Guilty as Sin (Sinful, Montana Book 1) Read online

  It wasn’t that there weren’t any good-looking cops on the SFPD. It was just that you were more likely to see them eating a taco than looking suave.

  Her new buddy said, “Same old thing, I’m afraid. Still hoping to get under your defenses. You’ve given me another week to think about how. Always dangerous.”

  The lean woman was approaching from the back of the store with Hailey behind her. Hailey was looking a little apprehensive as the woman stopped in front of Paige and asked, “Does this mean you’ve finally decided to sign?”

  “Excuse me?” Paige asked. “And no, it doesn’t. I won’t be signing.” She took a step back, keeping her hands up where she could use them. She saw “threat,” however unlikely a source it was coming from. But this was also her chance to draw Lily’s line in the sand, and to take the consequences.

  “I don’t understand what your problem is,” the woman said, one step too close to Paige’s face and nowhere close to buying the underwear she had in a death grip, “or why you won’t explain it. Why you won’t listen. Don’t you realize that you’re holding this whole town hostage? You’ve been here, what? Two years? Maybe? Some of us were born here. Some of us need this. You’re getting a good deal. Everybody knows that, and we can see that you don’t even need the money, either. You could live anywhere you want. We can’t. So why won’t you help?”

  “Whoa,” Mr. Silver Fox said. “Ms. Hollander isn’t obligated.”

  The woman rounded on him. “Then why are you here?”

  He smiled. Too charming again. “Well, you know, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

  “Meaning,” Paige said, her suspicions confirmed, “what? Are we moving on from bribery? What could possibly come next?” This had to be Brett Hunter. Behind her, a trio of teenaged girls whirled into the store like a tropical storm, all long legs, long hair, and chattering voices, and she thought, What is this, the candy store?

  “That sounds so sordid, though,” Hunter said with barely a glance for the girls. He was still so casual, still so amused, and Paige’s hackles were rising even more. “I’m here because I wanted to invite you out to look at a parcel. I think you’re going to love it. It’s a little remote, a little lakeside, and a whole lot charming. I saw it and thought, now, who would go for this? And I had my answer.”

  Paige wasn’t listening, for two reasons. One, that the thin woman was all but bouncing up and down on her toes. Too intense, too focused. Two, that the Milker had just stepped into the shop with a jingle of bells, bringing all his calm certainty with him, as if he walked in a cone of stillness. And three, that the teenage girls had drifted apart, and one of them had dropped her purse. The contents spilled out onto the floor and scattered, the girl shrieked, and everybody looked.

  Paige stepped back, and then she stepped back again. She ignored the girl on the floor, both men, and everybody else. A quick pivot to the left, and she was saying to the blonde girl standing next to the Natori rack, “Excuse me, miss. Would you please open your bag and show me what’s inside?”

  She got wide blue eyes, a lipsticked mouth in a perfect O, and a white-knuckled hand on a slouchy leather tote. Innocent and shocked from her face, and the opposite from her body. “What?”

  Paige took a step closer and beckoned. “Right now, please.” The girl’s eyes slid away, and Paige said, “I said now.”

  A long moment. Silence. A shuffle of feet from the girl, as if she wanted to run. And then, as Paige continued to hold her gaze, an achingly slow movement of her hand toward her bag. Until she stopped.

  “That’s right,” Paige said. “Now.”

  The girl thrust the bag open in one quick movement and said, all in a rush, “I was going to buy them. I was just about to. You didn’t give me a chance.”

  Paige kept her voice level. “Would you give them to me, then, please? We can ring them up for you.” The girl, sullen now, handed over the teal-colored bra and thong, and Paige glanced at the tags. A hundred dollars’ worth of distraction, and a coordinated effort with her friend. Some girls needed better hobbies. Unless this girl had shoplifted all her clothes, she could afford to pay. Paige said, “Thank you,” and handed the garments to Hailey, who took them without a word. “Would you like to purchase these now, or have you changed your mind?”

  “We weren’t even out of the store,” the blonde said. “You can’t do that. I’ll tell my dad you accused me and humiliated me in front of everybody for no reason. Just because we’re teenagers.”

