Pippa
“Pippa, Honey…”
I’m in the zone and I love the way the muscles in his thighs bunch up under my hands. He’s sitting with his back against the headboard and I know he’s watching me. The small grunts he tries to swallow as I take him to the back of my throat, I can feel all the way down to my core.
“Jesus, woman…” he hisses when I almost let him slip from my lips, catching the plump head with my tongue before sucking him back in my mouth.
That breaks him, and the next moment he hooks his hands under my arms, pulls me up, and arranges me on his lap so I face the foot end of the bed.
“You promised it was my turn to play,” I grumble.
“And now it’s done,” he growls as he firmly grabs my ever-expanding hips. “Lift, Pippa.”
I lean forward, my hands braced on his bent knees, and raise my hips until I feel the blunt tip of his cock slide along my crease.
“Down, gorgeous,” he whispers, his lips brushing the skin on my back.
My mouth drops open and my eyes close as he slowly fills me.
“Yesss.”
“That puts a different spin on things.”
I putz around in the kitchen because I’m too restless to sit, listening to Sully and his niece talk with Agent Wolff. He showed up about twenty minutes after Sloane called him, at her uncle’s urging, and she’s been answering all his questions, admitting freely she’d been digging and maybe doing a little hacking.
Wolff is good. Firm but not threatening, and the way he handles her, almost like she’s a colleague giving a report rather than someone confessing to a crime.
Last night, as I have most nights recently, I fell asleep on the couch while Sully and Sloane were bent over the laptop he brought over from his office in the main house earlier in the day. From their conversation over breakfast this morning, it was clear he had her take him over every step of her research, and then spent half the night doing some of his own digging. I wasn’t surprised to find out Cade Jackson is the person he chose to focus on. Truthfully, if I had to pick between Cade or Marcie as someone who might be involved, I’d pick Cade too.
It’s not even nine, although I’ve been up for hours. The same restlessness had me wake up Sully before the sun came up. Of course, at the time, I had no idea he’d only come to bed an hour or two before. It didn’t seem to hamper his enthusiasm though. A smile pulls at my lips, reliving the vivid memories of him moving inside me temporarily block out the discussion in the living room.
“Pippa?”
My head snaps up, when I hear Sully’s voice, to find every eye fixed on me. Immediately, I feel the blood rush to my face as I focus on Sully, who is wearing a smirk. Bastard knows exactly where my mind had drifted.
“Sorry, I missed that…”
“We noticed,” he returns smugly. “Wolff was just asking you something.”
My eyes slide to the agent.
“I was simply curious whether—given this latest information—you might have given any more thought to where Marcie might’ve gone?”
I scoff a bit. “I’ve frankly been trying to wrap my head around the possibility someone I thought was a friend could be involved with any of this.”
“Understandable,” the agent sympathizes. “So is that what you believe? That she’s involved?”
“I don’t know, but the answer would’ve been a hell no only days ago, if that tells you anything,” I share honestly as I move over to the couch where Sully pulls me down beside him. “I mean, at this point, all we know is she’s passionate about the Fair Game mandate, she’s some kind of sharpshooter, and she somehow disappeared last week. Unless I’m missing something?”
Sully’s arm tucks me closer, giving me a sense of comfort as I listen to the agent.
“Actually, some new information has come to light…” Wolff starts, and the sympathetic look he sends me makes me feel uneasy. “…Which would indicate Ms. Watts may have been the one to place the rifle in your motorhome. That fingerprint we found on the loaded round? It matches Marcie Watts’s prints we were able to collect from her apartment. Is there any reason why she might try to implicate you?”
“What? No, there isn’t.”
My answer is immediate. This is nuts. My mind is scrambling to make sense of what he’s suggesting, going over my interactions with Marcie since I met her last year.
It’s not like she sought me out, ours was a chance encounter at rehab. We chatted, hit it off when we discovered mutual interests, and she introduced me to Fair Game. When I mentioned maybe wanting to set down roots here and expressed an interest in the vacant auto shop, she negotiated a great deal for me. There’s nothing that might’ve given her reason to try and frame me, if that’s in fact what she did.
