Chapter 21
Dan rose to face her. “What’s going on, Leah?”
“I thanked him for the tree house, Aunt Leah.”
“Good work, bud,” she said, squeezing her nephew’s shoulder.
“Are you okay? Your eyes look squinty,” Dan said, studying her.
“Aunt Leah has a headache,” Hudson repeated.
“I’m better now, Hudson. Go get that bucket of food scraps, and we’ll feed the chickens.”
Her nephew ran off with Benny to do as she said, and Dan was left alone with her. He kept his eyes on her face rather than running them over her body.
“Tell me what’s going on and why you called the station?”
She didn’t want to. He saw it in her eyes.
“You came here because I called the station?”
“I did, because I know you well enough to understand you’d never call there unless it was important.”
A heavy silence settled between them.
“Look. I’m a cop, so put aside everything else between us and focus on that. I’m here to help if you need it. Your call worried me enough to drive here. Talk to me, Leah.”
She looked over her shoulder for Hudson before speaking.
“I don’t even know why I called. It’s probably nothing, but I found something in a barn that I don’t think the feds found when they searched this property before.
I thought your uncle was the best person to look at it.
” Her words didn’t have their usual strength.
Dan studied her and saw the dark smudges under her eyes and pallor of her face. “Your head bad?”
She shook it slowly, which told him it was.
“Taken anything?”
“I’ll go into town after and get something.”
“Get some water. I have pills in the cruiser.” Dan left as she protested that it wasn’t necessary. Returning with two pain pills in his hand, he handed them to her.
Leah had never been stupid, and much as she clearly wanted to refuse, she also knew that would be foolish.
She walked away, and he followed. His eyes went to the table, and he saw her naked again.
Looking for a distraction, he picked up a pottery bowl as she filled a glass with water.
It was glazed with greens and browns, the sheen almost metallic.
“Did you make this, Leah?”
She turned to see what he was holding. “Yes.”
“You should set up one of your sheds to do this because you’re good, and it would sell here. I think Ryder—”
“No. Not now. I need to do the planting,” she said, and her tone told him not to press.
Money, Dan guessed. Setting up a kiln, and everything else she’d need, would cost a lot of that, and she couldn’t do both the shade house and this.
“What do you want to show me, Leah?”
“I checked through the barns yesterday. I needed to see if there was anything to sell or use.”
“Find anything good?”
“I found Dad’s pickup in the last shed.”
Dan whistled. “That thing is still in there? I’m surprised it wasn’t sold. It would be worth some money due to its age and the fact that it’s highly sought after.”
“Do you think so?”
“Definitely.” He could see she was thinking about that and the money it could bring. He’d buy it, but for now, he left those words inside his head.
“Continue with your story,” Dan said.
“I wondered if it still worked, so we got in and tried the ignition.”
“You and Hudson?”
“Me and Benny. It didn’t, so I charged a battery, then went back out later to put it in and move it.”
He swallowed his smile at the thought of her and the little dog in her father’s pickup.
“It didn’t move after I’d started it. I checked underneath, and while the wheels did have blocks behind them, the truck was also attached by a chain to a handle in the floor.”
“Your father loved that thing, so it’s possible he chained it up to protect it.”
“I know, but since there was no point leaving the pickup there, I got the bolt cutters to break it like I had all the barn locks.”
He remembered that about her too. How she never asked for help with anything, just got on with it. Raised on this farm, she’d learned to do most things for herself because her father was always useless. The Reynolds women had done anything from fixing cars to changing a faucet.
“I drove it forward, and then when I got out, I found the shape of a door in the floor.”
“Tell me you didn’t go down into it,” Dan said. When she nodded, he felt his back stiffen at what she could have found down there. Because chances were, it was something illegal if someone had gone to that much trouble to hide it.
“Of course I went down.” She looked pissed that he’d think otherwise. “This is my property now. Why wouldn’t I?”
“I don’t know, maybe because someone had clearly gone to a lot of trouble to hide that room down there? That perhaps whatever is in it was illegal or dangerous.” He never raised his voice in the line of duty, and aware that Hudson was close, he kept it down, but he was angry, and she knew it.
