by Gayle Wilson
In that earlier moment of weakness, Sarah had made him an offer. Although he'd accepted, he had understood from the first that what she'd given him that night had no strings attached. It made no promises.
Tonight, in admiration for her strength, he'd come to make a similar offering. No strings. No promises. Only the here and now. For however long the two of them found what they shared mutually satisfying.
He crossed the bedroom, the sound of the shower growing clearer with each step. As he walked, his fingers moved against the buttons of his jeans. When he reached the partially closed door of the bath, he stopped long enough to strip them off. leaving them behind him on the carpet.
He widened the crack between the door and its frame, and then, barefoot, he stepped onto the cool, smooth tiles of the bathroom floor. He could see her behind the translucent front wall of the enclosure, lifting her face to the spray. Her body was in profile, firm breasts jutting upward. Just as he'd pictured them in his head.
He must have made some sound. Startled, she turned toward him. "Mac?"
"Yeah. It's okay."
"What's wrong?" She pushed the sliding door open, unmindful of the spray.
When she saw him, her eyes made a quick tour down his nude body before, widened, they came back to lock on his. The knowledge of why he was here was in hers.
For a moment, there was nothing else there. Not even shock. Then her shoulders lifted as she drew breath. She didn't speak, waiting instead.
"Nothing's wrong." he said finally.
"Then..."
"It wasn't enough. The other night. That wasn't all this is supposed to be."
"This?"
"You and me."
He didn't say "us." She would have told him there was no "us."
She would have been right. They'd both been alone too long. Too self-sufficient. Too opinionated. Too damned stubborn.
That didn't mean that there couldn't be more than that one-night stand. The phrase echoed, the epitome of his adolescent dreams.
"What more do you want, Mac?"
Her eyes again made that downward journey. When they came up this time, there was a trace of amusement in their gray-green depths.
He didn't mind seeing it there. It was, he supposed, pretty damn funny that the only way they could manage this seemed to revolve around the shower enclosure.
"I don't know. All I know is what I want tonight. And so do you."
"Is this supposed to be another form of persuasion?"
"Would that work?"
"Depends on how persuasive you are. I guess."
"Fair enough."
He moved toward the shower, and her eyes widened again. He'd surprised her. and he liked that. It boded well for what he intended.
He stepped into the enclosure, pulling the door closed. Despite the fact that the stall was open at the top. there was an immediate sense of containment. As if they'd somehow managed to shut out the rest of the world.
Tate. Morel. The press. Everything else had been left outside.
Only the two of them were in here. Alone. Together.
And then he realized he'd been right about everything else he'd envisioned. Moisture glistened on her skin, adding to its pearl like luster.
With one finger he pushed a strand of hair off from her cheek. Then the thumb of that same hand began a slow, involuntary glide along the smoothness of her jaw and down the side of her neck. Her head fell back, her mouth opening on a sigh as her eyelids drifted closed.
His thumb continued to trail downward, tracing along the valley between her breasts. As it did, his fingers brushed over her nipple, feeling its instant response. Emboldened, they then cupped under the small, perfect globe, lifting it to his mouth.
Her flesh was warm and damp. Soft. The taste so sweet it literally took his breath.
His tongue circled the tautened bud, but he was too hungry for the slow, deliberate courtship he'd employed before. And she wasn't the woman she'd been that night. Fragile. Scarred. Scared.
The image of her stubbornly defying him tonight because she believed it was the right thing to do formed in his mind. His erection, already firmly engorged, tightened.
Maybe that's what had attracted him from the first. The same quality he would have admired in a fellow police officer. Or a combat vet. In anyone willing to stand up and be counted.
His lips fastened around the peak of her breast, suckling hard. With his hand against her spine, he guided her away from the wall with the spigots toward the smooth expanse of the longer side. Then, his mouth still engaged with worshiping her breast, he used his lower body to urge her back against the tile.
As soon as that contact between them had been made, he knew it was a mistake. He was too near the edge, and he wanted her far too much to take this kind of risk.
He eased away, trying to fill his mind with something else. With anything else. Anything but the fact of her body a fraction of an inch from his. Anything but the thought of burying himself inside her and staying there until neither of them could think about what had happened today.
Or any other day, he amended. He wanted to bury himself inside Sarah until all either of them could do was feel.
Her hands had found his buttocks. Her nails dug into skin and muscle as she pulled him back against her.
He raised his head to issue a warning. Before he could form the words, her body surged upward, her mouth fastening over his as if she, too, had been waiting for this.
He could feel her nipples, hardened from his caress and slick from the combination of soap and moisture, slide across his chest. Another sensation to be added to the building chorus demanding relief.
He broke the kiss, lowering his face to find the curve between her neck and shoulder. Her head tilted, moving back and forth against his ear as his mouth nuzzled the soft, sensitive skin along her collarbone.
She moved suddenly, her arms locking around his neck. And then, using them to lever herself upward, she lifted her legs to fasten around his hips.
