“Any reason in particular why you look like the ghost of Christmas, dead and buried?”
“I’m just tired.”
He didn’t believe her, but he let it go. After she’d left, he reached for the two envelopes she’d shoved across his desk. He ripped open the first, then more hastily, the second.
Greg Harper practically hurdled his desk and lunged for the door of his office. “Alex, you bitch!” he roared down the empty corridor.
“She just left,” his startled secretary informed him. “With a man.”
“Who?”
“A cowboy in a fur-trimmed leather jacket.”
Greg returned to his desk, wadded the two empty envelopes into balls, and shot them at the wastebasket.
It was close to sundown when Reede wheeled his Blazer into the parking lot of the Westerner Motel.
“Just drop me at the lobby, please,” Alex told him. “I need to check for messages.”
Reede did as she asked without comment. They’d had very little to say to each other since their awkward reunion outside the D.A.’s office. The flight home had been uneventful. Alex had dozed most of the way.
Reede had passed the time watching Alex doze.
No less than a thousand times during the night, he’d almost gone back to her condo. Looking at the crescent-shaped circles beneath her eyes while she slept, he didn’t know how he could have walked away from her. She had needed someone with her last night. He’d been the only one available.
But no one had ever presented him a prize for being a good Boy Scout. If he had stayed, he couldn’t have kept his hands, or his mouth, or his cock, away from her. That’s why he had left. Their needs hadn’t been compatible.
Now, she was hesitating, half in, half out of the truck. “Well, thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Are you sure you won’t let me pay you?”
He didn’t honor that with an answer. Instead, he asked a question of his own. “What was the big powwow about?”
“A case I was working on before I left. The other prosecutor needed some facts cleared up.”
“And they couldn’t be cleared up over the phone?”
“It was complicated.”
He knew she was lying, but saw no reason to pursue it. “So long.”
She stepped to the ground and, pulling the strap of her heavy bag onto her shoulder, went into the motel lobby, where the clerk greeted her and handed her a stack of messages. Reede backed up and turned the truck around. He was about to pull out when he noticed that Alex had slowed down to read one of the messages. Her face had grown even paler than it already was. He shoved the transmission into Park and got out.
“What’s that?”
She squinted up at him, then hastily refolded the letter and stuffed it back into the envelope. “My mail.”
“Let me see it.”
“You want to see my mail?”
He snapped his fingers rapidly three times and opened his palm. Her exasperation was plain when she slapped the envelope into his hand. It didn’t take him long to read the letter. It was short and to the point. Tawny brows merged over the bridge of his nose as he frowned. “ ‘An abomination unto God’?”
“That’s what he’s calling me.”
“Plummet, no doubt. Mind if