  “Sounds like you’ve read up on your petty larceny statutes,” Paige said pleasantly. “Could be you’re right. Maybe you’d like me to call the police, and we can see what they say.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” the brunette who’d dropped her purse was saying now. “I didn’t take anything. It wasn’t even my idea!”

  “Chelsea. Shut up,” the blonde said, and Chelsea did.

  The third girl, the bystander, was all but wringing her hands. Paige went behind the counter, picked up the phone, and said, “What would you like to do?”

  “We’re going,” the blonde said. “I would’ve bought something, but forget it. You don’t have any right to keep us here, and I wouldn’t buy anything from you now anyway. You rip people off, and everybody knows it. You can buy everything in here a whole lot cheaper online.”

  “Fine,” Paige said. “Then you won’t be upset that all of you are banned from the store from now on.”

  If it weren’t for Brett Hunter, Paige was pretty sure, she would have been hearing a whole lot about that. Instead, the blonde glanced around, then muttered, “Fuck you,” almost but not quite under her breath. Like saying it got her last-word points, but also like it didn’t count against her with a good-looking man if she didn’t scream it. When Paige didn’t react, because it wasn’t the first time she’d heard it, or the thousandth time, for that matter, the girl tossed her hair, said, “Come on, you guys. We’re leaving,” and marched for the door.

  That was when Paige registered that the Milker was still standing in front of it, arms folded, six foot three and two hundred pounds of not-moving. For a long moment, it was a standoff. Then he stepped aside, held the door for the girls, and let it swing shut behind them.

  “What were you going to do if they’d run for it?” Paige asked him. She had some adrenaline, she realized with wonder. For something this minor? Like a rookie, like somebody who’d been out of it for way more than a few weeks. Like she truly was in Lily’s body.

  Oh. Lily would have been upset. The adrenaline was good, then. Part of the twin-meld.

  She got another of the almost-smiles the Milker specialized in. “I’d have thought of something.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  Hailey said, “Well,” and looked like she wanted to say more. “How did you know? I’d never have suspected Madison Knightley. Heaven knows she doesn’t need to shoplift.”

  Paige didn’t answer, because she couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t some form of, “Because I’m a cop.” The silence stretched out until Hailey said, “I’m surprised you didn’t wait until she was outside so we could have held her for the police, though.”

  Paige asked, “What would be the point?”

  Hunter said, “Interesting. If she doesn’t have a record, if her lawyer daddy pays for what she stole, and if the police can’t do anything next time either, because she doesn’t have that record? Is that better?”

  “The cops pick their battles,” Paige said. “She’s not worth it.”

  “Why not?”

  It was low. Quiet. From the Milker. And it wasn’t a challenge. It was a question. Paige said, “That much entitlement isn’t going anywhere. Not when it’s been grown at home, which I’ll bet it has. She doesn’t matter. What matters are the two girls with her. Or maybe one and a half of them.”

  “The one who was upset,” the Milker said.

  “And possibly the girl who dropped her purse. Maybe. If they’re ready to learn something, they may hav
e done it today. Meanwhile, I saved us some time and trouble, I saved the cops more, and I got the clothes back. What’s not to like?”

  “Interesting,” Hunter said. “Pragmatic.” And Paige realized that Lily would’ve handled this completely differently. Would’ve hugged Sad Girl, probably, which might have worked and might not have. Sad Girl needed her eyes opened while she could still distance herself. Which was now.

  And if it hadn’t been a good Lily-imitation in front of Hunter? If he thought Lily was tougher than he’d imagined, more—yes, pragmatic? That wasn’t a bad thing at all. This was all getting pretty subtle for Paige, though. She was better at action than the after-action report.

  While she was still trying to work it out, Hunter said, “I’ll come by tomorrow, shall I, and we can talk again while you’re not so busy.”

  “You can do whatever you want,” Paige said, offering up some more of the new, tough Lily. “It’s a free country, and I haven’t banned you. Yet. But my answer will still be the same.”

