Seductive Reasoning

by Melissa Schroeder

  “It’s been a long few days since we have been alone.”

  She nodded as she set the bowls on the counter. He stepped closer, pressing against her. She could feel his erection against her rear end. He nipped at the nape of her neck.

  “I used to have fantasies about your neck. Still do.”

  Heat flared low in her belly, as she felt her body respond to his words, and whatever he was doing to her neck.

  “My neck. How odd.”

  He chuckled, pressing his mouth against her flesh. The vibration of it filtered over her. She shivered in response. Good lord, they both had their clothes on and she was melting right there. Every hormone in her body was screaming for relief, and he had barely touched her.

  “I really wanted to know what it tasted like. Especially now that it covers it.”

  She wanted to say something, but she couldn’t. Her throat had gone unbearably dry. Her body throbbed with need. It was embarrassing that all he had to do was tease her just a little, and she was ready to rip her clothes off and jump him.

  With a sigh, he stepped away and turned her. He leaned his forehead against hers. “You test my control, Emma.”

  “I don’t know what I am doing to you.”

  Humor softened the features of his face. He had such a pretty face. “I know. That makes you even more enticing.”

  He kissed her then, with the rain tapping against her window, and the smell of supper surrounding her. And right there, she realized she was in love with him. Nothing in life had prepared her for it, and she doubted anyone could prepare for this. This bigger than life man had snuck in and stolen her heart. When he pulled back, he looked at her. His brow furrowed.

  “Emma? Are you okay?”

  She shook her head. “Not sure, but I will be at some point.”

  He opened his mouth to respond, but his phone went off.

  “Gotta get that.”

  “Of course,” she said.

  He answered and listened. The lightness in his eyes dimmed, and the warmth of the room seemed to seep away. “Where?”

  “Okay. Can you pick me up? I have my bike and I am at Emma’s.”

  He hung up and sighed.

  “They found Susan?” she asked, not really wanting to know.

  Del shook his head. “No. Her cell phone just went on though.”

  He hesitated and she shook her head. “Go. Come here when you are done.”

  He nodded and grabbed his jacket off the coat rack. Then he turned around and came back her.

  “Stay here. Please.”

  She smiled. “No worries. I have some more work to do.”

  He kissed her. The sweetness of it stole over her, tugged at her heart, and captured her soul. If she had not been in love with him before, she would have fallen right on the ground at his feet. He pulled back and she wanted to protest, but could not. They both had work to do.

  “I’ll call.”

  She shook her head. “Just come back.”

  Comprehension came fast and his mouth curved. Her heart warmed at the sight.

  He kissed her quick, hot and hard, then he was gone. She walked to the window and looked out over the water. She could see the outer bands of the storm approach. She prayed it was just a phone and not the woman.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Del’s nerves were raw, and his head pounding by the time Adam took the exit to Ko’olau Golf Course. Lights lit up the night, as Adam followed the directions of the HPD officer in charge of controlling the traffic in and out of the parking lot. The rain slashed at the windows, coming down so hard, it bounced off the hood of Adam’s TFH pickup.

  “I can’t help but think this is planned,” Adam said as he drove to the back corner of the parking lot where everyone had assembled.

  “You mean because of the storm?” Del nodded. “Yeah, might be. If this is one guy doing all these killings, I could see him getting particular joy out of this. It’s a mess out here; the storm will make it difficult.”

  “Add in that he wants to make sure there is no evidence, and this kind of storm would definitely ensure nothing would be left. Still, it hasn’t been two weeks, so I wonder if this was all sped up because of the storm.”

  “It might be. Emma has gotten a little more information tonight, things she put together since the meeting this morning. She is going to focus on the goddesses and the deity aspect. She thinks that might pop up in some other reports. Even if he didn’t tattoo them, there is always the chance she could find another connection. Writings, postings to social media. I don’t know why the hell people are surprised when their social media posts take them down.”

  Adam nodded. “I looked over some of those things she sent me. I also talked to Tamilya Avery.”

