Chapter 5

"Oh, God," Tamara wailed. "Oh, God. Marc, don't stop. Whatever you're doing, don't ever stop."

Marc thrust into her again, chest gliding up and down her sweat-slicked back. Tamara was splayed beneath him, magnificently and obscenely open to him, her hips propped up on a stack of pillows.

For once, he wasn't holding back. Adam was at Kim's parents' house for the weekend. There was no risk of waking him or being interrupted mid-coitus by his shrieks. It was just Marc and Tamara tonight.

And he'd finally gotten past the idea that enjoying what he was doing with his babysitter would make it more wrong than doing it with gravitas and a heavy heart. If he ever had to face a judge for this, he wasn't going to get one less day of jail time by claiming to have held back.

He liked fucking Tamara, liked the feeling of her gripping his cock in the snug space between her thighs, liked the firm softness of her tits in his hand and mouth, liked the feeling of her shifting beneath him or writhing with her own pleasure. He reveled in the sensation of her trembling around him and could get aroused just thinking about the sounds she made when he was inside of her.

And she liked it too. Whatever psychological damage he might be doing, whatever therapy she might need once it was over, he wasn't physically hurting her. Quite the opposite, he believed her when she said she'd never felt as good as she did when she was with him. Six-pack abs notwithstanding, there was apparently something to be said for experience versus the callowness of youth.

And in only eight weeks, he could do this legally ... fifty-four days, actually. Very little of how they conducted themselves could actually change, but it would be a relief to know that he wasn't potentially making things worse for himself every time he touched her. He could still be shunned and ostracized. Dana would almost certainly hate him. But, he wouldn't be doing any further damage.

As he drove into Tamara, he gripped her hips and tilted them upward a fraction of an inch. She gave out a gratifying shriek that might have undone him if he hadn't already been undone a couple of times today. He was amazed at his own stamina and felt a bit like a teenager himself.

When he lay on his back, panting and unable to move, Tamara seemed to be in a similar state. She nestled up against him, chest heaving with exertion.

"Wow. That was..." She trailed off, panting.

"Yes." Marc grinned. "It was, wasn't it?"

Marc dozed off then, not waking until he heard the distinctive crunch of car tires on gravel. He was up like a shot, sliding into his jeans without looking for his underwear, throwing on a dress shirt, buttoning and tucking it in as he headed for the living room.

"What is it?" asked Tamara, looking groggy and holding a sheet to cover her chest.

"Someone just pulled into the driveway," said Marc, trying not to sound alarmed. "I'll see who it is. Wait here."

Tamara nodded, "I'll get dressed."

"Good thinking," said Marc. "But, stay here." Then, he was out the door.

His heart sank when he saw Sheriff Beaufort coming up the walk, fiddling with his prosthetic hand. Rumor was he'd lost the hand and one eye as a sergeant in Vietnam when the men he was sergeant over had deliberately led him into a minefield. He'd been the scariest man in the county when Marc was in high school and age had not improved his reputation.

"Marc Heywood," he said. As far as Marc knew, he addressed everyone by first and last name, a reminder of how well versed he was in the town's history. To the sheriff, you weren't just a person, you were an ambulatory mass of genetic predispositions to specific kinds of malfeasance. If he'd ever arrested a relative of yours, he would remind you of it eventually, "You seen any sign of Arnold Schelle's boy?"

"Hunter?" Marc asked.

The sheriff took a pad out of his pocket, looking so that it reflected in his aviator sunglasses, "Hunter Schelle, Caucasian age five, approximate height three foot six, last seen in his back yard by his mother wearing a red, hooded sweatshirt and blue jeans with a Spongebob Squarepants decal on the back pocket approximately two hours ago. Apparently, she dozed off while watching him and he bolted into the woods."

Based on the sheriff's delivery, Marc almost asked what the boy was wanted for. But, he kept his mouth shut. He was a little giddy at realizing the sheriff wasn't looking for him, "I haven't seen the boy, sheriff. But, if I do..."

The sheriff pointed past Marc's house, "Your back gate is open. You mind if I make sure he's not floating face down in your pool?"

"I..." Marc paused. He wanted to get rid of the sheriff as quickly as possible and keep him away from the house, but the two seemed mutually exclusive. He waved towards the gate, "Go right ahead."

"You should keep this closed," said Beaufort, striding through. "A kid sees that bright, blue pool, he could go right for it. And you'd have some serious trouble on your hands. You familiar with the concept of an attractive nuisance?"

Marc couldn't help but glance back at his house where Tamara was presumably getting dressed, "I'm familiar with it."