  “Ah,” Hunter said, “but you haven’t seen my parcel. It might be worth a look.” He pulled a slim black wallet out of his back pocket, extracted a white business card, and dropped it on the counter. “In case you’ve forgotten my number,” he said with a faint smile. “Heartbreaking as the thought is. Nice to see you, as always, Hailey,” he added, and then he, too, was at the door, stiffening just a bit as he passed the Milker.

  Paige didn’t need a degree in Man to figure out that body language, either. That was pure circling-male-dog. And unless she was very much mistaken, it was about her. At least on the Milker’s part. She couldn’t tell about Hunter.

  Jace watched her, and he kept watching. She’d responded to that diversion in exactly the same way he would have. Recognizing it for what it was in a heartbeat, looking for the reason, and dealing with it on the spot. He’d swear, in fact, that she’d made the blonde as soon as she’d walked into the shop. But then, she was a retailer who sold expensive goods small enough to vanish into a bag the moment her back was turned. The awareness probably came with the territory.

  Still, though. Still. This woman was heaps more complicated than she’d seemed.

  He could have left when the girls had. He could have left anytime since. He hadn’t. Partly because he’d come here to see Lily and he wasn’t done seeing her, and partly because he’d wanted the other bloke to leave first.

  People said life wasn’t a competition. They were wrong.

  The thin woman, whom he vaguely recognized—around the gym, he thought—was still standing near the register, all but forgotten. As he watched, Lily shook off the harder persona she’d been showing, smiled at her, and said, “I’m sorry. You had something you were saying to me.”

  The woman looked rattled, and no wonder. Jace recognized that tactic, too. Classic de-escalation. “If you don’t want to listen,” the woman said after a moment, her anger lowered a notch, “if you don’t care, what else can I say? Maybe I was too… but I can’t see why you don’t get how much it matters to us. It’s like you really don’t care. Like you want us to go under. Why? Why would you want that?”

  She looked near tears now, if angry ones, and the other woman, the assistant, made a sympathetic noise, but Lily didn’t. If anything, she stiffened. “Maybe I care,” she said, “but I still don’t want to move from someplace I love, that’s mine. Maybe I don’t like feeling pushed to do it, either. Maybe I think people don’t get what matters to me. And whatever the problem is for you, or for anybody else, maybe there’s another answer to it. Maybe you should look for that.”

  The woman gasped. Actually gasped. “Whatever the problem is? Whatever?” She threw up a hand. “Never mind. I’m going. No point. I tried. I can say I tried.”

  Jace held the door for her, too. You’d think life in an American small town would be uncomplicated. No gangs, no wars, and a “crime wave” was when a moose started hanging around the school bus stop. He hadn’t counted on the undercurrents.

  Now it was just him, the shop assistant, and Lily. Who glanced at him, lifted her chin, and said, “If you’re here to tell me to sell, too, go ahead. I’m ready to go three-for-three.”

  She was still dressed soft, although that dress was sexier than anything he’d seen her wearing in the past, what with being able to see straight through it to at least four inches of thigh. Her hair was still golden blonde and wavy, her eyes were still a liquid brown, and her lips were still pink. Looking barely painted, like they came that way. And she still had dimples when she smiled. Soft all the way, except when she wasn’t. There was toughness under those clothes of hers.

  He liked brunettes. He always had. Blondes could look too obvious, somehow, even if their color was natural. Shallow of him, he was sure, and unfair, too, but your taste was your taste. So what was going on?

  He got the memory then, the kind that came to you out of nowhere. Of a training exercise years ago, storming a squatty cinderblock house with his squad. He’d gone in first, had seen the shadowy figure in black to his left, had fired, and had seen the wall go black even as he’d felt the hard sting as the paintball hit the back of his neck.

  He’d fallen, knowing he was dead. He’d done it right, but he was dead all the same.

  The instructor had said afterwards, “All the senses. All of them. Not just what you see. So what was that?”

  “A mirror,” Jace had said, still feeling the throb of the bruise. “A mirror I should have noticed.”

  “Why?”