  “You mean the woman who works for Conner Dillon?”

  Conner Dillon was a former FBI agent who now ran one of the most reputable security firms in the world.

  Adam nodded. “She’s former FBI and used to be a profiler. She agreed with Emma’s assessment. She said she’d hunt around, see if any of her old colleagues had heard anything, but she hadn’t heard anything herself.”

  “I hate to say it, but I have a feeling the governor is going want to call the FBI in.”

  “Well, that’s what we are now. Their…go between.”

  Del tossed him a look as he put the pickup in park. “Like they will see it that way. You know they’ll want to take over the entire thing.”

  Adam shrugged, but said nothing else as he turned off his truck. Del knew his friend was trying to come up with something to lead to the real question he wanted to ask.

  “Spit it out.”

  He cleared his throat. “So, you’re like an item now?”

  He glanced at his second-in-command. Del could tell Adam was trying to keep his voice professional. More than likely it was because his friend knew Del did not do “talks.” He said nothing.

  “You just might want to let people know, because there are a couple of guys in HPD who have a thing for her,” Adam said.

  Del grumbled and tried not to show any other reaction. Still, he felt his temper heating at the thought of HPD officers checking out Emma. She had no interest in them, and more than likely had no idea that they were attracted to her. Still, it didn’t sit well with him. “Especially Drew.”

  That made him chuckle. “No, he doesn’t have interest in her. His eye is wandering to another member of the team.”

  Adam frowned. “Elle is too old for him.”

  “First, she would kick your ass, or arse as she likes to say, if she heard you.”

  “She’s almost thirty-seven, but I was talking more about maturity.”

  Del nodded. “Either way, you’re wrong. He has a crush on Cat according to Emma.”

  “Cat,” Adam said with a laugh. “No way.”

  He shrugged. “She said something about his eyes dilating.”

  Adam pursed his lips. “Yeah, he does follow her around a lot. But that doesn’t mean you’re getting out of talking about Emma.”

  “I think I did because we’re here, and I’m the boss. I don’t talk about my feelings. I just punch things.”

  Adam reached into his back seat and grabbed a couple of rain ponchos with the TFH logo on them. “Hey, not my fault you told me to pick you up at her condo.”

  Del tugged the poncho over his head and looked at Adam. He was spending an inordinate amount of time pulling the poncho over his head. Then it hit him.

  “Aw, fuck, I was on speaker,” Del said shaking his head. “You should have told me.”

  “Not my fault. You know every time I call there is a chance you’re on speaker.”

  “That doesn’t excuse you.”

  He shrugged. “Not changing what happened. Some people lost bets tonight.”

  “On what? We were just going to have dinner.”

  “You mean you haven’t…”

  “Good God, are you a woman? Why is this important to you?”

  Adam chuckled. “You�
��re ‘ohana, Boss. Whether you like it or not, we are all in your business. We share.”

  Del rolled his eyes and stepped out of the truck. The place was flooded with lights, and he saw his team at the very back of the lot, not too far from where the path to the Likeke Falls started. They made their way over as McGregor was handing out a few umbrellas, although the banyan trees were shielding them from some of it.

  “Left just in range I take it?” Del asked.

  Adam nodded. “Yeah. One more foot and we wouldn’t have been able to track it.”

  They reached the team, and he heard more HPD showing up behind him. Cars parking, feet stomping, every body they could spare. It was harder on a night like tonight because the possibility of flooding always came with a tropical system. And tonight, there was a good chance some of Honolulu would be under water. HPD would be called in to help, so they might lose some of the searchers if the storm turned worse.

  His team looked at him expectantly. Del looked at Adam.

  “We have to redo the bets,” Adam said. “Just dinner.”

  He frowned, and then growled. “Wait, are you saying the bets were on my sex life?”

  Cat shrugged. “We do it all the time.”

  “Yeah, remember when that Frenchman was here for a conference and he kept sniffing around Elle?” Marcus asked.

  “None of us won that one,” Adam said.

