River Road Read online

  OTHER TITLES BY JAYNE ANN KRENTZ

  Dream Eyes

  Copper Beach

  In Too Deep

  Fired Up

  Running Hot

  Sizzle and Burn

  White Lies

  All Night Long

  Falling Awake

  Truth or Dare

  Light In Shadow

  Summer in Eclipse Bay

  Smoke in Mirrors

  Dawn in Eclipse Bay

  Lost & Found

  Eclipse Bay

  Soft Focus

  Eye of the Beholder

  Flash

  Sharp Edges

  Deep Waters

  Absolutely, Positively

  Trust Me

  Grand Passion

  Hidden Talents

  Wildest Hearts

  Family Man

  Perfect Partners

  Sweet Fortune

  Silver Linings

  The Golden Chance

  BY JAYNE ANN KRENTZ WRITING AS AMANDA QUICK

  Crystal Gardens

  Quicksilver

  Burning Lamp

  Perfect Poison

  The Third Circle

  The River Knows

  Second Sight

  Lie by Moonlight

  Wait Until Midnight

  The Paid Companion

  Late for the Wedding

  Don’t Look Back

  Slightly Shady

  Wicked Widow

  I Thee Wed

  Seduction

  Affair

  Mischief

  Mystique

  Mistress

  Deception

  Desire

  Dangerous

  Reckless

  Ravished

  Rendezvous

  Scandal

  Surrender

  With This Ring

  BY JAYNE ANN KRENTZ WRITING AS JAYNE CASTLE

  The Lost Night

  Canyons of Night

  Midnight Crystal

  Obsidian Prey

  Dark Light

  Silver Master

  Ghost Hunter

  After Glow

  Harmony

  After Dark

  Amaryllis

  Zinnia

  Orchid

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  Copyright © 2014 by Jayne Ann Krentz

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Krentz, Jayne Ann.

  River road / Jayne Ann Krentz.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-101-62098-4

  1. Women private investigators—Fiction. 2. Man-woman relationships—Fiction.

  3. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3561.R44R585 2014b 2013036136

  813'.54—dc23

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  This one is for my fabulous sister-in-law, Wendy Born,

  with thanks for the background info. I will never look at a Gravenstein apple the same way again.

  Contents

  Other Titles by Jayne Ann Krentz

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Otherwise Engaged

  1

  Who appointed you my guardian angel?” Lucy Sheridan asked.

  She was pissed—really, really pissed. But she was also thrilled. She was alone with Mason Fletcher, driving down a narrow, moonlit road. It should have been the most romantic night of her life—the stuff teen dreams were made of. But Mason had ruined everything by treating her like a kid who didn’t know enough to come in out of the rain.

  She slouched deep into the passenger side of the truck, one sneaker-clad foot braced against the dashboard, arms folded tightly around her middle.

  “I’m not anyone’s guardian angel,” Mason said. He did not take his attention off the road. “I’m doing you a favor tonight.”

  “Whether I like it or not. I’m supposed to be grateful?”

  “Brinker’s little party is not going to end well. There’s booze and drugs and a lot of underage kids. You don’t want to be there when the cops break it up.”

  Mason’s calm, ice-cold certainty was infuriating. You’d never know that he was nineteen, just three years older than her, she thought. The realities of teenage life made that an unbridgeable gap, of course. To him, she was what Aunt Sara would call jailbait.

  But it was worse than that. Mason was not just nineteen—he was nineteen going on thirty. Aunt Sara said that he had the eyes of an old soul.

  True, Sara often described people in weird ways. She and her business partner, Mary, were heavily into the whole meditation, enlightenment, be-in-the-moment thing. But Lucy had to admit there was something to what Sara said about Mason. He was already a man in ways she doubted any of the boys at the party tonight would ever be. He made them all look like they were still in middle school.

  She was starting to think that Mason was more of a grown-up than any of the actual adults she knew, including her parents. When they had split up three years earlier everyone congratulated them on a civilized
divorce. But none of their acquaintances had been in her shoes, she thought. None of them had been a thirteen-year-old kid hiding out in her room while two so-called adults fought using verbal grenades filled with accusations and the kind of sarcasm that sliced to the bone. If the divorce that followed was supposed to be an example of civilized behavior, the word civilized needed a new definition.

