And damn if it wasn’t sexy. And it made him wonder just what that body would look like, feel like, when he got her naked. Maybe he needed to push a little harder on that goal, he thought, and put his back into the digging.
She came back when he cut open the bags of soil and peat to mix into the hole.
“Hold off on that a second, and I’ll do it. But I want to show you something first.” She stepped beside Simon, then signaled Jaws—hand command only. He trotted right over and, when she pointed, sat. “Good dog, good.” She slipped him one of the treats she never seemed to be without. “Stay. Go on and get down to his level,” she told Simon.
“Do you want this tree planted or not?”
“It’ll only take a second. Stay,” she repeated firmly when Jaws bunched for a leap as Simon hunkered down. “Stay. He’s getting it, and we’ll work on the sit and stay with distance. But I thought you’d like this. Hold out your hand, say, ‘Shake.’”
Simon slid a cynical glance up at her. “No way.”
“Just give it a try.”
“Right.” He held out a hand. “Shake.”
Jaws lifted a paw, plopped it into Simon’s palm. “Son of a bitch.” He laughed, and the dog forgot himself in pride and pleasure to rear up and lap at Simon’s face. “That’s pretty good. That’s pretty damn good, you dumbass.”
Fiona smiled down as man and dog congratulated each other.
“Do it again,” Simon demanded. “Sit. Okay, shake. Nice.” He stroked the pup’s ears, looked up at Fiona. “How’d you teach him that so fast?”
God, they looked adorable together, she realized. The tawny-eyed man with his morning stubble, the young dog who was growing into his feet.
“He wants to learn, to please. He has a strong drive.” She passed treats into Simon’s free hand. “Reward him. He’ll be happy with your approval and affection, but the food reward’s extra incentive.”
She picked up the shovel, began to toss dirt, then peat, then dirt into the hole.
“That’s enough. We need to set the root-ball.”
“I don’t know much about planting trees.” She swiped the back of the work glove over her brow. “In fact, this is my first. Do you?”
“I’ve plugged in a few.”
“I thought you lived in the city before Orcas.”
“I didn’t grow up in the city. My family’s in construction.”
“Okay, but doesn’t that mean planting buildings?”
His lips quirked. “You could say. But my dad’s policy was to buy a tree or a shrub for any new house he built. So I plugged in a few.”
“That’s nice. Your dad’s policy, that’s nice.”
“Yeah. Nice gesture, and good business.”
He hefted the dogwood, lowered the root-ball into the hole. “That’s about right.” Crouching, he opened the burlap around the root-ball to expose it.
Together they dumped in topsoil and peat, mixed it.
“Shouldn’t we cover it more?” she asked when Simon stopped.
“No, just to the height of the root-ball.” He lifted a bucket. “You want to deep-water, and do that about once a week unless we get a good rain.”
It had been fun, she thought, planting a tree with him in the cool morning air. “Once a week, check.”
“I didn’t get mulch. Figured it was going in the woods and I could just use pine needles. You’ll want to mulch it.”
“Okay.” She stepped back. “I’ve got a dogwood tree. Thank you, Simon.”
“We had a deal.”
“And you could’ve picked up a pine and stuck it in the hole from the stump. This is lovely.”
She turned to kiss him, a friendly gesture, but he moved in and made it more.
“We’ve got some time before school starts,” he told her.
“Hmm, that’s true.” She tipped up her wrist to check the time. “Not a lot. We’d have to be pretty quick and pretty motivated.”
“You’re the former track star. You be quick. I’ll be motivated.”
He smelled of the soap from his shower twined with a touch of healthy sweat from the effort of digging. He looked rough, and ready. And the long, hard kiss beside the sweet young tree had stirred her to aching.
Why wait? she asked herself. Why pretend?
“It might be a good way to celebrate a tree planting. Why don’t we—”
She broke off as she heard tires on gravel. “Apparently someone else is early,” she began, then saw the patrol car. “Oh God.” Reaching down, she groped for Simon’s hand.
Davey pulled up behind the truck, got out. “Nice-looking tree,” he said, and took off his sunglasses and hooked them in his shirt pocket. He gave Simon a nod as he walked toward them. “Simon.”
“Deputy.”
Davey reached out to run a hand down Fiona’s arm. “Fee, I’m sorry to have to tell you, but they found another one.”
The breath she’d held came out with a jump. “When?”
“Yesterday. In Klamath National Forest, near the Oregon border,” he said before she asked. “She’d been missing a couple days. A college student, Redding, California. So he moved west and a little south for the abduction, then drove over a hundred miles to... bury her. The details are the same as the others.”
“Two days,” she murmured.
“They’ve got a couple of feds going in to push on Perry, to see if they can pull anything out of him, if there’s anything to pull.”
“He’s not waiting as long between,” she said. “He’s not as patient.” She shuddered once. “And he’s heading north.”
“He’s targeting the same victim type,” he reminded her, then set his teeth. “But goddamn it, Fee, after that newspaper thing, I’ve got some concerns.”
“He knows where to find me if he wants me.” Panic wanted to beat its wings in her throat. And panic, she reminded herself, solved nothing. Nothing.
And still those wings fluttered.
“If he wants to finish Perry’s work, a kind of homage, he can find me. I’m not stupid, Davey. It’s something I considered when I knew there was going to be an article.”
“You could move in with Sylvia or Mai for a while. Hell, Fee, you can stay with Rachel and me.”
“I know, but the fact is I’m as safe here as anywhere. Safer, maybe, with the dogs.” Her sanctuary. She had to believe it or the panic would win. “Nobody can get near the house without me knowing.”
Davey glanced toward Simon. “I’d feel better if you had more than the dogs.”
“I’ve got a gun, and you know I can use it. I can’t uproot my life on the possibility he may decide to come here in a week, a month, six months.” She dragged a hand through her hair, ordering herself to stay sensible. “He’s not as patient as Perry,” she repeated, “and he’s following someone else’s pattern. They’ll catch him. I have to believe they’ll catch him. Until they do, I’m not helpless.”
“One of us is going to check in with you every day. We take care of our own, even when they aren’t helpless.”
“That works for me.”
Simon held his silence until he and Fiona were alone. “Why don’t you go visit your mother for a while?”
“Because I have to work. And I do have to work,” she added. “I have a mortgage, a car payment, bills. I’ve had to juggle like a circus clown to manage the time and money for a long weekend off.” She picked up the shovel to put it in the back of the truck. “And what happens if he doesn’t go after some other poor girl for weeks? Do I just put everything on hold because of a maybe? I won’t be stupid and I won’t be careless.” Because it made her feel strong and capable, she hauled up the sagging bag of peat. “But I will not let this ruin my life. Not again. And I won’t be taken. Not again. Not ever again.”
“You leave your door unlocked. Half the time you leave it open.”
“Yes, that’s true. And if someone they didn’t know tried to get within twenty feet of the house, or me, the dogs would stop them. But you can believe I’ll be locking up at night now, and my nine millimeter’s going in the drawer next to my bed.”