Free Deceived (A Hannah Smith Novel) by Randy Wayne White Page B

eye on your mother’s place, okay? Just until we know more about Mrs. Helms. And tonight I’m following you home to make sure you get there in one piece.” Now his smile told me
Don’t argue!
    The feeling of his hands on my shoulders wasn’t uncomfortable, and he kept them there even when I replied, “Thanks, but I’m meeting a friend. In fact, I’m so late now I wouldn’t blame him if he’s mad.”
    “Him,”
Ransler replied. “You know the guy well?” Normally, the question would have struck me as intrusive, but his tone conveyed worry. Women are usually assaulted by men they know.
    “We’re dating,” I said. “And he’s not the violent type—just the opposite. So don’t worry.”
    “The guy’s a lucky man,” Ransler replied in a sweet way that made his own disappointment a gift to me.
    “You’d like him,” I said, smiling back. “Next fishing trip is my treat. The three of us, or bring Mr. Chatham, too, if you want. He’s a marine biologist on Sanibel and pretty good with a fly rod.”
    Ransler started to comment but turned when a deputy called, “Hey, Joel, take a look at this!” He was jogging toward us, carrying a camera.
    The deputy had photos to show the special prosecutor. I wasn’t invited to view them and was glad, because I knew from their conversation they had found the body of one of the pit bulls.
    “Put his head in the freezer!” was the last thing I heard the deputy say before I excused myself with a wave and hurried away.

The previous night, when I had slipped into Marion Ford’s arms, then into his bed for the first time, I had pretended to be reticent—despite the smoky shakiness of my voice—because I don’t share my body out of fondness, nor for sport, and I wanted Ford to know it.
    Tonight, though, my nervous system was so overloaded, the words
No
and
Slow down
weren’t within a thousand miles of the next morning. I wanted to lose myself in private sensations, disappear into the secret oneness we were beginning to create, and I did—
we
did—Ford looking at his watch, finally, and saying, “Gezzus, no wonder I’m hungry, it’s two a.m. You still want that pompano? Or try to hold out until breakfast?”
    His bawdy openness on the phone, and in bed, had cut me free, and I said, “There
is
something I’ve imagined trying . . . if you wouldn’t mind . . .”
    But before I could say more, he was already doing it, and when we were done, the tears I had been holding back were unleashed, which soon became embarrassing.
    “I can’t seem to stop,” I sobbed. “I don’t know why.”
    “One of us has to stop,” Ford responded dryly, “or we’ll both die of dehydration. I’ve got beer, but Gatorade’s probably a better call.”
    The pretense that he had misunderstood struck me as the funniest thing I’d ever heard. It replaced my bawling with laughter, and my laughter became something fun we shared, letting it flow back and forth between us, two naughty adults joined by a tide that neaped when a strange sound seeped beneath the door. A gonging
sound; repetitive, like a doorbell that is stuck.
    “Damn it,” Ford said, throwing the covers back, “that’s not supposed to happen.”
    “Something wrong in the lab?” I asked. I figured it was an alarm of some sort; a warning that one of the dozens of fish tanks there was leaking water or an aerator had gone bad.
    “Phone call,” Ford explained. “This won’t take long,” then hurried out of the bedroom, his weight causing the stilthouse to vibrate.
    A telephone?
Ford’s cell phone buzzed as an alert and his landline had an old-fashioned ringer. It was not a story a man would invent, especially a man as honest and plainspoken as Marion Ford. So maybe he had changed his ringtone or he owned a third phone—none of my business, but I was aware that only an emergency or a drunken friend would cause a phone to ring at two in the morning.
    I listened to a screen door slap shut, and soon the gonging