  Mason, on the other hand, always seemed like a real adult—to a fault, maybe. He and his uncle and younger brother had moved to Summer River two years ago. Mason was working full-time at the local hardware store and fixing up an old house on the side. This summer he was single-handedly raising his younger brother because his uncle was off fighting a war somewhere. One thing was blazingly clear: Mason took life Very Seriously. Lucy wondered what, if anything, he did for fun, assuming he actually got the concept.

  He even drove like a grown-up, she thought morosely, or at least like a grown-up was supposed to drive. The way he handled his uncle’s aging pickup truck said it all. He shifted gears with a smooth, competent hand. There were no bursts of acceleration on the straightaways, no heading into the curves a little too fast and definitely no speeding. It should have been boring. But it wasn’t. It just made her feel like she was in good, steady hands.

  “I didn’t need you to rescue me,” she said. “I can take care of myself.”

  Great. Now she really sounded like a kid.

  “You were out of your league tonight,” he said.

  “Give me a break. I was okay. Even if the cops do show up out there at the old Harper Ranch, we both know that no one’s going to get arrested. Chief Hobbs isn’t about to throw kids like Tristan Brinker and Quinn Colfax in jail. I heard Aunt Sara say that the chief wouldn’t dare do anything that might get their fathers mad.”

  “Yeah, my uncle says Brinker and Colfax have the chief and the whole damn city council in their pockets. But that doesn’t mean Hobbs won’t snag a few of the other kids tonight just to show that he’s doing his job.”

  “So what? He’ll give them a warning, that’s all. The worst-case scenario is that Hobbs would have called my aunt to come get me and take me home.”

  “You really think that’s the worst-case scenario?”

  “Sure.” She wanted to grind her teeth.

  “You’re going to have to trust me on this, Lucy,” he said. “You did not belong at Brinker’s party tonight.”

  “You do realize that by tomorrow morning everyone who is at the ranch tonight will be laughing at me behind my back.”

  Mason did not respond. She glanced at him. In the glow of the dashboard lights his jaw looked like it was carved in stone. For the first time a tingle of curiosity whispered through her.

  “There’s something you’re not telling me, isn’t there?” she said.

  “Let it go,” Mason said.

  “Like I can do that now. How did you know that I was at Brinker’s party tonight?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It matters.”

  “I heard rumors that you might be there. I called your aunt. She wasn’t home.”

  “She and Mary are in San Francisco. They’re on a buying trip at an antiques fair. I left a message in my aunt’s voice mail, not that it’s any of your business.”

  Mason ignored that. “When I found out your aunt was gone I decided I’d swing by the park and see if you were there. Figured you would be in over your head.”

  “Because I’m not one of the A-list kids?”

  “You’re too young to be hanging around Brinker and Colfax.”

  “Jillian Benson is only a year older than me. And please, whatever you do, don’t give me the lecture about jumping off a cliff just because all of my friends do it.”

  “Jillian is not your friend.”

  “It just so happens she’s the one who invited me.”

  “Is that right?” Mason sounded thoughtful. “Well, now, isn’t that interesting.”

  “She called earlier this evening and said she was going to Brinker’s party, and did I want to come along? It’s not like there’s a lot of other stuff to do in this town.”

  “So you jumped at the chance.”

  “Not exactly. At first I said no. I’m just here for the summer. I only know a few of the local kids. She said it would be a good way to meet people. I told her I didn’t have a car. She offered to pick me up at my aunt’s house.”

  “Real nice of her, wasn’t it?” Mason said.

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Did you have anything to drink before I got there?”

  “Just some bottled water that I brought with me. And I don’t owe you any explanations, by the way.”

  “You didn’t have any of whatever was in those unlabeled bottles that were in the ice chest?”

  “It was some kind of energy drink, Jillian said. She told me that Brinker makes sure it’s at all of the ranch parties. She said there’s something special in it.”

  “But you didn’t have any?”

  “I didn’t feel like getting drunk or high, okay?”