“You know,” Sully interrupts my thoughts as he addresses Agent Wolff. “You guys seem to focus all your energies in one single direction at a time. First, you were convinced Pippa was at the root of this.”
“I wasn’t,” Wolff disagrees.
“Powell was and from what I can see he’s in charge of this investigation. Despite what my niece uncovered; I hope you don’t limit yourself to focusing only on Marcie.”
“She fits the bill,” the agent says defensively. “Besides, she’s not the only person we’re looking at, but she is the only one who’s gone AWOL.”
“Oh yeah? Tell me you’re checking out Cade Jackson?” Sully pushes, slipping his arm from my shoulders as he sits forward, pointing a finger at Wolff for emphasis. “He actually has reason to implicate Pippa, not only because she rejected him but because she’d become competition. His family owns Jackson Automotive and I’m pretty sure he’s the one who vandalized the Pit Stop.
“But what’s more interesting is something I found out last night. Did you know the guy very publicly and very aggressively confronted Congresswoman Yokum on her stance on baiting at one of her campaign rallies two years ago? He tossed a bucket of rotting food onto the stage and called her a killer.”
Whoa. That is news to me. To Sloane as well, judging from her sharp intake of breath. He never mentioned anything, then again, I didn’t give him much of a chance this morning; I made sure his mind was on other things.
Wolff doesn’t look in the least surprised though.
“Sheriff Ewing provided that information to us last night,” he confirms.
“What is puzzling,” Sully contemplates out loud. “Is that no charges were ever filed. He was hauled away by the cops and by all accounts should’ve been charged with assault or something, but instead he walked.”
“Congresswoman Yokum apparently didn’t want to press charges. Powell is actually meeting with her this morning to get some clarity on why that was,” Wolff explains.
I’m only half listening and lean my head back, closing my eyes as I slowly breathe through another one of those damn fake contractions. As if on cue, the baby starts moving about as soon as it wanes. She obviously does not appreciate them either.
“Are you okay?” Sully asks beside me.
“Fine,” I respond, rubbing a hand over my belly. “She’s active, that’s all.”
Apparently, that’s enough for Sully to call an end to this gathering. Wolff doesn’t argue and gets to his feet, but he stops by the front door.
“Before I forget, we’re done with your RV. You can pick it up at our temporary digs at the game warden’s station just east of town.”
“That’s where Marcie stores her trailer,” I volunteer, remembering I dropped her off there once in the fall.
“Where?” the agent asks.
“At the station.”
“There was no trailer there. Weird,” he muses out loud. “Her car was still at the apartment and we didn’t find any other vehicles in her name. Do you know what she would normally tow the trailer with?”
“I know she mentioned renting a tow vehicle before, and I think last fall she may have borrowed someone’s truck. She was talking about trading her car in this summer for something with towing capacity.”
He nods, looking a little distracted as he walks out.
Sully closes the door behind him.
“We should go pick it up.”
Sloane claps her hands excitedly.
“Awesome. When are we going camping?”
“You’re outta luck, kid,” Sully says, bursting her bubble. “I’m taking Pippa outta here for a couple of days—think of it as our honeymoon—and someone needs to give Ira a hand at the garage.”
“No fair,” she complains, but then a grin steels over her face. “Then can I take it out for a few days when you guys get back?”
My anxiety ratchets up a notch at the thought.
Sully
Good to know Wayne Ewing finally got up off his ass and looked into Jackson.
I’d like Jackson to be guilty as all hell, but I can’t dismiss the stuff Sloane pulled up on Marcie. Both are good candidates. Better than Pippa, thank God, which means the focus is no longer on her.
Only thing is, I can’t quite figure out what Marcie’s motivation would be to target Pippa. That part fits Jackson better. Limp-dicked momma’s boy, who can’t take no for an answer, so he takes it out on the woman who turns him down. Coward.
