Judas Horse_ An FBI Special Agent Ana Grey Mystery - April Smith [35]
Maybe he noticed the nondescript car parked beside the house, a red 1993 Civic, one he has never seen before, with Oregon tags. The lady seems to go with the car—disheveled but clean, long, curly dark hair, a pleasing face, faintly exotic-looking, almond skin (Italian? Spanish?), average frame, or maybe smaller than average, but carrying forward with a confident stride. His eyes drop to the boots: worn. He withdraws behind another row. Observes. The pruning shears are weighty in his hands.
I step through his silent cathedral like a tourist, staring up.
He comes on me from behind.
“You’re trespassing.”
“Sorry! Didn’t see you.”
“Sure you did.”
“I’m Darcy. We met at the bar. I was also at the rally at the school.”
“I have no memory of meeting you anywhere.”
The moment he steps from the trees, a sexual force springs off him like slow claws down your back.
“Really? I’m hurt. What kind of trees are these?”
“Ornamental filberts.”
“Megan said they were hazelnuts.”
“Hazelnuts are filberts,” he says impatiently. “One and the same. We just don’t use the word filberts anymore. People don’t like the sound of it.”
“Kind of like ‘You’re trespassing’?” I smile. “That doesn’t sound very friendly.”
“How do I know you’re a friend?”
I give him flirty. “I can’t believe you don’t remember—I stole three hundred bucks from the till and gave it to the cause, when I could have gone shopping.” I pretend to be entranced by the willowy branches just sprouting tiny leaves. “This is amazing. How do you do it? Every tree is the same.”
His big developed shoulders shrug. His hair is in a dirty rat tail down the back. He wears a T-shirt under a grimy hooded sweatshirt, and a blue nylon jacket with a stripe down the arm. It was cold this morning. His light-colored jeans are dirt-stained at the knees.
“That’s the way my mind works,” he says.
I let him watch as I take in his eyes. I see a luminous intelligence. Seeking. Perching at a distance. Holding back.
“I brought the ducks.”
“What ducks?”
“They were stolen from a foie gras farm last night. Megan is expecting me.”
“When?”
In the muffled silence of the orchard, our voices are undistorted and strangely intimate.
“She said as soon as possible. One is sick. She was going to get a vet.”
His eyes skim my unzipped windbreaker.
“I need to pat you down.”
“Excuse me?”
“Security check. In case you’re wearing a wire.”
“A wire?”
Electric shock goes through me, as if I really am wearing a listening device and he can tell. I stare at the crows walking cocksure across the rows and shrug with absolute wonder.
“What am I, the bird police? Why would I wear a wire? I wouldn’t even know how.”
Don’t make a thing out of it.
“Give me your backpack.”
“Megan didn’t say I’d have to go through a metal detector.”
“Megan likes to think the world’s a happy place.” He finds a wallet. “Darcy DeGuzman?”
“Yes.”
He finds my cell phone and slips it in his pocket.
“Hey! I drove down here in the frigging middle of the night! Megan’s very upset, in case you didn’t know. There’s a sick bird in the car!”
“Open your arms and legs.”
I comply, but if my heart keeps going like this, it will kill me.
“May I ask what you’re doing?”
“I’m just an old bandit,” he says. “Just doing my thing. If I touch you inappropriately, you have permission to kick me in the balls.”
“If I have permission, it won’t be any fun.”
His hands are expert, like I’m a perp spread-eagled on the hood of a car.
“Are you done?” I ask Julius. “Okay?”
“No.”
“What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“You can leave the animals and go.”
“I need my cell phone back.” I stamp my foot.
He replies with a sardonic smile. If I’m reading it right, the subtext is, I could have you right now in the dirt.
“Let me tell you something, darlin’. I am not the one who made me paranoid.”
An instinctive part of him was watching from the