Free Latimer's Law by Mel Sterling Page B

bottles of lager, and she felt her clenching muscles relax, stupidly relieved to discover it wasn’t Marsh’s preferred brew. And Latimer had said please, a word that had vanished early from Marsh’s vocabulary once he had her firmly in his grasp.
    “Split the tomatoes and green beans three ways, Abigail.”
    “Three?”
    “You don’t think I’m the kind of man who’d deprive my buddy there of this fine meal, do you?” His head tilt indicated Mort, still quiet, tongue lolling, under the tailgate. Abby didn’t think the shepherd had taken his eyes off her for the past hour, and was not fooled, despite the doggy smile on his face. “Get a plate over here.” Latimer had the fork and knife ready, and lifted the slab of meat onto the plate she held out, with two hands under it to support the weight of the hefty T-bone. He rose, followed her to the table and deftly excised the bone and the fatty edge from the steak, putting them on a second plate with a bit of tomato and green beans. She watched his hands while he carved the meat into two generous portions. There was grace in his handling of the hunting knife.
    “I...uh, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get the orange juice, and the potato chips, out of...” She looked back toward the pickup.
    His eyes shuttered briefly, and Abby saw his calculations, no doubt running through what was in the front seat, potential weapons, perhaps. Then he nodded. She walked to the cab, still keeping an eye on the dog, and reached inside for the juice and chips, bringing them back to the table. As she returned, Mort rose from his place beneath the truck and paced alongside her. Her heart thumped, but the dog merely went to the end of the table nearest to Latimer and sat down again, alert and waiting.
    “Sit, Abigail. Eat.”
    “It’s...Abby. Abigail...” She trailed off, settling with the juice and pulling open the bag of chips, pushing them to the center of the table where they might be shared.
    “Kinda makes you feel like you might be in some trouble, eh?” His eyes held more than a glint of humor.
    “Yeah,” she agreed, looking down at the meat on her plate. It was huge, but she was starving, and it smelled delicious. They sat across from each other, Abby and the man whose truck she had stolen, and shared a meal in the slow, blue twilight.
    * * *
    The mosquitoes came out at dusk, just as Cade finished his last bites of steak and beans and chased them with a couple of potato chips and a swig of beer. Mort lay at his feet, working with diligent relish at the T-bone between his paws. Abby hadn’t managed all her steak, but she pushed the plate away from herself, one slim hand lying on her belly, and a slightly sleepy look on her face. It was the most relaxed he’d seen her.
    Now was the time to get the rest of her story out of her.
    “You gonna eat that?” Cade asked, indicating the remaining steak on her plate.
    “It was delicious, but I couldn’t possibly. Thank you so much. I know I don’t deserve your courtesy.”
    Cade spoke over her. He didn’t want to hear her voice turn soft and anxiously pleading now that their casual meal was over. He wasn’t her abuser; he didn’t want to hear her talking to him as if he were. He’d enjoyed the small talk about camp cooking and the best wood for smoking meat, and whether or not barbecue sauce counted as a food group. “There’s this guy I knew, back when I was working a joint task force—drugs—in Ocala.” For a moment, he remembered those months, working with the DEA and the local police forces in Ocala. It was his success with the task force that had put him in the limelight and shifted him to undercover work in Gainesville, still with the task force. Undercover work brought a fresh thrill to a job that had begun to seem, if not mundane, at least less of a challenge. Finding and chasing down drug dealers was a matter of patience, diligence and documentation of proof. Undercover work added the spice of risk, the