He raised his head then to look down into her eyes. They were closed, but her lips—only a fraction of an inch from his—were parted, seeming to invite his kiss.
As he leaned down to accept that invitation, her hand moved against him, grasping and then guiding him into the wet heat of her body. For an instant they both froze, from shock and pleasure.
Then she moved again, lowering herself onto his shaft, one slow millimeter at a time. His breath released in a long, low gasp, bringing her eyes open. At whatever she saw in his, the curve of her mouth increased, as did the pressure she exerted to pull him deeper inside.
She moved again, somehow able, within the restraints of their positions, to control the slow up and down motion of her body over his. She watched him as she did, seeming to anticipate the exact second when his quickly unraveling control reached the breaking point.
And then—suddenly—there was no further movement. No increase of the exquisite pressure her muscles had exerted. Nothing but some badly needed space and time to allow him to rebuild whatever control he could before the next onslaught of sensation.
He had come here prepared to take her. To show her that, despite her determination to do what she thought was right rather than what he believed was smart, he was in charge. At least of this.
He had discovered that he wasn't. Not by any stretch of the imagination.
When she began again that slow, seductive torture, he knew he should admit defeat. Which was also victory.
Unwilling or unable to endure any more, he gathered her to him, using his hands under her shoulder blades to lift her away from the wall. With them, he then pressed her downward. At the same time, he used the big muscles of his thighs and buttocks to drive his hips upward.
The gasp this time was hers. He caught it with his mouth, covering hers as again and again he pushed into her.
He broke the kiss only as the roaring cataclysm inside his body began. The force of it rolled over him in waves.
He
could do nothing but cling to her as they rocked him. Leaving him mindless. Blind and deaf.
As his orgasm began to wane, allowing a partial return to sanity and consciousness, he became aware that Sarah had joined him. He opened his eyes to find that her head had fallen back against the wall behind her.
He held her through a series of shivering releases until, sated, she sagged in his arms. Then they rested together, their bodies joined as their ragged breathing slowed and finally steadied.
After an eternity, she leaned back against the tiles once more, blowing out a breath. "We might need to try that again sometime."
"To see if we can get it right?" When he smiled at her, her lips tilted in response.
"Can you do something about the water?" she asked.
"What water?"
She turned her head, looking at the now-lukewarm spray from the shower head that continued to pelt them. Mac knew from bitter experience it would soon become ice-cold. He reached over and turned the handle, cutting off the flow.
The sudden silence seemed deafening. A little intimidating.
"Have I convinced you yet?" he asked.
"No, but I have to say that's the best frigging argument I've heard yet."
Despite the seriousness of the subject, he laughed out loud. And Sarah laughed with him.
With the sound of her laughter, he realized that he didn't want to lose whatever this was. He didn't want to lose her.
Didn’t want to lose her....
The words took on a life of their own. And in spite of her recent vote of confidence, he knew he hadn't changed her mind.
He couldn't. She wouldn't be Sarah if he could. Which meant...
Which meant it was up to him to come up with a solution that would put an end to Tate without placing her in greater danger than she was in already.
Twenty-Three
When the phone rang, Mac reached for the alarm on the bedside clock from sheer force of habit. The second ring brought him far enough out of the well of sleep to recognize the sound for what it was. By the third, he not only knew where he was. but who was asleep beside him.
As the memories from last night flooded his brain, he began to sit up. trying to untangle his legs from the long, smooth length of Sarah's. His hand, fumbling over the top of the bedside table, finally connected with his cell.
He opened the case and brought it to his ear. '"Lo?"
"Mac? Daryl Johnson here. I've got some new information on your guy I think you'll want to see."
It took him a few sleep-fogged seconds to place the name and then to identify the reference. "Something new on Tate?"
"Except that isn't his name."
There hadn't been a match in the databases for Tate's prints, but with the information they'd acquired at the time of his arrest, it had always been likely someone would eventually tie him to his past. Apparently the FBI had finally made that connection.
"Priors?"
"One very important one. Explains a lot."
"Want to give me the short version?"
As he talked. Mac was aware of Sarah sitting up in bed beside him. She pulled the top sheet up to cover her breasts.
In other circumstances, given what had happened between them last night, he might have found that amusing. Even slightly seductive. With the Bureau's profiler on the other end of the line, talking to him about the killer of her son, it was anything but.
"His real name is Nathan Burrows," Johnson went on, unaware of what Mac was dealing with. "Age thirty-three. Native of Wayne's Crossroad, Georgia. He was suspected of killing his mother and maternal uncle at age thirteen. No complete prints of any kind left at the scene, including the kid's, but they did get a couple of very incomplete partials. At the time of the murders, the boy disappeared, leaving the authorities to wonder if he'd been abducted by the killer. Now we know that he hadn't been because eventually he would reappear in a variety of personas and locations, the latest being Samuel Tate. The resemblance between the mug shots you guys took of Tate and Nathan as a boy are eerie."
"There's no doubt in your mind they're one and the same."
