Unlawfully Wedded - Kelsey Roberts

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moved to the near-rotten door and grasped the knob. The door wouldn’t budge.

      “Let me,” J.D. said, coming up behind her so that his thighs brushed her back.

      Tory stepped out of his way almost instantly, feeling branded by the outline of his body.

      J.D. wrestled with the humidity-swollen door for a short time before finally pulling it free of the frame. Reaching into his back pocket, he produced a small flashlight and directed the beam in front of them.

      The air inside the building was stale and musty. “Let’s start on the left,” J.D. suggested.

      The interior was a long, rectangular-shaped space with bowed stone walls and a few rotted timbers piled at the far end. Bars of yellow light filtered in from the boarded windows, imprisoning J.D. as he placed the measure against what was left of the old flooring.

      “Sixty-three feet, seven inches,” he called.

      Tory was about to mark the diagram when she noted the inconsistency. “The tape must be twisted.”

      She heard his boots scrape as he checked the length of the tape. “Nope.”

      “Then that back wall is three feet deep,” she told him.

      J.D. took the sketch from her, his eyebrows drawn together as he looked from the drawing to the room, then back to the paper.

      “This doesn’t make sense.”

      “You must have measured incorrectly.”

      He offered her a baleful stare before walking off to the back of the room. “Hold this,” he called, handing her the flashlight as she came up behind him.

      Using his pocketknife as well as his fingers, J.D. loosened the stones by scraping away the limestone mortar.

      “What are you doing?” Tory asked.

      “I’m trying to find the other three feet.”

      An oddly unpleasant odor accompanied the shower of small rocks as he created a small opening in the wall.

      “Give me the light.”

      J.D. stuck his arm through the opening, then she heard him suck in his breath.

      “What?”

      His arm came out of the hole and he faced her slowly. His expression was hard, his eyes wide. “We’d better go back to the Tattoo.”

      “Why? What’s behind the wall?” she asked, frustration adding volume to her litany of questions.

      “A body.”

      Chapter Two

      “I think he’s probably some poor, unfortunate homeless person who wandered into the building to escape the winter chill,” Susan was saying. The woman’s brown eyes were wide as she excitedly continued expounding her theory. “He must have been sick. And he probably assumed he was suffering from nothing more than a bad cold.”

      “I think you’re letting your imagination run wild,” Tory cautioned. The pout the other woman offered was at odds with her athletically lean face. Susan was a runner and it showed in her slender build. She was forever hounding Tory about the lack of physical activity in her life. Thankfully, the discovery of the skeleton had provided a diversion from Susan’s usual boring reprimands on the perils of passivity.

      “No,” Susan insisted, looking to J.D., who gave a small nod of encouragement. “He must have crawled in through the window before succumbing to bacterial pneumonia.”

      “Bacterial pneumonia?” Tory echoed, feeling her eyebrows draw together.

      “Sure,” Susan replied. “It’s very deadly if not treated. And it kills really fast.”

      “Well, hell,” Tory said as she theatrically slapped her palm against her forehead. “The police are wasting their time investigating. Why don’t you run out there and tell them what happened. It’ll save the city a whole lot of time and money.”

      J.D. folded his arms over the back of the chair, his eyes leveled on the redhead. His expression told Tory nothing of his thoughts.

      “I think your theory has a few holes in it,” J.D. said.

      “Really?”

      “If the guy was on death’s door, how do you suppose he built the wall?”

      “What wall?” Susan asked.

      Shrugging his shoulders, J.D. tilted his head and looked directly at Tory as he answered. “The stones that covered him aren’t the same as the ones used in rest of the building. It’s my guess that—”

      “You can’t be serious,” Tory cut in. “You’re suggesting that someone entombed that body in the dependency?”

      “It’s a real probability,” he answered slowly.

      “I think you’ve been watching too much television or something.” Tory dismissed his speculation with a wave of her hand. The lingering seed of doubt wasn’t as easily discharged.

      His gaze didn’t falter as his eyes roamed over her face. Rubbing her arms against a sudden chill, Tory shook her head, hoping to rid her mind of sudden vivid images of that nameless, faceless person meeting such a gruesome demise.

      “I think you’re being a bit melodramatic, J.D.,” she said with forced lightness.

      “Maybe,” he agreed as he rose to his full height and went behind the bar.

      Tory should have gone home. There was really no point in hanging around the Tattoo since the police had asked them to close down while vanloads of forensic teams scoured the area.

      About an hour after the initial discovery, Shelby and Dylan Tanner arrived with their son Chad in tow. A pang of envy tugged at her heart as she watched the couple move toward her. Dylan was tall, dark and handsome; Shelby dark, exotic-looking and hugely pregnant. Dylan almost always had a tender hand on his wife—small, seemingly insignificant touches that proclaimed the extent of their deep emotional commitment to each other.

      Chad was a different story. Polite people called him all-boy. He bounded into the room and immediately began pressing the buttons on the jukebox. Shelby’s stern warning to stay away from the machine fell on deaf ears. Chad had a mind of his own at the tender age of eighteen months. Tory liked that.

      Tory ran over and scooped the squealing child into her arms, planting kisses against his plump tummy.

      “How’s my favorite little man?” she asked.

      “Man, man, man,” was his babbled response.

      “Terror is more like it,” Dylan called as he draped his arm across his wife’s shoulders.

      “Are you a terror?” Tory asked the small boy.

      He shook his head vigorously, then said, “Man.”

      “See?” Tory said as she shifted Chad in her arms. “He’s not a terror.”

      “Then maybe Auntie Tory would like to take him for the weekend?” Shelby teased, a sarcastic light in her blue eyes.

      “Anytime,” she said earnestly. “Right, little man?”

      “Man,” Chad answered, nodding his dark head.

      Looping his pudgy arms around her neck, Chad proceeded to give her a “skeeze.” The delight in her eyes faded somewhat when she noticed J.D. leaning against the bar, a long-neck bottle of beer balanced between his thumb and forefinger. When he began to move toward them, the word swagger flashed across her brain. His expression was sour, distracted. Why did such an unpleasant man have to exude such sensuality? she wondered.

      “You must be J.D.,” Dylan said as he offered the taller man his hand.

      “Guilty,”

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