  “Good God. I can’t believe you all spend so much time worrying about what other people are doing or not doing. Or who.”

  Cat shrugged. “You’re ‘ohana, Boss. Just gotta accept this is going to happen.”

  “I don’t have to accept anything. All the money is being donated to the Humane Society of Hawaii.”

  There was grumbling, but he cut it off with a look.

  “So, anything?” he asked.

  Marcus held up an evidence bag that contained the phone.

  “Got the phone. Since it was turned off, the tech probably won’t be able to find anything on it in the way of GPS or anything. There’s also some fabric with it. It was laying on top.”

  He took the bag and turned it over. The moment he saw the fabric covered in blood, his own ran cold.

  “Not a good sign,” Adam said.

  “No.” If the fabric had been torn, it could have been left due to an accident. But this fabric was cut with a pair of scissors. Someone had taken the time to cut it in a small four-by-four inch square. It must have been soaked with blood, because it was still stained even after all the rain.

  “I worked up a search area,” Floyd said. He was the most logical, since he’d worked rescue at one time. He held up his tablet, which he had in plastic to protect it from the rain. “Right now, I think we should go along the path. We can send a few officers out to the golf course, but I think that we should concentrate most of us in this area. There’s a reason he left her phone here.”

  Del nodded just as Captain Pham walked up to join them. The seasoned commander had a grim expression. His years in HPD probably told him this was a recovery, not a rescue.

  “What do you need from us?”

  “Marcus worked up a search area. If the weather gets too dangerous, we’ll pull back, so make sure each team has a walkie-talkie. I would hate to have our rescue of a victim turn into trying to rescue one of our own. So, just in case, we need to make sure we have them. Once you get past here, the cell coverage dies.”

  Captain Pham nodded, and he and Floyd went off.

  “It might just be a warning. It’s early, Boss,” Cat said. But even as she said it, he could tell she didn’t believe it. He saw Elle walking up the long path.

  “We don’t have a body,” he said. The yet was implied, and he knew everyone heard it in their heads. All the signs were bad, but he still didn’t want to give up hope. There was still a tiny chance she was alive.

  She nodded. “Yes, but if there is a chance you find a girl instead of a body, I wanted to be here.”

  He knew what she wanted…what they all wanted. They wanted Susan to be safe, to not have gone through the horrors that Grace Singh had endured. But wishes don’t always come true, especially when dealing with their business.

  They walked along the path, looking for any kind of evidence. The hiking trail was muddy and slick in the best of conditions. With the tropical system moving through the islands, the path was a mess. While they were minutes from Pali Highway on one side and H-3 on the other, they were thrust into the middle of a jungle the moment they set foot on the path. Plants, trees, and bushes covered the area. Some of it helped shield them from the worst of the rain, but it didn’t make it easy to get down the path.

  Less than thirty minutes later, he heard a shout. They all hurried in the direction of where the shout had sounded. Shoes pounded through the wet mud; the sound of splashing filled the air around them. He knew the path well, had hiked it. But, it was a different feel at night, with rain pounding away at them, and the fear of finding another dead girl.

  He made it through to a clearing. The Likeke Falls roared thanks to the rain still falling. There, on a huge rock at the bottom of the falls, lay Susan Tanaka.

  Stripped of her clothing, she was positioned with her arms spread out, and with her feet one on top of the other—as if she’d been crucified.

  “Holy Mother of God,” Elle said from beside him.

  He turned to look at her. The horror he heard in her voice was easy to see on her face. Del turned back to Susan’s body. Her skin had been marred by the same kind of burn marks as Grace Singh’s had, and her eyes were opened. The way she was posed, her eyes were looking up at the top of the falls, as if the waters were the answer to her prayers.

  Unfortunately, no prayers were answered tonight.

  Emma stared out her floor-to-ceiling window and watched the rain beat against her lanai. Usually, this kind of weather was conducive to work. Emma thrived when she could shut the world out and just concentrate. The pounding of the rain helped with that. The regular rhythm seemed to allow her to think and just delve into her work. Tonight, it had not helped at all.

