awkward, but now she could cup his face as she kissed him, sliding her fingers through his hair. More importantly, he now had access to her body, his palms seeking out her breasts.
“I can barely feel that,” she moaned when he squeezed the tender flesh. “Too many clothes.”
He jerked up her sweater, only to find another sweater underneath, then a thermal undershirt under that. “How many layers are you wearing?” he grumbled.
“Four, I think,” she said, twisting on his lap. She needed more, the hot visceral glow of skin-to-skin contact. “Keep going, there’s one more—oh, God,” she gasped.
He’d found her silk undershirt, the bottom layer except for her bra—barely any defense against the rough heat of his palm. She arched, desperate as he fumbled with her bra cup, then solved that problem by shoving her bra up. It was the least elegant look ever, three sweaters and a bra bunched around her collarbone, but the sensation when he pinched her nipple made her arch so strongly she banged her head on the driver’s side window.
“Ow … no, don’t stop, don’t stop,” she said.
“I can think of better places to do this than the front seat of your car,” Conn said, but his hand didn’t stop moving, squeezing and pinching, then gathering the silk to graze her nipples into a hyperaware state. “Or the backseat. You should have bought the bigger sedan.”
She clamped her hand around the back of his neck and pulled his mouth to hers. The light in the garage door opener flicked off, leaving them in total darkness. “Shit,” Conn said, and slapped his hand against the dash until he found the push button start and activated the interior lights. A soft pinging filled the air.
Cady looked into his eyes and saw nothing but a thin ring of iris around his pupils. Her brain said standard response to dim lighting. Her body said aroused male and triggered the desire to writhe against him, something she wanted to do naked and horizontal. “Inside,” she said.
He opened the door and caught her in one bulky arm before she fell backward to the cement floor. In a move worthy of any of the Dukes of Hazzard she gripped the doorframe and lifted herself out and up until she could get a foot on the floor, kicking Conn soundly in the thigh in the process. He grunted, but followed her out, waiting with the car door open until she’d opened the door leading to the mudroom. Light spilled from the kitchen into the garage.
As soon as the door to the garage closed, they stumbled down the hallway to the kitchen. The whole first floor smelled of fresh evergreen, clean, enticing. Conn stripped off her top two layers, turning her hair into a wild, static-filled halo around her face. “Wait, wait,” he muttered, cupping both hands around her head to hold her for his kiss. She took advantage of the lingering moment to slide her hands under the hem of his Henley, then up his ribcage, pulling his shirt off as she went. He broke away long enough to let her strip him, then wrapped one arm around her waist and hoisted her onto the kitchen island, stepped into her spread thighs, and kissed her again.
His kisses were deep, raw, out of character for him. Before he’d been controlled, careful of the differences between his strength and hers, but now he vibrated with a desire so passionate it was almost desperate. Cady left off running her hands over his shoulders and chest to grab the hem of her turtleneck and silk undershirt and pull them off. Conn’s hands made short work of her twisted bra, and then they were skin to skin. She wrapped her legs around his hips and her arms around his neck, and pulled him close, pressing her breasts against his chest, her belly to his.
His breath left him with a barely audible groan, then he relaxed against her. She felt his abs lifting against hers as he inhaled, the hot, hard length of his cock pressing against his zipper, but mostly she felt the way the tension eased from him. His big hands stroked up and down her back, his thumbs bumping over every notch in her spine, from her nape to the waistband of her jeans.
He leaned back just enough to look into her eyes, asking a question, watching for a response. The first few times they’d done this, Cady was looking for nothing more than to release months’ worth of tension built up on the road with a man she was attracted to. She didn’t fool herself into thinking Conn wanted anything more than that … then.
Now? Now she knew him, knew his past and his fears; from there it was a short step to hopes and dreams. Now she could give him something she knew he’d gotten from so few people in his life: herself, freely offered.
“Hey,” she whispered. Over his shoulder she could see his back reflected in the big glass windows overlooking the backyard, the breadth of his shoulders, his muscled spine, the twin dimples just above the waistband of his jeans. She reached around and trailed her fingers up the valley of his spine, and watched him shiver, felt his cock pulse in the notch of her thighs.
His next kiss was hot, possessive, and slow enough to seduce Cady into a state of total limp surrender. He cupped her breasts, gently squeezing her nipples; it was her turn to shiver and lift against him.
“Bed? Or here?” he asked, rough, like she had to make a decision now.
“Bed,” she said, remembering the bruises on her lower back, his knees. The energy in the room had shifted from the frantic heat in the car to a tidal pull ebbing and flowing between his body and hers. “Definitely bed. Go slow. I want this to last.”
He groaned, but visibly gathered his control, testing himself as he popped open the button on her jeans and unzipped them. She wriggled from one hip to the other to get them off. They’d just hit the floor when Conn wrapped both of his big pushy arms around her waist. She clung to him as he carried her into the bedroom. Still in his jeans, Conn paused by her nightstand to unclip his holster, cuffs, and badge. He took off her panties; she worked down the zipper on his jeans and stripped him to his beautiful skin. They climbed into bed together, Conn pulling the covers over them both to trap the heat roiling between them.
Braced on one arm above her, he locked eyes with her, trailed his fingers down her sternum, over her belly, and into the folds between her legs. She shuddered, both at the possessive look in his eyes and at the slick heat he found. She reached for his shoulders, then his hips, then wrapped her hands around his wrists, gripping tighter and tighter as his fingertips slid along either side of her clit. She was sensitive, juicy from the teasing friction of rubbing herself against him, and he knew her so well now. In a moment she was digging her fingernails into his wrists and sobbing out her release.