"Not for us. The methodology of the original homicide confirms what the picture and partials suggest."
"Did you say he killed his mother?'
Maybe if Tate's primary targets had been women, Mac might have expected something like that. Since it never had been...
"From what the locals pieced together—and this is by no means complete—the uncle had been abusing him for years. Whether that was with the mother's complicity or not. Burrows apparently blamed her for not putting an end to it."
"Jesus." Mac said softly.
"Yeah. Not that there's anything new about that. It's almost stereotypical, actually. Except for killing the mother, too, of course."
"So...he's just repeating with his victims what the uncle did to him." That hadn't been a question. That was always the pattern.
"He's assuming the control he didn't have as a child. And when he's done with them, he kills them just like he killed his molester."
Despite profiles and patterns, Mac knew that much of what the behavioral science guys put out was guesswork. Educated guesswork, of course, but they filled in a lot of blanks that no one who had not lived through the situation could possibly know.
"Anyway. I thought you might want to see what we have," Johnson went on. "I tried your office first, but they said you weren't in."
"Yeah. We worked late last night. I need to fill you in on that. You gonna be there the rest of the day?" As he asked that question, Mac glanced down at his watch.
It was after ten. No wonder Johnson was surprised to find he wasn't at headquarters.
"Most of it. Something else happen?"
"He did another kid, but...there are some twists to this one. Stuff I'd like to run by you. Let me get some final details from the techs, and I'll call you back."
"I'll be waiting. As bad as that is, it does give you some time to assimilate the new stuff before..." Johnson let the sentence trail, but they both knew what he was getting at. Before the next murder. With someone like Tate, the next one was inevitable. "Maybe there'll be something in here that will help."
"I'll get back with you as soon as I can," Mac promised. "Thanks for sending the stuff."
"Talk to you later then."
Johnson disconnected, but Mac held the phone to his ear a few seconds, trying to absorb everything he'd been told. Finally he closed the case and laid the cell back on the bedside table. When he turned. Sarah was looking at him, her brows raised.
"That was the FBI profiler who's been working with us on the Tate stuff," he explained.
"And?"
"They've matched the photographs we took of Tate to someone named Nathan Burrows, who disappeared at age thirteen from a little town in Georgia. After killing his mother and her brother."
"His mother."
Sarah's repetition didn't have quite the same note of shock his own had had. Of course, she'd had a few minutes to fit that word into possible scenarios. And given what they already knew about Tate...
"He killed his own mother," she repeated softly when Mac didn't respond.
"Apparently she knew her brother was abusing him and didn't step in to stop it. Or that's what the boy believed. He apparently hated her because she didn't do what she should have to protect him."
As he said those words aloud, it was as if the brain-fog that had dogged him during his conversation with the profiler lifted. More than that, he realized. It was as if everything he hadn't understood about what had happened yesterday suddenly fell into place. As if he'd been given the key to a convoluted puzzle that was no longer at all complicated.
Nathan Burrows's mother hadn't stood up for him. Weak and defenseless, he'd endured unspeakable horrors until he had reached an age and a level of fury that had allowed him to stand up for himself.
He had murdered his attacker, as well as the woman whose job it had been to not only nurture but also protect hi
m. The woman who had failed to do that. A failure that had set him on the path to becoming Samuel Tate and all those other incarnations in which he had abused and then murdered defenseless children.
And through all those years, nobody had done anything to stop him. The justice system certainly hadn't. Not even when they had finally managed to apprehend him.
Then one cold, clear morning he'd walked down the steps of a courthouse, again a free man. A woman—a mother—had pointed a gun at him intending to bring him to account for what he had done to her son.
As the thoughts tumbled through Mac's brain, the sequence of understanding ran faster and faster. Each fit with the other until the picture they formed was unmistakable. And unmistakably correct.
Samuel Tate wasn't out to get revenge for what Sarah had tried to do. In his sick, twisted mind, she'd done exactly what a mother should do when someone hurt her child. Sarah had said no to him. She had screamed to her son's murderer. No more. If no one else will stop you, then I will.
"Mac?"
He raised his eyes, focusing on her face. The question he'd heard in her voice was reflected in her expression.
"What is it?" she asked. "What's wrong?"
"It isn't going to work."
"What?"
"What Morel wants you to do. It isn't going to work."
She shook her head, her lips forming a question she didn't speak aloud.
"He doesn't hate you, Sarah. And he doesn't want revenge. That isn't what he's doing."
"Tate? But... I don't understand."
"You did what his mother didn’t do. You did what, in his mind, you were supposed to do. You stuck up for Danny."
Putting the realization into words made him more convinced he was right.
Sarah started to shake her head. Even as she did. something else was happening in her eyes. Some inkling of the chain of logic he'd just followed to reach this conclusion.
In response to what he saw there. Mac nodded. Encouraging her.
"He admires you. Sarah, for what you tried to do." He laughed, thinking how wrong they'd all been. "That sick, twisted bastard likes you. He isn't trying to hurt you. If anything—"