  In the hours since Del had left, she’d attempted to work several times, but found herself at a loss. Worry about Del, about the team, and what they would find…she couldn’t think straight. She had left the television off and had avoided the Internet as much as possible. She did not want to know about the woman from anyone but Del.

  About an hour after he left, Del had sent her a text. It had only been Susan’s name, but she knew what it meant. It was something that she had been expecting from the moment he left. Her stomach knotted and her head throbbed. They had failed to save Susan, and she had suffered because of it.

  After that, she tried to throw herself into work, with the idea that she would catch the bastard, but she couldn’t bloody concentrate. All she could think about was Del and what he was experiencing.

  When the knock sounded at her door after two in the morning, she knew who it was before she checked. She opened the door and he stood there, drenched, looking so bloody tired. He must have come right from the scene. Mud caked his shirt, jeans, and boots.

  “Come in,” she said, stepping back.

  He shook his head. “I’ll get everything wet. I just wanted to stop by to let you know that I was getting my bike.”

  She glanced outside. The rain was still coming down in torrents. It actually appeared to be growing heavier by the minute. When she looked back at him, her protective gene kicked in. There was no way she could let him go back out in that weather. He definitely shouldn’t be driving in it, even on the best of nights, but tonight, she knew his mind wouldn’t be on driving. She could see the emptiness in his eyes. Her chest hurt, and she realized her heart was aching. For the woman who had been lost, but mostly for the man who stood before her.

  Emma couldn’t fathom what he was feeling at the moment. He had hoped, up until that very last moment, that they would find her. It was Del’s way. There was always a way out of every situation in his opinion. Be
cause of her past, Emma had always planned for the worst. It kept her prepared for the inevitable disappointments that came along the way.

  “You can’t go back out in this. Come in,” she said, grabbing onto his sleeve and tugging him through the doorway.

  She shut the door and locked it. She could smell it then, the sweet Hawaiian rain—it always smelled of flowers. But tonight, there was a tint of Del to that scent. Masculine overtones with the fragrant tropical flowers. Emma knew she would never forget that smell as long as she lived.

  “I’m wet,” he said, but she ignored him again. After that, he said nothing else, which worried her more.

  She helped him off with the soaking jacket and hung it on her coat rack. She knew he hadn’t probably had anything in his stomach for hours, and that couldn’t be good, considering the amount of energy he had been using.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  He shook his head. Her worry increased. Usually, Del would have put up a fight. It was one of the things she loved about him. Fighting was kind of like foreplay to an extent. At the moment, he acted like he hadn’t even noticed that she was undressing him.

  She helped him off with his shoes, putting them in her kitchen on the tiled floor, so they didn’t stain her carpet. When she straightened, he wasn’t even looking at her. It was as if he was looking straight through her. Goosebumps rose over her flesh. He wasn’t even in there, not mentally.

  “Well, let’s get you in the shower. You’re soaking wet.”

  Again, nothing. He kept quiet as she led him to her room, then into her bathroom. She turned the shower on so it had time to heat up. He just looked at her. He roused himself, then looked around. When he met her gaze again, he was even more remote.

  “I really should leave.”

  She crossed her arms and shook her head. “I said no.”

  And without any other comments, she first took off his shoulder holster, setting it down on the bathroom counter. Then, she helped him out of his clothes. His skin was cold to the touch, and she was worried that he might be going into shock of some sort. She ignored the little skip of her heartbeat when she finally had him nude. The man was amazing. All long, lean muscle, tats on his shoulders, one for Special Forces, the other of American and Italian flags. He had just enough hair on his chest, and she liked the way it narrowed down to a long path that bisected his abs. She hesitated for just a moment. Emma wasn’t especially modest, but it was the first time he would see her naked. Del wasn’t really paying attention at the moment, so she shrugged inwardly and peeled off her clothes. After stepping into the shower, she tugged him into the stall with her.