Instead, he grabbed the steering wheel with both hands and dropped his forehead until it banged.
Ahh, fuck. He was shaking with a need so violent, so pent-up, so festered, he thought he would break apart. The sight of her sitting on the edge of her mattress, her little breasts heaving, her pretty mouth slightly parted as she realized he could damned well see the tiny pink tips of her nipples poking out, had made him want to cover her body with his, delve his hands under her blouse, and suck her nipples until she cried out “Zach!”
She’d cried out for him before. Oh hell, she had screamed for him. Every Friday night she was not at Francine’s, he would kiss her until she was writhing in his arms, moaning his name into his marauding mouth, their bodies grinding and rubbing and so damned hungry for each other they’d—
A knock had him straightening. He pressed the window button.
“All bags are going to the lab.” It was Cody.
Zach rubbed his face with both hands, struggling to clear his mind. “Yeah. I’ll call and ask how much backlog they have, see if there’s a chance to do this fast.”
“Before the little miss decides to hightail it again?”
Gritting his teeth at the thought of her leaving, Zach climbed out and headed for the back of his Jeep. He rammed his camcorder into the duffel that contained everything from handcuffs to crime scene tape and plastic bags for evidence gathering. Zipping it shut, he frowned up at Cody, who was leaning against the fender, watching him in speculation.
“She’s pretty.”
“Fuck, stop it.”
“Hell, I admit I’ve been curious.”
“Not a word, Cody.”
Silence. Then a long, put-out sigh. “So you think it’s the judge’s murderer?”
Zach did not respond to that at first, but instead assessed a passing sedan until it disappeared around the corner. “I don’t know,” he said after his friend gave up the wait and started for his vehicle, “but I want the bastard!”
The murderer . . .
Dozens and dozens had been questioned. Zach, of course, had been questioned.
You and the girl have a little forbidde
n romance going on, don’t you? You want the father dead. He sentenced your father. Put him behind bars. Why not kill him? Get the girl, get revenge.
The bastard who’d interrogated him was now Zach’s CO. Needless to say, he had no love for Zach— and vice versa.
Zach had had no alibi. That fateful month his life had fallen apart at the seams; his only living parent had been sentenced to twelve years in prison, his car— the one he’d been working so hard to pay off— had been stolen, and then Paige . . .
He’d been alone that evening, in his small apartment next to the arcade business, and he’d been waiting for her, just like every Friday for the past months.
He’d worked at Dixie’s Fun and Games for less than a year— first at the miniature golf outside, then inside where the game room was packed with arcade games and teenagers eager to play them during the weekends. Zach did everything from ramming out the stuck coins to mopping the soda from the floor.
His ears would be ringing by nine p.m. and his heart would be kicking into his ribs, wild with anticipation. By ten p.m. the lively place would be cloaked in shadows, broken only by a rainbow of tiny twinkling arcade lights. The smell of popcorn would linger. And Zach would walk to his apartment to shower, and he’d change into a fresh set of clothes, and he’d wait for Paige, long for Paige, ache for Paige.
Sometimes she came early and would step into Dixie’s to watch him. Sometimes she helped power off the lights, grabbed some popcorn for herself, or threw hoops. Other times she would pull him under an arcade game, or lie on the bed of an inflatable kiddie game; then all he would hear was the wet, slippery sounds of them kissing, the rustling of clothes as they touched, the sounds of them breathing raggedly and wanting each other. But that night Paige never showed. Not at his place, not at Dixie’s. Investigators insinuated no one had a better motive to kill the judge than Zach.
Nothing could ever be proved.
He’d stayed away from her until the interrogations stopped and he was cleared, but by then Paige and her mother had disappeared.
Zach remained. And every morning he’d wonder if this was the day Paige would come back to him. I’ll make it better. Whatever it takes, anything I need to do . . .
He realized now, as he slammed the cargo door shut and climbed back into the driver’s seat of the Cherokee, that Paige might not even remember his vow. She’d been lying so still in that hospital bed, weeping her little heart out. Zach had wanted to tear his own flesh out, it hurt so much.
And it hurt to see her now. Wounded. Afraid. Alone.
No surprise that he still wanted, with the same fervor as he had yesterday and every day for the past seven years, to make it better for her. Would make it better for her, fuck it.