Mountain Angel (Northstar Angels, Book One) Read online

  “Courage? I’m not that mean, Pat.”

  “You’re not mean at all, sweetheart. But my demons are.”

  Chapter Nine

  “HERE YOU GO, BRANDON.”

  Adam glanced up at the cute, brown-haired bar tender. With a wink, she slid the frosty bottle of Moose Drool across the bar at him and he caught it deftly. He took a sip and let the liquid swirl through his mouth. Damn, it was good. Since it looked like he’d be staying in this god-forsaken state for a while yet, at least he had a good beer to help him pass the time. And a good bar tender, he added, raking his eyes appreciatively over the young woman.

  “Good, ain’t it?” the bar tender remarked, helping herself to one.

  “Yeah,” Adam replied. “Thanks, Amber.”

  “Sure thing, babe.”

  She moved off to tend another patron, hips swaying with practiced sass. Aelissm may have been the woman he compared every other to, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t appreciate a fine specimen like Amber. She’d proven to be more to Adam than bartender, co-worker and distraction, because she was also in Aelissm’s class at the college. He hadn’t learned much about Aelissm from her except the tidbit about her class, but he enjoyed hearing Amber talk about her. It made his wait somehow less tedious. Amber seemed to think Aeli was one of the best, most knowledgeable teachers she’d ever had, and Adam knew it wasn’t just because Amber and Aelissm were two of only a handful of women in such a masculine profession. He remembered how talented Aelissm was.

  Unbidden, his mind raced back to the phone call he’d made to Aelissm’s cabin just a few minutes ago. His fingers tightened in a white-knuckled grip around the bottle. That smooth sonofabitch, Pat O’Neil, saying those things, calling him by name. Where did he know that name from? It taunted him, flirting with recollection. He knew that name. A member of Aelissm’s family? No. She wasn’t related to any O’Neils, even by marriage. He wasn’t happy to put a face to the name. It was that same guy he’d seen Aeli dancing with at that little podunk potluck a while back, that tall, too-good-looking asshole who’d had his hands on Adam’s prize. The same man that tourist had griped to Adam about.

  Cooking at the roach motel’s restaurant had been an utter drag until that point. Adam knew now he’d gotten lucky when the waitress had asked him to take the order out to the customer, something he usually avoided. The prissily dressed jerk from California had been in a foul mood, Adam recalled, going off about goddamned stuck-up Montanans. The guy had grabbed Adam by the arm and proceeded to say exactly why he thought that. Adam listened in rapt attention as he had described Aelissm, June, that waif of a boy and a big man with rich, red-brown hair.

  “I was just trying to do him a favor, you know. There’s no way that kid was his, all blond-haired and blue eyed,” the guy had complained. “But he reacted like I’m some kind of freak. You know, like a child-molester or something. I don’t know which one of them two women he was with, but you should’ve seen them. They sure know how to make them around here.”

  It made him sick, not only listening to the Californian describe Aeli as a “hot piece of ass”, but to hear that she seemed to have found herself a man. And his name, Adam now knew, was Pat O’Neil. Patrick, no doubt. Patrick O’Neil…. Where had he heard that name? Frustration gnawed at him, churning in his stomach like a bad meal and pinching his neck and shoulders with agonized tension. He couldn’t recall hearing it since he’d been in Montana, so that left Washington. Seattle? Or Kitsap County? At which point in his hunt for Aelissm had he come across the man? How would Mr. O’Neil know who he was talking to?

  Call it a hunch.

  Adam swallowed the last of his beer and beckoned Amber to bring him another. Who the hell had hunches? Cops had hunches, that’s who. It was like a spotlight had clicked on in his mind. Detective Patrick O’Neil of the Kitsap Sheriff’s Department. Bill Granger’s prodigy. Tall, athletic, hazel eyes and hair several shades darker than red. And, if he remembered correctly, Patrick O’Neil was a man with a past.

  “Son of a bitch!” Adam snarled.

  “What’s that, sugar?” Amber asked, sidling over.

  He forced a smile and fought to find a convincing lie to cover his outburst. All he came up with was, “I’ve just remembered something.”

  “Sounded like a big deal,” she remarked.