“Don’t you dare speak to me like that, asshole,” she hissed back.
He blinked. “I beg your pardon. Did you just abuse an officer of the law?”
“Whatever.” She batted his words away like she would a gnat. “I looked around in there, but there seemed to be nothing weird going on—”
“Like people snorting lines of coke or a chop shop, you mean?” Dan inquired with deceptive calm. “Because you did know that was going on right under your nose, after all.”
“Fuck you, Dan Duke,” she spat at him.
“No thanks, not while you’re in this mood. I’ll take the Leah I had the other day.”
Her mouth opened and closed twice before any sound came out.
He beat her to it. “This is getting us nowhere. Show me what you saw, Leah. Please.”
She exhaled slowly. “You’re right, and I’m sorry…it’s just that finding the room—”
“It’s got to be unsettling knowing what your father was doing?” Dan added.
She nodded.
“Show me what you found, Leah.”
“Got them,” Hudson said, returning to the kitchen. “I went upstairs to get the chicken book that I got out of the school library too, in case I need to check I’m doing everything right.”
“Great,” Leah said. “Let’s go feed our egg suppliers, then, bud,” she said. “Get your boots on.”
He watched them put on their boots, his head running through what she’d told him. Then he walked with them back down the drive to where the outbuildings were.
“You check for eggs and feed those chickens, Hudson. Then I’ll meet you in the first barn,” Leah said. “I just want to show the deputy something in another one, okay?”
The boy ran off to do as he was told, Benny on his heels.
“He really does look like Cassie,” Dan said instead of the ten other things he’d managed to hold back.
“He does.”
She walked away from him, and he kept his eyes on her rigid shoulders and not that lovely ass.
“This is the last one,” she said. “I found it in here.”
“Anything good in the other barns?” Dan asked, trying to play nice. “We didn’t go through them when we came to clean up.”
She sighed. “There’s still so much to do.”
“You have help anytime you need it.”
Leah didn’t comment, and he knew there was no way she’d ask for it. The only way to deal with her was to force her to take help by turning up.
Dan studied the last barn as they reached it. There had been traffic in and out of here recently. He could tell that right off. Unlike the others, the grass in front of the doors was flattened.
Leah reached for the doors, but he beat her to it and opened one. They both walked inside.
“The padlock on this was newer,” she said.
It was a large open space, as barns tended to be, but not as much clutter as he would expect from a man like Chuck Reynolds, who had hoarding tendencies. There were some pallets stacked on the floor in a grid pattern about the size of his mom’s living room.
“I wonder what was stacked on those?”
“No idea,” Leah said.
He found the pickup and headed in that direction. A 1958 Chevy Cameo that half the men, and a good handful of the women, in Lyntacky lusted after, him included.
“Are you going to drive that pickup now?”
She shrugged and kept walking to the far right corner of the barn, so he followed.
“The other barns were where Dad did all the things with those cars, but this wasn’t really for anything much, or so he said. Me and Cassie weren’t allowed in here,” she said.
Chuck Reynolds, you asshole.
“And you listened?”
She spun, and he grabbed her shoulders to stop from knocking her over. She put one hand on his chest to steady herself.
They stared at each other, heat and lust swirling in the air between them. Dan wondered if it would always be there when she was close.
“I can’t stop thinking about you,” he said, lowering his head. “I’ve never wanted any woman more.”
For about five seconds, she sagged into him as he kissed her and then pulled back. “No, Dan, please.” She stepped back out of reach. “This—we can’t,” she whispered.
He ran a hand through his hair as she turned away. Fuck. He was in uniform again, and he was better than this. A hormone-fueled teenager had better manners than him in that moment. This had to stop. Something was going to give. He just wasn’t sure what, or when.
“Show me what you found, Leah.” His words came out gruff and harsh, but she didn’t comment.
She got into the pickup and drove it forward. Then after climbing out, she pointed to a handle in the floor and the outline of a door.
“It’s down here,” she said, reaching for the handle.
“Let me do that. You have a sore head.”
She didn’t argue. He shot her a look, but her eyes were on the opening beneath them, like every fear she’d ever had was waiting for her below.