When she relaxed enough to remove her nails from his skin, he was fumbling in her nightstand for a condom. “That wasn’t slow,” she said.
He shot her a quick Conn-grin as he ripped open the packet and sat back on his heels. “If you’re complaining about it, I must have done something wrong,” he said.
“I’m not complaining,” she said. Her hands were trembling as she slid her palms up his hair-rough thighs. “I’m just saying … it wasn’t slow.”
He aligned their bodies and nudged the tip of his cock into her soft, wet entrance. She gasped as the pressure stimulated nerve endings already strung to hypersensitivity. He kissed her, his swollen lips brushing over hers making her aware of yet another place on her body attuned to him. “Again?” he asked, his voice nothing more than a low rumble in the heated cocoon of covers.
She couldn’t think. He was no more than an inch or so inside her, stretching her swollen folds, encouraging her body to open to him and fold around him all at once. She hitched her heels high up on the backs of his thighs and lifted just a little.
“With me, Cady?”
“Yes,” she gasped. The multiple-orgasm thing usually eluded her, and she considered it a courtesy if her partner didn’t pound away for fifteen or twenty minutes afterward. Maybe she just hadn’t waited long enough. Maybe she’d been with the wrong man. “Oh, yes?”
He gave her a little more, just enough for her body to take notice. His thrusts were shallow, slow, in rhythm to the hot way his tongue slid against hers. Gold wires of sensation tendriled through her body, then, as he slid all the way inside, drew taut. He was careful not to grind against her sensitive clit, instead taking his weight on his elbows and kissing her, again and again, so possessively and thoroughly she forgot what it was like to not touch him.
Hot honey poured along her nerves with each thrust, sweet and sticky and just rough enough to make her tremble. Sensation swamped her from all sides, but mostly from the energy pouring from Conn’s body over hers. She opened to it, became the reservoir for it, offered it back to him with each lift of her hips, each welcoming lick or nip along his jaw.
He tore his mouth from hers and let his head roll against the pillow. “Fuck. Cady. Just … fuck.”
“I know,” she gasped. He was so hard inside her, sweat slicking the contact between their bodies. “I can … I think I can…”
“Yeah,” he said. “Fuck, yeah. Do it.”
She couldn’t stop herself if she tried. Her release tipped over the edge from possible to certain, and she froze, hips straining for contact with his, her entire sheath rippling against his hard length as he stroked in with a rhythm that must have cost him dearly to sustain. Then the tight, clenching fist inside her flung open and she cried out, sharp, short, unmistakable sounds of release.
Conn wrapped his arm around her shoulders and gripped her hip with the other hand, then plunged deep one last time. Cady trembled again from the sheer pleasure of feeling him come buried deep inside her.
Conn lifted himself off her and went into the bathroom. Cady lay in the blanket cocoon heated by their bodies, phrases and bits of what felt like might be a refrain drifting through the haze in her mind. When Conn emerged, he didn’t get dressed or head straight for the shower. Instead, he came back and clambered over her to snuggle back into the warm bed. His arm locked around her waist, pulling her close.
“I could get used to this,” she murmured, already half asleep.
His arm tightened around her waist. “Yeah,” he said. “Me, too.”
When she woke up the next morning, she had it. Overnight her brain had done that mysterious, magical thing, and the jumbled pieces of lyrics and melody and meaning were now at least a couple of verses, well on the way to a song.
“That’s it,” she said.
“What’s it?” Conn asked.
She pushed at his shoulder. “I’ve got it,” she said, which probably wasn’t any more helpful. “Let me up. I need to write this down.”
He obligingly lay flat so she could scramble over him. “That’s a first for me,” he said, clearly amused.
“What is?” she asked, distracted by the rhythm and words in her head. She followed the trail of her clothes out of the bedroom and into the kitchen.
“Having a woman jump out of bed. Usually there’s morning cuddling.”
“I’ve got an idea for the song,” she said, then did a double take. He was standing in the doorway, one shoulder braced against the frame, magnificently naked. “Do you want to cuddle?” she asked, torn.
“I’m good,” he said, still smiling. “Go do your thing.”
Thank God. She bolted for the stairs, desperate to get to the studio where her notebook and guitar waited. Noncreative types didn’t understand the way a song, a melody, a lyric could well up inside you, suddenly fully formed where before there was only a muddled mess, or worse, nothing at all. She hauled open the door and thumped down on her chair, already reaching for her guitar. She had the strap over her head and the body balanced on her thigh, her hand patting for the notebook that held the lines she’d written down back in August, the ones she thought were going nowhere.
No notebook.
She came up short. When she’d heard Conn come back inside after chopping wood, she’d been so desperate to get out of the mental rut she’d left it on the little table, open to the last page full of scribbles and doodles.
Maybe not. Maybe she’d taken it with her, automatically tucking it into her pocket. She leaned her guitar back in the stand, trotted back up the stairs. Water was running in her bathroom, so Conn was taking a shower. Down the hall, into the garage to search her car. Not there. Then she went through her coat pockets. No notebook.
A creeping sensation prickled the skin on the back of her neck. Convinced she was being watched, she whirled around, but there was no one behind her. The light was bright enough that she could see the outlines of the trees sloping up the hill. A flash of movement caught her eye and she startled, her hand flying to her mouth.
Forget looking strong and unafraid. She bolted for the bathroom. Conn stood under the steam shower, both arms wrapped around his waist, turning his amazing shoulders back and forth under the pressure. He looked up when she hurtled into the bathroom.
“What?” he said, already reaching for the handle to shut off the water.
“My notebook is missing,” she said.