  “It could be. I don’t know yet. Hey, do you think Dora would give me a few days off? I’m going to need to go back to Washington for a bit. Take care of some unfinished business I forgot about.”

  “I dunno. Maybe. She’s in early tomorrow to do some bookkeeping. No harm in asking, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Hey, are you going to invite me over tonight?”

  The corner of Adam’s mouth quirked upward. “Yeah, sure. You get off at midnight, right?”

  “I certainly hope so,” she replied with a playful gleam in her lustrous brown eyes. “But I’m thinking it might take longer than that. Maybe all night.”

  His smirk turned into a broad grin of anticipation. Amber blew him a kiss over her shoulder as she sauntered away again to help another customer. She was a tasty little thing, shorter than Aelissm, and curvy. And she knew how to make him forget everything but her in bed. Oh, yes, she certainly was more to him than a friend. More, even, than a simple distraction. When he was with her, he was the man he’d been before Aelissm. The man who could stand on his own without the thought of her to keep him steady.

  “Amber, you should know better than to tease the poor boy.”

  “Oh, hi, JP,” Amber called to the new arrival. “And it’s only teasing if I don’t follow through.”

  Adam swung around on his stool and offered his hand. JP shook it and took the empty stool beside him. Like Adam, there was nothing particularly memorable about him. Medium brown hair, brown eyes, medium build, somewhere from mid-twenties to mid-thirties and a face that was as plain as could be. Except there was something about JP that Adam would never forget, an air of authority and a sense of incongruity. It was that something that had first made Adam hesitant to even speak to the man. Oddly enough, though, he’d told JP more about his real reason for being in Montana than he’d told anyone. Anywhere. He’d first met the man that same day the Californian had gone off about Patrick O’Neil. JP had been eating at a table nearby, shaking his head and chuckling.

  “Some people just don’t know how to get what they’re after and blame their failure on everything but their own inabilities,” he’d remarked, deeply offending the Californian. “Go home and take your sob story with you. Come back when you’ve grown a pair. Ain’t no room here for pussies like you.”

  Adam had shared a few evenings with JP in conver-sation over a bottle or ten of beer, and one night, about two weeks ago, after he’d had a little too much, he let slip that he was here looking for a woman. JP had clapped him on the back and remarked that Adam, at least, wasn’t scared to fight for what was his. He’d gotten a few good ideas from JP about how to find Aelissm. He knew, somewhere in the back of his brain, that he should probably be wary of JP, but he couldn’t seem to stop talking when they got together in the bar here at the roach motel.

  “So, Brandon, any luck finding your girl yet?” JP asked. His voice was quiet so Amber wouldn’t overhear.

  “Some. I’m still missing one crucial piece of information, though.”

  “You don’t know where she lives. That puts a bit of a bind on things, don’t it? Have you decided how you’re going to handle her when you do find her?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “Well, whatever you do, you gotta make sure she knows she’s yours. No more of this runnin’ around bullshit. You’ve gotta teach her that you’re her master. Make her pay for all the pain she’s caused you.”

  Adam frowned. That feeling of something being not quite right about his companion danced across his awareness. They way he slipped from educated eloquence to a relaxed drawl was disconcerting at best and Adam knew that he should be cautious. He br
ushed it aside.

  “I know your girl.”

  That caught Adam’s attention. “You know her? How? I haven’t ever told you her name.”

  “No, but I know her. Reddish-blond hair, eyes the color of a hayfield in spring. Talented crafter. Aelissm Davis. No one else around here quite like her. Or her friend, June. No, they’re genuine prizes. Any man would be a fool not to covet either one of them.”

  Alarms sounded sluggishly in his mind, but the six beers had already begun to distort his thought-process. Part of his brain knew he should walk away right now. There was again that indefinable something in the man’s voice, a fascination that ran deeper than Adam’s predicament. JP’s remarks were seated in personal interest in Aelissm Davis and June Montana. No wonder Adam had found it so hard to resist chatting with him. There was an undercurrent of camaraderie between them, based on the equally unmentioned investment in one or both of the friends.

