Hope's Peak (Harper and Lane #1)(36)

Ceeli sighs with pleasure as his forefinger finds her slit, his free hand pressing her against the counter, the tap still running, spitting water everywhere.

“Go on, Lester. Go on,” she urges him breathily. “I’m hurtin’ but I’m achin’. Go on honey.”

He quickly drops his jeans, runs his fingers across the folds of her vagina, feeling her wetness, her eagerness to have him inside her again. Ceeli reaches behind her, guides him in. “Oh God,” she groans, leaning as far forward as she can. The water is spraying everywhere. “Honey . . .”



Julie carries her bag around the side of the house, eager to show Ceeli her finds. She snags one of the bags on an overgrown bush and curses as she tugs it free, continuing on. Julie looks through the window, at the point of announcing her presence when she freezes.

Lester, the dullard Ceeli has doing odd jobs at her place from time to time, is in the throes of fucking her neighbor over the sink. Julie shrinks back, not wanting to be seen, but filled with a dark desire to watch, all the same. She knows he could turn his head any second and see her standing there. But she’s rooted to the spot.

Julie can hear Ceeli moan with pleasure, and she can hear Lester grunting with effort, his pale-white ass pushing in and out. The fronts of Ceeli’s thighs slap against the cabinet as Lester pounds her so hard she cries out. Common sense kicks in and Julie backs off, retracing her steps and departing before she’s noticed.

She hurries to her home, wanting to get out of sight while she decides what to do.



“Ass end of nowhere, ain’t it?” Stu asks, getting out of the car and blinking in the sunlight.

Harper removes her shades. “Yeah, she likes her solitude.”

“I’ll say.”

“Well, hello.” Ida appears in the doorway. “You coming in? Or you want to sit outside?”

“Why don’t we enjoy some of this sunshine?” Harper says, remembering how hot it was in the house.

They sit out on the porch, on chairs Ida pulls from around the side of the house. She offers them both a cool drink, but they decline.

“You come to talk about last night?”

“Yes, but there was something else, too. I wanted to know if you’d take a ride with me to Wisher’s Pond.”

Ida looks away, to the road where the heat creates a haze over the baked ground. “Figured as much. I knew it was only a matter of time.”

“Are you willing to do it?” Harper asks her.

Ida looks at Stu. “Only if he’ll do something first.”

“Me?” Stu asks.

“Yeah,” Ida says. “I can’t help you two no further if you don’t believe me. I’ve spent too long hiding my gift to have it doubted. There have been too many unbelievers in my life.”

“What do you want?”

“Give me your hand, sugar,” Ida tells him.

Reluctantly, he places his hand in hers. Ida closes her eyes. A minute stretches out, the two detectives all too aware of the sounds around them. The distant cars. Crickets in the grass. Somewhere far off, a crop duster’s engine as it turns in the sky, leaving a trail of white smoke on the fields.

Then the sounds seem to fade. The air around them grows heavy.

Ida’s eyes open slowly. Stu cannot look away from her big dark pupils. From the intensity of her glare. “Your daddy used to buy you those sherbets. Lemon ones. On the ride over, you bought yourself and Detective Harper a lemonade. The kind comes in a plastic cup with a lid, filled with crushed ice. Mint leaves on the top. You told her it reminded you of the sherbets your daddy used to buy.”

Stu tries to move his hand, to pull it back, but Ida’s grip tightens just enough to let him know she’s serious, that he has to hear the rest.

“When he died, you found yourself walking through the town. You went into a little store there and got yourself a big old bag of those sherbets. Out in the park, there’s a little river, and a bridge going over it. You sat on a bench near one side of that bridge, crying like you hadn’t done in years, like a hurt child. All you could think about was your poor old man, six feet in the dirt. Everything you could’ve said to him, but didn’t get a chance to.”

“That’s enough,” Stu says. He tries to get his hand free, to move, to do something to break the spell, but he can’t pull his hand from hers; he can’t look away; he can’t stop listening to her soft voice reveal the workings of his own heart.

Ida sighs. Her thumb works on the back of his hand, rubbing it gently, soothingly. A single tear rolls down her cheek, and Stu watches it fall to the porch, where it makes a puddle in the dust that covers the boards.

“You and your wife couldn’t have kids. But you tried. God knows you wanted them kids, but they just wouldn’t come. She blamed you. Little did she know just how much you wanted a kid all your own, to buy them lemon sherbets. To take on a long walk and tell ’em ’bout your daddy. Your missus never got that, sugar. She ain’t never got that at all.”

Ida lets go of his hand and he gets up, trying to get off the porch to hide his face, wet with tears. Harper starts to go after him but Ida shakes her head. “Let him have some space.”

Stu stands with his back to them. The wind churns up from somewhere, blowing his tie out behind him.

“We got a name for the girl,” Harper says, eyes still on Stu.