  She had no intention of admitting that the idea of consuming the oddly colored beverage had scared the living daylights out of her. The sad truth was that she had realized long before Mason had arrived that the night was destined to be a failure. She was just not cut out to live on the edge or push the envelope or take a walk on the wild side. Everyone said she was levelheaded and responsible—not the sort to get into trouble. But those were just other ways of saying that she was boring and way too cautious. She was starting to think that she was doomed to remain on the outside of an invisible glass house forever, looking in at people who dared to take a few risks and really live their lives.

  “Why go to one of Brinker’s parties if you didn’t want to get drunk or high?” Mason asked.

  She scrunched lower into the seat. “I just wanted to dance. Have some fun. So sue me.”

  “But you weren’t dancing when I got there.”

  She sighed. “Because no one asked me to dance. I finally got invited to one of Brinker’s parties and it turned out no one wanted to be with me. You were right, I was out of my depth, hanging with the wrong crowd, blah, blah, blah, and it sure was lucky you came along when you did. There. Satisfied?”

  Mason did not answer the question, possibly because he was turning the truck into the long, narrow lane that cut through the old apple orchard to Sara’s cozy house. The lights were on inside the little bungalow. An aging van emblazoned with Summer River Antiques was parked in its usual place in the drive.

  “Looks like your aunt is home,” Mason said. He brought the truck to a halt.

  “She’s early.” Lucy unfastened her seat belt and popped open the door. “She and Mary usually don’t get back from their buying trips until after midnight.”

  Mason studied the front door. “That’s good.”

  Lucy paused halfway out of the front seat. “What’s good?”

  “You won’t be here alone tonight.”

  “Geez, Mason. I don’t need a babysitter. As a matter of fact, I babysit other people’s kids. I’m very popular as a babysitter because I’m so levelheaded and responsible and all.”

  “I know,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “Oh, stop apologizing. It’s not your thing.”

  She jumped out of the truck and made to close the door.

  “Sorry about tonight, too,” he added, voice roughening. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

  “Uh-huh.” She looked back at him through the open cab door. “You know what? A few years from now when I’m all grown up you can remind me to thank you for your totally unnecessary rescue tonight. Maybe when I’m thirty or forty I’ll be able to appreciate your noble intentions. Or not. You know what they say, no good deed goes unpunished.�
�

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that.”

  What the hell. She might as well tell him the rest.

  “For what it’s worth, you wasted your time tonight,” she said. “When you arrived, I was getting ready to walk home.”

  “Not a good plan. It’s a long walk.”

  “I would have been okay. I had my cell phone. Besides, this is Summer River, not the big city. My aunt says there hasn’t been a murder here in forever.”

  “Bad things happen in small towns just like they do everywhere else,” Mason said.

  “Crap. Now I’m going to get a lecture on walking home alone after dark?”

  She held her breath because the expression on Mason’s face indicated that was exactly what was going to happen. She smiled.

  “You just can’t help yourself, can you?” she said. “Born to protect and serve. Maybe you should consider a career in law enforcement.”

  “I hear there’s more money to be made in real estate,” he said without missing a beat.

  “I’m serious.”

  He ignored that. “Why were you going to walk home?”

  “Because Jillian was getting drunk, if you want to know the truth. I knew she didn’t want to leave. She thinks Brinker is hot. All the girls do, and some of the guys, too. Anyway, I was afraid to let her drive me home. There you have it, the whole story of my wild night out. You were right. I shouldn’t have gone to the ranch, even though half the kids in town are there. You did your good deed. Get over it.”

  The front door of the house opened. Sara appeared. The porch light glowed on her graying brown hair. Like the other women in the Sheridan family line she was no Amazon, but her five-foot-three-and-three-quarters stature and petite frame were deceptive. Decades of yoga and hauling wood for the massive fireplace in the old house had endowed her with very straight shoulders and a strong, compact body.

  She moved to the railing and waved.

  “Hi, Mason,” she said. “Thanks for bringing Lucy home. I was about to call her cell to see if she needed a ride.”

  “No problem, ma’am,” Mason said. “It was on my way.”

  Lucy sniffed. “On your way, my ass.” She started to close the truck door, but something made her hesitate. “About this guardian-angel thing you’ve got going.”

  “I told you, I’m no guardian angel.”