  “If I were of a mind for revenge,” JP was saying. Adam got the feeling he was talking more to himself. “I’d want to make sure she got the message. Oh, I’d never hurt her physically. No, she’s too dear to me for that. And it’s not her fault anyhow. She only did what she thought she had to. For him.”

  Adam frowned in confusion, his buzz fading with each word his companion uttered. Was he talking about Aelissm? Or June? Or someone else entirely?

  “He deserves to be punished for it. He caused it.” Suddenly, JP’s intense brown eyes turned on Adam, seeing him again. “Are you listening to me? You’ve got to make her understand what she’s done to you. You have to make her pay.”

  “And how would I do that?” Adam asked cautiously.

  “Oh, any number of ways. Use your imagination. You’ve already tried to tell her directly, I’m sure. Letters, phone calls and the like. Maybe it’s time you got a little more… decisive.”

  Adam doubted he wanted to know anything about JP’s idea of “decisive”.

  “What are you boys whispering about over here?” Amber asked, striding over and mercifully interrupting their disturbing conversation.

  “Nothin’ important, sweetheart. How ‘bout you grab me a Moose Drool? And another for my friend, here.”

  “Sure thing.”

  There it was again, Adam thought, intently studying JP’s face. The drawl was back, thicker than before. And, with it, the smiling eyes with squint-lines gathered at their corners. The more time Adam spent with him, the more he came to realize there might be two distinct sides to JP. One was the friendly, harmless ranch hand, the other a cold, calculating and sharply intelligent predator. Still… despite the possible dangers, the man was useful. And if he really did know where Aelissm lived, Adam might be able to finally catch her and claim her.

  Amber brought their beers and stayed to chat a little. Adam was again grateful for her presence. When she was around, JP couldn’t drag him into conversation about things he should never have mentioned to the man in the first place. If it came to it and his patience wore down to nothing, he’d ask for JP’s help, but until then, he’d manage on his own, like he had since Bryce had died.

  “Thanks for the beer, JP,” Adam said. “But I think I’m going to call it a night. I don’t want to be a disappoint-ment.”

  “I do hate being disappointed,” Amber remarked. “See you in a little while?”

  He nodded and slid off his bar stool. JP didn’t move to stop him, suddenly uninterested in either Adam or Amber. Adam barely swallowed his relief. He left Amber a generous tip and sauntered out the door, resolutely forgetting about JP’s oddities and thinking instead of what he’d realized tonight. Dread was swiftly replaced by glee.

  Hot damn, things might start looking up again, he thought as he walked through the back gate of the motel complex and down the alley to his rented house.

  The place wasn’t much, just a single room with a separate bathroom off to one side and an old double bed taking up the majority of the floor space in the main room. For two hundred bucks a month, he couldn’t complain, and it wasn’t like he spent much time in it. Besides, the landlord kept his nose out of Adam’s business and didn’t ask questions.

  When he opened the door, he did a quick scan to make sure everything was exactly how he’d left it. Satisfied, he grabbed his duffel bag and started stuffing his clothes into it. He’d get everything ready tonight so he could take off tomorrow after he’d finished his shift. He had the next two days off, so it shouldn’t be too hard to switch a couple shifts with the other cooks. And it shouldn’t take more than five days to accomplish what he had in mind.

  “This will almost be fun,” Adam murmured.

  He really didn’t have the patience left with Aelissm and her little games. She’d dragged him all the way out here to the back end of Montana—though, admittedly, he shouldn’t have been surprised she’d run here, considering how she’d always droned on about this place. He was done playing, he vowed for the hundredth time that week. Now that he knew who Aeli’s new fling was, he wasn’t going to waste time with scare tactics that wouldn’t work anyhow. Pat O’Neil was a detective, probably sent out here by Aelissm’s over-protective uncle, so jumping out of the shadows wouldn’t deter him in the least. But Adam had an ace up his sleeve.

  Sara Montgomery.

  What a vicious little bitch she is, Adam thought with a shudder.