As if summoned, a blond head appeared in his bedroom window. Marc froze. The sheriff turned around slowly enough for Marc to enumerate all the ways his life was about to end. She was dressed, but her hair was a mess and her clothes rumpled. She looked like sex on wheels.

Marc saw surprise register in the sheriff's eyes. A moment later, Tamara dropped out of sight, straight down.

"You got somebody in the house with you?" the sheriff asked.

"Just my babysitter," said Marc weakly.

"And your boy, I assume," said the sheriff.

Marc frowned, "Sorry. What?"

"I was just saying that your son must be in there too. It wouldn't make any sense to have a babysitter with no baby."

"Right," said Marc immediately. "My boy."

The sheriff gave him a slow, considered look, "All right, Mr. Heywood. Thank you for your cooperation. He turned and walked out of the back yard, indicating the gate, "Remember to keep that closed."

Marc watched John Coleman line up a fourteen-inch putt and sink it. The assistant district attorney looked up, "That was four. Right?"

"Right." Todd answered quickly, like he was afraid that Marc might point out what they all had to know. It had clearly been six strokes. Marc couldn't care less about the game, but his brother and the other lawyer seemed to think that golf or, more specifically, cheating each other at golf was proof of their virility. He was happy with leaving them to it.

"So, how's my boy doing?" asked John. "I hear you put him right to work."

Marc nodded and said evenly, "We've got him down at the courthouse most days reviewing permits. He's doing ... good work."

Marc had no idea what kind of work Dave Coleman was doing, whether he was doing work at all, or whether he was even showing up at the courthouse. Once a week, he signed a paycheck with the young man's name on it and hoped that would be enough to keep his father happy.

"Permits that have always been approved," said John, sounding suspicious. "Isn't that a bit ... excessive?"

Todd shook his head, "We've got to make sure all our ducks are in a row. We've been having a lot of trouble with Sheriff Beaufort lately."

Marc gave his brother an admiring look. The answer had been improv, but it had both addressed Coleman's suspicion about his son's work and introduced the subject this excursion was actually all about.

"How so?" asked the ADA.

Marc shrugged, "He's been harassing my workers a lot all of a sudden--pulling them in for no reason, holding them on suspicion of being illegal immigrants, anything he can do to slow down construction."

John frowned, "Why would he do that?"

"I think he knows we're looking for a real candidate to run against him this November," said Todd earnestly.

It had been perfectly delivered, but John shook his head, "Don't waste your time or your money. Better men have tried. Beaufort's a war hero and the VFW votes for him in a block every time he comes up for election. You can't beat old people on a local level. The vote by the bus-load."

"His own men led him into a minefield because they were terrified of him," said Todd evenly. "That's hardly the stuff of recruitment posters."

John shook his head, "That's just a rumor. He stepped on a mine during combat operations, but nobody knows whether or not it was an accident."

"Actually," said Todd. "I have an affidavit from a man who served under him, swearing that another soldier, killed in the same firefight, had revealed plans to murder the sergeant out of fear for his own safety."

John looked skeptical, "If that's so, why did this never come up before."

Todd shrugged, "The man was terrified of retribution. Even today, he has nightmares about Sergeant Beaufort."

Also, Marc added to himself, nobody had ever offered the man five thousand dollars to tell that story before. Lithium and Thorazine were apparently very expensive. Marc wasn't even sure the man had actually served with Beaufort, but introducing the document close enough to the election meant that any such unfortunate details would be unlikely to come up in enough time to swing the voting.

Mentally, Marc cursed Hunter Schelle and his inattentive mother. The boy had wandered back out of the woods a few hours after disappearing, gripping half of a gypsy moth caterpillar in his fist, covered with dirt, and strangely placid about the whole thing. But the damage had been done. The next day, the sheriff had been down at the school, asking Tamara's teachers and classmates about her. Todd had exaggerated the harassment of his contractors, but the sheriff had pulled one over on a DWI and taken the opportunity to ask some pointed questions about Marc, particularly about his relationships with women.

Marc and Todd had convened a war council.

"He'd be a tough nut to crack," Todd had said. He's never taken a bribe and offering him one is a good way to turn a routine traffic stop into a routine drug bust or a routine 'skull busted while resisting arrest.'"

Marc had been surprised. He'd known the sheriff as a terrifying presence, but considered him basically honest, "I thought he was a good cop."

"He's an effective cop," Todd had explained. "But, I wouldn't apply any definition of 'good' to him. He's a bully and a sadist and has been for as long as he's been sheriff. He enforces the law selectively and loves to escalate things that could be handled much more tactfully."