  He’d considered. “The light. Something wrong there. The…” Another pause. “The smell, maybe. The feeling. Can’t tell. Something off.”

  “That’s right. Sometimes you know what you’re seeing. Other times, you can’t trust your eyes. You have to feel it. A twitch of your nose, the hair rising at the back of your neck. It’s coming from somewhere, and it keeps you alive. Keeps your mates alive, too. Pay attention to it.”

  What confused him now wasn’t that something was wrong. It was that something was right. Her new haircut, maybe. Or maybe that he was paying attention instead of assuming he knew who she was and what she was all about. He’d been looking in the mirror, reacting to what he’d expected to see instead of what was there.

  All of that took a couple seconds to process, and then the shop assistant was glancing at him and saying, “I’m sorry, I’ve been ignoring you. May I help you?”

  “No, thanks.” When she looked even more curious, he went on, “Stopped in to say hello to Lily and got myself fascinated along the way, you could say.”

  Lily looked wary. Again. Still. The assistant, on the other hand, looked decidedly interested. Jace held out a hand to her and said, “Jace Blackstone.” Always good to have an ally.

  “Oh,” she said with a little laugh, her plump hand soft in his, “I know who you are. And it’s Hailey.”

  “You know who I am?” Bloody hell. He was reclusive. He’d worked at it.

  “It’s the accent,” she said. “My daughter’s waited on you at the Red Rooster.” Ah. Jace’s café of choice. “She mentioned that there’s a guy from England who’s always working on his laptop, writing books. That’s you, isn’t it?”

  “Australia,” Jace said at the same time Lily did. Jace glanced at her, then back at Hailey, and said, “We don’t sound anything like the same to ourselves, sorry. I didn’t realize your daughter knew I wrote books.”

  “You’ll have to move to Missoula if you want to keep that a secret,” Hailey said with a smile, as if Missoula were New York City. “I guess somebody peeked.”

  “Oh.” So much for narrowing down his admirer that way, if half the town already knew who he was. But maybe it didn’t matter. It had to be somebody twisted, and most people weren’t twisted. When they were, you could smell it on them if you paid attention. The flatness, like there was nobody home behind their eyes, or the opposite. Too much intensity, that sweaty nervousness that said “IED” or “suicide mission.”

  Or it could be something
entirely different. Simply a hopeful writer, trying to get Jace’s attention anyway she—he—could? That wasn’t how it had felt, though. It had felt sexual, and it had felt twisted. Of course, the person might have assumed that “sexual” would get his attention, and they probably weren’t wrong.

  Time to focus on the mission, on the here-and-now. He told Lily, “You surprised me. With your shoplifter.”

  “Is that why you came in?” she asked, halfway between sweet and not. “You sensed an imminent takedown and wanted to observe? Funny, seeing that the girls weren’t even here at the time.”

  She always made him want to smile, even as she disconcerted him. Maybe because she disconcerted him. “No,” he said. “I came in because I realized you were telling the truth about hurting your hand and your leg. And probably because I liked watching you work out, even though that was more than you should’ve been doing.”

  “You realized I was telling the truth? And you’re giving me your opinion on my workout plan?”

  Those brown eyes weren’t soft anymore, and he thought back over what he’d said. What had been wrong with it? It was the truth. Caroline had said, during that final disastrous week, that he didn’t share, that he shut down. Which was probably true, but he was sharing now, and this was what he copped? What was the point, then? “What?” he said. “I’d never seen you in the gym before, and I was interested. And no, I wasn’t going to tell you not to strain muscles you’d already strained, even though I’d have been right to say it.”

  Wait. There was no way that sounded better. Especially that last bit. Lily seemed to agree, because she said too-sweetly, “It’s a good thing you’ve told me now. Thank you. I might not know what to do otherwise. I’m a little slow. Has that approach been working well for you so far with the ladies?” Not quite so sweet now. “I could say something myself, I suppose. Maybe that you rowed for too long. That you already ran this morning, so all you needed was to loosen up before you lifted, if you were only going to work out for half an hour. Would that be helpful? I’m guessing not, and it’s none of my business anyway, so I won’t say it.”