Midnight Kiss (Men of Midnight #7) - Lisa Marie Rice Page 0,44

up with her.

Man, it was all wrong. Wrong time, wrong place and she was tangled up in something very bad. But the crazy thing was, Luke was feeling really good. He knew all the bad parts about this situation but he also knew he was feeling … upbeat. The world had been gray and lifeless, mere bony sticks of existence, for a while. Since the trial. He did what was essential because he was a Reynolds and they never faltered. He got up, went to work, ate, worked out, watched some TV, read the newspapers, had the occasional beer with a friend. None of it meant anything, not really. Most of the time he’d felt outside himself, watching himself go through the motions. No colors, no tastes, nothing.

Now he drew in a deep breath, smelling all the scents of the forest. The scent of new leaves, the dust raised by their feet, the wildflowers growing along the sides of the path. His body felt loose and strong, alive in every cell. He welcomed this challenge because at the end of it, Hope would be free and maybe … hmmm. She’d definitely kissed him back. She was caught up in this too. They were uncovering what had happened to her in the past but once they did, they had the future stretching out ahead of them.

A future they might share.

It felt good to think of the future with hopefulness and not dread. With a woman who enticed him like no other.

The path finally led to a ramshackle wooden cabin fairly deep into the woods. It had shingle sidings that were warped and gray and, in modern-day California, a blaze just waiting to happen. An ancient geezer sat on the rickety porch, like a caricature out of a movie. Not Deliverance, more like Jackass. He had a long gray pony tail, a loose shirt that had been washed a billion times and pants that were too big on him. He looked like someone who’d lost a lot of weight recently.

The old man was watching them steadily, not getting up but not ignoring them either. Luke stopped about ten feet out. He made sure that Hope was on his left hand side. His right hand was down, loose. He could reach his weapon in less than a second. He’d timed it.

“Hey,” he said to the old man.

“Hey back.” The man wasn’t as great a wreck as Luke had thought at first. The entire trailer park was decayed and abandoned and he’d just assumed that the old man would be, too. But though his clothes fit badly, they were clean, and the man’s dark eyes were alive and intelligent. “Help you?”

Luke reached out to cup Hope’s shoulder. He managed not to frown when he realized she was shaking.

“Yeah, hope you can help,” he said easily, smiling. Luke had been undercover, at times, for months. He knew how to assume a persona. Right now he was Easygoing Guy, Mr. Average. Affable, harmless. “I’m writing a family history and trying to chase down all the various branches, before I get down to the writing itself. There’s a branch of the family that lived here in Sacramento. Bunch of cousins called Sanderson. My fiancée and I tracked them down to here. It was the last mention of them in a batch of letters I found. They must have moved on — oh — around 1995-1996 maybe, and we don’t know where. Is this ringing any bells?”

“Maybe.” The man stood up, very thin but agile. He took a step forward and brought his hand up to his chest and rubbed his thumb across the tips of his fingers, in the universal symbol of gimme.

Well. Maybe he had intel or maybe not. Only one way to find out. Luke let go of Hope, reached into his right front pocket and pulled out a C-note. His loose money was in his right hand pocket and ordinarily he wouldn’t have used his right hand for this. But the man was clearly unarmed. If there was a rifle somewhere, it was in the house, not out on the porch.

Luke leaned forward, holding the hundred dollar bill folded in half lengthwise, held between his first two fingers. The geezer walked slowly down the steps toward him and snatched the note, putting it in his shirt pocket.

“Sandersons, eh?” He looked at Luke then at Hope, and frowned. “Yeah, we had some Sandersons here in the 80s and 90s. Parents were stoners but didn’t deal.