Boggles my mind though, it’s one thing to be passionate about a cause, it’s a whole different ballgame to start executing people. There has to be a better motivator for the murders than that. Something more that drives someone to become this bloodthirsty.
It’s tempting to keep digging, but Pippa is out of the FBI’s crosshairs and I promised to take her camping. I am worried, however, Sloane will continue her investigation.
“This Chappy guy, is he someone special?”
I look over at Sloane, sitting in the passenger seat.
She barks out a laugh. “God no. I mean, he’s nice, and maybe he’d be interested in something more but I’m not.”
Poor guy. Something tells me my niece didn’t hesitate to use his interest in her to get what she wanted.
“Not cool, Sloane, bribing the guy with hope when there’s none.”
I glance over and catch her watching me from under her lashes, a small blush on her cheeks.
“It wasn’t really like that. I never made any promises.”
“Maybe not, but the guy potentially risked his career for you, which means at the very least you gave him the impression he had a chance, sweetheart. Please don’t risk his, or your own, future by continuing to poke around in a federal investigation.”
She turns to look out the side window, not saying anything but hopefully thinking on what I said.
Pippa is at home, having a nap. She was up early and got busy right away. A smile steals over my face thinking of my wake-up call at the crack of dawn. As a result, I didn’t get a lot of shut-eye either, but I’ll have to catch up on my sleep when we have Pippa’s rig parked somewhere secluded and we don’t have to worry about family interruptions or law enforcement knocking on the door.
We’re in Pippa’s truck on our way to the game warden’s station to pick up the motorhome. Sloane will take the pickup to the garage and I can drive the rig home. This afternoon we can stock up and get it ready and tomorrow morning we’ll head out.
I know we can’t go too far, but there’s a place we stumbled on last year on a search I’d like to take her to. It’s only about ten miles from Libby; a small lake at the end of what was little more than two tire tracks veering off the forestry road for about half a mile. It’ll be tough going—we did it on horseback—but it’ll be worth it.
“What would be required to become a game warden?” Sloane asks as we turn onto the station parking lot.
Pippa’s motorhome is parked behind the building and I pull the pickup in beside it before turning to my niece.
“I imagine your degree would be a good start, but it would also require a great deal of knowledge of fish and wildlife. It’s not limited to policing in the great outdoors, it’s in large part preservation as well.”
From the corner of my eye, I see Woody Moses come out the station’s rear door.
“Maybe you should ask him,” I suggest, directing Sloane’s attention to the approaching warden.
“Eckhart.”
“Moses.” I nod at him before turning to my niece, who is rounding the front of the pickup. “This is my niece, Sloane.” The two shake hands. “She has a brand-new degree in criminal justice and is interested in the kind of work you do here,” I add.
“I can speak for myself,” she snipes at me before aiming a bright smile at Woody. “That said, yes, I would love to pick your brain at some point when you have a few minutes.”
Woody grins. My niece knows how to turn on the charm when she wants to.
“I’m on my way out now, but why don’t you leave your number with my office and I’ll give you a call when I have some time.”
With a nod for me he starts walking to his SUV parked on the other end.
“Before you go,” I stop him. “Do you know where I can find the keys to the motorhome?”
He looks at the rig and then back at me. “She’s more than welcome to leave it parked here. It’s not in my way.”
“Thanks, but we’ve got the space at the ranch. Besides, she’s ready to get out of town for a bit.”
He nods with a look of understanding. “Don’t blame her.” Then he jerks his head toward the rig. “Keys are behind the fuel tank door. See ya later.”
Sloane is already behind the wheel of the pickup and is backing out, wiggling her fingers at me. I jerk my chin at her before heading around the rear of the motorhome. I retrieve the keys, get into the driver’s seat, and start up the engine. As I maneuver out of the parking spot and head for the road, I notice the game warden’s SUV still sitting in the same spot. Moses is on his phone behind the wheel and lifts his hand in greeting as I pass.
When I get home twenty minutes later, Pippa is sitting at the kitchen table, my laptop open in front of her. She smiles wide as I approach.
“How do you feel about dogs?”