  He knew her from the private school he and Bryce had gone to. Sara and Bryce’s older sister, Jeanette, had been sickeningly close and he’d gotten to know Sara well because she always seemed to be over at the Ellington’s Lake Washington house. Mansion, Adam corrected with a snort. No one so bitchy and stuck-up deserved so much. The thought of Sara lowering her standards so far to date a cop was laughable. From the first day she’d recognized boys as something other than disgusting, she’d turned her nose up at any would-be suitor worth less than a million in trust funds.

  Adam tried to remember what he’d heard in the bar that night he’d been tailing Aeli’s uncle. How long ago was that? Ten months, give or take. The two of them, O’Neil and Granger, had sat hunched over the booth’s table, nursing their beers and ignoring their plate of hot wings. As he recalled, Bill had been trying to convince his underling to take a “well-needed” vacation. They’d talked about Sara for a while, then moved on to something else. Adam had been bored out of his mind and was about to leave when Aelissm’s name had dropped into the conversation. Other than a hint about what a nice girl Aeli was, Bill hadn’t said anything else about her. So he’d left and given the matter little thought since.

  It was strange how something he’d deemed unimportant then had suddenly landed front and center in his brain. At the time, he hadn’t bothered contemplating Patrick O’Neil’s demeanor when discussing his ex-girlfriend. Now, the little gestures—the grimaces, the flinches and the darting glances—were branded in his mind’s eye. Adam doubted there was anything Patrick O’Neil hated or feared more than Sara Montgomery. It probably wouldn’t take long to scare him back to Washington and back to working himself to death if that little socialite bitch came sniffing after him.

  “But why would she even care?” Adam wondered.

  He’d gotten the impression that Pat had been the one to end it, so maybe he could appeal to Sara’s pride. Wringing his hands as he paced, Adam hoped that nasty arrogance would find vengeance for a broken heart—or, more correctly, the insult of being dumped—more appealing than seizing the opportunity to take her vengeance on the man who’d killed her best friend’s brother. If Adam was honest with himself, he had killed Bryce. Accidentally, yes, but Bryce was dead because of what Adam had done.

  Dora had to give him the time off. If she didn’t, he’d quit on the spot. He had to get rid of the cop and he wasn’t prepared to stoop to murder. Killing Bryce had been balanced by saving Aelissm. If Bryce hadn’t tried to hurt her, he’d still be alive, Adam reasoned. Actions and consequences. It would be very bad karma to kill twice in her name and cop killers never got away. Besides, the cop hadn’t do
ne anything to her or Adam, beyond getting in the way. There was no justification for murder in that. Not that he had murdered Bryce. He hadn’t meant for his friend to die. How could he have known about the aneurysm?

  He nearly jumped out of his skin when a knock boomed on his door. It was still far too early for it to be Amber. Shaking loose from the lingering nerves, he peered through the peep hole to see his boss standing on the other side of the wooden barrier. He opened the door but didn’t step back to invite her in.

  “Amber told me you wanted some time off,” Dora said by way of greeting. “Said you seemed a little edgy.”

  “Yeah. I have some business I need to take care of in Seattle.”

  “I see. And how many days do you need to get it taken care of?

  “Four. Maybe five.”

  Dora lifted her penciled gray eyebrows. “Take five, then, but if you’re not back for your shift after, your can find yourself a new job. I like you, Brandon, but I got a restaurant to run.”

  “I understand. And thanks.”

  The cranky old woman turned and walked away without saying anything more on the subject. Adam took a brief moment to wonder if that heavily painted, wrinkled face ever did anything but scowl. He couldn’t see why it would ever have reason to lift in a smile; the motel’s owner was an insufferable dick, she’d been left by her husband for a twenty-five-year-old blond bimbo and her only daughter had recently affirmed that she never wanted to see her mother again. Was Dora a miserable old hag because her life was crappy or was her life crappy because she was a miserable old hag?

  Karma, Adam thought again. Karma was why he couldn’t even hurt Patrick O’Neil, no matter how much he wanted to. Truth be told, he didn’t want to, he just wanted him out of the way. He hadn’t wanted to hurt Bryce, either, and his best friend had ended up dead. He was tired of pain. Would it ever stop? Would it ever go away?

  He kicked the door closed and regretted it a moment later when pain stabbed in his toes. He had to convince Sara to get past whatever dislike she felt for Adam and help him chase O’Neil off.